Tag Archives: scottish ghost stories

The Beastie Girl

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All I could see of the beast at the bottom of the garden was a pair of red eyes shining out from the thicket where it hid. A trail of blood on the grass told me it was wounded and all the more dangerous for it.

The question was: what flavour of beastie was I entertaining in my own backyard? Judging by the neon glare it wasn’t one of the usual suspects. Or at least none of the critters that usually roamed the mean streets of Bruntsfield.

A low, trickling growl grew in ambition to a full throated roar. What the hell was I going to do with the damn thing? It wasn’t exactly a SSPCA or council call-out because if it was what I suspected, everyone would die. And die hard as Bruce Willis would no doubt have said if he’d known.

Then I remembered the steak in the fridge. It was to have been my Sunday night treat: burned to a crisp and washed down with a bottle of Talisker. Now it was bait for whatever skulked in the bushes. A beast whose tastes, I was willing to bet, were rather more rarefied than my own.

An icy north wind nipped the back of my neck and I noticed for the first time that no birds sang. It would be dark soon and whatever it was I was going to do, I needed to do it now. I turned to head back to the house until a desperate rasp stopped me in my tracks.

It took a few precious moments to figure it out, but when I did there was no cigar.

The thing was laughing.

Fairmiledead

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Martin didn’t mind that he was dead so much as the fact that he’d been killed by his unloving wife of twenty-three years. To add insult to injury the bitch was now living the high life in what had been their suburban semi in Fairmilehead on the outskirts of Edinburgh.

Mary had laced his dinner with arsenic night after night for weeks and smiled at him over the dinner table as he’d eaten every last mouthful. She had tended him as he vomited his guts up and held his hand when the pain got so bad he begged her to put a pillow over his face. Finally she had relented and, picking up one of the over-stuffed cushions she liked so much, had done as she was bid with a little quirk of the mouth he didn’t recall having ever seen before.

He had tried not to fight of course, but found that his wasted body’s instinct to survive thought differently. He began to struggle, to signal to her that he’d changed his mind, that she didn’t have to carry out her grisly promise after all. But she only bore down harder with a strength he hadn’t known she had in her. And then:

“Die you fat bastard, why don’t you die. You should go to hell after what you’ve done.”

That was strange he’d thought, because he hadn’t been fat at the end. On the contrary the weeks and months of illness had rendered him skeletal, skin hanging in folds around a wasted frame as though he was wearing a flesh suit three sizes too big.

Well, she had got her wish, the dead part at least. Except he didn’t think he was in hell. No, it looked very much like he was still here in the home sweet home they’d shared together for over two decades. He had tried to leave, but found he couldn’t get further than the gate at the end of the garden. This was unfortunate as he subsequently discovered that he had also fallen victim to the oldest cliché in the book: she had been having an affair with his so-called best friend Cliff Morgan, the man he’d played golf with at the Swanston Golf Club twice a month for almost as long as he’d been married to Mary.

Well, as he had been fond of saying when he was alive, this was indeed a pretty pickle. The first time Cliff had come round, he’d tried to get through to him, screaming himself hoarse to make his friend understand what Mary had done. It was only when Cliff put one hand on Mary’s breast, while unbuttoning his trousers with the other that he realised the full horror of his predicament. What was he to do?

What, he wondered, had Mary had meant when she had referred to something he’d done. He couldn’t for the life or even death of him fathom that one out. He also wasn’t sure what had upset him the most: Mary’s betrayal or Cliff’s. To his surprise, on balance it was his friend’s behaviour that cut deepest. She had killed him to be sure and he wasn’t about to forget that; but it was Cliff’s treachery that had cut him to the quick. He hoped fervently that didn’t mean he was some sort of homo. No, that wouldn’t do at all.

