by Gemma Amor
I turned my feet towards the cemetery. One last thing, and then you can rest, I told myself.
Naively, as it turned out.
Laide Burial Ground was a tiny pocket graveyard resting peacefully on a low bank that directly overlooked Gruinard bay. One side of the cemetery was lined with a hedgerow of rowan trees, thistles, shrubs, baby oaks and long, thick stalks of grass, where crickets chirruped and tiny birds hopped from branch to branch, singing and plucking brilliant green bugs off of leaf buds. The other side of the burial ground was edged by a squat stone wall that held back the shore of the bay. Inside the boundary of the hedge and the wall, the graveyard itself: a neat emerald patch peppered with headstones of all shapes and sizes. It was a romantic location, to be sure, and one I might have been happy with myself as a final resting place.
Had it not been for the locals.
Don’t judge, I thought as I unlatched a small wrought-iron gate and made my way in. You’ve met two people so far. Mother always used to tell you how friendly people were up here. Don’t tar everyone with the same brush. Two bad eggs does not a dozen make.
And yet my blistered, damp feet said otherwise.
In the middle of the cemetery, which was tidy and well-kept, the slumped remains of a tiny chapel stood watching over the headstones with a quiet, ruined grace. Time had not been kind to it. The sea air had weathered the stone, and the walls had crumbled so that only the gables at either end were left standing. Those leaned inwards precariously, seemingly on the verge of collapse. A wind-worn mullioned sandstone window frame in the east gable yawned into the bay, held in place by an iron bar.
And through that window, I could once again see the Island.
Of course.
It appeared larger, now, closer, as if it had used the time it was out of sight to creep nearer to me. It hunched there on the horizon, low and long, and my head almost exploded by way of response. I gritted my teeth, bit back a groan.
It had to be a psychosomatic response of some sort. It had to be. I was no psychologist, but I was willing to theorise, for the sake of my sanity. The headaches had to be a physical manifestation of my current state of mind. My brain had fixated upon the Island subconsciously, used it as a focal point for my pain and exhaustion. There was no other explanation for the agonising pangs that flared on and off as the Island passed in and out of view. No other logical, reasonable explanation that I was willing to countenance, at any rate.
Granny, I thought, looking to distract myself from the headache by any means possible. Find Granny.
I spotted a small sign on weathered posts propped up against the end of the chapel. I went to it. ‘CHAPEL OF SAND OF UDRIGAL’, it read. I skimmed the text beneath...One of the earliest churches on the west coast...medieval...east gable...abandoned...and then stopped when I saw the surname Mackenzie. My Granny’s surname had been Mackenzie. I re-read the sentence. Rebuilt by Robert Mackenzie in 1712.
Once again my heritage made itself known. This cemetery, and the chapel too, were a family concern. Fancy that. How many of my ancestors were buried here?
I drifted between the headstones, steadying my head with one hand and reading names out loud where I could. Some of the stones had lost their inscriptions, the writing polished away by the weather. Others, those that looked Victorian in shape and design, had the text inlaid with brass or ivory. These had stood the test of time better, were easier to read. I saw lots of good, solid Scottish names therein: McGregors, Macivers, McLeans, McRaes, and so on.
And then there were the stones that had no names, no writing on them at all, but instead had rudimentary carvings, symbols, or maybe they were runes- I couldn’t really tell the difference. There was one row in particular of these odd stones, marching out in a little line across the cemetery and down towards the sea. The markers were slender, like thin stone tablets, rounded at the edges, and placed close together in the ground, so close that they looked like teeth sticking out of green, loose gums. On each one, the same symbol was carved. A rudimentary stick man, with an odd device coming out of the top of its head, and off to one side. It was a familiar shape, and niggled at me as I stood there. Where had I seen that image before?
I puzzled over the stones, and then it hit me. Of course! It was the symbol for Hangman, the word game you played on paper. The shape was that of a stickman, hanging from a noose. I’d drawn that shape myself, many times, as a child bored in lessons, and later, as an adult in meetings.
