Tales from the Tent (10 page)

The few old hens had laid claim to the bedroom. Melting snow soaked floors and furniture. Where had old Peter gone? ‘Did he,’ she wondered, heartbroken, ‘set off in the storm
and, like Helen, become a mystery known only to the glens?’ She would never know.

The good woman stood in silence, clasped hands and said a little prayer.

One last look round the house, then she would leave and take the sad news home to her husband.

Something, though, caught her eye. A notebook, covered in dust, lay half-open on the kitchen table. It was a small diary, Helen’s, dated thirty years ago, the day she disappeared. Mrs
Beckett picked it up, and carefully blew off the dust. It read:

Now if the couthy neighbour had dallied just a wee bit longer, and taken herself into the bedroom, then shooed away the hens from the tousled bed, she may have seen on the pillow an impression,
clearly showing the mark not of one, but of two heads!

9

THE BANASHEN

T
hat is one of my all-time favourite stories. So where were we? Oh aye, this creepy place. I’m still sure you won’t believe me and
I’ll lose you on this one, folks, but if you can stay with me then its grateful I’ll be, because if you haven’t experienced the supernatural then why be a judge?

I was the first to notice it. Mammy said there was nothing like it for spiralling through a damp washing and giving it a proper airing. Daddy said it put a grand heart into the fire. It sent wee
Tiny curling into a tight ball behind the trailer wheel for shelter, but to me it meant only one thing—the voice of a ‘Banashen.’ That cold, sharp breeze blowing along the
Earth’s floor, rising no higher than knee level, told me a spirit was angry. An elderly woman once informed me that if a grave were disturbed then many would come. I didn’t know what
she meant at the time, but before our stay’s end I found out all right, no doubting that!

Apart from the cold breeze blowing round our ankles that Monday morning it was quite pleasant for September. The heather heads were deep purple and cornfields ripe for cutting. Daddy and Nicky
went off to spray-paint a farmer’s sheds, while Mammy and I went hawking. Since my confinement with Shirley in Glenrothes and that horrible paper mill, Mammy and I didn’t have many
cracks, so this day’s hawking would allow us time together. Anyhow, who could forget a day tramping amongst the kind country hantel of the Angus glens?

Nicky’s wee brother Alan, their mother and her new man, big Wullie Young, who had arrived the night before, said they’d keep a heart in the fire and have soup ready for our return.
My Auntie Annie was previously married to Jock Macdonald. His family was known amongst travellers as powerful street fighters. They were as proud a clan as any that lived and breathed in Scotland,
and not only were they an extremely handsome folk, but their history tells of ancestors who held a circle of human shields around Charlie on the field at Culloden. All perished. They were thought
to be descended from Glen Coe. My mother’s younger sister, Mary, had married Charlie, brother of Jock.

During mid-morning, big Wullie and the lassies went for a rout amongst the silver birch wood. Soon they came upon the circular granite structure of a mausoleum. This giant building, standing
about forty feet high, seemed an impregnable fortress. Undergrowth of thick ivy and gorse bush dominated its lower part. Sisters Mary and Babsy were desperate to see inside, but Renie wasn’t
so keen. She was our seventh sister, and although she never accepted it there was in her the power of the eye. Not, may I earnestly add, ‘the evil eye’, but rather that of the sixth
sense. ‘Come on, big Wullie,’ she begged, ‘don’t you go looking for a way in there. It’s a sacred place, and gives me the jitters.’

Big Wullie found Renie’s fear quite disturbing and ushered the lassies away. Our Mary, however, was as curious a thirteen-year-old as you’d find anywhere and laughed off
Renie’s warnings. She spied a broken branch hanging from the high bank over onto the wall. ‘Come on, Babsy, that’s our way in,’ she called. She hoisted Babsy up by the arm,
and in no time the duo were out of sight and half way up the branch before big Wullie could stop them.

‘You two bisoms get down here this instant, before the polis or a laird o’ some kind spots ye breakin’ an’ enterin’.’ He needed to raise his voice and shout
my sisters down, but if you’d ever heard the roar from him then you’d know the whole of Kirrie would hear. He was aware of this, so told Renie to go back home, and that he’d fetch
the girls down himself. She didn’t need telling twice, and was soon gone out of the wood and up the road.

The big man rather sheepishly rolled over from the broken branch and landed inside the mausoleum. Mary and Babsy were already protesting their innocence, saying the padlock on the gate leading
to the inner chamber had already been interfered with. It didn’t take long to see they weren’t the first intruders. The padlock was indeed wrenched off and lay in segments upon the
stone floor. Very quietly they pushed inside and began whispering. Mary laughed at this and said she hardly thought the inhabitants were likely to hear them. Inside the dome, as far as the eye
could see, were inscribed stone squares circling round the floor and going round and round all the way up to the ceiling. These were obviously containers for the ashes of departed family members.
Some were little children who’d died of illnesses, some were soldiers lost in battles dating back hundreds of years, some were young women and old men, there were dozens of them. Big Wullie
began to feel a strange panic in his chest and shouted at my sisters to ‘get the hell out of this icy place!’ Soon the threesome were heading back up the old track road to tell Auntie
Annie about the creepy mausoleum of the landed gentry.

She was livid and told him so. ‘Better the man you’ll be if you took no part in the disturbance of the dead! See if I find out you had an evil hand in that kind o’ thing then
you’ll feel the other side o’ ma haun.’ Auntie Annie was brandishing the soup ladle as near her man’s face as she could, and if big Wullie hadn’t said what he said
next then he wouldn’t have felt its soupy wallop.

