“Taylor texted, he asks if it’s okay to come and get you at two.”
What? I mouthed.
“To show you the dig.”
Oh yes. The crannog site. Had I agreed? Oh God, I had. I looked at Logan with pleading eyes.
“It’s up to you. You don’t have to,” he shrugged. “Just say no.” He always captured the shades and subtleties of human relationships.
Told him I would, I wrote on the back of some A4 paper from the printer’s tray.
“Yeah well, you can change your mind.”
You coming? I chanced.
“No time. No one is around to watch the shop this afternoon, I’ve got to be there.”
I thought about it for a second.
Tell him yes.
“You sure?”
I nodded.
“Right. Here’s his number, just sending it to you . . . there. I’ll make lunch before you go. Something stodgy, to keep you going.”
I smiled. He was such a mother hen. A scruffy, grumpy one, but still a mother hen.
I switched the bird woman off without regret.
*
We drove to the loch in Taylor’s Land Rover. It was only ten minutes away and there was no need to drive at all, but I suspected Taylor wanted to show off. It was sweet, though.
Shame I had these niggling thoughts about Alex in the back of my mind. As much as I tried, I couldn’t quite manage to stop thinking about him . . .
No. I was lucky Alex was talking to me again in the first place. I couldn’t let myself go back there, not after it had caused so many problems. I’d made a promise to myself.
With a huge effort, I brought my mind back to the present, back to Loch Avich. It was a cold, clear day, and I was relieved there was no mist on the water. Taylor’s boat was a tiny, pretty wooden thing. It was painted blue and shaped like a peapod, and looked a bit like the boat my dad used to have. I couldn’t help smiling – I was expecting something high-tech – and Taylor read my mind.
“This is the advanced technology we can afford at the excavation, Inary,” he laughed. “Seriously, we concentrate our funding on diving equipment, and this is the best way to travel on the loch, I find. It’s quiet, it doesn’t disturb the wildlife, and it’s fast enough. Also, I got to name her . . .” He pointed at the name painted in navy letters on the side of the boat: Rover. Weird name for a boat.
Your girlfriend? I wrote on the notebook I’d brought with me. I hoped he’d get the joke.
Taylor laughed again. “Silly, Rover was our dog when I was a kid,” he explained. He was charming, an All-American kind of charming. I had to give him that.
I climbed into the boat. It swayed quite wildly, but it wasn’t the rocking motion, or the fact that it was tiny, that worried me. It was a different concern entirely. It was that a thin mantle of mist was beginning to rise on the loch, and the water was so black . . . I sat rigidly, holding on to the boat’s sides. Taylor must have noticed my anxious expression, because he studied my face, frowning.
“Are you okay? We don’t need to go if you don’t want to . . .”
I shook my head with a smile brighter than I felt. I was sure it was time to win over my old fear. Thirteen years avoiding something that frightened you was a long time. Also, I didn’t want to disappoint him – he seemed so keen to show me the dig, so enthusiastic about the whole thing.
There was my pride as well. I couldn’t chicken out of it now and let him believe I was scared to go on a boat! Too humiliating.
He pushed Rover into the water, took hold of the paddles and slowly, hardly making a ripple, we left the shore. The silence was unbroken, the water a black mirror, and the sky bright and cloudy at the same time, the way a winter sky can be sometimes – pure white shining from within. We passed Ailsa, the little rocky island in the middle of the loch. It wasn’t much wider than a hundred yards in diameter, and was covered with dark, wind-bent trees and hardy bushes. It reminded me of that painting by Arnold Böcklin, The Isle of the Dead.
Okay, maybe it wasn’t the right moment to make that comparison. I tried to un-think that thought.
“Don’t worry, this is perfectly safe,” Taylor tried to reassure me in between paddle-strokes. “And once we get to the platform you’ll be on dry land, in a way.”
I took my notebook from my jacket pocket and wrote I’m not afraid of the water (lie) I’m a good swimmer (truth).
