“Okay.” Gilda stood up but hesitated before leaving. “Are you sure you’re okay, Wendy?”
“I’ll be better if I can just get some rest tonight for a change.”
“Just knock on my door if you want to talk.”
“I’m fine.”
But Wendy wasn’t okay. After Gilda left, she walked across the room to find her pajamas, and for an instant, she glimpsed someone else’s reflection in the mirror.
37
The Accident
In the middle of the night, Wendy awoke with a feeling that there was something important she needed to do—as if she had left something vital somewhere. She stood up, pulled on her boots, grabbed her coat, then quietly left her room without having the faintest idea where she was heading.
As she tiptoed down the stairs, Wendy had the sense that she was a mere observer of her own actions. Her body had suddenly become a vehicle that some unknown driver controlled, and she herself had become a passenger along for the ride. The stranger had a plan—something he or she wanted very badly, and Wendy did not feel that she could protest.
This is a weird dream, Wendy thought to herself, because it feels so real.
She made her way down the flights of steps, then out the front door and into the cold night.
At the same moment, Gilda awoke from a light, fitful sleep to the sound of soft footsteps padding quickly down the old staircase. She opened her door to peek into the hallway and was alarmed to see Wendy’s door left ajar.
Gilda hurriedly stuck her feet into slippers and jogged down the long flights of stairs just in time to glimpse Wendy swiftly disappearing through the front door of the house.
Shivering in her pajamas without a coat, Gilda stepped into the cold night air. She heard the clop, clop, clop of Wendy’s footsteps echoing down the dark street as steadily as a loud metronome.
“Wendy!” Gilda’s voice was lonely in the empty street.
Slender in the long, unbuttoned coat that billowed loosely behind her, Wendy moved with unwavering purpose, as if propelled by a little engine set on autopilot. This wasn’t Wendy’s usual slouching shuffle. For a moment, Gilda had a palpable feeling of unreality, as if she had suddenly awakened to find herself following a stranger she had mistaken for Wendy—as if she herself were dreaming.
“Hey! Wendy!” Gilda yelled. “WEN-DEE! WHERE ARE YOU GOING?”
It was as if Wendy were completely deaf. Was she sleepwalking? Gilda followed her along the curving row of Victorian houses that gazed down at the two girls with darkened, hollow eyes.
Wendy began to walk even faster through Jericho, nearing the entrance to Port Meadow. The sound of a fast-approaching car broke the silence, and Gilda suddenly started sprinting. She knew she must catch up to Wendy before it was too late.
As a car sped toward the two girls, Wendy calmly stepped into the street, directly in its path.
38
Dr. Cudlip and the Baffling Case
The car squealed to a halt just as Gilda grabbed Wendy’s coat and pulled her back onto the sidewalk without a split second to spare. The two toppled onto the pavement.
“Bloody students!” the driver yelled. “Get off the road, you daft cows!”
“Daft cow yourself!” Gilda retorted, gasping for breath and wishing she could think up a more original comeback.
“Go home and stop loiterin’ about on the streets!”
“We will after you go take some driving lessons!”
The driver abruptly revved her car’s engine and sped away, muttering something about “irresponsible American kids.”
The impact of hitting the sidewalk and the angry exchange between Gilda and the driver seemed to shake Wendy from her trance.
“Gilda,” she said, “I think there’s something terribly wrong with me.”
The next morning, Gilda and Wendy sat in a dreary National Health Service waiting room. The surroundings vaguely reminded Gilda of the experience of waiting with her brother to get his driver’s license at the Department of Motor Vehicles. A weary-looking woman sat across from the two girls with a baby who cried weakly; a toddler solemnly observed Gilda and Wendy while picking his nose. Most interestingly, two elderly women who appeared to be identical twins sat dressed in matching white overcoats and furry white hats, their hands folded and their crinkled mouths set in thin lines of pink lipstick. I wonder if they both have the same illness, Gilda thought. The room was devoid of magazines, but posters on the wall reminded patients that AIDS IS STILL REAL! and PRENATAL HEALTH BEGINS WITH YOU!
“Wendy,” Gilda whispered, “are you sure you want to see a doctor?”
“Gilda, I stepped in front of a car last night without even knowing what I was doing. What if I do that again—or something worse?”
“I know. I’m worried, too. I just don’t know if a regular doctor will be able to help you with problems caused by a ghost.”
“But what if it isn’t a ghost? What if I have a medical condition, like . . . a brain tumor or something awful like that?”
Gilda felt an unpleasant cold sensation in her stomach. “Even if you did have something like that—and I’m sure you don’t—you wouldn’t walk out of here knowing it today. Believe me, you’d only leave a little more worried than you are now.” Gilda remembered how her father had been sent from specialist to specialist, each of whom ordered multiple tests—a wearying dance between hope and despair—until finally, a diagnosis was given, and everyone settled into the bleak certainty of bad news.
No, Gilda thought, this cannot happen to Wendy. At the moment, even a “substitute ghost” seemed preferable.
“You’re saying I shouldn’t even go to the doctor?”
“No, you should. I guess I just don’t like doctors’ offices much.”
