They passed the rock outcropping beside the docks and were coming up alongside the walled orchard when Rachel heard a gruff voice in the darkness. She slowed to a near halt.
“The sheets are doing their thing tonight, as usual. Have you got the salt?”
Another voice, this one with an Irish lilt, answered, “Aye. I have a whole package.”
A third voice spoke, rather louder, “Um, so, we’re really going to jump a bunch of ghosts? Why, exactly, are we doing this?”
The second voice teased, “Ohhh. Look at Mister Loves-the-Undead over here.”
The third voice objected, “They’re just ghosts. They’re not vampires. They’re harmless.”
A fourth voice growled, ‘Oh yeah? What about Headless? Is he harmless?”
The third voice spoke again. “Well, he’s a phantom. That’s different.”
The third speaker was definitely the princess’s brother, Alex Romanov and the second was a MacDannan. Rachel was not as certain about the rest, as they were deliberately lowering their voices.
Rachel whispered, “Is that Abraham Van Helsing and his vampire-hunting cronies?”
Gaius whispered back, “Sounds like Alex Romanov, at least. I’ve hardly ever spoken to Van Helsing. He’s…odd.”
Rachel and Gaius rounded the high stone wall of the orchard, which was walled on three sides. The fourth side, facing the river, was open. Hidden behind the wall, a pile of boys and two girls huddled together over the light of a few candles. The boys were Abraham Van Helsing, Conan MacDannan, Alex Romanov, Max Weatherby, Laurence Colt, and the Ferris Twins—generally known as Arrick and Efrick Ferret. The girls were Max’s younger sister Sarah and her friend, Winifred Powell.
Arrick stepped from the pack and puffed out his chest. “Stand down, civilians on deck.”
The pile of boys tried to look casual. Winifred, who wore glasses over her grease painted face, smiled and waved. Sarah kept peeking out from behind the gnarled trunk of an apple tree.
Rachel waved at them as she flew onward, as if flying a bristleless off campus at night was a perfectly normal thing to do. This might not have gone over so convincingly, except for two factors. First, she was alone with her boyfriend, so maybe the others thought the two of them were sneaking off for a little time by themselves. And second, it looked like the vampire-hunting club had the same idea she and Gaius did, so they were hardly in a position to tattle.
“We should have brought some salt, too,” Rachel mused, as she and Gaius flew onward.
“I have some.” The warmth of Gaius’s breath on her cheek was a pleasant contrast to the chill of the night. “And an amulet with a twig of broom. We in Vlad’s group pride ourselves on being well-prepared. I also have a couple of packets of peony seeds. Here, take one.” He slipped one into her hand. She stuck it into her sleeve. “Many of the restless dead feel compelled to stop to count all the seeds, which can give you time to get away. Probably would not work on Old Headless, though.”
“I have my clothing inside out,” Rachel said, “and the Horseman doesn’t come until midnight. We should have plenty of time to go and come back. Besides, I don’t think we need to fear the Wild Hunt. Doesn’t it just collect wayward ghosts? That’s what it does at home, anyhow, when it rides across the moors. Laurel and I rode out to see it once. It was quite spectacular!”
Gaius made a noise that might have indicated amusement under his breath.
“What?”
“It’s just that most of the girls I know were afraid to go down to the docks to float lanterns tonight. You’re something different, Rachel Griffin.”
“Not so different from Sarah and Winifred,” Rachel pointed out.
They passed marshes and then a stretch of forest. In the silvery moonlight, the hemlocks along the shore swayed in the dark like shaggy specters. The shoreline moved east, and Rachel flew over the rocky island with a single lone fir tree, She knew this meant that they were close to the northmost edge of the school’s wards. After this, the shoreline moved west again, and more hemlocks swayed.
When the trees changed to marsh again, and she caught sight of cattails, Rachel knew that they were now alongside Bannerman’s house. Looking up the hill, she could see the silhouette of the mansion’s turrets against the moon-bright sky. Behind it, farther away, was the orangey-red glow of the bonfire atop the tor. As she navigated her steeplechaser eastward and inland, she caught sight of a faint light gliding through the darkness of the marsh—a large phosphorescent white glow accompanied by small phosphorescent green ones.
