by Janni Nell
“Did you bake them yourself?” I asked.
Mrs. Ferguson leaned toward me and whispered, “Can ye keep a secret?” I assured her I could. “The brownies made them.”
I thought I understood. Girl Scouts here were sometimes referred to as Brownies. I said as much to Mrs. Ferguson but she instantly corrected me.
“Brownies,” she said, “are wee folk—you might call them elves—who live in my house and do the chores while I sleep.”
It would have been easy to dismiss Mrs. Ferguson as senile, but as a paranormal investigator I’ve seen things even I found hard to believe. So I took her at her word. Clearly someone was keeping this cottage spic and span. Maybe it was elves…I mean brownies.
“More tea?” she asked.
I declined the tea but accepted another cookie. Between mouthfuls I asked her to tell me about her dreams.
“How much has Douglas told you?” she asked.
“Just that you had the same dream three nights in a row. Something about drowning.”
The sparkle left her eyes. “Aye, that’s true,” she said. “I dreamed I was floating in the loch. The water was blissfully warm, which it never is in reality. I felt so secure and comfortable. Completely at peace. Then the water started to froth and bubble. All of a sudden it turned ice cold.
“I was sucked down, deep, deep into the black water. I couldn’t see or hear or breathe. I opened my mouth and water gushed into my lungs.”
Flipping open my notebook, I scribbled frantically, taking down every word she said.
“Was that the end of the dream?”
“Aye,” she whispered.
“And you’ve had this dream three times?”
She nodded.
“Exactly the same each time?”
“Exactly,” she said.
I thought about that for a while. “Douglas told me you’ve had other dreams that came true.”
“Only if I have the dream three times.” She continued in a singsong voice, “Dream times three, true it be.”
I looked at the tiny woman opposite me. There seemed little chance of her going swimming in the loch, which meant that her dream couldn’t possibly come true. Hoping I wouldn’t offend her, I pointed this out.
Instead of becoming defensive, which I had half expected, she leaned toward me. “Douglas hasn’t told ye much about me, has he?”
I confirmed that he hadn’t and waited for her to go on.
“Let me tell ye about the worst week of my life. Every night I dreamed about pain—down my arm, across my chest—it was agonizing. On the eighth day Edwin died of a massive heart attack. I knew it was coming but I couldn’t persuade him to see a doctor. He said he’d had more than his rightful three score and ten years—twenty-five more to be precise—and it was time to go. He even suggested we die together. We argued over that. I’m not the kind to kill myself. I’ll go when the good Lord tells me it’s time and not before.
“What I’m trying to tell ye is that, although the events in my dreams appear to be happening to me, in real life they always happen to others. Someone is going to drown in the loch. It might be Douglas or Sir Alastair or even ye, lassie, but it won’t be me.”
It wouldn’t be me either. There was no way I’d swim in the loch unless the temperature rose by at least twenty degrees, but perhaps Douglas and Sir Alastair, whoever he was, were made of sterner stuff.
“Mrs. Ferguson, I’d like to clarify a couple of things about your dream. When you felt yourself being sucked under, did it feel as though someone was pulling you under?”
“Ye mean like hands around my ankles?” She shook her head. “No, nothing like that.”
“What about something pulling you under?”
Once again she shook her head.
I decided to go for the direct approach. “Do you believe there is anything living in the loch, Mrs. Ferguson?”
There was a moment of shocked silence then she laughed, “This isn’t Loch Ness, it’s Loch Furness. There’s no monster here.”
That wasn’t quite what I’d had in mind, but I let the subject rest.
“Have you seen the rose by the loch?” I asked her.
“The Dedfield Rose? I’ve not seen it yet but I know what it means.” Her old eyes brimmed with unshed tears.
I squeezed her hand, offering what little comfort I could.
I made some more entries in my notebook but I soon realized Mrs. Ferguson couldn’t tell me any more. It was eight when I left her pouring a bowl of milk for her brownies.
