The Mysteries

by Lisa Tuttle

  Along with the maps I'd stored my notebooks and travel diaries from those days, jottings that described my impressions of psychic and emotional atmospheres as well as physical descriptions of the spots I visited. I hadn't looked through them in years—frankly, I'd almost forgotten about them—and as I got them out I felt a tingle of the old excitement and felt absurdly pleased with myself for having kept this careful record. This would really cut down on the time needed for research; I'd be able to read my impressions of the area where Peri had last been seen, probably pinpoint the very hill or stone circle that was the local entrance to the Otherworld in a matter of minutes.

  My smug pride quickly evaporated as I realized I was wrong. Although I thought I'd been “everywhere,” there were spots I'd missed on my leisurely grand tour, and the twenty- or thirty-mile radius around the public phone box where Peri had briefly materialized was one of them.

  For its size, Scotland still has relatively few roads, and much of the west coast consists of long, skinny tendrils of land projecting out to sea, served by a single, narrow road that connects to nothing. At first, I was determined to drive down every obscure byway, but as the months wore on—and particularly in the short cold days of lashing rain—I gave that goal up as impractical. Even though there was a ruined castle that might have tempted me down to the end of the winding road where Peri had last been seen, something else—probably snow or hail—had countered that temptation. I'd decided that particular side track didn't fit in with my schedule, was too far out of the way, didn't offer enough of interest.

  I cursed my younger self, although it had probably been a sensible decision at the time. The more closely I'd explored this country, the more it expanded, like some magical box, bigger inside than out. A whole lifetime would not be enough to investigate every nook and cranny of this island.

  At least, although I hadn't seen much of North Knapdale, I had the Ordnance Survey map, and a copy of that useful little pamphlet, Place names on maps of Scotland and Wales, to help me make sense of it. I needed it, because almost nothing in that part of Scotland—apart from “caravan site” and a few cottages owned by in-comers from the south—was labeled in English.

  The first name to catch my attention as I pored over the map was Cnoc na Faire, but a quick check told me that “faire” had nothing to do with fairies. It meant “watching,” and in connection with “Cnoc” (“a round hill”) translated as something like “Look-Out Hill.” I couldn't see anything with sidh, sidhean, or sith in the name to indicate the traditional connection with the Good Neighbors, but there were several ancient sites within walking distance of the caravan park—three duns, a ruined chapel, and several cairns, as well as an indication that there were caves along the rocky shoreline. People had lived along this coast for many centuries, and I was sure there must be places they'd told stories about, woodland with a reputation for being uncanny, heaps of stones once sacred to a now-forgotten god, a magic well, a cave where someone had been seen to go in but never to emerge again . . .

  I spent hours, long into the evening, moving from a close study of the map to the dustiest books in my library, searching out old collections of folklore as well as more contemporary surveys with titles like Mysterious Britain and Haunted Scotland. Few gave any mention to Knapdale—which didn't feature much in the more ordinary guidebooks, either—and when they did, the reference was always to something located on another shore, or across the loch, twenty or thirty miles or more from where Peri had been seen.

  Finally, in a book about the remains of prehistoric Scotland, I found a description of Dun a'Chaisteal, the Iron Age “Fortress of the Castle” and precursor to Castle Sween (which overlooked the contemporary caravan park). It was described as “associated, traditionally, with the mythical Celtic heroine, Deirdre of the Sorrows, who fled from Ireland to this part of Scotland with her lover, Naoise McUisneach.”

  Deirdre and Naoise were both humans, entirely mortal, unlike Etain and Mider, yet the reference to this ancient love story gave me hope, for it seemed possible that a story about one pair of lovers might well be hidden or disguised by another.

  Then I found this:

  Dun a'Bhuilg, or Dunvulaig, The Fortress of the Quiver (or, perhaps, the Fortress of the Bag), the crumbling remains of another Iron Age Fort, was at one time avoided by locals, who believed it a dwelling place of the Daoine Sidhe, fairies, who could be seen on moonlit summer nights silently plying their delicate, eggshell boats with translucent green sails, in Kilmory Bay below.

