Petras ghost, p.24
Petra's Ghost, page 24
CHAPTER 15
Lavacolla (6 miles)
“GODDAMN IT!” Ginny winces as Daniel passes the cold metal sewing needle through the bottom of her foot.
“You’ll be wanting to stay still for this,” Daniel says, pulling the piece of black thread through one of her blisters. He hopes it will help it to drain although he is concerned it may be too late for that. A dark red line is starting to move up her leg from the ankle. Blood poisoning. “You should be seeing a doctor, Ginny.”
Ginny takes a deep breath in as he ties the thread in a tight knot. “Are you kidding me? We’re only six miles from Santiago. We’ll be there by this afternoon. I’ll go to the clinic when we get there.”
Daniel wasn’t sure how far away they were at this point. He’s lost his guidebook, having dropped it back in the plaza in San Paio. Though he supposes with Beatrice’s maggots on it, he really didn’t want it anymore. They’ve been walking through open parkland since finding their way out of the town and back onto the Camino, the trail now well-marked with the faithful yellow arrows. Their progress has been steady. Which is good, since he has seen storm clouds gathering in the hills off in the distance. They’d had a light rain earlier even though the sun still shone.
“A smile and a tear,” he had remarked to Ginny at the time. That’s what his mother always called it when the weather contradicted itself in this way.
“A smile and a tear,” Ginny had repeated though she never took her gaze off the road ahead.
He was surprised when she made the rare request for a rest stop. When she had taken off her boots and socks he had seen why. Two blisters, one on each foot, sat bloated between her toes like pus-filled bubbles of misery. They’d hiked down a grassy knoll at the side of the trail toward the sound of water and found a small stream beside a chapel ruin to rest and tend to them. Large white rocks dot the surface and make for shallow rapids. The sound of the water rushing over them is soothing, even in their predicament. It would be a good place to rest if not for the huge black crows that stand on the rounded rocks like sentinels. Daniel doesn’t know what unsettles him most with the birds: when they stand there silently and stare at them, or when they pierce the quiet with a random squawk.
He cups his hand around a pocket lighter so he can sterilize the needle in the flame before tending to her other foot, but the wind keeps blowing it out. He finally gives up, rinsing the needle in the icy stream and then plunging it into the second blister. Ginny gasps and closes her eyes, the hot puss mixed with blood runs down her instep like sweet relief.
“There now, Ginny, you’re doing just grand.” Daniel can feel heat radiating from her foot and into his hands. He pulls the second piece of thread through and ties it, trying hard not to add to the hurt. “Looks like you’ve been at this before,” he says, seeing the remnants of an earlier attempt, the dirty black thread embedded between her toes where the skin has closed over it. He digs through the Band-Aids and Aspirin in his first-aid kit and pulls out a pair of tweezers, but she protests.
“Forget it,” she says. “I can’t take anymore.”
“Ah, Ginny, we can’t be leaving it like that.”
“What are you worried about? That it’ll work its way through my bloodstream and kill me, like they used to tell us splinters would as kids?”
“I’m more worried about the infection getting worse than it is now,” Daniel tells her although he can’t help picturing the threads travelling through her body as they speak, like nasty black pinworms aimed at her heart. He reluctantly puts the tweezers away in his kit.
She takes off the pink baseball hat to fix her ponytail. When she pulls the elastic out, a fair bit of hair comes away with it in a dry fuzzy ball. She throws it to one side and it blows away like a tumbleweed. A lot of women have this problem on the Camino. The stress on the body of miles of walking extracts this toll from them.
“It’s like I have that disease where you start to lose all your hair,” she says. “Like that British model. What’s her name. Gail Borden.”
“Gail Porter,” Daniel says. She’s actually Scottish. They projected nude photos of her on the House of Parliament. You don’t forget a woman like that easily.
“Okay, whatever,” Ginny says, preparing to stand.
“Gail Borden invented condensed milk,” he says, offering his hand to steady her.
“You really can’t control yourself, can you?”