Curious. Why was that symbol marked on all these stones?
I chewed on it, letting my eyes travel up, taking in the view of the bay beyond, but not enjoying it. Mysteries upon mysteries. I thought about the woman in the Post Office, Fiona, and the man with the angry dog. Murdo. My boots were still damp, and reeked of piss. What was the dog’s name again? Patch. My boots reeked of Patch’s piss. It felt as if I’d left my house years ago, instead of mere hours. I was beyond exhausted, both physically and mentally. I felt strange, disconnected. A little feverish. My headache was so bad now that it was bordering on a migraine. I squinted out to sea, a miserable creature with a sore head and a sore heart, and glared at the Island that sat proud in the bay, mocking me.
The Island deceives, Fiona had said, unprompted. As if she’d known that it had taken to haunting me. But how could she have known? Did she feel the effect of it, too? The pull? The pain?
An idea slid into my tired mind. I worried at my lip, staring at the Island. The spot where I stood in the burial ground represented the furthest distance from Taigh-Faire that I’d travelled since I left the house. The furthest distance from the Island, too, not counting everything from before my arrival in Scotland.
I thought about that feeling of a string, tying us together, and the idea went further: at the end of the string, a sharp hook, sunk into my tender flesh.
Could it..?
No. Don’t be a daft bean, Megs, I heard, again in my Mother’s voice.
But could it?
Only one way to find out.
I turned my back to the bay, walked a few long, deliberate steps in the opposite direction. Pain clamped down upon my skull with renewed intensity.
I stopped dead in my tracks, sucking in fresh, salty air in an effort to avoid being sick, wheeled about, and walked back the way I’d come, so that I was closer to the Island once again. A few steps closer, but it made all the difference.
The pain receded, if only a little.
I repeated the experiment several times, to be sure, but I needn’t have bothered. I wasn’t imagining it. It was clear what was happening.
My headache grew worse the more distance I put between myself and the Island.
Reality began to slip sideways.
How was that even possible?! What did it mean? My earlier theories about my subconscious mind evaporated. I felt the Island tugging at me, constantly tugging at me. Its pull was palpable, a tangible thing. The longer I kept from looking at it, the worse it got. The whole thing was incredibly unnerving, like a storm threatening in the distance. I felt heavy, and slow. Things took on a nightmarish quality around me. The little teeth-like headstones loomed, far taller in my mind than they were in real life, where they barely came to my knee. The sound of the sea, gentle and muted until that point, crescendoed suddenly. The sky brightened until my eyes watered. Trees and flowers took on a burning outline of silver. I tasted something metallic in my mouth.
I put my hands over my ears, completely overcome. My head became a raw, pulsing wound, so painful and agonising an object that I could hardly bear to be attached to it.
And then, it stopped.
The noise, the headache, the brightness.
Stopped.
A pin burst the taut bubble of suffering that was my skull. I sagged with relief. The absence of pain in my head felt incredible, like being reborn.
I stood and waited for it to return. It didn’t.
I cautiously lifted my eyes to the Island. It seemed further away, now. Diminished.
W
hat the fuck is happening to me? I thought, not for the first, or last time.
I started searching the enclosure again for Granny’s headstone. Maybe if I kept busy, the headache wouldn’t return, I reasoned. Maybe.
I eventually found her grave right at the edge of the cemetery, next to the low stone wall that bowed down to the shallow beach below. I knelt, and contemplated the grey, smooth stone bejewelled with a light crust of sea-salt. It read, simply, PATRICIA MACKENZIE, and underneath there were no further words, no birth date and death date, no poetry or odes or bible scripture.
There was, instead, a symbol, embossed into the stone with a golden, metallic inlay.
I sighed.
It was a symbol I knew well, now. Not a hanged man, this time. Rather, a triangle, with a round, deep dot at the end of each point, and a fourth dot set into the very centre. It was the same symbol as the one carved above my door, at Taigh-Faire, and on the capstone in my cellar beneath my house, and tattooed onto the wrist of the mousy-haired, peculiar woman who ran Laide Post Office.
