The Ghostly Past

Chapter 37

Elias was kind enough to come and collect her, after she called him, rambling and shaken. She wasn't entirely sure how the professor managed to find her. She'd forced her legs on until she'd found some road signs and he'd tracked her down. "Are you sure you don't need a hospital?" He'd asked her seriously. "You look out of it. How on earth did you end up down here?"

"I'm not sure." Clara stammered honestly. "It felt like I was dreaming."

"Must have been heat stroke." Elias looked worried, "It can make you confused, delirious. And then you've been walking too for hours. I really do think you should see a doctor." He leaned over, taking her wrist in his warm hands to take her pulse. "Your hands are cold." He noted in surprise.

"I just need rest I think." She said as he put a hand against her forehead, noting too that it was icy cold.

"Well I want to see your friend before I leave you, make sure she keeps an eye on you." Elias insisted.

He drove her back, occasionally flicking worried glances in her direction. She was quiet, shivering even with the heaters on in the car. She had downed a bottle of water he gave her and felt a little better afterwards.

He pulled into the hotel car park, walking her in and asking reception to call up to her room for Harriet. Her friend came hurtling out of an elevator, her face flushed with concern. "Oh thank god!" She looked between Clara and Elias. "I've been calling you for hours. What happened?"

Clara looked at her with empty eyes, scarcely present. "She was in a state of confusion when she called me." Elias said, after introducing himself. "I found her by the side of a road in the middle of nowhere. She doesn't seem to know how she got there. I wanted to take her to hospital, but she insisted on coming back here."

"Thank you." Harriet shook his hand. "I'll look after her." She took Clara up to the hotel room, ran her a hot bath and nudged her in.

Clara lay in the hot soapy water, her mind oddly blank. She was Dorian.

She was Dorian.

It meant that she was cursed. She had a cursed soul.

She wasn't descended from the original Dorian but his soul was hers anyway.

Oliver had died for nothing. It hadn't been him the ghosts had been trying to stop leaving but her. Perhaps if she had just let him run, he would have lived. Bitter tears coursed down her cheeks.

Dorian's fate in every lifetime was suicide. She had seen it, read it in the histories, felt Amelia's despair as she threw herself down the well. The cycle always seemed to end when Dorian took his own life.

The story was playing out, just as it should, she saw. Nothing had changed.

She had arrived, befriended them. Jess was pulling away from Leo. She, James and Leo had gone to London. Even their trip had been part of the curse.

So now she would return before them, and no doubt Jess and Ryan would be having an affair. Would Max have encouraged it? She wondered sadly. And then the blood and death would begin.

"I don't know how to stop it." Clara murmured.

Leaving the bathroom, she spotted Harriet sitting out on the balcony. There was a note left on the bed. 'I'm not good at apologies. I don't believe in ghosts but I do know you. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Who am I to say what's real.'

The note, the Shakespeare quote, made her smile, despite everything.

Striding over to the balcony, she heaved the heavy sliding door open. Harriet turned, looking sheepish. "Apology accepted." Clara smiled. "Though I agree, you are terrible at them."