Small Spaces

Ollie pedals quickly out of town and heads for a part of Lethe Creek known as the swimming hole. She knows nobody will be there now that the weather has turned cold. Ollie hopes to find some privacy and a quiet spot to read until it’s time to go home for dinner. She’s brought an old adventure novel called Captain Blood.

As she walks her bike down the hill to the edge of the swimming hole, Ollie finds a woman already standing there. The woman appears to have been crying recently. She says she must throw the book she is carrying into the water. Ollie finds this behavior strange and offers to take the book, questioning why anybody would want to drown a perfectly good book:

‘I have to!’ snapped the woman, bringing Ollie up short. The woman went on, half to herself, ‘That’s the bargain. Make the arrangements. Then give the book to the water.’ She gave Ollie a pleading look. ‘I don’t have a choice, you see’ (13).

The woman says the book must be dropped into the water before tomorrow because that’s the bargain she made with the smiling man. Before the woman can toss the book into the water, Ollie snatches it away and refuses to give it back. The woman asks how old Ollie is. When the girl replies that she is 11, this number seems to have some meaning to the woman, who offers her a piece of advice: “‘Small!’ shrieked the woman. ‘Small spaces! Keep to small spaces or see what happens to you! Just see!’ She burst into wild laughter” (16). Ollie takes off on her bike before the woman can follow and retrieve the book. 

Ollie arrives home shortly before dinner time. She pauses to contemplate the odd exterior of her home. Her father always liked bright shades and painted the house the colors of an Easter egg. The house has since been known as The Egg. Ollie thinks fondly of her earliest memories of her father and mother painting the interior—each room distinctive. Ollie’s mother was adventurous, while her father enjoys arts and crafts. He loves to cook and make pottery too. Although Ollie refuses to recall the memory, her mother died in an accident the year before, an event that caused Ollie to withdraw. She quit the chess club and the softball team and spends most of her time alone with her books.

When Ollie gets inside the house, her father is making dinner. He says that the school called about her rock-throwing behavior. Ollie is supposed to see the principal the following day. Her father tries to talk to her about her behavior, but Ollie stomps upstairs and pouts in her bedroom, skipping supper. Alone in her room, Ollie grows curious about the book she rescued at the creek. It is entitled Small Spaces and was published in 1895.

The book begins with a letter from a woman named Beth Webster to her daughter, cautioning her never to return to Smoke Hollow. The book’s epigraph is equally ominous: “Ollie turned the page, fascinated. The next page only had an epigraph: When the mist rises, and the smiling man comes walking, you must avoid large places at night. Keep to small” (28). The story is then told from Beth’s perspective as a girl. One day, a young woman named Cathy and her two sons, Jonathan and Caleb, arrive at Beth’s father’s farm looking for work. Jonathan is 14 at the time, and Beth is already attracted to him.

The next morning, Olli’s alarm goes off early. This is the day her class is supposed to go on a field trip to Misty Valley Farm. It’s raining buckets, and Ollie pretends to be sick to avoid leaving the house. She wants to continue reading Small Spaces. She has now reached the part where Beth has finished talking about her teenage years. When Beth’s father dies, she inherits the farm. Both Jonathan and Caleb are courting her, and Beth agrees to marry Jonathan. Caleb is very angry and gets into a fight with his brother. Eventually, he runs off and goes missing for days. Jonathan is overcome with guilt and looks for his brother everywhere. Beth writes:

The mist was rising with the rain, the mist that gives Smoke Hollow its name. It was nearly Samhain, which, in the Old Country, marked the turning of the year. I cannot excuse what he did next. But Jon was desperate, outside in the wet, grieving. ‘Please,’ Jonathan said aloud. ‘Please. I’m sorry. I just want him back. I’ll do anything. Anything.’ And, out of the mist, a voice answered—. (33-34)

Olli’s reading is interrupted when her father comes upstairs to call her down to breakfast. He isn’t falling for her sick routine and coaxes her downstairs with the promise of oatmeal and bacon.

As she eats, Ollie continues to read her book with Jonathan’s unnerving description of the smiling man:

He didn’t tell me his name. I don’t think he has a name. He had long fingers. Long, thin fingers, and, oh, I can’t remember the rest. I felt as though I’d known him since the day I was born, and I felt the most indescribable horror at the sight of him (39).

The smiling man says he can bring Caleb back if Jonathan does whatever he says, “until the mist turns to rain” (40). Ollie’s reading is once again interrupted as her father packs her lunch and hustles her off to school.

When Ollie enters the school building, she remembers that she has an appointment with the principal. Much to her surprise, Brian is already there and says that he doesn’t know who threw the rock at him and that it was probably just an accident. Since the principal can’t get a confession from either Brian or Ollie, she is forced to let them go. Outside the office, Ollie refuses to say thank you and confronts Brian about why he didn’t defend Coco himself. He says that he doesn’t want anybody to get the idea that he might like to be her boyfriend.