Tonight the traitorous love-birds were having a romantic dinner for two: scented candles, roses, and the big dining table set as though it was a fancy restaurant. She of course was done up like a dog’s dinner in a pink evening dress that was far too tight and revealing in all the wrong places for her frumpy body. He was freshly coiffed with that hideous Bobbie Charlton comb-over that Martin and Mary had laughed about behind his back. Well, she wasn’t laughing now, the two-faced cow, as she slid her stocking-clad foot up and down Cliff’s pinstriped leg and gazed adoringly into his eyes.

Maybe this was hell. Doomed to imprisonment in his own house watching his killer and his best friend canoodle with not a thing he could do about it.

Or at least that’s what he’d thought. Just the other day (although time was fluid in this state so he couldn’t really be sure) he had met another occupant of the house that could see, hear and understand him perfectly. She said she had died in the house when she was young and she certainly didn’t look older than sixteen. She told him she used to watch over him when he’d been alive to which he retorted that she had obviously not done a very good job given recent events. She huffed for a while and only came round after he had apologised profusely. Some assiduous flattery and ego massaging later (of which he was rather proud given he’d never had to do it before), she revealed that yes, there was a way to intervene in the physical world after all. It was tricky and dangerous, even for ghosts such as they, but it could be done.

It would be done, he thought with mounting rage. As though in response, a china dog he had never liked fell off the mantel-piece and shattered on the hearth. Things were looking up.

Thrice Bitten

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There was something about the three blonde, black-eyed women that was not quite right. At least that was Colin’s opinion as he finished one pint and considered starting another. His thoughts turned as they always did to his bitch ex Jackie, who was giving him grief and not letting him see the wee man until he paid what she said he owed. Fat chance of that when he’d just lost his job in the off-licence where he had worked for ten years. Who could have predicted offies in Scotland would ever go out of business? You had to get through the cold, smothering dark of the winter months somehow and it had long been a family tradition that a vast quantity of booze was just the way to do it.

He decided on another pint and whisky chaser and lumbered unsteadily to the bar to get them in. The Bingo Wings was a run-down sort of place, but you could sit in the gloom and nurse drink and grievances in equal measure with no interference from anyone who knew what was good for them. So the hot glances thrown his way from the blond bints, weren’t really what he’d come to expect from his inner sanctum, least of all on a blustery Tuesday afternoon. No, talent-spotting wasn’t the usual pastime in the Bingo Wings and there were other more likely venues for that sort of nonsense. This was where silent, angry men sat and drank themselves into a well earned oblivion before picking a fight outside to round the evening off.

Christ they were fit though: lush, full figured and from the long legs, not much shy of his six feet frame. He thought maybe they’d been to a fancy dress party because they were all dressed in white see-through dress things that rode right up when they sat down on the bar stools, so you could pretty much see everything. Little tarts.

The nearest one turned her head to look at him, a sinuous, twisting motion accompanied by a fall of white-blond hair that was so long she could have sat on it. Well, if the little slag played her cards right, she’d be sitting on something else before the end of the night.

“Are you sisters then?” he said controlling the slurring with a mighty effort.

The other two turned to stare at him with that same serpentine motion and three pairs of black eyes fixed on his face as though he was the most fascinating creature in the world. Probably couldn’t believe their luck. They must have been sisters because their features were almost identical. There was also a sharpness about the nose and cheek-bones that he hadn’t noticed at first, but they were still stunners, no doubt about it.

“In a way,” the nearest one answered in a soft voice.

She was definitely up for it. Wait until Jackie found out that he still had the old one, two magic.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Eh, Colin. Colin McQuarrie. Yours?” he asked, finally remembering the finer points of leg-over etiquette.
“Margo. And this is Morgan and Marjorie.”

The blond in the middle, Morgan, slid gracefully off her stool and came to stand next to him. Maybe he’d be in a three-way before the night was out if he minded his p’s and q’s. He hurriedly calculated just how much he’d had to drink because it really wouldn’t do to disappoint the ladies. Not if the abuse Jackie had regularly showered him with was anything to go by.

