I thought I had a bloody good idea exactly what house the story was referring to. The book was dated 1922, but the story, set as it was in Jacobite times, took the tale back to the mid-eighteenth century. And it seems I’d been wrong about the markings on the flag—they had come after the rhythm was set, and were not the source of it. Whatever it was I had uncovered over the summer and early autumn, it was far older than I had previously thought.
However, it all seemed moot now—there had been no soot marks for weeks, and no more anonymous email correspondence. I left the book on the mantel to remind myself to return it to Alan’s father, and went back to my routine.
* * *
There was one more thing of note.
I developed a nervous habit. It started one early December morning out on the patio. I was feeding the sparrows when I caught myself drumming with the fingers of my left hand on the table. It took several seconds for me to realize it was the repeater beat. As my fingers moved, I saw the associated soot marks in my mind; no limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.
Realizing what I was doing, I stopped at the third repeat, but at intervals in the days following I noticed it happening more often, especially if I let my mind drift. It wasn’t too difficult to control, just bloody annoying, and I put it down to having spent so much time listening to the programmed beeps I’d set up on the laptop. To stop myself being tempted in the future, I deleted the program and burned my worksheet containing the grids. With a small degree of concentrating on what I was doing, I was also able to suppress the finger twitching completely, and I finally thought I was rid of the earlier compulsions that had gripped me.
* * *
In the second week of December I gave in to the growing chill in the house and started lighting a fire in the main grate. The stoat was not at all happy at me infringing on his domain when I went to fetch the first load of wood. He hissed at me angrily, but after that he seemed resigned to losing his perch and took to glaring at me from the dwindling pile each time I stocked up.
The sparrows weren’t at all happy that I was spending less and less time with the patio doors open. They took to tapping on the window with their beaks in attempts to get my attention, and I usually gave in to their demands when my fingers threatened to tap along in time.
Having the fire going in the main room meant that my gaze was often focused on the fireplace itself, and on the mantel in particular. I took to talking to Beth again, especially while painting and at times it felt like our conversations were guiding my brushstrokes. The abstract had become a dense, multilayered riot of color, predominately black and red but shot through with golden yellow and azure blue. I saw now it was not as abstract as I had thought, but was in fact a seascape, of sorts, but not of any view I had ever set eyes on.
3
On the Saturday before Christmas I took a taxi down to the Dunvegan Arms.
“You’re looking well, son,” was the first thing old George said as I joined the usual crowd in the snug. I ordered a round and it was only when I returned from the bar that I realized we had a new member of the Saturday Club—the local minister, Alexander Wark. I’d seen him around town, but never spoken. He’d always looked dour and forbidding, and was the last person I’d have expected to join the little group of drinkers I had come to call friends.
“Don’t mind auld Alex here,” George said, laughing. “He’s not about to give us a lecture on the perils of drink. He likes to come in around Christmas for his one night of drunken debauchery a year.”
The minister smiled and looked like a completely different man.
“Aye—on every other Saturday night I’m over at your place shagging your wife.”
Once again we were off and running for a night of jokes, stories and not a little verbal abuse. Alex Wark proved more than capable of giving as good as he got; he was also a font of scurrilous gossip that would have dismayed the ladies of the town had they heard it uttered, here in the local bar.
“And what about you, lad?” the minister asked, an hour or so and several beers into the evening. “How are the Spaniards treating you?”
You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone round the table went quiet, so much so that we could hear some of the local youths working up to a fight in the main bar.
Alex laughed and addressed the other men around the table.
“Come on, you mean you’ve let the lad live up in that house all this time and you haven’t told him its history? Shame on you. That’s no way to treat a pal.”
“We didn’t want to frighten him,” Sandy Johnston said.
“Didn’t want to frighten yourselves, you mean?” the minister replied. He turned to me.
“Get me a Talisker and I’ll tell you a story,” he said.
I didn’t need to be asked a second time.
* * *
“How much do you know about the house?” he asked. We’d taken ourselves off to one side. Old George launched into one of his stories as the others studiously ignored us, which was fine by me.
I told Wark what I thought I knew—about Mrs. Menzies, about old Tom dying in the cottage fire, and about the wee drummer boy.
He laughed.
“My, you have been busy—and all that without even talking to these reprobates here about it. And what haven’t you told me?” He put a hand out and covered my left fingers—they had started to twitch. “I’ve seen that before—Annie Menzies had the same affliction, not long before she passed.”
I wasn’t about to tell a man I’d only just met about the soot marks, or the messages on the laptop, or the beeps and rhythms of the message—that’s how I now thought of it; a message I was never able to decipher. He seemed to see some of it in my eyes though.
“The house is getting to you, isn’t it? You shouldn’t let it. They’re only stories—a strong man has nothing to fear from stories.”
