The Wind of Southmore (18 page)

There it
was, before her. She stopped, her hand resting on one of the stone
boundaries. The circle was beckoning.

The
strange sphere of sand looked distant and remote as she entered its
centre. Nothing seemed changed or unusual, and she twisted this way
and that, not sure of what she was looking to find, but eager to
end her search. No other evidence of the cloak, or the ancient
fragments of the scene she had just witnessed, greeted her eye.
Yet, suddenly, as she was turning to leave, a white fleshy object
caught her attention. Thinking perhaps it was a starfish or some
other sea creature hurt by the landslide, she dropped down to
examine it, but drew back immediately with a gasp of horror. Later
she remembered vaguely thinking that she had never noticed any
marine life out on the beach anyway, except for the birds. And this
was certainly no marine life. It was a hand.

Arlen
froze.

The hand
was white and soft, the flesh still fresh, the wrist savagely torn.
The sand around it was stained red with blood. The only
distinguishing mark was a large signet ring of gold and black opal,
which sat mockingly on the little finger. Arlen felt her heart stop
for a second. She knew that ring. She had seen it on the owner’s
hand nearly every day of her life.

It
belonged to Mr MacKenzie.

Alone in
the attic room, Alice was jolted awake suddenly. She had the
unpleasant sensation of having just dreamt something which left her
uncomfortable and uneasy, but which she couldn’t remember, and the
not being able to remember part almost disturbed her more than
anything. Snatches of memory invaded her mind, none sharp enough
for her to catch or name, and she shuddered, cold suddenly, and
looked over to see if Arlen was awake.

But Arlen
was gone.

Slowly,
almost as if in a dream, Alice rose and dressed, and hoped that the
unpleasant dreams she could not remember were not about to come
true. Instinctively, she slipped out of the house and made her way
down to the beach, where a figure crouched amongst the
rocks.

Alice
stopped. It looked like Arlen. But was it Arlen? And what was she
doing there, in the middle of the night, in the very place she had
warned Alice against? Doubt found her suddenly, with creeping,
sticky fingers. Why was Arlen in the circle? That circle, that she
had fought so hard to keep them from? Ambiguously, she almost felt
that all this was Arlen’s fault; if she had not gone searching for
answers that she obviously wasn’t meant to find, most of this
probably wouldn’t have happened. She stood stiffly, unsure of what
to do, and horribly aware of the cutting guilt which was rising in
her as she realised that she was not rushing to protect her own
twin. From the corner of her eye, she seemed to see another figure
standing behind Arlen, blurry in the shadows, its dark cloak
flapping in the rising wind, the long strands of hair hiding the
face so that she could not see who it was. It startled her, and she
jolted to suddenly, as if awakening a second time, and she drew her
breath and quickly ran into the circle towards her
sister.

Arlen was
still and silent, and for a horrible moment Alice wondered whether
she had been turned into stone, like something from an old myth
that one of her teachers would have once read in class. But Arlen
was breathing, harsh and hoarse, and, as Alice stood beside her and
gently raised her, the tide rolled in and drowned the circle,
washing over the girls’ feet and soaking their jeans. Before them
the sucking froth of the water claimed the hand and carried it off,
a white object jolted amongst the foam and spit of the waves, and
then it vanished, sinking beneath the heaving darkness.

The moon
emerged suddenly from behind a cloud, its pale reflection casting a
shallow, sickly light on the long black shadows running down the
sand and the cliffside. The wind had died, and the beach seemed
eerie and lonely. It was then that Arlen turned and faced her twin,
her eyes dark and hopeless.

“
Has he come back?”

She knew
the answer already, and Alice shook her head, slowly and
sadly.

“
How do we tell Robbie?”

The tide
was weakening now, although the gurgling water still lapped near to
the girls as they made their way slowly through the rubble. White
tongues licked around them lazily, confident of their claim,
drawing smugly back into the mass of darkness with a menacing hiss.
Alice felt that she would never be able to wash the prickling of
sand and sea water from her clothes. It was just as she was
abstractedly thinking that she hadn’t seen a washing machine since
London, that she nearly tripped over something.

“
Hey, wait a minute!” she called to Arlen, who was walking
miserably on ahead. Arlen turned and faced her, exhausted. All her
energy was spent, and yet the sharp rush of fear and pain that
swept through her when she saw what Alice had nearly fallen over
was almost blinding.

The
obstacle was no rock or log, but a foot, and, unlike the hand, it
still had a body attached.

Alice was
staring, her face white and incredulous in the impassionate glow of
the moon. There was a body lying in the breaking waves of surf,
face down in the sand, water lapping it softly. Its arms were flung
forward into the low waves, the left one chopped short and
colouring the water like wine.

Arlen
gasped, her face a mixed mask of relief and fear. She’d know those
sturdy black shoes anywhere. They had found him. For a moment she
couldn’t seem to move. It seemed that she had seen something like
this before, long ago, except that she couldn’t remember what or
when, and for a few moments Mr MacKenzie’s body seemed to flicker
and fade, and she thought she saw the moonthread cloak wet and
bedraggled and choking in the seaweed.

But no.
It was Mr MacKenzie, and she almost felt that she was standing
aside watching herself, still and wooden, while Alice ran to the
motionless man lying helpless in the foam, and seized him by the
ankles.

“
Arlen, help me!” she cried frantically. “We’ve got to get him
out of here!” She was pulling and tugging with all her strength,
and though he was slowly moving away from the water, the weight was
too heavy for her alone. “Oh, help me, please,” she
sobbed.

