The Secret of Isobel Key (19 page)

Pretending to hear only his words and not their deeper meaning, Lou reached up and kissed him gently. “Of course. Hurry back in the morning.”

Brian turned to leave, but Lou caught a flicker of disappointment on his face. She had to fight the urge to fling herself at him, but as much as she wanted to spend the night with him, she wanted to make up with Tammy first. She watched him walk into the street, and finally Tammy snapped her fingers under Lou's nose.

“Earth to Lou, come in Lou!” Lou shook her head and laughed at her best friend.

“I'm sorry, I was just--” she trailed off, glancing at the door.

Tammy smiled. “I know. And I want to hear all about it. But first, I have to show you what I found this afternoon!”

She raced up the stairs and Lou followed her, breathless. She hurried across the room and picked up her guidebook. Taking the photocopy from its pages, she handed it to Lou. “I made a copy of this today. You have to read it.”

Lou looked Tammy's eager expression, but her friend shook her head and smiled secretively. Lou sighed and started to read the letter.

28th April, 1689. To the people of St. Andrews; I, Dr. Angus Ferguson, being of tormented mind and ill body, do hereby set down a record of events some twenty-two years past. My death is not far from me; even now as I write these words, I see the shadow waiting in the corner of the room, waiting for me to breathe my last. I am no longer afraid of death, but I am mortally afraid that I will perish with the stain of un-confessed sin black upon my soul.

She
lifted her eyes to Tammy, who nodded hurriedly. Lou looked back at the copy in her hand. Her eyes skimmed the page, and she sucked in her breath in surprise.

I was shocked at what I had done, and afraid of losing my practice, all that I had worked and studied for all my life. Instead of confessing my crime, I allowed an innocent woman to take the blame.

“
My god, Tammy, does this mean what I think it means?”

“He confesses everything. The murder, and the fact that he blamed that poor woman.”

Lou clenched her fist, crumpling the letter. “What a monster.”

Tammy leaned over her shoulder. “At least he felt remorse: look, he says, ‘Her face has haunted me these many years, and I cannot even now close my eyes without taking sight of poor Isobel Key.
'”

Lou snorted. “A lot of good it did her. She was executed as witch. He just spent a few sleepless nights.”

“But he cleared the record. He could have taken what he'd done to the grave, but at least he didn't! He must have had a conscience.”

Lou read the end of the letter out loud. “'I am prepared to make my case before the Lord. I trust he will judge me with mercy. Only please do as I ask, and restore her memory as is fitting. Regretfully, Dr. Angus Ferguson.' Either than, or he figured he better confess before dying to make sure he got into heaven.”

“Whatever made him do it, at least he told the truth.”

“Isobel was never even close to a witch! She was just the scapegoat for that crazy doctor. But oh, what happened to her?” Lou's voice rose slightly, frustration escaping in her words.

“Well,” Tammy spoke thoughtfully, “the doctor seemed pretty convinced that she was killed, probably as a result of his charge of witchcraft.” Lou nodded solemnly. “See at the end of the letter, he instructs the reader to go and ‘re-consecrate her remains'; that must mean he knows she wasn't buried in the churchyard.”

Lou interjected, “Well, of course not. They would have--” she paused, recalling something Brian had said the first day they were down in the archives. “They would have likely buried her bones at a crossroad, remember?” Tammy looked blank, but realization dawned in a minute.

“Brian said witches were strangled, burned, and their bones buried at a crossroads. Wasn't there something in there about a piece of iron, a horseshoe, I think, being buried with the remains, to keep the witches from rising again?” She looked at Lou.

They both spoke at the same moment.

“But how do we find the crossroads?”

~

That night, neither Lou nor Tammy slept well. Tammy lay awake, staring at the ceiling and replaying the words from the letter over and over in her mind, searching for some clue that would help them find Isobel's remains.

Lou
tossed and turned fitfully, waking from dreams of murder and blood and burning. Finally, just before dawn, both girls drifted off to sleep. Lou began to dream vividly, but this time, the images in her dream were not steeped in blood.