Outside a pale moon competed with the lights inside the houses, but neither did much to illuminate the dark street. The chill in the air was now bone-numbing, and despite the darkness I thought I could see little curls of mist wreathing the nearby gardens. There was something eerie about this village at night. I would be glad to return to the safety of Mac’s.
As I strode toward the pub a breeze began to blow bringing the bitter cold of ice and snowfields into the village. It seemed excessively cold for early fall. Reminding myself that the fall temperatures in Scotland were very different from those of San Diego, I folded my arms around my body and quickened my pace.
The breeze gathered strength. It rushed up behind me and wrapped itself around my legs. I put on a burst of speed and hurried toward Mac’s. I had almost reached the door when the howling began. Softly at first and then growing in strength until it filled my head.
I didn’t cover my ears. Paranormal investigators don’t do that kind of thing. Instead I listened for hidden words. Witches’ spells can hide in the wind. Ghosts can use it to voice their pain.
I could hear pain now—deep, primeval and unmistakably feminine. As the wailing of the wind increased, I tried to identify the source of the pain. Love? Anger? Grief? I’m not psychic, but sometimes I can sense these things.
Right now I sensed grief. Vast and overwhelming, as though someone’s soul was being wrenched from their body. There was death too. Dark and horrible.
“Who are you?” I asked the wind.
It answered by blowing harder. The wailing changed to a keening that made me shudder. I’ve heard a lot of horrible sounds in my time, but the only one that rivaled this was the moaning of the White Lady at Willingthorpe Castle. The one case I had failed to solve.
This wasn’t the time to dwell on my one failure. I was trying to push the memory of the White Lady out of my mind when the wind abruptly died, plunging the village into brooding stillness. It was the kind of stillness you get before a snowfall, but I guessed there would be no snow tonight. Something much worse was on its way.
Chapter Two
Hurrying the last few yards to Mac’s, I pushed open the door. The crowd in the pub was oddly silent, as though they too had been listening to the wind. More than one pale face turned toward me. There were questions in their eyes. Was the paranormal investigator any good? Did she have the answers?
Ignoring their stares—there was no point telling them I knew as little as they—I headed for the bar. Douglas gave me a whiskey. Resisting the urge to down it in one gulp, I took a sip.
Douglas said, “I assume you heard the banshee.”
Banshee? Of course. Although I associated banshees with Ireland, I knew they were also heard in parts of Scotland. Draining my glass no longer seemed such a bad idea. In fact it proved quite fortifying.
Douglas looked me straight in the eye. “There’ll be a death.” He kept his voice low but it carried in the unnatural silence. A whisper of agreement rippled through the room.
With an impressive show of bravado, a middle-aged man got to his feet and ordered another round. His words broke the tension.
Someone said, “Settle down, McEwen. There’s no hurry. Death won’t come for you tonight. You’re too tough and ugly.”
That’s not exactly what he said. I’ve deleted the six expletives and the reference to a female body part. Pub talk can get painfully dull if you include all the expletives.
Douglas hurried to fill McEw
en’s order. Bess rushed it over to his table. She was setting down the last drink, when McEwen got to his feet and, beer in hand, moved unsteadily toward me.
After putting his full pint carefully on the bar, he tried to climb onto the stool beside me. Immediately he slipped off and tried again. The second time he succeeded.
Fixing me with his bloodshot eyes he said, “So, lassie, you’ve come here looking for things that go bump in the night.”
I gave him my standard reply. “I’ve been asked to investigate certain paranormal occurrences.” Then I dropped the official line and gave him a flirtatious smile. I’m not one of those women who draw the line at using feminine wiles to elicit information. I’ll use any means that gets results and feminine wiles usually work wonders with drunks like McEwen.
Proving this theory, he gave me a lecherous smile and offered to buy me a drink. Accepting a soda—I wanted to keep a clear head—I asked him his thoughts on the wailing wind.
“Was it a banshee or just the wind?”
