The Ossians

by Doug Johnstone

  Bang! Even in the raging storm, the noise of the gun shocked him. It was as if the bullet had gone through his brain, severing the synapses from each other, ripping their delicate connections apart like tearing fresh bread. At the sound of the gun the stag tensed its body but stayed absolutely still, looking right into Connor’s eyes. He’d tried to kill it and missed. The two of them looked at each other for a long time, Connor imagining a look of pity coming into the stag’s eyes. Then suddenly it leapt off into the terrible blackness, leaving him alone.

  He started to cry. The tears ran down his cheeks and were whipped away in the wind, mingling with the relentless snow. He lay there weeping to himself. After a time he banged the torch pointlessly against the snowdrift. No light. He was utterly alone in the dark and he realised he was going to die out here, a pointless, idiotic death. He felt angry as hell. He hurled the torch up into the air and as it arced away in the night he fired wildly at it, using his free hand to steady the top of the gun. One, two, three shots rang out, the sound of each one puncturing his head before being quickly sucked away. He heard ringing in his ears and felt a new, excruciating pain in his hand. He brought it up to his face and in the blackness somehow sensed it was sticky with blood. He licked it and the bitter, ferric taste felt good on his tongue. He felt disorientated again and more tired than he’d ever been. He vomited thick, bloody bile next to where he lay. He put his head back in the snow and closed his eyes for a second to stop the world spinning, the wind raging and the snow swirling. His mind drifted off into complete nothingness, oblivion, and his body relaxed.

  13

  Corrour

  ‘It’s the hope that kills us

  But it’s the hope that keeps us alive

  With our heads in our hands

  And smiles on our faces

  With a song in our hearts

  And blood on our lips’

  The Ossians, ‘The Hope That Kills Us’

  Scarlet shadows danced across his eyelids. The sweet, warm smell of burning wood came to him. He could hear the spit and crackle of a fire. His body throbbed with pain and, as he became more aware of it, the focus seemed to be his left hand. He opened his eyes.

  He was wrapped in blankets and lying on a threadbare crimson sofa in a cluttered living room. A large open fire threw out reckless heat and an ornate wooden clock on the mantelpiece said it was nearly eight o’clock. The sound of breakfast being prepared started up in another room – sizzling, the clatter of pans, a kettle boiling. He had a blinding headache. A deeper pain was pulsing in his hand. He lifted it up to his face – it was bandaged tight. He turned the hand, examining it from all sides as if it was something he didn’t recognise.

  ‘You’ll need to get that seen by a proper doctor.’

  A short, round elderly woman of about seventy stood in the doorway. Her grey hair was pulled back in a bun and she wore a plain white apron over a dark dress.

  ‘I’m a retired nurse, you see, so I bandaged it up for you, but you’d better get it seen to just in case.’

  Connor wanted to speak but didn’t feel his brain was up to speed, so just watched the woman, who came into the room and started clearing things from a dining table.

  ‘You’re very lucky,’ she said. ‘You could easily have died, you know, out here in winter, in this awful weather. Just as well your friend found us.’

  ‘What?’

  The old woman was looking back at the doorway, and Connor followed her gaze. What he saw made his mind stall. Standing there looking serene and angelic as ever was Martin Gill. He started helping the woman set the table.

  ‘We thought we heard shots,’ said the woman as she bustled around with cutlery and placemats. ‘Just as we were wondering what to do, whether we’d maybe imagined it, or if we should head out into the blizzard and have a look around, there was a knock at the door, and there was young Martin, saying we had to come quickly because his friend had collapsed on the moor. Turned out you were only fifty yards away, lying in the snow. Do you remember?’

  Connor shook his head, feeling stupid. He looked at Martin, who was avoiding eye contact, busying himself with putting salt, pepper and glasses on the table. The woman looked at Connor.

  ‘If you don’t mind me asking, what on earth were you two doing out here?’

  Connor thought about the question for a long time but didn’t say anything.

