Tormentor

by William Meikle

  Alan saw me looking.

  “So you’re not regretting coming then?”

  “Not for a second,” I replied.

  The waiter interrupted any further conversation by bringing a menu.

  “I can recommend the Chicken Jalfrezi. My treat,” Alan said. “I’ll slip it past Dad on expenses. And they’ve got some fine island beers on tap too.”

  The curry proved to be very good indeed—fiery yet subtle, and the ale—a local wheat beer, complemented it perfectly. Alan’s conversation danced over the top of both, always lively and humorous, with an underlying sarcasm that suited my temperament. He told me of the goings-on in the island, and I told him what little there was to tell of my first month.

  I wasn’t going to mention it, but I did let slip about the writing on the wall in the old cottage, and the two words I’d read both there and in my e-mails.

  “Kids, most like,” he said. “They’re always on the lookout for somewhere to have a quiet smoke away from the eyes of their parents.”

  I wasn’t convinced—not at all—but Alan was such a convivial companion, and it didn’t feel like an issue worth arguing over, so I let it drop, and conversation quickly turned to the Dunvegan Arms.

  “How are they treating you?” Alan asked.

  “Very well,” I replied. “They’re a talkative bunch, when it suits them.”

  He picked up on my sarcasm.

  “Don’t push it, Jim,” he said quietly. “Yes, they like to talk—we all do over here. It’s our favorite pastime—after sex of course, but there’s only so many times you can look at a sheep.

  “We all keep secrets—I’m sure you’ve got some of your own. Just relax, enjoy your house, and trust me—there’s nothing you need to know that’ll help you in the knowing of it.”

  I let it lie—it was a niggle, but no more than that, and not enough of one to be worth too much attention. Alan had a second beer and I had a coffee, aware of the forty-five-minute drive I still had ahead of me to get home. He looked like he was just getting started.

  “Come down in a taxi sometime,” Alan said, as we parted in midafternoon. “We can make a day of it, have a few beers—more than a few beers—and maybe if you get me drunk enough, I’ll tell you some of those stories you seem so keen on hearing.”

  I laughed.

  “If I wait until you’re drunk enough, I’ll be comatose myself and long past being capable of listening.”

  He grinned.

  “As if that would stop me.”

  We shook hands, and he went back to his musty files and land registry history. I turned away to head for my car—and realized I was being watched.

  They were over in the far corner of the car park again—the old woman and her son, just standing, staring at me. Back in London I’d have got in the car and driven off, feeling slightly intimidated, if not even fearful, but I’d come up here to be master of my own destiny. After such a pleasant lunch, I wasn’t in the mood to have the afternoon ruined by any bullshit.

  I walked over, slowly, half expecting them to back off, hoping to embarrass them into silence. It didn’t work—but at least the old lady had lost her belligerence from our earlier encounter in the bar.

  “You should leave, son,” she said softly. “You’re not safe here.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  She smiled, and suddenly looked much younger.

  “Don’t be daft, laddie. I’m trying to help you. No good will come of staying in that place. It drove my old pal mad in the end, trying to keep them out.”

  “Keep who out? Speak sense, will you?”

  “If you don’t know yet, you will soon,” she said. “They don’t stay down for long.”

  I was so stunned to hear those words, I only stood, mouth flapping, and watched the man lead his mother away.

  What had been merely a niggle had quickly come back as a fully-fledged worry.

  * * *

  I considered getting the truth out of Alan once and for all, but when I turned and looked in the Bean and Sons’ office window, he was at his desk, head down in paperwork.

  I got in the car and drove, not paying much attention to the scenery on the way back. My mind was full of a tangle of words and images—the finger-writing on the wall, the old lady with her false teeth loose in her gums as she gave me a warning, and Alan’s ready smile as he told me there was nothing to worry about.

  On reaching the house, I went straight to the kitchen, fetched a pail of water and a sponge and went out to the ruined cottage, intending to wash the offending words away, as if that would cleanse them from my mind. I pushed open the old door, walked into the empty room, and stared, openmouthed again, at four blank walls. The soot and ash was still there, and the room still looked like it had been scoured, but there was no writing, and no sign there had ever been any.

  I studied the wall from every possible angle, even putting my cheek against it and sighting along its length, but to no avail—all I got was a sooty spot on my face, and more of it on my fingers when I tried to rub it away.

  I backed away to the door and tried to create a different shadow inside the room by opening and closing it, but there was still no writing. In the end I threw the pail of water at the wall anyway, standing there as it left dark running streaks pooling in even darker puddles on the floor. I slammed the door as I left—not quite enough to break it off its hinges, but enough that it hung there precariously, creaking in the breeze behind me like mocking laughter.

  * * *

  I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I went back inside; a long streak of soot ran down my left cheek, from just below the eye socket to my chin. It looked like a thin finger had drawn it there.

