XIV
Outsiders
So the search was reignited, but Becky was not selected to see it through to the end. Waiting often proves more difficult than the task itself for those left behind during times of peril; it would be at least a couple of hours before they would find out if the climb was successful in rescuing Alice, even with the steepest and most direct route before them.
Dreading the anxious wait ahead, she was pleased to occupy her mind helping Affleck for a while as they sought to make Jim more comfortable. His pain had worsened the longer he tried to stay still and, on inspection, it looked likely that a full break rather than a fracture had occurred just above his ankle. The repentant adventurer would be eternally grateful that Affleck kept morphine in his vehicle for just such an eventuality; this he used to silence Jim’s ‘whining’, telling them not to bother asking how he had acquired a supply.
Once the morphine was administered and they were satisfied there was no chance of infection, Becky focused her efforts on wrapping the injured leg in a bandage, which would suffice until a stronger version could be achieved in a hospital. By the time she was close to finishing the work Jim was no longer grimacing with pain, but lying back with closed eyes and a wide grin on his face, conscious but not quite all there.
‘I guess you won’t be drinking your tea, dopey?’ Affleck spoke loudly to him.
‘Yeah… just put it there.’ Jim replied. Affleck did just that but it was clear to them that he had already forgotten the brew steaming away beside him, even though he had craved tea since the morning light itself.
Becky did not overlook the chance to let tea warm her bones, however, and, as they ceased their activities in order to be revived for more challenges ahead, she was able to enquire further on the capture of Stevens.
‘So are you confident they have the right man?’
‘Oh he fit the description alright,’ Affleck told her. ‘I didn’t see him myself but I heard the report on the radio – was why I was able to get back here so quick. The police are still searching elsewhere for Alice.’
‘He must have driven there,’ Becky said, unable to satisfy herself on any news of her tormenter until she could make complete sense of it. ‘I wonder why.’
‘Why doesn’t concern me as long as they’ve got him. Can’t be many more tall Americans walking round the mountains at this time of year.’
‘Did he put up a fight?’
‘No, but there was a second police car there soon after he was spotted. He allowed them to cuff him, probably thought he could sweet-talk them.’
The account didn’t sound much like Stevens who had always done all he could to resist capture in the past, violently if necessary, but then he was in a foreign country and might have felt less confident with his surroundings, or feel he had less cunning to play games with the authorities.
Becky knew that a part of her wouldn’t believe it until she saw him with her own eyes, his terrorising having grown legendary in her mind over years that felt long and arduous. At the same time there seemed no reason to doubt the right man was now in police custody, as Affleck had stated, and she partly gave in to a sense of relief and security she had not hoped to encounter without greater turmoil. Instead her thoughts turned to Adam and what his last words to her could mean.
‘The snow’s easing a little,’ Affleck remarked, interrupting her reverie, ‘it might be possible to get a better view if the mist decides to clear, but I think more likely she’s over where your fella’s heading, just wish I’d thought of it sooner. What’s the deal with you and him anyway?’
Becky was caught off guard by his bringing up their relationship, reacting with the shaky demeanour of someone who feels their inner thoughts are being scrutinised. A professional response was all she could manage to give.
‘He’s my supervisor.’
‘You don’t yomp all the way from London to the Highlands to find your supervisor; I saw his face, didn’t even know you were coming.’
‘I told you earlier; I was running from the loony toon. I tried to call his bluff by making it look like I was heading back to the US, there was nowhere else to go but to seek out Adam. It’s not my fault he never charges his phone.’
‘So you’re not madly in love with each other then?’
Becky couldn’t help but laugh, remembering how Adam had warned her Scots were not shy of asking direct questions. She couldn’t imagine anyone else she’d known for less than two days bringing up such a subject and have it come across as friendly banter, almost concluding it would be easier to let him win.
‘He’s my soul mate, I guess,’ she replied, knowing it to be a feeble answer.
‘Huh! I’ll remember that one,’ Affleck said, laughing loudly in the process.
‘It’s clearly too complicated for simple folk like you to understand,’ she fought back, thinking if you can’t beat them join them.
‘Woah, you hear that Jim, downright prejudice!’ Affleck cried out, taking delight in the fight Becky was showing.
‘The truth,’ Becky then attempted to say more seriously, ‘is that Adam’s more complicated than he seems – too complicated for even those who know him well.’
‘Men are never complicated, only women,’ Affleck told her.
‘Now who’s prejudiced?’
‘Aye!’
Such banter was there to be endured as an exercise against timidity, but just then Jim surprised them both by joining in – they’d had no idea he was even capable of following the conversation.
‘You’re not boyfriend and girlfriend?’ he asked Becky, through dreamy eyes. ‘Good looking girl like you… should have a boyfriend.’
