Fabulous. Even when I didn't have a date with Gil, I would still have to bundle up in wool and huddle outside on frigid winter nights. Oh, well. The hostel was hardly an improvement. The high ceilings, thin windows, and ancient steam-heat radiators conspired to keep us all in double sweaters from November to April.
I had not really known the meaning of cold until I had come to Scotland. Not that it didn't get equally cold in Oregon, on the thermometer; it was the persistence of the Scottish chill that made it formidable. Our smaller houses in Wild Rose were heated better, and anyway, I tended not to spend so many hours outdoors in the winter in Oregon as I'd been doing here.
I went looking for Sharon, who should have been back from work by now, but I couldn't find her. Eventually I located a note at the front desk that said she wouldn't be back until tomorrow; she was spending the night at Thomas Chester-Brighton's flat. This would be the third time she had done so.
"Why even pay rent here, Sharon?" I muttered to the slip of paper, and went back upstairs. It seemed the world was intervening on purpose to keep me from seeing the people I wanted to see.
True to Laurence's prediction, Eileen spotted ghosts in Charlotte Square that night.
We had parked ourselves on a wood-and-iron bench on the cobblestones, and stayed there for hours. At about 11:00, by which point I was drowsing on Tony's shoulder, my nose and ears numb, a lull fell over Eileen and Tony's conversation. It was almost enough to drop me completely into sleep, but Eileen scared me awake by jolting up with a cry. The movement rippled through Tony and me like an earthquake tremor. I looked all around, at the demure old houses and the straggling pedestrians on far corners, and especially at the dark section of sidewalk that Eileen was staring at, but once again I saw nothing.
Neither did Tony, apparently, for he whispered, "How many?"
"Just one," said Eileen, who no longer sounded scared, but fascinated. "She's beautiful. It's the beggar girl I read about."
"What's she doing?" I asked, trying to form a woman out of the very ordinary wet street and stone wall.
"Walking up and down the sidewalk. Slowly. Like she's sad, and cold."
"Can you..." Tony began.
But Eileen got up from the bench in the middle of his sentence, and walked across the street to where the ghost supposedly stood.
We stood up too, and watched. She lifted her hand, as if she were trying to greet someone. I heard her say something timidly. She reached out and stroked an invisible surface in mid-air, then stopped, glanced around, and looked at us with dismay. "She's gone!" she called across to us.
Tony and I jogged across the street to her. She was making her way along the outside wall of the nearest iron fence, touching the spikes and murmuring, "Maybe in here was an alley where she used to live; I thought I read that; or maybe a shop or a house where she got food..." Still talking, more to herself than to us, she kept moving down the sidewalk. Tony and I exchanged glances.
"She's losing it," I said.
"Or finding it," he suggested. He tipped his head back into the soft folds of his black parka, and looked up at the stars, a few of which were visible between streetlight-colored clouds. "Since I've got here, especially since last night in the vaults, I've felt so alive. I've really felt God is with me. I don't know if it's the country, or something to do with Eileen's ghosts, but-"
He was interrupted again by a startled scream from Eileen. Several yards down the sidewalk from us, she was recoiling from a small space between buildings, her gloved hands against her mouth. We darted forward. I was ready for a horror show in the alley, by her reaction. But there was only a nook about six feet deep, with some trash in it, absolutely nothing that could be called romantic or even spooky.
"This was the alley," Eileen insisted, when she recovered her voice. "I saw her there dead. I saw the whole alley, and these buildings were smaller; and she was there, frozen to death. And then it closed up again, and now it's... gone."
Just to be on the safe side, Tony and I took a step away from the bricked-up nook. We allowed a moment of silence, examining the architecture to see if this indeed had been expanded lately over an alley. As if I knew anything about remodeling.
"I think we ought to be getting back," I suggested.
"Yes, perhaps so," Tony said.
Eileen agreed that she had seen enough for tonight, and we all retreated to the hostel and to our separate beds.
This was the pattern for every night of Tony's brief stay. He went out with her to some haunted location, she saw ghosts and got a fun little thrill, then they came back and she flung herself all affrighted onto Laurence's lap. I went with them every night except one, but saw nothing. Tony claimed he did not see anything either. Laurence didn't go at all that week; he had a cold.
On Tony's last night in the hostel, we got up enough bravery to sneak into Canongate Cemetery and tiptoe around the grave markers. We settled down in the dry overhang of a particularly large monument after a while. Once again I was falling asleep. Tony had wrapped one side of his coat around me and was keeping me warm. Their low-toned conversation about burial practices didn't disturb me. I was thinking in a poignantly happy dream-state that I would be sad to see Tony go tomorrow, but glad to have more days with Gil, numbered though they might be.
I must have actually fallen asleep for a few minutes, because when I next opened my eyes, Tony was shifting upward, climbing to his feet. And Eileen was across the cemetery, in the moonlight and the harsh December wind, advancing on an ominous vault entrance. It was a box-shaped stone building about twelve feet high, with a wooden door that should have been locked but was swinging slightly ajar on one hinge.
