by Frazer Lee
“A toast, to the happy couple! I mean, happy trio!” Alex exclaimed, his naturally booming voice louder than ever now that he had more booze inside him. He lurched to his feet suddenly, raising his glass. As he did so, the huge map fell from his lap.
Mike felt strangely transfixed by it. Time seemed to slow down as he watched the map in freefall, floating down and onto the hearthstone. Then, the noise of the room snapped Mike from the moment. Alex was in full sway and clinked glasses first with Mike, then Helen, who was drinking water. He was about to do the same with Meggie when Kay cried out in alarm.
“Shit, the map!”
It had caught fire in the hearth. Mike saw the flames spread from the corner of the map until the whole thing was ablaze. It was too late to rescue it from its fiery fate.
“Bloody hell!” Alex said.
Alex reached down and grabbed the poker from beside the fire and used it to shove the burning map into the grate.
Mike placed his whisky glass on the floor. Feeling queasy, he decided he didn’t want any more to drink. The heat from the fire was making him sweat, and he felt the need to lie down on his cool bed upstairs. As Alex made a show of warming his hands on the fire, cheered on and jeered at in equal measure by the girls, Mike saw the flames devouring the elevation lines representing the Kintail Mountains. Torched paper floated up into the chimney, incinerated little moths of flame and smoke.
He watched the remains of the map turn black as it burned away to ashes.
* * *
Mike slept fitfully. The unpleasant onset of acid reflux woke him as it took hold in his chest.
The burning aftertaste of whisky lapped at his throat, and he puffed up his pillows and tried to prop himself up in order to quell the fire, but to no avail. He was awake now and feeling much the worse for wear after drinking so much on an empty stomach. Mike decided it might help him sleep if he sneaked downstairs for a snack – that might give the acid something to feed on other than his insides. He swung his feet over the side of the bed and caught the flicker of a shadow passing under the door. Mike froze, dreading what he knew in his heart would happen next. Seconds later, he heard it. The piercing sound of a child’s laughter, echoing down the stairs. Mike looked to Helen to see if the sound had woken her, but she was still fast asleep.
He shot out of bed, the drink almost making him lose his footing as he lurched toward the door. Opening it quickly, he rushed out onto the landing. He heard the child laughing again and footsteps on the stairs. He followed the sounds downstairs and found himself standing alone in the living room.
“Who are you? Hello?”
Mike felt ridiculous even asking out loud. Chasing phantoms. He glanced around the room and saw nothing except the detritus of the evening – a few empty glasses, and his own still half-empty by the fireside. The only sound to be heard now was the faint crackle of dying embers in the hearth. Mike felt a rush of acidity at the back of his throat and padded barefoot into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and searched for something to eat. The remains of the cooked trout lay on a plate under clear plastic film. It looked gray and unappetizing in the artificial light of the refrigerator. After closing the fridge door in frustration, Mike crossed to the sink and filled a clean glass with water. Even the water looked slightly off to him in the gloomy light, and cloudier than it should have been. He glimpsed his reflection in the window, beyond which was the total blackness of night, and found himself thinking of the loch again. It was out there somewhere, vast, deep and dark. He sipped his water and watched himself do so in the reflecting glass of the window.
Then he heard a cry.
At first, he thought it was the child’s voice again, but when it came again he realized it was an adult’s voice, a woman’s. It had come from the living room, he was certain of that. He placed his glass on the drainer and made his way back through the conservatory and into the living room. There was no one there. But again he heard the woman’s cry. It was a cry of unmistakable pain. He rubbed at his throbbing temples with his fingertips, wondering if he was simply drunk or going stark, staring mad. The cry was coming from the mantelpiece – and more specifically from the black scrying mirror, which stood there alongside the fragment of stag’s antler.
“Hello?” he said again, now feeling more self-conscious than ever, speaking to a bloody mirror in an empty room.
