Fire on the Island (7 page)
Glasgow,
Scotland, UK
Milton
District
October 31,
1991
Isla sat in her
favorite chair by the window of the one-bedroom shack she shared with her
mother, and stared out at the rain pelting the dirty window. The old chair had
three and a half legs—the half-leg was propped up with a stack of books—and was
upholstered with dodgy plaid fabric, but it was the most comfortable thing in
the building.
A mother and
her son hurried past on the street below, huddled under a big umbrella, and
Isla half-heartedly wished she could go with them. Feeling much older than her eight
years, Isla knew she would never have a mother like the one on the street. One
who cared about her child and wanted to see him safe and warm inside. Her
mother did the best she could, the drink having stolen half her mind and all
her beauty, but Isla longed for a normal family. One with a mum and a da and a
nice house without the stink of alcohol, cigarette smoke, and bitterness in the
air.
Eileen MacAllen
had led a hard life. Her husband had left her when Isla was just two years old.
Eileen blamed it on the psychotic ravings of her now-dead mother, when Isla
felt sure it was probably the booze and the anger that had driven him away. She
would probably never understand why her mother was so angry at the world, so
the best she could do was stay out of her way.
Isla wished she
could be out guising like the rest of the kids her age would be on Halloween,
but she'd never been allowed to go. And the children certainly didn't come to
their neighborhood to beg for candy. Absently, she reached under her black, curly
hair and rubbed at a sore spot on the back of her neck. Her neck had been
aching lately, probably because of the lumpy bed and flat pillow she slept on,
and today it had kicked up a notch.
"Something
wrong with your neck, girl?" Eileen barked from the old couch.
Isla knew
better than to complain in her mother's presence. "No, ma'am. Sure I just
slept on it wrong."
Eileen rose and
walked over to Isla, batting the girl's hands away, ignoring her protests.
"Let's 'ave a look, then." Surprisingly gently, Eileen lifted Isla's
hair off her neck. With a gasp, she dropped it again and backed away.
Hearing
Eileen's sharp intake of breath, Isla turned to face her. "What is it,
Mum?"
Her mother's
eyes grew shuttered, her face strangely expressionless. "Nothing to worry
over, it's just a bit red. We'll put a salve on it before you go to bed."
Eileen said and hurried out of the room. Isla caught the image of Eileen
crossing herself in the wall mirror but thought she must be mistaken. Eileen
had lost her faith years ago.
Curious about
her mother's reaction to her sore neck, she went to retrieve a hand mirror off
the dingy bathroom sink. Turning away from the mirror above the sink, she
angled the smaller mirror so she could see the back of her head in the
reflection. Lifting her hair up with her other hand, Isla inspected the back of
her neck, expecting to find a rash or a cut. She froze in disbelief, stunned
and confused by what she saw. A mark had appeared on the skin of her neck,
about two inches in diameter, so clearly defined that it could have been a
tattoo—only it wasn't. The edges of it were raised as if it had been scored
into her skin.
The image that
appeared was three concentric circles, nested inside one another, with three
slashes across them, one at twelve o'clock, one at four, and one at eight, like
they formed the points of an invisible triangle. Inside the smallest circle was
a primitive-looking glyph that resembled an eye. Isla was at a loss to explain
the appearance of the strange brand or why her mother hadn't told her about it.
She knew she was out of time to figure it out when Eileen called her to the
kitchen area for the evening meal.
Eileen placed a
bowl of lukewarm oatmeal on the kitchen table in front of Isla—her idea of
supper. "Eat this and run along to bed."
"Yes,
Mum," she said, and forced down a spoonful of the thick slop. The sooner
she ate it, the sooner Eileen would leave her alone to puzzle over the bizarre
turn of events. Isla finished the oatmeal as quickly as she could stomach it
and took her dirty bowl to the sink.
