The rain fell from the dark sky and flowed along the gutters of the Old Town district of Stirling. A small, hooded figure stood by an old-rendered, turreted house as a couple appeared out of a doorway. The woman, a tall blond with too much make-up, said: “What’s a child doing out alone on a night like this?”
The small character turned slowly to face them, the hood hiding the facial features.
“Please help me, my name is Rebekah, and I’m looking for my mother!” said a pleading girl’s voice as a strong feeling of menace invaded the atmosphere.
“Oh, you poor dear,” said the woman, who moved toward the figure, but the man pulled her back as the child lowered the hood to show a head of curly blond hair which tumbled onto her shoulders. The skin of her face was pallid and stretched over a fine bone structure. She stared at the couple with total black eyes.
“Come on Peggy,” said the man with a quivering voice.
“Please, I have to go home!” beseeched the child, but the couple had gone and all that remained was the splatter of the rain on the pavement and road. She pulled up her hood and walked on through the night. The gargoyles high on the Barceló Hotel on the other side of the road spat out a steady flow of water which crashed onto the pavement. A drunk sitting in a doorway out of the rain gazed at the hooded figure as it passed by.
“Where are you going?” he barked.
She stopped and turned to face him. He was unshaven and wore a crumpled grey jacket which had seen better days. He whimpered as she pulled back the hood.
“Please help me, my name is Rebekah, and I’m looking for my mother!”
“Leave me alone!” the man shouted turning away.
A moment passed.
The man felt a finger jab his upper arm, and he turned to find the child’s face next to his.
“Please, I have to go home!”
After a moment the drunk rose and shouted: “You keep trying!” as he walked off into the dark.
Crossing the road the figure passed the front of the monolithic Church of the Holy Rude. Light from spotlights reflecting on the water running down the walls, gave the building a dark-blue patina. She passed through the locked gates to the Old Town Cemetery as if they weren’t there and followed the path between the dripping headstones. Shadows played hide and seek as statues gazed through a swirling mist which had descended on the graveyard.
The child stopped for a moment by the white iron and perspex cupola of the Virgin Martyrs. She looked inside at two marble female statues, one reading a bible to the other, both looked over by an angel. The rain drops ran down the perspex like tears from heaven.
She moved into another part of the cemetery where three statues stood on a raised area, over-shadowed by Stirling Castle in the background. A thick swirl of mist engulfed her; children’s hands pulled her apart and her essence evaporated.
The next day the sun swept the rain clouds away and dried out the ancient burgh of Stirling. Peggy and Tom MacDougall made their way up through the Old Town district and entered the cemetery.
“What are we doing here Peggy? This place gives me the creeps,” complained Tom.
“I told you Tom, something’s attracting me here!” She looked through the headstones and statues and said, pointing,” Over there!”
The pair strode into an area which was much more ancient and unkempt than the others. Peggy then stopped in front of an old, weathered headstone and crouched.
“Oh, look at this Tom!”
“Here lies the remains of Flora Fraser. May God have pity on her soul,” read Tom.
“This means something about that child we saw last night.”
“What? Peggy, look at the date—1485!”
That night, Peggy sat in her spare room and searched Stirling’s historical files on the Internet, her face illuminated by the screen in the otherwise darkened room. The website had showed that Flora Fraser was burnt at the stake beside Stirling Castle for being a witch.
My God! Thought Peggy as she read on and found out that Flora had a daughter called Rebekah.
Next, she accessed a site on black eyed kids and was tapped on the shoulder causing her to jump.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” asked Tom.
“Heavens Tom, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“There’s the front door bell. I’ll need to go,” said Tom, turning and leaving the room.
“Yes. I would love a cuppa!” Peggy shouted after him.
After a few moments Tom shouted, “Peggy you’d better come and see this.”
She sighed, then left her computer and went downstairs. The sight of the small figure with long-blond hair and total black eyes standing at the front door made her legs quiver.
“Please help me; I need to find my mother? Will you come with me?” Rebekah pleaded.
“Now, Peggy,” cautioned Tom, who was standing behind his wife.
Peggy turned and kissed Tom and then grabbed her coat from behind the door, “it’s okay Tom, I know what I’m doing. I’ll be back soon.”
