A Wee Dose of Death

by Fran Stewart

  Since then she’d taken to calling me on my days off, and I usually felt too sorry for her to send her to voice mail.

  “Her husband’s looking to retire down here,” I said. “That’s why they bought the house.”

  “What would be this retyre? I asked ye once before, but ye didna answer me.”

  The words Dirk didn’t know would fill a dictionary. Of course, I didn’t understand a lot of the words he used—he’d died in Scotland when people were still speaking Middle English, like Chaucer. I’d decided there was some sort of transcendental translation agency at work for most of our speech, but we still had a few words to learn. Sometimes I could figure out what he meant just through the context: Ye needna whinge so meant he wanted me to stop complaining. Well, right now I wanted him to quit grumbling. “‘Retire’ means to quit working and take it easy.”

  He squinted. Two lines appeared between his heavy eyebrows. If he wasn’t careful, those lines would etch themselves into his face. No, wait. He was a ghost. He’d never get any more wrinkles than those crinkly laugh lines he already had around his eyes. Nothing had changed for him since 1359, the year he died. Except that he and the shawl he was attached to had been transported to twenty-first-century America, a country that hadn’t even existed when he was alive. Well, the land existed, and people were here; but America wasn’t even an idea in any Scottish head 653 years ago.

  Retire. I could almost see his brain still shuffling the idea around. Back in the fourteenth century when he was alive, maybe nobody ever retired. If they survived infancy and childhood, then they worked all their lives, got old, and died. Or at least that was what I thought had probably happened. I was truly going to have to bone up on my history. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was about all I’d known of the time back then, until I bought an old shawl and met Macbeath Donlevy Freusach Finlay Macearachar Macpheidiran of Clan Farquharson. You can see why I opted to call him Dirk.

  3

  Settling In

  Marcus Wantstring glanced at his green three-ring binder. Thank goodness he’d found it; otherwise this whole trip would have been a waste of time. He hadn’t known where it was at first, and the early-morning dark was getting considerably lighter by the time he remembered he’d left it in the car. So he’d stuffed it in his backpack on top of a brand-new bag of Tootsie Rolls. Well, it had been almost brand-new. Marcus patted the rolled candies in a zippered pocket on his pants leg. A Tootsie Roll was a good reward for having left so quietly, locking the garage side door behind him, so he hadn’t woken his sleeping wife.

  He reached for the binder and flipped through it idly, reading a sentence here, a paragraph there. He jotted a five-pointed star in the margin on page 153. He’d have to do something about that section. Without any particular reason he could identify, he remembered that next week was his wife’s birthday, and her sister had planned to fly up from D.C. as a surprise. With this storm, there was a chance nobody would be flying anywhere. He ought to call her and select an alternate date, just in case. He turned back to the first page and jotted today’s date in his distinctive green ink. Call Josie Calais again (when I get cell service), he wrote, wondering as he did so why he was bothering to write himself a note. He wasn’t likely to forget something as important as his wife’s birthday surprise.

  He left his camping ax where it was for the moment, stuck through a loop on the side of the backpack. He spread his sleeping bag out on the lower level of the rustic bunk bed built into a corner. Might as well get comfortable since he’d be here three days at the very least, maybe four.

  He left enough food for one meal on the table and put the rest of the packages on the wooden platform of the top bunk. He was tall enough that he didn’t have to strain to check for rodent droppings. Only a few, and they looked pretty dry; they were old enough that he might not have to worry about mice nibbling through the packaging.

  Idly, he pulled out one of the half dozen Tootsie Rolls still left in his pants pocket. Nothing like a Tootsie Roll to sharpen mental focus. He unwrapped it and stuffed the wrapper back in his pocket along with the two others he’d already placed there. Bring it in with you, take it out with you: the motto of any good camper.

  He rounded the table to sit on the second chair—the green binder was on the one closest to the door—and bent to remove his cross-country skiing shoes and replace them with his crazy socks and his hiking boots.

