The Year of Ancient Ghosts

The Year of Ancient Ghosts

by Kim Wilkins

Published by Ticonderoga Publications

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 Kim Wilkins

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, recording or otherwise) without the express prior written permission of the copyright holder concerned. Page 261 constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

Introduction copyright © 2013 Kate Forsyth

Afterword copyright © 2013 Kim Wilkins

Internal illustrations copyright © 2013 James Blake

Designed and edited by Russell B. Farr

A Cataloging-in-Publications entry for this title is available from

The National Library of Australia.

ISBN

978–1–921857–45–4 (limited hardcover)

978–1–921857–46–1 (trade paperback)

978–1–921857–47–8 (tradehardcover)

978–1–921857–92–8 (ebook)

Ticonderoga Publications

PO Box 29 Greenwood

Western Australia 6924

www.ticonderogapublications.com

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION BY KATE FORSYTH

THE YEAR OF ANCIENT GHOSTS

THE CROWN OF ROWAN

DINDRANA’S LOVER

WILD DREAMS OF BLOOD

THE LARK AND THE RIVER

AFTERWORD

Story Acknowledgments

About Kim Wilkins

Publisher Thanks

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INTRODUCTION

KATE FORSYTH

The first time I met Kim Wilkins, I told her she looked like the evil queen in my novel.

She laughed and took it as a compliment which, indeed, it was. Maya, my evil queen, has blue eyes and a black bob just like Kim, and ensorcels people with her beauty and charm.

It was a hot oppressive evening in Melbourne, and we were shouting above a noisy crowd while waiting for the announcement of the 1997 Aurealis Awards for Speculative Fiction. My first book Dragonclaw and Wilkins’ first book The Infernal had both been short-listed for the Fantasy Award.

The Aurealis Awards are the premier prize in Australia for fantastic fiction. Writers of fantasy fiction are rarely shortlisted for any other kind of award . . . which is a short-hand way of saying we both wanted to win. Badly.

That night Kim’s book not only won the Fantasy Award, but she also walked away with the prize for Horror Fiction as well. To add insult to injury she was looking absolutely gorgeous in velvet and a starry tiara while I was barely able to waddle, being eight months pregnant.

I bought The Infernal that muggy night in Melbourne and began to read it a few weeks later, pacing the floor with early contractions and desperate for distraction. I became so instantly absorbed that I, incredibly, forgot about my coming baby. I emerged hours later, petrified, shaken, exhilarated and without a contraction in sight. The Infernal had literally scared them away.

I have read and loved every one of Kim’s books since. She is one of my all-time favourite writers, someone whose books I wait for impatiently and rush out to buy as soon as they hit the bookstores.

These are the thirteen things I love most about Kim’s books

1. the way the pages just fly by while I’m reading, as if turning themselves

2. her characters—all so very different, with frailties and terrors and flaws that make them feel so very real

3. the vividness of her settings, so beautifully drawn I can see them clearly in my mind’s eye

4. her limpid and sensuous prose style that sings with effortless grace

5. her ability to weave together two separate time periods without ever letting her narrative threads fall slack

6. the way her stories illuminate the past so I feel as if I have travelled there myself

7. the way the real world utterly fades away, so I am completely lost within the world of the book

8. the way each book is utterly different from any book she has written before

9. I feel so much while I’m reading Kim’s books—in turns, they chill the spine, bruise the heart, make my eyes sting with tears, my skin crawl, my pulse quicken, I laugh, and cry, and gasp out loud.

10. This means, at the end of each book, I feel as if I have suffered and fought and survived just like her heroines, and I am a much wiser person because of it

11. She knows so much, about so many things—I come away from each of her books feeling like I have learnt so much

12. because she constantly surprises me

13. her fearlessness

In this collection of short stories and novellas, Kim proves herself one of the most gifted and versatile writers Australia has ever produced.

The title story, The Year of Ancient Ghosts, is an utterly chilling and suspenseful set in modern times. A grieving mother and her young daughter come to stay in the Orkneys—the place where her husband grew up—and find themselves haunted by eerie ghosts from his past.

