by Jane Renshaw
‘Midsummer’s Eve. When the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead weakens and thins... When the dead can visit the living... When hallowfires must be lit and lanterns set in windows to ward off evil spirits, and call home the souls of the dead.’ He stepped back, outside the circle, and began to move round it, appearing and disappearing as he passed behind the stones.
‘For God’s sake Hector,’ said Fiona.
‘I suppose,’ said Steve, ‘you’re going to tell us this is where the evil spirits hang out? In stone circles?’
‘Where else? You have to take care where you light your hallowfire. In your own grate – fine. There it acts as protection. But light one in a stone circle and you can call up the Sith, the fairy-daemons, from their hidden barrows and cairns. The Sith, who lead travellers from the road; who steal babies from their cradles and substitute changelings; who murder men as they sleep.’
One of the girls giggled.
‘The Sith are no laughing matter, Perdita. They come upon you without any warning – other than, sometimes, the faint sound of the bells hanging from the harnesses of their phantom horses.’
Fiona grinned at Helen across the fire, and snuggled against Steve.
‘Oh, it’s all nonsense, of course... But as recently as the turn of the century, orra loons were sent round the farm boundaries with flaming torches to ward off evil. On this night, at Mains of Clova, at Unthank, at every farm in the parish there would have been torches moving through the dark.’
Norrie said in her ear: ‘What a load of crap.’
‘No – it’s true,’ Helen whispered back.
Hector’s voice became brisk. ‘But that’s all just superstitious nonsense. No one believes it any more.’
Another long silence.
‘Or do they? As recently as the 1960s, Sandie Milne still kept a vigil at Greenmires. Every Midsummer’s Eve, when the work of the farm was done, he’d set a fire in the grate in the little sitting room off the kitchen, and switch on the wireless, and make the first of many cups of coffee to keep himself awake through the night.
‘When his wife Betty was alive she’d sit up with him and they’d chat and keep each other awake – but since she’d died he’d kept the vigil alone. He’d set a candle in the window, though he laughed about it and called himself a silly old bugger. But still he hoped... Maybe this year she’d come back to him. The dead soul of his Betty.
‘No one knows exactly what happened on Midsummer’s Eve 1964. But on the morning of June 22nd, farm workers John Dunbar and Willie Duff found the old man lying dead on the hearth, a carving knife in his throat. A bottle of whisky and a glass sat on a sidetable by his chair.
‘And the ashes were cold in the grate. The fire had been out for hours.
‘The official verdict was suicide. There were no signs of a break-in. All the windows were snibbed, and the doors locked from the inside. The two farm workers had to break a window to get into the house after looking through the sitting room window and seeing Sandie motionless on the floor.
‘So no foul play was suspected.
‘But if you read the Procurator Fiscal’s report, you’ll see that there were some odd anomalies. There were no tentative “test” wounds on the old man’s neck, as are usually found when someone stabs themselves. Even more oddly, there were no fingerprints on the handle of the knife, only a strange powdery deposit. John Dunbar and Willie Duff were questioned about this – had either of them, in the first moments of shock, tried to remove the knife from the old man’s neck? Perhaps with a dirty rag, such as farm workers often carry in their pockets? That would explain how the old man’s fingerprints were wiped from the handle of the knife.
‘Both denied having done any such thing. But the report surmises that ‘interference’ with the scene before the police arrived must have been to blame for the lack of fingerprints on the handle of the knife.
‘Two more odd things were not mentioned in the report. One, which spread like wildfire through the parish, was that, when the two men turned the body over, they found a look of terror frozen on Sandie Milne’s face. And the other... that night, in the small hours, Sandie’s nearest neighbour, Jenny McKenzie at Newbigging, had heard the sound, faint but clear, of bells, moving through the woods behind her house.’
He stopped, and there was no sound but the crackling of the fire and the wind sifting the pines behind him. No one spoke. No one moved.
Then Fiona laughed, and reached forward with a stick to flick her potato from the fire and inspect it. ‘And if you believe that you’ll believe anything.’
