Tormentor (5 page)

I must have reacted again, because Alan stopped and raised an eyebrow.

“Are you sure you want to hear this? I don’t want to be the cause of any sleepless nights for you.”

“I’m fine—but I need another beer.”

I went back into the kitchen, more to calm my fraying nerves away from Alan than from any great need for the booze. When I returned with a beer for each of us, he was less keen to continue.

“Look—I can stop there if you like? I meant it when I said it wasn’t anything you really needed to know.”

“That’s just it,” I replied. “I think I do need to know—if only to dismiss it. Please—go on.”

He took another long chug of beer and continued.

“For a while the situation seemed to have stabilized—everyone knew the old lady was a bit strange, but her constant cleaning seemed to have solved her main problem. And this is where I come into the story—about two years back.

“We got a phone call, saying she wanted to put the place on the market. Dad sent me out to see her to get things started, and so began one of the strangest afternoons of my life.

“The house was almost exactly as you see it now, with one exception—it did indeed stink of bleach, detergent and God alone knows what else. All the time I was there—which was several hours—she constantly moved around the room, a wee dance that looked almost ritualistic as she wiped and dusted everything, only to start again immediately after she finished. She looked tired, worn out, an old lady running on fumes and nervous energy.

“I had a series of questions I needed to get answered, but it was tough getting a word in edgeways as she kept up a constant stream-of-consciousness chat. I kind of caught the gist as she went along—to cut a long story short, she felt that the spooks were getting stronger, and she feared for her safety if she stayed much longer.

“She also wanted to know if she could have the crofter’s old cottage removed completely from the land—I told her it would be a selling point, at which juncture she started laughing uncontrollably and I couldn’t get her to stop.

“I left her with a promise to get the ball rolling on a sale, and beat it the hell out of here.

“She was dead two days later.”

* * *

The statement had come at me too abruptly and I struggled to process it, covering up my confusion by sipping at my beer.

“So, what was it? Just old age?” I asked, hoping for a mundane answer.

Alan wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Nobody really knows why she did it—but look, she was old and losing her wits. The fire could have been an accident.”

“She burned…and it was out in the crofter’s cottage, wasn’t it?”

He was having trouble looking me in the eye, obviously feeling guilty.

“I’m afraid so. I should really have told you, but…”

“But it’s been two years since her death, no sensible local would touch the place, and you needed to make a sale…I get it.” I actually felt relief now I knew. “It’s not that big of a deal, really. Back in London I lived on top of one of the old plague pits for a while, and I grew up on a house overlooking a cemetery. If spooks were going to plague me, they’d have done it long ago. Trust me. I’m fine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” I replied. I tried to feel like I meant it.

“Really, really,” he said in a perfect impersonation of a young child, and I snorted beer down my nose trying not to laugh. That broke any tension there had been, and talk moved on to more welcome subjects.

Alan was a natural storyteller, and kept me amused all afternoon with tales from the island—as an estate agent he got to meet a lot of people, and hear a lot of stories, most of them funny, some of them sad, and others very lewd indeed. We hardly noticed we were getting through rather a lot of beer until I went to the fridge and found it empty. As the sun set chill air blew in, driving us indoors, and ending the first part of what was turning into quite a session.

We started on the Talisker while Alan cooked up some more fish—with mash potatoes this time—“for ballast,” he said. We ate in the dining room, and as we were going back through to the sitting area, Alan looked at Beth’s urn on the mantle.

He turned serious again.

“I see what you mean about the cottage not bothering you,” he said quietly. “You’ve got something even closer to home on your mind, haven’t you?”

Back in London, nobody would ever have asked such a direct question, but up here on the island, it didn’t feel intrusive at all—just a natural extension of the other stories I’d been told that day. I said something vague about needing to have Beth close by me. Alan didn’t push it—if he had, I might have started talking and not have been able to stop. He launched into a ribald story about a local vicar, two Swedish tourists and an incident in a phone booth.

Then we really started drinking.

* * *

The morning hangover was as epic as the drinking had been the night before.

I woke to the sound of clinking glass and got out of bed to investigate. Alan was already up and about, cleaning up the wreckage we’d left for the morning—beer bottles and glasses, two empty whisky bottles, plates still containing bits of our meal, and half-finished packets of salted peanuts and cheesy snacks. And above everything else, the place smelled—of stale beer, Scotch and fish.

I left Alan at the sink and opened the French windows to their widest extent, letting the wind off the loch blow away my cobwebs. I took one look at the crofter’s cottage, and realized I’d made a decision at some point during the night.

“Can I have it taken down?” I said to Alan once the chores were done and we were once more out on the patio—black coffee, and plenty of it this time. I pointed at the cottage. “It’s blocking the view a bit—it needs to go.”

“You can do anything you like with it,” he said. “It’s yours.”

“In that case, fuck it. I want it gone—every stone. Do you know somebody who’d do the job?”

“You should throw a party,” he replied, smiling. “Half the island would come to cheer you on. But yes, I know just the man for the job. I’ll get him to give you a ring.”

“He’s not scared of ghosts, is he?”

“Of course he is—he’s an islander. But money trumps fear up here, every time.”

We sat for a while just enjoying the morning.

“So is there anything else I should know before you go?”

He smiled, then groaned.

