The Secrets of Geadais Cottage

Geadais Cottage was every bit as beautiful as the letter clutched tightly in Maggie Scott's hand had described it.

She stood before the little building now and despite the bitter chill of the icy autumn rain, she couldn't help but feel excited about this new beginning. The cottage was dilapidated, its red shingled roof missing tiles and the grounds overgrown but the rose bushes that bloomed at each side of the old wooden door were beautiful; a sign of the new life she hoped to breathe into the old girl. The windows were dusty - Maggie even noticed one window was missing entirely, replaced with wooden boards but they were tightly packed enough that the elements couldn't penetrate the house. None of it upset her though: she was looking forward to beginning the renovations as soon as possible.

Geadais Cottage had belonged to her estranged uncle Francis, a reclusive man and deeply religious. She'd been shocked and confused when she'd received the letter informing her that this small cottage, tucked away in the moors of the Isle of Canna, was to be her inheritance from him. It was a beautiful gem in the Scottish islands, away from most of civilisation and the perfect place to begin her new life as a divorcee.

Above her, the low clouds darkened as the evening grey turned to indigo. Night was falling fast. Taking a deep breath, the solitary woman clutched her letter with the estate deed tightly to her breast before making her way up the leaf and moss-covered path, trundling her wet suitcase behind her. All her worldly belongings were in that suitcase: just some clothes, toiletries, some jewellery and an old photo album. She'd had enough of the abuse and had just walked away from her life. Now she was free, free as the ocean waves crashing into the coast, just over the edge of the cliff. Imagine, Maggie, she thought with a smile, a coastal cliff in your very back garden!

This cottage was going to change everything.

The night was uneventful. The wind brought with it a distant rattling, but Maggie knew it was just the strange sounds of the country. Of course, a city dweller such as herself would get unnerved over the smallest little things: everything was unknown now. But despite that, she slept decently enough.

Although Geadais was decaying on the outside, the interior had been well lived in. Uncle Francis was a strange man. She'd never met him before but recalled her mother talking of her the eccentric old man with the pigeon coop and the barn who collected various old bibles and other religious artefacts. He'd gone to university in the early 1900s, studying Indian languages before becoming an archaeologist. After a trip to Assam, he'd all but vanished from society, retiring to this very cottage to pen various memoirs and tales of the people and places he'd encountered. That was really all Maggie knew about her great uncle. She'd never met the man before.

As she awoke in the guest bedroom, she unearthed herself from the mound of blankets and duvets that were piled on the bed. She knew she could have slept in her uncle's bed - after all, it was her home now - but that felt a little weird to her, especially when she was still, for all intents and purposes, a guest, a stranger to this little cottage.

She made her way into the drawing room. The home had no electricity, so she'd been unable to appreciate the unique beauty of Geadais under the dim light of her old battery-operated torch. In the morning sunlight, she marvelled at the domed ceiling, each panel inlaid with strange carvings and artwork and painted with the most beautiful shades of sage and gold. Along the walls, large bookcases stood tall and proud like silent sentinels, filled to the brim with archaic old tomes, each one a treasure trove of knowledge and memories. The old man had clearly taken great care of the home's interior: nary a speck of dust lay on any of the lacquered wood furniture or the ancient vases that lined the top of the bookcases. Maggie couldn't even wager a guess at how old any of these beautiful items were. A grand fireplace rested beside the bookcases, directly opposite of the brown leather sofa and its quarry of various embroidered cushions and pillows. What a stunning place, Maggie thought. She was about to turn and explore the rest of the home when she noticed another letter laid out neatly on the polished coffee table between the sofa and the fireplace.

She was going to ignore it but it felt strangely placed, as though laid out neatly expecting her to read its words so she did. Placing herself on the edge of the sofa, almost afraid to sit properly, and politely crossing her legs, she picked up the cream letter. It was parchment - thicker than the solicitor's letter and home deed and textured under her bitten and ragged fingernails.

Dearest Margaret,

I remember dear Alice telling me how you had dreams of exploring as a child. I leave this cottage in your capable hands and invite you to make use of the books I have collected over the years. I have no doubt you will be a more than capable scholar and will be eager to explore this beautiful cottage, but I must implore you: do not open the cellar. It is long flooded, and restoration will be impossible without collapse, but it will not trouble you. Take care of yourself, dear girl and make use of the Bibles. The Good Word will grant you protection.

