The Bagpiper's Ghost Read online

  “Well, what if he’s still inside Peter?” Jennifer asked. “And using Peter to bring back the sister he mourned forever?”

  “Then we have a big problem,” Gran told her. She stood. “However, first things first, lass, and this we canna rush. If MacFadden is still here and using puir Peter, we must ken what kind o’ ghosts we’re dealing with.” She raised one finger and shook it at Jennifer. “In matters o’ magic, knowledge is the most important beginning step, as surely ye have discovered by noo.”

  “But, Gran,” Jennifer whined, “we have to do something now!”

  Gran shook her head. “Rushing aboot is an American disease. We Scots ken that slow and steady in the ways o’ magic is best.” She turned toward the door and then said over her shoulder, “I’ll get my book.”

  Jennifer pushed the porridge bowl away. How can I even think about eating with Peter lying upstairs possessed? What kind of a sister am I? And then she had another thought: What kind of brother was Andrew MacFadden, treating Mary that way? It made Jennifer hate him. She ground her teeth together and stood, planning to go up to check on Peter once more.

  Just then Gran came back. “This is the volume on ghosts,” she was saying, holding out a large tome bound in dark red leather. “Sit doon, Jennie. Study comes from quiet contemplation.” Sitting back down at the table, she patted the chair next to her. “Ye’ll tak the notes.” She handed Jennifer a pen and a piece of notebook paper that was longer and narrower than the kind Jennifer was used to at home. “Come, lass, sit.”

  Jennifer sat.

  Opening the book, Gran ran her finger quickly down the table of contents. “Glaistigs—nae, they’re female and shape-changers. And our bonnie lad is neither a dog nor a lass.”

  Jennifer put a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling. Peter as a girl? Or a dog? The idea would have been sidesplitting—if the situation weren’t so serious.

  “And …” Gran continued, “they’re mischief makers besides. This is nae such a one. Nor is it green ladies, either.”

  “Well, what about ladies in white …?” Jennifer asked.

  “Notes, my little lass,” Gran said. “Unless ye’ve a better memory than mine.”

  Jennifer dutifully wrote down NOT and under it put glaistigs and green ladies, though her spelling was atrocious.

  Keeping a finger carefully on her place in the book, Gran looked at Jennifer. “Noo aboot that white lady—colors are important in magic, child. White is nae green, nae matter how hard ye squint.” She turned back to the book. “And we’re nae dealing with the banshee or the caoineag. All they do is moan a bit and flap aboot, warning o’ a death to come.” She shivered. “Horrid folk.”

  Jennifer shivered, too, but dutifully wrote down the names under the NOT list, spelling them as best she could. “Are there lots of different ghosts in Scotland, Gran?”

  “Hundreds,” Gran said with grim satisfaction. “Nae—thousands. Sometimes the unshriven dead all march together in a great lang parade, one after another, their winding clouts flapping in the wind. Then it’s called the Sluagh.”

  “Sloo-ack? Should I write it down?”

  Gran nodded. “Sluagh.”

  Jennifer scribbled the name.

  “The death march o’ ghosts,” Gran continued. “And those o’ a superstitious nature never leave a window open on the west side at night because o’ it.”

  “Is Peter’s room on the west side?” Jennifer asked in a horrified whisper. “He always sleeps with his window open.”

  Gran threw her head back and laughed. “That’s nonsense aboot the west window. Mere superstition.” She laughed again. “Dinna ye be believing it. Superstition is fer folk who dinna ken much aboot real magic.”

  Jennifer gaped.

  “Ye must ken what’s true and what’s only toom-headit,” Gran cautioned.

  “Toom-headit?”

  “Empty-headed nonsense,” Gran said. “So we crack the books, as ye say in America. Though a crack in a magic book is nae a good thing.”

  Sighing, Jennifer said, “Green ladies and white ladies and the Sluagh and superstitions. I don’t know what to believe anymore, Gran.” She was horrified to find she was crying.

  Gran placed a hand on Jennifer’s. “That’s why study is important if ye have magic in ye, Jennifer. And right noo, we must study as hard and as fast as we can. Fer young Peter’s sake. And fer our own.”

  Jennifer smiled through her tears. “Don’t you know—I’m on vacation, Gran. School’s out. I’m done with studying for the summer.”

