Take Me Home

by Daniela Sacerdoti

  Alex: Is this for real?

  Me: Afraid so.

  Alex: So this is the gift you told me about, the gift Lewis couldn’t accept?

  Me: It was, yes.

  A pause. I could see he was typing, but nothing was coming through, as if he were writing then deleting message after message.

  I’d done it. I’d told him about the Sight. The enormity of it was making my heart pound in my chest, in a mixture of terror and relief . . .

  Finally, I saw that he was calling me on Skype. But why? He knew I couldn’t speak. I took the call, and seeing his face on the screen made my heart skip a beat. There he was: Alex. My Alex. His black hair was standing up in tufts, in a sweet end-of-the-working-day kind of way. He was wearing a shirt, opened at the collar. In the background, I could see the familiar scene of his living room – the fireplace, the photographs of his nieces and nephews on the mantelpiece . . . My gaze went back to him, and as our eyes met, he smiled. Alex had this thing, that when he smiled his eyes wrinkled up and he looked so young, like a happy child. I wanted to smile back, but I was too anxious.

  “Hello,” he said, and I waved. Suddenly I remembered that he could see me too, and my hands went to my hair, self-consciously. I probably looked like something a cat had dragged through a bush.

  “You look lovely,” he said, and the hint of a smile finally curled my lips. “I have something to tell you.”

  I nodded. I couldn’t do much else.

  He lifted up a piece of paper, with a few words scribbled on it in red Pantone: You’re even more amazing than I thought.

  Hope soared out of me like a balloon floating to the sky.

  I clasped my hands over my mouth. He believed me. He understood. He didn’t think I was Satan’s daughter or mentally ill and hallucinating.

  A pang of longing swept through me.

  I missed him so much.

  I loved him.

  Oh, God.

  That was the first time ever that I’d admitted, even to myself, that my feelings for Alex weren’t as clear-cut as I always pretended them to be. Which was probably something everyone knew, but me. I’d pushed him away because of my fear of getting hurt, but I was stronger now. Maybe I would be given another chance. Was it too late?

  I hastily looked for my notebook and wrote: I can’t wait to tell you everything! About this one ghost, Mary . . . and about all that’s been happening. I lifted the notebook up against the webcam.

  “I can’t wait to hear it. Anyway, I suppose it makes sense, for us to be friends . . . with all we’ve been through.”

  What? How could we be friends? I love you, I wanted to say, but it just seemed impossible to write down something like that. I nodded, waiting with bated breath for what would come next . . .

  “I don’t want to lose you, Inary. I mean, with me seeing Sharon and all that . . .”

  Oh. My stomach sank all the way into my ankles. I felt sick with disappointment.

  Yes, I wrote simply, and lifted the notebook up.

  “Great,” he said, and my heart broke. “Now tell me all about Mary . . .”

  Email, I wrote. He nodded and we both switched Skype off.

  Instantly, I felt the tears that had been gathering behind my eyes start to spill. I’d tried so hard while we were talking to keep them in because I hadn’t wanted him to see me crying.

  I told him everything, about what happened that day on the loch, thirteen years before, about Mary, about my research. I was so relieved at his reaction, so touched that he should believe me, and understand me . . . but I sobbed throughout.

  We were to be friends.

  Maybe he loved her.

  I’d had my answer, then. Like I’d feared, it was too late.

  38

  To see her face

  Inary

  A few days later, Taylor and I embarked on our journey to Ramsay Hall. It was as magnificent as a castle, albeit small, and its grounds were lush and green and dotted with deer. The long gravelled driveway took us to grand stony steps and a door that was twice the size of the front door of our cottage.

  “Come in, come on in,” Torcuil said in his quiet way. “Mrs Gordon is off today and I just couldn’t quite work the heating . . . I’m usually okay with it, but this time I seemed to have jammed it . . .”

  “Maybe I can have a look?” said Taylor.

  “Sure, that’d be great. I’m Torcuil, by the way,” he said, and shook Taylor’s hand. “Come this way . . . So I hear you’re writing a book?”