The next piece The Crown of Rowan takes us far back into the past, to a land that seems much like England in the 8th century. It tells the story of a young queen who has taken a secret lover and must do all she can to protect her unborn child during a time of turmoil and war. It left me hungry for more—I’m desperate to know what happens next and can only hope that Kim fulfills her promise of turning it into another novel.

Dindrana’s Lover is set in the time of King Arthur and his knights and contains a true frisson of supernatural horror, while Wild Dreams of Blood returns us to the modern day with a most unexpected twist.

The final story in the collection is The Lark and the River, a heartbreaking story of love and faith and magic that is utterly perfect in its creation and execution. Set just after the Norman conquest, in a small English village where old superstitions still hold sway, it tells of the love between a Norman priest and a young Saxon woman whose family adheres to the old ways. It left me with tears in my eyes.

In all of these stories, Kim has woven together elements of history, mythology, horror and magic to create something utterly new and utterly beguiling. All I can say is: I WANT MORE!

Now, please.

SYDNEY

FEBRUARY 2013

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THE YEAR OF ANCIENT GHOSTS

"Further than history / the legends thicken . . .

Further than death / your feet will come"

— George Mackay Brown, Further than Hoy

I

Shards of bright pain and bright light spear into the cloying vacuum. He struggles upwards; he has something important to remember.

Try to be still. You’ve had an accident.

His tongue swells against his teeth.

Don’t talk and don’t move. We’re taking you into surgery.

The darkness yanks him towards it. Surrender. Beyond this threshold is the big black; an end to the pain. But there is something else. Something waiting, as it has waited for nearly twenty years, tangled in seaweed and teeth and veins.

His voice breaks from his throat, a blood-soaked gargle. Jenny! Mary!

The light blinks out.

II

We came late to Orkney after all, when the lambing snow was melting off the crest of Hoy. Lachlan would have been dismayed. It’s April, he might have said. The book is meant to be called The Year of Ancient Ghosts, not "The Nine Months of Ancient Ghosts". But Lachlan wasn’t around to be dismayed. A council bus had taken care of that, clipping the back of his bicycle three days before we were due to leave.

We came anyway, Mary and I. We came late.

The three of us had been meant to stay at the croft where Lachlan spent his childhood. That there were only two of us added more sodden weight to the inescapable sadness. We ploughed over the black water on the ferry, and the waves and the wind were relentless. I knew the weather and I would get on: we had much in common. I had not imagined that I would find myself in this position: single mother to a two-year-old, mourning my husband on a remote island off the tip of Scotland. But then, I wasn’t the one with the imagination: that was Lachlan, my husband.

Mr McBride met us off the ferry. I’d only seen a photograph of him when he was younger—Lachlan had it in a frame on our bookshelf—wearing a yellow cable-knit pullover with his dark hair curling over the back of the collar. The elderly man who waved from the bottom of the walkway bore so little resemblance to the man in the photo that I assumed he was waving at someone behind me. But then he said, Jenny! and I managed to recognise the heaviness of his brows and the tilt of his mouth under his white beard.

Hello, I said, coming to a stop a few feet in front of him. I wasn’t sure of the protocol: we had never met. We had spoken two or three times on the phone. He was from Lachlan’s past, not mine.

Mr McBride seemed to feel the awkwardness too. He crouched with an audible knee-click in front of Mary and said, And you must be wee Mary.

Mary, defiantly cold in only a little pink fleecy pullover and track pants, dived behind my legs and pressed her face into the back of my knees.

So she’s a little shy, he said.

I assure you, that’s the last word I’d use to describe her, I said. She’ll warm up.

Already Mary was tipping her head out from behind my legs, stealing curious glances at Mr McBride.

Oh, well, he said, straightening up, but it sounded like Och, weel. Sorry about the weather.

Thank you for coming to collect us.

Couldn’t have you making your own way up there. Not with your bags and with the wee one. He smiled at Mary, who smiled back.

Wee, she said, laughing.

I hefted my suitcase and Mary’s stroller and knapsack off the luggage rack and Mr McBride felt in his pocket for his car key. Then he stopped, reached out his hand for my wrist, and said softly, Look, I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry. I’m just . . . I’m so sorry for your . . . for Lachlan.

