The Ghost and Katie Coyle

by Anne Kelleher

When Katie finally fell asleep, it was close to dawn. The birds had already begun to sing, and the insects were still. A grayish light suffused the sky, but Katie left her bedside lamp burning. When she woke, it was after ten, and sunlight filled her bedroom with a yellow glow. She got out of bed gingerly. All right, she thought. Let’s assess this. The nightgown was fragile. She could easily have torn it without knowing it. It could have come through the wash with several rips, and she might not have noticed. That had to be it. After all, the nightgown wasn’t dirty. It wasn’t full of pine needles or anything. Clearly she hadn’t really been out in the woods. Once again, she was letting her imagination run away with her.

  Enough, she said to herself. “It’s time to get to work,” she said out loud. She pulled her nightgown over her head, tossed it on the bed and strode into the bathroom, where she turned the taps on full force for her morning shower. Nothing had happened for which there wasn’t a reasonable explanation. And nothing was going to happen, either, she said to herself. She stepped under the steaming spray, vowing to think about nothing but Ireland for the next six hours.

  • • •

  It was terribly hard to concentrate, knowing that the Standing Stones were out there in the woods. Maybe, she mused as she sipped a glass of iced tea and stared out the window, maybe the Stones weren’t real. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing. “Oh, stop this,” she said aloud. She checked her watch. It was after three o’clock. Except for a brief lunch break, she’d been working all day. She got up and stretched. Surely she deserved a little walk. Just a quick one, she told herself. Just enough to clear her head. And check for the Standing Stones. Just to see if they were really there.

  She strolled across the footbridge. In the sunlight, the water was dark and murky. It was impossible to see the fish. She followed the same path she’d taken the previous evening. In the daylight, it was much easier to see how overgrown the path really was. She was lucky she hadn’t tripped and broken her ankle. She paused as the path intersected with the one that led down to the beach, half expecting to hear the voice calling, or to see the brush move. But nothing happened, and she chided herself for being overly imaginative.

  She pushed through the thick undergrowth, and stepped at last into the clearing. The Stones rose just as she remembered them, but in the light they didn’t seem quite so large or menacing. They were barely as tall as she was, made of solid slabs of granite, about the width and thickness of a man. They were arranged in two concentric rings. The bases were rife with weeds and vines twined around most of them.

  Katie pushed aside some of the growth. The Stones seemed to have some sort of markings on them, and she peered closely, trying to decipher the script. With a start, she realized the script was Ogham, the curious stick alphabet that predated the earliest Irish writings by the Romanized Celtic monks. So far, no Rosetta Stone had ever been discovered, and no one knew what the stick shapes meant. She would have to come back with paper and pen and make notes. As she bent closer to explore the bases, for it was clear that the markings were not ancient and nowhere near as old as the bases on which they stood, she thought she heard a rustle in the bushes behind her.

  Her blood froze and she glanced fearfully over first one shoulder and then the other. But she saw nothing, and with a sigh, she turned back to examine the stones once more. She stooped down, brushing away dirt and weeds. The stones had been mortared into place upon the bases. She paused, considering. That meant the stones had been put there afterwards. The bases seemed ancient, the weathered rock pitted and misshapen. There was no doubt that the bases had been in place for centuries. But the megaliths themselves confused her. The carvings on them had been done fairly recently, although there was no doubt that the language with which they were carved was an ancient one.

  A twig snapped beneath her foot and she jumped. Her heart leapt and she closed her eyes, leaning against a stone. Her nerves were getting the better of her. She would have to stop being so jumpy or she’d never make it through the first week, let alone the first semester. And then she smelled it again—the distinctive odor of bay rum—and felt an overwhelming sensation that she was being watched. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

  “I know you’re there,” she called. “Why don’t you stop playing these games and show yourself?”

  There was a long pause, and then to Katie’s surprise, the sound of the bushes parting came from behind her.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said a woman’s voice as Katie swung around just in time to see a tall, blond woman emerge from the underbrush beneath the trees. “I didn’t think anyone was close enough to hear me. I was just coming up the path from the beach—there’s a shortcut, you know, out to the main road.”

