Storm at the Edge of Time (3 page)

No, no, no! she felt like screaming to the dark,
placid house. This
was
her talent. She just had to find the right place to practice it. And Jamie Halcro was never one to give up. She had two weeks on this wretched island, and if it held one shred of a ghost, she would find it!

At least the cupboard's stocked with marmalade,” Mr. Halcro said, plunking a jar onto the table. “The staple of the English breakfast.”

“That, and frying everything in a lake of grease,” his wife added.

Bundled up in the chilly dining room, Jamie was not interested in the breakfast habits of the British, only in their haunting habits—or lack thereof.

She had roughly shoved away last night's doubts and was now forming a battle plan. But the failure of her first effort still annoyed her, as did the fact that the only thing that had sent shivers up her spine was a stupid blue-eyed bird landing on a tall rock.

She glanced out the window at the gray wind-churned morning. The top of that tall stone was just visible beyond their wall, taunting her. “Why did they bother to set up that big rock in the pasture over
there?” she asked sharply as she spread marmalade on toast. “Just as a sheep back-scratcher?”

Her father followed her gaze out the window. “The standing stone there? No, that's really ancient. That's one of the things these islands are noted for: their Neolithic monuments. Our guidebooks say that this stone is part of a whole chain of standing stones and stone circles leading across the middle part of the island. They're supposed to be about five thousand years old.”

“What did they set them up for?”

“No one knows for sure, except that it was probably something astronomical, lining up with sunrises and eclipses and such—like Stonehenge in England.”

“Oh. So they're not gravestones or anything?”

“No; more like temples, I guess.”

With a discouraged shrug, Jamie turned to her canned peaches. For a moment, she'd thought that the reason the owl and stone had seemed so creepy was that there was really some sort of ancient cemetery out there and that she'd been picking up ghostly vibrations. So much for that theory.

Sitting across from her, Jamie's mother was jotting down a list on the back of an old envelope. “Sorry, no birding excursions, Doug, until we go into town and stock up on groceries. You'll want to come too, Jamie. Kirkwall's supposed to be an interesting town, and the bus line stops right by this house, so you can go in on your own later if you don't want to go birding with us.”

“Got that right,” Jamie muttered. How, she wondered for the thousandth time, could two grown people get such a kick out of sitting still for hours watching birds? She considered asking them what sort of local
white owl had blue eyes, but thought better of it. They'd probably tell her at great length.

In the car on the way to town, Jamie's father lectured on the variety of seagulls that could be found in the Orkneys, and then slid into a discussion of the local economy. “Beats me how folks ever made much of a living here. Sheep and fish mostly. One of the big exports seems to have been dried seaweed. It's no wonder my ancestors cleared out.”

His wife laughed. “The way you used to go on about it made it sound as if your ancestors held grand estates in the Scottish isles.”

“Nothing of the sort,” he said indignantly. “All I knew was that my ancestors emigrated from the Orkney Islands a couple of hundred years ago. Of course, I may have embroidered the details just a little.”

Jamie had been half listening, half watching the landscape. They came to a small town, just a cluster of houses really, with a church and cemetery. For a moment she was afraid that this was the big town of Kirkwall. But they drove on through.

When they did get to the capital of the Orkney Islands, it didn't seem much bigger. There was a little harbor smelling of sea, oil, and coal smoke, and back from the water were several shopping streets. In addition to the few grocery stores and bakeries, there were numerous shops apparently dedicated to selling toy puffins, jewelry, and wool sweaters to tourists.

These streets also seemed the place for the local teenagers to hang out, flaunting their toughness in the
cold by wearing jeans and tank tops. Jamie could feel them looking her over and pegging her by her stylish warm clothes as a clueless tourist. She blushed with resentment until she thought about how awful it would be to be stuck here year round. What was there to do besides watch puffins and bother tourists? Good thing her father's family had got up and gone.

In the center of the town stood a red stone cathedral surrounded by an old-looking cemetery. This might be a place to try and scare up some ghosts, but would any hang around a busy town square with cars and trucks rumbling by? Maybe the little cemetery they'd passed on the way would do better.

