“Whatever else indeed?” Carole whispered. She knew one thing—there was no way John was going to get her back down into that cellar.
The butler was still speaking.
“I have often thought that the legend of the banshee must have been born in a drafty house like this one in the wind—it fair whistles and sings some days. I’ve gotten used to it over the years. I wouldn’t let it bother you.”
They were back in the front room, looking out over the misty moor. Carole’s heart rate was just getting back to normal after their scare, and she was beginning to feel rather foolish at having been spooked twice in the same day.
“So Mr. Blacklaw doesn’t use the cellar at all?” John asked.
Carole was only giving the conversation half her attention. She was looking out over the moor, where the mist had lifted enough to see a couple of hundred yards of wet heath and scrub.
“It’s not my place to say, sir,” the old butler replied to John. “But as I said before, it hasn’t been used since your grandfather passed away. It wouldn’t have seemed proper.”
“I would like to ask you some questions about that night, if I may?” John replied.
“I’ll have to ask the Maister if he approves.”
“Of course—I don’t want to do anything to rock the boat around here.”
Carole didn’t hear the butler’s reply—her attention had been caught by a darker shadow, just within the fog, a hunched figure out on the boggy ground, tramping along with head down—two hundred yards out and heading straight for the house.
“It looks like we’re about to get a visitor,” Carole said, as the fog rolled in again, obscuring the moor and engulfing the figure in its folds.
“I doubt that very much,” McKinnon said, and left them alone, but not before Carole had seen the look in his eyes—he looked just as John had when they’d run up out of the cellar—he looked terrified.
= 12 '
After coffee Carole declared that she’d had quite enough excitement for one day and was going to lie down upstairs, but John was too wired to rest. Everything they’d seen and heard so far merely served to confirm that there was indeed a story here that needed to be ferreted out. Maybe McKinnon would have some insight that would enlighten the whole matter—or maybe there was something else in the box of tapes, some tidbit of detail that he could use as a hook into the rest of the story.
He took a cup of coffee through to the library and got the reel-to-reel machine set up with another tape—this one from just a week before the last dated one in the box. Once again his grandfather’s voice spoke to him from decades past.
“Blackie is not quite persuaded on the brilliance of my idea, but he has agreed that his cellar would be the ideal spot for filming, and has gotten into the spirit of things by clearing it out and providing some local color with chains, manacles, and whatnot. We did a test sound-check down there earlier, just to make sure the acoustics were going to be right, and the vault does indeed provide an echoing emptiness to voices that will be most appropriate when we come to the ritual itself.
“Mrs. McKinnon, the housekeeper, provided some unintentional hilarity today by declaring me a bad influence on Blacklaw—how little she knows of her new Master. She was also adamant that she would not be staying in the house for the duration of my visit, declaring herself a God-fearing Christian and not about to put up with any works of ‘Auld Nick.’ If she had not left in such high dudgeon, I might have been tempted to include her in the documentary for some local color. Her husband is a poor substitute in the charisma department, being as dour a Scot as you’re ever likely to find, although he already seems devoted to Blacklaw and will brook no nonsense from the younger ladies and gentlemen of our crew.
“We start rehearsals today, and I have already chosen which passages from the book we will use. From now until the final shoot it is simply a matter of organization and choreography. My excitement is growing. We are almost there.”
^
After a brief pause of hissing emptiness, the volume kicked in again. At first John wasn’t sure what he was listening to, for it consisted of clangs and rattles, like equipment being set up. Then old Hugh spoke and the situation resolved—it was a recording of a rehearsal, and a particularly chaotic one at that. He heard loud arguments alongside shouted pleas for attention and a great deal of disgruntled moaning, mainly from the female members of the cast who were being forced to hang around in a cold, wet cellar in very little clothing.
Finally Hugh shouted “Action!” and things started to happen, although without vision it was almost impossible to make sense of proceedings. Feet slapped on stone, somebody somewhere groaned in either ecstasy or pain, and, just at the edge of hearing, a camera whirred, recording it all.
After what seemed like an age, singing started, a high-pitched chant that sounded strangely familiar. As the singing rose to a crescendo, Hugh’s voice joined in, booming and echoing as if amplified above all the rest. The tape recorder buzzed and throbbed in sympathetic vibration and the temperature in the library seemed to drop alarmingly.
John leaned over and switched the machine off, too quickly, succeeding only in snapping the tape so that the broken ends spun and lashed before finally coming to a stop.
The library fell quiet again, so much so that John jumped with a start when a voice spoke in the doorway.
Old McKinnon stood there, the fear plain in his eyes.
“I haven’t heard that since it was recorded,” he said softly. “God help me, I should have stopped it. The missus said it would all end in tears, and for once she was right.”
“Tell me,” John replied. “He was my grandfather—I deserve to know.”
The old butler seemed uncertain, then looked at the box of tapes and seemed to come to a decision. “We did something stupid,” he said. “We meddled with something that should have been left well alone, God help us all.”
^
“What do you mean?” John asked.
