The ferry was now fast approaching the small harbour where they would be disembarking. Several small cottages dotted the coastline, and seagulls cried and circled overhead. After ensuring that they had their rucksacks with them, they headed downstairs and waited for the announcement from the captain to instruct them that it was all clear to get off the ferry. When it came, they were the first in the queue to walk down the metal gangplank, where they were somewhat surprised to find Mrs. Campbell waiting for them. She was accompanied by two men: a stocky, middle-aged man with a short white beard who from his attire was clearly a priest, and a younger man who bore some resemblance to her.
“Welcome to Islay,” greeted Mrs. Campbell. She gestured to her companions. “May I introduce my brother-in-law, Father Archie Campbell, and my son, James.”
For a moment McQueen was lost for words. He had not expected there to be others involved in this investigation, although he saw no reason why their presence should complicate things. Indeed, it could make things easier, providing they knew what they were letting themselves in for. After making his greetings, he and Forsyth followed them to their car.
“So just what are our plans now?” asked McQueen, unslinging his rucksack and handing it over to James Campbell, who had opened the car-boot.
“From here, in about half an hour’s time, we’ll catch the Feolin Ferry over to Jura. Then it’s just a relatively short drive along the only road, until we get to the point where we have to head off across country. If the weather stays reasonable, it should take us about three hours to get to the house,” answered Eleanor Campbell.
* * * * * * *
McQueen shivered and turned up the collar of his coat as he stood beside the parked car and gazed out at the desolate moorland before him, the dark grey masses of the three mountains barely visible in the low cloud, which threatened to descend and engulf everything. He shivered at something more than just the coldness of the early afternoon air. It was as though an invisible, clinging mist had seemed to rise up out of the ground beneath his feet bathing him in an aura of impending horror. With an effort, he told himself fiercely that he had to forget that, to keep his mind on the job that lay ahead, and that somewhere out there on the other side of the island there was a ruined house that kept its own mysteries.
A chill light drizzle began to fall.
“God! What a place.” Forsyth tightened his bootlaces and then hoisted his rucksack onto his shoulders.
“It’s fairly inhospitable, I agree,” commented James. Like the others, he was outfitted in a large raincoat, and both he and Archie carried rucksacks as well. “How my father persuaded the others to come out to this godforsaken place I don’t know.”
Tightening a strap on his rucksack, McQueen strode over to join him. “Did he really believe that the most haunted place in Britain was out here? I’d have thought somewhere like Edinburgh Castle or Highgate Cemetery would’ve been more his kind of thing.”
“Cameron did indeed think that the place we’re going to was the most haunted,” answered Eleanor, before her son could answer.
McQueen glanced upwards, noting that the drizzle had now turned to a cold rain. “Might be best if we waited in the car until this rain’s stopped.”
“Depending on how long the rain’s going to last, we might not make the house before nightfall, and the path’s hard enough to find in daylight,” reasoned Archie in his thick, gruff accent. “No, I think we’d better head off now, rain or no rain.”
With no further talk, they set off across the bleak, uncompromising landscape, their boots squelching through the thick, peaty sludge of the barely discernible path. After about a mile the path degenerated into nothing more than a trail, and in the gathering mist it became increasingly difficult for them to stick to it. The atmosphere had now become oppressive, cold, and damp and it did not take long for the imagination to run riot.
Half-formed, tenebrous images seemed to lurk just on the periphery of McQueen’s vision, leading him to think that there were things out there, unfriendly things which even now were observing their progress with a malign intent. The mist had become thicker, almost suffocating, the only sounds that of the occasional curse and splash from one of the others. As they progressed through the murk and the gloom, the notion that perhaps this was not one of his better ideas came to his mind, and that despite what he had said to Forsyth about enduring the hardships for the sake of fame, perhaps it would be best to turn back whilst that still remained an option.
With some measure of inner resolve, he took a hold of himself and trudged on, the ghost-like form of James, who he was following, just visible up ahead.
After the first hour or so, the conditions deteriorated further so that, at least as far as McQueen was concerned, it seemed as though the very elements themselves were conspiring in an attempt to drive them back. A strong wind had now picked up, ice-cold fingers clawing at exposed skin and stabbing sadistically through their waterproofs. With it came an almost horizontal rain that drove at them with a vengeance that seemed born of an elemental fury.
The sky darkened with each passing minute, and ill-looking black clouds now replaced the ubiquitous greyness.
A cold sweat trickled down McQueen’s spine, an iciness somewhat colder than the rain. On several occasions he was convinced that he heard hideous wails on the wind, as though nature itself had become corrupted, and had now found some fell voice with which to shriek at them, to warn them perhaps of an impending doom. The ground become soggier, the going more treacherous as deep pools of standing surface water now lay all around, and one wrong step would result in an immediate drenching from which hypothermia could easily develop.
The others cursed and struggled on, each absorbed in their own thoughts and nightmares regarding where they were going.
