'So how do we break through the symbolism to get to what Laura really saw?' Church asked.
Shavi rubbed his chin uncomfortably. 'I would not like to try again so soon after this attempt. I think Laura… both of us… need time to recover. The mind is too sensitive.'
'Yeah, and it's the only one I've got.' With an expression of faint distaste, Laura rubbed her hands together as if wiping away the stain of the memory.
'At least we know Laura saw something… someone,' Shavi continued.
'So do you believe me now, musclehead?' With her sunglasses on, Church couldn't tell if she was talking to him or Veitch.
'I still think she could be making it up,' Witch said suspiciously. 'None of you know what's going on here, what her mind can do, what's real and what's not. She might have dreamed it up this way. Some kind of self-hypnosis, I don't know.' He turned to Laura. 'You didn't say anything about how you got the blood on you.'
'I remember that now. Whatever I saw turned my head upside down. I wandered into Ruth's room like some kind of mental patient and I just, sort of, touched the blood because I couldn't believe what I was seeing.'
'Fits together perfectly, don't it?' Veitch sneered.
As Laura bristled Church jumped in to prevent further confrontation. 'We can't stay here any longer with that cop driving around.' He glanced among the trees. 'Who knows what's in these woods anyway? We need to get to Edinburgh.'
'That cop will at least have put out the van's description and number,' Laura said. 'Face it, we're not going to get far in that.'
'Then we dump it, find another form of transport,' Church said. 'Time to use our initiative.'
Before they left, they took Ruth's finger and buried it in the leaf mould. It made them sick to leave it there, but there was nothing else for it. Then they took the A84 to Stirling where they found a dealer who took the van off their hands for two hundred pounds. It was an effort to lug their bags, camping equipment and remaining provisions to the station, but they didn't have long to wait to pick up a train to Edinburgh Waverley. There were only two carriages but apart from a trio of people at the far end of their carriage, the train was empty.
'I thought they would have shut the trains down by now,' Church said to the conductor as they boarded.
'Make the most of it,' he replied gruffly. 'The last service is tonight. Indefinite suspension of the entire network.' He shrugged. 'I still get kept on at full pay, at least for the moment. Not many people travelling anyways.'
They settled into their seats, lulled by the sun-heated, dusty interior, and once the train gently rocked out of the station they found themselves drifting off after their night without sleep. The journey to Edinburgh would be under an hour, but they had barely got out into open countryside when they were disturbed by the loud voices of two of their fellow travellers. It appeared to be a father and daughter conversing in a heated manner. His greying hair was slicked back in a manner popular during the war, and he had on an old-fashioned suit that seemed brand- new. A cracked briefcase was tucked under one arm. The daughter, who was in her early thirties, wore clothes that were smart, if unstylish. She was quite plain, with a complexion tempered by an outdoor life.
Drifting in and out of half-sleep, Church made out they had a farm somewhere outside Stirling which was experiencing financial problems and they were heading into Edinburgh to attempt to secure some kind of grant. But there was an edgy undercurrent to their talk which suggested some other issue was concerning them and they couldn't agree about how to deal with it.
Veitch shifted irritably in his seat and plumped up his jacket as a pillow. 'Just shut up,' he said under his breath as their voices rose again.
They all managed to get some sleep for the next ten minutes, but then they were jolted sharply awake by the farmer snarling, 'There's no bloody fairies in the fields! No bloody God either! It's not about luck! It's about those bastards in the Government, and in Europe!'
Church glanced around the edge of the seat ahead. The woman was pink with embarrassment at her father's outburst and trying to calm him with frantic hand movements. But there was something else concerning her too.
'What are you talking about, girl? Words can't hurt anyone! Who's listening?' The farmer's face was flushed with anger. 'This is what's important: the farm's going broke and we'll all be in the poorhouse by the end of summer if something's not done!'
His rage was born of desperation and tension bottled up for too long, and he probably would have carried on for several more minutes if the woman hadn't suddenly jumped to her feet and marched to the toilet.
The strained atmosphere ebbed over the next few minutes as Church drifted again. In that dreamy state, he found himself faced with an image of Ruth pleading with him for help in a scene disturbingly reminiscent of when the spirit of Marianne had begged him to avenge her death. His anxiety knotted: so much pressure being heaped on his shoulders, so much expectation he was afraid he couldn't live up to. And then he looked into Ruth's face and all the emotions he had tried to repress came rushing to the surface. He had tried to pretend she hadn't suffered, wasn't dead, but-
A piercing scream echoed through the carriage. All five of them jumped to their feet as one, ready for any threat, hearts pounding, bodies poised for fight or flight. The woman had returned from the toilets and was standing opposite her father, who had his back to them; her face was frozen in an expression of extreme shock.
Shavi was the first to her, grabbing her shoulders to calm her. She was shaking her head from side-to-side, oblivious to him, her eyes fixed so firmly on her father Shavi was forced to turn to follow her gaze. The old man was no longer there; or rather, his clothes and his briefcase were there, but his body had been replaced by straw; it tufted from the sleeves, dropped from the trouser legs to fill the shoes, and sprouted from his collar into a hideous parody of a human head, like an enormous corn dolly.
'Dad!' the woman croaked.
Veitch reached out to prod the shoulder curiously and the mannequin crumpled into a pile of clothes and a heap of straw. This set the woman off in another bout of screaming.
'What happened?' Laura asked with a horrible fascination.
While Shavi led the woman to the other end of the carriage where he attempted to calm her, Tom knelt down to examine the remains. 'You heard the things he was saying,' he said.
'I don't get it,' Laura replied. 'So he was a crotchety old git like you-'
'In the old days, the people who worked the land were terrified of saying anything which might offend the fairies, the nature spirits, whatever,' Tom snapped. 'They even had a host of euphemisms like the Little Folk or the Fair Folk in case the powers took offence at their name.'
'And now they're back…' Veitch began without continuing.
'They always were a prideful race,' Tom said. 'They demanded respect from all those they considered as lesser.'
'But all he said was…' Laura caught herself before she repeated the farmer's words. She glanced back at the sobbing daughter. 'Poor bitch. At least the old man will be able to keep the crows off the fields.'
'Oh, stop it!' Church said sharply. He looked at the broken expression on the daughter's face and read her future in an instant; he felt a deep pang of pity.
'It simply shows the contempt in which they hold us,' Tom noted. 'We need to be kept in our place.'
Veitch looked round suddenly. 'Wasn't there someone else in here?'
'That's right. There were three other passengers.' Church looked to the seats where the third traveller had been. 'I don't remember him getting up. No one got off.'
'That might have been one of them.' Tom hurried to the adjoining door to peer into the next carriage. It was empty. 'Now they are back, I presume they will be moving among us, seeing how things have changed.'
As if in answer to his words they heard a sudden scrabbling on the roof of the carriage, then a sound like laughter and footsteps disappearing to the far end. Veitch ran after it and pressed his face up close to the window in an attempt to peer behind, but all he saw was a large, oddly shaped shadow cast on the cutting. It separated from the train, rose up and, a second later, was gone.
Soon after, the train trundled slowly through the regimented green lawns and blooming flowers of Princes Street Gardens into Waverley Station, the volcanic ridge topped by the imposing stone bulk of Edinburgh Castle rising high above them. The daughter was bordering on hysteria by the time Shavi led her out on to the platform in search of a guard, who promptly took her off to the medical centre for treatment. There were few travellers around for such a large station, but that only made the small pockets of police more obvious; at the furthest reaches of the
