The Mysteries (20 page)

We saw Hades tricking the unwary Persephone into eating a pomegranate seed before he sent her back to her mother, knowing this would force her to return to his realm. Then, the same scene from a different angle, and this time instead of force or trickery we saw compliance, as the girl exchanged a sexually charged look with her rapist/lover, slyly thrusting out her tongue to accept the seed he offered.

In the modern drama, the girl is just saved from death by overdose and returns, repentant, to her mother's house. Then, in the dead of night, she creeps outside, into the same iron-fenced garden where Persephone had been sitting in daylight amid flowers; there she meets her dealer-boyfriend, offering him her arm, upturned and fisted, for the needle. The camera moves to catch the dreamy ecstasy on the modern girl's face. Gradually, that face blurs to mere shadows. When it comes back into focus, it's Peri's face, and her smile gradually fades, replaced by a look of utter blankness. Even the light in her eyes seems to be extinguished, a split second before the image freezes.

The hairs rose on the back of my neck. I felt as if I'd seen Peri at the moment of her death, and the horror and sadness of it was overwhelming.

The screen went black. Credits scrolled slowly, white words against a black background, against silence.

I turned to Laura and saw tears rolling down her cheeks. Her breathing was a little ragged, but otherwise she made no sound, gave no sign that she was weeping.

I felt like crying, too. I wished I had the right to put my arms around her and kiss her tears away. Instead, I got up and went across the room to the counter, where there was a box of tissues, and brought it back to her.

Laura took a tissue and gently blotted her face. “She must be alive. She was alive six months after she left. And she said she was happy then. She sounded all right.”

I could think of nothing useful to say, so I said nothing.

Laura sighed, crumpling the tissue in her hand. She didn't look at me. “It's getting late. Maybe you should go.”

“When will I see you again?” That came out more ambiguously than I'd intended. I added quickly, “I've still got some questions . . . and we need to talk about, um, a contract, expenses, stuff like that—now's not a good time.”

She nodded. “Tomorrow. I could meet you for lunch. Somewhere near my office?”

“Sure.”

“There's a bistro place—look, I'll e-mail you the details. I'll send you Polly's address, too.” She was brisk, almost recovered, the businesswoman dealing efficiently with practicalities.

“Good.” I picked up my briefcase, much lighter without the bottle, and started for the door.

“Ian.”

I turned. She was staring at me, intent on the truth. “That other case of yours, the one you didn't want to tell me about? Just tell me one thing.”

I waited for it.

“Did you find her? And was she all right?”

I met her eyes and fixed on them, a wide, unblinking gaze meant to convince. It was, I knew, the body language employed by liars, but I couldn't seem to stop myself.

“Yes,” I said. “I found her, and everything was OK.” I could feel a flush rising above my collar and was eager to get away. “See you tomorrow.”

What I'd said was the truth, so why did I feel like a liar?

17. Mary

Mary Campbell married John Nelson, a young goldsmith of Aberdeen, in the early 1800s, and they were a happy couple until the time came for her to be delivered of her first child. At midnight, the household heard a loud and terrible noise, and all the candles blew out. The midwife and friends attending Mary fell into a panic, and it was some time before they managed to recover their wits, restore light to the room, and return their attention to her—to find a corpse in the bed.

Many people attended the wake, among them one Reverend Mr. Dobb, who took one look at the body and proclaimed it fake: “Mrs. Nelson must have been carried away by the fairies, who left this stock in her place so all would think her dead.”

But he was unable to convince them, even though he adamantly refused to attend the funeral, and so the thing from the bed was buried, and John Nelson and all of Mary's friends and relations deeply mourned her loss.

Sometime later, John Nelson was riding in his fields one evening when he heard music, which seemed to be coming from the little grassy knoll that they called in that part of Scotland a “knowe” or “moat.” As he went toward it, he saw a veiled figure in white. He greeted the woman kindly. She threw back her veil and burst into tears and, with a shock, he recognized his wife.

“In the name of God, what has disturbed you?” he cried. “And what has caused you to appear at this hour?”

“I am not dead,” she replied. “Although you think me buried, there is but a stick of wood in my grave. I was carried away with our newborn child. I hope you may save me, but I fear I cannot bring our child away, for it has three nurses who attend it always. The greatest hope I have is in my brother Robert.”

Robert Campbell was a sailor, whose ship was due to arrive in Aberdeen within a fortnight. Mary told her husband he would find a letter addressed to her brother on his desk the following Sunday, and that he should give it to Robert Campbell when he came home.

“Do not attempt to win me away, or I shall be lost forever,” she cautioned. “Only Robert can do it.”

