The Silver Bough (36 page)

Nell glanced across at the lighted window and shrugged. “Yes.”

“You do see it?” At her confirming nod, Kathleen sighed. “So at least I’m not hallucinating.”

“You must have left it on.”

“No, absolutely not.”

“Do you think somebody broke in?”

“I don’t know what to think.” She sighed and squared her shoulders. “I’ll have to go in and find out. I know it’s a lot to ask, but would you come with me?”

Although Nell wasn’t bothered by the prospect, she felt she had to say, “Shouldn’t you call the police?”

“I don’t think so. You see—it’s kind of weird—that window shouldn’t be there. It wasn’t there this morning. I never saw it before.” She sighed. “I don’t know why you should believe me.”

“Because there’s no reason for you to lie, and I’m sure you’re not hallucinating.” And she no longer thought she had been suffering from heatstroke on her walk through that mysterious wasteland, or that the golden apple in her orchard was descended from anything that had ever been sold in a supermarket. The world had changed around them, as if they were living in a fairy tale. She wondered who they’d find inside the library, waiting for them in a room that did not exist: Rapunzel? Or the wicked witch? Or someone closer to home?

She thought of Ronan Wall with a stab of longing and held out the book she’d been clutching to her chest all this time. “Here, Kathleen, this came from your library. A man gave it to me yesterday. It looks valuable; I think he might have stolen it. Maybe he broke into the library—I wouldn’t put it past him. And maybe he’s inside there now.”

Kathleen gasped. “This is someone you know?”

“Not really. He just turned up at my house on Sunday, wanting to see my orchard. He said his name was Ronan Wall.” She hesitated. “You know that branch? There wasn’t any blossom on it before he touched it.”

“Ronan Wall,” Kathleen said slowly. “That name keeps coming up. Well. I’d like to meet him. Shall we go and find out if you’re right?”

“I’m ready if you are.” They grinned uneasily at each other, and she was surprised by the excitement that surged through her. There was nothing in it of fear. Kathleen’s company lifted her spirits and made her feel like a schoolgirl embarking on some slightly mad adventure.

Kathleen lifted her large key ring and led the way to the back doors. As soon as they were inside—wincing at the noise the old locks and heavy doors made—she switched on some lights.

“Anyone would have heard us come in, so there’s no reason for us to creep around in the dark. By the way, if we
do
need to call the police, here’s my cell.”

Nell took it a little awkwardly, then looked around for somewhere to deposit the book she still held, and decided it should be safe enough on top of the old counter that separated the entrance foyer from the reference room. She followed the librarian around the back of the counter and watched as she unlocked another door. If someone really had broken in, they’d gone to a lot of trouble, locking doors behind them. Behind the door was a narrow spiral staircase, rising into darkness until Kathleen touched the switch on the wall at her side. Anyone upstairs had to know they were coming by now. As she watched the librarian mount the stairs, Nell was reminded of her own worried foray on the night of the earthquake and guessed Kathleen felt a protective love for the library similar to what she felt for her orchard. She clutched the phone more firmly as she followed behind, ready to press 999 at the first sign of trouble.

The room at the top of the stairs was empty of furniture, but it was decorated with a life-sized 3-D mural of an apple tree on one wall, so vividly painted that the apples appeared positively to glow: two red, and one golden. Kathleen was standing stock-still and staring at the tree as if she’d never seen it before.

“Did that just appear?” Nell asked in a whisper.

Kathleen shook her head. “But I never knew it was a door,” she murmured. She reached out her hand to the golden apple, the lowest of the three, and as she pressed it there was a click, and the door that had been hidden in the wall swung open.

It revealed a second spiral staircase, this one well lit by the light that flooded down from above. Kathleen started up the stairs, moving in a slow, oddly dreamy way, and Nell, close behind, had to take care not to bump into her.

The stairs took them up into a wide and spacious room filled with a faintly golden light. It was a round room and, as she looked up at the high, curved ceiling, Nell realized they must be inside the golden dome that made the library such a famous landmark in the town. The other thing she noticed immediately, as distinctive as the room’s shape, was the smell: oil paints and turpentine. Even before she took in the number of painted canvases, resting on easels or stacked against the gently curving walls, she knew this was an artist’s studio.

