Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Amy Rae Durreson

  He laughed, and again I felt that odd shock of realisation—here was my family.

  THE EVENING was cooler than it had been a week ago when Niall and I came here—Christ, had it only been a week? I made an early night of it, and for once I didn’t dream about horses or flying like a ghost over the border. Instead, I dreamed of home—of Eilbeck House—but a sun-washed, muddled Eilbeck where Niall now kept a herd of horses on the cricket pitch and lived in my little flat with me, and no one thought it strange at all when he showed up in the back of my classroom with a wild hill pony in tow and helped me teach Macbeth by demonstrating how to groom the pony, in broad Scots.

  When I woke, it was early, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. I slipped out of my room and tiptoed downstairs. There was a girl dozing behind the front desk, and she blinked at me sleepily.

  I whispered, “Sorry. Couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d get some fresh air.”

  She nodded slowly. “The light, is it? Let me give you tonight’s door code so you can get back in. You can have a leaflet with some walks in if you like.”

  “I wasn’t planning to go far.”

  She scribbled the door code on the leaflet anyway and put a star beside the first walk. “The first bit of this one will get you down to the river—it’s five minutes and the prettiest bit of the grounds.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Enjoy your walk,” she said, and when I looked back, she was bowed over her phone again, earphones in as she watched something.

  It was cool and fresh outside, and I decided to take her advice. The path led down through a charming rock garden to the banks of the river. I glanced at the leaflet and saw the walk she had marked was “Peel tower loop: 1 and half miles.”

  That wasn’t far at all. I wasn’t ready to go back and lie awake yet, so I continued along the path at a lazy pace. It was a pretty little trail, with a few carefully positioned ornate stone benches set into the side of the path, but I had it completely to myself at this hour. I stopped on one of the benches for a while to watch a bright kingfisher flashing over the water.

  It made me think of Niall, pointing out the buzzard to me, and my heart ached again, not with panic this time, but with something slow and sad that I didn’t think I’d ever entirely put aside. I didn’t want him to join the list of people I would always miss. I wanted him here, watching the kingfisher with me, his hand warm around mine.

  But he was gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring him back.

  Eventually the kingfisher flitted back into hiding, and I continued my walk, passing through a gate that marked the edge of the hotel grounds. The river went curling around the foot of a low hill, broadening as it crossed the flat fields beyond. The path divided, one fork following the river and the other leading uphill to the low ruins of a tower. As I turned up that way, rabbits scattered out of my path, and an indignant pheasant went flouncing away. On the broken stones of the tower, a lizard was basking in the morning sun. I moved past as softly as I could, but when I looked back, it was gone.

  The path curled round the far side of the hill, climbing steadily up the slope on the other side of the river from the hotel. The path rose behind a farmhouse that sat snuggled into the slope, overlooking the fields below. It was a big farm, sturdy and grey-walled, with several barns. It looked comfortable where it sat, gazing down placidly.

  Then I realised that its doors and windows were all boarded up and the barn doors padlocked shut. Ironic, that. It was exactly the sort of place I’d envisaged when Felix started looking for a site for a new school. Why couldn’t someone have gifted us a place like this rather than Vainguard Hall with all its guilt and bad memories?

  What if that had been why I came here? What if I’d stayed in that big hotel and one evening when I came back from working in that warm, peaceful place, Niall was at the bar, celebrating his birthday maybe? He’d have had no reason to growl at me, and I would have just looked at him and thought he was beautiful and—since this was just a daydream—I would have bought him his next drink, and he’d have been surprised into letting that slow, sexy smile of his out from behind his sadness.

  What ifs.

  Might-have-beens.

  They were all I was going to get.

  But all the same, once I got back to my room, I searched for the details of the boarded-up farm and found them on a local estate agent’s website—it had been on the market for several months. I forwarded them to Felix.

  And while I waited for Peter to wake up, I lingered over my might-have-beens, for all they were cold comfort compared to the reality of Niall.

