DRIVING BACK along the A7, as the light began to fade across the great towering hills that flanked the road, I thought again of Vainguard’s troubled past. The truth had come out, of course, and been a nine days’ scandal until the next tale of power and abuse came along. Becky’s had handled it as well as any organisation could, in my probably biased opinion, but it had hurt us. We had tracked down the last survivors and offered them compensation, but it was a stain on our reputation, no doubt.
But there were still children who needed us, and we still had a future. All we could do was keep going and guard against it ever happening again.
It took me well over an hour to get back to Niall’s new forge. I didn’t mind too much. My flashbacks were back to where they had been before Felix sent me to Vainguard, but they would never leave me entirely. I saw no point in driving along the road where my parents had died in the very same weather conditions unless I absolutely had to, and there was no rush today. By the time I had come through Hawick and crept carefully along the last stretch to the south, sunset was staining the sky in bright hues.
Niall wasn’t home yet, and no lights were on. I took a moment to breathe in the clear, chilly bite of the frost and the wind over the pathless hills. It was bitterly cold, and the stars were already blazing above me in the clear sky. We were forecast heavy snow next week, and Niall had been happily trying to scare me with tall tales of drifts higher than his head and being forced to survive on snowmelt and tinned prunes (we didn’t have any tinned prunes). This new place had once been a signal box on the long-abandoned railway to Carlisle. It had been converted into a holiday home a few decades ago but never made enough to support its upkeep. The outbuildings and ground floor were big enough for the forge and a possible workshop but were currently an overcrowded mixture of storage and sitting room. Upstairs was a small bathroom and a bedroom with windows to the sky.
It wasn’t really big enough for one man, let alone two, but the plans for my new school included a head teacher’s house. If we could live here together out of boxes until it was built, the rest would be easy.
An owl cried, long and lonely. The wind rushed over me, making the sign by the road creak on its frame. Something scuttled in the dry grass.
And although I was the only living human for miles, a child laughed, light and quick as the wind.
I smiled at the shadows but then went inside, closed the door against the night, and turned on the lights.
In an hour or two, Niall would be home. He would come in and wrap his warm arms around me, kiss me against the kitchen counters, make love to me in our bed under the starry sky. But for now, it was just me, the warm lights in our kitchen, and the wind outside, laughing its way across the dry gorse, but never more lingering at my door.
And I was not afraid.
Author’s Note
WHEN IT comes to setting a book in the Middle Marches of the Scottish Border, finding inspiration in local history and folklore offers an embarrassment of riches to a writer. In creating Leon’s story, I have drawn on a number of local traditions, but also taken the liberty of creating a few locations of my own where my story might have offered even more ignominy than history itself. So what’s true and what’s not?
Firstly, there’s no such place as Blacklynefoot, and to my knowledge, there has never been an orphanage located in a converted peel tower anywhere along the border. Vainguard is an amalgamation of several real sites and my own imagination. The little border town of Newcastleton is real and one of the friendliest places I’ve ever been—I feel rather guilty for inflicting such a nasty haunting on such a lovely place! The bridge where the reivers cross the border is based on the Kershope Bridge on the border to the southeast of Newcastleton, but the road over the border runs immediately into the forest, not to a village. The footpath along the river is real, as is most of the hike that Leon takes early in the book. There is no ancient stone circle atop the Larriston Fells.
Hermitage is real and just as atmospheric as I’ve made it sound. Stories of wicked Lord de Soulis and his familiar, Robin Redcap, are plentiful, though they vary when describing what happened to Robin after his master was boiled in lead.
Sadly, the abuse suffered by Jeannie, Frank, and the other orphans is not unrealistic at all. Over the last decade, countless stories of historic institutional abuse have emerged, not just here in the UK, but across the world. It is a tragic truth that too many of the most vulnerable children were not safe in the places that were supposed to care for them.
If you have been affected by childhood abuse of any kind, please remember it was not your fault and you are not alone. Below are the details of just some of the many charities and support groups who work with adult survivors of childhood abuse. Don’t be afraid to reach out.
UK:
The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (NAPAC) 0808 801 0331 napac.org.uk
US:
National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (NAASCA) www.naasca.org
Australia:
Blue Knot Foundation 1300 657 380 www.blueknot.org.au
International:
Help for Adult Victims of Child Abuse (HAVOCA) www.havoca.org
isurvive.org
AMY RAE DURRESON is a quiet Brit with a degree in early English literature, which she blames for her somewhat medieval approach to spelling, and at various times has been fluent in Latin, Old English, Ancient Greek, and Old Icelandic, though these days she mostly uses this knowledge to bore her students. Amy started her first novel a quarter of a century ago and has been scribbling away ever since. Despite these long years of experience, she has yet to master the arcane art of the semicolon. She was a winner in the 2017 Rainbow Awards.
Blog: amyraenbow.wordpress.com
Twitter: @amy_raenbow
By Amy Rae Durreson
7&7 – A DSP Publications Anthology of Virtue and Vice
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Published by DSP PUBLICATIONS
www.dsppublications.com
Published by
DSP PUBLICATIONS
5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886 USA
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
© 2019 Amy Rae Durreson
Cover Art
© 2019 Brooke Albrecht
http://brookealbrechtstudio.com
Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact DSP Publications, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or www.dsppublications.com.
Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64405-336-2
Digital ISBN: 978-1-64405-335-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019942783
Digital published October 2019
v. 1.0
Printed in the United States of America
with friends
Something Wicked This Way Comes Page 35