Ross Lawhead (15 page)

This last sentence was directed at Freya. She nodded in agreement.

Ms. Sinton leaned forward. “This is no doubt cause for concern— and Felix will give us specific details later—but he told us just now that he believed you had been, for want of a better word, ‘taken' when you were younger. Is this true?”

Freya's eyes dropped to her tea and looked into the steam swirling up from it. Then she started to retell, in a halting voice, the lies and half-truths that she had told the police and all the psychiatrists over the years. She made sure to include all of the rehearsed halts, pauses, and stutters she had tailored into it.

“When we were younger,” she said, “Daniel and I, we found a tunnel that we explored. When we tried to leave, we couldn't find our way out again. We were missing for almost a month. We wandered through tunnels underground, we licked water that dripped from rocks, we ate insects sometimes, and then we were found— up north somewhere. I don't remember where.”

The group looked at her with blank faces.

“And that's it,” Freya said.

“You'll forgive me, my dear,” said the stout porter, Wood, “but I believe that is far from ‘it,' as you say!”

Freya was shocked by this outright attack. She automatically started replaying another side of the story she usually held in reserve to make people think that they had earned her trust.

“There were people, I think, and they helped us, maybe, but—but I don't remember much about them.”

“And I say it was nothing of the sort!”

“Please, Brent,” said Rev. Borough. “Don't antagonize the girl.

I'm sure I would not wish to open up to a group of strangers about events that most would think me mad for relating. She simply doesn't know to trust us yet. Perhaps we should let her rest and she can explain more when she's recovered.”

“Thank you,” Freya said, spying an out. “I'm just—there's a lot that's happened recently, with Daniel, and I don't think I can talk about it yet. Please, tell me, what do you—I mean, the Society—do?”

“Lt. Cross,” said Professor Stowe, rising, “perhaps you'd like to give our guest a short—very short, mind—account of our history.

I have a matter I must attend to. Excuse me.” He left the room.

“Well,” Lt. Cross began, “the Society was formed in April of

1917, when Elsie Wright and Frances Mitchell began meeting regularly with Sir Wilfred Rewlbury, the head of the Royal Society of Biology, and, in May of that year, Nils Ogred, a Swiss botanist. Initially they met in a small tearoom in Bradford, which was convenient for charting incidents in the area. They were, over time, joined by Robert Trebor, the historian and lecturer, and Arthur Rutherford, Lord Sansweete. In August of 1919, Nils Ogred moved to Holland, and the group relocated, meeting in the chapter house of Westbury Cathedral. They were joined by Rodney Woodrue and Nassar Rassan in October 1921, after Lord Sansweete left in June of 1920. In September 1926, the group was on hiatus following Sir Rewlbury's son's disappearance. Once that situation was resolved they started meeting again, but this time in the Bury St. Edmunds Town Hall. They were joined by gentleman scientist Rian Buford, Clark Sassoon, and Lady Gail Nyman. It was at this time that rifts began to form, and in July 1928, the group first split, with Wright, Woodrue, Rassan, and Sassoon meeting on Thursdays of alternating weeks, and the rest meeting, from November of that year, on the first and third Mondays of every week at the private library of Joseph—”

Freya wasn't following any of this. She was so desperately tired that for a few moments she couldn't decide if it was more polite to excuse herself or just fall quietly asleep. “I'm sorry, I'm not really—I think it would be best if I left,” she blurted, but made no effort to move, or even lift her head.

“—Wimbourne, twenty-eighth Earl of Winton. The following year, February to be specific, was when Mitchell's faction began their private royal presentations, at that time before George V. He allowed Mitchell's group use of the Royal Gallery's Eastern Rooms, which, in March of 1931, was abandoned for the Gallery Room of the Royal Gardens' Eastern Offices. Meanwhile, the Wright Society—”

Freya thought that she protested once more at this point, but she didn't have time to recall what she'd said because the next instant she was asleep.

2

The trip up to Dunbeath, the largest village next to Morven, took just a couple hours and was a scenic, costal drive. As he came closer to Morven, the sky became overcast, threatening rain. The clouds were so dark and deep—almost purple, in fact—that one could almost think it was starting to be evening. Alex looked at the dashboard clock; it read 9:47 a.m.

Instead of finding a place in the village to park, he turned inland and looked for the farm. Farmers were more tied into the area, not just in terms of community but of the land as well.

He came across a group of small buildings near a sign that read Bainabruich. He pulled the Land Rover up a dirt driveway, killed the ignition, and let himself in through a cattle gate. After knocking and receiving no reply at the front door, he circled around the house to the large open barn.

Through the doors in the back he could see a tractor moving across one of the fields. He spotted the path to the field and started along it. When the man in the tractor saw him, he turned off his engine and climbed out of the cab.

“Hello,” Alex said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a wallet that he had stuffed his police badge into. “My name is Alex Simpson. I'm with the Northern Constabulary,” the truth; “I work in the Special Crimes Unit,” the lie.

“Oh, aye,” the farmer said cautiously, reaching into his jacket pocket for a tobacco pouch and a packet of Rizlas.

“Can I ask your name, sir?”

“Rab Duthie.” He stuck out his hand.

Alex shook it. “My department deals with crime patterns by location and sociological region. I wonder if you wouldn't mind answering a question or two about the area.”

The farmer licked his cigarette paper and nodded.

“Grand,” Alex said, pulling out his notebook, more to stall for time than anything else. All that nonsense about worming your way into the affections of the local folk by handing out cigarettes and making sly comments was pure fantasy—something just to keep the mystery serials on TV moving along. The farmers he'd grown up around weren't that gormless. He was going to have to blag his way through and hope that his officiousness carried him to where he needed to be.