Rebekah took Peggy’s hand, and the pair walked through Stirling and then up through the Old Town. They stopped at the gates to the Old Town Cemetery although they were still open.
“I don’t know,” said Peggy, staring into the darkness.
“Come on, it will be all right!” Rebekah said, pulling on Peggy’s hand.
They entered the graveyard and Rebekah led Peggy to the area where the three statues of the Reformers stood with their backs to the dark leviathan that was Stirling Castle. A swirling mist engulfed them, and children’s voices hissed, “your soul is ours, daughter of ancient stake-burner!” Realisation descended over Peggy as she looked through the fog at Rebekah who had grown in size and was grinning revealing huge, pointed teeth. Instinctively Peggy let go of the hand and ran.
Stumbling between the headstones Peggy made her way toward the distant gate.
She screamed as she came face to face with a stone angel. Then, stopping to catch her breath, she turned and gasped in horror as the swirling mist headed in her direction.
On and on she ran finally reaching a well- maintained gravel path. She turned her head as she sped along the path with the gates in sight, “Oh my God!” Peggy shouted in frustration as the mist tugged at her, pulling her back.
Then, just as small hands grabbed her, a figure stepped out from behind a big statue, and the drunk from the previous evening shouted, “Come and get me you bastards!
Leave that poor woman alone.”
“So, we have you at last—son of ancient stake-burner!” growled a voice from the mist.
Peggy felt the mist release her, and she ran on-grateful to the man, engulfed in the demon-infested fog. She looked on in despair at the now locked gates, she didn’t have the energy to climb over them.
She stopped and looked in utter horror as the fog swirled around her feet. Then suddenly there was the roar of an engine and the gates burst open. A red pickup truck reversed through them, and Tom threw open the passenger door next to Peggy, and shouted, “get in, quick!”
Peggy jumped in and slammed the door, then Tom gunned the engine and they flew out of the cemetery and away.
“Let’s not go back in there again Peg," said Tom. “I told you it gives me the creeps!”
A relieved Peggy could only nod.
I stared at the white-washed walls. I stared at the window with iron bars. I stared at the dirty blue and grey striped mattress, which was my bed. Grey stuffing protruded from a hole in the corner and was trying to escape the stitched confines.
The overall I wore was baggy and hadn’t been washed for weeks. My hair, shaved off my scalp, was bristly to the touch. Being physically handicapped they confined me to a wheelchair.
The sound of marching boots outside - the sound of shouts and screams inside the building. Einsicht Mental Institution was an old prison with cold flagstone floors and had been my home for five years since I was given up by my mother.
She came to see me at the start, but after a while she came no more. Dieter, the nurse who cared for me, told me she had moved away because she wanted to give our house to good people.
When I was alone, I took out the small metal cross with the funny little man on it she had given me and I prayed for her the way she had shown me. I also prayed for the other people like me trapped in their rooms.
At night I pressed my hands to my ears to keep out the noise, and I dreamt of my mother, and of a time when we were happy in our Munich home; a time when people used to smile and call me happy, little Friedrich. But then darkness descended over our world and people looked at each other with frightened eyes. From the streets at night there was the sound of breaking glass and the smell of burning.
The dark became darker when it took my father away and left my mother crying into the night. I had wanted to go to her; to console her, but I needed help to get out of my bed. I cried: “Mama, mama!” But she never came.
The rest of 1933 we cowered in our home with the shutters over the windows and the door locked. Boots marched along the street and we heard cries as people were taken away from their homes and their businesses. I asked Mama where they were taking our friends. She told me it was better not to know. She also told me to love God, because he loved me and would not forsake me, and to always remember that, no matter how bad things got.
One day I peeped out of the space between the shutters of the parlour window and saw men in shabby clothes with dirty faces being marched along our street. The men had dead eyes. At the sides of the horde were soldiers in tan uniforms with guns. One man stumbled and fell onto the cobbled road. A soldier then ran over to him and hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. I screamed with horror, and the soldier looked at me with such hatred in his eyes I cowered away from the window and hoped that they would go away. Mama came running into the room and closed the shutters and said: “When you hear marching boots you must not look out Friedrich.”
