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- Herausgeber: Orenda Books
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Serie: The Annie Jackson Mysteries
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
`A tense, creepy page-turner´ Ian Rankin, New Statesman `Malone is the master of twists, turns and the unexpected´ Herald Scotland _______ Annie surged forward, but she was too slow, too late. A hand came over and down, and she felt a sharp pain at the back of her neck. Then all became smoke, and silence. Hiding from the world in her little white cottage on the shores of a loch, Annie Jackson is fighting to come to terms with the world of the murmurs, a curse that has haunted female members of her family for centuries. While she is within the ancient, heavy stone of the old dwelling, the voices merely buzz, but the moment she steps outside the door they clamour to torment her all over again, bringing with them shocking visions of imminent deaths. Into this oasis comes her adoptive mother, Mandy McEvoy, begging for Annie's help. Mandy's nephew Damien has gone missing, after dropping off his four-year old son at his mother's home. Unable to refuse, but terrified to leave her sanctuary, Annie, with the help of her brother Lewis, is drawn in to a secretive, seductive world that will have her question everything she holds dear, while Lewis' life may be changed forever… The second book in the critically acclaimed Annie Jackson Mysteries series, The Torments is both a contemporary gothic thriller and a spellbinding mystery that deeps deep into a past that should, perhaps, remain undisturbed… _______ Praise for Michael J. Malone `An assured paranormal thriller in which the paranormal isn't even the scariest part…' Herald Scotland `A beautifully written tale, original, engrossing and scary… a dark joy´ The Times `A deeply satisfying read´ Sunday Times `A fine, page-turning thriller´ Daily Mail `Brilliantly creepy … a spine-tingling treat´ Daily Record `Prepare to have your marrow well and truly chilled by this deeply creepy Scottish horror … A complex and multi-layered story´ Sunday Mirror `Unsettling, multi-layered and expertly paced´ CultureFly `Disturbing but compulsive … I loved it´ Martina Cole `Both thought-provoking and heartbreaking´ Foreword Reviews
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i
Hiding from the world in her little white cottage on the shores of a loch, Annie Jackson is fighting to come to terms with the murmurs, a curse that has haunted female members of her family for centuries.
While she is within the ancient, heavy stone of the old dwelling, the voices merely buzz, but the moment she steps outside the door they clamour to torment her all over again, bringing with them shocking visions of imminent deaths.
Into this oasis comes her adoptive mother, Mandy McEvoy, begging for Annie’s help. Mandy’s nephew Damien has gone missing, after dropping off his four-year old son at his mother’s home.
Unable to refuse, but terrified to leave her sanctuary, Annie, with the help of her brother Lewis, is drawn in to a secretive, seductive world that will have her question everything she holds dear, while Lewis’s life may be changed forever…
The second book in the critically acclaimed Annie Jackson Mysteries series, The Torments is both a contemporary gothic thriller and a spellbinding mystery that digs deep into a past that should, perhaps, remain undisturbed…ii
iii
THE TORMENTS
MICHAEL J. MALONE
Contents
Prologue
She has watched over and preyed on the inhabitants of this cloud- and mist-covered land for an age, several ages, truth be told – before the Norse, before even the armies of Rome. She remembers little before the time when she crawled out of the bracken and heather, dressed only in thin garments that took on the colours of the moss and trees, and made it up onto her knees, then her feet, trudging through heavy peat and moor, driven on by a hunger so strong and harsh it all but drove reason from her mind.
She was born of the elements – wind, air and rain. She was bound by greed and lust, and by hope. And guided by beliefs so ancient they were issued to the air long before wretched iron was torn from rock.
Succubus, some called her, but she wanted more than men’s seed, it was their life blood and their soul she was after. And she had the wiles, the teeth and claws to get what she needed from them.
And what did they get from her? A tainted dream? A torment of last moments?
Let the legend of one of the earliest men to call her offer some form of explanation.
He was a poor sheep farmer and after his first wife died in labour, he spent weeks alone in the hills tending to his sheep. He was bone-tired, heart-sore, and aching in the ways men ache for a woman.
Not many know the call, but he did, and as he sat in his tumbledown bothy, smoke from the fire stinging his eyes, the smell of the damp hair of his pony and his dog teasing his nostrils, he put the whistle to his lips and blew. He played the tune as if it were the last time music would find his ears, for he knew the moment 2he stopped playing the spell would be broken. And as he blew he made his wish – for a woman of tender heart and warm loins. Someone to bear him a son and work on this patch of earth he called home while he ranged over the moors, tending to his herd.
On he played, and on. The sun rose, and fell again, the wind whistled through the thatch of his roof, rain dampened the earthen floor, and then as he was thinking he might need to moisten his lips before his tune faltered, a shadow entered.
Her beauty sank him into silence. She was everything he could have wished for, and more. Large, dark eyes, wide-hipped and strong of limb. And possessing of the grace of queens.
She nodded, reading the strength of his longing, and accepted a beaker of whisky he offered with a stammer.
The woman hid her smile and sharp teeth behind the cup, and her cloven hoofs within the folds of her dress. She smiled because she knew that a God-fearing Scotsman should only make such a wish during the hours of darkness if he also invoked God’s protection. Without it, his wish would be granted, but in the most terrible of fashions.
This fellow, however, was so in thrall to his desires that he failed to claim the protection of the Lord – and in that failure he had sealed his doom.
They kissed, and she silently noted his tremble of desire and longing, hearing his thoughts as if they were her own. She closed her eyes. Savoured his need and ache for her, knowing he would die in mere moments, his stare wide and his terror distilled into the liquid of his eyes.
She put a hand on his chest, held him off. ‘Patience,’ she whispered, her half-smile and raised eyebrows, her nearness, her promise of love and loving pushing him into a torment of yearning.
He was found several days later – his faithful hound’s ceaseless barking drawing the neighbours’ attention. The man’s body was as cold as a mountain top in winter, his throat ripped out, his flesh 3entirely empty of blood, but, mysteriously, naught but the footprints of animals around him.