Morgan put a hand on his arm and was so close he could smell her: an intoxicating scent that brought with it the green promise of spring woods. He was just about to press his mouth to hers and maybe even give her a bit of tongue, when she ruined the moment by speaking. That was women for you.

“Did you know you have an elemental attached to you?”

“An elephant? Are you pissed hen?”

The third blond, Marjorie had joined them and stood on his other side. He felt hemmed in for some reason and started to wonder where Rab the barman was; quelling a sudden surge of adrenalin as though some part of his brain was telling him to make a run for it. Why would he run from three lassies?

“An elemental,”

“It’s a lower form of spirit-”

“That attaches itself to people who have done bad things in their lives. It feeds off the energy that creates-”

“And for every bad deed, the elemental gets bigger-”

“And bigger and-”

“Yours is the size of a tenement. And it’s still growing. You must have been a very naughty boy Colin.”

He’d lost track of who was saying what but it didn’t matter because it melded into a seamless whole as though the conversation was taking place entirely inside his own head. The three hadn’t taken their eyes off him, tracking his progress like a deer or some other prey that didn’t have a hope in hell. Being hopeless had never felt so good.

“You know those angry, frustrated feelings you get where you want to burn the world and everybody in it?”

He was pretty sure that was Marjorie who was stroking his arm, snaking a trail up to the back of his neck. Dumbly he nodded.

“That’s from the elemental. Sort of like waste products if you see what I mean. You’ll have noticed how it’s getting worse no doubt? That’s the elemental getting stronger. Soon it’ll be powerful enough to swallow your soul. While you’re still alive I mean. You’ll be little more than a walking, talking corpse. Isn’t that something?” Margo smiled. Was it just his imagination, or were her teeth more prominent than they had been a moment ago?

He was really confused now, unsure if it was the drink or if the women had drugged him. He wasn’t sure he cared, as long as they stayed with him.

“Can’t I get rid of it? I mean, couldn’t you help me?” he said, like a little boy pleading not to be sent to bed. He didn’t question the truth of what he was being told: it was as if he’d always known. Ever since that hit and run that he’d been responsible for as a teenager and then all the other stuff since then…

“Ah, now. We were just getting to that,” said Morgan. “But first there’s something you need to do for us.”

Beauty And The Beast

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All I could see of the beast at the bottom of the garden was a pair of red eyes shining out from the thicket of brambles where it was holed up. A trail of blood on the grass told me it was wounded and all the more dangerous for it.

The question was: what flavour of beastie was I entertaining in my own backyard? From the neon eyes clearly not one of the usual suspects. Or at least none of the things that usually roamed the mean streets of Bruntsfield. You’d be surprised what you can find lurking just over your threshold, waiting for a gold embossed invite RSVP.

A low, trickling growl grew into a full throated roar. I flinched despite myself and wondered what the hell I was going to do now. It wasn’t exactly a SSPCA or council call-out because if it was what I suspected, everyone would die. And die hard as Bruce Willis would no doubt have said if he’d known.

I remembered I had a steak in the fridge. It was to have been my Friday night treat: burned to a crisp and washed down with a bottle of Talisker. Now it was destined for the gullet of whatever skulked in the bushes. A beast whose tastes, I was willing to bet, were rather more rarefied than my own.

An icy north wind nipped the back of my neck and I noticed for the first time that no birds sang. It would be dark soon and whatever it was I was going to do, I needed to do it now. I turned to head back to the house when:

“Don’t go,” the beast rasped. “I want to kill you here, out in the open where I can see the light fade from your eyes. A last request you might say.”

And it chuckled, a gurgling, phlegmy affair that couldn’t quite disguise the rustling of old leaves as it tensed, gathering itself for that final leap.

At least it was attention for me.

