Westchester Haunts: Time Runs Away With Her,
Dobbs Ferry, and Sleepy Hollow
Dobbs Ferry, and Sleepy Hollow
I grew up in Dobbs Ferry, NY, listening
to my parents’ friends in the local historical society try to scare me with tales
about the ghostly White Lady in her diaphanous gown, drifting down the hill
from The Master’s School. I really wanted to see her, and I never did. She was
supposed to be translucent. “Translucent” was my favorite word when I was in
fifth grade. I imagined the expression
on her pale, see-through face: solemn, tragic.
It would have been so cool to see The White Lady just once!
Maybe that’s why I had to write a
YA novel set in a village on the banks of the Hudson River in the year
1970. Time Runs Away With Her has a ghost fifty times as heartbroken as
The White Lady—and there’s time travel in the mix, too!
Westchester was seriously spooky in
the 1960’s and 70’s—not like the Johnny-come-lately hocus-pocus on Sleepy Hollow. Look, Sleepy
Hollow’s fun, but coming up in a river town back in the day, you took creepy
old houses and ghosts for granted. They weren’t something you TiVo’d and
binge-watched. They were simply what you
walked by on your way to school, past Victorian houses and Prohibition-era
brick storefronts. Everything was
haunted.
Each Sunday, my parents deposited
me at an Episcopal church that was built sometime around the year 1830. Washington Irving was one of the original
vestrymen there, by the way, speaking of Sleepy Hollow! I sang in the children’s choir, and wore a
heavy purple choir robe with a starched white collar. The robe probably dated back to the 1920’s. It itched, and smelled like dust. There was a very old lady in the congregation
who looked a bit like Queen Victoria, which was fitting because she also was
very British and could certainly remember Her Majesty. Her name was Grandma Thomas, and she would
pour me a cup full of warm milk with about a tablespoon of actual tea in it: a
suitable drink for an eleven-year-old.
When the
pacifist-priest-who-could-talk-to-the-young came to town, and the guys in my
junior high classes started growing their hair out until it “got good in the
back,” some things changed—and some things didn’t. Minding Father N’s children in the church
rectory was still terrifying because everyone knew the place was filled with
angry ghosts. Things happened there. This was one baby-sitting job where you were glad
if the kids wouldn’t go to sleep. But
like I said, it was the lower Hudson River Valley. The late 60’s. Everything really was haunted.
And away from our spooky old
mansions-turned-to-private schools and our big, bare trees whistling in the
winter wind, the whole world was turning on its head. Restless spirits in the
night? The thing that really scared us river rats was The Bomb. Or, as we got further into high school, The
Vietnam War. Vietnam wasn’t the Good War
our fathers had fought in. It seemed
pointless. Hopeless. And some of us would get drafted and killed.
Welcome to my heroine Bean
Donohue’s world. Things are still
pretty…analog. Vinyl LP’s are cutting
edge technology, not retro fun. Phones
plug into the wall. There’s The Pill--and
concerts at The Fillmore East and a hip, going-to-be-an artist boyfriend. But Westchester’s ghostly past keeps coming
back for Bean when she least expects it.
And it really does “run away with her.”
She has to be very careful who she tells that to. Copping to being a time traveler isn’t like
telling someone that you speak a little French—or that you play guitar.
C’mon up and visit us in the lower
Hudson Valley if you want to see what’s left of Time Runs Away With Her’s setting.
Did you know The Ramones shot the video for Pet Sematary in Sleepy
Hollow Cemetery? And that Leona Helmsley
is buried there as well as Washington Irving?
No spoilers here, but you have to see that Helmsley monument!
And if you
can’t see Bean’s (and my) stomping ground in person, here’s an even better alternative: your
imagination. Let Time Runs Away With Her run away with you.
* * * * * *
Time Runs
Away with Her
Christine
Potter
Time Travel Romantic Suspense, 74k
Time Travel Romantic Suspense, 74k
It’s not easy being Bean. Bean
Donohue lives for her guitar, but her mom threw her out of the house during a
snowstorm for singing. No way she’s going to get permission to go
see The Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East.
Zak, her
almost-boyfriend, will get drafted if he doesn’t get into art school, pot makes
Bean paranoid, and her best friend can’t stop talking about sex. 1970’s not for
wimps—but neither was 1885...or 1945. So why does Bean keep sliding backwards
in time?
Excerpt:
…Suzanne’s black turtleneck was
pulled all the way up to her nose, and her shoulders were hunched. She was memorizing French vocabulary words
and twirling a strand of her stick-straight, chestnut-colored hair around a
finger. Bean began to fold the corner
of a loose-leaf page back and forth so that she could tear it off without
making any noise: a note.
That’s when the library’s double doors banged open hard enough to bounce
on the wall behind them. Bean heard Miss
Webber draw her breath in––not quite a gasp, but almost––all the way across the
room.
It was Zak. Bean put a hand over her mouth to hide an
instant grin. Miss Webber, maybe a
little embarrassed at being startled, set down the paperwork she had been doing
and looked over her gold-rimmed glasses at him.
On Zak’s head was an old-fashioned fedora, an index card with the word
PRESS handwritten in big letters in its hatband: a press pass, like a black and
white movie’s newspaper reporter. His long hair looked silly and wonderful
underneath it.
“Mr. Grant,” said Miss Webber. “Do you have a pass?” That’s when the laughing started. Not hard,
nasty laughter, like when a dumb teacher gets taken in by a prank, but happy laughter. Kids liked Miss Webber, even though she was
so old that no one could guess her real age.
She wore a bun at the back of her neck the way you’d expect a librarian
to. Her hair was a brownish, grayish
no-color. But Bean bet it went all the
way down her back when she brushed it out at night.
