THE CROCODILE EYE
by Gill McKnight

The final turn of the drive would once have displayed the house in all its grandeur. Now the rot in the window sills and the flaking mortar were plainly visible. The lawns needed mowing, and the fir trees allowed to grow so close to the house they blocked the light, adding a green-tinged gloominess.

The cold lump of anxiety Claire had been carting about in her stomach since Euston station hardened. She fretted away all of last night on the Caledonian overnight express, finding no comfort in the deluxe sleeper compartment her parents had booked, despite their displeasure with her. She hadn’t managed the kipper breakfast either. Instead, she watched the Cairngorm mountains roll by with her forehead pressed against the window.

Her great aunt refused to send a car to meet her at Inverness, organizing instead for her to board the local train over to Muir of Ord. Great aunt Nessa was famed in the family for her meanness. At Muir of Ord, Gowrie, with his clapped out Triumph 10 waited for her outside the station. His rattling cough and the elderly engine spluttered in competition with each other, with Gowrie’s lungs beating the Triumph by a whisker.

The first abrupt surprise of the morning came when he piled her suitcase onto the passenger seat, leaving her to travel behind in the dickey seat. Claire didn’t really mind, she would rather be distanced from his smoke stenched tweeds and phlegmy cough, and she suspected the chance to exchange barely a word appealed to him, too. It was merely her paranoia that read this as a slight. She rebuked herself for being silly and pushed the thought away. Nessa would never share a degradation with her servants, there was too much vainglory in the family name to sully it so. Gowrie knew nothing. He was old and indecent and didn’t want to make small talk with a fancy young lassie just up from London. That was all it was.

The dickey seat had its advantages. Cold as it was, it afforded her the most fantastic views across the Beauly Firth, and out towards Black Isle on the way to Bog Fada and great aunt Nessa.

Claire looked for a knocker or bell pull on the formidable oak door, weathered by almost a century of Scottish weather and lack of maintenance. High above her, carved into the lintel, the family armorial sported the date of 1824, registering the house as ninety-nine years old. Earnan Gall, Nessa’s father and parliamentarian, had built the house as a hunting retreat for the Glorious Twelfth. Nessa had chosen to withdraw here as a young lady, giving up on London life after the ‘Incident’. Now Claire, hot on the heels of her own incident, stood on the moss-stained doorstep, unsure if this was the right place or time for the self-contemplation her parents hoped for.

She had no need of the lost doorknocker. The heavy door swung open, and Cromarty stood before her, brows knitted and a face like a thunder clap. The housekeeper had always been formidable. Claire remembered her from childhood holidays when her family had made the tortuous trip from London to sit in the mouldy old stately home for two weeks, while outside the rain poured incessantly.

“Good morning,” she greeted the housekeeper.

“Mistress is waiting for you.” Cromarty turned on her heel and walked away. Claire glanced at her suitcase, balanced on the edge of the stone steps where Gowrie had dumped it, before rattling off as fast as he could go. It was rude of the housekeeper not to bring it in for her. Again, anxiety gnawed. Was this whole visit to be shrouded in rebuke and reprimand?

“Miss?”

She started, caught off guard by a maid’s sudden appearance at her elbow. A small smile played around the young woman’s lips on seeing Claire jump.

“You startled me,” she said, feeling her face glow.

A slyness entered the maid’s eyes and she gestured towards the suitcase. “I’ll take that up to your room.” She brushed past and snatched the bag up as if it weighed nothing, although both Claire, and in turn Gowrie, had staggered under it. Without a further word she headed for the wide, gloomy staircase.

“Miss Claire?” Cromarty called from farther up the hallway. Her voice full of displeasure to find Claire still dithering by the door. “Your aunt will see you now before the doctor arrives.” So, she had an allotted time in which to be welcomed, and not a minute more. Claire moved quickly after Cromarty and was led to the rear of the house where the rooms faced south and had the better morning light.

Great aunt Nessa was bundled in wool blankets, her armchair placed close to the blazing fire, despite the midmorning sunlight beaming through the closed French windows. She sat imperious in her own little cloud of dust. Her face was heavy and sour in its perpetual frown. Claire had never remembered her any other way, though the high cheekbones and aquiline nose echoed a former glory. Nessa always looked like she’d just had bad news from her broker.