  ‘Martin never told me either,’ said the woman. ‘It’s none of my business, I suppose, you don’t have to tell me anything. Although I strongly advise you don’t do anything as daft as that again.’

  A large, broad bulk of a man in his late sixties came in from the kitchen. ‘Ah, the dead has arisen,’ he laughed. He smiled widely but there was concern in his eyes. ‘And have we found out what the wanderers were up to yet, Selma?’

  ‘Leave the boys alone, Donald. This one’s only a laddie, and that one’s still in shock.’ Selma nodded towards Martin then Connor. ‘How’s breakfast coming along?’

  ‘Breakfast is in hand, dear,’ said Donald, heading over to a drinks cabinet. Then to Connor, ‘I suppose you could do with a wee dram for the shock, son?’

  ‘That would be grand,’ said Connor.

  ‘And for you?’ Donald looked at Martin, who shook his head silently. ‘Fair enough.’

  Donald poured two large nips, handed one to Connor and sat down opposite him in an armchair. They clinked glasses. ‘Slainte.’ They took a drink, Connor downing his in one and feeling the slow creep of warmth spread outwards from his chest. They remained in silence for a while, just the crackle of the fire and sizzling from the kitchen in their ears. Donald sat looking at the fire, while Connor couldn’t take his eyes off Martin, watching him as he quietly glided around the table, helping Selma lay it out for breakfast, never looking up. Once the table was set Selma and Martin headed back into the kitchen. Connor sat looking at the doorway for a while, still unable to get his head round anything. Eventually he spoke.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Corrour Station House,’ said Donald, refilling both glasses. ‘Selma and I are employed by the estate owners to keep this place ticking over. You’re bloody lucky, son. If it wasn’t for young Martin there, you’d be a dead man. This is the middle of nowhere, you know. What the hell were you two doing out here?’

  ‘Looking for Loch Ossian,’ said Connor. The words sounded pathetic.

  ‘You nearly found it. Just under a mile east of here. Where did you come from?’

  ‘Fort William.’

  ‘Jesus wept, son, that’s nearly twenty bloody miles. Did you walk the whole way?’

  Connor thought about the stolen bike, and nodded sheepishly.

  ‘In that weather? Christ, you’re a pair of madmen.’

  Connor suddenly thought about the gun, and felt below the blanket for it. He noticed he was only wearing shorts and a T-shirt. The man watched him for a moment.

  ‘If it’s the gun you’re after, it’s safe. It’s over on the mantelpiece. I didnae think you’d be needing it before breakfast. I’ll not ask if you’ve a licence for that thing. That’s your own business, I suppose.’

  Connor finished his whisky. He felt his hand throbbing and held it up to examine it in the firelight.

  ‘Powder burns, apparently,’ said the man. ‘You’d need to ask Selma more about it, she dealt with it. Happens when you don’t fire a gun properly.’

  Selma and Martin came back in carrying plates heaped with food – sausages, bacon, eggs, toast, tomatoes, haggis, mushrooms, beans and black pudding.

  ‘Are you up to a wee bit of breakfast?’ Selma said to Connor. He didn’t feel at all hungry, but thought he should at least make the effort. He noticed that his clothes were drying next to the fire. He wrapped the blankets around his shoulders and sat at the table.

  ‘I’m Connor, by the way,’ he said as they started eating.

  ‘We know, Martin told us,’ said Selma. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you. We don’t get many visitors this time o
f year.’

  Outside, the sky was lightening to a translucent grey colour as high, feathery clouds broke up, exposing patches of clear sky.

  ‘Looks like it could be a fine day,’ said Donald.

  Connor watched Martin getting stuck into his massive plateful of food, shovelling large forkfuls into his mouth. Connor’s brain and body still felt like they were thawing out, although the drams had helped. His hand hurt like a bastard. He tried to think about how he’d got here, how the fuck Martin was here, too, and how they came to be sitting with a charming old couple having breakfast as if life was normal. He couldn’t work anything out, so he just sat looking out the window at the massive expanse of sky.

