by Kirsty Ferry
That’s pretty weird, isn’t it? Surely it should be Fern I’m thinking about like that? But it’s not. It’s Nessa.
I cast a glance over in her direction and she’s looking around the place with interest.
Then she says: ‘Oh no. Wrong pub.’
‘Why is this the wrong pub?’ I ask. ‘It’s a very nice pub.’
‘Oh yes it is,’ replies Nessa, ‘but it’s not where Maggie’s skull is.’
Then my neurons fire; they must have dried out a bit to make that happen. ‘Ah! Yes, I remember that from the book,’ I say. ‘Where was it now? Let me check.’ I pull out my phone as I have Maggie’s e-book downloaded onto that as well. ‘The Saracen’s Head in Glasgow,’ I say a few moments later.
‘That’s the one,’ says Nessa. ‘I saw it in the book yesterday. It’s quite a long way from here, though, isn’t it? If it is her skull.’
‘Again,’ I say, shrugging, ‘who knows if it’s her or not. It’s a nice legend though.’
‘And if the pub is called The Saracen’s Head, who’s to say it’s not simply a Saracen? Maybe Maggie was a Saracen? It’s confusing. But Ewan, don’t let them put my skull on display, will you?’ she says. ‘Because when I die, that paparazzi guy will no doubt break into my coffin and display it on a spike. Fern will probably tip him off when I go and tell him where to find me. Maybe I should be cremated instead. Rather than being burnt at the stake. That would, work, wouldn't it?’
I think she’s probably only half joking. ‘Well whatever happens, they can’t find us today,’ I say. ‘They don’t know we’re here.’
‘Thank goodness for that!’ Nessa says and grins. She leans forward and I can see a spark of excitement in her eyes. ‘I’m looking forward to seeing these woods. Should be very atmospheric. It is almost Halloween after all.’
‘You’re sure you’re not going to be scared?’
‘Me?’ she replies and opens her eyes wide. ‘Why should I be scared? Agnes will look after me and fend the evil spirits off. And if she doesn’t, I’ll do it myself. Why, I’m half way through my book so I’m practically qualified. Ewan, do you think I could be a necromancer?’
I almost choke on my coke, and for the first time I’m a little unnerved by Nessa and her witchcraft. I think it has something to do with the fact her hair has dried all wild and curly, and the firelight is highlighting part of her face and leaving other bits in the dark, and the flames are flickering in her eyes and she’s looking straight at me and I can’t look away …
And my God, she’s gorgeous.
Is this how people get seduced by witches – they genuinely get bewitched?
Bloody hell.
‘Ewan?’ she says and I realise I’ve drifted off into some fantasy world where Nessa is dressed in a tight, corseted black dress with a split right up to the thigh revealing long, black boots, and she’s sitting provocatively on a broomstick and Schubert is a true witch’s familiar – a sleek, purring genius of the feline variety …
‘Ewan!’ she says again, more sharply. I blink and suddenly she’s just Nessa again. And a confused-looking waiter is hovering by the table.
‘Hunter’s chicken?’ he says. ‘And cod and chips?’
‘Me!’ we both say, raising our hands at the same time. Then we look at each other and we laugh and the waiter laughs with us and then he puts the food down and it’s all normal again.
But I’m still thinking about Nessa’s legs and that black dress …
Chapter Eleven
NESSA
Well my hunter’s chicken was divine. I think Ewan enjoyed his fish and chips as well, and I must say we were both very, very quiet when we were eating. And our food didn’t last long and that’s always an indication of good food.
He did take the LuaLua off before he ate, which I thought was quite well-mannered. Then he put it on again afterwards, which shows he has an excellent sense of humour.
Like I told him, it’s my treat, so I’m currently at the bar paying and wondering exactly how much longer I can stretch our trip out for. I know we’re off to Kincladie Woods now but somehow it’s not enough for me.
Does that make me a bad person?
But there’s not much else to do, once we’ve done the woods.
If only ...
I wish …
‘All right?’ Ewan’s voice is just next to my ear. I jump slightly and turn to see him bending down to murmur the question to me. For a moment I just stare at him, at his mouth and his eyes and I just enjoy being so close to him.
