Chapter 20

Tuesday, February 4, 1936

Wickenham

 

“You saw who doing what in the library?” Grandmother gasped, her sausage-laden fork frozen in midair.

Everyone had gathered around the end of the long dining room table, starting on their breakfasts bright and early that morning. Grandmother was at the head of the table, of course. To her right sat Mel and to her left the professor. The serving maid had just set down a rack of cold toast and a pot of marmalade, and was scurrying out of the room.

“It was a man, a ghost,” Bao said, floating next to Grandmother. The little girl was suddenly and distressingly aware that she might not be conveying good news. “He was looking at some papers. And then he used them to start a fire in the fireplace. He said he was warming up the library for you.”

“Did he now?” Grandmother said darkly. “What did he look like? What was he burning?”

Mel and the professor looked every bit as shocked as Grandmother, and leaned in to listen to Bao’s answer. She was acutely conscious of being the center of attention, and not in a pleasant way.

Bao began by describing the specter’s heavy white parka and high boots, which were dripping water. He had a long, gloomy face and didn’t look as though he liked to smile.

“I never saw him before. I asked if he lived here, and he said he used to, but he’s been away for a while. Then he went out through a window.”

Grandmother frowned for a moment. She slowly rose to her feet and marched out to the hallway. “Bao,” she said over her shoulder, “please stay right where you are.”

Grandmother returned a moment later with a small picture frame that she thrust at the girl ghost. “Did he look like this?”

Bao examined the picture in the frame and nodded at Grandmother. “Oh yes, it’s the same man. He was very polite to me.”

The old lady groaned and collapsed into her chair. “Oh dear. I’m afraid that Percy has paid us a little visit. And if he was burning papers, he may have destroyed some vital evidence.”

“So he must think we’re hot on his trail,” Mel said. “And there must be some incriminating information in all this stuff. We’ll have to search through the ashes in the fireplace grate to see if we can find any remnants of what he burned. But how did he find what he was looking for? There are dozens and dozens of boxes piled in the library. It’s taken us days just to plow through one-tenth of them.”

“Percy had nearly a photographic memory,” Grandmother said. “When I had his archives brought down here, I made sure the servants kept the boxes in exactly the order Percy had left them. He would have known just where to look for things. I’m afraid all we can do is hunt for any signs of disruption amongst the material.”

Mel shook her head in disgust. “That’ll take forever. But I suppose there’s nothing else we can do.”

Bao followed everyone into the library, where they each took a different section of the room and began to dig through boxes. She felt badly that she hadn’t known this man was Grandmother’s son, that awful Percy Rathbone. But she had only seen Percy when he had been in a zombie body. She couldn’t have known what he looked like as a ghost.

Now all she could do was patiently watch as her friends leafed through all those papers. She tried hard not to distract them. But standing beside Mel, she couldn’t help asking a question.

“What did Grandmother mean when she said Percy had a photographic memory?”

Mel smiled down at her. “Well, you know what the pictures that Johnny takes look like. When Dame Honoria said Percy had a photographic memory, she meant that he could look at something, and never forget a detail of it. Just like he had a snapshot of it in front of him whenever he wanted it.”

Bao felt a little bit confused about that. “You mean he could remember real good?”

“That’s another way of saying it.”

“I can remember real good, too. We played a game when I was little, and you had to remember every place that someone touched, and then go around and touch the same places in the exact same order. Here, I’ll show you. I’ll touch the exact spots in the room that Percy touched when I was watching him.”

With that, the little girl ghost flew from the fireplace to a folder on one of the tables and back to the fireplace again and then to a window. Mel watched her in surprise.

“Dame Honoria, Professor DeNimes. I think I know one of the folders Percy was looking at,” she said, staring at Bao.

It was a folder that Mel had examined the day before. She said it contained newspaper clippings from twenty years ago, back when Percy was a teenager. The stories were almost all about sports.

“But there was another article in here, way in the back,” Mel said. “I remember it because it was the only one that wasn’t about sports. It was a travel story from the Royalton Times. In fact, I remember it for another reason. The story was about Okkatek Island.”

“That would have been long before Percy and your parents visited the place,” Grandmother said. “I had no idea he was interested in Okkatek back then.”

“Well, the article is gone now so we’ll never know what clues it held. Darn it!”

Grandmother thought a moment. “Not necessarily. We simply need to find another copy of it. You said it was in with clippings from about twenty years ago?” She picked up the telephone on her desk and dialed a few numbers, waited a little, then said, “Tilda? This is Dame Honoria.” There was another brief pause. “Very well, thank you. I need you to get me the Gorton’s Little Pills headquarters in Royalton. You know the number.”

Bao floated closer to Mel. “Who is Tilda?”

“Local operator,” Mel replied.

A moment later, Grandmother was instructing some person to go to the Royalton Times newspaper office and request a copy of the old article. She gave the details of the newspaper clipping, and said that it was probably published about twenty years ago.

“You’re to give this the highest priority,” Grandmother said into the telephone. “And I expect to hear back from you later today. I want you to make notes on the contents of the article and, most particularly, anything having to do with ghosts and etheristics. Is that clear, Ned?”

Bao heard a tiny little voice come out of the phone. “Yes, ma’am, it certainly is.”

Three hours later Ned called back. Bao watched with excitement as Grandmother picked up the hand piece.

“Hello? Dame Honoria here.” There was a brief pause. “Yes, Ned, I’ll make notes.” Grandmother leaned over her desk and prepared to write. “Go ahead.”

Mel and the professor came over and stood by the desk, probably hoping to catch anything Ned might say. Bao wanted to hear, too, and floated up above Dame Honoria.

“The author of the article was one Eustace Phipps, a prolific travel writer of the day,” the tiny little voice said. “He toured all over Okkatek Island and sampled the tribal culture in all its variety. He ate the food, witnessed the music and the dance, commented upon the many gorgeous vistas, observed the wildlife, recounted the history, and so on. But I think the part that you may be most interested in, Dame Honoria, pertains to a week that he spent on horseback trekking through the northern mountains with a group of fellow adventurers.

“They were heading up to one of the high plateaus. Along the way, they passed a landmark called Morbrec’s Cave. Legend has it that an ancient shaman of that region, one Morbrec, had died in the cave, of cold and starvation, after being driven from society. He was banished because people believed he had devised a way to bring the dead back to life.

“To this day, islanders won’t go into Morbrec’s Cave because they still fear his terrible power.”

This Morbrec must have been very wicked if his own people cast him out, Bao thought. Could his evil power still exist after all these years? Had he survived as a ghost? And what if he was helping Percy?

She shuddered to think of it.

It meant things could get a whole lot worse than they were now.