In a few short, limping steps I was at the entrance to the cairn. There was nothing—no one—there. Leaning forward, I peered along the pathway that led to the center of the burial mound, but it was open to the air, and I could see nothing. I spun outwards and looked around behind me, but the darkness had closed in again as the clouds drew their curtain across the full moon.
If my eyes hadn’t deceived me and a man had really been there, he was there no longer. I slumped against the rock mound, completely at a loss. Had the nattering of the old ladies from the tour bus been the truth? Was wishful thinking making me see things? Or was I really losing my mind?
In the distance the wail of a siren rose up. Ambulance, or police or fire—I couldn’t tell. But it was a purely contemporary sound. As I listened to it fade away, my heart rate slowed enough to allow logic to begin to seep back into my brain. He had been there—he had. I had seen him. I had seen the dark lines of his plaid moving against his knees in the light breeze. I wasn’t sure what he had been wearing over the plaid—some kind of heavy cloak, certainly—but I was sure of the heavy boots.
I dropped to my knees. Perhaps the damp ground would give evidence of boot prints to prove I was not completely losing it. I glared up at the sky, willing the cloud cover to part at least enough so that I had a bit of dappled moonlight to see the ground.
In answer, tiny raindrops began to spatter my upturned face. I shook them off and concentrated on the ground. By feel alone I could tell the entrance to the cairn was not rock, but mud. Fairly frozen mud, to be sure, but maybe …
My bicycle lamp. I pushed all thoughts of low batteries and returning safely back to the hostel to the back of my brain. I needed to know if there were fresh boot prints, and for that, I needed light. I jumped to my feet and ran smack into the unmistakably solid body of a non-ghostly human male.
Just after midnight, March 16
Inverness, Scotland
Jotting a quick note while my co-ghost hunter (very kindly) pays the cabbie. Have had the strangest and most unique day of my visit. Perhaps of my whole life.
Back in my room, I didn’t even turn on the light, just dropped my pack in the corner and sagged into my bed.
Stretched out, and fell asleep to the memory of the screaming …
Yes, there had been screaming, but not all of it had come from my throat. Screaming, slipping, falling, grabbing, slapping, snatching, pushing, recriminations and finally, breathless, panting silence as I’d stared at the man in front of me, bathed in the reflection of his flashlight.
“I thought you were a ghost,” he said, at the very moment I blurted, “You’re not a ghost.” If we had been in a movie, we would have both laughed wryly and compared notes.
As it was, he glared at me, a streak of mud on one cheek and his left eye beginning to swell from its untimely meeting with my elbow. I stood, arms crossed, at the entrance to the ancient tomb, my heart sunk just about as low as it had been at any point along this strange journey.
Not taking his eyes off me, he bent to the ground to retrieve something in the dark. As he stood up again, I could see he held my book.
“That’s mine,” I said, reaching for it.
“Not so fast.” His voice was laden with cadence from the American south, and marked with deep suspicion. “Mah copy has a blue cover. How do I know you’re not one of them Irish gypsies who lie in wait in dark places to rob innocents?”
“Look,” I said. “You can tell from my voice I’m an American. And you’ll have to take my word for the fact I’m no thief. I’m sorry I bumped into you. I thought I saw something, and clearly you did too. We were both mistaken, obviously. Just hand back my book and I’ll be on my way.”
He leaned against the rocky passageway inside the cairn, tucked the book under his arm and re-directed the flashlight from my face onto his own backpack. After rustling about for a moment, he fastidiously closed the top and slipped the straps back over one shoulder and then the other. Not until he had carefully re-buckled the chest strap did he direct the beam of the flashlight back onto the ground between our feet and hand me my book.
“Mine’s still in my pack,” he said, in no way apologetically.
A light—not the flashlight—went on in my head.
“You must be Gerald.”
His expression did a quick change from suspicious to startled, then back to suspicious again. “How’d you know that?”
I sighed. “I met Helen and Evelyn, earlier. They mentioned a man named Gerald had gone missing from their tour. They even invited me to take your place.”
He sniffed. “I’m surprised they missed me, the old biddies. Always going on about ‘Claire this’ and ‘Claire that’—so tiresome.”