by Layton Green
I had the nagging sense that there was more to the story, but it was a different worry that kept me awake deep into the night, plaguing my mind with a single question that denied me the solace of sleep.
What had we seen in that courtyard?
-16-
When I woke, Asha was curled against my side. I flipped through some channels in Italian until she yawned and sat up.
“Ciao, principessa,” I said.
She managed a wan smile and squeezed my hand. “Thanks for last night.”
“For what?”
“For being there.”
“Yeah. Of course. How are you?”
She pressed her lips together. “Trying to . . . I don’t know. Listen, will you do me a favor? I know Jake and Lou will have questions—can you tell them?”
“Sure.”
I took a shower and made my way to the lobby while she cleaned up. Jake and Lou were having coffee at a table. Jake noticed the somber expression on my face and set his coffee down. I relayed what Asha had told me, and their faces drained.
“She’s sure?” Jake asked.
I nodded. Lou mumbled something unintelligible and returned to his coffee.
A few minutes later Asha came down. Lou patted her shoulder as she sat beside me.
“I need to develop the photos and look into some things,” Jake said. “Maybe you and the Commie could meet me around five at the coffee shop across the street here. Then let’s all meet up for dinner.” He looked at Asha. “I figured you could use some time to yourself.”
“I still want to be in on everything,” she said, “but thanks.”
“Haven’t you heard of digital cameras?” Lou asked.
“When mine breaks,” Jake said, “maybe I’ll look them up.”
“Maybe you should look up laptops, too. In case you needed a research source from the last century.”
Jake tapped a smartphone that looked a decade old. “Who carries a laptop around? Besides, if it happened in the last century, I’ve got no use for it.”
Lou rolled his eyes.
After Asha returned upstairs, Jake said, “If y’all will excuse me, I’ve got some research to do. Five o’clock?”
“We’ll be there,” I said, turning to Lou. “You know where we’re going, don’t you?”
“I strongly hope we’re going to make another visit to our haunted castle.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.”
“What for?” Jake said. “We have the photos.”
“What do you mean what for?” Lou asked. “To find out what really happened last night.”
Jake shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Lou hailed a taxi and instructed the driver to take us back to Castello di Selva. We wound our way through the city and he dropped us off in the same spot as before.
“Since it’s Sofistere’s dime,” Lou said, “I told the driver to wait for us this time.”“Good thinking.” I glanced around. “This place looks a little friendlier in the daytime.”
“Harder to play mind games in full sunlight.”
“It looked pretty convincing to me.”
He snorted. “Sorry, and I feel terrible for Asha, but do you know how easy it is to pull off a parlor trick like that? The question to ask is why.”
We walked to the section of the courtyard where we had first seen the boy. After scouring the grounds and the base of the tower, I squatted and put my elbows on my knees. “All I see is a bunch of wine bottles and cigarette butts.”
“There’re too many footprints to tell whose is whose,” Lou muttered.
We combed the rest of the courtyard and explored the three entrances to the castle. After an hour of searching we returned to the center of the courtyard, frustrated.
“Let’s check the other side of the wall,” Lou proposed. “Opposite the tower. Maybe someone set something up over there.”
We backtracked to the outer wall, following it to where another opening led into the courtyard behind the tower. We peered around. It was a smaller version of the inner courtyard, vacant and uninteresting. The tower we had climbed the night before loomed above us, punctuated by the chessboard window.
I started to head back, then noticed Lou bent over the ground.
“Check this out,” he said.
The section of grass near Lou was darker than the surrounding area, and stretched away in a straight line in either direction. Odd. I leaned down further and realized the inch-wide strip of grass was deadened, as if something had come along and caused a portion of the undergrowth to decay.
We followed the line until it intersected with another strip of deadened grass. This line ran along the ground in a curvy pattern that stretched almost the length of the courtyard. We noticed more lines branching off of the wavy one.
“That’s just weird,” I said, and Lou nodded. Then he looked up and began walking, cocking his head for me to follow.
“What’re you thinking?” I said.
“It’s probably nothing.”
I followed him back to the inner courtyard and then to the foot of the tower before realizing what he wanted to do. Retracing our steps from the night before, we climbed to where the chessboard window provided a clear view of the courtyard through which we had just walked. I caught my breath as a chill coursed through me.
When viewed from above, the thin strips of blackened grass took on a whole new aspect, forming a pattern that spanned the entire courtyard. I could see, quite distinctly, four straight lines of dead undergrowth, each parallel to the other, running from the top to the bottom of the quad. A single wavy line connected the tops of the four straight lines, forming a pattern that, as we stared down at it, was instantly recognizable.
It was the same marking that was on the letterbox.
-17-
“Do you see that?” I whispered.
“Of course,” Lou hissed.
I looked out the other window and scanned the inner courtyard, but saw only a bed of weeds littered with rocks. In the distance, the Bay of Naples was visible off the tip of the peninsula. The chills began again, and I felt exposed.
“What the hell is going on?” Lou said.
“I don’t know. Should we check around some more?”
“I think we should get out of here.”