  I PHONED Summer as we left the hotel and was treated to a scolding which left my ears stinging. Summer wrangled out of me everything I had told Lucy that first day. By the time we got to the police station in Hawick, she had put together a statement and refused to let me add anything more to the very bare bones we had agreed on. The police weren’t happy, but as she did not hesitate to point out, they had nothing to connect me to Niall’s disappearance. She lashed them with a word-portrait of Niall that hurt—a grieving father struggling with alcohol and depression, reminded of his loss by the search going on around him, and missing somewhere while the police wasted their time harassing his loved ones.

  She was a force of nature, and the police liked her even less than they liked me, but I was allowed to go, although with a strict request to inform them of my whereabouts every morning until Niall was found. Summer bristled at that, but I was happy to agree to a small compromise if it got them off my back.

  When we got back outside, she stopped in the middle of the car park, out of anyone’s earshot, and asked quietly, “Do you think they’re right to be looking at Forster for this?”

  “No!” I snapped.

  “Honestly, rather than with your heart?”

  I took a deep breath. “First time I met him properly, I was having a flashback at the side of the road. He stopped his car, helped me through it, and drove me home. He’s a good man. I thought… that is, I thought he was starting to be happy again.”

  She gave me a long slow look; then her expression softened. “Grief’s hard, Leon. People slide backwards sometimes. With any luck, he’ll come back to you.”

  Not when he’d found Katie again. “Thanks, but I think he would have done by now, if he was coming back.”

  “Too soon to give up.” She looked past me, eyes widening, and to my relief, changed the subject. “Is that your brother’s car? Hello, sexy.”

  That made me laugh for a moment, and I left her drooling as Peter showed off his baby. I climbed up to the road above to get a signal and called Jeannie. She had seen the news about Mac being found and was determined to talk about that, and it took a while to redirect her onto other subjects. By the time, I’d elicited the information I wanted, Summer had gone, and Peter was on his phone. He hung up as I got close, looking slightly guilty.

  I asked, “Bring your hiking boots?”

  “I did, actually.”

  “Good. Jeannie says they tried an exorcism back in the eighties but—and I quote—‘he seemed to think he was humouring some daft old biddies rather than putting down something evil.’”

  Peter winced. “No wonder it didn’t take. And? Why are we going hiking?”

  “She thinks the only way to trap the thing is to put it back in the circle.”

  “Which they broke?”

  “I asked her if she still had the missing piece Martyn stole, but she says he threw it in the burn the day before everything happened. We’ll have to mend it if we want it to work.”

  Peter sighed. “And we can’t do that without climbing up there to have a look.”

  “There’s a direct route up one of the cycle trails from the road. About two and a half miles each way. Even with the climb, we can be there and back by lunch time.”

  “Best get going, then.”

  I HADN’T realised what a relief it had been to get away from Blacklynefoot until we started driving back that way. W
e’d been talking about trivial family stuff, but I struggled to keep the conversation going. After a while, Peter switched the radio on quietly—something gentle and inoffensive on Radio Two—and didn’t press me. It wasn’t until we’d parked at the bottom of the forestry track and were changing into our boots that he said anything more. I’d grabbed the map and my compass from the hotel room and was double-checking the route.

  “I can’t quite tell if you hate it or love it here.”

  I looked at him, startled.

  He stared back thoughtfully. “Kasia wanted to send in the cavalry weeks ago. She thought you were desperately unhappy.”

  I shrugged. “There was Niall, though.”

  Peter closed the boot of the car and shaded his eyes, looking up the track. Without looking at me, he said, “And is it just him, or would you have any other reason to stay? That’s a lot to put on one man’s shoulders.”

  I shrugged, squinting hard into the light myself to hide my stinging eyes. “He’s not coming back. It doesn’t matter.”

  Peter hummed a little but didn’t say anything more. We set off up the track at a steady pace, not talking, but I found my mind drifting. Would I come back here, when our business with Vainguard was done? I missed Eilbeck House, but I’d been ready to embrace this opportunity.

