“Trust her, lad. She’ll know exactly what to do.” Zulu felt a cool kiss on his forehead and stared at the woman, her feet a good twenty inches off the floor to reach him. It made him laugh and she gave him a wink.
“You must know Mama Irene,” he smiled. “You remind me of her.”
“I met the woman many years ago when she was here visiting Conor’s father. She knew who I was and didn’t blink. We became good friends that week. She was my kind of woman, like your Gabrielle. Survivors. That’s what we are.”
Maggie passed through the walls as if it were just another Tuesday. Conor and Sean chuckled, shaking their heads.
“This is like being back home,” smirked Rory. “I like your Aunt Maggie. I wish I’d known her when she was alive.”
“Same,” said Conor. “I heard stories of her but didn’t know her personally, obviously.” Joseph nodded at them, standing to leave the room.
“Let’s go find the girls and see what they’re up to.”
***
“Unbelievable,” she said shaking her head. “This Hungarian, whether a priest or not, turned this man in to a mass murderer. It makes me wonder what will happen to him when he figures it out. When he discovers that what he did was never going to help him.”
“There’s nothing in here that will help us,” said Rose. “We’ve read these diaries over and over again. Most seemed to stay away from him. When people disappeared around the castle, it looks as though the Laughlin’s would attempt to send out warnings once again but they weren’t heeded, or they were heeded too late.”
“Do you remember when Archie and the others were released?” asked Julia. Gabi nodded, frowning at her. “It took them a while to remember how they’d died. They didn’t remember what happened to them. It was days, even weeks before they figured it all out.”
“What are you saying?” asked Rose.
“I’m saying that maybe he doesn’t remember his death and that’s why he’s still hanging around. Maybe, he only remembers the quest that he was on but not suffering in his final days and actually dying.”
“Well, that’s definitely something for Joseph and Eagle Feather to tell him,” said Gabi.
“Hey, how did we miss this?” said Julia pushing the journal toward Rose. “How could we have missed that story?”
“We missed that book,” said Rose. “Where did you get it?”
“It was right here on the table when I walked in. I thought it was one that we’d looked at before.”
“I brought it in,” said Michael coming through the wall. “It’s been hidden in the attic for many years but I think there are things in there that you need to see.”
“Michael, we could have used this days ago,” said Julia.
“I know but I made a promise once that I wouldn’t show anyone this journal. I see now that I was wrong to do so. I’m sorry.”
“What does it say?” asked Gabi.
August 1737
The morning Ian left the harbor, the sea looked harmless enough, all silver light and slow-breathing tide, but the older fishermen had warned that calm water could be the worst sort of liar.
He had gone out alone before dawn, chasing a shoal that had been moving farther from the usual grounds every week, and by the time the sun rose pale through the mist, he had already lost sight of the church steeple that usually told him where home was.
At first he blamed the fog. Then he blamed the current, and after that he blamed himself, though blame did nothing to turn the boat. The wind had shifted without his noticing. His little vessel seemed to slide sideways instead of forward, nudged by an unseen hand.
By midmorning, the water had grown strangely dark beneath him, and out of that darkness the black shape of the cliffs emerged, jagged and wet, with gulls wheeling above them as if circling something dead.
Ian knew those cliffs. Everyone in the village did. The caves cut into their base were spoken of the way people speak of graves or old crimes: never directly, and never after sunset.
Children were told the sea there was hungry. Men said boats that went too near had their oars snapped by waves that came from nowhere. Women lowered their voices and said the caves were haunted by the spirits of those murdered long ago under the rule of a chieftain so cruel that even his own warriors feared to say his name.
According to the rumor, the chieftain had used the caves as a hidden prison and a place of execution. Rivals, debtors, travelers, and anyone who crossed his temper were taken into the rock and never seen again. But Ian knew that it was more than that.
Storms would cover the noise, the old people said. The tide would wash away the blood. But the dead had not gone quietly, and because they had been denied burial, prayer, and even their names, their spirits had stayed where their bones were left.