He doesn’t suppose he can. Daniel helps her over to the stream where she thrusts both feet into the biting cold water, and the shock of it makes her gasp again. The crows squawk angrily at them but stay on the dry domes of the rocks.
“Do you know her, Ginny?”
“No,” she says quietly. They each know who they’re talking about. By now, they’ve both seen the posters with Beatrice’s picture and know the missing woman is the one that follows them.
“She’s from Orange County, like you are,” Daniel says. Ginny stiffens beside him. The blood from her feet flows in little rivulets down the stream.
“Do you have any idea of the population of Orange County, Daniel?” she says. “I live four hundred miles north of there now. I haven’t been back in sixteen years. Not since …”
She can’t finish, but Daniel knows since when. Since she ran away from home and the dangling hair dryer, her sister calmly talking on the phone as Ginny cowered in a frigid tub.
“So, you don’t know her,” he says, more gently.
“No, I don’t know her.”
“And your friend, the one who died of the overdose? What harm, but you were thinking it was her at first. If they look similar, maybe they’re related.” He’s grasping at all the straws now.
“No.”
“Maybe she …”
“No, Daniel.” She is shutting the conversation down, as she has since they reunited in San Paio. She doesn’t like to talk about Beatrice.
“We could contact the police, I suppose,” he says, wondering why he hasn’t thought of this before.
“And tell them what, exactly? That we’ve found the missing woman and she’s gone all Santa Compaña, stalking us on the Camino for our souls? That would go over well.”
“We could leave,” he says. After all, they are not without options. He has a cellphone. Even with a busted-up screen it still works. They are not in the wilderness. He could ring for a taxi to pick them up and take them to the airport. Although, he realizes, reception has been spotty for a long time now. He can’t even remember the last time he talked to his sister.
“I’m not leaving,” Ginny says emphatically. “We’re almost at the cathedral.” She pulls her feet out of the water, flexes her toes once or twice to bring the feeling back into them. “Besides, I’ve tried,” she adds like an afterthought.
“You’ve tried?”
“A few times. Each time, I just end up back where I started when I wake up the next day.”
“What are you saying, Ginny? We can’t leave?”
“We just have to make it to Santiago,” she says, taking his hand. She may be running a fever from the infection, but her fingers are cold as ice through her gloves. “Once we get there, we’ll be free of her,” she says.
“How do you know that, Ginny?”
“Yes, how do you know that?”
Both Ginny and Daniel wince at the sound of the booming voice. The Englishman stands at the top of the knoll surveying them before he marches down the hillside and drops his huge backpack on the grass. He pulls out a cigarette from behind his ear and lights up on the first try despite the wind. The birds flap their polished ebony wings anxiously.
“Seems to me,” Mark says as he exhales his smoke aggressively into the air, “that you’ll never be losing that bitch.”
“What are you after?” Daniel says as he stands up, trying not to betray how much Mark has startled him. At least he’s not Beatrice, he thinks. They haven’t seen her since the plaza. Maybe she’s downstream somewhere, bathing her own wounds.
“I’m not after anything more than you, mate. Just a place to rest.” He sits down on the ground, stretches out his legs, and leans back on his hands. “In fact, this is where the pilgrims used to rest and purify themselves, right here at Lavacolla,” he says, removing his hat and placing it on the grass.
“Purify?” Ginny asks.
“That’s right, love. Purify.”
He moves a little closer to where she sits on the grass. Daniel steps in protectively to block his way. The Englishman continues with his impromptu lecture regardless.
“The medieval pilgrims would stop here to wash themselves before entering the sacred city of Santiago, probably stank to high heaven, fucking peasants.” He spits onto the ground, as if the stinking peasants are still there. “That’s where the name Lavacolla comes from,” he says, “the Spanish word for ‘wash.’ I thought that’s what you were doing here. Didn’t you read the guidebook?”
“We lost it,” Daniel says evenly, standing his ground.
