Alder Maclean left an impression. Too bad it would take a lifetime to scrub him from my memory.
Fable
Foul Play Suspected In Missing Woman Case
I traced the lines of the word Woman in the headline.
Was this the same fate my great-aunt had suffered? Reduced to a headline meant to sell newspapers?
I wiped at my eyes, yawning for the third time as I glanced at the grandfather clock that presided over Leith’s library. I squinted as I struggled to read the roman numerals in the shadowy morning light. Quarter after seven. I groaned once, then stretched. A warm paw landed on my shoulder and made me grin.
“Morning, buddy.” I scratched the old wolfhound behind the ear. “My second night in a row sleeping with you. I bet you’d make a lovely tea companion.”
The other wolfhound lifted itself off the floor and stuck his cold, wet nose in my neck. I giggled, scratching him equally long before putting my stack of old newspaper clippings back into the album where I’d found them.
I’d spent all night poring over the stacks of books in this library. I couldn’t stop thinking about Alder’s words from earlier in the day. The answer is in the books. Maybe I was taking his statement too literally, but that hadn’t stopped me from searching through the shelves like a hungry detective. The topic of my great-aunt’s disappearance had been strictly forbidden in my family. My grandmother refused to speak of it, and my mother swore she’d never been told any details. Only that it’d happened at Leith.
I’d spent countless nights as a kid, up all night and unable to sleep, thinking about the possibilities surrounding her vanishing. At first, my mind wove stories of an innocent girl falling into a well, lost and never to be seen again. But then, as my interest in life’s darker moments grew, I imagined a deranged traveler came to kidnap her from her family. But then my sick mind would conjure a love story, and I’d dream she rode off into the sunset to live happily ever after with her lover-boy madman, never to be seen or heard from again.
Maybe the truth wasn’t as simple or as dark as I liked to imagine it. Or maybe the truth was worse.
I thought of Alder’s question about whether or not I was ready for the truth. Was I ready? Would I ever be?
I’d spent most of last night scanning the worn covers of old hardbacks. Tales of Highland lords and lore filled the pages, and one story about a family curse held my attention for longer than the rest. A Kylemore native was said to have transcribed tales and legends from the old-timers in the village. The story involving the founding of Leith and the curse that followed its inhabitants was striking.
I tried to imagine my ancestors walking down these halls. The idea that the stones were alive with the work of witches and fae was a new one, but one that persisted in the more rural villages of this island and all over the farthest reaches of Scotland. Had my grandmother and her sister let their fingertips whisper along the feathery tips of the heather that lined the lane leading to Leith?
Had one of them fallen victim to the same fate as so many of the other women in this village?
A shiver coursed down my spine when the memory of one particularly haunting headline came back to me. A story about a man arrested and then later cleared in the suspected murder of a local teenager. Her remains were never found, but the sharp eyes of a neighbor alerted investigators to suspicious activity around the loch late on the night of her disappearance.
I thought of Alder being accused of murder just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. If things had gone badly and he’d failed to save me, it wouldn’t be a stretch for someone to think he was doing far worse. Like trying to murder me.
The man accused in the article made headlines because his family was once considered prestigious, before they lost everything—including their land. I soon discovered Leith Hall had fallen to the same fate. After years of neglect, the estate had been deeded to the historical commission, and funds were raised every year to maintain its upkeep. That explained the neglected graveyard and crumbling spire atop the keep that drove into the sky.
Definitive evidence never could be tied to the man accused, and he was released on bail less than forty-eight hours after his arrest.
And now another missing girl.
How many mysteries could Leith hide in its crumbling stone walls? And how was the story of my great-aunt’s vanishing woven into the cracks?
My thoughts swirled as I attempted to piece together the similarities. I’d tried to research as much as I could about the mysterious way women went missing around here, but because the vanishings were sporadic—sometimes once or twice a year, and other times with long breaks in between, finding puzzle pieces that matched was nearly impossible.
Were they random accidents? Or was something more sinister at work? All the men had warned me off the water, yet I’d been helplessly drawn to its edge. It’d taken only a blink for the worst to happen, the strange currents that swirled in the loch pulling me under before I had a chance to resist. Had Alder only been there at the right time? Or was he the sinister force that lingered at the edges of the loch, waiting for the perfect moment to…what? Drown local women?
I huffed, laughing at how suddenly I’d made my nearest neighbor into the villain of this story.
I patted one of the old dogs on the head, his hair soft despite its coarse and curly nature.
“Good morning, boys.” Keats opened the front doors wide, and a wash of morning sunlight enveloped all of us then.
A bright smile lifted my cheeks. “Good morning!”
The old man’s eyes met mine, a scowl on his face before he turned away. “Mornin’.”
I followed him outside as he stumbled along after the dogs. They hobbled easily, mimicking Keats’s unsteady walk in a funny way. Wasn’t that something they said? Dogs often looked like their owners? I thought how true it was in this case, right down to the wiry salt-and-pepper hair.
“Plans today?” Keats paused when he reached the edge of the graveyard, the dogs lingering in the woods at its perimeter. Their noses were bent as if they were on a cold trail. Just like my reason for being here. I thought again of his unofficial status as the local historian. How would I ever get this man of few words to open up to me? Was it possible he had been here when my great-aunt was?
“You got cotton in your ears this morning?”
“Excuse me?” I hummed, eyes trained on the tiny limestone-washed cottage across the loch.
“I asked if you’ve got plans today. Or will you just be trailing me around while I work?”
“Oh, I was going to spend more time in the library researching, I guess, and then maybe wash off a few of these gravestones—”
“Why would ye go and do that now?”
“Why not now?”
“Most people ain’t wantin’ them disturbed.”
“But you can’t even read the names.”
“What good are names if ye don’t know a damn one of ’em?”
“Well, research, for starters…”
“Everything you need to know is in those books. Mightin’ lose ya mind spending so much time in that musty library, though.”
“This looks like a good spot to read.” I gestured to the large boulder that anchored one corner of the cemetery.