The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

But I hae dream’d a dreary dream

Beyond the isle o’ Skye,

I saw a dead man win a fight

And I thought that man was I.

It had been a Percy who gave Douglas his mortal wound at Otterburn, which made the old ballad special to him.

He burrowed deeper into his bed.

It was steep, but that wasn’t why he was afraid. He couldn’t stop, he would have to follow the path out to the end. He knew the waves were close; he could hear them even if he couldn’t see them. The sun was shining, why was it so dark? He had to stop. If he went on—

At the corner of his eyes he saw something moving, but when he turned that way it was gone. Then on the other side, something thin and beckoning, but looked at directly, it also vanished. It was so dark now the sun seemed a pale and diminished wafer, only a little brighter than the surrounding miasma.

And always his mind screamed to halt, but his feet kept finding their way down.

Percy woke to a bright morning, bright enough for him to shake off the mood of the dream with scarcely a thought. What could he expect, going to sleep with that stanza running through his head?

While he dressed he looked out the bedroom window. There were still mists here and there, but vanishing in the benign fury of the sun.

He breakfasted with gusto; by the time he finished his eggs and bacon and broiled tomatoes and scones the room was empty except for Angus Donnan sitting over at the table by the wall doing his accounts. Percy had been waiting for this moment.

Folding his napkin neatly, he rose from the table and walked over.

Angus looked up. “Yes, Mr. Percy?”

“I want to know about the Bealach a’ du Mairbh,” he said quietly.

Angus glanced about the room, then gestured to the other chair. Finally. “I’m glad you asked. I’ve been telling myself you deserved to know, but I didn’t know how to start.” He stared down at the table for a moment. “You wouldn’t say I was a superstitious man, would you?”

“No,” said Harry.

“And neither are the rest of us. We think about Value Added Tax and the price of beef and mutton, not about seal-maidens or glaistigs or the Nuckelavee—you know about the Nuckelavee?”

Percy grinned. “Enough to know I don’t want to hear a description of it so soon after breakfast.”

Angus grinned fleetingly in return. “You know about the Nuckelavee. Anyway, we leave such things to the summer ladies from the mainland, with their tartans and their folklore societies. You’re interested in the old things too, but not the same way; you’re tactful, even though you’re a sasunnach. So I want you to know everyone takes the Pass of the Dead seriously.”

“What’s down there?”

“Nobody knows.”

“But how can that be?”

“Nobody goes down there, or rather the few who did never came back.”

“You’re joking!”

“I’m not, Harry Percy. It’s been called Bealach a’ du Mairbh as far back as there is memory. Two brothers—MacNeils they were—went down some years after Culloden and were never seen again. A young lad daft for gathering birds’ eggs thought he’d try early in Victoria’s reign. An incomer like yourself—a man named Johnson—went down right after the Hitler War, 1947. And after that there was the slide and no one has tried it since.”

“Aren’t there explanations, stories about the place?”

“To be sure, but moonshine, made-up stories. It’s a mystery.”

“Not even anything about why it’s named the Pass of the Dead?”

“Nothing. But I believe it’s well-named. It’s not a canny place, and you’d do well to avoid it.”

“Thank you for warning me,” Percy said.

“You’ll not be going down there?”

“I’ll consider what you’ve said.”

“Mr. Percy,” Angus Donnan said, “you know I’m a saving man, though not a grasping man, but I swear I wouldn’t start down that cleft for a thousand pounds. That’s how seriously I take it.”

“Then I have to take it seriously too.”

Harry was going to take it seriously. Though not the way Donnan meant. Obviously the Pass of the Dead was more dangerous to climbers than it looked, had been even before the slide.

Percy checked his equipment in his room and when he left the Black Bull, inside his jacket he had a 150-foot- coil of nylon rope slung over his shoulder, and his mac draped over one arm to hide his climbing pack.

To his right Ben Skraig brightened. By the time Percy reached the headland that concealed Bealach a’ du Mairbh, the quilting of purple-brown heather, pale green grass and dark green bracken was shining under a cloudless sky, and he had to recant his earlier doubts; on a day as clear as this North Uist was not only visible, but seemed nearer than it was, except for the dark blue miles of the Minch between. A perfect day for rock climbing.

Despite his eagerness, he took his time descending the cleft on the chance that he might see something he’d missed in the rain and dimness last time. And just before the cleft opened out, protected by the overhang, and even on such a bright day, half-hidden in the shadows, he found and sketched an incised spiral design. When he reached the stone at the bend of the trail below he stopped to sketch the “cup and ring” carving.

At the break in the trail he advanced cautiously, uncertain of the edge’s solidity. The descent didn’t look bad: no overhangs and the traverse back onto the trail at the bottom wouldn’t be far. About sixty feet down, but he measured it with the rope to be sure. It should be a smooth climb back; from here he could see at least one safe route.

There were no trees to anchor the rope, and the only rock was too sharp, so Percy drove three pitons into the rock and connected them with slings. Seat harness with brake-bar secured, belt, sling with carabiners and pitons, holstered hammer, pack, gloves. Enough equipment for an American, but then he was climbing alone. He left his mac folded beside the anchors, put the rope through the slings, snapped it into his brake bar and around his hand, and backed off the edge.

His last sight of his mac folded so small and lonely there gave Percy a wry twinge; if he never came up Angus Donnan would be telling solemnly how all they ever found of the sasunnach who went down Bealach a’ du Mairbh was his coat and the pitons.

The face was clean, with no loose rock or overhangs, but not too smooth; there should be no difficulty climbing back. Johnson or whatever his name had been might have been inexperienced. Though what about the three before the slide? But it was a steep trail.

The sun was still bright on the rock; as he started the traverse to the trail he could see every pebble and boulder of the scree below.

When he arrived the rope was his first thought; he barely glanced down the continuation of the trail before he started pulling one end of the doubled rope, and coiling it as it dragged out. One thing at a time. The free end dropped past, and he finished coiling it and put it over his shoulder. No bad frays.

When he was done, he had a good look; the trail was narrow and tortuous, but that only made it interesting.

After the first steps he came to a stop. Nothing had changed; the sun still shone, the waves of the Minch were still rich blue, but Percy found himself trembling, half-paralyzed with terror. Once before, when exploring the earthworks of a causewayed camp, he had felt this same objectless dread, but nothing had happened. He went numbly on. He was palpable, as if the air had thickened till he had to force his way through—or was it as if he were being pulled in?

It was hard to think, the edges of things wavered before his eyes. That boulder that seemed to crouch, that bleached and twisted log? But how could there be driftwood so far above the surf?