“You should have been here an hour ago.” Her greeting floated across threadbare carpets and heavy, out-moded furniture.

“I couldn’t have arrived any sooner,” Claire said, trying to inject a breeziness she wasn’t feeling. What else could Nessa expect? By not collecting her from Inverness she had unnecessarily extended the journey. There was an awkward silence as Nessa squinted around the room, no doubt seeking for something civil to say. Her thin white fingers drifted to the huge amber pendant that hung from her neck to nestle in the blankets. It was as big as a duck egg. Exotica from Burma.

“How was the journey?” she finally asked. “I suppose your parents threw money away on a sleeper?” Her thin mouth twisted. Claire could hear Cromarty’s disapproving sniff behind her.

“I was safe,” she answered. Let the old spinster chew on that. What was wrong with a father wanting his child to travel securely? It was his money after all. It almost amused her to be defending him against these old curmudgeons, it showed the depth of his disappointment that she should be here at all.

“You were safe.” Nessa flatly repeated the words with all the chill she seemed to find in the room. The inference was not lost on Claire. She was anything but safe. She was a calamity, shuffled off here until a decision on her future could be made.

Discordant chimes rang down the hall.

“There’s the doctor.” Cromarty moved to the door where she waited pointedly for Claire to follow. Nessa sank further into her swathe of musty blankets. Her cheeks hollowed as her jaw sagged in contemplation of the slew of maladies she would no doubt heap upon the physician.

Claire passed Dr. Graham in the hallway, he nodded curtly as he hurried by. A harassed man with a wealthy client, his job demanded due diligence with long patience. He didn’t recognise her and she was unsurprised. They’d last met several years ago, the summer before the war ended, when Teddy had the endless nosebleeds. The mustard gas had eaten away his sinuses leaving abscesses and a constant trickle of yellow discharge. But at least he got to come home early, apparently he’d been one of the lucky ones.

“You’re in the Blue room,” Cromarty informed her. Claire could see she wanted to return to Nessa and the doctor.

“I know where it is,” she said, having no wish to spend a moment more than necessary with Cromarty.

“Moira.” A maid Claire remembered from her holiday visits appeared. “Show Miss Claire to her room.” Cromarty moved briskly back to the morning room.

“Miss.” Moira gestured awkwardly toward the staircase. Claire recalled the girl was a bit of a dullard. Nothing seemed to have changed. Moira still had that vacant, woebegone look of the permanently disenfranchised. She led Claire to a cold, depressing room lacking natural light courtesy of the firs outside. The ugly blue of the walls and soft furnishings did little to warm or welcome.

“I’ll bring up your lunch tray, miss.” Moira trudged off leaving Claire to regard the few books she had brought with her stacked neatly on her bedside table. A quick check in the armoire showed her things had been unpacked and put away. She didn’t like anyone handling her things, even a maid. It seemed intrusive, and she tried not think about her underclothes tucked away in the top drawer by someone other than herself.

The topmost book, The Enchanted April, was part read, and she lifted it to take over to the window. But instead of opening it, she found herself standing perfectly still listening to the quiet tick of the mantelpiece clock. Far away, on the crystal blue horizon the soft, buttery summit of Ben Wyvis was visible through the slimmest of gaps through the trees. She might as well be gazing out through iron bars.

The tinkle of china warned her that the door was about to open. She turned expecting Moira with the lunch tray, but it was the other girl, instead.

“Do you want it over by the window, miss?” she asked, and there was that strange look in her eye again, as if she were secretly amused.

“Yes, please. Claire refused to be drawn into another round of self-inflicted martyrdom. Instead, she indicated the small desk set under the main window.

“Elizabeth von Armin,” the maid said.

“Sorry?” Claire blinked stupidly.

The maid nodded at the book in her hands. “The Enchanted April. It’s okay I suppose, but I preferred Vera.”

Claire’s face coloured. She had barely started this book and had not read the other. Immediately she felt unreasonably guilty for not doing so. The maid hesitated, as if waiting for an answer.

