Free Blackbriar by William Sleator Page B

from shivering. “The article was about the oldest building around here, and they weren’t really sure whether Blackbriar was or not. But the earliest records they have of it were from the time of the Great Plague, you know, the bubonic plague, when it hit England in 1665. Blackbriar was where they put away the people from Dunchester who caught it.”
    Philippa was gazing at him silently, her lips slightly parted. Now that he had broken the ice, he went on quite rapidly. “I did some research on the plague today. The first time it came, three quarters of the population of Europe died from it. It sounds like such an awful disease, with people getting huge sores on their bodies that itched and stung and were so painful that people would just scream and writhe around uncontrollably. And they had fits and convulsions too. I think it affected the brain, people would go mad from the pain and run around helplessly, not knowing where they were or what they were doing, trying to rip the swellings from their flesh. . . . That explains the names on the door, of course. All those people died there, from the plague. I still wonder about Mary Peachy, though, why she had no date. I was thinking, maybe she was the last one to die, and there was nobody left to put it down.”
    For a moment Philippa was silent. Then, her voice husky, she said, “I’ll go get the milk and eggs,” and dashed from the car.
    Truly shivering, Danny absentmindedly pulled Islington more tightly against him. Oddly enough there was something comforting about stroking his warm, gently breathing body. He wondered vaguely why Islington did not protest, but soon began to think about what that strange man had said the night before. Mr. Creech had told them he was a harmless eccentric, and maybe his words were nothing but confused, meaningless prattle. But there was something about the way he had said them that made it difficult for Danny to get them out of his mind. There must have been something very special about Mary Peachy for the man to speak of her like that, something more than just being the last to die. The librarian, too, had reacted to her name. But what was there about her? And what could last night’s visitor possibly have meant by suggesting that she might be there? It was clearly impossible that she could still be alive. Yet that was what the words had implied, and Danny could not forget them.
    Soon Philippa returned, and with brisk movements tightly packed the milk bottles, egg cartons, and a pot of fresh butter into the back. Roughly, she jerked the car away, and soon they were driving through the little forest with the gnarled roots. Here it was almost night, the thick, twisted shadows of the trees stretching out across the road. “Well,” Philippa said at last, “that certainly is a piece of information. But I’m not sure how grateful to you I am for finding it out, I must say.”
    “But you know we’d have had to find out sometime. We were just too curious not to.”
    “Yes, I suppose so. But tell me, how do you feel about living there now?”
    “I don’t really know. I suppose it’s silly to worry about the place still being infected; it couldn’t be, after all those years, and nobody gets the plague now anyway. But I’m sure that really isn’t what’s bothering either of us. It’s just the idea of it, that all those people died such horrible deaths there. I mean, that’s the only frightening thing. And why should that have any effect on us, really? I mean, unless we believed in ghosts or something, which we don’t.”
    “Yes, yes, I know all that. But, I just don’t know if I can bear the continual thought that right in my own bed, right where I’m sleeping, somebody was rotting away in mindless agony.” For a moment she closed her eyes and shook her head back and forth, then quickly snapped her attention back to the road. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m an emotional person. I’m even a bit superstitious. And I know