Hector laughed too, coming out of the shadows and grabbing a can from the cool box. ‘Makes a good story though, doesn’t it?’
‘Brilliant!’ giggled Jennifer.
‘Hanging on every word,’ said Steve.
As he passed round behind Helen, Hector leant over her and whispered: ‘I felt the Sith would be more likely to use a knife than a shotgun.’
She cricked her neck to smile up at him. ‘Oh, definitely.’
Hector took a seat on the Sloane girls’ rug, and one of them asked, ‘But what do Sith actually look like?’
‘Like ordinary people. From a distance, at least. No one who’s seen them up close has lived to tell the tale.’
‘Ooh.’ Sloane Girl wriggled closer to him.
‘Oh come on,’ said Lorna.
‘No way did Willie Duff ever do anything as interesting as finding a guy with a knife in his neck,’ said Suzanne. ‘You just put him in the story because folk have been talking about him. Because it’s his funeral tomorrow.’
‘And you think that’s a coincidence?’ said Hector. ‘That he’s died at midsummer?’
Suzanne snorted.
Lorna shook her head. ‘He died over a week ago.’
‘What’s a week, to an evil spirit condemned to wander the Earth for all eternity?’
Fiona laughed, and pushed her potato back into the fire. ‘Fish once saw a ghost in our garage. He was ten years old and had just sucked all the centres out of a box of liqueur chocolates, but he swears he saw it, a “shape” moving through the wall.’
Suzanne snorted again. ‘Where is Fish, anyway?’
Hector was lighting a cigarette. ‘He phoned earlier to make his apologies. Apparently he’d rather sit in a pub making small talk with lawyers.’ He leant back, exhaling.
Fish had a job in a lawyer’s office over the summer.
Lorna came and plomped herself down next to Helen, and whispered: ‘That’s dope they’re smoking. Suzanne and those airheads, and Hector.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘You can smell it from here. Hector’s been handing it out like sweeties. And that Tom and Perdita are snorting something. I’ve had enough of this. Do you think Norrie would drive me home?’
‘He can’t. He’s been drinking.’
‘Great. So we have to stay up here all night until someone’s sobered up enough to get behind the wheel?’
‘That seems to be the general idea. I think –’
‘Shh!’ One of the Sloane girls had jumped to her feet. ‘Everyone be quiet!’
Suzanne was the last to shut up. As she stopped talking, a metallic jangling sound drifted, very faintly, down through the trees.
‘Oh my God,’ whispered Sloane Girl.
Someone laughed, and was quickly shooshed.
The sound was louder now. The high, cheerful sound of little bells.
Hector stood, and called out: ‘Okay, very funny, Norrie.’
‘Norrie’s here,’ Helen hissed.
Hector turned to look at them. The firelight picked out the line of his jaw, his nose, the brightness of his eyes.
‘Well who’s missing? Tom?’
‘I’m here.’
Everyone looked around at each other. ‘There’s no one missing.’
‘Shit.’
‘Oh God, what’s that?’
Jennifer screamed, shot to her feet, tripped over something, fell ove
r, scrambled round the fire. Two others followed her.
In the space behind where they’d been sitting, between the stone circle and the trees, something was moving. A figure. Helen grabbed at Lorna, and Lorna grabbed at Helen, and Hector shouted, ‘Get back behind the fire!’ and he was snatching something up and jabbing its end in the blaze.
Flames shot out. Helen smelt paraffin, and saw that Hector was holding up a branch with rags tied round it at the top, and they were covered in flames. But the sudden flaring light only made it harder to see beyond it.
The figure was still moving.
‘Who’s that?’ said Hector.
The figure stopped.
Then:
‘Death,’ came groaning through the dark, and suddenly the figure was flapping, and leaping into the stone circle, and coming round the fire at them, and it had no face, and it held up something that glinted, a knife, and everyone was screaming, Helen’s throat was raw with it, and then it stopped and flung back the hood of its cloak and tore a black oval from its face, and it was screaming with laughter, and it was Fish.