A tingle ran down Rachel’s spine. The shadow-strewn night suddenly seemed spooky and dangerous. The haunting strains of violins, horns, and bells played in her mind in three-four time. Behind her, Gaius began to hum the tune she had been imagining.
Rachel halted and backed up her broom.
“What?” asked Gaius.
“That was eerie. I was just imagining that same waltz.”
She felt Gaius shiver. He said, “I can ‘hear’ it perfectly, but I can’t hear any music…with my ears, I mean.”
Together, they hummed a few bars of the music they were imagining in perfect unison. Rachel shivered, too, and leaned against him.
“You know, we don’t have to keep going,” Gaius murmured softly. “You are still astonishingly brave for having made it this far.”
“No! I want to go on. It’s just…”
“Spooky? Unnerving? ‘Terrifying beyond the capacity for rational thought?’”
“I wouldn’t go that far.” Rachel smiled into the darkness. “Unnerving is a good word.”
“Why do you want to go forward?—Not that I am saying you shouldn’t—” Gaius amended quickly. “It’s just that I am rather curious as to your reasoning. At least eighty-nine percent of the girls at school would pay not to see a ghost, and we go to a school of sorcerers.”
“Why?” The question caught Rachel off guard. She had to think about it. “I guess it’s part of wanting to know things. I’ve realized recently that I say ‘I want to know everything,’ but what I really want to know is secrets. Forbidden things. Forgotten things. Especially forgotten things. I feel so sorry for the things that no one remembers.”
“And that’s what ghosts represent, isn’t it?” Gaius asked, surprised.
Rachel nodded. “All ghosts have a forgotten thing—some secret no one knows about—that’s holding them to the mortal world. If we could find it, we might be able to help them pass on to…wherever it is that the dead are supposed to go. It is as if each ghost is its own mystery.”
As Rachel spoke, it occurred to her that now that Azrael was bound up again, Myrddin might feel his business on earth was finished. The idea that she might never see Thunderfrost’s Boy again made her feel both hopeful for him and slightly sad.
Gaius nodded. “That makes sense.”
“Does it?”
“Yes, I can understand that,” Gaius said. “I know that ever since the princess told me about her vision of my past, I’ve been obsessed with who I might have been and how I came to be here. I can’t stop thinking about that space station that blew up. I…think I had something to do with that. I’m seventy-nine and a half percent certain.”
Rachel thought of Dream Gaius, staring at the star-faring galleons. “You have no way of knowing that for sure, Gaius.”
“Rachel, I have this persistent feeling that I was…not a good person.”
“But you are now,” Rachel said firmly.
Gaius swallowed and nodded. She waited a moment, but he said no more.
“I want to see what those lights are.” Rachel gazed down the shoreline at the floating luminescence coming their way. “Shall we proceed?”
“No time like the present.”
Rachel flew her broom over the marshes. She could smell the boggy water. They moved cautiously toward the eerie gliding glow. Once closer, they saw that the iridescent white came from the gowns of a procession of young women with long flowing hair, who glided bar
efoot over the marshes toward the mansion. The green glow came from wild will-o-wisps—the kind that would lure a mortal to a soggy, boggy doom—hovering above the outstretched palms of the young women. The sight of the dead maidens with their ropey locks, bearing the pale light of fey wisps, sent shivers dancing up and down Rachel’s body.
“What are they?” Gaius whispered.
“Wilis.”
“Willies?” Gaius’s voice took on an odd quality, as if he were making a Herculean effort not to snark.
“Yes, Wilis.”
“Which are?”
“The spirits of maidens who died from a broken heart. Like in Giselle.”
“Which is?”
“Don’t you watch classical ballet?”
“Not on a regular basis. No.” Gaius’s voice sounded tight, as if he was trying to contain his mirth.
“Aren’t you an upper school senior?” Rachel turned at the waist and frowned at him. “We’re learning about them in Freshman Music. How could you not have studied Wilis?”