  “N-no,” stammered Katie. Her heart pounded so loudly she was sure the woman could hear it too, and her palms were wet. Katie trembled all over. She didn’t know whether to hug the woman for being so obviously real, or lambaste her for scaring her half to death. Katie crossed her arms and hoped the woman wouldn’t notice how she shook.

  “I’m so sorry,” the woman repeated. “I did scare you—I am sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” said Katie. She hesitated for a split second. The woman’s long, blond hair and pale, thin face gave her a ghostly aspect but she seemed human enough. “I’m Katie Coyle. I’m teaching at East Bay.”

  “So you’re the new resident of Pond House, then?” said the woman. “I’m Mary Monahan. Have they warned you about me yet?”

  Katie blinked. Mary wore a gauzy white tunic over flowing white trousers. They enhanced her otherworldly air, but she certainly didn’t look dangerous in any way. “Warn me about you?” she said slowly. “Are you dangerous?”

  At that Mary laughed, a tinkling little laugh that sounded like the peal of church bells. For a moment, she sounded no older than Katie, and Katie wondered just how old she really was. “Well, I’m not an ax murderer.”

  “How about an armed robber?” Katie smiled to cover the fact that she found the conversation very bizarre. The woman seemed all right, but Katie noticed that the woman hadn’t said she wasn’t dangerous.

  “Oh no,” replied Mary. “I’m afraid of guns.” “Well,” said Katie, searching for something to say. “I suppose that’s a good thing.”

  Mary cocked her head. “But I did startle you, and for that I’m terribly sorry. I see you’ve already found your way out here to these. Interesting, aren’t they?”

  Katie nodded. Mary advanced. She circled the stones, caressing the nearest with a hand draped in silver bracelets and rings. The sunlight sparkled on the metal.

  “Yes, they are,” Mary said. “I’ve got a lot of questions, but I doubt I’ll ever find all the answers.”

  “What would you like to know?” asked Mary. “My grandfather raised them.”

  “He did?” Katie asked, startled once more by Mary’s extraordinary claim. It lent the whole exchange a decidedly eerie air.

  “Yes,” Mary said, not looking at her. She was tracing the stick figures with the tip of one long fingernail, which Katie noticed was painted pale peach. “He had an even more interesting reputation than I do, you know.”

  Katie blinked again. There was something at once appealing and off-putting about this woman, with her long, pale hair and pale clothes—something ethereal and fey.

  “Well,” said Katie slowly, trying to think of some way to respond to the woman. “What kind of reputation do you have?”

  Mary gave that same soft, tinkling laugh. “I may as well tell you, before someone else does. I’m the town witch.”

  “Oh,” said Katie, even more slowly than before, and thinking twice as rapidly. How on earth did one respond to such a claim politely? “How nice” didn’t seem appropriate.

  Mary laughed once more, and this time there was a throaty quality in her laugh. “Not really,” she said. “But my family has a reputation.” She broke off and sighed. “Sometimes I’m not sure why I ever came back.” She gazed off into the distance, an
d Katie was struck by a profound sense of loneliness in the older woman’s gaze. She realized that Mary was much older than she’d originally guessed. With her long, flowing blond hair and gauzy clothes, she looked like a throwback to 1968. Which, Katie realized with a start, she probably was. A shaft of late-afternoon sun fell across her face, revealing lines and creases that the shade had hidden before. Suddenly Mary looked closer to fifty than she did to forty.

  “Where did you used to live?” asked Katie, more as an attempt to erase the look of sadness that had crossed Mary’s face than a real request for information.

  “Oh,” she replied. “For a while I was in Boston, then New York, and then Baltimore. After that, I lived on the West Coast for about ten years. But I came back when my mother died. I missed New England. All those palm trees and balmy temperatures got on my nerves.”

  She flashed a grin in Katie’s direction, and suddenly Katie saw that there was much more to the woman’s story. Suddenly she felt as though this were someone she’d like to get to know, someone without the kinds of pretensions universities bred in career academics. On impulse, she said, “Would you like to come back to the house for a cup of tea?”

