Eileen had procured reservations in a tour of the underground vaults and closes of the Old Town. Sharon had vanished with Thomas and wasn't expected back, and Laurence had to sit at the front desk until midnight, but Tony and I agreed to go with her.
It was a chilly, blustery night, with spatters of sleet. The three of us trudged up to the high street with our noses buried in our collars against the wind, and joined a group of about 30 people huddling under a church doorway. Our guide greeted us loudly, apologized for the weather, and promised us shelter in (sinister voice now) the ghoulish and haunted vaults below the city streets.
He proceeded to lead us into an alleyway so narrow that I wouldn't have even noticed it, and down some steps to a tall, locked wooden door. All the while he was telling us the history of the wynds and closes, these passageways between the former Nor' Loch and the Royal Mile; he listed proprietors and residents and shocking goings-on. He gave gruesome details of the pestilence that had festered in these old streets, the same story Thomas Chester-Brighton had told us, about plague victims being abandoned here to die.
It was all appreciably morbid, but it was hard to be frightened when you'd had experience sitting late at night, with only one other person, in silent graveyards, burned-down houses, pitch-dark forests, or isolated sea-cliffs. Though I was entertained by the history lessons, and pleasantly spooked by the old, dank, shadowy tunnels and rooms under the Royal Mile buildings, I was not expecting anything genuinely supernatural to occur on such a contrived tour.
Therefore, it scared the daylights out of me when I looked over my shoulder and saw Eileen, white as a sheet of paper, stranded behind the tour group and staring into the middle of the room, with her lips trembling.
I looked where she was looking; I looked all around; but I saw nothing except stone walls. I rushed over and took her arm. It had been perhaps two years since I had been with her when she sighted anything, and I had forgotten that seeing someone else see a ghost, without seeing it yourself, is genuinely scary.
"Eileen!" I shook her. "Eileen!"
She blinked rapidly, and looked around her. "They're gone, but they're still here," was her confusing comment.
"Come on," I said, and led her back to the tour group before anyone could notice us missing. To be truthful, I wanted to dive back into the flock as soon as possible. Safety in numbers, and all that. "What did you see?" I asked.
"I felt them as soon as we got near the door," she was saying. Her eyes kept moving around the room. "But I couldn't see them till just a minute ago." Her voice fell to a whisper. "They're still here. I just can't see them."
"Hey, I thought you always saw them if they were there," I said, attempting to chide playfully. It fell short of the mark.
Tony had returned to us from his wander across the corridor, and quickly noticed the state of our minds. He asked her cautiously, "Did you see something?"
"First a little girl was standing right in front of me," she said. "I thought I was going to trip over her. She was staring up at me and reaching out her hand. Then other people started just... materializing, all around, against the walls and on the floor and...and hanging from the ceiling. They were dressed like it was the 1600's. They were dying, and they had sores, and one woman had been cut open and was bleeding to death..." Her breathing was approaching hyperventilation, but she wisely kept her voice quiet. "I've never seen so many at once," she told us. "Never. Never more than three, when I was a little girl."
I really did not like my position at the back edge of the tour group, with the faint lights dissipating into blackness four feet away. Running and screaming was looking like a good plan. Tony, too, sensitive as a filament to any breath of spirituality, looked very uneasy. He kept casting quick glances behind us and seemed to be plotting the nearest exit.
But, of course, we were stuck behind a tour group. The guide was, ironically, trying to scare us by telling us the sinister story of Burke and Hare, which was not scary at all compared to the panicked dark eyes of our friend Eileen.
Tony and I converged behind her, sheltering her and keeping our backs together, so that between us we could watch almost every angle. "Did you bring a crucifix?" I asked him.
"Yes, but I don't think that guarantees anything," he muttered back.
"I thought you Catholics could exorcise."
"You have to be a priest. I'm only a Theology major."
Every little sound or movement for the rest of the tour startled me, though Eileen saw nothing more. She stayed quiet, and breathed unsteadily, and whispered a few times that she still felt them --that wasn't comforting. Only after we were out of the vaults, up the steps, and back into the realm of fresh, icy air did she revive.
"Thank you and goodnight, and sleep well--if...you...can!" said our sinister guide in farewell. The group laughed and applauded, and dispersed in knots of twos and threes, chitchatting about how marvelously ghoulish it had been.
We did not laugh, nor applaud, nor chitchat. We walked shoulder-to-shoulder, rapidly, down the sidewalk, staying close to streetlights whenever we could, all the way down to the bustling Waverley Bridge and thence to Princes Street. We could have taken shortcuts through the dark wynds and closes, but that really did not appeal.
"I think," said Eileen, once we were safe under the shop windows and Christmas garlands, "that I might never want to go down in those vaults again."
"Hear, hear," Tony put in.
"Fine by me," I said.
"I never thought I'd say this," she added, "but I am so glad there are eleven other people sleeping in my room tonight."