Sleeping Dogs Lie

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Although the place had been wiped clean of ghosts, there was one that had not been persuaded to go. One that was so much a part of the fabric of the house and the people who lived here, that it had refused to make that final journey along the Highway of the Dead.

The question was why.

Looking at me warily from the corner of the room, the ghost fiddled with its over-sized granny glasses, the pattern of the wall paper behind it showing clearly through the insubstantial body. The forehead just above the left eye had been stoved in and something fluid glistened inside. This was how it remembered the injury it had received, a vague recollection of an outrage perpetrated on a body it no longer possessed.

I held out my hand and it came, bringing with it a wave of loneliness that crashed over us both leaving us adrift on a vast featureless sea under a leaden sky, moorings cut, compass broken. But the conduit between us had been opened and the ghost’s secret self was concealed no more.

Grudging details came at first, like reluctant suitors on a first date. In life it had been called Anne, but what had rooted it here in death was still buried deep down under the surface like a sleeping leviathan. My death sense began to whisper to it, threats and enticements in equal measure, prodding the monster to wake.

And wake it did.

Our Lady Of Sorrows

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I strangled my two sisters in the womb so they would stay with me always. Now we traverse Princes Street on this sunny Sunday in March, brushing past the cattle clutching the hands of their young as though fearful someone may snatch them away. And maybe they have cause for such concerns given the Ice Cream Man, so called for his method of storing his young victims, has once again taken up his old ways down in darkest Leith.

But we, we unhappy three, we hunt for a different kind of victim; a live and willing flesh suit to do our bidding out here in this too, too noisy world with its trams and buses and the harrowed faces of those who no longer have the time even to notice the passage of their miserable lives as they slip down the drain into the eternal dark.

I see her, blonde and bumptious, talking to an invisible friend on a metallic device that has just slid from her fingers as I reach out and caress her hair…

Toilet Troubles

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The hand around my throat had been pressing down hard on my carotid and now my vision was beginning to spot, clots of darkness that threatened to join up and take me into oblivion. I forced myself to go limp as though I had fainted letting my attacker take the full force of my dead weight. He shifted his balance to accommodate the fact and loosened his grip on my throat by a fraction. A sense of calm descended on me, the harbinger of my worst berserker rages. Without conscious thought my thumbs quickly flipped the switches on my finger-knives and plunged them into the eyes behind the mask.

My would be murderer screamed, a high pitched feminine sound. He dropped his own knife and threw me bodily out of the toilet cubicle. I landed on the floor, hard, sliding along it only to bang my head on the metal bin. I lay momentarily stunned on my bed of assorted garbage until reality reasserted itself. I staggered to my feet, putting the finger-knives to bed in favour of the two curved blades that hung at my waist only to fall back down, tripping over my trousers and smashing my cheekbone for good measure. The screaming from the bathroom had descended the octaves and was now more of an agonised moaning.

Sounded good to me…

Reign of Fire

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But there was no more time because the world was fire and fire was the world. Through the flames I could make out charred bodies tied to stakes and a man sitting astride a throne of molten bone, his long hair aflame and the skin peeling from his body like an overdone roast. A huge crack appeared in the cobblestoned street and a dark tide rose, taloned beasts fought their way to the surface and flew into the air shrieking their blood lust. I just had time to haul Rufus into the circle with Ruby and I before the horde were upon us. We never stood a chance.

Old Gods And New Tricks

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I took a fast black north to Granton, a part of the city clinging for dear life onto the south shore of the Firth of Forth like a spurned lover. The landscape was flat and bleak in a city famed for its curves and vitality. It had been heavily industrialised and then left to rot like so many places in Scotland. To be truthful, it had always depressed the hell out of me: grey and abandoned as though it had been stuck onto the rest of the city as an afterthought by an absent-minded god who had promptly forgotten about it. Trust Ravi to have picked this spot.

My destination, Granton Square, turned out to be more of a circle as I discovered after being turfed unceremoniously out of the taxi by the taciturn driver.

