Yesterday’s Time

This is the second novel of suspense with Tess MacGregor.

Tess and her sister, Libby, visit Orkney, Scotland and become enmeshed in a one of the most unique murder mysteries that terrifies the small community and threatens the very essence of the island’s culture. Was it death in the standing stones or death becoming the standing stones?

Here are the first two chapters of Yesterday’s Time.

Chapter One

I had been sitting alone all day. There wasn’t much for me to do on a beach in Orkney, Scotland, except watch and think. I was now bored from enduring my long, complex thoughts. Libby, my younger sister, seemed to be tired of hearing them as well. She had escaped my worries by bobbing up and down like a blond ball in the vast ocean.

The beach stretched out forever. The walk I took on the warm, coarse sand seemed endless. The kind of endless that belonged on the fringes of time. I liked to hang on the fringes. It was a comfortable place to be with no demands. I had made the past my profession as well, teaching for the last two years at the University of Virginia’s Archeology Department. I enjoyed being a professor in a quiet department that only attracted bookworms and geeks. It was a safe, comfortable existence; perfect for my wary soul.

Libby, being the opposite of me, chose to be a cop. Facing danger head-on was her life’s pursuit. She wanted nothing to do with the fringes of anything.

She was enjoying hitting each wave that came to her. As they say in Scotland, she loved the “now.” Being pummeled about by the North Sea didn’t give her a second thought. I watched her carefully and then sat down to look at his unwanted and thoroughly creepy e-mail one more time.

Psycho Louis had sent a message a few weeks before. It was not a threatening email, as emails go, but anything from him made your pulse quicken. I reread his message, then putting my laptop down I wondered why an ability would always feel more like a disability to me. I was reintroduced to Louis, the psycho, because I was psychic. Funny that both words had to do with the soul, as neither were spiritual in my book. He had stabbed my sister and long ago kidnapped me, scaring us both so badly that we were now on our first vacation together as adults. Libby had suggested that we leave the country, and get as far away from Charlottesville, Virginia as one could reasonably get and still speak English. I didn’t argue with her this time; Louis was still on the loose.

Everyone has various perceptions available to them. Some only dream in black and white, while others have high definition and a whole 64 crayon selection of colors to fill in their view of reality. My world had all of the crayons plus an added feature that I was not able to delete, the thoughts and unspoken intentions of those around me. Actually, I could read thoughts from far away, but that was something that only my close family, the FBI, psycho Louis, and until recently, a few detectives in the Charlottesville Police Department, knew.

The so-called brand new science of psychometry, reading the memories on objects, really a very old spiritual practice, was the next label given to my photo in the government’s file. Nice to know that you are filed in alphabetical order somewhere with all of the appropriate boxes checked. But they had omitted one box, can talk to animals, nope, no one, not even the FBI would buy that one. Should have had a box though.

So here I sat, with the wind swirling uncontrollably around me, while my beach neighbors gave no notice to what I thought was a threatening situation. Libby seemed fiercely happy fighting with the ocean. I could feel the joy radiating from a most primitive part of her being. White water smacked her hard in the chest. The ice cold waves crashed loudly on the rocky shore as the birds piercing cries danced with the untamed ocean. I looked to see if anyone else on the beach was worried about the swimmers being tossed about in the rough sea. Nope, no one gave a damn. That is what I enjoyed most about the Scots, after many centuries of British rule, they knew when to not give a damn; I was learning this also.

We were comfortably settled in our self-catering cottage. The Orkney Isles, an archipelago  north of mainland Scotland, were home to several civilizations that left their mark on the scattered bits of land. The Vikings had claimed them as their own at one time, but I felt that Orkney had always belonged to the Picts. They were the mysterious, woad-painted people, whose legend stood in antiquity as strong as the standing stones that they carved with their hidden messages. Not one of their symbols had ever really been deciphered. Their meaning had only been guessed at by some not-so-knowledgeable, trendy, New Age types, whose hodgepodge philosophies spouted out blended beliefs of old and new. None of it made much sense to me. I had spent too many years in countless libraries and museums, researching history and the philosophies of man, to take it seriously.

