CATRIONA WARD was born in Washington, DC and grew up in the United States, Kenya, Madagascar, Yemen, and Morocco. She read English at St Edmund Hall, Oxford and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. Her debut novel, Rawblood (W&N, 2015) won Best Horror Novel at the 2016 British Fantasy Awards, was shortlisted for the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award and selected as a Winter 2016 Fresh Talent title by WHSmith. Her second novel, Little Eve (W&N), described by Joanne Harris ‘magnificent,’ was published in July 2018. She lives in London and Devon.
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The walkway to the isle lay before him now, under an inch of gleaming water. He congratulated himself that he had timed his journey so well, for the tide would soon turn and start coming in again. Altnaharra could only be reached at the ebb, and if he had dallied, the sea would have been lapping at his thighs by the time he came to cross.
But Bill balked at the causeway. He planted his four legs firmly and showed that he would not get his hooves wet. Jamie tried to persuade him with the piece of sugared bread which he had meant for his own lunch. He petted and threatened, all to no avail. Th e pony would not go across. Rather than argue with five hundred pounds of stubborn Highland, Jamie unhooked the side of beef, took it resignedly onto his own back and waded precariously out to the isle.
A stiff wind blew in the wake of the storm and more than once the weight of the beef nearly toppled him into the sea. He heard the distant bark of seals. He did not relish the idea of falling into deep water with a hundred pounds of steer strapped to him. The pods which overwintered at Altnaharra were grey seals: vast, ugly and strong. They had been known to attack if they caught the scent of meat.
As Jamie came close the wind sang strangely through the steel gate. It was fi fteen feet tall, hung from vast posts. Heavy chains held it fast. Jamie put the beef in the wire cage with a thump. As he turned to go, he stumbled in the shallow water and steadied himself by grasping a crossbar of the gate. At his touch it slowly swung open and Jamie went with it, falling to his knees with a splash.
Before him was a small blue pebble beach. A path led up the hill through yellowed winter grass. Sheep scratched mournfully at the hard earth. Above, the tumbledown silhouette of the castle was stark against the sky.
Jamie straightened quickly. He called a hallo. The sheep leapt in alarm, but no answer came. ‘I thought they wished me to bring the meat up to the castle,’ he told the inquest later. ‘And that they had left the gate open for me.’ Jamie shouldered the beef once more. He climbed the narrow stony path. The sky was clearing to the sharp blue of a cold day. The sea rippled and shone. Behind, to the west, the land was bathed in light. To Jamie, each step felt like trespass. The castle was surrounded by a motte, old and crumbling. The rusting portcullis was half-descended. In the courtyard beyond, scraps of white paper or handkerchiefs tossed violently in the wind. The spikes on the portcullis were sharp and Jamie ‘did not want to put himself under, as it looked as if it might go all the way down at any time, and into me’. He called out to the house. There came no answer.
He rolled the beef under the metal spears and then, reluctantly, with his eyes tightly closed, he wriggled through, waiting for the old iron to hurtle earthwards and pierce his ribs. Once inside the courtyard he called again. Still no reply came. Jamie was put out – he thought that perhaps he was being mocked, or that there was some game being played. He saw as he approached the kitchen door that the white handkerchiefs were in fact five or six gulls, squabbling over scraps of something. As he raised his fist to pound on the oak, one gull, pursued by its fellows, barrelled into his legs. It dropped what it was holding in its beak at Jamie MacRaith’s feet. This proved to be a human thumb, severed neatly at the joint. Jamie’s heart began to beat hard. He put the side of beef down quickly, then wrapped the thumb in his handkerchief and put it in his pocket. The gulls pecked angrily at his fingers as he did so. Next, he removed the metal hook which had been lodged in the meat for hanging. With this in his hand, he opened the door and slipped quietly into the high-beamed kitchen.
He said later that knowledge swept over him the moment he entered Altnaharra. Standing in the silence and breathing the air, he knew that they were all dead. He looked about the room with its scrubbed table and iron range, four times the size of the little one in his cottage. The stove was cold to the touch, which told him that no one had stoked it that day. A heavy cleaver lay on the floor, a slit bag of flour slumped by it. The wind had blown a fi ne dusting across the room. In the flour were two sets of footprints. He followed them, taking care not to disturb the tracks. He was, after all, a reader of detective fiction.
