Beware The Peckish Dead!

by William Stafford

  The whimpering gave way to a howl and I felt like the damnedest fool in the country.

  I had forgotten all about Cassie!

  I had left her dozing in front of the fire, like the faithless cur I indubitably am. I cast off the blanket, bounded from the car and launched myself at the door.

  “I’m here, old girl!” I reassured her, lifting the bar and tossing it, caber-like, aside. Cassie yipped in eager anticipation. I heaved the door open and was almost bowled over by the dog’s enthusiastic greeting. She struck me in the chest like a cannonball - a furry, licky cannonball, squirming in my embrace in a manner that brought Cuthbert to mind - but then, what doesn’t bring Cuthbert to mind? Very little.

  I stroked and tickled her rain-soaked fur, glad to be reunited, sure, and relieved my visitor was nothing sinister or supernatural. I was even prepared to overlook the appalling smell of wet dog - aside from mentioning it here.

  The storm continued to rage and, when the dog had calmed down a little, I set to securing the door again. My efforts were interrupted when a flash of lightning gave rise to angry growling from my canine companion.

  “Easy, girl,” I said, looking for the damned bar to lock the door. Cassie barked, insisting I paid more attention.

  In Bessie’s passenger seat sat a pale figure, moonlight white and dripping wet.

  Drownded Ned was looking right at me!

  It was too late; I had, as Cuthbert might have put it, clocked him good and proper.

  The apparition seemed to be staring directly at me. Those boiled fish eyes sent a chill down my spine and set my knees atremble. I found I was transfixed, unable to tear my gaze away. I tried to read his inscrutable expression. Was that an accusation in the slight dip of a hoary eyebrow? Was that petulance in the protrusion of a blue lip? Waves of sorrow seemed to emanate from the spectre until it felt like I was immersed in sadness, all-encompassing, all-pervading sadness until I couldn’t breathe. I was drowning in it.

  Cassie barked.

  Drownded Ned gave the slightest nod and vanished like a soap bubble pricked by a finger. The spell was broken. I staggered, reaching for the nearest wall to support me but I still could not breathe. I coughed and spluttered. Out came a lungful of brackish water.

  Cassie yelped.

  Breathless, I laughed. “You’re as surprised as I am, old girl.”

  I inspected the car. Of Ned, there was no sign, no indication he was ever there. I placed my palm on the seat. As dry as the floor of a budgerigar’s cage.

  Cassie barked thrice in rapid succession and leapt into the car.

  “What’s that?” I got into the driving seat. Even though she was unable to supply an answer, I felt it polite to ask. I imagined what her response might be:

  After Ned come the Peckish Dead...

  I froze. Beside me, Cassie whined like a creaking hinge. I muzzled her with my hand. We listened...

  For what seemed like an extended interval, there was nothing but the drumming of the rain. But then came the splashing of feet in puddles and the cries of men fleeing the inn. Someone tried to get into the stables. Cassie tensed, her hackles rising. Fists pounded.

  “Let me in!” a voice repeated, the words distorted into a strangulated cry, which in turn was superseded by the dreaded lip-smacking and the vulgar hums of appreciation.

  Omnomnomnomnom!

  Thunder crashed and lightning flashed, vying for dominance over the scene, building to a rousing, you might say Wagnerian, crescendo.

  And then silence. Sudden and absolute.

  Even the rain ceased. I gave Cassie a reassuring pat on the head - it reassured me, at any rate - before venturing from the car and daring to peek outside.

  Men - the patrons of the inn - were making their way back indoors, no doubt for some kind of restorative tipple. They nursed injured hands. One held onto a shredded ear. Another limped, wincing with the agony of a torn-off kneecap. The fellow who must have been trying to get in - the innkeeper, I saw it was - was missing a cheek.

  “Mr Mortlake,” he addressed the stable door. Blood coursed through his fingers as he held his ravaged face. “I’ll thank ye to be on your way. There’s nae need to worry about the bill. We are all square.”

  He hobbled back to the bar. I felt an urge to hurry after him and express my gratitude for what was - from a Scotsman! - a surprising show of generosity!

  Also, I felt like I ought to go in and offer my services. I’m not much of a Florence Nightingale, I readily confess, but the spirit was willing. I made to unfasten the door; Cassie yipped in opposition to the motion.

  “Perhaps you’re right, old girl,” I returned to the relative comfort of Bessie’s upholstery. “Bad idea. But at first light, we shall be off, I know not where.”

  Another thing I knew not was why had I been spared? Why had not the Peckish Dead come for me?

  Cassie settled down to get some shuteye, resting her snout on my thigh.

  “Good girl,” I whispered, scratching behind her ear.

  I couldn’t help wondering whether she might have something to do with it.

  Chapter Ten

  Three days later, I was back in London. I’d left Bessie at Glasgow station. Love her as I do, it was more expeditious to travel by rail. There are precious few outlets dotted around the country to supply the gasoline my motor car so ravenously guzzles. Much as it pained me to put distance between myself and the site of Cuthbert’s disappearance, I knew the only thing I could do was to conduct research regarding the phenomenon of the Hole and the area in general. Denied access to the impressive resources housed in the library at Baird Hall, my best - indeed, my only - recourse was to devote my time to the British Library, squirrelled away in the reading room.

