The Visitors (19 page)

‘Where did she go?’

At this, his face dimmed a little.

‘I knew the stories. I knew that I only needed her skin, and she’d be mine for ever. She offered it to me, Flora,’ he said, and again he looked directly into my eyes. ‘She offered me her skin, held it out to me, like this, in both hands, and asked me to take it. And I thought about it. By God, I thought about it. But there was something there that held me back. I didn’t see myself fit to be a selkie’s man. She scared me. I could sense the love in her. It was bigger than a sea. It was too much. Damn near broke my heart, but I said no. Besides, there was a lass at home I was fond of …’

Grandpa was retreating into himself again.

‘… so I said no.’

‘I hope the lass in Tighna was worth it,’ I said, gently.

‘Ask her yourself. It was your Nana, even then.’

‘Even then?’

‘Always,’ he said, softly.

‘Does she know?’

‘About the selkie? Your Nana? Jesus Christ, no. The last thing a fisherman’s wife wants to hear is that her man has canoodled with a selkie.’

I leaned against the pebbledashed wall, soaking in the story. The day was bright and cold.

‘So did you see her again?’

Grandpa weighed it up. ‘In truth, I don’t know. I never saw her as a woman, that’s for sure. But I’ve always seen plenty of seals, when I’ve been out in the boat. More than most. Especially when I’ve been out alone, just me and the boat. As a seal, well. I think she was there every time I set to sea.’

‘That’s sad. But sweet, too.’

‘What is?’ he said.

There was a pained, deliberate mischief in his eyes. The clouds were back. It occurred to me that his eyes had been like that all my life, and I’d simply never noticed.

‘Well, the whole story. It’s romantic.’

‘Story? I could tell you a story or two.’

I studied him. He’d been so lucid when talking about the selkie, and now he was back to himself again. His cloudy eyes met mine. Then he looked up.

‘Why are we outside?’ he said, baffled. He checked his watch. ‘We’re missing the snooker.’

‘All right then, Grandpa. Let’s get you home.’

He waggled a finger in my face. ‘Not likely, little miss. Oh no. You’ll never get me in a home.’

‘Of course not, Grandpa,’ I said, and steered him back into the bungalow. Starlings chattered on the roof.

We drove to Anders’ house in a stuffed, contented silence. Baby Jamie passed out pretty much as soon as he saw the car, and the lurching island curves never woke him up. I sat in the back, looking out the window, with Mum and Ronny up front.

Grandpa’s story stuck with me. His lucid bursts were few, these days, but he still remembered much of his youth, and when it came to the sea, he knew exactly what he was talking about. But he was distant, and easily fuddled. I didn’t quite know what to make of his selkie tale. I didn’t believe it, of course, but I’d write it up for my report. He would have heard it when he was a boy. Time had transformed the myth into a memory. It was the first story I’d heard in which a selkie had been a kind creature. Even then, Grandpa had spoken of her with sadness and strangeness. She’d been too different, too deep, and that depth had scared him. He’d been frightened by the abyss of her love. She’d asked him to step inside, and he’d been too scared.

Even Izzy’s campfire stories were cautionary tales. The selkie was a foreign thing. It wasn’t human and it wasn’t for humans. It was dangerous. A selkie was too powerful, too strong. Selkies were everything about living on the islands, and dying out at sea. All the stories, good or bad, were about the loneliness or greed of crofters and fisherwives. Selkies
tempted them with escape or reward, but punished their greed with heartbreak or death. They offered themselves, offered anything for the warmth of human love. Little wonder that all young men craved a selkie for their own. Once you had a selkie’s skin, she was bound for ever to your will. But every time, they turned young men into sad, old, broken men.

The stories were warnings.

Want what you have, I thought. Live humbly. Accept your lot. Because if you can catch a selkie, or if she catches you – if you get what you think you want – you’ll regret it. You’ll be punished. Selkies taught you to take the safe option, and not to look beyond your horizon.

I simmered in the back seat. Richard had been the safe option. I was done with safe options.

A dark thought crept at me from the corners. I was an islander. I came from the islands, and I wasn’t satisfied at all. I wanted to leave the island. They were only stupid old stories, designed to frighten superstitious people, but I was suddenly conscious of how close it struck home.

Why, alone of the entire class, had I chosen selkies for my project?

Looking out the window, trees were skeletons that flickered past the car. The drive north was no distance at all, only a couple of miles, but it seemed so much further than the drive from home.

