by Jane Davitt
Possession. It was something he’d heard about, something he feared, in a distant, won’t ever happen to me kind of way. Most of the ghosts he dealt with weren’t interested in anything but sharing whatever was holding them in place, tethered, bound, and asking for help. He didn’t know why the Lennox brothers were doing this, but he didn’t really care.
They had to stop.
“Get out of them,” he said, his voice as controlled as he could make it, addressing his words mostly to Josh. “I can help you; if you’re in their minds, you know who I am and what I can do, but you have to leave their bodies. You’re hurting them.”
He didn’t know what the effects of possession were, but he didn’t think sharing mind and body with an angry, centuries-old ghost was a good idea. Two wills couldn’t coexist, and if one was submerged in the other, was that reversible? God, he was lost here, consumed with concern for his brother and, if to a lesser degree, Fred and with guilt because some of this was his fault; if he hadn’t forced the spirits away…
There was no time to think it through. Bonnie was still glassy-eyed, leaning against the low wall bordering the grounds of Rossneath, but the other two were poised to leave. They grinned at him, feral, fierce, and began to walk away.
“No!” Nick went after them and grabbed Josh’s arm, calling out for John to help him, his voice lost in the roaring in his ears. It was like a nightmare where all his screams were silent. Josh’s head jerked around, and he snarled.
Nick turned his head, too, and saw John appear at the head of the driveway, too far away for his expression to be visible. Then pain, bright and hot, blossomed at the side of his head and when he put his hand to it, he brought it away wet with blood.
Fred grinned, dropped the stone he was holding, and he and Josh ran off toward the car, their bodies moving clumsily but still too fast for Nick to even contemplate chasing them, given that his knees were buckling, turning to water.
John was there, holding onto his arm and saying something urgent; it was hard for Nick to make himself think, but he did his best to convey what he needed to. “It’s the ghosts ‑‑ they’re in Fred and Josh. God, John…”
“Easy,” John said as he wobbled on his feet, getting an arm around him. “They’re off ‑‑ we won’t catch them now.”
“We have to.” Nick tried to get his body to cooperate, but only managed a few weaving steps in the direction Josh had gone before he almost fell again, saved only at the last second by John’s support. He watched, stunned, as the car Fred and Bonnie had arrived in started and drove away, kicking up a thick spew of dust and pebbles and swerving far enough off the road that it flattened a short hedge in the process. “I have to sit down,” he said weakly, and did, so suddenly that John couldn’t stop him.
“Nick. Love.” John’s hands were on his face, looking into his eyes. “He needs a doctor.” This last seemed to be directed at someone else.
“Here, I’ve a handkerchief,” Bonnie said, her own voice shaky, and a moment later, the soft cloth was being pressed to Nick’s head.
He hissed and tried to jerk away, but John steadied him. “No, let me. I’ll have to get him into the car.”
Finally finding his voice again, Nick said, “I’m okay. It just took me by surprise.” He looked up at Bonnie, who was standing above them. “What about you?”
She shuddered and rubbed her hands over her upper arms as if trying to warm herself. “I’m all right, now that he’s gone. I suppose you’re willing to admit now that the legend was true?”
Nick forced his mouth into a wry grin but didn’t try to nod. “Yeah. I wasn’t lying before ‑‑ I really couldn’t sense anything until that wall came down. It must have been one hell of a spell.”
“It felt like having…I don’t know, some sort of monster inside me.” Bonnie crouched down and caught Nick’s gaze in her own. “I think they’re after the ones that put them in that cave and let them drown. Well, after their grandchildren, at this point, I suppose, but I definitely…I felt it. Their anger.”
“Then we have to stop them,” Nick said.
“Easy said.” John rubbed the back of his hand over his mouth. “Back in the house,” he said decisively. “You’re going nowhere until you’re in dry clothes with something for that lump on your head. I’m thinking ice, some aspirin, and a dram of whisky.”
