“I don’t think you know how dangerous this really is. Someone I know had a run in with a troll on the outskirts of Dublin two months ago. They found his hat and a sock. And nothing else.”
Jean’s eyes widen.
“I suggest we wait for Mr Nicol to return, and then we put you both into a taxi to wherever you want to go. We’ll phone you when we’re finished.”
“Well, Mr Grant. I suppose you know best. As soon as James is back we’ll go to my sister-in-law’s house, over in Morningside. What a shame, to miss all the excitement! Our life has become so boring since the Elliotts moved. They were hippies, you know – strange clothes, long hair, lots of peculiar friends: I could have spent all day watching them from the kitchen window. I had the perfect vantage point. It was so entertaining.”
Another growl interrupts her. It’s the cat again. She sounds different, though.
A meow. High pitched, sort of strangled.
We all look at the armchair where she’s sleeping.
Where she was sleeping.
She’s disappeared.
Uncle Alistair springs up.
“Where’s the cellar?”
“This way!” exclaims Jean, who’s gone a bit pale.
“We haven’t got the stuff out of the car!” I say, panicked.
“No time!” hisses Uncle Alistair.
We all hurry after Jean. She stops in front of a black wooden door.
“Here,” she whispers.
All noise has ceased. There’s perfect silence. Uncle Alistair takes Jean gently by the shoulders and pulls her behind him. He stands in front of the door.
Suddenly, it opens, just a little… And then shuts again with a bang. Something has been thrown through, nearly hitting Uncle Alistair in the face.
It’s a small red collar, with a bell.
The cat’s collar.
12. WHERE I NEARLY GET EATEN
Alistair Grant’s Scottish Paranormal Database
Entry Number 156: Ghostly guardians
Type: Post-mortem manifestation
Location: Seil, Argyll
Date: May 2005
Details: In May 2005, a team of archaeologists digging on the Isle of Seil in Argyll recorded seeing ghostly warriors. The warriors were Pictish in appearance, with long hair and beards, wearing helmets and carrying swords and shields. Many believe such warriors remain in order to guard buried treasure.
Jean gasps and leans down to pick up the collar.
“Oh, no,” she whispers sadly.
“Stay back,” Uncle Alistair urges her.
We all take a step back.
Nothing happens.
“Luca, Vally.”
“Yes,” we whisper.
“Go get the equipment from the car.” Uncle Alistair throws me the keys to the van.
We run out as quickly and as silently as we can. I open the boot, and take out the white cool-bag with the orange flowers that my mum lent us. She didn’t know what it was for, of course. She wouldn’t have lent it otherwise. I hand it to Valentina, who runs back in with it.
I’m left to manage the cage. It’s really heavy; I’m sweating as I lift it out of the boot. It falls onto the pavement with a CLANK!
A dog-walker, who’s just stopped at a bush for a quick wee (the dog, not the walker), looks at me.
“Yes, it is a cage, you saw right,” I mutter grumpily under my breath. It’s just too heavy for me to carry, and we’re in a rush. I’m about to run back in and call Valentina, when she runs out again. Together, with great effort, we manage to lift the cage and bring it into the hall.
“What’s happening?” I whisper to Uncle Alistair, making sure he can see my face and read my lips. “Nothing yet.”
“Where’s Jean?”
“It got her.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. Valentina and I look at each other. She is as pale as I feel.
“Just joking! She’s in the living room, I told her to lock herself in.” Uncle Alistair smiles mischievously. Valentina rolls her eyes. My heart starts beating again.
“Valentina, you go upstairs, too. Luca, get the cage ready–”
“I’m not going upstairs!”
“Do what I say! Now!” whispers Uncle Alistair, loudly and urgently, as he opens the cool-bag and takes out a few dead, plucked chickens. He scatters them in a trail from the cellar door to the cage, with the last one right inside it.
“Ok, ok!” Valentina grudgingly makes her way up the stairs. She crouches on the landing, her face between the bars of the banister.
“Everybody still. Cage ready?”
I nod. I’m holding its door open, ready to shut it as soon as we get the troll inside.