“Yes. Well. Thank you.” Claire indicated the door in what she hoped was a carefree dismissal. The maid’s face fell slightly, though her eyes never lost their hard gleam. She had her hand on the door knob when out of pure curiosity Claire asked, “And your name is?”

“Ailsa, miss.” She bobbed into a quick curtsy, that again felt too calculatingly perky not to be impertinent. Claire was unsure what to make of her. She turned her back, refusing to relax until she heard the door snap shut.

Lunch was cold mackerel and brown bread and butter, and a pot of strong tea. There was little she wanted to do after that than take a long walk around the forest and down into the glen.

Glen Fada was deep and narrow, necklaced by wide, barren bog land. Part way down the fir and rowan stopped in a tumble of landslips and knotted roots pointing skywards, and gorse and dogwood took over. It was a wild place, thriving with deer and rabbits. At the foot, a salmon river ran toward the Beauly Firth, and even the lazy, fat fish could not lure poachers in. It was an uneasy place to be, and the superstitious locals were deterred by the rumours surrounding it. People often got lost in the glen. There had always been stories of children swallowed by the bog, or stolen away by the Siths. When they were younger, Claire and Teddy had hunted high and low for the elusive fairies with no luck.

The greatest misfortune in living memory was actually Nessa’s. Her fiancé, a young man fresh from making his fortune out of Burma, had drowned while fishing in the Fada river. It had been a long, hot summer of parties, and the obligatory hunting and fishing. Claire’s father had been a boy at the time, but he remembered it clearly. Nessa had been inconsolable, her grief had shrouded her life for years to come. She refused point-blank to leave the house and return to London, not even for his funeral. No one could dissuade her, neither friends nor family. She had remained at Bog Fada ever since, alone, save for the few servants she retained.

Claire went to bed that night musing on the story, now a part of her family lore. Dinner had been another lonely affair, with Nessa too frail to leave her room and join her. A second tray had been sent up, this time hot mackerel with potatoes and neeps. Moira brought in the tray on this occasion. Ailsa was nowhere to be seen.

Claire read a bit, then prepared for bed. The bathroom was along the landing, near the stairs to the second floor where the servants slept. Bessie Smith singing Baby Wouldn’t You Please Come Home, drifted down to her. Someone up there had a gramophone player. She was tempted to follow the music, but hesitated. Upstairs was not for the likes of her. Nor was it any of her business what Nessa’s servants did after hours.

She returned to her room, tired after her journey and quickly fell into deep sleep.

The crying awoke her some time after two in the morning. At first she was unsure what had disturbed her, listening to the hiss of wind through the fir needles, she was about to give up and go back to sleep when it came again. A child’s sob, deep and heart rending.

Claire was unaware of any children in the house. She lay and waited to see if the child’s needs would be attended to. There was silence for a while, and then the cries came again, this time as a forlorn wailing. Fully awake, Claire pulled on her dressing gown, and stepped out onto the landing. The crying stopped. The weak night-light threw long shadows, and the skittering of moth wings against the tatty silk lampshade echoed her own shallow heartbeat. The landing was long, and though ill-lit she could see it was empty all way down to where it turned a corner. Claire tightened the belt on her robe, and nervously advanced. The crying took up again, closer this time, until she was certain the child stood just around the corner.

But there was no one there. The sob came again, farther up, pulling her onward. There was no lamp here. She reached for the wall switch but nothing happened. Her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, and up ahead she saw the soft glow of a small white nightdress and long blond hair. A little girl, no more than a five years old Claire guessed, stood sobbing in the middle of the corridor.

“Hello?” she called softly, so as not to alarm her. The child looked back at her with wet, but relieved eyes. Claire approached her carefully, aware of her distress. “Hello,” she repeated. “Why are you crying, are you lost?” She must belong to one of the servants, could Moira or Ailsa have a child?

“I can’t find Archie.” The little girl hiccuped.

“Who’s Archie? Is he your brother?” Claire asked. She was not three yards from the child, reaching out her hand. “What’s your name, little one?” The girl started, and swung her head around as if she had heard something. Then she turned and ran away so fast that she disappeared into the gloom in seconds.