“Touché, Madame,” said Zak. Then, without speaking, he took the fedora
off his head, and set it before her on the desk. He pointed at the hand-lettered PRESS card in
the hatband, and pantomimed taking pictures of Miss Webber with an imaginary
camera. Miss Webber laughed, which was
not something that happened incredibly often.
“A hall pass, Mr. Grant,” she
said. He pulled a small pink piece of
paper out of his army jacket. She
examined it. She still looked amused.
She stretched her arm out before her, the hall pass between two fingers, and
Zak retrieved it, bowing deeply. Instead of putting it back in his jacket, he
tucked it into his hatband with the PRESS pass, and put the hat back on his
head, adjusting its brim low on his forehead.
He spun around dramatically and scanned the library. Bean put her head down and stared at her book
to protect herself from disappointment if she was wrong, but she suspected he
was looking for her. She held her breath for a minute, looked up, and Zak was
halfway to her table.
“Grant,” said someone in a low voice as he walked by. Zak ignored it and dropped into the chair
next to Bean. Suzanne snuck a quick glance at Bean over the top of her French
book. Zak’s army jacket smelled like the outdoors: winter air and fireplace
smoke.
“Hi,” he whispered to Bean.
“Hi,” she whispered back. She wanted to giggle so much that her face
hurt. She turned a few pages, looking
for another Scarlet Letter
quotation. When she’d finished writing
one down, she peeked back at Zak. His
Algebra Two book was in front of him, and he was unfolding a piece of
paper. He produced a Rapidograph, used
it to jot down an equation, and began to solve it.
Bean felt giddy. She reread what she’d just written in her
notebook, but then a shadow fell across the page: Zak’s arm.
“Was stuff at home okay?” he wrote on the page
across from her English notes. He began
to doodle a shining sun face wearing a fedora next to what he had written.
“Sort of,” wrote Bean. “My mother
is a...”
“Big Mamma!” wrote Zak, and drew a plump woman in a bikini reclining
under the sun face. Bean’s mom wasn’t especially fat, but the picture was
funny. Bean laughed silently and glanced up at Zak, not meaning to stare
straight into his eyes. How had she not noticed the color of his
eyes before? They were steely blue.
Suzanne closed her French book to watch.
Bean felt herself blush, and tried to go back to The Scarlet Letter.
A few minutes later, Bean heard more fine-point pen scratching. She
pretended not to notice. On the back of
his algebra homework, Zak had dashed off a sketch of a girl (Bean? Hard to say)
with a guitar (Okay, so maybe it was
Bean).
He showed Bean the sketch, and
flipped the page back over. Then, he was
scribbling numbers again, quickly enough that it surprised her. At the edge of her vision, the light over the
river brightened, and the water sparkled.
Bean looked up.
That’s when she saw the dinosaurs.
Brontosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus rex. What were the names of the others?
Was that a steg ... a stegosaurus, maybe?
She couldn’t remember.
The dinosaurs were huge, at least life-sized, and on a barge in the
river, being towed by a tugboat. The
playground of the elementary school next door to Stormkill High was filling
with children in double rows, walking toward the riverbank, led by their
teachers.
Bean remembered her third grade teacher’s
explanation: “The dinosaur models are for the Sinclair Oil Exhibit, at the
World’s Fair they’re building in The City.
The whole school’s going outside to watch the dinosaurs sail down the
River.”
Bean stared out the library window.
She remembered how she’d put on her itchy blue mohair sweater and lined
up with her class. She hadn’t wanted to
be Alice Turton’s partner, but she’d had to hold someone’s hand when they
walked outside the building together: the buddy rule. The hall had been echoing with the sound of
everyone in it all at once and then they were out on the playground.
Eleventh-grade Bean got up from the table, leaned her arms on the
windowsill, and looked down. Outside,
the elementary school classes walked toward the Hudson. And there:
there was a little girl toward the front of one line of children with a blue
sweater and long, red hair.
What Bean saw was herself, in the
past, and so she pushed the window up and leaned out. The dinosaur barge was
right in the middle of the mercury-colored river...
...And then it wasn’t. It had blinked out––gone. There was nothing, nothing but the glitter of
sun on water and the rough cliffs on the other side of the Hudson. The playground next door was empty, unless
you counted a couple of squirrels and a few canvas-seat swings, moving in the
wind. Bean pulled her head back
inside. Zak was at her side, looking
either concerned or amused. She couldn’t tell.
Mrs. Webber was on her way across the room.
“Heavens! You’ll freeze all of us, Rebecca! Next time, just tell me if you’re too warm!” Mrs. Webber said, as soon as she got
close enough so she didn’t have to raise her voice. Kids from the tables near Bean stared. There
was a little laughter, a buzz of whispered conversations. She managed to shrug
her shoulders, and heard Zak chuckle.
The pages of Bean’s open notebook were moving in the cold breeze, but
then Mrs. Webber closed the window and they were still. There was a bit more
laughter, then it was quiet again.
Author Bio:
Christine Potter lives in a small
town not far from the setting of Time
Runs Away With Her, near the mighty Hudson River, in a very old (1740)
house with two ghosts. According to a
local ghost investigator, the ghosts are harmless, “just very old spirits who
don’t want to leave.” She doesn’t want them to.
Christine’s
house contains two pipe organs (her husband is a choir director/organist), two
spoiled tom cats, and too many books.
She’s also a poet, and the author of two collections of verse, Zero Degrees at First Light, and Sheltering in Place. Christine taught English and Creative Writing
for years in the Clarkstown Schools. She
DJ’s free form rock and roll weekly on Area24radio.com, and plays guitar,
dulcimer, and tower chimes.
Website: http://chrispygal.weebly.com/
Facebook
book page for Time Runs Away: * https://www.facebook.com/beanstravels?fref=ts
Twitter:
@chrispygal
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