  “A bodie’s ne’er done wi’ studying,” Gran said. But she smiled back at Jennifer to show she got the joke.

  Ten

  The Low Road

  “The kitchen’s gotten a wee bit close,” Gran said suddenly. “A body can scarce breathe in here.”

  That was exactly how Jennifer had been feeling, too: choked up, as if lying under a heavy blanket on a hot day.

  “Let’s tak the book into the garden,” Gran said, getting up from the table. “There’s naught like the smell o’ summer herbs to clear a bodie’s head.”

  Jennifer got up eagerly and followed her out.

  “The wee beasties can help, too,” Gran said, nodding at the horse and the white cat. The dog, who’d been kicked out of Peter’s room, was there as well.

  “Not so wee,” Jennifer told her, and they both giggled.

  Dog and horse raised their heads at the laughter, but the cat paid no attention to them and headed across the rolled lawn to the summerhouse.

  “Beasties often sense ghosts where we humans dinna feel a thing,” Gran said.

  That made the dog grin, his tongue flopping out like a piece of used bubblegum. “See—sometimes I can be o’ help.”

  “And sometimes,” Jennifer hissed at him, “you make a mess of things and then run away at the first sign of trouble.”

  The tongue disappeared. As did the grin.

  “No apologies?” Jennifer asked the dog.

  He was silent.

  “And no explanations, either?”

  “Dinna ye forget how he came to get me” Gran told her, her forefinger raised.

  “And took his own good time about it,” Jennifer reminded her.

  “Och, we’ll get to apologies and such once we have young Peter back,” Gran said, looking down at the dog. “Meanwhile, Thunder here, having spent a lot o’ centuries with that great and wicked sinner Michael Scot,” she added, nodding at the horse, “may have some insights fer us.”

  At that, the horse started to paw at the ground, as if embarrassed by the praise, but Gran made a tsk sound with her tongue, reminding him that he was too close to her herb garden. So he stood still, a small tremor like a waterfall running across his flanks.

  Jennifer and Gran sat down at the garden table. Gran got a strange look in her eyes, as if she had suddenly gone blind, her eyes opaque as marbles.

  “Gran!” Jennifer cried, and put her hand on Gran’s, which was cold, and marblelike as well. It was terrifying.

  Slowly Gran’s eyes seemed to change back, the hand under Jennifer’s getting warm again.

  “What just happened to you?” Jennifer whispered hoarsely.

  “Thinking,” Gran said, but the way she said it indicated that it was no ordinary kind of thinking; it was something deeper, harder, dangerous.

  “Thinking about what, Gran?”

  “About the dead.” Gran’s voice was dull.

  “For a minute …” Jennifer said quietly, “for a minute I thought you were dead.”

  Gran smiled at her and opened the book. “Sometimes to truly ken a bodie, one must be that bodie.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jennifer said, shivering. But she did.

  It was the dog that put it into words. “The auld carlin means that to ken the dead, ye must become dead yersel.”

  Gran saw the stricken look on Jennifer’s face. “Nae really dead, my dearie. Just magically so.”

  “Is that why the cat has run o
ff to the summer-house?” Jennifer asked.

  Gran nodded.

  “You … you don’t expect me to try that dead thing, too?” Jennifer said in a small voice.

  “You are not ready for any such,” Thunder told her, but gently. He shook his great head, and a waft of horse smell, warm and musky, enveloped them.

  “The dead,” Gran said, ignoring the horse, “dinna always ken themselves passed over. And so they canna pass on. They’re tied to the place o’ their greatest grief. Mary MacFadden to the grave where she wept herself to death. Iain McGregor to the home where he left the young woman he luved. And Andrew MacFadden …”

  “But why isn’t Andrew a ghost, too, Gran? Why did he have to possess Peter in order to be seen and heard?” In her eagerness, Jennifer leaned forward, her hand on the red leather book. “And will he leave Peter’s body quietly?”

  “If your gran knew the answers to all that,” Thunder said, once again shaking his massive head so that his mane looked like dark waves, “she’d be up there in Peter’s room right now.”

  Gran slid the book away from Jennifer. “The horse is right. I dinna have all the answers. But this I ken—if Andrew MacFadden doesna gae quietly noo that yer brother has had a long sleep, we have real trouble.”

