Finding Fraser Page 11

  I peered around the edge of the giant rock and scanned the area. The light had not flickered into view again since I had first seen it, and I began to wonder if the moon had been playing tricks with my eyes. Maybe it had glanced off a fleck of metal in one of the stones piled in the center cairn?

  Whispering through the dead leaves surrounding the trees behind me, the breeze rustled just like the sound of shuffling footsteps in the dark. The hair on the back of my neck was standing at full alert. I took a deep breath, slipped out from behind the shelter of the standing stone and half crab-scuttled to the edge of the center cairn itself. The stones of the cairn had a different look and feel than those standing sentinel behind me. As I crouched by the low mound, my fingers traced odd indentations on the stone’s surface—the strange, unexplained cupping that the information sign had told me helped date the site to its ancient origins. The hypothesis was that the marks were strictly decorative, but the texture under my fingers made me feel uncomfortable. Like I was touching the back of an ancient, sleeping guardian.

  Just then, the moon shone out again from behind a tattered bit of cloud and flooded the place like a spotlight. And directly in front of me, standing, legs spread in the center of the opening of the cairn, was the clear silhouette of a Highlander.

  I’m pretty sure I fainted for a moment, right there on the side of the mound of rock. My vision blurred and swam, but when I rubbed my eyes, there he remained. Clouds scudded across the moon, but could not obscure the unmistakable outline of a tall man in a kilt. He wore some kind of heavy boots on his feet, and the plaid was topped by something that could have been a substantial fur cape.

  A strange feeling of unreality slipped over me. It was like in those dreams where I tried to run, but couldn’t. My feet felt mired in mud. I must have been holding my breath, because right about then an actual wave of nausea washed over me. I had to close my eyes a moment to stop from delivering my clam chowder from lunch onto the dead grass beneath my feet.

  When I opened my eyes again, he was gone.

  I stood up immediately and stepped toward where he had been standing, but the moon dropped back under the cover of the cloud again and my sore knee made crushing contact with one of the ancient stones. I bit my tongue so as not to cry out, and my eyes filled with sudden, hot tears. I’m not sure if it was from the effort to keep silent through the pain in my knee, or from the reality that I had somehow misplaced my Highlander once again.

  In a few short, limping steps I was at the entrance to the cairn. There was nothing—no one—there. Leaning forward, I peered along the pathway that led to the center of the burial mound, but it was open to the air, and I could see nothing. I spun outwards and looked around behind me, but the darkness had closed in again as the clouds drew their curtain across the full moon.

  If my eyes hadn’t deceived me and a man had really been there, he was there no longer. I slumped against the rock mound, completely at a loss. Had the nattering of the old ladies from the tour bus been the truth? Was wishful thinking making me see things? Or was I really losing my mind?

  In the distance the wail of a siren rose up. Ambulance, or police or fire—I couldn’t tell. But it was a purely contemporary sound. As I listened to it fade away, my heart rate slowed enough to allow logic to begin to seep back into my brain. He had been there—he had. I had seen him. I had seen the dark lines of his plaid moving against his knees in the light breeze. I wasn’t sure what he had been wearing over the plaid—some kind of heavy cloak, certainly—but I was sure of the heavy boots.

  I dropped to my knees. Perhaps the damp ground would give evidence of boot prints to prove I was not completely losing it. I glared up at the sky, willing the cloud cover to part at least enough so that I had a bit of dappled moonlight to see the ground.

  In answer, tiny raindrops began to spatter my upturned face. I shook them off and concentrated on the ground. By feel alone I could tell the entrance to the cairn was not rock, but mud. Fairly frozen mud, to be sure, but maybe …

  My bicycle lamp. I pushed all thoughts of low batteries and returning safely back to the hostel to the back of my brain. I needed to know if there were fresh boot prints, and for that, I needed light. I jumped to my feet and ran smack into the unmistakably solid body of a non-ghostly human male.