And then everyone was shouting at once.
‘You bastard!’ said Fiona, and ran at him.
‘Ow ow ow,’ said Fish as she thumped him.
Hector had dropped the flaming branch. He was laughing so much he was bent over, gasping, and Steve was saying, ‘Arse.’
‘How is that funny?’ yelled Suzanne, but then she was laughing too.
Norrie had the black oval in his hands. ‘Painted cardboard.’
Typical Norrie – everyone else was going mental, and he wanted to know what the mask was made of.
After that Helen remembered everyone getting more drinks and the girls giggling and giggling and she found her glass of cider, and before she knew it she had drunk it all and Norrie had got her some more, and she was smiling all over her silly face, lying on the rug and looking up at the eerie pale-blue sky.
Then: ‘I feel like shit,’ Suzanne was growling, like it was Helen’s fault, collapsing beside her on the rug and rolling slowly onto her front.
Helen started to laugh, and Suzanne grabbed her and said into her face: ‘Helen. You stupid cow.’
On the other side of the fire they’d lit more torches. Tom had one, and Fish, and Hector. They were weaving in and out of the standing stones, acrid smokiness trailing behind them, people getting up to join on the end of the line.
When Helen looked back at Suzanne she saw that her T-shirt had ridden up, exposing the white skin of her narrow back, luminous in the light of the fire – and the dark marks that leapt across it.
‘What are those?’ Helen grabbed at the T-shirt but Suzanne, drunk as she was, got there first, pulling it back down over the bare skin.
‘Bruises. Fell against the edge of the table in the nursery.’
Helen frowned. ‘Not while you were holding Stinker?’
‘Course not.’ And, defiantly: ‘Okay, so I’d had a bit to drink, I’m a stupid cow, but so are you.’
Helen sighed. ‘What time is it?’
Suzanne’s forehead had dipped to rest on the rug, the mussy halo of hair hiding her face. ‘Dunno.’
Helen moved her watch’s face, angling it to the light from the fire. Ten to twelve. She stood, and looked across the fire, not expecting to see Hector this time.
But there he was, striking off across the clearing like the Pied Piper with everyone following behind. Fish was still in his stupid cloak. When they were in the woods, Hector would give someone the torch and sneak back, she supposed, and down to the Land Rover.
‘I have to go,’ she told the back of Suzanne’s head.
Suzanne didn’t look round, or say anything, or give any sign that she’d heard.
She found the stalkers’ path, and then lost it. After that it was hazy. She remembered being in the darkness of the trees, stumbling, ducking unseen branches that snagged in her hair, and the relief at finding the path again further down the slope. The path being too steep; tripping, slipping, bumping; finding her feet again. A hand on her arm, pulling her off the path, and another hand over her mouth, and she couldn’t breathe.
And that was all she remembered.
10
Helen didn’t want to open her eyes. She wanted to go back down into that warm, blurry place where nothing made sense but it didn’t matter, where everything happened a long way away and was nothing to do with her.
But there were voices, very close.
A woman: ‘Don’t you dare tell me what I need to do!’
There was a smell of sweat, and hot disinfectant, and soap. A hand suddenly clamped round Helen’s right arm and squeezed it, hard.
‘Mrs Clack!’ said a man.
‘Ina, stop it!’ Mum?
The hand squeezed again, even harder, and then let go.
‘Mrs Clack, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
‘I’m not going anywhere!’
‘It’s all right. Please. Let her stay.’ Yes, it was Mum. It was Mum. ‘Ina, sit down and let’s –’ And then much closer, much softer: ‘Oh dearie, dearie…’ A hand again, very gentle this time, closing round Helen’s. ‘It’s all right, you’re all right… Can someone get a doctor?’
Helen opened her eyes. One of her eyes. The lid of the other wouldn’t move – something was pressing it down tight. It was hot and stinging and itchy. She was lying down, and Mum’s face, thin and pale, was leaning over her, and next to it Auntie Ina’s, big and red and shiny. There was a white ceiling above them, dazzling.