Chapter Fifteen
Dawn of Jealousy
When we returned to the hostel, Eileen darted around the front counter and threw herself onto Laurence's lap. He caught her with a cough and an "Oww!"
She pressed her face to his neck and said, "That was awful."
What a drama queen. Her fishing for sympathy had gotten quite old, if you asked me. And like Laurence was her grand protector, anyway. He didn't even believe in ghosts, and here were Tony and I, pale with the ordeal she had just put us through, and whom does she want to see?
"Spot some nasty spooks, did we?" Laurence asked. I noticed he was touching her very gingerly, just resting his hands on the outside of her coat.
She nodded, and started telling him about it, using the small, frightened voice she had used in the vaults, which I knew was exaggerated because she had recovered her usual composure on the streets ages ago.
I didn't want to watch anymore. "Will you be okay, Eileen?" I asked.
"Yeah," she said, from under Laurence's chin.
"We'll be upstairs," I said.
Laurence cast me a wry look that could have meant, Sure, leave me with the basket case, or, Aww, isn't this cute? One couldn't always tell with Laurence.
As we went up the stairs, I began to realize that I was annoyed with her because I wanted to talk to Laurence, alone. I wanted to tell him exactly what had happened through the eyes of a non-biased observing narrator, bounce theories off him, and hear what he had to contribute from the scientific angle.
And I wanted to talk a little more about Gil, while we were at it.
For the second time in two days, I wanted to be with Laurence. Good Lord. What was wrong with me?
With some chagrin, it occurred to me that Laurence was the only person in my life who knew all the important things about me, and could discuss them rationally. Gil, of course, knew quite a bit, but one got the impression that he was dealing with too much baggage of his own to spare you any help.
I tried to have the conversation about Eileen with Tony instead. I sat us down with some tea in the kitchen, and we scooted up against the wall radiator and dissected the topic. He was very interested, and willing to talk about it till dawn if need be, but he definitely did not have Laurence's angle on it.
"A theory occurred to me," he said. "If these are really dead people's souls, then why are they here? They're supposed to be either in hell, h
eaven, or purgatory, right? So... see where I'm going? Maybe this is purgatory. Earth. Having to re-live the scene of your death."
"Well...maybe... But I want to know first if these ghosts even exist."
"I believe that Eileen believes it. And that convinces me that, if nothing else, God is causing her to hallucinate for some reason. What I can't figure out is why."
"Temptation," said a voice behind me.
I looked at the next table back and saw Cathy watching us fiercely from over a book. I just gazed at her, perplexed. Tony picked up her suggestion immediately.
"Temptation from God?" he prompted.
"From demons. If they haven't said they're from God, then they must be from Satan," she said.
"Then you believe they're outside her mind, not inside," I said.
"It sounds to me like she's plagued by demons," Cathy affirmed.
"Ah, but how do we know it isn't God?" Tony said. "He works in mysterious ways, you know. Plenty of the saints had grueling experiences, terrifying visions, before they-"
"The so-called 'saints' do not deserve glorification," interrupted Cathy, anger flashing in her eyes. "Not all of us are idolatrous papists, you know."
"Okay; whatever. But how can you be sure that Eileen's ghosts are not a message from God somehow? Plenty of people--I won't say saints--have had harrowing visitations like that before accepting the peace of Christ." (I always got embarrassed when he said things like 'the peace of Christ'.) "Can we really say," Tony went on, "that these were visions from Satan, and therefore Satan led these people to God?"
"They overcame the devil's temptations and turned to God," Cathy insisted.
"But didn't maybe God put those evil temptations there? Even if they're basically Satan's domain?"
"So," I interjected, "are you putting forth the question: did God invent Satan along with everything else?"
"Well, He must have," said Tony, who had apparently already settled that question in his mind.
"How can you say that?" asked the astonished Cathy.
"Is God the Almighty or is He not? Did He create the universe or didn't He? And if Satan exists, isn't Satan part of the universe?"
"Then did God create Himself?" I asked, dryly.
They both glanced at me the way you would glance at a passing bus with a confusing advertisement pasted on the side, then went on.
"How can you live in a world where you think God might be putting evil temptations in front of you?" Cathy asked him. "How could you live with the treachery? Why can't you comfort yourself by knowing that God would only do good things for us, and that Satan is to blame for everything evil?"
"Because I think maybe people are to blame, more than Satan. You give Satan too much power by crediting him with all the bad things in the world."
I got up at this point to rinse out the teacups. They had obviously left the topic of Eileen's psychoses behind.
This wouldn't have happened with Laurence, I grumped to myself.
Or what about with Gil? The corner of my mouth twisted wryly. I put away the dried cups and hung the dishtowel on its metal bar. I strongly suspected Gil's input would have been, Och, religion! Bunch of rubbish. Ghosts, maybe; ye never know. Being young and hip, he would have to bash spirituality. Being Scottish, he would have to tip his hat to the native ghost legends. And he wouldn't give a serious thought to either.