  I nodded, but he was walking ahead and didn’t see me. He turned around and gazed at me. “So, you’re writing a book . . .” he repeated, thinking I hadn’t heard. “Oh, gosh, sorry! Taylor told me on the phone you couldn’t speak! So sorry. I’m mortified. It must be the cold going to my head,” he said, perfectly serious. I had to laugh. With his enormous blue eyes covered by round glasses, he looked a bit like an owl blinking in daylight. He led us through an endless succession of rooms and corridors and down two flights of stairs until we came to some sort of basement. I stood next to Torcuil as he showed Taylor the boiler. It was gigantic and it looked positively ancient.

  “It’s here. What Mrs Gordon . . . my housekeeper. . . usually does is she bangs it twice here, and once here and it always works. But it doesn’t seem to work as consistently with me. It sort of recognises its master. Or its mistress, I should say.”

  “Right, twice here and once here?” said Taylor, unfazed by it all and, as ever, keen to help. “Okay, here we go!” He slammed the boiler three times, and the thing started emitting a long, sinister wail. The wail dissolved and turned into a buzz, and then a low, reassuring hum.

  I smiled and turned towards Torcuil, who’d been standing at my side – except it wasn’t Torcuil. It was someone else entirely. A man whose pale, smiling face was just a few inches from mine.

  I screamed with all my might and jumped back, but the shadow was gone already.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You okay?” Taylor and Torcuil were both beside me. Right then I realised that my arms and legs were tingling, and that the humming in my ears had been hidden by the wail of the boiler.

  The man began to dissolve in front of my eyes, but my heart showed no sign of slowing down. Sometimes it happened, with the Sight. You saw things you’d rather not see, especially in ancient places like Ramsay Hall.

  I smiled a brittle smile and made a gesture with my fingers on Torcuil’s arms, to signify a spider.

  “Oh, yes, there’s a few of them down here. Sorry.”

  As we walked back upstairs, I saw Taylor gazing at me sideways. I wondered if some aspects of my behaviour puzzled him.

  We sat in the hall, a splendid room with wooden floors and huge windows that opened onto the lawns. I’d always loved Ramsay Hall, since I was a child and I’d come to play here with Torcuil and his sister, Sheila. From the window I could see the tree house we used to play in, and it brought a smile to my face.

  “Another life, huh?” said Torcuil, following my gaze. “Happy memories. Except I had a tendency to fall off the tree. I broke my nose there. Twice. You probably remember because the second time I fell on you . . .”

  I laughed. I remembered.

  “Anyway, this is the stuff I dug up . . . Mary Gibson used to work here. My great-grandmother, Lady Edwina, employed her as a maid. She’s in a few pictures . . . look,” he said, and handed me a thick, leather-covered photograph album. “She must have been about twenty when this was taken. Not long before she married Alan.”

  I smiled in recognition. Yes, that was her, my Mary. The dark hair in a bun crowned by a braid – the slender, small frame, her tiny, feminine hands. Finally I could see her face better: the sweetheart shape of her forehead, her eyes, so full of life that they seemed to shine, even if the picture was in black and white. The corners of her mouth were curling up – she was trying to look solemn as the picture was being taken, but not quite managing. She was arm in arm with another girl, slightly taller
and plumper than her, with fair hair and a look of calm about her – Leah. I recognised her from my vision, but I couldn’t tell Torcuil, of course.

  “From what I know, Mary and Alan struggled quite a lot. Alan came back from the war badly wounded and couldn’t work for a long time. My great-gran gave her a job here on the estate, and Lady Kilpatrick helped them a lot too.”

  Lady Kilpatrick?

  “Anna Kilpatrick.”

  Of course! Anna, Robert’s fiancée, was Lady Kilpatrick! Did she not know about what had happened between Mary and Robert? She must have. But she’d helped her anyway. I thought of her beautiful face, and how graceful, how dignified she looked. She stood out in a crowd – and still, it was Mary that Robert had loved. But not the one he chose.

  Only then did I realise that a photograph had slipped out of the album, somehow, and was lying on the floor.

