Highland Tales Series Box Set

by Rory B. Byrne

  Every day following the incident was one day further away from getting back to the truth. Somehow, Harper Biel managed to crossover, just like her mother; there was something special about the girl.

  Simon stopped henpecking the keyboard on the laptop. He had a private room in the large hospital. Arranged and paid for by Equinox Technologies, Simon had everything he needed, including the company phone and laptop. Brian refused the recovered data from the incident. Simon had to wait for access. Until he recovered fully, Brian had his best people analyzing the data. Brian had hinted that there was new evidence.

  “How are you feeling?”

  It was the night intern. A young lady, easy on the eyes with a pasty complexion because she had sacrificed day for night, looked after Simon. He tolerated her more than other staff. She brought him tea and snacks.

  Simon looked up from the laptop. He saved the data and closed the cover. It was a little after three in the morning. Rain tapped at the window that overlooked Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Shieldhall, a southwestern province of Glasgow.

  “I am well, thank you.” He didn’t mean to be curt with the woman. It had something to do with Simon’s lack of appreciating social interaction. She turned to leave.

  “I could use a cup of tea,” he added quickly. “You could join me.”

  She smiled and nodded lightly. The intern departed the room, and Simon only considered how simple it was to pass through the doorway into his room. From the glimpses of Harper’s disappearance, he saw the similarities in walking from one place to the other.

  Brian hired Simon because he was the best at Scottish dialects, Gaelic, and historical accuracies within the region. Simon knew Equinox Technologies had investors from all over the world. Silent partners accepted Brian’s management of the site because the man knew more than he ever shared with anyone, and people gave him money for it. It was a gift Simon never understood. Brian said he had secrets, things he couldn’t share with the rest of the world. Somehow, he whispered enough to the right people, and they funded his ongoing research.

  Simon knew the moment Phoebe Biel arrived at the site all those years ago that she was more than a research assistant. Though Simon never admitted it to anyone, even if they pulled off his other arm, Phoebe meant more to him than life itself.

  “Here you go,” she said. The nurse put down a napkin and a hot mug on the tray table next to the laptop.

  “Thank you, Karen.” Simon pulled at the string in the mug, making the teabag dance in hot water.

  “Are you thinking about 3D armatures?” she asked. Karen noticed the brochure for the artificial limb on the stack of files from Equinox.

  Simon understood she wanted small talk. It was therapeutic. That was something the psychologist had suggested. Simon needed healthy conversation with people. He needed to feel a part of their world as much as he had to allow people into his world. Simon thought he had to tolerate more people than he liked until they released him from university care. Brian footed the bills, Simon had to heal. The tendons and nerves around the trauma area caused him muscle spasms and sometimes excruciating cramping. There were certain bodily functions that he hadn’t yet learned to control, and until that happened, Brian didn’t want Simon back.

  “I think I’ll find something useful.”

  Karen approached the bed. She had sad eyes, Simon thought. There was something about her social distancing from other interns and nurses. Karen said she didn’t have time for a lot of the medical staff because she had studies. Simon thought Karen wasn’t a socialite by choice. It didn’t have to do with textbooks and medical education.

  “You should get something flashy,” she said. “They come in a variety of colors. I read they have different attachments for the hand portion.”

  Karen moved closer to examine the bandages. Simon smelled the coconut conditioner Karen used. He liked that it wasn’t the smell of disinfectant and astringent. She probed the padding and bandages. Simon barely felt her delicate fingers against the gauze.

  “You are incredibly lucky,” she said.

  “A few surgeons said the same to me.”

  “Your accident, since it involved high heat, managed to cauterize the area.”

  Simon nodded. “It was electricity.”

  “Oh? That’s interesting.” Karen lingered closer to Simon’s bed without touching him. Her hands slipped into the pockets of the blue lab coat over her thin shoulders. She looked at him. “Did it hurt?”

