by C T Cassana
“Hey, are you two here alone, or are there others?”
The two men swallowed hard, quite unable to speak. Then the boy disappeared again and reappeared in yet another part of the room.
Old Alfred stared at him speechlessly, fearing an imminent cardiac arrest. He was far too old to wrangle with a ghost and live to tell the tale.
“Others?” asked Robert.
“Yes, other people apart from you.”
“Why do you want to know?” asked Alfred, worried that the question might be a strategy to find out whether they had sufficient reinforcements to stop the ghosts from carrying out whatever plan they might have.
“It’s an important detail for a ghost,” replied the boy, flashing once more from one point in the room to another. “Don’t take it the wrong way. This place is very nice, but if there aren’t any people to frighten, it gets kind of boring. I don’t think we’d stay.”
Although by that time it was obvious, the fact that the boy had acknowledged that he was a ghost terrified the two men all the more.
“If you’d stay?” asked Alfred.
“My grandmother and me. She’s a library ghost and she’s very happy here because she says it’s a really nice one.”
The guards nodded while the boy disappeared and reappeared again in another corner of the room.
“But I don’t like reading, so if there’s nobody to scare, I get bored.”
“Well, at night here it’s all pretty quiet, right, Alfred?” said Robert.
“And during the day too,” replied his partner. “It’s a club with very few members. It’s very old, and very expensive.”
“Oh, jeez!” said Charlie, trying to look disappointed and to keep from giving away just how much he was enjoying this game.
“I think you’d have more luck at the Reform Club,” suggested Alfred. “It has more members and the library is much better than this one.”
“And it’s not so cold at night and the restaurant is excellent,” added Robert in an effort to support his partner’s suggestion.
“Shut up, Robert!” Alfred snapped at him. “Ghosts don’t get cold or hungry.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, because they’re, you’re...” Alfred decided not to finish his sentence so as not to offend the boy, although his pained expression made it clear that he was about to say that it was because ghosts were dead. But when he saw his partner staring at him with a clueless look, he tried to find a way of concluding the matter. “Well, because they don’t!”
“And do you know if this Reform Club is far from here?” asked the boy.
“Not at all! It’s right next door, at 104,” replied Alfred. “And it closes later than we do, so there are a lot more people at night than there are in this club.”
“Yes, by this time we’re the only ones here, and, not that you don’t frighten us, but pretty soon we’d get used to you, so...” Robert’s explanation was cut short when Alfred jabbed his elbow into his stomach.
“Oh, yes, I see,” said the boy. “In that case I’m going to tell my grandmother before she gets too comfortable in this library. She has a habit of staying until she’s read all the books.”
The boy began walking toward the door to the library and the two men moved apart fearfully, giving him room to pass through. But then the boy stopped suddenly before he had even touched the door.
“Thank you very much, you’ve both been very kind,” he said.
And then he vanished.
The men moved instinctively over to the library door, although they didn’t dare to open it. With their faces pressed up against the glass, they watched the boy walk through the adjacent room and climb the steps to where the ghost of his grandmother stood.
“Have you found it?” Charlie whispered so that the guards wouldn’t hear him.
“Oh, yes, I’ve got it,” she replied, completely oblivious to what was happening. She showed him an envelope with an hourglass seal on the back. “I was just looking at a few books while I waited for you. There are some real antiques here, first editions of masterpieces... it’s an absolute treasure trove.”
“Would it be alright if we got going now? I’m a little tired...” said Charlie, making sure that his body was blocking the view of the door.
“Of course, my dear. It’s very late,” replied the woman. “I’ve been having such a good time that I didn’t think to go look for you.”
Charlie smiled by way of forgiveness. Then he threw his arms around her and they disappeared together, to return to Miss Rotherwick’s living room.
On the other side of the door, Robert and Alfred breathed sighs of relief when they saw them disappear. The Reform Club would now have its own resident ghosts.
. . .
Charlie opened the envelope containing the third annulus while Miss Rotherwick was still recovering from the effects of the journey on her comfortable couch.
“‘Indumentum anulus’,” read the boy, leafing through a notebook of instructions that came with the device.
“The clothing annulus,” translated Miss Rotherwick, still in a daze.
“Almost everything here is in Latin, just like the others.”
“The others?”
“Yes, the notebooks that came with each annulus. We don’t really know what they say.”
“Perhaps I can help you to translate them,” offered Miss Rotherwick. Seeing the notebooks would help her to understand how the cape worked, she thought.
“That would be great,” yawned Charlie, who seemed suddenly to have become extremely drowsy.
Miss Rotherwick looked at her watch and blushed when she saw how late it was.
“Good heavens, my dear! Get off to bed and leave the notebook for me to translate. Tomorrow I’ll tell you what it says.”
“Aren’t you going to bed?”
“I will shortly. I’m going to have a cup of herbal tea first. Leave the cape and bracelet here too; I might need them,” she added casually.
Now that she knew the extraordinary powers that the cape had and that Charlie could go anywhere he liked with it, she felt she had to keep him from using it, at least while he was in her care.