  Just after midnight, March 16

  Inverness, Scotland

  Jotting a quick note while my co-ghost hunter (very kindly) pays the cabbie. Have had the strangest and most unique day of my visit. Perhaps of my whole life.

  Back in my room, I didn’t even turn on the light, just dropped my pack in the corner and sagged into my bed.

  Stretched out, and fell asleep to the memory of the screaming …

  Yes, there had been screaming, but not all of it had come from my throat. Screaming, slipping, falling, grabbing, slapping, snatching, pushing, recriminations and finally, breathless, panting silence as I’d stared at the man in front of me, bathed in the reflection of his flashlight.

  “I thought you were a ghost,” he said, at the very moment I blurted, “You’re not a ghost.” If we had been in a movie, we would have both laughed wryly and compared notes.

  As it was, he glared at me, a streak of mud on one cheek and his left eye beginning to swell from its untimely meeting with my elbow. I stood, arms crossed, at the entrance to the ancient tomb, my heart sunk just about as low as it had been at any point along this strange journey.

  Not taking his eyes off me, he bent to the ground to retrieve something in the dark. As he stood up again, I could see he held my book.

  “That’s mine,” I said, reaching for it.

  “Not so fast.” His voice was laden with cadence from the American south, and marked with deep suspicion. “Mah copy has a blue cover. How do I know you’re not one of them Irish gypsies who lie in wait in dark places to rob innocents?”

  “Look,” I said. “You can tell from my voice I’m an American. And you’ll have to take my word for the fact I’m no thief. I’m sorry I bumped into you. I thought I saw something, and clearly you did too. We were both mistaken, obviously. Just hand back my book and I’ll be on my way.”

  He leaned against the rocky passageway inside the cairn, tucked the book under his arm and re-directed the flashlight from my face onto his own backpack. After rustling about for a moment, he fastidiously closed the top and slipped the straps back over one shoulder and then the other. Not until he had carefully re-buckled the chest strap did he direct the beam of the flashlight back onto the ground between our feet and hand me my book.

  “Mine’s still in my pack,” he said, in no way apologetically.

  A light—not the flashlight—went on in my head.

  “You must be Gerald.”

  His expression did a quick change from suspicious to startled, then back to suspicious again. “How’d you know that?”

  I sighed. “I met Helen and Evelyn, earlier. They mentioned a man named Gerald had gone missing from their tour. They even invited me to take your place.”

  He sniffed. “I’m surprised they missed me, the old biddies. Always going on about ‘Claire this’ and ‘Claire that’—so tiresome.”

  He shone his light at my face again.

  “Would you please stop doing that? You’re blinding me every time.”

  He completely ignored me. “It must have been the hair,” he muttered viciously. “They love the ones with the curly hair.”

  I put a hand up to my head and surreptitiously yanked out a couple of twigs, dropping them on the ground behind my leg. “Well, yeah, I think Evelyn might have been inclined to think that way,” I admitted. “But everyone set her straight.”

  “Then it’s all Evelyn’s fault,” the man said, bitterly. “She was the one who swore she saw a ghost.”

  “You’re on the Tour,” I said, slowly, as the pieces began to fall into place. “And you were looking for—Jamie?”

  “I saw him too,” he declared, a trifle shrilly. “I woulda spoken to him, but
for your interference.”

  “I didn’t interfere,” I said, hotly. “I just stepped closer to get a better look.”

  The man grabbed me by both shoulders and shook me a little. “Then you spotted him, too? In the moonlight?”

  I nodded and he shook me again once more before dropping my shoulders. His face was exultant. “I knew it. I knew he was here.”

  I crossed my arms, shivered and considered the possibility that I had crashed into a madman. I mean, I didn’t really expect to meet a fictional character from the past at the first stone circle I’d ever been to, but this guy clearly did. The light rain had wept itself away but the moon was completely gone, blanketed by the rolling fog. The thought of the bike ride back to Inverness was beginning to haunt me more than the ghost. Still, I had to know …

  “You left the tour to stay here and look for a ghost? Why? What ghost?”