In the passage, the fl agstones were caked with black mud, great swathes of fi lth described across the fl oor, not quite dried. Jamie saw with a feeling like falling that the mud was tinged with red. From somewhere above there came what sounded like a shot. Jamie told police later that everything ‘went cold and came to a stop’. After a few moments the sound came again and reason reasserted itself. It was only a door fl ung hard by the wind in some upstairs room.
He went to the entrance of the Great Hall. The tall windows overlooked the sea to the east, and the reflections of the water played across the walls and beams of the vaulted ceiling. There was a sweet, fermented smell. Chairs were pushed back as if in haste and the candles were all burnt down to nothing in the sconces. In the corner of the room, two chickens pecked hungrily at the cold flags. Upstairs the door crashed again in the wind with an almighty sound. After a moment, Jamie MacRaith swallowed his heart back down. He went on through the house, following the trail of mud and blood. He came to the door that gave on to the east of the isle and greeted the air and the sky with relief. But the lintel was marked with a rusty handprint. The path at his feet was spattered with dark drops. It led towards the sea. He followed as he knew he must, a question and answer repeating in his head like a nursery rhyme or a half-remembered song. What has happened here? A terrible thing.
He crested the hill, a smooth slope of green descending to the warm grey huddle of a ruined church. Beyond it were the standing stones. They reached like wise fingers to the sky, casting long shadows on the sward. The largest stone, known as Cold Ben, lay on its side, beside a gash where it had been torn from the earth. Then Jamie saw them.
In the centre of the stone circle lay five shapes, arranged in a star. They were attended by gulls, feeding busily. As Jamie crept closer the gulls lifted off, beating white wings. The shapes were people, lying peacefully as if in a children’s game. Their feet pointed to the centre of the circle and their heads radiated out; bodies telling the points of the compass. They were wrapped in fine white wool. Jamie saw their faces, and he saw that they were dead. Jamie MacRaith’s first instinct was to turn and run. He mastered it. His second impulse was to vomit and for a few moments he crouched on all fours. When he had recovered, he went quickly to the circle. He checked each cold wrist for a pulse. Their hearts were still. Their right eyes had been neatly removed. The sockets gaped red. Elizabeth’s corpse was laid east to west, pointing at the sea. Her head rested by the fallen stone. She had been fourteen. The wind tossed her curls. Next to her was John Bearings, his flesh like marble, stiff with rigor, hair spilling back from his brow. His thumb was neatly severed at the knuckle. By him was Nora. Her single large grey eye stared. Dinah lay on the far side of the circle. Beside Dinah lay Sarah Buchanan, a village girl. What ill fate had drawn her here to Altnaharra, Jamie could not imagine.
The inhabitants of the isle were all present save one: Evelyn was not among the dead. The gulls cautiously began to return. One landed on Dinah’s face and drove its beak into the place where her eye should have been. Jamie shouted in horror and ran at it. It fluttered a few feet out of his reach and landed lazily on Nora’s foot. He lunged again at the gull, sobbing, but when he turned ten more had descended. They tore and picked with greedy beaks.
Jamie ran about the circle waving his arms. The gulls rose and settled and rose and settled in white-feathered waves, easily avoiding him. They filled their bellies with the soft flesh of the dead. Jamie was screaming, and so he did not at fi rst hear his name spoken in a weak voice. Dinah called to him again. She fluttered her fingers. Her face was ghastly pale, her words slurred, her head lolled drunkenly and a thin line of blood trailed down her cheek. But she was alive. Jamie cradled her and wept.
‘Where is Evelyn?’ she said. ‘Oh, I remember. She took our eyes.’
Jamie MacRaith stared about him as if Evelyn might be lurking behind the stones or in the long grass, but there was nothing save the bright morning.
Jamie came galloping into Loyal. The pony trembled with exhaustion, his long shaggy coat drenched with sweat. They were greeted with astonishment by Mrs Smith, who had come out to sit on her doorstep to repair a fishing net. She tried to take Jamie inside to give him a nip and settle him but he would not go. He pointed again and again with a shaking finger: over the moor, to the east, to the sea, as if those things had done some great wrong.
‘They must get to Altnaharra,’ he said. ‘The police. They have all been murdered. Only Dinah is alive.’ What has happened here? A terrible thing.
So I lived, although I did not wish to at the time
(C) Catriona Ward 2018