‘He’s right you know,’ Affleck told her, on his way to the door with flares ready to be set off. ‘Though I wouldn’t take too much advice from him if I were you.’
Alone again (with Jim drifting in and out of awareness), Becky found she could occupy her mind with nothing but thoughts of Adam, wondering how far he had tread upon the search and longing for the time to pass when he would appear through the falling snow once more, bringing Alice with him. Inevitably their last conversation stuck in her mind; refreshing as it was not to be plagued with debate over her stalker’s whereabounce, the image that some happy ending with Adam might present itself still failed to sit comfortably in her imagination. Her words had been genuine; he was complicated and she had never figured out why.
The once bitter memory of Adam turning down her advances was supposed to have been laid to rest, now resurfacing with the revelation that she had been completely wrong in supposing emotional scars from his last relationship to blame. Some hope she’d held out that those wounds would heal and their affections might grow to more than a friendship, but the factors behind such a transformation were now utterly perplexing.
One depressing likelihood she could not dismiss was that he desired no more than friendship after all. A sickening thought that succeeded in stripping away all outer layers, leaving Becky at one with her surroundings, all thoughts of summer doomed to be encased within the icicles of winter’s chill.
It mattered not how vigorously she told herself all this was irrational and absurd thinking for a scientist; gloom had found her and she was soon fighting off tears. Tears she realised had been lingering for a while, held back by stronger emotions than self-pity when the spectre of Stevens had re-emerged scratching at the door of her London flat; when the police truncheon had been smashed onto Adam’s forehead; and when she feared coming to the Highlands had resulted in the abduction of a little girl. Bottled up trauma was overflowing at last and any attempt to think on other subjects only took her back to all she had lost since becoming a victim. So many unfulfilled years in hiding, so many days she would have lived differently if her life had not been torn apart. Suddenly she found herself thinking on what kind of person she might have been and considered that, even though Stevens had failed to kill her (something she firmly believed to be his goal), he had succeeded in taking life anyway.
Nothing was to be seen, but Affleck was not one for giving in. His role in looking out for people’s well-being had taught him to prepare for all outcomes and, as with his idea to disperse one-man tents about the landscape in case any of them became stranded during the search, his mind was clearly working overtime to assess what other resources and elements of chance could be used in their favour. His next plan was to climb a short distance towards the Cairn Gorm peak, having noted that the low-lying mist might present an opportunity to draw more attention to their location via the clearer air above.
So it was that he excused himself from Becky’s presence, temporarily, to make a short climb to higher ground. He promised not to be many minutes, but her hope of finding something to occupy her mind had only found further isolation. With Jim barely conscious there was no one to talk to and waiting was the only task left.
A chance escape to the Highlands, that proved to be nothing of the sort, had changed her considerably, perhaps in a more profound way than it had even Adam. At least he had been prepared for the challenges in some way, but for Becky all her vulnerabilities, secrets and fears were uncovered as if her own will no longer existed in this land. Lonely nights had never been allowed to hold much sway over her demeanour, but the act of taking solace in one’s own strength of character no longer found her a willing participant. When life’s pathways change course the yearnings of our dreams are magnified; even the most nihilistic among us hold their hearts in hand at such times of imbalance, for the dread of a new day barren and hostile betrays all insincerities. Becky’s cloak had been one of bitterness; a foil she had never denied to herself but used it to bury all other weaknesses. Now, at last, that cloak lay about her feet and her nakedness unprotected from the gathering storm. Tell herself there was now reason to look ahead with optimism, she might, but such wisdom was unaccompanied by warmth or comfort.
After scenting the sweet nectar of freedom for a second it was impossible not to thirst for more, but having buried her soul beneath academic and career pursuits for so long she was afraid that, on looking back within herself, she would find only a well of emptiness waiting.
It had been a day of confrontation, but her efforts to confront inner demons were futile. Their voices came forth fresh from the void she thought had swallowed them up and too much doubt plagued her to take them on. A sense of fulfilment proved unforthcoming; the nervousness of impending doom had not left even as events on the mountain appeared close to being wrapped up.
Back in the bothy – with Jim staring into a void of his own – she found herself unable to sit still without feeling her head was likely to explode. In desperation she drew on all she knew about psychology and told herself that certain prolonged events had given birth to paranoia, that she was experiencing the panic of being at the heart of a storm but if she weathered its onset all would soon pass and the dawn would bring a calmer day.
Words of wisdom to cling to, but another ten minutes went by that felt like an hour and Becky feared that she was losing her mind. A more perceptive eye might have remarked that our actions are more liable to betray what we believe than our opinions, for undoubtedly the Ben Macdui air that made her location a place of trepidation for lonely souls was proving infectious. One stalker she might be rid of, but climbers spoke of a thirty-foot tall man that shepherded the Cairngorms, himself a stalker in his own way and she with a history of attracting the unhinged and disengaged.
