The Ghost Sonata (14 page)

“I bet he teaches at the university,” said Gilda, after the man hastily finished the rest of his sausages and left the café—not without giving Gilda and Julian a reprimanding glance.

“My guess is that he works in a secondhand bookstore,” said Julian. “He
wanted
to go to school at Oxford, but he flunked his A levels. So he's spent his years reading all the dusty gastronomy books in the store instead.”

“And he eats sausages for lunch every day,” Gilda added.

“Except Thursdays. On Thursdays he eats tripe.”

“I take it you like people-watching as much as I do.”

“People are ridiculous,” said Julian, “but at least they're entertaining.”

“They're not
always
ridiculous.”

“Believe me,” said Julian, “most of them are ridiculous.”

 

The rain had stopped by the time Gilda and Julian left the Covered Market. They wandered down busy Cornmarket Street, then to a narrow path that led into the private gardens of Merton College. Gilda was delighted to hear gloomy organ music from the college chapel intermingling with church bells in the distance.

“There's a shortcut here that leads to the Music Building,” Julian explained.

Gilda followed him onto a straight walking path that divided a meadow with playing fields on one side from the college buildings on the other.

“I think this is called Dead Man's Walk,” said Julian. “My teacher said they used to have funeral processions here.”

At the end of the path, Christ Church Cathedral loomed like a Gothic castle, its spires soaring under a mixture of dark and sunlit clouds. Gilda was instantly intrigued with Dead Man's Walk: she had the sense that there must be hundreds of ghosts nearby—spirits that drifted silently down the streets and pathways, wandering to destinations that still existed from antiquity.

Something about the quiet, moody atmosphere of Dead Man's Walk made Gilda want to confide in Julian—to share something more meaningful about herself. “This probably sounds weird,” she ventured, “but I think the guesthouse where Wendy and I are staying might be haunted. In fact, I'm pretty sure I saw a ghost on our first night here.”

Gilda half-expected Julian to respond with a joke, but instead he became thoughtful. “I saw a ghost once,” he said.

“You
did
?”

“I was never quite the same after that night.”

As Gilda and Julian walked through Christ Church Meadow, Julian told his story.

16

The Wandering Children

 

A couple years ago,” said Julian, “some of my mates bet me that I couldn't spend the whole night in the cemetery, so I decided to prove them wrong.

“We met in the center of town just before midnight. They handed me a flashlight and a blanket and vowed that they wouldn't play any rotten tricks; it was going to be a completely fair bet. We trotted past the darkened shops and the drunkards wobbling home, then down an alleyway and toward the old churchyard. The church is away from the houses and shops, surrounded by a grove of trees that were creaking in the wind. As we walked under the trees, I kept remembering this old poem my grandfather used to recite to spook us when we were walking at dark:

 

“It's a poem about how trees have their own spirits. Elm trees can die of grief if they see another tree being chopped down. Oak trees can be dangerous and mean. But it was the part about the willow tree that always gave me the shivers—the idea that if you're walking alone at night, a willow tree might quietly uproot itself from the ground and tiptoe behind you. Every now and then you'll hear a
swish, swish, swish
sound. Then, just as you look behind, the tree sinks its roots right back into the ground. When you start walking again, it follows you, and gradually this begins to drive you crazy with fear.

“Anyway, in the dark, it all seemed quite plausible—trees tiptoeing around and such—but I had to put a brave face on, of course, and not share any of these thoughts.

“My mates trotted away laughing, leaving me all alone in the cemetery, which was just crammed with rotting tombstones, and I sat down on the cold, damp ground. I couldn't help thinking about how I was surrounded by dead bodies and bones—how all that separated me from them was a few feet of dirt. I nearly had a heart attack every time I heard the crackling of a twig or the hooting of an owl.

“By now I was frozen, and wished I had about three more woolen blankets. I couldn't tell if my eyes were just playing tricks, but all the shadowy tombstones were beginning to look like little people standing all around me. I turned off my flashlight because I didn't like seeing all the names on the tombstones, because knowing the names of all those corpses under the ground would make them too real, reminding me that they actually
were
people. I tried just sitting there with my eyes closed, but that was somehow scarier.