He seemed surprised by my question. “Och, it’s the banshee. Someone in this village is a walking corpse. Or someone at Maitland House. That’s the stately home on the ridge.” He gulped beer, wiping froth from his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Who lives there?” I asked.
“Sir Alastair and his new wife, Lady Justina. She’s not from round here,” he added with a sneer.
I interrupted him. “What about staff? At Maitland House?”
“A chef, a butler,” he checked them off on his fingers, “and a couple of lassies from the village who go up there twice a week to clean. But they dinnae live there.” McEwen leaned toward me. “Has Douglas told you Lady Justina is a witch? She dances naked in the clearing near Beag Glais—” he pronounced it bayk glis, “—casting spells.”
This sounded like a malicious rumor. The classic case of an outsider being blamed for everything that goes wrong in a village. Calling McEwen’s bluff, I asked, “Have you seen this with your own eyes?”
“Matter of fact, I have.”
Greatly surprised, I pressed him for more information.
“It was early one morning,” he said. “I was on my way to the castle to do some carpentry for Sir Alastair, when I heard a strange sound. Like singing but not, if you know what I mean. Anyway, for once in my life I was early for work, so I followed the sound. That’s when I saw her, dancing around in her birthday suit. Och, she’s a bonnie woman.” He paused as though a new thought had come to him. “Of course, she could have cast a spell to make me think she was bonnie. For all I know she’s an ugly old crone.” He paused again, this time to drink his beer.
I filled the silence by saying, “Do you really believe that singing and dancing naked around a clearing makes Lady Justina a witch?”
He stared at me as if I was crazy. “How many people do you know who dance around clearings stark naked?”
“It’s proof she’s eccentric,” I said, “but not that she’s a witch.”
“She was chanting a spell.”
“You said she was singing.”
“It wasn’t a proper song. It sent shivers down my spine.”
“Do you remember the words of the song?”
“Aren’t you listening? It was a spell. I dinnae understand the words.”
Seeking to cover all bases I asked him whether Lady Justina spoke any foreign languages.
“Aye,” he replied. “She speaks fluent Witch.”
Ignoring his reference to Witch—I doubt if he’d ever heard it spoken—I asked, “Has anyone else seen Lady Justina dancing in the clearing?”
“I’m not making this up,” he said.
It wasn’t a direct answer to my question but it contained all the information I needed. Unless I had another confirmed sighting of Lady Justina I couldn’t afford to take McEwen at his word.
To smooth his ruffled feathers I offered to buy him another pint. When Douglas had placed the drink in front of McEwen, I asked, “Supposing Lady Justina was casting a spell, what kind of spell do you think it was?”
“A spell to make me fall in love with her.” He stopped abruptly. He seemed appalled that he had spoken the words. “Forget I said that.”
Hoping he wouldn’t clam up, I asked gently, “Did she succeed?”
He studied his dirty fingernails. Then he scratched his chin. Finally he stared deep into his beer as though it was an old and comforting friend. Keeping his eyes downcast, he whispered miserably, “Aye.”
Poor bugger, as my Australian father would have said.
What was I doing thinking of Dad? I’d had no contact with him in ten years. For all Mom and I knew he was still wandering around the Nullarbor Plain, which he’d been planning to cross just before he disappeared.
I told myself to forget Dad, as he’d no doubt forgotten me, and focused on the job at hand.
But I decided not to question McEwen any further. It was clear that his unrequited love for Lady Justina had caused him to lie about her being a witch. Maybe he’d made a pass at her and been rebuffed. Who knew. But one thing was sure, I wasn’t going to rub salt in his wounds.
Leaving him to drown his sorrows, I glanced around the bar. The crowd was thinning. Douglas caught my eye and smiled.
“Do you want another drink?”
“Why not.” There was no longer any point in remaining sober. I was too tired to question anyone else tonight.
Putting away my notebook, I wrapped my hand around the glass Douglas put in front of me. I was savoring the fiery taste of the whiskey when Douglas came around the bar and sat on the stool to my right. McEwen was still perched on the stool to my left, staring moodily into his beer.