‘I only had a wee peep inside, wife, and by the way, what’s wrong with the other side o’ your haun?’ Silly big fool of a man. Everybody who knew Auntie Annie knew her
arm-reach was longer than that of any living man, you see she never misses.

Without seeking another word from the lassies or her man, she went back to stirring the soup. When we all gathered for supper she told us about the mausoleum. My Mammy, although she’d had
a grand day at the hawking with me, was furious and didn’t half lay into Mary and Babsy. She left Renie alone, knowing she’d have no stomach for such desecration. For the next hour the
crack made no mention of the building that housed ‘gone over the other side folk’.

Usually when we had eaten, we took our last long walk of the day—you know, the one that needs a lot of privacy. Men went in one direction, women the other. Somehow or other, though, in
that particular gloaming we found that our paths met down on the old track road, standing outside the place of dead folks. Strange that we were all of the same curious mind, would you not say,
reader?

Daddy hoisted Alan up, then said he’d go in last, let all us healthy youngsters go first. Mammy and Auntie Annie stood at the bottom, point-blank refusing to go any further. Portsoy was
confident enough that there was still spunk in his bandy legs to tackle the climb.

Inside (and I can verify this because I was the first in) was an altar with a tiny casket in the middle, but, sad to say, its contents were long since scattered over the stone floor. ‘This
must have been a very important baby to be placed in this position,’ I thought, ‘and all these names—wow!’ My eyes circled up and round the dome.

‘Would you look at those words,’ whispered cousin Nicky in my ear.

‘What words?’ I asked. Nicky took my chin and directed my gaze upward towards a long narrow stone cemented between the memorials to two Earls. It read:

I didn’t quite understand those chiselled words, nor did I understand why there were spirals of icy-cold winds breathing sharply against my ankles. Still, all the while the voice of yon
old woman echoed loudly in my head: ‘Angry is the Banashen when graves have been disturbed.’

Mammy’s whistle had all of us abandoning our curiosity and clambering over the wall back onto terra firma. Soon we saw the reason for her whistle, a handful of locals were heading towards
our campsite. Whenever travellers were in the vicinity it was usual for local folks to join them for a ceilidh. Well, it was in those days, especially in the Angus glens. The hardy craturs had
brought some home-brewed ale and soon the pipes were reeling, followed by lassies dancing and singing the old ballads. Mammy played her mouthy dry, and as the day wasted away a grand time was had
by all.

Before we uttered our farewells to them, however, Daddy asked what significance the mausoleum held. For instance, did any superstitions linger around it? The dead, did they hold any position of
high degree? Now, reader, do you know this, that not one of those folks, and I can say from memory there was a dozen, said a single word. They just thanked us for a braw evening as they slowly
walked out of sight and round a tree-lined bend.

Auntie Annie reminded us not to leave any belongings lying outside, just in case someone had an eye on something. Mammy told her our visitors were as honest as the day was long and not to be so
mistrusting. Auntie said she trusted no one, and reminded us she once had a pair of pink knickers stolen from off a fence—and did the bugger not steal a shoe as well! Big Wullie laughed, and
said there must be a right funny thief going about. ‘Did you search for a one legged bloke who wore pink knickers, wife?’ he joked. Stupid big man, you’d think he’d learn.
Yes, this time he took the full force of both Annie’s fists.

Well, the ale had worn off, and by midnight we were all sound to the world in our beds. Then it began. The haunting!

Now, for no apparent reason, I awakened and sat upright in my bed. Mammy did the same. In the hazy dark she asked what had wakened me? Suddenly, Daddy and my young sisters were also sitting up
in bed, bewildered as to why they were awake. We peeped out from within the trailer curtains, out into the grey dark night, and, God in heaven, what we saw still sends eerie shivers travelling from
my hair to my heel.

Sticks, still alight, were suspended in mid air. Washed clothes that Mammy had draped over a nearby fence were floating around in circles intermingled with basins, boots and tattie bags. In fact
all that lay outside was going round and around in mid-air. We stared in utter terror to see if anyone else was witnessing this phenomenon, and, yes, Auntie Annie and big Wullie were both wide-eyed
at their window. Nicky and Portsoy were a wee bit braver than the rest of us and opened their trailer door. Immediately they stepped outside the wind stopped, and everything fell with a clatter on
the ground.

‘This is a witch’s doings,’ called Portsoy, ‘someone has put the evil eye on us.’ He went on, ‘Come on Charlie, you too, big Wullie, best we take what we can
and move away this night.’

Before anyone could find the breath to answer Portsoy, the spirit wind came with such ferocity the feet were taken from beneath him and threw him hard upon the cold grass. I never knew the old
yin could move so quickly. The moment he and Nicky were back inside their trailer again, every movable object began circling the campsite. This went on for at least an hour. Then, as quickly as it
began, it subsided. Unable even to contemplate sleep we sat as if transfixed in our beds. Then it started, a noise unlike any we’d heard before. Metal striking metal. Then, the most horrific
of all—the voices! Shouting, screaming, whispering voices! Inside our heads and outside there was no escaping those dispossessed souls, for that was the only explanation we could
find—the dead were amongst us. It is almost impossible to put those moments into words. Whatever was in our midst that night, its sole purpose was to frighten the life from us. Renie was the
first to stiffen and shriek hysterically, and in no time we joined in. Daddy stood up and shouted as loud as he had ever done at us to shut up. Soon we exchanged our hysterics for low whimpers, and
this, along with the voices, lasted until a sleepy sun pushed its first rays beyond the heathery grouse-moor horizon.