Throughout the ages many, many more victims fell to her hunger.
But that was then.
Now, as old beliefs die, religions fall, and people numb themselves to the lack of purpose and meaning in their lives with a sugared potion, or smoking stick in one hand, and a small box of flickering light and stuttering sound in the other, She has found a new way to prey, for down the centuries her hunger for man-flesh has only grown.
She has waited. Shown the patience of the ages.
And She will not be denied, for She is cunning. She is chaos. She is torments untold.
She is legend.
She is the Baobhan Sith.
Chapter 1
Annie
Annie reached for her car keys on the little kitchen table and felt a surge of anxiety twist at her heart and shorten her breath. The minute, the second, she sat in her car, the murmurs could awaken and harass her until the moment she stepped back inside her little stone cottage.
There was just no pattern to them. Often they would leave her alone for hours, sometimes days, but then they would populate every waking and sleeping moment, making her feel constantly on edge.
Inside the cottage, though, in the garden, or by the little beach that edged the loch, they were much quieter.
Sometimes she was able to deal with them, but there were 4moments when the hateful, accusatory voices became too much and she just wanted to curl up into a ball and rock herself to sleep.
For the millionth time she sent a prayer of thanks to her Aunt Sheila for leaving her this place – a woman she had only met a couple of times in her life, while only a girl. How she had known the little building would offer Annie sanctuary from the curse that had haunted her family for centuries Annie didn’t know, but she would be forever grateful.
Annie looked out of the window, at the still surface of the loch and the heathered hills beyond, and felt the soothing they always offered.
The only way to, is through, she told herself; the little mantra that had helped her face her troubles over the years. Just one of the nuggets she’d been taught by her adoptive mother, Mandy McEvoy.
With that thought tight in the forefront of her mind she gripped her keys. Felt the metal dig into the soft flesh of her palm.
You can’t lock yourself away up in Ardlochard forever, Lewis’s voice sounded in her ear. Her twin brother had phoned her just that morning from his office in Glasgow, like he did almost every day.
‘Watch me, brother,’ she’d replied.
Being isolated from the rest of society not only muted the voices but it also offered relief from knowing how someone was about to die – another part of the family curse. She did appreciate, however, that being almost entirely on her own, without another human within a ten-mile radius, was not a good way to live. And might well lead to quite a different form of madness.
All she needed was a brood of cats and she was set, she thought ruefully.
Steeling herself, she walked to the door. Lewis was right. Besides, it was time to go to work. It was only four afternoons a week. And importantly, without the income she earned at the little café in Lochaline, she wouldn’t be able to afford to live here, so there really wasn’t much of an argument to be had.
Another step closer to the door. 5
She set her jaw. Listened.
The voices were there, but were low, like a distant hum.
The last time she went to work they’d started up the moment she turned the key in the car. With the surge of the engine came the build-up of aural insanity, and by the time she’d reached the road-end she was close to being a sobbing wreck.
Right.
Just go.
Leave.
Chapter 2
Annie
Happily, the murmurs were fairly quiet during Annie’s shift at the café. And she was kept busy enough that she was distracted from their constant drone. But there was one man who set off that other part of her curse – the knowing how someone was about to die.
The crew of the local lifeboat were running a practice drill out in the waters of Loch Aline, and when they finished, they berthed just by the café and popped in for bacon rolls and cups of tea.
One young lad caught her attention. His blue eyes shone with the pleasure at being included in the team, and he soaked up the words of the experienced men and women around him
That familiar sick taste bloomed in her mouth. Lights sparked in the periphery of her vision, his face blurred, the skin on it peeled away and she could see the bone beneath. A flash of noise and movement, and in her mind’s eye Annie saw a small, dark-blue car all but wrapped around the trunk of a tree.
A voice of insistent horror filled her ears. A mass of unintelligible words, murmuring and sibilant, and woven through that the sound of flames and of wood sap boiling and cracking in the heat. 6
These feelings of dread and sickness rose in her every time she received one of these premonitions. She battled against them, as she always did.
‘You alright, hen?’ a man she was about to serve asked. She realised she’d paused in the action of setting down a cup of coffee in front of him.
She looked around. Out of the café window she saw a little blue car, fully intact. The car in her premonition.
She coughed. ‘Whose is the wee Corsa?’ she asked, wondering how she might avert a disaster, knowing at the same time that whenever she’d tried to warn someone about how they were going to die, it always ended badly for her, and more importantly, didn’t stop the death from happening.
Someone at the table said, ‘That’s your wee heap of shit, Lachlan.’
The young man with the blue eyes held his hand up.
Everyone laughed. Annie read the strong camaraderie, and realised the young man’s death would affect the whole team.
‘The shaggin’ wagon,’ one older man shouted.
Lachlan joined the laughter, good nature on show, and shot the speaker a finger. Then he turned to Annie and winked.
‘Why? Want to buy it?’ he asked with a cheeky grin.
‘Be careful, hen,’ one of the older members of the team counselled. ‘He’ll be after your phone number next.’
More laughter.
‘Maybe once you get that slow puncture fixed, mate,’ Annie replied.
Everyone chuckled as their young friend’s attempt at banter with the waitress backfired, and Annie could see that none of them knew who she was: the infamous Annie Jackson who’d uncovered the truth of the ‘Bodies in the Glen’. As far as they were concerned, as far as everyone in the local area was concerned, she was Annie Bennett. She’d decided to adopt her birth mother’s surname as part of her attempt to blend in to the local population as just another incomer. 7
Moments later she returned to the table with Lachlan’s roll and bacon. As she placed his food down she leaned forward and urged quietly, ‘Get your tyres seen to, eh?’ He looked up in surprise, but before he could respond, she quickly walked away, her heart thumping.
The rest of her shift passed without any further dramas – the lifeboat crew leaving just before she did.
