Ah, but this had been one of those nights.
Strachan had no sooner got settled in, made some coffee, opened a book to the first page of a science fiction thriller, when the phone rang—a break-in at the museum at Newtonmore. A three-mile drive along the Spey road, an hour spent examining a broken window and recording statements, and three miles back again. But before he could enter the details in the book, another call-out to the Aviemore Holiday Centre, where a guest was drunk and wrecking the hotel bar!
Ten miles each way this time, and Strachan righteously annoyed and fully prepared to arrest the man—except he was sleeping it off when he arrived, and the manager of the hotel wouldn’t put him to the trouble. Besides, he was sure he could recoup his damages in the morning. Er, but in the event there should be any problem … well, maybe the constable would like to make a note of the breakages now, while he was here?—And that had taken another hour. But at least Strachan was given a wee dram on the house, just the one, to warm him up a bit.
Which should have been ample for one “quiet” night in the vale of the Badenoch. But no, the phone was ringing when Strachan got back to Kingussie: a traffic accident at a bad bend on the Coylumbridge road. Damn it to hell, but he’d only been a mile or two from the site up at Aviemore! If he’d known, he could have gone out onto the road and waited for it to happen! Except that was a bit of Irish, and he was a Scot, and a policeman’s lot is not a happy one.
But it wasn’t all that bad. Two cars had glanced off each other. One of the drivers, a young woman, had scraped her knees and shaken herself up a bit when she’d run off the road and hit a tree. Strachan had dabbed her pretty knees with an antiseptic swab (no, not bad at all!) and as always when there was an accident, he’d taken along a brandy flask. So he’d given the drivers a tot each, and one for himself, then let the male driver of the other car go off while he and the young lady sat in his police vehicle and waited for the tow-truck. She was a pretty wee thing; far better than sitting there with some grumbly old codger.
By the time he’d set off again to drive back to Kingussie it had been something after eleven-twenty, and a cold mist coming up off the Spey to shroud a full moon hanging low over the valley. Which was when it happened …
Level with the wildlife park, suddenly there was someone on the road! A man with a torch (thank God, else the constable might easily have hit him), wreathed in mist, desperately waving Strachan down. It was old Andrew Bishop, the owner of the site and keeper of the park. His eyes were wild and fearful as Strachan pulled off the road and drew to a halt on the verge.
And as he got out of the police car, Bishop was on him in a frenzy. “Is it Gavin Strachan?” he panted, as he glanced back over his shoulder at the misted park outbuildings and wire-mesh enclosures. “Gavin, lad! Thank goodness ye’re up and aboot!”
“Eh? What’s up?”
“Up? My God, up? I’ll tell ye what’s up. Somethin’s in wi’ the animals!”
Strachan caught at Andrew’s arms, tried to hold him still. “Where are the boys?” (Old Bishop’s sons.)
“No back frae the dance in Dalwhinnie. And Liz is locked in the bedroom, at the hoose.”
“Locked in? Yere wife?”
“Ah locked her in mahsel’! Have ye no a weapon, Gavin?”
“A weapon? Now Andrew, what would Ah be doing wi’ a weapon?”
Bishop was fairly dancing in his anxiety. “Ah have a shotgun in the hoose,” he cried, “but Ah’m out o’ shells. Oh, hell! Oh, damnation!”
Now Strachan held him tighter still. “Andrew, now come to yere senses, man! What on earth’s wrong wi’ ye? Somethin’s in wi’ the animals, ye said.”
“Aye, Ah did,” the other wrenched himself loose. “And more than one somethin’, Ah fancy! Mah deer are oot and runnin’ wild frae whatever it’s that tore its way in tae the pens!”
“Come on,” Strachan said, making for the track to the outbuildings, barns and pens. “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” But old man Bishop at once dragged on his arm.
“What? And will ye go in there wi’oot a gun?”
Which stopped Strachan in his tracks. The quaver in Bishop’s voice, where the constable never before heard a tremor in all his life. The fact that he’d locked his wife safely away in a bedroom—but safe from what? And in that same moment, Gavin Strachan knew there was something terrible here …
Then, distracting him, even unnerving him, there came the furious, frenzied squawking of terrified chickens.