When they had finally finished shopping and were heading back, Jamie suggested they drop her off at the village so she could do some walking and exploring.

“You don't want to go to Deerness and look for guillemots?” her mother chuckled. “Well, I suppose there are worse forms of teenage rebellion than rejecting birds.”

“Mother!” Jamie objected. “It's not the birds I mind, it's the hours spent watching them. They've got enough sense not to sit around and watch us, after all.”

Her father sighed theatrically. “Well, at least take this guidebook and map so you can figure out what you're seeing and how to get back.”

Once they'd let her off, Jamie stuffed the guidebook and map into one of her pockets and walked toward the church and its little walled cemetery.

Opening the creaking iron gate, she slipped in. It was a lot quieter here than in town. Other than the wind, she heard only a few droning cars and an occasional
distant voice or barking dog. Much better for ghosts.

Systematically she walked up and down the ragged rows of tombstones, taking pictures but feeling nothing—not the faintest twinge of the supernatural. The only thing that startled her was suddenly seeing her own last name on a tombstone. Halcro. Then she found several other Halcros scattered about. So her father's family had come from around here. Good. Maybe if she had some kind of link, the ghosts would be more cooperative.

She sat on the grass beside the lichen-splotched stone of Duncan Halcro. The writing was worn, but the dates looked like “1706—1753.” She closed her eyes, spread her hands over the grass, and felt—nothing. Minutes passed. Still nothing. Whatever had happened to Duncan Halcro in 1753, it hadn't left him an unquiet spirit waiting to be summoned by some distant descendant.

Discouraged, Jamie got up and walked away from the headstones to sit on the cold stone steps of the little church. Searching her pockets for a candy bar, she found the map and guidebook and pulled them out.

Halfheartedly she flipped open the guidebook. Now, where else might she find ghosts? This whole island seemed to be dotted with “megalithic chambered cairns”: earth-covered stone tombs where the people of 5,000 years ago buried their dead. One of the cairns, Maes Howe, was considered the best example of this sort of thing in all of Europe. There was also an admission price and a guide to take you through it.

Forget that. Jamie doubted any 5,000-year-old
ghost would hang out in a tourist trap. But according to the guidebook, there were also smaller cairns around the countryside that people could just walk into if they wanted. Maybe she'd have better luck there.

Unfolding the map, she studied it for a while and finally found where she was, a village with a “cemy” marked beside it. Kind of a cheery abbreviation for a usually gloomy sort of place. She also found several cairns marked on the nearby hills. Jamie looked up from the map. Gray and windy, not exactly a great day for a walk, but so far that seemed the only kind of weather they had here. A walk sounded better than hanging around a totally unhaunted house all afternoon.

At a small corner store Jamie bought a meat pie and a soda for lunch; then she set off along the road shown on the map. She passed a few modern houses, but the rest were old ones built of gray stone. The only color in the landscape came from nodding daffodils and laundry on clotheslines flapping in the constant wind. The hills were all gray-green or purple-brown heather. Her dad said that heather in bloom was a beautiful bright purple. April was obviously not the month it bloomed.

The higher she climbed, the fewer the houses. Sheep grazed behind stone walls, and the wind filled the air with a steady dry roar. The tops of the hills had disappeared in cloud, not fluffy white but a frayed blanket of gray.

She stopped and struggled with the wind to unfold the map. Already she seemed to have missed the turnoff to one cairn, but there should be another one ahead. On the ground, these roads certainly didn't look the way they did on the map. Jamie trudged on, getting hungry
but refusing to stop and eat until she had reached her goal.

At last she came to a parking lot where a small sign marked “Chambered Cairn” pointed to a path. It was narrow, little more than a sheep track worn in the springy ground. Peat, Jamie guessed. Weren't peat bogs like quicksand, the kind of place people sank into and were never heard of again? She kept carefully to the path and watched for the white wooden arrows marking the way.