As one of the older members walked past he said, ‘Best rolls and bacon in the area.’ Annie knew him. Geordie Harrison. She had come across him several times. He owned the local hotel and bar, and was prominent at any community gatherings. Geordie was a small, lean man with a shoulder-length mane of grey-and-black hair. Something told her that there was money behind many of his dealings with the locals, that they were performative rather than coming from any wish to develop a sense of meaning in his life.
She was sorely tempted to offer young Lachlan another warning via Geordie, but fear stilled her tongue. Her warnings never had the desired effect – no one ever listened, and all that happened was at best, strange looks, and at worse, a mouthful of abuse. It was, Annie determined, another way for this curse to punish her – she knew the details of someone’s demise while being aware there was absolutely nothing she could do to change the situation. She smiled at Geordie and he went on his way.
Throughout the morning Annie had become aware of the stares of a woman in the corner, and her studied indifference when Annie looked over. She was middle-aged and slim with chin-length white hair, wearing sturdy shoes and what looked like a quality waterproof jacket. At first sight, Annie thought she might be a walker, but she could feel the woman’s eyes on her back wherever she came out of the kitchen, and she realised there was more to her.
Periodically, ever since she had been in the news, people would seek her out. Mostly it was by letter – addressed to her by name, 8often only with the word ‘Ardnamurchan’ as the address – and mostly these letters would end up unread in the bin. When they first started arriving she read them out of guilt, but the distress she invariably picked up from them became too much. Occasionally, people would find their way to Lochaline or Mossgow, hang about with her photo on their phone for heaven knows how long, and pounce the moment they saw her. They would then plead with her to help them find their lost relatives or friends.
It was heartbreaking. The weight of their loss was stitched into their expressions and the shape of their bodies. But that pain often turned to anger or disgust when she declined to help them.
Seeing this woman, Annie groaned, sure it was going to happen again. And on top of the guilt she was already feeling over Lachlan, it was too much. A quick look at her watch and she saw that her shift was about to end, so she ducked into the kitchen, whipped off her apron and told her boss, Jan, she had to leave straight away. But before she reached the door, the woman intercepted her, placing a hand on her arm.
‘I don’t want to disturb you,’ the woman said quickly, the eagerness in her eyes betraying the lie. ‘But if I could just talk to you … ’
Playing out in Annie’s mind, as clear as the woman barring her exit, Lachlan’s car surged forward, hit a tree. His scream of fear and fright sounded in her ear. Then, she saw his bloodied and crushed head against the steering wheel before he was engulfed in flames. And in the background her murmurs crowed their terrible tune of demented pleasure at her pain.
‘Please God, no,’ Annie shouted. ‘Leave me alone. Enough.’ In desperation she moved to the door. Perhaps she could catch up with Lachlan. Wave down one of his friends? In her haste she collided with the woman, and knocked her back onto the corner of a table.
The woman groaned. Corrected herself. Grimaced. Held a hand to her back. ‘But you must read this,’ she insisted. ‘And then get in touch. We need to talk.’ 9
Annie took the letter automatically. But then anger surged. Even after Annie’s rudeness and their accidental collision, this woman wasn’t deviating from her plan.
‘Jesus,’ Annie said, and slammed the envelope down on to a table. ‘Just give up, will you?’ Then she pushed past the woman and left the café before she said something truly nasty.
Sadly, there was no one from the lifeboat crew still in the car park, so she couldn’t deliver her warning. So she made her way back home, dropped her car keys onto the kitchen table, took a seat, and with a mind full of images of the dying Lachlan and the desperate woman in the café, she waited for her heart beat to slow to a normal rate and for the murmurs to drop to a quiet hum.
Going out of the house was worth it, she told herself. Besides, she had no other option, despite how difficult it was, and if she moved back to the city, it would be ten times worse. There she wouldn’t have the almost-quiet she experienced whenever she walked inside the cottage.
If only there was a way to bottle that and take it everywhere she went.
Annie made herself a cup of tea and a sandwich, and after she had finished and washed up her dishes, she settled down by the unlit fire with a book and tried to savour the silence.
Apart from Annie herself, and the very occasional visitor, the only people who used the road to her cottage were forestry workers. This really was a quiet, unpopulated place to live. The nearest houses were around five miles away down the single-track road, where it joined the B-road. Left took you to Lochaline, and right to Mossgow, and at this junction was a terrace of four white cottages, built, she guessed, to house estate workers. Most of the area, she knew, was owned by Conor Jenkins’ family, but the local gossip was that Conor would inherit none of it now his involvement in the Bodies in the Glen case, as the gutter-press named it, had become clear. 10
The part of the track she could see out of her living-room window led upward a good two hundred yards to the brow of a hill. During the darker months, the first sign of someone’s approach was the sweep of car lights breaching the summit moments before a car appeared. Today, it was late summer, so it wouldn’t be dark for a good few hours yet.
She put her book down, struggling to concentrate.
The young Lachlan’s face appeared in her mind. The good-humoured shine in his eyes as he accepted the jokes at his expense from his lifeboat colleagues. Then she saw him in his car. He was approaching a bend too fast. He lost control. Ploughed into a tree.
Annie felt sickness surge up from her stomach. She made it to the toilet just in time.
After, trembling, she stood at the sink, washed her face and looked at her tired eyes in the mirror. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe her warning about his tyres would fall on listening ears and he’d do something about them.
She shook her head. She knew this was a false hope.
A knock at her front door made her jump. Rapid. Heavy. Insistent.
Who could that be? she wondered, thinking they must have driven in while she was being sick, as she hadn’t heard a car engine.
‘Coming,’ she shouted.
When she pulled the door open it was to find Geordie Harrison, and judging by his white face, clenched fists and his mouth in a pale line of fury, he wasn’t happy.
‘Geordie … ’ she began.
‘What did you do?’ he demanded.
Annie stepped back, shocked at this display of anger. ‘I don’t — ’
‘Lachlan … ’ he choked. His eyes were red. Puffy. ‘He died at the scene. Went off the road.’
