Hot Scots, Castles, and Kilts

by Tammy Swoish

  At first, I thought she'd grab an ax and chase Adan off her property, but once Shane climbed out of the car, she turned all shy and quiet.

  I swear, she needs some serious counseling.

  Hmmmm . . . Fiona likes Shane. That makes my setting them up so much easier.

  Not surprisingly, it didn't take too much convincing to get her to agree to go on the double date. She had two rules: one, Adan couldn't speak to her, and two, we had to go and sit in the ghost field.

  I don't know how Fiona thought she was going to get a guy with that plan, but Shane seemed thrilled, so she must've known what she was doing. Either that or Shane is as nuts as she is.

  We had to convince our moms to let us stay out late again. It wasn't that big a problem, since Mom and Molly think it's cool we're hunting ghosts. Of course, we didn't tell them the guys were going to be with us.

  Holding back information isn't lying . . . is it?

  Ghost Field Double Date

  Since we hadn't told our moms that the guys were going, Fiona and I took off on the four-wheeler at dusk. Adan and Shane were going to meet us there.

  Fiona packed way too much stuff. I had to juggle two backpacks and two sleeping bags on my lap while she whipped across the field. I almost fell off the back three times.

  I know she was trying to dump me. She wasn't happy about spending the night in a field with Adan McClintogg. She'd mumbled about the “stinking Mc-Clintoggs” while she'd packed.

  She must really like Shane.

  When we got to the rendezvous location, the guys were already there. They'd dug a shallow pit, circled it with stones, and had a nice fire going. It got cold at night here. Fiona wouldn't have a fire the other night—something about frightening the spirits away.

  The guys' sleeping bags were rolled out, and there was a pile of food sitting on one. From the looks of it, they planned on eating all night. Guys eat like horses, I swear. I wouldn't be eating a thing.

  Speaking of horses, apparently they'd ridden out to the meeting spot, because two horses stood in the shadows, tied to a large stake.

  Fiona didn't like the fire. She said, “What are ye thinking? We won't see any ghosts with that going.”

  Shane said, “Aye, we will, Fiona,” and winked at her.

  Fiona got this soft, mushy look in her eyes, and nodded like she was starring in one of Mom's romance novels. The big, strong hero says it's fine, and the heroine just goes along with it. Disgusting!

  If they acted like this all night, I'd scream.

  I put the backpacks by the fire and spread out our sleeping bags a suitable distance from the guys'.

  “What's the plan, Fiona?” Adan asked, breaking rule number one—no talking between the two of them.

  Fiona glared at him. “Dinnae be talking to me, Adan McClintogg.”

  “Fiona, it'll be a long night if there's no talking,” Shane said.

  “We can talk. Just Adan and I won't,” she said.

  She sat on her sleeping bag and Shane plopped down on mine beside her. “He's not so bad, Fiona.”

  “Aye, he is, Shane. And if ye've come to make peace between the McClintoggs and MacKensies, ye're wasting your time.”

  Shane shook his head. “This is foolish, Fiona. MacKensies and McClintoggs haven't feuded in years.”

  “Aye,” said Fiona. “Then my dad died. Ye tell him to leave my family alone.”

  Shane looked into the fire. “I'll not spend my night speaking between the two of you. Tell him yourself.”

  “I already have,” she said.

  “Then you've said your piece.”

  “Aye.”

  Adan sat on the bag with all the food and I sat down next to him. “I dinnae want yer family home, Fiona,” he said.

  We'd never see any ghosts if these two kept up this argument. The night was quickly turning into a therapy session.

  “Aye, ye do, Adan McClintogg,” Fiona said. “Dinnae lie because yer friend is here.”

  Adan shook his head. “Not even my father who runs the clan . . .”

  Fiona covered her ears.

  Adan sighed and quit talking.

  11 p.m.

  I probably have burned marshmallow stuck between my teeth. I broke my “no eating in front of guys” rule and ate toasted marshmallows.

  I couldn't resist.

  11:05 p.m.

