No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.
* * *
Alan fitted right in at the Dunvegan Arms, being well-known to most of the locals.
“Where’s your dad?” old George asked. “The auld bugger owes me a fiver.”
“Can I pay you in dancing girls?” Alan replied, and George laughed.
“That reminds me of a time in Frisco back in sixty-five when…”
And away we went, on a night of stories and booze, more stories and more booze. The band started up at nine, but I didn’t go home, although the noise did drive me out into the street for some respite after half an hour or so. Old George came out and joined me, lighting up a smoke.
“Are you okay, son?” he asked.
That was the second time today I’d been asked that—maybe I wasn’t doing as well as I thought—or maybe I’d just spent too long over the pictograms.
“Just been working on some stuff,” I replied.
The old man took a long draw of smoke before replying.
“You need to get out and about among people more often,” he said. “It doesn’t do to lock yourself away—especially after losing your wife. Trust me son, I know. I’ve been there myself.”
I could see it in his eyes—the same grief that had eaten away at me for the two years after Beth passed. But I wasn’t grieving now—hadn’t been for some time. How could I explain that to an old man who obviously only wanted to help? The simple answer is that I couldn’t. I muttered something about getting down to the pub more often, he finished his smoke and clapped me on the back as we went inside. And that was the end of his attempt to buck up my ideas. Perhaps I really should have listened to him.
The night rolled on—Alan proved himself a trouper during an extended karaoke session that saw him doing fine impressions of Elton John, Elvis and Mick Jagger, and I drank more Scotch than was good for me before we were finally bundled into the taxi somewhere around one o’ clock.
I was in bed and asleep, fully clothed, by quarter past.
* * *
I woke, disoriented in the dark, wondering why I was still dressed and on top of the covers, then more worried that my head might fall off as the effects of the booze made themselves felt. My bladder called for release and I managed to get up—half rolling off the bed to stagger to the bathroom. I only put on the small light above the mirror so as not to disturb Alan who lay sprawled on the couch snoring like thunder. After flushing, I turned to the washbasin—just in time to see a black streak form on the mirror, appearing from nowhere.
“Beth,” I whispered. “Is that you?”
A dot was added above the original line, as if to punctuate my question.
“Beth?”
Another single stroke added a left leg to the figure.
“For pity’s sake—tell me what I should do.”
There was no further answer. I stood and stared at the figure for several seconds, then my brain remembered I was still drunk and drove me, staggering and bumping into furniture, back to my room, where I tried and failed to get my trousers off and fell back onto the bed.
The rest is darkness.
* * *
When I finally surfaced, thin sunlight was coming in the window. I heard the toilet flush, then Alan opening and closing cupboards in the kitchen area as the kettle began to whistle. I dragged myself out to meet the day.
I felt moderately better after a shower, and by the time we went out onto the patio with some toast and coffee I was almost human.
“I cleaned the bathroom mirror,” Alan said, giving me a jolt.
“Shit—I forgot about that.”
I went back inside to my desk and added the latest stick figure to my grid. Alan stood at the French doors looking at me.
“I saw that earlier too. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Not really,” I replied, and went back out to the patio.
“Wee black lines and crosses? Come on, I’m not stupid. This is Mrs. Menzies all over again—only you’ve got it conflated somehow with the auld flag and the fairies. This isn’t healthy.”
I sat and looked over the view—my view. There was no sign of the stoat, or the sparrows, and suddenly all I wanted was solitude, quiet, and more time to study the pictographs.
“It’s all I’ve got, Alan,” I said softly. “I came here because I was in need—I didn’t know what I needed. But I do now. This place is good for me.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“Just promise me you’ll call if it gets too much for you—or even if you just fancy a beer. You should come over to Portree—see the bright lights and the big city.”
I managed a laugh.
“What—the chippie and the George Hotel bar again?”
He didn’t rise to the bait—that’s when I knew he was serious.
“I don’t want to have to try to sell this place again,” he said. “Look where it got me the last time—drunk and hungover on a strange man’s couch on a Sunday morning.”
“Hey, I’m not a strange man.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion.”
I thought we’d steered the conversation away from the pictograms, but I was wrong.
“I’ll tell you my theory about the wee scribbles—if you’re interested?” he said.
“Oh, I’m interested all right. I’ve been trying to find a starting point for weeks now. I’ll fetch more coffee and you can fill me in.”
When I came back with a fresh pot, he had the page with my grid layout in his hand.
“I used to know a drummer, back at uni,” he said, and tapped the paper. “And when he was practicing, he worked from sheets that looked remarkably similar to this. I think what you have here isn’t a code—or rather, it is, but not in words. It’s some kind of rhythm.”
It was another moment of epiphany.
“And a flag that was being carried into battle might have a drumbeat imprinted on it—one that could easily be seen, and followed?”