“Well, I’ve got a sore head, but then again, that makes two of us. No—the old lady was the main thing. There are other stories—of course there are with a house this old. But that’s all they are—stories. I doubt there ever was a Spaniard within several hundred miles of the place in the armada days, and as I’ve said, you can’t swing a cat up here without hitting some spook or another. As long as you don’t get the heebie-jeebies out here on your lonesome, you’ll be fine.”

We finished off three cups of coffee each before he pronounced himself fit to drive.

“I’ll leave the dinghy here for a bit if you’d like?” he said. “There’s a wee seal colony down the loch that’s worth a visit, and some caves farther up the coast you can get inside. If you’re looking for inspiration for a painting?”

“As long as we keep off the Scotch next time,” I replied.

“Och, man—where would the fun be in that?”

He left with a promise to get a contractor to give me a quote for taking down the cottage, and I went back to bed.

7

The demolition of the crofter’s cottage took less than an afternoon. I accepted a phone quote from the contractor the day after Alan’s visit, and two days later the building was gone, thanks to the use of a small bulldozer and a chunky flatbed truck.

I watched proceedings from the patio—the two workmen were both fast and skillful, and the cottage was little more than a pile of rubble before I finished my coffee. What was left of the roof was lifted onto the truck in almost a single piece. After that it was just a matter of them getting all the loose stone into the back, a job that took less than an hour. I was amused to see the stoat poke his head out to see what all the rumpus was about before fleeing for the duration.

The older of the men accepted my offer of a beer when they were done. The younger declined and drove the truck away, heading off down the rutted track at a slow walking pace.

“There’s a bit of a hole down there now, sir,” the man said. “Some kind of root cellar by the looks of things. I wouldn’t go wandering around along the shore in the dark—if you fell in and hurt yourself it might be while afore anybody noticed.”

“I don’t intend to do much wandering,” I said, laughing. “The view’s just fine from here.”

“I’ve lived in Dunvegan all my life, you know,” he said. “But this is only the second time I’ve been out here.”

I hesitated to ask, but the cottage was gone, it was a gorgeous day, and we had beer—what harm could a simple question do?

“When was the last time?” I asked.

I saw a similar hesitation in the man before he answered.

“It was the day before the old lady died,” he said. “Funnily enough, she asked me to come and give her an estimate to take away the cottage. I gave her the same figure I gave you—I was waiting for a reply when I heard she was dead.”

A sudden breeze came of the loch, a chill reminder of how quickly the weather could change. I felt it in my spine and shivered.

“Somebody walk over your grave?” the man asked.

I didn’t answer, but the day no longer felt as gorgeous as before. He finished his beer and looked out over the loch.

“Your view is improved. I knew it would be,” he said.

He was right about that. I now had a clear outlook right across the expanse of the loch to the hills on the far side. The only thing now between the patio and the shore was the woodpile—I hadn’t had to use any of it yet, but I was looking forward to the winter when I could get a real fire going. I wasn’t sure the stoat would enjoy being disturbed too often though—he seemed to have taken up residence in and around the logs, and could be seen most mornings sunning himself before starting his day’s foraging.

My own mood improved greatly in the weeks following the removal of the cottage. I got used to the solitude, and even started in on a new painting—a panoramic view from the patio. The dinghy still lay in the harbor below the kitchen, but I didn’t have the confidence to take it out on my own. Alan was away working on the sale of a large estate north of Inverness for several weeks, and our next fishing trip was put off until his return.

I developed a liking for two things—mackerel pate and Talisker, sometimes both at the same time. The other item of note was that I had taken to talking to Beth as if she were in the room with me, mostly when I was working on the painting. My coffee rituals now also involved feeding not two, but six sparrows, the family having grown since my arrival. The stoat never came closer than the woodpile, but he watched me constantly, as did the seals just offshore.

Every Friday I went down to the village to get my provisions and stock up on booze, and on Saturday nights I walked down to the Dunvegan Arms, usually leaving again when the cabaret or band started up around nine, and being home by ten.

That was my routine through most of the summer.

* * *

The idyll was not to last.

I got the next corrupted email in the middle of August. As before, only two words stood out.

Stay down.

I took precautions against a malware attack, cleared up the laptop registry, deleted the cache and cookies, and ran three different virus scans. I woke the next morning to find a long streak of soot on the bathroom mirror and three more garbled e-mails.

A lesser man—or a more sane man—might have upped sticks and left at that point, but I’d grown fond of my new home, far too fond to be driven out by dirty streaks and badly spelled emails.

My war of attrition began in earnest that same weekend.

* * *

It started slowly.

Each morning I’d find a single streak of soot, somewhere in the house. Sometimes it would be partly hidden behind a curtain or almost behind the cooker, sometimes I would find it in plain sight on my laptop screen or the bathroom mirror. Each time I wiped the dirt away, muttered “fuck off” under my breath, and went about my business. I received a garbled e-mail every second day or so, and after a few weeks of this I took to deleting them without even reading them.

I incorporated the morning check for soot and e-mail into my daily routine—after shower, before coffee. That way I got to relax out on the patio and I could still feel as if the day was only just beginning. I refused to think of the irritations as any kind of supernatural visitations, preferring to consider them just a minor quirk of the house to be endured; a mental subterfuge, I know, but one I found surprisingly easy to maintain as the weeks went on.

I certainly fooled Alan—we had two more fishing trips with accompanying whisky-drinking sessions—and subsequent hangovers—before the end of summer, and I managed to make my morning checks both times without him spotting anything amiss.