And then the path began.
It was dirt and gravel and broke off from the road, heading to the right. Thomas stepped onto its surface and then felt a chill go through him.
Why did you buy it?
Because I had to.
He looked up and shivered. He would have liked to have blamed it on the weather. Unfortunately, there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Even if there had been, that wouldn't have been what unsettled him.
It was that he'd been to this place before.
It was as if some strange permutation of déjà vu had overcome him. He found himself powerless to keep from walking up the road. As he walked, the feeling increased until he wasn't sure any longer what century he was in or how many times he'd walked along the same path.
And then he rounded the little copse of trees and found himself facing his castle. For a moment he could see it with perfect clarity—
As it must have been centuries ago.
The outer walls were intact, the drawbridge down, the road hard-packed and well used. The trees were gone, and the rest of the surrounding countryside stripped of all vegetation. That made sense. No enemy would sneak up unnoticed with only that pitiful bit of foliage to hide behind. He could hear faint noises of hammer on anvil, men shouting, horses neighing.
Then he blinked, and the vision was gone. Trees surrounded the castle, ones that "had certainly sprung up in the past couple hundred years. The castle walls were crumbling, and no drawbridge protected the keep from invaders. A stone bridge spanned what had perhaps been a moat in times past but was now nothing but a filled-in ditch.
Thomas made his way along the path until he was staring at the gatehouse. It was in good shape, along with the walls, if you could overlook the missing masonry. The gatehouse still stood firm, and the four corners of the outer walls still boasted guard towers. Thomas walked over the stone bridge that spanned the distance from a grassy expanse to the gatehouse itself. The enormity of his task began to sink in. He was no mason. Even with his unwavering belief in his ability to tackle anything, he had to concede that perhaps this was beyond him. Never mind his lack of knowledge of stone-working. The repairs would take months just by themselves. He'd have to hire help.
He walked under the gatehouse and looked up at the portcullis hanging above him. He was almost certain he saw spikes in the shadows, but when he blinked, they were gone.
It was really starting to drive him crazy. He wished that if true madness was going to overtake him, that it would do it in a rush instead of in annoying bits and pieces.
He shrugged aside his visions, then walked out of the gatehouse and back out into the open—
And back again, seemingly, into medieval England.
He froze at the sight that greeted him. Men milled about the inner bailey. One or two were dressed in rough peasant garb, but the majority were obviously Scots going about their business in their plaids either with mighty swords hanging at their sides or strapped to their backs. He looked quickly at the keep itself, expecting to see it functional as well.
It was, oddly enough, a wreck.
The hall had no roof, nor a front door for that matter. He realized absently that it would take him years, not months to put the hall to rights and that, too, would take a mason's skills. But that wasn't the worst of it. There were men milling about in his inner bailey—men who looked like they belonged quite firmly in the past.
Yet here they were in the present.
And that led him to believe quite firmly that they were anything but mortal.
"Hell," he said with feeling.
All right. So the castle needed a lot of work. So he was likely going to be harassed by a preservation society for the duration of his stay in England. Those he could handle. But ghosts? In his bailey?
Somehow, he just knew he shouldn't have been surprised.
The men seemed to be ignoring him, so he took the opportunity to stare at them. They argued, laughed, and talked loudly about things he couldn't divine. He supposed they spoke in Gaelic. Well, that was something he should look into learning. Best to know what his castle mates were saying about him if he could.
He looked around the bailey, trying to see past the paranormal activity within his view. To his left were two guard towers on the outer wall. One was so perfectly preserved, it was startling—and unsettling. Just looking at it gave him the creeps. No, he would not be spending any length of time there until he knew its history. He suspected that once he knew what sorts of things had been done inside those circular walls, he'd be even less likely to visit it.
He looked at the far corner tower. It was much larger than any of the others, and it was crumbling in a few places. Maybe that would be a good place to start work. The stones looked sound. Maybe all it would take was some carpentry work to make it habitable.
To his right, the inner bailey stretched for some distance, based on what he could see from the walls and guard towers there. He suspected that in the past, such a space might have housed stables, a smithy, or other workaday buildings. A wall now separated him from that part of the castle, a wall taller than he, but there was an arched wooden gate there.
He turned away from it. That could be explored later. He wanted to see the inside of the great hall and examine the damage time had wrought.
He stepped inside the doorway and jumped in spite of himself. The place was packed with Scotsmen, even more numerous than the group he'd seen outside. There was no
