Spirit Wild

Chapter 1: Ashes, Dust, and Whispers

John had grown more erratic as the day wore on. Callan supposed it was understandable. As far as he knew, it was the first time his uncle had seen a man come back from the dead.

The day had already flirted with the bizarre, beginning with John’s insistence on a safety coffin. The undertaker gave Callan a look, half disbelief and half plea, like it was some grim joke.

“It’s 2025,” the man muttered. “No’ the bloody Middle Ages.”

But John wasn’t joking, and a hundred quid settled the matter. Drill a hole in the coffin. Thread twine through. Tie it to the late Iain Hobbs’s big toe, the other end fixed to a bell above the grave.

Brilliant. Buryin’ a neighbour wi’ a doorbell on his toe. Totally normal day.

The burial itself passed with little to remark upon. Ashes became ashes, dust became dust. A cold March drizzle whipped sideways by the North Atlantic wind hurried mourners into the nearest pub. From his seat, Callan watched them raise their glasses.

That’s when things lurched somewhat sideways.

A guest who’d stepped out for a smoke returned, pale and wide-eyed.
“Eh... the bell’s ringin’.”

For a long beat, no one spoke. Silence thickened.

“It’ll be the wind,” someone offered, eager to stay warm and dry. A few muttered agreements followed.

John alone strode to the door. He glowered around the room, snatched a bottle of whisky from the nearest table, and stormed out, curses in his wake.

Callan, still bearing marks from the last time his uncle had taken to the drink, considered taking the opportunity to slip away.

Always best to avoid the man when the whisky came out.

He drained his orange juice, about to leave, when he noticed a girl beside Nana Tain.

Jess.

He had taken a moment to recognise her at the graveside, her familiar tangle of auburn curls now cropped to below her jaw. Her wee brother Lewis was with her. They’d never been close friends, though their families had once been. That was before. Before her brother. Before his dad.

She caught him looking and gave a brief smile, nodding for him to come over. He hesitated, dropping his gaze. He wasn’t normally the type to join others. But Nana Tain wasn’t a stranger, and Jess had smiled, which was more kindness than he was used to.

People dinnae tend to smile at me. No’ like that anyway. A mistake? I’ll take it.

As he moved to join them, a figure appeared at the far end of the room, rain-slicked and robed in patchwork cloth. He walked with deliberate rhythm, as if following a path he alone could see. Water dripped from his sleeves, pooling at his feet as his staff tapped the floor with each step.

Callan’s gut clenched.

The man stopped at Jess’s table and although Callan couldn’t see his face, Nana Tain’s expression told him enough. Her permanent laughter lines stayed, but her forehead tightened while her hands clenched the table edge. Not surprise. More recognition.

And was it fear?

“I come with no ill intent,” the man said.

His voice rasped like dried leaves, brittle. Conversations stalled as eyes turned.

“The spirits sent me.”

He raised one hand, knotted with age and inked with faint symbols, and pointed a crooked finger at Jess.

“You bear the mark,” he said.

Then he tapped his staff once on the floor. A sharp, deliberate crack.

“The earth stirs, and you’ve been hidin’ too long.”

Jess went still, while Nana Tain stood so fast her chair tipped backward.

“Have ye no’ a shred o’ decency? This is a funeral. Leave now, or ye will rue it.”

The man turned.

Callan didn’t recognise him, but his body jolted like he’d touched a live wire. Standing near him was like being too close to a fire; his skin prickled.

His silver hair was braided tight, coiled around his head in intricate loops. One eye bore green tattoos. Runic. Ancient.

He didn’t flinch beneath Nana Tain’s fury. His gaze wandered the room before landing square on Callan.

A flicker o’ recognition. A whisper o’ surprise.

He stepped closer and clamped a hand around Callan’s arm, his grip locking like iron.

“And you,” he murmured, low and certain, breath sharp with whisky, “keep it covered.”

He let go.

Keep what covered?

