by Trisha Telep
Caden clicked the flashlight on with his thumb and kept on running, weaving between trees and hurtling over logs. He could hear Hades barrelling through the underbrush behind him.
Finally, he saw her through the trees ahead of him.
She looked over her shoulder at him. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, her features changed from bewitching to hideous with wide, sunken black eyes, wrinkled skin that seemed to glow, and grizzled hair.
Caden suddenly felt feverish. His skin became slick with perspiration and his heart began to race. He had played competitive ball long enough to recognize the signs of a massive adrenaline dump.
I need to control my breathing!
He kept running but took slow, measured breaths.
Hades suddenly let out a terrifying yelp and forced Caden to abandon his pursuit.
He found the mangy beast only a few yards away, yelping and howling as if the hounds of hell were nipping at his heels. His collar had snagged on a lowlying branch and was choking him each time he moved. Caden quickly released the dog but by the time he had retraced his steps, the woman had vanished.
He considered abandoning the chase and returning to Blackstone House, but the adrenaline surging through his body propelled him on.
He walked through the woods, moving his flashlight in front of him in a wide, sweeping arc searching for signs of the woman.
Caden still believed the creature he pursued was merely a woman bent on revenge or mischief. A clever woman who was able to halt a charging deerhound with a single gesture, somehow alter her appearance, and slip over land littered with dry, crackly leaves without making a sound.
Doubt began to needle at him.
What if it wasn’t a woman? What if it was one of the mythical creatures Mrs Harriet had prattled on about? If he had learned one thing since arriving at Blackstone House, it was that the Scots believed in the supernatural and revelled in telling stories about it. Ladies in white, headless horsemen, loch monsters, demons, fairies, phantoms. If he were to believe Mrs Harriet and the Guinness-fueled old men he’d spoken with at Gordon Pub, the hills and lochs were crawling with creatures.
His boots snapped twigs and crashed through the underbrush. The sound seemed amplified in the woods, making him feel unusually vulnerable. He didn’t like feeling vulnerable.
The hairs rose on the back of his neck. Someone watched him.
He glanced over his shoulder, peering into the darkness. Only Hades followed, trotting several paces behind, his head hung low.
The sound of a twig snapping in the distance drew his attention. He swung his flashlight out before him, aiming it straight ahead. Nothing was there. The beam of light caught the spiralling descent of a brown leaf and Caden realized something was in the trees.
He raised the flashlight higher but nearly dropped it when he saw two glowing eyes staring back at him.
“Shit!”
Perched on a branch in a nearby tree sat a large grey owl, his obsidian gaze fixed on Caden. His head swivelled around, then he screeched, and Caden’s heart stopped beating. The owl flapped his wings and flew off into the night sky.
Caden followed the owl’s flight path until he came to the mudflats that led to the Solway Firth.
Hades growled.
Caden patted the dog’s head, feeling the bristly fur on his palm.
“Be quiet, boy.”
Although the wind had died down, Caden shivered. The long sleeved T-shirt he wore beneath his rugby sweatshirt was damp with perspiration and clung to his arms and chest.
The clouds drifted apart and silvery moonlight reflected off the placid water. That’s when Caden saw her. The woman in green knelt at the water’s edge and was repeatedly plunging a garment into the sea. Her hair, once again platinum blond, hung like a curtain around her face.
Caden clicked off the flashlight, motioned for Hades to stay, and then moved slowly, stealthily towards the water’s edge until he stood close enough to see the leather belt knotted around the waist of her medieval costume.
Costume? Of course!
He realized then that she was probably one of the people who reenacted medieval life at Clash of the Centuries, the medieval fair held each year at Caerlaverock. Though he thought Mrs Harriet had said it took place in the summer, not late October.
She plunged the stained garment into the water again and then dropped her chin to her chest. The sound of her soft weeping floated on the sea-stained breeze.
Caden suddenly felt guilty for chasing and spying on a woman who had done nothing more than trespass and disturb the peace of Blackstone with her strange, mournful tune.
He reached out to touch her shoulder but his hand passed through her.
“What the––?”
She looked up at him through her curtain of hair and gasped. Tears glittered like diamonds on her translucent cheeks. She was even more beautiful than he had first thought. He’d already noticed her kiss-worthy lips, but now he noticed her ample, round breasts which were almost disproportionately large on her petite, slender frame.
He tried to touch her shoulder again but his hand moved through her as if she were made of vapour.
She dashed the tears from her cheeks and stood, the top of her head coming to his chin.
“You can see me?”
“Yes.”
“And hear me?”
“Obviously.” Caden’s thoughts spun around in his brain. He feebly grappled with the clues, trying to construct a logical explanation for the illogical situation before him. “Who are you? What are you?”
The ridiculousness of the situation struck him. He remembered the time he had been sick in bed with the flu and had channel surfed to an impossibly idiotic show called Ghost Hunters and how he’d snorted when the host had walked into an empty room of an old insane asylum and announced, “If there’s anyone here, please make your presence known.” Now here he was attempting to have a conversation with a transparent woman with banging curves and kissable lips.