  The blizzard inundating the East Coast didn’t bother him. Vermont always made it through blizzards without even noticing them, but this storm would have the eastern half of the country shut down. Except for Vermont. He needed solitude? Well, he sure was going to get it. Nobody would be out pleasure skiing on this snowy Sunday.

  * * *

  Emily stood next to the phone for several minutes, glued, as it were, to the spot. She didn’t want to be a complainer. She always hated herself when she did that. But she just couldn’t seem to stop herself from nitpicking about everything and everybody. Especially about Mark. There was something that bubbled out from somewhere inside her, making her criticize her husband, complain about him. Bad-mouth him. Like a little chained monster in her that clawed its way up her throat—her throat. Emily felt like she was choking, and she eased a finger into the collar of her turtleneck. She pulled the fabric away from the front of her neck. As she did so, she felt the faint ridge of the scar.

  These spasms never lasted for long, but when they hit like this, she didn’t know what to do except to loosen the stretchy fabric, stand still, and wait for her body to slow down. The monster inside her was what made her do it, the choking, the complaining. It made her grouse at everyone. She was always harping at Mark. She couldn’t stop herself. It wasn’t his fault, but something inside her—that monster—believed that if she had never gotten married in the first place, if she’d followed her dream without interruption, somehow she wouldn’t have had to go through . . . what she’d had to go through.

  She’d read in some self-help book her sister Josie had given her about how the deepest self—that was what it was called—knew the truth at a visceral level, even if one didn’t want to acknowledge it. Or admit it. Well, it was all very well and good to theorize up one side and down the other, but living with . . . a monster inside her, there was no way to get past that fact. She wasn’t even sure she knew whether she had a deeper self. It had been so long since she’d believed in anything.

  Once her throat stopped the spasms, she straightened the magazines and newspapers on the coffee table, wishing again that she had tidied the house in Burlington before they’d left this time. Sandra would see it, and Sandra was a good enough friend not to care, but Emily would have felt better if she’d taken just a few minutes to wash the dishes. She hadn’t, because Mark had been in such a hurry to leave. She didn’t understand him. She hadn’t understood him for years. And, of course, she’d forgotten to water the plants, but she’d called Sandra and asked her to stop in and take care of that. She would never have asked Sandra to wash the dishes she’d forgotten about. Never.

  4

  Pop Goes the Weasel

  Mac Campbell had always been graceful on skis, much more so than when he walked on solid ground. Every gliding step he took today, though, seemed to fuel his anger. He had never been one to be particularly aware of his body, except when he admired his physique in the privacy of his own house, so he didn’t pay any attention to the way his muscles tightened with every negative thought. He’d been mad at that woman for months, and he still felt irked as hell about all the crap around Mason Kilmarty’s death in Peggy Winn’s ScotShop store last summer. Mac was CHIEF of the Hamelin, Vermont, police force. In his mind, the capital letters were automatic. Yet that upstart Peggy was the one who’d discovered Mason’s murderer.

  He’d never admit it to anyone, and he hardly admitted it even to himself, but he, Chief Mac Campbell, hadn’t had a clue. Not a single clue, while that half-baked twit of a female ha
d overpowered the perp. Perp. Mac liked words like that. Sounded so—so cop. Twenty years he’d policed in Hamelin, with him in the top position for eleven of those years. Good thing the previous chief had croaked, and there was Mac, the best—well, the only—candidate to fill his shoes.

  Irritation made Mac ski faster. Heading uphill like this, it was easier the faster he went. Slow down too much on cross-country skis and you’ll tend to slide backward. He was making good time, though.

  He hadn’t skied or even hiked this particular trail in three or four years. There were others he enjoyed more, especially the Fife; it was quiet, even though that trail had four or five houses on it. In the summer, the Fife skirted far behind the houses; in winter, they were closed up tight.

  Nothing ever changed in Hamelin, so he was sure there wasn’t any new construction out here. This trail, the Perth, had only the one cabin. Just one room and an outhouse. There was an old wood-burning stove, too. Maybe he’d come back this summer and stay a few days.

  For today, he planned to ski right on past it. That way, he should get to the top of the Perth trail in another two hours. He’d eat the sandwiches and one of the energy bars he’d packed and then head back toward Hamelin. Maybe take the other fork on the way down just for some variety.