If there was more to it, it vanished as the front doors burst open.

John stumbled in, filthy and panting, wild-eyed and dragging something heavy.

It was Hobbs— slung over his shoulder like a sack of tatties.

Screams broke the silence as he heaved the dirt-caked corpse onto a table, scattering glasses and toppling chairs. The body hit the wood with a wet thud. Mud flecks flew. A smell like cut peat and old, ruined meat filled the room—sharp and wrong.

The smell was too familiar. No’ death, but the same sour, cloyin’ rot that had clung to Da’s room in those last weeks. It stuck in my throat like old smoke.

Callan spun back, but the old man had vanished. The floorboards where he’d stood glistened damp, as if the rain had soaked deeper there. A tang hung in the air—resinous, salt-bitten—that made Callan’s throat tighten.

Then John collapsed into a chair, chest heaving as if he’d hauled the grave itself.

“That’s the final straw!” boomed a portly man with impressive whiskers at the bar. “Bereavement or no’, John’s lost it. Call the polis, Charlie!”

John raised a hand. “Shut up. All of ye.” He grabbed a pint, took a swig, and set the glass on Hobbs’s chest.

The big man at the bar started forward, but his friend caught his shoulder. No one else moved. After a moment, a few crept closer, peering into the pint glass.

Ripples.

Small, slow ones. Barely noticeable. But there. One every few seconds.

“It’s a pulse,” someone whispered.

A faint hiss followed, as if air had been dragged through teeth. Not breath, not really. More a shudder, like something unseen had forced Hobbs’s lungs to remember what pain felt like.

A hum of disbelief swept the room. And yet, despite the stench that said otherwise, John was right. If not alive, Hobbs wasn’t fully dead either.

The clincher came when Hobbs opened his eyes.

The local polis had arrived within the half hour and, with sleeves pulled over noses, helped guide the air ambulance in. Callan, more accustomed to the smell, still found the sickly sweetness coating the back of the throat rank and cloying.

He was about to mention it to one of the officers when he spotted his uncle at the bar. John had kept his distance, draining whiskies as the whole festival of emergency services continued. As their eyes met, John’s nostrils flared.

Whisky bottle in hand, he crossed the room in three swift strides, grabbed Callan by the ear, and hauled him into the cold.

Don’t fight, don’t flinch. Just get through it. That’s the rule. That’s always the rule.

Some murmured protests at the roughness, but no one stepped in. They never did.

John slammed him against the wall. Slurred words, blazing eyes.
“What is it wi’ you and death, eh? Always you.”

Callan winced. “But… he’s no’ dead! And he smells like Da…” The words tumbled out before he could stop them.

“Don’t you dare talk back to me.”

Callan braced for a blow, but it didn’t come. For a second, something shifted in John’s eyes. A flicker of understanding. Even fear. His jaw worked, chewing words, rage thinning to something colder.

“Ye think I’m mad?” John said, quieter now. “Ye think I don’t smell it too? Same as before. But this time…” He took a great gulp of whisky, eyes sharpening as though the amber liquid gave him courage. “This time I’m goin’ to sort it. I’ve found the way through.”

His eyes shimmered then, a strange glint. Excitement? Madness? Gone in a blink, replaced by grim resolve.

“I want ye home. Now, get out of my sight.”

He yanked Callan by the ear again, shoving him toward the road. A boot followed, missing Callan’s backside by a whisker as he bolted down the track.

John’s voice rose behind him, half mutter, half chant. Callan caught but fragments… a word that sounded like bridge.

The wind picked up. Clouds grew heavier. Far in the distance, a bell rang once more.

Chapter 2: Between the Trees

Callan finished his shinty drills, swinging the caman with his good hand, guiding the ball in small arcs across the floor. Futile, but the repetition gave his thoughts somewhere to land. Exhausted, he collapsed into bed.