Only the crackling embers answered him. But he was drawn toward the mirror, intrigued by what he had heard, and wondering if by approaching it he might hear the woman’s cry more clearly should it come again. As he drew close, the smooth, inward curve of the black glass seemed to latch on to him, filling his field of vision with its void. Something flickered darkly there, and Mike blinked. No, he had definitely seen something. But what was it? He moved closer, until his toes were touching the rough stone of the hearth, and gazed deeply into the mirror.
Reflected there, he saw a half dozen men. They were workmen but not from Mike’s era – they wore clothes from centuries ago. The room behind them appeared half-built, and even though it was the middle of the night for Mike, in the reflection he could see daylight through the gaps in the unfinished walls.
Four of the men each had a thick rope over his shoulder, which they were pulling on in order to move something across the floor of the room. Something that was clearly incredibly heavy. The other two men were leaning and pushing against the object, which Mike suddenly realized was the very same hearthstone that was at his feet. The surface of the enormous slab of stone was rough-hewn, and it did not surprise Mike that six men were required to shift it. Mike ran the big toe of his left foot over the hearthstone. It was as though tactile contact with its surface would rid him of the strange reflections in the mirror. He looked into the shallow black bowl of glass again and saw the men reflected there, as though they could be working in the room where he stood. Spooked, he glanced over his shoulder into the physical room behind him.
No one there.
He heard the woman’s cry again and looked once more into the mirror. What he saw there made him take a step back from the hearth in surprise. The workmen and their slab of stone had disappeared, replaced by the reflection of a young woman. She was lying on her back with her legs parted. Either side of her, half-obscured by the dark shadows at the edges of the mirror, stood silent figures. Each wore dark robes, their features hidden by cowls that hung black over their faces. The woman cried out again, her voice echoing like breaking glass through the glossy surface of the mirror. She appeared to be in a lot of pain, writhing on the floor with her hips thrusting out in sudden spasms. The robed figures appeared to be coaxing and placating her, two of them gripping her wrists – to assist the woman or to restrain her, Mike could not tell. Seeing her huge, distended belly as she gave an almighty thrust accompanied by an agonized scream, Mike understood that he was witnessing the birth of a child – or at least the memory of it.
He glanced behind him again into the room and saw the slightly crumpled rug on the stone floor where, in the mirror, the woman lay in the throes of childbirth. Her cries stopped short, suddenly replaced by the hysterical laughter of a child.
Mike felt afraid to look once more at the mirror, but he felt compelled to know what was reflected there. He tried to resist, but it was as though his head was being forced back to look, urged on by some unseen and powerful force. The scrying mirror was black and empty once more, the woman and the dark figures nowhere to be seen. An echo of the child’s laughter rang out, the sound seeming to travel around the dark perimeter of the looking glass.
Then an idea struck Mike.
Here he was, standing close by the mirror, looking straight at it. The phantoms – for he was sure that was what they must have been – were gone. Why then could he not see his own reflection? He leaned in closer to the mirror’s surface to test his idea, then swayed on his feet from side to side. Nothing. He cast no reflection in the mirror. It was as thou
gh the mirror and the hearth were there but he somehow didn’t exist at all. The sensation of not existing made him feel nauseated, and he tried to tear his gaze away from the mirror, intent on turning his back on it and getting the hell away from this creepy nighttime room.
But he could not budge. The mirror had a hold on him so intense that he could not even blink. He felt a rush of air, how he imagined it might feel to be in an airplane cabin when it depressurized, and his face was pulled closer to the mirror. The air was freezing cold, making his eyes water. He opened his mouth to scream as he was sucked into the black circle of the mirror. He reached out and gripped the mantelpiece with both hands, fighting against the vortex pulling him in. His head was at the center of a cold, whirling storm of blackness.