We pulled up at Anders’ place.

It was a monstrous old manse, built squat and square at the top of a field, now surrounded by a dying pine plantation. Patches of dark-grey render had long since fallen from the stone walls, and the north end was carpeted in moss. Virginia Creeper ran rampant from floor to chimney, and the garden was full of weeds the size of triffids. It had stood empty for years before Anders bought it, long since abandoned by the
church. He’d moved in at once, and done as little as possible to make it habitable. He lived in a neat annex of rooms on the ground floor, joining the kitchen, bathroom and a makeshift bedroom into a serviceable flat. The rest of the building was given over to wildlife. Swallows, swifts and bats roosted in the attic, but Anders never cared. A hedgehog hibernated in his coal shed. He’d named it Thor.

‘There is room for us all,’ he said, patting the solid walls. ‘Nature is always welcome to my home.’

I smiled to think of him.

The massive front door hung ajar, as usual. Ronny put his shoulder to it, and pushed it open on protesting, squealing hinges. He led the way inside, and I followed.

‘Ho, you daft bastard! Where are you?’

Ronny turned from the vast hallway into the front room where Anders kept his bed. I hadn’t been to the house in ages, and went to explore the empty side. The drawing room creaked underfoot, cold and mildewed. The light was dark green, shadowed by the creeper that thronged the windows. From inside looking out, I could see the undersides of tiny suckers gripping to the glass.

Ronny called for Anders on the other side of the building, and I moved into one of the back rooms. This room was dusty, with a thin carpet of long-dead leaves crunching underfoot. Through the window, the pines seemed to have grown closer to the house, ready to reach out and touch.

The next door brought me back into the hallway, and I took the sagging stairs, testing each with my weight before stepping up. The landing was gloomy. I couldn’t identify a buzz in the dark until my eyes adjusted, and then I saw a wasp, tiny in the huge space. It swayed in woozy lines near the coving, seeking a place to nest for winter. On the ground floor, I could hear Ronny talking indistinctly.

There was a rustle in one of the bedrooms.

I swivelled to look. At one end of the corridor, a shadow passed across the daylight spilling beneath a door. It was one of the rooms above Anders’ living quarters. Suddenly cautious, I crept along the hallway, fingers tracing the bumpy wallpaper. The window at the far end was blown out where the creeper had invaded, clinging to the walls and ceiling, tendrils reaching deep into the house. Once again, the shadow fluttered beneath the door, and I slowed to a crawl as I approached. A floorboard moaned underfoot, and I froze. Whoever was behind the door went still, then, and the rustling stopped. The band of daylight was clear, but the corridor felt dark as pitch by contrast. The creeper shifted in draughts I couldn’t feel. I gripped the doorknob, tensed, and burst into the room.

A black shape exploded at my face, flailing and beating at my shoulders, and I shrieked, throwing up my arms to shield my head. My hands made contact with something sharp, and then with something feathery, and in a rush I dropped to the floor and cowered. I looked up. The crow flapped and banged into one wall, and banged again, then scrabbled to the window. With my heart hammering, I rocked back to lean against the doorframe. The crow hopped to the window and dropped away from the ledge. I was alone in the room, chest heaving, pulse racing. Creepers gaggled at the empty frame. The crow had scored patterns in the dust, half-moons and broken lines.

I didn’t know if it was from the beak or talons, but somehow the back of my hand was bleeding.

‘Is that Anders?’ called Ronny, his voice sharp.

‘No, just me. I found a crow. Scared the crap out of me.’

‘Have a look, will you? Check the rooms down there.’

‘What’s up?’

‘Don’t argue, Flora, just do it. I’ll check this side.’

I blinked. I couldn’t remember the last time Ronny had ordered me to do anything. I opened each of the doors in
the corridor. The bedrooms were empty, paper peeling, floorboards carped. In the unused upstairs bathroom, the tub was full of whatever dark fluids tracked through the ceiling, and a small frog blinked from the oily water.

‘Anything over there, Flo?’

‘No. Nothing.’

‘Shit. Shit.’

Ronny clattered down the stairs again. Suddenly cold with apprehension, I followed. The wasp had left the landing.

On the ground floor, Ronny was dialling a number into Anders’ old phone.

Mum stood by the door, her face etched with concern. Jamie was still fast asleep, nestled against her chest.

‘Hello? Hello? Is DC Duncan there? No, I’ll wait. It’s Ronald McLoughlin from Bancree. He knows me. Thanks.’

