MacFarlane's Ridge (2 page)

This was Cam’s first Antique Week, and she discovered that enough items had moved out of the store already that she could bring down another trunk or two from storage and lay out the items inside them. She locked the door that connected the shop to the rest of the house, and headed upstairs.

Cam loved the giant red and white Victorian and its history. It had originally been built as a home by her great-great-grandfather, Isaac Duncan, the first physician in Haver Springs. Isaac had been a prudent man, and when his wife had produced only one child, Isaac had converted the huge parlor out front into an office suite. Here he had examined patients and kept meticulous records, and eventually delivered his own granddaughter, Emily, in 1917. Emily’s father, Isaac’s only son, was killed just a month later, serving in combat in France as a medic. Emily too had been raised in that house, and after her own son and his wife were tragically killed by a drunk driver, she had never questioned taking in her only grandchild. Cameron was nine, and Emily had been nearly sixty at the time and thought her child-raising days to be over.

At the top of the curved stair was Emily’s room. The house had five bedrooms in all, and Cam was using Emily’s as a sorting area, to rummage through the seemingly endless piles of memorabilia. She knew exactly what she was going to bring down first; it was a steamer trunk full of old clothes. Vintage clothing was back in style, and these were in reasonably good condition. She was handy with a sewing machine, another bit of Emily’s legacy, and thought she could unload the repaired bloomers and other “unmentionables” for a decent price.

Up in Emily’s room, Cam pried the trunk open. She would have to carry the clothes down a few at a time. Even though she jogged and was in fairly athletic condition, there was no way she could lug that trunk down the steps without herniating a disc. Inside the trunk, as expected, were several layers of simple linen garments. Even the smell of mothballs had faded, thanks to several strategically placed apple sachets, and Cam shook out the clothes, which were slightly wrinkled. Suddenly she paused. She had heard sleigh bells. Someone was trying to open the shop door. She moved to the window, and peered out. She couldn’t see the front door from the bedroom because of the large covered veranda that wrapped three sides of the house.

Flinging the window up, she called, “We’re closed! Come back tomorrow at one!” There was no answer, but the bells jingled faintly again. “I’m sorry, we’re closed for the day,” she yelled down. Still, she saw nobody. Obviously, whoever wanted to come in wasn’t leaving. Remembering the broken windowpane, Cam sighed resignedly. She hated to be unfriendly to a potential customer, but she didn’t wish to invite any more problems either.

“Hang on,” she grumbled. “I’m coming.” She flung a handful of bloomers and petticoats over her shoulders and maneuvered downstairs. By the time she got the door unlocked and into the shop, her customer was nowhere to be seen. She checked the small square of plywood that Hal had thoughtfully used to cover the broken pane for her, and it was intact. Cam went out on the veranda and looked around. There were few people left on the street by now. Haver Springs was hardly a hotbed of excitement, and even with Antique Week happening, most of the tourists stayed in Bedford or Roanoke and drove into town during the day to do their shopping and trading.

Haver Springs and the other towns of the county boasted no less than a hundred and ten antique shops. In fact, the county had more antique shops per capita than gas stations or churches, although in this part of Virginia you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a church, Emily had always said. So once a year, Cam learned, all the merchants in the county held an Antique Week. Visitors came from all over the United States and Canada, descending on the shops like hoards of locusts, eagerly spending their money and bringing in trade goods. They even crowned an Antique Week Queen from the local high school. Wayne Sinclair boasted that he made as much money during Antique Week as he did the entire rest of the year, but she doubted the accuracy of that claim, considering the source.

She kicked a clump of colorful leaves off the step. Fall here in the mountains was glorious…

Her thoughts were interrupted by a bang and a shriek from behind the house. Sprinting around the veranda, Cam reached the rear garden just in time to see a figure duck into the carriage house that she used as a garage.

“Hey!” she called. There wasn’t much of value in the garage, except her little Honda Civic, but maybe, she thought, she could just chase the intruder away without anything getting stolen. Besides, the shriek had sounded like a woman, and Cam figured she was fast enough that she could outrun her visitor if she had to. She picked up a large stick from the base of the great oak tree, and wielded it like a baseball bat.

“All right, come on out,” she called firmly. “I’m not going to hurt you, I just want you to go away.”

There was a scuffling sound inside the carriage house, and what sounded like a sob.

