stories high and had no windows or doors—a fact for which I felt oddly grateful. Had there been an opening, self-respect would have demanded that I step inside and look around, and this was not something I wanted to do.
The islands had never held me in thrall any more than the supposedly enchanted lowlands or highlands, but I could sense that this was an uncanny spot. Lonely, a place of spiritual desuetude and perhaps something worse. It was what the natives called “feart.” Still, at some level it called to me, a familiar voice whispering in the closed-up basement of my brain. I had never been here before, but this place knew me.
Megan MacCodrum, come near .
Terror is a strange beast. It can be repulsive, an urgent warning from that inner voice of sanity to stay away from something. But it can also be oddly enthralling, even addicting, and the foolish urge to rush out into the dark when one hears a noise, or to look beneath the hood of the cloaked stranger to see perhaps a monster can be very strong. At its worst, this mixture of fear and fascination can become a parasite in the blood that takes up residence in the heart and stays with you forever, always urging dangerous confrontation when common sense says to flee. This was the way my mood trended. Angered at what I had willingly endured at Duncan’s hands, I was ready to lash out wildly, to prove that I would not be subdued by anything or anyone again.
The whispering voice encouraged me: Come closer and we shall make you strong!
Then, unbidden, a paragraph from Fergus’s book came to mind:
The savior of Man, enraged with the spilling of Christian blood on this, the most Holy of Days, allowed the phantom candle to appear at the stone as a sign of disgrace, and it burned throughout the night with unnatural brightness. All who beheld it were dead within a fortnight, a judgment upon them for their impiety.
The words, feeling suddenly quite real and crying out louder than the foreign whispers in my head, caused me to shudder and I was suddenly more than ready to leave that haunted place to the whispering ghosts who owned it. Surprised from my trance, I belatedly noticed that there lingered in the air, so unnaturally still for being hard upon the shore, a trace of something foul and threatening. I did not think the troubling residue was from the mound itself but from something nearby, and it made me recall Lachlan’s contention that he could smell Fergus’s murder. This seemed something similar.
Then I saw a most disturbing thing. As though conjured by my thoughts, a glow, rather like a small sunrise, began at the north side of the mound. Cautiously I skirted the Sithean Mor , keeping well back from the stone walls and praying that no door or window had opened while I wasn’t looking.
The light was not from the mound itself, but rather from something outside which quickly grew from afew inches to something taller than a man, though in a man’s general shape. The phenomenon has many names, both in Scotland and in the United States—will-o-wisps, Saint Elmo’s Fire, hobby lanterns, spook lights, ball lightning and, most disturbing, corpse candles. Learned men in ivory towers would have us believe that they are caused by swamp gas escaping from the ground, but of what use is this theory when the seven-foot-tall shaft of painful, glowing light was appearing on a rocky beach where there was neither swamp nor gas?
Some think they are evil spirits turned away by both God and the Devil and doomed to roam the earth forever. Others believe they are the guardians of buried treasure. I could not help but recall that locally, these effulgent lights supposedly appear in places where the dead have been—or will soon be. And not just any dead—only those who die in violence.
Nerves shattered, I fled.
Chapter Seven
Come as the wind comes, when Forests are rended; Come as the waves come, when Navies are stranded .
—Sir Walter Scott, “Gathering Song of Donald
The islands had never held me in thrall any more than the supposedly enchanted lowlands or highlands, but I could sense that this was an uncanny spot. Lonely, a place of spiritual desuetude and perhaps something worse. It was what the natives called “feart.” Still, at some level it called to me, a familiar voice whispering in the closed-up basement of my brain. I had never been here before, but this place knew me.
Megan MacCodrum, come near .
Terror is a strange beast. It can be repulsive, an urgent warning from that inner voice of sanity to stay away from something. But it can also be oddly enthralling, even addicting, and the foolish urge to rush out into the dark when one hears a noise, or to look beneath the hood of the cloaked stranger to see perhaps a monster can be very strong. At its worst, this mixture of fear and fascination can become a parasite in the blood that takes up residence in the heart and stays with you forever, always urging dangerous confrontation when common sense says to flee. This was the way my mood trended. Angered at what I had willingly endured at Duncan’s hands, I was ready to lash out wildly, to prove that I would not be subdued by anything or anyone again.
The whispering voice encouraged me: Come closer and we shall make you strong!
Then, unbidden, a paragraph from Fergus’s book came to mind:
The savior of Man, enraged with the spilling of Christian blood on this, the most Holy of Days, allowed the phantom candle to appear at the stone as a sign of disgrace, and it burned throughout the night with unnatural brightness. All who beheld it were dead within a fortnight, a judgment upon them for their impiety.
The words, feeling suddenly quite real and crying out louder than the foreign whispers in my head, caused me to shudder and I was suddenly more than ready to leave that haunted place to the whispering ghosts who owned it. Surprised from my trance, I belatedly noticed that there lingered in the air, so unnaturally still for being hard upon the shore, a trace of something foul and threatening. I did not think the troubling residue was from the mound itself but from something nearby, and it made me recall Lachlan’s contention that he could smell Fergus’s murder. This seemed something similar.
Then I saw a most disturbing thing. As though conjured by my thoughts, a glow, rather like a small sunrise, began at the north side of the mound. Cautiously I skirted the Sithean Mor , keeping well back from the stone walls and praying that no door or window had opened while I wasn’t looking.
The light was not from the mound itself, but rather from something outside which quickly grew from afew inches to something taller than a man, though in a man’s general shape. The phenomenon has many names, both in Scotland and in the United States—will-o-wisps, Saint Elmo’s Fire, hobby lanterns, spook lights, ball lightning and, most disturbing, corpse candles. Learned men in ivory towers would have us believe that they are caused by swamp gas escaping from the ground, but of what use is this theory when the seven-foot-tall shaft of painful, glowing light was appearing on a rocky beach where there was neither swamp nor gas?
Some think they are evil spirits turned away by both God and the Devil and doomed to roam the earth forever. Others believe they are the guardians of buried treasure. I could not help but recall that locally, these effulgent lights supposedly appear in places where the dead have been—or will soon be. And not just any dead—only those who die in violence.
Nerves shattered, I fled.
Chapter Seven
Come as the wind comes, when Forests are rended; Come as the waves come, when Navies are stranded .
—Sir Walter Scott, “Gathering Song of Donald
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