Wendy’s face softened as she remembered why Gilda hated waiting around in hospitals. “Sorry—I forgot. And I know what you mean.”
Finally, someone called Wendy’s name. The two girls followed a weary-looking nurse into an examination room.
“I haven’t been feeling like myself,” Wendy explained to the nurse, who regarded her with a level stare. Why are you wasting our time? her gaze seemed to suggest. We don’t feel like ourselves either.
“She might have a brain tumor,” Gilda blurted. “She needs to see a doctor urgently.” Based on memories of her father’s ordeal, Gilda believed that it was necessary to convey hyperbolic urgency if one wanted to be taken at all seriously by the medical profession.
The nurse raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been having headaches? Dizziness?”
“Some.”
“Tell her how you’ve been hearing things, Wendy.”
Wendy shot Gilda an irritated glance. “I—I’ve been hearing things that aren’t there.”
The nurse frowned and scribbled a note on her clipboard.
“She almost got hit by a car last night,” Gilda added. “She’s a potential danger to herself and others.”
“I’m not a danger to others, Gilda.”
“The doctor will see you in a few minutes,” said the nurse, deciding to let the doctor get to the bottom of this case.
While she and Wendy waited for the doctor, Gilda passed the time by testing tongue depressors to determine whether they were different from the ones in America. She was sticking a tongue depressor in Wendy’s mouth when a young, curly-haired doctor entered the room.
“Best not to play with the medical supplies, if you please,” said the doctor, snatching the tongue depressors from Gilda’s hand and dropping them in the trash.
“I’m Doctor Cudlip. You must be Wendy Choy, then.” Dr. Cudlip quickly shook Wendy’s hand. He eyed the notes the nurse had left and glanced at his watch.
Gilda wondered what the nurse had written on the chart. She always found it frustrating that you never got to see the notes doctors and nurses left for each other. What if the nurse had written something like, Annoying kids—move them out quickly! or Probable insanity; institutionalize pronto!?
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“Here from the States, are you?”
Gilda and Wendy nodded. “I’m here for a piano competition,” Wendy explained.
At this, Dr. Cudlip’s face brightened and he looked at Wendy directly for the first time. In an instant, she became a person of interest for him. “You’re competing in the Young Virtuosos Competition?”
“Yes.”
“Brilliant!” Dr. Cudlip sat down on a stool as if he suddenly found himself with time to kill. “I studied piano myself, but I never quite stayed with it long enough to qualify for one of the big competitions. Now I wish I could still play more than anything; you’re very lucky to have that talent.”
Wendy was familiar with people like Dr. Cudlip—professionals who had studied the piano as children but quit due to lack of interest or talent—doctors, lawyers, and dentists who had abandoned music for something more lucrative and practical, but who still harbored nostalgia for their dreams of concert-stage glory. As adults, they either wished that someone had forced them to continue or wholly rejected all artistic pursuits as ridiculous and impractical.
“I’m Gilda Joyce, Wendy’s page-turner and official manager.” Gilda extended her hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Gilda,” Dr. Cudlip replied, with considerably less interest than he had shown toward Wendy. He reviewed his chart and observed Wendy quizzically. “You’ve been having some headaches?”
Wendy did her best to describe her sleeplessness, the music that continually interrupted her concentration, the experience of awakening in the middle of the night and feeling compelled to search for some object she had lost.
Dr. Cudlip stood up and placed his stethoscope on Wendy’s back to listen to her heartbeat.
“And when did all of this start?”
“Mostly since I’ve been here in Oxford.”
“Is jet lag a problem?”
“I guess so.”
“Any history of sleepwalking?”
“No.”
“Even when you were a young child?”
“Not that I know of.”
“On any medication?”
“No.”
Dr. Cudlip removed the stethoscope, sat back down on the stool, and stared at Wendy. “What happened to you last night could be a form of sleepwalking. However, that most often happens to patients who have some childhood history. Of course, sleep deprivation and stress can also make sleepwalking more likely, so we shouldn’t rule it out completely.”
Wendy nodded. She didn’t like the idea of being a sleep-walker, but it was certainly preferable to a brain tumor, or something worse.
“Now, there’s also an interesting condition called sleep paralysis , and with that condition, people see and hear all kinds of bizarre things—space alien abductions, monsters—you name it. Because their eyes are open, they think it all must be real—that they can’t possibly be dreaming. In fact, their brains are still asleep.”
“Maybe that’s what I have,” said Wendy, almost eagerly. “Maybe all these strange things are just my brain being partly asleep?”
“Perhaps, but with sleep paralysis, people generally can’t move. They say that some alien force is pinning them down in their beds, literally paralyzing them. You said you were able to get out of bed and walk down the street.”
“So, it can’t be sleep paralysis, then,” said Gilda.
“Well, I expect it’s still some kind of sleep disturbance—perhaps a rather unique one caused by stress. My guess is that it will resolve once Wendy catches up on her rest and the stress of an international competition is over. But if the symptoms continue, Wendy, you should have your parents take you to a specialist back in the States. Oh, and make sure you lock your door or place something in your path that will wake you up just in case the sleepwalking happens again.”
The doctor scribbled something on Wendy’s chart and stood up, preparing to leave the room.