I can feel my heart thumping like it’s going to jump out of my chest. There’s perfect silence, except for our heavy breathing…
Then Uncle Alistair opens the cellar door.
“HELLO-HOOOOO!” he booms.
Nothing.
“HELLOOOO-HOOOOOOO!!! THERE’S FOOD HERE!”
A thumping sound, heavy footsteps up the stairs, a terrible smell – strong enough to cover even the pickled onions – and there he is, emerging from the darkness of the cellar. The troll.
“A moor troll!” booms Uncle Alistair. He seems delighted.
The troll is dressed in what look like rabbit skins; he has a huge head and huge feet and hands, and his skin is all leathery, with a greenish-yellowish hue. He has a few straggly yellow hairs on the top of his head and pale, nearly white eyes. He blinks in the light, towering over Uncle Alistair – he must be at least seven feet tall.
“There you are! See? I was right. It is a troll!” shouts Uncle Alistair triumphantly.
Great, I think. You were right, yes. Hooray.
After a few interminable seconds of blinking, the troll throws himself on the first thing he sees: Uncle Alistair. Uncle Alistair ducks, covering his head with his hands. Valentina screams, I’m about to run to his aid, when the troll stops in mid-air.
He scrunches up his face and makes a gagging noise, then roars in anger.
“I smell bad, don’t I? But look! This is good! THIS SMELLS GOOD!” shouts Uncle Alistair, grabbing a chicken by the leg and waving it in front of the troll’s face. “FOOD!”
The troll roars and grabs the chicken, and then bites a great big chunk off it. I can see his teeth: huge, pointed, black. Slowly, deliberately, he devours it, making a horrible, disgusting crunching noise. I feel my stomach churn. I could throw up, but I stop myself.
“There – there’s more! Good boy, good boy!” Uncle Alistair entices him on, and the creature grabs the next chicken on the trail and starts chewing. Then the next one. And the next one.
And then the troll sees me.
His pale eyes are looking straight at me. My legs give way. I have to hold on to the cage to stay standing.
“LUCA!” I hear Valentina’s terrified scream, and it seems to come from far away.
The troll crouches slightly to gain momentum. I know what he’s about to do: he pounces towards me, all seven feet of him. I fold over myself, hiding my face, praying for my life.
When he’s near enough to smell the pickled onions, he stops in his tracks, just a few inches away from my face. I can smell him, too: a mouldy, revolting stench that seems to come from the depth of a bog. The troll scrunches up his face again and makes the same gagging noises, and again he howls in anger.
It’s my moment.
“Here boy… here…” my voice is coming out all small. I grab a chicken and lift it up, dangling it in front of him. I’m shaking so much that the chicken trembles too. I throw it into the cage.
The troll puts his head through the cage door. Not one, but two plucked chickens lie inside. He can’t resist. He’s taking a step… I’m ready to close the door and lock it, when…
“Jean, I’m hooooome!”
The front door opens. And there’s James Nicol.
It takes James a few seconds to grasp the situation. He blinks, j
ust like the troll did when he came out of the dark cellar. In front of him there’s a huge, foul-smelling, seven-foot-tall creature who’s watching him like he’s a plate of haggis, neeps and tatties. With a whisky sauce and all.
James screams. I scream. Valentina screams. Uncle Alistair screams. The troll growls.
We all run towards James, with different intentions: three of us want to save him, one of us wants to eat him.
Thing is, the one who wants to eat him is a lot faster than us, and his legs are a lot longer. He’ll bite James’s head off before we can reach them…
“AAAAAAAHOOOOOOOOO!”
All of a sudden, the troll stops, takes his foot in his hand and starts hopping. Jean has come out of the living room, the handbag in one hand and the rolling pin in the other.
“Do. Not. Touch. My. Husband,” she says, in a low deep voice. Her eyes are blazing.
We are frozen. Jean lets the rolling pin fall as she rummages in the bag. She takes out a small bottle, then jumps around a bit until her hand is even with the troll’s face, which is lowered because he holds his sore foot.