  I had to purchase a map of the Highlands - annotating the documents here is frowned upon, to put it mildly; a hanging offence, I shouldn’t wonder - and my notebook grew fat with my discoveries.

  The fairy paths, I found, continued toward Perth in one direction and Loch Ness in the other.

  The clerk fetched me an invaluable tome on the subject by a certain Ranulf Lindquist, in which he documents sightings of some kind of prehistoric creature in the waters. Marvellous, I groaned; once again my fate is entwined with a monster in a lake.

  Searches of the loch, Lindquist reported, invariably yielded nothing, but sightings of the creature persisted and persist to this day. My old grey matter came to the boil like pease pudding on the hob.

  What if the so-called Loch Ness Monster is only glimpsed intermittently because it is only present intermittently? What if it pops in and out of that damned travelling Hole, punctuating its life long ago before the Dawn of Man with the occasional daytrip to the here and now?

  It was all extremely diverting stuff but I would not let it distract me from my quest to bring back Cuthbert.

  If my ideas about ‘Nessie’ were correct, what were the implications for my valet? If the monster could come and go, even on an involuntary basis, surely Cuthbert might do the same? After all, Cassie had come through and no harm done...

  Thinking of the dog caused me a twinge of guilt. I was forced to leave her in my apartment while I conducted my research. I resolved to nip back at lunchtime and give her a good run around the park.

  I decided I needed another look at the Lindquist so I approached the counter and filled in a slip requesting the book be brought up from the Stygian stacks into the light of my table lamp. The clerk, a rat-faced fellow whom I suspect was deeply annoyed with me and my incessant demands that he do his job, perused the slip with a sneer and handed it back.

  “We are unable to fulfil your request at this time,” he said flatly, but there was a twinkle in his beady black eyes.

  “How so?” I queried. “I was looking at this very volume only yesterday.”

  “Yes,”
he grimaced. “I remember. But today you may not.”

  “And why is that, pray?”

  “Because someone else has beaten you to it.”

  The news astounded me. Someone else? Who on Earth? It seemed entirely incredible to me that anyone at all should be interested in such an obscure text on an esoteric subject and at the exact same time that I needed it. Oh, you know and I know, coincidences exist but whenever they occur, I always feel threatened, as though events and people are in some way conspiring against me. My skin prickled under my collar.

  “Who, pray, has the book?”

  I scoured the immediate vicinity, hoping to spot a likely candidate among the newspaper-readers, bored-looking students and assorted vagabonds.

  “I am afraid I am not at liberty to disclose-” the clerk began smugly but cut himself off when a tall woman in an expensively-tailored outfit approached the counter. Her hair, which was piled high beneath a fashionable hat, was the fairest blonde. Her cheekbones were sharp and angular and her ice-blue eyes pinned the clerk with a stare. When she spoke it was with the singsong lilt of a Scandinavian.

  “Good morning to you, Mr Mortlake,” she extended a gloved hand. “It is certainly good to be seeing you once more.”

  The clerk harrumphed and scurried away.

  I had to confess I hadn’t the foggiest idea who this woman might be. She laughed, like tinkling bells, at my embarrassment.

  “We met, you are not remembering, at one of your book signings. Oh, but you must be encountering so many of your fans wherever you are going. I read your book, The Kissings With The Nymph of the Water with keen interest.”

  “I am flattered.” I may even have blushed.

  “Of course, it is turning out to be little more than lurid and sensational fiction and of no use to my purpose.”

  If my face wasn’t red before, it certainly was now.

  “Your purpose, Miss?” I cleared my throat. “What might that be?”

  She smiled. “Why, finding my father, of course. I was assuming that with your interest in his writing-”

  “Wait a minute!” I interrupted, and rudeness be damned! “You’re the one who has beaten me to the Lindquist?”

  “Yes, indeed!”

  “Your father?” I remained puzzled.

  “My father is writing the book.”

  “Your father is Ranulf Lindquist?”

  “Yes, I am being desperately worried about him.”

  “So, you’re his daughter?”

  “Well, I am not being his son. I am Constance. But you may be calling me Connie.”

  Dim memories of a party thrown by my publisher to launch my novel rose to the surface of my mind, like Nessie from the loch.

  “Ah, yes!” I shook her hand again. “Connie Lindquist!”

  It had been on the tip of my tongue.

  ***

  She invited me to join her at a table on which several publications and documents were strewn. Her father was missing, she explained, and it was a matter of grave concern to her. His last known whereabouts were in the Loch Ness region, south of Inverness; he had gone to research a second volume on the prehistoric phenomenon.

  All sorts of bells rang in my head. I asked her to show me on a map the places her father frequented. I compared the sites she pointed out to those annotated on my own copy.

  “I am knowing what you are going to be saying, Mr Mortlake,” she smiled sadly. “These places follow a fairy path.”

  I gaped at her.

  “Oh, yes,” she continued, “I am knowing about the fairy path. As a young girl I would be listening to my father storytelling me about the fairy path. When you are being older, he was saying, I shall take you up there.”