Rain tapped on the skylight, droplets tracing familiar paths across the glass. The house groaned with the cold, timbers shrinking and shifting in protest. The hall clock marked each second with a deep, deliberate tock. Steady. Indifferent. Half an hour since it had struck midnight. He wanted sleep, but frustration dragged it out of reach.

Where was John?

Beneath the scratchy blanket, he kicked for warmth, fingers drifting to the scar on his left hand. He couldn’t help but to pick at it. See if it still bled. Check for that proof it was still part of him.

Some prize. A scar that won’t let me forget.

His thoughts slid back to Hobbs. That same wrongness in the air. Sweet at first, then turning rancid, like fruit left too long on the sill. A foul echo of his father’s room.

He sat up, pulled on his jumper, and tiptoed through the hall. It hit him before he touched the handle, coating the back of his throat. The door might as well have been breathing it out at him.

His father sat rocking, the motor whirring. Eyes open, blank as ever.

He tucked the blanket around his dad’s shoulders and kissed his forehead.
“Still here, Dad.”

Was I askin’ him if he was, or assurin’ him that I was?

For a heartbeat, he heard it. The tiniest pull of air, sharp and shallow, like someone wincing in their sleep. He froze, but his father’s face stayed slack, eyes vacant, rocking gently.

As he turned to leave, his ears pricked. Voices outside—two, maybe three. Female, softly singing an old folk song. Respectful of the hour, but the single-pane glass let it all through.

Callan moved to the window. Nana Tain and Jess, with Lewis trudging beside them. They hugged, then Nana Tain turned into her home, leaving the siblings to walk on. A faint smile tugged at him, gone as quick as it came.

Imagine that. Family that actually walks you home.

Then it came: a sharp, wet crack, like bone snapping in the cold.

The singing stopped.

The siblings froze at the end of the track, moonlight silvering their shapes. Jess turned and said something to Lewis. Callan couldn’t hear, but her stance spoke fear.

And then something moved.

A ripple between the trees. No form. No face. But it was fast. unnaturally fast. The air tightened, storm-heavy.

Callan’s pulse spiked and he pressed closer to the glass, breath fogging it. Lewis fell; Jess hauled him up, dragging him back. But there was nothing to see. Nothing visible anyway. Only a presence closing in.

Then shouting.

John’s voice, ragged and wild:
“Get away from them! You hear me? Leave them be!”

A shape burst onto the track. John, charging with a bottle in one hand and something heavy in the other.
“I see ye!” he bellowed. “Ye dinnae scare me! No’ tonight!”

Whatever hunted in the trees shifted. Low and quick.

Jess and Lewis bolted, stumbling, Jess half-carrying her brother. The thing hesitated, eyes fixed on them.

John didn’t move.
“I’ve found it!” he shouted. “The bridge. I ken it’s yer way through. Goes both ways though. I’ll find Drathus!”

The presence held its silence. Waiting. Watching.

John’s bravado cracked. His voice dropped to pleading.
“Look, please. I just want tae save my brother. That’s all. Just… leave us be.”

Then panic.
“Get back! I said. Don’t!”

It lunged. Too fast for any person.

The thud rattled the glass. John collapsed like a felled tree.

“No,” Callan breathed, his palm pressed flat to the pane.
Get up. Please, just once, get up.

The thing turned. Facing the track. Facing Jess and Lewis.

It was going after them.

I could stay low. Hide. Pretend none o’ this was happenin’.
But Jess is out there. Lewis too. And if that thing wants prey, it can look at me first.

He slammed both hands against the window, shouting, voice breaking the night.

The attacker froze. Its head snapped toward the house.

Even from here, Callan felt the weight of its stare. His heart hammered, but he held its gaze.

Don’t blink. Don’t run.

And then, movement deeper in the trees. A tall figure. Rain-slick. Still. The faint line of a staff beside him.

The man from the wake. Watching.

The attacker faltered, body tensing like prey that sensed a predator. It looked to Callan once more, then it vanished into the trees.

The tall figure lingered a beat longer, his head angled toward Callan, then the next blink of rain and shadow erased him too.

