The beetle was still beating its wings. I could imagine it giving us a proper dressing-down.
“He’s a beauty,” cooed my wife, heedless of the grass and mud stains on her clothes and person.
“He’s one of a kind,” I agreed. “What are you, little fellow?”
“He’s the Bickers Beetle!” Esme announced. “He shall be named after us, his discoverers.”
“Steady on, old basket,” I warned her. “We have to get him checked and verified first. Could take years.”
“Even so,” my wife hooked her arm in mine and rested her cheek against my shoulder, “he’s ours.”
***
Cuthbert’s reading was curtailed by the intrusion of a third party onto the scene. An elderly fellow in tam o’shanter and tweeds above a murky kilt. His white mutton chops gave him the appearance of being attacked by lambs and his irate face was as purple as any thistle. He brandished a gnarled walking stick in our direction, an accessory I’d wager he employed more for purposes of self-expression rather than as an aid to perambulation.
His mouth was working but his voice was not carried by the breeze and so Cuthbert and I had to wait until the fellow was within earshot before we could learn the reason for his furious urgency. His demeanour was entirely aggressive and unwelcoming. Cuthbert, instinctively, put himself between me and the curmudgeon’s cudgel.
“Good afternoon,” I offered.
The fellow spat out a grumble.
“How’d you do?” Cuthbert gave him one of his winning smiles - the one with the dimples displayed to their optimal cuteness and irresistibility. The fellow seemed oddly placated, as though his savage breast was charmed by sweet music. He frowned and continued to mumble imprecations but the steam of anger was no longer driving his engine. Among the snarls and growls, words began to surface. I distinctly heard ‘my land’ and ‘get off’. The reason for his frightful displeasure dawned: he had mistaken us for common trespassers.
Common I most certainly am not.
“My dear sir,” I began, from my place of safety behind Cuthbert’s broad shoulder, “We mean neither you nor your property any harm. We are merely passing through and shall be on our way directly. I bid you good day.”
It was not my good manners that rekindled the fellow’s ire but my English accent. He bristled at my voice and looked ready to have at me with his knobbly staff. As ever, Cuthbert’s intervention saved my skin. He addressed the fellow in the soft and lilting accent of the Highlands - a contrast to the harsh unintelligibility of Glaswegian tones and, indeed, to Cuthbert’s own native Cockney.
My valet never ceases to surprise me. After a couple of minutes of the pair of them speaking in hushed voices, with sidelong glances at me followed by braying laughter, Cuthbert nudged me and winked in an unnecessarily vulgar fashion.
“Come on,” he winked again. “Auld Jock has invited us for tea.”
“Who is Auld Jock?” I was puzzled. Cuthbert indicated the curmudgeon who was striding away through the heather at quite a pace.
“Our host. Auld Jock Hitchin. Come on. We might find out something about that beetle. He might remember your friends.”
With that, my valet set off after the old man, leaving me to wonder, not for the first time since he came to my employ, who the devil was in charge.
Chapter Two
Auld Jock led us to an isolated shack of mouldering stone and rotting thatch. The kind of remote place to where one might bring one’s victims, I could not help thinking. Cuthbert threw me a glance of reassurance and, when the old man wasn’t looking, gave my hand a squeeze.
Inside, the cottage was poky but clean. The furnishings were not only sparse but Spartan - there was very little to keep tidy. Gruffly, the old man bade us sit at a rugged table, its surface worn smooth from decades of rubbing. Cuthbert and I pulled out rickety chairs with flat, faded cushions while our host busied himself at the kitchen cupboards. He returned to us with three cracked glasses and an ancient bottle.
“Usquebaugh!” he announced, pulling the cork with his teeth and pouring three generous, golden measures.
“Bless you,” I replied.
“It’s whisky,” Cuthbert translated. “The water of life.”
Auld Jock raised his glass and, cueing us with his eyes like a choirmaster, incited us to do the same. The three of us knocked back the shots in unison.
