The Book of Illumination (3 page)

I
COULD FEEL
the force of their fury before I even caught a glimpse of them. And a glimpse it was, for we had no sooner passed through the first floor in the creaky old cage of an elevator than the lights began to flicker and then went out, plunging us into darkness as we hit the basement floor.

“My God,” said Sylvia, fumbling for the door handle. I was afraid we might be trapped, if the electricity was truly out, but at least we weren’t dangling between floors. They were monks, no doubt about that, and from the thickness and color of their worn linen robes, I guessed they were seven or eight centuries past their use-by date. The younger one had a blank, impassive gaze, but the sight of the older monk raised the hair on the back of my neck. It wasn’t danger I felt—he was dead; he couldn’t hurt us—but a shock of surprise at being on the receiving end of his blazing contempt. I felt like saying, “Hey, what did
I
do?”

The lights flickered and came back on, so Sylvia was able to open the door.

“Does that happen often?” I asked.

“Yes. It’s one of the things that made me think we might have …
a ghost.” She let out a bright, nervous giggle, as though she was a little embarrassed to be saying this out loud. She closed the elevator door with precise care, and I remembered from childhood that if the accordion door wasn’t fully closed, completing the electrical connection, the elevator couldn’t be called to another floor.

“You do,” I said.

“We
do?”

I nodded.

“How do you know?”

I shrugged. Wasn’t it obvious? “I saw them.”

“Where?” She glanced around quickly. “Here?”

“Just now. That’s why the power went out. It’s one of the few things earthbound spirits can actually do: disrupt the flow of energy.”

We started down the hall to the bindery, where she was going to show me the manuscript. Though it didn’t have the elegance of the upper floors, the basement was well maintained: the floors glazed and buffed, the walls painted the pale and reputedly “calming” green of grammar school classrooms and 1940s kitchens.

“What do they look like?” she asked softly.

“Ghosts in general? Or these in particular?”

She was struggling to appear calm, but I could tell she was rattled, so I chatted on in a tone intended to convey nonchalance.

“They look just like they did when they were alive, just not … solid.”

She paused and turned.

“These two,” I said, my glance indicating the floor above us, “were monks.”

“Oh my God.” The color had drained from her face and she suddenly had the dazed and chalky look of someone about to pass out. I steered her toward a nearby chair and had her hang her head over her knees and take a few deep breaths.

“Don’t worry,” I said, rubbing her back the way I rub Henry’s when he’s not feeling well. “They can’t hurt you. They’re just trying to get your attention.”

She took a few more breaths and then sat up. “But why?”

“That’s what we have to find out.”

She nodded trustingly. I sat down on the floor beside her chair.

“What else happened? To make you …look for help?”

She let out a sigh. I suspected she was now sorry she had crossed the line separating the abstract possibility of ghosts from my confirming that they were, in fact, absolutely
here
. But it was too late now.

“Well, I’d come into the bindery, and it would look like a tornado had touched down. My things would be thrown all over the place. Not the books themselves, but all my tools and supplies. And where Chandler, the other bookbinder, works, not a pin would be out of place.”

“That’s pretty standard,” I said.

“And another thing—this ring.” She held out her hand. “I always leave it in my top drawer upstairs. Opals are really porous, and some of the substances I work with—”

“I know.”

“Oh, right. Sorry! I keep it in a little alabaster box, but sometimes, when I go to put it on at the end of the day, the box is empty. It’s happened a number of times, so I know it’s not just my memory. I always find it eventually—in the middle of the floor or right on my bookshelf—always in plain sight. Just not where I left it.”

“And nothing else is missing?”

“No. The door’s locked. Could a ghost do something like that?”

“Move something light, like a ring? Yeah, sure. They’re pure energy. The things you’re talking about, whipping up a little wind,
moving light objects, messing with electronics and electricity—that’s the usual bag of tricks.”

She nodded. I sensed she was trying to absorb all of this.

“I can see the book some other time,” I said, though I was desperate for a glimpse.

“No, I’m fine.” She stood up, testing whether she really was fine, then started down the hall. I got to my feet and followed.

“That’s funny,” she said, when we were just a few paces from the bindery door. “The lights in the bindery are on.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “It wouldn’t be ghosts. They don’t need light.”

I saw her hand hesitate on the doorknob, then she took a deep breath, turned it, and flung the door open with such force that it slammed back against the interior wall.

“Chandler!”

“Jesus, Sylvia!”

“Sorry!”

“You scared the shit out of me!”

Which didn’t look as though it would take too much. Granted, we were in a basement, and the reflection from the green walls could have made just about anyone look sickly, but the man had a sallow and sour quality, as though he rarely breathed fresh air.

So much for seeing the manuscript.

“This is … my friend, Anza,” Sylvia sputtered. “She’s a bookbinder, too.”

Chandler looked peeved at being disturbed. He had twelve or fourteen architectural plates laid out on a table and was cutting layers of tissue.

“She wanted to see where we work,” Sylvia managed, nodding overenthusiastically.

“Well, here it is,” Chandler said grouchily.

“What are you working on?” I stupidly asked, the result being
that fifteen minutes later, we were still listening to a discourse on lesser-known details of Palladian influence in the buildings of nineteenth-century Philadelphia. He had really warmed up—to the sound of his own voice.