‘I don’t—’ I start, then I clamp my lips together. I want to say that I don’t want to go home, or I don’t want him to go back to Fern or I don’t want to just leave this magical day behind and have us still just “friends” at the end of it. But obviously I can’t say any of that. So I change it.
‘I don’t want Schubert to feel left out.’ I say. So I add a packet of prawn cocktail crisps to the bill, and tell Ewan that they’re Schubert’s favourite. Which is not a lie. It’s just not what I wanted to tell Ewan.
‘I’d have put him down as more of a cheese and onion guy, myself,’ says Ewan, looking at the crisps.
‘No, they make his breath smell,’ I tell Ewan, ‘so he’s not allowed them.’
I pick up the crisps and put my purse away and head towards the door. Ewan slips in front of me and opens it like a gentleman and then we both stop and stare.
It’s almost pitch black outside and those clouds we saw over the mountains have reached the village to make a thick fog which blankets everything.
I hadn’t realised we’d spent so much time in the pub.
‘Well now, Kincladie Woods are going to be fun in this!’ I say.
‘Yep,’ agrees Ewan. His voice sounds oddly muffled in the fog. ‘Come on – race you to Winnie.’ He sprints off and I falter a little, then sprint after him, shouting at him in the hope of putting him off. His laugh disappears into the fog and I run faster.
I hate running, I really do.
But it’s the principle of the thing.
And I have the keys. So ha ha, Ewan Grainger – even if you get there first, it isn’t going to help you!
EWAN
Nessa is not very good at running. She pitches up gasping and choking a few minutes after me and bends double next to Winnie.
‘You. Win,’ she coughs out. After a few minutes, she stands up. I realise that I’ve been rubbing her back as she recovers herself. It seems like the most natural thing in the world, but I take my hand away as soon as I realise that I’m doing it.
‘All right?’ I ask again and she nods.
‘I have the keys anyway,’ she says and produces them. They dangle from the end of her finger and then she flips them into her palm and unlocks the door.
A black ball of fur leaps out and jumps right into Nessa’s arms, closely followed by a purr that sounds like a chainsaw.
‘I know, I missed you too,’ she says and puts the cat down. We both climb into Winnie and it’s surprisingly warm and cosy in here, especially when Nessa clicks on the light. Not only do the normal lights come on, but so does a net of tiny stars which criss-cross the ceiling. The colours of the patchwork blankets she has over the seats, the strangely patterned hairy wool crocheted footstool cover and the contrasting cushions scattered around make the place look really welcoming and she’s also got a strange, mismatched collection of bright china in the lime-green wall cupboards. It looks a bit like a Jasper Conran/Habitat advert from the eighties. But it’s nice. I like it. I add the lei to the décor by hanging it on the corner of what I assume is a wardrobe – and I must admit that it does look good.
Nessa straightens up, having opened the crisps and scattered them on a blue and white willow pattern saucer, and smiles at me.
‘Winnie comes alive at night, doesn’t she?’ she asks, as if she knows what I’ve just been thinking. ‘The colours always look so much brighter, somehow. I don’t know if it’s the lightbulbs.’ She squints up at one and frowns. T
hen she shrugs her shoulders. ‘It might be. I always wanted a gypsy caravan you know. But I tried one once and me and the horse didn’t get on. I told Billy—’
‘—your brother?’
‘—my brother, that it wasn’t for me, so he took it back to the seller for me and made an excuse. I didn’t know you knew Billy. He’s a car salesman, but he always seems to know where to get good bargains in the transport world.’
It hardly seems worth suggesting she could have tried a different horse.
‘So I might just get a gypsy caravan and put it in the garden if I ever get a garden big enough. I’ll have to see,’ Nessa continues. ‘Oh, good boy, Schubert. You’ve eaten them all up. Okay – I think we’re ready to see Kincladie Woods now. Whoooooo!’ she makes fluttery motions with her hands as if to indicate a ghost. ‘Let’s see if we can scare Ewan.’ Then she winks at me and climbs into the driver’s seat.
‘Impossible,’ I tell her, climbing through to the front after her. ‘Oh – what about the lights?’ I half-turn to go back and switch them off, but she shakes her head. ‘No, it’s fine. Leave them on. If Schubert wants them off, he’ll do it. You see the kitchen unit?’
