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Here's story 280, of 288 so far.

Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.

Inhabited

The evening sky was as purple as the heather that stretched out before me, but it had bands of red and gold too.

I’d hiked almost ten miles that day, in a long loop that would eventually bring me back to the car in another forty-five minutes or so. The light was fading, but I’d have more than enough time to make the trip safely. I’d even done plenty of night hikes before, though I’d never been so far north. The Cairngorms were far behind, and I was now well into the Highlands proper, moving between small towns and villages as the fancy took me, getting away from my real life and exploring the scenery.

I’d last checked in with my family the previous day, when I’d found a pub with wi-fi. I had my one-man tent packed away on my back, and I’d already picked tonight’s camping spot, adjacent to where I’d parked. The headlights would help me when I was pitching my modest shelter later. For now, I breathed in the pleasantly brisk evening breeze, and pushed on.

Before long, I saw a medium-sized dog up ahead, and after another minute or so, I caught sight of the animal’s presumed owner, who must have been seventy years old if he was a day. His white hair matched his thick woollen sweater, and his boots might have been as old as me. He had a walking stick, but he didn’t look like he needed it. He was stood at the crest of a ridge, standing perfectly still, looking into the distance.

As I approached, I bent down to pet the dog, and I was aware of the man’s head turning in my direction. I nodded with a smile, and for a moment I thought there was a strange expression on his face, but it dissipated so quickly that it might never have been there at all.

“Evening,” he said, and I returned the greeting. His accent was broad, but I’d travelled in Scotland many times before, and I could understand him easily.

“What’s his name?” I asked, indicating the dog, and the man gave the animal a wrinkled grin of inordinate fondness.

“Loki,” he said. “Mongrel that he is.”

“The Norse god of mischief,” I replied, and the man nodded.

“Aye, as some say. But he’s a wee bit old for much mischief now.”

I ran my hand repeatedly across the dog’s head, smoothing back the tufts of wiry fur. “I wouldn’t count him out just yet,” I said. The remark seemed to please the old man, and he nodded and once again turned his attention to the glen that stretched out below.

After another few seconds of petting the dog, which by now was eagerly leaning into my touch, I stood up and joined the man on the ridge. Low, rolling slopes of gorse and heather and brambles formed a patchwork of colours under the dramatic sunset, and a small and narrow loch gleamed like the blade of a giant’s dagger, fallen from the sky and now lying forgotten at the base of the hills.

“Do you live around here?” I asked, and the man nodded.

“No’ far,” he replied, tilting his head backwards and to the right. I glanced in the direction he’d indicated, and could see a few lights clustered together perhaps half a mile distant, beyond a copse of pines.

“I’m just passing through,” I said, even though it was unnecessary. “Seeing the country.”

“Aye,” he said, as if he encountered hikers every day — which he very likely did. “Should have fine walking weather tomorrow, too, and—”

He stopped abruptly, and I looked over in concern, but he still stood straight as an oak, his stick held loosely in his right hand. The dog appeared at his feet immediately and sat down, its posture every bit as rigidly attentive as its master’s.

“You alright?” I asked, a frown on my brow, but his only response was to half-turn his head towards me and then quickly tap a single finger against his lips twice. The gesture would have been understood anywhere: Quiet. Then he nodded in the direction of the valley below.

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust, and then I saw her.

She was a few hundred metres away, down at the bank of the loch, facing directly away from us. Her hair was dark, and long; it reached at least the middle of her back. Her skin was pale, and her limbs slender and lithe. She stood perfectly still, and while I couldn’t be sure at this distance, I thought that her feet might have been in the water.

She wore no clothes.

People were tough in this part of the world. I’d seen them swimming in the North Sea, diving into water that was midnight blue and coming back out with smiling lips that had turned almost the same colour. Just a few days earlier, I’d seen two teenaged girls paddling in the harbour of a fishing village, trading gossip and giggles as if they were on a school bus, with no parents in sight.

But naked? And alone, as the sun had begun to set?

“We should help her,” I said, and even though I wasn’t really speaking to the old man and had already taken a step forward, I suddenly felt his hand clamp around my forearm. His strength was shocking, and I think I actually gasped as I looked around at him again.

The dog, whose name was Loki, watched us both unperturbed.

“She’ll need none of your help, lad,” the man said, and it was the fact that he was almost whispering that finally made my arms break out in gooseflesh. “If you go down there, the one needin’ help will be you.”

I looked at him incredulously, then turned to try and catch sight of the woman, and I felt the strangest feeling of dread. She was still there, backlit by the water that held the reflection of the sky, and perfectly still.

I turned my attention to the man again, and I was about to protest and drag my arm away when I heard a sound from below. It was an entirely normal sound when out in the country, but here, in this situation, it was somehow horrifying. It was the whinny of a large horse.

My eyes sought out the animal, but I couldn’t find it — and still, the woman was down there. I saw motion in my peripheral vision, and glanced around to see the old man crossing himself, his lips moving in a silent prayer. This time I did attempt to pull away, but his grip was iron. Helplessly, I yet again turned my head to seek the strange, unclad woman at the water’s edge, and then I think my breath stopped in my lungs for a long moment.

The horse I’d heard was standing on the bank now, head bowed to lap at the shallows. A massive beast, black under the looming night, rippling with strength. Almost too large for the setting, as if there was some trick of perspective. Of the woman, there was no sign at all.

I opened my mouth to say something, or perhaps to ask a question, but the old man tugged my arm and drew me away from the ridge. He released me after several metres, and then he clapped a hand upon my shoulder. I flinched, and his eyes were full of understanding.

“Don’t be going down there,” he said. “Mind me now.”

I could only nod, because every instinct I had said that his advice was to be followed. He scrutinised me for several seconds, and then his posture relaxed slightly, but not before he gave one final glance towards the ridge just above us.

“If that’s where you need to be, you can go when the sun is back up,” he said. “But not before.”

His hand was still on my shoulder, and he leaned in. His eyes glittered black as coal, and I think that I saw fear in them, too.

“This place is inhabited tonight,” he said.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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