Petra's Ghost Read online

  “This is great,” she tells the Dutchman, taking off her gloves. “Very civilized.”

  The Dutchman spears a piece of apple with the knife and tips it toward her. She leans in and takes it between her teeth, the shiny blade dangerously close to her lips. Her eyes close in satisfaction. He skewers another piece and offers it to Daniel.

  “Please, you are hungry,” he says.

  Daniel hesitates for a second more and then takes the fruit from the knife point carefully with his fingers, popping it in his mouth. The tart juice wakes up his tongue, reminding him how thirsty as well as hungry he is. It is time for a break. Slipping off his backpack, he sits down alongside the other two pilgrims.

  “Thank you,” he says as the Dutchman cuts off a generous piece of cheese and hands it to him. Its creaminess clings to the sides of Daniel’s mouth. He washes it down with a good swig from his water bottle.

  The Dutchman puts down the Swiss Army knife and wipes his right hand on his pants before he extends it. “I am Rob,” he says, before adding theatrically, “the most handsome and intelligent man in the Netherlands.” His wry smile is infectious. Daniel shakes his hand.

  “I am Daniel from New Jersey,” he tells him through a mouthful of bread. Rob nods at him without any question in his eyes. People whose first language is not English don’t usually detect the accent. Daniel enjoys the chance to be culturally ambiguous.

  “And you?” the Dutchman asks, turning to his other lunch guest.

  “I’m Ginny,” she says. “From California.”

  “Is this where you learned your Spanish?” Rob asks her.

  “Sort of,” she says, cutting off a piece of cheese. “I took a course before I left. Plus, you pick things up after awhile.”

  Daniel wishes he had taken a course in Spanish before he left. Two days ago, he tried to order wine in a restaurant. Vino del año meant “young wine,” he was told, the fresh kind they served for drinking early in the year. But he had pronounced it incorrectly, and the insulted waitress told him in English that he had asked for “wine of my butthole.”

  “Where did you learn your English?” she asks the Dutchman.

  “Oh, from English speakers at my work. I owned once a moving business, but I had to sell and change to a new job. My heart,” he says as he pounds on his chest for emphasis, “was not strong enough for the stress. I had, I am not sure in English.…” The Dutchman pauses for a healthy burp and to search for words. “A go around for my passes,” he says.

  “A heart bypass?” Ginny suggests.

  “Yes, that is right. A heart bypass. My wife says no more stressful work after this. I listen to my wife.”

  “What do you do now?” Daniel asks him.

  “I am a miller,” Rob tells him as he pulls another apple from his pack. “We grind wheat for bread in the old way, with a windmill.”

  “Wow, that is so Dutch,” says Ginny.

  Rob laughs, curling his fist and holding it to his mouth so he doesn’t choke on a bite of apple. “It is,” he admits, as he coughs. When he clears his throat, he reaches into his backpack and pulls out a short fat link of chorizo. He cuts off a slice of the spicy sausage and offers it to Ginny.

  “No, thanks,” Ginny says, chewing on a piece of bread before closing her mouth self-consciously.

  “The chorizo is very good, Ginny, you should try it,” Rob says, cutting a wedge for Daniel with his knife.

  “That’s okay,” she says quietly.

  “Are you a vegetarian?” Rob asks her, a bit more perceptive than Daniel. She had refused his beef jerky twice since Alto del Perdón and he hadn’t caught on.

  “You’re not a vegan, are you?” Daniel says when she doesn’t respond. “Those people are mad!” He had dated a vegan girl in college once. She had lived off fennel seeds and wheat grass. The only good thing he can remember about her is that she was biodegradable.

  “No, I’m not vegan. Just nothing with a face.” Ginny takes a sip from a water bottle she carries. She must have it as a backup for the hydration bladder in her pack. “I eat fish though,” she adds.

  “Sure, but fish have faces,” Daniel says.

  “Yeah, but they’re ugly faces.”

  “This is a shame,” Rob breaks in, looking serious. “There are too many things to enjoy in life to only eat the ugly faces.”