With that, she vanished.

John Nelson quickly rode back to town, where he found Mr. Dodd and told him what had happened. The Reverend Dodd accompanied him home and stayed with him until the following Sunday, when a letter appeared as Mary had promised. A few days later, Robert Campbell arrived, and John gave him the letter at once.

In the letter, Mary asked her brother to go, on the first night after he received it, to the moat where she'd been seen. “Let nothing daunt you, but stand in the center of the moat at the hour of twelve at night, and call me, when I, with several others, will surround you; I shall have on the whitest dress of any in the company; then take hold of me and do not forsake me; all the frightful methods they shall use, let it not surprise you, but keep your hold, suppose they continue till cockcrow, when they shall vanish all of a sudden, and I shall be safe . . .”

Robert Campbell vowed he should rescue his sister and her child that very night. He set out by himself at ten o'clock, and almost immediately was confronted by a great roaring lion. He lashed out with his sword and the lion vanished. This cheered him enormously, for now he felt certain that all the threats he'd meet would only be illusions.

Arriving at the moat, he saw a white handkerchief spread on the top of it. He went and stood on it and called for his sister. At once he was surrounded by a company of ladies, all in white clothes, and the one who shone the whitest was unmistakably his sister.

Taking hold of her right hand, he announced, “By the help of God, I will preserve you from all these infernal imps!”

A wailing broke out, and a circle of fire surrounded them, and the shapes of terrible birds swooped and dived at them. This torment went on for almost two hours, until the first, distant cock crowed. At that, the fire faded, the ugly shapes vanished, and beside him Robert Campbell saw his sister Mary, shivering in the cold dawn breeze. Giving thanks to God for her delivery, he wrapped her tenderly in his coat.

She threw her arms around him and cried out that she was saved.

However, they didn't have the baby. Later in the day, Robert Campbell stood with his brother-in-law beside the moat, discussing a plan of burning off all the brambles and thorns, then making it level with the field, when a voice spoke out of the air: “You shall have your child back on condition that you do not till the ground within three perches of the moat and leave the thorns and brambles untouched.”

They agreed to this, and a few moments later, Mary Nelson felt the baby gently laid in her arms. They all knelt and gave thanks to God for this safe delivery.

18. Fred

I resisted what I'd seen on the hillside. I refused to believe my own eyes. People did not disappear into thin air. Maybe I'd dreamed the whole thing.

All night in my narrow bed in Mrs. MacDonald's overheated house I tossed and turned in a delusional, dreamlike fever, and woke in the morning feeling tired but clearheaded. I went to the local police station, which turned out to be a one-man operation, and reported Amy as a missing person. I told Sergeant McAdam about the abandoned, makeshift shelter that I believed to be hers. I didn't say anything about the apparition of Amy, for Sergeant McAdam, a dark, wiry, keen-eyed man, didn't strike me as a believer in fairy tales.

He listened politely to what I had to say, then assured me, in a few, obviously formulaic phrases, that he would look into it. However, he trusted I understood that his resources were limited, and unless I had reason to believe a crime had been committed, or that she had gone missing while climbing or hill walking, requiring the assistance of the mountain rescue service, there was little he could do.

Amy had the right, with her passport, to remain in Great Britain until the end of December. As she had already told her parents she was intending to stay on for a while, perhaps I'd better accept that was precisely what she'd done. So, she'd abandoned a bag of old clothes in the woods. She hadn't left her credit cards behind. She was probably happily established in an Edinburgh hotel, busily running up a huge bill as she sampled all the fine shops there. The young ladies did enjoy the shopping, didn't they, sir? Edinburgh was a grand place for it, with only Glasgow maybe better.

I stared at him in disbelief.
Young ladies?
McAdam didn't look as old as me, yet he talked like somebody's grandfather.

“Practicing a little retail therapy,” I said. “Is that what you mean?”

“Retail therapy?” he said, as if he'd never heard the phrase before. He smiled and nodded. “Ah, yes, that's a very good way of putting it, sir. I'm sure your young lady will turn up safe and sound in a month or so with a whole new wardrobe. I'm sure there's no cause for worry.”

Dissatisfied, but not surprised, I left the police station and went back to explore Doon Hill in the daylight. I found my way back to the bender easily. It was all as I had left it, although I noticed that in places the ground was churned up, as if someone had been digging. I felt a moment's excitement before realizing that I'd done it all myself, in my frenzy to discover the trick of her disappearance.

Now in sober, if still-shadowed, daylight, my idea of holograms and such seemed straight out of an episode of
Scooby-Doo.
Surely I had been dreaming.

