Hearthstone Cottage

by Frazer Lee

  * * *

  The sleet had become rain and was finally easing off when Mike approached the outskirts of the valley floor where they had met their accident with the stag.

  As he drew closer to the place where the dark, still waters of the loch began, Mike saw Meggie’s car at the roadside in the distance. It was overturned, resting on one crumpled side.

  As he ran to the crashed car, he wanted to call out Helen’s name, but the ringing in his ears was all too deafening. Reaching the car, he saw that the driver’s door was wide open, a deep dent giving it the misshapen appearance of a broken jaw. A spider’s web pattern of broken glass was all that remained of the windscreen.

  He looked inside the car, his heart beating frantically. Broken glass littered the passenger’s and driver’s seats. One windscreen wiper pirouetted spasmodically into thin air, and Mike momentarily mistook the whine of its little electric motor for that of a wounded animal. He reached through the driver’s side window, which had also shattered, and turned the ignition key to kill the electrics in the car.

  The mechanical whine gave way to the breath of the wind, which crept across the surface of the loch, bringing a damp chill to Mike’s skin. He stepped back from the car a little and blew on his hands, massaging some warmth into them. Just then, he saw a bloodstain on the lip of the car door, next to the handle. He walked around the vehicle and into the scrubland beside it.

  Helen was nowhere to be seen.

  Part Four

  Under dark, dark skies

  There are dark, dark mountains

  And beneath the dark, dark mountains

  Is a dark, dark road.

  On the dark, dark road

  There is a dark, dark turn

  And beyond the dark, dark turn

  Is a dark, dark cottage.

  In the dark, dark cottage

  Is a dark, dark window

  And through the dark, dark window

  Is a dark, dark room.

  And in the dark, dark room

  There is a dark, dark hearth

  Upon the dark, dark hearth

  Is a dark, dark mirror

  And in the dark, dark mirror

  There is a dark, dark truth.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hey! Stop!”

  Mike waved his arms frantically, trying to attract the driver’s attention.

  Edward and Jamie’s Land Rover had sped past him, kicking up wet dirt as it went. They must have seen him. He was, after all, the only living, breathing thing in the landscape. He punched the air and saw the vehicle slow down, its red brake lights glowing hot in the middle distance. He jogged after the Land Rover, cursing his sore feet and aching limbs for preventing him from moving faster.

  “Where ye going, laddie?”

  It was Edward, his ruddy face peering out at Mike from the gloomy driver’s cabin. Jamie sat beside him, regarding Mike with a pitying expression.

  “Back to the cottage. There’s been an accident.… My girlfriend, I have to make sure.… Did you see the wrecked car?”

  The old men’s expressions remained the same. Mike wondered what it would take to rile these two.

  “Aye, we saw that,” Edward mused. “Didn’t look like anybody was about. It’s a write-off, that car. Like the one you wee youngsters hired, eh?”

  “I don’t care about the bloody car,” Mike said, more gruffly than he’d intended. “I just need to make sure she got back okay.”

  “Hop in, laddie,” Jamie said with his usual tone of authority.

  “There was a bloodstain, on the car door.” Mike faltered at the memory of the red smear and all it might entail. “And my girlfriend.… Well, she’s pregnant, see.”

  Edward raised his eyebrows and glanced at Jamie, whose face broke into a wide smile.

  “Didn’t think ye had it in ye,” Jamie muttered.

  “Aye, but she did, didn’t she?” Edward showed his teeth when he grinned.

  Mike pretended not to hear that one. “Can we just get back to the cottage? Please?” he said, clambering onto the passenger seat beside Jamie.

  “Just trying to calm you down,” Edward said, his voice clipped. “You’ve had a bit of a shock.”

  Mike remained silent. His concern for Helen had drained him of all patience with the two elderly jokers. He thought it perhaps best for all of them if he stayed quiet for the journey to the cottage, and so he did. The atmosphere in the driver’s cab felt tense. Mike noticed that Jamie had shuffled along the seat as far as he could, the distance between them as icy as the weather outside. All the while, Mike scanned the edges of the loch, trying his best to detect any movement. At one point, a dark shape shifted and Mike almost called out to Edward to stop. But the movement quickly revealed itself to be a host of black crows swaying on the lower branch of one of the many pine trees clinging to the edge of the loch. Mike had never seen so many, clinging on to a branch together like that.

  After what felt to Mike like an age, but was in fact only a matter of minutes, the Land Rover reached the track leading to the cottage. He had already released his safety belt before Edward had pulled over, and with a quick word of thanks, Mike opened the passenger door and scrambled out of the vehicle. He shoved open the gate and raced up the path to the front door. It was shut, and locked. He banged on the door but was too impatient to await an answer, and so he skirted around the back of the cottage to the conservatory door. That too was locked. He made a quick about-turn and ran across to Meggie’s studio. Her painting stood on its easel, with her brushes and paints lying abandoned on the desk nearby.

  Mike ran back around to the front of the house. Maybe someone had heard him knock, and he had hardly given anyone time to answer. He rounded the corner of the cottage to find Edward and Jamie standing on the doorstep.

