The Last Sunset
Authors: Bob Atkinson
The Last Sunset
Copyright © Bob Atkinson 2012
Cover art copyright © Wicked Cover Designs
2012
All rights reserved
Published by Greyhart Press
Also available in
Paperback (ISBN-13: 978-1478162155)
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The Last Sunset
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Glen Laragain, Scotland — 1916
The old man gaped blankly around him. Only
a moment ago he’d been in the mist of Glen Laragain with his son, searching for
a lost ewe. Now, it was as if he’d stepped off the edge of the world. In an
instant the mist had vanished to reveal a sky that was a tapestry of fire.
Above the western horizon an angry halo curled around a blood-red sun. He’d
seen halos before, but they were delicate, nebulous things, gently warning of
Atlantic rain. This was different. Here was a warning of something infinitely
more sinister.
Desperately he tried to make sense of what was
happening. He had seen other visions in Glen Laragain. Images from the day long
ago when the soldiers had brought death and destruction to the glen, as though
those terrible events had taken root in the very land itself.
But this was no image from the past. A deep
sense of foreboding told him this was a precursor to some terrifying event that
was yet to occur.
His chest was becoming tighter and tighter now.
It was so warm, so difficult to breathe… as if this hellish sky truly was—
A blinding flash lit up the sky above
Meall
Banabhie
, to the south. Before he could take in this latest horror, a
mountainous cauldron of fire began to climb into the heavens before his eyes,
the gates of hell bursting open. The old man watched as the boiling inferno
climbed higher and higher into the waiting sky. He was incapable of logical
thought now. He was aware of nothing but the pounding terror in his chest.
As he watched, an arm of fire detached itself
from the cauldron and began to curl towards the Glen Laragain pass.
He felt his chest explode moments before the
fires engulfed him.
Glen Laragain — 1916
After two days of incessant rain, the skies
were at last beginning to clear from the west. Glen Laragain slowly re-emerged
in the watery light, like a newborn land rising from the sea.
The two brothers had trekked barely half a mile
into the aquatic landscape, but their rough tweed clothing was already soaked
through. Their khaki haversacks were also drenched. Only the hunting rifles
slung over their shoulders remained impervious to the rain.
“In God’s name, Colin, what were the two of you
doing up the far end of the glen anyway?” the older man asked sharply.
“It was none of my doing,” replied the other,
his voice brittle and defensive. “One of the ewes had wandered off. Himself
thought she might have strayed up yonder. You know what our father was like
when he got an idea in his head.”
“Where was it you found him?”
A faint shudder ran through the younger man. “Up
near the old graveyard. I was on the far side when the mist came down and I
lost sight of him.” He looked forlornly towards the upper reaches of the glen,
where the April sun had reappeared as a pale orb behind the softening layers of
cloud. “It should have been yourself, Alistair, finding him like that. You
would be used to it. You would have known what to do.”
“It wouldn’t have mattered whoever was there,”
murmured the older man.
Colin ran his fingers through the black mess of
his hair. His young, weather beaten face was pale, his eyes red and swollen.
“Is that what it’s like, Alistair? Do they always look as… och, I don’t know…
Doctor MacIver said it was a heart attack, but when I saw his face… as if he’d
seen something, away on up there…”
Alistair exhaled slowly and made a point of
tightening the straps on his rucksack.
Colin went on, the words rushing from him like a
river in spate. “He would never allow us up that part of the glen when we were
wee laddies he always said the area was cursed he told me he saw things up
there terrible things that no man should ever have to see… he said they were
like images from the past…” The tumbling words suddenly turned to Gaelic: “
We
should build a cairn for him, Alistair Mhor, like they did in the old days.
”
Alistair snorted in tired disapproval. “He
always said you would be the last
tcheuchter
in Glen Laragain.”
The ghost of a smile flitted across Colin’s
haunted face. “Do you remember the stories himself used to tell us, about the
people who lived here before the massacre?”
Alistair glanced sharply at his brother. “Oh I
remember his stories all right. They were always about the Glen Laragain men
who went off to fight for their clan, or Scotland, or whatever. He never told
us about the ones who stayed at home tending cattle, raising a family. It was
as if men’s lives only had meaning if they’d been to war.” He looked to the
west, where bright shafts of sunlight had begun to play on the desolate
landscape. “Why are we like that? What is wrong with us?”
