The unforgiven dead, p.43
The Unforgiven Dead, page 43
He heard barking coming from the house and figured Gills was up and about. He rolled a kink from his neck as he walked up the garden path, but before he reached the front door, it opened and Gills appeared. He was dressed for hiking in plus fours, gaiters, and leather walking boots that looked like something Edmund Hillary might have worn. Bran and Sceolan wriggled past him and began running excited rings round the garden. Gills slung a rucksack over his shoulder, an ancient thing that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a museum. His gloves, however, were newish and Gore-Tex, and his walking poles lightweight aluminium.
Angus gave his outfit a once-over. “Where are you going? To scale K2?”
The older man grinned. “Be prepared. Scouts motto.”
“Seriously, though, where are you going?”
“Where are we going, you mean.” He squinted at Angus. “Wait . . . you haven’t been out here all night, have you?”
“No,” Angus replied, without conviction.
Gills gave a frustrated sigh and stood aside. “In you come. We’ll get some breakfast into you before we go.”
“Okay, but where are we going?”
Gills tapped the side of his nose. “Cave hunting.”
Angus parked the Land Rover in the shadow of an eight-arched viaduct that spanned the northeastern shores of Loch nan Uamh. Easily mistaken for its bigger and—because of the Harry Potter series—more famous cousin some sixteen miles east at Glenfinnan, the viaduct was a popular spot for camera-toting tourists. Today, however, Angus and Gills had the run of the place, aside from a few black-faced sheep, who eyed them suspiciously as they climbed from the Land Rover, then bolted when they saw Bran and Sceolan.
“Now will you tell me where we’re going?” he asked.
Gills shouldered his ancient rucksack. “To find the site of the Glen Màma Massacre. When you mentioned Chichester told you he was once trapped in the cave, it got me thinking.”
“Aye?”
He clapped Angus on the shoulder. “I’ll tell you on the way.”
Gills got the dogs on their leads and then set off down a rough track that led past a sturdy farmhouse. Once they’d crossed a wooden bridge over Allt a’ Mhama, he untethered the dogs, who shot off into the undergrowth. As they climbed, the burn, swollen by meltwater, surged down the wooded glen, a torrent of peaty water glimpsed through dripping branches of Atlantic oak. The rich scent of moss, rotting wood, and decaying leaves lingered behind the crisp freshness of the mountain stream, a bracing smell that chased away Angus’s tiredness.
Gills set a good pace for a man of nearly seventy. Angus smiled affectionately at the old man—with his walking poles jutting out like extra limbs, Gills resembled a big stick insect. The smile died when he thought of the vision he’d seen on the shore last night. Whatever happened, he couldn’t let Gills near the sea until this was over.
Soon the trees thinned and the path opened onto a bleak moorland dotted with the skeletons of dead oak. Towering mountains glared down on them as they wended their way through the heather.
“Up until thirty or so years ago, academics disputed whether the Glen Màma Massacre had actually occurred,” Gills wheezed. “Sure, it had a basis in reality—the MacRuari clan was annihilated by the MacLoughlins; numerous sources attest to this. The detail about the cave, though, was considered far-fetched, a literary motif used by the chronicle writers. But then some potholers exploring the cave system of the glen stumbled across piles of human bones. They called the police, erroneously believing the bones were recent. For a time, rumours of a serial killer’s lair swirled around, until the bones were radiocarbon-dated to the sixteenth century. Archaeologists later discovered charcoal deposits and evidence of burnt bone a foot or so down. The remains were from men, women, and children, which all but clinched the deal—here was the physical evidence of the massacre referred to in the ancient manuscripts.”
They walked around the shores of a small dark lochan, then struck off the main path, following what was little more than a sheep trail around the base of the crags.
“The exact location of the cave was kept secret by authorities to deter trophy hunters,” Gills said.
“Then how do you know where we’re going?”
“Myself and the lead archaeologist on the dig were friends. He told me where to find the cave.” He paused and turned to Angus. “And here’s a curious thing: the cave is known in Gaelic as Uamh na Caillich.”
