“So now you have to try and persuade someone at the museum about all this?” said David. “How are you going to do that? It was hard enough convincing us.”
“It may not be as difficult as you think. Already there are rumours about a small animal which leaves its traces in the museum but is never clearly seen, and a feeling of disquiet is growing among those who are sensitive to what is happening.
“I’ve been a regular visitor for a long time. The staff are used to talking to me.”
Mr Flowerdew looked at the children’s bleak faces and said gently, “We have some time before we will be forced to act.”
“Oh good,” said Kate weakly. “Enough time for us to grow up?”
“A few weeks.”
“Oh. Right.”
They sat in silence round the big wooden table until David said, “We should be going.”
“Of course.”
Numbly, they gathered their belongings.
“I’ll be in touch soon, but if you want to talk to me before that, just telephone.”
He opened the front door.
“And by the way, I think you know me well enough to call me John, don’t you?”
“John?”
“Even a Guardian of Time needs a first name. You don’t imagine everyone calls me Mr Flowerdew all the time?”
“John.”
LATIN
Princes Street Gardens hadn’t played any nasty tricks on Gordon Syme after that singular occasion, and yet he found himself increasingly unsettled.
The few times he’d walked down that way after dark the weather had been clear, and it had been obvious that the valley below the castle held only railway tracks, grass and trees. Yet he found himself on edge, listening for the muffled splash of oars and gruff voices, and felt shameful relief if he found himself walking past the gardens with others.
So it was that on Tuesday night, when he left to walk home after a drink with the others – just like the last time, he thought – he was pleased when he realised that the person who’d fallen into step beside him as he walked along George IV Bridge was someone he recognised, and who also recognised him.
“Mr Syme, isn’t it?” said the man. It was the old gent with the sketchbook who often sat in the Main Hall.
“That’s right – Gordon. I recognise you from the museum, don’t I?”
“Yes. John Flowerdew.” He held out his hand to shake Gordon’s own. “I should have introduced myself long before now. Would you mind if I walked with you? I think we’re both going the same way.”
“Not at all. The company’s welcome.”
“It’s a fine night for walking.”
“Beautiful. I often think the town looks its best on a clear night.”
“I believe you’re right. Night covers the ugly details rather well for the most part, and the skyline gets to speak for itself.”
They walked on in silence until they had crossed the road at Deacon Brodie’s pub, which was raucous already, although it wasn’t yet nine o’clock.
As they started down the hill, the old man said, “Strange isn’t it, how the mist gathers in the valley like that? You’d hardly believe the main railway line was down there.”
Gordon felt his heart give a thud as he looked towards the gardens. The mist rolled across them in coiling white clouds.
“It must have been quite a sight in the old days,” John Flowerdew went on, “before they drained the Nor Loch. I believe they held frost fairs on it in the fifteenth century when it used to freeze solid. Now that is something I would like to have seen.”
As he spoke they continued to walk steadily down the hill beside the misty gardens. Gordon’s mouth was dry. Don’t be ridiculous, he told himself. It’s just mist. There are still the gardens under it. Don’t be stupid. Just look.
He forced himself to turn his head to the left and concentrate sight and hearing on what might lie beneath the mist.
A train whistle made him jump, and at that moment a veil of mist blew aside and he saw not water, but the familiar outlines of trees and grass.
He realised he’d been holding his breath and let it out, cursing himself inwardly for being so stupid. How had he come to be so afraid of something that wasn’t even there?
John Flowerdew didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss with his behaviour and was talking on serenely about frost fairs.
They crossed Princes Street and walked up to the top of the next hill.
“Our ways part here, I think. I’ve enjoyed the company. Thank you,” said the old man.
“I’m sure I’ll see you at the museum soon,” Gordon replied.
“Oh yes, very soon indeed.” Mr Flowerdew cleared his throat. “There are very few people to whom I would say this, but you are, perhaps, someone who would understand.”
Gordon waited to see what was coming.
“Sometimes at night, in the mist, when I go past the Gardens, I am sure the Nor Loch has returned. I see it and hear it. I hear men in boats on it – I even smell it. I don’t know how to explain it, but it happens.”
Gordon felt as though someone had flung icy water into his face.
“Anyway, I mustn’t keep you any longer with a foolish old man’s fancies, Mr Syme. Goodnight to you.”
Gordon mumbled some sort of goodnight and stood rooted, watching the old man make his steady way along George Street.
What was happening to him? Was he going mad? How did the old man know what he’d seen and heard? He found that he was shivering, although the evening was not cold.
Automatically he turned his footsteps towards the home that no longer felt safe to him.
***
The next few days did nothing to settle his mind. The cleaners were gossiping openly now about there being some wee animal loose in the museum that no one could catch, an animal that scattered crumbs and opened drawers and left handprints on glass. He’d seen the prints and crumbs himself, of course, but since that night no one had got any sort of glimpse of an animal.
