by William Bell
On the door of Greyfriars Kirk.
For many years afterwards, the covenanters were aggressively persecuted and, after a particularly hot battle in 1679, more than a thousand were jailed at Greyfriars. Thus, the Covenanters’ Prison. Eventually, many of them were hanged, just because they refused to use the king’s book. No wonder the place has such an eerie atmosphere.
After I had read all this, I sat back and mulled it all over. What would it be like to live in a place where my religion was illegal? What if I had to sign an oath saying I didn’t believe in it, or I’d be hanged? Except for you and maybe a couple of other people, there is nothing that I would give my life for. What would it be like to believe in something so much you were willing to put your life on the line?
The covenanters fought battles and suffered persecution, and many died for the right to worship freely. Was the man I saw at Greyfriars one of them?
FROM: Cole Ingram [email protected]
SUBJECT: hauntings
TO : Marci [email protected]
DATE: April 7, 12:31 PM EDT
Dear Marci,
I just came back from a walk in the little park across the road from the hotel. I did a lot of thinking.
And I asked around the hotel—the chambermaid, a waiter in the cafe, the woman at the desk—about the ghost stories. It’s amazing how much credence is given to the notion that “there must be something to it.” Up in my room, I went on the Net again. All kinds of newspaper reports and articles allege that evil spirits have caused poltergeist-type events at the kirkyard, and this has been going on for centuries. Psychics routinely sense the “presence” of spirits in the area, especially on the left side of the prison (where I saw the man’s body, by the way—a little detail I didn’t notice at the time). Visitors on the City of the Dead tours regularly report feeling oppressed and sick to their stomachs in the kirkyard, just as I had. Others go so far as to say they have difficulty breathing and think they are suffocating. Local clergy have tried exorcisms at Greyfriars. Unsuccessfully, it seems.
I could hardly believe what I was reading. Apparently normal, apparently credible people in Edinburgh believe there are spirits haunting the Greyfriars Kirkyard.
And apparently I’m one of them.
FROM: Cole Ingram [email protected]
SUBJECT: City of the Dead
TO : Marci [email protected]
DATE: April 7, 9:06 PM EDT
Dear Marci,
I went back to Greyfriars. I had to, although I could hear your calm, reasonable voice telling me I was being ridiculous.
It was sunny and warm, and the daffodils on the hillside below Edinburgh Castle blazed like a golden grassfire. Candlemakers Row was sunlit, and a few tourists were wandering in the kirkyard when I got there. I made my way toward the prison, encountering a tour group on the way. Mostly young people, their anoraks open with the warmth of the afternoon, their hiking boots crunching on the gravel path. The tour guide was dressed in black.
I want to caution you, I heard him say in hushed tones, as we approach the jail. Over the years there have been many reports of visitors experiencing rather dire physical manifestations. Some have been knocked over, and a few actually knocked out.
Oohs and aahs from his audience.
But no one has been injured, the guide continued, at least, not yet. This way, please.
I let the pack move on ahead, then followed them to the prison gate. Everyone feeling all right? the guide inquired. Halfhearted murmurs of assent from the tourists. I searched the faces nearest me. His theatrical patter really had them hooked.
The spirit energy in Greyfriars, the guide went on, almost whispering, is by far the most potent on the entire City of the Dead tour. It is not at all unusual to experience foul odours—rotting flesh, offal, filth and so on. The spirit most often seen or felt is that of Lord Advocate George Mackenzie, a particularly cruel magistrate who delighted in sending many covenanters to the gallows. According to legend, he torments the jailed covenanters even after death, right here in the prison. As you file past the gate, you can take a look into the prison area before we move on.
After a few moments, the group followed him behind the church and down the hill, leaving me standing in the sun at the chained and padlocked gate.
I looked into the sun-drenched prison area just as the others had. Around me, birdsong and the sigh of the breeze in the trees that shaded parts of the kirkyard.
Nothing happened. Nothing appeared.
