Stranger in the Woods: A tense psychological thriller Page 11

  My heart racing, I wrenched the water off.

  The battering knock came again.

  Grabbing a towel, I dried off quickly and then threw a track suit on. I felt a tiny bit less vulnerable now that I wasn’t naked. For a moment, that stupid story that Hamish had told me about the scarecrows coming knocking raced through my head. It was crazy how the dark and isolation made things like that seem like they could almost be real.

  I made the decision not to answer. I’d stay here, in the bathroom, until the person left.

  Another insistent knock had my teeth on edge.

  They weren’t going to go away. What if it was the police? The knock had been loud, the same way police tended to knock on doors.

  “Isla? Isla? Are you in there?” A woman’s voice rang out. A young woman. It couldn’t be Nora Keenan.

  Whoever was out there, she knew who I was. Still, I was wary as I headed to the door.

  I cracked the door open. A girl stood there, cold and shivering, pale hair tangled around her shoulders. I didn’t recognise her at first. But then I realised she was Aubrey Chandlish.

  “Hope you don’t mind. I just needed some company,” she said.

  “Oh. Oh, of course.” I drew a long, silent breath. “Are you alone?”

  “Yes. All alone. I was with Simon, out walking in the woods, but I’m not now.”

  I waved her inside. “Come in and get warm.”

  Giving me a faltering smile, she entered the cottage, planting herself next to the heater and rubbing her hands against the warmth. She glanced back at me as I closed the door. Even with a blotchy face, she was beautiful. She had porcelain skin and huge eyes and perfectly arched eyebrows. The glow of the nearby lamp highlighted tear stains on her upper cheeks.

  “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?” I went to put the kettle on.

  She threw up her arms. “Simon. He’s what’s wrong.”

  “That’s your boyfriend, right?”

  “Yeah. Well, he was. Maybe not after tonight. I’ve had a gutful of him. He’s such a nice guy but then he starts drinking and he says the meanest things to me.”

  “Hope this isn’t rude, but why are you still with him?” I had my mother’s habit of being blunt.

  “Oh, after each time he always says he’s going through a rough patch and he’s sorry. Trouble is, his life seems to be one never-ending bad patch.”

  “Will he be out there looking for you right now?”

  She shrugged. “I think he’s too drunk to care.”

  “Feel like a cup of tea?”

  “I’d go for a coffee, if you have it.”

  “Yep, there’s coffee here.” With the water boiled, I made the hot drinks and sat down on the sofa with her. “Sounds like you need to make some decisions.”

  A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows and she eyed me steadily. “See, this is what I need. A voice of reason. My girlfriends tell me that’s just what men are like. I keep telling Simon that he’s hurting my feelings, but he just keeps on.”

  I shook my head. “My mum always tells me that if you have to draw a line because of someone’s bad behaviour, then draw the line around them, not yourself. That means that it’s up to the other person to improve and you shouldn’t restrict yourself because of their behaviour.”

  “My mum says just to pick a man before I’m thirty and stick with him. As long as he fits a list of certain criteria. She says they’ve all got problems and us women just have to see it through.” She shrugged glumly. “What about you, Isla? Are you seeing anyone?”

  “No, no time for that.” It seemed that almost everyone I’d met so far had asked me that same question. It must be a small-town thing.

  “Sounds like you have a super-busy life.”

  As soon as she spoke the words, I knew that it wasn’t true. I didn’t have to work as much as I did. I did have time for someone special. But I just…hadn’t bothered. It’d been years since I’d dated anyone.

  “Would you like a piece of banana cake?” I asked her, changing the subject. “It’s from the bakery.”

  “Thanks, but I should be getting back.” She puffed up her cheeks and exhaled. “Hey, would you walk with me? I’d rather not go alone.”

  She caught me unprepared with that question.

  “I don’t—” I started saying.

  “I’ll drive you back here,” she pleaded. “Please come with me. I have a stupid fear of the dark. I’ve had it since I was a kid. I hate the tattie bogles, and I have to pass them to get to my house. It’s way too long a walk if I go around the road.”