It wasn’t just him that was spooked by whatever it was. Some of his colleagues were even less willing than usual to do their turn at night shift, but would not admit why. Only Sandy remained unmoved by the idea of the “wee rat,” as he called it, roaming the museum happily in the darkness.
“D’you reckon we’d get any sort of reward if we caught it?” he asked Gordon one afternoon.
“Don’t be daft. There’s nothing to catch.”
Sandy opened his mouth to retort, but Gordon had escaped by going to help a man emerging from the Staff Only door, almost hidden by a large polystyrene box.
“Need a hand with that, Mr Nixon?”
A face peered round the box, light brown hair flopping down to round spectacles.
“Oh, Gordon, it’s you. Yes please. It’s not heavy, just awkward. I think your arms are longer than mine.”
“What is it today, Mr Nixon?”
“Birds. Waders mostly. We had a lot handed in after the storm last month. I’ve not had a chance to take a proper look at them yet. Thought I’d just take them home and do it there.”
“Are you in the front car park?”
“What? Oh yes, thanks, but there’s no need…”
“No trouble, Mr Nixon.”
By the time Gordon returned, Sandy had forgotten what they’d been talking about, and the rest of the day passed quickly, and on the way home there was no mist.
***
At least, there was no mist in Princes Street Gardens …
Down by the shore at Cramond, the lights of the houses and the pub failed to penetrate far through the haar that had drifted in off the sea and wrapped itself coldly round the village.
The top of the tower house poked out above the mist like a stumpy finger, its windows showing clear as a lighthouse.
Inside, Andrew Nixon was finishing his preliminary examination of the batch of frozen birds he’d brought home. There was nothing outstanding, but they could do with some new specimens of Turnstone
and Redshank, and he’d do the others as skins for the reference collection.
He left the two he wanted to work on the next day in the specimen fridge to thaw slowly and put the others back in the freezer. He’d long ago got used to the bad jokes people made when they heard that he worked as a taxidermist: quips about putting sage and onion stuffing in instead of straw, or eating the bird he was working on for the museum, instead of the one he’d roasted for Sunday lunch, and he no longer noticed how odd his house must look to visitors. Living there alone, as he had done for years, he had it all arranged to his own taste, which probably wasn’t shared by that many people.
Furniture, carpets, curtains and the like didn’t much interest him; so long as they did what they were meant to he saw no reason to change them, and the house had a shabby look to it as a consequence.
However, he did care about his books, and they were carefully housed in the floor to ceiling shelves he’d had built specially.
His true passion, of course, was the stuffed animals, and their glassy gaze dominated every room. Some were Victorian, rescued from junk shops or bought at auctions; then there was the collection his father had amassed in much the same way. Lastly, there were his own specimens. Birds mostly; they were his favourites – the delicacy and balance of them posing a perpetual challenge of positioning them so they looked truly life-like. He always thought of himself as being in pursuit of the perfect specimen, never quite satisfied with what he produced.
Under the critical gaze of a crow and two field voles, he heated some tinned soup and made toast. He’d meant to shop on the way home, then realised he didn’t dare keep the specimens in the car for that long. This sort of thing was happening too often. Maybe he should get a housekeeper, then he could come home to a lit fire and the prospect of a proper meal.
He went through to the sitting room to check on the progress of the coal fire he’d lit half an hour before. It was drawing well now, the coals glowing red, and he decided to bring his frugal supper through here. He went across to the window, set in its eighteen-inch-thick wall, to draw the curtains.
Below him, mist lapped the tower like water, opaque and milky. On impulse he pushed the window up, listening for the sound of the sea a hundred metres away. It was a calm night, and the unseen water made small shushing noises against the rocks as the tide fell. It was overlaid by other, closer sounds, which Nixon strained to hear.
The area between the tower and the shore held some scrub, a small car park, and one corner of the building site where they were installing the new sewage treatment plant. Normally it would be quiet at this time of night, but it sounded as though a large number of people were gathered down there in the mist. He could hear shouts and laughter, and the sound of metal striking metal. Now that he looked more closely at the mist, he thought he could see the flicker of flames through it.
Normally, he would have closed the window, drawn the curtains and forgotten about it, or if it was something which worried him he would have phoned the police, but now he found that almost without thinking about it he had pulled the window closed and gone down the twisting stairs to where his coat was hanging.
He was out of the door before it occurred to him that these people, whoever they were, might not be pleased to see him, and that really, what he was doing was most unwise. However, his feet kept carrying him towards the noise somewhere on the building site.
There was definitely a fire – no, fires – flickering through the mist in several places. It dawned on him that he shouldn’t be able to see them. There should be a four-metre plywood barrier around the site.
They must have torn it down. They were probably vandals, or travellers maybe. He’d better watch his step. He continued to move forward cautiously. He could hear the voices clearly now, but couldn’t make out what they were saying; in fact it didn’t sound like English at all.
