Pine

by Francine Toon

Genres: Ghost; Small Town & Rural; Horror

Synopsis

They are driving home from the search party when they see her. The trees are coarse and tall in the winter light, standing like men.

Lauren and her father, Niall, live alone in the Highlands, in a small village surrounded by pine forest. When a woman stumbles out onto the road one Halloween night, Niall drives her back to their house in his pickup. In the morning, she’s gone.

In a community where daughters rebel, men quietly rage, and drinking is a means of forgetting, mysteries like these are not out of the ordinary. The trapper found hanging with the dead animals for two weeks. Locked doors and stone circles. The disappearance of Lauren’s mother a decade ago.

Lauren looks for answers in her tarot cards, hoping she might one day be able to read her father’s turbulent mind. Neighbours know more than they let on, but when local teenager Ann-Marie goes missing it’s no longer clear whom she can trust.

In the shadow of the Highland forest, Francine Toon captures the wildness of rural childhood and the intensity of small-town claustrophobia. In a place that can feel like the edge of the word, she unites the chill of the modern Gothic with the pulse of a thriller. It is the perfect novel for our haunted times.

Sample

1

They are driving out for guising when they see her. It is the narrow part of the road that cuts through the hem of the forest. Some firs arch so densely here they block the night sky. Lauren sits high in the passenger seat, her elasticated gym shoes swinging over cans of Kick and a chewed-up tennis ball. She has braided her hair and wears it in a circle like a garland. Niall, her father, is steering their dented pickup and listening to Aerosmith. It smells of dog fur even though Jameson isn’t in the truck.

‘Is that lipstick?’ her father asks.

‘No, it’s face paint,’ Lauren says, lying. It is the one time of year she can wear something of her mother’s. It feels precious. Clandestine.

She holds a pumpkin-shaped bucket on her knees. Her face is powdered white except for the deep-red trickle at the corner of her mouth. There is no reason it can’t be face paint. Her dress is black with a cream lace collar. They bought it for her grandmother’s funeral eleven months ago, when she was nine and a half. Her arms stick out of their sleeves, reminding her that next year the dress might be too small. Her father says next year maybe they’ll stop. But for now, she is a vampire. She likes this outfit and because they live in a tiny village no one can tease her, unlike at school. In her pocket, there’s a piece of antler that folds out into a knife.

The headlights cast two white beams into the black. Up ahead there is a kink in the single-track lane, a passing place, its diamond sign growing luminous as they approach. Lauren sees a skinny figure standing in the scrub of the verge, enveloped in a large white dressing gown.

‘Jesus,’ her father says as they bump past.

‘Who’s that?’ Lauren cranes back at the dark road. The trees are thinning out.

‘Who’s what?’ replies her father and turns up the music.

Lauren puts her hand in the dress pocket and runs a finger across the ridged antler, then along the metal strip that is the edge of the blade. She has been doing this recently. Soon they break out of the forest altogether and speed down the hill to Clavanmore: four houses dotted along the road; a constellation of lights among the dark fields. Niall parks near her friend Billy Matheson’s house, at the disused phone box. Its bare bulb is still working, illuminating one corner of the pavement. Weeds are growing through the cracked tarmac and up under the glass.

Lauren watches the wing mirror for several minutes, until she sees the small figure of Billy and his frost-coloured shorts. His mother Kirsty and little brother Lewis follow behind, walking downhill from their home along the narrow edge of the road.

Billy has fake blood smeared over his face and down the front of his long-sleeved goalie’s jersey, under his coat. His hair stands up in gory spikes. ‘What’ve you been doing to that football strip?’ Lauren’s father says flatly, slamming the pickup door.

‘He’s a zombie.’ Kirsty’s voice catches in the iced air. She is wearing a yellow and navy Puffa jacket that reminds Lauren of a bumblebee. Her cornflake-blonde hair is mostly tucked under a bobble hat. It looks cosy. ‘Red food colouring,’ Kirsty says, smiling at Lauren, her eyes small and bright. ‘Lewis here is a little monster, aren’t you?’ The toddler is wearing a dinosaur onesie over some bulky underclothes, his chubby cheeks flushed.

‘You can say that again,’ says Niall, with a sting of humour in his near-expressionless face.

Lewis looks up at him and says something urgently that they can’t understand.