  With a deep sigh of satisfaction I carefully marked the book and laid it to one side with the map and my notes. All of a sudden, I was ravenously hungry. The pot of coffee was long gone, and that skinny little steak at lunch might have been consumed in another lifetime.

  I went down the road to get a hamburger. I name no names, but one of the major American franchises had an outlet on the corner opposite the underground station, and although I'd been known to fulminate against globalization and the evils of standardized, mass-produced fast foods, not to mention the litter problem, there were times when all I wanted was the opportunity for quick, anonymous, no-hassle refueling.

  I went out into the light, balmy evening. The air smelled, not unpleasantly, of garbage and traffic and humanity, that summer-in-the-city smell. There were lots of people around, strolling along by themselves, or hanging around in clusters outside the closed shops, or queuing for take-aways at the kebab shop, the pizza place, the Chinese. Although it was late, it still wasn't completely dark. For no reason at all except the season, my mood was suddenly one of ridiculous optimism. Except for those years in Texas, where it was already far too hot in June, and you knew it would only get worse, midsummer has always been my favorite time of the year. Maybe it's because it was when I was born, but it has always felt special; a time out of normal time, without regimented schedules, when day and night blend together seamlessly, and anything is possible.

  Halloween was a dark and dangerous night, when spirits of the dead roamed the earth, but midsummer's eve was the haunt of a different type of spirit; it was for lovers. All at once I felt convinced that we were going to find Peri and that Hugh was the one to bring her back.

  With the warm and comforting weight of food in my belly, the taste still in my mouth, I hurried home, impatient to talk to Hugh and convince him he could win back his long-lost love.

  As soon as I got in I saw, as if in response to my thoughts, the winking light on my answering machine. One call, in the brief half hour I'd been out. But when I pressed the replay button there was only the faint hissing sound of the tape winding on before the buzz of the dial tone when the caller hung up. Hugh didn't seem like someone who'd do that, but I was reluctant to give up my belief that it was he, so I called him straight back.

  Once again, I got his voice mail and left my details: “I really need to talk to you. Call me as soon as you get this. Anytime, on my mobile.”

  I added that, because I only had one landline, and if I had to keep that free for his call, I wouldn't be able to use the Internet. It was long past time that I upgraded, I knew. At the very least, I could have a separate business line. I'd considered it before, but somehow I never seemed to be in a position to expand and take on more expenses, even the most minor ones. Over the past few years, everything had gone up except my income. And now that Laura had fired me, my search for Peri had become something else to put down under personal expenses rather than possible income. Even worse, as long as I was looking for her, I wasn't going to be able to do anything else that might bring in some money.

  Oh well, it looked like I was going to be running up a little more debt on my credit card. A straightforward loan would be cheaper, but what would I put down as the purpose of the loan? “A trip to Fairyland.” Yeah, right.

  As I checked my e-mail again—that nervous tic of modern life—my attention was caught by the earlier message from Laura, with Polly Fruell's address. On a whim, I entered Polly's details into a search engine. />
  Seconds later, I was staring at her obituary, from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram of March 2, 1995.

  The next hit was on an article from the Dallas Morning News, from a couple of days earlier, describing the horrific freeway pileup in which three people—among them, Polly Jean Fruell, forty-three, of Jacksboro—had lost their lives, and seven others were seriously injured.

  I bounced around to check out the other hits, but there was no doubt in my mind that this was Laura's Polly, and that she'd been dead for years.

  Was it possible that Laura had been taken in by an ordinary imposter pretending to be her long-lost friend? Somebody who was in reality an associate of the man who called himself Mider, both of them criminals involved in Peri's kidnapping . . .

  I could imagine Laura's mind running along such lines, but it made no sense. People invented complex scams in the hope of a large reward. There was no way anyone was benefiting from this—not in the ordinary way.

