by Ian Cook
Darkness had fallen, but the sky was already starting to glow with a strong green light. Once again, the Northern Lights were flickering in the heavens.
A deckhand wandered over to join them and gazed up at the sky. “Pretty, isn’t it? We see this all the time now,” he said. “Where are you going, anyway? I thought no one was allowed to travel here any more.”
“The main police station in Kirkwall. To install some emergency generators,” answered Larry.
“Look after themselves first, don’t they?” said the deckhand. “We’ve got power cuts all the time now. Pretty sure this’ll be our last trip. The radar’s down and the radio’s down – all the communication systems. We’re only doing this trip because it’s emergency supplies.”
Larry turned to Jim. “Try your mobile again. Try Rebecca.”
Jim stabbed in the number and listened. “It’s completely dead,” he said.
The deckhand seemed unsurprised. “You’d better be careful,” he said. “Strangers are not exactly very welcome at the moment. Since those kids disappeared, people are a bit edgy. They’re starting to blame each other and there’s been some fights – quite nasty. The police are having a job to keep control.”
“Thanks. We’ll be careful,” said Larry.
CHAPTER 67
As Larry drove the van off the ferry, the lorry in front of him was stopped by a uniformed officer, who stepped out of the darkness and went round to speak to the driver. It seemed to take an eternity as they chatted together amiably. Eventually the officer stepped back with a big smile and waved the driver on.
“This could be a bit more difficult,” said Larry, moving the van forwards and opening the side window. “Good evening, officer,” he said.
The officer seemed barely beyond boyhood. In fact, he was not a full policeman at all. A badge on his cap stated ‘Community Warden’. “Papers, please,” he said.
“Oh dear, we gave them to an officer in Scrabster,” said Larry. “He took them from us before he allowed us on board.” The officer looked unsure what to do.
“All on your own tonight?” asked Larry sympathetically, looking around the deserted quay.
“Yes. Everyone is out trying to deal with the riots. That’s why I’m here. It’s getting a bit rough, tonight. People fighting all over the place. A lot of injuries – and the hospital is getting short of medical supplies. What with the power being cut off as well – it’s mayhem. It’s not usually like this.”
“Did the lorry driver have all his papers?” ventured Larry.
“Er, actually, no he didn’t. But I know he’s okay. He’s a mate of mine. He’s been to get emergency drugs from Scrabster. The hospital’s running out.”
“Same as us,” said Larry. “We’ve been to get emergency generators for the hospital. Have a look if you like.” He got out of the van and opened up the back. The officer peered in. “You know, we should be pressing on,” Larry said. “Don’t want anybody dying just because we didn’t get there fast enough.” He closed the van doors and jumped back in the cab. The officer stepped back and, with some hesitation, waved him on.
“You should have been a politician, the way you told that pack of lies,” observed Jim, as they drove off straight into the town.
Stromness was in total darkness and seemed to be deserted. The only light came from the waving green curtain of the Northern Lights, which cast an eerie glow over the buildings.
Jim was peering out, looking for any signposts. “God, it’s dark in this place.”
“Let’s just head straight for Birsay,” said Larry impatiently. “Which way is it?”
Jim continued to search for roadsigns but could only make out a deserted road. “Just turn left. This is a small place – there must be a signpost soon.”
After five minutes driving around the town, Larry pulled over so that Jim could look at the map. I’ve found Stromness and Birsay,” he said. “But all I can say is, we’ve got to head north.”
“That’s a great help. I know that – but which road do I take? We could be going in any direction. The irritating thing is, I remember getting lost in this place once before.”
Jim became exasperated. “Dammit. We just need to head north by any means, wherever we are.”
At that moment, the Northern Lights flickered a few times, then faded away altogether. “I think I know what’s going on,” said Jim. “Where’s the compass?”
“On my key ring,” said Larry.
Jim slipped the compass off the key ring and put it flat on his knee. He tapped it, then tapped it again. The needle was going round in circles.
Larry looked over at the compass, a puzzled expression on his face.
“You realise what this means, don’t you?” said Jim. “It’s finally happened – the Earth’s magnetic field has totally disappeared. At least around here.”
Larry picked up the compass and inspected it. “Maybe it’s because we’re inside the van.” He opened the door to get out.
“Come back! Quick! Shut the door,” shouted Jim, pulling him back.
A tangled throng of fighting, shouting men, armed with metal bars and wooden cudgels had suddenly emerged from the darkness. Jim instantly locked the van doors, but as the violent group surged towards them, it quickly became evident that these men were completely oblivious to the presence of both the van and its occupants.
As they moved into the beam of their headlights, it appeared that four or five men were being savagely beaten up. Each time one of them managed to break free, he was pulled back into the crowd, as if being forced to run a never-ending gauntlet. Within a minute or two, the frenzied mob had passed out of their view back into the darkness, their cries fading in the distance.
“Jesus!” said Jim, shocked and astonished. “What’s that all about?”
“My guess, wrong colour hair,” said Larry simply. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Jim pointed to a road ahead. “Over there. Let’s just hope it’s in the right direction.”
