The Croft

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. It cast its sickly, flickering light sparsely across the stunted, gnarled gorse bushes that huddled close to its crumbling walls. Inside, a ragged, bedraggled man huddled close to the remnants of the fireplace and piled a pathetic tumble of moss and dead wood in its empty belly.

He was a professor at a prestigious University in his day-to-day life, or had been; now he was a runaway. A hunted scavenger with a scraggly beard and crusted blood under his fingernails. How his esteemed colleagues would have blanched to see him this way... or, he reflected, to smell him. No glittering crystal here, no fine wines or rich meats. He shoved a handful of the small, yellow flowers into his mouth and fought the rising bile. Blackberries, or brambles as the locals called them, should be rising now, but he couldn't seem to find them in the woods. God knew they couldn't be out there on the whistling highland slopes; they would have stood out from the heather like supermodels in a shipyard.

Out in the woods, in the ridiculous patch of trees that passed as a kind of woodland, something snapped. The Professor froze like a frightened animal as a ripple of snaps approached the cabin, the scuttled to the cavity beneath the stairs, covering the candles light with his cupped hands. His hands became hot, first, then started to burn. The silver moonlight that passed through the gaping windows was blotted by a shape that hovered long after the flesh on his palms started to burn. Mouth open in a silent scream, the Professor's eyes watered, but he persevered. Only when the last snapping twigs fell silent did he pull his hands away. Cradled to his chest, his wounded hands throbbed like petulant children, but soon they would be well; he crawled across the floor and dug through his bag. The deformed root, twisted and caked in dirt, looked like nothing at all, but when he sliced it and placed strips of its wet interior on his flesh the burning stopped. The flesh did not heal, of course, it was potent but not magic; these secret remedies were not what he and his team had come to the glen for, but they had proven useful... for him at least.

No, they had come for the croft. A perfectly preserved patch of history - who else in the country could say they had seen a perfectly preserved, original West Highland croft? The roof and door as good as new, the interior, presumably, the same. Its outbuildings and sheds, even a cabin for seasonal workers on the edge of its unusually large lands and sheep, probably from a nearby farm, in coincidence or perhaps natural mockery of the pasty, wandering as if the inhabitants would wake and begin their work. It was a wonder, the University had agreed, a perfect opportunity to learn more about pre-industrial Scottish life. Of course, the locals had rolled their eyes, and he supposed he would have too; the son of a Lord come to study the remnants of a family his own had cleared from the land... but he persevered. Found the secret glen, led his team to the crofts lands, to its very door. The first days had been wonderful - there were even fragments of written diaries. Mostly financial ledgers, but nonetheless remarkable. Then the storm rolled in and they were forced to sleep in the croft. He returned to the fireplace and stared at the pile of wood. What had he been thinking?

John had been the first; a door had appeared in a nearby mound of dirt, uncovered by the violent storm, no doubt. It was an old, wooden door that showed the signs of its age, unlike the rest of the property. Brittle and scarred, it gave way easily, and a shower of dirt fell from above its mantle as John broke through. In the stories, these kinds of creatures could only appear at night. In reality, it had risen before their eyes. Some kind of deathly thing - a Draugr, it might have been called in some more northerly climate, though the Professor reflected that it was not possible to go too much further north than this place. More than two-thirds of the world could be classed as 'south of here'. It clawed its way out of the dirt and darkness, and grabbed John, not biting or tearing, but crushing. Its hands like stone, it seemed to fold him like a piece of paper, and they ran. One by one, in the night and the day, it followed. It followed with the same steadiness of a lazy river, a moving glacier. Implacable, unstoppable, and completely without mercy. When it broke Jeremy, they realized that it was, or had possibly been, a woman; a gaping wound in its dry, blue flesh showed the half protruding face of a child, as if someone had tried to cut it free. They tried to shelter in the croft, but it broke the wooden door and cornered them. Now there was just the Professor and the Draugr. Help was a long way behind him, past the croft and through its wide-flung patrol. Beyond the cabin there were only open peat fields and the jutting bones of the land, reaching out to the North Atlantic.

The Professor crept from the cabin at first light, which came early in the summer, and made his way out of the woods like a hunched creature, hands touching the dirt beneath them regularly as if he could scurry below sight like a mouse. It was nowhere to be seen, but the perfectly preserved croft house was visible, the maw of its broken door both an invitation and a threat. Across from it, the empty mound stared. Two watchful guardians whose duty seemed to be to see that he was witnessed.

The rustle behind him was the only reason the Professor needed to run. With a quick look over his shoulder, he saw that it was almost upon him and strained to sprint as fast as he could. As he reached the outer limit of the croft garden he tripped and fell, skidding across the rough ground before he could scramble to his feet. The Draugr, if that's what it was, did not falter. Neither speeding up nor slowing, it stepped over every bump in the ground without removing its glazed eyes from him. Strings of matter hair clung to its ropey arms, its greyed flesh, but it didn't reach for him, even as it closed in.

