Redhead

by Ian Cook

  Larry helped him to sit up. Sandy’s hair was now matted with dried blood from a deep gash on the top of his head. He was distraught.

  “Thank God! Thank God! At last! I tried to get help. I banged on doors, but nobody would open up. No one would help…”

  Larry winced as he inspected the wound. “What happened to you? Where have you come from?”

  “It was the birds. They were evil, like something out of a horror film.”

  “Birds? You mean birds did this?” asked Larry.

  “Yes. Great big birds. They came out of nowhere and just came at us. You wouldn’t believe it…”

  “Take your time. It’s all okay now,” said Larry. “You mean the attack at the Odin Stone? I saw what they had done.”

  Sandy looked up. “We had just put the Stone back, when they came and swooped on us. They knocked us to the ground. We didn’t stand a chance…”

  “I think I know who was behind all this,” said Larry. “It doesn’t sound possible, I know, but I believe someone called Neferatu and his followers had the power to take the form of birds and attack people. I can tell you some quite incredible things have been happening around here…”

  “Neferatu? I know about Neferatu,” said Sandy bitterly.

  “Well, the good news is that Neferatu is gone, and with him, I imagine, the birds as well,” said Larry. “But right now, we should do something about this gash of yours.”

  At that moment Rebecca and Jim arrived, Rebecca still holding Shona’s hand. When she caught sight of Sandy, she hurried towards him. “Oh, my God, what on earth has happened to you?”

  “It was the birds,” said Sandy. Then he looked at them all in turn. “But that’s not all, I haven’t told you everything. Terrible things have been happening on Norstray. There’s been a massacre…”

  Struggling to hold back tears, he began to tell them about the appalling events that had taken place there. “I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “I am very lucky just to be alive.”

  “Right, we should get some doctors over there as fast as possible,” said Larry.

  He looked at Rebecca and Jim, and then at Sandy and Shona, the distraught women and children. “I think I’m going to have to stay in Orkney a while. These people are going to need some help.”

  “Thank you, Larry,” said Rebecca.

  Larry looked up at the sky. The sun had broken through the clouds, which glowed red on the horizon. The waters of the Loch of Harray shimmered in the early morning light.

  “‘Red sky in the morning – shepherd’s warning’. Things are going to be very different now,” he said.

  As if in reply, a rainbow, symbol of promise, began to appear, brilliant and clear, arching high in the sky over the loch. Everybody in the Ring stopped what they were doing, and stood and watched, entranced.

  At one end, the rainbow lit up the Standing Stones of Stenness. The other end reached down into the sunlit water, and the whole loch seemed to explode into a million glittering, brightly coloured lights.