Hearthstone Cottage

by Frazer Lee

  “Aye, they are that. But don’t ever eat them; they’re fearsome poisonous,” Meggie warned. “They look like wee Halloween pumpkins, don’t they?”

  Mike couldn’t see it. To him, the pinkish-colored berries looked like fragile little hearts. He pinched one between his thumb and forefinger, and it disintegrated in a little flood of juices that coated his skin.

  “Careful, Mike,” Helen said.

  “That’s a spindle bush,” Meggie said. “The berries split apart when the weather gets properly cold and reveal their orange insides.”

  She sounded as though she was relishing every word. Mike wiped the slimy juice of the poisonous little berry away from his skin on some nearby leaves. He was glad he hadn’t crushed it with his wounded thumb, for fear that he might get poison inside the cut.

  “Guess we know where the Spindle Stones got their name from anyways,” Kay mused before she took a welcome sip of water from her reusable bottle.

  Helen and the others continued rehydrating themselves and, in between sips, resumed calling out for Oscar. The only reply was the distant cry of a kestrel, circling high above the loch. Mike watched the bird, wishing for a moment that it was on the lookout for Oscar too. It would make finding the stupid dog a lot easier.

  “We’ll cover more terrain if we split into two teams,” Alex said. “Which do you girls prefer? The high or the low ground?”

  “I vote low,” Helen said, and Kay and Meggie agreed.

  “Good choice,” Meggie said. “Plenty of tree cover on the lower path. My main concern is that Oscar chased something into the woods and injured himself. He could be hurt. I’ve got some basic first aid stuff with me in case we need to dress a wound or anything.”

  “Poor Oscar,” Helen said, sounding horrified.

  “He may be fine yet, just lost,” Meggie reassured her, but the concern was still written in her tense expression.

  Mike didn’t like the look of the steep path, but, seeing the look on Meggie’s face, he said, “Best we get going then.”

  “Aye,” Alex said, hoisting his backpack straps over his shoulders.

  Mike blew Helen a kiss, and he followed Alex onto the path that led up the hill. Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Meggie leading Helen and Kay into the woods on the lower path.

  When the girls were out of view, Mike and Alex settled into a slower pace. It was as though an unspoken agreement had passed between them. Out of sight of their partners, they had less to prove, Mike supposed. The thought kept him amused all the way to the higher ground while he listened to Alex’s labored breathing. And his friend had the audacity to pick fault with him about his smoking all the time. Mike began to chuckle under his breath.

  “What’s so funny all of a sudden?” Alex asked.

  But Mike ignored the question. As they climbed over the ridge onto a flat, green promontory, he spotted a dark shape lying in the grass.

  “Hey, what’s that?” he asked, drawing Alex’s attention.

  The two increased their pace to investigate. Flies buzzed in an ever-shifting black cloud as they made their approach. The smell hit Mike then, too, bringing back unpleasant memories of the dead fish with its belly full of maggots.

  Oscar lay on his side, his body stiff and still beneath his muddy and matted fur. Something had torn open the dog’s throat and abdomen. Congealing blood had spilled from the dog’s wounds and onto the strands of grass poking out from beneath. The trauma to the dog’s body stood out vivid crimson against the muted green of the long grass.

  “Jesus bloody Christ,” Alex said.

  Mike thought of what Meggie had said about her first aid kit. Oscar was beyond any help that mere bandages might bring. “How long do you think he’s been out here like this?”

  “I don’t know,” Alex replied. “He was an old dog – about to get his bus pass, in dog years. A predator probably got the better of him. He was always off chasing after some prey or other. Maybe this time he decided to chase something else’s supper and didn’t live to tell the tale. Had to happen sooner or later, to be honest. Though I doubt that will make my poor wee sister feel any better about it.”

  “She loved that dog, didn’t she?”

