Kate desperately wanted to learn what it was Cameron had found out about himself. However, she sensed that asking him now might only make him regret telling her as much as he had, not encourage him to tell more. So she just said, “I guess all of that makes you want to get away from people, to a place like this.”
He nodded. “Like you, though, I don’t know how realistic it is to think I can stay here. I’ve got vague notions about trying to make a living as a freelancer, specialising in wildlife and scenic shots, but I have an awful feeling that it won’t pay.”
“I guess the only way to find out is by giving it a try.” Cameron nodded again. “I saved a little when I was in the army, so hopefully I’ll be able to renovate the cottage and support myself for long enough to see if the freelance thing is viable.”
“And if it isn’t?”
“I’ll have to try getting a job on the local paper.” “
You make that sound like a last resort.” “
Take a look at the pictures on its pages: three out of four are check presentations. The others are retirals, wedding anniversaries, school plays. Not the sort of thing you can get too creative or excited about. I’m sure I’d end up just going through the motions, and life should be about more than that, shouldn’t it?”
“Most definitely,” Kate said, her words heartfelt. She took a drink, then asked, “How about opening a studio and doing portraits and weddings?”
Cameron had considered that, but couldn’t see it working out. There was much more to taking portraits than technique. You had to be at ease with people, and able to put people at ease. The best way he could think of explaining things was to say, “It would be like you with your sculptures, Kate.”
And she nodded, because she understood.
For a little while they sat without saying anything, just holding their drinks, gazing into them …
Then Cameron said, “How about you, Kate. What’ll you do if things don’t work out here?”
“Go back to Sausalito, I guess.”
“It must be a beautiful place if it’s a tourist trap, but you don’t sound too enthusiastic about going back.”
“It is a beautiful place. Nothing like this, but lovely nonetheless. When I said ‘back to Sausalito’ I suppose what I meant was back to the feeling that life’s passing me by.”
“At least you’d have whatever money you made from selling the estate,” Cameron said.
“I couldn’t enjoy spending it, not knowing the price other people had paid to put it in my pocket. I’d feel like I was a second Lady Carolyn … And cursed just like she was,” she added.
“How do you mean?”
Kate related what Finlay had told her about the deathbed curse on Lady Carolyn and her descendants.
“You don’t believe in that sort of stuff, do you?”
“After what Finlay told me about the fate of some of the people in these portraits it’s difficult not to,” Kate said, looking over Cameron’s shoulder at the wall of paintings. “And it’s difficult not to get the feeling that history’s repeating itself—that I’m destined to be responsible for a second clearance, and punished accordingly.” She hesitated, afraid that what she was about to say might seem foolish, but then said it anyway because for some unaccountable reason she was sure that Cameron wouldn’t laugh: “Besides, there’s the way my sculptures have gone bad … It’s almost like a curse caused that.”
Cameron didn’t know quite what to say to that, so he was relieved when Finlay and Miss Weir came in to clear the trays, and the four-way conversation turned to the meal and how much it had been enjoyed.
After a beaming Miss Weir and Finlay had gone, taking the dishes with them, Kate and Cameron were left in silence.
Kate was berating herself for having mentioned the notion of a curse—things had been going so well, then she’d gone and put a downer on the evening and probably made herself seem a little kooky in the process.
Cameron was kicking himself for mentioning the things that weighed him down. He’d been trying to appear bright and funny but, in the end, hadn’t been able to keep what was inside from showing.
Kate got up and walked over to the wall of portraits, looking at Lady Carolyn.
Cameron got up and walked over to the picture of Jamie.
Turning to her guest, Kate said, “We make quite a pair, you and me, don’t we: a woman with a curse on her family and a guy with a haunted house?”
Suddenly they were laughing at each other and with each other …
And then they weren’t talking or laughing, they were kissing, neither of them making the first move or thinking about what they were about to do, both of them moving together and acting from feeling rather than thought.
“I didn’t think anything like this could happen so quickly,” Kate told him after they’d drawn apart, her hands on his shoulders, his clasped around her back.
“I didn’t think it could happen at all,” Cameron said.
For a few moments they stood like that, suddenly awkward, the way two people are when they’ve stumbled into the uncharted territory which separates friendship from love.
“Would you understand if I said I didn’t want things to happen too fast?” Kate said, finally breaking the silence.
Cameron nodded.
“Would you be disappointed?”
He nodded again.
“I’d have been disappointed if you weren’t disappointed,” Kate told him.
They laughed easily and together. Some of the awkwardness disappeared, and this time Kate felt able to fill the next silence by asking, “What are you thinking, Cameron Fraser?”
“I’m not thinking, I’m hoping.”
“What are you hoping?”
“That you manage to hang on to Greystane, Kate Brodie.”
He felt her stiffen in his arms, saw a sadness in her smile.