“Take this!” A hissing sound. Jean sprays her perfume right in the troll’s eyes. He growls again, covering his face with his hands. He’s now blind and rolling on the floor in pain.
“And this!” Jean takes out her final weapon, the frying pan. With a scream you wouldn’t think could come out of an old lady, she raises the pan and lowers it with all her might on the troll’s head. There’s a resounding BANG. He’s out cold.
“RESULT!” says Valentina jubilantly.
James slides against the wall, and sits down with a sigh.
“Help me, Luca!” Uncle Alistair and I drag the troll into the cage and lock the door. We both sit on the floor as well, exhausted.
“Mint?” says Jean.
***
“We can’t set it free, it’s too dangerous! It eats people!”
The troll is still unconscious, but is starting to move a little. We’re about to cover his cage in sheets, and take him out into the van.
Uncle Alistair’s plan is to drive somewhere north, as far from civilisation as we can, and free him on a wild moor to feed on wildcats and deer. But I have my doubts that he’ll stick to animals.
“Uncle Alistair, you’ve seen him in action. Sooner or later he’ll get someone.”
“Yes, perhaps. Kill him, then.”
“WHAT?”
“Kill him. There you are.” Uncle Alistair hands me his dagger. Yes, he keeps a dagger in his sock, believe it or not. Just in case.
I take it, my hand shaking.
“Luca! You can’t!” I hear Valentina’s voice from somewhere far away. The wind is roaring in my ears.
Where? Where do I hit, to kill?
The troll’s eyes open. He sees me and the dagger, and curls up. He lifts his head to one side, and we look at each other.
His pale eyes are full of terror, and… resignation. Like he knows he’s about to die.
That second, that precise exact second when my eyes meet the troll’s, I know that I can’t do it. That I can’t kill anyone, anything. Ever.
I hand the dagger back to my uncle, who gazes at me with something very similar to pride.
***
I have no words to describe the stench in the van on the way back. A mixture of mouldy troll and pickled onions. I think I’ll never eat again.
We drive north for hours to the middle of nowhere: a place Uncle Alistair chose for its remoteness. When we get there it’s past midnight, and it’s pitch black because there are no lamp-posts or houses for miles around. The sky is clear and covered in a million stars.
Uncle Alistair gives us another drenching in pickled-onion liquid to make sure that the troll won’t attack us, then hands out a torch each.
We stand in a semicircle as he opens the cage. The troll blinks at the harsh light of our torches, and hides his face in his hands. He’s scared.
“Come on. Come out. It’s ok,” I whisper. He looks up, tentatively. It dawns on him that he’s being set free. He jumps out of the van, and my heart is in my throat as he stands there among us, all seven feet of him.
Then something weird happens.
The troll puts his hand in the rabbit skin he has around his hips, and he takes something out. Without a sound, he extends his huge pale-green hand, curled up in a fist, towards me. Then he unfurls his fist to reveal a little shiny thing inside. I can’t make out what it is.
Cautiously, I take the object from his hand.
The troll looks at me, then at Valentina, then at Alistair, as if he’s saying goodbye. He turns around and takes a huge leap into the darkness.
Valentina and Uncle Alistair step beside me to look at the troll’s gift. It’s a small medallion, beautifully carved with waves and spirals. It looks like it’s made of pure iron, and very, very ancient.
“Troll treasure,” says Uncle Alistair. “Very rare. Keep it safe.”
I put it around my neck and tuck it inside my sweater, proudly. Then we climb back into the van and try to snatch a few hours’ sleep while Uncle Alistair drives back, across the dark moors.
13. SOMEONE LIKE US
Alistair Grant’s Scottish Paranormal Database
Entry Number 583: Merpeople
Type: Cryptozoology
Location: Isle of Skye
Date: 1891
Details: Many sightings of merpeople have been recorded through the ages, both in fresh and in saltwater. In 1891, Skye fisherman Allan McLean caught a mermaid in his fishing net. He managed to get her on land and tried to show her to the other fishermen. However, all they saw was a particularly big fish. Only his sons, having inherited the Sight, could see the mermaid for what she was, and they sketched her before returning her to the sea. (See Photographs, Sketches and Maps, figures 37–42.) (For the merpeople’s songs and language, see Podcasts and Recordings, file numbers 17–23.)
