A Ghost Cradle

 by Tessa S. 

 

Andrea Carter awoke with a start. It was the day the Carter's would be hosting a ranch day for anybody miles around their ranch. Andrea(Andi as they called her) raced to get dressed into her plaid dress that she had worn the day her mother got remarried and then raced into the other small room that her father had added onto their log house shortly before he had past away. When she looked through the little window, she stopped in her tracks. It was raining!!! Exactly what would make the ranch day get canceled. She had been looking forward to this day for what seemed like forever. She was to give horse rides at the ranch day and she thought that made her seem older. 

"Good Morning Miss Andrea," her stepfather said softly,and then a bit louder,"I 'spose you see the rain too." 

"Will ranch day get canceled?" Andi questioned. 

"We will see if the rain lets up, but first go feed the horses and help Chad do some chores if he isn't finished." 

Andi hopped out of her frozen position, got on her raincoat, and ran to the barn. "Hello Taffy," she says while softly petting the palomino mare. She quickly gets the horse food, then she sits down on her stool and starts calmly brushing her horse, singing her favorite lullaby. 

She jumps when Chad comes in. ''Ha I got you.'' 

"Um Chad do you know if the ranch day is canceled,'' Andi asks loudly to make her voice heard over the rain that is now pounding on the barn roof. 

"I do not know, but mother just called me to come back into the house, so maybe she or he (referring to their stepfather) will tell me." 

"Chad,'' mother yells from the house. 

"Better go," Chad says as he races out of the barn. 

Andi decides she just as well could go inside also, so she puts away the brush (she had finished brushing Taffy a while ago) and she runs inside. 

"So you're canceling it," she hears Chad say from inside. 

"Yup," her stepfather says. 

Andi almost starts to cry, but then she decides she is too old for that. She walks inside, and eats breakfast. While she is eating she decides that she should explore the attic, because it's raining outside anyways. She has to finish chores with her family first though.

Andi finally gets the chance to explore about 2 hours later. She climbs the attic ladder and hops into the attic. ''Wow," she says awed at the dusty things and the SO MANY things.  "I'm going to start exploring right away." 

Then she hears it. A creak, creak, creak coming from somewhere in the attic. She scans the attic, but doesn't see anything moving. She kind of gets the creeps, but decides she will only find out what it is if she looks. 

She starts moving stuff around and then right behind a trunk, she sees the cradle and she can see it is making the creaking noise. The cradle is painted pink and she decides to bring it out of the attic to look at it closer. She carefully climbs down the ladder with it and she carefully sets the old material on the ground. When she looks at it closer she discovers a small name handwritten on the side of the cradle.

"Anna?" she says to herself. Nobody has ever talked about an Anna let a lone say the name. She decides to go around asking if anybody has heard of the name before. She goes to her mother first.

"Ma, is their anyone we know by the name of Anna?'' 

"Not that I know of, why?"asks her mother. 

"Because I found that name written on a cradle in the attic," says Andi. 

"Well I have never heard of the name before, but that is quite interesting, I will think about it harder tonight, but first you should go ride horses with Riley." 

"I don't feel like it," says a discouraged Andi.  She asks around some more, but nobody has ever heard of the name. 

Later that day, she hears her mother and father laughing as she walks in. 

"Andi, you know that name you asked us about earlier, I really wanted to name you that, but Mitch didn't," says  Andi's mother. "I wrote on a cradle, to say I already had a cradle, but Mitch didn't allow it. He thought of the name Andrea and I actually liked it, so that is what we named you."