‘Oh my God.’ Annie’s hand shot up to cover her mouth.
‘You’re that woman, aren’t you?’ he demanded. ‘The one who Chris Jenkins tried to kill up by?’ He cocked his head in the 11direction of the lost settlement. ‘The psychic who uncovered all those dead bodies?’
‘Geordie, what happened?’
‘You knew and you did nothing.’ He shook his head. ‘Your wee jokey comment about the tyres. Why didn’t you say more?’ His eyes were pleading now. ‘Why didn’t you stop him? You as good as killed that boy. If I ever see you in the village again I won’t be responsible for my actions.’ He spat at her feet. ‘Fucking witch.’
Chapter 3
Sylvia 1958
Whenever Sylvia cast her eyes to the side she caught sight of something. A shadow. If she was quick enough. If she tried to look directly at … whatever it was, there was nothing there. But she wasn’t scared. Indeed, she took comfort from it, and would speak to it, and play with it during breaktime. Of course, it didn’t reply, or do anything really, it was just there in the corner of her eye, like an absence of light.
Sylvia would always remember the first time. She was sure someone was by her side – but when she turned she was on her own. Then, inexplicably, she had an urge to proffer her hand for someone to hold. And then came the knowledge that the shadow would always be by her side. Occasionally afterwards a warmth enveloped her hand – fingers clasping hers with a touch as light as a single feather. Like a gentle validation.
She tried, once, to talk about this with her grandmother, but such was the look of disgust on her face, Sylvia never mentioned it again.
Sylvia was a trust-fund child, and an orphan. Her parents died in a plane crash on the way home from a second honeymoon in 12Africa. They’d been on safari at the famous Treetops Hotel in Kenya just a few months after Queen Elizabeth spent time there. A place that Sylvia’s mother dreamt about going to, apparently, from the moment she read about the Queen’s travels in all of the popular magazines of the time.
Sylvia was only a matter of months old when her parents took that holiday. The legend was her parents decided to leave her at home, fearing the Mau Mau rebellion that was causing all kinds of ‘upset’ at that time in the British colony of Kenya.
This was all relayed to Sylvia by her grandmother, Maude Purbeck, related to the grand Villiers family of Buckingham fame, who was so fraught at the loss of her only child that she took to holding regular seances in order to speak with her dead daughter whenever a decision was to be made.
Of her dead son-in-law, Maude said little. When she did it was prefaced by ‘that boy’. And even if she never articulated it to her, Sylvia sensed her grandmother blamed Sylvia’s father for her mother’s death.
The Mau Mau mentions passed Sylvia by, but the seances were a feature of her life that she prayed would continue even though she was soon going away to school.
Later in life she would recall that the gravity of those moments was difficult to translate at the time, but when her grandmother closed the heavy damask curtains and they sat face to face at the little highly polished table she remembered excitement bubbling under her skin. She loved the ceremony of it all, and the fact that she was deemed to be central to the seances’ success. And of course, she loved that she would get to hear the words of her dead parents.
That these words could be heard only in the mind of her grandmother mattered little. The young Sylvia received them from her grandmother’s lips without question.
So it was that, at age five years and three months she was deemed to be ready to attend Clevelland School, as all the young of her family had, going back several generations. And it was there 13that she found herself at a desk, sitting beside a solid and strange little boy who whispered to her, ‘I’m going to make you cry.’
Chapter 4
Annie
It had been two weeks since Lachlan’s crash; two weeks in which Annie barely went out of her front door, avoided work altogether and refused to answer the landline. Until the day she received three calls in quick succession. Mandy, her adoptive mother. It had to be.
‘Hi,’ Annie replied.
‘Annie?’ Mandy asked instantly. ‘Have you been avoiding your phone? I ran three times last night as well, you know. I hate you being up there and so out of touch.’
It was an ongoing argument and one Annie struggled to continue. ‘I’m just not getting wi-fi, Mrs Mac, and there’s not much I can do about the crappy signal on my mobile up here.’
‘Well, at least answer your house phone when it rings.’
‘Sorry,’ Annie roused herself from her poor mood. ‘What’s up?’
‘What’s up with you, more like? I left a couple of messages. Your dad and I are really worried. What’s going on?’
Annie thought about lying, and decided against it. Mandy could read her like a book. ‘Just having a tough few days, that’s all.’ She didn’t want to get into the whole Lachlan thing because Mandy would fuss for two hours straight and then get in the car with her husband to drive north to see her.
‘Oh. Right.’ Mandy was good at understanding Annie’s state of mind. But she didn’t delve further, which suggested she had an issue of her own that was distracting her.
Annie exhaled. ‘Anyway, enough about me.’ She huffed a short self-deprecatory laugh. ‘What’s up? Why have you been ringing me non-stop?’ 14
There was a pause.
Annie filled it. ‘You okay, Mrs Mac?’
‘My sister, Chrissie’s been on the phone,’ Mandy began.
‘Right.’
‘You remember her son, Damien, the one that was in prison?’
Annie only vaguely knew Mandy’s side of the family, but was aware that, despite her solid and loving nature, she had always been at odds with her only sister. Annie had met Damien plenty of times when they were younger, but from their teens and beyond, they’d led very different lives. Damien, she remembered, was a footballing prodigy as a teen. All the large Scottish clubs were after him, and a few English, until he signed for one of the big Glasgow teams. He had an injury, or something happened that Annie couldn’t quite recall, and thereafter he fell into the anti-social deep end. Fighting, booze, and drugs, until he ended up on the street – Mandy reported that with a rueful smile about the tough love meted out by her sister and her husband. In the end, Damien seriously injured another man in a street brawl and was given time in prison. Last Annie heard, he was out, trying to rebuild his life, and working to earn a relationship with his little boy, Bodie.
‘He has a kid now, right?’
‘That’s why Chrissie is so worried,’ Mandy replied.
‘Why? What happened?’