Well, why should I, for that matter? I wasn't the one seeing things. So I wandered back to the debating theologians, yawned conspicuously, and kissed Tony on the ear. "I think I'll go up to the room," I said. "Come up if you want."
"Okay, I'll be just a minute," he said swiftly, with hardly a glance at me. "But no, in the New Testament, it says..."
I didn't stay to hear what the New Testament said.
My outlook on life was sardonic as I trudged up the stairs to the third floor. Three boys, and not one of them was interested in me above all else. Gil was obviously not going to shed any tears when I left, as long as he had his studio job and his Miss Davis. Tony, who flew all this way to see me, was more interested in chatting hellfire with Cathy than he was in talking to me. And Laurence wouldn't spare me a moment as long as he could caress the hallucinatory brunette damsel instead.
This time I didn't even question why I included Laurence in my list of "boys."
And for some reason, when I got to the door of Room 17, instead of going in I veered back to the stairwell, and trotted down to the front desk. Laurence was there, writing comments in the margins of the guest book. Two Spanish boys were taking photographs in front of the lobby's Christmas tree. Eileen was nowhere in sight.
"Hi," I said to Laurence, leaning my weight on the counter. "Where's Eileen?"
"Went to the kitchen to find you, I thought."
"Oh. Well, I hope Cathy doesn't rip her a new one."
"Is she on a Bible-thumping tear tonight?"
"Yes, and Tony's making it worse. I left them debating whether God created Satan, or whether man did, or something."
"Glad I missed that one." Laurence laid down the pencil and leaned back in his chair. "So, did the wee ghosties fall out of the woodwork for you tonight, too?"
"No, of course not. Whatever it takes to see them, I don't have it."
"Me neither. I'm getting worried about her. I think she's too suggestible."
"Same here." I rested my arms comfortably on the countertop. This was the conversation I had hoped to have.
"You know what it really was, those ghost sightings in Mary King's Close back in the old days?" he said.
"Marsh gas?" I guessed, the guide's spiel still fresh in my mind.
"Exactly. Methane, basically. It hovers in small clouds, glows faintly, and sometimes burns with a blue flame. Almost all low-lying marsh areas have ghost stories about women in long white dresses, men with gray beards, or disembodied heads floating in the air."
"Seems obvious that's what it was," I said.
"Yes, and I did try to tell Eileen that. But nope, uh-uh. She said she could count hairs on these people's knuckles. Far too much detail for some cloud of gas. Besides that, there shouldn't be any methane anymore. Not since they drained Princes Street Gardens however many years ago."
"The Nor' Loch," I said. "Then it became Princes Street Gardens."
"Right. Give me a break; I don't have a personal Scottish tour guide like some people."
I lowered my eyes and toyed with the tinsel garland taped to the edge of the counter.
"By the way," he said, in a quieter voice, "how's it going with Anthony?"
"Oh, fine. He's a saint, as always."
"Eileen even likes him this trip," Laurence commented. "She said she thinks it might be his 'super-pure Catholic aura' that attracted all the spooks tonight."
"But we just established they're all in her head."
He shrugged. "Most likely. But if she thinks it's him, he'll become the placebo effect. I predict she'll hallucinate a lot more in his presence than she ever did in mine." He actually sounded rueful.
I frowned. "How could you..." I began, then stopped. I had been about to say something like, how could you, a smart and rational scientist, be attracted to a sensualist girl who not only drinks too much on the weekends and gets too free with too many boys, but hallucinates and honestly believes that ghosts visit her?
But that seemed too personal, and I didn't want to disturb this smooth rapport that Laurence and I had achieved.
So I turned it into a different question: "How could you explain ghosts that weren't anywhere near marshes?"
He pushed his hands through his dark golden-red hair, and clasped them behind his head. "I can't, since I wasn't there," he said simply. "And though I still think they're the products of imagination, it's true that science hasn't figured everything out yet. In a small corner of theoretical quantum physics, much stranger things than ghosts are possible."
"I guess so." I pulled back from the counter reluctantly. "I suppose I should go rescue Tony. It isn't very nice of
me to leave him with Cathy."
"Not nice at all." He smiled. "Night-night, chickie."
Chapter Sixteen
The Placebo Effect
Eileen slept soundly that night, as far as I could tell. I, for one, got spooked again as soon as the lights were turned off, and slept in hour-long dreams broken by half-hours of uneasy wakefulness. Therefore I disliked her the next morning, but (luckily for her) she didn't have to see me before I left for work.
Gil did not call while I was at the Dalrykirk Hotel, and that discouraged me. Furthermore, when I got back from work, there was a note on my bed from Tony that read, Dear Pudding Face: Laurence is taking me to the U district for lunch. I'm going with Eileen to Charlotte Square (wherever that is!) tonight after dinner because there are supposedly lots of ghosts there. Hope you can come! Love, T.
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