  Daniel takes another bite of chorizo, grinning. None of them hear the studded church doors open until a rough voice calls out from them.

  “Abierto!” A shrunken elderly Spanish woman pokes her head out as she makes the announcement and then abruptly retreats, like a turtle pulling back into its shell.

  Daniel turns to the others after grabbing a last piece of apple. “Ready to go in?”

  “Sure,” says Ginny, standing and brushing crumbs from her lap. She doesn’t put her gloves back on. It has warmed up now with the midday. Daniel takes off his hat and stuffs it in his bag.

  “I will finish eating,” Rob says, pulling another crust of bread from his backpack, picking up the last piece of cheese. “I have seen it before anyway.”

  “You saw it before?” Daniel asks. “But it was closed.”

  “I am not good with my English. I mean I have seen inside churches like this before. They are all the same.”

  Ginny and Daniel walk under the main arch of the external cloister and enter through the open doors of the stone chapel. It can’t be more than thirty feet across inside. At the front is a simple raised semicircular sanctuary, where a small table is laid out with a white linen cloth and the tools of the Eucharist. The silver trays of Communion are each adorned with a cross. Daniel looks up to see that the ceiling is ribbed and curved like a stone basket turned upside down. Canned Gregorian chants float up from a speaker on a folding table in the corner, where the elderly Spanish woman sits guarding a stamp pad.

  All pilgrims have a “pilgrim passport” that they need to get stamped at intervals along the Way to prove they are walking. Otherwise, they can’t stay in the albergues, which are meant only for people who are undertaking the pilgrimage to the cathedral in Santiago. You can have your passport updated at any of the major stops or attractions. Ginny lays out her passport for the woman but is ignored. The old lady has become distracted by the speaker, trying to adjust a short in the wire that causes the chanting to cut in and out like medieval club music. She flicks a fly from her ancient sun-spotted nose as she fiddles with the connection. Ginny gives up and moves on. Daniel doesn’t even bother. He only gets the obligatory stamps each night at the albergue he stays in.

  They both light candles at the front. There are real candles here. Not the usual false electric flames in a Plexiglas-lidded box that you activate with a couple of coins dropped in a metal slot. Daniel sits in one pew, Ginny in another. The Gregorian chants have been fixed and now echo again off the curved stone walls. Daniel makes the sign of the cross and lowers his head to pray. It seems appropriate; although, he doesn’t make use of the kneeler, which makes him wonder at his own seriousness. Our Father can’t hear you if your knees aren’t screaming — another of his granny’s sayings. That woman was a peach.

  He tries hard for a few minutes, but the prayer won’t come. He can’t even seem to speak to Petra, as he often does at moments like these. He feels cut off from her. He’s not sure whether it is because he is walking with the cute girl across the pew, or because he almost threw Petra off a cliff a few hours ago. He knows he needs a touch of the divine, but his prayers remain empty.

  His eyes are still closed when he feels Ginny’s cool breath in his ear. She speaks with a hush.

  “Let’s get out of here. This chanting is giving me the creeps.” A smile comes easily to his lips in response, despite the sombre mood of the church and his thoughts.

  “Not a fan of the Gregorian monk hit parade?” he asks Ginny, opening his eyes.

  “I feel like I’m in The Exorcist.”

  “Do you, now?” Daniel says, almost laughing. Talk about inappropriate.

/>   “I do. I’m just waiting for that old lady’s head to spin around.”

  This time he does laugh, releasing himself from more tension than he realized he held. He crosses himself again, genuflects quickly toward the altar, and turns to go with her. They are both still smirking a little as they walk up the narrow aisle. The old woman at her table watches them with a furrowed brow of disapproval. As they pass the table, she leans with her fossil-like frame toward them, then flicks another fly in the air.

  “Lo estan siguiendo,” she says, and crosses herself. Daniel stops and looks at her. But she folds her arms atop her chest and turns her face away from him as if in protest. He waits a little to see if she will say anything more, but she doesn’t. He doesn’t know what to say to her. His Spanish is so pathetic. Ginny has already gone outside and is not there to translate.