Here in the prehistoric splendor of Orkney, I enjoyed being with the stones and feeling their strength and age. So while the quiet stones stood as witnesses to the beliefs of an ancient world, I was soon to face the truth of the present.

Chapter Two

Lost to the exactness of a razor’s edge was Richard’s creative desire to carve beautiful pictures on her breasts. The picture seemed come alive as the blood appeared in his mind to gently wash over the tiny spirals. The spirals circled the dark areolas and grew larger the further out that they went. Her blood was not flowing now. The breath had left the empty shell, and all that remained had no vivid colors left. Those would come later, as the bruising would show in a few hours from now. She would be a prop for the next group of stones or perhaps, a neolithic site; maybe the new one, the Tomb of the Eagles, or an old favorite, Mine Howe. Outside, the wind howled and the waves rocked in time to an ancient rhythm. Richard pulsed with the sacred flow. He felt that he had no time to spare, as well as having all the time in the world. His time ebbed and then rushed in with the ghosts of the past.

Richard’s senses came alive when what he was touching was  lifeless. The intensity of feeling her made the center of his skull glow with warmth. The warmth spilled out and down his arms, making each capillary that it crossed dilate to deal with the rushing blood flow. Lost to the ecstasy of the moment, his pleasure took him to his private world of the dead. “Never shall I leave you!” He called out to his ancestors as his body shuddered one last time. The lack of sensation soon brought him back to the unemotional present. He withdrew from her cold shell and washed his hands in an old, lime-stained basin.

The black house, a three-roomed stone cottage, lay mostly in ruins, except for the kitchen area and the middle section that was a bedroom and sitting room of sorts. A well-worn sofa was placed next to the sooty fireplace; nappy sheepskin rugs were scattered about the cold stone floor. The honey-colored rocks, moist with ocean air, were raw and unyielding. They defined the room as they were the chunks of the cliff that the cottage clung to. No one cared for the remnants of the place since the last crofter left, over 150 years earlier. It was a secluded pile of forgotten scree, hidden in brambles, beaten up by the ocean’s winds and claimed by Richard as his very own.

He turned his attention back to the woman. She had long, dark brown hair. Her nose was fairly straight and she was average in height and weight. She had been his nondescript neighbor. Her equally dull family, at least that was how he saw them, was soon to have a good cry after seeing the condition of their wayward daughter. Heaving breasts and their lone wolf cries would pierce the summer sun nights with the thought of her mutilated body. Having her carved like an Iron Age Pict would be no consolation for them. Richard believed that he was giving her a place in history, something that would turn her inconsequential life energy into an impressive end. It was a grander death than her meager existence would have accomplished alone. She would have just have been another fat hen on a nest; raising a brood of boorish, slovenly chicks that in turn would breed and create more foul stench on his island. He had saved her.

Twilight hung on the roof top, finally slipping into the swell of the dark ground. The summer sun did not set until near midnight. It was a long day with a short-lived night that glimmered with light in varying degrees. His private time with her would soon end. The dawn’s golden radiance shimmered and filtered the earth’s colors until they blended into a harmonious scheme. The soft light shone through Richard’s bare window now. It illuminated his handiwork and gave an unholy glow to her skin. There was absolutely nothing better for him than being next to her. He stroked her belly and sighed deeply. Nothing would ever touch that place in his heart; no one would ever fill that void in his longing as death could. His nostrils flared as he breathed in her smell. This is what drove him to create his great masterpiece - a Pictish warrior woman. Richard’s longings gave birth to great works of art. He was certain that his ancestors would wake up. He would be with them again, with their words of praise and his halo of genius intact. The past spoke to him in charming tones, beguiling to his rotten core. He was certain that these creations would be loved forever as he would be loved forever. It was all about forever for him; forever to live, forever to die, it was all the same to him.

Richard brought himself out of his reverie and took the small knife, circling her belly, making sure to have the spirals trail downwards, dancing towards her pubic bone. The knife easily cut each line as he contemplated the next design. An infinite amount of time floated around him. He took the blade, and with a steady hand, skillfully cut his most intricate patterns. He happily hid himself within the designs. The swirls poked their way back and forth, up and down, on her cold skin. Richard’s stomach grumbled with hunger but was ignored. He was lost in the spiral’s pathway as it became a connected canvas. This, he decided, would look like the main lintel at Maes Howe. His ability to duplicate the design was uncanny. He believed that a hand from long ago guided him. The world was a vast array of connections for him. One thing would touch and influence another. This is what the spirals showed him; the cycles of life were everlasting, one flowing into the next. His essence flowed on that stream.

