Hearthstone Cottage

by Frazer Lee

Red.

  Red hair, like—

  Meggie’s.

  It was Meggie.

  Mike stopped still then and felt the breath leave his body deflated.

  He understood what she had been calling out. It had been a name, but not his. Not a human’s.

  Oscar’s name. It’s Meggie and she was shouting for Oscar. And Oscar’s bloody well dead, isn’t he? And Helen’s not here, and—

  Mike screamed then, or at least made a strangled, croaking attempt at a scream. He had to let rip, had to let it out. This was too frustrating, not knowing, not being able to do a bloody thing about it.

  As Alex and Kay caught up to him, looking shocked, he reeled around them and stomped back to the Land Rover, then straight past it. He glimpsed dried blood on the license plate, the marker from an altogether more successful hunt. To Mike, the stain was a cruel reminder of Meggie’s crashed car and the only clue he had that Helen had even been driving it.

  He decided to leave Alex and Kay to explain to Meggie what had happened, and walked on. His heartbeat had become a thundering tattoo, and his brow felt clammy with sweat. His fingers became numb from how tightly he was curling them into fists. Every fiber of his being now ached with a gnawing need to find Helen, and to make sure she was okay.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mike led the charge up the steep, winding path to the higher ground.

  If they couldn’t find Helen up there, he had argued, then maybe they would be able to see her from a higher vantage point. Edward and Jamie had offered to scour the wooded area adjacent to the bank of the loch farthest from the cottage side. Mike hadn’t had a problem with that – the two old geezers were experienced hunters, and he hoped their tracking skills might now be put to efficient use in finding Helen. Though, a nagging feeling at the back of his mind made him distrustful of the old men. He couldn’t help but still feel riled at the way they had gawped at Kay back at the cottage when they’d caught her in flagrante with Alex. And maybe, rather than out of the goodness of their hearts, they had only offered to search the woods to avoid having to climb the sheer path to the heathland.

  Grunting from his exertions as he neared the top of the path, Mike tried to put such unhelpful thoughts away. They were elderly, and he was in his twenties, so he could hardly blame them for taking the easier path. Besides, even he was out of breath by the time he had scaled the path. Despite his eagerness to push on ahead, he felt the sharp stab of the beginnings of a painful stitch in his left side and opted to take a quick breather where he stood.

  He glanced behind him and saw Alex, Kay, and Meggie following him up the path. They looked almost as knackered as he felt. Mike saw Kay reach out to join hands with Alex, the couple helping each other up the sloping path. This simple gesture made him want to find Helen all the more. Meggie trailed a little farther behind her brother and Kay, keeping a regular walking pace. The lack of urgency in her movements made Mike feel that she had perhaps tagged along out of a sense of duty, rather than a genuine desire to help him find Helen. He watched Meggie as he drew deep breaths into his lungs, wishing for a cooling drink of water. Meggie was constantly looking from side to side of the path, her keen eyes peering out across the landscape. He wondered if she was looking for Helen at all, or only for her precious dog.

  If only she knew.

  “No sign?” Alex’s voice roused Mike from his thoughts.

  Mike shook his head as he watched Alex unlink his fingers from Kay’s. The move was deliberate, Mike thought, but only served to accentuate the close bond between his friends.

  Meggie appeared over the brink of the hill and produced a water bottle from the folds of her raincoat. She drank thirstily, then strolled over and offered it to the others. Kay and Alex each took a sip, slaking their thirst gratefully. When the bottle was offered to Mike, he refused it. His mouth was dry as dust, but he could only think of covering more ground. Before it got dark.

  That’s a good one, he thought. Things got pretty bloody dark already.

  As if in collusion with his thoughts, he heard an animalistic moan. He wondered if it had only been the wind in his ears, but then he heard it again. It was a plaintive sound, which meandered across the heathland, so slight as to be almost undetectable. But he had heard it, and it was something to latch on to.

  Without a word, he strode off across the scrub in the direction of the strange, unearthly moan. Hearing it again, he broke into a run, taking care not to twist his ankle or trip on the uneven ground.