An icy tingle fluttered across Angus’s shoulder blades. “Cave of the Cailleach,” he murmured.
“Another odd coincidence, eh? It’s almost as if Dòmhnall and his kin made the ultimate sacrifice to the Bone Mother.” He gave Angus a tight smile, then pointed to a narrow cleft between two great slabs of ice-encrusted schist. “The cave is on the other side of these rocks. Watch how you go, though.”
“Just concentrate on yourself, a’bhalach,” he said.
Using his poles for balance, Gills picked his way down the steep slope, the dogs a few paces in front. Angus slithered after them, heart hammering as he fought to keep his footing. He passed between the two slabs and found himself hemmed in on three sides by sheer cliffs. Tiny scraggly trees sprouted improbably from cracks and fissures in the rock. Clumps of moss and grass clung to the crags like patches of hair on the face of an old man. Water streamed down the rock face, as if the mountains themselves were crying.
Angus shivered, sensing some malevolent presence in this remote, lonely place. The collies appeared to feel it too. Their hackles rose as they glared at the gaping black maw in the mountainside. Bran let out a low, throaty growl. Sceolan crouched, as if ready to pounce, his mismatched eyes bright and fierce.
“Easy, boys, it’s just a cave,” Gills said, voice betraying a hint of nervousness. He unslung his rucksack, took out a couple of torches, and handed one to Angus. “You fit?”
“Aye,” he muttered.
They walked to the cave mouth and stood for a few seconds, peering into the murk. A faint fetid-smelling wind arose from the darkness, as if the cave were sighing. Angus screwed up his nose at the rank sickly sweet scent of decay. Gills clicked on his torch and padded into the cave. Angus licked his cracked lips, then glanced back at the dogs. Bran paced back and forth, but would come no closer. Sceolan stood as if frozen, his front paw in the air, eyes fixed on the cave mouth. Angus flicked on his own torch and followed Gills into the dank cavern.
Daylight illuminated the first few meters, revealing green-tinted granite and rock worn into ribbons and flutes by centuries of dripping water. The cave floor was covered in loose boulders, smoother slabs and a thin layer of vegetation and soil. Ten feet above his head, the callused roof was pockmarked with toothlike stalactites and dark patches the colour of rust.
“Quite remarkable,” Gills breathed, the beam from his torch darting around the cave.
Angus did not trust himself to speak. In his mind’s eye, he saw a mass of bodies pressed together in the darkness. He heard the pitiful wails of children, bleak curses, and the anguished cries of women as the cave filled with smoke. He smelt the acrid stench of damp wood and heather burning. It masked the reek of piss and shit as the condemned loosened their bowels and coughed up their lungs.
“There is a certain . . . malignant aura, as if the events of the past have been scorched into the walls. That’s why I wanted us to come here.”
“What do you mean?”
“‘The wretched will make bargains with demons and, thus possessed, make blood sacrifices to slake the thirst of the old gods.’”
“That’s the prophecy.”
“Aye, and like you, I’ve been thinking about what that might mean . . . more practically.”
“You’ve been thinking about what possession by an entity from the Celtic otherworld according to an ancient manuscript might mean . . . more practically?”
“Aye.” Gills’s craggy face was uplit by the torchlight. “Will you humour me for a second, old bean?”
“Gills, I’ve been humouring you my whole life.”
The old man chuckled softly. “Quite. Well, then. Gormla didn’t live in our world, with its car parks and microcomputers. She lived in this world—the natural world. It thus occurred to me that the answer might be in the natural world, Angus. So I’d like to tell you about the humble horsehair worm.”
“Ok-ay . . .”