What was behind it, I couldn't see; everything was in deep shadow; but I pictured a stairway down to an underground tomb full of shrouded corpses on stone shelves. I scrambled to my feet instantly with a shudder, getting away from the tombstone I had just fallen asleep under. "What's she doing?" I asked.
"I don't know; she just looked over there and suddenly got up," said Tony. "Like she was possessed."
As we took a few steps out into the grass, she reached the door, caught hold of it, and vanished inside.
"She's insane," I said. Tony and I started toward the vault.
It only took us about ten seconds to reach it, but that was longer than you could have convinced me to stay in there, and she still hadn't reappeared.
I stopped on the square of stone in front of the door, and started swearing under my breath, every swear word I knew. The last thing I wanted to do, the most unpleasant thing I could possibly imagine doing, was to reach out and open that creaky vault door, widen that ribbon of darkness to a yawning mouth of evil black.
And Eileen was in there.
"I can't do this; I can't touch the damn thing," I said to Tony, bouncing on my toes in frustration. Why the hell didn't we bring a flashlight? "Eileen! Come out!"
"Eileen?" Tony shouted. He, too, eyed the door with a fastidious wince. If nothing else, there could be snails and spiders waiting to crawl onto one's fingers when one touched that thing. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," he muttered between his teeth, then seized the edge of the door and pulled it open. The requisite cobwebs swung soggily from the inner corner. I couldn't see a single thing inside. "Eileen!" he called again. "Are you okay?"
"Eileen?" I tried.
No answer. I looked at Tony. "I am not going in there," I told him.
Then we heard a whimpering, squeaking sort of sound, and with a sudden burst of footsteps that made Tony and me skitter backward, Eileen shot out of the vault and slammed the door behind her. She took exactly a fifth of a second to catch her breath, then launched off into the grass toward the cemetery gate, shrieking, "Let's get out of here, let's get out of here, let's get out of here!"
Like I needed convincing. We took to our heels; and I, for one, did not look back.
On a street corner two blocks away from the cemetery, the three of us finally tumbled to a halt, catching each other by the arms,
unable to breathe.
"What the hell..." I panted, "...did you see?"
"My name," she whimpered.
"Your name?"
"I saw a light, and I looked, and it was my name written in stone on one of the drawers in the wall. Those mortuary drawers where they put people. And there was a date on it."
Then, to my shock, she broke down sobbing. The daring, intrepid Eileen reduced to crying in public. Chills ran up my neck.
"I couldn't get out," she continued, mittens pressed to her face. "I swear I only took one step inside, but then it was like I was a hundred feet away from the door. And it said Eileen C. Willock, 19 February 2002."
That was a little under two months away. My chills broke into goose bumps.
Tony, who looked shaken, laid a hand on her back and guided her slowly along the sidewalk. "I'm sure it was nothing," he said. "Eyes playing tricks on you."
"It was there. I can still see it, the way the light spelled out the letters..."
"It probably doesn't mean anything," I said; "heck, just a date. Maybe you'll win the lottery that day." Though, truth be told, if I had seen my name written in a tomb with a date under it, I would already be off somewhere buying a Kevlar vest and hiring a bodyguard. And writing a will. God, poor Eileen.
"How am I going to live two months until then? Wondering if I'm going to die?" she wept.
I hugged her against me, and we walked back to the hostel. Tony and I murmured reassurances and made light comments about how she was surely just reacting from some hallucinogenic mold in the Scottish bread; but from the looks we exchanged, I knew he was as troubled as I was.
When we arrived, she said she wanted Laurence, so we took her up to Laurence's room on the fourth floor. He was reading, and was quite perplexed to find us knocking on the door at midnight, looking damp and disheveled, with a panic-eyed Eileen between us. She burst into tears afresh when she saw him, and collapsed against his chest. We explained what had happened, and he looked appropriately concerned, and agreed to let her sleep on his sofa.
The guilty thought did occur to me, as Tony and I trudged back down to the third floor, that maybe she had made up all of this--consciously or unconsciously--simply to get into Laurence's room for the night. All her other attempts had failed, she had complained to me just the other day. And she was ludicrously jealous of me for getting to sleep right up against him under the same blankets when I had been sick in October. (Apparently he had told her about that, for I sure hadn't advertised the fact.)
But that was ungenerous of me. Eileen would not break down in tears in the middle of a city sidewalk for a mere chance at bedding someone who was not even there at the time. She had better tricks than that. Whether or not she was hallucinating--and I hoped sincerely that she was--she wasn't doing it on purpose.
"Kind of scary, huh?" said Tony.
"Yeah. I've never known her to react that way. Not since she was a little kid."
"Doesn't exactly make me want to get on a plane tomorrow." Tony laughed uncertainly.
"Hey, don't worry about it. It wasn't your name she saw." A joke in poor taste, maybe, but we both smiled and felt a little better.