‘You know I wouldn’t ordinarily ask you this, dear,’ Mandy said, and Annie could see Mandy in her mind’s eye, fidgeting with the little gold pendant she wore round her neck.
God. No, Annie thought. Please don’t ask.
‘He’s gone missing. Chrissie’s desperate. She needs your help. This is so unlike Damien. He really has turned his life around.’ Mandy’s tone managed to be apologetic and pleading at the same time.
The murmurs surged. Sibilant consonants and long vowels in an unintelligible cacophony. Growling. Pleading. Mocking. Urging. Raging. Fury given sound. 15
Mandy didn’t know the scale of what she was asking her to do, Annie thought – to seek out those voices deliberately when for the best part of a year she’d been almost constantly fighting them off?
‘I know what I’m asking you is tough,’ Mandy said. ‘But she has no one else. The police aren’t even vaguely interested.’
Annie released a tremulous breath, aware only then that she had been holding it in.
‘How does she know?’ Annie asked, realising she sounded defensive, and knowing that Mandy should never be the target of her bad mood. ‘About me, I mean?’
‘I didn’t tell her,’ Mandy replied quickly. ‘She saw it on the telly along with everyone else in the country.’
Stupid question. Annie rolled her eyes. Of course Chrissie would know. Annie had been big news – massive news – when she’d survived a murder attempt up in the hills beyond her house, among the ruins of a lost settlement.
She could feel his hands around her throat even now – Chris Jenkins, the pastor at a church in Glasgow. It was only later that Annie was able to see that he had sought her out and wooed her because he wanted to know just how much her psychic ability had revealed to her about him. When she’d arrived within the confines of one of the ruined houses she’d not only seen a beautifully arranged picnic, but she’d somehow seen, under and within the roots of a tree, the bones of two women.
Her shocked reaction at this discovery had pushed him to try and kill her. She gasped at the memory, as she always did – surprised, and yet not, that it still had the power to frighten.
Following the events of that day it seemed that she had been on the news cycle for months, and it was only now, almost a year later, that she was being left on her own. Movie and TV producers had thrown various sums of money at her, pleading for her to tell her story, but she’d refused them all, determined that she would use this gift, this curse, as little as possible.
Despite all of that attention, she’d managed to keep this little 16house in this far glen a secret from the media. The hillside higher up the glen had been crawling with forensic scientists, newspaper reporters, and curious members of the public, but none of them had turned their eyes towards her home down by the loch. She occasionally wondered if the spirits who lived in the glen had somehow made this possible.
‘When does your shift end?’ Mandy asked, pulling Annie from her thoughts.
‘I … eh, I’m off today.’
‘Right. We’ll be there around four or five pm.’
‘What? We? Who’s we? You’re not coming up here, are you?’
‘We’ve booked a B&B in Mossgow.’ Mossgow was the village twenty minutes away where Annie had spent a chunk of her childhood.
Annie shivered. Cold fingers of dread gripped her heart. Her curse was hard enough to bear without actively seeking it out.
‘Hear Chrissie out, Annie,’ Mandy pleaded. ‘I’ve never seen my sister so worried.’
Annie closed her eyes. Tight. Clenched her fist.
Clever, clever, Mrs Mac. Saying that she was going to drive all the way up from Glasgow. Many knew, no matter how difficult it might be for Annie, that she was never able to refuse her anything, especially when she was standing in front of her.
‘Will you please help my sister?’ Mandy said. ‘Help her find her son?’
Chapter 5
Annie
At five minutes to five that afternoon Mandy breezed into Annie’s little house, carrying a large casserole dish. ‘Didn’t think you’d have time to cook, Annie, so I brought us some of your favourite 17fish pie. Hope you don’t mind. I’ll just put it in the fridge.’ By this time she was in the kitchen so she shouted over her shoulder: ‘Unless you’re hungry, in which case I’ll put it in the oven now.’ Then. ‘It’s been a while since you last saw Chrissie. Don’t just stand gawping at the door, Chrissie. Come on in.’ Then to Annie. ‘We’re staying at The Lodge, by the way, but we thought it would be nice to have a wee girlie evening with some food and wine, and I’m driving, so Chrissie and you can get stuck into the prosecco.’
Annie felt like holding a hand up, making a stop sign with it, just to get a word in. Mandy was a talkative lady, but even for her this was a bit extra. It was a sign that she was uncomfortable with the whole situation. Her love for Annie and her need to protect her had clearly been overridden on this occasion by her concern for Chrissie.
Annie took a step closer to Mandy’s sister, unsure of the protocol. It had indeed been a number of years since she’d seen Chrissie. She and her family hadn’t been that regular in their visits to see Mandy, and while Annie had got to know Damien as a child, she’d never really developed any kind of relationship with his mum. Not that the blame was all Chrissie’s. Annie freely admitted that she was hard work as a teenager, stomping about the house, slamming doors, avoiding any kind of contact. But seeing Chrissie standing in her doorway, her face a mixture of trepidation and desperation, her heart went out to her.
Chrissie was so unlike her sister it was hard for Annie to accept that they were siblings. Where Mandy was short and slight, Chrissie was a good four inches taller and four stone heavier. Mandy’s dark hair was slowly giving way to the silver, but Chrissie’s was dyed resolutely blonde. There was something about the eyes, though, that hinted at a family connection. Those eyes were carefully scrutinising Annie and her little house.
‘Hey,’ Chrissie said, still in the doorway, as if afraid the strange phenomenon that affected Annie was contagious in some way. But instead of being insulted, Annie found she was resigned. She’d 18suffered a much stronger reaction very recently. If the woman turned nasty on her she’d deal with it. In the meantime she’d try and be a friend and see where that led.
Should she shake her hand? Give her a hug? She settled for a raised hand and, ‘Hi. Come on in. Have a seat.’
‘Your wee house is lovely,’ Chrissie said as she moved to the folded-up futon under the window. ‘It’s a bit out of the way, right enough.’