  By the time they’d cleared the breakfast things away it was bright outside. Connor had eaten nothing but had drunk four cups of coffee, despite a burning sensation in his stomach with every sip.

  ‘I’m just away to let the dogs out,’ said Donald. ‘Are you two up for the guided tour?’

  Martin nodded shyly at Donald. Connor was feeling a lot better thanks to the whisky, the coffee and the spread of daylight filling the room. ‘Sure,’ he said to Donald as Selma gathered his clothes, checked they were dry and presented them to him. She disappeared into the kitchen. Connor dressed quickly, slipping the gun into his coat pocket, aware that both Donald and Martin were watching him. The three of them headed outside.

  There was a snap in the air which burnt Connor’s lungs as he breathed deeply. They stood outside the station house, a neat building in racing green and whitewash with a tiny spread of saplings lined up like midget soldiers outside. A railway line stretched off into the distance in either direction, dead straight, as far as he could see. In front of them, the track divided in two and ran either side of a small hut and a larger bunkhouse on an island platform. Beyond that the view was stunning – miles and miles of snowy moorland, with white peaks off in the distance. The sense of space was unbelievable. Connor felt minuscule in the face of the colossal stretches of land and sky all around him.

  Donald had let two collies out the house, who were snuffling around the saplings and each other, their paws making fresh patterns in the snow. To their left a small wind turbine flicked round and a thirty-foot aerial emitted a low buzz. On the right was a path over the railway, a battered old signpost too weather-beaten to read and a dead tree, spindling into the crystal sky.

  As Connor looked down the track he felt as if he’d been here before. There was something definitely recognisable about the place. He sensed deep in his mind that he’d seen this place, this exact place, sometime in the past, but he couldn’t place it. He thought about it for a couple of minutes.

  ‘This place looks familiar,’ he said.

  Donald and Martin turned.

  ‘You would remember being here before, don’t you think?’ said Donald. ‘It’s the most remote railway station in Britain, they say, so it’s not the kind of place you just stumble across. Present company excluded, of course.’ He spoke with a little laugh as he looked first at Connor, then Martin. The three of them stood absorbing the view for a while as the dogs played with each other. Then Donald seemed to remember something. ‘They did use this place in a film a while back,’ he said. ‘A trendy, young folks’ film. You might have seen that.’

  ‘What was it called?’

  ‘Now, it had a funny name. It was all about drugs or something, but it had an odd title. What was it, again?’

  Connor knew what it was. He remembered the scene almost exactly. He laughed.

  ‘Trainspotting?’ he said.

  ‘That was it,’ said Donald. ‘Did you see it? Any good?’

  ‘Yeah, I saw it,’ said Connor. ‘It was pretty good.’

  It’s shite being Scottish. This is where they filmed that scene, the one where Ewan McGregor does his rant about Scotland. The lowest of the low, the scum of the fucking earth, all that. And Connor had ended up almost dying here, trying to find a loch that was named after some fake ancient Scottish bullshit-merchant warrior poet, the same figure he’d named his pointless little band after. A smile spread across his face as he looked at Donald and Martin, then down the railway line into the distance, as if he expected his own personal train to come into view any second and carry him away.

  ‘Christ, Connor, where the fuck are you?’

  Paul was fuming.

  ‘Corrour.’

  ‘Where the fuck is that?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Is your mobile on? I’ve been calling all fucking night.’

  ‘There’s no reception here.’

  ‘We were about to go to the police, you daft bastard. What happened last night? You just went to the bogs and never came back.’

  ‘I went for a walk and got a bit lost, that’s all. You know how it is.’

  ‘No, I don’t. Try telling Hannah and Kate that. They’ve been going out their fucking minds, Hannah especially. Where are you? We’ll come and pick you up.’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There are no roads.’

  ‘No roads? How the hell did you get there?’

  ‘I walked.’

  ‘Is this a village or something?’