“Are you okay? Did you get hurt?” She had noticed that her patio table had been tipped over, as if someone had run into it. It was quite heavy, and could easily have caused some bruising if hit head-on. “I can call you an ambulance if you need it,” Cam added helpfully.

There was silence again within the garage. Cam sighed.

“Well, if you won’t come out on your own, I’m afraid I’ll have to call the police.” She hoped she sounded braver than she felt. As she neared the open garage door, a strange smell hit her, and she backed away. It was the smell of a person who had not washed in a long time. Had some homeless person found their way into her carriage house? Once, in Charleston, two men had used her car to sleep in. They hadn’t left too much of a mess, but there had been a definite aroma for weeks.

“Okay,” she said decisively. “I’ll have to call the police now, and they’ll come take you away.” She backed up slowly toward the house.

“Please,” said a soft, quavering voice inside the garage. This was not what Cam had expected at all. Maybe there was a lost child in there.

“Are you okay? Please come out. I won’t hurt you,” she offered again, and waited.

Finally, after what seemed like eternity, a small brown creature peeked around the door. Cameron realized it was a woman, a girl really, of about nineteen. She was filthy, her pale hair matted, and her eyes wild.

“Please,” she whispered again, “d’ye ken where the gate is? I mun get back to Ian and my bairnie.”

Cam strained to understand the strange speech. It sounded like the girl was speaking English, but her accent was thick and hard to comprehend. Cam shook her head.

“What gate? I don’t have a gate,” she pointed out. “I have a hedge.”

The girl waved her hands wildly in the air. “The Faeries’ Gate! Where I come through, to get awa’ from the savages! They took me awa’ but I tricked them and run! But I dinna ken how to get back to the gate after I come through it!”

Cam was having second thoughts about not calling 911 in the first place. “What’s your name?” she asked politely. By now the girl had crept out of the shadows, and Cam was able to get a good look at her. She was wearing the tattered remnants of what must have been a long skirt at one time, a brown shawl, and worn moccasins. Cam couldn’t help but notice that her legs needed a good bout with a razor.

Great
, she thought,
I have an escaped mental patient living in my garage.

A thought struck her. “Are you the one who tried to break into my shop this morning?”

The girl nodded, obviously terrified. “I saw Da’s sword, and Mollie’s book that she always be scribblin’ in. I tried to get them, but then there was a great fierce wailin’ sound…. I gashed me hand,” she said sadly. She held her hand up for Cam to see, and she had indeed gashed it. She had wrapped a stained rag around it, and Cam cringed at the thought of what bacteria could be lurking in the torn strip of linen.

“Well, let’s get you cleaned up, then,” she offered, “and then we can figure out who to call to come get you.” The girl didn’t seem dangerous, just terribly confused. Cameron took her by the uninjured hand and led her up the back steps. Once inside, the girl gazed around in awe.

“Ye ha’ lanterns that come on by their selves! Be it magic?” she whispered.

“Um, no. It’s electricity,” murmured Cam, as she hunted for some clean gauze pads in the kitchen drawer. Maybe this girl had gotten lost, and come down from the mountains, Cam thought. She knew there were parts of Virginia and Tennessee where there was still no electricity or running water, and the residents still spoke a dialect much like the traditional Scotch-Irish of their ancestors.

“Okay, miss, um, what did you say your name was?” asked Cam again.

“Sarah. Sarah MacFarlane,” the girl murmured. She was staring around, terrified. “Ye’re a woman, then, are ye?”

Cam was startled. “A woman? Of course I am!”

The girl scowled. “Ye be wearing breeks on yer legs like a man. It ain’t fittin’. An’ yer hair is shorter than a woman’s.”

Cam ran a hand through her tangled dark blonde hair and glared back at the girl. “Oh, come on. Lots of women wear their hair shoulder length. And plenty of us wear pants too. Or have you not been out much lately?” She felt as though she was talking in circles, and moved casually towards the phone.

“D’ye ken the way to the gate or not?” the girl demanded, lower lip quivering. “It’s been near a year since the savages come, and I mun get back to Angus and Ian and wee Hamish, if the babe still be living! Me other babe died…” She had tears in her eyes.

Cam had pressed the speed dial on her phone.

“911, what’s your emergency?” asked a tinny voice.

“Oh, hello, yes, there is a young lady in my house who seems confused about where she is,” said Cam, watching the girl Sarah, who was examining a bowl of fresh oranges. She gave the information to the dispatcher, who said she would send an officer over immediately.