“Wait,” Claire called, but she was gone. Perplexed, Claire could do nothing but make her way, shivering, back to her room. She paused by the foot of the servant stairs vaguely aware of music still playing despite the lateness of the hour. A cold draught whistled from an ill-fitting window and reminded her of her warm bed and she returned to her room, confused by the night’s events.

“There are no children in the house,” Cromarty informed her the next morning. “None.”

Claire fidgeted with her breakfast cutlery. “But—” There was no point in continuing the conversation. Cromarty squelched it with a frosty glare. She lifted the empty teapot and walked away.

Nessa kept no telephone in the house, so Claire walked down to the village to call her father from the phone box. The distance between them had softened him, he was kinder as they spoke. “How is the old girl?”

“She made me come all the way to Muir of Ord.” They both laughed. Nessa’s penny-pinching momentarily uniting them.

“Is she still wearing that ugly old pendant?” He harrumphed. “Abhorrent thing. I suppose it reminds her of whatshisname. Daft old trout, she should have got out of there years ago.” This was his usual opinion of Nessa and her indentured bereavement to her drowned lover. “Worth a fortune, you know. It’s been valued by Sotheby’s. Must be the size, certainly ain’t the aesthetics.”

“I saw a child,” Claire said, keeping him on the line a little longer. “A little girl. Last night. She was crying.”

“Crying?” His attention was fading fast. She had chosen the wrong subject to engage him.

“But Cromarty told me there were no－”

“Last child I remember up there was Cromarty’s own brat. Little ragtag of the thing.”

“A girl? About four or five years old?”

“Yes. Girl. Got to have been about that age.”

“And when was this?” Claire asked in genuine interest. She couldn’t imagine Cromarty as a doting mother.

“Lord, I must have been about ten. It was around the time of the drowning. God awful year.” He rang off soon after that, and Claire drifted back up the brae to the house, deep in thought.

She spent the afternoon in the library, after getting Moira to light a small fire. It was disgrace that the room was left so cold, it could hardly be good for the books. The real collection had been sold off years ago, much to her father’s disgust. At least Nessa had realised her frugal ways were inducing mould, and mice, and other book destroyers, and had swelled her coffers considerably rather than let the pages rot. All that remained were reference books, the Austens, Eliots, and Miltons long gone. At first Claire sat with her own book but found she could not settle. Soon, she was roaming the shelves, tea cup in hand looking for anything to catch her idle eye. Opuscula Mythologica Burma. It had to be worthless to be on the shelves, but still, the old tooled leather and gilt embossing on the spine proved irresistible. Claire pulled it off the shelf and was surprised to see a faded inscription to Nessa from a Major J.R.R. Wiley. This was the dead fiancé, at least she guessed it so, knowing he’d been a Cavalry officer before becoming a successful gem trader in Mandalay. So, the book was not worthless after all then, at least not to Nessa. Claire was ashamed to disregard the old woman’s tragedy so glibly.

The yellowed pages fell open where the back was cracked. Another reader had favoured these exact pages many, many times. The origin of ‘The Crocodile Eye’ lay before her. Claire realised she was reading the mythology around a particular pendant, which she had seen around Nessa’s neck practically every day of her life. The amber stone was one of the largest to be found in the Hukawng valley. A rare specimen, cognac in colour, it was ancient and laced with legend. Inside, fossilized in minute detail, was a small black spider. A Heart spider, so called because of the tapered shape of its body. No other example existed, this specimen was over one hundred million years old. At some point in prehistory this little poisonous arachnid had been encased in pine sap for all eternity. The stone was priceless for this entombed creature alone. The moniker Crocodile Eye came from the cognac colouration with its streak of black. Claire had often seen the stone up close as a child, for her the cold malice the gem exuded leant more to the name than anything else.

“It’s creepy ain’t it?” The voice made her jump. Ailsa looked over her shoulder at the pages. Claire made to shut the covers but stopped herself at the last moment. She couldn’t bare the smug look that slid over Ailsa’s face.

“How so?” she asked instead, watching as Ailsa gathered up the tea things.

