The Presence

Prologue

Chapter 1

Interlude

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Interlude

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Interlude

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Interlude

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Nightmares

T
he scream rose and echoed in the night with a blood-curdling resonance that only the truly young, and truly terrified, could create.

Her parents ran into the room, called by instinct to battle whatever force had brought about such absolute horror in their beloved child.

Yet there was nothing. Nothing but their nine-year-old, standing on the bed, arms locked at her side, fingers curled into her fists with a terrible rigidity, as if she had suddenly become an old woman. She was screaming, the sound coming again and again, high, screeching, tearing, like the sound of fingernails dragged down the length of a blackboard.

Both parents looked desperately around the room, then their eyes met.

“Sweetheart, sweetheart!”

Her mother came for her unnoticed and tried to take the girl into her arms, but she was inflexible. The father came forward, calling her name, taking her and then shaking her. Once again, she gave no notice.

Then she went down. She simply crumpled into a
heap in the center of the bed. Again the parents looked at one another, then the mother rushed forward, sweeping the girl into her arms, cradling her to her breast. “Sweetie, please, please…!”

Blue eyes, the color of a soft summer sky, opened to hers. They were filled with angelic innocence. The child's head was haloed by her wealth of white-blond hair, and she smiled sleepily at the sight of her mother's face, as if nothing had happened, as if the bone-jarring sounds had never come from her lips.

“Did you have a nightmare?” her mother asked anxiously.

Then a troubled frown knit her brow. “No!” she whispered, and the sky-blue eyes darkened, the fragile little body began to shake.

The mother looked at her husband, shaking her head. “We've got to call the doctor.”

“It's two in the morning. She's had a nightmare.”

“We need to call someone.”

“No,” her father said firmly. “We need to tuck her back into bed and discuss it in the morning.”

“But—”

“If we call the doctor, we'll be referred to the emergency room. And if we go to the emergency room, we'll sit there for hours, and they'll tell us to take her to a shrink in the morning.”

“Donald!”

“It's true, Ellen, and you know it.”

Ellen looked down. Her daughter was staring at her with huge eyes, shaking now.

“The police!” she whispered.

“The police?” Ellen asked.

“I saw him, Mommy. I saw what that awful man did to the lady.”

“What lady, darling?”

“She was on the street, stopping cars. She had big red hair and a short silver skirt. The man stopped for her in a red car with no top, like Uncle Ted's. She got in with him and he drove and then…and then…”

Donald walked across the room and took hold of his daughter's shoulders. “Stop this! You're lying. You haven't been out of this room!”

Ellen shoved her husband away. “Stop it! She's terrified as it is.”

“And she wants us to call the police? Our only child will wind up on the front page of the papers, and if they don't catch this psycho murdering women, he'll come after her! No, Ellen.”

“Maybe they can catch him,” Ellen suggested softly.

“You have to forget it!” Donald said sternly to his daughter.

She nodded gravely, then shook her head. “I have to tell it!” she whispered.

Ellen seldom argued with Donald. But tonight she had picked her battle.

“When this happens…you have to let her talk.”

“No police!” Donald insisted.

“I'll call Adam.”

“That shyster!”

“He's no shyster and you know it.”

Donald's eyes slid from his wife's to those of his daughter, which were awash in misery and a fear she shouldn't have to know. “Call the man,” he said.

 

He was very old; that was Toni's first opinion of Adam Harrison. His face was long, his body was thin, and his hair was snow-white. But his eyes were the kindest, most knowing, she had seen in her nine years on earth.

He came to the bedside, took her hand, clasped it firmly between his own and smiled slowly. She had been shaking, but his gentle hold eased the trembling from her, just as it warmed her. He was very special. He understood that she had seen what she had seen without ever leaving the house. And she knew, of course, that it was ridiculous. Such things didn't happen. But it had happened.

She hated it. Loathed it. And she understood her father's concern. It was a very bad thing. People would make fun of her—or they would want to use her ability for their own purposes.

“So, tell me about it,” Adam said to her, after he had explained that he was an old friend of her mother's family.

“I saw it,” she whispered, and the shaking began again.

“Tell me what you saw.”

“There was a woman on the street, trying to get cars to stop. One stopped. She leaned into it, and she started to talk to the man about money. Then she went with him. She got into the car. It was red.”

“It was a convertible?”

“Like Uncle Ted's car.”

“Right,” he said, squeezing her hand again.

Her voice became a monotone. She repeated some of the conversation between the man and woman word for
word. Perspiration broke out on her body as she felt the woman's growing sense of fear. She couldn't breathe as she described the knife. She was drenched with sweat at the end, and cold. So cold. He talked to her and assured her.