‘Shh,’ said Mum. ‘You’re all right. You’re safe now.’
But she hadn’t been?
Something crashing into her, the scream knocked out of her, an arm rough round her neck, an animal grunt, a hand pressed over her mouth and her nose –
That had really happened?
‘My eye’s funny.’ She put up a hand to feel it, and her fingers touched skin too soon – a big tight swollen mass from her eyebrow to her cheek, like her eye had inflated to fill the whole socket. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Your eye’s fine – the flesh round about’s just a bit swollen. And you’ve got some bruises, and maybe a cracked rib – and you’ve had a knock on the head that’s made you very sleepy and woozy. But the doctor says there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘What happened to me?’
And suddenly Auntie Ina’s face was huge, and she had her hands on either side of Helen’s face and Helen could feel her wedding ring digging into her cheek, and her eyes were staring, the skin round them puffed up and red.
‘Where is she? You tell us right now Helen! What have you done?’
There was movement and voices, behind Ina, and the ring dug in all the more and then the hands were gone, and Auntie Ina’s face was gone, and instead Mum was smiling at her, stroking her hair, telling her to never mind Ina, she was worried about Suzanne and she didn’t know what she was doing or saying.
‘Suzanne?’
‘Where is she?’ Helen couldn’t see Auntie Ina now but she could still hear her. ‘Oh please where is she?’
11
There was a bald man in a white coat, asking her questions, his fingers cool, his eyes kind. She remembered him, vaguely, from before – so that had been real too. His voice was very calm. Mum asked him if Helen could have a drink of water, and he said, ‘Of course.’ The water in the blue-tinted glass was lovely and cool, but Helen’s teeth chinked on the edge of it and she couldn’t get her mouth to work properly. Some of the water spilt on the sheet.
She sank back down on the pillow. Her head felt massive. Heavy.
Mum wiped Helen’s chin and patted her lips and whispered, ‘Okay?’
Helen tried to smile.
Another man’s voice, a loud voice, not the doctor’s: ‘And don’t let anyone else in until I tell you otherwise. Other than medical staff, obviously.’
She turned her head. A man had come in and was sitting down on a chair next to the bed. Quite young. His l
egs were big, not fat but big like a rugby player, and the suit trousers were pulled tight across his thighs. In one hand he had a little black notebook, the kind with a padded cover. He smiled at her. ‘Well, Helen. Hello.’
‘Hello.’
‘This is DS Stewart.’ It was Mum’s tight, polite voice, the one she used for people she didn’t like. ‘He’s a policeman. He needs to ask you some questions, dearie. It’s very important.’
Above Mum’s pale face there was a strip light, too bright. There were black dots along the inside of the light casing where insects must have crawled in and not been able to get out again and died.
Her right arm and side ached.
She had a question to ask too. An important one.
‘How are you feeling?’ said DS Stewart.
‘A bit weird. Thank you.’
‘Would you like another drink of water?’ Mum was still holding the glass. There was a yellow plastic jug with one of those flip-up lids on the table by the bed.
Yes, another drink of water.
But she had to ask her question first.
‘Has something happened to Suzanne?’
DS Stewart opened the notebook. The pages were lined in green. ‘We were hoping you could tell us that.’
‘But I can’t. I don’t know. How –’
‘All right,’ Mum shushed her, stroking her hair.
‘How did I get here?’
‘You were found lying unconscious,’ said Mum. ‘And Hector and Fiona and Steve brought you here to the hospital.’
The man called DS Stewart was staring at her. ‘Do you know where Suzanne might be, Helen?’
‘No.’
‘Did you have an argument? A fight?’
‘No!’
Mum squeezed her hand. ‘No one’s going to be angry. We all know what Suzanne can be like.’
Helen touched the swollen flesh at her eye.
‘Helen?’ DS Stewart’s voice was suddenly loud in her ears, but she didn’t think he’d raised it – it was like the volume on the TV had been turned up. ‘If Suzanne’s been hurt too, we need to find her. As soon as possible. There’s a search going on, but we need to know what happened so we know where to look.’