  “Mike?” Alex called from somewhere behind him, but Mike’s attention was so fixated on that tiny sound that he dared not look back for fear of not being able to hear it again.

  He ran on and, hearing more cries from the others, knew then that they too were running after him. His body went into autopilot, darting this way and that to avoid snagging his feet on treacherous outcrops of thistle, sudden tangles of brambles or roots hidden within clumps of tall grasses. The high-pitched whimper became clearer as Mike ran on. He heard Meggie call out Oscar’s name from somewhere in the distance between them. When she called out again, he hollered over his shoulder for Meggie to keep quiet. She fell silent as she drew closer to him. The two of them listened intently.

  There.

  They ran on together, and Mike knew instinctively where the sound had drawn them to before they got there.

  The site of the stone circle was, from this distance and angle, a narrow, dark oval of tangled grass and outcrops of stone. Crouched on all fours at the center was Helen. She was digging madly in the dirt, her fingers and clothes caked in the stuff. Mike felt a wave of elation on seeing her alive. As he neared her, Mike saw that her hands were covered with blood, the drying, congealing red stains merging darkly with the soil at her fingertips. She must have torn her skin by digging so frantically in the rough ground. Mike turned cold as he realized exactly where she had been digging.

  Hearing a sudden gasp of revulsion from Meggie, he realized that she had seen it too. Mike tried to put his hand over Meggie’s eyes, to turn her away, but she fought him off and shoved him aside. Sobbing, she approached the exposed earth where Helen knelt, still scratching, still digging. Helen had unearthed Oscar’s dead body. A writhing yellow halo of maggots surrounded the corpse, expanding ever outward as Helen continued to disturb the earth.

  “Helen? What the…?” Mike could hear the confusion and despair in Meggie’s voice, echoing his own. “Are you…? Are you all right?”

  “Babe?” Mike approached Helen now, eager to get her away from the hideous scene of Oscar’s burial. As he neared her, he could smell the ripe corruption of decaying dog flesh. The stench made him gag.

  Swallowing, he willed his reluctant feet to move closer to Helen. The smell was unbearable. He had to look away for a moment as he saw a wriggling maggot emerging from the pale jelly of Oscar’s eyeball. The dog’s tongue was speckled black with thousands of tiny flies. Mike watched in revulsion as they skated across the filmy surface of saliva coating the dead pink gray of Oscar’s gaping mouth.

  Reaching out with a trembling hand, Mike grabbed a hold of Helen’s wrist and pulled her upright, as though extracting her from a nightmare. She did not resist and, as she reached his eye level, looked back at him blankly, as if he weren’t even there. Gently, but firmly, he led Helen away from the dead dog. As he did so, Meggie fell to her knees, crying over the remains of her pet. He knew from the sheer force of her sobs that she had been holding on to the hope that he might still be alive. All this time, she had allowed herself to believe that he would come back. And now she knew—

  “Oh shit, you found Oscar.”

  The words were out from Alex’s mouth before Mike could convey any kind of warning to him. Kay had caught up to them too and was looking in horror at Meggie and the dog. A cold silence permeated the Highland air.

  “Oh.… You bastards,” Meggie hissed.

  She gla
red up at Mike and Alex from beside the rotting, ruptured remains of poor Oscar. Mike glanced guiltily at Alex. He found the same incriminating expression on Alex’s face that must have been etched on his own.

  “You buried him up here, didn’t you? Let me think… Let me think all this time that he would come back. How could you do this? How could you…?”

  “We didn’t want you to see him,” Mike said.

  “Aye, we were—”

  “Only trying to help?” Meggie’s voice trembled with rage. “How could you even think this was the right thing to do?”

  Mike saw Kay’s incredulous look.

  “Did you guys really…?”

  Kay looked at Alex like she no longer knew him. Then her eyes met Mike’s. He broke eye contact and glanced at the ground. But, however bad things were for Meggie right now, he knew he had to focus on Helen. She was staggering away from the horrible guilty secret that lay at the center of the Spindle Stones. Mike caught up to her, stopped her and rounded on her, touching her face with his fingers and finding her skin to be freezing cold. She might be suffering from exposure. He started taking off his jacket.