  I picked it up. It was a child – a girl, wearing a white dress and buttoned boots. Her long black hair was in braids, white ribbons tied in bows at each end. Everything twirled around me. All of a sudden I could hear a low noise, like water lapping on a shore in the distance.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  It was the girl I’d seen in my visions.

  It was the girl in the loch.

  “Are you okay, Inary?” asked Torcuil, but his voice came to me from far away.

  I nodded.

  “You sure? You look a bit green.”

  I’m fine, I wrote. Do you know who this girl is?

  Torcuil took the photograph from my hand, and severing the link with it so suddenly made me slightly nauseous. “I think it’s Mary’s sister. I don’t have pictures of them together, I don’t think . . . She vanished, not long before Mary’s wedding. Poor wee thing.”

  Mary’s sister and the girl in the loch were the same person.

  Mary’s sister had drowned – find her, she’d implored. The two sisters were pleading to be reunited. So that was why she and her mother were crying, the day they came into my house.

  Do you know her name?

  “I’m not sure . . . But I can have a look through the papers and pictures and see if I can find out.”

  The girl in the loch was the person they’d never see again.

  Thank you. Can I borrow this album? I’ll be careful with it, I promise.

  “Of course. And I can’t wait to read your book . . .”

  I nodded again, looking down.

  “Is there a bathroom here?” asked Taylor.

  “Yes. Six of them. The closest is the blue door on the landing . . . you know, where we went down to the basement.”

  “Six bathrooms? Do you use them all?”

  Torcuil laughed. “One for me, one for the guests, the others are perfect to keep books in.”

  Taylor disappeared in the maze to look for the blue door – I was surprised that Torcuil hadn’t offered to show him where it was, but as soon as Taylor had gone, I found out why.

  “So, Inary. What did you see down there? In the basement?”

  I felt the blood drain from my face.

  What do you mean?

  He smiled. “We used to play together, Inary, remember? I’ve known for a long time. About you having the Sight. I have McCrimmon blood too . . .”

  I looked down. I’d been taken aback, I didn’t know how to discuss this with anyone. I liked Torcuil, but apart from at Emily’s funeral I hadn’t seen him in ages and I wasn’t sure I could trust him.

  “I’m not going to ask you any more questions, Inary. And don’t worry, I won’t discuss this with anyone.”

  I nodded.

  “Hey, I’m back,” said Taylor cheerfully, striding back into the hall. “I ended up in a room full of severed heads, but it’s all good.”

  “Oh yes, the other blue door. That’s the trophy room.”

  “Cool. This place must be full of ghosts. Have you thought of installing infrared cameras?”

  “They’d just catch me roaming the place looking for a bowl of Weetabix,” Torcuil laughed, and his eyes met mine.

  I wasn’t so sure of that.

  *

  I sat the photograph album on my desk. I was painfully aware of the picture of the girl in it, as if it’d been pulsating quietly between the pages and in my mind. I felt it there. I wrote a long email to Alex telling him what happened, how I’d found out who the girl in the loch was.

  From Alex.McIlvenny@hotmail.co.uk

  To Inary@gmail.com

  This is amazing. So do you think that’s why she’s come to you? And the guy in your cousin’s basement . . . Your life is like an episode of Most Haunted.

  From Inary@gmail.com

  To Alex.McIlvenny@hotmail.co.uk

  I never knew you watched Most Haunted . . .

  From Alex.McIlvenny@hotmail.co.uk

  To Inary@gmail.com

  Oh yeah. It’s my guilty pleasure. Love it when they go into hysterics. And tell me, was the delectable Taylor with you as you made your discovery?

  I smiled in triumph. We were to be just friends, but he was still jealous.

  From Inary@gmail.com

  To Alex.McIlvenny@hotmail.co.uk

  He was, yes. He’s a nice guy, but completely not my type.

  From Alex.McIlvenny@hotmail.co.uk

  To Inary@gmail.com

  Well, I suppose none of my business. Inary, I was thinking, all this story . . . Mary’s story . . . Maybe you should put it all on paper, don’t you think? With Cassandra gone . . . Just a thought. I have to go.