“Another sunny day,” I say to myself, as I open the blind in my room, and then the window, to breathe in the fresh salty sea air.
The summer has truly arrived in Eilean. Hordes of tourists are walking up and down the main street and stopping on the pier to take pictures of the seals, and the beach is full of families swimming and sunbathing. Heaven.
We’re going to spend the whole summer at home. Sometimes we fly to Italy to see my mum’s family, but this year Nonna Rina has come to us instead. It’s barely nine o’clock, but I know for sure that my mum and Nonna are already cooking. Nonna Rina loves anything to do with food: food shopping, reading cookbooks, watching cookery programmes on the TV and, of course, cooking. She’s always concerned that we are too thin, and feeds us huge portions at every meal.
“Ciao Luca, vuoi la colazione?” she says with a smile as I step into the kitchen. It means, hello and do I want my breakfast?
“Si Nonna, grazie!” Mmmm. Home-made bread and honey, brioche and chocolate milk. Valentina is already sitting at the table, tucking in happily.
“Morning, children.” Mum comes in from the shop, laden with grocery bags. “I met your Uncle Alistair on the way back. He says if you want to, go over and see him this morning.”
Great! Something’s up. A new adventure.
I look at Valentina. She’s smiling from ear to ear. We’ve only been back from Edinburgh two days. In spite of several showers, our hair still smells of pickled onion, which we had to explain by saying we stayed above a fish shop and ate a lot of the stuff. We’d also stopped at the Museum of Scotland quickly on the way to the Nicols’, to gather some brochures and postcards and a few pocket-money toys, so we could get away with our cover story.
Valentina and I eat breakfast as quickly as we can, managing to consume everything on the table, and then we run out.
“Ciao Nonna, ciao Mamma!”
“But they haven’t eaten a thing!” I hear my Nonna saying. Valentina and I look at each other and laugh. We could never eat enough for Nonna.
Both Valentina and I are wea
ring t-shirts and shorts; it’s great to step out and feel the sun and the fresh air on my skin. We run all the way to Weird HQ, and we’re breathless when we get there.
“GOOD MORNING CHILDREN!” booms Uncle Alistair, loud as ever. He’s at the computer, and the Paranormal Database is on the screen. Camilla is lying on the sofa, reading a book. She can’t hold the book, or turn the pages, of course, because her hands just go through them, but, she’s explained, she can move things with her mind. Only very light things though, like paper or sand or feathers.
“Come into the kitchen, I’ll make sausage rolls,” shouts Uncle Alistair. We follow him. “I got a call this morning,” he begins, while cutting and buttering bread. “Luca, sausage roll?”
“No thanks, I couldn’t eat a thing more,” I reply. Not after Nonna’s breakfast.
“Yes, please!” says Valentina, and bites into one.
“Anyway. Two mermaids were spotted in the river Clyde last night, in Glasgow. It’s far, far too crowded a waterway for them. We need to go get them and take them somewhere safe.”
“If someone else sees them, they might be taken to a zoo, or worse!” Valentina’s brown eyes are full of concern.
“Don’t forget that very few people can See them. Most people only see some big fish. The mermaids’ real danger is not so much being spotted, but the motor boats.” Valentina gasps. “There’s a lot of river traffic on the Clyde. Imagine the mermaids as people with not much experience of cars wandering in the middle of a motorway. We need to leave as soon as possible.”
“They’ll never let us. Nonna has just arrived, she wants to spend time with us…” says Valentina, torn between wanting time with Nonna and the adventure in prospect.
“How long will she be here for?”
“Three weeks.”
“What if I return you by tomorrow at lunchtime?”
“It’s worth a try” I say, but I doubt it will work.
***
“Why not? It’s a great opportunity to take Nonna to Glasgow. We can go shopping. The Buchanan Galleries, lunch in Prince’s Square…” My mum’s eyes are shining.
Really Weird Removals.com Page 9