‘Yes?’ I say faintly.
‘He can climb on there and reach the switch with his paw. He’s done it before.’
We are about half a mile down the road, almost at the woods, when the lights in the back of Winnie go off. We are plunged into darkness and there is a soft sound and a ‘Mow wow,’ as if a substantially sized cat has landed on a hairy wool crocheted covered footstool.
Then there is the contented sigh as said cat snuggles into a mouse-shaped toy and then a quiet dragging as he pulls it closer to him.
NESSA
I don’t think Ewan realised Schubert could switch the light out. It’s one of the many things Schubert can do. He’s pretty clever for a cat, I must admit. I’ve never trained him as such, he just does things and works it all out for himself.
I just wish he wasn’t so opinionated at times.
Anyway, we’re just about approaching Kincladie Woods now, and it is very, very atmospheric.
‘Wow’, I say, as I pull Winnie up to yet another grass verge, just before we reach the wood properly. It seems to be a thick, dense grouping of awfully big trees. Kincladie Woods doesn’t look massively scary at this point, but when I checked the map earlier, I saw that it’s quite a substantial area so who knows what it’s like further in?
There’s a car tucked into the only space that’s really decent enough to fit a vehicle, just along the road by the woods. Then I see a little road leading to the left and it seems to run alongside the edge of Kincladie, so I turn Winnie up there instead. It’s that or the other verge and because it is so dark now, who’s to say there isn’t a ditch? Winnie can do many things, but clambering out of ditches is not one of them.
This is how I justify our trespassing to Ewan as he starts to protest, anyway.
‘There might be a ditch on the other side,’ I tell him, ‘so we’ll park along here.’
‘But it’s dark and this might be private land.’
‘And maybe it’s not private land,’ I tell him. I feel a little triumphant.
‘It’s much darker around here, don’t you think?’ Ewan asks me as I stop Winnie and kill the engine. Suddenly, we’re simply surrounded by silence and velvety blackness. The fog that was coming in before is hanging around here like an unwelcome relation at Christmas, and despite my bravado, I shiver, just a little.
I’m quite glad Ewan is with me, to be honest. There’s something strange here that I just can’t quite put my finger on. As if he agrees, Schubert creeps forward and paws my lap.
I lift him up and cuddle him. ‘So do you still fancy looking around the woods?’ I ask Ewan.
‘Yes,’ he says, ‘I definitely do. I think this will be a great setting for part of my book’.
I cast a sidelong glance at him under cover of snuggling into Schubert’s fur. ‘Yes,’ I reply, and my voice has an oddly hollow sound to it, loud in the complete stillness of the world outside. ‘I’m still not scared, you know,’ I say. And do you know what, it’s true; having thought about it, I’m not scared.
I’m just very, very interested to see what secrets this place feels fit to share with us tonight.
Chapter Twelve
EWAN
Nessa has chosen the perfect place to park Winnie up. There is no way anyone can find us here unless they are looking for us and let’s face it, that’s highly unlikely. Who would even expect two reprobates like Nessa and I to be poking around at the site of a seventeenth-century mass execution?
Because basically, that’s what it is.
‘Those ladies were probably innocent,’ Nessa says, her voice soft in the warm, dry confines of Winnie. ‘It’s very sad.’
‘Very true,’ I say. ‘Well. Shall we go and explore?’
‘Yes, let’s.’ She attempts to put Schubert down on the ground, but encounters some issues as he’s hooked his claws into her sweater. She eventually disentangles the beast and he glares at her and gives one of those ‘Mow wow’ comments that she swears is his way of communicating.
‘Now don’t be silly, Schubert,’ she says. ‘It’s perfectly safe.’
Schubert remains unimpressed and stalks to the back of Winnie with his tail in the air. Then he suddenly pauses and tilts his head to the side as if he’s listening to something. Then he stalks back to the door and just stands there, looking at it.
‘Schubert, out of the way.’
‘Mow wow,’ says Schubert.
‘Well, all right,’ says Nessa. ‘You can have ten minutes out there to stretch your legs as well. You haven’t had a lot of fresh air today, have you?’ She points her finger at him and wags it. ‘But you had your chance earlier, so you can’t complain, all right?’
