Finding Fraser (16 page)

Not taking his eyes off me, he bent to the
ground to retrieve something in the dark. As he stood up again, I could see he
held my book.

“That’s mine,” I said, reaching for it.

“Not so fast.” His voice was laden with
cadence from the American south, and marked with deep suspicion. “Mah copy has
a blue cover. How do I know you’re not one of them Irish gypsies who lie in
wait in dark places to rob innocents?”

“Look,” I said. “You can tell from my voice
I’m an American. And you’ll have to take my word for the fact I’m no thief. I’m
sorry I bumped into you. I thought I saw something, and clearly you did too. We
were both mistaken, obviously. Just hand back my book and I’ll be on my way.”

He leaned against the rocky passageway
inside the cairn, tucked the book under his arm and re-directed the flashlight
from my face onto his own backpack. After rustling about for a moment, he
fastidiously closed the top and slipped the straps back over one shoulder and
then the other. Not until he had carefully re-buckled the chest strap did he
direct the beam of the flashlight back onto the ground between our feet and
hand me my book.

“Mine’s still in my pack,” he said, in no
way apologetically.

A light—not the flashlight—went
on in my head.

“You must be Gerald.”

His expression did a quick change from
suspicious to startled, then back to suspicious again. “How’d you know that?”

I sighed. “I met Helen and Evelyn, earlier. They
mentioned a man named Gerald had gone missing from their tour. They even
invited me to take your place.”

He sniffed. “I’m surprised they missed me,
the old biddies. Always going on about ‘Claire this’ and ‘Claire that’—
so
tiresome.”

He shone his light at my face again.

“Would you please stop doing that? You’re
blinding me every time.”

He completely ignored me. “It must have been
the hair,” he muttered viciously. “They love the ones with the curly hair.”

I put a hand up to my head and
surreptitiously yanked out a couple of twigs, dropping them on the ground
behind my leg. “Well, yeah, I think Evelyn might have been inclined to think
that way,” I admitted. “But everyone set her straight.”

“Then it’s
all
Evelyn’s fault,” the man said, bitterly. “She was the one who
swore she saw a ghost.”

“You’re on the Tour,” I said, slowly, as the
pieces began to fall into place. “And you were looking for—Jamie?”

“I saw him too,” he declared, a trifle
shrilly. “I woulda spoken to him, but for your interference.”

“I didn’t interfere,” I said, hotly. “I just
stepped closer to get a better look.”

The man grabbed me by both shoulders and shook
me a little. “Then you spotted him, too? In the moonlight?”

I nodded and he shook me again once more
before dropping my shoulders. His face was exultant. “I knew it. I knew he was
here.”

I crossed my arms, shivered and considered
the possibility that I had crashed into a madman. I mean, I didn’t really
expect to meet a fictional character from the past at the first stone circle
I’d ever been to, but this guy clearly did. The light rain had wept itself away
but the moon was completely gone, blanketed by the rolling fog. The thought of
the bike ride back to Inverness was beginning to haunt me more than the ghost. Still,
I had to know …

“You left the tour to stay here and look for
a ghost? Why? What ghost?”

He gave me an impatient shrug and slapped
the cover of the book in my hand. “
What
ghost?
How are you even worthy to carry this around?”

“I—I just mean …” I stammered, at an
almost total loss, “Of course I know the ghost from the story. It’s just—why
are you looking for that ghost? And why
here
?”

He sighed and shot me a sideways glance.
“Let’s get out of this rain,” he said, and even somewhat gallantly stepped
aside with a gesture indicating I should go first. I stepped gingerly onto the
spot where I thought the path lay, and seconds later, his flashlight beam shone
down to light the way to the road. The path was very narrow and rocky, so the
going was slow, but unlike his earlier behavior, he showed no impatience. He
walked behind me slowly, holding the flashlight high so we could both make out
the way ahead.

“My name’s Gerald Abernathy,” he said as we
entered the narrow band of trees that ringed the ancient site. “That is, my
father was an Abernathy, one of the Georgia Abernathys, actually, but my
mother’s family are all old Scots. Her maiden name was Grey.”

I thought about this as I stumbled along the
path. “As in Lord John Grey?”

The flashlight beam bobbed a bit and then
stopped moving. I couldn’t see a thing without it, so I turned to face Gerald.

“I know it’s fiction,” he said quietly, his accent
deepening as he spoke. “But it’s almost like I could be a descendent of Lord
John. He believed Jamie was the perfect fella…” He took a deep breath. “And so
do I.”

He raised his chin as he said this, looking
at me defiantly.

I smiled up at him. “Well then, it appears
we are both trying to find the same man,” I said, and turned back to the path
once more.

A few stumbling moments later, we stood at the
same spot by the side of the road where I had watched Evelyn and Helen’s tour
bus pull away. A car stood idling in the drizzle, headlights cutting through
the night and reflecting off the water droplets on my bicycle.

“You know,” said Gerald, eyeing my wet bike.
“I could really use a drink after seeing that ghost, and you look like you could
use a lift into town. Care to share my cab?”

With the help of the cabbie we got the bike
jammed into the trunk—the “boot” he called it—and slid damply into
the back seat of the wonderfully warm taxi. The return to Inverness was not
long, but enough time for us to both discover how much we had in common, not
the least of which was a love for OUTLANDER and its most famous Highland warrior.

The cabbie disgorged Gerald, my bicycle and me
at a pub just a block from my hostel and across the street from the place where
Susan and I had rented the bikes. The store was dark, so I leaned the bike up
against the front wall of the pub and decided to return it in the morning, safe
in the knowledge Susan would have paid the bill earlier.