“These worms mate in the water and when their eggs hatch, the tiny larvae settle on the bottom of streams and rivers, where they are eaten by the larvae of other insects, like midges or mosquitoes. When the midges metamorphose, they emerge from the water, fly about a bit, and are inevitably eaten by other insects such as crickets.” Gills strobed the torch beam around the roof of the cave, eyes narrowed. “But the cricket doesn’t know the midge has a stowaway on board. Once inside the cricket, the worm larva begins to grow, sometimes up to a foot long. Outwardly, the cricket appears unchanged, but here’s the good bit”—his eyes flitted to Angus—“the worm produces large amounts of neurotransmitters that make the cricket act in ways it normally wouldn’t. For example, it stops the cricket chirping.”
Angus frowned. “But why?”
“Because chirping alerts predators. The worm doesn’t want the cricket eaten, for obvious reasons. It has basically hijacked the cricket’s brain, and when the worm is ready to emerge, it does something else quite remarkable. Crickets avoid water, the dangers of fish and drowning being great. But crickets infected by horsehair worms think they’re Tom Daley. They seek out the nearest pool and dive in kamikaze-style. By now the worm has bored a porthole in the cricket’s exoskeleton. As soon as the insect hits the water, the worm squirms out of its host and goes off to find a mate. And so the cycle begins again.
“The cricket, incidentally, if not eaten by a fish, does not necessarily die. It hops away, a great hole inside it where the worm used to be.”
Angus glared at Gills, waiting for him to continue. “And your point is?”
“I’d have thought that obvious, old bean. I think when James Chichester was trapped inside this cave, he was, in a sense, infected. He became a host, not for a horsehair worm, but for some ancient entity, perhaps the spirit of his ancestor an Draoidh. Dòmhnall MacRuari was not just a follower of the old gods; he was an emissary between them and his people. He drew his power from them, but when Chichester stumbled into this cave, that power was all but gone. To become strong again, an Draoidh therefore needed to strengthen the gods.”
“Through human sacrifice?” Angus croaked.
“Indeed, blood is the currency of the gods. An Draoidh needed Chichester as much as Chichester needed him. So they made a bargain. In fact, Chichester almost told you as much, Angus.”
“Did he?”
“He told you he made a pact, remember?”
“Aye, to reintroduce wolves.”
“Wolves and the Cailleach have a symbiotic relationship. She represents the natural order on which they subsist—this place before damned motorways and fish farms arrived. And they, in turn, preserve the natural order that is the Cailleach.”
He pictured Chichester, sweeping his walking stick across the landscape as they stood on the platform above the wolves.
This is make-believe, an artificial creation of man, first branded by the Victorians and flogged to death by successive governments ever since. No landscape can truly be called a wilderness when its top predator has been eradicated.
“Think about everything the Cailleach represents. She is the summer and the winter, the harvest and the frost. She is life and death—not as we know it, but as a continuum, as a sacred circle of renewal. And so is the wolf. It is the apex predator that in creating death preserves nature and thus life.”
He thought of Chichester, his eyes narrowed to slits, like the arrow loops in Dunbirlinn Castle.
In ten years’ time—if the reintroduction project is allowed to progress unhindered—the view from here will be quite different. . . .
Wolves have a symbiotic relationship with nature, Angus. . . .
She is the missing link in the chain.
“Angus, the murders of Eleanor and Faye are blood sacrifices to honour and sustain the goddess.”
“But what does she want?”
“What all deities want—to be worshipped. Chichester—or whatever’s left of him—is the spider at the centre of this web. Like Dòmhnall MacRuari, he has na Sgàilean, his Shadows. Betty Duncan, Joe Carver, Jonathan Boyce. All of them, out of the blue, brutally murdered people close to them. They were sacrificed, Angus. And the thing inside James Chichester compelled them to do it.”
“My mother, too?” Angus asked, voice little more than a whisper.
Gills shook his head. “Your mother was taken from us before Chichester ever set foot in the Highlands, let alone this cave. No, Chichester had nothing to do with Caitlin’s murder, but I believe it is connected.”
“How?”
“By you, Angus. Your visions. They are not random. In fact, they’re the opposite. Even when you weren’t taking those pills, lots of people died. Road accidents. Drownings at sea. But you foresaw none of those.”
