Ghost Story Review: "Playmates" by A. M. Burrage

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After her alcoholic father dies, eight-year-old Monica is adopted by Stephen Everton who is himself childless and no great fan of children. He wasn’t close to her father and it’s something of a mystery as to why he adopts her, but at least it keeps her out of “some refuge for waifs and strays.” Monica’s short life has already been hard. She goes with Everton without protest. “She would,” the reader is told, “no more have questioned anybody’s ownership [of her] than if she had been an inanimate piece of luggage left in a cloak-room.” Everton writes books on historical crises, “cumbersome books with cumbersome titles, written by a scholar for scholars.” But they have brought him and not a little money. He can comfortably provide for the child, and so he does. She loves to read. Everton gives her free rein of his library. She remains a somber, cheerless child, one who has never learned how to play, until Everton moves to a different house when Monica is twelve. It’s larger than his first house, so he closes off areas. Gradually, he notices Monica smiles. Other odd things happen. She refers to an unused room off the library as “the schoolroom.” She speaks of “friends.” And she picks up old old-fashioned slang. Of course, she’s gotten this all out of books, Everton tells himself. She’s making up friends for herself because she has no playmates her own age. This is a sad, human little story, one whose ending surprised me. The reader is shouting at Everton, “Come on, those girls Monica is playing with are ghosts! They’re not just imaginary friends.” It’s nice to see Monica happy. Nice to see her smile, and sad to see that Everton doesn’t quite get it. However, even this arrangement is artificial and keeps her from experiencing life. It cannot last. The ghosts who become Monica’s friends died of diphtheria, a disease children are routinely vaccinated for now. It is quite rare in most of the world, but was still a threat into the 1920s when the story was written. The Great Race of Mercy was a successful effort to get antitoxin to a 1925 diphtheria outbreak Nome, Alaska, and is commemorated in the yearly Iditarod Race. I liked this story. I bought into it completely. Author A. M. (Alfred McLelland) Burrage wrote fiction for boys, including a series titled “Tufty.” He also wrote a memoir of his experiences as a soldier during WWI titled War is War under the pseudonym Ex-Private X. I’ve been unable to find this novelette online. _____ Title: “Playmates” Author: A. M. Burrage (1889-1956) First published: Some Ghost Stories 1927 Source: ISFDB