Part of her was telling her to sit her ass down and pry open a bottle of wine and wait for them to find her. She’d left the kitchen door propped open, they’d figure it out soon enough. But she also knew it was only about ten o’clock when she’d started her little adventure and there was no way in hell she was going to stay down here all night and God knew how long into the morning.
It was so dark her eyes couldn’t adjust. She couldn’t even see her hand in front of her face and felt desolate tears about to start. Even though it was a horrible option, she decided she better wait it out, and leaned against the wall in defeated misery.
The wall! She could just follow the wall all the way around until she came to the staircase again. Dear lord, she was really an idiot. Even if the room was as big as she feared it was, she’d get around it soon enough.
Taking a cleansing breath, Evelyn began shuffling forward with one hand against the wall and the other hand holding the wine bottle out in front of her. It was slow going, and every once in awhile she’d come to a barrel or crate that was against the wall and she’d have to carefully pick her away around, scared the room was oddly shaped and she’d lose the wall altogether.
After what seemed like hours, her outstretched wine bottle knocked into something wooden. She’d never been so happy to come across a door in her life. Throwing it open revealed nothing but more darkness so she felt around inside the opening to discover a staircase. She knew it wasn’t her original staircase, because that one hadn’t had a door at the bottom, these stairs were stone and the passage seemed narrower. Not entirely convinced it was a good idea to take an alternate route out, the prospect of getting above ground again was too enticing for her to pass up. The stairs went up, that was good enough for now.
The stone steps were worn down and slippery, some of them steeper than others, and some were crumbly in places, causing little landslides under her feet. Neither wall turned up a bannister or any kind of hand holds, just smooth dusty stone.
Sadly, she abandoned her wine bottle so she could use both hands to make the treacherous climb in the pitch dark. It seemed like she climbed for at least a half an hour before she saw the faintest sliver of light ahead of her. Breathless with relief, she forced herself not to hurry so she wouldn’t go sliding to her death now that the end was in sight. If the door up ahead was locked she didn’t know what she would do. The thought of trying to get back down was almost too much for her.
Fortunately, when she made it to the landing, the door slid open with ease and only the slightest of creaks. The long hallway she was now in was gloriously lined with windows, and the light of the moon was like a blazing beacon after all the time she’d just spent in the dark.
She stumbled down the hallway, only to realize she wasn’t back on the ground floor. The scary deathtrap staircase must have been longer than the one she’d gone down, or she must have missed a landing somewhere in the gloom. It wasn’t the floor with her bedroom either. She went to a window and pried it open to look out, getting a rush of vertigo as she did. The ivy covered wall plummeted straight down, and she counted four rows of windows below her.
“How did I get from the cellar to the fifth floor?” she said out loud, completely discombobulated.
And besides that, she seemed to be in some side wing now, when she’d clearly started in the center of the house. Off to her left she saw a round tower that went even higher than where she was, to her right and below she saw the main part of the monolithic structure and a fancy courtyard. She had no clue if she was facing the front or the back of the place.
Well, I am so totally screwed right now, she thought.
The light of the moon didn’t seem all that bright anymore and the surroundings were downright gloomy, threatening to upgrade to spooky if she so much as heard a creak or a scuttle. The hallway floor under her slippered feet was worn and scratched up wood, meagerly covered with a threadbare runner.
She remembered Piper’s warnings of rot and felt scared to take another step, remembering how far above the ground she was. If she broke through the floorboards would she actually plummet to her death, or would she just get caught in the splinters and break a few bones? She closed her eyes and wished she was back in her bedroom downstairs, actually her bedroom in Texas.
“Get a grip, dummy,” she whispered, and opened her eyes.
The hallway was lined with plain wooden doors. Surely one of these rooms would have a candle or an oil lamp or a torch. A flashlight seemed completely out of realistic range of things to wish for.
Trying to be as light on her feet as possible and keeping close to the wall, she started jiggling door handles. The first two were locked tight, the third opened to a completely empty room with a very sinister chandelier hanging from the ceiling and the fourth was so packed with crates and covered furniture she couldn’t open the door all the way.
“Of course,” she muttered angrily when a rubdown of the walls didn’t turn up any switches.
The window in this room didn’t have any hangings but was half blocked by stacked boxes, the obscured light source throwing shadows everywhere. She took three steps in and was positive she saw one of the sheet covered objects in the room move, and decided she’d make do without a lamp, her skin crawling with terror.
Back in the hallway she felt foolish and giggled nervously, deciding to head in what she thought was the direction of the middle of the house. Every creak of the wood planks beneath her feet caused her heart to leap. According to what she’d seen when she looked at the outside of the house, she should be right above the courtyard area. Ostensibly, there should have been a staircase, or at the very least the hallway should have continued further. Instead she was faced with a dead end.
“I’m going to die up here,” she said to the stone wall in front of her.
She’d have to backtrack to a point in the hallway where there were still windows and try to get her bearings again. Feeling defeated, she turned around and started back the way she’d come, trying to stay close to the cob webby wood paneled wall without actually touching it. Tapping the wall, she stopped in her tracks and turned back around to take another look.