  “Helen, I looked for you everywhere. In the village.…” He lost his thread for a moment, remembering the shapes in the sleet, pursuing him, then the bloodstain on the crashed car. Mike took a breath and tried to find his resolve. It was buried somewhere deep inside him, somewhere beneath the layers of dread and revulsion. He quickly wrapped his jacket around Helen’s shoulders.

  “Jesus, Helen, you’re bleeding.” Kay’s voice sounded so thin on the cold air that Mike thought he might be hearing things.

  He took a step back from Helen. To his horror, he saw that Helen was in a far worse state than he had realized. His relief at finding her turned to abject horror as he saw the bloodstain on the crotch of her jeans. She was drenched in it. The blood had spread out in a dark rose petal from between her legs and across her inner thighs.

  “Oh my god,” Alex said.

  Kay ran across to Helen, pushing Mike’s jacket away from her shoulders and replacing it with the blanket she had carried with her. Mike stooped to scoop up his jacket, watching as Kay took over comforting Helen.

  “Oh, Helen,” Mike said, “my Helen.…”

  She swooned, her face as blankly white as a snowdrift, and Kay only just managed to catch her fall. Mike joined Kay, and they each supported Helen with a shoulder.

  “We have to find Edward and Jamie, right now,” Mike said. “We need to get her to a hospital.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I still think she’d be better off being cared for at a hospital. By medical professionals.”

  Mike knew Kay’s words made perfect sense, but Helen had been adamant that she wanted to return to the cottage to sleep.

  He had given in to her partly because her freezing skin made him want to get her warm as soon as possible. Alex had revived the fire in the hearth as soon as they returned. Even Meggie had helped. When she had gone outside after they got back, Mike assumed she would retreat to her studio. But she returned a few minutes later, her arms laden with firewood from the log pile outside. Alex took the firewood gratefully and tried to broach the subject of Oscar once more, but Meggie’s look made it clear that he was not to go there – possibly ever again.

  Mike had remained silent too, putting all his nervous energy into fussing after Helen. He was worried about how much blood she had lost and, on Kay’s instruction, made a pot of tea. He wished they had fresh milk – Helen loved her tea quite weak and milky – but at least there was some local honey left with which to sweeten it for her. He knew Kay had only asked him to make tea in order to stop him from pacing up and down across the creaking floorboards. As Kay and Meggie took over nursing Helen, running a hot bath for her and making up a hot water bottle for her to sleep with, he had been forced to back off and give them some space. He had retreated only when he was satisfied that Helen had taken a few sips of tea.

  “How is she?” Mike asked as soon as Kay and Meggie emerged from the stairwell and into the living room.

  Meggie sighed. “Sleeping. The herbs I added to her bath seemed to calm her down a wee bit.”

  “Didn’t know my sister was a witch doctor,” Alex said.

  “Why do you always do that?” Meggie asked. She sounded hurt.

  “What? Chill, I was just—”

  “I’m going to do some painting,” Meggie said, her voice loaded with finality. A heavy silence hung in the room after she had left.

  Mike cleared his throat, eager to know more. He still felt frustrated at the lack of anything he could do to help. “Did you get any sense out of her? About the crash?”

  “She said….” Kay’s voice trailed off a little, and her eyes darkened. “You guys, she said she saw a stag at the side of the road. She said she swerved to avoid hitting it.”

  “Another stag?” Mike’s mind raced. “In pretty much the exact same spot where we hit one? That’s impossible, don’t you think?”

  Alex shrugged, and then he looked thoughtful for a moment. “It’s unlikely. Not impossible.”

  Kay looked troubled – certainly the most troubled Mike had seen her since he had walked in on her and Alex. “Events do seem to be replaying themselves, don’t they?” she muttered.

  “What’s that?” Alex hadn’t been listening to her, seemingly lost in his own thoughts.