  Alex nodded. He blinked into the wind, and Mike thought he may have glimpsed a tear in Alex’s eye. Maybe Alex loved the dog, too. But his carefully maintained alpha male persona would not allow for any outward expressions of sentimentality about Oscar. It would be different with Meggie, of course. Mike knew that Oscar’s death would shake her to the core. And her grief would put a damper on their vacation; that was for sure. He felt a little selfish even thinking it, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d already had more than his fair share of grim morbidity, what with hitting the stag on the road and all the weird dreams he’d been having since they’d arrived at the cottage. An idea occurred to him, and the more he tried to push it away, the simpler and more attractive it seemed to him.

  “We could decide to…not tell her.”

  There. It was out in the open, his idea becoming a potential action, a viable solution. Alex blinked back at Mike blankly.

  “Look at it this way. If we tell her, she’ll want to see him,” Mike said. “You know she will.”

  Alex looked from the dead dog’s corpse to Mike, and back again to the dog.

  “Dead right. You cannae show that to a vegan, no matter what you think of all that tofu-munching bollocks,” Alex said with his usual air of sensitivity.

  Maybe that tear in his eye really had only been a result of the wind.

  “We’re agreed it’s for the best then?” Mike asked.

  “Aye,” Alex said and nodded, “we’ll bury him as best we can, but it’ll be bastard difficult without any tools.”

  Mike and Alex set about locating a suitable spot but found only hard, rocky ground. Burying Oscar was clearly not an option. They decided instead to gather up the biggest, heftiest rocks and stones that they could find to conceal Oscar’s body. Then they began piling on loose turf and foliage as camouflage. The work took just over an hour, but when they were done, the spot where Oscar lay concealed was pretty much indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape.

  Mike took a few steps back from their handiwork, searching out any gaps he and Alex might have left. If there were any gaps, then other animals – attracted by the smell – might be able to burrow inside easily. If they did so, they could uncover Oscar’s body. Satisfied that they had done a thorough enough cover-up job, Mike nodded to Alex, who was taking a breather on a rocky outcrop toward the edge of the ridge. Alex took a hip flask from his backpack, unscrewed the cap and took a swig before offering it to Mike. Alex’s concept of a picnic lunch always included a nip of something strong to take the edge off, and Mike was gladder than ever to see that today was no exception. Just as Mike began to approach Alex to take the flask from his outstretched hand, he noticed something about the rocks upon which Alex was perched.

  They had purloined a fair few of the rocks from the perimeter of the ridge around the spot where they had discovered Oscar. Something about the curve of the land from the rocky ridge to the burial spot struck Mike, and he stopped in his tracks to glance around the area where he stood. Among the rocks were bigger, darker plinths of stone. That was it, the reason why his eye had been drawn to them – they were the exact same hue as the stone fireplace at the cottage. He followed them, picking up speed as his eyes searched them out between the smaller rocks, stones, and long grass.

  “What’s gotten into you? D’you want a drink or not?” Alex shouted.

  “These stones!” Mike replied. “The dark ones. Don’t they look familiar to you?”

  Alex placed his hip flask on the rocks beside him and stood up. Mike continued around the perimeter, each step confirming his suspicions. The dark stones marked out a circle, about fifty feet in diameter, with their little grave mound at the dead center
of it.

  Making his way around to Alex, who stood frowning next to his flask, Mike said breathlessly, “It’s a circle, Alex, I knew it! It’s a stone circle, or at least what used to be one.”

  Mike leaped up onto one of the rocks next to where Alex had been sitting. Then he climbed up onto another, the highest of the stones. From this elevated position, he could see it even more clearly.

  “We’re at what I would guess is the southernmost side. If you start with those darker rocks over there, and follow them around, ignoring the grass and the scrub, you’ll see it.”

  He pointed out the perimeter, tracing its circumference with his finger in the air.

  “Bloody hell,” Alex muttered. “I never even noticed that, until now.”

  Mike’s mind raced with possibilities. Perhaps this stone circle site was the same one that Kay’s book at the cottage had mentioned. The Spindle Stones. He looked around again at the layout, trying to imagine how it might have looked before the circle had been plundered for building materials. It would have been an imposing sight, he imagined, to anyone who climbed the steep, winding path he and Alex had taken. Maybe ancient feet had created that path as they made their pilgrimage to the stones. All of which begged another question.