Were there grooves in the now dry dirt where the iron fence met the ground? Claw marks made by grasping human hands? Gouges dug by scrabbling boots? You could say so.
Or you could say not.
FROM: Cole Ingram [email protected]
SUBJECT: voices
TO: Marci [email protected]
DATE: April 8, 1:41 PM EDT
Dear Marci,
Just after lunch, a package arrived by courier from Shel in London. There were two large glossies inside, and a note. Costumes for Adele and the Ghost Girls, the memo said. I’d like your opinion. I think they’re great. Call me soon as.
For “Don’t Need God No More” Adele would be wearing a lacy halter top that showed lots of her implanted cleavage, and low-slung seventies-style bell-bottom jeans with religious symbols all over them. Each symbol was enclosed in a red ring with a diagonal line through it. The Ghost Girls, with long straight black hair and white death-mask makeup, wore ankle-length see-through robes slit from neck to navel.
I pictured Adele shouting out her song like a five-year-old in the grip of a tantrum at the abbey ruins in Dunfermline. GG half-naked, cavorting near the Covenanters’ Prison gates. And a little voice I hadn’t heard from in a long time started to natter away at the back of my mind.
In a place where people who had signed an oath to oppose the destruction of their religious freedom, I was planning to make a video that used bare skin and disrespect to sell CDs.
Oh, of course I knew that sex and disrespect were what GG and Adele aka Icebitch were all about. I also knew that our business isn’t about respect or reverence. It’s about effect—making a splash, gaining attention. And getting attention is harder and harder these days. Elvis used to do it with a greasy duck’s-ass hairdo and a few hip thrusts. Nowadays you need lots more. Our market is kids, and when you’re selling stuff to kids—music, clothes, sports—getting attention means two things: sex and disrespect. Sex plus disrespect equals money. And money talks.
Money doesn’t talk, the little voice said, it swears.
FROM: Cole Ingram [email protected]
SUBJECT: the message
TO: Marci [email protected]
DATE: April 9, 8:52 PM EDT
Dear Marci,
Who called three o’clock in the morning the long night of the soul? F. Scott Fitzgerald? I forget. Doesn’t matter.
Forgive me for sounding dramatic. Last night I couldn’t sleep. The old brain was in overdrive, with images charging around like demented kids in a toy store. Fog, mouldy stone walls, barefoot young women mouthing the words to songs, dead bodies. Around three I got up and sat at the window, sipping scotch and looking onto Comiston Road and mulling over the events of the past couple of days.
Marci, Greyfriars is haunted.
Not by the “spirit energy” mentioned by that tour guide. By things that are real—injustice, suffering, terror. All those people, jailed and starved and beaten and hanged by the neck—all for a little book, at the whim of a king who thought, like so many other rulers, that God talked through his mouth. Women and men and children hounded and persecuted for the way they prayed. People who have been forgotten.
And the dead man I saw stretched out on the wet ground? Was he imaginary? A trick of light and mist and fatigue? A ghost? Was it too fanciful to suppose that he was there to tell me something? Let’s say—just for argument—that he showed himself to me, only me, to pass on a message. What would that message be?
Remember.
See, Marci? I’m way past wondering and worrying about whether the man I saw was real. I got the message.
Remember.
I can’t shoot my video in that place.
FROM: Cole Ingram [email protected]
SUBJECT: the promise
TO: Marci [email protected]
DATE: April 9, 11:04 PM EDT
Dear Marci,
I feel as if I’ve set down a heavy burden.
I took a long hot shower, dressed and sent for coffee and scones. While I had breakfast I read “The Scotsman,” the newspaper that came with the coffee.
Marci, not much has changed since the Covenant was nailed to the Greyfriars church doors. In the newspaper there were reports of three wars in Africa. And the always-war in the Middle East. And the persecution of people around the globe because of their religion, or ethnic group, or gender. Before I had rolled up the paper and tossed it into the waste bin, I had made two decisions.