It was not. But after a mile or so, they passed a single signpost to Birsay.
CHAPTER 68
The abduction of Rebecca was carried out quickly and efficiently. She had barely left the police station, when a large black car drew up behind her. Unseen by Rebecca, the rear door of the car opened and Neferatu slid out. He was dressed in the same damp suit that he had been wearing on Norstray. As the car crawled slowly alongside, he caught up with her, clasped a hand over her mouth, dragged her back to the car and forced her into the back seat before she had time to realise what was happening. Neferatu pushed her head down on to the seat as the car accelerated away.
He released her only as they were crossing the causeway that led out of Kirkwall, over the Bay of Weyland. She sat up, shocked and dazed.
Neferatu turned towards her, with his familiar sneer. “So, you just couldn’t resist coming here, could you?” he snarled, in a guttural accent she hadn’t heard before. “And you walked right into my trap. Your friends will follow you. But there’ll be no escape this time.”
She found it difficult to find her voice. “Why do you want to kill me? What have I done?” she whispered.
Neferatu face was impassive. “You have to die,” he said, “because you are the Queen.”
Rebecca sat there, stunned. “The Queen? What Queen? What do you mean?” she asked.
“You must know that you are the leader of the tribe – the Queen of the Redheads.”
Rebecca struggled to make sense of what was happening. “I still don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not a Queen of anything. I’m just a journalist writing a story. I don’t understand why you want me dead.”
“You don’t need to understand,” was all he would answer.
Then why doesn’t he just kill me right now? she thought.
It was as if he had read her mind. “You could have had a quick and easy death. Now we have something very special for you.”
“Le
t me go! I don’t belong to any tribe.”
“Oh yes, but you do,” he said.
“What are you on about? Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere where nobody will find you,” he answered coldly.
The driver turned around. His face was Middle Eastern. “We are getting very near,” he said, his accent similar to Neferatu’s.
Rebecca looked outside the car. It lurched as they swept around a roundabout and headed down a road signposted to Stromness. Neferatu was now staring straight ahead impassively, indifferent to the passing landscape.
Suddenly, feeling she had nothing to lose and infuriated by his arrogance and stupidity, she shouted, “What have you done with all the children? Where are they? What are you planning to do with them? They’re just innocent children, for heaven’s sake!”
He slowly turned to face her, his green eyes burning into hers. “They are quite safe enough – until tomorrow. We have taken them to many secret places – similar to where we are taking you. They are scattered all over the island. But you will be kept completely alone – and you will suffer.”
Rebecca looked at him with contempt. “You sick bastard,” she said, and raised her hand to hit his face.
Neferatu grabbed her wrist and twisted her arm so that she squealed with pain. He let go of her and raised his fist as a warning. She sat there, shaking.
“How far is it now?” he said to the driver, as they drove slowly along the side of a loch.
“We’re here,” said the driver. He turned off the road and headed down a track towards the water.
Rebecca thought she couldn’t feel more wretched, until she saw the large, grass-covered mound in front of them. It looked like a smaller version of the tomb of Maeshowe.
As the car pulled up abruptly into a parking space, Neferatu sprang into action. He jumped out of the car, grabbed Rebecca, forced her arm behind her back and frog-marched her towards the entrance. She caught a glimpse of the name of the tomb on a sign: ‘Unstan Chambered Tomb’, as the driver knelt down and opened a low iron grill-gate.
Saying nothing now, Neferatu forced her on to her knees and pushed her roughly into the entrance passage. Before she could turn, she heard the gate clang shut and the click of the key in a padlock.
Neferatu turned and walked back to the car, calling to Rebecca over his shoulder, “You can shout and scream all you like. They’re all dead there. Enjoy their company – you’ll be joining them soon.” The car reversed, turned around and sped back towards the road.
Rebecca crawled the four feet through the passage into the tomb, took one look and quickly headed back to the gate. She shook it violently, but it was firmly locked. “Help! Help! Get me out of here!” she screamed.
She went on screaming until her voice became weak and hoarse. Nobody appeared. Not even a bird. Only a cold winter breeze blew intermittently from the loch.
She tried stabbing the keys on her phone and putting it to her ear. It was completely dead.
Finally, slumping against the cold iron of the gate, she found herself weeping uncontrollably. Realising the futility of her situation, she backed away from the gate and made her way back into the gloom of the tomb.
Standing up, all she could initially make out were large slabs of cold, grey stone covered in patches of green lichen. On closer inspection, she could see that some of the slabs were set vertically to create dark chambers around a central space. She wondered how long the Neolithic dead had lain in these chambers, before their bones had finally been cleared.
In the dim light of the tomb, she noticed two windows in the roof, but they were impossible to reach.
Defeated and dejected, she sat down on a stone sill at the entrance to a chamber and tried to keep calm. The atmosphere was cold and damp and even in her winter coat she started to shiver. She clasped her arms around her and began to go over what Neferatu had said. But it did not make any sense to her. Trying to imagine what Neferatu could have been talking about, she got up and walked around, checking to see if there were any means of escape through the chambers. There were not. She was effectively sealed in.