“Mah hens!” Bishop gasped. “They’re in wi’ mah poor chickens!”
“Let me get mah licht,” Strachan quietly growled, taking a heavy-duty torch from the back of the car.
“And yere truncheon,” Bishop whined. “But by God—a gun would be a sight better … !” Already the mad fluttering, squawking and screeching was dying down.
They were on the track, approaching the outbuildings, when a different sound brought them to a halt. But there are sounds and there are sounds. This one was a cry: eerie, ululant, electrifying—and unmistakable.
“Dog,” Strachan breathed, hurrying forward again. “Out in the woods back o’ the house. A big yin, probably, returned tae the wild.” Even as he spoke the howl was answered, from closer at hand. And when the sound had died away, Strachan added, “Or dogs. There’s been some sheep worrying south o’ here.”
“Ye say?” Old Bishop seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. “Dogs? Ye think?”
“Why, what else?” Strachan moved forward again. “Yere animals must o’ smelled ’em.”
“Smelled ‘em, heared ’em, seen ’em, probably,” the old man seemed steadier now. “God, they’ve been howlin’ this last half-hour! Put the wind up me and Liz, Ah can tell ye! We saw one o’ they frae the upstairs window. But Gavin,” again he clutched at the constable’s arm, “ … ye can damn mah eyes for liars if they didnae see him stand up on his hind legs! And big … man, he was one big yin!”
There came a rustling from the nearest enclosure—and a moment later a squawk. “Mah hens!” Old Bishop aimed his torch, sprang forward, skidded to a halt in swirling ground mist where a hole had been torn in the high wire-mesh boundary. And Strachan saw that the wire was of a heavy gauge. Then:
“Dogs,” Strachan whispered again, his own beam flickering this way and that, but nervously now. “Big yins, aye.”
Old Andrew turned to him and his mouth was slack. “God—they chewed through this wire like it was cheese!”
And again it was the old man’s voice that did it to Strachan, got through to him like nothing else could have. And yet again he asked himself, just exactly what had Bishop seen that caused him to lock up his wife and run dancing down the road? An old stoic like Andrew Bishop? Why, there wasn’t a more down-to-earth man in all the Highlands! And so far (Strachan suspected) old Bishop had been entirely too reticent, like he hadn’t wanted to destroy his salt-of-the-earth image.
Strachan checked himself; he was now as nervous as the old man. It wasn’t good enough. “Two of us,” he said. “Which should be more than enough for a couple of rogue dogs. And anyway, the birds are quiet now. In we go.” He climbed in through the large hole in the wire, with old man Bishop right behind him.
The enclosure was a big one, free range, with hen-houses on both sides and a boardwalk up the centre. But as the beams of their torches sliced deeper into the swirling mist they saw that the houses had been wrecked, wrenched apart. And the carcasses of dead birds were everywhere. Old Bishop picked one up in a trembling hand; not a mark on it. It was as if the creature had died of fright. But others were bloody, and some were without heads.
Various alternatives passed uselessly through Strachan’s mind. Uselessly because they didn’t work. This could have been done by foxes—indeed the wanton destruction of so many birds was precisely the fox’s modus operandi—but foxes would have dug under the wire, not through it; they couldn’t have chopped through it. As for wildcats: they would never come this close, and certainly not at this time
of year, when there was plenty of food in the wild.
“Well, whatever he was, he’s out o’ here now,” the constable croaked, and cleared his throat. “The birds would tell us if he was still here.”
Old Bishop was wandering among the shattered hen-houses, gathering up corpses. “What birds?” he said, his face a fearful mask in Strachan’s torch beam. “There’s no a one o’ they left!” And he went stumbling to the far side of the enclosure.
“What about the deer pens?” Strachan was acutely aware of the eerie silence, and he didn’t like it. “Ye told me the deer had been scared off?”
“Stampeded, aye. Me and the wife saw them scattering away intae the woods. Ye’d think the place was on fire, by God! But Gavin, it’s time ye knew. Ah don’t think the things Ah saw oot here were dogs. Ah’m no sure, Ah cannae say what they were … but no dogs, they yins.”