  “They do look kind of freaky.”

  “They’re so freaky. So, you’ll come with me?”

  The last thing I wanted was to go marching through the Scottish countryside at night, especially with someone I didn’t know. But she hadn’t left me with any room to say no. “Oh, sure,” I told her, trying not to sound as reluctant as I felt.

  She broke into a grin. “Yay. You’re a superstar. You’d best dry your hair first. You’ll catch your death like that out on the moors.”

  I ran my hands through the wet ends of my hair. “I was in the shower when you knocked.”

  “I must have given you a fright.” She inclined her head, shooting me a quizzical look. “You’ll stay for a while, won’t you? Everyone’s there.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “My brothers—Peyton and Diarmid. And a couple of friends. Simon, too, if he’s made his way back there by now, that is.”

  “Really, no, I won’t stay.”

  “C’mon,” she pleaded. “You can’t spend all your time here stuck in the cottage. Or hanging out with a boring old married couple. And I need you with me so I can feel a bit bolder when I have to talk to Simon again. You’re the only one with any sense. Anyway, if you’re walking all the way over there, you might as well stay for a wee bit.”

  I bit my lip, giving her a nod. “Just for a few minutes.”

  Dashing to the bathroom, I towel-dried my hair and blow dried it. I applied a small amount of makeup—enough not to look washed out—and changed into jeans, boots and a thick jacket.

  Aubrey grinned at me. “Let’s go!”

  The air had a savage bite to it as we stepped out into the dark and started walking along the tree line.

  “You know the way in the dark?” I asked her nervously.

  “Of course. Don’t worry, you goose.”

  This was probably the first time in my life anyone had called me a goose. I’d thought that it was something only grandmothers called their husbands. Come on in out of the rain before you catch your death, you silly goose! But here I was, with the glamorous Aubrey, in a deep, dark Scottish forest, being called a goose.

  “You should come out with us one night while you’re here,” said Aubrey. “There’s some great nightclubs in Inverness.”

  “I didn’t bring any clothes with me for that kind of thing.”

  “Oh, I can loan you some clothes. Hey, you can be like my sister or something while you’re here. I don’t have any sisters, just brothers. Well, I have Bridget—I’ve known her forever so she’s like a sister—but she’s a drunk. That’s both the best and worst thing about her.”

  She started telling me about Bridget’s drunken escapades. I was grateful she seemed to have forgotten about the nightclubs of Inverness. I was also grateful for her prattling. It filled in some of the empty, pitch-dark space.

  But Aubrey fell silent after a while. I grew increasingly anxious. I didn’t walk around the dark spaces at night back in Sydney—I stayed well away from alleys and behind buildings and kept to the busy, brightly-lit areas.

  The forest seemed too high and too absent of light. I worried that Aubrey would change her mind about driving me back to the cottage, and I’d have to walk back alone. But I’d said that I’d do this and now there was no turning back. I tried to keep my mind blank and just keep walking.

  Up ahead, a set of inhumanly tall people stood motionless on a hill. The sc
arecrows.

  Aubrey linked her arm with mine. “I don’t know why we have to keep these things here. None of us grow crops anymore.”

  “They’re scary in the dark.”

  “I know, right? Ugh.”

  We turned a ninety-degree angle from the scarecrows onto a wide path through the forest.

  Finally, after twenty minutes or more on the path, the Chandlish house came into view. I would have liked it to be lit up like Christmas, but just the odd window here and there displayed a yellowish glow.

  “They’ll all be in the cellar,” Aubrey said. “That’s where the booze is.”

  Into the cellar with a set of strangers, I thought, cold threads of uncertainty running down my spine. No, I reminded myself, they are only strange to me. The McGregors and Keenans and Chandlishes had known each other for generations. The families were distantly related. They were safe. I was safe.

  I followed Aubrey into the house, instant warmth closing around me. The walls were covered in a velvety, misty-green wallpaper, the doorways and staircase framed with chunky white-painted wood. Lots of family photographs, paintings and sculptures. Comfortable furniture. A lot more homely than Alban’s house.

