by Frazer Lee
Mike blinked and the image began to clarify.
He was seeing them from the back seat of the same 4x4 that he, Helen, Alex and Kay had written off after hitting the stag. Mike looked down expecting to see the hearthstone, but instead saw the solid floor of the car’s plush interior.
He was inside the vehicle again.
And it was moving.
Mike reached out and pressed the flat of his hand against the passenger window. It felt cool and hard to the touch.
Real.
This was real.
He turned to look at Helen. She looked so alive, her skin flushed with expectant energy. His gaze fell to her stomach, and he wondered if new life grew there still.
“What?” Helen said, looking puzzled at the way he was staring at her tummy.
“Nothing, babe,” he muttered. His voice sounded clearer, too. Away from the cottage. Away from the cloying dark and the endless nights.
Mike’s mind reeled at the implications of this new, entirely altered, reality.
He was being given another chance.
That must be it.
He looked again out of the window. The landscape on the left-hand side of the road had opened up, giving full view of an enormous, stunning loch. The still surface of the water was like a mirror, reflecting every detail of the sky above it. Tall, ancient trees lined its banks, and, between them, the stark white of a small building stood out from their dense green foliage. Mike tilted his head with the car’s movement around the loch and peered out at the building he knew so well.
“Hearthstone Cottage,” he said quietly.
The windows looked so dark, and so impenetrable, as though shrouding the cottage’s secrets from view.
“It looks…smaller than I’d imagined,” Helen said.
Kay hissed through her teeth. “Beautiful!” she exclaimed. “It looks freaking beautiful!”
Alex cracked a smile at her enthusiasm, playfully tousling her hair.
“Thank you for bringing us here,” Kay said softly and kissed Alex on the nose.
Alex’s eyes were taken off the road for just three seconds.
But three seconds was all it took.
“Alex!”
Helen’s horrified scream jolted Mike from the stunning view. He almost screamed too, from the sudden pain of her fingernails as they dug into the flesh of his forearm. The gasp died in his throat when he glanced through the windscreen. A massive, dark shape loomed dead ahead on the dirt road in front of them. It was a stag. Mike saw, almost in slow motion, steam rising from the creature’s back in subtle wisps like the smoke from his joint.
“Christ!” Alex yelled, gripping and yanking the steering wheel to the left.
The car drifted as it went into a skid. Mike felt the entire rear end of the vehicle lift from the ground. He saw the stag’s eyes, twinkling dark in the daylight. Then the car hit the dirt, righted itself on its new trajectory, avoiding the stag as it hurtled onward.
Mike heard the panicked cries of the others as the car crashed off the road. All at once, the interior of the vehicle became a tumbling metal barrel. Objects were strewn above Mike’s head as the car continued rolling, over the graveled edge and into the loch. The impact of the car in the water came as a massive thud, which shook the bodywork so hard that Mike felt sure the car would split open in the water.
The bodywork buckled at the sudden impact, water pressure distorting the doorframes and trapping them inside. Water flooded into the vehicle, dragging it farther down into the loch, and Mike became aware of each of his friends clawing desperately at door handles, trying with all their might to wrench them open.
Mike looked across at Helen and saw her nose bleeding profusely. Droplets of red fell onto her lip, and she spluttered—
Seeing movement, as if in a dream, Mike glanced to the front of the car and saw the Ordnance Survey map slide and fall from the dashboard—
In the passenger seat beside Alex, Kay was struggling and wriggling. Mike leaned forward and saw the extent of her panic. Her foot had become twisted and trapped under her seat. Alex had hold of her lower leg and was trying to work it free—
Mike saw the door release next to him and thumbed the catch. The impact had mashed the surrounding doorframe into a tangle of metal. His thumb was torn open by an exposed piece of metal. He lifted his thumb and watched as blood billowed, upward, from the wound—
He was aware only then that the car had completely filled with water, and he was drowning.
So much for a second chance, he thought.
Mike felt a hand at his shoulder and knew that it was Helen’s.
But he could hold on no longer. The pull of the void was too great. He gave himself over to the spiraling blackness of unconsciousness.
Opening his eyes, he found himself standing on the hearthstone once more. Or perhaps he had never left. The images played on in the black scrying mirror, and he watched, a captive audience watching four people trapped inside the sinking car.
You can go back if you want to, Meggie’s voice intoned, buzzing inside his ear with the incessancy of a fly. You can live.
“But?” Mike asked.
He knew there would be a ‘but’.