  Polly was dead. She'd been dead three years ago when she turned up on Laura's doorstep on Christmas Eve.

  The connection between death and the Otherworld appeared again and again in the old stories. Although it wasn't a straightforward equation, fairies were sometimes confused with spirits of the dead. The tumuli that were supposed to be entrances to their underground homes were in actual fact ancient graves, chambered tombs, and many first-person accounts from people who claimed to have visited Fairyland mentioned seeing people they had known but believed to be dead. In addition, some of the people stolen by fairies appeared first to die, like Robert Kirk or Mary Campbell Nelson, although that death was explained away as an illusion if they were later rescued.

  I wondered how Laura would explain this away, how deep in denial she'd have to go, and I imagined her comatose with shock, and shuddered. Well, I certainly wasn't going to be the one to tell her that she'd spent several weeks entertaining a dead woman in her flat; a dead woman who continued to send her e-mails.

  I closed the Internet connection, closed the program, and shut down my computer. Sometimes I left it on all night, but I didn't feel like doing so that night. Then I got up and made sure the doors were locked and bolted shut, and set the burglar alarm, too, even though such things are well-known to make no difference to the dead.

  In my dream, I was going to meet Jenny. I was on foot in a city that was both familiar and strange to me, and the journey was taking much longer than I had expected as I made one slow, circuitous wrong turn after another. The city was a puzzling jumble, bits of Milwaukee and Dallas mixed up with London, and nothing that I recognized was quite right. Eventually I arrived at a park with a high wall around it. The tall, square gateposts were topped with pale grey stone statues of hooded figures. It looked more like a cemetery than a public park, yet I knew this was where Jenny had asked me to meet her, so I hurried through the open gate.

  As I approached the small hill at the center of the park I could see Jenny was already there, waiting for me, standing there like a beacon. She had on the dark red suit she used to wear when she wanted to impress, as it made her look both businesslike and sexy, with its short skirt and the high heels she wore to flaunt her shapely legs and add height. My heart leaped at the sight of her, and I hurried forward, my arms going out to hug her.

  She turned and she wasn't Jenny, she was Fred.

  I stopped in confusion, but she caught my hands and nodded encouragingly, inclining her head. I saw a door in the side of the soft, green slope. Although she didn't say anything, I knew from the nod of her head that Jenny waited for me inside the hill.

  I stepped forward confidently, and as soon as I was inside, the door slammed shut and I was trapped in a small, pitch-black, suffocatingly close space. In a panic, I flailed my arms, struck the wall, and woke up.

  The room was filled with light that seemed searingly bright after the darkness of the dream. My hand throbbed. I shook it and flexed my fingers: bruised, maybe, but no serious harm done. I peered blearily at the clock and groaned when I saw it was only just after five-thirty. My reaction to the dream had pumped so much adrenaline into my system, I knew there was no way I'd be going back to sleep.

  I got up and stumbled downstairs, but as soon as I walked into my bare, chilly little kitchen, with its permanent scent of damp never quite covered by the ghosts of cooking past, I remembered that I'd forgotten to buy more coffee, or indeed anything to eat, and had to make do with a glass of water before going back up to shave, shower, and dress.

  I didn't think any of the local shops or cafés would be open so early, so I decided to head into central London and get breakfast there. I had no plans for what I was going to do after that; but the residue of that dream, plus what I'd learned about Polly Fruell, made me unwilling to spend the day cooped up all by myself in my office. Until Hugh got in touch I had the frustrating feeling that there was nothing more I could do.

  There wasn't much traffic on the road, and there were few people about as I walked down to the underground station. I wasn't even sure it would be running yet, but it was, and I had the rare, almost unique, experience of riding in a carriage that remained empty almost all the way to Leicester Square.

