Haunted Scotland Read Online Free Page B

interested in faith healing in the hope of finding out what I can do for them.’
    Poor Henry. His thirty-eight-year marriage had ended in separation and a painful divorce. Increasingly, those close to him regarded him with amused tolerance. He was harmless, they told me.
    ‘Don’t pay any attention to him if he turns all silly,’ his son insisted, when I mentioned I had seen his father on the steps of the Edinburgh College of Parapsychology.
    But I did not consider him silly. I was intrigued, and often looked in on his Bruntsfield flat for a chat and a coffee. On this occasion, I had volunteered to drive him to Walkerburn for lunch
with some mutual friends.
    ‘Please don’t say anything about this when we get there,’ he pleaded. ‘They already think I’m a bit dotty. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked you to
stop. I just needed to have a proper look at those poor people.’
    He was courteous and kind, and I was curious. ‘What did they look like?’ I asked.
    He closed his eyes as we set off again. ‘There were at least a dozen women with several children, four or five maybe, all pretty emaciated. Their clothes were ragged and grubby. They
looked half-starved.’
    Nothing more was said on the subject. We had an amusing lunch with our friends where, so far as I can recall, the conversation centred on labrador puppies. I drove Henry home afterwards and,
having delivered him to his door, promptly forgot all about the incident, that is until three months later, when I ran into him by chance.
    I was walking along Melville Crescent when he hailed me and strode purposefully towards me with his hand outstretched. ‘I just wanted to let you know I finally got to the bottom of those
wretched people we saw when you drove me to lunch with George and Helen,’ he said.
    ‘You saw,’ I corrected him.
    ‘Yes. Well, at least you didn’t appear to think I was entirely potty. At least, I hope not.’
    I nodded. ‘I always keep an open mind,’ I said.
    ‘And so you should. If only others followed your example,’ he said with a sigh of resignation. ‘Anyway, let me tell you what it was all about.’
    On returning to Edinburgh, Henry had immediately telephoned his close confidant Marion McNaught to ask her advice. A well-respected historian, Marion was used to such enquiries and having
confirmed a map reference, began a search. Time-slips, for that is what this must have been, occur throughout and across the centuries, visible only to those susceptible to them, and on the spot
where they took place. Before long she had come up with an explanation.
    Enclosed within an envelope of rolling hills, there was once, long, long ago, a small encampment at Caddonlee. It was a simple life in that era, safe from the intrusion of
the outside world, or so it was thought. All about was lush pasture land. The local community had their own livestock and were blessed with a plentiful supply of water from the River Tweed. They
kept themselves to themselves. With no roads or even footpaths, strangers rarely strayed into their territory.
    But alas, nobody noticed the Roman soldiers until they were upon them. Sent on a punitive mission to suppress the hostile elements of the locality, no questions were asked. It was slaughter on
sight. That day the river ran red with blood and the corpses of the innocent; slaughtered men were left to rot where they dropped.
    Further down the glen a group of women were tending to their chores with their children. Hearing distant cries they had at first assumed that it was their menfolk rounding up the cattle. It was
only when they returned to the village at sunset that the full extent of the devastation became apparent. At this juncture, they too were set upon by the legionnaires and put to the sword.
    ‘Souls caught in limbo almost always belong to those who have met with a violent or unhappy end,’ explained Henry. ‘All those emotions – anger, frustration, despair
– create a void in