“I’m not opposed to that.”
The taxi driver sped away at Lou’s urging. I turned to stare at the castle as we drove off, holding my gaze long after the castle ruins had disappeared from sight.
Needing to walk off our tension, we had the taxi drop us in the city center. We grabbed two panini and started towards our hotel. Touches of color dotted the city, a park here or a scenic fountain there, but for the most part Naples maintained its gloomy demeanor. Fleets of mopeds and miniature cars sped by as we navigated the absurdly narrow streets.
Lou stepped onto the curb as a horde of teenagers on Vespas almost ran us down. “I never thought I’d say this about an Italian city, but I don’t care much for Naples.”
“Depressing, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s a shame—if it was restored it’d be beautiful.”
“It’s like no one cares. So much culture and history covered by the worst layers of civilization.”
I shrugged. “Food’s good, though.”
“Food is good.”
“Women aren’t bad, either.”
“É vero.”
I stopped in front of a grimy cathedral sandwiched between a bank and a pizzeria. “So who do you think did that to the grass?”
“I’ve got no idea. Again, I don’t think for one second there isn’t a reasonable explanation. But I have to admit I’m curious to know what it is.”
“The curiosities are beginning to pile up,” I said.
We found our way back to the hotel and ducked into the coffee shop across the street. Again, a pleasant interior belied the chaos of the city outside. The café was small and rustic, flush with the aromatic scent of pastries and fresh coffee. We spotted Jake at a table in t
he back.
“You’re late,” he said.
A slim waitress with calloused hands and a throaty voice took our order. When she left, I told Jake what we had seen.
“It was formed out of dead grass?” he said.
We nodded.
“That can’t be good.” He pursed his lips and tugged on the brim of his hat. “Third time this marking has shown up. Perrott’s bottle, the letterbox, and now here. I wish we had an idea what it was. I haven’t had any luck on that front.”
“So what now?” I said.
“We follow the map. It’s all we have to go on. You ready to see what the next section looks like?” He rummaged through a backpack on the floor beside him. “I had images enlarged and copied.”
We crowded in. “So it really revealed another location?” Lou said. “Do you recognize it?”
“I don’t know where it is, but I know what it is.” He set a folder down on the table. “A cemetery.”
-18-
Jake pulled out a pair of enlarged photographs, passing one to Lou and one to me. “Take a look.”
The center of the photograph depicted a plain shape: two rectangles standing upright and topped by another rectangle lying across them. Surrounding the central shape was a collection of squares capped by semicircles, with longer rectangles extending from the base of the squares.
Classic representations of graves and headstones.
“The problem is figuring out which one of the world’s hundred million boneyards this one is.” Jake grunted. “We should’ve asked the specter.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts,” I said slowly, “but last night was . . . I’d be more likely to brush it aside if Asha wasn’t so disturbed. She’s convinced she saw her brother.”
“I can’t believe you’re entertaining this conversation,” Lou said.
Jake took a sip of coffee. “I suppose you think we ran into a little Italian boy who happens to look exactly like Asha’s dead brother, wearing the same clothes he had on when he died, and who has this little problem with being incorporeal?”
“Or,” Lou said, “Asha could be lying.”
I remembered the shock in her eyes when she saw the boy’s face. “I don’t think she’s lying,” I said quietly.
Lou shrugged. “It was dark, anything could’ve happened.” He flicked a wrist at Jake. “How come you’re so pro-ghost, anyway? How does that fit with your papal worldview?”
Jake set his coffee down. I thought he was going to blow up, but his voice possessed an uncharacteristic evenness. “You think my beliefs are backwards, but what’s more ignorant—subscribing to a two thousand-year-old belief system I’ve studied and experienced, or forming your own uneducated opinion on the matter? Enlightened doesn’t mean devoid of faith or beliefs. It means having an open mind and dealing with the facts you’ve been given, even if what you discover differs from what you personally believe.”
“Jake,” Lou said carefully, as if talking to a three-year-old, “I went to church three times a week for sixteen years. And right now I’m doing exactly what I’ve been doing all my life, including when I used to get spanked for making my Sunday School teachers cry: I’m dealing with the facts. And the fact is, we’re talking about ghosts. There’s no evidence they exist.”
“How about what you saw with your own two eyes last night? And where’s the evidence they don’t?”
Lou pounded on the table. “That’s circular and you know it. Why believe in something you can’t prove by science, by rational experience? If God exists, why not create some evidence we can see, or create us so we can all believe? He’s God, isn’t He?”
I kept waiting for Jake to reach across the table and throttle Lou, but the angrier Lou became, the calmer Jake seemed to grow. “The evidence is all around us,” Jake said. “And God’s logic isn’t your logic.”
“Apparently not. And for the record, I hate that argument.” Lou waved a hand in disgust. “God is a crutch. A way to explain away pain and sadness and human frailty, when it’s just the cruel natural order.”
Jake lit a cigarette, his face as calm as fallen snow, and offered one to Lou. “I hear you, Commie. There’s an almost unbearable amount of pain in the world, and I sure don’t have all the answers.”