  And I’d sent the details of Peel Farm to Felix.

  I said, to the swaying pine trees as much as to my brother, “I’ll never drive down that back road without being afraid, but I’d go elsewhere in the Borders. Not Blacklynefoot, maybe not even Newcastleton, but… it gets under your skin, this place.”

  “It does?”

  “Yeah. And I like the people here, the sense of community. And the history of the place—all that war and pain, but it’s faded into something new. It’s a place to reinvent yourself. And that’s what we are, isn’t it? The home of second chances.”

  “I do wish you wouldn’t define yourself by reference to an institution, however admirable we all think Eilbeck is.”

  “Pot, kettle, reverend.”

  It was a peaceful walk, for all we weren’t doing it for pleasure. Occasionally we had to stand aside to let cyclists pass us, but most of the time we seemed to have the forest to ourselves. It was strange to walk with company. Usually I hiked alone, and the last time I’d walked any distance with Peter it had been Boxing Day a few years ago and the family had gone meandering across the heath for a few hours. He’d spent most of the walk chatting with Valerie, and I’d had Kasia’s oldest on my shoulders. We’d barely interacted.

  We didn’t speak much now, but he commented a couple of times on the view, and I pointed out a buzzard to him when I saw it floating overhead. It wasn’t until we came out onto the open hilltop that he asked, “What are you expecting to find?”

  “I’m not sure. The legend says they laid down an iron chain around the circle. Martyn Armstrong broke it in 1944.”

  “You think we can fix it?”

  “Not until we get him in the middle of it. And we need to know what needs fixing first.”

  I had been bracing myself for what might be waiting for us at the circle, but there was nothing there but the half-buried stones, a wind with a bitter edge, and that same eerie feeling I had noticed last time. There was no sign of the redcap—no hint that he had come near here. All the same, we worked fast, digging into the peaty soil with our hands.

  Peter found the chain first, bringing up a handful of peat full of rusty scraps. “Is this it?”

  I’d found a cold weight under my fingers, too, on the far side of the circle. I dug it out carefully—a single thick loop, its neighbouring links crumbling as I lifted it. I said stupidly, “I thought peat preserved stuff. Why is it rusted?”

  Peter looked grim. “Maybe it only held until Armstrong broke the first piece.”

  The link I held was still solid, although muddied and speckled with rust. It looked thicker than the remains on either side. I rubbed some of the soil off gently, worried I’d do more damage. As the mud fell away, I glimpsed something. “Come and look at this!”

  Peter came over as I carefully scraped the metal clean, using the corner of my T-shirt and my nails to get to the flattened side of the link. There were letters carved into it—old, old letters in a script I couldn’t make out. “I can’t read it.”

  “Give me a look. It looks medieval. I might be able to pick out some letters.” He grinned at me. “Plenty of it in the cathedral.”

  “Bet you never thought it would come in useful.”

  He snorted but squinted at the lettering. “That’s an M at the start of the first name. An E on the second—Elliot, I think.”

  “Makes sense. Which one, though?”

  “M-something-g-t. Margaret Elliot.”

  The moment he said the name, the air went still. We both stepped closer to each other, and I felt all the hairs on my arm stand on end.

  But nothing came, and after a moment the wind blew again. Peter looked shaken, so I took the link off him and tucked it safely in my pocket. I said, “One of the first victims, probably. Do you think we need to create something similar?”

  “With the names of the more recent children?” He still looked pale, but he nodded slowly. “In that case, we need…”

  “A blacksmith,” I finished and began to laugh bitterly, because the only one of those I knew had left me when not just I, but all of us, needed him most.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  BY THE time we got into Newcastleton, Peter was optimistic again, already speculating about how to approach a strange blacksmith with this request and how much a commission like this would cost. I didn’t quite have his energy, but I let him talk at me over lunch. As we left the pub, his phone went off.

