Something Wicked This Way Comes

by Amy Rae Durreson

  “Get out.”

  “And my brother.”

  “There are two of you?”

  “He’s not like me. Except I think he might be—underneath.”

  Niall chuckled. “Have you had any sleep in the last three days, lover?”

  “Some.” It was all catching up with me now. I still couldn’t quite believe he was here, warm against my side.

  By the time we got inside, I was shaking from head to foot, and I barely registered the reaction from Anita and Peter as we stumbled in. Niall accepted his mum’s hug with a long sigh but kept his arm around me. I could tell Peter was worried, but I couldn’t quite focus on him.

  Niall was here and safe. I had saved him. And now I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even pick apart the waves of emotion rolling through me. There was relief in there somewhere, and anger, and something warm and aching that clenched around my heart.

  “Leon,” Peter said calmly, “time out?”

  And yes, he had grown up at Eilbeck too, even if he had never been a student there. I jerked a nod at him, and he deftly removed Niall’s arm from my shoulder and led me into the workshop. He sat me on the stool there and took three steps back, out of my personal space. All he said was, “Slow breaths, kiddo.”

  I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing until I no longer felt like all my tangled feelings were about to claw out from under my skin, listening to Peter pace away softly and have a murmured conversation at the door. When I felt on an even keel once more, I said, “Okay.”

  “You look like you need patching up a bit. You ready for that?”

  I’d not always reacted well to medical care as a kid—too many reminders of waking up in hospital alone. I hadn’t realised Peter knew that. Except now I knew I hadn’t been entirely alone. Someone had been watching over me. Jeannie and Martyn had been there, protecting me when they hadn’t been able to protect their own kin. It wasn’t the same, but somehow it helped. You can’t go back, but sometimes you can fight the next fight, look to the future instead of the past.

  “Leon?”

  “Yeah. I don’t think it’s too bad.”

  Peter snorted. “You’re covered in bits of road.”

  I laughed, although it came out wobbly with everything roiling around inside me. “I’ve had worse. It’s just scrapes and bruises. Nothing hurts enough to be broken.”

  “I’ll quote you on that. Want me to do it or your Niall? He’s pretty worried.”

  “He’s worried about me? He’s the one who’s been jaunting about with the dead for days.”

  Peter said cheerfully, “Seems like a good chance to make him grovel. Kash said he was pretty good with you before.”

  “Do you guys spend all your free time gossiping about me?” I grumbled, but I was grateful for the normality of it all.

  Peter grinned. “Look at the ego on that.”

  “It’s not ego if it’s true,” I tried and stood up. “Where’s Niall?”

  He was right outside the door, looming anxiously. I said, before he could growl at me, “I need to get these scrapes cleaned up. Where’s your first-aid kit?”

  “Bathroom. Come on.” I knew perfectly well how to get to his bathroom, but he led me there with a hand in the small of my back, and I found it endearing. It was nice to be worried over.

  Once we were in the bathroom, he said, “You okay?”

  “Got a bit much for me. Sorry.”

  “No apologies needed. Now get your shirt off.”

  I raised an eyebrow at him. “Smooth.”

  “So I can see where you’re hurt. That was a crazy thing to do, Leon.”

  “Shut up.” Oh, it seemed that one of those swelling emotions was anger. “You fucking rode off and left me. You don’t get to criticise my choices.”

  “You were fine with it at the time,” he muttered, crashing through the cabinet to slam antiseptic wipes and bandages down into the sink. “I didn’t mean to stay away so….” He trailed off, then turned to stare at me. “Fuck. You weren’t okay with it. You could have asked me to stay.”

  “To choose, you mean,” I snapped. “Like you wouldn’t have hated me for it.”

  He looked genuinely shocked. “What?”

  “I didn’t have the right—”

  “But you have to right to risk your own bloody life pulling me off a moving horse?”

  “Yes! I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I still don’t know why you don’t hate me right now!”

  His surprise was taking on an edge of annoyance. “For saving me?”