  Speak soon,

  Alex x

  I sighed. All the stories had gone out of me. I hadn’t tried to write in weeks – there was no point. I was touched, though. Alex had always been so supportive of my writing. The thing was, I felt so drained and empty that writing seemed impossible, like climbing Ben Cruachan barefoot.

  *

  That night I had the first nightmare: black water closing over me, and then floating with no breath in my lungs, my heart still. Long, lonely years at the bottom of the loch. I woke up gasping for air, and when I fell asleep again, it started once more. Drowning, slowly, painfully; water closing over my head; my lungs filling up, my heart stopping – and then silence. And again, and again. Sometimes I could catch a glimpse of my white dress, my childlike hands, my small feet clad in buttoned-up boots, my black braids. I was her. The girl in the loch. Mary’s lost sister.

  She was so small, and so frightened. Calling for help, but nobody came.

  Little did I know that those nightmares would torment me for a long time . . . Every night I’d pray it’d be the last night she’d come to me, I’d pray that it would be Emily to come to me instead, but it never was.

  39

  Little girl lost

  Inary

  Logan’s shop was getting busier and busier as the weather got warmer, and hillwalkers from down south and from the cities started flocking in. Every once in a while, Logan disappeared. Hillwalking, apparently. Often I heard him talking on the phone at night. I was worried, but the thing was, he looked pretty cheerful. I caught him one night in the living room, watching TV with a glass in his hand. Nothing strange about that – he’d always had a glass in his hand since Emily died. But that night it was a glass of orange juice, and I’d noticed quite a few cartons of it in the fridge . . .

  So there I was, in the Welly, trying to concentrate, but my head was floating somewhere else. I kept forgetting what I was doing and staring into space instead.

  Three nights now. Three nights of drowning nightmares. I was worn out. It was as if seeing the girl’s face had unlocked some line of communication between us; the dreams of water had become stronger, and even more distressing. And relentless.

  She was talking to me, she was telling me what had happened to her, showing it to me, making me feel every moment of her terrible fate. She was giving me her memories, the memories of her death and of her ghostly existence. The girl in the loch was an elemental force, with all the intensity of a child abandoned
. She was draining the life from me. I dreaded falling asleep in case she came – and she always did. She would not let me be.

  “Hey! Hello!” Eilidh had just come in with Maisie.

  “What can I help you with?” Logan appeared from the stock room.

  “This girl needs a new bike helmet. She lost hers.”

  “Right. Shall we try on a few?” said Logan with a smile. He was just back from one of his expeditions and in a strangely chirpy mood. Maisie went with him happily – she loved my brother, like a lot of children did. There was something warm, something unmistakably kind under his abruptness, and children seemed to pick up on it better than adults. I often thought he’d make a great dad, one day.

  “Inary . . .” Eilidh called me to one side. “Listen. I saw Lewis. You know, Lewis McLelland.”

  I swallowed and nodded. I didn’t need the second name. I knew which Lewis she was talking about.

  “He asked me for your mobile number . . . I didn’t give it to him, of course. But just to let you know, he’s looking for you. He says he needs to speak to you.”

  I felt ill. Just what I needed.

  Eilidh and Maisie were sent on their way with a new helmet, and I was left in even more of a daze than before.

  “Wake up, Inary . . .” Logan called to me gently.

  Sorry, I mouthed.

  “Go home, come on,” said Logan.

  I shook my head and eagerly started refolding some tartan scarves.

  “It’s not that busy. On you go home. Honestly.”

  As I walked out of the shop, I briefly turned around to wave goodbye and I saw Logan looking at me. He had a worried expression on his face, and I felt vaguely guilty for giving him even more worry than he already had, with my voice not returning and all that. Still, if I’d told him about the girl in the loch and the real reason why I fell in the water when I’d gone out on Taylor’s boat, he would have been even more worried. And if I told him about Lewis looking for me, I knew that it’d be Logan looking for Lewis next. And probably not just for a chat.