Jake took a deep drag and turned to stare out the window, his face unreadable. I was jealous of both their worldviews; at least they had convictions one way or the other. Too often in life I was unable to take a stance, cursed with a mind that saw all the facets in every gem, never able to join a group or a cause or even a political party because I couldn’t relate to the categorical thinking it required. My father called it wisdom, but the world called it social ostracism.
I broke the standoff. “Jake, any new thoughts on the letterbox?”
His eyes remained far away for a moment. “I still don’t have a clue what it is. But I discovered a few interesting pieces of information.”
“Such as?”
He looked down at the letterbox. “What do you know about the Druids?”
“I’ve heard of them, of course,” I said. “Weren’t they some sort of ancient priests from the British Isles? Lived in forests?”
“Rites of summer solstice, oak groves, mistletoe, all that jazz,” Lou added.
Jake nodded. “The Druids helped the Celts conquer vast territories, but they were also the intellectuals of their day: scholars, religious mystics, philosophers, astronomers, and physicians. Like all organizations, there was a Druid food chain—and at the top of it were the high priests.”
Jake signaled for another espresso. “These cats had a nasty reputation, and their area of specialization was the occult. The ancient world was terrified of them.”
“So you think the Druids may have had something to do with the letterbox,” Lou said, “because of the Ogham inscription, the dates, and the location.”
“I thought of them the first time I saw the Ogham, but as I said, the Celtic priests—Druids—were very, very strict about not committing their knowledge to written form.’”
“Why the prohibition?” I asked.
“Mainly so their knowledge wouldn’t fall into the wrong hands. They thought their occult secrets were too powerful for regular people to handle. Also, they thought memorization made for sharp Druids. It took more than twenty years to complete the Druidic studies. More to become a high priest.”
I whistled. “They sound intense.”
“You bet. And you want to know what their priests were infamous for in the ancient world?”
I wasn’t sure that I did.
“Making shoeboxes with hidden maps?” Lou said.
“Human sacrifice. Among other things, they searched for auguries in the entrails of their victims.”
I gave my coffee cup a nervous half-turn. “But you haven’t connected them to the letterbox?”
“I can’t find any mention of it. But remember, the only written records we have of the Druids are from outside sources.”
“If the Druids are long gone and no written records survived,” Lou said, “and we can’t find any mention of the letterbox, then why are we concerned with them?”
“Two things,” Jake said. “One, I learned long ago not to overlook coincidence. Too many things about the letterbox are connected to the Druids to dismiss them out of hand. Second, the Druid high priests had a distinguishing characteristic, verified by all of the cultures they came into contact with.” He looked at Lou and me in turn, his face grim. “They always wore white robes.”
-19-
Even after Lou and I saw the blackened symbol in the courtyard, the whole affair seemed unreal, an elaborate game that, like my growing feelings for Asha, made me feel alive and engaged. But now, as I thought about the times I had been alone or vulnerable with the figures in the white robes, I had the sensation of an insect crawling down my spine.
“The island forest outside Dubrovnik,” I said. “That clearing was ringed by oak trees.”
“Oak groves were Dr
uid places of worship,” Jake said.
I paled. “So we’re being followed by a dangerous sect of Druids supposed to have been eradicated almost two thousand years ago?”
Jake pinched the butt of his cigarette. “We don’t know for sure who they are.”
“But we have a good idea,” Lou said.
“So what do you propose? Tell the police that dead wizards in white robes are playing peek-a-boo in the woods and killing grass, and you’re upset about it? Go ahead. I hear Italian sanitariums are real nice, up in the Alps.”
“All we’re saying,” my voice rising, “is that maybe, just maybe, we need to watch our backs.”
“I always do,” Jake said softly.
I shook my head, disgusted. Jake ordered another espresso, his third since Lou and I had arrived, then downed it like a shot of whiskey. “Let’s recap what we know about the letterbox,” he said, stroking his whiskered chin as if the previous conversation had never happened. “The box was found in the Devonshire moors, which in Celtic times was one of the traditional strongholds of the Druids. It exhibits some type of obscure carving style unknown to the British Isles at the time. The Ogham inscription reads “Path of God,” which is an oddity for two reasons: one because the Celts were polytheistic at the time, and two, that phrase clearly speaks to religion, the sole territory of the Druids—yet none of them were allowed to commit anything to written form.”
Jake crossed his feet on the chair across from him. “So we’ve got ourselves quite a conundrum. Either Druids didn’t inscribe the Ogham, or they made an exception for the letterbox. There’s also a mysterious map expertly crafted out of tiny stones on the bottom of the box, unlike anything I’ve ever seen. So far the map has led us to a haunted castle in Italy, the next stop is a cemetery, and I haven’t had a drink in far too long. That, at least, I can fix right now.” Jake reached into his backpack, uncapped a flask, and took a long pull. “That about sum it up?”
“Don’t forget the marking in the courtyard,” I added.
He gave a dismissive wave. “I’ll look into that when I get some time. What intrigues me most is the inscription.”