Much love,

Dr Francis Harris Scott

Ah, mother. It had been ten years since she'd passed. Maggie shrugged at the old man's religious insistence - she hadn't picked up a bible since she'd become a mother herself, so many years ago. Fat good it had ever done her, anyway. In fact, she had planned later that day to remove the various crosses that hung throughout the house. She laughed, unable to believe the silly old coot honestly thought she still clung to such silly tales of a man in the sky. Nonsense.

***

Before she would begin the renovations and making various phone calls to the construction companies she'd need to aid her, Maggie began to tidy up the property. It was much tougher work than she'd expected but the cold winds were barely an issue with her working up such a sweat. She ripped out weeds and cut back swathes of overgrown brush with an old scythe she'd found, doing her best to make it look as tidy as possible, but it'd been a long time since she'd had to do gardening, having lived in a high-rise building for years. She worked her way around the large moor, doing it bit by bit, day by day. On the fifth day, she approached the old barn and began to chop down the tall grass when she wandered round the back of the dilapidated building. And there it was: the cellar Uncle Francis had told her about.

Hiding among the tall weeds, the cellar doors lay, almost flat, covered in creeping ivy and moss. Grey stones were piled up on either side, as though to give the area more support where the muddy earth dipped a little below the weight of the barn itself. A heavy iron chain held the doors tightly shut with a large padlock. Curious, Maggie decided she'd come back later with bolt cutters after a nice afternoon coffee.

She returned later with the heavy bolt cutters and her trusty old battery-operated torch and snapped the old chain off. It fell to the damp grass with a dull thud. It took her a few attempts to wrench the doors open but she managed after some exertion and, peering down into the now exposed black void leading down into the earth underneath the barn, a sudden wave of chills flew over her body and the downy hair on her arms rose. Clicking her torch on, she shone it down into the depths. It was ominous.

Thankfully, nothing was waiting down there to leap out at her. She crept down the old stone steps one by one, listening as her torch flicked about looking for any danger but she was relieved to find she'd just been letting her imagination run wild. She was surprised to find the cellar was dry - she wondered if maybe it had been flooded at one time and locked up just in case. The walls were strange - stone but she noticed a cut out piece of stone near the north wall, facing the ocean, surrounded by marks and scratches. The dirty stone floors were caked in dried mud and other debris, but something caught her eye as she flashed the light around: a small glint of metal lying on the floor near the corner. She approached cautiously, kneeling to see what the object was. A locket.

Picking it up, she wiped it against her rain jacket, clearing off the dirt and read the engraving aloud.

My dearest Maude, beloved daughter.

How strange.

She approached the hollow in the stone wall and noticed that the scratches were remnants of an engraving. She noticed an old, mildewed cross hanging from the wall at an angle. How curious. Lowering her eyes from the unreadable words, she peered into the hollow itself and instantly recoiled in fright. There was a large wooden box in there, about the size of an adult human, a large chunk of metal piercing through it, most likely a piece of fallen debris. The realisation hit her like an anchor being dropped from a great sky ship: this was a crypt of some kind!

#

Maude MacNeill, according to the archived newspapers Maggie read the next day at the local library, had gone missing on July 17th, 1932, when she was merely twenty-one years old.

The pretty milkmaid with her fiery red curls had last been seen by her brother, leaving the local chapel with a group of fellow attendees. They'd enjoyed lunch together before splitting off their separate ways, with Maude opting for a stroll along the cliffs near Geadais Cottage. She'd never returned home.

Naturally, the possibility that she'd fallen to her untimely demise was the first thing that had crossed the village's collective minds but there was no trace of her. Maggie noted that several of the old newspapers made mention of baobhan sith - legends of beautiful women that lured men to their deaths. Apparently, a mere week before Maude's disappearance, a local farm boy had been slaughtered. Maggie gave it no thought: after all, the folklore stated these bloodsucking fey were only after men. If Maude had encountered one, it would have killed her; not whisked her away to some faerie realm. So where had Maude gone?

Maggie was fairly certain she'd found the answer, buried underneath the old barn in Geadais Cottage. At least, Maggie assumed it was her - there was no way to be sure but the locket lying on the floor and the way Uncle Francis had requested the area be left undisturbed told her all she needed to know. Maggie had cleaned up her locket and sat it out on the table in the drawing room but as she sat in front of the roaring flames that cold autumn night, she began to wonder.

Did Great Uncle Francis have a hand in her demise?

