The Last Witness

by Claire McFall

  Doubt was written across his face.

  “You don’t believe me,” I accused.

  “I don’t think you’d lie,” he hedged.

  I scowled. That wasn’t the same thing. “You think I imagined it.”

  He made a face that was easy to interpret: yes, but that’s not what you want to hear.

  No, it wasn’t.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. His hand reached out to press against my forehead; a pointless gesture as his skin was so much hotter than mine. “Do you feel chilled? Overheated? Sick to your stomach?”

  I pulled away from his touch.

  “No,” I replied, somewhat frostily.

  He chewed on his lip as he considered me. “I’m sorry, Heather, it just sounds a little—”

  “Crazy,” I finished for him.

  He grimaced at me, his eyes apologetic.

  “But this…” He turned the brooch over in his hands. “This is weird. How did it get there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said as I sat down, watching the way the light reflected on the coppery surface. “Don’t you think it’s kind of a funny coincidence?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It being there, right there, at the cove. Maybe… Maybe it’s linked.”

  “Linked?”

  I paused, not sure I was ready to admit my theory. Even to me it sounded nuts.

  “Think about where we got this,” I said, hoping he’d guess what I was thinking so I wouldn’t have to say it.

  “The cairn?”

  “The burial cairn,” I reminded him.

  “But it was just left there,” he argued. “It can’t have been there long; it’s not even old.”

  “It looked old when you pulled it out,” I argued.

  “Yeah, but that must have just been dirt. Look at it now. Metal doesn’t stay all shiny like this, not for that length of time. Not left outside.”

  I knew he was right, but I still couldn’t let it go.

  “But everything that’s happened… It’s all been since we found it.”

  “You think…” His lips twitched as he sat and, even with everything that was going on, I knew he was laughing at me. “You think the brooch is causing all of this?”

  “Don’t you think it’s a little strange that we steal this, then just after it—and I mean, like, just hours after it—everything starts going wrong?”

  “It’s just a coincidence, Heather,” he said quietly. “Nothing more.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said obstinately. I felt stupid, my cheeks flooding with red, but I plowed resolutely on. “Right after we find it, Martin goes AWOL, the Volvo dies, and you sprain your ankle. Then you chuck it away, and Darren goes missing at the beach where it washes up, Emma goes crazy, and I—” I broke off, ground my teeth together.

  I was getting angry, annoyed that Dougie wouldn’t even consider my words. He hadn’t been this derisive when Emma had told her insane story. Why wouldn’t he even consider mine?

  “Heather—”

  I didn’t let him finish, sure he was going to try to persuade me I was talking nonsense.

  “Dougie, what if we’ve…woken something?”

  “Heather, there’s nothing here.” Dougie leaned forward in his chair, forcing me to meet his gaze. “It’s just us. Maybe—”

  “I didn’t imagine it,” I said. “It could be…what you were saying. About the druids.”

  “That was a story, Heather!” Dougie exclaimed. Then he took a deep breath, obviously reining in his emotions. “Look. I believe you think you saw what you say you did,” he said, and I glowered at his careful wording. “But maybe you’re not able to separate what’s real and what’s not right now. I mean, when I was dizzy before, I didn’t even know where I was for a minute.”

  “I’m not getting sick,” I repeated stubbornly.

  “You might be, and you just don’t know it yet,” he insisted. “I was fine right up until I wasn’t. Heather”—he reached one hand up to rub his forehead, which was shiny with sweat—“you’re talking about the supernatural here. Spirits and entities and stuff. I mean, just last night you said Emma was losing it. Now you, what, agree with her?”

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. I wasn’t quite ready to align myself with Emma. I certainly hadn’t seen anything like she’d described. But I was maybe willing to think about it with a more open mind. But she just…she just seemed so unstable right now. It was difficult to believe anything she said.

  “I’m not crazy.”