“That’s why I don’t want things to move too fast, Cameron—in case I don’t manage to hang on to the estate,” she said. Then her actions were giving a lie to her words about not wanting things to move too fast, because her hands were running over his shoulders, her fingers clasping behind his neck, her lips pressing against his.
And for Cameron the past suddenly belonged to another time, the faces in the forest belonged to another world.
His heart belonged to Kate Brodie.
And that was when it happened: without any warning, the picture of Jamie Chisholm fell off the wall.
The painting had been hanging directly behind Kate, and she literally jumped with fright as it clattered to the polished wooden floor at her feet. The color drained from her face and, in a shaky voice, she said, “Was that what I think it was?”
“If you think it was a painting falling off the wall then, yes.”
Kate broke away from Cameron to turn around and look at the picture lying face-up on the floorboards.
“I wonder if that means Jamie’s jealous,” Cameron said, trying to make a joke of it.
“I hate to think what it means,” Kate said.
Cameron knelt down to examine the painting, and said, “The picture wire snapped.” Seeing that Kate was still shaking, he said, “That’s all it was, Kate, just an old picture wire that was ready to snap.”
“Maybe, but it’s really got me spooked.”
“I’m not surprised. I got a real fright myself,” he admitted.
“Are you going to be okay spending the night in the camper?” Kate asked.
He nodded.
Kate hesitated, then told him, “I meant what I said about not wanting things to move too fast, but you’re welcome to the guest room here. In fact, you’d be doing me a favour if you stayed. It’d be nice to know there’s someone through the wall.”
“I wouldn’t like to impose.”
“You wouldn’t be.”
“You’re sure? I’ve got a sleeping bag and fold-down bed in the camper.”
“You don’t need them. I’ll make up the guest bed for you.”
“If you’re sure … “
“Cameron, I’m sure.”
“I’ll just nip across and get an overnight bag, then. Do you know if there’s a quick way to get to the top of Jamie’s Crag from here?”
She nodded. “Turn right at the bottom of the steps outside the wall. You’ll come to a bridge, just above the waterfall. It leads to a flight of steps up Jamie’s Crag. You’ll need a flashlight, though—a torch, I think you call it. I’ll see if Finlay has one.”
She didn’t have to go looking for Finlay because, having heard the clatter of frame on floor, he came rushing in to find out what had happened.
Five minutes later Cameron was heading along the path that led to the bridge.
CAMERON WAS GONE FOR SO LONG THAT KATE AND FINLAY were pulling on their coats and getting ready to mount a search party by the time he returned. “Cameron! We were just about to go looking for you,” Kate told him. “We thought maybe Jamie’s ghost had gotten you.”
Cameron didn’t even manage a smile, let alone a laugh.
“Is everything okay?” Kate asked.
“The torch died on me,” he told her.
Kate and Finlay both looked at the torch in his hand, which was shining brightly, then looked back at him for an explanation.
Cameron didn’t know quite what to tell them.
When he set off from Greystane he’d been thanking his long-departed relative Jamie for helping secure him a night under the same roof as Kate Brodie.
However he wasn’t thanking Jamie quite so much by the time he reached the end of the path behind the summit of Castle Crag, because the only way down to Waterfall Bridge was by a staircase of wooden sleepers that descended the forested hillside.
Cameron hadn’t been able to set foot in a forest since Kosovo, not even by day, let alone night.
He stood there shining the torch down the stairway. The beam of light seemed to heighten the blackness around it. A breeze blew through the branches and they gave a dry rattle that startled him far more than it should have. The trees took on a skeletal quality, their branches like outstretched arms, the twigs like clutching, bony fingers. Staring with horrified fascination into the darkness, Cameron saw things he knew weren’t really there, heard things he knew couldn’t really be heard. His hand shook as he shone the torch to left and right because he half-expected that, at any moment, the beam would fall on something nightmarish. Something that wouldn’t stay dead and buried in a far-off forest clearing.
Eventually he gathered himself enough to twist the front of the torch and tighten the beam so it would travel further, trying to put the forest on either side out of mind by putting it out of sight. He used the torch to probe for the bottom of the steps, but there was no end in sight. Even though he could barely see the trees on either side of the stairway now, he could sense their brooding presence. He felt like they were closing in.
Unable to face what lay ahead, Cameron turned and hurried back along the path and past the staircase that led up to Greystane.
He followed the track that wound its way to the bottom of Castle Crag and the glen below. After using some stepping-stones to cross the burn, he followed the track up Jamie’s Crag until the torchbeam fell on his van.
Once in the camper he put a towel into his rucksack, some underwear on top of the towel, and his toilet bag on top of the underwear. Slinging the rucksack over one shoulder, he left the camper. He had the key in his hand ready to lock up, but something stopped him before he could turn it.
The unmistakable feeling that he was being watched.