  “For taking you away from Katie!”

  He gaped at me, and I couldn’t bear the realisation in his face. I dropped my face into my hands and shook.

  Then, to my surprise, his arms closed around me. He said, very softly, “Oh, Leon.”

  “I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I’m so sorry.”

  His lips brushed my cheek. He said, jerking the words out, “My little girl’s dead.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “No, listen. My Katie’s dead, and I nearly drank myself into an early grave last winter. Drunk myself out of a relationship. Almost drove even my mum to disowning me. But I didn’t kill myself. I stopped drinking. I lived. I couldn’t bear to die as well.”

  I unfolded my arms to wrap around his waist, because I hated the thought of him alone in the lodge, drunk and hurting.

  “And if I couldn’t be dead for her, I can’t be a ghost for her either, whatever… whatever she wants.”

  I hung on to him more tightly, and he pressed his face against mine. For a few moments, we stayed like that, holding each other up. Then he said quietly, “If you had a chance for one last hour with your parents, would you take it?”

  “Of course.”

  “That’s all I thought I was doing. It was—I couldn’t have told you days had passed. It was like a dream, and every time I realised I couldn’t wake up, we were riding somewhere else and I forgot again. If you’d asked me, I would have said it was no more than ten minutes.”

  I shuddered. “Do they know how much time has passed?”

  “They weren’t chatty. I don’t know.” He kissed my cheek again and said, back to practical, “Let’s get you cleaned up now, lover, and then we’ll figure out what to do next.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  WHEN WE got downstairs, all my scrapes cleaned and bandaged, my bruises kissed better, and both of our faces washed clean of tears, Peter greeted us eagerly. “Lovely, lovely. Shall we get started, then? Either of you fancy tea?”

  “I could eat a fucking horse,” Niall said, rubbing his stomach.

  “I’ll put a sandwich together,” Peter offered and fled for the kitchen.

  Niall narrowed his eyes. “Mother, be nice to guests.”

  Anita had a glint in her eye. “Man’s an archdeacon. You’d think he’d have an opinion on church policy.”

  “Not the female archbishops thing again,” Niall said with a sigh and stomped after Peter.

  Anita muttered, “No fun at all.” She grinned at me. “What do you think?”

  I knew better than to get involved in that one. “So, did you find anything about Margaret Elliot?”

  “Very little, sadly. There’s a May Elliot who appears in some of the older ballads and folk tales. Wicked Lord de Soulis kidnapped her to be his wife.”

  “Poor girl.” I hadn’t thought much about the shadowy figure at the start of all the stories, the wicked lord who had first summoned the redcap to prey upon his enemies. “If she was his bride, that makes her older than all the other victims. Outliers are always interesting.”

  “Minimum marriageable age back then was twelve,” she said grimly. “Contrary to popular belief, it didn’t happen that often, but—”

  “Oh hell.” Poor girl, indeed. “What happened to her?”

  “Hard to tell from this distance. Oral narratives and fanciful retellings, you know. Once Peter found the name, I’ve been tracking her back through ballad coll
ections and antiquarian texts, but it’s vague stuff. Some later versions have her rescued by a lover who then orchestrates the death of de Soulis. I’ve got a travelogue from 1702 mentioning an old tradition of how the families on either side of the border laid aside their differences to exact revenge upon the local lord—which one is left unspecified—for despoiling and murdering one of their daughters. Peter has a theory.”

  Peter leaned out of the kitchen. “I think she’s our patient zero, so to speak. The very first victim.”

  I took the link off my wrists and ran my fingers over the letters in her name. “I suppose it had to start somewhere.” Poor forgotten child, whose abuse had been the first link in a chain of blood which stretched down to this day. Had she grown up in these valleys or even at Vainguard itself, looking up at these same hills throughout her childhood, dipping her feet in the burn below us, saying her prayers in the very chapel that was now haunted by the same evil which must have killed her?