A streak
of lightning bolted suddenly from a sagging dark cloud above,
tearing it as scissors rent material, and soared through the sky in
a whirl of electric colour, lighting the landscape and
illuminating, for a few brilliant moments, the tears of the small
girl struggling on the beach. The remnants of the wreck suddenly
wrenched apart from the rocks, heaving into the air, a proud
moment, dark and tall against the flashing skies, as a great clap
of thunder served as a drumroll. Something called in Arlen. Her
mood snapped and she turned to face her sister, drenched in the
gushing torrents, and ran to aid her, splashing into the sea as she
gripped the old man’s arms. Together they dragged him from the dark
waves and onto the shore, away from the sucking sand of the
forbidden rocks behind them.

The sky
cracked and the heavy, brooding clouds were stripped apart in a
jagged tear as the thunder shook the scene like an earthquake, and
the sea heaved and spewed in shades of deep red and crimson and
black beneath the furious spears of lightning. One soared right
through the ancient vessel, striking the groaning old carcass in a
blaze of triumph and sending it into a bright orange, burning burst
of flames, which danced and shook in eerie figures and gestures
against the cheeks of the two girls watching. And the sky was a
great mess of rent and savaged clouds, hanging shredded and wilting
in the dark red, flashing picture above like forlorn wisps of
cobwebs, when the twins were met by a frantic Robbie, who had
somehow appeared on the beach before them to help them carry his
grandfather home.

Chapter Ten

Miraculously, the old man had survived, although he was weak
from pain and loss of blood. It was several hours later before he
had calmed himself sufficiently to even talk to the three little
personages clustered worriedly around him. He had regained
consciousness almost as soon as they had reached home, as if some
great spell had been broken and he was unleashed. He had bathed,
been dressed in soft, warm clothes, and had eaten and drunk to his
fill. The stump of his left hand had been tightly bound and
bandaged. They had had to do it themselves; no one in the village,
including the doctor, it seemed, had wanted to be raised from their
warm beds into a wild night, and Robbie’s frantic cries at their
doors had gone unheeded.

Now,
however, his grandfather sat by a blazing fire, the cold shut out
from the broken window by the great sheets of newspaper crammed
into it. He had just consumed his fifth cup of sweet, hot tea, and
had made a reach for the brandy bottle on a nearby shelf, when he
finally turned and faced the three youngsters. He looked at them
with something akin to sorrow in his eyes, his pupils boring from
one to the other at regular intervals, and then he sighed heavily,
and turned his head away from the trio to stare at the bulky
curtained picture of the stuffed window before him. The pain and
anguish visible in his clouded blue eyes was more than Arlen could
bear, and she ran to him, her heart almost breaking, and sat on the
side of his own comfortable armchair, placing her arm around his
shoulder, her small wet cheek soft against his coarse, bristly
skin.

“
Don’t worry, Mr MacKenzie,” she said. “You’re alright now.
You’re safe.” She didn’t know what the old man’s part was in it
all, but she couldn’t forget that he had been her only friend when
all the other villagers had shunned her.

“
Yes, you are,” Alice echoed her words as she moved to sit by
his feet, and Robbie looked on, a pleading expression in his eyes
as he silently begged his grandfather to speak. But Mr MacKenzie
just looked at them once again, one by one, through the tired,
faded blue eyes that once must have been so like Robbie’s, then
sighed and turned his face away again.

The twins
and Robbie looked at each other, misunderstanding, each wondering
frantically what they had done to warrant such a cold reaction,
when suddenly Mr MacKenzie, still gazing out at the faded curtain
which hid the stuffed, splintered window, opened his mouth and
spoke, and his voice was dull and broken.

“
I didn’t deserve that.”

“
Of course you didn’t, Grandad.” Robbie rose quickly and placed
his hand firmly on his grandfather’s shoulder. “You certainly
didn’t deserve to be left on the beach the way you were. And your
hand – ” he broke off, and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand
suddenly, furiously, and Arlen, seated opposite, could have sworn
that for just a moment or two she saw the glint of tears in the
bright blue of his eyes. “You could have drowned,” the words were
almost a whisper.

“
That’s what I deserved,” his grandfather’s voice was gruff,
and he rose suddenly, trembling on his feet and shaking off the
aiding hands as he struggled over to the window and tore the
curtain from its hooks. “
This
is what I deserved!” he cried passionately,
pointing at the shattered glass.

“
Grandad, I – ” Robbie ran to him, hurting, wondering if
perhaps his grandfather’s sanity had suffered a little during the
trauma. But Mr MacKenzie waved him back.

“
I deserved to be left out there on the beach,” he was almost
shouting. “I deserved to be sucked into the sea, the same way as
the others. I did,” he broke down then, and his words were coming
in blurred, sobbing whimpers, mixed with the hard, hot salt of a
seaman’s tears.

Arlen
silently rose from the chair arm and walked slowly over to where he
stood, shaking, by the jagged panes of glass. The wind moaned
mournfully, slinking over the fragile teeth and breathing into the
curtain until it looked like the sheeted ghost from an old horror
movie.

She gazed
at the old man, suddenly so frail and vulnerable, and her voice was
soft. “What about the others, Mr MacKenzie? Don’t you think it’s
about time you told us the whole story?”

Old Mac
turned, and moved his dry, crumpled old hands away from his
creased, worn face, and he nodded as he regarded the girl with
something like relief in his eyes. He moved slowly back to the
armchair and seated himself in it, his back upright and his face
determined. One by one, Arlen, Alice and Robbie took seats on a
red, plush footstool at his feet before the fire, and it was then
that he began his tale.