  “I’m sorry?” Daniel says to the woman. No reaction. Is she deaf? Or can she not hear him over the chanting. He tries once more with his limited knowledge of the local language. “No entiendo,” he says. I don’t understand.

  She turns and looks at him again, repeating what she said before, but more slowly, punctuating each Spanish word with one bent and frighteningly hairy finger in the air.

  “Lo estan siguiendo.”

  Daniel doesn’t understand any more than he did the first time. His confused look earns nothing more from her but a hand gesture, her index and pinky fingers held up like horns. It is a sign Daniel associates more with 80s heavy metal rock than with the Catholic Church. He assumes she is using it for its original purpose, to ward off the evil eye, rather than to profess her undying love of Iron Maiden. When she turns away again with a huff, he gives up and walks out the door.

  Outside, he is surprised to see Ginny about to overtake the top of the first large hill that leads back to the main trail. She has gone on without him. In fact, she must have taken off at quite a clip to get so far in such a short time. Run even. He glances over and sees the low stone wall is unoccupied. The Dutchman has left as well. Nothing remains of his little picnic except a tattered piece of the checkered cloth caught on one of the rougher stones. It flutters in the breeze.

  This is grand, Daniel thinks, first I have a hairy old elf woman giving out to me and now I’ve been ditched. He looks back up the hill, shielding his eyes from the high sun with his right hand to check whether Ginny has stopped to wait for him. He can just make out the last of her ponytail disappearing as she makes it hurriedly over the top of the hill. He can’t help but feel offended. Was it the bit about the cows?

  Daniel grabs his hat roughly and puts it back on. “Who cares,” he says to himself. She was a bit of flake anyway. Besides, he likes to walk by himself. He is here for a purpose after all, not to go socializing.

  He bends over to pick up his backpack. When he stands up again, he sees it: a dark shape moving out from a small grouping of trees at the crest of the hill. It advances slowly but purposefully from that hiding place and then out onto the path. Daniel is too far away to distinguish its features, but it is not the Dutchman, not tall enough. The figure disappears over the hill. It moves like one of those Spy vs. Spy characters he used to watch in cartoons as a kid.

  It could be anyone, Daniel thinks. Perhaps another pilgrim that went to take a slash behind a tree. There aren’t any public restrooms on the Camino. The world was their toilet.

  He doesn’t really believe that, though. The person seemed to be lurking in the trees; waiting until Ginny walked past. He keeps his eye on the rise as he tightens his backpack but sees nothing more. Just false intuition, he decides, brought on by the ridiculous chanting and talk of The Exorcist. He had always hated that shite movie. Only Hollywood could make a franchise out of a girl vomiting on a priest. Daniel is bent over retying one of his boot laces when he hears the scream. Alarmed, he looks up and hears it again.

  “Jesus!” He abandons the boot and races through the archway with the lace still trailing. Overworked leg muscles pump as he runs up the steep incline, trying not to trip. The backpack bangs back and forth behind him, the weight of it slamming with each stride into the small of his back. His lungs fill to capacity with air. His side births a searing pain. He shouldn’t have eaten so much face-filled chorizo.

  “Ginny!” he shouts as he runs. Even at full speed, it takes some time to reach the peak of the incline. When he does, his heavy hiking boots slam down the other side of the hill, sending shock waves up the lower half of his body. He rounds the corner at the bottom and bends over, hands braced on his knees, panting. There is no one there. Just the trail stretching out ahead of him into the distance, hill after rolling hill obscuring his view. She could be anywhere. He is ready to start running again when a hand grabs his arm from behind. He whirls around, ready for attack.

  “Relax. It is me.” The Dutchman gives him a tentative look.

  “Did you see Ginny?” Daniel asks, still gasping for breath.

  “Yes,” Rob says. “She has just left. She says she wishes to walk alone.”

  “You didn’t hear a scream?” Daniel asks him.

  “No,” the Dutchman says, drawing the word out, the way people do when they are not too sure about you.

  “You weren’t seeing anyone else?”

  “No, only her. Are you okay, Daniel from New Jersey?” His concern is real. Even Daniel can see that. There is no reason not to believe him. Everything is quiet, except for the far-off sound of a tractor, the chirping of birds.