She was standing near the sea in a place that looked like St. Andrews. Lou recognized the Old Course over to her left, and realized that she was somewhere near the modern edge of the town. In her dream, however, she was somewhere much more rural; other than the Old Course and the road running alongside it, there were no man-made structures. No lights winked out at her from the darkness, and everything was shrouded in a strange mist.

Lou heard a noise coming from the direction of town. She froze, knowing that she would not be seen in a dream, yet she was unaccountably afraid of whatever was coming her way.

The sounds grew more distinct, and Lou saw the source of the noise. A mass of people surged up the road, headed in her direction. They carried lit torches and shouted and jostled each other. Toward the center of the group, the men and women were carrying something. It wasn't until they dropped part of their burden that Lou could make out the shape of human bones.

The bones were charred, as if they had sat for hours in the fire. She thought she knew who they belonged to, and her suspicions were confirmed when a man called out “The witch's soul is back with her master!” His words were answered with a cheer, and Lou watched, nauseous, as some of the boys in the group each picked up a bone and began to batter each other as if they were playing with wooden swords. A dog ran by their game and scooped a bony hand into its mouth.

The skull slipped to the ground, and instead of bending to retrieve it, the woman who carried it began to kick it in front of her. Lou wanted to cover her eyes, to scream, to cry at them to stop, but she was frozen in the dream, unable to look away, unable to stop listening.

The mob passed without noticing her, but one of the mangy dogs trotting along at the edge of the crowd stopped directly in front of her and howled once, low and menacing, before continuing along its way. Still unable to move her body, Lou stared as the crowd flowed around her. They stopped some hundred yards away, and Lou watched the flurry of shovels, digging into the earth. Squinting in the dark, Lou was just able to make out a thin dirt path, crossing the main road from St. Andrews, at the spot where the mob had stopped. “The crossroads!” With that frenzied thought, she was sent spinning out of the dream, pulled into absolute darkness.

She shot up in bed, wild eyed, and looked across the room at Tammy, also wide awake and staring.

Tammy began to stutter, her face white with terror. “God, what an awful nightmare. Awful! There were people, and bones, so many bones!” She shut her eyes and shuddered. “It was so awful.”

Lou crossed the room to her best friend. “I know. I think I dreamed the same thing. Did you see where they buried the bones?”

Tammy shook her head, frantically. “No, I didn't see them bury anything. I just saw them!” She choked, gagging. Lou squeezed her shoulders, trying to reassure her.

“I saw them. I saw them too,” she murmured, soothingly. Gradually, Tammy started to calm down, and Lou leaned close to her face to whisper, “But I saw more. I know where they buried Isobel's remains!”

Tammy looked at her friend with suspicion. “You think we saw something real? Lou, it was just a nightmare.”

Lou shook her head. “Tammy, I've had dreams like this before since we've been here. It's a sending from the past!” Lou was getting excited as she spoke and didn't notice Tammy's
disgusted
expression. “Isobel is helping us, or someone is! We're meant to find her grave, and this dream will show us where she's buried.”

Tammy pushed Lou's arm off her shoulders, and shook her head fiercely. “Lou, honestly, all this witch talk is getting into your head.” She crossed her arms stubbornly. “This isn't reality! Reality is what you see when you're awake, it's what you can prove with facts and experts and eyewitnesses! It isn't a ghost telling you something in your sleep. People get committed for believing that kind of crap.”

Lou forced herself to speak quietly, glancing at their sleeping roommates before she began. “Tammy, I know you think I'm crazy. But did you ever think, just for a moment, that there's more than one kind of reality?” Tammy looked away, but Lou pressed on. “Not a separate reality, not something you have to choose between, but what if there is a hidden reality? A reality made up of tiny threads of energy, connecting people and places in ways that don't always make sense? That kind of reality that sends dreams to people to help guide them when they're desperate for information, or the same kind of reality that lets the spirits of the dead pass on love and help, even unseen, to their descendants.”

Tammy snorted and muttered “New Age idiots.”

Lou flexed her fingers in an effort to contain her anger. “Tammy, it isn't just Pagans who believe in things like this! Look at Christians! Even my mother believes in miracles! And the Muslims believe in angels. How is this any different? I may call it magic, and you may call it a prayer or miracles or angels, but we're all saying the same thing!”