It was like drinking fire.
Or suffering the effects of smoke inhalation at best.
I coughed and spluttered until Cuthbert patted my back. He had taken it much better than me but I could see even his eyes were watering. To Auld Jock, it was water of life off a duck’s back. He was already charging our glasses for a second round.
Down the hatch it went, like a flaming arrow to the stomach, to be followed by a third, a fourth...
By the sixth, I wouldn’t say I was developing a taste for the stuff but I was certainly building tolerance. Of a kind.
The room began to blur and spin. The voices of my valet and our host faded in and out. I couldn’t get a grip on their discourse. Nothing I heard made sense to me. Finally, my eyes rolled up to the rafters - I noted there were no cobwebs - and then I fell forward, face first onto the table top.
Everything disappeared.
***
The next thing I knew it was the following morning - Well, any number of days and nights might have passed while I was lost to oblivion. The cottage was reeking, thanks to Auld Whatsisface’s ministrations at the stove. He was chasing thick slices of black pudding around a frying pan with a fork. My stomach flipped and let out a groan, declining the invitation to breakfast on my behalf. Cuthbert, by way of spiteful contrast, was heartily tucking into a plateful of the stuff. He grinned at me.
“Morning, sir!”
I groaned something that was meant to convey my annoyance that anyone could be so damnably chipper.
The old man slapped a plate of burnt offerings before me. My gorge rose. I fled the cottage and out into the crisp, fresh air of the morning. I vomited into my sporran and felt a good deal better.
I steadied myself against the water butt and gave serious consideration to dunking my head therein. In the end, I decided against it. Loyal readers will know why I can never trust water. And what might be in it.
Eventually, the door opened and Cuthbert stepped out, patting his belly in an unnecessarily theatrical manner. Auld Jock was not far behind. Farewells were exchanged. Gratitude and appreciation were bandied around. The old man patted the young one on the shoulder with a look of admiration illuminating his features. A pang of jealousy twisted my already tormented innards.
What had they been up to last night?
I could not stomach the idea of Cuthbert with anyone else, let alone that geriatric bag of bluster. Come to that, I was in no fit state to stomach anything.
Cuthbert witnessed my physical - and perhaps my emotional - distress and chuckled. He put his arm across my shoulders and steered me back to the doorstep where he importuned me to shake our host by the hand.
It was like grabbing an old potato. I noticed - with horror, I must admit - that the fellow had no fingers on that hand, just four little nubs and a thumb as rough as sandpaper. The fellow held eye contact, enjoying my discomfort and my failure to mask my revulsion. He laughed and urged me to have a good life - but in an accent so thick it might have been the old line about the ‘braw, bricht, moonlicht nicht’ for all I could make out.
I could not get away fast enough. Cuthbert clung to my arm for support (mine, not his) and we headed away from that tumbledown croft as fast as my hangover would allow.
“Let us repair to the inn,” I managed to utter. “A hot bath will see me right.”
“Not on your nelly, sir,” Cuthbert, reverting back to Cockney, steered me from the path (not for the first ti
me!). I tried to resist but he has always been able to strong-arm me into anything. “We have a stop to make first. Something I want to look into.”
“Oh,” I despaired as each step took me farther from the tub. “What?”
“Auld Jock told me a few things while you was passed out, sir. He reckons this glen is an evil place, sir. On account of the hole.”
“Hole? What hole?”
“Auld Jock reckons there’s a hole somewhere on the hillside. You put something in it and you never see it again.”
“Sounds like my bank account,” I muttered. “And this is what you want to look into, is it, this hole?”
“Literally, sir. If we can find it.”
“Didn’t he - old whatsit - tell you where it is?”
“No, sir. He reckons it moves.”
Well, I’ve heard some hogwash in my time - and written a damn sight more of it.
“A moving hole! Preposterous!”
