Haunted (Otherworld 5)

"It's a popular place. Do you want to hear about the vampire?"

"Let me guess, he infiltrated the castle as a servant or something, then they found him sucking the blood of some poor schmuck, and walled him up in here."

"No, they walled her up in here." He glanced over at me. "But, otherwise, you're right. Standard vampire lore. On to the billiard room."

We walked through a doorway into yet another oversize room, with yet more paintings. Glass-cased bookshelves lined one wall.

"Looks more like a library," I said.

Trsiel pointed at a table in the middle.

"Billiards, and a decent segue into my next story. The second earl of Glamis, known as Earl Beardie, was an inveterate card player. One Saturday night, he and his friend, the Earl of Crawford, played for so long that a servant came in to tell him it was nearly midnight, and to beg him to stop playing, for it was sacrilege to play cards on the Sabbath. Beardie sent him out, saying, 'I'll play with the Devil himself if I like.' A few minutes later, there came a knock at the door. There stood a man, dressed all in black, asking to join the game. The earls agreed and, that night, wagered and lost their souls. When Beardie died five years later, his family began hearing the sound of curses and rattling dice coming from that same room where Beardie had played. They walled it up, but the noises continued."

"More walling up? Geez, they must have employed full-time bricklayers in this place."

We continued on our walk. A few minutes later, he led me into a sitting room.

"And here is a bit of history closer to your time. The Queen Mother's sitting room. This was her ancestral home. She grew up here, and Princess Margaret was born here--well, not in this room, but in the castle."

"So the Queen Mother grew up and had a child in a castle known for ghosts, vampires, visits from the Devil, murderous revolts, executions, and torture? You know, this may explain a few things about the British royal family."

As we continued up a wide set of winding stone stairs to the clock tower, I saw a young woman in a long white dress standing at the landing window. My first thought was not "Ack, a ghost!" but "Hmmm, these Scots wear some pretty strange jammies." As Trsiel had said, the castle was still the private residence of the latest Lord Glamis, with the family and their staff living in a wing off-limits to the daily tours. But then the woman turned, and it was obviously not a nightgown, but a formal white dress.

She turned from the window, her eyes wide with horror. "They come!"

She snatched up her skirt and raced toward the stairs, passing right through an urn.

I glanced over at Trsiel. "I thought you said there were no ghosts here."

"That's a residual."

"A residual what?"

"A residual image of a past event. Some traumatic events burn images of themselves into a place. Like a holographic sequence. When triggered, the sequence replays. Any ghost or necromancer, and some sensitive humans, can trigger them." He paused. "You have seen these before, haven't you?"

I thought of the crying woman in Paige and Lucas's home.

"Er, right. I just...didn't know they were called that."

Trisel grinned. "You thought they were ghosts?"

"Of course not. I--"

He threw back his head and laughed. "What did you do? Try to talk to them? Entreat them to go into the light?"

I glared and stalked past him up the stairs.

After two rooms of being ignored, Trsiel offered an olive branch by way of a story, one about the woman I'd just seen. The White Lady. Ghost hunters can be the most ingenious breed when it comes to inventing ghastly tales, but ask them to think up a name for the ghost of a woman dressed in white, and they give you "the White Lady."

She was Janet Douglas, widow of the sixth Lord Glamis. She'd been burned at the stake for witchcraft, accused of conspiring to poison King James V. Her true "crime" was being the sister of Archibald Douglas, who'd expelled the young king's mother from Scotland years before. Political revenge--with a pretty, popular young widow for a pawn.

Last stop: the crypt.

I expected to descend into some dark, dank basement. Instead, Trsiel led me back to the main entrance at the foot of the clock tower, through a door to a set of narrow stairs that led up. We climbed the stairs into a long narrow room with a rounded ceiling.

"What's at the other end?" I asked.

"The dining room."