“Come through to the kitchen, sir,” the butler said. “The Maister has his domain, and I have mine. I’ll be more comfortable speaking through there. “
John saw the old man cast a nervous glance up into the rafters, then back away from the door, as if afraid to enter. He rose and followed McKinnon out into the hallway and through to the rear of the house. They went through a door and into a kitchen that would not feel ashamed in a top restaurant, all stainless-steel butler’s sinks and row after row of hanging copper pots and pans.
The old man went straight to a tall wooden cupboard and took out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses.
“I don’t usually drink while I’m working, but this a tale that needs a stiffener to tell, if you’ll join me?”
John was never one to turn down good liquor. He joined the old man at a long table that was worn and scarred with what might be centuries of use. The butler poured three fingers of Scotch for each of them, and downed half of his in one gulp before speaking.
“The missus is away into Dingwall to do some shopping,” he began. “Which is just as well, for neither she nor I have spoken of this for many a year now—although we have been living with it.”
John had immediate questions but held his tongue, as the butler clearly needed to get something off his chest.
“We were all much younger then, of course—the missus and I were barely out of our twenties, and we were still new at running the house. We’d heard stories before coming here—everybody for miles around knows about the auld house—but we weren’t superstitious folks. Anyway, if you were to believe every story you heard about any auld house in Scotland, you’d think there was a ghost or ghoulie in every one of them. Besides, times were hard and we needed the work, so when the Maister put an advert in the Inverness paper for housekeepers, we were first in line.
“The Maister took to us straight away, and we to him, and those early days were the best ones we had here—the Maister came up from London when he could manage, and the rest of the tim
e we had the place to ourselves. But it all went sour when your grandfather had his stupid idea.
“Moira—that’s my wife—told them; she told them both that no good would come of it, and she even went to live with her ma while the filming was going on. But Mr. Fraser would not be swayed—he seemed driven, even obsessed, with his plan.
“I thought it all a bit of harmless fun, back before that last night. I didn’t share the missus’s apprehension, and I was enjoying the whole thing. Working with the film crew, seeing the Maister and your granddad together like we’d seen them on the telly, even setting up the cameras and lights in the cellar proved to be a bit of a lark all around. And it didn’t hurt that the girls they brought up from London were very pleasing to the eye.
“It had all gone smoothly, and I was looking forward to seeing the wife the next day when we got to that last night of filming, but as soon as the chanting started I knew we were about to do something very stupid. I cannot put my finger on it, but something in the atmosphere changed, and suddenly it wasn’t such a lark anymore, and if the Maister hadn’t needed me, I’d have been much happier almost anywhere else at that moment.
“The girls danced as the cameras rolled, and the old vault echoed and vibrated as if a train was going by overhead. Your grandfather had a big smile on his face as he made his way to the painted circle.
“I believe the Maister had felt the same change in the air that I had, and was of like mind to me. I followed him over to the painted circles and tried to stop Mr. Fraser, but it was no use—he was adamant that the show must go on. He laid down on the floor, shouted out the chant—and all the lights blew at once.
“I was nearest the door and was able to feel my way back upstairs and replace the main fuses. I helped the crew and the girls up the stairs and out into the light, and missed the Maister going back down to the cellar. The first I knew of your granddad’s death was when the Maister came back up the steps, his face white and shocked—he looked to have aged ten years in ten minutes. I went past him down into the cellar myself to have a look—and you know by now what was there—Mr. Fraser, just lying there, staring, dead as a doorknob.”
^
McKinnon stopped to pour himself more Scotch, and John thought the story was done, but the butler wasn’t quite finished.
“If I had known then what was to come, I’d have taken the missus to her ma’s place and stayed there permanently, but God help us, we stayed here, and we’ve lived with it—for forty-five years we’ve lived with it.”
“Lived with what?”
McKinnon gulped down his Scotch.
“That part of the tale is for the Maister to tell you,” the old butler said. “It’s not my place. Let me just say that you couldn’t pay me enough to go into yon library on my own after dark, and leave it at that, shall we?”
“No—let’s not. What’s in the library? I need to hear the story.”
“And the Maister needs to tell it—he’s needed to tell it for many a year now. But you’ll have to bide your time—he needs his rest. He’ll see you tonight, and may be well enough to tell the tale. But I must go now. The missus will be back any minute and there’s chores to attend to, if you’ll excuse me?”
Now that his part of the story was told, the old man was back to being all politeness and business, and John found himself getting hustled out of the kitchen and back into the hallway before he could ask any more questions.
A chill breeze followed him upstairs to the bedroom, and John thought it came, not from the cellar, but from the library.
= 13 '
Carole woke up at the sound of John opening the bedroom door. She hadn’t intended to sleep, merely rest her eyes for a bit, so was surprised to check the clock and see it was already late afternoon. The flowing fog outside the window thickened the gloom and made it feel even later. She was vaguely aware that she’d had a disturbed sleep, strange dreams verging on nightmares, and that they’d involved both mist-covered moorland and dank cellars.
