Chapter 7
Aileana
Aileana sat at the desk by the window, trying to put some time in on her article she was writing for the magazine. But she wasn’t having much luck with the information from the locals. They all had too much to lose if it got out they talked to a journalist about the oil rigs. Aileana felt like she was butting her head against a stone wall. Someone had to be willing to talk; she just needed to find a person who would.
She decided to catch up with her emails and write a few quick messages to her parents and her sister. Aileana planned to Skype with them later in the week at a time she knew would be convenient for them.
She was in the process of deleting a bunch of junk email from her account when she heard a faint, terrified scream from down below on the beach. Aileana jumped up from the computer and grabbed the binoculars her seanmhair left lying on the ledge of the large window facing the ocean. Near the rocks along the shore, a gigantic man was carrying a struggling woman over his shoulder toward the water.
She ran out the door as fast as her legs would carry her. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted down to the gargantuan-sized man. “What in the hell do you think you’re doing? Leave her alone, you shithole.”
Aileana definitely was not thinking clearly. She had nothing on her person to try and help the woman. Where was her mace spray when she needed it?
She heard screams for help; the woman put up a good fight from the sounds that came from the beach. Aileana planned to jump on the brute to help the woman as soon as she reached them. Aileana was small and petite, but she could be vicious if needed. She was ready to use her nails and teeth if it came to that.
Aileana took the steep stairway down with its twists and turns all the way to the beach. She’d lost sight of the two of them struggling and now couldn’t hear any cries for help. What the hell? It hadn’t taken her more than a few minutes to reach the beach. Where were they? They’d both just disappeared into thin air. She ran to the area where she last saw them, but only saw a set of deep footprints being washed away by the waves and rising tide.
Aileana rushed back to the cottage after finding no trace of either the man or the woman on the beach. She placed a call to the local police station to report what she’d seen. They told her they would send a man out to take a report.
Half an hour later an officer knocked on the door of the cottage. Since her grandmother was still in town doing some shopping, she answered the door to find a uniformed officer. He introduced himself as Officer Sinclair. The officer had bright red hair and freckles covered his face. Officer Sinclair seemed to be about thirty years old. He was a short, stocky man with a serious no-nonsense attitude. Aileana showed him in and started to give him the details of what she had seen.
“I was sitting at my laptop going over some of my emails when I heard the screams,” she told him.
“Could ye make out any words that were being spoken? Perhaps it was a lovers’ tiff?”
“That was no lovers’ quarrel that I’ve ever seen or heard, she sounded like she was fighting for her life and screaming at the top of her lungs,” she hotly replied.
“And what did this assailant look like? Did ye get a clear view?” He continued writing down everything she said.
“Well, he was gaunt, gigantic, really incredibly tall, around seven feet tall. His build was slight. He must have weighed around a hundred and eighty pounds. I’m not sure what the pounds versus stones conversion are. He looked enormous, and had wet shoulder length, dark brown hair.”
“How were ye able to see a clear view of him from this distance?” the officer asked.
“I used my grandmother’s binoculars.” She pointed to the pair now lying on the couch, where she had thrown them when she ran out the door.
“Could ye make out what he was wearing?”
“Just, in general, it appeared he had some seaweed wrapped around his shorts or bathing suit, or maybe it was caught on them. It was hard to tell from this distance, even with the binoculars. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. He was pale-skinned, almost albino white and long-limbed.”
“What did ye observe when ye reached the beach?”
“That is the strange part. I couldn’t see or hear the woman or the man at all. No trace of them except for some large footprints that were rather deep. But the footprints were starting to wash away with the tide by the time I was in the spot that I had seen them. How could two people just vanish like that?”
“Did ye notice if they might be out in the water?”
“I scanned the surf and beyond, I couldn’t see anyone on the beach. The water had no one in it that I could see. Not even the seals that are usually out beyond the surf,” she stated.
All right, I guess that is it. I will turn the report in at the station. We will check for a missing woman in the area and go from there. Yer description isn’t too clear other than a large-sized male. Ye were quite a ways away, I understand. We will put up some bulletins around town to see if anyone has seen someone that size around,” he said. “Ye will be around if we have any other questions?”
“Of course, please let me know if you find the woman. It would ease my mind to know she is okay. And it was just some loud lovers’ quarrel.” She didn’t believe that was going to be the case.