The Lighthouse Witches

by C. J. Cooke

  I decided to store the paintbrushes and protective clothing in the lantern room, just in case the ground floor flooded again. It was dark, but my torchlight fell on something that definitely hadn’t been there the day before.

  On the floor was a white triangle made up of three objects.

  I bent down carefully to take a look at it, retracing my steps in my mind. No, the lantern room had definitely been empty. I’d have spotted such a thing if it had been there.

  Bones. The triangle was made out of three delicate animal bones, perhaps the leg bones of a fox, crisscrossed in the shape of a triangle.

  Someone had been here. And they’d left me a message.

  Or a warning.

  Just then, there was a noise from below. A loud creak, then a slam. Footsteps.

  Someone was inside.

  I felt sick. I listened, my heart roaring in my ears, for the sound of the footsteps. They were heavy and slow. So, definitely not one of my children.

  There was no way out of the lantern room, and nowhere to hide. I was trapped. I would have to pray that whoever it was would leave. Or I’d have to confront them.

  I’d like to say that I screwed my courage to the sticking-place and went out to confront the intruder, but I was terrified. What kind of person would come out on a stormy night to a derelict lighthouse? The sort of person who would also kill an animal to make some horrible symbol like the one lying in front of me. I squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted it all just to go away.

  And then, a sound. A tune. Whoever was downstairs was humming.

  It was a familiar song. I opened my eyes, utterly confused. Was that . . . ABBA?

  I raced out to the top of the stairs and shone my torch down the stairs.

  “Who’s there?”

  A loud clatter followed, and several loud expletives. My torchlight fell on a man. He’d fallen flat on his arse and was holding his hand up against my torchlight. I moved quickly down the stairs, much faster than I should have.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” I said, when I reached the bottom. I took pleasure in shining my torchlight directly in his eyes. Built like a tank, he looked like a Viking—a thick copper beard, a round belly stretching the fabric of an Iron Maiden T-shirt, long amber hair pulled back into a ponytail, tattoos covering his hands. Just then, a horrible thought occurred to me.

  “Are you . . . the owner, Patrick Roberts?” I said, lowering my torch.

  “Finn McAllen. Isla said you’d need of a plasterer.” He had a deep, booming voice that bounced off the walls. “I can come back later if that’s easier . . .”

  “No, no,” I said. “The dead of night is absolutely the right time for checking out a lighthouse . . .”

  “It’s only eight o’clock,” he said. “I came as soon as I finished my other job.”

  “You’ve not been in earlier?” I said, thinking back to the bones. “There was something left in the lantern room . . .”

  “Nope,” he said, dusting himself off. “I had a big job on today. I told Isla I’d have come sooner but it’s been manic . . .”

  So he hadn’t left the bones upstairs. That is, if he was telling the truth. I watched him carefully in the cold glare of the torchlight.

  “You’re here to see what plastering needs doing, correct?”

  “Correct. Isla mentioned the place is getting a mural or something painted inside. You’re the painter, I take it?”

  “Yes.”

  “OK,” he said, in a way that suggested he was expecting a different answer. “Show me what needs doing.”

  Everything, I thought, but instead I pointed the torch at the sections of the stonework that I couldn’t paint over, not without the mural looking disjointed and uneven. We took the stairs and climbed to the first turn.

  “Place is a mess,” he said, wobbling the banister.

  “Please don’t do that,” I said. “You’re likely to pull it off.”

  “Sorry. I thought Roberts would have sorted the place out before getting it decorated.”

  “I think it would take quite a while to sort this place out.”

  “Not at all,” he said with a sniff. “Dynamite would sort it in seconds.”

  “Oh, before I forget,” I said, shining the torch up at the bats flitting in the high corners beneath the lantern room. “I need to get someone out here to take care of the bats.”

  “You mean, take care of the bats or take care of the bats?” he said, drawing his finger across his throat at the second repeat.

  “I don’t want them harmed. But I’ve no idea if the paint will bother them.” As I said this, a large bat flitted closely overhead, making us both duck.

  “I think they’ll bother you more than you’ll bother them,” he said, chuckling. “I’ll take care of them. I do a bit of pest control, on the side.”

  “Didn’t you say you do plastering on the side?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “There’s a lot of ‘on the side’ when you live on an island.”

  “You’ve dealt with bats before?”

  He shrugged. “Not much I haven’t dealt with. Bats, seals, the occasional whale . . .”

  “A whale isn’t a pest, surely.”

  “It was a joke.”

  He had a dry sense of humor, which I appreciated more than I let on. “How soon can you start?”

  He produced a notepad and pen from his pocket and jotted something down. “Tomorrow, if I move some things around. I can’t do much about the time it takes plaster to dry.”

  “I can start painting over here if you want to plaster that section first.”

  He didn’t answer, but spent a long while checking the walls with his fingertips, pulling at loose bits of stone. “Been a while since I’ve been inside,” he said.

  “You know the Longing well?”

  He placed a hand thoughtfully on the newel post. “He said it took him a year to make this.”

  “Who?”