  Adan made a pot of tea. They drink a lot of tea in Scotland.

  It was good. Even Fiona complimented him on it.

  Progress?

  Day 22

  Midnight

  Under Fiona's protests that we wouldn't see ghosts if there was a fire, the guys compromised. Our once mighty fire became nothing but smoldering coals. I was sitting close, and my front was warm, but my back and butt were freezing.

  Fiona and I properly sat on our side of the fire and the guys sat on theirs.

  There were no ghosts, but that didn't bother me. I was happy spending time with Adan. The light from the fire made him look so gorgeous.

  2:16 a.m.

  This sucked. I was the only one awake. I tried to sleep, but it was too cold . . . and too quiet.

  3:10 a.m.

  Almost fell asleep.

  3:12 a.m.

  Heard a noise. What was it?

  I started hyperventilating.

  Cats?

  3:17 a.m.

  The noises of dying cats have been replaced by eerier sounds—moaning, thumps, sobbing.

  Holy crap. I didn't want to see a spirit carrying his bloody, decapitated head.

  I shook Fiona. “Wake up,” I whispered.

  She bolted out of her sleeping bag, grabbed her camcorder, and hit Record, sweeping the lens back and forth over the dark field. “What is it?” she asked. “Did ye see something?”

  That woke the guys. “What is it?” asked Shane. “Do ye have something on camera?” He moved over and stood by Fiona.

  Adan came over and sat by me. “Did ye see something?” he whispered.

  “No,” I said.

  “Heard something, then?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn't ask any more questions. Feeling that I didn't want to talk about it, he just nodded and put his arm around me.

  3:25 a.m.

  I kept pinching myself to keep from crying. I sat snuggled next to Adan and hadn't heard any moaning for almost nine minutes. During that time Fiona and Shane had left the security of our camp, wandered out onto the field, and come back. They both had genuine looks of disappointment on their faces.

  “Nothing,” said Fiona.

  That was a good thing. Right?

  “Fiona,” Adan said, “did you get any sounds?”

  “No,” said Shane. “We already did a playback of the audio. Nothing.”

  Adan pulled me closer. “Sami heard something,” he said.

  Fiona and Shane nodded. “Aye,” said Shane. “What'd ye hear, Sami? What'd it sound like?”

  “Moaning. Cats.”

  “Ghost moaning?” asked Fiona.

  Adan laughed. “We're sitting in the middle of a battlefield, Fiona, waiting for the spirits of the dead. Is there another kind of moaning?”

  Fiona smiled. “No.”

  “Let's go home,” said Adan. “I think Sami's had enough.”

  I hated being the coward. Adan hugged me and told me it was fine.

  “Ye can hear the spirits, Sami,” said Shane.

  “No,” I said.

  “Aye, ye can, Sami,” said Adan. He pulled me into his arms. “You'll be our medium, our connection to the dead.”

  “What?” I looked around our small circle. They were all nodding.

  Fiona clapped her hands. “It'll be perfect. That's why we haven't seen a ghost, Sami,” she said. “We need someone to communicate with them and let them know it's safe to show themselves to us . . . to come back into our world.”

  “What?” I sounded like a recording.

  “Aye, do ye think so, Fiona?” asked Shane.

  She nodde
d. “All spirits need something to communicate through. It'll be Sami.” She smiled at me.

  “We'll use that to our advantage,” said Adan.

  “What?” I cried again.

  They'd all eaten too many marshmallows.

  4:30 a.m.—Back at the Cottage

  Maybe ghosts do talk to me.

  Not cool.

  During our time on the battlefield, Adan and Fiona had apparently worked through their family squabbles—at least enough to agree that I was some weird clairvoyant, and that the four of us would try to communicate with the dead again. Or should I say, they were going to use me to communicate with the dead.

  I don't want to speak to the dead, and I don't want them talking to me. Why don't they just talk to Fiona and leave me alone?

  Wool Dyeing

  Molly, Fiona, Mom, and I dyed wool today.

  Fiona explained that this was another activity they were trying to perfect for future guests. So I was off to be the test dummy again.

