The Swing

The melody sounded familiar but I couldn’t quite decide where I had heard it before. It was constantly stuck in my head during those days, which was vexing to this composer. I would find it sneaking its way into my writing, snaking through variations and writhing in fugal themes. I dare say it is a melody that continues to haunt me to this very day.

My name is Ian McIntosh and I live in a modest cottage just outside a village that is a short distance North of Edinburgh, Scotland. Though I consider it my primary profession, I have exhibited an unexceptional career as a musical composer. To date, only 3 of my compositions have been published, and of those, only 1 performed publicly. In addition, I work as a gardener for a few of the wealthier residents in the village. This work I must profess,, 

 I have found to be far more lucrative. These days I live alone in my cottage as I have been left a widower due to an anomalous accident involving a horse-drawn carriage and a steam train, but that should be a story for another time. Neither of my occupations necessitates much interaction with others, and as my wife, Aileen, and I never had any children, my life is largely a lonely one.

The elderly neighbors that lived in the cottage to the East of me decided to move to Edinburgh and they put their property up for sale. A younger couple purchased the cottage a few months later. Though we were neighbors, due to a long stone wall, a fair amount of land between the dwellings, and combine with my chosen life of isolation, we never met for an extended period of time.

On my way home from a day of gardening, shortly after their arrival, I observed a swing had been placed on a thick branch of the large Sycamore tree in their side yard closest to my home. Though there is a stone wall, I can see the tree from the room I use as my studio where I like to compose. When I can, I like to open the windows in the studio and enjoy some fresh air. As that room happens to be on the East side of the cottage, I usually have my tea in the mornings there as I watch the Sun come up and then try to complete some writing of music.  

The morning after the swing had been hung, I pulled back the drapes and opened the windows to be greeted by the rising Sun which itself was accompanied by the sound of a faint melody. I peered out the window to see a young girl with long black hair, wearing a white dress, sitting in the swing humming to herself. I smiled to myself, and for the first few days I found it charming, but soon the charm quickly wore off and it became more and more of a distraction to my ability to compose. Each morning she would be there from the time I would open the windows until the time I would leave to do my gardening. As I would walk by their yard I would try to catch a glimpse of the girl, but I could never catch a clear view of her face.

Finally, 3 months later I met my neighbors face to face at a celebration we happened to be attending in the village. We exchanged pleasantries and I learned their names were Colin and Beatrice. They had moved up North from Glasgow after Colin had graduated from Law school and he opened an office in the village. As we were about to go our separate ways, I asked their daughter’s name and mentioned I heard her humming a melody when she was in the swing and that while it was quite beautiful, the melody eluded my recognition. Beatrice’s eyes grew large and then she gasped and started to cry. Colin had a look of disbelieve upon his face. He drew his wife into his embrace and then looked up to meet me eye to eye.

In a faint whisper he vehemently informed me, “Whatever hallucinations you may be having, they do not involve us. Our daughter was killed in an accident a few years ago and it has left us devastated”. With this he turned with his wife and headed down the road toward their cottage before I could say another word to them. 

It was my turn to be aghast. I was merely telling them what I had experienced. Each morning when I opened my windows, I could see and hear her. It was not a figment of my imagination, or a hallucination as Colin had called it. I searched out the priest from the village church and after speaking briefly with him, he confirmed that their story was true. Colin and Beatrice’s daughter, Margaret, had been killed when the carriage she was travelling in from Edinburgh to Glasgow had been hit by a train. Her fellow passengers had all died instantly as well.

Father McLeary and I stared mortified at each other as the realization hit us. She had been in the same carriage that my wife was in when she died. And then achingly it dawned on me, the melody the girl was humming was one that I had written that my wife loved and which she had sang all the time. After she died, I had blocked it from my mind and even destroyed the composition of which it was a part. 

In the days that followed we came to discover that Margaret had been a student of my wife’s. Aileen taught music classes in Edinburgh during the summer and she had taught her students the composition I had written for her containing the haunting melody for them to perform in concert. Aileen and a few of her students had been travelling from Edinburgh to Glasgow for a final performance. The carriage driver was attempting to beat a steam locomotive that was fast approaching the intersection to ensure his passengers arrived at their destination on time. As the carriage they were in was crossing the rails the jolting motion caused it to become disconnected from the harnessed horses that were pulling it and it came to a halt in the center of the tracks. The train had no time to stop and the carriage’s passengers had no time to escape before they were struck. 

Though we never knew for certain why the apparition appeared on a swing humming the melody, the priest and I conjectured it was because of the close proximity of Margaret’s parents and I and it caused some special energy. Shortly after my meeting with Colin and Beatrice and the reawakening of my memories, I decided to rewrite the composition. After its completion I swore I heard voices singing along as I played through it on the piano, and just as suddenly as it appeared, so did the ghost disappear.