“So that’s not what’s making you nervous? Is it me?”
I laughed and shook my head. It’d be impossible to be nervous around Taylor.
I relaxed ever so slightly and sat back a little, taking in the beauty of the landscape and enjoying the gentle rocking of the boat. Maybe I could allow myself not to think about anything, if only for an hour. Just for a short time, just as long as I needed to start breathing deeply again, without the anxiety of grief, or the fear of lost chances. To just be.
The water was perfectly black, but I could see silvery fish darting by on the surface every once in a while. It was the first time I had gone out on the loch in many years, and it didn’t feel too bad at all, I conceded. Maybe I had just been silly to avoid the water for so long – what happened that day, thirteen years ago, seemed like a distant dream. Or a distant nightmare, more like.
“Look! You can see the dig from here,” Taylor said, jerking his head to the right without letting go of the paddles.
A wooden platform stood above the water, about a hundred yards from the shore. A white and blue caravan sat in a clearing opposite it, just past the tiny pebbled beach, and I could see the remains of a bonfire. A marshmallow-roasting session after work, I imagined.
“The weather is okay today, we should be able to see underwater,” said Taylor, panting slightly with the effort of rowing. “I can’t wait to show you what’s under there. It’s just amazing . . . On a clear day, when the water is transparent, you can see the poles that used to hold the crannog up. Some of them are still standing. It’s quite incredible, to think this stuff was laid there so many years ago, by people like you and me. It gives me a thrill every time,” he continued, and suddenly my heart started beating faster. His face had the kind of glow you only see when someone is truly passionate, truly inspired. I’d been feeling so empty of passion recently – I wanted to breathe in his enthusiasm, to drink from it, to feel that zest for life again.
I didn’t want to be the girl sitting in front of a blank screen, all her stories gone.
I sat up as we approached the platform. Taylor tied the boat to one of the poles and climbed up. Then he crouched and extended his hand to me. “Come on,” he said, and he helped me step on to the wooden planks. I had seldom been on this part of the loch, so much wilder than the side that faced the village. It was beautiful, full of the peace you can only find in truly ancient places, made heavy by the weight of eras.
I closed my eyes for a second, letting my other senses take over – the sound of the water lapping around the platform, the tap-tap-tap of the boat against the pole she was tied to, the scent of water, fresh, moist, misty. I could understand why Logan spent so much time in the wild. I understood the peace it gave him and how it helped him cope with all the complications of his life, the weight he’d felt on his shoulders for many years.
I opened my eyes and the beauty took my breath away, as if I was seeing it for the first time: the glens cradling the loch; the smooth expanse of the water, wavy with tiny ripples, reflecting the white sky; the soft mantle of clouds, endless, ever-changing.
Suddenly I realised Taylor was looking at me, his head leaning slightly to one side, thoughtful, as if he were looking at an artefact in a museum. I blushed.
“Come and see . . .” He took my hand, and he kneeled at the edge of the platform, peering into the loch. I stood, holding his hand, hesitating. I wanted to reach him and kneel beside him, but I wavered. Even if I couldn’t feel any of the physical signs that announced an apparition, my last memory of having my face so close to the water was . . .
I didn’t want to remember. My heart had begun to flutter again, and it wasn’t because of Taylor’s flirting. I checked myself again: no tingling, no buzz in my ears. It was going to be okay. It was okay.
“Don’t worry, Inary,” smiled Taylor. “I’m a very good swimmer, I promise I won’t let you drown.”
I was a bit piqued: so when I’d said I could swim he hadn’t believed me. Well, I was going to let him think that. I couldn’t explain what really happened anyway. I took a deep breath. It was time to let go of old fears.
I made myself kneel beside Taylor and gazed down into the black, still waters.