  “Realer than this?” Jennifer asked.

  Gran nodded. “I suspect that Andrew MacFadden is too angry fer peace, too guilty fer a quiet haunting, and that his heart is the size o’ a wee hard stone. But all my blather is nae more than wind in the heather, lass. We must follow the book to ken what we must do next.” She patted the cover of the red book and then opened it.

  “But, Gran—” Jennifer started, thinking that the one thing no one had mentioned yet was the dog’s role in the whole disaster. “What about the—”

  Anticipating her question, the dog ran off into the far end of the garden, his tail between his legs. However, Gran was so deep in study, she didn’t seem to notice, and so Jennifer reluctantly let the question go.

  They kept on with the red leather volume on ghosts well through the afternoon, Jennifer taking notes as they went along.

  Twice Da stuck his head out to check up on them. The last time, he said he was going out for a walk and would pick up Molly on the way back.

  Gran nodded and waved him on, but never lost her place in the book.

  After that, they worked their way through the customs of sitting up with or “waking” a corpse before a funeral, death lights, and phantom funerals. They read about deaths—by hanging, by drowning, and in battle.

  “There seem to have been an awful lot of battles in Scotland,” Jennifer said, scribbling furiously, the pen making blots on the page. “And an awful lot of ghosts.”

  “Ghosts on the High Road and Low,” Thunder put in.

  The dog, who had been slowly inching back toward the table, suddenly sat up and began singing in a high nasal voice, “Ye’ll tak the High Road and I’ll tak the Low Road, and I’ll be in Scotland afore ye …”

  Putting her finger in her ears to block the awful howling, Jennifer turned to Gran. “Can’t you stop him?”

  Gran lifted the point finger on her right hand and the dog was silenced. “That’s a wee bit interesting, Jennie. Let’s think more upon it. It’s a bit o’ ghost lore we’ve not come upon in our book yet. The Low Road—that’s the spiritual path along which a ghost might return to the place of his birth.”

  Thunder whickered softly. “The song comes from two friends, supporters of the King Over the Water, who were captured by the English. Only one of them ever escaped. The other was hanged.”

  “Good,” Gran said, nodding at him. “Good.”

  “Hanged.” Jennifer shuddered. And then she gave a start. “That’s it!”

  They all stared at her.

  “There’s nae a bit o’ hanging in our nicht adventure,” Gran said.

  “No, no,” Jennifer said. Her hands were making circles in the air and her voice rose excitedly. “Not the hanging part. The song. That’s what Iain McGregor was playing on his pipes.”

  “Was he noo?” Gran leaned forward. “Are ye certain, lass?”

  “I’m positive, Gran. I sang along with him.”

  “And ye’ve only just remembered?”

  Jennifer hung her head.

  “Never mind, lass, never mind. This is why we gae aboot this magic stuff slow and steady.” Gran smiled at her. “How much did ye sing?”

  Jennifer shrugged. “Not much. I only remembered the first few lines.” Then an idea came to her. “You know, I bet Iain McGregor did die at that battle after all.”

  Gran leaned forward. “Go on.”

  Jennifer didn’t need much encouragement. Somehow everything suddenly seemed to fit. “Well, what if he died, and then he took the Low Road home, but he just didn’t know he’d died. You said, Gran, that sometimes dead folk don’t realize they’ve passed over. Suppose Iain McGregor didn’t know—but somehow his pipes did. Could that be right?”

  Smiling slowly, Thunder showed a remarkable set of large yellow teeth. He whinnied with pleasure. “She’s a smart girl and may be on to something.”

  Gran smiled, too. “So noo ye ken that slow study does reveal all.”

  “Well, it wasn’t something we actually found in the book, Gran,” Jennifer said.

  “One thing leads to another. All is connected,” the old woman told her, emphasizing what she was saying with her finger upraised.

  Bounding the last few feet toward them, the dog cried, “But I was the one! I! I! Had I nae sung the song …” He suddenly sounded a great deal like Molly, who was only four years old and therefore had an excuse for such behavior.