  I hadn’t heard Emma coming out of the tent, but when I whipped my head around at the sound of her voice, she was standing just a few feet behind us.

  “Emma, you’re awake,” Dougie commented, his voice falsely cheerful, and I knew he was wondering the same thing I was: how long had Emma been standing there listening?

  “I’m not crazy,” she repeated, moving forward, footsteps silent in the sand. “That thing I saw… It was real, and it was there.” We watched in silence as she rounded the firepit and lowered herself slowly into one of the remaining chairs. She was wearing the clothes I’d helped her dress in earlier, but now they were creased, her sweater hanging messily from one shoulder. Her hair was tousled, not in the casual, I-just-got-out-of-bed style that I knew she spent hours creating, but as if she didn’t know what she looked like and didn’t care. The makeup she’d put on at least a day before was now halfway down her face.

  She looked older than I’d ever seen her. It was in her eyes: as if she’d witnessed true horror. They were frightened and sad and resigned all in one, and I didn’t like looking at them. I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away though.

  “Tell me again what you saw,” I demanded.

  Now that she was calmer, I hoped I’d get something a little more concrete than the hysterical fragments Dougie and I had had to piece together the night before.

  But Emma didn’t answer. She was looking at me oddly, head cocked to the side, eyes slightly tightened. “What happened?” she asked me.

  “What?”

  “Something happened to you. What was it? Was it the cove? Did you go back there? Did you see something?”

  “I’m…not sure.”

  “Tell me,” she ordered.

  I recounted my story again. Emma’s eyes widened in surprise and fear, then settled into a mixture of satisfaction and resignation. “I told you,” she said when I finished. Then, with more feeling, “I told you!”

  “I didn’t see a…thing,” I insisted, uncomfortable corroborating her story when it still seemed so unbelievable.

  “But you think there’s something going on. I heard what you said before,” she added as I opened my mouth to argue.

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled pathetically, aware of Dougie’s eyes watching me closely. I took a breath. “I think we should just get the hell out of here.”

  Nobody argued with that.

  Though it was tempting to hide out in our tent during our final hours on the beach, none of us wanted to leave the fire. It wasn’t just for the heat, though I was so cold it had settled right into my bones and Dougie was shaking uncontrollably, fever tricking his body into thinking everything was cold, even my arms around his shoulder, desperately trying to warm him.

  We huddled by the fire. The world around us was cloaked in ominous shades of gray. Slowly, that darkened into unfriendly, threatening black.

  We didn’t talk much. After appearing almost normal earlier, Emma had retreated back inside her head and was quietly humming to herself as she gazed into the flames. Dougie looked like it was all he could do to stay awake, although he’d resisted my attempts to get him to go and lie down. I didn’t push the matter. His presence, even weak and dizzy and barely conscious, was a comfort. As for me, I spent my time scrutinizing every inch of the brooch. Tilting it at an angle, I use
d the flickering glare from the flames to throw the engravings into sharp relief. Twisting it this way and that, I tried to make sense of the squiggles and shapes. I wasn’t sure why, but I remained convinced that the little circlet, small but big enough to almost fill my palm, was somehow if not responsible, then at least connected to everything that was going on.

  They were so strange though, those markings. Unrecognizable, but not random. Undaunted, I continued to try to decipher them, spinning the brooch around, peering at it from different perspectives, attempting to force the loops and irregular angles to become something that made sense.

  “You know,” I said slowly, squinting down at it, “if you look at this the right way, that part kind of looks like a man.”

  “What?” Dougie turned to me, his eyes half-shut, jaw juddering. He sniffed, pulling his second sweater tighter around his shoulders, but looked down at where I was pointing.

  “The brooch,” I said, ignoring when he sighed. “This part here.” I held it out for his inspection. Rather than straining to see across the short space between us, he pulled it from my grasp.

  I watched him rotate it this way and that.

  “Maybe,” he said. “You mean this part in the middle of the flames?”