“Oh, you should never give people with head injuries alcohol!” Bonnie protested, which left Nick completely convinced that nothing of the ghost remained in her. “It’s not recommended at all.”
“Maybe not where you’re from,” John said, his arm around Nick, supporting him as they began to walk up the driveway. “Here, it’s the most important part of the treatment.”
Nick thought that Bonnie was too far away to hear John mutter, “You’d think even an English woman would have more sense than that,” but he was past caring. The side of his head was throbbing and he couldn’t make his feet move in anything but a slow plod toward the house when he wanted to run, race after Josh.
Inside, they left Bonnie with a glass of water at the kitchen table and went upstairs, just as slowly, so that Nick could change into dry clothes. Caitrin was still in the shower by the sound of it.
“We have to find him,” Nick said to John, who was kneeling on the floor putting dry socks on his feet so he could continue holding Bonnie’s handkerchief to his head.
“We will,” John said shortly, finishing the job. “There. How’s your head?”
“Hurts.”
“I’m not surprised. Well, let’s get you back downstairs and find some ice.”
He was sitting at the kitchen table with a makeshift icepack held to his head when Caitrin came downstairs, having changed into a pair of John’s jeans ‑‑ they were too big, and held up with a belt ‑‑ and a wool sweater that’d had an unfortunate accident in the laundry and become two sizes smaller. She stopped in the doorway, frowning. “Where’s Josh?”
John cleared his throat and glanced at Nick. “Well, now, that’s a bit of a long story.”
“One of the ghosts is borrowing his body for a while.” Nick looked at John and lifted one shoulder in a half shrug of apology. “Not so long.”
“What do you mean, ‘borrowed’?” Caitrin asked.
“Possessed,” John said. As her expression changed, he quickly reassured her. “It’ll be all right.”
She gave him an incredulous look. “Did you hit your head as well as Uncle Nick?”
“Don’t be so cheeky,” John admonished her, but it sounded automatic. He sighed. “It will be all right, love. We’ll see to that. Nick will talk to the ghosts, get them to see reason, and help them move on. It’s what he does.”
“Oh, this is crazy,” Caitrin cried out. Bonnie shifted uneasily in her chair, the glass of water she’d been given barely touched. Caitrin rounded on her. “And you! What con are you trying to pull?”
“I ‑‑ I assure you ‑‑” Bonnie began.
“Caitrin,” Nick said, interrupting Bonnie, who was looking distressed, her face showing what he guessed was a rare expression of confusion and indecision. “The lady’s been through what Josh is going through now. She’s got information that can help us and a friend of her own who’s in danger, so back off, will you?”
Caitrin flounced ‑‑ there really was no other word for it ‑‑ to a chair and thumped down in it, glaring around at all of them before slow tears began to trickle down her face. John walked over to her and stood beside her, his hand gentle as he stroked her hair. “There now,” he murmured. “You cry, hen.”
She wiped her face and jerked her head away from his hand. “I’m not crying. I’m angry.”
“My mistake,” John said, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “The tears confused me.”
“They’re angry,” Bonnie said. “I don’t understand what they want to do this for, though. I mean; they’re dead.” She looked at Nick appealingly. “They are, aren’t they? They can’t ‑‑ they can’t stay here?”
“They were confused, at first.” Bonnie was looking down at the table. “He was. He didn’t like me because I’m a woman.”
Nick shifted the icepack and winced. “What else did you get? Anything?”
She shook her head. “It was all…I don’t know.”
“You’re trying to tell us that thing was in your head ‑‑ in you ‑‑ and you don’t know anything more than it was ‘confused’?” Caitrin’s cheeks were flushed. “You must know something!”
“It was…” Bonnie closed her eyes as if she could remember better that way. “He was angry. So angry. And…I think, afraid. Underneath it. But mostly angry. He wanted ‑‑” She opened her eyes and met Nick’s. “I think he wants to find the people who did this to him. The ones who were responsible.” She’d said that before.
