Waterfall Glen (20 page)

An owl.

There was another barely audible sigh as it launched itself from the window, passing so close above Cameron that he could feel the breeze of its passage. He got unsteadily to his feet and watched as the owl disappeared into the night in the direction of the forested hanging valley between the two crags.

Cameron stood there looking into the night for what might have been a little while or a long time, waiting for common-sense to kick in again: for his mind to accept the explanation that the misting on the window had just been the breath of the bird; that the moving shadow within the cottage was nothing more than softly beating wings; that the wistful sighing was simply the sound that went with the motion; that the sensation of being watched was solely due to the amber eyes that had appeared as if from out of nowhere in the empty quarter of the window … Waiting for his heart to stop racing, his stomach to sink back down to roughly where it belonged, and the strength to return to his legs.

Then he hurried back towards Greystane as fast as he could. Despite the darkness he wished that the beam from the torch would fade, or at least flicker.

The owl could explain a lot, but not the way the light had died when he tried to shine it into Jamie’s Cottage.

By the time Cameron reached Greystane he still
couldn’t explain away the dimming of the torch. He could only answer the questioning looks of Kate and Finlay with a lame, “It must have just been a loose wire or something.”

Finlay nodded without conviction.

“I maybe shouldn’t have told you the cottage is supposed to be haunted,” Kate said after Finlay had gone up the stairs to bed. “I don’t want to put you off staying in the glen.”

“Meeting you has done the opposite of that,” Cameron told her.

Kate reached for his hand and clasped it in her own, and Cameron’s disquiet disappeared with her touch. By the time they said goodnight to each other with a shy kiss on the landing at the top of the stairs, Cameron wasn’t thinking about Jamie’s Cottage, the owl or the torch; he was thinking about Kate Brodie.

After breakfast the next morning—which Miss Weir insisted on serving to Kate and Cameron in the banquet hall, albeit without the candles this time—Kate said, “Well, I’ve shown you mine, how about you showing me yours?”

Finlay came in just at that moment to clear away the dishes. From the way he was trying to hide his smile as he tidied the table, Kate knew he’d heard her. “Houses, Finlay,” she explained. “We were talking about houses.”

“It’s none of my business what you were talking about,
Lady Kate, but I’m sorry if I came in at an inopportune moment.”

Kate blushed. “I was just inviting myself up to Jamie’s Cottage. Cameron’s thinking of renovating it.”

Finlay stopped what he was doing, and said, “That reminds me, I have something for Mr. Fraser.” Turning to Cameron, he said, “If you’ll be so kind as to wait here a few minutes, I think you’ll find it worth your while.”

“Sounds intriguing,” Kate said.

Finlay returned five minutes later with a large cardboard cylinder.

“What is it, Finlay?” Kate asked, unable to contain her curiosity long enough to wait for Cameron to open the tube.

“Plans for doing up Jamie’s Cottage, putting in a little kitchen and bathroom, new windows and the like. Not long before Mr. Chisholm died he’d been thinking about renting the cottage out as a holiday home. He was getting desperate to make ends meet. Anyway, he had some plans drawn up for the work that needed done,” he gestured to the paper Cameron was unrolling, “and, if I’m not mistaken, he had them approved and got estimates from half a dozen builders. All the paperwork’ll still be up in his study somewhere, I’m sure.”

Kate said, “This is a pleasant surprise, Finlay.”

Cameron didn’t say anything; the dark imaginings of the night before were still fresh in his mind.

Kate turned to him and smiled.

Cameron didn’t think she noticed that he had to force
the smile he gave her in return, but when Finlay left the room she reached for his hand and gave a reassuring squeeze.

Half an hour later he was standing with her on top of Jamie’s Crag. “It is a bit spooky,” Kate said, looking at the cottage. “But once it’s been done up, once it has curtains on the windows and smoke coming from the chimney, it’ll look more like a home than a haunted house.”

This time Cameron didn’t even manage a forced smile.

Sensing his unease, Kate said, “Just what exactly did happen up here last night, Cameron?”

“I got spooked by an owl flying out the window while I was looking in it.”

She searched his eyes, and knew there was more to it than that. “There was something else, though, wasn’t there?” she asked.

“Don’t you think that would be frightening enough?”

“It would be at the time, but it’s the sort of thing you’d laugh about later—yet you’re not even smiling about it, let alone laughing.”

“Can you laugh about the picture falling off the wall?”

“No, but I’m not trying to pretend there wasn’t something spooky about that, the way you’re trying to pretend there wasn’t something spooky about whatever happened here last night.”

Still Cameron didn’t say anything.

“Cameron?”

“You’re not going to let this drop, are you?”

Kate smiled sweetly and shook her head. “If I’ve got to
contend with a curse, it’ll be some consolation to think that at least my next-door neighbour is having to put up with a haunted house.”

Finally Cameron laughed.

“So, come on, out with it. What happened up here last night?”

Cameron took a deep breath, then walked over to the nearest window and said, “When I shone the torch in the window it died on me. I swapped the batteries around and it was working perfectly …

“But then, when I shone it in at the window again, the same thing happened. The light died as though the batteries had gone dead. Every time I moved the torch away from the window it came on again, and every time I moved it back it went out.”

“That is a bit wooky-spooky,” Kate said. “How come you never mentioned anything about it last night?”

“You’d been scared enough as it was by the painting falling off the wall. And besides, I was worried you’d think I was crazy.” He paused, then added, “Do you?”

“Not crazy, maybe just suffering from some sort of post-traumatic stress. It’s hardly surprising if you are, Cameron. In fact, it’d be more surprising if you weren’t. I’m sure you can’t see the sort of things you saw in Yugoslavia without being affected by it on some level.”