Gerald picked a seat right by the fireplace
and I slid into the chair across from him. He sighed and gestured to the
half-pint of golden liquid sitting in front of me. “Drink up,” he said, and
took a sip of his own. “It’s a shandy. I’ve developed a taste for them on the
tour.”

“Thanks.” I took a sip. I was fairly certain
it was beer and ginger ale mixed together. A little sweet for my tastes, but a
free drink was a free drink.

Gerald swallowed another deep draft of his
drink and sighed deeply.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “But I was so
knocked out by the sight of that Highlander. It—he—took my breath
away.”

“Me, too. But, to tell you the truth, I
wasn’t completely convinced. It couldn’t have been a ghost, right? I mean—there
must be some rational explanation.”

I took another sip of my drink, which was
growing on me. “It’s not the right circle, for one. And his cloak looked funny …
I just needed to get closer.”

He nodded. “I had no expectations, you know.
I mean—Clava Cairns— it’s nowhere near Fort William, and in spite
of what everyone says, I’m sure
Craigh na
Dun
is much closer to there than here. And I had those old biddies
nattering on like fence birds the whole time. We argued about the site all the
way down on the bus. Evelyn was convinced she’d see the ghost at Clava, and I
was equally sure we would not.”

“And then you did.”

He grinned at me for the first time,
completely transforming his expression in an instant from sour-faced to
charming.

“Apparently, so did you. Anyway, I decided
on the trip up from Edinburgh that I’d had enough of all the natterin’ …”

“Claire this and Claire that?”

He laughed. “Yeah. I’m not a whisky man,
either. Bourbon’s more to my taste. In the end, as soon as my cellphone picked
up service outside Inverness, I called and booked the cab. Had a private word
with Angus the tour driver and it was all set. I had no idea what I’d see, but
the lure of waiting by the stone circle had a certain appeal, which I’m sure
you can appreciate.”

I nodded and sipped. The glow of the shandy
warmed my insides. “Not to mention ditching the tour-bus denizens.”

He leaned back in his chair and looked me
over from frizzy head to wet toe. “Definitely more Laoghaire than Claire with
that fair hair of yours,” he said, appraisingly. “I guess I should worry that
you might just pull a Laoghaire and move in on my ghost, then?”

I tucked a strand of damp hair behind my ear.
“Well, if it
was
him, it’ll be the
second time I’ve lost Jamie on this trip, so there’ll be no stealing your man,”
I said. “Besides, I’m more anxious to find a modern version of him in the flesh
than in apparition-form.”

Gerald nodded. “What’re you going to do
next?”

I shrugged. “I met a friend here—her
name’s Susan. She said something about some other stone circles nearby. And I
need to think things through a bit, I guess.”

He waved at the server and counted a few
bills onto the table. “It’s Fort William for me,” he said. “I’ve pinpointed a
set of standing stones on a hillside down there that are pretty much derelict,
and not on any of the tour maps I’ve read, anyway.”

“Really?” I asked, intrigued, in spite of
myself. “Where?”

His face closed up again, as suddenly as it
had opened, and I could tell he was wrestling with himself. “You have internet
access?” he said, at last. I nodded and he slid a small notebook and pen over
to me. “Write your contact information here. If I have any luck at all, I’ll
tell you—afterwards.”

I raised my hand to him as he walked out the
door, convinced I would never hear from him again— and a bit relieved at
the thought. That he believed in ghosts was odd enough— but that he was
chasing down the ghost of a fictional character?

Demented.

8:45 am, March 16

Inverness, Scotland

I’m still pretty tired, and not
really sure I want to blog about this anyway, but I can sum up, I think, by
saying this trip is far from over.

I saw a ghost last night.

The circle was wrong.

The location was wrong.

And yet I saw a ghost. A ghostly Highlander.

I’m not sure what to make of this.
I don’t know what it means.

This trip is FAR from over.

I flipped the cover of the notebook
closed and dropped it on the pillow beside me, too exhausted from the events of
the day before to even grab my laptop and do the post properly.

Breathing deeply, I stared up at the
ceiling, just taking stock. My body hurt all over from the bike ride, but
strangely enough my knee seemed to be completely better. I tried to remember
when it had stopped hurting—I’d bashed it again on one of the standing
stones, but sometime after stepping into the stone circle— the pain had
vanished.

I lay there as the sun rose slowly behind
the thin white curtains in my hostel room window, thinking about the silhouette
of the Highlander, standing in the moonlight.

What the hell was it that I had seen?

Something niggled at me, but I couldn’t put
my finger on it. Still, I knew in my heart the search wasn’t over. Maybe the so-called
ghost was telling me I was on the right track? Gerald certainly thought so.
Wrong ghost, wrong circle. But if he did find the right one, the chances I’d
ever hear from him again were pretty slim.

Feckin’
slim,
as Susan would say.

I flexed my knee again under the covers.
Maybe the bike ride had done it good after all?

The thought of the bike suddenly had me
sitting bolt upright in bed. I hadn’t returned the bike! And not only had I not
returned it, I had left it propped,
unlocked
outside the pub we’d been
to the night before.

I threw on some clothes, grabbed my wallet
from my pack and bolted down the stairs.

“All right, Emma?” called Mrs. Henderson,
the hostel-keeper.

“Back in a minute,” I gasped to her, as I
ran past.

It was only a block to the pub, and miracle
of miracles, I saw the bike almost right away, leaning against the wall just
where I’d left it. I dropped my hands to my knees for a minute when I got
there, panting and bathed in the feeling of relief washing over me. After I’d
caught my breath, I rolled the bike over to the store, determined to be kind
even to the man who’d made remarks about my size relative to the little green
bicycle the day before.