The Boy Who Was Lost
Lit Up’s Christmas Event
Yesterday was midwinter in Achnasnoc. That time of the year when the hours of daylight squeeze through the mist and fog and get lost again in the night. We look forward then with hope, to the joy and light of Christmas Day, but this year is different. We buried old Chrissie MacKinnon two days ago.
Iain Rua was at the sheep fank tool store by midday, where he fired up the stove someone made years ago, from an oil drum with a flue stuck in the top. Having graduated ten years ago from Edinburgh University, Iain Rua now avoids destitution by picking shellfish from the shore, for the lorry which buys them by the sackful each Wednesday.
The fank sits on the moor above the township. Our forebears built its long enclosure, stone on stone, and now demoralised by lichen and moss. Over the years, since folk stopped keeping sheep, the fank has become, as Calum Ban says, ‘like one of those clubs for gentlemen in London, except ours is for losers’.
Helen showed up around eleven o’clock, with a flask of coffee well-laced with whisky. She had Brendan with her, which raised some eyebrows. He blew into Achnasnoc in the summer and since then he has slept in his estate car. Perhaps Helen is warming him up these cold nights. Rumour has it she was the love interest in a couple of episodes of ‘The Man from Uncle’ way back. You would think she’d make good money at that game, but she arrived here with only just enough left to buy a mobile home. Shimi, one of the last native Gaelic speakers in Achnasnoc, lets her keep it at the top of his croft. When she smiles, you can still see the beauty in the faded architecture of her face.
By the afternoon folks were huddled around the stove which was now red-hot. With the fog rolling in from the sea and people mindful of Chrissie’s funeral, the veil between us and that other, capricious, world was paper-thin. We’re terribly modern in Achnasnoc with the electric coming thirty years ago and the TV mast on the mainland bringing the wide world to our kitchens, but we’re still wary of the Bann Shee and any ancestors who might want to hang around, instead of buggering off like decent souls.
Calum Ban had delivered the eulogy at Chrissie’s funeral, and he was still feeling inclined to talk.
‘Does anyone here remember young Neil-Angus MacLeod?’
Shimi, who prides himself on his mastery of English, said, ‘It’s true that I remember right enough. He was the child who went missing one Christmas day did he not?’
‘Oh dear, how terrible for the parents,’ exclaimed Helen, and she placed the coffee flask carefully back on the table. ‘Was he ever found?’
‘Yes he was found,’ said Calum. ‘But not until the following spring. Ach, searches were made, for just a week later, on Hogmanay night, a light was seen wandering around the top of the moor. The lad was only twelve but a strange one. He liked to roam by himself up on the moor all day and did he not take a little torch which he sometimes used on returning home late? All that winter the light was seen, not every night, but enough that his parents, poor Alec and Morag, were nearly driven out of their wits.
Finally, they went to old Chrissie, God rest her soul. Aye, there was always something knowing about Chrissie. Women went to her to find out who their future husband would be, how many children they would have, who had put the evil eye on their cow to make it swell up — that sort of thing.’
Calum opened the door of the stove and threw in a couple of lumps of peat, and we all watched as the flames rose up to consume them.
‘When Alec and Morag went to see her about their boy, Chrissie asked them to come back with something he used to wear. They gave her an old pullover which she held in front of her while closing her eyes. When she opened them again all she could say was: ‘he sleeps under a roof of ice.’
Now Alec and Morag didn’t know what to make of that at all, but then someone remembered that one time, he’d seen the lad skating on the High Loch. Of course, there was nothing to do then but to drag the loch. Well do I remember the men hauling the boat up the old cart road, and the chains jingling in its bow. With my own eyes I saw them launching it and throwing the hooks into the water. They were not long at their task.
The lad must have fallen through the ice and no-one there to help, you see. Well, his remains are buried up there in the Seceders’ * graveyard. The light on the moor was never seen again.’
The wind was shrieking round the fank walls by now, and folk drew closer to the stove. After a while, Shimi got up, opened the door and peered out.
‘It’s blacker out there than the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat,’ he said, ‘ I’m for home and so should the rest of you!’
There are days in Achnasnoc when folk look back on the road they travel and see that much of the journey is over. There are nights when a glory morning seems many leagues away.
- Seceders -a breakaway sect from the Church of Scotland