Cuthbert emitted a lascivious chuckle. I slapped his arm before he could say anything indecorous.
“But my thinking, sir, is that things can go into the hole, sir, things can also come out. Other things, sir. Like your beetle, sir.”
My brain was in too much of a fug to think straight and my throat was as dry as - as dry as that old man’s mutilated hand. Cuthbert passed me a hip flask - of water, I was actually grateful to find.
“You never hear of portals, sir? Doorways to other realms?”
I put a hand to my brow and squeezed my throbbing temples. We have seen a lot of strange things in our time together: monsters in lakes, Aztec deities, dog-faced men... We have seen examples of them all, therefore I was in no position to pooh-pooh any metaphysical or supernatural supposition. I was just tired, damn it. It would be nice to go somewhere for once and have nothing happen.
“Might be a book in it, sir.”
“In the hole?”
“In the story of the hole, sir. Come on; it’s got to be worth a gander. One hour, sir, and then I’ll bleedin’ carry you down to that inn if I have to, and run you that bath myself.”
I was too enfeebled to offer any objections. “One hour,” I nodded.
Cuthbert was already striding away. I followed at a slower and shakier pace. As he strode and I plodded, Cuthbert regaled me with further details of his evening with the old man. Auld Jock had known the Bickerses and still bore them a grudge. They had borrowed Cassie, his collie, for one of their forays into the flora and fauna, and had returned without her. The dog, they claimed, had simply disappeared. One minute there she was, snuffling through the sedge, and the next, there she wasn’t. The Bickerses searched for hours, calling and whistling, until darkness fell and they were forced to return to the croft and offer the old man several guineas for the loss and inconvenience.”
“Dogs run off,” I shrugged.
“Indeed they do, sir, but Charles Bickers claims in his journal that they both saw the dog vanish before their very eyes. Head and front paws first, then the back legs and then finally the tip of its fluffy tail.”
“You mean it went behind a rock or a shrub or something.”
“No, sir. Into air! Into thin air.” He pulled out Charles’s book and stabbed a finger at the appropriate entry. Charles had essayed a series of sketches to illustrate the disappearance of Cassie. He was no Leonardo; I’ll say that for him.
“This hole of yours,” I glanced at the illustrations, “Does Charles say where it is?”
Cuthbert showed me a map reference. “Right where we’re standing now, sir.”
I jumped.
“But as you can see neither of us has disappeared. Or, we both have...”
“Now, now,” I wagged a warning finger. “Don’t complicate matters. The hole has simply moved on.”
“Oh, so you was listening! I thought you was too busy trying not to keel over.”
I ignored that remark and asked if he believed that was how Auld Jock had lost his fingers.
“Och, no,” Cuthbert imitated the old man’s accent. “That wasn’t the hole. That was the Peckish Dead.”
“The who?”
“Tell you later. Have a butcher’s at this map.” He unfolded a voluminous sheet. “Here’s where the dog disappeared and over here’s where the Bickerses found the beetle. See how both places are on the same contour line, here and here.”
I nodded. It was all a blur to me. “What we need is a third location to see where the hole went next.”
I glanced around. I doubt even fully sober I would have been able to spot an invisible hole.
I was about to suggest - nay, insist - we call it a day and go back to the inn and see about that bath when we noticed - well, Cuthbert noticed - the old man hurrying toward us. Sans staff, I observed, so he must be on urgent business.
Auld Jock was waving something at us and calling out.
“Damn and blast,” Cuthbert patted his pockets. “I’ve only bleedin’ been and gone and forgot the bleedin’ beetle.”
Believe me, I was past caring at this point, but I jogged behind Cuthbert as he headed to meet the old fellow halfway. It seemed the least we could do. And the old boy was in much better shape than I, I’ll give him that. I stopped, my hands on my knees, to gulp for breath, while Cuthbert closed the gap between them.
“Here!” he cried. “You’re bloomin’ shrinking!”