“Can you see the outline of the house, Inary?” Taylor began. “People lived here, people like us, men and women and children, hunting and working the land and sleeping together in their home on the lake. They lived here for generations. You’ll think I’m crazy, but I often daydream about them . . . What they must have looked like, their names, their lives. I suppose archaeologists are obsessed with the past . . . We must be . . .”
His voice was hypnotic as he kept chatting about the excavation and what had brought him here and what they had found. Nobody could understand the way he felt about people from the past better than me.
The ripples in the black water, the perfect silence broken only by the soft sound of his voice and the lapping of the waves, it all melted into me – or I melted into them. Suddenly I couldn’t quite decipher his words any more, because my ears were full of the soft drone I knew so well – and still, I tried to deny it. Shapes were beginning to appear in the water – it’s the reflection of the clouds, I reassured myself. It’s the poles the crannog stood on. I had counted three of them standing up, a broken one, its rugged stump like a cracked tooth, and a few more lying scattered among the stones.
I heard myself whimpering as the tingling started in every limb, joining the drone in my ears – the usually harmless sensations were subtly hurting me, like a knife working its way over my skin in a shallow, slow, impossibly painful cut. I tried to move, but I was paralysed by fear. And more than that: something was keeping me still, and tied to the water. Something was keeping me prisoner. From the whirlwind of my thoughts came a prayer – please, let it be the people of the crannog, let it be their ghosts showing themselves to me . . . and not that other thing in the loch.
But I knew that it wasn’t. Never before had I felt like this, except that once. No other vision could cause me such terror.
My face and my chest felt like I’d been plunged in ice all of a sudden, and I knew that whatever it was, it was near. A silvery, blurred shape appeared in front of me, whirling in a crazy pattern. An overwhelming feeling of loneliness, of abandonment, filled my soul, bringing a tide of tears with it.
They left me.
They left me here alone.
Take me home.
I knew those weren’t my thoughts, my memories – I knew it was something else, some one else, invading my mind. I made another helpless effort to tug myself away, but I couldn’t, as if the thoughts overriding mine were hands, cruel hands keeping me where I was – kneeling on the wooden planks, my head facing the water and my hair cascading on either side of my face, my hands clutching the edges so hard they hurt. I must have let out a gasp, because Taylor wrapped his arm around me. I could hear him talking, but I had no idea what he was saying; his voice came to me like from the other end of a tunnel.
My eyes were following the swimming shape, as fast as a salmon, but too big to be one; as white as the reflection of a cloud, but too solid.
They left me here alone.
I’m cold.
I want to go home.
Take me home . . .
The alien thoughts were screaming in my mind, clawing at me. Over the words in my head, over the pain that had spread through my body, I became suddenly aware that my chest was rising and falling so fast I could end up passing out – I could already see stars sparkling in the corners of my eyes.
I seized the edge of the platform harder, praying that I wouldn’t fall into the water, where that thing was. That it wouldn’t pull me in.
The white shape kept swimming frenziedly around the platform, coiling and uncoiling like seaweed carried by the current. I knew it had come for me.
I heard Taylor call my name, and I tried to beg for help, to implore him to tear me away from the spirit, away from the loch, but I couldn’t. My mouth was open in a silent scream. It wouldn’t let me go. She wouldn’t let me go.
The shape stopped and floated right in front of me, just beyond the water level. I thought I would die of fright. But instead, mercifully, every feeling left me and I was empty, hollow, beyond fear and terror.
I watched as the spirit rose up without making a sound, without making a ripple, as if she’d been made of water herself.
22
Black waters
Inary
She looked just like I remembered – her skin white and her flesh swollen with water, her eyes black and empty, her long, tangled hair woven with seaweed. She was a child. A little girl lost.
The first time I saw her, the day I lost the Sight, I was a child myself.
Take me home, she whispered once more, and the sound of her voice came from inside my head and echoed all around me, in my heart and my bones. She hovered in front of me, her face so close it was nearly pressed against mine, and her small, blue-nailed hands touched my cheeks. They were wet and very cold. I looked into her eyes and I fell into them, fell into nothing.