After all, why wouldn't he have told the police about her body? Given the family some closure, at least? And what exactly had happened to the poor girl? Maybe he'd entrusted the farm to his sole living relative because he thought she would leave the place alone, as per his wishes. Maggie had hoped Geadais Cottage would be a fresh start for her but now, she felt like she was caught up in a murder investigation. She was going to inform the authorities: that much was certain.

Night came and Maggie doused the fire before retiring to bed. There was a storm brewing outside - she could hear the wind moaning outside the cottage but there was no distant rattling tonight. With a sigh, she pulled the mountain of duvets over herself and closed her eyes.

It happened around 2am. A great bang roused her from her slumber as an ice-cold wind howled through the cottage. Frustrated, she got out of bed, swinging her feet into her slippers as she threw open the door, expecting to find one of the boarded-up windows with the planks blown off. Instead, she stopped in her tracks.

There, in the hallway, illuminated by the sickly pale glow of the autumn moon as it streamed in from behind the open front door, stood a woman. The grotesque figure was doubled over, leering, its head hanging loosely to one side as though there were no muscles or bones in its neck. A ripped and stained nightgown flapped in the wind as Maggie felt her heart crash through the floor like steel. Maggie was speechless: she'd locked the doors and windows and yet somehow, an intruder stood in her new home.

Suddenly, the figure began to approach. Its movements were slow, strained and it stumbled clumsily through the cottage. Its arms and legs were barely recognisable - bones jutted out strapped with dried skin pulled tightly against the limbs - but the face... Oh, God, the face.

Empty sockets hung low in the face, framed by some scraggly red curls, still attached to what little remained of the scalp. A raspy, unearthly rattle came from decayed lungs, or what little remained of them, as the abhorrent thing tried to make its way through the cottage, towards Maggie. It tilted its head up and she caught a glimpse of gleaming fangs, glittering like unholy crystals in the moonlight.

As she stared in disgust, her jaw agape, and eyes unblinking in terror, she realised with great dread that the metal debris through the coffin was not, in fact, a piece of metal that had fallen.

It was a metal stake.

It had been driven through the torso but missed the heart that now pulsed with unholy energies as the shuffling horror crept through the house. She realised why she'd been warned to leave the cellar alone: the iron chain. The rattling in the night air wasn't the wind: it was...it was Maude. And Maggie knew from childhood tales that the fey despise iron. Oh God, what had she done?

Something took over Maggie: it was a frenzied madness, a need to escape, a deep, primordial urge to flee and never look back, to escape this dark, unholy creature of undeath. She turned on her heel and fled, bursting through the backdoor leading out of the kitchen and ran into the freezing, black night.

#

"Foul morning," the young lad commented as he approached the edge of the cliff. Below, he could see the flutter of the police as they ushered the curious and horrified villagers away. It was a bitter dawn, but nothing deterred the gulls from croaking above their heads as they circled the coast. "How long's she been down there, you reckon?"

"Two days approximately," came the sombre response from the constable.

"Sad."

"Bit of a strange one though," the constable began to gossip, unable to help himself. After all, he'd been up here guarding the cottage alone all morning with only his thoughts and speculations for company. "Body ain't got no blood. Only been two days. Seems she inherited the old Geadais Cottage." He tilted his head back towards the direction of the abandoned house. He inhaled sharply through his nostrils as he stopped himself. The villager didn't need to know about the strange cellar and the empty coffin they'd discovered. No, the policeman thought, it's an open and shut case. She fell from the cliff, probably bled out on the rocks and the surf had washed it away.

He'd find out later that day that the coroner was puzzled by two small puncture wounds in her neck. Just like the ones that had been found on Maude MacNeill at the foot of that same cliff in 1932 before she'd been given a quick burial somewhere on the island and the then-police had been warned to forget about it. That warning had come directly from the Vatican.

You see, Uncle Francis Scott was led to Geadais Cottage by the stories of vampire sightings. His work as an archaeologist was merely a front for his dark, clandestine work as an exorcist. His true intention had been to purify the tiny island of the unholy energy that lingered from primeval sources and to do that, he needed to capture the demon known as baobhan sith.

He had succeeded, for some time, until now. Trusting his only surviving family member to follow in the family's traditions of religious devotion, he'd believed she would be sensible enough to leave the crypt well alone. Years in isolation had made the old man too trusting of his own estranged flesh and blood.

Unfortunately, in Maggie Scott's great desire for freedom, baobhan sith was also free once more.