  Mary looked startled, and then a slow smile, far more genuine than her laugh, spread over her face. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

  “I’d love to hear more about the history of this place,” Katie said as the two women walked slowly down the path. “Why did your grandfather raise the stones?”

  “Well,” said Mary, “he was a bit of a crackpot, I guess you could say. Maybe even more than a bit. He had this idea that the Stones could be linked to a set of stones in Ireland. So he made copies and, well, he spent a lot of years trying to get them just so. From what I can gather, they are pretty exact duplicates of ones just outside of Dublin.”

  “Hmm,” said Katie. She concentrated on walking through the brush. “But the bases on which the stones are placed look ancient. Where did he find those?”

  “Oh, those were already there. That’s what gave him the idea, you see. He was always intensely interested in power points, ley lines, that sort of thing. You know what I mean?”

  Katie nodded slowly. According to some, ley lines were lines of power and energy that ran across and through the earth, intersecting at various points. The theory attempted to explain why so many ancient monuments seemed to be laid out on straight lines.

  “So anyway,” Mary was saying, “At first he hoped he could use the Stones as a sort of portal to go back and forth between here and Ireland. When that didn’t work, he had other ideas. He kept experimenting until the day he died, and just about drove my grandmother crazy. She refused to keep the house after he died. That’s when it was sold to East Bay.”

  “That’s a long time ago,” said Katie.

  “Yes. Over thirty years ago, now. But the house was empty for a long time before it was sold. My grandfather was the only one who really enjoyed living here. This house has a long history of turning over repeatedly from one owner to another. In fact, I think the university has owned it longer than anyone else since the eighteenth century.”

  “But why,” asked Katie, genuinely bewildered. “Pond House is beautiful.”

  “It is beautiful,” Mary agreed. “But—” She broke off, clearly hesitant.

  “Go on,” said Katie. “I have to live here.”

  Mary glanced around. They had reached the edge of the lower pond, and the sunlight sparkled on the water. Dragonflies swooped over the surface, and the water bubbled contentedly at the base of the waterfall. She took a deep breath. “Look. I don’t want to scare you or anything, or make you think I’m any stranger than you already must think I am. You seem very down-to-earth, not at all like some of those overeducated idiots at East Bay.”

  “If there’s a story, I’d love to hear it,” said Katie. She put her hand on the other woman’s ann. “Come on inside. I’ll make us some tea.”

  Together, the two women walked into the house. Mary hesitated noticeably as she stepped over the threshold. “Ah,” she said with a sigh of relief. “The place likes you. That’s a very good sign.”

  Katie turned. “It is?”

  “Oh, yes. You have a very positive vibration. It’s quite clear. The house likes that a lot.”

  “Ah,” said Katie as she went into the kitchen, wondering what else to say. She wanted to hear the story very badly, but on the other hand, she wasn’t sure she could believe anything Mary might have to say. There was definitely something different about the woman, definitely something that the good citizens of East Bay obviously found more than a little odd.

  She busied herself getting mugs and spoons and a sugar bowl. When at last she set a mug of steaming tea in front of Mary, she said, “Now. Tell me. I won’t laugh or anything.”

  “Okay,” Mary said, stirring her tea calmly. “The place is haunted.”

  Katie gave Mary a sharp appraising look, but it was obvious from the way Mary had said it that she believed that what she was telling Katie was the truth. “Go on,” said Katie. “Tell me more.”

  “Well, let me see. You haven’t been here very long, but maybe you’ve noticed a cat who sleeps on the footbridge?” At Katie’s nod, Mary went on. “That cat’s a ghost. You can’t get close to her—if you go out to pet her, by the time you’ve rounded the rhododendron bushes, she’s disappeared. And there’s a holly tree that used to stand in the far corner across from the upper pond—sometimes you still see it, although it was cut down years ago to make room for the other trees. And sometimes, when things are going to go especially well for you, just near the fireplace—where the original kitchen used to be, before the house was modernized in the twenties—you can still smell baking bread. Most often it’s very early in the morning, but sometimes at other times, too. And other than that—well, you’ve been down to the beach, haven’t you?” When Katie nodded once more, Mary continued. “Well, legend has it that one of the wrecks along the coast was the wreck of a pirate ship around the turn of the eighteenth century. The pirate captain was washed ashore, and crawled up the path that leads from the beach. He died there, calling for help.”

