Read Online Ashes to Ashes by Lillian Stewart Carl - Free Book Online Page B

to get some long johns. “See you then,” she called.
    He responded with a jaunty wave. She watched the gray car until it had disappeared among the trees, following it in her mind as if it were a camel caravan traversing trackless wastes. Dun Iain seemed as isolated as a desert oasis, thousands of miles from civilization. Not that there was anything wrong with that, she assured herself, she was just used to the bustle of the campus.
    The wind and the trees danced a Highland fling, the rush of air around the turrets providing the skreel of the pipes. Rebecca strolled toward the dovecote thinking, when the state turns Dun Iain into a museum, or a youth hostel, or a scout camp, or whatever they’re going to do with it, they need to move the parking area away from the house. Rather ruins the facade to have all these old heaps parked below it. Not counting Eric’s Volvo, of course.
    Steve’s pruning shears lay half in, half out of the marigolds, draped by the tangled cords of the Walkman. A faint thumping and whining emanated from the tiny machine. He was nowhere in sight.
    The dovecote loomed under the dark red eaves of the forest, larger than it had appeared from the door. Now Rebecca could see that only the side facing the castle was perforated with openings for the birds. In several places the narrow, undressed stones had pulled loose, leaving gaps the size of her typewriter case into the black and featureless interior. She followed a path around the circumference of the building, the grass brittle beneath her feet. The back looked much more like the mausoleum it was.
    Beside a door glistening with the mottled green patina of copper was a brass nameplate that read, not surprisingly, “Forbes”. Above it the rough granite blocks climbed in uncompromising tiers, contracting at the top to make a domed roof like an Irish monk’s beehive cell. Or, in keeping with John Forbes’s ambitions, an ancient tomb of a king of Mycenae. Close under its archaic bulk Rebecca could no longer see Dun Iain’s Scottish baronial splendor.
    She stepped onto the top of a short flight of steps that cleft the turf before the entrance. The lock that secured the door required a key even larger than the one for the castle. Its hinges were streaked with copper grooves; it had been opened two months ago for James, the last of the line. John had probably intended many generations of his descendants to be interred here. He must be looking down— or up, as the case may be— with a very bitter eye at his dynasty’s premature demise.
    Here beneath the trees the air was still, heavy with the fetid odor of mold. Rebecca drew back, her limbs prickling. She had thought it was quiet in the upper room of the castle, but here it was oppressively silent. The rush of the wind among the leaves seemed to be filtered through the stone of the mausoleum, as if she stood not outside but inside, enveloped by the dark tranquillity of the grave.
    No, not tranquillity. Not Mary Stuart’s serene smile. A brooding silence, as though something or someone waited on the other side of the massive door. The hair on the back of her neck lifted, drawn by a subliminal static charge. Rebecca whirled back up the step onto the path and hurried around the side of the building. There was the castle, raising its whimsical turrets toward the sky. Whimsical, not sinister, never sinister… .
    A huge black shape leaped from the trees. Rebecca gasped. The dog barked, shattering the silence so abruptly that Rebecca felt the noise slice through her head. Don’t run, she ordered herself. He’ll chase you. She planted her feet in the grass and stood her ground as the huge animal came to a halt just in front of her, barring her way back to the castle.
    “Hi there,” she tried. “Nice dog. Good boy.”
    The dog’s head seemed as large as a lion’s, its ears reaching to her waist. It stank that peculiar doggy smell of wet dirt and raw meat. Slowly she raised her hand and offered it to the