“Read on.” She nodded at the book. “Read about the legends surrounding it. Nasty thing. I think the Burmese did well to be rid of it, though I suspect our bonny Major stole it.”

“What a thing to say.” Claire was surprised at this outspokenness. Ailsa was a curious creature, she most certainly didn’t behave like a maid. She nodded at the book again.

“Read. You’ll see what I mean.”

Claire hesitated. Ailsa set the tray back down and took the book out of her hands and read aloud. “The Heart spider is so called as it was believed to burrow into the heart organ of its prey to lay its eggs, the living organ thus becoming a nest. When the young hatched by the thousands, they ate away the surrounding tissue to swarm from the breast of their host.” Her voice was clipped and cool, and she did not hesitate over any of the words. She was intelligent and well-educated, but Claire already knew this. Ailsa flicked her a level look before continuing. “The Myanmar people believed the stone brought bad luck to those who touched it. Local legends state that the spirit of the Heart spider burrows into the heart of the owner and hatches out evil, offering anything the heart desires while slowly ingesting it until the owner dies an empty husk. Then another host must be found.”

“How horrid.” Claire frowned. She didn’t sense that Ailsa was deliberately trying to disgust her. If anything Ailsa’s face was as grim as hers.

“Imagine hanging that thing around your neck,” she said. “Imagine giving it as a gift to the one you loved. He’d been chasing her for years, did you know that?” Claire didn’t know. “Absolutely years. And then, when he gets her, he drowns.” Ailsa snapped the book shut. Claire jumped.

Ailsa looked directly at Claire, who had no clue what to say. Once again, Ailsa looked disappointed with her. She set the book aside and lifted the tea tray.

“Was that you playing Bessie Smith?” Claire asked, far too quickly, and she flushed.

“Yes. I have a gramophone. You’re welcome anytime you want to listen.” Her eyes were bright again, slick with something Claire couldn’t read. The pulse fluttered in her throat. Was Ailsa flirting with her? It was such an unusual thing for a maid to say to a houseguest, it couldn’t be entirely innocent, could it?

That night the crying started again. Claire’s sleep had been troubled, plagued by dreams of spiders, and children who looked like little voodoo dolls with amber eyes. She was on her feet immediately, reaching for her dressing gown, moving faster this time.

The girl was in the exact same place, sobbing dreadfully. “Are you looking for Archie, again?” Claire asked. She managed to get much closer this time. The child looked up at her, face filled with so much hope that Claire was determined to help her.

“He isn’t talking to me,” the child said, and looked to her left. There, in the gloom, Claire could just make out the shape of a boy. He was taller than the girl by about half a head, but still very young. And whereas the girl was in her nightgown, he wore grubby, ill-fitting clothes, like a village child.

“Archie?” Claire asked. Although he was small and non-threatening she felt curiously unsettled on seeing him. He emerged slowly from the shadows until she could make out his pale face and mop-top of dark hair. He had to be six, maybe seven years old. His arms were folded defensively across his thin chest, and his face was wet with tears, though he looked at her defiantly through his hurt. “Are you Archie?” she asked again.

He nodded glumly and slowly unwrapped his arms. Claire relaxed. She would find out who they belonged to and gently berate whichever servant allowed their children to roam the corridors this late at night. Cromarty was obviously lying to her, for whatever reason. Perhaps even covering for someone?

Archie outstretched his arms to her, imploring to be held as any small child might. Claire moved toward the hug, then stiffened, and her relief turned cold. The hands he reached out to her were bloodied stumps. Every finger and thumb had been severed off. Claire recoiled, and the boy opened his mouth, anger flooding his dirty little face, he squealed like an animal through the bloody cavern of his mouth. His tongue had also been removed. Claire made a noise, it was not a scream, she could not draw in enough air for that. It was a choking sound of horror and distaste; and the boy heard it and turned and fled.

Beside her the girl gave a wavering cry of grief and turned to Claire reaching for her like a babe to its mother. Claire saw that she, too, was missing half of her hands, severed across the palm, straight and clean, as if by a cleaver. She backed away from the child until her hip rattled against a table. The girl sobbed at the rejection, and ran after Archie, leaving Claire alone in the dark. Her chest ached with fright and cold sweat trickled between her breasts.