  Katie felt the blood drain from her face. “Help?” she repeated.

  Mary shot her a sharp glance. “You’ve heard it, haven’t you?”

  Katie shrugged, shook her head and wondered why she felt so flustered. “Well, no, not really—I mean, it’s an owl, most likely, or some other bird—calling in the night…”

  Mary was looking at her with sympathy. “It’s not a bird. It’s the ghost. My grandmother hated him, the way she hated everything about Pond House. He wasn’t a very nice ghost when she was around. He’d play tricks on her all the time—throw stuff around, move things. She’d leave something in one spot, and it would turn up in another.” She was watching Katie very closely.

  Katie felt very cold. She wrapped her hands around her mug and pressed them tightly against the warm pottery. “Oh, really?” she said in a strained voice. “Tell me more.”

  “That’s one of the reasons Pond House doesn’t stay lived-in very long. The other reason is that the house itself has an energy—a feel to it. You’ve felt it, too, I can see that you have. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

  Suddenly Katie wanted very much to be alone. It was all too unbelievable. Standing Stones. Crazy grandfathers who thought they could be used to travel back and forth to Ireland. Ghosts of dying pirates calling for help. Disappearing cats and holly bushes. Things that moved all by themselves. She brought her mug uncertainly to her lips. “Would you care for more tea?”

  Mary shook her head, her brown eyes soft with sympathy. “I can see I’ve upset you. Listen, the place likes you. I can tell. The ghost hasn’t ever harmed anyone. He’s more of an annoyance. My grandfather had this idea of going back in time through the Stones to try and find the pirate treasure.”

  “Have you ever heard the ghost?”

  Mary glanced down at the mug and smiled. “Well,�
� she said slowly. “Maybe once or twice.” She looked up into Katie’s eyes. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. Pond House is a special place, and you must be a special person if it likes you. It liked my grandfather—but not my grandmother. Granddad used to say it would run her out at the first chance as soon as he was dead. And you know what? He was right.” She drained her mug and stood up. “I’ve taken enough of your time. Thank you for the tea. I’m sure I’ll see you around town. And I’m sorry I startled you out by the Stones. I won’t use the path again.”

  “No, no,” Katie said. “Please, by all means. Just whistle or something. The ghost doesn’t whistle, does he?”

  Mary grinned. “No. Not that I’ve ever heard.” She glanced around at the peaceful sunlit room. “I think you’ll be good for Pond House, Katie Coyle.”

  Katie said good-bye to the woman and tidied up the tea things. It would be almost funny if it weren’t so accurate. The woman had virtually recounted a list of every strange event she’d experienced since her arrival. As she settled down with her books again, Mary’s parting words echoed in her mind. She might be good for Pond House, but the real question was, would Pond House be good for her?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Mary picked her way slowly through the bramble-covered path. She remembered how carefully her grandfather had tended the paths that ran through the woods—as carefully as he’d tended the immediate grounds around Pond House itself. She paused beside the Standing Stones, running her fingers lightly over the uneven surface of the nearest block.

  “Hello, Mary.”

  She jumped in spite of herself and frowned in mock annoyance at the tall man who stepped from behind the opposite stone, his tattered white shirt billowing as he moved. “1 asked you a long time ago not to do that.”

  “Not even a ‘how are you,’ after all this time?” Derry grinned, showing even white teeth and a dimple in his right cheek.

  She relaxed. Damn the man, or the ghost. How could any human being—or former human being, for that matter—be so unbelievably beautiful? She smoothed her hands along the sides of her thighs. “Hello, my lord of Kilmartin. And how are you?”