"G'night,
Mum," she said, and placed a quick kiss on her mother's sallow cheek. She
merely nodded, and Isla noticed that Eileen wouldn't meet her gaze. As Isla
walked down the small hallway to the single bedroom, her eyelids began to droop
and her mouth felt fuzzy. Feeling unaccountably sleepy after a lazy Saturday at
home, Isla hastened into the tiny room. When she reached the foot of her
trundle bed, the room spun madly, and she collapsed face down on the lumpy
mattress.
Isla was driven
awake from a groggy stupor as a white hot flash of pain lanced across her neck.
She tried to sit up, but there was a dead weight atop her, pinning her to the
bed. Her face was turned to the side and pressed against the pillow, but she
recognized her mother's leg at her side, and she thought she heard sobbing
through the heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Pain radiated
from the center of her neck, and Isla instantly became fully aware of what was
happening. Eileen was straddling her back, holding her down, and carving at her
neck with what Isla could only assume was a kitchen knife.
"Mama,
NO!" The plea came out as a keening wail as Isla tried to wrestle away.
"Shh, be
still," Eileen whispered through her sobs. "Ye've got the devil in
you, child. He left his mark on you, plain as day. I've just got to get it out.
Then you'll be alright. We'll be alright," she said as she continued to
dig the knife into Isla's tender skin.
Screeching
incoherently, Isla drew on adrenaline and a well of strength she didn't know
she had, and surged her little body upwards, dislodging Eileen from her back.
As Eileen tumbled to the opposite side of the bed, Isla slapped a hand over the
bleeding wound on her neck and tore out of the room.
Isla skidded
into the kitchen on her stockinged feet, hearing a thump and a muffled curse
from the bedroom, and she knew Eileen would be coming after her again. Looking
around frantically for any kind of weapon to stave off another attack, she
picked up a chipped coffee mug from the counter. When Eileen appeared in the
doorway, Isla hurled the mug at her, but in her drunken state, Eileen had
listed to the right so the mug merely glanced off her shoulder and shattered on
the floor.
Eileen's eyes
widened madly and her face contorted into a mask of dark rage. "You little
bitch!" she screamed. "You're the devil's own daughter! I tried to
save you. I tried to be a good mother to you, but he's
in
you! Don't you
see?"
Isla began to
slowly back away from the crazed woman, inch by agonizing inch, while Eileen
laughed ferociously. It had finally happened—Eileen had lost what few marbles
she had left, and now Isla's main concern was getting out of that house.
As Isla
continued her torturous exit, Eileen began pacing and mumbling to herself.
"He seduced me. I should have known he wasn't my Charlie. He was too
beautiful. Too....perfect. By the time I did, it was too late. Can never tell
Charlie, never tell. He wouldn't understand."
Still backing
away, Isla gasped as her back connected with a door frame hard enough to rattle
the few pictures on the wall. Eileen stopped dead in her tracks, her gaze
snapping back to Isla's face. As if they were stuck in a suspended moment in
time, neither of them moved. Breaking out of her trance, Isla whirled into the
living room and lunged for the front door. The moment she reached it, Eileen
was behind her, yanking her back by the hair, knife still in hand.
Eileen forced
Isla down onto her knees with a hard push to her shoulder. With her hand still
in Isla's hair, Eileen jerked her head back to a punishing angle and held up
the knife with the other.
"I'm
sorry, my girl. But I see now that the evil has already taken you over. I can't
allow his child to survive."
Isla's eyes
rolled and strained, trying to follow the direction of the knife. Before she
could even scream a protest, the knife swiped across her throat and Eileen
dropped her only child like a bag of dirty wash.
When Isla came
to, she was sprawled in front of the door where Eileen had left her. Isla's
hand went immediately to her throat and came away wet and sticky. Taking a
testing breath and swallow, she realized that not only was she alive, but her
throat still worked relatively normally. It seemed that during Eileen's manic
rage, she had pulled Isla's neck back so far that the knife had made a very
shallow wound, leaving a vicious cut but no mortal damage.
