THIRTEEN
“I walked out of the churchyard and began to stroll along the high street. The wind was starting to pick up and some of the dead leaves from the church whipped up behind me, almost as if they were reaching out, willing me not to leave. I buttoned my coat to keep the warmth in and thought long and hard about what the old gravedigger had told me. It seemed somewhat implausible to me that merely a week ago I had such a negative opinion concerning fortune tellers and spirits and the like, and yet here I was, having experienced first-hand such ethereal phenomena, discussing the plausibility of gypsy curses with a complete stranger in the middle of a graveyard, no less. In many ways, the experience had been a humbling one. As someone who had discounted such events outright, I had certa