I left him to his own thoughts and turned to Douglas. The conversation that followed ended up more like a prelude to a date than a discussion between employer and employee, but, in my defense, I have to say he started it by asking, “How did you become a paranormal investigator?”
I could have told him about Casper, but I never talk about Casper. So, without mentioning any names, I told Douglas that very early in life I had realized that the skeptics were wrong and Shakespeare was right.
“To paraphrase,” I said to Douglas, “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by the average human.”
“But how did you know that, Allegra? You must have had an experience that made you realize it.”
“Yeah,” I murmured. But I didn’t tell him that my first contact with the paranormal had happened at the age of six. After almost twenty years I could still here the screech of the speeding car, could still see my ball lying in the middle of the road. From nowhere a golden-haired man had appeared and scooped me up in his arms. Next thing I knew we were on the sidewalk. I have no memory of getting there, but both the ball and I were safe. The man disappeared. Simply faded away. Thinking he was a ghost, I nicknamed him Casper.
Before Douglas could ask any other difficult questions, I said, “So tell me about you. Have you always lived in the village?”
“I was born in Edinburgh. That’s where I went to university. After graduating I worked as a high school teacher for a while.”
“What did you teach?”
“Economics.”
I smiled.
“What’s funny?” he asked.
“A hard-headed businessman employing a paranormal investigator.”
“Employing?” he snorted. “I’m not even paying you the minimum wage.”
“Oh yeah. Well don’t spread it around or everyone will want a freebie.” Changing the subject, I asked how he had moved from teaching to pub ownership.
“My uncle died. He had no bairns but he did have two brothers. Bess is the daughter of one, I’m the son of the other. Uncle Gordon owned this pub for fifty years and he wanted it to stay in the family. I suppose he thought that with my economics degree and Bess’s local knowledge we’d be able to run the place.”
“You’ve done him proud,” I said, remembering the crowded bar I h
ad entered earlier.
“Och, I hope so, although I’m not sure he’d approve of me changing the name to Mac’s.” He turned to a photograph on the wall. “What do you think, Uncle Gordon?”
The man in the photo resembled Douglas, if you overlooked the black-rimmed glasses and the weak chin. Neither of which Douglas possessed.
He raised his glass to Uncle Gordon and took a long swallow.
I wondered what Uncle Gordon would think of a paranormal investigator tramping around Furness. I suspected he wouldn’t approve. Not because he didn’t believe in the paranormal, but because he looked like the kind of man who could cohabit with it quite happily.
Bess interrupted my thoughts. “Last drinks, everyone.”
Douglas helped her fill the orders. Then he asked if I wanted another drink. I shook my head. Beside me, McEwen drained his glass. He mumbled something about having to get home and launched himself off his stool. He misjudged the distance to the ground, stumbled and fell heavily.
Instantly I was on my feet, reaching down to take hold of him, but he was a big man, a big inebriated man, and I needed Douglas’s help to get him to his feet.
McEwen shook off our helping hands. “Gotta get home.”
“I’ll drive you,” said Douglas, apparently forgetting his car was out of action.
“I’m not drunk,” said McEwen. “Just need a bit of fresh air.” Lurching like a sailor in a storm, he headed toward the door. When he reached it he pushed instead of pulled. He might have been stuck there until he sobered up if Douglas hadn’t pulled it open for him. McEwen proceeded valiantly down the three steps but he tripped on the last one and ended up in a heap at the bottom.
Once again Douglas and I helped him up. This time he didn’t shake us off.
“Where does he live?” I asked Douglas.
“On the corner of the first cross street. A few minutes’ walk, no more.” But that was long enough for McEwen to give us a slurred account of his ill-treatment by someone called Phillips.
“Who’s Phillips?” I asked.
“Butler,” mumbled McEwen. “Maitland House. Looks at me like I’m pond scum.”
Right now McEwen did look a little like pond scum, but I was sure he had a good heart.