Summer’s dusky dawn would be daylight soon. He pondered where to take her. He spiraled down to her left ankle just as a rat ran across one of the mangy sheepskin rugs. The rat stopped abruptly and looked back at Richard. The rodent’s nose twitched as he smelled meat. He wondered if it would be shared. Richard’s look fell heavy on the vermin's head. The rat realized the futility of his desire and vanished with lightning speed into a crack in the stones.

Richard took the handle of the replica of the stone age tool and twirled it in his palm. He had not used that blade yet, but the thought to christen it with her was tantalizing. A local craftsman had made the blade many years ago and now they were being  sold by a local potter in Harray. His store sold many reproduction flint knives to the tourists that ventured down the single track road, so who could tell whose knife made these marks he mused. The knife had been made in the same tradition of those from five thousand years ago. The blade honed sharp, its chisel marks gleaming on the grayish-black edge. He loved the antler handle as it fit perfectly into his palm. While holding the knife it became part of his body.

Richard took her right foot and propped up the bottom of her sole to cut a rune. The Viking rune stood for protection, an elk symbol. He was now quite satisfied that his blade had been used properly for its virgin cut. He reached up and got a wall hanging made of soft, felted wool down off a chipped peg and wrapped her in it. Then easily picking her up and throwing her over his shoulder, Richard carried her out to the barn. There was just one last preparation before her debut. An old oak table that was too valuable to throw away, stood in the middle of the grimy-walled barn. He placed her on his version of an altar and reached for the day old, mold-caked bucket of lime. Contemplating that cutting off her hair would add a new level of horror for her parents was an added thrill. They would have to look even more closely at her to recognize who she was; they would have to look through what she had become, what he had made her.

The body fit nicely on the table top, Richard thought as he unwrapped it and then pulled her long hair out from around her head. The sheep shears were cold and heavy in his hand. He took her head in one hand and began to cut. The long tresses fell on the dirt floor. Richard methodically sectioned of her scalp and cut each section in its turn. He hummed a lament while he played with his toy. Her hair was soon only two inches in length. He took the bucket of lime and coated sections of her hair, grabbing about a square inch each time. It took a bit of effort to twirl each piece of it into twisted tubes, covered in globs of lime, but the effect was stunning. Richard believed that this is what a Pictish warrior would have looked like as they readied themselves for battle; naked, limed hair and covered in woad. Lastly was the application of the dull-blue woad. Meticulously, each cut was covered in a lavender scented potion of the darkest blue woad. Richard used his favorite sable brush and savored the design as it came alive. Done, he rolled her back into the decrepit felt tapestry and loaded her in the trunk of his small car. Her body just barely fit. Richard watched the sun begin to take ownership of the sky again, as he snaked his way along the coast road to the Tomb of the Eagles. This was his latest gift to his line and it was the most creative design that he had ever done. This was his first human offering.

At present, the Orkney Archeological Society felt that rabbits were the scourge of historical sites. None of them had anticipated what damage would be done by clumsy constables becoming unhinged by their own horror upon seeing the latest resident at the Tomb of the Eagles. Nervous men with black, heavy boots, stumbling on 5,000 year old stones would do much more wreckage than a few bunnies scurrying around searching out mouthfuls of grass. This was still to be discovered though.

The trail that Richard chose was not the official one that was easily traversed by the tourists; instead, he cut through the cow field and made his way to the remains of the Bronze Age home. The midden pile, an ancient stack of garbage, was still present. It was on the western side of the site. His first impulse was to put her there, with the garbage. But providence made him choose another. He placed her body, resting it on a stone slab bed that remained from thousands of years ago. There were fewer steps to that spot; fewer marks to explain. His Pict was now home.

The golden sun lit the fields of Orkney, a new morning took hold of the land.