Before he could continue, there came an uproar of chattering and screeching from a large cage set well apart from the other enclosures. “The pine martens!” old Bishop gasped.
“Quick! Back out through the hole,” Strachan husked.
But: “No!” came Bishop’s answer. “This way’ll be better.”
Strachan stumbled to him across the shattered boards of a wrecked henhouse, and found him shaking like a man in a fever beside a second hole in the wire-mesh. His eyes stared fixedly at a trail of bloodied feathers, wings, and bird debris in general that led off into the night and the mist.
“Enough o’ this!” Strachan was furious with himself, disgusted at the fear that the situation and the old man’s obvious terror had inspired in him. “Let’s see what the fuck this thing is!”
They went through the hole in the perimeter and ran stumblingly towards the pine marten cage, where it was at once seen that the animals had only been complaining about—or warning of—the presence of outsiders and possible danger. But despite the fact that the cage wasn’t damaged, certainly something had been here. The pine martens’ fear was manifest in the way they clung close together, spreadeagled on the wire-mesh ceiling of their cage.
The mist was thicker now, swirling knee-deep and sending tendrils up into the trees bordering the park. “This mist,” old Bishop complained, and shivered uncontrollably, “man, it clings tae ye!”
It was true: the mist seemed alive, like the thick breath of a beast. They moved through it, torch beams stabbing ahead, towards the next enclosure: a small corral containing Bishop’s five prized bison of a species long absent from the Highlands proper. Which was when things livened up again, and in a single moment the night became a nightmare.
First the agonized bellowing of a beast from beyond the corral’s four-bar fencing; then the fence itself splintering outwards as a pair of stampeding bison smashed into it, hurling boards and then themselves in Bishop’s and Strachan’s direction; and a moment later the sound of breaking glass, and a cry—a scream—from the dimly visible, dark silhouette of the old man’s house:
“Andrew! Andrew! Andrew! Let me out … oh, let me out!”
Sent flying as the wild-eyed, fearful bison went thundering off into darkness, the two men picked themselves up—only to stumble aside as two more animals came snorting and kicking through the break. Then old Bishop was off at a run, heedless of life and limb, towards the house. “Liz!” he shouted. “Ah’m comin’, lass, Ah’m comin’!”
And Strachan was on his own, fairly certain that whatever was plaguing the beasts was in the corral. But all he could see through the break was a lake of mist, with milky tendrils lapping outwards from some central disturbance. Then—
—The black and crimson hump of a thrashing animal’s back heaved up into view, breaking the surface … and other things reached up to pull it under again!
Strachan wasn’t sure what he’d seen; it had happened too quickly. But an afterimage, of thick white ropes—or arms?—fitted with grapples or claws—or taloned hands?—burned on his riveted retinae. He stood there as if nailed in position, smelling hot blood and listening to tearing sounds … and the bison’s panting and bellowing, quickly dying away.
And then the snarling, and slobbering of frenzied—what, gluttony?—as the ripples of mist continued to swirl outwards from that deadly central area …
How long? Difficult to say. Minutes that felt like hours, before Strachan could think again. Or before he was galvanized to activity, as the knee-deep mist began swirling and rippling in his direction, and vague outlines were seen within the mist, with eyes like lamps that burned on him!
He had no weapon but a torch. Glancing this way and that, he saw pieces of shattered fence at his feet and snatched up a two-foot length of inch-by-four sharpened to a splintery point where it had broken along the grain. There were three pairs of luminous eyes in the mist. Three—whatever they were—were in there; they spread out as they moved towards Strachan.
But seen out of the corner of Strachan’s eye, coming from the direction of the house and heading for the woods, a figure. Not Bishop but … a figure that leaned oddly forward, upright like a badly formed man—or woman—loping through the mist. And its eyes were luminous, too …
… Then old Bishop was back, and a double-barrelled shotgun in his trembling hands. “Ah found a couple’ay shells,” he found time to pant … before the scene at the corral impacted on his mind. And cursing as he pointed his gun—without even bothering to aim—he let fly with both barrels. There came a flash and a roar both dazzling and deafening, which for a single second blew apart the menacing dark and stunned silence.