I traced the line of the triangle with my index finger, and felt that now familiar tingle spread up my arm.
I pulled back, and realized something.
The top point of the triangle wasn’t facing due North, like its twin on the lintel of my house. The tip of this triangle was angled slightly, pointing North-East, to one thing, and one thing alone.
To the low, dark object in the background, perfectly aligned to Granny’s headstone, as if someone had drawn a straight connection across the sea from that point to this, the tip of the triangle.
The Island.
I swore and stood up quickly, feeling the blood rush to my head as I did so. My skin crawled, as if eyes were upon me. I turned, and found to my surprise that there were. Three sets of eyes, in fact. From higher up the road, peering through a small gap in the hedgerow that overlooked the cemetery.
It was Fiona, and the man Murdo, with his rifle slung across his shoulder, and his dog. Patch.
Standing there, in a neat little line, and all of them watching me.
Dry-mouthed, I waved, hesitantly. Fiona didn’t respond.
The dog started to bark.
Not again, I thought, fear trickling down my back like cold water.
Murdo cuffed the animal behind the ears, a sharp warning, but the dog kept its racket up. I swallowed, hoping against hope it wasn't about to charge down the road and attack me again. What would I do then? I was far enough away that I could probably vault the wall, run across the beach, but at the most, I’d only get a small head start, because dogs were fast, and-
And Fiona leaned into Murdo. She said something in his ear, patted his shoulder sympathetically, took his rifle from him, stepped a few paces back, aimed at the dog, and pulled the trigger.
There was a pop of gunfire, a small burst of red, and the dog fell silent, disappearing from view.
I covered my mouth in shock, falling back against my Granny’s headstone.
And then both man and woman, stony-faced, deliberate, looked at me, and raised their right hands.
The photo, I thought, as they did this. They look like the photo! All those people, and my Granny, with their hands raised. And now, these two. What does it mean?!
At the exact same time, the pair extended their index fingers. They waited a beat, then in perfect unison, they traced a shape into the air by their heads.
A triangle.
I had seen enough. I scrambled over the wall away from them, stumbling across the beach so that I didn’t have to use the road and get anywhere near the town, anywhere near the crazy fucking locals ever again. I ran as fast as I could, sweat pouring down my back, the pound coins jingling, heavy and loud and burdensome, in my pockets, and when I couldn’t run any more, I walked, so fast I thought my hips would catch fire. The beach ran out, became a boulder-strewn shoreline, but by then I had put enough distance behind me that I felt safe enough to rejoin the road. I veered inland, scrambling through scrub and bracken and heather to get back to tarmac. When I had recovered my breath, I ran once again, the road hard beneath my feet, the sound of that single gunshot repeating through my brain, nipping at my heels, hounding me as I ran.
It’s about time something was done about that dog, Fiona had said.
And I kept seeing triangles in the air.
At last, after what felt like an agonisingly long time, Taigh-Faire came into view, shabby, yet proud upon its ledge. I had never been so happy to see a place in my entire life as I was at that moment. Exhausted, I climbed the steep driveway, frantically feeling for my keys about my person as I did so.
And found Matthew waiting for me on my doorstep.
7. Matthew
A part of me had known it wouldn’t take Matthew long to track me down after Tim and I split. Because Matthew was like that. He cared for me, and I for him, and I knew he would be worried about me. But also, when I thought about it later, I couldn’t help but feel as if he had been biding his time, waiting for this. Waiting for his moment. And now, he was here. His timing couldn’t have been worse. Matthew and I used to work for a large daily national newspaper, back when I was younger and considered myself a journalist. We’d been friends long before we’d fucked at the office Christmas party. That uncharacteristic ‘slip’ on my behalf, or so I told myself at the time, to try and assuage some of the guilt that came in the wake of the deed.