Listen to me, she pleaded, and all of a sudden, she somersaulted backwards and melted back into the loch, her hair dissolving in the black water, her face losing shape, her body liquid once more. She was a white shadow floating in the water, and then she disappeared.
I fell backwards too, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Everything went dark for a second, but I came to almost immediately. Taylor’s arms were around me, but I was dizzy and disorientated, and in my confusion I must have believed that the spirit girl had taken hold of me, like she had when she pulled me off my dad’s boat and into the loch. I panicked, and jerked away from Taylor with such force that what I feared the most happened – I fell over the edge of the platform with a splash.
The water closed above me and I couldn’t breathe – I was too frightened to open my eyes, in case I saw the little girl again. My body went into panic mode – all I could think about was air, oxygen, the need to breathe. My arms and legs were flailing in blind terror, and my skin burnt with the cold. Instinctively, I opened my mouth and a draught of water rushed down my throat, into my lungs. As the fight or flight instinct kicked into overdrive, I opened my eyes and there she was, floating in the murky waters, her arms extended to me. Our eyes locked, and at that moment I thought I was dead already.
It was just a few seconds, but it seemed like an eternity of fear, before I felt Taylor’s arms holding me again.
Next thing I knew I was on the shore, spitting out water and coughing so hard I thought my lungs would tear. A memory flashed into my mind: drowning hurts so much. I knew where that thought had come from, and it wasn’t my own consciousness. It was the girl, still echoing her thoughts feebly into mine. I took my face in my hands and let Taylor hold me, hoping the link between me and the spirit girl would be severed completely – she was so frightened, so lost. I couldn’t bear it.
I should’ve known. I hadn’t been silly at all, in avoiding the loch for so long. She’d come looking for me, a poor soul without peace, just like she had thirteen years ago. I realised that now, after all this time. She was trying to get my attention; she was trying to speak to me. And just like back then, she’d begged me to take her home – but I had no way of helping her, no way to answer her plea.
*
I sat shivering in front of the gas fire, my teeth still chattering, wearing nothing but an oversized Fair Isle jumper someone from Taylor’s team had left in the caravan and a pair of long woollen socks. I was still freezing, but the gas fire was incredibly hot and I c
ould feel myself warming slowly, and my hair was beginning to dry. Taylor, having changed into a black T-shirt and chinos, handed me some coffee in a mug with a cartoon picture of Nessie on it. I recognised the mugs that Peggy sold in her shop; we had a set of them too. Funny, the little things you notice when your thoughts are all jumbled up.
I drew a deep sigh. It felt good to wrap my fingers around the steaming mug, to be away from the water.
“Better?” he asked. I nodded, looking into his face. He seemed younger than he was, and . . . earnest. Yes, he looked earnest. Uncomplicated. I was so thankful he’d been with me. Had I been on my own, who knows what might have happened . . . I shivered again, and he noticed.
“You’ll get warmed up in a minute. This fire is so strong you could roast a boar on it!” he laughed. I took a sip of my coffee. It was revolting.
“It’s chicory. A great coffee alternative, no caffeine whatsoever!”
I mustered a smile, willing myself to take another sip – I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.
Taylor’s eyes turned serious. “What happened out there, Inary? You looked . . . terrified. I tried to move you, but you were rigid. And then when you fell I wanted to hold you, to help you . . . but you pushed me away.” His fingers went to his face, absentmindedly. Only then did I notice that there was a purple bruise just under his left eye. It looked nasty. It must have happened when . . .
Oh my God.
I did that!
I clasped my hands over my mouth, gazing at the bruise in horror.
“Oh, this? Don’t worry, its fine. It’s not sore. If I keep it closed.”
Sorry, sorry, sorry! I mouthed over and over, and followed the contours of the bruise with my fingers, gently. Sorry, I mouthed again.
Take Me Home Page 13