Chapter One
I sometimes questioned why I moved so far from humanity. I’ve always loved wild places. The untamed areas. Those few remaining bits of wilderness still left in this crazy, urbanized world. But it is one thing to go visit these places with your friends, quite another to live in one…alone.
The rain beat down hard against the windowpane, and I shivered as the fire dwindled. Soon it would go out, and I’d retire to my bed. The cottage housed but one bedroom, a small living room, and a kitchen with a simple table and an old-fashioned range. Cozy, the National Park’s office had called it. Tiny, my friends had said when I’d sent email pics of the snug interior. But whether cozy or tiny, this space was now mine for the next twelve months or so.
When I’d announced my intention to move to the Scottish Highlands to take up a yearlong residency studying the flora and fauna, everyone in my life had been shocked. Words like crazy and insane were tossed around like confetti. My parents were the most upset. Fears of me being trapped for days if the weather turned severe gave my mother sleepless nights until she begged me not to go. But how could I refuse the job offer? The wildlife of these wet and windy mountains was what I lived for. The chance to spend a year as custodian of such a primal and raw area wasn’t to be turned down.
Still, part of me would welcome the warmer spring days soon to arrive. The time when the nights would shorten and the tourists would return. I might not be quite as solitary a creature as I’d once believed.
When among my friends and the hustle and bustle of city life, I’d long for solitude. Now the loneliness… Well, it got to me a little some days. Thank God for modern inventions. My iPod provided music, my laptop my favorite television shows, and most important of all—I had contact with friends and loved ones through Skype.
A deep snuffle had me looking to the rug in front of the fire and smiling as my dog, Sandy, shuffled in her sleep. Her front legs twitched as if she were running across meadows, chasing rabbits. In her dreamscape, she probably did. Her fur gleamed golden in the amber glow of the room, and her nose twitched as she dreamed on. Soon, I would have to wake her to let her out for the night before we retired to the tiny bedroom.
After making sure the fire was well and truly out, I cajoled Sandy into getting up and following me through the kitchen to the door. She hated going out for her final constitutional, but if I didn’t make her, she’d wake me at four in the morning, crying and fretting.
A tremor rippled through me when I pulled the old wooden door back. Its creak never failed to give me pause. I smiled as my thoughts turned to my friend Suzy. Such a fanciful, fearful wisp of a girl, she’d have fainted clean away after a day here, never mind the nights. Suzy read books full of ghosts and demons and vampires. Then she wondered why she couldn’t sleep without a child’s night-light burning. She couldn’t even spend a night alone in her flat in the city. If her boyfriend went away on business, she would return to her parents’ home for the night. Yep, Suzy would fall apart if she had to spend but one night out here among the stars.
I welcomed it. Despite my own unease at times, I relished it in an odd way, even at times like this when the rain beat down and the wind howled.
Sandy paused in her snuffling of the grass, lifted her head, and gave a low whimper. I stiffened as I watched her. She didn’t normally react like that. She usually went out and sniffed around for ten minutes before finally having a pee and trotting back inside. Always looking as proud as if she’d brokered world peace.
“Sandy, come on. Do your business.” I huffed at her. Annoyance became a cloak I wore to hide my unease. I put my momentary anxiety down to thinking about Suzy, with her ghosts and ghouls.
But Sandy didn’t do her business. Instead, her head stayed upright and the whimper turned into a snarling growl. Hackles rose along her entire back, and for the first time since leaving home, my moments of odd disquiet turned into real fear.
There could be poachers out there in the black night for all I knew. Men who killed animals illegally. And what such men might do to a woman alone, I didn’t want to think. The park ranger’s cabin wasn’t for three miles; leaving a shotgun I barely knew how to use as my only immediate protection.
I called Sandy to me, and as soon as she reached the door, I pulled her in by her collar and slammed it shut, sealing us inside the cottage. I’d barred us from whatever was outside with nothing more than some thick, aged wood and an old, rusty lock.
Shaking, I made my way into the small bedroom and drew back the thick blankets. Sandy curled up happily enough in her basket on the floor, and I gave her a pat on the head as I climbed into bed. She gave a loud yawn. Nothing fazed Sandy for long, and I sagged in relief to see her back to her normal, contented self. Clearly, whatever had her so spooked outside bothered her no longer. After reading for a short while, my eyes grew heavy. I clicked off the bedside lamp and closed my eyes.
Tap, tap, screech. I blinked twice, not seeing much in the dark room. A yawn forced its way out of my mouth, and I struggled through foggy layers of sleep to full consciousness. Often, I would wake to Sandy turning around in her basket or even padding softly around the room, but as I listened, all I could hear was her gentle, rhythmic breathing. Tap, tap, screech.
My bed lay right under the window and the sound came loud and clear while I held my breath. Then…nothing. Perhaps I’d imagined it. After a few long moments, I started to relax and my eyes grew heavy once more when…tap, tap screech.
Shit! I might not be one for flights of fancy, but I didn’t like the sound. It reminded me of the way the witch used to tap at my window in my childhood dreams. Her long, gnarled fingernails would etch marks into the glass. Of course, they were never there when I awoke to the reality of bright daylight.
Tap, tap, screech. Frozen in place by cold dread, I barely dared breathe. But as I stilled, trapped in the indecision of terror, the words of my grandmother came back to me, soothing my fraught mind. Whenever I used to dream of the hideous old crone who’d haunted my childhood, she’d tell me to stop being a “scaredy cat” and hold my head high. To face my fears, because nobody got the better of a Buchanan woman. Not even gnarly old witches who haunted little girls’ dreams.
I could almost feel my spine become strong and rigid as Grandma’s voice washed over me in a rush of welcome memories. I was no scaredy cat!
Tap, tap, screech. I examined the situation with my rational mind, and guessed it would be nothing more than a branch tapping and sliding against the glass in the wind. It certainly explained the regular, rhythmic quality of the noise. Happy to have a sensible answer for the strange sound, I slid back down under the covers and closed my eyes. Despite feeling reassured, I still slipped my hand out of the warmth covering me and rested it gently on Sandy’s head.