I took the sheet of paper from him and ran a finger along the repeater line.
No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.
“But we still don’t know what the individual figures indicate. Long beats, short beats, double beats—it could be anything. And we don’t know why they’re turning up here, in the house.”
Alan looked like he might say something in reply, but took a long sip of coffee and looked at me over the top of the cup, as if assessing my mental health.
“I never said it was a good theory,” he finally replied.
“No, but I think you’re on to something—I’ll look into it later.”
“Hey, I don’t want to be blamed for sending you off the rails completely,” he said. “Promise me you’ll take it easy.”
I scarcely heard him—I was already studying the pictograms, looking for a key to unlock the rhythm.
* * *
I was still at it when Alan left ten minutes later.
“Remember—you promised,” he said as he left.
Actually I had done no such thing, and within minutes of the SUV driving off down the track I was back at it.
For the rest of the morning I sat out on the patio, drinking too much coffee, my head pounding in a rhythm of its own. The chill did a lot to help the hangover pass, and I was cheered when the stoat felt comfortable enough to sneak out and watch me from the woodpile. The sparrows returned soon after that, and made short work of the remains of the toast. When a seal barked just offshore, I felt quiet seep into me; I relaxed for the first time since getting up.
A colder wind came with the turning of the tide, finally driving me indoors in early afternoon.
I had new e-mail. Most of the text was garbled as before, but at the very bottom was a string of numbers, and I knew immediately what they meant.
1,1,2,2,3,5,9,2
I’d been given the rhythm signature of the repeater line.
; No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.
It wasn’t enough for me to decode all the pictograms—not yet. But it gave me a start.
I spent the rest of that day writing code. I reproduced the pictograms in my grid into beeps at the appropriate rhythm, filling in the missing beats with best guesses where I could in a cyclical loop that would play through all possible permutations. It didn’t take me long. I left it to play softly in the background as I continued to work on decoding the parts where I’d had to improvise.
I soon got used to the beeping—indeed it was almost soothing. I found it so calming that I left it on in the main room when I went to bed; the beeps played a lullaby as I drifted off into darkness where Beth waited for me, smiling.
11
I spent ten minutes looking for the soot mark in the morning. There wasn’t one—but I had more e-mail. At the foot of a garbled text message was an eight-by-thirty grid of numbers, the repeater showing up every six lines or so, with all the numbers I had only guessed at filled in.
I had my complete message. I just didn’t quite know what to do with it.
I coded the grid into the program I’d written the day before and set it to play in the background on the laptop. The beat accompanied me all day, most of which was spent sitting either on the patio, or on the sofa, in anticipation of an outcome.
There was none forthcoming—not that day, or the next, although yet again there was no smudge mark in the morning. I felt vaguely disappointed, as if I’d been handed a message and told to pass it on with being given any idea what it contained—and without any thanks.
I developed a slight obsession with checking my inbox, hoping for another clue, something to tell me things were still moving on towards some kind of a conclusion. Apart from a couple of invitations to Christmas parties in London, I got nothing.
I kept playing the rhythmic beeps for the rest of the week but got no reply. There was no recurrence of the soot marks, no more e-mail. On the next Saturday I switched off the laptop when I went to the pub. There was no soot mark on Sunday, so I left it off.
It seemed my foray into the twilight zone was over before it had really begun.
PART 2: DOORWAY
1
I settled back into a new routine—I redecorated my bedroom ceiling, got the root cellar filled in with stones and gravel from the shore, painted in the mornings and watched movies at night. On Saturdays I got a taxi down and back to the Dunvegan Arms. My coffee ritual changed from sitting out on the patio to standing by the open door; the stoat still kept an eye on me, and three sparrows were well fed through the rest of October and into November.
There were no more soot marks, no more garbled e-mails—and part of me felt like I had lost Beth all over again. I drank more than I should, both down at the pub and in the comfort of my own home, and I often switched on the rhythmic beeps on the laptop, just in case.
In mid-November I braved the elements, drove across the island and took Alan up on his offer of a night out in Portree. We had a great time, although I’m afraid to say it got hazy later on in the evening. I do remember joining him on karaoke for a very drunken rendition of some Rolling Stones songs, but beyond that the night is mostly an alcohol-induced blur.
The hangover was equally epic on the Sunday morning.
“What are you doing for Christmas?” Alan asked over coffee in his flat overlooking the old harbor.
“Sobering up,” I replied, and groaned as he pushed a plate laden with fried eggs, bacon, sausages, baked beans and toast in front of me.
“Breakfast of champions,” he said. “Get it down you.”
“I thought that was sex?” I replied.
“This is better for you,” he said, and took to his own breakfast with gusto. Once I started eating, I was surprised to find myself enjoying the meal, even despite the hangover.