  Probably not, if the villain of our story was a Soulis lord. The last of them had come just before the real reiver days started. Strange to think this might have begun before all those blood-soaked centuries.

  “Let’s have a proper look at that,” Niall said, coming out of the kitchen with a stacked plate full of sandwiches. I raised my eyebrows, and he shrugged. “My brain says an hour, but my belly knows it’s not been fed for three days.”

  “Always did have hollow legs,” Anita commented fondly. “Sit at the table, Niall.”

  We gathered round as Niall ate with one hand and turned the link over with the other. Halfway through the second sandwich, he said, “I can make a set of these—one for each child, right? Won’t be enough to make a full circle.”

  “There was a thinner chain on either side of it,” I said.

  “That makes it easier. I’ve got plenty of plain steel chain already. Going to be a pig of a thing to move.” He pondered it. “We can’t seal the thing until he’s in there anyway. I’m going to have to lug some tools up there. Might be worth taking it in pieces and assembling it there. Saves one of us having to climb up there and measure the thing again.”

  “How long is that going to take to make?” I asked.

  “Most of the day. I’d like to get up there in daylight to do the last assembly. I’m not sure if there’s a time we should be doing this.”

  “Sunset,” I said automatically. “Or dawn, but sunset’s easier. Do you really only need a day?”

  “Aye. Sunset tomorrow, then. Reckon Michelle can get the kid up there? We’re going to have to exorcise him first, aren’t we?”

  We all turned to look at Peter, who winced and muttered, “If the bishop ever finds out….”

  “We’ll have to work out how to get everyone up there too,” Anita said.

  “Everyone?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Ring of hands, the children said. We need enough people who know what’s going on to stand hand in hand around the ring.”

  Niall said blankly, “How are we meant to do that? I probably know that many people, but most of them would think I was crazy the moment I started talking about demons.”

  Anita and Peter shared a smug look. Peter sat back and said, with a distinctly Felix-esque twinkle, “That, dear boys, is what family is for.”

  LATER, RESTING my still aching body in Niall’s bed, I wondered aloud, “Just who is he planning to call? I do not want any of my nieces or nephews in the middle of this.”

  “He strikes me as fairly sensible, your brother.” Niall was standing by the open window, gazing out across the dark countryside. Anita was safely installed in the guestroom, and Peter had driven back to our hotel without me. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “You’re letting the moths in,” I grumbled. “Come to bed.”

  Niall grunted and closed the window before turning back to me. He looked tired, and I wondered if all those days of endless riding had affected more than his appetite. He pulled the curtains shut and sat down on the edge of the bed, stripping his T-shirt off. “There’s lights on and off up there.”

  I groaned. “I don’t want to walk up there again.”

  “Looked like playing to me. I could hear someone laughing in the field. If they’ve got a problem, they can come and knock on the door like civilised folk.”

  I couldn’t help laughing at that. “Not going to shout at them to get off your lawn?” I sat up enough to lean against his back and kiss his shoulder. “Grumpy old man.”

  “Old, is it?” He turned around and slid his arms around me to carry us both down against the pillows. He smiled at me, his whole face soft.

  “What’s that look for?” I asked, but I couldn’t help reaching up to cup my hand around his cheek. Even with his body holding me down, I needed that extra reassurance he was real, still here.

  “For you,” he said, leaning down to kiss me. He murmured my name against my lips; then we were kissing again, another of those slow, dreamy kisses like the one he’d given me on the road.

  And for a few soft hours, we forgot all about ghosts and demons and the troubles waiting for us the next day.

  Later, as he slept against my shoulder, I watched the rise and fall of his chest, too relaxed and relieved to move but a little afraid to fall asleep in case he vanished again.

  He stirred against me, frowning slightly, and said, “Leon?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Still there?”

  “Still here.”

  He sighed, and muttered smugly, “Pulled me off a fucking horse,” before he slumped back into sleep. A few moments later, he began to snuffle little snores against my throat.

  And damn me but I found it adorable.

  I was so in love with him.