Clever Mikey. That’s a good wee laddie. You do have to choose. Helen or you, I’m afraid. That’s the way this works. More souls are needed. She won’t take no for an answer.
Mike wondered for a moment if Meggie meant the witch or the cottage before he asked, “And the child? Mine and Helen’s?”
If you choose Helen, then the life that’s sparking into existence within her will live on, too. For how long, no one can know. But the wee child will live.
“I’m sorry for what happened to you, Meggie. If I could change things back, start over, I would.”
Go you. I think you might even mean that, Mikey.
Mike watched as Alex, reflected in the mirror, beat his fists against the windscreen with all his might, unable to break free. In the back of the car, beside Mike’s unconscious body, he saw Helen pivot around side-on in her seat. Lifting her legs up, she kicked at the passenger window, her desperation increasing with each attempt.
“Go on, Helen,” Mike urged.
You made your choice then?
He nodded.
Goodbye, Mikey.
His heart raced to see hairline cracks begin to form where Helen had kicked the window. He held his breath, willing her to succeed with every atom of love he had left in him. Helen kicked again, hard, and the window gave way. Shards of glass erupted out and into the murk of the loch water.
Helen clambered out first, followed by Kay, who was helped out through the jagged escape route by Alex. Mike watched from somewhere deep inside as Alex turned to pull him out of the window. But the car began to sink farther toward the lochbed, and Mike saw the anguish in Alex’s eyes. The anguish when he realized that Mike was already dead.
After struggling free, Alex linked arms with Helen and Kay, and together they kicked out in the water, rising to the surface. And, as the mirror image faded, Mike saw his own body sinking, trapped inside the twisted hulk of the wrecked car. Sinking into the murk.
The mirror’s surface became an unyielding sheet of polished black glass once more, its inward curve holding all of the darkness inside of it. Hearing distant sounds, Mike took a few steps back from the hearthstone. The living room was bathed in stark, still light from the conservatory windows. Dust motes hung in the air, as if frozen in time.
Mike moved through the static space and over to the windows.
In the distance, beside the loch, he saw an ambulance, its lights flashing slowly. Helen and the others were being treated by a trio of paramedics. Metallic-silver thermal blankets had been draped around their shoulders to warm them after their ordeal in the cold waters of the loch. Edward and Jamie, with their Land Rover, were
helping the startled stag away from the roadside and toward the trees, where it could once more run free.
Hearing a distant bark, Mike saw Oscar trotting down to the lochside.
Two other shapes moved there, apparently unseen by his friends. The sunset red of Meggie’s hair glimmered on the breeze as she walked back into the encompassing waters of the loch. A little child walked with her, and Mike saw that they were holding hands. Trapped behind the glass of the window, he watched as they both slipped beneath the surface of the water and disappeared from his view.
Oscar barked, then ran up and onto the lane where he greeted Helen with enthusiastic tail wags. It felt good to see Helen petting Oscar and ruffling the fur around his ears.
It felt right.
But nothing else did.
Mike placed his palm against the glass, feeling the timeless throb of the cottage’s dark energy all around him. He saw Helen look up for a moment – saw her look straight at him.
Could she see his hand against the window?
She looked away, following Oscar as he scampered over to Alex and Kay.
Mike slammed his fists against the window as he called out to her soundlessly.
It was as though Helen had taken all the remaining light with her. Mike felt the room darken with gathering shadows, until he too was just a shadow.
Trapped inside Hearthstone Cottage forever.
About this book
This is a FLAME TREE PRESS BOOK
Text copyright © 2019 Frazer Lee
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
FLAME TREE PRESS, 6 Melbray Mews, London, SW6 3NS, UK, flametreepress.com
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
Thanks to the Flame Tree Press team, including: Taylor Bentley, Frances Bodiam, Federica Ciaravella, Don D’Auria, Chris Herbert, Josie Karani, Molly Rosevear, Will Rough, Mike Spender, Cat Taylor, Maria Tissot, Nick Wells, Gillian Whitaker. The cover is created by Flame Tree Studio with thanks to Nik Keevil and Shutterstock.com.
FLAME TREE PRESS is an imprint of Flame Tree Publishing Ltd. flametreepublishing.com. A copy of the CIP data for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
HB ISBN: 978-1-78758-327-6, PB ISBN: 978-1-78758-325-2, ebook ISBN: 978-1-78758-328-3 | Also available in FLAME TREE AUDIO | Created in London and New York
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