A WIP speculative fiction novel.
Set in a fictional Scottish mountain and village, where two pseudo religions cults have been battling for hundreds of years.
Chapter 1.
Bonnie Margaret Sinclair heaved her canvas bag onto the table for near instant relief from aching shoulders. She would have preferred not to bring quite so much food, but then there was no accounting for the appetite of her guest. A guest leaving hungry would be unthinkable, so she brought enough food to satisfy even the heartiest of appetites—plus a few sundries, like a bag of fudge should her guest be a child. For more mature guests there was half a bottle of 12-year old Dalmore Scotch and a pack of cigars (which she wasn’t above sharing). A few indulgences felt warranted after what her guests would have endured.
No doubt the swollen bag contributed to her tripping and falling on the way to the bothy; the misfortune that left her hands and face caked in peaty mud from the hillside. She had made the trip many times before without so much as a sprained ankle, and had come to know the path as well as the lines in her own face. But it wasn’t her memory that failed her that day, it was her strength. The legs that carried her up the hill to the bothy going on fifty years felt heavier than ever before, sapped of their usual vigor. Weeks of bed-rest would do that to a woman.
The fall occurred near enough at the half-way point of the journey which began at the foot of the hill, at the gate to a small carpark there to serve hillwalkers. A picturesque trail in daylight, the desire path snaked around the steepest parts of the hillside, through a shallow stream, terminating at the bothy. With a snow-capped Ben Stronach as a backdrop, it was a striking vista. The landlord of the Arms had even mounted a photograph of it above the fireplace in the pub, much to Bonnie’s dismay since it attracted fool tourists to her bothy she would have preferred didn’t come traipsing around, peering in her window.
After sun-down the view wasn’t so appealing. With the sun set behind the mountain, the remaining smear of refracted light bleached the heather of its daylight purples, pinks, and greens. Surrounded by this night-desolate scrub, the bothy was the only visible landmark ahead of her. Its whitewashed walls a smokey grey through layers of mist, standing as though marking the world’s end, beyond which there was nothing—not even Stronach. As if the mountain had taken the night off.
Bonnie blamed the rabbits that overran the hillside for her fall. The little buggers spent their days burrowing and digging, churning up the soil, leaving holes wide enough to trap a foot and break the ankle of an old lady. Bonnie considered the path a safer choice, although she swore to reconsider after finding herself upended in the heather. No doubt one of the sandstone slabs that formed the path was balanced on the edge of a newly dug rabbit hole, a perfect trap for an old woman laden with provisions. Truthfully she wasn’t certain if rabbits were to blame, but she wasn’t strong enough to regain her balance after stumbling. She clutched at roots and wads of dirt to prevent herself from rolling further downhill, narrowly avoiding a patch of gorse with its inch-long thorns.
After regaining her footing and returning carrots and potatoes to her bag, she checked herself for injuries. Mercifully, her bones were intact and her skin unbroken, but her clothes were soaked from the droplets of condensed fog that hung on every stem, leaf, and flower of the heather. Bonnie shivered the rest of the journey, plodding up the hillside as cold seeped into her bones, unhindered by drenched clothes.
Her troubles weren’t over when she arrived. The door was locked. Of course it was. She had locked it herself with an old bicycle padlock following her previous night in the single room building. The key to the padlock was where Bonnie had left it: in a paint can under her kitchen sink back in the village, three or so miles away. Even if she had the strength to make the round trip, which she most certainly did not, the glen would soon be submerged in unnavigable darkness.
Returning wasn’t an option, but neither was a night on Stronach. The mountain was home to deer, badgers, feral goats, and pine martins. All of which had the good sense to return to a burrow or a den for the night. Bonnie was no more hardy then those creatures. If she couldn’t get into the bothy, it would surely be the death of her. Lord knows it was near-enough her time, but all she wanted was a few more hours to carry out her mission. Her life’s mission, she reminded herself.
Bonnie refused to be denied what was rightfully hers by a shabby door and rusty padlock. Gritting her teeth and with all the strength she could muster, she kicked the door on the side of the lock. The kick rattled the door, dislodging a hoarfrost of paint flakes. Unlike the wood, the weathered stonework around the bolt housing didn’t hold. With a sharp crack, it fractured, sandstone reverted to its primal state of mere sand. The door creaked open, lock and bolt swinging uselessly. Bonnie was delighted. She may be old and sick, but at that moment she was a force to be reckoned with.