We polished the food off in short order.
“So, Christmas?” he asked again. “Any plans?”
“I’ve got a couple of invitations to go back down south…” I started before he waved me to quiet.
“And miss your first island festivities? Oh no. That won’t do. That won’t do at all. You can come round to Mum and Dad’s place in the afternoon—she’ll do us all proud, we can eat and drink until we’re pished and stuffed, and fall asleep in front of a Bond movie. Then in the evening, there’s a dance in the George. It’s always a great do—if we’re lucky, we might even get a fight. Come on—you’ll love it.”
In truth I really wasn’t keen on traveling the length of the country before and after the holiday season, and seeing old friends would only remind me of being with them when Beth was around. A new experience, with new friends, sounded like the perfect tonic.
“Okay, you’ve twisted my arm.”
“Excellent. I’ll go and kill a boar for roasting. Let the feasting begin.”
We had another coffee after breakfast, sitting out on the quayside on the harbor before I declared myself sober enough to drive home.
“Hold on, I nearly forgot,” Alan said, and dashed back indoors. He came out and handed me a small book. It looked to be a children’s issue, and of some age judging by the faded and torn cover. The title was clear enough—Folk Tales of the Isles.
“I was telling Dad about your wee crosses and squiggles,” he said. “And when I mentioned my drummer pal, he remembered this. You want page fifty-four.”
I flipped to the required page. The story was titled “The Dunvegan Drummer Boy.” Suddenly I’d have given anything to be back in London, with Beth and old pals, sinking a few glasses of wine and with nothing more to worry about than which restaurant to visit that evening.
Alan must have seen something in my eyes.
“Give it back,” he said. “It was a bad idea. Sorry.”
I pulled the book away from him.
“No, you’re okay. I’ll take it. It’s just a bit of a shock, that’s all—I thought I was finished with all that stuff.”
“Until daft me brings it all up again. Look, it’s just a kids’ story—and Dad says it’s the only time he’s ever heard of it, so it’s not as if it’s common knowledge or anything. It means nothing.”
“Then it’s okay if I read it, isn’t it” I replied, managing a smile.
“Your superior logic defeats me again, Spock,” he said, and gave me a smile in return.
“Remember, you’re booked for Christmas,” he said as I got into my car.
It was a glorious drive back across the island—clear blue skies, white horses in the bays and a touch of frost on the hilltops. I saw little of it. The book lay on the passenger seat beside me, and it called out to be read all the way back to the cottage.
2
The area around Dunvegan on Skye has long been known as one of the most haunted places in the islands, if not in the whole country.
Thanks for telling me.
That was the first line of the story, and it didn’t get much more reassuring after that. I was sitting out on the patio—I had two wooly jumpers on, and my thick socks, and still I felt cold, but I was more comfortable reading this particular tale out in the open.
There are so many stories to be told it is hard to pick just one, but perhaps the strangest of all is the tale of the Drummer Boy of the MacLeods.
Donald’s family were fisher folk, making a living off the bounty of Loch Dunvegan from a house of the eastern shore to the north of the castle, but Donald’s eye was always being drawn to the castle itself, to the soldiers, and to fortune and glory. In his head he was a drummer boy, and he beat out martial rhythms on all available surfaces in the house, driving his mother to distraction by holding mock battles with plates, cutlery and anything else that came to hand as he led his army in the fray.
When the call came for the clans to join Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion, the chief called for all available men to join him. Donald’s father was one of the first men to declare allegiance, but Donald w
as to be left to look after his mother and sisters. The boy would have none of it.
At the banquet before sailing, he sneaked in to the great hall with his bodhran in hand and even as the chief addressed the men, started up his beat. Donald’s father was furious, and would have had the boy beaten to within an inch of his life, but even as he tried to snatch the drum from the boy, a cry went up in the crowd.
To a man they turned. The old flag was fluttering above them, although there was no breeze in the hall. And as they watched, strange markings appeared on the aged silk—black crosses and lines that coincided with the beats of Donald’s wee drum.
The chief took this to be an omen.
“Where did the boy learn to do such a thing?” he asked.
Donald’s father could not reply—and the boy himself did not say, although he smiled, somewhat sadly, even as the chief declared that he would be the one to lead the men in the coming battles.
The very next day they went off to war. There is no need to tell here of the bloody failure of the rebellion, although it is said that Donald never flinched from his duty through the long campaign, even when called to lead the final doomed march onto the field of Culloden.
It is said that Donald’s mother knew the exact moment when the boy fell, so far away on the highland moor, for a drum beat out a rhythm that shook the whole house. Donald’s father returned weeks later and they put the boy’s body to final rest.
They buried the bodhran with him, and folks around Dunvegan swear that to this day, on quiet nights the boy can still be heard in and around the house, beating the drum and calling his army to battle.
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