  “I barely remember it,” he said. It wasn’t something medical staff usually asked. Karen had a particular interest in his wounds. “It’s strange that I still feel it. I think about it like it sometimes itches or I’m grabbing for something. I sit here typing with one hand, and I’m thinking about using two hands. I want to grab my mug with my right hand, and it takes a few seconds before I use my left.”

  “Whatever happened to you, Simon, it didn’t change anything about you,” she said. It was oral psychology. Had it come from anyone else, Simon didn’t want to hear it.

  “Thank you.”

  “I should let you get some sleep,” she said. Karen stepped away from the bed. “I’ll go do my rounds and get back to my studying.”

  “You—you don’t have to leave,” he said.

  Karen’s pale face, wrapped in wispy blond hair, brightened slightly. She nodded and hovered by the bed. Simon managed to keep her company but had nothing to offer for conversation. He remembered the mug on the tray table.

  “Thank you for the tea.” He sipped at it, nodding.

  “You are welcome, Simon.”

  “How is the studying?”

  She shrugged. “My internship is ending within the next few months,” she said. “I’ll have a choice of locations. Are you staying in Glasgow?”

  “No. As soon as I’m able, I’ll return to Inverness. I want to get back to work.”

  “Are you going back to the same job? Won’t that be difficult?” She pulled her hands from her pockets and waved them slightly.

  Simon laughed. It was an unexpected sensation that felt like a weight lifting off his chest.

  “My job doesn’t entitle me to use two hands. As long as I have a head on my shoulders, I don’t think missing an arm will hinder my work.”

  “What is it you do?” she asked.

  The accident, whatever had happened to Simon, wasn’t common knowledge in the university hospital. He had privacy and funding. No one asked questions. If it didn’t involve Simon’s recovery, then it wasn’t part of the treatment. It meant he didn’t have to share, and no one knew his history.

  “I’m a professor of Scottish history—well, that’s a lie. I was a professor. I work exclusively for Equinox Technologies now.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a research facility that looks into advanced technologies based on quantum mechanics.”

  Karen waited as if expecting a punchline. Her hands went into the coat pockets again. “What does that have to do with Scottish antiquity?” she asked.

  “That is an excellent question,” Simon said. “I wondered that for a while myself. And if I told you that my real work was classified and top secret, would you think I’m coy or bragging?”

  Karen tilted her head to the right, a little. Her thin blond hair barely moved on her shoulder.

  “I respect secrecy. I think there’s reason to keep some secrets.”

  “I appreciate that,” Simon said.

  He smiled. Karen returned the smile. As Karen lingered, Simon realized she expected more of him. It wasn’t the nondisclosure agreement that made Simon hold back on sharing things with anyone. It had to do with what happened to his arm; the disappearance of both women profoundly affected him. It wasn’t the shocking amputation that caused Simon to reconsider his choices in life. A near-death experience affected people way more than he cared to kno
w. What happened to Simon, what took away Phoebe and her daughter, Simon was at the center of it.

  Everything that happened between Phoebe’s disappearance and the disappearance of Harper came down to a fundamental understanding that alluded to Brian from the very beginning—opening the doorway, passing through to the other side. It had as much to do with the location as who they used as a conduit.

  For the last eight years, trying to replicate the change of events that took Phoebe from the earth, had they known it was in the genes, Harper would have joined her mother sooner. Given they had two chances to open the portal, they understood the link. Brian wanted Simon back at the site because they understood much more. Brian had people working day and night on securing the mound, creating a functioning doorway.

  “I am ready to get out of here,” he said.

  Of course, Simon could leave any time he wanted. But he still had much to learn. He had to control the pain. Simon had to learn to walk again. His weight and balance had changed drastically.

  “You’re progressing very well,” Karen said. “I suspect you’ll be ready to leave sooner than you think.” There was a twinkle in Karen’s eyes that made Simon’s heart flutter as she left the room.