Bonnie’s elation that she wouldn’t spend the night curled up in the heather was short-lived. As she stepped through the threshold of the single room building, the foot she had driven into the door protested. Pressure sent whip-cracks of pain up her foreleg. She pictured the tiny bones in her foot, fragmented and splintered under the skin, as shattered as the sandstone in the doorway. Bonnie cursed out-loud, letting loose a stream of short punchy words that ended in a comparatively tame “hell’s bells”. Bonnie wasn’t given to profanity, and abhorred it in others, but she didn’t suppose it would matter now. Today of all days.
The inside of the bothy was as she had left it some three months ago. Or was it four? Her memory wasn’t so great these days. It was the day after her last visit to the bothy that she had her fit. She had fallen in the middle of the post office, unable to prevent her limbs from shaking. Bonnie wet herself in front of a room full of folk from the village and their detestable rat-like children. It has humiliating. The medics in the ambulance told her nobody cared, but she cared. A few villagers came to visit her in the hospital, always with a gift. Some brought fruit and fashion magazines others brought their baking. Bonnie endured the visitors as much as she was able, smiling and nodding along with their protestations of faux concern, eventually faking sleepiness so they would gather up their rat-kids and stop bothering her.
They found the first mass not long after she was admitted. A sombre doctor calmly pointed out the fuzzy outline on her scan and talked about her options while a concerned nurse looked on. Bonnie didn’t need a doctor to know her time was up. She interrupted the doctor to tell him the food was too soft here, insisting her teeth were all her own and in good condition. She illustrated the health of her teeth by clashing them together in a mock bite. The doctor and nurse glanced at each other, communicating a shared understanding. Bonnie was happy for them to think she was losing her marbles if they left her in peace.
Soon after they found a second mass, and a third. Then there was no more talk about options from the doctors. Now they talked about keeping her comfortable. They gave her pills that made her feel out of sorts. A sensation that reminded her of the time she smoked reefer in a boyfriend’s flat in the seventies. She kind of liked the pills, but just as the reefer did then it made her forget her mission—like it just didn’t matter. But it did matter. It was more important than anything. More important than boyfriends, more important than children, and more important than her pain. She stopped taking her pain pills, slipping then under her tongue and faking a swallow for the nurses. Like the reefer in her youth, she flushed the pills as soon as she had the opportunity. Pain returned, but then so did her clarity. She was sharp enough to convince a nurse to walk her to the cafe downstairs where she promised to stay for an hour as she read her magazine. The nurse was a sweet girl, but none too bright and suspected nothing. It didn’t take Bonnie long to purchase a set of clothes from the hospital shop before changing out of her gown in the ladies and leaving via the main door. Not quite an escape worthy of her namesake 1920s gangster, Bonnie Parker. There were no Tommy Guns blazing, no cops peppered with lead, and no high-speed car chases. But still daring, Bonnie fancied, as she boarded the next bus to town.
With only a deprived lambent glow spilling from tiny windows, the interior of the bothy was reduced to a collage of indistinct blue shapes. Bonnie fished out an oil lamp from under the sink by feel, her hands groping for the unmistakable glass globe and brass handles which she found next to a box of Swan Vesta safety matches. She set the lamp down on the table, struck a match, and carefully guided it under the globe. A blue flame circled the wick, disappeared momentarily, then returned, followed by yellow-orange flame that swelled inside the bulb and cast long dancing shadows on the walls. Bonnie adjusted the wick to create a good blaze within the bulb which banished the meager dregs of light from the windows. Let there be light, she said to herself before turning her attention to the stove. The wood burner had seen better days since it was built some time in the 1950s. It’s doors were more rust colored now than the original cream. Every hinge creaked like the ancient cast iron tank that it was—and yet much to Bonnie’s satisfaction it worked as well as it did when it was factory new. She had suspected it would be functional long after she was gone, and now she was more convinced than ever. She packed in kindling and newspaper and lit it carefully, narrowly suppressing a coughing fit as she nurtured the tiny flame into a blaze with her breath. She placed a dry log on the fire and closed the stove door, leaving the valve open to get a good burn going. Sitting next to the stove, she smoked a cigarette as the heat ramped up. By the time she had smoked all the way to the filter, her face was flushed with heat and her damp clothes and begun to dry.