Claire stumbled back along the corridor to her room. On passing the servant stairs faint music drifted down from Ailsa’s room, and without stopping to think Claire ran up to her.

Ailsa had cheap dark rum. It was cloying but Claire gulped it down greedily.

“No fingers, you say?” Ailsa looked mystified. “Yuck.”

“The boy had no tongue.” Claire took another gulp. Heat hammered through her and her legs felt liquid. She had no hope in standing for the next few minutes.

“I haven’t been here that long, but I’ve heard the other servants talk about ghosts. Though Cromarty has been known to fire those who go on about it too much.”

“Why would she do that?”

“To stop idle talk becoming hard fact, I suppose. You know what small villages are like, full of gossip and rumours.”

Claire thought about this. “My father says Cromarty came here with her daughter when she first started.”

“Moira told me her girl disappeared years ago. They say she wandered into the bog. A wee fella went the same way a few years before. Every so often the bog snares one.” Ailsa shrugged the way one does in sharing the sympathy but not the experience.

“My ghosts were a boy and a girl.”

“There’s been more than two lost over the years.” Ailsa refilled her glass, and took a generous measure for herself. The gramophone hissed as the needle bumped across the last grooves. Ailsa reached over to reset it and Indiana Moon filled the little garret room. Ailsa kept it cosily cluttered with all the paraphernalia necessary for a young modern. There were plenty of clothes, shoes, and perfume bottles. It reminded Claire of her friends flats back in Soho above the bars where they could dance until the small hours. She wondered what Ailsa did on her days off. There had to be somewhere to go and dance, she decided, looking at a dainty pair of pearl-strap shoes.

“Nice shoes.” She gestured and rum sloshed down her front.

“Here.” A cloth was pressed against the spill. “Do you dance much?”

Claire nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her cheeks were flushed from the drink, and her earlier fright had unnerved her so much that she was far from sensible. She knew what the pressure on her breast was, and it was not to soak up the rum spill. She should never have come up here.

“With your girlfriends?” The question was insidious and knowing. The pressure on her breast was gently pushing her back on the bed until Ailsa lay over her. “Show me how you dance with your girlfriends.” Her hand slithered along Claire’s thighs up under her nightdress. Claire started upward but Ailsa kissed her, pressing her back down. She bruised Claire’s lips forcing them apart and pushing her rum soaked tongue in. “Show me what your fancy London girls do. This is what we do up here, but then we’re all rough Highlanders,” she murmured into her mouth. Her fingers roughly probed the folds of Claire’s sex. Blunt fingernails scratched at her labia. Claire squeezed her legs and eyes tight shut. The hand stilled.

“Look at me,” Ailsa said, her voice thick and smoky. Claire opened her eyes. Ailsa looked down at her, her gaze hot and sly. “Open your legs.”

Claire let her legs fall apart. Ailsa heaved off her to pull the nightdress all the way up to her waist. She examined her nakedness for several moments before declaring in a matter-of-fact voice, “You’ve a nice cunt. All trim and proper.” She held Claire’s gaze as she slid a finger into her as deep as it would go. “Tight, too.” She pulled her finger out and in slowly, always watching Claire’s face. When she swapped over to two, Claire gasped, and a small smile played on Ailsa’s lips. “If you were the mistress here…” she moved her fingers in and out at a steady pump, “…I’d have you serve me tea every afternoon…naked…and I’d pour the cream and sugar all over your tits…and lick it off.”

Claire’s face flamed. She grunted. Grunted like a small animal. She could hear the wet slap of Ailsa’s hand grinding against her. She spasmed when three fingers were roughly pushed into her, her cunt wet and eager to grab them.

“Tell me more.” Claire’s head fell back and she looked at the ceiling. “What if I were naughty?”

“I’d beat you. With the riding crops downstairs. Across your lovely, milky ass.” Ailsa slapped her hard across the bottom. The sting was so sharp and unexpected, and thoroughly delicious that she came, feeling the deep ache bloom into dampness on her thighs and seep across Ailsa’s palm. Ailsa disentangled her hand. “Of course,” she said, lightly. “You’d have to be mistress.” She raised her fingertips to her nose and inhaled.