After we fucked, I warned Matthew that I didn’t want anything else from him but his continued friendship. This wasn’t strictly true. I was confused. I did want more, but I was frightened of what that meant for my life. Terrified of upsetting the apple cart, of breaking up not just one marriage, but two, of becoming the person everyone hated. So, instead of taking the plunge and running off into the sunset with him, I lied. I hurt him. I used words like ‘friendship’ and ‘special relationship’, whilst all the time being aware that our marriages were glass walls between our individual needs and desires. We could see each other through the walls, but couldn’t quite breach the glass.
‘Can we remain friends, after this?’ Matthew asked me, sadly, when we took a walk one evening to discuss the situation. ‘Really?’
‘I think so, if we work hard at it.’
‘But I am always going to want more than that, Megs. And I don’t know how long I can bear not being with you. I can’t stay in limbo forever.’
‘It isn’t limbo,’ I said, selfishly. ‘I just need you in my life. I need you.’
‘But not enough to leave your husband for me.’
‘It isn’t as easy as that.’
‘I am willing to do whatever it takes, Megs. I’m not saying it would be easy, but I’m willing.’
‘I know,’ I said.
Later, when he was stolen away from me, those words would haunt me for years to come. Because I realised, too late, as is the way with profundity, that I had wasted years of my life not loving as one should love. Years, because I was afraid. He had not been afraid. He had been nothing but honest about what he wanted, willing to disrupt everything, just to be with me.
Until the Otherworld took him.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
So, yes. I was very clear afterwards that sleeping with Matthew had been a mistake, a one-time occurrence. Matthew was very good about it, considering. He took it on the chin, but I always knew that he wanted to take it further. I think he thought he was really in love with me. I think perhaps I was really in love with him too, but we were both married, so we let it lie. And, amazingly, somehow, we did remain friends. And I did not make friends easily.
I hadn’t told anyone where I was going when I had left Tim, but that never stopped Matthew before. As journalists go, he was one of the best connected in the industry. And tenacious with it. In hindsight, I should have realised how far he was willing to go for me.
In hindsight, I should have realised a lot of things.
At first, I didn’t see him. I dragged myself slowly up the driveway of Taig
h-Faire, head bowed, panting. I couldn’t forget the image of those three silhouettes watching me in the cemetery: man, woman, dog. The gun. The small cloud of red mist. The yapping, cut off mid-bark.
Hands, tracing triangles in the air.
Did they shoot the dog because of me?
And that symbol...I had to know what it meant. It was driving me mad. Was it a local superstition, like a sign against the devil? My fingers itched with the memory of touching Granny’s headstone, touching the outline embossed in the stone. It had been pointing to the Island, because everything since I had climbed out of bed that day seemed to be pointing to the Island.
Triangles, secrets, symbols, an Island, an angry dog, headaches, death…
I couldn’t make head nor tail of any of it.
I folded into self-pity. I just wanted to write. That was all. Sit down, turn on my machine, and write. Then sleep. I had now been awake for so long now I was half-delirious, yet I still needed to write. Purge, then rest.
The Island deceives, Fiona had said.
Deceives how?
The adrenaline that had carried me home dispersed, and I sagged. I was so emotionally and physically fatigued I could feel my spine bending under the weight of it all, like an old tree limb carrying too much weight.
It was then that I realised I was not alone.
I looked up at the house, and saw him, leaning casually against my front door frame with a white plastic bag of groceries dangling from one hand. He was tall and slim, with salt and pepper hair and a ready smile. He had been there all along, and was now laughing at me, shaking his head at the spectacle I presented as I puffed up the incline.
I stared, disoriented, not recognising him at first. When I finally realised who it was, I did the only thing that I could think of. I burst into tears. And once I started crying, it felt like I would never stop again. I let out everything I had been feeling since I’d left home the day before. The confusion, the loss, and fear, and frustration. The shame, the embarrassment, the bloody, stupid dead dog. I cried, and cried, and cried, and then I felt strong hands slide around my shoulders, and Matthew circled me in an embrace, and squeezed me gently, and spoke into my hair.