Just then something did surprise her; Jim had been so still and quiet that she had almost forgotten him and, upon looking up from between the palms of her hands, she found him staring at her. His eyes now seemed alert, but the expression he pulled was not his own.
‘I didn’t tell Affleck,’ he told her, ‘in case he laughed at me.’
‘Tell Affleck what?’ she asked, wondering if she was a part of some waking dream he was having.
‘That I saw him.’
‘Saw who?’
‘The Grey Man; the giant. He’s the guardian and he sees all who come here.’
Becky had no response.
‘It was him who made me fall, that’s why I ran,’ Jim continued.
‘It’s just a bad dream you’re having,’ Becky said, looking to take the thought from his mind. ‘Try to shut your mind and when you wake up the doctors will have made you feel better.’
‘It’s not me he’s after,’ that blank face continued, ‘but there are two he says; two outsiders will die on the mountain tonight.’
Morphine or no morphine, his words unnerved her so much that she had to resist shouting something back, though any response would have been lost on him.
Once the vicious prophesy was made his eyes closed and his chin fell to rest on his shoulder. Drug-induced, Jim could sleep while the Grey Man came hunting, but Becky’s nervousness grew into panic. She could not say why, but she was sure something was approaching the bothy.
What was she thinking turning to psychological theory within the realm of a being that wielded power over people’s minds with such ferocity? If the Grey Man was indeed bearing down intent on murder then her waking nightmare would truly become a reality… and if he did what could she do to defend the helpless Jim? But then his words had referred to two outsiders; herself and Adam no doubt. Was Adam already dead? It was he who related the folk tales to her and she had not thought long on whether or not there was any truth behind them, concerned as she was with ghosts from her own past.
Daring to step outside again, Becky hoped to see Affleck returning but only snow and mist awaited, both of which allowed to thicken by the dying wind. Nothing about the view succeeded in comforting her at all, with little to see in any direction leaving her unable to tell if some malicious gaze held her in its sights. Being found defenceless and fit to be toyed with had been a fear of many years and she had to convince herself she was braver than she felt in order to check out the surroundings further, but in truth it was hard to say she would not have fled there and then had Jim not been lying helpless inside. Venturing to see if any view of the valley was still visible, she walked some distance away from the bothy to where the land began to fall more steeply but found she could only just make out the door from whence she came and nothing of yonder Ben Macdui.
From her vantage point the boys’ footprints could be seen fading away beneath her and she guessed they must have been on the summit by now, aching and breathless. Still she wished she had gone with them, detesting the blanket of uncertainty that had taken her ‘soul-mate’ from her and threatened to embroil them in more evil games. The plan had seemed sound when set in place, but suddenly the thought of Adam and Clyde negotiating the unseen heights above succeeded in filling her with no hope at all. Rational thought was now as cold and unwelcoming as the surroundings, mocking her romantic view of the Highlands and denying her any say in how events were due to unfold. Choosing her torments, however, she decided against returning to the claustrophobia of the bothy in favour of the unguarded
outside, preferring to seek for friends from the surrounding mists than wait for a knock on the door.
Then she felt it.
By obscure means, or a nightly instinct mankind has forgotten, the knowledge suddenly came to her that she was being watched. Someone was regarding her from the direction of the bothy; it made the hair stand up on the back of her neck and, without being able to explain why, she knew it was neither Affleck nor Jim as if the potency of its presence required no authentication.
Turning with dread, unfortunately she found no trick of the imagination. Sure enough there he was, standing outside the bothy’s door having approached unseen despite the snow. As she had already guessed, it was not a returning Affleck but someone else, a new arrival that held her in his gaze, studying her with cold ambiguity but no gesture or movement.
Common sense told her that it could not be, but common sense was clearly in short supply. The land was still alive with Celtic mythologies far from buried and anything was possible… but surely not this?
Appearances can be deceptive and this was true of the man that beheld Becky with deadly intent right then; he stood tall and would have towered over her, but this was no spirit or spectre that folk had fled from in days gone by. This man was flesh and blood and, by all accounts, not supposed to be there or present a danger anymore. But he was there and, accepting a miracle from the comatose Jim, there was no one around to interrupt whatever conflict was due to pass between them.
Just as the Prophets will recognise the Four Horsemen when they come calling, Becky recognised her own apocalypse, but it was no demon of Underworld belonging that came to take her life that evening. He came from across the sea, a child of the Americas like she was, ready after a decade of waiting to collect his prize.
Not Far From Aviemore Page 14