  That's where I got out to walk through the quiet, waking streets, past the shut-up shops in an eerie blaze of daylight. There were other people about, most of them probably heading for work, although some of them looked both bright and confused and were probably tourists, and there were also a few staggering shufflers who seemed left over from the night before, caught out by the morning's sudden arrival. I saw one coffee shop open for business, but it had a queue of customers spilling out the door, so I passed. The next early-morning café also looked overcrowded, and another one, although still shut, had attracted a huddle of sleepy-looking potential customers.

  I kept on walking, even though I was starting to feel definite signs of caffeine withdrawal, but the thought of Golden Square guided my steps. I didn't know why I should go there, but maybe I'd pick up some clue, see something I hadn't noticed before that might tie in that particular little corner of London with an ancient Irish myth. If not, well, the square had benches, and I could rest until I decided where to go next.

  Only a scattering of people were using the benches at that early hour, and some had probably been there all night. They were all men. I didn't look directly at any of them—this was the city; we allowed each other our privacy—but made straight for an unoccupied spot, head down, purposeful, projecting, I hoped, the image of someone who should not be bothered with requests for spare change or cigarettes.

  “Ian.”

  The sound of my name, spoken quietly, lifted the hairs on my neck.

  “Over here.”

  I turned and saw Hugh Bell-Rivers sitting on a bench. As I approached, he held up a large styrofoam cup with a lid. “Want a coffee?”

  I stared. He had two cups with him. A little hesitantly, I sat beside him and took the cup he offered. “Waiting for someone?”

  “I thought you might turn up.”

  “And this was easier than calling?” I gave him a hard look. “How long have you been waiting?”

  “I just got here.”

  The coffee, steaming hot, seemed to confirm that. But it made no sense. “What made you think I'd come here? Hey, did you get my message?”

  He nodded.

  “I didn't say ‘Meet you in Golden Square,' did I? I didn't know I was coming here myself until ten minutes ago.”

  He shrugged. “That's OK.”

  “No, it's not OK. I asked you to phone me.”

  “I would've if you didn't turn up. It's still early.”

  “Who'd you get this coffee for?”

  “You.”

  “Just in case I turned up.” I was getting irritated. “This is stupid. I didn't come here to play games. In fact, I don't know why I came here. But you do, it seems.”

  “I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

  “I do. But I don't normally expect just to bump into the peopl
e I want to talk to at opportune moments. That's why God gave us telephones. What am I supposed to think, that you planted a posthypnotic suggestion that I'd come here this morning and be spooked out that you knew?”

  “I didn't make you come here.”

  I laughed harshly, not amused. “As if!”

  He sighed. “I'm not trying to prove anything. There's nothing to prove. OK? Why don't you just drink your coffee and say what you wanted to say to me.”

  I frowned. “First I want to know what made you think I'd be here.”

  “OK.” He stared at me with those big, blue eyes. It was not a guileless, faux-naive stare, but a weary, open gaze. “I saw us here together. I mean ‘saw' us.” Still holding his cup, he managed to make quotation-mark hooks of his fingers. “It happens to me sometimes, I have these sort of visions. I don't mean hallucinations, and I know they aren't happening now; they're more like really vivid memories, but of things that haven't happened yet.”

  “And do they always come true?”

  “I don't know yet.”

  “It sounds like the Second Sight,” I said. The Second Sight was a gift, or curse, of the Highland Scots, and it was connected to the ability to see fairies. “Were you born with it?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “How long, then?” But as I asked, I knew what he was going to say.

  “Since Peri disappeared.”

  “A gift from Mider,” I guessed, thinking of the strange wine. “Maybe a gift he didn't want to make, but he had to trade you something for Peri.”

  “Oh, he gave me a lot more than that. There was the money.”

  I peeled off the lid of my cup and took a cautious sip of the hot liquid. It was delicious, a strong, rich roast, uncontaminated by milk or sugar, as if Hugh's Second Sight extended even to the details of how I liked my coffee. “That check for five hundred thousand pounds? I thought you gave it back?”

  “I did. At least, I thought I did, but he didn't take it.”