  “Your father wanted to take you up the fairy path?”

  “Yes, alack and alas, it was never happening. And now he is being gone. Lost forever!”

  She sobbed into a handkerchief, attracting attention and muttered commentary from other readers. I was at a loss to know what to do. The only consolation I could offer was my inkling that I might know what had become of Ranulf Lindquist.

  “Miss Lindquist,” I ventured, when the sobbing had abated, “Connie, do you know about the Hole?”

  She dabbed at her eyes and gave a wet sniff. “The whole what?”

  I explained as best as I could about the portal that seemed to travel along the fairy path. Her brimming eyes grew rounder, shedding tears down her pale cheeks.

  “I too have lost someone up the fairy path,” I added, “and I would do anything to get him back.”

  She squeezed my hand. “Then getting him back we shall be! My father also! Oh, Mr Mortlake, you are bringing me hope with these tidings.”

  She threw herself at me. I stood rigid as a board while I endured a wholly inappropriate and unsolicited hug and suffered the seething but unspoken outrage of the library users. Too forward these Scandinavians! Probably something to do with the cold climate and the nights that can last half the year. They find warmth in each other, I suppose, which is all well and good, but hardly the done thing in the middle of the British Library.

  At last, the ordeal was over. Miss Lindquist walked around the table, patting her chin and touching various documents.

  “There is being a book,” she said. “It is being extremely rare. The authority on fairy paths in the British Isles. It is being so rare indeed that only one copy is existing.”

  “Then we must consult it at once!” I headed for the counter. “I shall fill out the slip.”

  The forward Miss Lindquist pulled me back by the sleeve. “Oh, Mr Mortlake, alas and alack! Even your great British Library is not having this book. Are you not thinking that I am asking for it? No; there is being only one copy and it is not being here.”

  “Where then? Where is it being?” I asked, although the sinking feeling in my entrails told me I could make a jolly good stab at the answer.

  “It is believed to be being in Scotland,” Miss Lindquist confirmed my misgivings. “In the private collection of L-”

  “Laird Baird!” My shoulders slumped.

  “You are knowing this already? You are knowing this man?”

  “Alas and alack,” I sighed in unkind imitation.

  “This is being perfect!” she clapped her hands.

  “Far from it, I’m afraid. Come with me, Miss Lindquist, if you will be so kind. I have a luncheon appointment but should be pleased to have you join us. I shall tell you everything then.”

  “Oh, well, if you are being sure I will not be protruding?”

  “No, no, not in the slightest. Now, tell me: how’s your throwing arm?”

  ***

  While I kept Cassie amused with the stick-throwing game, at which she is indefatigable, Miss Lindquist perched on a bench. She was scouring my notes, comparing them with her own - she even had the temerity to strike out some of mine and append corrections in the margins. Surely no English rose would be so brazen! But, if her actions resulted in the return of my Cuthbert, I would simply have to endure this bad behaviour. I could feel my upper lip tightening, like a true Englishman’s.

  She scoured the pages, seeking signs of her father. I would have insisted it was the work of her imagination but, given the bizarre unfolding of events, I could not be absolutely certain that it was.

  I fetched us bags of roasted chestnuts from a vendor.

  “I am believing,” Miss Lindquist announced between munches, “my father is going into this hole of yours and the beetle is coming out. My father is being in Ancient Egypt and, knowing I would be searching for him, low and high, he is placing himself among these hieroglyphs to be letting me know he is being all right.”

  It was possible, I had to admit. Recent years have seen me accommodate all sorts of strange notions.

>   “And Cuthbert? Do you think he is in Ancient Egypt?”

  “I am not knowing. The old man is going in, you are saying, and this beautiful dog is coming out?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Then your Cuthbert fellow is going in...”

  “Yes...”

  “Then, Mr Mortlake, we must be asking ourselves, who or what is coming out?”

  Chapter Eleven

  With much reluctance, we returned Cassie to my apartment. Fed and watered, she was content to doze on the rug in front of the fireplace. I was less content, being a little antsy about having an unchaperoned woman in my home, lest the neighbours got entirely the wrong idea - for her sake, of course. I was merely thinking of Miss Lindquist’s reputation. The Scandinavians have no regard for such delicacy; Miss Lindquist’s carefree presence only rankled my British sense of propriety.

  “Come along,” I addressed her a little stiffly. “We must return to the library; I want to look at that book again.”

  “Which book?” To my alarm, she perched on a chair at the dining table and proceeded to unpin her hat.

  “That book you believe your father crops up in to send you a message.”

  Miss Lindquist’s somewhat loose translation of some hieroglyphs led her to believe her old man was trying to communicate with her across the millennia.

  “That book!” she laughed.

  “Yes, that book!”

  “You are meaning this book.” She produced from under her hat the very volume in question. I was aghast. I did not know which was worse: the purloining of a library book or the brazen removal of her headwear in male company.

  She saw me flustered and stammering and she laughed merrily like someone using icicles as a glockenspiel.

  “I am merely borrowing it,” she was shameless in the light of her transgression. “It is what one is doing with library books, is it not?”

  “Well - yes - but-”