  “Sung it? More like you howled it.” Jennifer had to shout to be heard over the dog’s commotion. She was disgusted with him—furious actually—because he was the real cause of Peter’s possession. If the dog had never mentioned the stupid ghost in the first place, hadn’t insisted on their going to the graveyard at midnight, hadn’t left them when the ghosts appeared, they wouldn’t have gotten into such trouble. Then she remembered her own role in the disaster and realized that the dog was not alone in creating it.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “Of course, it was you who thought of the song.”

  Suddenly her mother burst out into the garden. “He’s awake,” she cried, looking both happy and frightened. Her hair was standing out around her head, a dark halo of curls, and there were unshed tears pearling in her eyes. “Peter’s awake. But we can’t make out a single word he’s saying.”

  Eleven

  Madhouse

  They went into the house—all but the horse, of course—and Jennifer galloped up the stairs two at a time.

  “Peter!” she cried. “Peter!”

  Bursting through the bedroom door, she stopped short. Pop was sitting on the bed, holding on to Peter’s shoulders as if trying to calm him.

  Clearly Peter was not being calmed. His face was drawn up in a strange grimace, and he was cursing steadily, but in a broad Scots accent.

  “Ye blind doited bodie, ye dorty man, are ye fou or fowsome?” Peter cried, his arms flailing.

  Pop held on to Peter, but he looked up at Jennifer with such agony on his face, she wanted to cry.

  “What’s he saying?” Pop asked. “I can’t understand a word of it.”

  Gran bit her lip, then took a deep breath. “He said that yer a blind, foolish, stubborn man. He asked if ye were just drunk or an obscenity.”

  Peter smiled. Or rather the man in Peter’s body smiled. It did not improve his looks. “I never told her. She never asked. And what was I to tell her, anyway? Truth is nae absolute. Nae if it’s meant to hurt a bodie. ‘In the stane a token of luv,’ he said. The fool. The doited fool. Luvstruck and gawping. Who’s to ken it? I thought. ‘Three from the bottom and four above.’” Peter began to laugh with the other man’s voice. “Three from the bottom o’ hell, I tell ye. Four above.”

  “Who is he?” wailed Mom.

  “Wha
t is he?” Pop’s voice echoed her.

  “Confused,” Jennifer said.

  “Mad,” the dog muttered, though Mom and Pop didn’t understand him.

  “He’s a teenager,” Gran said with finality. “That’s the very definition of madness.” She raised her right finger and pointed it at Peter, who went dead quiet. Then she turned to Mom and Pop. “Gae downstairs, both o’ ye, and leave Peter to me. I’ve handled worse.”

  Mom hesitated.

  “Gae!” Gran said. “Noo.”

  “Okay,” Mom answered, her voice as unsteady as her legs, “but I’m calling the doctor.”

  “Tell him to come wi’ a lang needle,” Gran said.

  As Mom, supported by Pop, went out the door and down the stairs, the dog added, “And a lang spoon.”

  “A lang spoon?” Jennifer asked.

  Gran looked at her. “He means a long spoon.” She pronounced it carefully. “When supping wi’ a Fifer, ’tis said, one should bring a lang spoon.”

  Jennifer raised both her hands as if admitting defeat. “I don’t get it.”

  “The dog’s guessing Brother Andrew was born and bred here in the Kingdom o’ Fife. And when dealing with a Fifer—so they say—one has to be a wee bit extra careful, because a Fifer is that canny, that smart.”

  “But aren’t you a Fifer, Gran?” Jennifer asked.

  Gran laid a finger beside her nose. “Who better to deal with one?” She turned back to Peter, who still sat, unmoving, on the bed. “That small hold spell will do fer noo. But we haven’t much time, lass. Andrew MacFadden has nae gone quietly awa back to his ain grave after the boy’s lang sleep, as I’d hoped. If we canna get Peter back in his ain body by tomorrow, Andrew will stay in control o’ it forever.”

  “Forever?”

  “Aye. The longer a ghost is in a body, the less it wants to leave. We have another twenty-four hours at best.”

  Jennifer took a deep breath of air. “And at worst?”

  “In Bedlam—the madhouse,” the dog added morosely. “Who’s to walk me then, I ask ye?”

  Gran rounded on him, glaring. There were little spots of color on her cheeks. “I’ll put ye in the madhouse if ye dinna shut yer cake hole.”