Hearing Eileen
smashing plates in the kitchen and screaming, Isla realized that she had to get
out before her mother noticed that she was still alive. She quietly reached up,
opened the door, and crawled out onto the sagging porch on her hands and knees.
She had made her way to the front walk when police cars came flying down the
block and skidded to a halt in front of their house.
Disoriented and
dizzy from the steadily bleeding wound, Isla idly wondered if one of the
neighbors had heard the commotion and called the police. She heard more sirens
as an ambulance pulled to a stop behind the police cars. Strong hands lifted
her up and carried her to the back of the ambulance, where she was laid out on
a gurney. A medical technician bandaged her neck, checked her vitals, and
started an IV.
Isla couldn't
see them removing her mother from the house, but she could hear Eileen's
enraged screams and deranged mutterings as she was led to one of the squad
cars. She was dimly aware of a pair of officers talking outside the ambulance.
She couldn't hear much, but words like "committed" and
"orphanage" drifted into the vehicle. Knowing her life had just taken
a turn for the worse, Isla gave in to exhaustion and blood loss and drifted off
into a fitful sleep.
~~~
Jeremiah was
awakened by the entire cabin faintly shuddering. It happened so quickly that he
thought it must have been a low-flying plane going by. He sat up and began
unwrapping his ankle, removing the wet towel so he could check it out. It was
bruised and a bit sore, but it wasn't nearly as bad as it had appeared last
night, and at least it wasn't broken.
Wiggling it
experimentally, he was relieved when he got sharp discomfort rather than
nauseating pain. He levered himself up off the couch and tried putting some
weight on it. It didn't feel good by any means, but he thought he would be able
to walk with a limp.
Looking around
the cabin, Jere observed the small kitchen with vintage appliances, the quaint
living room with the hodgepodge furniture, the cast iron wood burning stove in
the space between the two. The little house was charming, and it suited Isla
perfectly.
Feeling the
rumbling again, this time longer and powerful enough to rattle the windows,
Jeremiah grew concerned. He hobbled down the small hallway and poked his head
into the first door he saw. Bathroom. He turned and opened the door on the
opposite side.
There he saw
Isla, a tiny lump under the quilt on the king-sized bed, tossing and turning as
if locked in the grip of a nightmare. The bed frame beneath her shivered and
creaked, causing the rumbling noise. Not sure what to make of it, Jeremiah
approached the bedside and sat down on the edge.
When she didn't
wake up, he put his hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. He had to duck
when she came up swinging, a gut-wrenching shriek tore from her throat.
Jeremiah had to use both hands to pin her arms to her side, keeping her from
taking off his head.
"Isla,"
he said, giving her another quick shake. He watched as she turned unfocused
eyes to him and touched her throat. He'd never noticed it before, but she had a
thin, jagged scar there. She shook her head, and her gaze slowly became sharper
and the tension in her body eased slightly.
Jeremiah pulled
her into his arms
rubbing
his
hands up and down her back. "It's okay." She relaxed into his embrace
just a little more.
Isla drew in a
shuddering breath and pulled back to look up at him. "Sorry to wake you."
"Don't
worry about it. At least I was able to walk in here." She smiled at that.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Probably
not," she answered. "Definitely not before coffee. She hopped off the
bed and shuffled into the kitchen, presumably to brew said coffee. Jere
remained where he was, staring at the bed, and wondered what kind of power it
took to shake a whole house in your sleep. It appeared to Jeremiah that if Isla
was indeed
Bruixi
, she had no idea, and that could be very dangerous for
her.
When he joined
her in the kitchen a few minutes later, she had pulled out two cast iron
skillets, a package of bacon, and a carton of eggs. "Care for some
breakfast?"
"Sure,
I'll help."
She handed him
a mixing bowl and he began cracking eggs into it. "You know, for being a
Scot, you sure do have a lot of American habits. Coffee, hearty American
breakfast”—he looked pointedly at the bag of shredded cheddar she pulled from
the fridge—“cheese in your eggs."