  He gave me an impatient shrug and slapped the cover of the book in my hand. “What ghost? How are you even worthy to carry this around?”

  “I—I just mean …” I stammered, at an almost total loss, “Of course I know the ghost from the story. It’s just—why are you looking for that ghost? And why here?”

  He sighed and shot me a sideways glance. “Let’s get out of this rain,” he said, and even somewhat gallantly stepped aside with a gesture indicating I should go first. I stepped gingerly onto the spot where I thought the path lay, and seconds later, his flashlight beam shone down to light the way to the road. The path was very narrow and rocky, so the going was slow, but unlike his earlier behavior, he showed no impatience. He walked behind me slowly, holding the flashlight high so we could both make out the way ahead.

  “My name’s Gerald Abernathy,” he said as we entered the narrow band of trees that ringed the ancient site. “That is, my father was an Abernathy, one of the Georgia Abernathys, actually, but my mother’s family are all old Scots. Her maiden name was Grey.”

  I thought about this as I stumbled along the path. “As in Lord John Grey?”

  The flashlight beam bobbed a bit and then stopped moving. I couldn’t see a thing without it, so I turned to face Gerald.

  “I know it’s fiction,” he said quietly, his accent deepening as he spoke. “But it’s almost like I could be a descendent of Lord John. He believed Jamie was the perfect fella…” He took a deep breath. “And so do I.”

  He raised his chin as he said this, looking at me defiantly.

  I smiled up at him. “Well then, it appears we are both trying to find the same man,” I said, and turned back to the path once more.

  A few stumbling moments later, we stood at the same spot by the side of the road where I had watched Evelyn and Helen’s tour bus pull away. A car stood idling in the drizzle, headlights cutting through the night and reflecting off the water droplets on my bicycle.

  “You know,” said Gerald, eyeing my wet bike. “I could really use a drink after seeing that ghost, and you look like you could use a lift into town. Care to share my cab?”

  With the help of the cabbie we got the bike jammed into the trunk—the “boot” he called it—and slid damply into the back seat of the wonderfully warm taxi. The return to Inverness was not long, but enough time for us to both discover how much we had in common, not the least of which was a love for OUTLANDER and its most famous Highland warrior.

  The cabbie disgorged Gerald, my bicycle and me at a pub just a block from my hostel and across the street from the place where Susan and I had rented the bikes. The store was dark, so I leaned the bike up against the front wall of the pub and decided to return it in the morning, safe in the knowledge Susan would have paid the bill earlier.

  Gerald picked a seat right by the fireplace and I slid into the chair across from him. He sighed and gestured to the half-pint of golden liquid sitting in front of me. “Drink up,” he said, and took a sip of his own. “It’s a shandy. I’ve developed a taste for them on the tour.”

  “Thanks.” I took a sip. I was fairly certain it was beer and ginger ale mixed together. A little sweet for my tastes, but a free drink was a free drink.

  Gerald swallowed another deep draft of his drink and sighed deeply.

  “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “But I was so knocked out by the sight of that Highlander. It—he—took my breath away.”

  “Me, too. But, to tell you the truth, I wasn’t completely convinced. It couldn’t have been a ghost, right? I mean—there must be some rational explanation.”

  I took another sip of my drink, which was growing on me. “It’s not the right circle, for one. And his cloak looked funny … I just needed to get closer.”

  He nodded. “I had no expectations, you know. I mean—Clava Cairns— it’s nowhere near Fort William, and in spite of what everyone says, I’m sure Craigh na Dun is much closer to there than here. And I had those old biddies nattering on like fence birds the whole time. We argued about the site all the way down on the bus. Evelyn was convinced she’d see the ghost at Clava, and I was equally sure we would not.”

  “And then you did.”

  He grinned at me for the first time, completely transforming his expression in an instant from sour-faced to charming.