  Trouble was, Hamelin was too quiet. Mostly speeding tickets, an occasional burglary, penny-ante stuff. Only a few murders, usually by stupid dolts just asking to get caught. No scope for real policing.

  Mac’s idea of real policing involved car chases, shoot-outs, hostage situations, and a little karate thrown in for good measure. Not that he practiced the kata very often. Still, he knew how to do Swallow Pivoting on a Beach and Extract from a Castle with the best of them. Or were those Kung Fu moves? Couldn’t keep the names straight. He’d taken lessons here and there over the years—karate, jujitsu, tae kwon do, kung fu. There were a couple of dojos in the nearby town of Arkane. It was easy to mix up all those names. He raised his ski poles into a double sweeping block. If Peggy hadn’t gotten there first, he could have taken out that son of a gun with a few well-placed—

  In that moment of inattention, he didn’t notice that the ski tracks he followed veered two or three feet to the left of a slight mound. Mac went straight, and his right ski caught on something. Probably a snow-buried branch, Mac had time to think. Mac had skied cross-country all his life. Since he was five. He should have been able to recover quickly, but he’d been so focused on his anger over Peggy Winn, and so off balance with his poles in the air, he’d taken just a moment too long to react. He was down, spraddle-legged, before he could even squawk. He felt the front half of his ski immobilized by the branch. The front edge of his ski shoe was locked into place on his ski. The inside of his right leg slammed against something hard.

  The pop of breaking bone—and the excruciating pain—told him something was wrong. Very wrong.

  * * *

  Earlier in the week, Wantstring had tried to ignore his students’ collective sigh of relief when he canceled the next two graduate seminar classes that met on Saturdays and Mondays. He couldn’t blame them. They needed more time on their papers. He’d felt his own sigh of relief over those cancellations. His research assistants would handle the undergraduate classes until he returned.

  He pulled two USB thumb drives from one of his multiple pockets and tucked one of them under the rolled-up flannel shirt he used as a pillow. He wedged a second one in between two logs halfway down the woodpile. Enough wood inside for a week at least, and twice that amount outside under the wide overhang of the roof. The cabin had been well designed for a Vermont winter, even one like this, with heavy October snows.

  He distributed a few other small items here and there around the cabin. Time to get the fire built so he could melt snow for washing. He patted his shirt pocket and felt his green ballpoint pens and the box of waterproof matches. What more did he need?

  He thought for a moment and retrieved two of the energy bars he’d stowed on the top bunk. He put them on the simple square table next to his lunch. Nothing like an energy bar snack for later, to get his brain revved up in an hour or two when he was bound to get stuck on a difficult paragraph. Thinking about the bars reminded him—he retrieved his cell phone from the windowsill and checked those bars. No service. That was just as well. Nobody would have any reason to call. He’d made it clear that he was going to be unavailable for an entire week. The phone charge wouldn’t have lasted more than a few days at best. He powered it off with a deep sense of satisfaction.

  Once all his supplies were arranged to his liking, he stepped away from the cabin to gather a pot of snow to melt for wash water. With his filter system, he could use the snowmelt for drinking water, too.

  He had an itchy feeling, like somebody might be watching him, but one quick glance around the clearing and at the trees beyond reassured him that he was alone. Completely alone.

  5

  When the Store Is Closed

  I pulled my old plaid shawl tighter around my shoulders. I couldn’t help being grateful for having bought it in that mysterious shop in Pitlochry, one of my favorite towns in Scotland. That had been four months ago. Little had I known the shawl came with its own baggage—this almost transparent, incredibly rugged ghost, complete with full-sleeved homespun shirt, a Farquharson tartan kilt—the old-fashioned kind made of nine yards of handwoven and hand-felted fabric. He had to pleat it each morning, lie down on it, roll it around his . . . I was getting distracted here. Anyway, he didn’t have to do all that anymore, now that he was dead.