The dark took my mother one evening while I slept. When I awoke with the first rays of a frosty dawn slipping through the shutters, I shouted: “Mama!” But there was no reply.
The whole of that day and the next night I called for her from between soiled sheets, but she never came. Then the next day she walked into my room; her skin was pale, and she had a faraway look in her eyes. “Mama!” I shouted with joy.
“Friedrich, look at you, I must clean you up son.”
The next day she took me to the institution and told me that the doctors could look after me better than she could. “But Mama I want to stay with you!” I cried. I then watched her as she waved and watched her as they closed the old metal-studded
wooden door. I sobbed as a man in a white tunic took me to my room; a room with bars on the window.
One dark morning two men in white coats woke me and dressed me and told me I was going on a bus journey. “Where’s Dieter?” I asked.
“He’s gone on ahead,” said one man.
The bus, an old, dark-green vehicle with wooden seats, sat in the courtyard. People like me were being helped into the coach by other men in white coats. Some people were crying others just looked bemused.
The bus took us away from Munich out into the snowy countryside. I pushed my hand into my trouser pocket and felt the comforting shape of the cross with the man on it. A man in a white coat who sat opposite me, looked at me briefly and smiled.
Big white snowflakes fell from the sky as we turned into the courtyard of a tall, sand-coloured building. We were then helped off the bus and taken into a low grey building with a flat roof at the side of the main house.
In a cold, bare room the men in white coats took off our clothes and then led us into another cold, bare room with only one small, round window. The shouting and crying was deafening as one man shut the large, thick door.
I looked at the cross I had grabbed from my trousers before they were taken away and, as an engine started and blue/grey fumes issued from a vent in the ceiling, I asked the funny little man why he had allowed me to be born at such a time with such a deformity, but most of all I wanted to know why he had forsaken me.
George Campbell was walking to work along the cliff top road when he heard the menace of the engine. He turned and then, moving over to the right-hand side, he jumped over a puddle to the relative safety of the verge as a metallic-green BMW X5
charged toward him.
The car swerved over to the right side of the empty road and then careered through the puddle sending a spray of muddy water over his kaki fatigues. He glared at the driver, John Conon-Forsythe, who had a smirk on his face, as he flashed by on his way to Bourachdale Golf Course at the end of the road.
George worked at the golf course as a junior green keeper; a job his father, the Bourachdale Estate Gamekeeper, had acquired for him. He hated it because the course was part of the estate, owned by the Conon-Forsythe’s.
A tall blond-haired boy, John Conon-Forsythe had mocked and laughed at George most of his life, especially at primary school where George, a plump, shy boy, stuttered every time the teacher had asked him to read aloud. George’s embarrassment had provided endless amusement for Conon-Forsythe and his chums—the sons of the
‘well-heeled’ of the area.
Later that day the course was empty as low cloud swept in from the North Sea bringing a fine rain which made the grass glisten. George was tidying up around the 11th tee when Conon-Forsythe and his friends: Callum MacDonald, the police chief’s son and Michael Muir the son of the local hotel owner walked over from the 10th green.
Conon-Forsythe dropped a gum wrapper and then shouted to George: “Hey boy, pick that up will you!” George just stood and looked, as the threesome sniggered.
“Come on then, chop, chop!” Conon-Forsythe ordered as George walked toward the wrapper. But Michael Muir stepped in before him and picked up the piece of litter and put it in the tee-side bin. “Honestly John, you are the limit,” he said as he looked at George and shook his head.
That night George sat in his bedroom brooding as his parents slept. Something had to be done, he thought. He could just leave Bourachdale, but where would he go?
What would he do?
Secondary school at nearby Blairs had been much the same for George. He had found that he was retreating into himself and not speaking to anyone for fear of stuttering.
Relief came, however, when with the schooldays over, Conon Forsythe went off to university in Edinburgh. George found he could relax and his confidence grew. He worked at the golf course and had even struck up a platonic relationship with a local girl called Evelyn.
The college holidays, however, were dreaded; they were a time when he felt himself being dragged back into his shell. They were a time when his self-esteem sank. Something had to be done!
One night he crept down the stairs of the sleeping house and grabbed his father’s keys from the telephone stand in the hallway. He then unlocked and opened the door of the small room at the back of the house where the gamekeeper kept his guns and ammunition.