Half-blinded by the flash, Strachan threw up an arm before him as the mist erupted! He was bowled over—something bowled him over, and raked at the sleeve of his jacket in its passing. Then there was a blur of sinuous motion, an angry snarling receding rapidly into the woods behind the animal park, and an urgent howling ringing down from the foothills beyond the trees. Almost as if … as if they were being called off.
And there was a gasping and sobbing from old Andrew Bishop, stretched prone on the earth. “It’s mah damn leg!” the old man groaned. “Mah bleddy leg! It has tae be broken. But did ye see, Gavin? Did ye see?”
“No.” White as a ghost, the constable went to him. “Nothing that makes sense, anyway.”
“But … dogs?” the old man pressed.
And as their eyes met Strachan was obliged to admit: “No, Ah cannae say they were dogs.”
“What, then?” Bishop’s voice was a whisper.
Strachan could only shake his head. The sleeve of his uniform and shirt had been sliced as by razors down to the skin, but by some miracle his skin was unmarked. And no matter what he might think he had seen, what he thought he’d seen couldn’t possibly have done that. Not unless it—or she?—had a handful of razor blades …
At the house Liz Bishop was in a bad state of hysteria. Shuddering and almost incoherent, she told a story that night that she could never repeat to any court, nor ever commit to paper. Her husband wouldn’t let her, and he himself would later deny all knowledge of anything but “an attack by wild or rogue animals, probably dogs, on the creatures of the park.” Perhaps he feared ridicule, but Strachan thought not. Knowing Andrew Bishop’s character, it seemed more likely he believed that in denying what he truly believed, he might make it go away—like a man whistling in the dark. And later, the constable might have wished that he had taken a similar course.
As for Mrs. Bishop’s story:
Alarmed by the squawking of the chickens and the frenzy of the pine martens, she’d gone to the window of her upstairs bedroom and looked out. Immediately beyond the window, a balcony overlooked the park; and down below, there was the mist, of course: a milky lake lapping between the trees and various enclosures. But also down there, crouching by the wall of the house and staring up at her …
… Something wild and naked and awful, and human! Or perhaps not human.
For as its yellow triangular eyes met hers, the creature had snarled, sprung upright, bounded all of fifteen feet into t
he air to grasp the balcony rail and vault over it. And its face had stared at her through the window, as its lips became a muzzle that drew back from teeth like bone daggers! At which she had picked up a chair and smashed it at the thing through the window, then screamed for her husband, and for her life.
But when next she had dared look the thing had gone, and all Mrs. Bishop could remember of it was that, “It looked like … Ah could swear … Ah mean, it wasnae all animal, Andrew! Am Ah mad, or what? It looked something like … Ah mean, it reminded me o’ … a lassie? But what sort o’ lassie, Andrew? What sort?” And her last few words had been spoken in little more than an awed and frightened whisper.
That was what she’d said that night, but the next day she was in too bad a way to record a statement, and old man Bishop too busy looking after her. Meanwhile:
“Mah report had gone in,” Strachan finished. “Ah was young and eager; Ah would hae made a good cop; Ah tol’ it the way Ah saw it. Big mistake. When finally they Bishops did speak about it, huh, it was animals did the job. No specific creature, ye ken, but most likely dogs. Me? Ah was left holdin’ the bleddy baby! And it came out how Ah’d had a couple’ay wee drams that night! So that was that. As for the rest …
“ … Ah got no peace frae then on in—until Ah got out! What an idiot, eh? For like Ah said, Ah tol’ it the way Ah saw it, and Ah tol’ what Ah saw. That was mah error.”
“But what did you see?” Inspector Ianson pressed, fascinated by the sweat on Strachan’s brow, despite that his flat was cool.
The other nodded. “Hear me well,” he said, “for it’s the last time, Ah swear. Ah had seen wolves, George! White wolves, or things that moved, crept and snarled like wolves. Certainly Ah had seen one wolf—the one that came frae the house, after scarin’ Liz Bishop half tae death. But the hell o’ it is that as the thing made for the trees, just before old Bishop let go wi’ that double blast, it looked more like a lassie! Aye, just like the old lady had said. But wolf, bitch, girl or some sort o’ weird mixture—whatever it was—it stood on its hind feet, George, upright! Now how can ye explain that?”