They stopped briefly for a cheerless break, sipping from their flasks and devouring their packed lunches before setting off once more, hoping against hope that they were still heading in the right direction. In the thick fog it was now nigh on impossible to be certain, and McQueen dreaded to think what would happen to them if they were to become hopelessly lost out here, for he did not think that there were any adequate search and rescue teams based on the island. Similarly, at least as far as he and Forsyth were concerned, neither of them possessed any appropriate survival knowledge nor, more importantly, had they informed anyone else of where they were going. The latter was an unsettling thought that, unwillingly, plagued his brain for the remainder of the trek.
Thus it was with some relief that, just as darkness was encroaching, James let out a jubilant cry that he could see the house up ahead.
At first McQueen could see nothing through the veil of water that curtained off his immediate surroundings. Then, spectrally, the ruined cottage just seemed to materialise out of the fog before him.
* * * * * * *
By torchlight, they began sifting through the detritus and rubble, stooping occasionally to take a look under many of the heaps of contorted woodwork and jumbled heaps of bricks. What remaining furniture there was lay mostly wrecked and decaying: a bookcase devoid of books against one wall and a few splintered chairs. It was clear that someone had been here, certainly within the last few years, for there were small piles of cigarette butts of a brand McQueen knew to have been only released relatively recently. When he had questioned Mrs. Campbell, she told him that her husband had been a non-smoker, however they could have belonged to members of his team or indeed to the police who had searched the place after the disappearance.
After an hour or so of fruitless ransacking, they decided to camp up—McQueen, Forsyth, and Father Archie Campbell setting up base in the ruined main room, whilst Eleanor and her son retired to one of the small side rooms, one which had clearly served as a bedroom of some description.
Outside, the wind and the rain battered without mercy at the derelict building as though trying to outdo each other in terms of ferocity. Despite their hasty, patchwork attempts to provide shelter and
make the place somewhat habitable the interior was cold, the atmosphere lugubrious.
“So what do you think happened here, Father?” McQueen asked as he unrolled his sleeping bag and looked for somewhere comfortable to lay it down.
“The Devil’s work,” came the gruff reply. “What else could it be?”
“Would you care to be more specific?”
“I always told Cameron that no good would come of his meddling with things which are best left alone. But would he listen? No! All the time he said he needed to have the proof to substantiate his beliefs. I repeatedly told him that faith should be enough—but alas, it was clearly not enough for him and for those other misguided fools who followed him out here.”
“So I take it you think something unnatural happened here?” asked Forsyth from where he sat, shining the torch all around, making the grotesque shadows dance like wraiths.
“Without doubt. It’s one of the main reasons why I agreed to accompany Eleanor. There’s evil here. I can sense it. It lives in the very bricks and timbers of this old house. When it shows itself, I have all the means necessary to combat it and make it pay for whatever it did to my brother and the others.”
“Are we talking about an exorcism here?” asked McQueen.
“Exactly.” The priest grinned. “For whereas Cameron sought only to prove the existence of such foul things, I believe it is my duty to permanently destroy such Satanic entities. As I said, I have come prepared. Crucifix. Holy water. Bible. Communion wafers.”
“What are you—some kind of vampire hunter?”
“No. Simply a humble servant of God. One on a crusade to stamp out the Dark and restore the Light to its true brilliance.”
“And what if nothing happens?” said McQueen. “What if we just end up spending a couple of miserable, cold, and wet nights in this deserted shell of a cottage—what then?”
“Ah, but that won’t happen. You see it’s my aim to draw out whatever evil resides here. Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, I’ll conduct a séance to try and do just that.”
“Wait a minute!” protested McQueen. “Who mentioned anything about holding a séance? That’s completely out of the question and I want no part of it. What a ludicrous idea.” He lit a cigarette, his strong features visible for a moment in the flaring match-light.
“Scared of something?” taunted the priest.
“Scared? Of such a stupid thing as a séance? No, I’m not scared, but—“
“But what?”
“Well, it’s just that I don’t have any belief in anything like that. I don’t see the point.”
“Surely we’ve got nothing to lose and potentially something to gain,” ventured Forsyth. “Besides, it’ll pass the time,” he added flippantly.
“Yes,” said the priest. “And perhaps as another incentive, think on this: we may gain an insight into just what happened here on that dismal night over a year ago. If I do manage to contact the spirit world, perhaps I can find out what really happened to Cameron.”
McQueen had not factored anything like this into his plan of operations. But he might as well humour the man, and besides he thought it highly likely that Eleanor, who was paying for his services, would want him to participate. So disagreeing would be counter-productive. Later on, after the séance had failed, he might be able to work the conversation round to his theory that one or more members of Cameron’s ill-fated team had gone berserk and murdered the others. In the shadowy light, he could see from his watch that it had just gone nine o’clock, so that left nearly three hours in which to get some rest in readiness for midnight and whatever insanity that might bring.
* * * * * * *
The exhaustion from the three-hour trudge across the island struck McQueen with a fierce suddenness, dragging him off into a dark slumber as soon as he climbed into his sleeping bag. Almost instantly he was struck by a terrible plethora of dark mental images, each nightmare worse than the one before. Horrible, grinning skull-like faces swam into view before melting away into a swirling mass of blighted wickedness. Surreal, unnatural beings, neither man-like or animal-like, danced crazily through his silently screaming mind, insane shapes which seemed to fold and unfold before him.