The hall on either side of her was dusty wood, but the end of the hallway was made of stone. It seemed odd and off-putting and way too Edgar Allan Poe for her tastes. Whirling on her heel she charged away from it, straight down the center of the hall, rotten wood be damned. She was going to get back to the civilised part of this monstrous haunted house if it killed her. Her nerves were so frayed she was about to break into a run when she heard a distinct grinding sound behind her, and felt the floor shudder slightly under her feet.
Immediately she got to the side of the hall, pressing herself against the grimy wood, certain the entire floor was collapsing. The end to the perfect night.
The nearest room was a few feet behind her and she decided to try to get back to it, praying it was unlocked and that the floor in there was more stable. She inched her way around and nearly expired on the spot.
Standing in the middle of the hall, not ten feet from her, was a massive, brawny wildman in a kilt and tattered shirt, his raven black hair in a knotty tumble around his shoulders, a look of absolute death on his face.
The stone wall behind him was no longer a stone wall, but an open passageway leading into a dark expanse. Evelyn blinked but he did not go away. He held an axe loosely at his side, his arm muscles tightening as he gripped the handle. Was he thinking about using the axe?
I’m dreaming, she thought, feeling an intense sense of relief. I fell asleep while reading Highlander’s Embrace and now I’m dreaming about that lusty rogue, Gavin Mctavish. He’s awfully grimy, though, and is that a blood stain on his shirt? Is he going to wrap me in his arms and sweep me off to ecstasy in that secret passageway?
The giant took a step forward and growled something she didn’t understand. He paused and repeated himself and she stood there dumbfounded, waiting to wake up. He was certainly tall and muscular, but why did
he look so angry? Gavin Mctavish was supposed to be a warrior with a gentle heart. This … he looked like he very possibly had no heart.
He took two more steps forward and Evelyn knew she couldn’t fool herself anymore. She was awake and had to be facing none other than some murdered Highlander’s ghost. Some poor soul who’d been killed in this house, and buried behind a stone wall, never to find peace.
She opened her mouth and screamed the scream of someone who really, really didn’t want to be where she was. The great, terrible apparition stopped in his tracks and she thought maybe she could make it go away with more screaming.
He dropped the axe and held up his hands in a placating gesture. She stopped screaming. His murderous scowl was replaced with possible confusion or annoyance.
Evelyn was hugging herself and hyperventilating, wondering if she should start shouting out Latin words to try to release its soul or send it back to hell or wherever a ghost went when it wasn’t scaring the bejesus out of lost houseguests. He was shaking his head and saying something again in his low rumbling voice, something she couldn’t understand at all.
She drew in a deep breath for another scream, and seeing that she was about to do so, the ghost closed the gap and grabbed her by the shoulders. The scream heaved out of her like a train whistle.
He was real, not a ghost. An actual living, giant, kilted man. His hands were rough and warm, living human man hands, and he winced when she screamed.
She wrenched away from him, which was quite easy since he wasn’t actually holding onto her, and whirled around to get away from him, knowing it was fruitless, and bounced off of Sam, who appeared from behind one of the wooden doors.
She screamed again, then flung her arms around him in relief. He patted her on the back and disentangled himself from her grip, then walked up to the blood-stained Highlander as calmly as if he were the cashier at the corner store.
She noticed with some chagrin that the door Sam had come through was a staircase, and a well lit one at that. If only she’d tried all the doors. Forgetting about her stupidity, she turned back to watch Sam speaking to the man, pointing at her with an apologetic look on his face and then patting the man on the arm before returning to her.
“Come on,” he said, gripping her arm above the elbow and leading her into the stairwell.
They had to exit it at the bottom and walk down another hallway before they got to another stairwell, this one open to the floor below. He was walking fast and the look on his face didn’t invite any conversation. A little more twisting and maneuvering and they were back on the floor with their bedrooms. He stopped in the middle of the hallway and wiped his hand over his face.
“Who was— ” She started.
“Nope.” He shook his head and then took her arm again and led her in the opposite direction of her own room, stopping outside a door that was decorated with a pretty sprig of dried flowers.
He rapped on it twice and opened the door, pulling her in with him.
Piper sat up in the middle of another huge four poster bed, surrounded by mountains of pillows and blankets. She shook herself awake and scrambled to the edge of the bed.
“What happened?” she asked, looking first to Sam, then to Evelyn. She slumped a little amidst her bedclothes.
“She saw him,” Sam said.
Piper wiped her hand over her face in the same gesture of defeat Sam had used, then nodded.
“Let me get dressed. Evelyn, you better get dressed, too. Bundle up, we’ll have to go outside.”
She slid her legs over the side of the bed, her feet dangling almost a foot off the ground.
“Library?” Sam asked, and she nodded.
“What is going on?” Evelyn demanded, starting to feel angry.
They were treating her like a wayward child, when she’d been lost for hours and scared half to death by whatever had been upstairs. Did Pper have some embarrassing crazy uncle that lived in the belfry? They both gave her a glare. Sam shook his head and left the room.