George gasped as he then opened a small, secure cabinet hidden behind a bookcase which he had watched his father open as he peered through the keyhole.
Moonlight, which shone in through the small, barred window, reflected off the blue/grey barrel of a pump-action shotgun and made it look like something alien. He touched the barrel, it felt both cold and exciting.
George entered the kitchen the next morning and found his packed lunch sitting on the table. He looked out of the window; rain swept across the back garden driven by a strong off-shore wind. A shiver made its way down his spine, produced by gazing at the cold uninviting day from the warmth of the kitchen, he assumed; or was it from the thought of something else… something more sinister!
Pulling on his jacket George then grabbed his bag. He was about to leave when he spotted his father’s spare keys on the telephone stand. He couldn’t, he thought, and opened the front-door, but just as he was about to step out, Conon-Forsythe’s mocking face flashed into his mind’s eye. George ran through the hall, opened the gun-room door and then unlocked the smaller cabinet and took out the pump-action shotgun, then loaded up three cartridges.
George then left the house with the gun stuffed inside his jacket. Fortunately, there was no one about as he walked up the hill which led to the cliff top road.
Low, grey clouds obscured Dale Mound, the mountain which provided a back drop to the golf course, as George walked along the road made slick by the rain. He looked over the edge of the cliffs and was about to throw the gun over when he heard the purr of a car engine. His heart-rate galloped when he turned to see the BMW X5 head toward him. Could he? Yes, he could.
George walked out in front of the car and unzipped his jacket. Strangely, calmness descended over him and he felt confident as the BMW screeched to a halt.
“Get out of the way!” Conon-Forsythe shouted before bursting into a laugh. The mirth changed to sheer panic, however, as George raised the shotgun and pointed it into the car then pulled the trigger.
The windscreen exploded into a million pieces and Conon-Forsythe was flung back into his seat with a big red hole in his chest. His head then lurched forward and crashed onto the steering wheel as the car rolled, due to the camber of the road, toward the edge of the cliff. George stepped out of the way as he pumped the gun and blasted the rear left-side window taking part of Callum MacDonald’s head.
Screams erupted from the front passenger’s seat as the car went over the edge and careered down the cliff which was more of a steep grassy hill at that point, before crashing into the rocks at the bottom.
George slid down the slope and then peered into the battered car. Michael Muir, still strapped in, was screaming hysterically. An odour of excrement filled the vehicle and the rear ceiling was coated with blood and bits of brain tissue.
Muir stopped screaming when George aimed the shotgun at him through the smashed front passenger’s window. He was about to pull the trigger when an image of Muir picking up the gum wrapper on the golf course crept into his mind, and he engaged the safety catch instead.
Michael Muir passed out, possibly due to his injuries, or more likely from emotional relief as George climbed back up to the road and walked into the small police station and threw the gun on the floor.
At the high court in Dundee, George was sentenced to life imprisonment, and, as he was led away from the dock, he turned toward where Michael Muir and the family members of the victims sat with a smirk on his face.
IF YOU GO DOWN TO THE WOODS TODAY
Evelyn Roberts turned onto the tree-lined road which led to Auchmithie village on the east coast of Scotland. She checked the rear-view mirror of her blue Citroen and sighed in relief at the empty road. She had left her husband, Colin, and two sons watching television in their semi-detached council house in Arbroath telling them she was off to see her friend Jaz. Her heart-rate increased as a muddy lay-by came into sight with a dark, green Audi parked at the far end.
Evelyn parked at the near end of the lay-by and turned off the engine. She again checked her rear-view mirror and waited until a white van passed before leaving the car and entering the woods. The path she took was well-worn by dog-walkers and led to the sea after winding its way through a stream cut den where ancient trees stood and watched.
The late August Saturday evening was warm, and the setting sun threw golden rays at the clouds. Evelyn left the path and pushed her way past a thick bush into a small clearing. She surveyed the area and was about to leave when a hand shot out from behind a tree and tapped her on the shoulder.
“All right, come out Alan,” she said with a smile.
“How did you know it was me?” Alan, a tall, thin man with thick, brown hair, asked as he stepped out from behind the tree.
