Page 12 of Bonetide

The older man laughs, but only a little. “You want nonsense, then don’t mention the wives.”

The bartender lets out a tired sigh and goes back to cleaning glasses while shaking his head.

“The wives?” the female hill-walker inquires.

“Och, it’s an old story.” The woman waves her hand. “They’ll tell you in any pub on the coast. The drowned wives wait at the edge of the water at dusk and pull the swimmers down. Don’t go in the loch alone, and certainly don’t go in after dark. They’ll have you.”

The ginger-bearded man shakes his head slightly. The older man stares into his pint.

“And that’s what you think happened to the Mackenzie woman?” The female hill-walker’s tone is incredulous, but it’s clear she is trying to be respectful at the same time.

“That’s what my granny would have said,” the woman replies, and she’s still smiling but it’s more careful now. “My granny said this loch’s had a tenant or two since before her granny. Lots of folk gone missing over the years if you go back, usually by the shore but sometimes in the trees by the water as well. Three over the summer is a lot more than normal, but it’s not unusual. We’d be a sight more worried if it wasn’t happening.”

Great.

The older quieter man clears his throat, finally, and says, in a voice that’s not unkind but is final, “Mary, that’s enough. Missing women are one thing, but the stories are another.”

The conversation closes. The hill-walkers exchange a look that dismisses it as colorful local folklore, and go back to their plates. The locals settle into a quieter register about something else, fishing licenses and trout, I think. I don’t know, I’m not listening anymore. I eat my soup with gusto it’s actually quite tasty if you don’t mind skink and think about those three missing women and who could have taken them. Because, even as witchy as I am, I know there’s no such thing as ghosts that kill people. Haunt people, yes, but actively murder them? No.

And now I’m thinking about the man at my door last night who wouldn’t give me a last name.

What if the man at my door is the reason those women are gone? The man staying in a crumbling old castle that’s supposed to be empty?

The thought is so cold it sobers me up. Which is a pity because I was enjoying the buzz.

I pay the bill. The bartender glances at the credit card and then at me. “Galloway,” he says, mildly, then looks at me closer. “You’re the niece. You’re the one staying out at Effie’s place.”

Am I locally famous, or what?

“That’s me. You knew her?”

The locals at the far end of the bar have all looked over. The woman, Mary, raises her glass an inch in something that might be a toast.

“Sure did. She was a good woman, your aunt,” the older quiet man murmurs.

“Thank you,” I say. I’m getting better at saying this. “She was.”

“Knew the loch better than most,” he states. “People would come to her with all sorts of problems and she’d solve them. No matter how outlandish they seemed.”

I don’t know what that means but I give him a half-smile and tip twenty percent because the North American way of doing things has been ingrained in me, then I gather my paperback and coat and I leave.

The fog has thickened in the time I was inside. My car looks like an angel has been weeping over it.

The drive back to the cottage is slow going. The single-track is wet, the visibility bad, and I’m taking it with my headlights on full, watching for sheep and the occasional hill-walker who hasn’t read the signs about reflective gear. The fog has gone the color of pearl and it’s darker, though dusk is hours away. The mountains and loch are still swallowed up. I have the road and the verge and a few meters of bracken beyond it, and that’s it.

It’s spooky as fuck.

Then, ahead of me I see a man walking on the side of the road.

His back is to me, and I see him only because my headlights catch the pale of his shirt against the dark of the ferns and the wet road. He’s in dark trousers and a white shirt that’s wet through, sticking to his back, and his hair is dark and wet against his collar. He’s walking with the kind of even, unhurried pace of a man who hasn’t noticed a car coming up behind him. I can’t even tell you what his face looks like and I’m only looking at him from behind, yet I know it’s him.

I should drive past him at full speed because the man on the road might be the man who’s been murdering women in these parts, and stopping for him is the dumbest thing I could do. And yet my foot is coming off the gas because even though my aunt’s words flash through my head—don’t let him in—and even though I just heard about a possible serial killer, there’s a terribly unwise and reckless part of me that wants to roll down the window and say his name.

Alasdair.

I give my head a shake, trying to clear the fog that feels less like my usual fibro brain and more like the weather that snuck into my bones. I drive past him at five miles an hour, and as the car passes him, he doesn’t turn his head. He doesn’t lift a hand. He doesn’t seem to register me or the car at all.

Probably better that way.