  “C’mon,” Aubrey said, unwrapping her thick woollen scarf. She took me through to a hallway, which ended in a set of steep, narrow stairs that led down. Music with a deep bass beat punched the air, growing in intensity as we reached the bottom.

  Four people—three men and a woman—lounged in the plush armchairs, drinking wine and beer. The cellar was a large open space with a dark patterned wallpaper and grey carpet. A bar stood at one end, fully decked out with glass shelves of spirits.

  Two enormous dogs lay at the feet of the people—greyish, shaggy animals with the longest legs I’d ever seen on a dog.

  “The doggies are Mitzy and Boomer,” Aubrey told me. “They’re Scottish deerhounds. Big babies, they are.”

  “Simon’s looking for you!” the redhaired woman announced to Aubrey.

  Aubrey scowled. “He’s being a right jerk. Anyway, I swapped him for someone much better. This is Isla Wilson. You’ve already seen her about, but you didn’t meet properly. She’s a photographer who’s staying at Braithnoch.” She gestured towards the woman. “This is Bridget. She’s a travel agent. When she can be bothered to work, that is. It’s her mother’s agency.”

  Bridget gave me a slow, cheesy smile. “That’s not true—about me not working. I go and check out holiday locations a lot. All damned year ’round.” She had a bored tone to her voice, as if she’d seen every possible holiday location the world had to offer, a few times over.

  “And this funny little person in the leather vest over there is my big brother, Diarmid,” said Aubrey. “He sings bad karaoke at pubs and was working as a ski instructor in Val Thorens, France—until two of his students broke their legs in the same week.”

  Diarmid raised his glass to me, then rolled his eyes at Aubrey. “You seemed to have missed the last decade of my life in that summary, dear sister.”

  “Did I?” she said playfully. “Oh well. Those were the standout items from your life. And this,” she turned to gesture at a tall guy sprawled in an armchair, “is my other big brother, Peyton. He does something or other at one of the companies our parents’ own. What is it you do, again, Pey?”

  Jumping up and coming to shake my hand, he gave a laugh. “I’m the general manager at Chandlish Industries. Basically, I’m a gopher for the CEOs—which are our parents.” He had engaging eyes and much darker hair than his siblings.

  I returned the laugh. “Happy to meet you, Peyton.”

  Aubrey pointed to the man standing against the bar. “And that shady-looking character is a friend of mine, Trent. He’s Australian, like you.”

  My heart sinking, I realised he was the odd guy from the pub that Greer had taken me to.

  Trent lifted his glass in the air. “We meet again.”

  Aubrey frowned. “Oh, that’s right. You already intro’d yourself to Isla.”

  “Hello,” I said to Trent.

  I couldn’t help but notice that his eyes weren’t smiling, despite the grin he wore.

  Bridget sighed loudly, dropping her head back over the side of her armchair as if the introduction exchanges were boring her. “Anyhoo. Have a drink and put your feet up, Isla. Good to see another girl around here. All this testosterone is getting a bit…smelly.”

  “It’s good old-fashioned sweat, woman,” said Diarmid. “Not that you’d know anything about that. I didn’t see you out there getting the wood ready for the fire.”

  Bridget held up a hand and brushed Diarmid’s words away. “I spent four years at university because I have the brains to do more than chop wood.”

  Diarmid made an exaggerated yawn. “What’s the point of the degree? It’s all for show. The men you went to uni with will end up working for their Daddy’s company. And the women will fan about competing at equestrian events and doing busywork in vanity business ventures, before they marry a rich clod and produce a heir and a spare.”

  Bridget put down her beer and clapped slowly. “That’s harsh.”

  “And you’re drunk,” said Diarmid.

  Nodding, Bridget took another slurp of her beer. “You call a spade a spade. And a drunk a drunk. I like that.”

  Walking across the room, Aubrey gave Diarmid a playful shove. “Had to have a dig about show jumping, didn’t you, Diarmid?”

  “To be fair, Diarmid had a dig at himself first,” Trent remarked, still standing at the bar. “He knows he’ll end up working for Daddy, too.”