‘He’s excited,’ says Kirsty. The wind howls in the distant trees.

‘What are you?’ Billy asks Lauren, as if it isn’t obvious. He’s growing taller than her.

‘Vampire,’ says Lauren. She tries not to sound too excited about it. The supermarket had sold out of glow-in-the-dark fangs, so she had to make do with the lipstick-blood.

They leave Niall in the pickup, the muffle of Moray Firth Radio fading as Lauren and Billy make their way further down the sloping road, Kirsty and Lewis ambling behind. The dark is broken by the light of windows shining through the cotton backing of curtains, and two streetlights, like orange boiled sweets. They walk towards the homes of people they have known their whole lives.

Alan Mackie’s is the first house on the road. The cottage smells of paint stripper and sawdust. Lauren trips over a stepladder folded in the hallway as she shuffles into Alan’s beige lounge. Kirsty picks up Lewis, who begins to grumble, his plump fingers reaching towards a screwdriver on the hall table. Lauren takes her place next to Billy, in front of the roaring football with its green glare. Sun-bleached photographs balance on top of the television. They are of Alan and his wife, much younger and stockier, on red bikes in the Aviemore hills. There is a picture of his wife in later years, pallid and close to the end, sitting in a pink dressing gown with a large ginger cat curled on her lap. Billy’s mother sits with Alan now on the same toffee-coloured sofa. It squeaks when she crosses her legs. He mutes the wide television. The smell in this room is sour and musty, like a pub. Lauren hardly visits Alan or notices him around. There is something about him that gives her the creeps, and seeing the inside of his house is rare. Once in a blue moon, Niall will bring her by to pick up a piece of hardware he needs to borrow. He’s comfortable when socializing has a practical purpose. One time they were there, Alan took Lauren through his trophy collection that shines now along the back wall. He stood closer to her than she liked, and she could smell his body odour. He told her he used to be her father’s PE teacher and showed her his awards for shot-put, discus and stone-put at the Highland Games, turning them over in his crêpey, speckled hands. She likes the crystal trophy the best, and second best the trophy with the little gold man holding a tiny gold stone at his neck.

‘So,’ Alan says, ‘what’s your party piece?’

Billy says, all in one breath, ‘Why could the skeleton not go to the dance?’

‘I don’t know,’ Alan says, with a nod. He looks at Kirsty, then back at the children. His teeth are yellow when he grins. ‘Why could the skeleton not go to the dance?’

Billy pauses. ‘Because he had nobody … to go with.’

Alan bursts into a wheeze. ‘Ach, no body, very good, son.’

For her party piece Lauren sings ‘Bat Out Of Hell’. She’s rehearsed this several times in her bedroom, but when she starts to sing, her throat feels as though it is trying to close up. ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ is a song her dad puts on in the pickup or when he is frying bacon on a Sunday morning. One summer he opened the windows and blasted it at Jehovah’s Witnesses walking up their empty stretch of road. She wishes he was here to listen to her. He doesn’t like being polite if he doesn’t have to be, unlike Kirsty or her husband Craig. He’s the kind of man who slips away, unnoticed, any chance he gets. People in Strath Horne, their closest town, raise their eyebrows at this sort of thing.

Alan Mackie reaches down and hands Lauren one of the Mars bars laid out on the low glass-topped table between them. He puts his hand on his back as he leans forward to do so. There is a large chip on the coffee table’s wooden frame, as if something heavy has fallen on it. Alan’s cardigan looks itchy and a button is missing, exposing his off-white polo shirt. He wheezes to Billy’s mum, ‘We’ll be seeing her on the telly, eh? X Factor.’ He ruffles Billy’s hair and gives him a Mars bar, too, as they get ready to leave. He says, leaning towards Billy in his football kit, ‘And this one’ll be the next Billy Dodds, eh? Billy Matheson.’ His laugh takes all of his breath. Lauren doesn’t see what’s funny.

She runs as fast as she can down the cottage driveway until she is warm. It makes her cape, a split bin bag, float in the air. She laughs a pantomime laugh. ‘I’m your arch-nemesis!’ she says in an American voice.

‘What’s that?’ Billy is not far behind.

‘It’s me!’ Lauren swirls around. ‘Can we go guising to Diane’s?’ she asks his mother.