I spent the rest of the day driving around outlying villages with Amy's photograph and a fresh stack of flyers that I posted in Port of Menteith, Brig o'Turk, Callander, and Doune. The skies cleared and the sun shone benevolently down so I almost forgot why I was there, and simply enjoyed the fabulous scenery like any awestruck tourist.

In the evening I called Nell Schneider. I didn't tell her about the bleak little bender, or any fairy tales about Doon Hill. I told her the police weren't worried.

“She's probably off enjoying herself in Edinburgh or London,” I said.

The long-distance silence went on for a little too long. Then she told me that there had been no transactions on Amy's credit card since the beginning of August. “Of course, she may have some travelers' checks left, but . . .”

“Maybe her boyfriend is paying the bills.”

“Yes . . . maybe . . .”

After that conversation I knew I had to do something more focused than a random flyer-posting of Scottish villages. Sergeant McAdam had given me the phone number of a charity that specialized in helping the families of missing persons, so I contacted them the next day. They made various suggestions and I took notes.

I was wandering aimlessly around Aberfoyle, wondering whether I had enough appetite for lunch yet (Mrs. MacDonald's breakfasts took some getting through), when a flash of brassy gold caught my attention. I looked up and saw Fred trudging past the Co-op. On impulse, I rushed after her.

Up close, in full daylight, she wasn't quite as I remembered. The artificial hair was the same, but her skin had a coarseness I hadn't noticed before, and there were wrinkles around her eyes. She was obviously older than I: mid-to-late thirties, I reckoned, maybe even forty. I was struck by the odd notion that she'd aged several years for every day that had passed since our first meeting.

She looked surprised to see me. “You're still here.”

“Still looking for Amy,” I explained, trying not to stare. “Have you had lunch?”

She shook her head and hoisted the plastic carrier bag she wore on one arm. It didn't have much in it. “Just about to go home and cook beans on toast.”

This sounded as mysterious and unappetizing as the drink of orange squash Mrs. MacDonald had offered me earlier. “They do better than that in the café. My treat.”

She smiled. “Great, pal. You're on.”

We both ordered the special of the day: fresh haddock fried in crispy batter with chips and a salad. Fred chose to accompany hers with the inevitable hot, milky tea, and I asked for a Coke. When the waitress had left I looked at Fred, suddenly speechless.

She put her elbows on the table and propped her face in her hands. “So?”

“So?” I repeated.

“Have you changed your mind?”

“About what?”

She smiled faintly, mockingly. “Are there more things in heaven and earth than were dreamed of in your philosophy?”

I took a deep breath. And then, although I hadn't planned this at all, hadn't meant to tell anyone,
ever,
it all came pouring out, all the details of my mysterious, impossible encounter with a woman I assumed to be Amy, on Doon Hill.

I finished just as our food arrived, so Fred was busy for a few moments, vigorously salting her chips and splashing the fish with drops of vinegar. When she'd dosed everything to her satisfaction she looked across at me.

“You'll go back on Halloween?”

I shrugged. “I guess. But I wish I understood what was going on.”

“I can tell you,” she said. “Halloween is the old festival of Samhain. In the old calendar, the last night of October was the end of the old year and the beginning of a new. It's a magical time, a time of transition. It's when the door between the worlds opens, and anything can happen. You'll be able to bring Amy back, if you're brave enough to do exactly what she said.”

“All she said was that I should hang on to her and not let go until morning.”

“It won't be as simple as that.”

“Now, why didn't I guess that? And what do
you
know about it?”

“I've researched the subject,” she said, matter-of-factly. “In another life, I was a graduate student; old habits die hard. I've read everything I could find. What she said is pretty traditional as a means of rescuing people who've been abducted by the gentry. There was a woman in Aberdeenshire, Mary Campbell Nelson, a hundred and fifty or two hundred years ago, who was rescued by her brother just that way. The earliest story might be that of Young Tam Lin—you probably know the ballad?”

“Never heard of it.”

She raised her eyebrows, then, between mouthfuls of fish and potato, she explained:

“It's a traditional ballad, but a lot of those were based on true stories. Young Tam Lin was taken by the—fairies.” Her hesitation before saying the word was as palpable as a hiccup, which struck me as odd, but I said nothing and she went on.

“He had a habit of appearing to young maidens in a particular spot in the woods, near a well—or maybe they summoned him.”

“The love-talker,” I said.