She had prepared this meal many times before, for many guests. Often her food went uneaten—something which disturbed Bonnie greatly. Not that she blamed her guests at all. She knew what it took to meet her at the bothy, and what they would have had to endure. Still, she maintained a confidence, nay a certainty, that her guest would make the journey that evening and she brimmed with excitement at the thought of it. She set about to cook them their meal. She fried a hearty amount of steak together with onions. Once the meat developed a good color with dark caramelized edges she added carrots and potatoes with a pint of stock, a can of stout, salt, pepper, and a hefty spoonful of mustard, stirring until it simmered nicely and the bothy filled with savory aroma. She placed the lid on the pot and sat down to take the weight off her foot which ached something fierce by that point, and to smoke while the stew cooked.
Bonnie stubbed out her last cigarette and checked her watch. It was time. The stovies would be just about ready, and her guest would be on their way. She kept a brass ship’s bell on the shelf next to the plates, a novelty she had picked up from a sale in the city. She took the bell along with the lamp and a knitted blanket which would keep her warm while she sat and waited outside by the door. The bell was as old as anything in the bothy, perhaps older. It has lost much of its lustrous finish over the years to a creeping green tarnish, and it made a noise that sounded more like a dull clang than the expected ring. And yet it was more than loud enough to carry far up the mountain. She sat wrapped in her blanket banging the bell clapper against the brass, the reverb of the clang passing into darkness beyond.
She heard voices. Shouts and yells, distant and dampened by cold air. This was a good sign. Voices meant a guest was coming. Voices followed by pops meant the guest likely wouldn’t come. As long as there were voices her guest may soon be with her to sample the stew gently simmering inside.
After what felt like an agonizing age and a half, but in reality a matter of tens of minutes, a figure appeared silhouetted against the night’s sky. It stood upright on a hummock at the extend of the lamp’s reach. A silent specter with black eyes, standing and watching. Bonnie hadn’t heard a single footstep nor detected any sign of anyone approaching. If she didn’t know better she could have sworn that it had always been there and it was the specter’s decision to be seen. “Come, come,” she called to it, “you must be hungry. There is food inside, plenty to go around.” The silhouette remained in stillness seemingly content to observe from a distance. Bonnie stood up with her lamp raised, not to illuminate the specter, but so the specter could see her face and the broad kindly smile she wore. “I’ll set the table,” she declared and returned to the bothy, leaving the door wide open.
Bonnie removed the stew from the heat, gave it a stir, and sampled a little. “Mmm, good.” She ladled out two bowls and set them on the table, each with a spoon and an individual oat cake.
The specter stood in the doorway as still as it had appeared to her moments ago. As silent as ever, it was as if the ghostly figure had glided down from the hill without ever touching ground. In the full light of the lamp, the specter was clearly a man, stooping in the doorway under which Bonnie could walk upright. Streaks of mud over his body superficially resembled clothing, but failed to disguise the fact that he was quite naked. His once black, now pale blue, eyes set in a face as unreadable as a wax-work, observed her coldly. Bonnie pulled out a chair and beckoned the man to join her at the table, which he did, stepping gently inside on feet as bare as the rest of him. As the man sat down, Bonnie draped her blanket around the his broad shoulders as much to cover his nakedness as to keep him warm. “Let’s see who he have here,” Bonnie said. She took a wet rag to the man’s face, wiping at the mud around his eyes and brow, removing grime and dirt until she had to rinse the filthy rag and return to finish the job. The man said nothing while she worked, allowing Bonnie to wrinkle out a clog of mud impacted deep in his ear without a word of complaint. Nor did he protest as Bonnie fashioned his hair into a parting with a comb and a bit of spit. Satisfied, Bonnie took her seat. She smiled. “A handsome one,” Bonnie said, “You’re hungry, you should eat now.”