Angus peered into the darkness and tried to still the thumping of his heart. What Gills said had a kind of logic, but something still bothered him.
“Why not kill them himself?” he asked. “Why drag in someone else?”
“I believe Chichester is the living embodiment of his ancestor Dòmhnall MacRuari. An Draoidh was considered a semidivine figure. He had devotees, just as Chichester now has whoever is garbed as Donn Fírinne. Ask yourself this, Angus: Who is more powerful, the hangman who places the rope around a condemned man’s neck, or the king who ordered the execution? Dòmhnall straddled the divide between the sacred and the profane. He was an intermediary between the gods. His followers had to prove themselves.”
“But how does that even work?” he asked.
Gills released his arm and sighed. “That, I don’t know. My guess is some kind of Faustian bargain. In one lurid historical account, Dòmhnall makes just such a pact with the Devil. He gains his heart’s desire—dominion over his enemies—but in doing so, everyone he loves is, eventually, slaughtered. The story is a Christianised version of a much older tale, with the Devil transplanting some other supernatural being, quite possibly a Celtic deity.”
“Eleanor told us her husband had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer,” Angus said. “She said it was at a distant stage, meaning the cancer had spread to other parts of his body. The doctors gave him eighteen months to live, tops. I looked up the survival rates online. For men of Chichester’s age, with his type of cancer, and at such an advanced stage, he simply could not survive. Yet he’s still in robust health a decade later. Either he’s a medical miracle—”
“Or something else,” Gills said, finishing Angus’s thought.
“Aye.”
Angus swept his torch beam over the moist walls of the cave and tried to still the shake in his arm. He thought of that brief glimpse of something feral in the laird’s eyes when they’d spoken at the wolf enclosure. Phrases from their strange, rambling conversations seemed to echo around the cave:
I fell into this trancelike state of hyper-awareness. . . .
There were times when I felt godlike. . . .
Angus tried to banish the laird from his head, but that reedy voice continued to reverberate.
And now I’m paying for that hubris. . . .
Will this suffering be enough . . . ?
We are irredeemably lost, Angus Dubh. . . .
And suddenly it hit him, like the force of the Steall Waterfall. Chichester had been confessing to him the whole time. It hadn’t just been grief Angus had seen in the laird’s eyes. It had been guilt.
Chapter 67
Ashleigh sat on the small, padded stool at her clarsach and gazed, unseeing, out the window. Dusk was beginning to fall, a scattering of stars appearing in the north sky. She leaned forward and rested her head against the neck of the clarsach. At her bare feet sat the forms Granny Beag had given her, ready to be sent to the electoral office. After the devastating news at the clinic, she had made the decision to run at the local elections in the New Year, only a couple of months away. There was more to being a woman than raising children; Granny Beag had taught her that. And besides, she heard the old woman say, You’re young yet; you’ve still got options. Angus had insisted they could save up and try IVF through a private clinic. Or they could adopt. Why then did she feel so utterly despondent? Why, beside that measured, reasonable voice in her head, was there another? A sneering, hectoring voice that told her she was worthless, told her to tear everything down and burn it.
FUCK THE WORLD.
Suddenly she heard the low purr of an engine as a car pulled up in front of the cottage. Then silence. She waited, heard the sound of a car door slam and the creak of footsteps walking towards the front door. A delivery driver, she thought, although they hadn’t ordered anything recently, and besides, it was Sunday. Jehovah’s Witnesses perhaps, offering to save her soul, just like Reverend MacVannin.
She rose from the stool and walked into the hall. She could see the dark shape of someone—a man, judging from the height—behind the frosted glass on the door. Despite this, she jumped when the doorbell rang.
She closed her eyes and muttered a near-silent curse. If it was the Jehovah’s, they were going to get short shrift. She marched to the door, undid the chain, and hauled it open. Her mouth fell open in surprise. Standing there in an immaculate dark coat and charcoal suit, a trilby on his head, was James Chichester. He clutched a cane with a wolf-headed handle in his leather-gloved right hand, and his tanned face wore an expression of light amusement.