“I know. I know. Shameful. But, frankly, if it doesn’t give me magical powers when I summon it up, I haven’t really paid a whole lot of attention. Unless it’s dangerous. Are Wilis deadly?”
“Only to handsome young men, whom they dance to death,” Rachel replied dryly.
Gaius’s mouth formed a silent “O”. “I will make a point to avoid those particular beauties. Luckily, I brought my own.”
Rachel blushed in the darkness and quickly turned the broom up the slope toward where the mansion stood at the top of the hill.
Bannerman’s mansion rose black against the surrounding bare trees, its turrets silhouetted against the starry night. Part of the roof was missing, and the circular far wall had a gaping hole in it. Half-rotten faces and glowing eyes stared out from what struck Rachel as a Spanish-style porch with high arched windows separated from each other by round columns. The strains of a waltz from Swan Lake swelled from inside—though Rachel could still hear it more clearly in her head than with her ears. Through the broken or glassless windows issued an eerie blue-violet glow that danced and flickered.
“Almost looks as if they are playing Snap-dragon,” murmured Gaius.
“Yes it does,” Rachel replied.
The blue-violet glow did look eerily similar to color of burning brandy.
“That’s another game we’re missing,” said Gaius.
“My family plays Snap-dragon at Yule,” replied Rachel dryly, “so I will not miss my chance to burn my fingers grabbing flaming raisins.”
“Nobody burns their fingers playing Snap-dragon,” scoffed Gaius.
As they circled, looking for a good spot to land, he added cheerfully, “Speaking of fire. Did you hear that one of those burning skunks sprayed Darling and Andrews?”
“Yes. I saw that.” Rachel was glad he was behind her, because she was having trouble repressing her malicious grin.
“Wish I could have seen that,” Gaius mused wistfully.
They landed the broom on the stone veranda and cautiously approached the house. Low moans issued from within. The unearthly blue-violet glow flickered from somewhere inside the run-down mansion. It made her and Gaius’s faces nearly as pale as those of the Wilis. Gaius’s pale blue skin made an interesting contrast with his two streaks of darker blue war paint. Resting her broom against a corner of the house, Rachel stepped through the broken wall into the mansion and halted.
The shades of the restless dead were everywhere.
Her heart began pounding. Rachel nearly turned tail and ran. Gaius’s words, about her being brave to have come this far, echoed in her mind. There would be nothing shameful about leaving now. After all, she had seen the Dead Men’s Ball.
How many other students—or mortals of any kind—could say that?
But if she left, she would never know more. She would never know what caused the strange blue-violet glow. She would never know if the shades she had read about in the books she had taken from the library were truly here. She would never know why there was beautiful sweeping waltz music, for she could hear it clearly now, even with her ears, issuing from such a grim and grizzly place.
Besides, if she left now, what would she have to show for her day? Killed an elf? Made a lopsided corn doll? Was cursed by an exploding chestnut? That hardly seemed like the way she wanted to remember her first All Hallow’s Eve at Roanoke.
Gathering her courage, Rachel walked forward to face this new adventure.
Chapter Twenty-Four:
The Dead Denizens of the Hudson Highlands
Ghosts, ghouls, white ladies, and specters, almost too faint to behold, sat on a circular bench inside the chamber into which the hole in the wall opened. Others milled about the old mansion. Some could almost have been mistaken for living men. Others were ghastly to behold, skeletal faces with bulging eyeballs rolling in their sockets, or bloated drowned faces, half-rotting bodies with bones gleaming white where the skin was missing. Still others were ghouls, hideous dead who had been transformed into ungainly monstrosities. Near these, the odor of rotting flesh nearly made her gag.
The majority of those present were sailors—many with seaweed clinging to their rotting garments. Some had been so long amidst the waves that barnacles grew from their hands and faces. Their garments varied from the black garb of the old Dutchmen to the simple browns of hard-working folks, to sou’westers, to the spiffy sailor suits of navy men. Over by the large gap in the far side of the chamber, looking south down the river towards West Point, five rougher-looking Dutchmen conversed, their heads close together. They had a grizzled, hard quality that made Rachel wonder if they were pirates. A young girl floated beside the Dutch sailors dressed in a strange garment of vests and skirts and boots that Rachel could not place. Unlike the other specters, she did not sit or stand upright, but seemed to be flying, her body stretched out behind her in the air. She hardly looked human with her enormously-large black eyes and her hair that flowed around her like living kelp.