“Just a moment, Dr. Cudlip,” said Gilda, “I think we’re missing a possible diagnosis here.”
“Gilda,” Wendy protested, “please don’t.”
“And that might be?”
“Spirit possession.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows. “I think you’d have to talk to a local vicar about that sort of thing; it’s not exactly my field.”
“It is my field,” said Gilda, wishing she also had a clipboard to hold. “I’m a psychic investigator.”
“Omigod,” Wendy muttered under her breath.
“I must confess, Dr. Cudlip,” Gilda continued, “that I haven’t come across a case quite this perplexing before.”
The doctor regarded Gilda as if he suspected that she should be sitting up on the paper-covered examination table instead of Wendy. The fact that she wore her “London Mod” outfit with spidery false eyelashes and a rather obvious wig of straight black hair didn’t help her credibility in his mind. He turned his attention back to his patient. “Wendy, do you think you might have a case of ‘spirit possession’?”
Wendy clutched the edge of the table with both hands and bounced her foot nervously. “I don’t know,” she said in a small voice.
“I agree that stress could cause sleepwalking,” Gilda continued, “but it doesn’t explain the fact that Wendy and I actually recorded the voice of a ghost on a tape recorder. We both heard it!”
Dr. Cudlip frowned. “I don’t understand.”
Gilda did her best to explain how she and Wendy had picked up a mysterious voice on tape after Wendy had recorded the melody that literally haunted her—the melody that often awakened her at night. “I believe Wendy’s symptoms are evidence of a genuine haunting, Dr. Cudlip.”
Considering this piece of information, Dr. Cudlip looked thoughtful. He leaned against the wall, clutching his clipboard to his chest. “There is one case of spirit possession I remember from the medical journals,” he said, almost as if talking to himself.
“There is?” Wendy and Gilda leaned forward.
“It was a most unusual account—the case of a young man who believed he had been put under a curse by a jealous friend. This boy came from a very well-to-do and respected family, and he had always been well-behaved—a hard worker and a perfect student. But as a result of this supposed ‘curse,’ the boy thought he was inhabited by a rather unpleasant spirit who forced him to steal things. Within no time, he became a petty criminal, and he ended up in prison, much to his parents’ disgrace. As one might predict, the psychiatrist who examined him assumed that the boy had the early stages of schizophrenia—ongoing episodes of hearing voices that weren’t there, feeling that someone else was controlling his behavior, et cetera.”
Wendy turned pale at the reference to schizophrenia—a diagnosis she feared.
“But—here’s where the really strange part comes in. While the boy was in prison, some of the other inmates actually heard the faint voice of an old woman and saw a cold mist that drifted toward the boy and then disappeared inside him. A priest who came to visit the young man also concurred that this was indeed a true case of possession rather than mental illness. So the psychiatrists were faced with a bewildering question: was everyone crazy? Or was this boy truly a victim of possession by a spirit? Was this one of those rare cases we can’t explain with medical science?”
Both Gilda and Wendy were fascinated. “So what happened?”
“I believe they performed an exorcism and also gave the boy psychotropic drugs just to cover all the bases. One or the other did the trick.”
Gilda turned to Wendy eagerly, but Wendy quickly shut down this idea. “I’m not going to subject myself to an exorcism. And I don’t want to take drugs either.”
“I was not about to suggest that you do,” said the doctor. “This is the twenty-first century, for goodness’ sake, and I’m not convinced that you need medication at this stage.”
“I think Gilda was about to suggest it.”
“I like to be open-minded,” said Dr. Cudlip, interrupting the burgeoning argument between Wendy and Gilda, “so
I acknowledge it’s possible that the two of you are experiencing something that modern-day medicine can’t explain. But Wendy, my money’s still on stress and sleep deprivation as the most simple explanation.” He gave Wendy a little wink as he shook her hand. “Come back if things get worse, but at this point, just try not to worry too much. Try to get some rest. And most importantly, best of luck in the finals of the piano competition!”
39
Beneath the Black Water
Well, what do you suggest now?” Wendy wrapped a long scarf around her head several times, trying to keep warm. She and Gilda stood in the bitter morning sunlight outside the health clinic, unsure of what to do next. Students bundled in overcoats and scarves sped past them on bicycles.
“I think we should go back to that graveyard where Charles Drummond is buried.”
Wendy wrinkled her nose. “What would that accomplish?”
“After you came out of that trance last night, you said you had a feeling you had to get somewhere—that you had left something important behind, right?”
“But I have no idea what ‘it’ was, or where I was heading.”
“But you were walking toward the meadow—exactly in the direction of Charles Drummond’s grave. What if there’s a clue in the graveyard that his ghost wants you to discover?”
“What if he just wanted me to get hit by a car?”
Gilda fell silent for a moment. She had to admit she had no idea whether the ghost had helpful or malevolent intentions. She also had no idea why a deceased English boy would be haunting a Chinese-American girl—except that it must have something to do with the piano competition.
“Wendy, I don’t know if we’ll find anything in the graveyard; I just have a gut feeling we should look there. Besides, I really want you to see this place.”
The Ghost Sonata Page 18