“Watch yourself here hen,” he said through a cigarette clamped between his teeth Clint Eastwood style, “they come out at night.” And with that he roared off down the road speeding on his way to suck the fun out of someone else’s night.

Hen, indeed. Where the hell had that little generic moniker come from?

I stomped round the faux square trying and failing to establish where 1A was. It must basement but I just couldn’t find which one. In the pitch black surprisingly few lights winked out and the street lights only managed an anaemic glow. There was no one about and surprisingly little traffic as though everyone had just decided that this really was not the place to be and had left it to its fate. Rather like Ravi’s previous home in the murky depths of the Gyle.

There was the distant noise of the occasional car, but the serenity of the square absorbed it like an over-indulgent mother. I remembered from somewhere that Granton had not been inhabited by people until comparatively recently and that may have explained the wraith like creatures that stalked the place. These wraiths resembled animals that couldn’t decide what species they belonged to: feline shaped heads, with tusks where teeth should be and legs ending in human hands not paws. One was following me now, a low growling deep down in its malformed throat. I sympathised with both the sentiment and the indecision.

A door slammed and then the sound of someone young and fit on stairs and indeed it was because Ravi burst into view from the building two doors down. He bounded over and picked me up as though I weighed nothing and, swinging me round, kissed me full on the lips. The familiar clean, herbal smell of him made me forget momentarily that I had been considering kneeing him in the nuts.

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said, putting me down.

“Well to keep me here, you’re going to have to get me a massive drink and get it now.”

“All taken care of. I made some food in case you were hungry, or in between incidents.”

He laughed and the swirl of darkness that always accompanied him hugged him tighter as though protecting him from me. I was again reminded that this man had had a violent past: maybe that was why he was trying so hard to have a peaceful, nurturing present. I hoped to the god that I didn’t believe in that nothing like ever happened to me….

Dark Heart

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I came to in a huge room with a high vaulted roof. A fire crackled merrily in the grate and I wondered if I’d fallen into a fairy tale. Beauty and the Beast perhaps where the twist was that Beauty actually turned out be a bit of Beast herself. I was wrapped in a musty smelling blanket and the appetising smell of roast beast reminded me how hungry I was. The Guardian sat opposite me, bandaged but surprisingly chipper given the filleting he’d just had.

“For you,” he said indicating a little side table to my right. On it was indeed a roasted animal of some unidentifiable species part rodent with a large dash of goat judging by the horned head. Beside it was a cracked goblet, full to the brim with red wine. I did as I was bid.

“I usually prefer my food live and uncooked,” he said smiling.

“Where was I?” I said, ignoring him and stuffing huge mouthfuls of tasty meat down the hatch. “And what the hell is this place?”

“Well to answer your second question first, this is the heart of the city. So many souls living and dying here have made it…beat shall we say. You were about to join the Highway of the Dead. Had you fallen all the way, I wouldn’t have been able to bring you back.”

“The Highway of the Dead runs through your gaffe. That sounds cosy. Why?”

“Rose,” he said gently, “I keep telling you. This is the Edinburgh’s heart. When its citizens die, they converge here and make the journey together.”

“Journey? Where?”

He smiled. “Where do you think? To whatever’s next. I take care of all the people who live here, my people, from the cradle to the grave. Sort of like a supernatural welfare state.”

He laughed, but if it was a joke, I didn’t get it.

“So you’re telling me I didn’t fall all the way and if I had I would have died? Well what bastard pushed me?”

“Yes you would have died. Would that have been so bad? You are a very troubled soul Rose. Death might bring you peace.” He smiled. “One of my servants was angry at your presumption to open that which was not offered. I caught you before you hit the ground. I may be injured, but this is my home and I am master here.”

The handsome human features became neutral, composed. He was healing at a rate of knots and I knew that was my cue to get the hell out of Dodge.

There was only one teensy tiny little problem however.

I didn’t know how.