Piper sighed. “Just go get changed, okay Evelyn? Meet me downstairs. We’ll tell you everything.”
Chapter 6
Piper had told her to bundle up because they’d be going outside, and now that she’d felt firsthand that the weather forecast had indeed been telling the truth, she looked at her flimsy cardigans and felt pretty stupid. Still stung by the way Piper was treating her, she shrugged and put on her jeans, two tee shirts and the sweater she’d worn in the car on the drive from the airport.
Not feeling entirely sure about her ability to navigate the simple trip back down to the library, she hung around in the hallway near her room until Sam came slamming out of his.
Barely hiding a scowl, he let her catch up with him, then sighed and motioned for her to go before him on the stairs.
“You’re even a gentleman when you’re mad,” she commented. “That’s nice to know.”
He rolled his eyes but didn’t answer. When they got to the library, he held the door open for her with a sarcastic flourish. He sat down in an armchair near the fireplace, then resolutely ignored her.
Evelyn decided to let him stew and went to the desk. It was covered in books and papers, some of them so old they were actually on parchment. There was an odd assortment of books, a whole stack of books on physics, one on the history of Scottish witches, an ancient bible that was open to the back, showing rows and rows of names and dates written in tiny script, and several that were old and faded but looked like they were accounts of the landlords and tenants of the estate. Flipping one of these to its front page she saw the date 1873 written in a large showy hand.
Piper came into the room and leaned against the door, dressed in a long hunter green wool coat and shiny black riding boots. A cream beret with a rather alarmingly large red and yellow pom pom sat jauntily atop her head. If Evelyn hadn’t been so worn out and traumatized from the night’s events she would have definitely said something.
“Why did you go upstairs?” Piper asked, crossing her arms in front of her.
Evelyn’s eyes almost popped out of her head she was so shocked at this cross examination.
“I didn’t do it on purpose,” she said, instantly realizing how nonsensical she sounded. “I went to the kitchen and there was a little door—”
“What did I say about secret passages?”
Was Piper actually tapping her booted toe?
“It was a door, Piper, it wasn’t secret at all. It went to the wine cellar.”
Piper looked to Sam. “There’s a wine cellar?”
He shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t know, I guess there is.”
“There is,” Evelyn said. “I had a really old bottle I was going to show you, but I had to put it down to scale the death stairs.”
“Stop, Evelyn. What?” Piper rubbed her eye.
Evelyn felt guilty for not letting her get a full night’s sleep, but she couldn’t have possibly known how bad a turn things would take. And maybe if they had warned her about the psycho in the attic she would have stayed firmly in her room.
“I dropped my candle because, well, because I did, and then it was pitch black in the wine cellar,” Evelyn tried to explain. “It’s huge down there, and it’s not very well organized, so when the light went out I panicked and followed the wall around until I came to the stairs.”
She was finally starting to get a mild look of pity from Piper. Sam still looked stony.
“They weren’t the stairs I came down on, they must have been on the other side of the room, but I was scared and starting to get claustrophobic and I just wanted to get back above ground.” She smiled bravely at Piper, who nodded encouragingly. “That’s it. The stairway went on forever. I was practically crawling up the thing. You have to remember it was dark, so if there was another landing I never felt it.”
“Then you met Lachan,” Sam said.
Evelyn briefly considered telling them she had thought he was a ghost, but they both looked so utterly despondent she cou
ldn’t do it.
“Who is he? He’s, well, he seems so authentic.”
Piper made a choking sound and hurried over to her desk to sit.
“He’s authentic all right,” she said, placing her hands on the desk in front of her and looking nervously at Evelyn. “You better sit down.”
“Oh, hell no, Piper. You just tell me. I can not take this much longer. My nerves are frayed here.”
While she was on this tirade, Sam picked up one of the straight-backed chairs and placed it behind her. He gently laid his hand on her shoulder and began to exert pressure. She glared at him but sat in the damn chair.
“The man upstairs is Lachlan Ferguson,” Piper said and then pressed her lips together in a tight line.
“The crazy guy who thinks he’s a Highland battle god?”
Sam sighed loudly and with impatience. “He’s not crazy,” he said, staring hard at Piper. “Do you just want me to tell her?”
“He’s from the past,” Piper blurted and then laughed nervously. “I don’t know what happened but he came from the past. The seventeen hundreds, Evie. We’ve been trying to figure it out.”
She waved her hand at the pile of books on the desk.
“I’m going back to bed,” Evelyn said.
She stood up, daring Sam with one of her most authoritative looks to try and stop her .
“It’s true,” Piper said. She looked frantically from Evelyn to Sam. “We have to show you something out back, okay? Just come with us and let me explain from the beginning.”
“Fine.”
They trudged through the house, exiting into the ornamental courtyard Evelyn had seen from the window upstairs. Piper threw a switch and flood lights blazed above them. As they passed, tiny motion sensor garden lights flickered to life along a path leading away from the house.
Lost Highlander Page 4