“Five hundred years ago, I lived in a village near Caerlaverock. My name was Deidre Monreith.”
Caden thought he detected a hysterical note in his chuckle. “Are you telling me you have travelled through time?”
She shook her head and the moonlight streamed off her hair like liquid silver.
“I am not a human from another time nor am I merely a ghost of what I once was. I am something far more tragic. I am a bean shìth.”
“I don’t understand,” Caden grudgingly confessed. “What is a bean sheath?”
“A bean shìth,” she corrected. “One who has been condemned to spend eternity as a messenger of death.”
“Messenger of death?”
“Aye.”
Her story was too outrageous and he began to wonder if he had unwittingly become a dupe in one of those television prank shows.
“So you’re sort of like Santa Claus? You fly around at night but instead of bringing presents you bring death.” Caden crossed his arms over his chest. “With six billion people on the planet, you must be awfully busy.”
“You do not believe me, Caden Maxwell?”
Caden uncrossed his arms and motioned for Hades to come to him.
“Okay, who are you and how do you know my name?”
“I told you, I am a bean shìth.”
Caden ignored her bizarre statement and repeated his second question. “How do you know my name?”
“I have known your name since it was given to you.”
Hades trotted up and stood by Caden’s side. The dog did not growl, shake or bark, but appeared strangely calm.
“You’re a banshee?”
Deidre nodded.
“And you came to Blackstone House to let James Maxwell know that he is about to die?”
“Aye.”
“You did that, so now what? Will you evaporate? Hop on a broom and fly over to France to scare the wits out of some other dying soul?”
Her eyes shimmered like the sea and for a moment she
looked sad and weary.
“You do not understand.”
“Enlighten me.”
“I cannot leave this land.” She looked at him in a raw, vulnerable way that made his heart ache. “Though it is not my wish, I am a bean shìth for the Maxwell Clan. Mine is a wretched existence, tied to the misery and sorrow of the descendants of a man who once caused me misery and sorrow.”
He could not look away from her bewitching, green-eyed gaze. And the longer he looked in her eyes, the more he believed her story.
“You said you were once human. How did you become a banshee?”
Birds began chirping and weak, watery sunlight filtered through the black, silhouetted trees as dawn approached.
“I once loved a man named Robert Maxwell and I thought he loved me, too,” she brushed past him and he thought he could almost feel the hem of her gown pass over his boots. “But I was mistaken. He was a wicked man.”
He joined her and together they walked along the shore towards Caerlaverock Castle, towering over the trees in the distance. Hades followed.
“On the eve he was to ask my father for my hand, he told me that he intended to marry another. He was terribly cruel,” her voice trembled.
Apparently, caught in a web of sticky memories, she fell silent. Caden did not press her. He waited patiently until she resumed her tale.
She told him about her quarrel with Robert Maxwell on the roof of the derelict tower, candidly describing his callousness and her heartbreak, and Caden found himself wondering if there was something written into the Maxwell DNA that caused them to treat women with cruel disregard.
He hoped not. He didn’t think he would able to live with himself if he ever acted in such a way.
As she described her death at the hands of his ancestor, Caden felt a blend of emotions. Fortunately, the loathing he felt for Robert Maxwell – a man he’d never met, a man who had lived five hundred years before Caden’s birth – was surpassed by his sympathy for Deirdre Monreith.
Without thinking, he reached for her hand and was shocked when he felt her warm, slender fingers intertwine with his.
They stopped walking and turned to look at each other. Deidre’s form no longer shimmered. She was not a vapourous, amorphous shape but a solid, well-proportioned woman with real, smooth skin that glowed in the orange rays of dawn.
“I don’t understand!” She blushed and pulled her hand away. “You touched me and I felt it! How can that be?”
Caden shrugged.
“Beats me. I am still trying to figure out how you became a banshee.”
“I don’t know, but I believe someone must have uttered a curse over my dying body. Ever since my death, I have spent my days and nights in an unearthly limbo, able to see and hear the world around me but unable to interact with the people in it. Until you, the only people who could see or hear me were the dying descendants of Robert Maxwell.”
Deidre wrapped her arms around her waist and let out a sigh that nearly broke Caden’s heart. There was a vulnerability about her that aroused primitive, protective instincts in him.
“I have spent five hundred years silently observing the Maxwells; a mute and reluctant witness to the lives of people Fate determined I should abhor.” Deidre looked deep into his eyes in a way that both excited and unnerved him. “I’ve watched with anticipation the birth of each Maxwell heir, hoping he would be the one to unlock the secret of my curse, for there must be some reason I am tethered to this family by supernatural ties.”
“Wait a minute!” Caden raked his fingers through his hair. “Are you saying you were present at my birth?”
“Aye … yes.”
The breath left Caden’s body in one violent exhalation, as if he had been tackled by a two-hundred and ninety pound defensive tackle. He took a seat on a boulder near the mudflats that joined the Solway Firth. Deidre joined him but did not press him to speak. He watched a gaggle of whooper swans gliding gracefully through the water while he tried to absorb her mind-blowing confession.