Cameron didn’t know what to think about what had happened outside the cottage the night before, let alone what to say.

“You looked haunted before you even saw this place, Cameron. The cottage maybe spooked you because it looks like something you saw in Kosovo. It might have acted as a trigger, a stage for your own ghosts to appear on.” She hesitated, then said, “Maybe it wasn’t the torch that kept blacking out when you looked through the window, Cameron—maybe it was you.”

He didn’t say anything, just kept looking at the derelict cottage.

“I don’t know what post-traumatic stress syndrome involves,” Kate said, “but I’d guess the best cure is to mellow out, lose yourself in other things: your photography, rebuilding this place. I have to admit I’m being selfish—I like having you around—but, even putting that aside, I honestly think it might do you good to rebuild Jamie’s Cottage. I guess you’ve seen too many homes turned into derelict shells; maybe turning a derelict shell into a home might lay some of your ghosts to rest…”

Still Cameron didn’t speak; his gaze was drawn towards the empty quarter of the window.

“But it might be an idea to stay away from this place by night until you’ve got it looking like a home rather than a haunted house or the site of an ethnic cleansing,” Kate said. “If you want to give the renovation a go, you can crash out at the guest room in Greystane for as long as it takes to turn Jamie’s Cottage into your home.”

“Thanks,” Cameron said, finally turning away from the cottage to look at her. “I appreciate that, but I wouldn’t
want to get in the way.”

“You won’t be in the way. And anyway, I’ve got a battle of my own to face, against Tony Carling. I’d be glad of all the moral support I can get.”

Cameron knew exactly what she meant about needing moral support; if it hadn’t been for Kate, he would have just got in his camper van and driven away.
Run away.
He could quite happily turn his back on the cottage, but he couldn’t turn his back on Kate Brodie. So he took a deep breath and walked over to the door of Jamie’s Cottage. His throat was dry and his palm was moist as he reached in his pocket for the ancient key that Archibald Cunningham had given him. He had to use both hands to fit it into the lock, one to keep the other from shaking. After hesitating for the time it took to draw another deep breath, Cameron started turning the key. He hoped the key would jam, the lock would stick and he would have an excuse not to enter Jamie’s cottage. Sure enough, the key stuck almost as soon as he tried to turn it. He gave a couple of half-hearted twists of his wrist, but it wouldn’t budge. With a sigh of relief he began withdrawing the key—but as he did so it clicked into place, telling him it had just been pushed in too hard for the teeth to engage the tumblers.

His palm was sweating so much now that he had to leave the key in the lock and wipe his hand on his jeans before turning it. This time when he twisted his wrist there was still resistance, but he was able to overcome it.

Something made him hesitate on the threshold. It was
the fear that when he pushed the door it would shudder and scrape and then swing open with a drawn out creak to reveal a blackness darker than night, just as he’d imagined it would when he stood in front of the cottage the night before.

Then he was aware of Kate at his back, and he turned the rusty old handle and pushed.

At first the door stuck fast.

Then it shuddered back a few inches.

It stopped with a scraping jar.

And then shuddered forward another couple of inches.

Caught up in a horrible déjà vu, Cameron couldn’t bring himself to push any harder.

He didn’t have to. Kate stepped forward and gave a shove, and the door swung open in front of them with a barely discernible creak that slowly died away into utter silence.

To his horror, Cameron saw that the interior of the cottage was impossibly dark, just as it had been in his hellish imaginings of the night before. He froze, unable to move, as if a spell had been cast over him.

“Wow!” Kate said. “Talk about atmospheric. You should have brought your cameras.”

Her words broke the spell and Cameron realized that the darkness had a simple explanation; he’d shut his eyes as the door swung open, out of fear of what he was about to see.

Opening them now, he saw sunlight slanting in through the doorframe around him and Kate, casting their shadows onto a stone floor whose only covering was mud
and mould and puddles of stagnant rainwater.

A small table sat in the center of a drab room. The table, and the chairs to left and right of it, looked as old as the furniture in Greystane, but that was all they had in common. There was no elaborate carving, no elegantly curved legs and lion’s paw feet, and the upholstery of the seats was crudely woven wickerwork rather than plush velvet. A cracked, rainwater-filled bowl sat abandoned on the table, next to a toppled pewter candlestick holder. The only thing that looked as though it must have once been beautiful was the intricately woven lace tablecloth the bowl and candlestick lay on, but now it was so water-stained and filthy that it was almost as dark as the wood it covered.

The far wall beyond the table was bare stone, relieved only by a cracked, badly foxed mirror with a wooden frame whose mitred joints had opened up with years of damp.

The wall to the right held a fireplace with a split wooden bucket, rusty ash pan, and fire-blackened poker in front of it. On one side of the hearth was an ancient rocking chair, lit by a horizontal shaft of light streaming through the window. On the other side of the hearth, illuminated by a sunbeam that shafted through a hole in the roof, was an empty crib lined with more of the filthy but lovingly woven lace, and covered with the gossamer of an equally lovingly woven spider’s web.

The light that poured through the window to their left fell on a rusty iron bedframe and a heavy chest of drawers which were all half open and empty but for more cobwebs,
glistening with drops of moisture.

Kate and Cameron stood in the doorway, trying to take it all in.

Kate was the first to speak. “Believe it or not, this really could be fantastic,” she said.

“I’m going to take some convincing,” Cameron told her.

“Don’t see it as it is now; look at it in terms of what you can do with it. Just imagine sitting in the rocker with a roaring fire inside and a roaring wind outside.” She grabbed his hand and led him into the cottage. Taking him over to the window with the missing pane, she said, “How’s that for a view!”

They were looking down on the lochan, and had an unobstructed view of the entire length of the glen.