He could see figures, gathered round the fires indistinct through the fog. There seemed to be tents too, and he could smell meat cooking. He caught another snatch of conversation, strange and yet familiar in its pattern of sounds. The figures he could see round the fires seemed to be wrapped in blankets, as if this were some sort of camp for the homeless people he normally saw bundled up in doorways in the city centre.
Moving carefully, he stepped over the boundary where four metres of plywood should have stood.
At once, the mist was gone, and he stood frozen to the spot, looking around him. Now he knew why the language had sounded familiar and what it was.
Latin.
He stared about him at a Roman army camp – tents, cooking fires, soldiers in rough woollen cloaks playing knucklebones. Had he wandered onto a film set? If so, where were the lights and cameras, and why were people speaking Latin? He felt his hackles rise at the profound wrongness of the scene.
Just then, a soldier at the nearest campfire looked up and straight at him. Nixon saw his eyes widen with fear as he jumped to his feet, knocking the knucklebones flying. Following his gaze, his companions were standing up, making the sign against evil with the hands that weren’t reaching for weapons.
Andrew Nixon ran. He ran as he had never run in his life, blood pounding in his ears, back to the thick-walled safety of the tower house, fumbling with his keys and pushing the door shut with his full body weight, turning all the locks and bolts, to stand trembling in his dark hall, listening in terror for the sound of Latin beyond the door.
There was no noise of pursuit. After two or three minutes he climbed the stairs on shaking legs under the impassive yellow gaze of his birds. In the sitting room the fire still burned, and its crackling was the only sound he could hear. He went to the window and peeped around the edge of the curtain, then pulled it open, his senses reeling.
***
Under a clear night sky, a four-metre barrier of plywood marked the boundary of the building site with its cranes and heaps of earth. There was no sign of the Roman camp.
LIGHTNING
“I’m whacked,” said David to Alastair, yawning ostentatiously. “I’m off to bed.”
Alastair opened his eyes wide in a pantomime of disbelief. “Are you all right? It’s not like you to volunteer to go to bed – especially recently.”
“I know. No, I’m fine. I just need a bit of extra sleep. You should be pleased; it’s what you’re always telling me to do.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I am pleased. Goodnight then.”
David gave his dad a rather furtive kiss. “Night.”
In his bedroom he found Tiger sprawled on the bed. He lifted the cat off and pushed him out of the room, closing the door to make sure he stayed out.
When he looked out of his window he saw a clear, cold night, the street lamp shining at the end of the garden. He pulled the curtains closed, undressed and got into bed.
In spite of what Mr Flowerdew had said, he was scared. He could feel his heart thumping faster than usual when he thought about what might happen once he fell asleep.
Remember, he thought, it’s just a dream. Nothing can hurt you.
He closed his eyes.
***
The mercurial expanse of the lake stretched flat before him, the far shore indistinct. Pebbles moved under his feet as he turned slowly three hundred and sixty degrees, straining his eyes and ears.
He was alone. Away from the lake’s edge, the pebble beach stretched back into the distance, the stones becoming larger the further from the water they were, until there was a landscape of boulders.
There was no sound, no movement. He was definitely alone.
He began to walk along the shore, feeling the rounded shapes of the pebbles through the soles of his shoes. He let his path veer closer and closer to the water until he was barely a hand span from it. It was unnaturally still, not the tiniest ripple disturbing its eerie perfection. As he looked at it, the buzzing started, and he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.
He kept walking slowly, not letting his pace quicken, and this time instead of trying to
block the sound out, he strained to hear the whispering voice.
“Come to us. Be one with us. We can heal your pain. Listen. We understand. Come to us.”
“Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid,” he muttered to himself under his breath. He stopped walking and listened carefully to gauge the direction from which the voice came.
To his left. Definitely to his left. He let himself take three deep breaths and turned very slowly to face the source of the sound … and thought his heart would stop.
A figure stood on the lake, perhaps five metres from the edge. Not in it, but on its surface, not disturbing the flat calm in the slightest.
It was a man, tall, with greying black hair and a beard, dressed in a ragged black robe, which fluttered in the wind.
There was no wind, David realised, but the robe moved anyway, and the man’s hair blew back from his face. His eyes, David noticed, were a very bright blue.
He stood quite still, in the wind that was not there. Silver rivulets from the lake began to slowly climb the tatters of his robe, like the shoots of a plant. Only his mouth moved in time with the whispering, buzzing voice, but the movements of his lips didn’t quite match the words; like a piece of film with the sound and vision out of synch.
All that David wanted to do was turn and run with his hands over his ears, away from the figure and the silver tendrils writhing impossibly up from the flat lake. But he forced himself to stand still, listen and look.
The figure on the lake raised one arm and beckoned to him.
“Come to me. Do not fear me.”
David shook his head and despite himself, took a step back, pebbles skittering under his feet.
The crawling silver trails had reached the man’s shoulders, and now they turned and began to move down his arms. As they did so, the air around him began to crackle slightly, adding to the weird buzzing of his voice.
For the first time in the dream, David found his own voice. “Who are you?” he shouted, and it sounded flat and small in the dangerous air.
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