She looked at Kathleen, who looked back at her, pupils dilated in shock, clearly even more astonished than she was by the discovery of this secret atelier. Then they both turned and stared at the artist who was very much in residence, and deeply engrossed in her work, painting away at a canvas resting on an easel. The unfinished painting, largely composed of shades of green and brown, seemed to depict a grove of trees. The artist wore a multicolored, striped, long-sleeved, knee-length smock over a long dress or skirt. She was turned away from them, so they couldn’t see her face but only a mass of light brown hair loosely fastened behind her head.

Kathleen cleared her throat. “Hello?” Her voice sounded soft and weak. “Excuse me,” she went on, more determinedly. “Would you mind telling me who you are, and what you’re doing here?”

The artist gave no sign that she’d heard. The librarian walked right up to her and reached out to touch her. Nell, who stayed put, admired her nerve, and was not at all surprised to see her hand pass right through the artist’s colorfully striped shoulder.

Kathleen reeled back in shock, then suddenly giggled. She walked all the way around the working artist, looking at her from every angle, but keeping well clear of her, taking no risk of trying to touch what looked so solid yet had no mass. When she’d completed a circuit she looked back at Nell. “You see her, too?”

She nodded.

“She doesn’t look like a hologram projection. Not like anything I’ve ever seen. She looks absolutely real. I wonder, can she see us? Hear us? Or…are we ghosts to her, too, only she’s used to ignoring us so she can get on with her work?”

“She’s very industrious.” It felt wrong to talk about the artist as if she wasn’t there—but, probably, she wasn’t. “Any idea who she is?”

“Emmeline Wall.” She took a step back, her eyes fixed on the ghost as she spoke the name, but it seemed to have no more power than any other words.

“I never heard of her.”

“Daughter of the man who built this library.” As she spoke, Kathleen moved away from the painter and began to prowl about, inspecting the paintings on display. “She was never famous but I found a really interesting painting by her tucked away in the storage room. Oh, and she was the mother of Ronan Wall.”

Ronan’s mother.

Although the information made her focus once more on the back of the oblivious artist, Nell still did not move. She had a strong feeling that they were trespassers in this room. They hadn’t been invited, and even if she was unaware of them, even a ghost deserved courtesy.

“Hey, look at this!”

“Kathleen, I think—”

“Come here—it’s a portrait of her son. See if you can recognize him.”

Despite her unease, she couldn’t resist, and crossed the room to Kathleen’s side.

“That’s Ronan, isn’t it?”

She looked at the canvas Kathleen had found and could only nod, speechless, as she recognized the man who had offered her the chance to have her heart’s desire, the man she had sent away yesterday. The painting was fairly small, no more than eight-by-ten, a head-and-shoulders portrait of an unsmiling, darkly handsome young man.

“How weird is that,” said Kathleen, sounding awed. “I thought it was, you know, because I just saw a newspaper photograph of him from nineteen fifty, when he would have been in his early thirties, and he looked just like that. But Emmeline didn’t live to see her son grow up. He was only about three years old when she killed herself. So how could she have known?”

Obviously, thought Nell, the picture had been painted by Emmeline after her own death, when she was a ghost, drifting about the town unseen, still watching over her orphaned son. As the image formed in her mind she felt sorry for the sad little boy who’d lost his mother at an even earlier age than she had. “What happened to him? Was he adopted?”

“He was looked after by his grandfather, but not with much affection. I’ve been reading his diary, and it seems that he just couldn’t warm to the boy. I guess he couldn’t forgive him for what happened to Emmeline.”

Nell thought of Ronan, and her heart ached for him—and for herself. She remembered her child-self—dirty and desperate and doing her best—and felt ashamed of the foolish coward she’d grown to be. Once she had not been afraid to take chances, to try to achieve the impossible. Maybe it wasn’t too late.

“I think we should go now. Kathleen?”

The librarian had drifted away. Nell called her name more loudly, but she seemed nearly as oblivious as the ghost, and Nell could see no other way of getting her attention but to go after her and take hold of her arm. It was a relief to feel warm, solid flesh beneath her fingers.

“We have to leave.”

