Trembling With Fear 5-19-24

56°49’0.257″N / 4°11’2.267″W, by Jordan McClymont

I’m going to kill her. One more nineties Clubland classic, and I’ll do it, I swear. 

We rejoin the A9 again and this time I pick the music. If Iona’s so intent on dragging us out to the middle of God knows where, then I would like to do it with the smallest amount of decorum and man, does that woman have crappy taste. 

I watch hills twist and disappear. It all looks the same to me, but Iona loves it. ‘Look,’ she squeals, and I do. ‘Very nice.’ 

She’s harshing my mellow, but she’s my mate.

‘We’re here,’ she says, turning off and onto a road that barely deserves the name. We rise and fall into more dull hills, then snake alongside what is clearly a decommissioned railroad. 

The rental car’s struggling. Iona gives me that look, the one that tells me I was right. She just about manages to stall us into the layby and what is likely the car’s final resting place. ‘Now, that wasn’t so bad, was it?’ I give her that look, the one that says I’ll throttle her.

My mouth hangs open when I see the amount of gear she’s brought. ‘One should expect the unexpected,’ she rhymes off, as if she’s traveltips.com made flesh. I forget to hold an overinflated sigh, but she just ties off that oversized backpack of hers and locks the car, giving me that signature cheeky-but-adorable grin of hers.

We cross railroad tracks long rusted past the point of remedy. Iona takes a quick snap, only to be disappointed with how it comes out. Then we’re balancing stone to stone like six-year-old girls again and I regret wearing trainers when my foot slips beneath the river’s surface. Iona’s heckling from the other side, feet safe and sound in leather boots.

 We climb the next hill and Iona checks her app. ‘This is it.’ She runs out, dropping her backpack onto a foot-deep patch of heather. ‘Scotland’s pole of-,’ she checks the correct word, ‘inaccessibility.’

‘Woo,’ I add, grasping at what enthusiasm I can. Then unprepared, with my mouth half open, Iona grabs half-a-dozen selfies of us both. ‘Don’t even think of posting them.’

She lifts her phone out of reach, and we leave this pole of inaccessibility. I pivot on the hill to change socks, not that’ll make much difference—the trainer is soaked right through. Burying the wet sock in my backpack, I glance up to see Iona unfurling a tent.

‘Just what exactly is it you’re doing?’

‘Weather’s perfect,’ she says. Then the penny drops, she’ll have to convince me. ‘There’s a lunar eclipse tonight. So, I was thinking, where better than here?’

I stare at ominous, migrating clouds and emit a deliberate sigh this time.

‘Come on, it’ll be nice.’

I weigh putting that soaking-wet trainer back on. ‘Alright, but you’re cooking, you little shit,’ I say, limping to help. 

She cooks us dinner on a portable stove, and we settle down for the night. The wind sounds much worse than it is, our tent contorting like a fly in a web. ‘I’ve set an alarm for the eclipse,’ Iona says.

“Wonderful.’ I stare at the taut polyester shifting in the dark, drifting in, then out and—

Sky, stripped of colour. River, red with blood. Dirt, grasping at bones. Fire, asking me in. I kneel, my back to a setting sun as a moon, long starved of sacrifice, rises to consume. Blinded by visions, I drive the dagger in.

I jump, gasping for air, hands racing to my abdomen. I’m a sweat-coated mess, but I’m whole. ‘Christ.’ I turn to apologise, only to find Iona’s sleeping bag empty, our tent open.

I step outside, look around, then up. ‘Okay, Iona,’ I whisper, ‘that’s kind of cool.’ 

Stars, thousands, placed at every discernible point. I’m overwhelmed by all the minute differences, a certain hue here, different over there, some dimmer, others brighter, some in clusters, some not.

I’m brought back to Planet Earth by a muffled moan somewhere to my left, back towards the patch of heather. ‘Iona?’ 

I tiptoe barefoot across ground that is sharp and dry, distinctly aware of the moon’s absence. Must be mid-eclipse. Struggling to make out the dim outline of the land, I move forward slowly, cautiously. Soon, a foot deep in heather again. Then the moon, full and white-blue, and larger than I ever thought possible, escapes the shadow that had been draped over it. It kills the stars in the sky, casting a light that I’m not too comfortable with. I vaguely recall my nightmare, craving my bed back in London.

There it is again, that noise. Deeper into the heather now, made fully visible in the moon’s indiscriminate glow. I step in something slimy, my frustration beginning to boil. 

I look down: something is there. Pale hands rise from the mud, reaching for me. I try to run, but my leg is snagged and I fall. I can feel them clawing. I try to crawl away, but they drag me back and with a handful of heather and a mouthful of dirt, I’m taken below. 

I fall and land hard, a searing pitch splitting my brain, then I’m pulled through the dark, stone slicing soft skin.

They discard me. My hearing returns. Chanting, a language I cannot place. One breathes outward and fire awakens, flames sapphire blue. My attackers are human no longer; far beyond decay and absent of scent – these creatures are ancient.

I make it to my knees, look to the centre and what appears to be some form of altar. ‘Oh god.’ And then I see her, limp to the side, eyes turned black. Blood pools around her and now I’m all salvia, throating a silent scream.

‘We should do a trip up north,’ Iona had said. ‘It’ll be nice.’ 

Blue flames cause the malformed shapes of the dead to dance against stone and latticed vines; they howl and raise a dagger coated with my friend’s blood.

And people ask why I’m a city girl.