Gone. Yet the house still felt watched.

Callan staggered back from the window, caman clutched so tight his knuckles burned.

His legs were moving before his mind caught up.

He leapt downstairs, grabbed one of John’s old oilskin jackets from the hook, and slipped it on. It still smelled of smoke and whisky.

What had he shouted? The bridge. Drathus. Savin’ someone. Every word hooked into me.

His father had been lost for ten years. And now this.

He stepped outside. Cold air sliced through the night like a blade. Frost crunched beneath his feet.

He didn’t know what he was walking toward.
But something had changed.
And it wasn’t going to change back.

Chapter 3: The Shining Ones

Callan burrowed deeper into John’s oversized jacket, pulling the collar over his ears as helicopter blades roared overhead. Rain stung his cheeks, but the chopper’s thunder drowned even the whispers of the neighbours that had gathered nearby. You couldn’t blame them. Not much happened in Achnasheen. Seven houses and a roofless church didn’t make for much excitement.

Small town. Big drama. They’ll be tellin’ this story for years.

He stared after the helicopter lights until they vanished into the clouds, his stomach twisting. The image of his uncle lying there wouldn’t leave him, the purple tendrils creeping up John’s neck, threading along his hands, even curling faintly at his jaw. Full of life one moment, gone the next. By the time the paramedics arrived, the strange marks had faded completely, leaving nothing but sallow skin and confusion. The others hadn’t seen them, or if they had, they’d pretended not to.

As the air ambulance climbed into low clouds, a hand caught his sleeve.

Nana Tain stood at his side, shawl pulled tight against the elements, even as the rain jeweled the grey wisps at her temples, and spoke soft enough that nobody but him could hear.
“Ye did well, laddie. It has been a long day. Get some sleep, and we shall talk once ye are rested.”

He nodded. She held his gaze a heartbeat longer, then released him, folding back into the knot of neighbours as though she’d never moved at all.

Three different fears had driven him past his uncle’s fallen body without stopping. He feared that whatever had struck John down might still be nearby, ready to finish the job. He feared what he might see if he did go to him. And he feared the worst of all, that he would not know how to help even if he tried.
So he had run straight to Nana Tain’s house. She was the one who called the air ambulance, calm and steady while Callan shook with adrenaline, but it was her reaction to his suggestion of phoning the police that had truly shocked him.

“No,” she’d said sharply. “Not them.”

He’d blinked. “But shouldn’t someone…?”

“They will not help with this,” she said, voice lower now. “Not a word, Callan. Not to the polis, not to a soul. Not of what ye saw, and definitely not of how it moved.”

He swallowed. “But…”

“They will say it was the drink and the dark,” she said, her grip tightening. “Let them. Some things grow bolder on the sound of their own names. You would do yourself a great favour by keeping your mouth shut, for yer own sake.”

Now, with her away, he lingered, listening to the neighbours’ murmur.

“Poor old sod. Surprised he made it home at all, the state he wis in.”
“Aye. And he’d already had a bellyful before Hobbs even showed.”

Callan peered at them from under his hood. The voices dipped lower, as if the rain itself might be listening.

“Still reeks the same though, eh? Same as Hobbs did.”

A silence.

They were right though. That wrong-sweet tang that had lived in da’s room, that had followed Hobbs to his wake, also clung to John.

“Mind yer mouth, Charlie.”
“I’m just sayin’—”
“Well, say less. See what happened to Hobbs… and now John.”

They shuffled, uneasy. Someone gave a nervous laugh that died quick.

“Always ramblin’ on about them, he was. The Shining Ones.”
“Don’t.” A sharp hiss, a boot scuffin’ the gravel. “No good comes of callin’ names aloud.”

Shinin’ Ones. They never speak o’ them, certainly never by their own name; the Fae. It’s always the Shinin’ Ones, the Fair Folk, the Good People. Never the Fae. As though that name carried teeth.