  “Don’t you think it’s weird, though?” Mike asked.

  “What?”

  “Oscar just upped and died. Right in the middle of it. In the dead center of an ancient stone bloody circle.”

  Kay had only been talking about it the night before, after all. About the witch and her curse and the children going missing. Mike recalled the childlike laughter from his nightmare and shuddered.

  Human sacrifices, the book had read.

  Suddenly cold, Mike felt that he might take a drink from Alex’s hip flask right about now. He clambered down to retrieve it. Mike unscrewed the cap and tipped it back. Feeling a warm wave pass down his throat, he realized Alex had filled it with good honey malt whisky. The perfect tonic for the shivers he was experiencing at his discovery of the stone circle.

  “Ah, I would’nae read too much into that if I were you, pal,” Alex said, now sounding as gruff as ever.

  “You don’t think it’s even a little bit weird, though? After what Kay told us yesterday?”

  Alex shrugged, then reclaimed the hip flask for another drink. “It’s a coincidence, that’s all. I mean, there are a lot of places an animal as daft as Oscar could’ve met his maker.”

  “Well, I think it’s a bit spooky. Of all the places out here in the vastness of the Scottish countryside, he chooses this one to give up the ghost – pun intended.”

  Alex groaned. “Maybe I should’nae let you take any more of this whisky. You’re half-cut, man. Bloody mumbo jumbo and superstitious nonsense. You sound almost as batty as my poor wee sister.”

  Mike sighed. Whatever his friend said to try to normalize it, he felt an unshakeable feeling that this place had somehow drawn Oscar to it. Either that or whichever predator had killed the poor pooch had dragged him up here. Which pointed to the same conclusion, at least in Mike’s mind – the stone circle that had stood here for centuries still held some power over the surrounding landscape that it had dominated in its heyday. Those same stones were now tucked away in the walls, floors, and chimney stacks of the houses in the village. And in Hearthstone Cottage.

  Mike found little solace in that revelation as he and Alex made their descent back down the hillside path in search of the girls.

  Chapter Eight

  The trees became taller and their trunks thicker the deeper Mike and Alex walked into the forest. Mike felt relieved to put some distance between them and Oscar’s grave up at the stone circle site. The atmosphere up there had seemed pregnant with unease, and Mike had been eager to leave it behind. Even though they had done a bloody good job of burying him, the fact that Oscar’s corpse lay just inches under a layer of rock, dirt, and foliage stayed with Mike all the way down the hill. Every time he blinked, he saw the dog’s ruined body and its tongue lolling lifeless from between its teeth, a grotesque and cartoonish image of decay. The buzz of a fly passing close by his ear reminded him of the torn fur and ruptured flesh. Death’s red gash was staring him in the face, undeniable in its finality the more he tried to blink it from his memory. It was as though they had buried a problem but had inadvertently carried the guilt of that apparent quick fix with them.

  The woods, though, felt different, and for that Mike was thankful. Here, the foliage was dense and dark green. Shade-loving ferns lined the forest floor, which was carpeted with fallen pine needles from the high branches. Mike luxuriated in the cool calm of the fresh air, each breath becoming a balm as they walked on. The occasional cry of a predatory bird was muted by the canopy of strong branches that formed a complex interlocking ceiling high above their heads.

  Mike heard another sound as he and Alex navigated a steep, downward slope in the forest floor. It was a female voice, though it was too far away for him to make out if it belonged to Helen, Kay, or Meggie. As the natural dip began to slope upward again, presumably the result of heavy rainfall and subsidence in the soil, Mike saw more daylight between the branches of the trees. At the top of the slope, he and Alex passed through a line of younger, more spindly trees until they reached the edge of a clearing. Mike spied the girls at the other side of this clearing. They looked as though they were taking a breather.

  Mike heard laughter among the girls as they spotted him and Alex.