Then the police arrived, called by neighbors who were awakened by her screams.

The two officers flanked her bed and started firing questions at her, demanding to know what she had seen—or what had been done to her.

Despite the terror, she felt all right because of Adam. But then huge tears formed in her eyes. “Nothing, nothing! I saw nothing!”

Adam rose, his voice firm and filled with such authority that even the men with their guns and badges listened to him. They left the room. Adam winked at her and went with the men, telling her that he would talk to them.

 

A month later, the police came back to the house. She could hear her father angrily telling them that they had to leave her alone. But despite his argument, she found herself facing a police officer who kept asking her terrible questions. He described horrific things, his voice growing rougher and rougher. Somewhere in there, she closed off. She couldn't bear to hear him anymore.

She woke up in the hospital. Her mother was by her side, tears in her eyes. She was radiant with happiness when Toni blinked and looked at her.

Her father was there, too. He kissed Toni on the forehead, then, choking, left the room. An older man in the back stepped up to her.

“You're going to move,” he told her cheerfully. “Out to the country. The police will never come again.”

“The police?”

“Yes, don't you remember?”

She shook her head. “I'm sorry…I'm really sorry. I don't know who you are.”

He arched a fuzzy white brow, staring at her. “I'm Adam. Adam Harrison. You really don't remember me?”

She studied him gravely and shook her head. She was lying, but he just smiled, and his smile was warm and comforting.

“Just remember my name. And if you ever need me, call me. If you dream again, or have a nightmare.”

“I don't have nightmares,” she told him.

“If you dream…”

“Oh, I'm certain I don't have dreams. I don't let my self have dreams. Some people can do that, you know.”

His smile deepened. “Yes, actually, I do know. Well, Miss Antoinette Fraser, it has been an incredible pleasure to see you, and to see you looking so well. If you ever just want to say hello, remember my name.”

She gripped his hand suddenly. “I will always remember your name,” she told him.

“If you ever need me, I'll be there,” he promised.

He brushed a kiss on her forehead, and then he was gone. Just a whisper of his aftershave remained.

Soon her memory faded and the whole thing became vague, not real. There was just a remnant in her mind, no more than that whisper of aftershave when someone was really, truly gone.

“I
magine, if you will, the great laird of the castle! The MacNiall himself, famed and infamous, a figure to draw both fear and awe. Ahead of his time, he stood nearly six foot three, hair as black as pitch, eyes the silver gray of steel, capable of glinting like the devil's own. Some say those orbs burned with the very fires of hell. His arms were knotted with muscle from the wielding of his sword, his ax, whatever weapon fell his way in the midst of battle. It was said that he could take down a dozen men in the opening moments of a fray. Passionate for king and country, he would fight any man who spoke to wrong either. Passionate in love, his anger could rage just as deeply against a woman, if he felt himself betrayed.

“Imagine, then, being his beloved, his bride, his wife, burdened with the most treacherous of advisors, men determined to find a way to bring down a man so great in battle, to further their own aims. Imagine her knowing that she had been betrayed, maligned, and that her laird husband was returning from the blood of the battlefield…intent upon a greater revenge. There…there! He would come to the great doors that gave entry to the hall.”

Toni stood at the railing of the second-floor balcony, pointing to the massive double doors, high on sheer exhilaration. A crowd of awed tourists were gathered below her in the great hall entry, staring up at her.

This was really too good, far more than they had imagined they could accomplish when she and the others had set their wild dream about procuring a run-down castle and creating a very special entertainment complex out of it. So far, David and Kevin had rallied their crowd magnificently by playing a pair of hapless minstrels in the reign of James IV, when the current structure had been built upon the Norman bastion begun by thirteenth-century kings. Ryan and Gina had done a fantastic job playing the daughter of the laird and the stable boy with whom she had fallen tragically in love during the reign of Mary, Queen of Scots. Thayer—the wild card in their sextet—had proved himself more than capable of portraying a laird accused of witchcraft in the time of James VI. And they had all run around as kitchen wenches or servants for one another.

Beyond a doubt, the crowd was into the show. Below, they waited. So Toni continued.

“Alas, it was right here, as I stand now, where, tragically, Annalise met with her husband, that great man of inestimable prowess and, unfortunately, jealousy and rage. Believing the stories regarding his beautiful wife, he curled his fingers around her throat, squeezing the life from her before tossing her callously down the staircase in a fit of uncontrollable wrath. Since he was the great laird of the castle, his servants helped him dispose of the body, and Laird MacNiall went on to fight another day. He was, however, to receive his own just rewards. Though he had bested many, and countless troops had
been slaughtered beneath his leadership, Cromwell was to seize the man at last. He received the ultimate punishment: being castrated, disemboweled, decapitated, dismembered and dispersed. His pieces were then gathered by his descendants, and he now lies buried deep within the crypt of these very stone walls! Ah, yes, his mortal remains are buried here. But it's said that his soul wanders, not just around the castle itself, but through the surrounding hills and braes, and he is known to haunt the forest just beyond the ruins of the old town wall.”