  Outside in the night, childish laughter drifted on the wind, and I hoped with all my heart it was not mocking me.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  TO MY surprise, the first person who knocked on the door the next morning was Lucy, the police community support officer who lived down the road. She looked tired, but not surprised to see Niall, who was head-deep in the fridge, grumbling about the lack of bacon.

  We offered her tea and toast, both of which she declined, but she leaned against the sideboard, watching both of us thoughtfully. Then she said, to my surprise, “Want me to wait until tomorrow before I let anyone know you’re back?”

  “Why would you do that?” I asked.

  Niall added, retreating from the fridge with a box of eggs and some cooked ham, “Not that we don’t appreciate it, mind.”

  She shrugged. “Funny thing is, my Granny Peg, who’s in a home in Carlisle now, lived all her life in our house. Had a best friend when she was a kid too—little girl from Burnside Farm—what’s Rick and Fiona’s now. Gran’s still got a picture of the two of them heading off to their first day at the high school.”

  It was a strange non sequitur.

  “Ellen Kerr, her name was, and she vanished in 1953. There were all sorts of theories about where she might or might not have gone. Most folk reckoned she went in the river, but my gran had another theory. She reckoned it was the night riders that took her. It was a bit of a joke in my family—oh, Granny Peg and her ghosties. Except, of course, I could hear them too. And the more I think back on it, the more I wonder if Granny Peg didn’t save me from something horrible when she always insisted I stay inside the day after we heard them go by in full hue and cry. Now I’ve heard them go past wild three times in the last two weeks. The first time, young Mac went missing. The second, he came back and Niall vanished. Then last night they came back, and Niall’s here. And that’s not all.” She stopped, looking at us anxiously.

  I said to her, “From everything we’ve learnt, your gran probably saved your life.”

  She sagged a little, and I realised she hadn’t been entirely sure we’d believe her.

  “What else happened?” Niall asked.

  “Mum and Dad are away, so I had the house to myself. Not sure if that makes it better or worse—if they�
�d not heard it, and I’d still had to sit up listening all night….” She shuddered. “About midnight, someone started knocking on my door and tapping on the windows. I thought it was the wind, at first, but then it started calling out, ‘Is Peggy there? Peggy, come out to play!’ And it kept going, over and over. ‘Peggy, Peggy, come out to play.’ And I lay there with a pillow over my head for a few hours, but eventually I had to look. And I’m damned if Ellen Kerr wasn’t standing in the yard, looking just like she did in Gran’s photo, except for the fact that I could bloody well see through her.”

  It sounded like Frank hadn’t been the only lost child up to mischief last night.

  “Then what?” Niall asked.

  “Then she looked up, sighed, and went ‘You’re not Peggy,’ and disappeared. And the only other thing I could see which wasn’t as it should be was the fact that all the lights up at Vainguard were going on and off. I don’t suppose either of you know what the hell is going on here?”

  It had never occurred to me that any of the other families might be drawn in. I said, trying to keep it light, “So, we have a bit of a ghost problem.”

  Niall snorted at my back and went back to making breakfast, leaving me to tell the story yet again.

  SHE WAS only the first to show up. Niall spent the day out in the forge making chain loops, but I got caught up with the stream of people who appeared on our doorstep. Peter and Anita had hit the phones harder than I realised, and it became clear they weren’t the only ones. Peter appeared mid-morning with Jeannie Duffy, who immediately got on the phone herself while Peter drove off again in the direction of Carlisle.

  Naomi appeared shortly after he left, looking surprisingly un-Naomi-ish in jeans and walking boots. To my relief, she hadn’t brought the girls, who had been entrusted with the holiday cottage in Whitby for the night. Not long afterwards, Shirley Atkins’s stepson showed up from Newcastle with a glamourous sixty-something who turned out to be Renie Mellor’s much younger civil partner, Radha. Just before lunch, two strangers (to me, not Niall) showed up. Farmers from three miles downriver, Nigel and Adrian had been woken in the night by their older cousin, dead since 1976.