“Long dead,” Nick said briefly. “So they’ll target their families.” He glanced at John. “Who were the main people responsible for leaving the brothers in that cave? It wouldn’t have been the whole village; there are always ringleaders.”
John’s forehead wrinkled in a frown. “I don’t know,” he said doubtfully. “The priest, aye, and maybe whoever was important back then; the richest farmer, the man who owned the most land… the teacher of the local school. The story doesn’t really say.”
“Oh, yes, it does,” Bonnie said, sitting straighter and looking invigorated by the chance to put someone right. “I brought along a small selection of books concerned with the folklore and history of the islands, and the Lennox brothers are mentioned in several of them.”
“Is that so?” John said. “And what do these books say?”
“Probably no more than you already know,” she told him, “but one of them lists the people who died, supposedly because of the ghosts’ revenge, and I’d say that would make a good starting point?”
“If they killed them then, why would they want to kill their ancestors now?” Caitrin asked.
“Maybe they didn’t get them all before the binding spell trapped them?” Nick shrugged. “This is all guesswork.”
“Did they mention who organized the spell and who did it?” John asked Bonnie. “Stands to reason the people most in fear were the guilty ones and I imagine they’d have a grudge against the witch, too.”
Bonnie pursed her lips. “I think so, but I only skimmed that story. We’re here for the stones and that was just something that caught my interest.” She flushed. “It was a long drive up here,” she confided. “And Fred isn’t ‑‑ well, he can be just a little tedious at times, sweet though he is. If I’m reading, he doesn’t talk to me.”
“So you buried your nose in a book all the way up from England?” John said dryly. “Well, forget the stones; the rest of your group can prance around them all they want; we need you to get us those names.”
She looked torn. “I want to help, of course I do, but… shouldn’t we report this? Tell someone?”
Make it into someone else’s problem, Nick translated. “Who do you suggest we tell?” he asked bluntly. “Until they do something illegal ‑‑ and I guess it might not be long until they do, but still ‑‑ the constable can’t do anything, even if he wanted to. Which I doubt he would.”
Nick glanced at John for confirmation. Lewis Armstrong was the man who put the fear of the law into Traighshee’s citizens, when it was necessary, which wasn’t all that often. Lewis would be the first to admit that he didn’t believe in what he couldn’t see, an admission that lessened his favor in the eyes of the church but meant that the young people on the island looked up to him. “He’d think we’d all had a bit too much to drink,” John agreed, nodding.
“He might not believe us, but he might watch them if we said something had happened.” Caitrin bit her lip, thinking. “What if we said they’d taken drugs? By mistake, like. We could say Josh brought them with him from America, and that they’d got into some food by accident?”
“You haven’t flown internationally, have you,” Nick said wryly. “I don’t think he’d have gotten through the airport with them, let alone onto a plane.”
“We deal with this ourselves,” John said, his tone making it plain that it wasn’t up for debate. “And by ‘we’ I mean Nick with me helping him.” He looked down at Caitrin, his expression as stern as Nick had ever seen it; John was usually indulgence itself with his niece. “You’re going to argue with me, and we don’t have time, so I’ll give you something to do. We’ll all get in the car and go to this lady’s ‑‑”
“Please. Call me Bonnie,” she said. “I feel as if we’re past the point of being formal, don’t you?”
“We go to wherever Bonnie’s staying,” John continued.
“The Fraser Arms Hotel,” she said. “We all are.”
“Fine. We go there, and you and Caitrin find this book and get a list of possible targets. You can call us when you have it.”
“And what will you be doing?” Caitrin asked suspiciously. “Because I want to help Josh, Uncle John, and I’ll not be put somewhere safe like a baby!”
“We’ll look for the car; the island’s not that big, after all, and we know they won’t be trying to leave it. We’ll start in town, maybe go out to where the Lennox cottage was ‑‑”
“Or the graveyard,” Nick put in. “They could be drawn there.”