The sadness, as it always did, winded me unexpectedly. I don’t know how many times I’d thought I was doing okay, only to have some small thing remind me and then . . . that familiar hollow punch to the belly. I took a deep breath. Thank you, I said, because there was nothing else to say, and he was sad and uncomfortable.

Well. I’ll get the car.

The cottage sat a half-mile from the water’s edge, its deep front windows directed out over Scapa Flow to the island of Hoy. Viking language, Mr McBride told me, for high island. It looked like a sea monster’s back rising treeless out of the churning blue tide.

I’ve fixed you up with some tea and bread and so on, Mr McBride said as Mary ran from room to room chatting to herself happily. But if you want anything else there’s a grocer near the roundabout. I can take you there tomorrow if you like.

Thank you. I’ll be fine. I’ll need to fill the time somehow and you have enough to worry about. Can’t be running around after me.

I can, Jenny, if needs be. Just until you settle in.

Mama! Mary called. She emerged from her new bedroom cradling a soft doll that wore a tartan raincoat. Mama, look!

Aye, now. That’s from Mrs McBride, he said, crouching. She’s very sick and can’t leave the house to come down and welcome you herself, but maybe you’d like to come up and see her some time soon? That would make her very happy.

Mary was too busy pulling the raincoat off the doll to answer him.

She’ll have that naked in two seconds, I said. None of them keep their clothes on. Not even in this weather.

Mr McBride laughed. Don’t worry: spring will be upon us soon. We’ll have sun and blue skies. You’ll see. Then he raised his bushy eyebrows. Won’t be anything like that Australian beach you live on, though.

A pang, remembering the untroubled sun and the warm ocean back home. But home, now, was a very different place. Hollow and cold in the shadows. It’s nice to be somewhere different, I said.

Aye. I understand. Now, the little miss has found her room. This one is yours. He pushed open an internal door and I moved in ahead of him.

It’s been waiting for you since . . . ah . . . since before.

Since before. When there was need for four pillows and two empty bedside tables. My heart clenched.

Mr McBride strode to the dresser, picked up a little book and handed it to me. This isn’t easy, but you’ll be wanting to see this, he said.

Its thin pages were fastened with rusty staples. Childish handwriting on the front declared it written and illustrated by Lachlan McGregor.

"The Fisherboy," I read from the cover.

First wee book he ever made, stapled together out of cardboard, Mr McBride said, then he chuckled. Combined his love of stories with his love of fishing. Clever lad was only five. Mrs McBride has saved it all this time. Brings it out to impress dinner guests. ‘This was the famous Lachlan McGregor’s first wee book’. She was longing to show it to him. A short, uncertain silence. You should have it.

I laid the book gently on the dresser. I didn’t know if I wanted to keep it or if I wanted it to go back to Mrs McBride, who had preserved it so proudly all these years. It’s lovely.

He was always special.

I know.

Strange wee boy. Full of stories. Full of mystery. Folk around here used to say, he’s not for this world, that lad. Not for this world. Then, checking himself, realising he might be stirring my sadness, he cleared his throat. I’m glad you’re both here. I think you made the right choice.

And that did cheer me a little. A number of people—including my own parents—had thought coming here the very worst decision under the circumstances. Thanks, I said.

I’ll leave you to it.

*

Mary had always been a good sleeper. When we brought her home from hospital, she was already sleeping six hours at a stretch at night. I was the envy of my mother’s group, whose shadowy eyes and twitching moodiness told of sleep snatched in fragments. Lachlan’s theory was that she was just so exhausted by being awake: curious, smiling at everyone, poking everything; and then, later, crawling everywhere, grasping handfuls of the cat’s fur, pulling things over on her downy little head. By the time evening fell, she didn’t so much sleep as black out.

So her cry on that first night at the croft made me wake in alarm. I didn’t know where I was. My phone, docked beside my bed with the time showing, told me it was three in the morning. I pulled back the covers and got up, whacking my shin against the chest of drawers. The floorboards were cold on my bare feet.

It’s okay, Mary, I croaked. Mama’s coming.