And then, it seemed no sooner had he drifted off into a troubled sleep that he was awakened by James.
“It’s getting close to midnight. My mother was hoping that you’d join her and my uncle.”
“What?” asked McQueen groggily, temporarily unsure of his surroundings.
“They’re planning on holding a séance in the next room. I can’t say that I’m all in favour of the idea, but there we are. I don’t approve and I don’t think it’ll help in finding my father.”
Everything rushed back, colliding inside McQueen’s brain like a dark tide battering at a sea wall. “Yes. I must have drifted off for an hour or so.”
“More like three hours,” commented Forsyth, entering the abandoned room. The light from his torch made everything seem frightening and insubstantial, shadow-shapes seemed to slink away from the beam of light as though possessed of some sentient quality. “I guess that hike across the island must’ve really taken its toll on you.”
McQueen got out of his sleeping bag and followed the others into the adjacent room. A small wooden table has been set up, around which five chairs had been placed. Eleanor and Archie Campbell were already seated, clearly awaiting their arrival.
“When you’re ready,” said the priest, gesturing to the others to sit down in the vacant chairs. Once they had taken their seats he continued: “Let us all link hands whilst I try and reach out to the spirit world.”
They linked hands as instructed. In his left, McQueen held Eleanor’s delicate, long-fingered hand and in his right he grasped Forsyth’s. Inwardly, he could not help but think that he was being a gullible fool for even considering participating in this occult nonsense. He had come out here in order to conduct a rigorous and methodical search for any evidence pertaining to the disappearance of Cameron Campbell and his team and now, here he was, gathered around a table joining in with their mumbo-jumbo! He would have to see about asking for extra pay as compensation for this insult to his common sense.
“Is there anyone out there?” intoned the priest. “Does anyone care to tell us what happened here?” He asked his questions with a quiet deliberation.
McQueen grimaced, his face a portrait in sceptical annoyance. Of course there were people there—themselves.
“Cameron. Are you there, brother?”
“Look, this is getting—” complained McQueen, getting ready to rise from his chair.
“Wait.” Eleanor threw him a sharp glance.
The room was suddenly very still. All sound ceased abruptly, as if someone had drawn a thick, impenetrable curtain across everything. Utter silence. A finger of ice traced strange patterns along the muscles of McQueen’s back. His skin itched and crawled as though a thousand ants were creeping across it.
“Cameron, can you hear me?” In the dim torchlight the priest’s face was half-bathed in shadow, giving it a sinister and slightly demonic look.
McQueen felt Eleanor’s grasp on his hand tighten, her nails threatening to dig into the flesh of his palm. An eerie atmosphere crowded around them and the temperature dropped noticeably, so that he was shocked to see that his breath was now steaming. A long moment passed. There was a low ringing in his ears now and somewhere, at the very edge of his vision, he detected a growing brightness coming from the corner of the room. He clenched his mouth shut to keep his teeth from shaking.
Within the darkness, in the corner of the room, a greenish, dense fog began to gather. The fog began to assume human form, condensing and then solidifying into a tangible being—perhaps not a true flesh and blood one, but a being nonetheless. The ghostly face was lined with pain and torment. Its eyes were tinged crimson and sunken, its face etched with deep lines, and its hair was wild and unkempt.
It was the tortured spirit of Cameron Campbell!
; “Cameron!” cried Eleanor.
“You must all flee!” wailed the spectre. “There is a dark spirit here. It will destroy you all as it destroyed me. Your only hope resides in the fireplace. Save my soul and your own lives.…” Its last cry was a bloodcurdling, fading scream from the netherworld, a truly terrifying caterwaul that shook all of them to the marrow, temporarily paralysing them with fear. Then, his warning given, Cameron’s spirit was drawn back into whichever dark beyond it had temporarily been summoned from. It was compressed to a single glowing point, before blinking out of existence.
“What the hell was that!?” cried Forsyth, his eyes wild, his hands trembling visibly. Most of the colour had drained from his face.
A gripping terror clutched at McQueen, forcing him to swallow a lump in his throat. He could feel his heart begin to hammer inside his chest like a caged animal, and a cold, damp sweat now leaked from his forehead. He could offer no explanation for what had just transpired; no reasoning enabled him to come to terms with what he had just witnessed with his own two eyes. He had known, instinctively, that what he had seen had been real. It was no trickster’s hoax or phantasm generated by a troubled mind, for all of the others had seen it too. It had been something that had defied his logical ordering of the world and all within it, something that his practical, pragmatic outlook on life could not accept—and yet it had happened. He had seen it!
Father Archie Campbell was the first to regain some semblance of composure. “It was the doomed soul of my brother. May his spirit rest in peace.” He broke his hold on those seated next to him and, shakily, made the sign of the cross.
The Chaos of Chung-Fu Page 7