It rained all the next day, trapping her in the house. She moved restlessly from room to room, edgy from the sex and her fright from last night, until she ended up back in the library.

“What do you know of the ghosts?” she asked Moira, out of the blue. She started as if Claire had poked with a sharp stick and sidled away. “Whatever’s the matter, Moira? You don’t believe in ghosts do you?” She laughed nervously, and saw from the ruddiness on Moira’s cheeks that she did. “Well? Tell me.” She knew she was bullying her, but she was bored and wanted to know.

“It’s the lost children, miss,” Moira said, sullenly. She lived in the village and would be well aware of the rumours Cromarty hoped to squash. “Since that twally got himself drowned there been seven bairns lost. They’re nere allowed near the glen no more.”

“Because of the bog?”

“Cos o’ something, miss.” Moira had scuttled close enough to the door to beat a quick retreat from any further questions.

Claire mulled over the curious answer, and looked to the shelf where the Opuscula Mythologica Burma was kept. It was not there. She frowned. Who would have taken it? Ailsa? Even thinking of her was enough to flush her thighs with warmth.

The empty slot on the shelf had been claimed by the lopsided tilt of a neighbouring book. Claire tilted her head to read the spine. It looked to be as old as the Opuscula, but a lot more battered. The title read, Diabolism Alba.

“Scottish witchcraft,” Claire roughly translated. With shaking hands she drew it down from the shelf. Remembering the broken spine on the Opuscula, she allowed the book to fall open where it would. It opened at a page entitled, ‘For the preservation of youth and beauty’. Another well-read passage, but what caught Claire’s attention was the faint, irregular staining of the pages. She moved to the window to examine the brown marks better, until she was satisfied they were blood.

With a chill in her heart she sat down and read the nasty little piece. It concerned the dismemberment of children, detailing the best morsels of young flesh that, when anointed at particular phases of the moon, would grant longevity to those who feasted. Tiny fingers and tongues. Claire’s stomach lurched. She took the book and left the library.

Ailsa was in the hallway with Cromarty. Her eyes narrowed as Claire approached, dropping to the book and back up at her. “Miss?” Ailsa said, and it came out as a question.

“Where is my aunt?” Claire asked Cromarty, ignoring Ailsa. She couldn’t chance any weakness now, sexual or otherwise.

“She’s resting.” The answer was short and snappish.

“I asked where she was, not what she was doing.” Claire’s voice had become hard-edged. Her jaw was set so firmly she could feel the ache in her face muscles. A shadow of disquiet flickered in Cromarty’s eyes. Ailsa didn’t say a word, but watched with a cunning that missed nothing.

“She’s in the morning room, if you must know.” Cromarty refused to be cowed, but Claire didn’t care. She was already moving toward the back of the house. “She’s sleeping,” Cromarty called after her. Claire ignored her.

Nessa wasn’t sleeping. She was bundled in her blankets by the fire, reading the Opuscula Mythologica Burma. The heavy amber pendant lay clutched in her withered, age-spotted hand, her awkward caress almost a convulsion. The book lay open at the Crocodile Eye section. How often had she read it, Claire wondered.

“Did you forget this?” Claire held up the Diabolism Alba. “What a waste. All that pain, and you’re old, and done, and dying, after all.”

Nessa’s face darkened. Her hard-as-flint eyes flashed nothing but hatred. “You’re the waste, you walking disappointment.”

Claire refused to be drawn. “What about Major Wiley? Did he really drown? Or is the answer in here somewhere?” She tapped the cracked leather cover.

“How should I know, you simpleton? It’s not my book.” This threw Claire, but she tried her best not to let it show. “Cromarty brought it with her.” Nessa’s face settled into a mask that Claire could only describe as undiluted evil. Cromarty had been her accomplice all these years. And her daughter, what about her own daughter? Claire was rigid with shock. Not that Nessa noticed, she was too caught up with her spite. “He got what he wished for— me. He had me, and then he died. It’s what the Eye does.”