  “Flames?” I blinked. “What flames?”

  “Yeah, these parts.” He pointed to jagged scratches that I hadn’t been able to decipher. “They’re flames, right?”

  I wasn’t sure—they didn’t look very flame-like to me—but I remembered how easily Dougie had interpreted the cairn when I had seen nothing more than a jumble of stones.

  “Sure,” I mumbled.

  “And these look like gifts.”

  Gifts? I snatched it back from him. I hadn’t seen any “gifts.”

  “Where?”

  “Here.” He stretched over and ran his finger around the lower half of the brooch, opposite the man apparently surrounded by fire. “See? That’s a pot or something, and that’s maybe a spear or an ax… It’s hard to tell. Definitely votive offerings, though.”

  “Votive offerings?” I echoed, trying not to sound like I’d never heard the phrase before in my life.

  “Yeah, you know, sacrificial offerings to a god or whatever.”

  “Right.” How the hell did he know all this stuff? “So then…this might be a god?” I pointed to the man I thought I’d found.

  Dougie made a face. “Doubt it, not with all the flames. Not unless it’s the Devil. Or a demon, perhaps.”

  “Something evil…” My thoughts were racing. I looked back down at the scratched figure of a man, the jagged shapes Dougie said were flames. “Or could they be”—I squinted, connecting lines in my head—“wings?”

  “Yeah.” Dougie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Flames, wings.” He paused, thought about it. “Might even be waves.”

  Twenty-One

  Silence. Uncomfortable silence.

  I didn’t know what Dougie was thinking, but only one thought was spinning round and round in my head.

  What if the brooch was old? Really, truly old.

  What if there was some spirit tethered to it, to the isolated cairn, one that had lain dormant until Dougie rooted around where he shouldn’t have? It sounded ridiculous, so ridiculous that I couldn’t even bring myself to say it out loud for a second time.

  But it wouldn’t go away.

  And now that thought had cemented itself in the depths of my mind, the darkness—already unwelcoming, frightening—became terrifying. What lurked out there, hiding in the night? It was hard to stop my imagination from inserting the muddled description Emma had provided into the villain’s role. Now every gust of wind that rolled around us carried with it ethereal noises. Low moans, high-pitched wails, a chorus of whispers. The rush of air tickling my hair was like brushing fingertips, making goose bumps erupt on my arms under the thick sweatshirt I wore.

  The fire, a comfort before, became an absolute necessity. Neatly stacked off to the side was our pile of wood for burning. Collecting wood had been the furthest thing from my mind during both trips to the cove, and now the stack was pitifully small. I was loath to shrink it, but the flames were retreating into the pile of smoking ashes. Heat still rolled off the embers, but the light was receding, darkness encroaching upon our circle so that it was a strain to make out Emma’s outline, just a few feet away. I opened my mouth to suggest delving into our dwindling reserve when Dougie reached forward and yanked up a couple of good-sized branches.

  “These won’t catch if we leave it any longer,” he said, thrusting them into the heart of the firepit. Taking a thinner stick, he poked at the smoldering heap until virgin flames leaped up, gnawing hungrily on the fresh fuel. Job done, he chucked the spindly twig into the fire and sat back, satisfied. His face was troubled, though. I knew why.

  “How long do you think that’ll last?” I asked, pointing toward our reserves. There were only four or five logs and a few handfuls of dried seaweed and grasses.

  Dougie shrugged, made a face. That wasn’t reassuring. “Will it last us till morning?” I pressed.

  “Are we going to sit here all night?”

  Yes. Or at least that was my plan. There was no way I was going to huddle in the tent in the darkness. The flimsy material could barely offer protection from the weather, so what chance would it have against a vengeful spirit?

  Dougie seemed to read my mind. “We could lock ourselves in the Volvo,” he offered.

  Steel and glass were a lot better protection than canvas, but…

  “I like the light,” I said.