  “Naomi,” he said to me apologetically and strode off to take it. I walked away myself, wondering uneasily if people were looking at me—if everyone local knew Niall was missing and I was the last to see him. Then I spotted a familiar figure on the other side of the road. Michelle Elliot was standing in front of the town noticeboard, gazing absently at the layers of announcements and flyers. I crossed over to join her and she jumped when I said hello.

  “How are you doing?” I asked her.

  She looked tired, with shadows under her eyes and a slump to her shoulders. She just said, “I’ll be glad to get home. Lyall’s going crazy trying to change our flights, so I brought the boys here for ice cream.” She darted a gaze over her shoulder at the shop on the other side of the road. “I know I’m smothering them, but I can’t help worrying every time they go out of sight.”

  “I think that’s a pretty natural reaction.”

  She smiled at me wearily, started to look at the shop again, and swung her attention back the sign. She said, with clearly forced determination, “I’m still sorry we missed the music festival. I wrote my thesis on Scottish folk music, you know.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, feeling abashed. I had to stop thinking of this woman purely in terms of her family. “Did you study music?”

  “Double major. Music and history.” She shook her head. “It was a long time ago. I was mad for it all, though—spent a couple of years on the Ren Faire circuit, singing. That’s where I met Lyall, of course. He was a re-enactor.”

  I only had the vaguest idea what all that meant, but I was intrigued. “And have you been looking for the music as well as your ancestors?”

  “Lyall’s ancestors. My maiden name was Fontaine, and all my ancestors were French.” She laughed a little. “But yeah, I’ve left Lyall with the boys a time or two to go and listen to some local bands. It’s pretty great to hear the songs being performed in the places they were written.”

  Some of her worry had faded as she spoke, and I was glad she had a passion to balance out all the troubles she’d suffered when her boys were caught up in Vainguard’s curse. “Didn’t take them along?”

  “Sadly, all the men in my family have a tin ear and couldn’t carry a tune if they tried.” She shook her hair bac
k and sang, low but clear and sweet, “I forbid ye, maidens all that braid the gold in your hair, to come or go by Carterhaugh for Tam Lin he bides there.” She stopped, and her eyes went sad again. “I can’t seem to shake that one. You know the song?”

  “Tam Lin,” I said slowly, the hairs rising on the back of my neck. A lowlands song, maybe even a Borders one, of a girl rescuing the father of her unborn child from the fairy hunt.

  “I keep thinking about how brave she must have been to just hold on and hold on to the one she loved until she knew for certain he was safe.” She took a quick breath. “Leon, I need your—”

  “Mom! Mom! Mac took my ice cream.” Doug had come hurtling out of the shop.

  His expression changed as he reached us, and he leapt forward to grab my arm and whisper urgently, “Mr Kwarteng. We got it wrong. We got it all wrong!” Then he shut up quickly, stepping tightly into his mother’s shadow. I turned to see Mac sauntering towards us. He had an ice cream in each hand and was taking it in turns to sample each of them, his tongue curling against the dripping lines of strawberry and chocolate. The very way he moved was different from the bookish, diffident boy I had come to know. He moved slowly now, sure-footed and graceful, like a big cat stalking its prey. When he looked up, his eyes narrowed, and he glared at me so viciously I took a step back.

  I knew that expression—knew that hatred.

  Robin Redcap was glaring at me through Mac’s eyes.

  Then his expression shifted, and he was just a sulky pre-teen boy again, slouching towards his mother and brother. When he got to me, he said, every word slow as if he was deliberating over it, “Hello, Mr Kwarteng.”

  “Hello.”

  “I didn’t think I would see you again.” When he looked up, his eyes were fierce and hungry, and I knew that he was still hunting me, even as he squatted behind Mac’s round face. Was it possession, or was Mac still trapped somewhere in the dark?

  “I’m planning to show my brother Vainguard,” I said. “He’s a priest. I’m sure he’d find the chapel very interesting.”