‘Aye,’ Mandy said as she re-entered the living room. ‘I forget each time I drive up here how far it is from the big city.’
Mandy and Annie hugged, and before Mandy let her go she sent a silent query with her eyes: You okay? Annie should have known Mandy would notice something wasn’t quite right.
Annie smiled in reply, realising that a smile that didn’t go anywhere near her eyes wasn’t going to convince Mandy of anything.
‘We can talk about it later,’ Mandy whispered. Then she sat, looking around as she did every time she came to visit. ‘It is lovely and peaceful, Annie,’ she said. ‘I can see why you’d never want to leave the place.’
‘Yes,’ said Chrissie as she released her handbag from her lap, where she had been clutching it as if it might offer some sort of protection. ‘There’s a nice atmosphere in here, eh?’
Annie sat on the chair nearest Chrissie, thinking it best they got on to the subject at hand. ‘Damien,’ she said. ‘What happened?’
‘Right,’ Mandy said. ‘I’ll go and see to the food. Let you two talk.’ With that she disappeared into the kitchen.
Chrissie watched her go, and Annie read that she’d rather Mandy had stayed. ‘It’s … well … I don’t really believe in all this voodoo stuff. I mean it doesn’t make sense, does it? How can you know these things? And I’m a good Christian.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘But this is so unlike Damien. He’s a changed boy, so he is. Dotes on that kid of his, so he does. There’s no way he would just up and vanish unless something bad had happened to him.’ 19She leaned forward, crossing her arms as she did so. ‘So, how do you do this thing? Do I give you something of his and you get some kind of signal?’
Chapter 6
Annie
Annie felt hopeless. She could see the distress that Chrissie was in, felt it deeply, but had no idea how she could help.
Playing for time, she said, ‘Let’s just talk for a little while.’ She paused. ‘This thing has no real pattern to it. Comes and goes, and it’s mostly when the person is in front of me that I sense things.’ She hoped her expression of sympathy would be appreciated.
‘Oh.’ Fresh tears sparked in Chrissie’s eyes. ‘But you helped that man find his girlfriend, didn’t you?’ She looked around, out of the window behind her, and at the hills beyond.
Annie felt herself heat with anxiety at the thought she might not be able to help Chrissie and her son.
‘You mentioned Damien’s wee boy. Tell me about him?’
‘Oh,’ Chrissie brightened a little. ‘Bodie. I thought that was such a stupid name at first, but it’s growing on me. He’s a love. The cutest wee boy you could ever imagine. Bright as a button, with this mop of blond hair.’
‘Do you get to see plenty of him?’
‘Not as much as I’d like.’ Chrissie’s expression fell back to a slump. ‘People forget about the grandparents, you know? The courts. When they work out visiting rights and all that, they don’t give a moment’s thought to how the grandparents might feel, hardly ever getting to see the wee one … ’
Mandy reappeared in the room, telling them she’d put the food in the oven, and before long they’d be able to sit down to eat. When it was warmed through they all took their places around 20the small table in the kitchen and were soon eating the fish pie, and to Annie’s relief, the conversation maintained the same general tone as before.
As Annie was finishing off her meal, she heard a noise from the front of the house. She turned towards the window, trying to work out what it might be.
‘Are you expecting anyone, Annie?’ Mandy asked. ‘Lewis hasn’t decided to pop up, has he?’
‘Not that I know of.’
There was a loud crashing noise. Breaking glass, and the squeal of tyres. Then shouts:
‘Fucking witch!’
An engine revved – a whine as it moved too fast in reverse, wheels spun, and a car tore away.
‘What the…?’ Annie rushed through to her living room. Saw a rock that had landed in the middle of the floor and the glass of the window scattered all over her couch. Anger heated her limbs and she ran to the door, pulled it open and saw the brake lights of a car as it crested the hill.
‘The utter, utter shits,’ she cried.
Then she heard a gasp from Mandy, and turned. Her door had been splattered with red paint, and the matted fur and headless corpse of a rabbit lay on her front step.
Chapter 7
Ben 1958
It was hate at first sight.
But that wasn’t unusual; Ben hated everyone when he first met them, and it was only when he was older he realised that this was simply so he could save time. 21
It was 1958, his first day of school at Clevelland Academy in the Scottish Borders, and a girl with blonde hair was told to sit beside him. She did so without even looking at him, and while other children around them cried for their parents, the two of them sat in confused and judgemental silence. Why would anyone cry when left behind by their fathers and mothers? Parents did that all of the time. Benjamin’s parents left him to go on holiday, to go to work, to go to friends for the weekend, to go into town, to take the dog for a walk.
There were any number of reasons that they avoided spending time with their only son, leaving him with a string of au pairs and nannies – few of whom lasted more than two weeks. He didn’t have to say much to scare them off. Simply standing at the door, silently, for however long it took them to have what his mother described as a ‘conniption’.
His mother said they were sending him to this school because he was special, that only an establishment such as this could cope with his particular abilities. Which he knew was a lie the moment the words spilled from her mouth.
She was a thin woman, with severe cheekbones and lips so pale they were almost blue. Ben couldn’t remember a soft, or a kind, word ever coming out of her mouth; she only ever spoke in commands or judgements.
‘You’re a little man. Behave like one.’
‘Boys should be seen and not heard. Silence.’
‘Shake Mother’s hand. Silly boy.’
At least she spoke. Father was as quiet as the grave. He would simply give his mother or the nanny a look, and whatever he intended they said. Except when Ben did something wrong, and then Father would strip the belt from his trousers, and words full of hate and spite would flow from him like a purge as he beat Ben. ‘Bruised but never bloody,’ Father said to Mother each time. ‘That is how man differs from the beasts. And I fought the Germans across Europe, so I know beasts.’ 22
Ben knew he deserved it, that he should be a good boy, but the sins of children were too numerous and confusing, and what was a cause for remonstration one day would produce a half-grin perched over a full whisky glass the next.