  Alone again, Simon opened the laptop. He scanned the notes and added more details. He found it difficult to concentrate. The twinkle from Karen made him consider a life half lived.

  Simon once fell in love with a woman who had a family in the United States. There was something charismatic about Phoebe. She had an intoxicating presence. It was an unrequited love. Phoebe had communication problems with her husband, but she was forever devoted to her family.

  Simon lost a lot of sleep over the years following Phoebe’s disappearance. For the first few months, the local police dogged him whenever he left the facility. One of the constables believed Simon had something to do with Phoebe’s disappearance. It took Brian’s bottomless wealth and his forethought to place Phoebe outside Scotland.

  The night of the incident, Simon witnessed the event. Phoebe left not only the facility but Scotland. Only Simon and Brian knew that the woman, who left behind a bewildered husband and an abandoned daughter, didn’t abscond to a forgotten Scandinavian township. When Phoebe left Scotland, it wasn’t by her own means. And now it had happened again.

  Simon considered the turn of events that brought a rebellious girl face to face with him eight years following her mother’s vanishing. Then Harper Biel follows her mother into the unknown. It hurt Simon’s brain, thinking about all the variables that put Harper in the same exact place as her mother.

  In the short time he got to know Phoebe—long enough to fall in love with the woman—Simon knew she’d have something witty to say about how math factored into everything that happened.

  Simon yawned and stretched and winced. While he felt two arms rise in the air with the stretch, only his left responded. The socket and remaining pieces of his right arm caused a jolt of painful fire to shoot across his clavicle and chest.

  Simon closed the laptop again. He pressed the nurse’s call. He needed pain management again. He knew since Karen was on duty, she’d authorize the release of medication. Simon closed his eyes, waiting. He knew Karen would return to his room. Perhaps before she arrived, he’d think of something to talk about and keep her close by for a few minutes more. What was it about Karen that made Simon feel like there was hope for something he never thought about after Phoebe?

  Lost

  I think going from 100mph to 0 felt a lot like I did when I opened my eyes. For the longest time, I lay very still because I couldn’t tell if I was upright or upside-down. I didn’t know if I was alive or dead. The world tilted too many directions at once. It was hard to keep track of everything with all the floating stars in my line of sight.

  I didn’t have any experience with lightning strikes or falling out of airplanes, but I felt like both happened to me at the same time. The hammering of my heart thundered in my ears and over the mild tinnitus from—well, I don’t know what. The openness of the cavern where I froze recumbent suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

  The sensation on the left side of my body reminded me I was alive. It was icy cold and squishy under me. I blinked several times in the open darkness. I wasn’t inside of a cavern or a Quonset hut. I lay in a muddy hole scooped out of the earth. The deep, water-filled bowl was nothing more than a wide divot that blended with the surrounding countryside. I lifted, pushing off the ground with my hands in the water. I took a long look around for Amy and the stranger who grabbed me.

  Not only had they vanished, but the ultimate magic trick was on me, because I wasn’t anywhere near the place I started. It was dark. I was outside, and the air had a scent. Its texture was crisp, like Highland air, unhampered by urban pollution.

  Overhead, I didn’t see the Quonset dome but extraordinarily bright stars. It was as if I was a little closer to them, or the night sky didn’t have that constant film of greenhouse gasses. Somewhere along the way, I’d lost consciousness. Maybe the stranger got the jump on me, knocked me in the head, and threw me outside.

  I wanted to call out to Amy. Scanning the black cutout of vegetation around me, I thought to wait. We’d broken the law by trespassing. If we were in America, the guy had every right to shoot us inside the building. I hoped, once thinking that horrible thought, that he called the police to have us arrested.

  “Amy,” I whispered. It was as if I had no voice. The rolling inky landscape went on forever. I knew the irregular black blotches against the surrounding horizon were mountains because their shapes cut strips in the starry sky.