Kathleen looked puzzled; Nell had the idea she wasn’t sure who she was.

“Kathleen,” she said, more urgently. “Let’s go.”

Her face cleared. “Oh, that’s all right! You go; I don’t need you here.”

“Come with me. We don’t belong here.”

She laughed. “
I
do! I’m the librarian. I’ve got a job to do. Just look at all these paintings! Absolutely none of this stuff has been catalogued; can you believe it?”

For a moment Nell was tempted to leave her to it. But she knew it would be wrong. Even though Kathleen looked happy enough, she clearly had no idea where she was or what had happened. She was in a dream-state; she hadn’t made a conscious choice.

“Well, before you get started, we should finish downstairs. We have to make sure everything is all right downstairs; all the books and everything; make sure nobody broke into the library.”

She frowned. “Broke in?”

“Remember? It’s late, Kath. You’re not supposed to be working now. You’d gone home, and then you saw a light on—”

“Oh, I remember! But we came up here—” She broke off and looked around uneasily. Her gaze fell on Emmeline, still working away at a mass of green in the center of her canvas, and she shivered. Without another word she headed for the door.

Nell hesitated, drawn by her own curiosity about what the ghostly artist was actually painting. But she recognized the danger in that and would not let herself be distracted. She hurried down the slightly swaying staircase after Kathleen and, after a moment’s uncertainty, left the hidden door ajar before descending the second staircase. She did not believe that Emmeline Wall could pose a threat to anyone save herself, and did not like the idea of her poor ghost being trapped up there if she couldn’t manage to open the door from the inside.

Once they were back on the ground floor, Kathleen shut the door behind them and locked it, her trembling hands making it a difficult enterprise. There was no talk of searching the library for other intruders; they were both eager to get away.

It had been dark when they entered the library, but now it was light—light enough, at least, that they could see their way around outside. But it hardly seemed like morning. There was a dim grey half-light that might have come just before dawn, but with an odd greenish tinge.

“How long were we in there?” Kathleen said, sounding bewildered. “What time is it? Darn this cheap watch! Do you have the time?”

Nell shook her head.

“We must have been in there for hours! The whole night! And it felt like minutes—I’d still be in there, if not for you. Look, the window’s disappeared!”

Together they stared up at the side of the building. Where the glowing rectangle of an upstairs window had been there was now nothing but solid reddish stone. Then Nell staggered slightly as Kathleen threw her arms around her and gave her a strong hug. “Thanks for being there. Thanks for getting me out,” she murmured. Then, letting her go, she said, “Want to come in for a drink?”

“Thanks, but I have to go. There’s someone I have to find, if it’s not too late.”

 

From
Popular Superstitions and Festive Amusements
of the Highlanders of Scotland
by W. Grant Stewart
(Archibald Constable, 1823)

 

I
N
the former and darker ages of the world, when people had not half the wit and sagacity they now possess, and when, consequently, they were much more easily duped by such designing agents, the “Ech Uisque,” or water-horse, as the kelpie is commonly called, was a well-known character in those countries. The kelpie was an infernal agent, retained in the service and pay of Satan, who granted him a commission to execute such services as appeared profitable to his interest. He was an amphibious character, and generally took up his residence in lochs and pools, bordering on public roads and other situations most convenient for his professional calling.

His commission consisted in the destruction of human beings, without affording them time to prepare for their immortal interests, and thus endeavour to send their souls to his master, while he, the kelpie, enjoyed the body. However, he had no authority to touch a human being of his own free accord, unless the latter was the aggressor. In order, therefore, to delude public travellers and others to their destruction, it was the common practice of the kelpie to assume the most fascinating form, and assimilate himself to that likeness, which he supposed most congenial to the inclinations of his intended victim.

The likeness of a fine riding steed was his favourite disguise. Decked out in the most splendid riding accoutrements, the perfidious kelpie would place himself in the weary traveller’s way, and graze by the road-side with all the seeming innocence and simplicity in the world…he was as calm and peaceable as a lamb, until his victim was once fairly mounted on his back; with a fiend-like yell he would then announce his triumph, and plunging headlong with his woe-struck rider into an adjacent pool, enjoy him for his repast.