“And what about a weak man?” I said softly.
He smiled.
“That’s what I’m here for,” he said. “Any time you need to talk, you know where the church is.”
“I’m not a believer.”
“It’s not compulsory,” he said, and laughed. “But you didn’t buy me a drink to get a sales pitch. You bought a story—another story.”
He took a sip of the Talisker before continuing.
“You’ve probably realized by now that your house is old—you’ve gone back in your stories to the time of the rebellion—but it’s older than that—much older. I suspect that some of the stonework might even go back to the earliest inhabited history of the island, several thousand years before Christ. Short of mounting a full-scale archaeological dig, the really early stuff is probably lost forever in the mists of time. But there is something I can tell you—the church has extensive records, as has the castle, and I pride myself on being something of a local historian. That’s how I know that there is a basis in truth in the name of the house. There was indeed a Spaniard—or rather, several of them.
“The aftermath of their defeat by Drake saw many armada vessels attempt to make their escape by heading up the east coast and through the Pentland Firth to try to lose themselves in the islands before making south to home. Most didn’t make it—the seas around northern Scotland are treacherous at the best of times, and that, combined with one of the worst storms in memory, meant that many Spaniards were dashed on Scotland’s rocky shores. Five of them, in a single lifeboat, ended up here.
“Their names are written in the parish records if you choose to look—there is no denying they were here. Just as there is no denying they were given your house to stay in and work the land. It’s written that it was a gift, of sorts, from the church—‘Ye dwelling and five acres that no honest man will touch, for it be blighted.’”
I stopped him there.
“Why weren’t they imprisoned? Weren’t we at war with Spain?”
The minister laughed.
“You might have been, but Scotland wasn�
�t. That was Elizabeth’s war, and she wasn’t all that popular in these parts. And before you ask, no, I don’t know what ‘blighted’ means—although there are plenty of acres of ground on the island that have proved too difficult to work for an honest man to make a living.
“As far as I can tell, they lived there for several years. There are no records of any of them taking a wife—although that does not mean there was no fraternizing with the local women, just that none of it was sanctioned by the church.
“And there is only one other thing I can tell you. Three years after they arrived, they were all dead and buried. Their stones are out at the back end of the churchyard. They’re faded and worn now, and scarcely legible, but if I have read them right, the men all died on the same date, and all have the same words inscribed beneath their names.
“‘Gone to meet their maker, marching to a different drum.’”
* * *
When I switched on the radio the next morning, I heard “Spanish Harlem,” quickly followed by “Spanish Eyes” and “Boots of Spanish Leather.”
It seemed the period of dormancy had been broken.
4
The conversation with the minister marked the start of a new phase in my relationship with the house, as if it had peeled back another layer of the onion and taken me one step closer to the center of the mystery.
My twitch grew more pronounced. I found myself drumming out the repeater rhythm on my desk, on the kitchen table, even going so far as typing to the beat when composing e-mails on my laptop.
No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.
The e-mails were to my friends down south, thanking them for the Christmas invitations, but turning them down with a vague promise to meet up in the coming year. It was a promise I had little intention of keeping, for the house had its hold on me—the house, and Beth.
Our conversations were getting longer—at least on my side of them. I’d stand at the easel, ostensibly busy painting, with nary a brushstroke made in an hour as I called back to mind a trip to her favorite pizza place, or a night spent by the riverside watching the lights of the city twinkle on the Thames. She didn’t reply, but I was coming to think I could hear a whisper, just at the edge of hearing, soft and sibilant, like her breathing in my ear.
I began to hear the beat everywhere—in the tapping of the sparrows on the windows, in the drumming of rain against the roof, in the lap of waves on the shore. At nights before sleeping, I’d listen to my heart pound in my ears and imagine it matching the rhythm my fingers drummed out on the sheets.
When Christmas Eve came round, I rang up Alan, intending to plead illness and cancel—I felt like I would be abandoning Beth. But he would hear none of it.
“Listen, I’m not taking the flak from my mother—she’ll have been slaving away in the kitchen all day today. And if you don’t turn up, she’ll just make me eat even more. It could get messy. There could be an explosion. We’ll see you at one. Don’t be late. Okay?”
Even then I almost didn’t leave the next morning—partly because of the house, and partly through embarrassment that I had totally failed to buy a present. In a moment of madness, I took the abstract painting off the easel, wrapped it up in some brown paper I had kept from the move, and took it with me across the island.
The wheel noise on the wet road surface kept time with my fingers drumming on the steering wheel.
No limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.
* * *
The family thanked me for the painting—Alan’s mum was most effusive about the gift, at least until it was unwrapped. Several things showed in their expressions when they saw the work—confusion mainly, and also just a hint of disgust. They were too polite to mention it but I had a feeling the fruits of my autumn spent painting was destined for the back of a cupboard never to be spoken of again.