  There were no insects. The midges that had annoyed us, making our way into the facility, didn’t swarm me now. I stood very still on wobbly legs, my clothes completely mud-soaked through my entire left side where I’d landed. I felt the chilling bite of wetness creeping through the layers of clothing.

  “Hello?” I whispered. “Amy?”

  My eyes adjusted to the darkness. The patching varying levels of shady black turned into hazy details of gravel, mud, scrub brush, and something long and familiar lying near where I woke up.

  The outdoor ambient light wasn’t like artificial light. After a while, eyesight remembers what it was like before electricity. More of the surrounding area came up in detail. The object on the ground, the one that caught my attention and rooted me, was once alive. At first, I thought the impossible. Then the impossible began wholly real but utterly improbable.

  “I’m thinking like Mom now,” I said. It didn’t matter if someone heard me or not. I needed to hear something other than the incredible quietness of my inner monologue and the endless terrain.

  I felt a wave of chills rocket through me. This time it wasn’t from the cold. It happened because the human arm lying on the ground belonged to the guy who grabbed me.

  A frosty panic kicked me in the stomach. I tried making sense of the last few minutes. My mind was as soggy as my clothes.

  “Chaos defined,” I said. It was a term Mom used to explain ordinary mishaps, like spilled milk. What would she say about what happened to me and why a man’s severed arm showed up randomly?

  “Hello? Angry guy?” I raised my voice a little calling out again. “Sorry about your arm.”

  I felt the breeze flowing into the muddy pit. The nylon jacket helped diffuse some of the chill, but I had gotten wet lying in muck. The black cutout silhouette of the strange landscape was incredulous and impassible in a lot of directions.

  Aside from the skull-breaking headache, and the rusty nails knotting in my stomach, I was alive. I don’t know if the same worked for the man who had grabbed me in the cavern.

  I had to climb out of the gouged earth. But first, I had to decide what to do with the man’s arm. If he wasn’t coming back to get it, I felt obligated to make sure nothing came looking for finger food. I didn’t know anything about predation in Scotland. It w
as easy in New York. We had raccoons, bears, coyotes, even loose neighborhood dogs that weren’t picky, who would run off with leftover scraps.

  “I’m not carrying that around with me,” I said. “It’s not my fault.” But it was, I knew. Somehow, I caused that man to lose an arm. I knew it in my sour guts.

  I took a deep breath. I made up my mind and squatted to pick up the limb by the fabric-covered forearm.

  “Ew,” I grumbled. It was surprisingly heavy.

  I carried it extended away from me with my left hand while using my right arm to claw my way out of the mud hole. From the rim, I looked back at the perfectly carved half-sphere in the ground. It was as if a gigantic ice cream scoop pulled a sizable helping of earth from the hole and dropped me in its place.

  I had my hiking boots, a nylon windbreaker, and a man’s severed arm. I think if the police found me now, they’d tag me as a serial killer looking to dispose of the leftovers.

  I moved to the drier rocky area and selected a secluded place to bury the man’s arm. I doubted, given the circumstances, he was coming back to reclaim it.

  I didn’t move very far away from the pit in the ground. I thought if someone came looking for me, if I waited long enough, either someone would call out, or the sun would eventually rise. I got one, but not the other.

  When the sun finally breached the Highland mountains to the east, I knew I wasn’t anywhere near the facility, Inverness, or Eskdale. The uncultivated land had high, dense, meandering scraps of grassy wedges and scrubby vegetation. Patches of peat clung to the rocky surfaces around my boots. The breeze swept through, and the cloudy sky overhead splashed me with sporadic icy raindrops.

  I knew the time to move had come when my stomach settled, my head calmed, and my ears stopped ringing. It did no good to call out because the low vegetation surrounding me gave way to the rolling hills and the eventual mountains in the distance. I was deep in a Highland valley without company, without civilization.

  “If I wait here, I don’t think anyone will find me,” I said. It helped to talk out loud because the whirlwind of noise inside my head fought between panic and logic.