The next morning, Eileen and Laurence came down, about ten minutes apart, to say goodbye to Tony. He was leaving at 7:00 a.m. to take a cab to the airport.
If Eileen was experiencing any afterglow from having spent the night in Laurence's room, she didn't show it. She still looked unsettled, and had dark shadows under her eyes.
Laurence sniffled a little with the remainder of his cold, but otherwise looked the same as ever. He, of course, would not have told me if anything romantic took place. Eileen would normally have told me, but under the somber circumstances she might not.
I wondered if Miss Manners had any suggestions on how you should go about asking a friend who was shadowed by the Angel of Death whether she got any action last night.
Laurence and Tony shook hands and said gruff, friendly things. Then Eileen stepped up and hugged Tony, which was surely a first. He took it very gracefully, and gave her a good solid hug in return.
"I know you're not into this," I heard him say to her, "but I'm going to pray for you. Whether you like it or not."
She smiled, and answered, "I can handle that. Thanks, Tony."
"Keep in touch," he said.
I followed him outside to the curb, where he flagged a taxi. He gave me several long kisses, and then spent a moment stroking my ear and gazing at me. "It's dangerous to leave you here; you've gotten so pretty," he said.
The guilt stole up and bit me. I tried not to twitch.
The cab was waiting, so we said our farewells and he got in.
"Tell Sharon Merry Christmas for me!" he said, and shut the door. And then he was gone.
I watched the cab drive away, and turned back to the hostel with mingled sorrow and relief. It was one less complicating factor, anyway.
Replaced by so many others.
Chapter Seventeen
Feminine Wiles Fail
"What did you do to her last night?" Laurence asked me, as I scrambled eggs in the kitchen before work.
"Funny, I was going to ask you the same thing."
"Now, now. Let's not be crass." He leaned his back against the counter and folded his arms. "She did keep trying to kiss me. But she was obviously addled in the brain, so it couldn't mean much."
I glanced at him with surprise. He had never told me details like this before. Then distaste slid in. Eileen was beguiling him with psychotic tricks that shouldn't have worked on someone like Laurence. "Did you let her?" I asked, focusing on the eggs.
"Once or twice. To calm her down."
Mental note: find out from Eileen if Laurence is a good kisser. There was gossip to be had here.
"Then what?" I asked, flipping my eggs onto a plate.
"I spent the entire night telling her she wasn't going to die, until at about five a.m. she finally fell asleep. Thanks so much for leaving her on my doorstep."
"Well, maybe she'll listen to you. We told her the same thing, but..." I shrugged, and reached past him for the salt and pepper.
"She just needs to sleep more. And drink less. Maybe see a psychiatrist. I mean, come on; that date--it's my birthday. Did you notice?"
I paused. "February 19th. That's right. I knew it sounded familiar."
"Yeah. Like I told her, it's just the spirits reminding her to shop for me," he replied with his usual flippancy.
"Come to think of it, that does make sense. She's completely obsessed with you. I'm probably not supposed to tell you that, but I figured you already noticed."
"Everyone's noticed." He lowered his eyes. I couldn't tell if this was modesty or dissatisfaction.
"Did she know it was your birthday?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. Didn't help, though. She said, 'That just makes it more likely. We'll all go out to dinner, or a party, and we'll get in a taxicab crash; or I'll get food poisoning like Eva did, only it'll be fatal.'" Laurence sighed, and took off his glasses to rub his eyes. "I told her, 'Then don't throw me a party. I won't throw a party. We'll fast; we'll stay home.' But she said, 'If we stay here, there'll be a fire or something; I just know it.' She thinks it's destiny now."
Eileen corroborated this story when I next talked to her, which was that afternoon, up in Room 17.
"I knew it was his birthday as soon as I saw it," she said. "And I thought, dying on Laurence's birthday... yes, that sounds likely enough, the way I feel about him." She moaned and put her head on her knees. "Now all I want is him. And I want to go home; I want to see my mother; but I couldn't go unless he went with me."
"You know, I was thinking about this," I interrupted. "You only saw one date, right? You didn't see your date of birth."
"Just February 19th," she said.
"Right. So if you ask me, that isn't a sign of death at all. It's just a date. If you'd seen Eileen Willock, 1978 - 2002, now that would look bad, but this... who knows? Maybe it's the date he'll ask y
ou to marry him or something." I hated saying that, but it might give her hope.
She laughed a bit. "He would never ask me that." She rested her cheek on her knee and looked sideways at the window. "Too bad. He's probably the only person I'd say yes to."
"Hey, he's a bastard; we've established this. You can do better." But I no longer meant that, and anyway, now I was thinking of my own romance problems.
Though Tony had just left that morning, and I still missed him, I was finding it hard to think of him as my boyfriend. We had kissed, and snuggled under coats to keep warm, but as I'd found, anyone could do that. We hadn't done anything remotely steamy, and the worst part was that I hadn't wanted to do anything steamy. I had been relieved that we hadn't had the opportunity.
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