“Would you like one?” asked Cam. The girl sniffed the fruit suspiciously.

“It smells queer,” she murmured. She opened her mouth and took a tentative bite.

“No, no!” Cam grabbed it away. “You have to peel it. Like this.” She peeled the orange and pulled off a juicy wedge, giving it to the girl. Sarah’s eyes widened as she tasted the sweet fruit. The buzzer sounded at the side door. Suddenly the girl cowered in the corner, like a frightened animal.

“Demons!” she hissed, quickly making the sign of the cross. Cameron ignored her, made sure there were no sharp knives or other potential weapons visible in the room, and scurried along the hall to the door. It was the new deputy, the nice one who had taken her report earlier in the day.

“Sergeant Adams, what a pleasure,” she smiled. Under her breath she whispered, “You are going to just love this one.”

When they got into the kitchen, the girl was gone, her half-eaten orange on the counter. The kitchen door stood wide open.

Cam frowned. “Maybe she went back out to the garage, that’s where I first found her hiding.”

As they stepped out onto the back step, she heard from the street a sound she was sure she would remember for the rest of her life. There was a blaring of horns, a screech of brakes, and the startled cry of an onlooker. Cam and Troy looked at each other in horror. They raced to the front of the house, Troy beating her there by only a step. In the near lane of Meador Street, a pickup truck had stopped at an odd angle, and a crowd was beginning to gather. It was dusk, and the streetlights had not yet come on, but Cameron could still see the frail brown shape and the tattered moccasins peeking out from under the truck.

Cam sat staring into her coffee at Alice’s place. Troy Adams sat across the booth from her, while Alice hovered nearby, her brassy orange hair a beacon in the fluorescent lighting.

“Honey,” she drawled, “there was nothing you could have done. That poor girl didn’t have a clue where she was or what was happening. She’s probably better off now anyway.”

Cam didn’t really think anyone was better off that had just been hit by a half-ton pickup truck, but she didn’t say anything. She knew Alice was just trying to help.

Cam and the pickup’s driver had tried to save the girl with CPR, while Troy had radioed for an ambulance, but she had obviously been killed instantly. Her head had lolled at an unnatural angle, and Cam shivered at the memory.

“Can you believe she had never even seen an orange?” she mumbled. “I had to peel it for her.”

“Poor kid.” Troy shook his head. “She didn’t have any identification, and she doesn’t match any of my missing persons reports, although her name did sound slightly familiar for some reason. All we have to go on is what she told you. If no one claims her we’ll just have to have the county bury her.”

Cam felt terrible. The girl would be buried in a pauper’s grave at the county’s expense, with no one to mourn her. And somewhere in the hills, there was probably some mountain family with no electricity, living in the old-time traditional ways, who were waiting for a lost daughter to come home. But she never would.

“Maybe we could track down her people,” Cam suggested. “Even if she came out of the back hills somewhere around here, there must be a record of her, right? I mean, we know her name was Sarah MacFarlane, or at least we think it was, and she mentioned someone named Ian, and someone else called Hamish, and a Mollie. Maybe Ian or Hamish is her husband or her brother or something.”

Troy nodded. “I can check with Vital Records on Monday and see if they have any marriage records on her in the past few years. She couldn’t have been more than twenty or so.”

Cam felt better just knowing that they would find Sarah’s people. She walked home in the dark and slept a dreamless sleep.

Sunday passed rapidly. Cam spent the morning raking out the dead leaves from the garden, and in the afternoon opened the shop to a small crowd of customers. She barely gave any thought at all to the events of the afternoon before. By the time she had closed the shop for the evening, she was ready to collapse. She started a fire in the enormous old fireplace, and flopped onto the couch. She had managed to get rid of quite a few of the old bloomers, to a college student who did re-enactments. She also acquired a crate of old maps. Some were a bit water stained, but many were very ornate and in good condition. If they were put in good frames, she thought, they would look nice hanging in someone’s office. She had received these in exchange for a pallet of wooden Coca-Cola crates.

She unrolled one of the maps, spreading it out on the coffee table. It was a map of Colonial-era Virginia. Cam was fascinated. Half of the state wasn’t even populated at that time, and West Virginia wasn’t even in existence yet. She found Haver Springs, which was just a crossroads settlement at that time, and Bedford County. She was about to roll the map back up when something caught her eye. A few inches above Haver Springs was an area marked “MacFarlane’s Ridge.” She wondered if it was where the unfortunate Sarah had come from. She called Troy Adams and explained what she had found.