“I’ll leave you everything except the bracelet. Lisa made me swear not to give it to anybody,” answered the boy openly. “But don’t worry, there’s a drawing in the notebook that explains how it works.”
The woman nodded. She had the cape, which appeared to be an essential element to be able to travel from one place to another, and that would be enough, at least for tonight.
Charlie said goodnight and went off yawning to the guest room. As she watched him leave, Miss Rotherwick couldn’t help but feel guilty. She knew what she had to do, but the child was too young to understand it; he trusted her completely and that made her feel as if she were betraying him. It would be a long time before he would be able to forgive her; so long, in fact, that she would very probably never again enjoy the friendship of that charming boy.
“Sleep well, my dear,” she called after him sadly.
Then she went into the kitchen to prepare her tea.
Absorbed in her thoughts, she put the kettle on and popped a lime blossom teabag into a cup. She then pulled four boxes of medicines out of a drawer, which she left open, and took a pill out of each one of them. One by one, she lined up the little colored pills next to the cup, leaving the boxes scattered around the table.
She performed each movement mechanically, while she tried to remember everything Charlie had told her that night. She knew that each word, each detail was important to be able to crack this extraordinary mystery, to work out exactly what powers the cape had and how Charlie and Lisa had used them. Lost in her ruminations, she didn’t hear the boy enter the kitchen. Then suddenly, she heard his voice behind her.
“You have to keep it in here, with the others, to protect it,” said Charlie, handing her the Book of Time.
Miss Rotherwick started at the sound of his voice and snapped out of her rev
erie at once. She didn’t want him to see her pills; indeed, she had waited for him to go to bed to take them. As if he could read her mind, the boy looked over to the boxes and the blister packs with the colored pills spread around the table.
“What’s wrong? Are you sick?” he asked with a hint of curiosity, without giving the matter much importance.
“No... I’m fine,” replied Miss Rotherwick hesitantly, visibly uncomfortable with the situation.
“Well for someone who isn’t sick you sure take a lot of medicines,” said the boy, eying them thoughtfully.
At that moment, Miss Rotherwick swept the boxes into the drawer with her hand and pushed it shut with her knee. Then she leaned on the counter, using her body to block his view of the cup and pills lined up next to them.
“I said I’m fine!” she said sharply.
To Charlie this reaction seemed a little too aggressive for somebody who was fine, and he had to bite his tongue to keep himself from making this observation aloud. It was clear that Miss Rotherwick was not going to tell him about it even if he asked, and that she was more troubled about it than she was letting on. Indeed, it was the first time he had seen her lose her composure.
All of this was quite intriguing and worthy of a detailed investigation to uncover the reason for her secrecy. He would wait for the right moment to find out what all those medicines were for. In the meantime, to keep her from guessing his intentions, he faked a smile and a little yawn.
“All the notebooks are in this binder; you can put the one we’ve found in here too,” he said. “If it’s alright with you, you can tell me what they say tomorrow.”
“Of course, my dear,” replied Miss Rotherwick, doing her best to put on a calm face.
Charlie then went over to her and stood on his toes to give her a kiss on the cheek.
“Thank you, Helen. My mum was right when she said you’re a wonderful person.”
Finally he turned around and went straight off to bed.
Miss Rotherwick stood perfectly still, holding the binder that the boy had given her and feeling absolutely miserable about betraying his trust.
Meanwhile, behind her, the kettle began whistling insistently for a gentle hand to take it off the fire.
. . .
Miss Rotherwick was parking her car in front of Charlie’s school when her cell phone began to ring.
“Good morning, Marcus,” she said when she picked it up.
“Hello, Helen,” replied a worried voice. “Have you dropped Charlie off at school yet?”
“Not yet, my dear. I was just parking the car.”
“Thank God! Please, bring him to the hospital right away. Come in by the emergency door and ask for Dr. Price. We’ll be waiting for you.”
“What’s the matter, my dear?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. But please, come straight to the hospital. Don’t stop anywhere along the way.”
. . .
When they got to the hospital, Charlie and Miss Rotherwick were met by Dr. Price and Marcus, who brought them at once into a private room. Both men were wearing concerned expressions; indeed, Charlie couldn’t remember ever having seen his father look so serious before. Neither he nor Miss Rotherwick dared ask what was happening or how Lisa was; they just waited patiently until the men were ready to tell them.
Marcus cleared his throat before he began to speak, as if he needed to release the tension that had built up inside him.
“Charlie, Lisa is sick... It’s nothing serious, but it could have been fatal. Luckily, they detected the disease in time, before it had a chance to develop, so she’ll be alright in no time.”
Marcus paused for a moment.
“This disease is transmitted by fleas, fleas from rats.”
Miss Rotherwick opened her eyes wide, but said nothing. There were only a handful of diseases that Marcus could be referring to, and all of them were very serious indeed. Any doubt she might have harbored about the powers of the cape disappeared at once on hearing this news.
“Lisa told us that you two found a stray cat near the museum,” Marcus went on, “and that she stroked it; but she couldn’t remember whether you had touched it too.”