“Who else would hang around here?”
They embraced and kissed.
“When are you going to leave that guy and come with me?” He asked when they stopped kissing.
She stared into his eyes and caressed one of his cheeks with the back of her hand.
“I've told you before—it’s difficult. There are the two boys to consider.”
“They could come as well.”
She laughed as she fell back onto the soft mixture of moss and long grass pulling him on top of her. They rolled about in each other’s embrace before he settled on top of her. He kissed her passionately and stuck his hand up under her T-shirt and caressed one of her breasts.
“Hey! What the hell!” Alan shouted as he stopped what he was doing and looked toward his feet.
“What’s up Al?” Evelyn asked dreamily.
“It’s… oh shit, another one!”
Evelyn screamed and jumped up as Alan was pulled away from her with two gnarled, thick roots wrapped around his ankles. Paralysed with fear, she could only look on helplessly as he struggled and grasped at the thin branches of bushes, which came away in his hands. In an instant he was dragged into a gaping hole, which had opened on the periphery of the clearing. The last Evelyn saw of her secret lover was his hands grasping at the air as the ground enclosed around them.
Shocked out of her paralysis, Evelyn ran over to where he disappeared and fell to her knees and thumped the re-formed ground. “Alan! Alan! Oh, what’s happened?”
she shouted through loud sobbing. Then, after a minute, she stood up and looked around while brushing pieces of moss from her jeans. Confident there was no one around Evelyn left the clearing the way she came in.
The sound of an engine made her pull back into the bushes as she was about to leave the cover of the path for the openness of the lay-by. She watched as a white Ford Focus passed. After the sound of the engine disappeared into the distance, she left the cover of the bushes and ran to her car. With shaking hands, she turned on the
ignition and the sound of the radio made her jump. “This is ridiculous,” she said to herself, “why am I running away? I’ve done nothing wrong!” Cheated on my husband maybe—hardly a crime—or is it? Oh, but how could I explain Alan’s disappearance?
she thought. Negotiating a quick three-point-turn she then gunned the engine and sped toward Arbroath.
Driving through the streets of the town Evelyn’s mind was a mess. What would she do? Who would she confide in? She had to tell her husband about Alan, but how could she explain what happened? No, she had to bluff it out. No one else knew about her affair apart from Jaz, who would say nothing to anyone as they had been friends since childhood and had stuck-up for one another many times. But… did someone spot her car parked beside Alan’s? “Now I’m getting paranoid,” she told herself.
She turned into her driveway and switched off the engine then; after checking her makeup in the rear-view mirror, she opened the driver’s door and left the comforting safety of the car.
“Hello! It’s only me!” Evelyn shouted as she closed the front door.
“Hi Mum!” the two boys shouted in unison.
In the kitchen, Evelyn switched on the kettle and then filled a mug with two heaped teaspoonfuls of instant coffee.
“How was Jasmine?” Colin asked as he strolled into the kitchen.
“Oh, she was fine.”
“There’s a movie just started,” he said as he left with a packet of crisps.
“Yeah, there’s always a movie starting,” she said under her breath with a sigh. Èvelyn stared up at her Aunt Cath. “Please, I want to go out and play?”
“There are green men out in the backdoor at this time of night that will come out of the ground and carry you away,” warned her aunt with a stern look.
“But it’s only seven o’clock; Mum lets me go out!”
“Well. I’m not your mother. Now get ready for bed.”
The telephone rang as Evelyn made her way upstairs, and she heard Cath pick it up and speak. Then, knowing that her aunt stayed on the phone for ages, she dashed back down the stairs. She then ran through the kitchen and unlocked the heavy back door and strolled out into the semi-dark garden of the small, two-storey building on the edge of town.
Evelyn watched as shadows fell across the path she walked on towards the small lawn where her skipping rope lay. She screamed as a bird flapped its wings and flew off from a nearby tree. The light had almost gone as she picked up the rope and skipped, but her heart wasn’t in it. She threw the rope back onto the grass and was about to head back towards the welcoming lights of the house when a noise from an empty patch of soil beside the lawn captured her attention.