  It took me several minutes to wash it off—the soot and ash felt sticky, almost oily to the touch and resisted first a facecloth and then enough soap to wash a family before finally being defeated. The facecloth in particular came off second best. It had been white when I picked it up, but was now a flat gray, mottled with darker spots as if a fungal disease had taken hold on the surface.

  I tossed the cloth into the washing machine and headed for the booze, skipping the intermediary beer and going straight for Scotch. I stood at the patio doors, looking over towards the ruined cottage. It was still just four walls and a roof, but now it had taken on a new role—tormentor. I made a mental note to talk to Alan about whether I could just pull it down—raze it to the ground and piss on the rubble, then pulled the curtains closed, shutting it out. The view didn’t appeal to me right then.

  I went to the laptop, looking for another movie to lose myself in. The machine was open—not unusual in itself, as I’d taken to leaving it plugged in, on top of the desk. It was also switched on—again, not too unusual as I often wandered away and left it that way.

  What was unusual was the finger-thin streak of soot running down the screen—I hadn’t been anywhere near it since coming back inside. I used a handkerchief this time, and a dab of the Scotch, and thankfully it wiped away without leaving a smear. As I knocked back what was left of the liquor and turned to pour another, my inbox pinged.

  I had three e-mails, all garbled text. In all three there were only two discernible words.

  Stay down.

  6

  I kept my distance from the crofter’s cottage for several weeks afterward, although I did not let it damage my coffee ritual, which was fast becoming a habit. One fine morning, almost two weeks after my last trip to Portree, I was sitting outside with a coffee and a book when I heard the sound of a vehicle approaching up the track, wheels spinning in the dry dirt and gravel. I walked round to the barn just in time to see Alan Bean park an SUV with a dinghy on a trailer behind it.

  “It’s time to start your long conversion into a man of the isles,” he said as he disembarked. “And it starts with fishing.”

  “I’ve never fished. And I’ve never been out in anything bigger than a paddleboat in the Med,” I said, laughing.

  He smiled.
>
  “Not much difference here then,” he said. “Apart from the cold water, the lack of sun, and the complete absence of bikini-clad blondes. I do have one saving factor.”

  He opened the trunk of the SUV. Alongside the rods and tackle was a twelve-bottle pack of strong local ale.

  “Can you get done for being drunk in charge of a dinghy?” I asked as I helped him, first with reversing the trailer down to the small harbor below the kitchen window, then with getting the dinghy loaded and into the water.

  “Who said anything about you being in charge?” he replied. “And it’s ‘Captain Alan, sir,’ to you for the duration.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain Alan, sir,” I replied, and saluted.

  “Cast off at the blunt end,” he shouted, and started up the outboard motor.

  The next few hours stay etched in my mind—a clear, perfect moment summing up everything good about my new home. We cruised up and down the loch, trailing fishing lines behind us that contained little more than hooks and splashes of colored thread at six-inch intervals along the length.

  “No need for any fancy bait today. We’re after the mackerel.” Alan said. “They’re like teenagers—unable to resist anything shiny passing into their view.”

  He was proven right even before we got through the first beer. I hadn’t spotted any bending or jerking of the stiff rods we were using, but when we brought in the lines, we each had a full load of black and silver fish—a dozen in total in our first haul alone.

  “I hope you’ve got plenty of room in your freezer,” Alan said. “It looks like a day for a big catch.”

  Yet again he was proven right—over the next hour or so we brought in over a hundred fish and drank three beers each. I even piloted the dinghy for a spell, although my attempts at turning only brought hysterical laughter from Alan.

  “We’ll take things slowly, shall we,” he said, taking the tiller from me.

  All in all, it was a glorious way to spend the morning.

  Alan wasn’t finished with my education. Once back in the house we filled one of the two butler’s sinks with the fish.

  “Now comes the icky part. What do you want to do—heads or guts?”

  I must have looked bemused for he laughed loudly again.

  “Watch and learn,” he said.

  He lifted the first fish and lopped off its head with one slice of my heaviest knife, sliding the severed head into the empty sink and putting the rest of the fish to one side.

  “That’s your job—then you pass them to me and I’ll clean them out.”

  I quickly discovered what he meant by icky—within minutes the second sink was filling up with heads and guts, and over at the table Alan had laid out a line of gutted fish I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to eat.

  Some accompanying beer made the job more palatable though, and Alan seemed happy in his work. He even cleaned up most of the resultant mess when we were done.

  Over the course of the afternoon we made several pounds of mackerel pate—cooked fish, butter and pepper in the main, blitzed in a blender and put in the fridge to chill. We stuffed freezer bags full of the remaining fish—all apart from six, which Alan grilled with some butter, garlic and herbs and we ate out on the patio with the remainder of the beer to wash it down. I was as relaxed as I’d been at any time since my arrival on the island.

  * * *

  “You seem to be settling in okay,” Alan said. “I thought you would—although I hear you had another run-in with auld Mrs. Duncan that last day in Portree—I hope she didn’t upset you.”

  I happened to be looking at the crofter’s cottage as he spoke, and as if a switch had been pulled, all the goodness drained out of the day.