I will fulfill my obligation to Shel and make the video. But in St. Cuthbert’s or Calton, not Greyfriars. Afterwards, I’ll resign.
And I will try to find a way to make the kind of documentaries I’ve always dreamed of doing but never had the courage to try. I know it sounds pretentious, but I don’t care: it’s about time I did something important.
But first I’m flying home for your birthday. After all, a promise is a promise.
—Love, Cole
beer can man
Albert woke to the clink of his grandfather’s Zippo. He burrowed deeper under the covers and pictured the silver lighter, almost lost in the old man’s callused hand as he flipped back the lid with his thumb and flicked the tiny wheel for a spark. Albert saw the flame lifted to the cigarette between thin lips, the red glow swelling, the ash lengthening in front of the curling smoke. Clink as the lighter’s lid snapped shut. He heard a throaty cough, and tobacco smoke filled the room.
Albert sat up, knuckling sleep from his eyes, and climbed out of bed. He straightened the bedclothes before rolling the cot under the chesterfield that filled the end wall of the single-wide. He pulled on the drawstring to raise the venetian blinds and looked out the window. Flat grey light flowed from a low, steel-coloured sky. Frost rimed the lanes between the mobile homes, the garbage cans beside the driveway, the neighbours’ cars.
He padded to the kitchen nook where his grandfather sat at the table, his mug of tea before him. The Zippo rested atop a small green box of cigarette papers, which in turn sat on a matching packet of Macdonald’s tobacco. Albert poured tea for himself, added milk and two spoons of sugar and sat down opposite his grandfather. Still half asleep, he stared at the picture of the young woman on the tobacco packet. Blond curls flowed from under her tam, and the clan plaid was draped over her shoulder. Albert had always suspected that his grandfather smoked Export because his family name was Macdonald.
“Might be our last trip of the year,” his grandfather commented, looking out the window into the November sky. “They’re calling for snow tomorrow or the day after.”
Albert stirred his tea to cool it, then took a sip.
“How many slices?” the old man asked, getting to his feet.
“Two, please.”
“Kinda jam?”
“Strawberry, I guess.”
Albert’s grandfather put the bread in the toaster and took a jar of jam from the fridge. “Looks like Cuddy will be able to play tonight after all,” he said.
“Great. Now the Leafs will win for sure.”
“Wouldn’t bet on it.”
Grandad was a Habs fan, but Albert loved the Leafs. The two of them never missed Hockey Night in Canada. Next Saturday, the Leafs and Montreal played at Toronto, and Albert and his grandfather would rib each other all through the game. His mom, who disliked hockey and complained good-naturedly every week that her TV was commandeered for the evening, would make popcorn.
“Where’s Mom?” Albert asked, blowing on his tea.
“Workin’. That big stone house on Birchgrove Lane.”
“Oh.”
“You’ll have to eat quick like,” the old man said, stuffing his cigarette makings into the pocket of his flannel shirt. “We need to pick her up at noon. She said she’d be done cleaning by then.”
Albert climbed into the pickup truck through the driver’s side and slid along the seat. An accident a few years before had permanently jammed the passenger door. Albert’s grandfather hauled himself behind the steering wheel, slammed the door and turned the key. “Here’s hopin’,” he muttered. The starter motor wheezed weakly, the engine coughed a couple of times, then held. He eased the truck into gear. It shuddered as it rolled out of the trailer park.
“Truck’s more gutless every day. I think one of them pistons is just goin’ around for the ride.”
“Yeah, sounds like it,” Albert said.
The old man headed toward the big highway that bypassed the town of Langdon. He turned onto a ramp, rounded the cloverleaf and, instead of merging into the light Saturday-morning traffic, pulled off onto the shoulder and parked under a bridge.
“Cans or bottles?” he asked, opening the door.
“Bottles, I guess,” Albert replied.
“Thought it was my turn.”
Last weekend, Albert had noticed his grandfather struggling with his sack, breathing more heavily than usual. The aluminum cans were much lighter than the bottles.