Through the gathering gloom Evelyn watched in amazement as a round, green object thrust its way up through the soil. After a few moments she froze in horror as she realised her aunt was right, for the green head of a man was protruding from the surface and was still rising.
She shook herself from the paralysis and grabbed a spade left in the earth and swung it, blade edge-on, at the green head. The spade chopped it off at the neck and left green ooze spurting as the head rolled away into the dark. Evelyn screamed as she threw the spade away and ran back to the house.
“What’s wrong?” said Colin as he woke Evelyn up in the darkness of their bedroom.
She looked around with beads of sweat rolling down her forehead. “Oh, it’s that dream again.”
“You should see someone about that. It happens every other night,” he said as he rolled over.
Who was she to see? She was not even sure if it was a recurring dream. Did it actually happen all those years ago she wondered?
Monday morning, after dropping her sons off at school, Evelyn drove to her work at a bottling company on an industrial estate near the sea. Alongside Jasmine, she worked there part-time. The traffic was heavy, and she shouted at a driver slow at leaving traffic lights after they had turned green. “Whoa there, Eve baby!” Evelyn said. “What’s happening? I’m letting this whole thing take over my life—I got to get a grip!”
After a few hours of mind-numbing work Evelyn was sipping coffee during her lunch break and staring out at the sea through a plate-glass window.
“What have you been up to Eve?” Jasmine asked as she sat down beside her.
“What do you mean?” she asked brusquely.
“Oh touchy- eh! I mean Alan Harrison has been reported missing. According to the local radio he hasn’t been seen since Saturday night.”
“How would I know?”
“Well, you know, I thought…”
“Well, don’t think Jasmine,” interrupted Evelyn.
That evening, while Evelyn was preparing a meal, Colin strolled into the kitchen.
“How are you doing Evie?”
“Oh, okay.”
“I see some guy from the town’s missing. Jim next door says the police found his car beside the woods on the Auchmithie Road and they’re searching all over the area.”
“Oh,” she replied nonchalantly betraying the sinking feeling in her gut.
After the meal she ran to the toilet and threw-up and then sat on the edge of the bath and wept. “Why me?” she asked herself between sobs, but deep down inside she knew the answer. Sleep that night for Evelyn was impossible like the other nights except for when she lapsed into that dream. She tossed and turned, but couldn’t get the image of Alan being dragged away from her out of her mind. Suddenly she sat up and knew where she had to go.
Evelyn shivered as she pushed her way through the bushes and into the darkened clearing where Alan had disappeared. An owl hooted in the distance and small animals rummaged around in the undergrowth which surrounded the area. She was about to turn and run when someone said: “I couldn’t sleep either!”
Evelyn spun round in the direction of the voice, “Alan,” she said breathlessly.
“I’m Detective Inspector Marshall,” said a man dressed in a light-coloured rain coat with the collars pulled up topped off by a brown trilby which made it difficult to see his face. “We both seem to be here for something.”
“I don’t know what you mean!”
“Then why are you here?”
The man stared directly at Evelyn and she stared into black, hypnotic eyes and relieved her burden: “I never did anything. Alan was snatched by two roots, which dragged him under the ground.”
“Come on now; you don’t expect me to believe that?”
“That’s what happened,” pleaded Evelyn.
“What we can’t figure out is what you did with the body. We found traces of his blood in this clearing, and there’s evidence of a struggle.”
“I never killed Alan - I loved him.”
Suddenly the bushes at the back of the clearing shook violently as two uniformed police officers appeared followed by two plain clothes officers.
“Okay Miss, I'd like you to come to the station to help us with our enquiries,” said one of the plain clothes men.
After Evelyn was taken away one officer turned to where Marshall was standing and said: “Okay sir!” But there was no one there, so he shrugged his shoulders and left.
Marshall exploded with laughter as he walked further into the woods while casting off his clothes revealing a green body. His ploy to hypnotise the human keepers into thinking he was one of their masters worked perfectly. Getting them to hide in the undergrowth while she told her story, which sounded ludicrous, was then easy.
As he walked, he sank into the earth, as if he was walking in quicksand. Before he disappeared, he said: “Rest peacefully my brother. The murderess will be dealt with by human rules and renounced by her family. Even if released, I will have something dear to her as you were dear to me!”