  He turned to me. “My great-grandfather. He made this banister. The whole thing. A hundred yards of iron. Beaten and welded by hand. There might even be a picture of him here.” He strode over to the wall behind the staircase, and I followed. My torchlight fell on a small gallery of picture frames. It was the first time I’d noticed them. “There he is.” He wiped the glass with his fingertips. “Angus McAllen.”

  “He was a lighthouse keeper,” I said, noticing the photographs of men posed in their uniforms.

  Finn nodded. “Aye.”

  “Your family ran the Longing?”

  “Not for a long time, now. They cut the shipping routes. The Longing was decommissioned after that.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Hardly your fault, is it?” he said. “My family owns—owned—the Longing and ten acres around the bay. Even the wee bothy you’re staying in. It got passed down to me.”

  He went to say more, but stopped short, busying himself with his inspection of the walls. I figured it was difficult for him, being here.

  A hired plasterer instead of the owner.

  II

  I barely slept that night. I couldn’t help but mentally play out the scene of someone creeping past the bothy and into the Longing, clutching a pile of bones, wanting to scare me off. Wanting to threaten me.

  The next morning, after the school run, I resolved to call Isla and get her take on the matter. But exhaustion rendered me barely coherent—I babbled down the line at her about bones and triangles and naked children. “I was wondering if you’d heard anything,” I said. “From the locals about me being here. I know a single mother with three kids moving into the area doesn’t always go down well . . .”

  “Why don’t you come over?” she said. “We’ll have a cuppa and a chat.”

  Isla lived on the other side of the island. I found the south side more charming than the nort
h, with a coastline scooped out by white beaches and turquoise sea. Sailing boats swayed in the port, and a row of pretty terraced houses painted in different colors—pink, blue, yellow, lilac, and orange—lined the street overlooking the North Sea. Isla’s house was at the end of a long driveway, a large barn conversion with immaculate gardens. Isla greeted me at the door and led me to the sitting room, where I found her daughter, Rowan, curled up in a white armchair with a tub of ice cream and a blanket. She was watching Friends.

  “Row’s off school today, as you can see,” Isla told me. Rowan turned and gave us both a beaming, contented smile, which only served to make Isla cock an eyebrow disapprovingly. “Period pains never called for a day off when I was young. But here we are.”

  “Olivia,” Rowan said as I sat on the sofa opposite. “I hope you don’t mind me saying, but your aura is dark. Is something wrong?”

  I looked to Isla, not quite sure how to respond. It seemed like this was her usual kind of query posed to household guests.

  “I . . . found a few odd things in the Longing,” I said carefully. “I suppose I’m unnerved by it.”

  Rowan nodded sympathetically, her gazed fixed above my head. “Yes. When I heard you were coming, I put a rowan branch on the door. “

  “That was you?” I said, surprised. “What a kind gesture.”

  “The Longing is super grim,” Rowan said. “I could come and cleanse it for you, if you like?”

  “Cleanse?” I said. I heard Isla sigh behind me.

  “It probably has a lot of negative energy. You should really cleanse it before you start work. I’m a witch, you see. Didn’t Sapphire tell you?”

  “As in, Wiccan?”

  Row shook her head, her large blue eyes wide. “No, not Wiccan. I’m a green witch. It’s very different.”

  “Off you go, Rowan,” Isla said, irritated.

  Rowan threw me a shy smile and gathered up her blanket. “I’ll come and do a cleanse anytime, just let me know.” And she floated off.

  “Righty-ho,” Isla said, closing the door and handing me a cup of tea. She sat down and cocked her head. “You sounded very panicked on the phone, my dear. Walk me through what happened.”

  I told her about the bones in the lantern room. They definitely weren’t there the day after we arrived, so sometime between then and yesterday someone had put them there.

  She pursed her lips at this. “Very strange. I can imagine why you’re so rattled.”

  I exhaled deeply at this. I worried that I’d overreacted.

  “You know, any other time I’d have said Mr. Roberts left them, but he’s at sea just now.”

  “Why would Mr. Roberts leave bones in the lantern room?”

  She pulled a face. “He’s a bit of an odd one, that Roberts. Folk aren’t keen on him, keep their distance.”

  Now I was even more puzzled. “But . . . you work for him?”

  “Doesn’t mean I’m bosom buddies with the man,” she said. Then, leaning close: “If anything, I work for him to keep a close eye, see what he’s up to. You’ve never met him, have you?”

  “No. I heard about the commission through a friend . . .”

  She nodded. “I see. Nobody knows anything about him. Keeps his cards close to his chest, you see. The island’s mystery millionaire. And right now, I can tell you he’s out at sea.”

  I nodded, a little uneasy at what she’d said about Mr. Roberts. “You said the Longing had been vandalized before. Do you think it might be the same people?”

  “I can’t be sure. Like I said, I’m sure it was outsiders that graffitied the place. Tourists, you ken.”

  “Why couldn’t it have been someone local?”

  She sighed. “To be completely honest with you, most folk around here are too afraid to go near the Longing.”

  “Why?”

  “It has a wee bit of a history, that place.”

  I thought back to my visit to the Neolithic museum. “I’ve heard it was named for people who were grieving?”

