Page 95 of Disturbing the Dead
“So you’ll tell me later?”
“Sure.”
“How about next Tuesday? You can sit at my graveside and tell me the whole story.”
I glower at her, but she only smiles back. Yep, I really did get my love of the macabre from Nan. Her death isn’t something I want to joke about, but this isn’t about my comfort, is it? These next few days are all about her.
“Tell me a story, Mallory Elizabeth,” she says. “A story about my granddaughter falling through time.” She takes a chocolate from an open box and then pops a tiny pain pill with a sip of water. “There. I’m ready. Entertain me.”
I get as far as the death of Annis’s husband before my parents come back from dinner. I stop there. I’m fine entertaining my grandmother with my weird dream, but I don’t want to get into it with my parents. Besides, Nan is almost asleep, and the nurses come to give her a little something extra for the pain. Then Mom stays with her while I return with Dad to our rented flat, and I take the sedative the doctor prescribed because there’s no way I’m getting to sleep without it.
I’m back in Nan’s room before dawn, sending Mom to breakfast with Dad. Nan had a rough night. The end is coming fast, and she’s putting on a good face, but I can only imagine the pain she’s in. She half wakes once or twice, seeming confused, only to slip back under. She’s still sleeping when Dad takes me for his second breakfast, but when I return, Nan’s awake and even alert, tapping away on her iPad while Mom dozes.
“Take your wife to bed, Glen,” she says to my father. “I don’t want to see her again before two P.M. That’s an order.”
Dad smiles and gently wakes Mom and gets her out of the room. Then I take her place beside Nan’s bed.
When I yawn, she glares over at me. “Do I need to send you to bed, too?”
I heft a giant coffee-chain cup. “Nope, I’m good. I haven’t had a cappuccino in…” I trail off and struggle for a smile. “Well, three days, apparently. It just feels like months.”
“About your story, I want to know more about your friend Duncan Gray.”
I groan. “He’s an imaginary friend, Nan. Like Angus when I was five. Remember Angus?”
“Dr. Duncan Gray,” she says, making me groan again. “Born August 12, 1838, in Edinburgh. Son of Irvine Gray and his wife, Frances. Attended the Royal High School and then the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated with degrees in both medicine and surgery, though he was never licensed to practice.”
“Because he dug up a body to confirm a theory on cause of death.” I sip my cappuccino. “Are you just going to recite my own stories back to me?”
“Did you tell me his birth date, Mallory? Or where he went to school? I don’t even think you told me what his degrees were in, besides being medical. As for why he wasn’t licensed, you definitely didn’t tell me that story, but now I want it very much.”
I go still, lifting my head from my coffee cup. I stare at her. My brain is sluggish this morning from last night’s sleeping pill.
Nan waves the iPad. “There’s not much here, but even a non-detective like me was able to track down that much.”
“I… I must have read about him somewhere. While studying forensics.”
She reads from the iPad. “Sisters Isla Ballantyne, chemist, and Lady Annis Leslie, who took over her husband’s business after his death from poisoning at the hands of… Well, you know who killed him, I presume, though I’m a bit disappointed to have this spoil that story for me.”
I can’t speak. My mouth is dry, my brain suddenly blank.
“Is anything I just said incorrect?” Nan asks.
I still don’t answer.
“I have read you the facts,” she continues. “You believe you must have stumbled over some mention of Duncan Gray and then put him into your dream, which means you imagined all the details. Which ones that I recited are wrong?”
I struggle to focus. “Wait. It said his mother was Frances Gray. That was his adopted mother in my dream.”
“Yes, in your version, his father brought him home, as his illegitimate child, and his wife raised the boy as her own. Which has me thinking I would like Mrs. Gray very much… and would like to curse her husband to the second circle of hell. But I am reading a brief biographical note focused on his place in science, where they would not delve into the exact nature of his parentage.”
When I still hesitate, she says, “Describe your Duncan Gray. What does he look like?”
I stumble over the words, spitting out bits and pieces. She turns the iPad around.
“Like this?”
There, on the screen, is Gray. He’s older, maybe in his early forties, graying at the temples, but it is definitely him, and seeing that photo…