This place is definitely getting to me.
John didn’t help matters by bringing her up to speed about his talk with the butler and his intimations of spooky goings-on in the library.
“So you’re saying that your granddad’s ghost has been hanging around a dusty old library for more than forty years now?”
John nodded. “I’m not sure I believe it—but the folks that live here certainly do.”
“We’re letting our imaginations run away with us,” Carole said. “If this place was in London we’d be laughing all of this nonsense off as preposterous.”
“Whether we believe it or not is neither here nor there, is it?” John said. “The people who live here have a story to tell, one that’s getting more interesting by the hour. I’m getting close to getting to the heart of it—I can feel it.”
He lay down on the bed beside her and she nestled against him as he spoke of his hopes—high-profile features in the Sundays, maybe a book deal, and possibly even some television appearances. John was pinning his future on what he was learning in this house. She wasn’t sure it was entirely healthy, but he was as excited and focused as she’d seen him in a while, so she’d give him his head—for a while longer at least.
They lay that way in silence for a while before getting up to wash and change for the evening meal.
When Carole emerged from the bathroom, John was listening to his recorder again, playing Blacklaw’s interview of that morning. He was going over the section where he said he’d heard something strange, but there was still just Blacklaw’s whispering voice, and after hearing the same sentence five times in quick succession, Carole asked him to stop.
“There’s nothing there—not now. I believe you heard something—but maybe it wasn’t on the tape at all? Maybe it was in the library itself?”
Whatever she’d said, it made an impression. John suddenly got agitated.
“I should have seen it—it’s the library—that’s where the story is. That’s where we’ll get to the truth of it.”
“That’s as may be,” she replied. “But if you’re not ready in ten minutes, I’m going to eat your supper.”
^
As they went downstairs a quarter of an hour later, she saw John glance towards the library door. She took his hand.
“Later,” she said. “The old man is expecting us—let’s at least try to be polite.”
He didn’t argue, although he had a last look before they went through to the front room.
Their host was already in his seat at the top of the table. He looked better than he had that morning, with more color at his cheeks, and less of a tremble in his hands as he lifted a glass to salute them on their approach to the table.
“I hope you made the best of a bad day?” he said. Carole merely smiled—she had a feeling that tales of splashing on the moors and skittering in the cellar were not what the old man had meant.
John was clearly champing at the bit to ask questions, and she had to give him a kick under the table, twice, to curb his enthusiasm, before he went quiet enough to allow their host to control the ebb and flow of the conversation.
At first it was all just small talk—about the desirability of getting, and keeping, good housekeepers, about where their meal had been sourced—venison from the hills, salmon from the rivers, and liquor from the peat-filled waters of both. McKinnon fetched and carried platters of food—again, enough to feed twice their number. Carole found that she was hungry again, and took to it with gusto. Even Blacklaw managed to eat a good half of what was put in front of him. Carole couldn’t remember having a better meal.
After the last dish had been taken away, they retired to the library for coffee and more Scotch, and the conversation finally turned once again to John’s grandfather.
^
Blacklaw pointed at the box of tapes.
“Did you listen to the last one?” he asked.
John shook his head. “Not yet,” he replied.
“Then please don’t
,” Blacklaw said. “At least not in this room. The consequences would be unpredictable and quite possibly dangerous.”
“Tell me,” John said. “Tell me what’s so special about this room. Your butler hinted at some things, but I need to hear it from you.”
“And I cannot persuade you to let the matter lie?”
John shook his head again.
“I’m afraid not. It would gnaw at me forever if I dropped it now, when I’m so close.”
Blacklaw sighed. “I had hoped you might be satisfied with the detail of Hugh’s death, but I can see you have inherited his stubborn streak along with his looks. Very well then—you shall have another story—or another part of the same story. But first, pour us all a drink if you please. As McKinnon is fond of saying, this one needs a stiffener.”
Carole did the pouring duties, and limited herself to a smaller glass than the ones she poured for John and their host. John took out the recorder again, set it running, and Blacklaw began.
“As I’ve told you, Hugh got a quiet funeral, and we all went on with our lives. I decided to move here permanently, and resolved to live a life of quiet retirement. The library came with the house, lest you’re thinking I built it, and I have barely perused a tenth of the contents, but I liked coming in here to sit by the fire of an evening and wallow in history and learning with a book and a drink. It made me feel rather like the lord of the manor, and appealed to my vanity.
“It was sometime in the first winter that my grief faded enough to allow me to listen to these tapes that Hugh had left behind. I remember it was a harsh one, and we were cut off for many days by storms and heavy snow. I sat here on those nights, listening to the wind whistle and howl, and reliving old adventures in warmer climes, laughing and crying along with my old friend.
“And then, one night I finally got to the tape I was dreading—that last one. I almost didn’t play it—I even considered burning it, but I’d listened to all of the rest, and felt that I might get a sense of closure by completing the set. I set up the machine and let it play out that final, mad, night.
The House on the Moor Page 6