He had spent the last five years working as a day trader in the futures market, a challenging profession that required brains and balls. The most successful day traders possessed strong analytical skills, nerves of steel, and the ability to make a quick, shrewd decision despite shifting data. The most successful day traders were open-minded and unflappable. And he was definitely successful.
He believed he had made millions – for his clients and himself – because he possessed the ability to quickly process information. And yet, his mind reeled from all he had learned. He was trying to put it all in order, to find reason amid confusion, to alter long-held beliefs to adapt to the current trend. But accepting the downward movement of a particular stock was a lot easier than embracing the notion that a hot woman was really a banshee who had been haunting his father’s family for generations.
He looked at Deidre.
“What did you see? The day I was born?”
Sadness altered her lovely features and she turned away.
“Sometimes it is better to leave the past buried lest you unearth more than you ever hoped to find.”
“Really? Does that mean you don’t want me to try to learn more about the circumstances surrounding your death and the curse that made you a banshee?”
She caught her lower lip between her pearly front teeth and nibbled on it.
“I will make you a bargain, Caden Maxwell. If you help me discover more about the curse, I will tell you what you wish to know about your birth.”
Caden wanted to tell her that there was no need for her to bargain with him; he would have helped her anyway.
“It’s a deal.”
He held out his hand and she shook it.
“If you are bound to the Maxwells and a Maxwell caused your death, weren’t you there to witness the charm?”
“Curse! It was a curse, not a charm.”
“Right, curse.”
“I do not remember the curse but I suspect Agnes is the one who cast it.”
“Agnes?”
“Aye.” She bent over and snatched a rock, rubbing the smooth, water-worn surface with her fingers. “Agnes Bowquat was a white witch who lived in a hut in the woods bordering Caerlaverock.”
“White witch?”
His mind was spinning again. He thought white witches were villains who fed naughty boys Turkish Delight and turned fauns into statues, like in The Chronicles of Narnia.
“A white witch was someone who practised the ancient arts of healing and acted as a mediator between the earthly world and the spiritual worlds.”
“I’m trying to wrap my head around all of this, but it’s not easy.”
Her eyes widened and she gasped.
“I’m sorry,” he said, suddenly realizing his faux pas. “Poor choice of words. It’s a saying – meaning I’m trying to comprehend everything you’ve told me.”
Mollified, she finished telling him about the night of her death. She said she remembered lying on the cold stone, feeling the energy drain from her body and blood from her head ooze down her cheek. She remembered hearing Robert’s footsteps echo in the stairwell and how good it had felt to close her eyes. The next thing she remembered was walking into Caerlaverock and realizing nobody could see or hear her.
“Five days after he killed me, Robert married Janet Douglas,” she said, her voice thick with emotion.
“Jesus! What a bastard!”
He instantly felt guilty using such language in front of a lady, but Deidre did not seem to mind.
“Aye.” Deidre flicked her wrist and sent the stone skipping across the glassine surface, then turned to look at him. “I am sorry to say most of Robert’s descendants have been bastards. But you are different, I think.”
“I hope so.”
The weight of exhaustion pressed heavily upon him and he knew he should return to Blackstone House to rest and check on James, but he didn’t want to leave Deidre. He stood and stretched his muscles.
When she saw him
struggling to stifle a yawn, she smiled and said, “You are tired. You should go home and sleep.”
“I can’t leave you here alone,” he said, holding out his hand to Deidre. “Come with me.”
Deidre looked at Caden and her heart joyfully skipped a beat. How tempted she was to take his hand and let him lead her back to Blackstone House, but this was the first day in five hundred years that she was able to feel, physically and emotionally, and she did not know how long it would last. If this was her only day to be whole and human again, did she want to spend it in the home of a dying Maxwell? With the son of a dying Maxwell?
Caden smiled, a charming, lopsided grin that caused dimples to appear near the corners of his mouth and her heart to skip another beat. His dimpled grin and easy charm reminded her of Robert, but that’s where the resemblance ended. Tall, tanned, ruggedly built, with dark blond hair and piercing blue eyes, Caden looked quite different from the Maxwells she had haunted.
She wondered what it would be like to be truly loved by a man as handsome and compassionate as Caden Maxwell.
She took his hand and together they walked through the woods to Blackstone House. He asked her many questions about her life before the curse and seemed particularly pleased when she confessed she had always wanted to learn how to blow glass.
“Seriously? That’s cool,” he said, holding a branch back so she could pass beneath it. “My mother teaches glassblowing at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma. It’s just a hobby of hers but I know she would be happy to teach you if––”
He let his sentence fade away but his if lingered in the air. If the curse had finally been broken. If she remained human. If they were ever to see each other again. It amazed her that such a small word could contain so many hopes.
They were climbing the steps to Blackstone House when the front door suddenly swung open and a plump, elderly woman appeared, a worried frown tugging at the corners of her mouth.
“Thank God,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. “Whar huv ye bin? Ah huv bin so worried aboot ye!”
“I am sorry I worried you, Mrs Harriet. I couldn’t sleep so I went for a walk and must have lost track of time,” Caden said, squeezing her hand gently and releasing it. “Is James all right?”