  I took two more well-aged maple logs from the stack in the corner and added them to my beautiful bright red Defiant FlexBurn wood-burning stove. Flames leapt up as I closed the door. I moved the damper lever back to keep the heat from overpowering the living room. Through the heavy glass insert, the thick bed of coals glimmered brightly, casting a reddish glow over the dark living room. Even with the curtains wide-open, the cloudy afternoon light seemed to be growing dimmer. There’d be more snow by midafternoon; they were predicting at least another twenty inches overnight, on top of the two feet that had fallen last night. Probably not a full-out blizzard, but it might be close to one. Nobody would be going anywhere tomorrow.

  Fine with me. I wasn’t opening my store, the ScotShop, a piece of old Scotland, today. There weren’t any tour buses scheduled, and—this time of year, at least, once the autumn leaves were off the trees—the tour buses were about the only thing to liven up the downtown area, especially on a Sunday, and the ScotShop was always closed on Mondays. The blizzard that had stopped most of the eastern cities in their tracks was just one more regular old winter day here in Hamelin. By Tuesday, they’d have the roads cleared and we’d have an influx of tourists, although the regular tour buses from Boston might not be able to make it. The store was ready. Last Friday, I’d received a long-awaited order of kilts, tartan ties, ghillie brogues, and sgian-dubhs. Gilda, my shop assistant, who was finally back from her sixteen-week sojourn in the alcohol rehab center, had helped me log most of it in and get it on the shelves. Sam and Shoe—they were my twin cousins and employees as well—had pitched in. Many hands make light work. My mother always used to tell me that. Still did, as a matter of fact. Like an eerie echo, my ghost had told me the same thing as he’d watched the four of us unpacking, pricing, and displaying the new merchandise.

  Once last summer, he’d told me how sorry he was that he couldn’t help. Ghosts can’t pick things up. Can’t eat. Can’t sleep. Can’t even . . . Well, never mind that.

  “Don’t worry about it, Dirk,” I’d told him when there was nobody around to hear me talking to him. Nobody else could see or hear him—nobody except my dear friend Karaline Logg, who owned the Logg Cabin, the wonderful restaurant across a small courtyard from the ScotShop. It was open for breakfast and lunch only—and Karaline made a very good living offering the state’s best maple pancakes, to name only one of her specialties.
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  Karaline had picked up my shawl one day and found out that she could see my ghost, although other people—well, one other person: Harper—had held it to no effect. No effect, that was, other than a speeding up of my heart as I wondered how I was going to explain Dirk, who appeared to be a permanent part of my household, to Harper, whom I would have loved to have as a permanent part of the same place. Only Harper hadn’t seen or heard anything out of the ordinary.

  I wasn’t really sure why I was the one who’d bought the old, old tartan shawl, one that had been handed down from great-grandmother to great-granddaughter through thirty or thirty-five generations. The perfectly ordinary-looking woman who’d sold it to me in Pitlochry when I went to Scotland on a buying trip had mentioned that she had no daughters or granddaughters to pass it on to, so the shawl would have to go to her sister’s line. But if that was the case, why had she sold it to me? And why hadn’t I been able to find the store again when I went back the very next day?

  It was all a mystery to me. Peigi, Dirk’s long-dead ladylove, had woven the shawl—in the fourteenth century, if you can believe something as crazy as that.

  There were days I thought I’d just made this all up, like a waking dream, but then I’d turn around to find Dirk talking quietly to Shorty. My cat could see him. Spiders were attracted to him. So was Tessa, my brother’s service dog, although Tessa had learned early on not to try to lick Dirk’s face or his fingers. Animals—or people—who touched him accidentally ended up with a disconcerting pins-and-needles feeling, and if they made the mistake of colliding with him, it could leave them disoriented or, even worse, flat on the floor, for quite some time.

  But I’d learned all of this slowly, over the past four months. The basic truth was that, somehow or other, the shawl had found its way to me, a twenty-first-century woman with a penchant for all things Scottish. This 653-years-dead Scot came along with it. If I folded the shawl and set it aside, Dirk disappeared. Where he went I didn’t know, and he didn’t, either. He’d tried to describe it, but spoken language just didn’t come close.