  “Apparently, so did you. Anyway, I decided on the trip up from Edinburgh that I’d had enough of all the natterin’ …”

  “Claire this and Claire that?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. I’m not a whisky man, either. Bourbon’s more to my taste. In the end, as soon as my cellphone picked up service outside Inverness, I called and booked the cab. Had a private word with Angus the tour driver and it was all set. I had no idea what I’d see, but the lure of waiting by the stone circle had a certain appeal, which I’m sure you can appreciate.”

  I nodded and sipped. The glow of the shandy warmed my insides. “Not to mention ditching the tour-bus denizens.”

  He leaned back in his chair and looked me over from frizzy head to wet toe. “Definitely more Laoghaire than Claire with that fair hair of yours,” he said, appraisingly. “I guess I should worry that you might just pull a Laoghaire and move in on my ghost, then?”

  I tucked a strand of damp hair behind my ear. “Well, if it was him, it’ll be the second time I’ve lost Jamie on this trip, so there’ll be no stealing your man,” I said. “Besides, I’m more anxious to find a modern version of him in the flesh than in apparition-form.”

  Gerald nodded. “What’re you going to do next?”

  I shrugged. “I met a friend here—her name’s Susan. She said something about some other stone circles nearby. And I need to think things through a bit, I guess.”

  He waved at the server and counted a few bills onto the table. “It’s Fort William for me,” he said. “I’ve pinpointed a set of standing stones on a hillside down there that are pretty much derelict, and not on any of the tour maps I’ve read, anyway.”

  “Really?” I asked, intrigued, in spite of myself. “Where?”

  His face closed up again, as suddenly as it had opened, and I could tell he was wrestling with himself. “You have internet access?” he said, at last. I nodded and he slid a small notebook and pen over to me. “Write your contact information here. If I have any luck at all, I’ll tell you—afterwards.”

  I raised my hand to him as he walked out the door, convinced I would never hear from him again— and a bit relieved at the thought. That he believed in ghosts was odd enough— but that he was chasing down the ghost of a fictional character?

  Demented.

  8:45 am, March 16

  Inverness, Scotland

  I’m still pretty tired, and not really sure I want to blog about this anyway, but I can sum up, I think, by saying this trip is far from over.

  I saw a ghost last night.

  The circle was wrong.

  The location was wrong.

  And yet I saw a ghost. A ghostly Highlander.

  I’m not sure what to make of this. I don’t know what it means.

  This trip is FAR from over.

&
nbsp; I flipped the cover of the notebook closed and dropped it on the pillow beside me, too exhausted from the events of the day before to even grab my laptop and do the post properly.

  Breathing deeply, I stared up at the ceiling, just taking stock. My body hurt all over from the bike ride, but strangely enough my knee seemed to be completely better. I tried to remember when it had stopped hurting—I’d bashed it again on one of the standing stones, but sometime after stepping into the stone circle— the pain had vanished.

  I lay there as the sun rose slowly behind the thin white curtains in my hostel room window, thinking about the silhouette of the Highlander, standing in the moonlight.

  What the hell was it that I had seen?

  Something niggled at me, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Still, I knew in my heart the search wasn’t over. Maybe the so-called ghost was telling me I was on the right track? Gerald certainly thought so. Wrong ghost, wrong circle. But if he did find the right one, the chances I’d ever hear from him again were pretty slim.

  Feckin’ slim, as Susan would say.

  I flexed my knee again under the covers. Maybe the bike ride had done it good after all?

  The thought of the bike suddenly had me sitting bolt upright in bed. I hadn’t returned the bike! And not only had I not returned it, I had left it propped, unlocked outside the pub we’d been to the night before.

  I threw on some clothes, grabbed my wallet from my pack and bolted down the stairs.

  “All right, Emma?” called Mrs. Henderson, the hostel-keeper.

  “Back in a minute,” I gasped to her, as I ran past.

  It was only a block to the pub, and miracle of miracles, I saw the bike almost right away, leaning against the wall just where I’d left it. I dropped my hands to my knees for a minute when I got there, panting and bathed in the feeling of relief washing over me. After I’d caught my breath, I rolled the bike over to the store, determined to be kind even to the man who’d made remarks about my size relative to the little green bicycle the day before.