  There was a long pause, then Dougie said quietly, “Me too.”

  “Are we going to need more wood?” I asked.

  Dougie thought for a moment, then nodded. I sighed. I’d suspected as much. Dougie was in no fit state to go wandering around, and Emma was still half in, half out. Which left…

  “Well.” I stood up decisively. “Might as well get it over with.”

  “What?” Dougie looked up at me, eyebrows raised. “On your own? No, Heather.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I won’t go far. I won’t even leave the beach. I think I saw some driftwood over the far side. Leftovers from other campers, maybe.”

  “Heather—”

  “Five minutes,” I said firmly. “Give me the flashlight. It’ll last that long.”

  I wasn’t feeling as brave as I was trying to sound, and there was no way I was going out there into the darkness empty-handed. The measly glow from the dying flashlight would at least keep me from being completely engulfed by the suffocating black.

  Dougie wasn’t happy, I could see that, but he handed me the flashlight without further complaint. As I swept the beam in front of me, sending a narrow strip of light outside the circle of the fire, I caught Emma’s silhouette. She was standing too.

  “I’m coming,” she said.

  I was surprised, but I didn’t question it. I was too relieved not to have to hunt for burnable material by myself.

  We didn’t speak as we took our first tentative steps away from the safety of the campfire. My hand was shaking, making the flashlight tremble. I tried to tell myself it was just the cold—it was chilly away from the heat of the flames—but truly I was scared. I wasn’t sure whether I believed my theory about the brooch’s wraith. But being in the dark, far from anyone, two of our friends mysteriously gone, was enough to terrify me anyway.

  The moon was hidden behind a thick bank of clouds, and we didn’t have to go far before the brightness of the fire seemed no more than a memory. The weak light from the flashlight was cold by comparison, turning the world into layers of shadows. Colorless; nightmarish. My teeth started chattering. To cover the sound, I marched forward with more purpose, heading for the jumbled pile of wood I thought I’d seen along the far side of the beach.

  “We’re not leaving here, you know,”
Emma said quietly as we walked.

  I glanced at her, taken aback by the somberness with which she said the words.

  “What? Of course we are, Emma. We’re leaving tomorrow, as soon as it’s light.”

  “No, we’re not,” she disagreed, but so low I could almost ignore it. I chose to. Emma’s ominous comments were not helping me steady the vibrating flashlight beam.

  “Look,” I said, grinning with relief. “Firewood.” Right where I thought it would be.

  I had to stick the flashlight under my arm so both hands were free to grab bundles of logs. Emma didn’t help, but stood staring toward the rocks at the edge of the cliff, water lapping over the path Martin had taken the last time we saw him. I turned my back on it resolutely, concentrating on the task at hand. I kept my eyes fixed on Dougie’s fire, where I was going to be in about four minutes. It looked tiny from here; I could barely make out his silhouette hunched in a chair.

  “Emma, can you help me?” I asked a little impatiently. I wanted to be back inside that halo of warmth as soon as possible. No answer. I turned, annoyed. Why had she come if she wasn’t going to help? “Emma?” I asked again sharply.

  She was still gazing away from me, standing utterly motionless, her hands by her side.

  “Heather,” she whispered. “Heather, can you feel that?”

  Feel what? I shuddered. “What? Emma, I don’t feel anything. Come on, help me with the firewood.”

  She turned to me. I trained the flashlight on her face and saw she was smiling wistfully.

  “The wind,” she said. “It’s gone.”

  I knew she wasn’t commenting on the weather. I held her stare for a brief moment, then started snatching up wood with haste.

  “Let’s get back to Dougie,” I said as I stuffed a final log under my chin. This would have to do.

  “It’s too late,” she murmured. Now that the air was completely still, I heard her easily. “Can you hear the waves?”

  “They’re still there, Emma,” I snapped to cover the fact that no, I could no longer hear the quiet lapping of the water on the sand. “Come on!”