Ronny was turned away, leaning against the doorframe. I walked past him and looked into Anders’ living room. It was in total disarray. Every single thing was smashed. His sofa had been overturned and leaned against the wall. A wooden chair lay in splinters on his futon. Books were tumbled everywhere, and the shelves had been pulled down across the little table. The television lay on its front, the broken screen spreading in crumbs across the floor, and Anders’ few pictures hung crooked on the walls. Something that could only be blood spattered on one wall, and a pool of it had crusted brown on the threadbare carpet. I looked up at Mum, but she was looking at Ronny.

A voice garbled on the other end of the line, and he stood up straight.

‘Hello there, Tom. No, not great. Not good at all, to be honest. It’s Anders,’ he said, and held up a hand to pinch the bridge of his nose. ‘I think that Anders Tommasson has gone missing.’

There was a pause, then the phone garbled again.

‘Since Wednesday, perhaps. He’s not answered his phone for a wee while. I’m in his place now, and it’s been turned upside down. It’s a shambles. Looks like there’s been a massive fight, and he’s not anywhere to be seen.’

A porcelain lamp lay in fragments on the floor, though the lightbulb remained stupidly intact.

‘I don’t know. You’d have to call the rigs. I don’t have a number for anyone there. But you need to come across and have a look. There’s blood. No, it’s definitely blood.’

Ronny twisted to look at Mum.

‘Me, and Cath, and the baby, and Flora. Should we wait for you? No, all right. You know to call me if I can help at all. Bye, Tom.’

He looked at the phone for a moment, as though it might ring and tell him this was all a great mistake, then carefully returned it to the plastic cradle. I realised he’d been holding the phone with a dishcloth. Fingerprints.

There was a stupid pause, the three of us stood dumbstruck. Outside, wind shivered in the plantation. A bluebottle hummed madly at the window.

‘What’s going on, love?’ said Mum.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know. That was Tom Duncan from the constabulary. He’s in charge of Dougie’s case.’

‘This can’t be a real thing,’ I said.

‘How real does it need to get, Flo?’ said Ronny, gesturing at the devastation in the room.

‘We only saw him a few days ago.’

‘Aye, but he didn’t meet us in Tighna. And then he never showed in Tanno for the football. He’s not been round. He’s not answered his phone.’

‘He’ll be drinking,’ said Mum, uncertainly. ‘Somewhere.’

‘Of course he is,’ I faltered. ‘He has to be. He’s Uncle Anders.’

The words hung in the air, empty and pointless.

‘This is happening, Cath,’ said Ronny. ‘It’s really happening.’

‘Love,’ she said, gently, ‘we don’t know—’

‘We know!’ he yelled, and slammed his hand into the wall.

Jamie started from his snooze. His face crumpled in slow outrage at being woken, and he waggled his little fists in fury. Mum was looking at the wall.

‘I’m sorry to shout, love,’ said Ronny, quietly. ‘It’s just – well. Not Anders, too. It’s too much. First Bill, then Dougie, and now Anders. All within half a year. That’s not just accidents. Something’s going on.’

I’d never seen my stepfather look so lost. Mum crossed the room to stand with Ronny. Jamie was still griping, but she put her free arm around her husband’s shoulders. I left them to talk. I walked out to the car and tried not to look up at the manse, because now it felt like all the windows were looking back.

We drove home in numb silence.

There was a full glass of peaty water left over by my bed. I drank it so fast it slopped over my chin, spilling on my chest, and a lump rose in my throat. It hurt to swallow. I wiped my face with the back of my sleeve. Outside, in the sea, not quite Bancree, and not quite anywhere else, sat the islet of Dog Rock. The wind pounced on woodsmoke from the crooked cottage chimney, and tugged it away in wild bursts.

Uncle Anders, the one-man army.

It wasn’t possible. He’d be in a bar somewhere, playing cards, or singing songs and telling tall tales and complaining about the beer … Except he’d missed the football. And his
house had been smashed up. As though there’d been a fight. Traces of blood. Uncle Anders.

I turned from the window. On the desk, all my selkie research sat beside my laptop in a ruffled stack of books and paper. The Mutch book sat on top. The cover stared at me. I picked it up, balancing the spine, and let the book fall open at random. It turned to the full-page illustration of the evil selkie woman. The sealskin dropped from her hips. Her back was too thin, the spine angled, the ribs askew and waist too narrow. Lip curled, she stared back at me, full of spite and hate.