He laughed. “MacFarlane’s Ridge has been nothing but an empty mountainside for years. The last of them moved out of there about half a century ago. But I’ll call around and see if anyone up that way has heard of her.”

“Thanks, Troy,” Cam smiled into the phone. He really was nice, even if Alice misguidedly thought they should be romantically involved. “By the way, have you ever heard of a place called Faeries’ Gate?”

“No,” he replied. “Was that the place that the girl said she was looking for?”

“Yeah,” answered Cam, “but I think it may have just been in her head, poor thing.”

He promised to call as soon as he heard anything.

True to his word, Troy Adams showed up in front of Granny’s Goodies as Cam was unlocking the door the next morning. There was already a fair amount of people on the sidewalks.

“You have a minute?” he asked, politely helping her stock a shelf with old books. She had dug out a collection of early editions of Agatha Christie’s mysteries.

“I always have a minute,” she grinned, “but all of my minutes seem to be occupied. Can we work and talk at the same time?”

“Sure. Actually, I was going to call you back last night, but it was late.” He leaned across the box of books. “Remember I said I thought Sarah’s name sounded familiar?”

“Yes! Did you find out who she is?”

“No,” he admitted. “But there’s some interesting stories connected with the MacFarlanes and the Ridge. Local legend and folklore.”

Cam shook her head. “I lived here for nine years before I went away to college, and I don’t remember any of the local legends.”

Troy laughed. “You were a teenager, so you probably weren’t paying attention. I, on the other hand, have lived here all my life, descended from a long line of local mountain folk, spent two years at Bedford Community College, and took an entire semester on local history.”

A crowd of women had come in, all bright colors and sparkles, like a great group of plumed exotic birds. Cam moved past Troy. “Hello, ladies! What can I help you with today?”

One of them blinked her aquamarine eyelids and glanced around doubtfully. “You got any geese?”

“Geese?” Cam repeated.

“Yeah, you know. The big see-ment ones you put on your front yard and put cute li’l dresses on em. That cute feller Mr. Sinclair up the street said I should come see you if I want a goose.”

Cam shook her head regretfully. “I bet he did. Unfortunately, no, I’m afraid Mr. Sinclair was mistaken. I have no concrete lawn geese.” She brightened up. “I do have some nice hogshead barrels that people like to use as planters.”

“Nah, I don’t wanna plant nothing. I just need a see-ment goose.” The woman waddled away, back to her friends, who were pondering a pile of old
National Geographic
magazines.

“So anyway,” whispered Troy, “you want to hear the story or not?”

Cam nodded, watching the women. She could have sworn she saw one of them slip something into her coat. “Why, certainly, officer!” she exclaimed loudly.

He grinned at her, and she watched the shifty woman replace what she had taken. The whole gaggle of them left abruptly, clucking and chattering. Cam turned back to Troy. “Fire away, oh great officer of local legend and lore!”

“Okay, so here’s the deal. The MacFarlanes were part of a group of maybe half a dozen close families that came over here from Scotland about ten years after the Jacobite Rising of 1745. There were also some Murrays, a couple of McGregors, the Kerrs and some others.”

“Is this when your family came here?” she interrupted.

“No. My ancestors didn’t get here until much later, right before the Civil War. You want to hear this or not?”

She nodded meekly.

“So this fellow Ian MacFarlane marries one of the Duncan girls, she has a kid or two, and then she gets kidnapped by Indians!”

Cam’s eyes widened. “I can’t believe you remember this much about something you learned back in college.”

“I didn’t. I had to go dig out my old notebooks and look it up. And besides, I wasn’t in college that long ago. So, the missing girl’s sister makes the husband go after his wife. He never finds her. About a year later, his brother, who is a pirate or something, tells him about an Indian he met. The Indian admits to being one of the guys who took Ian’s wife, so of course, the pirate beats the tar out of him trying to find out where she is. The Indian tells him – are you ready for this? He tells him that the girl escaped from their tribe a few months before, and the last place they saw her was near the
ho’a tehewenna,
the Faeries’ Gate!” Troy stepped back, obviously pleased with his own storytelling ability.

“So what is this Faeries’ Gate, then, Mister Smartypants?” Cam asked skeptically.

Troy sighed, “I don’t know, but that’s not the point.”

“What, exactly,
is
the point?”