She was about to sit down again, when a small carving on a stone at the entrance to a chamber caught her eye. It was like a child’s drawing of a bird, about three inches long and etched into the rock. She could not help wondering who had done it. Like her, the bird seemed trapped inside the tomb.
She remembered Jim telling her that Orkney was dotted with remote tombs like this. She realised it could be weeks before anybody trapped in them would be found. They were the ideal places to keep captives in. She thought about the small children now imprisoned inside them. Imagining what they must be going through, she was overwhelmed with desperate concern for them.
She crawled back to the gate and called out – but to no avail. Feeling completely desolate, she returned to the inside of the tomb and sat down again on the cold stone sill with her head in her hands.
It was beginning to get dark, and with the darkness it was becoming colder. She put her arms around her knees, making herself as small as possible in an attempt to keep warm, watching the skylights and the entrance-gate, dreading what she might see.
As the darkness grew, she wondered desperately whether anybody would guess what had happened to her, or whether they might organise a rescue mission. Any animosity she had felt towards Jim and Syreeta had long dissipated, and she now yearned for them to appear.
Who might miss her on Orkney? In reality, nobody would notice her absence. Besides, the people of Orkney had other things on their minds.
Her mind was beginning to switch off when something flashed past her head, zigzagged around her and disappeared inside a chamber. She shrieked and waved her hands around her hair in panic. Shaking, she looked around, trying to convince herself that it was only a harmless bat.
She was very thirsty and would have done anything for a glass of water. She checked her watch. It was nearly seven o’clock and she had had nothing to eat or drink since early that morning. She was now desperate for someone, anyone, to appear.
Then, a freezing mist seemed to come up out of the floor, swirling around her ankles. She jumped up, but it rose rapidly up her body, until she couldn’t see anything around her.
Edging back against an upright stone slab, she stood there, frozen. In one chamber, a pile of gleaming white bones shone through the mist, as if they had an inner light. The mist eddied, and she caught glimpses of dark, shadowy figures in it. Dead, glazed eyes seemed to pop out of nowhere, stared at her and then disappeared, only to reappear somewhere else.
A hand suddenly grasped her shoulder, and she almost fainted. A hairy face appeared in front of hers, followed by a body which seemed to materialise as she watched. The face bore a kindly expression. It was that of a middle-aged man with a fiery beard and unkempt red hair down to his shoulders. He was wearing a belted jacket and trousers, crudely stitched together out of some rough brown woollen material.
What transfixed her and strangely reassured her were his clear blue eyes. He said something to her in an urgent tone, but she couldn’t comprehend what it was. It sounded a little like Gaelic. He waited for her response, but all she could say was, “I don’t understand.” Clearly impatient, he repeated the message. Rebecca shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Then there was another voice, yet no body this time. It was the voice of a woman. A mixture of wonder and relief surged through Rebecca. She recognised the voice of her own mother. But the tone was earnest.
“He is telling you to put back the Odin Stone. It is urgent. It is true what he said. You are the Queen. You must put back the Odin Stone.”
At that moment, there was a clank from the direction of the entrance. Instantly, the apparition, the voices and the mist all disappeared. Two huge swarthy men emerged, one after the other, from the entrance passage into the central chamber and stood up. Together, they grabbed her arms. Dazed and exhausted, she was unable to struggle this time, though s
he was bewildered by their strange appearance. Apart from loincloths, they were completely naked.
CHAPTER 69
The two hefty men forced Rebecca through the entrance to the tomb. One was taller and stronger-looking than the other, and his air of authority seemed to denote that he was in charge. Seizing two spears which they had left outside, they prodded her towards the track without a word. With one on either side, she was briskly marched towards the road and shoved along roughly if she tried to slow down.
As they reached the road, she caught sight of a group of terrified, wailing children, all with red hair, emerging out of the gloom. Some were holding hands, most of them crying, one girl carrying a howling baby. Only one guard accompanied the children, and he hit them occasionally on their sides with a spear, as if shepherding a flock of sheep. Rebecca desperately wanted to console them, but she was hastily pushed into line behind them and swept along, unable to do anything to help.
It seemed only a short time before they reached the path that led up to the Ring of Brodgar. From the opposite direction of Stenness appeared another group of miserable red-haired captives, emerging out of the darkness. It became clear that they were mostly children, exhausted and barely able to walk. Among them were one or two women, usually carrying an infant, and the occasional man with a guard close by, spear at the ready.
More guards stood at the junction of the road and the path, directing the throng up towards the stone circle. This was lit by flares set on top of the stones, so that it looked like a ring of fire.
There, standing at the entrance, was Neferatu, hands on his hips and a thin satisfied smile on his face. He was now dressed in fine white robes, apparently indifferent to the cold. He surveyed the crowd carefully, as if looking for somebody. As Rebecca came into sight, his eyes lit up and he made his way towards her.
“So pleased you could join us,” he said, with a mocking half bow.
Rebecca broke away from the group and stumbled over to him. “Why are you doing this?” she asked, angry and bewildered. “What is this all about?”