  “Anyone answer?” Mike asked, breathless.

  “No, laddie,” Edward said, removing his hat and scratching at his thinning gray hair.

  “Can’t imagine where they’ve gone to,” Mike said and then had a thought. “Wait a minute, what if Helen made it back here, and then they took her to the hospital?”

  He couldn’t shake the image of the bloodstain on the car door. She was injured in the crash. She would need medical care. But then he realized something else.

  “Bloody hell. Meggie’s is the only car we have. So they couldn’t have driven her anywhere, after all. Unless they managed to call an air ambulance or something.”

  “We did’nae see any helicopters when we were out driving, did we, Edward?” Jamie’s eyes twinkled.

  Mike didn’t like that look, which had an accusatory air about it, like Mike was overreacting, or inventing his story about the bloodstain.

  Edward shook his head. “No, I can’t say that we did,” he said dryly.

  Mike bristled at the old man’s tone. It felt like he was being humored.

  “Why don’t you use the spare key?” Edward said, as if it was the most obvious choice of all. “Check she’s not at home and asleep, with a concussion or the like?”

  “Spare key?” Mike replied, pointing at the combination lockbox, which hung open and empty beside the front door. “There isn’t one.”

  Edward shrugged, then bent down – quicker than his age ought to allow – and began lifting the plant pots beside the porch door. After a few moments, he held up a shiny object between his thumb and forefinger.

  “The spare, spare front door key,” Edward said with a grin.

  Its gleam almost outshone the triumphant smile he was wearing. He handed it over to Mike, who took it gratefully and slid it into the lock.

  “How did you know where to find it?”

  “Why, laddie, I knew because I was the one who put it there.”

  Mike was taken aback. “You? What business have you got having keys to the cottage?”


  Edward’s cheeks flushed with indignation, or was it embarrassment?

  “Now, now, laddie, there’s no need to take that tone with young Edward here.” Jamie moved closer to Mike, puffing his chest out like some prize cockerel.

  “It’s all right, Jamie,” Edward said gratefully. “The boy is just worried about his girlfriend, that’s all.” Before Mike could reply, he continued, “Your friend Alex, his father sometimes employs folk from the village to clean and maintain the property. I delivered a trailer of logs for him not so long ago. You’ll have seen those around back?”

  “The woodpile,” Mike cut in. “Yeah, I saw that. But that still doesn’t answer why you would need the front door key.”

  Edward smiled, all teeth again. “Alex’s pa expressly asked that we put the kindling wood indoors. To keep it dry, you ken?”

  Mike felt suddenly very stupid. He turned his back to hide his frustration and set about unlocking the door.

  “Now you know our secret,” Edward said. “All the houses in the village keep a wee spare key lying around somewhere. But don’t tell your city friends, will you?”

  Mike pushed his way inside the cottage. It felt lovely and warm inside, and he could smell a wood fire burning.

  “Aye,” Jamie called out from behind him, “don’t be telling the likes of them.”

  Mike wrestled off his damp jacket and hung it on one of the hooks above the Wellington boots. He quickly scanned the rows of clothing and footwear, eager to see any sign of Helen’s return to the cottage, but found none.

  Not bothering to kick off his boots, he opened the interior door into the living area and heard what sounded like applause. He was already two steps over the threshold when he realized his mistake. The clapping sound was flesh upon flesh, but not in the way he had expected.

  A blazing fire roared in the hearth, backlighting the living room in a hot orange glow that danced like fireworks on the walls of the room. Standing over the hearth, her naked skin glistening with perspiration, was Kay. Behind her, Alex stood with his trousers around his ankles, thrusting into her. They were both deep in the throes of their combined passion, Alex grunting and Kay crying out with each ecstatic thrust. Mike stood, frozen to the spot, not knowing how to react. Between Kay’s grabbing hands on the mantelpiece, the scrying mirror reflected the flickering firelight like the pupil of some monstrous, voyeuristic eye.

  “Bloody hell, it’s a long while since I’ve set eyes on anything like that!”

  Edward’s voice cut through the heat of the room like ice.

  Alex struggled to detach himself from his lover, pulling his trousers up on instinct and then attempting to protect Kay’s honor by standing in front of her.

  Mike turned to see that the two old men were gawping at Kay, who turned around and screamed the moment she realized they were standing there.

  “Jesus hell and b-bloody Christ, Mike,” Alex stammered, “why the hell didn’t you knock?”

  “I did.… I mean, we did. But there was no answer. And the door was locked.”

  “How on fucking earth did you get in then?” Alex was absolutely fuming, his face almost blood-red from this humiliating coitus interruptus. “Would you gawping bastards actually mind?” Alex shot an angry look at Mike, then at the two old-timers, before gathering up Kay’s clothes. They had been cast off over the back of the sofa.

  Mike saw an open bottle of wine on the coffee table, along with two glasses. Clearly, one thing had led to another.

  “Well?” Alex thundered. “Give us a bloody minute, yes?”

  Edward and Jamie retreated to the doorstep.