‘Mow wow,’ says Schubert and again I look at him in confusion.
Nessa opens the door and the cat disappears into the night.
‘Our turn now,’ says Nessa. She steps out of the camper van without, it seems, a second thought, and I pull on my hooded jacket and follow her.
Kincladie Woods are the oddest place. I have been to many strange locations in my time, but this spot, on a foggy night near Halloween is indescribable – and a lack of coherent words is never good for an author.
Nessa and I walk towards a gap in the trees where the forest seems to swallow itself up in swampy, dark green gulps and we push through some shrubs. I want to reach out and take her hand to guide her through the place, but I shove my hands in my pockets instead. Her breath comes in sweet little puffs as she scrambles over some fallen logs and although I can’t see her too clearly, there is a reassuring warmth about the fact that soon she is walking along next to me again.
‘Did you bring a torch?’ she asks. ‘I don’t think the moon is going to get through this canopy very well, especially with the fog.’
‘I’ve got one on my phone,’ I tell her.
‘I’ve got one like that too,’ she says. ‘Do you think we should switch them on?’
‘Yes – but one at a time,’ I say. ‘They’ll drain the batteries and we can’t afford to lose all the light at once.’
‘There’s a torch in the van.’ Her voice is muted and I think that’s the combined effect of the fog and the trees. ‘I can go back and get it, if you like?’
‘ I think we’re fine for the moment.’
‘Okay,’ she says easily, and I can sense her shrugging her shoulders, rather than seeing her shrug them, ‘just let me know if you want me to. I can easily go back. It’s no bother. I can—’
Then there’s a God almighty yowl from somewhere way in front of us and a strangled ‘Mow wooooowwwwwww!’
‘Schubert!’ Nessa screams, and then she sprints way ahead of me, disappearing into the forest with a terrible crashing and snapping of twigs and branches.
‘Nessa!’ I yell – but it’s too late. She’s gone and all I can see is the blackness of
the forest and all I can hear is the sighing of the wind around me.
It’s like she’s never been here.
Chapter Thirteen
NESSA
If Schubert hasn’t killed himself, I will probably do it for him if that shout didn’t mean anything more than an owl flew too close to him. But I just can’t take the chance.
I don’t even know where I’m going through these woods. I’m just following what I hope is a path and luckily I’ve not fallen over and broken my ankle yet; which is usually what happens in horror movies when people are running through haunted forests near Halloween.
I don’t really have time to contemplate that too much. I don’t even think I have time to do anything more than just run and hope for the best.
‘Mow wow.’
I hear Schubert again, but there is altogether a different tone to his voice.
‘Mow wow,’ I hear. And then – good grief – is he bloody well purring?
I stop and take stock of where I am. I’m in the heart of the forest all right. I wrap my arms around myself and peer around me, quite blindly, because the darkness is so impenetrable here.
‘Mow wow.’ And it’s that complacent sounding noise he makes now, which means that wherever he is and whatever he’s doing, he’s happy about it.
‘Schubert?’ I say. I’m not speaking that loudly, but there is a weird echo to my voice, quite unlike there was anywhere else in this wood.
Then there is the snap of a twig just behind me and a cold draught whips around my ankles.
I whirl around and there’s an ominous droning coming from beyond the tree line: ‘Sin. Dex. Sin. Dex. Sin. Dex.’ The strange words are accompanied by a marching sound – the sound of a group of men heading purposefully my way.
But I can’t see anybody.
‘Sin. Dex. Sin Dex. Sin Dex.’
The sound is getting nearer and my heart begins to pound. I feel dizzy and sick. I feel as if someone has punched me in the stomach with an icy cold fist and I catch my breath on a scream.
‘Och, don’t you worry about those people,’ a cheerful voice says just behind me. ‘There was a Roman marching camp right here in the woods. I think it was something to do with Agricola in 83AD. Way before Hadrian and his wall.’ There is a heartfelt sigh. ‘Wasn’t the wall built to keep the Sassenachs out of Scotland? Or was it to keep the Picts out of England? Ah well. History is not my strong point. But yes, just ignore the boys. They’ll pass by in a wee moment. I think you are more interested in the witches, sweetheart. Am I right?’