Mike looked down and saw, impossibly, the waters of the loch. The storm was sucking him down, closer and closer to the water. He saw his face reflected there, a pale oval with a black hole for a screaming mouth. As he plummeted closer to the water, feeling sure he would be drowned in it, he saw that the reflection was not his face at all. It was someone else, peering up at him from beneath the surface of the dark, briny water.
Meggie’s face, pale and drowned and screaming in silent anguish.
* * *
Mike’s eyes blasted open, and he awoke from his nightmare, struggling for breath.
His heartbeat slowed as he realized that what he had seen in the mirror, all of it, was a disturbing nightmare. He glanced at Helen beside him, curled in a fetal position, fast asleep. Mike wiped sweat from his brow and sat up. His t-shirt was drenched with perspiration, and he peeled it off, ready to toss it onto the floor. As he lifted the shirt up and over his face, he was astonished to see someone standing at the foot of the bed.
Meggie was naked, her red hair hanging loose over her alabaster skin. She was looking right at him, her eyes becoming as black as the glass of the scrying mirror. Though her intense gaze troubled him greatly, he felt powerless to look away. Her lips curled into a thin smile, and he saw that she held an infant child at her breast, wrapped in a white swaddling blanket. She moved around to Helen’s side of the bed—
No, no, don’t come any closer, please don’t come any closer.
—her darkening eyes impenetrable, unreadable to Mike. Something about the way she moved seemed spiderlike and utterly threatening to Mike, and he wanted more than anything to raise the alarm, to wake Helen and to warn Meggie to keep away. But any such sound stayed locked inside his throat, and all he could do was watch as Meggie scuttled, naked and savage, to Helen’s side.
Meggie took the baby from her breast and held it out in her arms, lowering it onto the bedsheets next to Helen. All the while, she stared at Mike, her eyes fully black now with no whites to be seen in them at all. And she laughed – a vile chuckle that froze Mike’s heart and would have sent him scurrying beneath the covers if he could only move.
In her sleep, Helen moved her arm, embracing the child.
Meggie’s horrid chuckle increased in volume until it was a constant loop, sounding all at once like the crackling of the fire in the hearth, the breaking and re-breaking of millions of jagged fragments of sharp black glass, and the anguished, pitiful cries of an infant. Mike clamped his hands over his ears to try to blot out the sound, but it only increased in intensity until he felt that his skull was caving in. He roared along with it, his own scream an attempt to dispel the sound but instead becoming part of the concert with it. Mike felt the weight of the baby on the sheets next to Helen and in that moment knew how fragile it was. He felt afraid that the explosive noise filling the room, and his skull, would somehow break the child’s little body apart.
* * *
He jolted awake and found himself tangled in sweat-drenched sheets once again. Mike looked at the space in the bed next to him, where he had dreamed Helen and the child. He sat up, still in a panic, and looked toward the foot of the bed, half-expecting to see black eyes staring back at him. He was alone. Morning light bled through the gaps in the curtains. He swallowed dryly, the acid aftertaste of whisky lingering in his throat, and looked fearfully around the empty bedroom.
Part Two
Under dark, dark skies
There are dark, dark mountains
And beneath the dark, dark mountains
Is a dark, dark road.
On the dark, dark road
There is a dark, dark turn
And beyond the dark, dark turn
Is a dark, dark cottage.
Chapter Seven
“Oscar! Oscar!?”
Meggie’s voice echoed off the wall of trees skirting the edge of the loch.
Mike and Alex walked on ahead, carrying backpacks full of snacks and equipped with two-liter bottles of water tucked in the plastic holders.
“Oscar!” Mike called out, while Alex whistled.
“Good thing my sister loves that wee mongrel so much,” Alex said. “I’d be inclined to bloody well kill him for making us walk this far.”
“You always liked a walk,” Mike said.
“True enough,” Alex replied, “but I prefer sitting on my arse and fishing even better.”
Mike laughed but inwardly felt glad to be out and stretching his legs. His nightmares of the past couple of nights were still casting their gloomy spell over him, and he had begun to dislike being cooped up in the cottage with the others. He breathed in the fresh mountain air, finding it refreshingly energizing with its scents of bracken and pine.