“So my teeth were clacking and practically jumping out of my jaw, and my bones were chilled. Then it started to spit down rain, and that's when I almost got up and left. But I remembered they had bet me twenty quid that I couldn't stay there, and of course I didn't want to lose that dosh. So I convinced myself to give it just another hour, thinking I would get used to everything and stop feeling scared.

“And that's when I saw it. Or—that's when I saw
him.

“At first glance, it looked like a completely real, ordinary child who was just standing there in the drizzle. But the thing was—I knew he wasn't
supposed
to be there. I knew in my bones that this was not a normal little boy who just happened to climb out of bed and wander from the village into the cemetery in the middle of a rainy night.

“‘Are you lost?' I called, just in case he really was a lost child. ‘Where's your mum?'

“He didn't answer. Then I noticed that his clothes looked odd, somehow old-fashioned. He looked at me as if he recognized me—that gave me the chills—and then the strangest part happened. He vanished right into thin air.

“So I did what you would expect. I ran. Because I suddenly knew what I had seen. They say that all across England—probably even all over the world—there are ghosts of children who were murdered. They're called ‘Wandering Children.'”

Gilda felt her scalp tingle at the spookiness of Julian's story. She also had to squelch an urge to pull out her
Master Psychic's Handbook
to see whether Wandering Children appeared in the index. “So what did you do next?” she asked.

“I went home and had a bath and a cup of tea.”

“But—didn't you want to find out that ghost-boy's identity, maybe figure out what happened to him in the past? I mean, maybe there was a reason he materialized in front of you. Maybe he was trying to send you a message!”

“He was trying to scare the pants off me.”

“Ghosts don't really set out to frighten anyone, Julian. People just get scared because they're dealing with something they don't understand.”

Julian looked annoyed. “Leave it to an American to spoil a good ghost story.”

“Leave it to an English boy to go home and have
tea
after seeing a ghost.”

“Leave it to an American girl to feel pointlessly superior to tea.”

“Look, Julian, I didn't realize you were just telling me a
ghost story.
I thought you said this really happened to you.”

“It
did
happen.”

“Well, that's why I'm curious about the details.”
I can't believe we're already getting in a fight when we haven't even had a chance to become boyfriend and girlfriend
, Gilda thought.
I guess I asked too many questions. Clearly I was just supposed to listen and giggle and not offer my own opinions.

“Listen,” said Julian, “my piano teacher is probably looking for me, and he'll give me a hiding if I don't get to the practice rooms at some point today. Pointless as that may be when Waldgrave is one of the judges, of course.”

“Oh, sure.” Gilda felt a twinge of regret that Julian appeared to be in a sudden hurry to extricate himself from spending more time with her. “I need to go do some research anyway.”

“What kind of research?”

“Oh, just some homework for school. Nothing that would interest you.” At the moment, she no longer wanted to tell him about her work as a psychic investigator.

 

After Julian left, Gilda sat on a bench at the edge of Dead Man's Walk. She considered heading to the Music Faculty Building to find Wendy, but she didn't want Julian to suspect that she was following him.

A feeling of homesickness came over her, and she felt compelled to write a letter. She knew her mother and her older brother, Stephen, would be expecting a postcard, but she felt the need to write a note to her dad instead.

Gilda saw that rain clouds were again gathering overhead. Thinking of Julian's story about the Wandering Children, she decided to head toward Blackwell's Bookshop to do some research on English ghosts.

17

The Haunted Melody

 

The sign outside Wendy's practice room door announced: THIS IS ONE OF TWO SOUNDPROOF PRACTICE ROOMS AT THE MUSIC FACULTY BUILDING. TWO-HOUR TIME LIMIT PLEASE! Inside, the tiny practice room reeked of microwave popcorn, cigarette smoke, and the cedarlike scent of rosin used for stringed instruments.

As she set up the tape-recording equipment she had borrowed from the Music Building, Wendy perceived a distinct patch of cold air near the piano. It reminded her of a feeling she had experienced once while treading water in a northern lake in Michigan—the sensation of moving over a spring of freezing-cold water that bubbled up from the ground.
Gilda would probably say that's a sign of “spirit activity,”
she thought, blowing on her fingers to warm them up.