“There have been reports of animals missing in the area. Anything of your own gone walkabouts?”

Duthie lit his roll-up and took a puff, squinting as he thought. “Nothing missing, as such. But there have been some . . . breakages. Vandalism, ye ken.”

Alex scribbled in his notebook. “Where did this occur?”

“East Fold,” he said, gesturing. “Hedge been flattened.”

“The hedge?”

“Aye. Flattened right down to the ground. Torn up places, but mostly”—he made a squashing motion with his palms—“had to put up some planks to stop the sheep all from wandering awa'.”

“That's odd. Could we go an' have a look?” Alex asked, looking out across the field.

“Sure, nae problem. Hop on.” Rab Duthie started up the tractor and they rolled off, Alex perched on the footstep, holding on to the cab After some maneuvering around dirt tracks and muddy paths, they came to a long thick hedge that must have been, Alex judged, at least a hundred years old. It was only about five feet high, but over four feet wide. The tractor shuddered to a stop and Alex hopped down.

“Ye can see it there,” said Duthie, climbing down and discarding his cigarette and pointing to a gap in the hedge. “I no ken how it happened. Too narrow for any car or tractor—and I've seen both get stuck trying to travel through thinner—in addition to there bein' no tracks. No animal I know of would have the power tae do it. Except an elephant, mebbe.”

Alex poked around a little but found nothing peculiar. “You really have no idea what did this?”

The farmer looked at him for a second and then shrugged and shook his head. He stuck his hands in his pockets.

Which meant that he did have some idea, but that he wasn't willing to share it.

“Anything else odd in the area?”

“Weel, there's been carjackings. Joyriding and the like. It's been awhile since we've had that up here,” Rab Duthie said, looking off into the distance, his voice getting high, stressed. “It's like a wee crime wave up here. Been thievings, fights most nights down at the pubs, even the quiet ones. People are fashed—right desperate, ye ken? Spirits are low. We've had a bad season—nae enough rain or sunlight. Everything ye put in the ground comes up weak and yellow, if at all, and that gets ye doon, natural, but folks took it hard this year. Some farmers hae kilt themselves and done tried kilt themselves. Children. Children done kilt themselves. Teenagers with their lives ahead of them—” Duthie paused and spat on the ground, twice. His voice was getting low and raw now. Alex said nothing.

“Their lives ahead of them and they can no see a way for'ard.

More afeared of life than they are of death. Every one of them is a blow, even the ones that pull through. It gets to you. It mounts up in your soul and you find yourself looking at a bottle of pills or a rafter in the barn, and you think, weel . . . weel mebbe . . .”

Duthie cleared his throat noisily and spat again. He didn't look like he felt like saying any more after that.

“Well,” Alex said eventually. “It seems to me as if you have more problems than just a gap in your hedge.”

Duthie forced a laugh.

“What do you think is causing it?” Alex asked.

The farmer turned his head.

“Crime, suicide, depression, violence, drunkenness, vandalism . . . and this gap in your hedge. To you, they all seem connected. What's causing these things?”

Duthie turned to stare Alex straight in the eyes. His sturdy, weathered frame swayed slightly in the brisk morning air. “Aye, I have a ken of what's causin' this—this atmosphere of hate and fear.”

“And?”

“You would nae believe me!” Duthie shouted, almost angry in his desperation.

“Try me.”

“The De'il!”

Duthie seemed shocked to hear himself say the words out loud. He stood, trembling. The Devil.

“Aye, now we're getting somewhere,” Alex said, grinning.

Duthie turned to look at Alex out of the corner of his eye. “You don't think I'm crazy?”

“Not at all,” Alex said. “I think you're clever and brave to say that.”

Duthie nearly broke down completely. His eyes became watery and he had to look away. “My wife—she dusnae get up most days. Says she can feel the presence of evil here—like a giant hand that's pushing everyone doon.”

“Who hereabouts—or in the village perhaps—would I go to find out more about this?” Alex asked. “A town official? Mayor? Priest? Wise old woman?”

Duthie pushed at his cheekbones with his palms. “Rector,” he said, clearing his throat. “Rector Maccanish. He's your man.”

“Where will I find him?” Alex asked.

“Down the kirk. I'll tak' ye to him,” Duthie said, climbing into the tractor once more.

“If it is the De'il,” he said before he started the engine, “is there anythin' a man can do about it?”

“Of course there is,” Alex answered. “That's why I'm here.”

3

“Oh no, not again.”

Sitting upright, Daniel looked around. Everything was different. He was now in a meadow covered with lush green grass that stretched out, vast, flat, and empty, in all directions. Ahead of him, just visible on the flat horizon, was a thick green line between the sky and the plain. A forest?

He twisted around. Behind him, the ground seemed to slope up slowly, over the miles, and far, far into the distance rose an enormous mountain. It was so far away that it was actually rather hard to see—it blended in almost perfectly with the sky, so that only the edges and top could be traced. It rose to a single peak and its sides flowed down smooth and straight. It was as if someone had poured an enormous pile of sugar out onto the landscape.

But that was it—there was nothing else around him, not a hill, not a bush, not a tree stump. The sun in the sky above him seemed massive and that, along with the mountain, gave him the feeling that he was now inside of a larger world than the one he had been in just a few moments ago. This thought—that he was in a different world—a different planet—made his stomach lurch. He stood and scanned the horizon, looking for any detail at all, but there were just those few elements: the plain, the forest, the mountain, the sky, and the sun. And each of these was so absurdly simple, so . . . iconic, as if a child had drawn them.

He stopped turning and listened. There was the sound of a gentle wind blowing past his ears, but nothing more.