Fortunately that was the only sour note in what turned out to be a Christmas as good as any I remembered from my childhood. Alan’s mum did us all proud with a feast fit for the chiefs of Dunvegan, while his dad kept our glasses topped up with fine local ales and some heady Australian wine. I was quite relaxed by the time we left the table, and even put up with a game of charades where I did not know half of the shows or personalities Alan’s parents played out.
Alan surprised me by taking to the piano and belting out some standards before leading us in carols that even I knew the words to sing along to. Then we did indeed have a snooze while a Bond movie played on the television, before heading out into a cold night for the shindig at the George Hotel.
The promised dance turned out to be more of a full-scale party to which it seemed everyone in town had been invited. Local lasses whirled Alan and I around the floor, songs were sung, games were played and everybody had a high old time.
Somewhere around midnight, I went outside for some air. I spotted the old woman and her son immediately. They stood in the corner of the car park, as if they had been there all along, waiting for me.
I walked, rather more unsteadily than I would have wished, towards them.
“You’re drunk,” the man said.
“Yes, and you’re ugly, but I’ll be sober in the morning.”
The ancient joke went completely over his head. The old woman didn’t seem too amused either. She stared into my eyes, then took my left hand in both of hers. My fingers twitched, seemingly eager to beat the rhythm. She dropped my hand as if she’d been burned.
“You’ve left it too late,” she said, her eyes sad. “Much too late.”
The man led her away.
“Hey, wait,” I shouted, but they seemed to scuttle off, like fleeing sparrows, leaving me alone in the corner of the square.
As I walked back towards the hotel entrance, it started to snow.
* * *
I woke the next morning—or more accurately, afternoon—to Alan banging about in his kitchen singing “White Christmas” at the top of his voice. I was vaguely aware that the party had gone on long into the night, and I remembered our footprints in fresh snow on the short walk from the hotel to Alan’s flat, but beyond that, most of the time after midnight was little more than a blur.
I remembered the old woman’s words well enough though.
“You’ve left it too late.”
“Breakfast?” Alan shouted.
“Just some toast and coffee—lots of coffee,” I replied, and groaned as I tried to get out of the sofa that had taken a death grip on my back and neck.
“I could make a full fry-up?” he said, but the thought of all that oily food made my stomach roil. I stumbled to the bathroom, had a shower and felt almost human again.
Three cups of coffee and some toast got the engine running, but it almost stalled when Alan suggested a hair of the dog.
“The George will be open,” he said. “Fancy a pint or three?”
Actually, I did, but I also knew that if I started, I wouldn’t get home that day, and the house had been calling me since I woke up.
“Maybe at the New Year,” I said. “I’ve got to get back.”
Alan pointed out the window. I noticed, for the first time, that it was still snowing—not heavy, but persistent.
“You might not make it—the council won’t be out today—it’s a holiday for them too—and the roads won’t have been gritted. It might be best to stay here a wee bit longer?”
“Stay and get pissed again? I’m not sure my liver would stand it.”
“Mum’s got a fridge full of leftovers too—we could take on plenty of ballast?”
I laughed.
“Don’t tempt me—but I need to get back. There’s some folks down south I need to talk to online—and I said I’d phone Beth’s parents.”
That little lie made me uncomfortable—Beth’s parents and I hadn’t spoken since the funeral, and we both liked the situation just fine—but Alan didn’t know that. He relented, and let me off with the promise that we
’d meet up at some point for the New Year festivities.
I went out into a snow-covered landscape.
* * *
Portree was eerily quiet, considering it was already two o’ clock in the afternoon. An old man walked a wheezing dog, and said something to me as he passed, but his accent was so broad I didn’t catch it, and I just muttered something in reply, hoping I hadn’t been rude.
As I got to the car park, I checked the far corner, half expecting the woman and her son to be standing there, watching me—but there was only a stretch of unbroken snow leading up the incline away from the town center.
I had to brush snow from the windshield, and my hands felt like blocks of ice by the time I finally got in and started the car up. At least it started on cue, although the wheels spun rather alarmingly as I pulled out, and I almost didn’t make it up the incline that led to the Edinbane and Dunvegan road, sliding left and right and struggling for traction all the way.
I was on the verge of turning back and throwing myself on Alan’s ample hospitality when I crested the hill and the snow thinned enough for the wheels to get a better grip. I was still doing little more than fifteen miles an hour, but at least I was making progress, so I pressed on.
I quickly regretted that decision. The snow fell harder, testing the limits of my wipers, and I crawled forward, peering into a white emptiness. There was no other traffic on the road—the locals weren’t that stupid, and I was starting to have thoughts of being stranded out here for the day, to be found, dead and frozen, once everyone else had stopped partying.
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