  Peyton held up his drink to Diarmid. “But he’s avoided that duty so far. A toast to you, brother, you magnificent bastard.”

  “A toast to Diarmid,” Aubrey said, raising an imaginary glass.

  Peyton glanced across at me. “Look at wee Isla over there. We’ve got her thinking we’re a bunch of toffy brats.”

  “I’m not. Really,” I protested.

  “You’re just too polite to tell the truth,” said Diarmid. “We actually are toffy brats.”

  “I was never any good at show jumping,” said Bridget in a sad voice.

  “That was random,” commented Diarmid.

  “No, it wasn’t.” Bridget shrugged. “I just can’t keep up with your conversation. I’m lagging.”

  Diarmid raised his eyebrows. “Never mind, how about you practice your show jumping on me later?”

  Bridget shot Diarmid a terse glance. “You’ve been asking me that for the last ten years. The answer’s still no.”

  “Anyway,” said Aubrey, “will someone throw Isla and me some beers or something?”

  “I’m not drinking,” I said quickly.

  “Okay,” said Aubrey in a disappointed tone. “Something non-alcoholic for Isla.”

  Peyton put a small glass bottle of cola in my hand and handed Aubrey a beer.

  A blonde man lumbered into the room. He was obviously drunk or on drugs, his eyes heavy and roaming. I recognised him as being Aubrey’s boyfriend, Simon.

  “Why’d you run off on me, Aubrey?” he said.

  Aubrey looked immediately defensive, her shoulders drawing inward, fingers clutching her beer. “Because I have better things to do than listen to you put me down. I’ve had enough.”

  Peyton stood. “Touch my sister and you’ll have me to deal with. And Diarmid.”

  “You’ve always had my back, Pey.” She eyed her boyfriend from beneath a deep frown. “We’ll go talk in Daddy’s office. No one else wants to hear our blather.”

  “Let me know if you need me, Aubbie.” Peyton cast a glare in Simon’s direction.

  Bridget seemed oblivious to Aubrey’s distress. Humming, she poured herself another drink. The next minute, she began reminiscing about her string of failed love affairs.

  Now that Aubrey had gone, I had no way of getting home. Unless I walked through the forest on my own. I didn’t know any of these people well enough to ask them for a lift. And they all seemed p
retty inebriated. Worse, Trent hadn’t stopped staring in my direction.

  Anxiously, I looked about for something to distract myself with. I rose and stepped across to the various paintings and photographs on the walls.

  The paintings looked expensive, yet here they were adorning the walls of a basement. There was one of a sunset over somewhere called the Cairngorms. It was gorgeous.

  “How are you liking Scotland, Isla?” came a male voice behind me. “Hope it hasn’t been all work and no play for you.”

  I wheeled around to find Trent directly behind me. I hadn’t even heard him walking up to me. His voice sounded almost mocking.

  What did this person have against me? I decided to answer as if I hadn’t noticed the tone in his voice. “It’s been fun. So far. A bit hard to come straight from an Australian summer to these temperatures though.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “What part of Australia are you from?”

  “Darwin. Crocodile country.”

  “Oh, you’re at the opposite end of the country to me. I’m a Sydneysider. I’ve been meaning to visit the top end, but I keep putting it off. I guess I’m not much of a traveller.”

  “Yet, you’re here,” he said. “You’d have to be pretty determined to travel to the Scottish Highlands in winter.”

  “Had to shake the cobwebs loose sooner or later.”

  His expression seemed to darken. “You can drop the act, you know.”

  I stared back at him, searching his face. “What act?”

  “Are you honestly going to say you don’t know me?”

  “So, you really think I know you? Sorry, if I’ve ever come across you somewhere, I don’t remember.”

  “What is it with girls like you? You think it’s fine to just ghost a guy and act like you never knew him.”

  “This is getting weird real fast, Trent. Think I’ll go find Aubrey and see if she can take me home.”

  Did I really want to go back to the cottage now? Trent was actually a bit scary and the thought of being alone in the cottage now made a chill creep along the back of my legs.

  Peyton approached, a questioning expression on his face. “What’s going on here?”