  Isla folded her arms and pursed her lips, visibly weighing up how to shortcut to the parts of history that mattered. “A long time ago, the people that lived here burned a number of women who were accused of witchcraft. The accused were held until their trials at the site where the Longing is now.”

  I thought about the hole I’d found, covered by the metal grille. The thought of people being held down there made me shiver. “Were they held underground?’

  A nod. “I believe so.”

  “But that was hundreds of years ago,” I said. “Surely people aren’t afraid for that reason?”

  Isla gave a little laugh. “Ah, well . . . when one of the witches was being burned at the stake, she cursed the island. Soon after that, things started happening that were . . . frightening. And folk have been wary ever since.”

  I frowned. “What things?”

  “Look, I don’t think the bones are anything to worry about. I tend to know most of the goings-on in this place and I’m fairly sure there’s no one who poses a threat to you. It’s probably animals. Maybe some kids having a lark.”

  “What about a young child?” I said, thinking back to what I’d seen in the lantern room the day that I pushed Saffy. “Would a young child from the island be deterred from going inside?”

  “No wains live near the bay,” she said, puzzled. “Are you sure you saw one?”

  I faltered. I couldn’t say I was sure.

  “You mention that people here are still wary,” I said. “That the island was cursed. You don’t believe that, do you?”

  She flicked her hair. Isla could be direct all day long, but wasn’t keen on receiving it. “I can appreciate that a ‘curse’ sounds very dramatic from the outside, but when you start to see the evidence . . .”

  “What evidence?”

  She lowered her eyes. “About thirty years ago, a child went missing on the island. My wee brother, Jamie.”

  “Oh, Isla,” I said, horrified. “That’s terrible.”

  A small sigh, and I could she was growing upset. “I was sixteen. We all adored him. He was only two. We were playing in the rock pools on the bay all afternoon. One minute he was there and the next . . .” She pressed her fingers to her mouth. “We searched everywhere. Every inch of the island was covered. My parents never got over it.”

  “I can imagine,” I said. “What a terrible thing to happen.”

  “Sadly, it wasn’t the first time a child went missing. And it wasn’t the last. About a year after we lost Jamie, another child went missing. A German family. The husband was here doing research at the Neolithic site. Little girl.” She moved her eyes to a corner of the room, lost in a memory. “And then, another child. Wee Cam Maguire. Bonniest lad you’ve ever seen. Seven years old. Mother went out of her mind looking for him. But they never did find him.”

  I took this in. “Can I ask a personal question?”

  “Of course.”

  “If these things keep happening, why do you still live here?”

  I asked it gently, hoping not to offend her. She raised her eyebrows. “Well, you can see for yourself how beautiful Lòn Haven is. And I think I inherited some of my mother’s stubbornness. My family has lived here for centuries. If you think I’m going to let something as small as a witch’s curse send me packing, you’ve another think coming.” She rallied, clapping her hands together. “Now then, how about that dram?”

  III

  I avoided the lantern room after that, with the exception of a quick dash inside to retrieve the paintbrushes I’d left there. I spotted the bones, still on the floor, and darted out again, as though I might be able to erase the whole incident by simply closing my eyes to it.

  Finn was already at the Longing when I arrived. He was dressed in overalls, prepping plaster in a bucket. A small radio played heavy metal music. He turned it dow
n as I entered.

  “Morning,” he said, lifting a white cardboard box and holding it out to me.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “Seeing as you’re a visitor to Scotland, my daughter Cassie and I made some shortbread last night.”

  “How kind,” I said. “Thank you.”

  A quick bow. “You’re most welcome.”

  The shortbread broke the ice, and it felt better to work alongside someone here, especially since Isla’s history lesson had made me feel creeped out by the thought of women in a dungeon underneath us. On the wallpaper table, I spread the pencil outline I’d done of the mural on a sheet of paper. “What is that?” Finn asked.

  “Oh, it’s the mural.”

  He screwed his face up. “The mural? Bit small, isn’t it?”

  “It’s an outline,” I said dryly, and he chuckled.

  He stepped closer, looking at it curiously. “What is it? Prince’s new name?”

  “I’m just the artist. Mr. Roberts wants it painted, and that’s what he’ll get.”

  “Hope he’s paying well enough.”

  “Enough to keep my girls in pony magazines.”

  “Your girls? How many?”

  “Three. My youngest’s seven. Clover. Luna’s nine, and Saffy’s fifteen.”

  “Fifteen,” he said with a whistle. “Cassie’s ten and I’m already feeling like I’m in that scene in Jaws. You know, ‘We’re gonna need a bigger boat’?”

  “She’s ten? She must be in Luna’s class at school, then.”

  “Not at school. She’s still recovering.”

  “Recovering?”

  He stepped back from the plasterwork, wiped his brow. “She had leukemia last year. That’s, uh, the reason I sold this place. The doctors here said they couldn’t do anything more for her. But I found a doctor in America who had this fancy new treatment. So I took her out there, paid for the treatment. And, uh, she’s still here.”

  I could tell he felt awkward telling me this. He was sharing with me, and not just the news of his daughter’s illness, either—he had given up his inheritance for her.