On the way back to his apartment, Thomas stopped at a coffee shop that sat directly across the street from the edge of campus. He ordered a latte, slid into a corner booth, and slowly drew the liquid warmth into his body. The caffeine that now raced through his bloodstream helped fuel a debate in his mind: Had he imagined the whole thing, or was it real? A thought suddenly occurred to him, and in an instant his right hand was patting at the side of his coat. What resulted was a rare moment of cognitive dissonance. The program that the young woman had handed to him should have been protruding from that pocket, but he felt nothing. A check of his left outside pocket and his inside coat pockets yielded only a wallet, a cell phone, and a set of keys. He looked down to the floor of the booth: it was empty.
The internal debate notwithstanding, Thomas’s gut told him that the experience had been real. But where was that program? In a fit of frustration, he plunged his right hand to the bottom of his coat pocket, and to his surprise, something was there. But when he pulled his hand out, he found himself looking not at a church program, but at a set of Rosary beads.
Thomas had never owned a set of Rosary beads in his life, and he had no idea where this set could have come from. He mentally retraced his steps from his apartment to the college grounds and then to the coffee shop. He hadn’t physically bumped into anyone, and he was never close enough for anyone to slip these into his pocket. And why would they do that anyway? The chapel had been empty, except for the young woman at the door. All he knew was that the program was gone. And a set of Rosary beads now sat in his hand.
Thomas began examining the beads, and his mind went to work. They were cut from stone, and yet they were worn—not a new set. Someone spent a lot of time on their knees, he thought to himself, shaking his head. The shape and color of one of the beads was subtly but discernibly different from the rest. He looked at the crucifix—sterling silver was his guess. He turned it over and saw three letters engraved on the back of the cross beam: A.E.H. “A.E.H.,” he whispered to himself. Someone’s initials? Something nagged at him, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. He repeated the letters to himself a few times as he sat immersed in thought. He fell asleep that night with those three letters on his brain.
***
It took a full day, but Thomas finally realized why the three letters provoked him. And yet, the realization left him flummoxed. He woke up early the next morning and headed for the center of campus. He wouldn’t be missed at the office before lunch. He had no plan—he was just hoping to find something that might help him make sense of the whole thing. He entered the chapel and saw a priest standing near the altar. Dressed entirely in black, a roman collar was visible at the front of his neck. Two freshly extinguished candles each sent a thread of smoke racing toward the ceiling. As he walked forward, Thomas shot a glance toward the nativity scene over to the right.
“You’re too late for Mass, son.” The gray hair atop the priest’s head was a tousled mess. An image of Albert Einstein flashed through Thomas’s mind.
“Oh, that’s okay, mist—I mean, Father.”
The priest was elderly, but the misstep was not lost on him. There was a subtle look of amusement on his face. “Can I help you?”
“I don’t know,” said Thomas. “I wanted to ask someone … I found something …”
Surmising that the ensuing conversation would likely take some time, the old priest looked at Thomas and said, “Let’s sit down, son.”
They headed for a front-row pew and sat. Thomas rotated himself sideways so that he was looking directly at the priest. The elderly man shifted as best he could. “Now,” the priest said, “what have you found?”
Thomas sized up the old priest quickly. He was an elderly man who still had his wits about him. Thomas suspected a patience that came with effort in the latter stages of a life in which he had seen and heard it all. But there was also a gentleness to his countenance, and Thomas decided that he would trust this old priest with his story. He recounted what had happened, from the moment he left his apartment until his return, including his time in the coffee shop. The priest listened quietly, nodding his head from time to time, but not uttering a word. If anything surprised him or struck him as unusual, he never tipped his hand.
When Thomas had finished, the priest held out his hand. “May I?” Thomas pulled the Rosary beads out of his coat pocket and handed them over. He watched as the old man held them in his battered and weathered hands, seemingly examining the individual beads and the center medal. Thomas’s focus intensified as the priest turned the crucifix over and ran a finger across the engraving.
“I was wondering,” Thomas began. He spoke in a hesitating cadence that betrayed his embarrassment. “I was wondering whether … You’ve been here at this school for a long time?”
“I have,” the old priest replied.
“I was wondering if there have ever been any credible instances … apparitions … of that freshman girl who died here back in 1911?”
“Why do you ask that question?” said the old priest.
“The initials: A.E.H.”
“Ah,” said the priest. “And you’re contemplating whether you may have had an encounter with the ghost of Abigail Elizabeth Hargraves, and whether she may have somehow found a way to pass along to you a set of Rosary beads that she owned when she was still alive.”
Despite the absence of any condescension in the priest’s voice, the question left Thomas feeling sheepish. “I guess so,” he replied quietly.
“Well, I’m sorry if I disappoint you, but there is no Abigail Elizabeth Hargraves. There never was. That whole story was concocted decades ago. I’ve always been amazed at how it picked up steam over the years. Everyone loves that one,” said the old priest amusedly. He permitted himself a soft chuckle.
“How do you know that?” There was a subtle but unmistakable defensiveness to the question that surprised even Thomas.
“Well,” said the priest, forbearingly, “perhaps you might find the archive section of the library more convincing than you find me. But there was never a student by that name, or even a similar name, enrolled here at the college. The whole story was made up. I hear that the students have turned it into quite the shindig every Halloween night. No harm in that, I suppose.”
“But what of everything I just told you? What about the Rosary beads?”
“What’s your name, son?”
Thomas had the curious sense that the question was asked for his benefit, not the priest’s. “Thomas … Thomas Hanson.”
The old priest nodded. He handed the Rosary beads back to Thomas and said, “Hold onto these. We’ll probably talk again. Meantime, I’ve got to go hear confessions. I wouldn’t be so busy,” he said, giving Thomas a wink, “if you kids didn’t drink so much.” Thomas watched him shuffle off to the back of the chapel and disappear into a confessional.
Never one to accept assertions without evidence, Thomas took the old priest up on his challenge. Exiting the chapel and walking to the far end of the quad, he entered the library and found the archive room sitting two floors below ground level. The school’s collection of records rested mostly undisturbed under the watch of an elderly woman wearing wire-rimmed spectacles, her gray hair pulled back into a bun. A gold-colored crucifix in desperate need of a polish dangled from a chain around her neck, and a shawl that had seen better days sat wrapped around her shoulders. Thomas imagined a house full of cats. The dust-covered name plate at her desk told him that he was looking at a Mrs. Edna Draper.
“I’m looking for records of student enrollment for the school year 1911–12,” Thomas stated inquiringly.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Draper. “Doing some research?” She disappeared for a moment and returned with a well-worn canvas binder that read 1908–1918 on the cover. Thomas sat at a nearby table, opened the binder, and found the annual student rolls. The old priest had been right—there was no student by the name of Abigail Hargraves, or anything similar, for the 1911–12 school year. He looked at each of the ten years included in the binder and found nothing.
As he stood to return the binder, he saw that the archives lady at the desk had been watching him. “Looking for Abigail?” she asked with a crooked smile. “Every four or five years someone comes looking. I’ve pulled that binder off the shelf more than most of the books in this room. Amazing how everyone falls for that one. There’s only one ghost in that chapel,” said Edna Draper, “and it’s not Abigail Elizabeth Hargraves.”
Thomas considered her for a moment and, looking at the crucifix around her neck, asked with a wry smile on his face, “The Holy Ghost?”
“You got that right!” said Edna.
“Thanks,” said Thomas, handing her the binder. He began his ascent to the ground floor.