The man took a spoonful of the stew into his mouth and chewed a tender piece of steak and potato. A crack of a smile broke the surface of his tranquil expression as he ate with increasing enthusiasm, matching every spoonful of Bonnie’s meal with two of his own. “Don’t forget the oat cake,” Bonnie said, scooping up some of the stew with a corner of oat cake. The man watched her, then did as she did, going as far to replicate the satisfied Mmm sound Bonnie had made after eating a mouthful of crumbly oatcake with the stew. It wasn’t long before he had finished the bowl of hot food, and Bonnie served him another, setting the freshly filled bowl down on the table next to a tall glass of stout. The man focused his attention on the dark malty beer with its rising bubbles and creamy head. “You will like it,” Bonnie said with confidence. He took a sip, which turned in to a gulp, followed by another Mmm as he wiped stout foam from his lips and carried on eating.
As he ate, Bonnie studied the man’s face. Young, but not a boy. Thirties, she wagered. A heavy brow, high cheekbones and small button nose over a wide mouth. With a hint of a dimple on the man’s strong jaw, he reminded Bonnie of a fair-haired Cary Grant. Bonnie couldn’t recall ever meeting a Cary, but Grant worked as a forename. “Your name is Grant,” Bonnie declared as the man finished the second bowl. Surnames were harder, but then she had already decided to do something she had avoided in all her years. “Your surname is Sinclair,” Bonnie said with a sense of satisfaction.
“My name is Grant Sinclair,” he intoned.
“You are American,” Bonnie said. She considered it appropriate given he was named after the American film star.
“I am American,” Grant repeated with an unmistakable American twang, sans any regional inflection that Bonnie could pick up on.
“Try New York.”
Grant paused, as if to process. “I am American. From New York,” he said.
“Better.” Bonnie grinned. She had never been to New York, having barely gone any further than the city of Glasgow. Her knowledge of the New York dialect was limited to the Cagney and Lacey show from the 80s, but the man’s ratatat of words sounded authentic to her ears.
“Who—“ Grant began, leaving his sentence hanging in the air, incomplete.
“Who am I?”
Grant nodded.
“My name is Bonnie, sweetheart.”
“Alright, good meeting ya, Bonnie. Are you my mother?” he asked, dropping the r in mother, as if born to it.
“No, Sweetie. Your mother died when you were wee. You remember that, don’t you?”
Grant tilted his head. “Yes,” he replied with an air of confidence, “I remember.”
“Tell me.”
“Sure thing, Bonnie. Mom died when I was ten.”
“How did she die?” Bonnie asked.
“She was hit by a car.”
“What kind of car, Sweetie?”
“She was hit by a limousine. A stretch limousine. It mounted the sidewalk and plowed into a crowd of folks leaving the night club where she worked—”
Bonnie stood up. “Carry on, Sweetie. I’m listening.” She limped over to a wooden chest wedged in one corner of the room, while Grant recanted the story of how he lost his mother. He continued to talk as Bonnie dug through the contents of the chest. From the jumble of lose clothing she retrieved a pair of blue jeans, a flannel shirt, underwear and socks. Next to the chest was a pile of old shoes. There were men’s, women’s, and children’s shoes of varying sizes. She hunted through the pile of boots, pumps, sandals, trainers, even heels, from which she pulled a pair of brown Oxfords. Second hand (as they all were) and a little scuffed around the edges, but serviceable. For a moment Bonnie considered polishing them, but with the mud and filth outside she concluded it would be wasted effort.
Grant was still talking when Bonnie limped back to the table. He’d moved on to discussing his father who died of a coronary while working for a haulage firm in Maine, at a time when Grant lived with his grandmother in White Plains. Bonnie interrupted him to suggest he put on the clothes she had picked out, which he did while talking about his father’s shared love of mathematics. Bonnie averted her gaze as he dressed.
“Pops always loved numbers. He taught me Euler’s theorem when I was twelve… no thirteen years old.” Having barely missed a word of his story while he dressed, Grant appeared to discover his clothes all at once. “How do I look?” he asked.