  I'm still wondering who would pay for this type of vacation. But if they put ghost tours on the agenda, I think the place would be swamped with paying paranormal weirdos. They'd pay more than those zany want-to-go-back-to-the-past type people. There are always shows on television about people wanting to vacation in haunted hotels and stuff.

  I was so tired, and my ideas about chilling and catching up on my sleep did not include dipping wool into boiling vats of colored water. Oh well, here goes nothing.

  Molly and Mom had things set up by the smallest cottage, the one Fiona and I had cleaned earlier in the week. It's the one I wish Mom and I were staying in. There's a pond in the backyard, no loft, and no Samuel Logan.

  The dyeing area consisted of three huge pots, each sitting on its own stack of wood. There were also three long wooden tables and a huge wood-framed box with chicken wire across the bottom.

  Mom was carrying a bucket of water and dumped it into the middle pot. Molly walked among the three tables, piling each with weeds.

  “Mum's found some recipes for medieval wool dye,” Fiona said as we walked closer. “I think she's working on yellow today.”

  “Yellow?”

  “Aye, before you came we worked on brown,” Fiona said. “Mum tries different mixtures until she gets the best color. That will be the formula she'll use when the guests dye wool.”

  I watched Molly separate a bunch of plants. “Is she going to use that?”

  “Aye.”

  Mom called. “Hey, girls, grab some buckets and help me fill the last two cauldrons.”

  We did. By the time we finished, we had a path of worn grass between the pond and the work station. It took a million buckets to half fill the pots; maybe Molly should hook up some kind of a hose system. I mentioned this to Fiona, and she looked at me like I wanted to spoil all the wool-dyeing fun.

  Mom lit the fires, and Molly gave everyone an apron. Mine had brown stains all over it—maybe from Molly's earlier wool-dyeing experiments. Then Molly walked us over to the tables and explained each plant.

  “Lady's Bedstraw will give a cheese-yellow color,” she said. “Chamomile is supposed to give a strong yellow. And onion peels will give a yellow or orange.”

  “Did you grow these here?” Mom asked.

  “Not yet,” said Molly. “First I'll find the color I like the most, and then we'll plant. I want to have enough so we can harvest and dye twice each summer. I'm going to use walnut husks for the brown.”

  Mom nodded like she knew what Molly was talking about. I didn't have a clue, but it was kind of cool because I felt like a medieval mad scientist, working in my outdoor lab.

  “In one of your novels,” Fiona said to Mom, “the lady dyed wool. I remember reading it.”

  Mom smiled. “Yeah, I researched that scene.” She looked at the plants on the table. “I'm a little nervous doing this. I hope I wasn't too far off.”

  “Auch, no, you weren't,” said Fiona. “I helped Mom with the brown. Walnut was what was used in your book. It's a good color.”

  Mom smiled.

  “Dyeing wool makes for a long day,” said Fiona.

  “That's the way I wrote it,” said Mom.

  Mom and Fiona walked to the cauldrons together to stoke the fires.

  Molly looked at me. “Fiona likes reading,” she said.

  I nodded. Weird.

  “Want to help me tear these, Sami?” she asked, standing at the table full of onion peels.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it hard having a mom who's a writer?”

  “No,” I lied. It was tough. Sometimes Mom would go into her writing mode and not come out of it for days.

  “Auch, Sami,” Molly sighed. “My mum was a painter. I hated it and told myself I'd never do anything creative if it meant not spending time with my kids. So I know what it's like to live with an artist.”

  I grabbed an onion out of a large sack and ripped the skin off. “I try not to let it bother me,” I said, feeling comfortable talking with Molly.

  “Aye.” Molly stood beside me removing an onion skin. “It's something to be proud of, but that doesna make it easy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My mum would paint me. She used to sell her work to a little shop in town. They couldn't keep her paintings in the store. Tourists would snap them up,” she said.

  I looked at her. “So you could be hanging on the wall of some stranger's house?”

  She laughed. “Aye. It used to give me nightmares.”