“Well,” Sylvia broke in, “we should probably let you get back to work. Anza has …”

I could see her searching helplessly for something I had … to do? To get to? To treat with an immediate dose of … something?

“…a friend running the Tufts 10K!” I offered brilliantly. I beamed at Sylvia.

“How unpleasant,” he mumbled. A horrifying image of Chandler in spandex, and too little of it, sprang unbidden to mind.

I had to agree.

Sylvia unlocked her office door, switched on the light, and stepped inside. A strangled cry escaped her lips, and as my gaze swept the room, my stomach did a little flip. Desk drawers were pulled out and their contents spilled across the carpet, and several beautiful shells I had noticed, pearly varieties in various shapes, had been shattered.

Man, these guys were mad!

Then I saw him again, the older monk. He had apparently just finished his rampage, because he was red and breathless.

“What’s
this
all about?” I demanded, fixing him with a direct stare. “You should be ashamed of yourself! This is no way for a man of God to behave! Trashing people’s offices!”

I have to admit, I always enjoy the look of shock on their faces. Ghosts don’t know I can see them. Until I speak to them directly or wave or something, they assume I’m like every other clueless human being.

They were thinking in a language that was unfamiliar to me, a
language I had never heard spoken. But words are not, and never have been, barriers for me. I have no idea how or why, but I understand what is being thought. That’s how it’s always been.

“Oh my God,” Sylvia said. Miraculously, she was still on her feet.

“Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord, thy God, in vain!” the older monk bellowed.

“Knock off the swearing,” I said to Sylvia. “You’re pissing him off.”

“I didn’t swear,” she said.

“‘God’ is a swear,” I explained, “when you say it like that.”

“I’m sorry! I didn’t know!” I noticed that her hands were shaking.

“What do you want?” I asked him.

“I demand to speak with the cardinal!”

He was quavering with fury, and I tried to keep from smiling by biting the inside of my cheek. He was giving my son some real competition in the tantrum department.

“I don’t think that’s possible, Brother. As you probably know.”

He didn’t answer, but I had his attention.

“I’m sure you’ve tried. And he couldn’t see you, could he?”

He seemed to deflate before my eyes. Behind him, the younger monk shook his head silently.

“I’ll be glad to help if I can.”

“You?” The sneer had returned to his expression.

I speculated on which part of me he would find most objectionable, and the list was long: I was a lapsed Catholic, an unwed mother, a female wearing jeans and a torn T-shirt that might be a tad too tight, a female wearing red(dish) lipstick, a female who didn’t feel she had to genuflect before him and ask for his blessing. In short, a female who wasn’t a nun.

“Suit yourself,” I said. “You probably have people showing up here all the time who can see you and talk to you.”

He glared at me, but I could see that this had hit home. “I must speak with the cardinal!”

“Not going to happen, Brother. I’d do it if I could but I seriously doubt that someone like me could get Cardinal O’Shea here to do the bidding of someone like you.”

“And by that you mean …?”

“A ghost. With all due respect. You should know that better than anyone: the Church doesn’t believe in ghosts.”

Officially, that is. Unofficially, I have friendly working relationships with a number of men of the cloth, some of whom wear black, and some of whom wear scarlet. Cardinal O’Shea might not take my call if I phoned up his office and asked to speak with him, but I had people I could get to call him.

I glanced over at Sylvia. She had found her way to a chair and sat down. As though to compensate for her profane lapse, her posture was perfect and her ankles were primly crossed.

The older monk began to pace as his younger companion watched nervously. I could tell that the younger ghost wanted to speak but didn’t dare. From their relationship, I inferred that the older monk was his abbot.

“So it’s really up to you,” I ventured. “If you want my help, you have to tell me what’s going on.”

The older monk paused, then turned toward me slowly.

I’ll tell
you …
nothing
, he thought coldly.

“Not even what language you’re speaking?”

He could not prevent me from hearing what he was thinking, so as first he, then the younger monk vanished into air, I heard my answer as that young musical prodigy might hear a snatch of melody in the wind:

Irish
.

Clouds had gathered during the course of the day, and the few sailboats left on the river looked lonesome and vulnerable, like toys in danger of being picked up and tossed by an irritable child. I had stayed longer at the Athenaeum than I’d planned and was anxious to get home; Declan and Henry would be back anytime now, and I wanted to have a meal ready. I glanced at my watch and relaxed a little: it was only a quarter to four.

It had taken Sylvia and me half an hour to put her office back together. We’d replaced the items in her desk drawer, straightened the books on her shelves, and swept the opalescent shards of shell into her wastebasket. Her delicate pearly nautilus had been shattered, and a shell with a chestnut zebra pattern had taken a pretty hard hit, but a couple of the smaller, harder shells had survived with only chips.

“Why would they do this?” she asked, positioning the surviving shells so that the chips would be hidden.

“I don’t know. The younger one seems nicer, but I don’t think we’ll get anything out of him unless he comes to see you alone. Which poses a problem.”

Sylvia was straightening the items on her desk. She looked up. “You’re the only one they can communicate with.”