Its plodding steps followed him as he ran around the squat stone stable, breaking its line of sight. If he ran all the way back to the village beyond the river, it would follow, he reasoned, but if he could wait until it returned to its usual patrol, as it had every time he had outwitted it, he might make it beyond the limits of the croft to the treeline, the forest proper, without it following on. From there he could leave the glen, he thought. The Professors' feet, at the last minute, took him not into the croft, but into the uncovered mound. It was dry, cool, and, shockingly, devoid of any smell. No decayed flesh or putrescent odors, here. Just the cold chill of an old crypt. He pressed his lanky frame behind a jutting corner and watched with one eye as it Draugr stepped into the bright frame of the door. It stared ahead, but he knew it was listening. Waiting. It turned towards him with one step, stared into the darkness, then turned on its powdery heels to face the croft and stepped over its broken thresh hold before kneeling before the dead fireplace. There it stayed until darkness fell once more.

The Professor stepped deeper into the mound when it was dark enough to hide his movement. It was no pokey cave, but a deep, long space that stretched out and down. Only when he was in the pitch-black bowels of it did he turn on the tiny, wind-up torch attached to his belt has a novelty. It was an outdoor pantry, of sorts, cold as the deepest circle of hell, even in summer. Used for storing certain foods, once, but seemingly turned into a shelter. Two meager beds had been fashioned from bales of wool, shoes were lined by one wall. Perhaps the inhabitants of the croft had tried to hide in it until the landlords men or the soldiers had moved on. What good it would have done, he wasn't sure; when shepherds had passed the croft and seen signs of life they would only have come back.

The hairs on his neck prickled. The air was metallic, sharp.

He raised his torch and blanched; blood, bright red, shining blood, had soaked one of the makeshift beds to the floor. An old leather bag of sorts sat by its base. On inspection, it was stuffed with dried herbs, crisp vegetables and fruit, and a single, tattered journal. He picked it up and sank onto a portion of the bed that was clean. Skimming the pages of the journal put the Professors gaidhlig to the test, but the gist was simple. A woman, young, pregnant when she should not have been, accused of witchcraft (an odd accusation for the mid nineteenth century). The father of the child a married man, an important man who made pleas for her to leave, then demands, then threats. A drawing fell from the journal; a handsome man with pitch-black eyes. It would almost have been a cute little sketch if he were not naked. The Professor found himself blushing - it could have been his face. That was the secret, of course. The one he had held back from the team, his partner. Even the Dean of the University - these lands were his. His families - held for centuries. When reports of a croft reached him, when its location was revealed, he knew he had to come. It was like a siren call, and he had followed like a sleepwalker. Shame welled in his heart for what his forefather had done,

"He didn't clear your family for sheep," he whispered and raised an apple to his mouth, "he murdered them for hiding you." The crisp flesh of the apple burst like a boil under his teeth and rotting material spilled out, writhing with maggots. He threw himself back, stifling a cry as he struggled to spit the rotten flesh, and its taste, from his mouth. The pantry was foul; its air was heavy with the stench of death, and when he turned to look at the bed, he had to suppress a laugh. The blood was old and black, not red at all, and the walls were covered in matching black scrawls.

In the hallway up to the entrance, there was a dancing crackle of light. He followed a trail of old blood up, up, up until the croft was framed in the gaping maw of the door. Its roof was ablaze, the thatch falling in burning chunks to bloody earth,

"I've gone mad," the Professor muttered, but still his feet carried him up to the doorway. Heat, the first heat he had felt in days, pressed onto his skin, exerting pressure like a great hand. "I've gone mad."

The girl was not as young as he had expected; perhaps twenty-five. Old to be unmarried in her day, he thought distantly. Her red hair was unruly and curled, but stuck to her head and face - the rain, though strong, could not have damped the fire behind her. Someone was screaming. Somewhere. She held her stomach and looked up as he approached and for a moment her face was so soft that it hurt. He reached for her and a thin arm raised, sharp finger pointed as if to spear his heart,

"You," she howled, "unless you do right by me, it will all be for nought. I will haunt you and yours."

"I don't-" the Professor started to speak, but the cold gleam of the knife froze his tongue in place. It was wickedly sharp and curved. Made for cutting herbs. Made for reaping small harvests. She raised it high and looked him in the eye,

"Damn you, William."

He screamed as it fell in a brutally efficient arc, landing in the swollen flesh of her belly for just a moment before she tore it out and her own scream mingled with his. The Professor clamped his eyes shut, pressed his teeth together to hold back the bile. The rain stopped. The crackle of the fire subsided. There was only the smell of mud, now. When he opened his eyes the green and purple landscape rolled down to the forest, just as it had before. The doors to his left and right were broken, just as before. But the Croft was a ruined husk. Burned out, overgrown with creeping vines of some untraceable species.

Crack.

He turned to meet the sound, or tried to, but a force beyond his strength held him in place.

Crack.

The world tilted and he hit the mud, body chilling as the Draugr stepped over him and carried on her path. The Professor blinked once, twice, and then closed his eyes.

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, and its windows looked on the distant croft like blind eyes. Inside, the stub of a candle was fused to a rotting table. Wax spread across its surface like a puddle, and a last wisp of smoke curled above the blackened wick as a rosy mirage seemed to pass over the croftland below. Thatch reappeared on the roof, the door pressed neatly into its place, and a figure stepped through the gaping maw of a nearby mound as it was swallowed by the earth. The only mark on the landscape was a smudge before the croft door, and it would fade soon enough.