  “And now?”

  She sighed. “Her paintings hang in my bedroom. They're more valuable to me than anything else I own.”

  “I don't like romance novels,” I said.

  Molly smiled. “Every girl wants a little romance,” she said. “Have you ever read one of your mum's stories?”

  “Yes. Well, no, not really. I was always kind of embarrassed to say my mom wrote romance novels.”

  “Why?”

  “Sounds weird.”

  “I understand,” she said. “But you should read one, Sami. They're very adventurous.”

  I wish Mom wrote mysteries.

  Molly started talking about her mother again. “She painted portraits of people in traditional Highland clothing. I always wore very modern clothing, just to rebel.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I'm Allergic to Wool

  Luckily, all the wool had been spun. I hadn't even thought about that. It would stink to have to spin it like in “Rumpelstiltskin.”

  Molly had five monster-sized black bags full of wool. It looked like rope, nothing like yarn, and felt soft, like a kitten. Twenty minutes after I'd stuck my hands into a bag to grab some, I broke out in a rash up past my elbows.

  It itched like crazy.

  I'm going to go insane . . . and be all scabby.

  Four Hours Later

  Dyeing wool is an all-day process. We had to let the wool, plants, and water all boil f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

  But it was okay because Mom and Molly had spread blankets on the ground and brought food. Fiona and I tried to take naps, but our moms kept grilling us about ghosts and what we'd seen or heard during our vigil on the battlefield.

  By the time we started pulling the wool out of the dye concoctions and placing it on the drying racks, which were the huge wooden frames with chicken wire across the bottom so the wool could drip-dry evenly, our moms knew that Fiona hadn't caught any visual or auditory evidence on tape. They also knew she thought I was some weird clairvoyant.

  I put on thick rubber gloves that covered my rash and would keep the dye off my skin.

  We started with the Lady's Bedstraw. Molly stuck a long wooden paddle into the mixture, dipped it to the bottom, and lifted. A pile of gross-looking yellow wool came out. Fiona, Mom, and I, all wearing rubber gloves, grabbed the pile and heaved it over to the drying rack.

  “This is a disgusting color, Mum,” Fiona said.

  “Aye,” Molly said. “We'll see how it dries.”

  Then we fished the
wool from the other two cauldrons and spread it out to dry.

  My favorite was the onion-peel-dyed wool. It was a strong yellow with an undertone of orange. I'd buy a sweater that color—just not in wool.

  Day 23

  Great

  I apparently rubbed my hand across my right cheek while pulling out the gross Lady's Bedstraw wool.

  There's a disgusting streak of cheese yellow going from my chin to my temple, and it keeps getting darker. Molly says it will continue to darken until the chemicals from the plants have finished setting. I tried to wash it off with our lavender soap. No luck.

  I look like some alien from a bad science fiction movie—the alien with the cheese-cheek and rash clear up to her shoulders.

  I'm not leaving the cottage until both are gone. Molly says it could take days.

  I bet this never happened in one of Mom's romances.

  Day 24

  Creature from the Dye Pit

  I'm so freaky-looking that even Samuel won't come and talk to me.

  The cottage is quiet, and Mom made me stay home with this stinky poultice wrap on my hands and arms. I'm a cheese-faced mummy.

  Date with a Stained Face

  Shane called Fiona and said that he and Adan wanted to take us on a ghost tour. It would be an overnight stay in the underground city, which consists of hidden tunnels beneath the village.

  “Have you ever been?” I asked Fiona.

  “No, we locals don't go to the tourist places,” she said.

  I understood that. I'd never been to the antique malls in Abbey, Michigan, but people came from all over to spend the day looking at what I thought was other people's old junk.

  “When do they want to go?” I asked.

  “Tonight.”

  “Fiona, I still have cheese-cheek.” It'd been two days, and the stain had lightened some. But to see Adan with my discolored face? Not to mention the leftover scabs on my arms from my allergic reaction to the wool.

  Fiona laughed. “They'll understand.”

  “Who understands something like this?” I touched my cheek.