Desperate, Lou reached for Tammy's hand. Tammy didn't jerk away, but she didn't look up, either. “I know you don't believe what I believe, Tammy. But that shouldn't mean that what you believe is automatically right, and what I believe is wrong. There's room for a lot of different ideas in this world.” She squeezed her friend's hand, but Tammy didn't respond. Lou let go and sighed.

“I'm not asking you to believe me, Tammy. I'm just asking for your respect. As your best friend, as someone you've grown up with, please respect my beliefs.”

Tammy spoke quietly. “Of course I respect you. You're insanely smart; how could I not respect someone who finished school in three years?”

Lou sighed. “I believe in this.”

Finally, Tammy nodded. “I'll try not to criticize you, but don't expect me to go along with any mumbo-jumbo.” Lou leaned forward and hugged Tammy, and she squeezed her in return. Tammy looked at the clock and leaped up, relieved to break the seriousness of the moment.

“It's past seven! We have to get ready fast if you don't want lover boy to be waiting too long!” With that, she grabbed her towel and fled the room, leaving Lou behind in the dark.

Sighing, Lou flopped back down on her bed. It was so hard for her to make Tammy listen when even Lou wasn't one hundred percent convinced about what she was saying. But ever since they'd come to Scotland, Lou felt like her mind was opening up and shifting. The dreams she'd been having seemed to matter, and this most recent dream was obviously about the long dead Isobel Key. Lou wondered if she'd ever be able to put her feelings and beliefs into words that would make sense to her best friend, or, gods forbid, her family. Lou crossed her fingers and made one desperate wish.

When Tammy and Lou got down to the lobby, Maggie met them with a smile.

“Your gentleman friend is in the next room.”

Lou thanked her and headed through the side door. She found Brian staring at a group of framed images on the wall, but his head was blocking them from her view. Lou wanted to slip her arms around him, but she felt her old shyness returning, so she just tapped his shoulder.

“Sorry if you've been waiting long.” Lou murmured. Brian smiled down at her, his wide lips parted slightly. Lou felt her heart began to race when Brian dipped his head toward her face. He hovered in the air for a moment, and then he kissed her deeply. Forgetting her nightmare and the lingering tension with Tammy, Lou gave herself up to the sensation of Brian's tongue exploring her mouth. When he finally pulled back, they were both smiling, and Lou was a little breathless.

“I wasn't waiting long, don't worry. Are you girls ready to go?”

~

At breakfast, Tammy handed over the copy of the doctor's letter to Brian.

When Brian had finished reading, he looked up at Tammy across the table, and then turned to gaze at Lou beside him. “This is huge!” he exclaimed. “This letter proves that your ancestress was no witch!” In his excitement, he knocked over the carafe of orange juice, and Tammy scrambled out of the way of the golden liquid.

“Don't you see?” Brian continued, oblivious of the mess. “Even this one letter will cast doubt over all the cases!” Lou nodded uncertainly, and he went on. “You have to publish it.” He sat back, his cheeks red excitement. “What a discovery!”

Lou looked at Tammy across the table, uncertain of how to proceed. Tammy shrugged and mopped up the spilled juice with her napkin. Drawing a deep breath, Lou made her decision.

“It doesn't seem right to call attention to this letter. The doctor was so ashamed of his actions, and he's dead and gone now, so what is the point in stirring up scandal?” Brian's mouth hung open as Lou talked, but she pushed on. “You may be right, this could be exactly the thing to cause people to take a second look at the different accusations of witchcraft, but so what? People have already been doing that for the last century. No one believes the victims were witches anymore; what good would this letter do? Enough slander and harm have already been done because of the actions of one doctor.”

Brian tried to interrupt, but Tammy stopped him. “Lou is right, Brian. What if the doctor has descendants? What would that do to them, to learn that their ancestor is not only a murderer, but that he knowingly gave false testimony?” She sighed. “I agree with you, Brian. This is a big find, and could change the history of not just Isobel Key, but other victims as well, but the choice lies with Lou.”