Ginny looks down at her wet feet still hovering over the stream, and Daniel hands her a micro-towel to dry them off. He has no intention of sharing a rest spot with Mark. At least not for long. Catching his drift, Ginny reaches for her damp socks and pulls them on, not even taking the time to search for a fresh pair. As if sensing their discomfort, Mark gets up and goes to stand downstream, seemingly content to contemplate the smooth rocks and the birds for a moment before he speaks again.
“There are worse things, you know, than that woman,” he finally says.
“Like yourself?” Daniel says.
This earns a chuckle from the Englishman. Ginny starts to lace up her hiking boots.
“Worse than that,” Mark says as he unzips his fly. “But you’ll find that out soon enough.”
Daniel cannot believe the crass dirtbag is going to relieve himself right here in front of them. What a lout. Then he sees a long tentative talon creep out through the man’s pant zipper, a forked tongue between pointed teeth follows it, flicking, as if tasting the air. The nightmare artwork of the museum in Astorga is coming to life right in front of them. The black crows begin to squawk in earnest.
“I tried to purify myself here,” Mark tells them. “After the accident.” He ignores the abomination between his legs as he steps into the water. Rapids rush over the top of his walking shoes, soaking them.
The birds take flight but don’t go far. They wait in nearby trees to see what will happen next. Both Daniel and Ginny wait as well, paralyzed by the sight.
“It was an accident, you know,” he says angrily, turning around in the stream to address them, the icy water splashing up onto the bank. “Though she had it coming, that girl. I was just being friendly. I warned her.” The Englishman has started to sink into the water as if his long body is on an elevator, or disappearing into quicksand. They watch as the water turns dark red and starts to bubble.
“But she wouldn’t listen. She was a tease, just like you, and that other one.” His eyes narrow in on Ginny.
She grabs for her backpack, fumbling with the straps as she pulls it on. Daniel reaches for his own pack and throws it over one shoulder. Still, he can’t take his eyes off the big man, sinking into the stream bed, the demon’s face now fully visible and leering at the front of his hiking pants.
“How she whined and complained. ‘No, please stop.’” He says the words with a mocking falsetto voice. “She kept it up even after I put her in the backyard! No matter how deep I buried her, I could still hear her bitching and pleading. Pissing and moaning every night, she did, until I had to dig her up and cut her into pieces for the bin man!” Mark is nothing but a head now above the stream, his eyes madly twitching. Spit flies from his mouth.
Daniel moves forward to help Ginny, but a crow swoops down in front of her and she loses her footing on the soft earth at the water’s edge. Her right boot smashes squarely into one of the round smooth rocks.
Only it is not a rock anymore. None of them are. They are all heads like the Englishman, screaming in the boiling current of blood. Daniel pulls Ginny from the ground where she stumbled and drags her up the hillside. The head Ginny has kicked with her boot bellows after them, “You fucking bastards! Haven’t I suffered enough?!”
A crack of thunder sounds from far away, and all the crows come down from the trees, chattering and calling to one another. They dive and swoop around the bodiless heads, snapping and pecking without mercy. As Daniel takes a last look around he can see one working an eye out of the Englishman’s face, flying away with it like a prize.
Daniel and Ginny run down the road toward Santiago, Ginny trying not to trip on her boot laces. She hadn’t had time to lace them all the way. One pant leg is wet from her fall at the water’s edge and terror flows in tears down her face. Daniel holds her up so she won’t fall, and the two hobble together toward the dark clouds forming on the horizon. The heads continue to shout abuse after them, Mark still snarling about the relentless voice of the woman he murdered. The sun moves as if to protect itself behind the approaching clouds.
Maybe the Englishman is right, Daniel thinks. Perhaps there are worse things than Beatrice.
Daniel had been warned about the last part of the Camino, of course. That it would be disheartening with its commercialism. He and Ginny slog up the steep paved path approaching the western side of Monte del Gozo in the driving rain, careful not to slip on the wet cement as they tiptoe around the garbage left by day pilgrims. Some like to walk just the last few miles into Santiago to show their piousness or solidarity or just for something to do on a Sunday afternoon. Day pilgrims’ backs are conspicuously without packs, their hands full of souvenirs bought at the dozens of shops and stalls that line the pathway during the season. None venture out in this weather. The ancient walls of the approaching city are covered in loud graffiti; the gutters stink of garbage. Someone has spray-painted “Abandin all hope, ye who enter here” on the entranceway of the underpass they move through. Funny, Daniel thinks, how a person could know Dante but not know how to spell “abandon.”