It was true. The old man was getting shorter by the second. He was sinking into the ground. A bog, perhaps, or quicksand! You read about these things - Well, I do, at any rate. Cuthbert held on. Auld Jock’s free hand - the one with nubs for fingers - flailed about. His waist was at ground level by this point and he tried to clutch at blades of grass. Closer inspection revealed the ground to be bone dry and intact.
Auld Jock had stumbled across the invisible hole!
And, what was more and what was worse, he looked likely to pull my valet in with him. Not if I had any say in it he wouldn’t. He might be able to manage without his staff but I certainly couldn’t. I flung my arms around Cuthbert’s waist and, digging my heels into the dirt, clasped my hands around his sporran.
“Dinnae fash!” Auld Jock cried in dismay. “Let me go.”
I don’t know what ‘dinnae fash’ means but the rest of his remark was plain enough. “You heard him,” I said to Cuthbert’s back but Cuthbert held on doggedly. “I can’t lose you,” I urged. He shivered.
“That tickles,” he wriggled.
“Och aye!” cried Auld Jock, breaking free of Cuthbert’s grasp. He was swallowed up by the hole, his voice trailing off like an echo, “The noo-oo-oo!”
The last things to go were his hands. The mutilated one like a sprouting potato and, crucially, the other one that was still holding the box with the Bickerses’ beetle in it.
“Damn it,” I said over Cuthbert’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry, sir,” said Cuthbert. “But it looks like we’ve got out third position.”
“I say!” said a third party, to our surprise. “What the devil have we here? Disgusting behaviour!”
I sprang back, releasing Cuthbert as though electrocuted.
The new arrival was an elderly gentleman in tweed jacket and flat cap. His kilt was plain, an austere black, I noticed. His voice was clipped and decidedly English. Behind the thick, white moustache that spread its way to his mutton chops, the face was an irate shade of red.
“I shall have none of this unnatural business on my estate.”
“Now, look here,” I blustered, but it was all I could get out before Cuthbert stepped forward and offered the disgusted gentleman his hand.
“Hello, Grandfather,” he said.
Chapter Three
I was stunned, to say the least. A look from Cuthbert was enough for me to keep my questions to myself - for the time being.
Rest assured I would have it out with my valet as soon as the opportunity arose.
“Grandfather, this is my valet, Thomas,” Cuthbert continued, matching the old man’s cut-glass tones.
I looked around but I could see no Thomas. Then I realised he meant me.
“He was saving me from choking,” Cuthbert said casually. “An insect - a midge, no doubt - had flown into my mouth, you see.”
The old man grunted, silencing Cuthbert. “You will come to the house,” he made it sound more like an order than an invitation. “There we can celebrate your unheralded return with all due rejoicing. Your servant,” he awarded me a sneer, “shall have to walk.”
I did not like the sound of that one bit and I was about to blow the whole thing when Cuthbert shot me a look of such pleading I was incapable of resistance. I would play along. For now.
“Now, Thomas,” Cuthbert addressed me as though I were a simpleton, “just follow the road,” he pointed down the valley - in the opposite direction to the inn, I noticed. “You can’t miss it.”
Impatient, the old man harrumphed. He strode off to a pony and trap that was waiting below us. Before he followed, Cuthbert tipped me a wink and mouthed, “I love you.”
He always knows just what to say.
***
Miles I walked along that road. In other circumstances, I would have rather enjoyed it. The Scottish countryside can be stunning - as you may well be aware - with its purple-tipped hills, its viridian firs, its glistening brooks, and all the rest of it, but I was barely paying attention. My mind was full of questions to none of which I could supply an answer.
I lost sight of the pony and trap within minutes and it seemed I was on my own for miles around. Woodpigeons called to each other, making hollow sounds - I suspected they were blowing across the necks of open bottles. They could have been, for all I knew; it was Charles Bickers who was the naturalist, not I.
Beware The Peckish Dead! Page 2