Bonnie sorted Grant’s collar where it was ungracefully folded inwards on one side. His shirt was a little too tight, bowing around the buttons where it should lay flat, while his jeans were rather too large, forcing Grant to clutch a handful of denim to prevent them from falling to his feet. Only the pair of Oxfords fit him well, even if the formal shoe contrasted with the rest of his clothing. “One moment,” said Bonnie. She retrieved a leather belt from the bottom of the clothes chest and handed it to Grant, who threaded it carefully through the jean’s belt loops and fastened the buckle. The jeans stayed around his waist without assistance, although the loose denim still billowed around his thighs. Bonnie wished she could take Grant to one of the men’s clothing stores in town. A nice crisp shirt with fitted collar and matching suit would look dapper on him. She had always liked a man in a suit. Still, he was a handsome young man, even dressed in mismatched second hand clothing as he was. “You look very smart, Sweetie,” said Bonnie, “Your folks would be proud.”
Grant smiled. A sweet smile, Bonnie noted.
“Let’s drink to your parents”, Bonnie said. She poured a little of the whisky she brought with her into two tea cups, apologized for the lack of glasses, and handed one of the cups to Grant. “You will like it, but sip it slowly,” she told him. Bonnie clinked her tea-cup to his and took a sip. Grant sniffed the liquid in the cup, raised an eyebrow, and swallowed a little more than Bonnie had downed. He shivered as the burn of the spirit washed over his tongue and coughed when the smokey vapors hit his lungs. With warmth radiating through his chest, he confirmed he did indeed like it before returning to his monologue.
They sat together, chatting as though they had known each other forever. Grant did most of the talking while Bonnie listened and occasionally interjected prompts for further detail. He told Bonnie about his childhood with his grandmother in some detail: the school subjects he liked, his first crush, his second crush—he even unabashedly described when he had lost his virginity as a freshman in college. While recanting the story of how he had broken up with that first girlfriend, Bonnie refilled his tea-cup with whisky and handed him a lit cigar. He took the cigar from her almost reflexively, inhaled a lungful as Bonnie had done, and carried on talking as he smoked.
Hours passed. Birdsong ushered in sunlight, the golden light illuminated empty tea-cups and smoldering cigar stubs. Wearily, Bonnie checked her watch.
“Grant. Sweetie,” Bonnie said, “It’s time for you to go now.”
Grant blinked away the sunlight in his eyes. “Ain’t that something. We’ve been talking all night. I should really be going. Bonnie, it’s been a pleasure.” Grant said, rising to his feet.
“Grant, you are going to meet friends.”
Grant nodded. “That’s right.”
“Follow the path down the hill, but don’t go into the village. Cross the white fence and head towards the carpark, then go left. Your friends will pick you up on the road to Glasgow.”
“Gotcha.” Grant said.
She followed him to the doorway, feeling a swell of pride in the young man. He was polite, intelligent, and ambitious. All she could hope for in a son, if she had ever had children. Grant gave her a hug goodbye, which she returned in kind. It was always hard to see her guests leave, but this was the first time she had shed a tear—quickly wiped away before Grant could see.
“I’ll write,” Grant said, somehow sensing her sadness.
“You won’t remember me tomorrow, Sweetie.”
“Oh, I could never forget you, Bonnie!”
“Before you go,” Bonnie said, looking directly into Grant’s eyes, “I want to talk to the watcher. The one who watches from the mountain.” She spoke with a steady rhythm as though reading from scripture. “It is important,” she added.
Grant’s expression changed in an instant. His demeanor became as cold as it had been when he first stooped through the bothy door. As blank and as unfeeling as a waxwork, he regarded her once again with black eyes. “Speak,” he said.
“I’m old, and sick. Cancer. The doctor’s say I don’t have long, and I—“ she faltered, emotions choking her words, “—I won’t be able to serve you. I would like to take my place by your side. I am ready.”
The specter of Grant reached out with both arms and wrapped his fingers about Bonnie’s neck. He lifted her a few inches above the ground as though she were a doll stuffed with cotton and not a real woman. The Grant-specter violently jerked Bonnie’s head to once side before lowering the limp body to the floor.
“Thanks again for dinner, Bonnie!” Grant half-shouted through the door before taking the stone path down the hill.