The stalls are empty now and the stores closed, shuttered firmly against the two lone pilgrims in the driving rain. This is owing to both the time of year as well as the time of day. It is afternoon siesta, or at least Daniel thinks it is — he still can’t find his watch. It always seems to be siesta lately.
Fat beaded drops slide down their raincoats. Despite their treated nylon protection, much of their clothing has soaked up the rain and hangs heavy on their bodies, dragging them down. November is usually a dry month, but sometimes it rains. With the wind, it doesn’t come down, but on an angle, finding its way into every crevice of their clothing and equipment. The temperature has dropped to a point where Daniel knows at any moment rain could turn to snow.
Their boots are supposed to be waterproof, but there is only so much any kind of material can take. Only so much any of us can take, Daniel thinks, chuckling, starting to find it all amusing. Like walking across Spain with a beautiful woman and monsters on his tail is some kind of a lark. Maybe he’s getting delirious. Although, he worries more about Ginny for this. He’d felt her forehead earlier and her fever had risen. He listens as her socks squish as she walks, making a sucking noise in her boot — no doubt feeding fresh blisters. His own boots are making the same noise. He has blisters of his own to worry about now.
“Why did you come?” Ginny asks through the rain on her lips. Of course, she has asked him this before.
“Sure, you know why I came,” he says, pulling his jacket sleeves down over his hands. Too late, unfortunately. His wool gloves are already saturated.
“To spread Petra’s ashes?”
“Aye.”
“Seems to me you could have done that anywhere.”
He thinks about that for a while before responding. “I reckon I needed something to prepare me for it. Something hard and rough to burn the grief out of me first.” The hardship of the Camino was a punishment, he realizes, to clear himself of his guilt as well as his sorrow.
“Has it worked?” Ginny asks him.
“I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I suppose I thought that the Camino, a pilgrimage, would be more than this.”
“More than what?”
“More than just a long walk.”
“I guess that’s where the spiritual part comes in.”
Daniel nods. But the truth is despite all the awe-inspiring cathedrals and enshrined chapels he’s entered on this trip, he hasn’t managed to pray once. Even in the face of what follows them.
“And what about yourself?” he asks. “Is this what you imagined? What you were after coming for?” He shoves his frigid hands in his pockets and glances over at her. She’s shivering and visibly limping now.
“It’s different for me,” she says, wiping the wet snot from her nose with the sleeve of her jacket. “I have to be here.”
“Why?”
“For you, Daniel,” she says, looking across at him, but not stopping. There are raindrops caught in her eyelashes.
They keep on walking through the chilling rain without saying anything more.
As they come around a sharp bend in road, they see a man standing behind a fruit stand. A crooked roof of old shingles and plywood keeps the weather off him and his wares.
“Peregrina, why no you smile?” he calls out to Ginny. The man’s eyes crinkle up in good humour.
Daniel thinks he must be daft to wonder why a frozen wet pilgrim wouldn’t be smiling.
“Quieres una naranja?” he asks, holding out an orange, so bright and luscious in the bitter grey rain.
“Oh, yes, please,” Ginny says, forgetting her Spanish. “Cuánto?” How much? She goes for her wallet.
“Donativo,” the man says, pointing at the coffee can with the slit cut in the lid for donations. He is another penitent, a former pilgrim providing charity and assistance. Like the hippy back on the Roman road. Although, Daniel doesn’t see any Hendrick’s behind his cart.
Ginny slips a euro into the coffee can and takes an orange. She removes her gloves, but her fingers are so numb she can’t peel it. The man reaches out and takes the orange from her. Using a sharp silver knife, he deftly cuts away the rind before handing it back.
