The man with his head in his hands gave a short and sarcastic laugh. ‘Given our situation, Lachlan, I don’t really think that there’s much that’s going to “help”, is there?’
‘David,’ said Kaylinn, evenly. ‘We agreed. No downers, right? We gotta stay positive.’
I would have felt a lot better about her statement had her final words not been lost to a gulp that was clearly the precursor to tears.
David harrumphed and went back to staring at the table from between his fingers. Edgy man, who must be Mal, dug around in the pockets of an ancient and torn hoodie and brought out a pack of throat sweets. ‘Sugar,’ he said. ‘It won’t help but it will give your mouth something to do other than scream.’ He handed me a wrapped morsel. I stared at it as if I’d never seen a lozengebefore. ‘You tell her, Lachlan. I’m prepared to do the Heimlich manoeuvre if she inhales.’
‘Okay,’ said muddy-jacketed Lachlan. ‘Okay. Now, this is going to be hard to believe…’
David harrumphed again. ‘Understatement of the year,’ he said sullenly to the candle.
‘Look,’ I said as firmly as I could manage. ‘I don’t need to know. I just want to get out of here and go about my business. Whatever it is that you’re doing, it’s nothing to do with me.’
Mal, whose cultivated ‘edgy’ look was rather spoiled by a cherubic round face and intelligent eyes, snorted. ‘I don’t think you get a choice.’ He ran a hand through his hair, which stood up as though he’d recently been very, very startled. ‘Go on, Lachlan, give her the really unbelievable bit.’
‘We seem to still be in Dunaire Castle but…’ Lachlan took a deep breath. ‘I know how daft this sounds and I’m sorry, but – the castle is as it was in the eighteenth century.’ There was a silence into which I unwrapped the throat sweet.
‘Well?’ asked Mal, clearly eager for some response from me. I sucked the sweet. I had obviously either fallen in among a bunch of deluded crackheads, or they were up to nefarious doings and needed to confuse the hell out of me so that I’d be glad to get out of here. I’d seenScooby Doo,I knew how this went. If they evenletme get out of here, of course. Maybe they were going to kill me to stop me revealing their presence? Perhaps this throat sweet was really poison?
It tasted all right so I crunched it. It had been wrapped, after all.
‘Okay,’ I said eventually when I’d swallowed it and when the concentrated stares were beginning to get a bit much. ‘But I need to get out of here. My brother is up there in the castle and he will be looking for me.’ He wouldn’t, of course, not yet, but it was the only way I could think of to let them know that therewas someone else on the site who would be concerned about my disappearance. ‘He will call the police if he can’t find me,’ I added, in case they were thinking,One man? What can he do against all of us?
Mal sighed loudly and his previously perky hair flopped. Kaylinn patted my arm and Lachlan began to stride around the table. ‘You’re not understanding,’ he said, with a touch of impatience.
‘Hardly surprisingly,’ David said, still slumped. ‘Come on, Lach, we still haven’t got our heads around things, we can’t expect this poor lady to go, “Oh yes, all right, you’re all clearly such a sane and sorted bunch that of course I’m going to believe that we’ve all fallen through time.” Can we?’
‘I suppose not.’ As he stomped around a bit more, I could see that Lachlan was wearing muddy trousers beneath his jacket, and huge boots. Everyone else was in T-shirts and hoodies and trainers. It looked as though their morning run had been interrupted. ‘It’s just such a mad situation, it’s hard to knowwhatto say.’
‘You could show her?’ Kaylinn was still patting me soothingly as though I were a nervous pony. Her eyes were sympathetic but slightly too reddened to give me confidence. ‘It’s the only way. Remember thatwedidn’t really understand until we tried to go out there.’
‘We shouldn’t.’ David spoke from between his hands. He was eitherverydepressed or that table was utterly fascinating. ‘We agreed not to go out there more than we have to. Something might happen. We need to sit tight and wait to go back.’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Mal. ‘Mind you, I am getting a bit tired of sitting in here. I don’t suppose we could wait for return outside in the daylight, could we? I’ve got my vitamin D levels to consider here.’
‘We’ll think about that in a bit,’ Lachlan said reasonably, and then to me, ‘Mal is studying early Scottish history. He doesn’t get out much.’
‘You’re the one who said we should stay here,’ Mal muttered, mutinous. ‘Iwantto get out. I promise not to murder your grandfather.’ Everyone stared at him. ‘Well, notyourgrandfather, but somebody’s. If you tread on a butterfly you could end up not existing, or did you not read any speculative fiction while you were studying that PhD, Lachlan?’
‘Yes, well.’ I’d finished the last of the sweet and the burning power of menthol was stinging the backs of my eyes.Practical,I thought as the fumes numbed my nose.I need to be practical.‘I need to get out of here, so if you could show me the way out, I’d be grateful. Oh, and if you’re the missing archaeologists then you ought to let people know you’re here. The police think you went off the cliff in a storm and your families will be grieving.’
A look went around the table and Kaylinn burst into tears again. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ David raised his head and eyeballed me. ‘You’ve upset her.’ His voice didn’t sound altogether steady either.
‘She’supset!’ I burst out. ‘I’m in a cellar with a bunch of archaeologists playing hide-and-seek!’ I took a deep breath and tried to be rational. ‘I need to get out of here.’
‘You have to show her, Lachlan.’ Kaylinn sniffed, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry. It’s just… Mom and Dad will be thinking I’m…’ and she started crying again.
Lachlan, who seemed somehow to be in charge, although his air of leadership was rather spoiled by his equal air of muddy despondency, shrugged. ‘I suppose,’ he said. ‘Come on, then.’ He began walking across what I was going to have to term a room, although it was definitely a cellar with pretensions, stopping when I didn’t follow him. ‘Well?’
‘No, look, hang on…’ I didn’t want to be alone with a madman.
‘They’re right,’ Lachlan said and, despite the fact that I couldn’t see his face clearly in this guttering candlelight, Iknewhe was looking grim. ‘You have to see.’ There was a portentous hollow sound to his words, almost as though he was trying to talk sense into himself rather than me.
‘It’s okay.’ Kaylinn gave me a little push off the stool. ‘It takes time to believe it, y’know?’
‘I don’t want to believe anything that he might be about to show me,’ I said, desperately. ‘I only want to be allowed to go back to Lennox.’
‘Your brother?’ Lachlan’s voice was gruff. He’d got all the way across the room now and was almost invisible in the shadows.
