10. A Shakespearean revelation
ten
A Shakespearean revelation
EWAN
Around six in the morning, guests find the four of us still in front of the fire, snoozing.
We help Lana and Shirley ready the breakfast station in the kitchen by pulling out the butter and jams, and refilling the cereal dispensers and the pitchers of orange juice.
Then we all drag our feet to our respective bedrooms, leaving the hostel to be managed by the cats and the employees who didn’t party with us last night.
Lana kisses us both on the cheek, and Shirley hugs us. They walk away, hand in hand, and I feel envious of their easy friendship.
For a moment, I worry about finding myself alone with James. I’m still holding the fort, trying not to succumb to temptation, but I’m so tired, I don’t have it in me to think of a convoluted plan not to get in bed with him.
Thankfully, James just pushes me into bed with my clothes still on, settles by my side after closing the curtain on the narrow window, then falls asleep almost instantly, his hand simply resting on my forearm. I feel disappointed against my will.
I drift off, lulled by his deep breathing while trying not to dwell on all the ways he was kind to me during the night. I can still feel his fingers in my hair.
Shirley wakes us up around four in the afternoon, and we all trudge to the staff kitchen for a late breakfast. The three of us are bright-eyed and relaxed—drinking tea and feasting on club sandwiches after a night out seems to be the trick to sober up nicely—unlike Emma, Luigi, and Noah who look miserable.
They avoid our gaze and each other’s as they make their coffees.
Shirley, of course, doesn’t spare them shame by bringing up their little visit to the library.
They scuttle away, mumbling about having work to do.
James is laughing openly, eyes crinkling, and his joy is contagious. I find myself grinning, too.
Lana appears, dressed in a pink velvet robe, her red hair unbound, and she kisses us both on the cheek again. She’s been up and about for a few hours, apparently.
“So what are your plans tonight?” she asks as she makes herself a green smoothie.
“Ghost hunting,” James says. “You hired us, remember?”
Lana laughs merrily. “Oh yeah! That’s right.”
He smiles fondly. “There are two ghosts left on your list. The Lady in Red and the French Nobleman. Which one should we exorcise first?”
“The nobleman,” I say too quickly.
I don’t have it in me for another horny bout tonight, not when I’m still trying to bury my newborn feelings for James. I need more time.
Shirley offers me a knowing look, but James just nods.
“He’s often in the old parlour on the first floor,” Lana says, throwing a banana in the blender. “He likes it there because that’s where we allow guests to be raucous and have a drink.”
“In the notes you say he’s nonsensical. What do you mean by that?” I ask.
She grins. “You’ll see. He’s.. a lot.”
James throws an orange peel that has been lying on the table at her. “Oh come on, stop being so cryptic.”
She cackles. “He’s the most harmless of my ghosts.”
“But the most annoying,” mumbles Shirley in her coffee.
“More annoying than a prostitute who can control our bodies and an old man showing us his ball sack and asshole?”
Lana and Shirley nod as one.
“He’s very... talkative,” Shirley says. “He often makes an appearance during parties, and the guests think he’s a visitor, too.”
I like the idea of a simple ghost who will just talk to us instead of trying to set us on fire or drown us.
“Earl Lynch regretted summoning him to the house, but the ghost is as slippery as an eel, and he had a hard time getting him to leave. It’s in his journal. Then old Fergus died not long after anyway, and so the Nobleman is still haunting this place.”
“How did the earl get the ghosts to leave?” I ask, intrigued.
Lana’s finger hovers above the button of the blender, waiting.
“Well, something about a complicated ritual. I tried to find it to kick the ghosts out myself, but no luck. The earl’s books have all been lost to time, or probably burned.
How have you been doing it, if I may ask?
I know it’s probably an ExorSquad secret but... ”
I shake my head. After last night, I feel like both women have become my friends, and I don’t see the point of hiding what I can do to them. Everyone in this room will believe me, they have seen the uncanny.
“It’s me,” I blurt out. “I think I’m...” I hesitate.
I am what? A medium? That just sounds absurd.
“I’m different? I can see all spirits, even the ones other people can’t see.
” James is looking at me with a little smile, urging me on.
“I’ve been... asking your ghosts to leave, and they do?