  “She said she wanted to walk alone?” he asks Rob again. His breath is returning, his voice less strained. The chorizo settles back down in his stomach.

  “Yes,” he says, waiting patiently for Daniel to calm himself. “Pretty girl,” he adds as an aside.

  “I suppose,” Daniel admits, his panic moving toward embarrassment. This is the second time he has behaved like a lunatic today, running toward the same woman. His mother would be proud. He looks over at the long dirt trail ahead until it disappears into foothills and spent fields.

  “Everyone has a story,” Rob says, following his gaze.

  “Sure,” Daniel says, bending over again to tie up his boot lace, still trying to catch his breath. “I believe I may have heard that before.”

  Only later, when he parts ways with the Dutchman and is signing in at the albergue in Obanos, does Daniel remember what the old lady said, asking the hospitaleiro for a translation. Daniel’s tongue hacks at the language like a crowbar. Eventually the Spanish innkeeper picks up the pieces and understands him.

  “Followed,” he says in English, stamping Daniel’s pilgrim passport, then returning it to him with his identification and change for ten euros.

  “It means ‘You are followed.’”

  Daniel walks upstairs feeling uneasy, but he is too tired to care. He finds his bunk bed and collapses on it, patting the bottom of his backpack protectively.

  “Everyone has a story, Petra,” he says as he closes his eyes wearily. The woman in the next bunk bed discreetly moves herself and her gear to another room, mindful of lunatics and perverts. He is too exhausted to notice.

  That night Daniel dreams in the sparse bunk bed of the albergue at Obanos. What he saw then. What he sees now. It all comes together into an impossible tangle in his subconscious. Like the waxy-leafed trees that line the path in his mind, choking out the light as he loses his way on the road to Santiago. In the dream, he has just spread Petra’s ashes, but they blow up against him as he walks, clinging to his hiking pants along with the greasy wet leaves that have fallen on the trail.

  Petra appears behind him, then on either side. A ghost in triplicate, each version a beast with a different type of claws. One as she was, one as she became, and one as he last saw her, dark with death.

  The three versions of his wife rise up in front of him like mountains, then become one, blocking his way. He falls to his knees on the sharp gravel of the path and begs for her forgiveness. In answer, she turns to stone. He will never get past her now.

  The
sun sets on the slab of her face, as he sobs into his hands. She knows his story, and she will never let him forget it.

  CHAPTER 3

  Obanos to Azqueta

  THE NEXT MORNING, DANIEL sits at a patio table in front of the albergue where he can connect to the Wi-Fi. He is nursing a coffee with gloved hands while he Skypes his sister on his smartphone. Angela’s at the farm with their parents, visiting for the weekend. He can hear his father shouting in the background. His mother telling him to “cop himself on,” the Irish version of “get your shit together.” These are the reassuring sounds of home.

  “How are you?” Angela asks with a bit of hesitation. She worries about him. He has to call regularly to assure her he is not dead or wallowing in self-pity. She takes her big-sister role seriously, even though their birthdays are only ten months apart. “Irish twins,” as people call them. That is, all the people who aren’t actually Irish.

  “I’m better,” Daniel says, and realizes he is. Despite having had a rough night, he feels more relaxed this morning. More in tune with his surroundings. Still, the nightmare from last night lingers, made worse by jumping out of bed and falling flat on his face in his twisted mummy sleeping bag. The two Spanish guys he bunked with laugh and point at him every time they walk by.

  “You’d like this place where I’m staying,” he tells her. “Obanos. The church has a human skull in a box on the wall. You could test it for DNA.”

  Angela is a nurse but also an addict of forensic crime shows. He has never understood how after spending all day knee-deep in bodily fluids, she could be so interested in the angle of blood splatter and autopsies.

  “I read online about that skull,” she says. She’d been experiencing his journey on the Camino vicariously, reading up on the sights and scenery as her brother passed them. She had wanted to come with him but couldn’t get the time off work. “Was it Saint William it belonged to?” she asks.