  “Found them,” Mike said.

  Mike and Alex continued across the clearing, the ground softening beneath their feet as the leaf-littered forest floor gave way to an open expanse of rough scrubland.

  “Hey!” Alex shouted as the girls turned and ran into the trees on the other side of the clearing, laughing as they went.

  Mike glanced at Alex, and the two exchanged grins. The girls had challenged them to a game of chase. Caught in the reverie of the moment, Mike took off after them. Competitive as ever, Alex pushed past Mike, knocking him aside slightly as he hurtled across the clearing and beyond the line of trees.

  “Cheating bastard!” he called after Alex. His friend hurtled on, oblivious.

  Mike stumbled, losing his already tenuous footing on the uneven ground, and fell to his knees painfully. He reached out with his hands on instinct to break his fall. He scraped the soft skin of his palms on the rough ground and the pine cones that were scattered there. He felt his injured thumb twinge with a violent stab of pain. Cursing under his breath, he rolled over and stood up again. Pressing his smarting hands together, he was now facing the trees through which he and Alex had just emerged. His flesh turned cold at the sight of a low, dark shape as it darted between the trees. It looked like a dog.

  “Oscar?” Mike called, incredulous at the sound of his own voice.

  Of course it couldn’t be Oscar. They had left the pooch buried under a pile of earth, stones, and bracken about half a mile up the hillside. The dark shape flitted between the trees again, and this time Mike saw something else.

  The flash of sickly yellow eyes.

  He gasped at the sight of them, searing into his vision from across the clearing. His feet moved as if of their own volition. He felt a broken branch – or at least, what he hoped was broken branch – against his heel as he backed up and away from the disturbing shape in the trees. Mike listened to the sound of his breath, coming in rapid, staccato bursts. Whatever he had glimpsed in the trees had put a primal fear into his very bones. He wanted to turn on his heel and run away, catch up with Alex and the others and pretend he hadn’t seen anything out there at all. Hadn’t seen something with yellowy eyes glaring at him hungrily from the shadows of tall trees.

  Then he heard a low growl. It was a guttural sound, the sound of something that had not eaten for a while and was, even now, savoring the taste of Mike’s fear on its pink tongue and in its red throat. The growl came agai
n, louder this time, and Mike heard the snapping of teeth. That was enough to get his legs moving again. They felt numb beneath him as he ran full pelt for the opening in the trees through which the girls and Alex had disappeared. It was as though he were running outside of his body for a few disturbing moments, with the growling and snapping of teeth growing ever louder and all too close until he fancied he could feel something dark and immensely powerful bearing down upon him. He willed himself not to look, to just keep on running until he caught up to the others. He broke the tree line and hurtled between a confusion of saplings, which swayed from their contact with his panicked body. Only then did Mike risk turning around fearfully. The swaying young trees were like flags, alerting whatever dark beast was pursuing him to his presence on the other side of the clearing.

  Blackness erupted across his vision, and his hands shot up over his face protectively. He stood there, locked in a cage of his fear, until he realized what the black shape was. It flitted out of his eyeline and into the sky – a crow on the wing, startled by his crashing footsteps. He scanned between the trees, looking for any glimpse of those horrible, sickly looking eyes but saw only shafts of diffused daylight as they fell between the tree branches.

  Mike turned and ran on in the direction he had seen Alex go. Within seconds, he heard another sound, this time a panicked yelp from one of the girls. He increased his speed, pushing on until he felt his lungs might burst—

  You have to quit smoking, baby daddy.

  —and found Alex and the others standing beside a rough track in the woods. Kay had fallen over, and Helen and Meggie were rushing to her aid.

  “You all right?” he heard Helen ask.

  “Yes, but my damn foot is stuck,” Kay replied, sounding embarrassed.

  Mike jogged closer to see what was up and saw that Kay was struggling to retrieve her foot from a tangle of tree roots.

  “Let me help,” Helen said. She crouched down and took Kay’s foot gently in both hands, trying to free it from the roots.