I think they were prisoners here, and happy to be free, at last.”
Lana stares at me, hand still frozen above the blender.
“Did a ghost spook you last night at the club?” Shirley asks.
I nod, swallowing thickly. The entity who talked to me wasn’t even one of the worst ones.
He was just a guy in a club, looking for drugs.
Pretty harmless. But I do my best to avoid talking to spirits.
What would happen if they realise I can see them?
What would happen if some of them decide to stick around?
No locked doors can keep ghosts at bay. And after what happened two days ago, when the Warrior entered James’ body, I have reasons to fear the power of the dead.
“Aw, Ewan,” Shirley says, standing up and hugging me.
I let out a shaky breath and hug her back.
At last, Lana turns on her blender, and the noise fills the kitchen. When her green mixture is ready, she pours it into a tall glass and takes a sip, grimacing. “The earl talked about people like you in his journal,” she says at last.
I blink. “He did?”
She nods. “He met a woman with your ability one night. He was jealous of what she could do, his emotions bled all over the pages. He was a nasty man, Fergus Lynch. Where he required difficult rituals and sacrifices to pierce the veil, she could just see it all, at all times. It drove him mad with envy.”
My mood darkens. “He was a fool. There's nothing to be envious of.”
“I believe you,” she says, twirling the thick liquid in her glass. “I was thrilled when I understood they were ghosts in my house, at first. But the fuckers can turn out to be pest, don’t they?”
“They sure can,” says James, reclining in his chair. “The Warrior tried to possess my body the other night. And let me tell you, it wasn’t a pleasant experience.”
I blush, recalling what happened after the possession, when James asked me to share my body heat with him and well... after that, things got a little out of hand.
“That’s quite the talent for a ghost hunter,” Lana says to me. “ExorSquad must be thrilled to have you.”
“They don’t... They don’t know I’m different,” I say. “I wasn’t sure myself, up until this week.”
“I’ll admit, we were wholly unprepared for your ghosts,” James says. “But I’m glad Ewan is on my team.”
He is? Our eyes meet, and butterflies flutter in my belly.
Lana snorts and raises her glass of green smoothie in a toast. “To our wholly unprepared but quite efficient ghost hunters. You’re doing a damn fine job!”
We raise our coffee mugs.
We spend the afternoon relaxing at the hostel, nursing a mild hangover and drinking an ungodly amount of tea even by British standards.
Lana and Shirley come and go, managing the hostel that is again at full capacity.
Many visitors like to come during October and enjoy the full scope of Halloween season in Edinburgh while staying in a haunted hostel.
I realise I could get used to this. This wonderful place full of life, with a roaring fire in the hearth, a library stacked with books, friends who come and go, and cats on my lap.
Daylight and sobriety brought up questions about what Lana said to us the previous night.
She called the house sentient. Now I’m aware of every strange thing, like the lights flickering during an argument between guests, or the different smells in the rooms, as if the house holds memories of things long gone.
The staff kitchen always smells of baked bread, even though no one used the stone oven in a while.
The grand staircase has the scents of flowers, such as roses or lavender, even though there is no bouquet in sight.
The hats and scarves on the suits of armour in the large living room seem to change from time to time, from one blink to the other, even though no one touched them.
“Is it me, or does the boar’s eyes follow us?” James says at some point as we sit in front of the fireplace.
And yet, the cats are the strangest of it all.
James was right. They always appear in rooms even if the doors are closed, and they watch over the hostel like furry guardians.
Three of them harassed a guest for an hour, stopping him from leaving with his luggage, until Lana made him admit he’d stolen a small statue from the second floor by sneaking it inside his backpack.
The cats’ yowls chased him out in the streets.
James is still a little freaked out by them, but he seems to slowly get desensitized as they keep rubbing themselves on his legs or jump on his lap.
He told me in confidence that his grandmother had a cat who traumatized him growing up, and to him they still appear like feral beasts waiting for their chance to claw his face off.
We eat dinner with the others around nine, the usual excitement subdued, but we’re all content and relaxed. Then we play board games by the fire until midnight comes and all the guests have disappeared in their dormitories. Lana and Shirley wish us good luck as they go to bed hand in hand.