At the huge front door to the school his father put a hand on Ben’s shoulder. Ben flinched at his touch. It was rare that his father touched him with anything other than anger. His father stepped back, craned his neck to take in the scale of the establishment, a look of pleasure on his face, as if he’d built it himself. ‘Didn’t do me any harm, dear,’ he said to his wife. Then he looked at Ben and offered him a rare piece of advice. ‘It’s all about power, my boy. Grab it. Use it.’ And without another word he turned and walked away.
And there, sitting on that chair, next to the girl with the chin-length blonde hair, taking in the crying, upset children around him, noting her lack of emotion, he decided he would try to make her cry as well. That was power of a sort, wasn’t it?
Chapter 8
Annie
Mandy sprang into action. She ushered Annie to a seat then rushed to the kitchen to grab a scrubbing brush, a mop and a pail. Seeing what she was doing, Chrissie found a plastic bag, ran to the door and scooped up the poor little rabbit.
‘Unless you want it for tomorrow night’s dinner?’ Chrissie said with a wan smile.
‘Not funny, Chrissie,’ Mandy replied.
‘Kinda is,’ Annie said, and laughed. And laughed. Her laughter turning into tears of anger. This was her home, her safe space, her sanctuary, and these idiots had ruined it.
No: they’d tried to ruin it. She would not be cowed by their tactics. 23
People fear what they don’t understand.
The thing was, she understood that impulse to action, driven by fear. Who knew better than her how terrifying her curse could be?
After they’d cleaned the door and step as best they could Mandy gathered her into a hug. ‘You okay, pet?’ she asked.
The display of caring caused a surge of emotion. Until that moment Annie had thought she was okay. Angry, but not really that upset. Now, though, she felt the tears build.
‘Hey.’ Mandy rubbed Annie’s back. ‘Thinking is difficult,’ she said. ‘That’s why lots of people judge instead.’
‘That, and the fact that they’re arseholes,’ Chrissie added.
Annie snorted, laughed again, and soon all three women were giggling.
‘Best medicine,’ Mandy said, as she wiped tears from her cheeks. ‘We’ll get the rest of the paint in the morning. And, by the way, you’re not staying here on your own, young lady. You’re coming with us to the hotel.’
‘No, I’m not,’ Annie replied.
‘You can’t stay here after that,’ Chrissie said, her eyes straying towards the hill the car had disappeared over.
‘Yeah, what if they came back?’ Mandy asked.
Since her ability to see how people would die had become common knowledge, she had been aware of how many people reacted to her: the stares, the suspicion and the whispers. Thankfully there had been little of that kind of behaviour in this small community, and she had originally thought that was because no one here realised who she was.
Now she had been proven wrong. They’d known who she was all along. A thought that made her neck heat with embarrassment. Idiot.
She thought of the paint on her door. The broken window. That poor little rabbit. And she crossed her arms. Felt herself shrink. This was her sanctuary, and those arseholes, as Chrissie called them, had ruined it. 24
No. She refused to give credence to the thought. They hadn’t ruined anything. She wouldn’t allow herself to be pushed out by narrow-minded, knuckle-dragging children. In any case, how would she manage to live around other people in busier places – the knowledge of whose deaths would be broadcast into her mind on a much more regular basis. She simply couldn’t, wouldn’t, move away from this little cottage, the one place where the murmurs didn’t constantly tear into her mind.
Annie became aware that Mandy and Chrissie were staring at her, waiting for her decision.
She set her jaw. ‘I’m going nowhere.’ She moved to the other side of the fireplace, and looked over at the sharp edges of the broken window, at the glass shards scattered all over the sill, futon and floor – an opaque, razored jigsaw.
‘We’ll help you clean the glass up,’ Mandy said. ‘Do you have any board you could cover the window with?’
Annie snorted. ‘There was none left in the local supermarket last I looked.’
Mandy ignored her sarcasm and offered a smile. ‘We clean this up and then we’re taking you to the hotel. They’re quiet so they’ll have plenty of rooms. And besides, Mr Burns is extremely grateful to you so he’ll be happy to help.’ Then she added with false brightness: ‘He might even have a handyman he uses for hotel stuff who he can send out to fix your window.’
Mr Burns, the hotel manager at The Lodge on the Loch was indeed appreciative towards Annie. His daughter, Jenny, had been one of the women murdered and buried up in the lost settlement. She’d disappeared without a trace years ago, and he and his wife had spent most of the time since suspended in the agony of not knowing where their daughter was. Anytime Annie had been in the hotel since the truth was uncovered he was so happy to see her and so desperate to do what he could for her, that she felt deeply uncomfortable. It was the last thing she needed tonight.
Mandy and Chrissie had already started working quietly and 25efficiently to clear away the broken glass. Then Mandy found a towel and a stapler and fixed the towel over the window frame. ‘It’s not great, but at least it will keep the rain out,’ she said. Then she looked at Annie. ‘Pack your bag, and we’ll go, eh?’
Annie knew it was pointless protesting, so she nodded silently, then went into the bedroom, took a small rucksack from the back of the door and mechanically filled it with a change of clothes and some toiletries, all the while knowing that she couldn’t leave, couldn’t risk the murmurs kicking off the moment she left her home.
Back in the living room, Mandy and Chrissie were standing by the door, waiting for her, jackets on and holding their handbags.
‘Ready to go?’ Mandy said, jiggling her car keys.
‘Oh.’ Annie faked surprise. ‘Better get the charger for my phone. You two go on to the car, I’ll just be a sec … ’ She turned, pretending she was going back to her bedroom, but when she heard their footfall on the gravel path outside, she dashed to the front door, slammed it shut and turned the lock.
‘Annie,’ she heard Chrissie protest.
‘You can’t stay here, honey,’ Mandy shouted through the wood of the door.
‘I can’t spend the night away from here either,’ Annie shouted back.
She had slept every night in the cottage ever since she’d first moved in, and had slept soundly and without nightmares. She just couldn’t countenance a night somewhere else. She was terrified the dreams that had populated her nights previously would return with a vengeance.