“The girl, the one who disappeared, her name was Sarah MacFarlane!”

Cam laughed. “And just how do you know all this stuff?”

“Joke if you want. At least part of it is true. Mollie Duncan’s letters to her brother-in-law confirm it. They’re held at the county archives for historians. We did a field trip there in college.”

Cam nodded to some more customers. “I can’t believe you became a cop instead of a museum curator or a park ranger or something. It’s a great story, but it really doesn’t help us figure out who that poor dead girl at the morgue is.”

He shrugged. “I know. I just thought it was an interesting coincidence, that’s all. I mean, the part about Ian, and Mollie.”

“Look, Troy,” said Cam gently. “That girl was delusional. She wasn’t quite right in the head. We don’t even know if Sarah was her real name, and we never will.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

He left then, and Cameron spent the rest of the day busily selling, buying and trading old dusty things. Her great catch of the day was a box of old ship’s pulleys, which she hung jauntily from the ceiling with some fat hemp rope and some netting. Finally, it was over, and Cam decided that at the end of Antique Week she would close down for three days straight and do nothing but sleep. As she locked the front door, the bay window’s contents caught her eye. What was it the girl had said? Something about the sword, and the journal in the display case…

I saw Da’s sword, and Mollie’s book…

Cam unlocked the case, and picked up the journal carefully. It was old, but was in good condition after years wrapped up in oilskin in a trunk. She had never given it any thought, had never even read it, just knew that it had belonged to someone in her family long ago. She had always meant to read it thoroughly, but had just never gotten around to it. She opened the book gently.

The shrill ring of the telephone startled her.

“Granny’s Goodies,” she panted.

There was silence on the line.

“Hello? This is Granny’s Goodies, can I help you?” Cam could hear the soft breathing on the other end. “Oh, good Lord, Seth? Is that you?”

Still nothing.

“Well, okay. Thanks for calling, Seth, and have a nice evening!” she sang cheerfully. Hanging up, she shivered.
How in the world did he find me here?
Turning on the answering machine to field any other intrusions, she got back to the journal.

18 November 1774 -

A most Heinous Event has occurr’d, and my sister’s fool husband I hold responsible for her horrible disappearance, for if he had been here as a husband should be, the Fierce Wicked Savages should not have been able to take her. Instead, my dear Sarah is in their hands now, and those of Our Lord, and I have begged Ian’s brother Robert, here from the sea, to assist in a great search. My brother Angus shall stay here to help us ready for winter. I fear she is lost to us for good, though, as she most bravely killed one of them before being taken, with our Father’s sword. I keep the Great Sword in its place over the mantle, as it gives me comfort and reminds me of our brave Father, may God rest his soul. I pray that the Heathens shall not harm Sarah – I could not bear it were she to be injured or shamed.

In the meanwhile, Robert brings news that the troops of Lord Murray, who is Earl of Dunmore and our Governor, have been victorious against the Shawnee at Point Pleasant. Dunmore assures us that this shall bring peace along the frontier, although perhaps, in light of recent events, he did not think to advise the Savages of this. However, a Congress has been formed to organize resistance to the tyranny of the Crown, and I suspect Dunmore shall feel their wrath soon enough. Furthermore, the gentlemen of the Continental Congress have proposed that Massachusetts should form a gov’t independent of the Crown, and withhold taxes, arm their citizens, and establish a boycott of English goods. Boston has formed units of Militia, in which the good citizens of that Town have armed themselves. They are called Minutemen, for they claim that they are prepared to Arm, Assemble, and Fight at a moment’s notice.

Cam leafed through the pages. It certainly sounded as though the author was referring to the Sarah that Troy had told her about. Cam folded back the cover, which had a series of scribbles inside it. She peered intently at the faded brown ink.

Mollie Duncan
, it read.
Her Thoughts about the New World
. Now, that was weird. How had the girl, Sarah, known the book had belonged to someone named Mollie? Cam wished she had paid attention all those years ago when Granny Emily had tried to tell her about the family genealogy. Mind spinning, she raced upstairs with the journal in hand to Emily’s room.

“God, where did I put that stuff?” she muttered, yanking open the drawers of the roll-top desk. There it was! A fat folder marked “Family Tree.” She opened it up and pulled out the contents. A large folded sheet seemed to be the predominant item. She opened it up, and discovered a seemingly endless myriad of lines, names, and dates in Emily’s straight, square handwriting.