Free Tormentor by William Meikle Page A

all available surfaces in the house, driving his mother to distraction by holding mock battles with plates, cutlery and anything else that came to hand as he led his army in the fray.
When the call came for the clans to join Bonnie Prince Charlie’s rebellion, the chief called for all available men to join him. Donald’s father was one of the first men to declare allegiance, but Donald was to be left to look after his mother and sisters. The boy would have none of it.
At the banquet before sailing, he sneaked in to the great hall with his bodhran in hand and even as the chief addressed the men, started up his beat. Donald’s father was furious, and would have had the boy beaten to within an inch of his life, but even as he tried to snatch the drum from the boy, a cry went up in the crowd.
To a man they turned. The old flag was fluttering above them, although there was no breeze in the hall. And as they watched, strange markings appeared on the aged silk—black crosses and lines that coincided with the beats of Donald’s wee drum.
The chief took this to be an omen.
“Where did the boy learn to do such a thing?” he asked.
Donald’s father could not reply—and the boy himself did not say, although he smiled, somewhat sadly, even as the chief declared that he would be the one to lead the men in the coming battles.
The very next day they went off to war. There is no need to tell here of the bloody failure of the rebellion, although it is said that Donald never flinched from his duty through the long campaign, even when called to lead the final doomed march onto the field of Culloden.
It is said that Donald’s mother knew the exact moment when the boy fell, so far away on the highland moor, for a drum beat out a rhythm that shook the whole house. Donald’s father returned weeks later and they put the boy’s body to final rest.
They buried the bodhran with him, and folks around Dunvegan swear that to this day, on quiet nights the boy can still be heard in and around the house, beating the drum and calling his army to battle.
    I thought I had a bloody good idea exactly what house the story was referring to. The book was dated 1922, but the story, set as it was in Jacobite times, took the tale back to the mid-eighteenth century. And it seems I’d been wrong about the markings on the flag—they had come after the rhythm was set, and were not the source of it. Whatever it was I had uncovered over the summer and early autumn, it was far older than I had previously thought.
    However, it all seemed moot now—there had been no soot marks for weeks, and no more anonymous email correspondence. I left the book on the mantel to remind myself to return it to Alan’s father, and went back to my routine.
    * * *
    There was one more thing of note.
    I developed a nervous habit. It started one early December morning out on the patio. I was feeding the sparrows when I caught myself drumming with the fingers of my left hand on the table. It took several seconds for me to realize it was the repeater beat. As my fingers moved, I saw the associated soot marks in my mind; no limbs, no limbs, no head, no head, left arm gone, left leg gone, no legs, no head.
    Realizing what I was doing, I stopped at the third repeat, but at intervals in the days following I noticed it happening more often, especially if I let my mind drift. It wasn’t too difficult to control, just bloody annoying, and I put it down to having spent so much time listening to the programmed beeps I’d set up on the laptop. To stop myself being tempted in the future, I deleted the program and burned my worksheet containing the grids. With a small degree of concentrating on what I was doing, I was also able to suppress the finger twitching completely, and I finally thought I was rid of the earlier compulsions that had gripped me.
    * * *
    In the second week of December I gave in to the growing chill in the house and started lighting a fire in the main grate. The stoat was not at