The younger man knew the question was
rhetorical. “What’s it like out there in France? You’ve been home three days
and you’ve never mentioned it once.”
Alistair continued to stare westwards, towards
the heights of
Druim Fada.
Something in those rocky wastes was holding his
interest, but when Colin followed his gaze, he could only see the bare elements
of sky, rock and water.
“In his last letter, himself said you’d gone
behind his back and signed up. He wanted me to talk you out of it. He told me
Mr. Kitchener would surely understand if one of his sons was allowed to stay at
home to run the croft.”
Colin shrugged awkwardly. “It’s all by the by
now, isn’t it? The croft can wait until after the war. We can run it together
when we get home, like himself had always intended.”
“…Aye, when we get home,” the older man
whispered. It was a while before he spoke again. “It’s the sound of birds
singing you miss more than anything out there. It’s funny the wee things that
come to you… you hear them sometimes, skylarks mostly, but it’s not the same
thing; not like here…”
He took a slow lungful of soft mountain air. To
the west the sun had all but disappeared again behind another bank of low
cloud. “We’d better get to the head of the glen and put up that cairn,” he said
quietly.
The best part of an hour had elapsed by the time
the brothers had wound their way through the ruins of the eighteenth-century
settlement, which stretched throughout the upper reaches of the glen. Long grey
walls that had once separated cattle from corn meandered here and there, their
patterns meaningless now that the cattle, and the corn, and the hands that laid
the stones were gone. At intervals the remains of ancient dwellings appeared,
their stark walls laid dry stone upon dry stone, all slowly crumbling under the
onslaught of successive winters.
The uppermost ruin was wreathed in low cloud
when they reached the western end of the glen. They entered a ghostly
landscape, silent but for the gurgling of newborn streams.
Colin seemed unaffected by the hike. He watched
his brother lean against the wall of the ruin as he tried to catch his breath.
“One year away from the Highlands, Alistair, and
you’ve turned into a Lowlander.”
“Wheesht, man, or there’ll be two cairns up
here,” growled his brother.
Smiling faintly, Colin made his way over to the
lone mountain ash that sprung from the ancient graveyard; its branches like
skeletal limbs in the mist. Other than a scattering of low mounds, there was
little to indicate this patch of ground had ever been a cemetery.
“This is where I found him,” Colin said quietly.
“The mist came down just as quickly that day too.”
Alistair looked around at the grey, alien
landscape fashioned by the mist. Without a word he threw off his rifle and
haversack and began to gather the rocks that littered the area.
His brother stood for a while, contemplating the
graveyard.
“Do you know what himself once told me? He said
in the olden days the last person to be buried in a Highland graveyard was
believed to guard the souls of everyone there, until the next burial.”
Colin laid his weapon and haversack beside those
of his brother. “When he told me that, I thought of the last soul that was
buried here after the massacre. He said he had considered opening a family plot
here instead of Kilmallie, after herself died three years ago. But, och, he
couldn’t bear the thought of one of our family being left to guard this place
for all eternity. He’s right, you know. Could you imagine such loneliness?”
As the monument took shape the mist grew more
dense and overpowering. Alistair appeared oblivious to the conditions, but
Colin looked nervously around him as he worked. More than once the mist seemed
to come together, and take form, before dissolving again, like something
conceived and then aborted.
Alistair pulled on his haversack as his brother
manoeuvred the final stone into position.
“Was it as bad as this the day yourselves were
up here?”
“This is much the same as it was that day.
There’s something about it… I felt it that day too… something unnatural…”
To his surprise Alistair was nodding. “You can
see why himself would never let us up here.”
Even the splashing of the burns had now ceased.
All around them was deep, claustrophobic silence.
“Did you know today is the 21st of April; the
anniversary of the massacre?” Colin asked in a nervous whisper.
The look on his brother’s face made it obvious
he did not. He suddenly shook his head. “Och, this is all nonsense. You’re
going to turn me into a simple-minded
tcheuchter
like yourself. We’ve
done what we came to do, let’s get out of this place before you have me seeing
things as well.”
Colin continued to glance fearfully around him
as they set off down the mist-covered glen, with only the gradual sloping of
the ground to show they were headed in the right direction. They’d passed more
than a dozen ruins when Alistair suddenly went down on his haunches, silently
commanding his brother to do likewise. Colin strained every sense before it
came to him: An odour, faint at first, but stronger and more acrid once it was
acknowledged by his senses.