Her words were met with a collective “Ooh!” that was most encouraging. Toni flashed a smile to Gina, hovering in a room off the second-floor landing, watching. Any minute now, Ryan would come riding into the main hall.

“They say he roams his lands still, hunting for his wife, anxious to see her face, filled with love and lust…and a fury seizes him each time he would hold her in all her spectral beauty!”

She glanced at Gina, frowning. Ryan should have made his appearance by now.

Gina looked at her and shrugged, then lifted her hands, indicating that Toni should finish up, however she could manage.

“That night the great laird of the castle came bursting through his doorway!”

As if on cue, a fantastic flash of lightning suddenly tore through the darkness, followed by a massive roar of thunder.

The doors burst open…and a man appeared.

Toni inhaled on a sharp breath of disbelief. It wasn't Ryan. The man was on the biggest black stallion Toni
had ever seen. She thought that the prancing animal might breathe fire at any instant.

And the rider… He was damp from the rain, but his hair appeared to be as black as pitch. And though he was atop the giant horse, he appeared massive himself. If his eyes had glowed like the devil's just then, she didn't think that she could have been any more surprised. He was the great Laird Bruce MacNiall, the warrior in mantle and kilt, just as she had described him.

Again lightning flashed and thunder rolled and roared.

Toni let out a startled scream, and a collective squawking rose from the audience.

Perfect! Toni thought. It was time to announce that the laird had come home, in all his glory—and wrath. But for once in her life, words failed her. Like the others, she was mesmerized, watching, afraid to breathe, thinking she must have conjured a ghost.

He dismounted from the stallion with such ease that anyone there with a question would still be in the dark as to what a Scotsman wore beneath his kilt. He looked around the great hall with dark, narrowed eyes and a jaw of concrete.

“Who is running this charade?” he demanded harshly.

The spellbound crowd still seemed to believe it was all part of an act.

David, down with the crowd, jumped to life. “The lady at the top of the stairs!” he informed the stranger, pointing up to Toni. Then he did his best to vacate the place as quickly as possible. “And there we are, at the end of the show. Ladies, gentlemen, thank you for your attention!” he said.

The crowd burst into applause, staring at the newcomer as they did so.

The stranger's scowl deepened.

“Thank you again,” David said. “And now let's adjourn into the kitchen, where we'll have the promised tea and scones!”

As Toni watched the crowd disappear, she heard Gina whispering frantically to her. “What is it? What the hell…?” She stepped from the bedroom, moving out on the landing. “Is it Ryan? What on earth has he done now?”

“It's not Ryan,” Toni murmured beneath her breath. Kevin had followed David and the crowd into the kitchen, but not before looking up the stairs and glaring at her, lifting his hands in a “what the hell…?” motion himself. Thayer must have gone out to help Ryan, since it appeared that Toni and Gina were alone with the irate stranger, who was now slowly striding his way up the stairs.

“Oh, God!” Gina breathed. “You said you made him up!”

“I did!”

“Then who or what is walking up the stairs? Never mind—I can tell you. It's one very angry man.”

He was angry? Suddenly Toni, who had been so stunned and awed herself, was angry, as well. Who the hell was he, charging in on them? They had a lease option on the castle, and whatever he might be, Great Britain had laws, and he surely had no right here.

“Hello,” she said, determinedly putting ice and strength into her voice. “Can I help you?”

“Can you help me? Aye, that you can!” he snapped. Now that he was close, she could see that his eyes were
gray, a dark stormy gray, right now. “Who in the hell are you people and what in God's name do you think you're doing here?” If his eyes were a storm, his voice was the thunder that cracked through it. He was a Scotsman, definitely—it was clear from the burr of his words—but his clean, crisp enunciation suggested that he had traveled, as well, and spent a great deal of time in other places.

“Who are we?” she said, frowning. “Who are you?”

“Bruce MacNiall, owner of this castle.”

“The MacNialls are all dead,” she told him.

“Since I am a MacNiall, I beg to differ.”

Behind her, Gina groaned. “Oh, Lord! It sounds as if there's been some terrible mistake.”

“There's been no mistake,” Toni said softly to Gina. “There can't be!” To the stranger who had arrived in perfect theatrical form, she said, “We have a rental agreement, a lease-purchase agreement, as a matter of fact.”

“Whatever you have is not legal,” he said crisply.