‘I’ll be better here than in the hotel,’ Annie shouted through the letter box. ‘Come back in the morning with a number for the local handyman and we’ll laugh at those idiots.’
Annie could hear the two women holding a mumbled conversation.
‘And I won’t be too annoyed if you bring some bacon rolls with 26you for breakfast.’ Annie was aiming for a jocular tone, sending the message that she was okay.
‘Brown sauce or tomato sauce?’ Mandy asked after a moment, and Annie sighed with relief. Her adoptive mother was sending a message back: she understood.
‘Brown, please. Bye,’ Annie shouted, and Mandy and Chrissie called their goodbyes back.
Annie waited, listening to the women walk to their car. Then the car started, and they drove off. Annie made her way to her kitchen, threw the remnants of the spoiled meal into the bin, washed the dishes and then went to bed.
Head on her pillow, staring sightless at the ceiling, her mind was bright with the image of young Lachlan at the café. The shine of youth in his skin and eyes. And the terror in them the moment before his car hit the tree.
A waste of a life. He might have saved other lives as a crew member on the lifeboat. He might have had a wife and children. Now, none of that would happen.
She could have saved him.
She could have spoken up.
Shame washed over her, then set and solidified over her skin, muscle and bone until she was nothing but an unmoving length of granite, within which pulsed an overactive, punishing mind.
Chapter 9
Annie
At first light, feeling more tired than when she went to sleep, Annie slipped from her bed, dressed and made her way out to the little beach behind her home; a curve of sand that edged the loch. She sat on a rock there, a red tartan blanket over her shoulders, the breeze like velvet on her cheeks, and sipped from a flask of 27coffee, watching a pair of ducks as they dived for food just yards from where she perched.
She had fallen asleep the night before, eventually, but tiredness was like grit in her eyes, and guilt at not intervening before Lachlan died was still a weight on her limbs. Movement in the far right of her vision had her lift her face to the sky, and she watched a bird of prey as it flew in her direction.
The ducks were aware of the danger, it seemed, and they swam for the shelter of the long grass edging the banks further down the shore.
She loved this spot, and would often sit here for hours, savouring nature and its healing arts, and she was tempted to just stay here and allow that soothing, but the thought of the blood-red paint splattered on her door nagged at her. She wouldn’t be able to settle until that was cleaned off completely.
With a sigh, she aimed herself back indoors, to the sink and a pail and a scrubbing brush, and then she stood before her front door to assess the damage and to work out what needed to be done.
The paint was mostly on the bottom half of the door – a rich red against the stained oak – and some had made it onto the walls and the doorstep. Annie noted there were no footprints anywhere, meaning Chrissie and Mandy had managed to avoid stepping on it as they made their way over to their car.
As she studied the mess she realised she actually liked the colour. Against the white of the walls it was quite striking. Rather than clean it all up she could simply buy a tin of the stuff and paint the rest of the door. And it would be the work of moments to touch up the splashes on the walls with white masonry paint. Then, once the colour was cleaned off the doorstep it would all look quite smart.
This cheered her, and in her mind she gave a two-finger salute to the men who’d done this.
And then she thought of Lachlan again. Why hadn’t she been clearer? 28
A crush of guilt landed on her, and she exhaled, long and slow.
Enough. She had work to do to clean the doorstep and make the door ready for its new look.
Sometime later, over the noise of the brush against the stone, she heard an incoming car. She jumped to her feet in alarm, holding the brush in her hand like a weapon. If those guys, or any other idiots, were on their way to try and intimidate her, they’d find she was ready for them.
A car crested the hill, and she relaxed with relief as she recognised Lewis’s black Honda. But then she became annoyed. It was only nine am. He must have left Glasgow at the crack of dawn to be here at this time. Mrs Mac must have phoned him and told him about the attack on her home.
Lewis parked. Climbed out of the car and walked towards her, holding a little brown bag in the air. ‘Did you order bacon rolls?’ he asked. A smile hovered across his face, but his eyes betrayed his concern. He looked past Annie at the paint on the door. ‘You okay?’
‘You didn’t need to come driving up here like a white knight,’ Annie said, aware that she was bristling, but also pleased to see her brother. ‘When did Mrs Mac phone you?’
‘Last night. And if I was interested in doing the white-knight thing I would have left straight away. But fuck that, I need my beauty sleep.’ He grinned. ‘I did leave pretty early, right enough.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘But you’re okay, yeah?’
Annie studied her twin.
‘What?’ he asked. ‘You’re doing that thing.’
‘What thing?’
‘The looking me up and down, assessing thing.’
‘Just trying to work out how my brother is.’
‘And?’ Lewis stood still and held his hands out wide.
‘New expensive jeans. New girlfriend? Flatter stomach. Been working out?’
‘No, and yes,’ Lewis replied with a chuckle.
He reached out to her and they hugged. 29
‘You don’t need to worry, you know,’ Annie said after she’d stepped back. ‘I can look after myself.’ After her near-death experience the previous year, Lewis had taken up Krav Maga and running, apparently to fulfil his role as her protector. When she’d challenged him on it, he’d reminded her that their father’s instruction to him on the day before he committed suicide, when Lewis was just turned thirteen, was to look after her. ‘And that shit is difficult to deprogramme,’ he’d added.
‘Nice repaint,’ he said now, looking over her shoulder at the door. ‘Half and half. Kinda works.’
‘I’m thinking of keeping the red,’ Annie said.
‘Making lemonade?’
Annie laughed.
‘Is it coming off okay though?’ Lewis asked.
Annie wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘They used emulsion paint.’ She offered Lewis a half-cocked smile.
‘Amateurs,’ Lewis said.
Annie dropped her scrubbing brush into the bucket of soapy water. ‘C’mon in and I’ll put the kettle on.’
As they passed through the living room, Lewis gave a low whistle at the window, and the towel covering it. ‘Quite dark in here without that window, eh?’