His heart started pounding, his pulse racing. Telling himself it was just his imagination working overtime, he took a deep breath in a bid to calm himself, locked the door, and slipped the keys into the hip pocket of his jeans.
But the sensation of being watched grew stronger. So strong that he half-expected a clutching hand to come down on his shoulder at any moment, and was afraid to turn around for fear of what he might see staring back at him.
When at last he turned around it was hesitantly, and the white beam shining out from the torch in his hand was anything but steady.
The circle of light bounced along the bottom of the door of Jamie’s Cottage, no more than a dozen yards from where he stood. As it did, so the sensation of being watched vanished.
The lower half of the door was split in the middle, and twisted inwards at one side. Cameron shone the torch upwards, over the rusty iron handle, to the top of the door. It was buckled outwards at the outer edge. He knew the warping was probably due to the top hinge having rusted away. Yet still he had the thought that it looked almost as if the damage had been caused by someone trying to batter the door down—and it never occurred to him that it might have been someone on the outside trying to kick the door in and break into the cottage, even though that would have been the more logical assumption. The thought that filled his mind was that the damage had been done by someone inside trying to hammer the door down with their hands in a desperate bid to get out, to escape something dreadful and godforsaken that haunted the darkness within the old stone walls …
Something that moments earlier had been watching him.
If there was such a thing as a door to hell it would look like this, Cameron thought. The longer he looked at the door, the more unsettled he became by the prospect of what lay beyond it. Soon he was imagining the sound the door would make if he forced it open, and what he might find if he stepped inside. He didn’t have to make a conscious effort to imagine; the thoughts came unbidden to his mind, complete in every detail…
The door opening with a jarring shudder, giving way to a drawn-out creaking that went on and on and on.
A darkness revealed that was more complete than the blackest night.
Stepping into it, being enveloped by it, swallowed by it.
Being startled by movement behind him, and turning around just in time to see the door that had opened so noisily swinging silently, slowly, inexorably shut.
Grabbing frantically for it, but to no avail because it was tantalisingly out of reach.
Watching helplessly as the outside world—the world with his camper van and Greystane and Kate Brodie and Glen Cranoch, with the sun and moon, light and warmth—became a steadily diminishing vertical slash in the darkness before disappearing altogether as the door slammed shut, leaving him standing in the blackness that was deeper than night.
Reaching blindly for the door handle, but finding only splinters that lanced his palm, slit his fingers and wedged under his nails.
The mounting horror of realizing that there was no handle on the inside of the door—realizing there was no way out.
Desperately probing for the crack between door and frame, only to discover it was too narrow to offer his bleeding fingers purchase.
Sinking to hands and knees and searching for the warped section of wood, only to find that it had sprung back into place and was flush with the frame.
Struggling to his feet on shaking legs and reaching for the twisted top of the door only to discover that it, too, was no longer warped.
The feeling of being watched, not from a distance now, but from so close that a bony hand might grab him at any moment.
Looking over his shoulder, seeing only darkness but sensing something more.
Turning back to the door and hammering at it until his hands were black and blue but not managing to break it down, for it would only warp and twist, not splinter and break.
Shouting until he was too hoarse to do more than whisper, and hearing the echoes of voices other than his own getting ever louder …
Cameron’s dark imaginings were interrupted by the feeling that he was being watched again. The unseen eyes seemed to peer at him not from a crack in the door but from a little to the left. His hand was shaking rather than just trembling as he swung the torch in that direction, over rough old stonework cast in stark relief by the dramatic interplay of light and shadow.
As stone wall gave way to the small, d
eeply inset window, so the feeling of being watched faded once more. The beam from the torch fell on the bottom right-hand pane. It was cracked and stained and reflected the light, so that all he could see was dirty glass. A weak halo was cast on two of the other sections of the four-paned window, showing they had the same cracked and dirty glass in them. The other quarter of the window—the top left corner—was darker than the deepest shadow, and Cameron remembered from earlier in the day that its glass was missing altogether. Trying to forget his nightmarish imaginings of what might lie within the cottage, he walked towards the window, angling his wrist to shine the torch into the glassless section. Each step he took was smaller and slower than the last because, as the circle of light moved towards the empty quarter of the window, so the beam grew ever dimmer. When he was halfway to the cottage and shone the torch directly at the glassless section, the light died altogether.
“Damn!” he said under his breath. He moved the batteries around, hoping to get some extra charge out of them. Just as he was snapping the cover of the compartment back in place he got the feeling of being watched again. The sensation was so strong that he stopped what he was doing and instinctively looked at the window. The clouds parted and a shaft of moonlight fell on the cottage, which was less than half a dozen yards away now. He looked on in horrified fascination as the pane of glass next to the empty quarter misted up, as if fogged by warm breath.
The misting slowly vanished in front of his eyes until it was gone so completely it was difficult to believe it had ever been there at all.
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