  Mike considered all he had seen since they had come to the cottage. He felt his body twitch at the muscle memory of being chased out of the village by the silent mob. He glanced at the fireplace and the black mirror that sat above it. His thumb throbbed where he had cut it. Reaching out with his right hand, he touched the back of the armchair nearest to him, feeling that he needed to make contact with something tangible.

  “There’s another possibility, of course,” Mike heard himself say.

  “Aye, what’s that?” Alex asked.

  “She thought she saw a stag. I mean, really thought she did. But it wasn’t there.”

  “What, like a hallucination, you mean?” Kay asked.

  “Exactly what I mean,” Mike said, then decided however mad he might sound he would have to broach the difficult subject with them. Of seeing things. Of losing his bloody mind. He gripped the back of the armchair tighter, feeling the tips of his fingers turning numb and enjoying the reality of the sensation. “Can I ask…? Have either of you…? Have you seen anything strange since we’ve been here?”

  “Strange like what?” Alex asked.

  Mike could hear the indignation in his friend’s voice. He knew he shouldn’t have asked, but he had no choice. Perhaps if he phrased it differently.

  “Or heard anything? I don’t know, it’s just that since we came here, I’ve been having these weird dreams.…”

  “Like when you were sleepwalking?” At least Kay sounded like she was being a bit more patient with his questions.

  “Yeah, like that. Kind of, anyway. I mean, I know it was a laugh for all of you, but when I was dreaming, it really did seem like the cottage was burning to the ground. It was fucking terrifying, and really bloody real, you know?”

  “Not really, mate,” Alex said, sounding exasperated. “Listen, you were pretty bloody drunk. Best part of a bottle of whisky, and the rest of it.”

  Mike recoiled. “If you’re going to lecture me again—”

  “No, no, I’m not. I understand that Helen’s news came as a bit of shock to you. Came as a shock to all of us.”

  “Yes, it really did,” Kay added.

  Alex went on. “Your smoking and your drinking probably just got the better of you, that’s all. You’re reading too much into all of this.” Seeing Mike’s wounded look, he added, “It’s bloody terrible what’s happened to Helen. We all just have to pull together and do what’s best for her. Take care of her.”

  “I agree,” Kay sai
d.

  Great, so now they were putting on a united front for Helen and not even listening to what he was trying to say to them. Mike wanted to talk about his waking nightmare at the loch, of the child’s laughter he had heard in the night, and about the stag he had felt in the room with him when they’d all gone to bed. He desperately needed to unburden himself of the dark reflections he had seen in the scrying mirror, and the fact that it hadn’t been him that had killed the injured bird in Meggie’s studio. But…

  But…

  But, most of all, he wished he could tell them how sorry he was that Helen had crashed the car. Her miscarriage was his fault, and his alone. If he hadn’t hit the bottle so hard the night before, she’d still be pregnant. She’d still be pissed off with him for something else, no doubt, but she would still be pregnant. Mike couldn’t find any of the words he needed to articulate any of those thoughts, so he simply sat down in the armchair in silence.

  “Din’nae blame yourself, mate,” Alex said, placing a reassuring hand on Mike’s shoulder. “What’s done is done.”

  This only served to make Mike feel even worse. He chewed at his dry, chapped lower lip, not even flinching as he tore some skin away from it, tasting the salt tang of his own blood. The throbbing in his thumb had become an itch, and he tried not to scratch at it, but the urge was too great. He felt the hard, liquid lump beneath the surface of the damaged skin shift slightly as he scratched at it. A sharp stab of pain accompanied the queasy sensation that it might burst if he scratched too hard.

  Seeing him flinch, Kay noticed his hand. “Jesus H. Christ, Mike, that looks infected. Have you put any antiseptic on it lately?”

  Mike shook his head. Kay tutted, like she might do to a petulant child, and went into the kitchen. She returned with the first aid kit and, placing it on the coffee table, searched through its contents until she found a tube of antiseptic cream.

  “Here,” she said. “Put some of this on it right now before it gets any worse. Rinse it first, under the faucet.”