The path slanted down the hillside. Above, the clouds were creeping lower, but below she could see headlands, bays, and the silver sweep of ocean. The only sounds were the wind and the ciy of birds riding upon it.

Where was this wretched cairn? If she wanted an out-of-the-way grave site, this certainly was it. The little arrows kept urging her on. Then the path split. One fork angled up, disappearing into cloud, but the lower one led to a distant rectangle of fence surrounding a hump of earth. She grunted. This had better be good.

When she finally reached the entrance to the tomb, Jamie realized that the guidebook's phrase “walk in and visit on your own” hadn't been quite right. “Walk in” if you were a foot high, maybe.

A little grilled gate closed off the entrance. She tugged on it and it creaked open. Good sound effects.

The low passage was made of large stone slabs forming the walls, floor, and ceiling. At the entrance, a few black slugs slithered slowly across the stone. Trying not to squash them, Jamie got on her hands and knees and started crawling. Her body blocked out most of the
light. Suppose the passage ahead dropped into a pit, she thought suddenly with a jolt of fear that had nothing to do with ghosts. She didn't mind tight places, but she really hated heights and even the thought of falling. Still, she wouldn't give up now.

Carefully she inched forward. The stones were cold and slick with dampness. After maybe eight feet, she could feel the space open out around her. Cautiously she lifted her head. Weak gray light filtered through a hole in the ceiling, now ten feet above. Slowly her eyes made out a stone-paved floor and walls of stacked stone that gradually slanted inward until they formed the roof. She also saw, resting on the floor, a yellow flashlight with some government logo stamped on it.

Gratefully Jamie grabbed it up and by its weak beam made out patches of deeper darkness in the walls, entrances to low side chambers. No way she'd crawl into those and maybe get stuck. She switched off the light, leaned against the cold walls, and tried to pick up ghostly vibrations.

After ten minutes, all she felt was cold and hunger. From her jacket pocket, she pulled the soda and slightly squashed pie. Luncheon in a 5,000-year-old tomb. Weird. She frowned. “Weird” as in “offbeat,” not as in “creepy.” She felt cold, cramped, and kind of closed in, yes, but she didn't feel a whiff of fear. This was just the sort of place fantasy writers described. But where were the wispy wraiths, the grasping skeletal hands? The only ghastly things she'd seen were little black slugs.

Wadding up the pie wrappers, she jammed them into a pocket and pulled out her camera. In the sharp sudden light of the flash, the dark recesses and shadowy
stone walls became clear, close, and even more un-spooky.

Closing her eyes, Jamie tried again to sense that she was surrounded by something other than cold, lifeless air and piled-up stone. With her feelings, she reached and reached until she touched a chill, spreading fear. The same fear she'd felt before, but it had grown. The fear that her one talent was just an empty hope, a grasping for worth where there was none. Heavy and cold, the fear spread through her.

No! She knew she was right. It was the place that was wrong. It was
too
old. Wind and rain had scoured away the ancient spirits centuries ago. But surely somewhere on this island conditions were right for ghosts. There must be something, other than a stupid nagging doubt, to be frightened of.

Angrily Jamie crouched down and began crawling back out the low, dank passage. She moved too fast, but ignored the scrapes and bruises. At last she edged past the rusty gate and stood up.

Suddenly she was very frightened indeed.

The world was gone. A few feet in front of her there was nothing but gray. Grayness in all directions. It was like in one of those books. She'd gone through a door in her world and come out in another. In a world of gray nothing.

It was gray and wet, like mist. Like a
cloud,
that was all! The cloud had crept farther down the hill while she'd been inside the cairn. Around her, the usual raging wind was muffled into a ghostly sigh.

Jamie felt a quick surge of relief, but it just as quickly faded. In this mist, she'd have a hard time finding the path back. She thought of that Sherlock Holmes story about a ghostly hound in which someone strays off a misty path and gets sucked into the mire.

She'd left the government flashlight back in the tomb, but it was too weak to do much good here. With her eyes on the ground a few feet ahead, she slowly set
out, trying to remember her route. Past the gate, turn right. Go uphill.