The hairs on the back of Rachel’s neck rose. She trusted in her inside-out garments. Yet, she was aware of the unnatural, potentially dangerous nature of their ghostly companions. Gaius gazed around alertly, his wand in his hand. Without being intrusive, he made certain he stayed close to Rachel, where he could protect her. Surreptitiously, he tugged on the chain around his neck that held his amulet containing a twig of broom, slipping it onto the outside of his robes.
Several ghoulish entities backed away from him.
The music had fallen quiet. The band began tuning their instruments, an eerie sound even in the best of times. Rachel shivered and stepped even closer to her boyfriend. He squeezed her hand.
A blood curdling shriek caused the two of them to clutch each other. Again, she considered bolting. Had she not seen enough?
But if she ran, she would never know what had caused that screech, and that might be worse than staying. It was a sound that could haunt a person’s nightmares for a lifetime. It was partially to keep at bay the encroaching darkness at the edges of her mind that Rachel did bold things, such as stride into a party full of the shades of the restless dead. She did not need to give the darkness any more fuel.
Refusing to give in to her fear, she looked around. The screeching came from a feminine figure in white, ghostly and pale. The moment the shade was done uttering her horrible wail, she returned to wandering listlessly through the chamber. Rachel breathed a sigh of relief. Beside her, she felt Gaius’s tense body relax slightly.
Half a dozen other women stood wringing their hands and weeping. Most wore simple pale shifts. One crying figure, however, wore ancient native garb of leather, feathers, and beads. Another glided along in a homespun wedding gown. Yet another had no form of her own but was merely a collection of mist and dried leaves blowing in the shape of a woman.
Beyond the circular chamber was the main room, which was currently serving as a ballroom, though nobody was dancing at the moment. Eerie blue-violet fire flickered in t
he hearth, casting all those haunting the old mansion in its indigo glow. Even the white bridal gown of the shade who drifted noiselessly across the chamber appeared a violet-blue.
At the far end of the ballroom, a ghostly dais had been erected upon which played a merry group of musicians. These shades seemed quite different from their moribund companions. They looked like perfectly ordinary Edwardian gentlemen, except that they glowed slightly, and Rachel could see through them. They laughed and chatted as they tuned their instruments, three violins, three cellos, a bass fiddle, and a piano. Rachel wondered idly how difficult it was to move a ghostly piano.
Near the door where Rachel stood was a group of specters who wore manacles or even long chains that they dragged with them. These chains made no noise, and yet Rachel heard them rattling in her head. Beside her, Gaius was singing under his breath: “We’re Marley and Marley. Whoooooo. We’re Marley and Marley. Whoooooo.”
When he noticed Rachel watching him, he said, “From the Muppet Yule Carol.”
“The what?” asked Rachel.
He tapped her on the nose affectionately. “Don’t you watch classic Muppets?”
“Not on a regular basis. No,” replied Rachel, with almost exactly the same mirth-suppressing tone of voice Gaius had used about Giselle.
The young woman in the homespun wedding gown glided toward Rachel. Her face was half-gone, her eyes lonely and sad. Rachel, ignoring the tremblings of trepidation in her limbs, approached the ghostly bride.
“Excuse me,” Rachel asked softly, recalling the books she had read that afternoon about the entities that haunted the Hudson Valley, “are you Gertji?”
The young woman looked at her. “Yes! It is I! My beloved? Is that you? Have you come for me?”
“Um…no” Rachel said softly, “but I was…”
Gertji drifted toward Gaius. “My beloved? Is that you? Have you come for me?”
He shook his head, a bit unnerved. The young woman with her wedding gown and her ghoulish face drifted onward, approaching her fellow shades, endlessly repeating her question.
Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland (The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 3) Page 31