She smiled. “Anyway, when Janet fell pregnant, she refused to have anyone but Tam Lin for her husband, and he admitted that he was, in fact, human: He'd been taken by the Queen of the Fairies, and he had only one chance of returning to the mortal world. That was if Janet could win him back on Halloween. He'd be riding with the fairy host, and she had to pull him down from his horse and hang on tight. By magic he'd be changed into a snake, a bear, a lion, and even a red-hot iron burning brand, but if she could ignore all that, and keep hold of him, remembering that whatever he appeared, he was still her baby's father, he'd finally be turned back into her own true love, naked in her arms, and all she'd have to do then was cover him with her green cloak to keep him safe from the fairies forever.”

“Sounds very symbolic.”

“You think that makes it untrue?” she snapped back. “I'm trying to help.”

“Yes. I know.” I poked through the crisp fried crust on my fish and watched the steam escape. “I can't help wondering why.”

“What do you mean? Why shouldn't I help you?”

I shrugged. “You don't even know Amy Schneider.”

“So?”

“What are you doing in Aberfoyle? What brought you to Doon Hill in the first place?”

She went on eating, not looking at me. Finally she said, “Take a guess.”

“You're looking for someone.”

“Sort of.” She pushed her plate aside. It was empty now except for the fish skin and one pallid, undercooked french fry. “Not so much some
one
as someplace. I want to go where Amy went.”

I frowned. “You want to disappear?”

She grinned mockingly. “Oh, I've already done
that
.”

“Why would you want to go to a place that other people want to escape
from
? Robert Kirk, Tam Lin, Amy?”

“The same thing doesn't suit everyone. Some people love Scotland. Others can't wait to get away. Are you going to eat those chips?”

I pushed my plate across to her.

She picked up the vinegar bottle and gave me a questioning look.

“Go on.”

She shook out the vinegar. “It's because of something that happened when I was wee. We came here on holiday. Two weeks in a caravan, my parents, my two brothers, and me. Luckily, the weather was good. We kids ran wild. Well, it was the country, and folks didn't worry so much then. My brothers played with some other boys, but I was on my own a lot. I didn't mind, in fact, I loved it. I never seemed to have any space to myself at home. Here, I'd go off all day by myself, just wandering, and exploring, and climbing trees, or crawling into some little hidey-hole with a book to read. And then one evening I met a lady.”

“On Doon Hill?”

She nodded. “She told me there was a poorly baby that needed my help, and would I come with her? So I did. Of course, we'd been told not to go with strangers, but this seemed different, somehow. Well, she was a lady, and very beautiful, then there was that baby—I don't know why, but I followed.

“She went very fast; I had to run to keep up, so she gave me her hand—and then, all of a sudden we were in a completely different place. I thought I knew all the countryside around there, but this was strange.” She broke off, frowning. “I can't describe it now—I can't even explain it. Sometimes I dream about it, but—”

“Did you want something else?”

It was the waitress, coming to clear away our plates.

“I'll have another cup of tea, please,” said Fred.

“Coffee,” I said impatiently, and leaned forward, urging Fred to go on.

“It was just getting dark when we came to a building, I think it was a big house of some kind. There was a tunnel, it seemed to be the way into this house, but the opening was down so low you'd have to crawl to get in. The lady wanted me to go in first, and then I started to get scared. I realized how late it must be—I didn't have a watch—and I didn't know how long it was going to take me to get back, but I was bound to be in big trouble.

“When I hesitated, the lady started to coax, telling me there'd be lovely things to eat and drink inside. She gave me a gold coin and promised there'd be another for me once I'd seen to the baby; and then I really did get worried. All those things they used to tell you: Don't take sweets or money from strangers, don't go away with strangers—suddenly, it hit me, that's just what I'd done. I didn't want her to see I was scared, so I put the coin in my pocket, and said that I'd follow her in. She got down on her hands and knees, and as soon as she was in the tunnel, I legged it.

“I had no idea where I was, or how to get back. I ran for a long time, in a blind panic, and when I couldn't run anymore I hid myself as best I could, behind a rock or a tree or under some heather . . . It got darker and darker. I never saw any houses or a paved road. Sometimes I heard voices, and once I thought I heard music. At some point, while I was hiding, I fell asleep, and the next thing I knew, my father was bending over me, furious and relieved.

“I'd been out all night, and there was hell to pay. They wouldn't believe I'd got lost less than a mile from the caravan site, and they didn't believe me about the lady. When I tried to show them the coin, all I found in my pocket was an oak leaf.”

She fell silent. The waitress brought our drinks.

“That's it?” I asked.

She poured the contents of two packets of sugar into her tea and stirred it slowly.

“And now? You've come back here after all those years to look for the lady who gave you an oak leaf?”