I felt my way down the hall to her room. She sat up in bed crying. Crying hard, as only the very young can cry.

Sh, sh, I said, sitting next to her, pulling her against me.

The mean lady, she said. The mean lady.

Just a dream, sweetheart. You just had a bad dream.

Bad dream.

Yes, the mean lady isn’t real.

I could feel her heart ticking fast against her little ribcage. I stroked her hair and she began to calm. I almost asked if she wanted to come and sleep with me, but not for her comfort, for mine. If I was ever going to recover, I had to get used to sleeping next to Lachlan’s empty side of the bed.

Mary snuggled back under the covers, and was soon breathing deep and evenly. I sat with her for a long time. Her curtain was open, and I could see mist over the ruined farmhouse next door, lit softly white by the moon. I couldn’t hear the sea through the closed windows and thick stone, but I knew it was out there, ever restless and in motion.

*

The morning was heavy with mist. The view disappeared outside the window, but then began to reappear in the middle of the day. Distant, white sunshine. I wrestled Mary into a padded anorak that was two inches too long for her arms, and then got her settled in the stroller for a walk down to the shops. I knew where the shops were because Lachlan, in his obsessive poring over every detail of our stay, had mapped out the route. As it turned out, he’d failed to account for several sets of stairs. I bumped Mary down them backwards where I could, or lifted the stroller and struggled where I couldn’t. Finally, we were on the dark grey flagstones of Stromness’s narrow main street. The damp little houses were all crammed up against each other, spotted grimly by age and weather. The harbour smelled dank and briny, and the air was chilly.

The supermarket’s warmth was welcome, but the aisles confused me. I didn’t know where to look or what to buy. Everything was different from back home, so I bought random things that caught my eye: cheese and leeks and tomatoes and dried pasta and a bag of jelly babies; things that I didn’t know if I needed or could use. Mary fidgeted violently in the stroller, whining all the way home. Once there, I decided that we were jetlagged and needed extended time in the sunshine, however filmy that sunshine might be.

The path down to the beach wound past old croft land, muddy ditches and stone fences falling into ruin. The cold came on the wind, which rose and fell off the sea in a slow dance. Mary was already struggling out of her anorak and running ahead in her t-shirt, blithe to her goosebumps.

When we saw the beach, she pointed and looked at me doubtfully. Swim?

No, darling. Not here.

Mary loved to swim. In summer, we swam in the sea every afternoon. Forbidding a swim was a tantrum-throwing offence, but even Mary seemed to see the sense here. She shook her head. No swim.

I took her hand and we picked our way down onto the dark grey rocks, moulded by the centuries into sharp geometrical patterns and festooned with tough, slimy seaweed. She found a rockpool and crouched next to it, little fingers poking the algae that drifted like soft green hair within. I stood beside her, gazing out over Scapa Flow, missing Lachlan sickly.

He should have been here. Lachlan McGregor, author of the international best-selling children’s series Sea Orphans, had been commissioned in a six-figure deal to write his first adult work: a memoir of a year in the place he left behind at eighteen. A place that was as thick in his blood as it was terrifying for him to return to. Something happened here to Lachlan, twenty years ago, something that even he couldn’t remember.

Now nobody would ever know what that something was. The book would not get written.

Come on, Mary, let’s walk for a bit.

She rose without protest and we picked our way back up to the stony beach. The stones were round and smooth and many different shades of grey, so we played a game to see who could find the roundest and the biggest. Of course, mine were all wonky and I led Mary to the roundest ones every time, until she was squealing with delight at having beaten me on so many occasions. By the time our pockets were full of stones, we had managed a good half-mile walk along the beach and the sun was making me feel more human.

Then we found it. A huge, perfectly egg-shaped stone.

I collected it in two hands and held it up. Look, Mary, I said in faux-reverent tones. A sea monster egg.

Her eyes went round. Her mouth dropped open.

Shall we take it home?

She shook her head vigorously, and then I remembered she’d had bad dreams the night before and I felt like a rotten mother, putting ideas of monsters in her head. It’s okay, darling, I’m only joking. It’s just a rock. There’s no such thing as sea monsters.

Put it down, Mama, she said, pointing at the ground.