As they pushed on up the twisting path that led away from the lochside cottage and into the hills, he began to feel the color returning to his cheeks and with it his appreciation for being outside in the amazing landscape. The farther they trudged, the thicker and higher the banks of heather rose on either side of the path. A slight breeze made the stems sway, creating a vivid display of purples and greens as far as his eye could see. As the tree cover became denser, the path split into two. One track led deeper into the trees, and Mike recalled that Alex had told him this was the bridle path, carved out over decades by countless horses’ hooves traveling to and from the village. The other track led up the hillside to higher ground, twisting and turning like a giant stairway. Mike and Alex stopped for a while and waited for the girls to catch up. Mike was glad of the rest, conscious that he and Alex had both put a bit of spurt on in order to get ahead of the girls. He chuckled, slightly out of breath, and Alex looked at him with a quizzical expression.
“Thought they were just behind us,” Mike said.
“Probably chatting,” Alex growled. “Slows them down.”
Mike chuckled again.
“What’s so funny?”
“We are, mate,” Mike said.
“Oh? How so?” Alex asked.
“I don’t know. It’s just the differences, you know? We’d much rather push on ahead in relative silence, while that lot.… Oh, here they are.”
Mike saw Meggie’s red hair first, as vivid as a hi-vis vest against the green backdrop of the wild landscape. To Mike, she looked just as wild as her surroundings – her long, flowing skirt and baggy cardigan adding to the effect. Helen and Kay walked close by Meggie but looked like urbanites in comparison to Alex’s younger sister. Mike wondered how he might look if he left the city for good, to go live in a rural area. He had toyed with the idea of growing a beard while in his final year of university, but Helen had made it clear that she did not even approve of the slightest shadow of stubble. If he dared grow a beard, she’d hold kisses for ransom, she’d told him. Mike had stocked up on disposable razors that same day, and they had not mentioned the topic since. Yet, as he watched the carefree, fluid way in which Meggie navigated the path, he envied her. She seemed entirely at home here, at the foot of the mountains. He didn’t really know where he belonged. University had given him anonymity for the past three years. Now his girlfriend was pregnant and he didn’t have a job, or anywh
ere to live other than his parental home. He knew from crashing there for a few weeks during his first summer break that his parents were not keen on him overstaying his welcome.
They had managed a fortnight before raising the unwanted specter of rent and bills, and had badgered Mike into taking a crappy job in an even crappier bar just so he could ‘pay his way’ a little while he lived under their – more than ample, it had to be said – roof. He could imagine how they might react if he returned home and told them that Helen and little Mikey Junior would be along for the ride. His father, in particular, would no doubt go mental about it. His mother would get upset and retreat into herself, allowing her husband to call the shots about Mike’s future. He didn’t blame her for adopting this coping strategy – his dad was a forceful personality, and he too would avoid confrontation with the man whenever he could. A bead of sweat trickled from Mike’s temple, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. His bandaged thumb throbbed along with his and Alex’s footsteps up the twisting path.
“What kept you?” Alex said, in between gulps of water from his plastic bottle.
“Pacing ourselves, unlike you two,’ Kay said. “You both look a bit sweaty. Not overdoing it, are you, boys?”
“Not at all,” Alex replied. “We didn’t know whether to crack open the sandwiches or send out a search party.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Helen said, “it’ll be us waiting for you on the way back. You’ll have run out of energy.”
“Typical men,” Kay said, “always a sprint and never a marathon.” She winked at Helen and Meggie, who both burst out laughing.
The girls passed around their water bottles, and Mike saw that Helen was taken by a shrub with clusters of strangely shaped pink berries. He strolled over to take a look at what it was that had grabbed her attention.
“Aren’t the berries just absolutely gorgeous?” Helen said as she gently tilted a drooping stem toward the light.