Marcus, the doctor and Miss Rotherwick all looked at the boy, waiting for his answer. But Charlie was so confused about what he should or shouldn’t say that he didn’t even realize that his father was asking him a question.
“Charlie, did you touch that cat?” his father asked flatly.
The boy gave no reply. The only animals that he and his sister had gone near recently were the horses they had ridden to get out of Amarna, but he wasn’t even sure if horses could get fleas.
“What’s the name of the disease that Lisa’s got?” he asked, while thinking over the answer he should give.
“Bubonic plague,” replied Dr. Price. “It is caused by a species of bacteria, Yersinia pestis, which is transmitted by fleas on rats. It is generally found in hot and humid climates, so its presence in London is extremely strange, especially at this time of year. It is also odd that it was a cat that transmitted it, but perhaps it had been in contact with an infected rat. That’s why we need to know whether you touched it.”
“No, I didn’t touch it. In fact, I told Lisa she shouldn’t pet it because it looked like it was sick,” lied Charlie.
“Cats can’t catch the plague,” said his father. “At most they might be carriers of the fleas, which are the ones that transmit the disease.”
“Well, maybe it had rabies; I don’t know, but that cat had something,” insisted the boy.
“Fortunately, the disease is in its very early stages, when it can’t be passed from person to person, because the bacteria haven’t reached her lungs,” explained Dr. Price. “However, as you were with her when she touched the cat, we had better run some tests on you too. Don’t worry, if you had the disease you’d already be displaying some of the symptoms by now.”
Charlie nodded as if giving permission to the doctor, who pressed a button to call in a nurse. The nurse appeared a minute later carrying a small tray with a needle, a rubber band and some test tubes. Without a word, she tied the elastic to the boy’s arm and then stuck him with the needle, taking out far more blood than seemed reasonable to Charlie.
. . .
After some time, which to Charlie seemed interminable, Dr. Price came back with the results.
“As we suspected, you’re clear, young man,” he told the boy, messing up his hair, which always seemed to attract grown-ups’ hands when they wanted to celebrate some good news.
The doctor then left the room to attend to other patients.
“Alright then,” said Marcus, “I’ll walk you out to the exit.”
The three left the room and made for the elevator. Miss Rotherwick observed Marcus as he walked slowly, slightly slouched, the beginnings of a beard on his face.
“Why don’t you go home for a shower and rest for a while, my dear?” asked the woman.
“I have to stay with Lisa.”
“Don’t worry. I can stay here until you get back. Go on, I’ll call you if anything happens.”
“That way we can visit her,” added Charlie. “The doctor said she’s not contagious.”
“Luckily, we got her here in time, so she’s not,” replied Marcus. “But don’t get her worked up, she’s a little tired.”
“Go on, then,” insisted Miss Rotherwick. “I’ll take care of the children until you get back.”
Marcus looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. Given that he had to spend the night again in the hospital with Lisa, it would be good to have a chance to wash up and change his clothes. He still hadn’t told Maggie anything, as he had wanted to wait until he knew whether Charlie was sick, but now he had to call her and let her know what was going on. He also had to call Mrs. Davis to ask her to look after Charlie until Maggie got back. Everything was happening so quickly and Marcus felt that the situation was spinning out of his hands.
“And don’t wo
rry about Charlie,” added Miss Rotherwick, as if she had just read his mind. “He can stay at my place for as long as is necessary. He’s a wonderful boy and I’m enjoying his company immensely.”
Marcus let out a brief sigh.
“Thank you so much, Helen. You have no idea what a huge help that would be.”
The woman responded with a gentle smile.
“It’s nothing, my dear.”
“I won’t be long,” said Marcus, almost apologetically.
He gave Charlie a kiss on the forehead and said goodbye.
“I’m so relieved you didn’t touch that cat,” he said to him.
Before he left, he turned back to Miss Rotherwick to ask her one last favor.
“Maggie still doesn’t know anything,” he said. “I’ll call her as soon as I get home and have cleared my head a little.”
Miss Rotherwick understood at once what he was hinting at.
“Don’t worry. If I talk to her, I won’t say a word about this.”
. . .
Lisa’s room was well-lit and quite large, although it felt to Charlie like the heating was on too high. When he entered he saw his sister leaning back in bed, perusing a few teen magazines that her father had bought her.
“Hi!” she said on seeing her brother, but her tone immediately turned more formal when she saw who was with him. “How are you, Miss Rotherwick?”
“How are you feeling, my dear?” asked Miss Rotherwick with a smile.
“Alright. Last night they started me on antibiotics, so I feel a lot better today.”
“They already knew it was the plague last night?” asked Charlie.
“No, they didn’t find out till this morning, but they gave me the antibiotics as a preventive measure, because as soon as they saw the lab reports they knew I had some kind of infection,” explained Lisa. “And how are you doing?”
“I’m okay. I’m not sick because I didn’t touch that animal,” said Charlie, alluding to the story Lisa had made up as a cover for their trip to Amarna.
Although the boy had talked about their secret with Miss Rotherwick the night before, he thought it best to back up his sister’s story in the interests of keeping up the impression that the cape was essentially harmless.