  Alan saw me looking, and his smile disappeared.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Nothing at all—just some stuff about the old lady who lived here before.”

  “Mrs. Menzies? Aye—it was sad the way she went at the end. But old people die—there’s no need to make up supernatural melodramas about it, although I admit making up stories is a bit of a local pastime around here.”

  “It’s not just that…” I started. “It’s that old crofter’s cottage—it’s got me spooked.”

  “It’s that auld busybody that’s got you spooked. I suppose it’s about time you knew what’s got her back up—but I’ll need a few drinks to tell the full story—if you don’t mind me kipping on your couch tonight?”

  “If it gets everything out into the open, that’s fine by me.”

  I fetched us both some beer from my stock in the fridge and went back out onto the patio. The sun was making its way overhead and we sat in sunlight, a cool breeze blowing in from the sea.

  “I didn’t want to tell you any of this stuff,” he started. “Not right away at least—not until I knew you were settled and saw for yourself there was nothing in the stories to be worried about.”

  He took a long gulp of beer.

  “Mrs. Menzies bought the place back in sixties—in fact, it was Dad who sold it to her and her husband. I remember him—just. Nice chap, kept himself to himself—Mrs. Menzies did enough talking for the two of them. He died in the early eighties—nothing suspicious—a dicky ticker and too many fags seemed to be the general consensus among the gossiping classes. Mrs. Menzies went a bit strange soon after that. If we’re to believe the tittle-tattle, it all started with the soot.”

  That made me jump, the involuntary twitch causing me to spill beer on the patio slabs beneath me.

  Alan laughed.

  “You’ve only been here a few weeks and you’ve got a drinking problem already. Did I say something wrong?”

  I motioned for him to go on as I dabbed at a damp spot on my trousers with a handkerchief. I wasn’t ready yet to tell him about the writing—I wondered if I ever would be ready. He took a long sip of his beer before continuing.

  “Anyway, back to Mrs. Menzies. She started to make complaints about neighbors burning bonfires and getting soot on her washing. As you can see for yourself, there’s no neighbors close enough for smoke to be a concern. But she was adamant and caused quite a stooshie in the shop in Dunvegan when she started hitting Mr. Hannah over the head with her umbrella, shouting about him persecuting her and sneaking about among her underwear and nightgowns.

  “Things got worse when she filed numerous police reports about intruders getting into her house and making a mess—I’ve got a pal, Detective John Thompson, who was a bobby at the time, and he was called out time and time again. He said all they ever found was a wee bit of soot here and there, and he suspected Mrs. Menzies of doing it herself, for they never found any sign that anyone else had been in the house.

  “She took to cleaning—I suspect the bulk of her pension went on bleach and detergent by the end. John said the place stank so much it stung the eyes if you stayed there too long. And she tore the place apart—stripping it down to the bare walls before rebuilding—which incidentally is why you’ve got all this new electrics and plumbing. Still she wasn’t satisfied. The police ignored her calls after a while, but they did send a doctor round, several times. He reported that the old woman was lucid enough, but suffering from several delusions, the main one of which concerned ‘ghosts and ghoulies’ smearing her house with soot when she wasn’t looking.”

  I must have reacted again, because Alan stopped and raised an eyebrow.

  “Are you sure you want to hear this? I don’t want to be the cause of any sleepless nights for you.”

  “I’m fine—but I need another beer.”

  I went back into the kitchen, more to calm my fraying nerves away from Alan than from any great need for the booze. When I returned with a beer for each of us, he was less keen to continue.

  “Look—I can stop there if you like? I meant it when I said it wasn’t anything you really needed to know.”

  “That’s just it,” I replied. “I think I do need to know—if only to dismiss it. Please—go on.”

  He took another long
chug of beer and continued.

  “For a while the situation seemed to have stabilized—everyone knew the old lady was a bit strange, but her constant cleaning seemed to have solved her main problem. And this is where I come into the story—about two years back.

  “We got a phone call, saying she wanted to put the place on the market. Dad sent me out to see her to get things started, and so began one of the strangest afternoons of my life.

  “The house was almost exactly as you see it now, with one exception—it did indeed stink of bleach, detergent and God alone knows what else. All the time I was there—which was several hours—she constantly moved around the room, a wee dance that looked almost ritualistic as she wiped and dusted everything, only to start again immediately after she finished. She looked tired, worn out, an old lady running on fumes and nervous energy.

  “I had a series of questions I needed to get answered, but it was tough getting a word in edgeways as she kept up a constant stream-of-consciousness chat. I kind of caught the gist as she went along—to cut a long story short, she felt that the spooks were getting stronger, and she feared for her safety if she stayed much longer.

  “She also wanted to know if she could have the crofter’s old cottage removed completely from the land—I told her it would be a selling point, at which juncture she started laughing uncontrollably and I couldn’t get her to stop.

  “I left her with a promise to get the ball rolling on a sale, and beat it the hell out of here.

  “She was dead two days later.”

  * * *