“We honestly believe that it is.” Gina stepped forward, smiling ruefully and trying the polite approach. Gina was petite, with a wealth of lustrous brown hair, and green eyes that surveyed the world with intelligence and an easy courtesy. Her forte was public relations. “This,” she continued politely, “is Antoinette Fraser. Toni. I'm Gina Browne. Honestly, sir, we've gone through all the right steps and paid a handsome sum for the right to be here. We're registered and have a license as tour guides. I can't begin to imagine why you've suddenly burst in here tonight. The people in the village, including the constable, know that we're here. If there was a problem, why are you appearing only now?”

“I have been traveling. The constable didn't throw you out because he hadn't had a chance to talk to me, and find out if, for some reason, I had decided to rent the place. I just arrived back in the village this evening, and learned that my home was being turned into the Pete Rose Circus!”

“Oh! Really!” Gina sucked in air.

Toni looked at her, smiling grimly. Gina looked stricken, and certainly she felt the depth of the insult herself. “I quite enjoy the Pete Rose Circus,” she said. Arms crossed over her chest, she turned back to the stranger. “Look, we're truly baffled by your sudden appearance, especially since we didn't know that you existed and because we do have legal forms. Perhaps people here keep their own counsel, but surely someone might have mentioned you to us! And…we walked right in here, without even having to acquire keys—we found a set on a hook by the door. Perhaps you're out of town too frequently, Mr. MacNiall.”

“It's Laird MacNiall,” he said, his tone dry. “And I could hardly expect to come home and find—”

“Aha!”

The roar of the word sounded along with a new clatter of hoofbeats, cutting off Laird MacNiall. Ryan Browne had at last arrived, sword drawn, risen in his stirrups. He realized almost immediately that the room was emptied of people and filled with a huge black horse. He reined in swiftly, his eyes following the steps until they fell upon the upper landing, and he stared at the three of them.

“The great laird returns to his castle?” he said weakly. “Where he finds…?”

The black stallion let out a wicked-sounding snicker.
Ryan's horse, their handsome roan named Wallace, shied. “Another great laird with a bigger horse! Okay… This great laird is leaving,” he said quickly, getting the gelding under control. “But I'll be back,” he promised.

He turned and left, the roan clattering its way out of the castle.

“I really will have the lot of you arrested,” Bruce MacNiall said. It was more like a growl than a spoken comment. “How dare you burst in here, mocking Scottish history? Americans!”

“Excuse me, I think that we've explained all this. We have a lease, a legal document,” Toni said. “And we're not mocking Scottish history, we're here because we love it.”

“Listen to me one more time, you addled woman! I own the place, and it has never been for sale or lease!”

It simply couldn't be, yet his irritated aggression was so vehement that Toni found herself suddenly afraid that something could be really wrong. Gina looked stunned, and equally worried.

Toni stepped up to the plate, ready to do battle. “You're wrong,” she informed the man claiming to be the living MacNiall. “We have an agreement.”

“The hell you do!”

“We should have you arrested, since you're doing your best to destroy the tour,” Toni told him, aware that she was taking a slight step back despite her words. “And you've certainly no right to call me an addled woman. We have papers that prove we have leased the place. Now you say that
you
own it! It was filthy and in horrid disrepair. It was obvious that no one had given
the least care to this place in years. We've been through here repairing electrical connections, replacing wires, plastering and painting—just to keep the place from falling apart completely. The first day, David and Kevin shored up the front wall. We've worked our asses off to make it livable.”

“I told you, I've been out of the country.”

“All of your life?” she said sharply. “Because if not, you should be ashamed. This place is incredible. If I had owned it since birth, I'd have never let it come to this!”

“My castle is not your concern,” he said icily.

“But it is, because for the next year—at the least—it's
our
castle,” she said tightly.

“No, it is not,” he said. “I own the place and I did
not
lease it!”

Toni was forced to feel another moment's unease. There was definite conviction in his voice.

“I can see that you've put time and work into the place,” he told Gina. “For that, I'm sorry. But the place is not now, nor ever will be, for rent. I would have stopped you, but as I said, I've been out of the country.”

“Well, that's just amazing,” Toni said, stepping in before Gina could reply. “In this day and age, one would have thought that someone in this little village might have known where you were and called you, or at least said something about you when we were buying the paint and materials!”

“Right!” Gina said.

At that moment Ryan came striding back into the great hall. Being Ryan, however, he paused. “Great
horse!” he said, staring at the stallion. “What a beautiful animal.”

Bruce MacNiall started back down the stairs. “He's a mix of long and careful breeding.”

“Draft horse…look at the muscle and the size! And there's Arab in the history somewhere. He's almost got the legs of an American Thoroughbred,” Ryan said.