She threw Claire a withering glance. “Did you really think I expected to live forever, stupid girl? I will live for as long as I want, and always be beautiful for my age.” This was said with the hubris of an ill-informed old woman. Had she bothered with the London set she had been so quick to turn her back on, she would have realised how far removed she was from the modern measure of beauty.

Claire itched to tell her, but Nessa did not pause in her overspill of bile. “Am I to be accountable to a deviant such as you? Why, you are an unnatural, impudent, slattern, foisted onto me because no one else wants you to be seen! You have shamed your family name. You are unfit for the society you were born into. You have—”

Claire had heard enough. She strode over and tore the priceless pendant out of Nessa’s hand. The chain broke away from the scrawny neck, scratching the flaps of loose skin. She refused to be left here to rot! She would sell the ugly thing, and run away to New York, or Paris, or wherever girls like her went.

Nessa cried out and struggled to rise from her chair. A corner of blanket slid from her knees into the fire and caught alight.

“No. No.” Nessa flapped at the flames blooming on her lap. Driven by layers of dust and dry woollen fibre the blankets blazed up, swaddling Nessa in a fiery cocoon. Claire stood transfixed by the burning ball in front her. Nessa’s screams brought Cromarty flying into the room with Ailsa at her heels. They halted in disbelief and bewilderment as to what to do. The screaming suddenly stopped, and Nessa, chair and all, toppled over and the carpet began to burn. Ailsa broke the horrified stupor that bound them by leaping forward and battering at the flames with a cushion. Cromarty quickly followed her lead and soon the flames died out.

What was left was repellent. Nessa’s entire torso had been severely burned, leaving her head and lower limbs intact. Her face was wretched; twisted into a grim rictus of unimaginable agony. Her chest cavity lay split open and seemed to stir with a thousand black specks that surged forward before dissipating into the air. All three women hastily stepped back, unnerved by the momentary slither of black.

“What was that?” Ailsa breathed. Her look ghoulish. “It looked like spiders. Tiny wee spiders. Thousands of them.”

“Soot,” Claire stated, her voice coming out stronger than she felt. “Only soot,” she repeated. “She was seated far too close to the fire.” There was a faint and deliberate accusation to her words. “There was nothing I could do.”

Cromarty stirred, the blame not missing her. She looked at Claire with shock, her eyes travelling down to the pendant that hung over Claire’s heart, then Cromarty paled and backed slowly out of the room.

“Inform the police,” Claire called after her, “and Dr. Graham,” she added as an afterthought. Her hand fell to the amber stone. She could not recall placing the pendant around her neck.

“We need to get out of here.” Ailsa flapped away the acrid smoke layered about them. “It stinks,” she said bluntly. She pulled open the French doors. They creaked as if they’d not been used for decades, and both women stepped out into the fresh air.

“I can copy her handwriting,” Ailsa announced. Claire looked at her, confused. “Down to a tee,” she explained further. Claire still could not follow her. Ailsa smiled. “A new will and testament by the morning.” She grinned. “Unless you don’t want to be mistress after all?” A faint flash of uncertainty crossed her face.

The amber in Claire’s hand grew warm and heavy. If she had the house to sell she could keep the Crocodile Eye for herself, and still afford to travel. Maybe even with a maid? Of course, it meant her father would miss out on his rightful inheritance. Claire smiled. “Yes. I should like to be mistress.”

In the early evening, a drizzly mist fell, and Claire walked to the head of the glen, glad to be free of the house and the endless questions from the professionals who managed sudden deaths such as Nessa’s. Ailsa, now her housekeeper, was setting the morning room to rights after the body had been removed. Cromarty had disappeared.

Claire moved out from under the fir trees and emerged at the top end of Bog Fada. From there she could skirt the brackish waters and reach the head of the glen safely. She hesitated squinting into the mist that was blending into an early, cloud-covered dusk. Had she seen movement out on the bog? She stood and waited. Perhaps a deer was heading homewards? The mist shifted and for one short moment she thought she saw Cromarty. She was trudging through the bog, out into the heart of it, her long dress raised away from the mud that was already sucking at her ankles, ready to claim more and more of her with each step. On either side of her, walking over the same mud, but lightly, with no bother at all, were two young children. A girl and a boy.