I dropped it with a thud and grabbed her hand. Shall we go home for some lunch?

Hot dogs?

Mary’s favourite. Why hadn’t I thought to buy any? I vowed to start a shopping list the moment I got home. Sorry, sweetie. We haven’t any hot dogs. How about a cheese sandwich?

But she had spotted a length of old rope a little further up the beach and run off to investigate, so I assumed lunch was not high on her list of priorities. I watched her. She seemed so untroubled and I wondered if she ever missed her father. I didn’t talk about him or remind her about him because I didn’t want her to be upset, and I didn’t want her to see me upset. I realised, dimly, that this probably wasn’t the right way to go about grieving. I was getting it all wrong.

My stomach gurgled.

Mary! Come on. Back to the house.

We picked our way back over the beach, the sun bright on our hair and the wind cold on our cheeks. Halfway up the path to home, an elderly woman in a tartan skirt and black cardigan was walking a fat sausage-dog. She saw us, gave us a smile, then realisation flashed in her eyes.

Oh, you’re Jenny McGregor? she said, stopping and turning.

Yes, I said. In fact, I was and always had been Jenny Sanderson, but since Lachlan’s accident I had stopped minding if people assumed I’d taken my husband’s surname.

She extended her hand. I’m Nora Kirkby. I live right next door to you. Kevin McBride told me you’d be coming soon. She smiled at Mary. Hello.

You have funny teeth.

I blushed. Mary, that’s not polite.

Och, it’s fine. Don’t trouble yourself. I dinnae look after my teeth, sweet pea. You make sure you brush yours, okay?

Mary put her knuckle in her mouth.

Listen, Jenny, I hope you don’t think me too forward, Nora Kirkby said, her eyebrows taking on the expression of pity I had seen so often in recent times. But I’m just so sorry to hear of your husband’s passing. My husband died six years ago and I cry about it every day still. But your Lachlan, he was a young man with a young family. It’s a tragedy. If you need a shoulder, I’m just next door. Drop by any time for a pot of tea.

My mouth opened and closed silently for a few, creaking seconds. How could I tell her?

Are you all right? she asked.

He’s not . . . Lachlan isn’t dead.

Nora Kirkby tilted her head to one side curiously, waiting for me to explain, but I couldn’t. I just said again, He isn’t dead, and grasped Mary’s hand and walked away fast.

Because articulating it was impossible. No matter what words I used, all anybody would ever hear was that I’d abandoned my husband in a hospital thousands of miles away in Australia.

Not dead. Dead to the world. Dead to all sense and sound. Nothing could rouse him. And every time I went to see him, he looked worse. With every minute and hour he grew greyer, smaller, like a fruit shrivelling in time-lapse photography. Mary cried and trembled whenever we drew close to the hospital. He frightened our baby. He frightened her. I couldn’t take her back there again. Lachlan wouldn’t have wanted me to.

The call would come, no matter whether I was in Queensland or in Orkney. The call that it was over would come and until then, I was closer to Lachlan here than I was next to his husk in hospital. I knew it in my soul.

We walking fast, Mary said, huffing next to me to keep up.

How about we go into town and see if we can find somewhere that sells hot dogs? I said to her.

Her rosy cheeks lit up in a smile. The smile that was the only thing keeping me hanging on.

*

Lachlan feels the hot breath of the ship behind him. He swims on, muscles burning, choking on huge lungfuls of water, all the while knowing he cannot escape. The ship will surely catch him. He risks a glance over his shoulder. The ship bears down, its mast and sail obscure the moon in the molten indigo sky. The dragon on its curling prow grins at him cruelly.

And he sees her. He stops swimming, turns around and peers into the fast-moving mist. Waves wash over him, the ship speeds forward, but the dark figure on the ship is uncannily familiar. His memory churns like a big wheel in water: who is she? An image of milky skin and liquid eyes flashes across his brain.

Then the wind drops suddenly and the sail on the ship goes slack long enough for the moonlight to shine directly on her. No milky skin. No liquid eyes. Seaweed hair and barnacle teeth. His heart catches on an icy hook. The wind picks up again and he turns, swimming