John nodded. “Aye, they might. We’ll see them as we drive by if they are.” He looked at Nick, his eyes warm with concern. “Are you up for this? You’re awful pale, love.”
“I’m okay,” Nick said. He had to be ‑‑ there wasn’t anyone else who could do what he could, and for all he knew, the longer that ghost was in possession of Josh’s body, the harder it would be to get him out. He hated to think what Josh might be going through right now.
“Let’s go.”
It took them another ten minutes to get organized, what with three of them needing dry shoes. “We can’t chance stopping at my house,” Caitrin said. “My mam’s shopping on Mull today, but my dad might be there. He’ll want to know what’s happening, and I don’t want to lie to him.” She made do with a pair of old boots that had been tucked in the back of one of the cupboards since the house had become Nick’s ‑‑ they were probably twenty-five years old, but things had been made more sturdily back then, and they were only half a size too big.
John drove them all down to the hotel, where Bonnie and Caitrin were dropped off, and left strict instructions that they were to call if they found anything or if they saw Josh or Fred. Then he and Nick drove slowly through town, keeping an eagle eye out for Fred’s car and finally spotting it parked not too far from the pub.
And, if Nick wasn’t mistaken, there were Fred and Josh ‑‑ Blayne and Toran now ‑‑ disappearing into said pub. “There,” he said. “God, I hope all they want is a drink.”
“It’s been a long time since their last one, right enough,” John said. Off Nick’s look, he added, “Blayne and Toran, I mean.”
“True.”
“But I’m thinking they’re hunting,” John said, his fingers drumming against the steering wheel. “And not for a pint of ale.” He pulled up beside Fred’s car. “We should maybe do something so that they can’t drive away.”
“Like what? Shoot out the tires?” Nick got out of the car, fighting dizziness. He leaned against the car until John came around and slipped a hand under his arm and together they walked over to the pub. “Like you said; where are they going to go? And to be honest, I’d sooner they did drive away from the town; there’s a limit to what we can do in public.”
“Good point.”
Inside, the pub was its usual busy self, with the TV set above the bar showing a soccer match and the click of cue against ball coming from the pool table. Blayne and Tor
an were at the bar, already sipping at pints of lager, studying the room with a predatory, focused stare. Nick noticed that no one stood close to them; even Todd, the younger barman who pulled pints on Geordie’s nights off, had retreated to the far end of the bar, his face troubled as he slowly polished a glass with a towel.
Slowly, Nick and John walked toward them. When they were about six feet away, Nick stopped, gesturing at John not to get any nearer. “Josh.”
Toran shook his head; his eyes were so dark that even without everything else, Nick would have known something was wrong. “Not anymore.” He looked at Blayne. “I’d have thought he’d get the hint that he was better off well away from us.”
“Aye, Toran.” Blayne took another sip from his pint glass and shook his head sadly. “I remember a time when a man had the sense to avoid trouble.”
“Ah, but that was also a time when men knew better than to bed other men,” Toran said. “Back in our day, they would have been run off the island, not let to live amongst decent folk.”
Hearing those words come from Josh’s mouth, even though the voice didn’t sound much like his, was harder than Nick would have anticipated. It took everything he had not to let the hurt show on his face. “Things change,” he said.
Blayne smirked over the rim of his glass. “Aye, we know. And a good deal more is about to.”
“Oh, aye?” John settled himself into what Nick privately thought of as his fighting stance, even though it had been a long time now since John had gotten into an argument that turned physical. His hands were curled slightly, almost making fists, his weight was balanced evenly, and there was a spark of anger in his eyes. “For you two, maybe. Murdering bastards, the pair of you. You deserved all you got and it was a cleaner death than I’d have given you.”
Toran moved so quickly that Nick didn’t even have time to blink ‑‑ he grabbed onto John, turned him around, and shoved him up against the bar, snarling in his face. “We didn’t murder anyone,” he hissed. “We were innocent. They were the murderers, the ones that tied us up in that cave and left us to drown.”