  “Bloody hell, you guys, I’m so sorry,” Mike said, averting his eyes as Kay held her clothes against her body, before she made her way over to the foot of the stairs.

  “I…I found Meggie’s car,” Mike blurted. “It’s a wreck. There was blood on the door handle, glass everywhere. No sign of Helen.”

  Kay stopped for a moment. The seriousness of what Mike had just said registered in her eyes. “I’m just going to get dressed,” she said. It sounded like she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Fuck’s sake, Mike,” Alex said. He tugged on his t-shirt, and only then did his expression change. Mike’s revelation had, for the moment, diffused the awkwardness of the situation. “You checked the car properly, right?”

  “I looked all around, and even under it,” Mike said. “Mate, she wasn’t there. I was hoping she had made her way back here, but.…” He almost lost it then, his teeth chattering and his eyes burning with the tears that wanted to come.

  “Chill. Just chill. Bloody panicking won’t help find her.” Alex always seemed to know what to say. Even after he’d been walked in on. Mike needed his friend’s strength. “She can’t have gone far. Maybe somebody saw the accident, picked her up. We can phone the hospital.”

  “How can we? The phones never bloody work.”

  “They will on higher ground. Let’s search the path that goes around the loch. She may have walked blindly. She would be in a state of shock if the smash was that bad, right?”

  Mike nodded.

  “If we find her, good. If not, the path leads us to higher ground and we can phone around – also good.”

  Kay emerged from the stairwell, now fully clothed. Alex filled her in on the search party plan, and she set about filling a couple of plastic bottles with water to take with them. She also retrieved a thick woolen throw from the back of the armchair and slung it over her shoulder. “If we find Helen, and we will,” she reassured, “we’ll need to keep her warm. She might be freezing out there, poor thing. I’ll grab the first aid kit, too.”

  “One other thing we haven’t considered,” Alex said as he rooted out his own coat. “Meggie may have found Helen already.”

  “Oh?” said Mike and heard the hopeful tone in his voice. He would have to cling on to that for dear life, use it to tell himself that Helen may yet have survived the crash.

  “Aye, she headed off out for a walk about an hour ago,” Alex said.

  Mike saw Alex and Kay exchange an unspoken look. For reasons he didn’t want to fathom right now, he found that their silent connection was making him feel weirdly jealous. Mike grabbed his jacket from the coat rail and flinched at its cold dampness as he tugged it on over his clothes. Alex and Kay pulled on their walking boots, and then they were all set.

  “Which way do we walk?” Mike asked. Then, answering his own question, he suggested, “We should walk the perimeter of the loch, see if she’s there. Then go uphill.”

  “Oh, we won’t walk,” Alex said. Then, off Mike’s look, he added, “We’ll get those two old bastards to drive us.”

  * * *

  Edward and Jamie maintained what was, for them at least, a respectful silence as they drove up the rough track that led to the lochside.

  The terrain became bumpier the farther they drove, and Mike had to cling to a rail inside the back of the Land Rover to keep from falling from his bench seat. Alex and Kay sat opposite him – they had made it clear neither of them wanted to sit up front with the two lecherous old men.

  Mike’s thoughts kept returning to the crashed car and the alarming sight of the blood on the door. He willed the Land Rover to go faster. Edward made a bad gear change, and the gearbox protested with a mechanical groan. The vehicle lurched left, and they were onto the loch path proper. Mike peered out through a gap in the Land Rover’s canvas awning, eyes alert for any sight of Helen. The rain had stopped, making visibility much better, but he realized he didn’t even know what Helen had been wearing when she had gone out that morning. Mike was just about to ask Kay about this vital piece of information when he heard something that silenced him.

  It was a woman, shouting.

  Every hair on Mike’s body seemed to stand up in response to the sound, a primal reaction to what he could only now hope was Helen.
<
br />   “Hear that?” he called to Edward and Jamie in the driver’s cab.

  Edward nodded, and manipulating the steering wheel as though it were the wheel of some huge seafaring vessel, he altered the Land Rover’s course in the direction of the sound.

  Mike thrust his head through the gap in the canvas, eyes fixed on the line of trees by the loch. The light on the water shimmered, casting everything in the foreground into silhouette.

  “There!” he exclaimed. “Stop the car!”

  The Land Rover lurched to a halt with a squeak of its elderly brakes. Hearing the voice cry out again, Mike tussled with the metal bolt of the Land Rover’s tailgate. His hands trembling, it took him a couple of attempts before it was released from its housing, and him along with it.

  He jumped down onto the damp earth and stones, which felt reassuring beneath his feet. The afternoon light was almost blinding, reflected off the surface of the loch. He narrowed his eyes and saw a dark shape moving between the trees. He heard the voice again and struggled to understand what it was saying.

  Hold on, baby, he thought. I’m coming. Help is coming.

  He blundered across a thicket of grasses and weeds, heading straight for the young woman—

  It’s her, it must be her. Jesus god, Helen, I’m glad you’re alive. I’ll look after you right from now on, I promise you.

  —and then all at once, she moved from out of the tree cover and into the light. She moved her head, and Mike saw the shape of her hair, then its color.