  ‘It’s really just a house and a railway station run by some old pair. Look, I’m fine, OK? Apparently it would take hours to get back to Fort William. There are two southbound trains through here every day, both of which stop at Glasgow. The quickest thing is for you to head down to Tut’s and I’ll catch you there.’

  ‘This is fucking insane,’ said Paul, exasperated. ‘You want me to tell the rest of them that you’ve phoned and we can’t pick you up cos there are no roads, and we’ll just meet up in Glasgow? You think that’ll go down well?’

  ‘It’s the most sensible option. Tell Hannah I’ll speak to her tonight at Tut’s. This is the easiest way of doing things. I’m sorry I never came back last night, but things got on top of me. And I really did get lost in the middle of nowhere. Actually, I was pretty lucky Martin found me.’

  ‘The kid? What the fuck has he got to do with anything? Please don’t tell me he’s there with you.’

  ‘Em…’

  ‘Jesus, Con, he’s supposed to be at home in Edinburgh with his folks by now. Hannah left him at the cop shop, for fuck’s sake. What’s he doing with you? What the hell’s going on?’

  ‘I’m not sure, to be honest.’ Connor could hear Paul exhaling deeply. ‘Look, the train is at half twelve, I can be in Glasgow by five. It’ll take you that long to drive down anyway, won’t it?’

  ‘Probably, but…’

  ‘In that case, I’ll see you there. I’d better go, I’m using this old couple’s phone. I’ll speak to you in Glasgow. Cheers.’

  He was relieved to put the phone down. He walked back through to the living room. No one was about and the drinks cabinet was open. He was about to take a bottle of single malt when Donald and Martin came in.

  ‘Where can I find this Loch Ossian, then?’ he said to Donald.

  ‘Out the back door, straight ahead for about a mile.’

  Connor turned to Martin.

  ‘Fancy a stroll?’

  They walked the short distance without speaking. Now, sitting on the bank of Loch Ossian next to Martin, the quietness was overwhelming. Back at the station house the wind turbine, aerial and generator all created background noise. Here, there wasn’t a single sound in the whole world. The bank was mossy and slushy underfoot, and the water was a blue so dark it seemed like tar. Without a cloud in the sky, the day seemed too bright, the edges of things too defined. He’d never seen anywhere so in focus before. Out in the loch were half a dozen tiny islands, each with a spread of scabby conifers clinging to its surface. Beneath his feet, jutting out of the water at angry angles, were broken, dead tree stumps, the wood slowly decaying and sinking into the peat all around. The station house was behind them, but over the brow of a hill so that from here they could neither see nor hear it. The water was s
o calm it looked like glass, and Connor dipped his finger in to check it was liquid. The tiny ripples played out from the epicentre and disappeared into the distance.

  So this is what he’d been looking for. Big deal. It was just another beautiful, scenic place. Scotland was full of them. Christ, ninety per cent of the country was probably as gorgeous and peaceful as Loch Ossian. The band had been touring round shitty towns on the edge of the country and even they’d seen some beautiful sights. Scotland was a big place. The middle of the country was a massive expanse of hills and forests and Christ knows what else. Peace and fucking quiet, plain and simple. It wasn’t so complicated, was it?

  But what did he need peace and quiet for? He was a kid of twenty-four and in a rock band, for fuck’s sake. If anyone should be enjoying big cities with late-night bars, drugs and drink and partying, fighting in the streets on a weekend night and eating too much cheap carry-out food and watching football and going clubbing and taxi rides home and skinning up to come down, it should be him. But he was sick. Sick of it. Sick to fucking death of that world already, and only twenty-four. It was going to kill him. Or, more accurately, he was going to kill himself. He’d almost done it last night. He felt ashamed as he swigged from the bottle of malt Donald had handed him silently back at the station house. Fifteen-year-old, cask-strength Laphroaig. Very nice. It tasted so peaty it was antiseptic. That’s what he needed, antiseptic for the soul. To clean out the festering wound, the abscess in the heart of him, the big fucking infected hole in his heart.