“I like doing the bottles.”
“Suit yourself.”
Albert and his grandfather grabbed burlap sacks from a heap in the back of the truck. Albert stuffed three of them inside his jacket and unrolled two more. The old man took one, and they set off. Eyes trained on the dry grass, they slowly made their way along the ditch beside the road, the old man picking up beer cans, the boy carefully placing beer bottles in one bag and soft drink bottles in the other. A raw wind stung Albert’s face, and soon his hands were red and cold. He wished he had brought his gloves. But his grandfather never wore gloves on their Saturday pickups, so Albert didn’t either.
Cars swooshed by, tires singing; trucks shifted down for the long hill. In the intervals between, Albert heard his grandfather’s laboured breathing. He checked his pace. If he wasn’t careful, he would unconsciously leave the old man behind. His grandfather walked slowly, dragging the potato sack behind him, bending carefully to pick up his prizes, sometimes dropping one because he had arthritis in his left thumb and it didn’t work too well. “Like that damn old truck,” he would say.
The bypass that circled the town was four kilometres long, divided evenly into one-kilometre sections by bridges. Each Saturday, Albert and his grandfather walked one of the sections, covering the entire bypass once a month.
Albert allowed his mind to wander as he searched the dead brown grass for bottles. He turned his head when an eighteen-wheeler thundered by and caught sight of the driver’s shoulder through the side window. What would it be like to sit up there and go for miles and miles, every day a new and different destination? Maybe Grandad would let him drive the truck again today. For the past few weekends they had found a quiet spot on a country road and Albert had struggled with the stiff clutch and crabby gear shift, his veins buzzing with excitement.
As he walked, bent, stood, walked some more, accompanied by the faint clink of bottles in the bag he dragged behind him, eyes squinting against the chilly wind, Albert imagined the warm comfort of Renée’s Cafe and a steaming plate of french fries smothered in gravy, fried beef and onions, peas and melted cheese. A glass of pop, beaded with condensation.
“Cherry cola?” his grandfather would always ask.
“Yup.”
“Fries with the works, I suppose.”
“Yup,” Albert would answer, then watch his grandfather roll a smoke as they waited for their orders. The snack was their reward for the morning’s work. His grandfather put the remainder of the money away “for a rainy day.”
After a while,
man and boy reached the next bridge and leaned their bulging sacks against the concrete. Albert’s grandfather sat on his, pulled out his makings and rolled a cigarette. Clink, clink went the Zippo.
At length they hid the sacks in the bushes beside the bridge and waited for a break in the traffic before they made their way across the highway. They took up their work again, using the sacks Albert had kept inside his jacket. He had cooled off a little during the break, and the thin cloth of his coat was no match for the damp wind. His grandfather was moving more slowly during this second leg, so Albert took his time. It was ten o’clock before they found themselves opposite their truck on the far side of the highway.
They propped the bulging sacks against one another, crossed once more, and drove along the shoulder to retrieve the sacks they had hidden in the bushes. They took the exit ramp, crossed the bridge and headed in the opposite direction, stopping to pick up the second set of sacks. A big circle, Albert thought. Every Saturday we spend the morning making a big circle.
The old man and the boy visited three local parks, rooting through the trash barrels for bottles and cans, but at this time of year the yield was small. When they had checked every barrel in the third park, they took their sacks and some empty cartons from the truck and, on the scarred top of a picnic table, transferred the pop and beer bottles to the cartons.
“Not, bad,” Albert’s grandfather said when they had finished and Albert had hiked the boxes into the truck bed. “We filled all six cartons. That’s—”
“Seven twenty,” Albert said. “Not counting the cans.”
His grandfather grunted. “Knew I brought you along for a reason.”
They drove to a supermarket at the edge of town and, while his grandfather sat in the truck smoking and listening to the radio, Albert carried the two cartons of pop bottles into the store and waited patiently until the cashier was free to redeem them.