‘It’s a bit too far, love,’ says Kirsty. ‘We’d have to walk a couple of fields in the dark. Anyway, I expect she’ll be busy looking after her mum. We’d best not disturb.’

‘I never see her though,’ Lauren says in a sing-song voice, knowing she shouldn’t.

‘Do you not see her on the bus, with the older kids?’ asks Kirsty, brisk and dismissive.

‘Not really,’ Lauren says in a quiet voice. She wraps her foot around the back of her left leg to scratch it, like a flamingo. It’s true that when Diane gets on the school bus, with her slouchy black hoody, she will sometimes touch Lauren’s hair as she passes, like a blessing. On those days the girls her age will leave Lauren alone, although they still whisper. It’s an unspoken rule that the seats at the back of the bus are for the older kids, who go to the high school next to their primary. Diane is the kind of teenage girl who takes the middle seat of the very last row and doesn’t care if her throaty laugh travels down the aisle. One time their bus driver, Roy, threw her off for smoking. Lauren remembers looking down at the stony verge as they drove away. Diane stood giving the bus the middle finger, the wide purple heathland stretching behind her into wide white sky.

Lauren wishes Diane could see her Halloween costume. She’s someone who enjoys old films with vampires. Lauren thinks she would too; if she was allowed to go to Diane’s to watch them, they wouldn’t scare her.

There are lots of times when Lauren does feel scared: at school, on the bus, even at home when her father yells at her for asking too many questions. But Diane gives her a little thrill of fear that can feel good. She once dared Lauren to touch an electric fence for as long as she could, which was just a few seconds in the end. A week later, Diane gave her a bottle of glittery nail polish called Electric Eel. She showed Lauren where she had ripped off the security tag, so the alarm wouldn’t be triggered when she took it out of the shop. ‘The name reminded me of you … though you’re more of a prawn,’ Diane said, smiling with dark lipstick. It was still one of Lauren’s best memories.

‘If she told you to jump off a bridge would you do it?’ Niall had asked at the time, when he heard about the electric fence. Lauren had shaken her head, but deep down, she knew she probably would.

 

When the small vampire and zombie go down to Vairi Grant’s cottage they hear her tiny dogs start yowling like monkeys. Gingerly, Lauren tries to open the door of the white plastic porch just as Billy’s mum and baby brother amble up behind them. The door is unlocked as usual. From inside the house, they hear Vairi Grant shouting a hoarse ‘Wheesht!’ at the yapping. That auld wifey, Lauren’s dad sometimes calls her. A little taller than Lauren, she has a powerful voice and a fragile gait. They find her balancing on a kickstool, rummaging through a dark top cupboard in her foosty kitchen. The main light has blown, and the room is illuminated by a lamp on the table.

‘You all right there, Vairi?’ asks Kirsty. She looks at the children with raised eyebrows and sets Lewis down in the hallway. He stomps his small foot forward at the dogs, who begin barking again. Vairi doesn’t reply. She fishes a clear, open bag of monkey nuts from the cupboard and places it on the table. It looks identical to last year’s.

‘And how’s this little laddie? So much bigger every day!’ Vairi grins toothily down at Lewis, who toddles behind his mother’s legs. ‘Have you no got a party piece?’ she asks.

‘He’s a wee bit young yet,’ Kirsty replies.

When Lauren sings ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, Vairi frowns at Kirsty and then at Lauren, with wrinkled eyes like a chicken. Lauren looks at the woman’s veiny hands, free of rings. On the window ledge she sees a pair of binoculars and a spider plant.

‘Oh, I don’t think I know that one,’ Vairi says, wiping the olive-green countertop. One dog barks and stands on its hind legs. Vairi hums tunelessly. ‘How’s your dad keeping?’ Before Lauren can reply, Vairi turns to Kirsty. ‘I never see them on a Sunday.’ The other dog yaps, as if in agreement. Kirsty’s smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

When they are back outside Billy asks his mother, ‘Why is Vairi weird?’

‘She’s just an old lady – she’s getting on a bit. Sometimes people go a bit doolally, you know. And let’s be honest, she likes to talk, like everyone else round here.’

Billy has stopped listening and runs across the empty road but Lauren makes sure she overtakes him. He throws monkey nuts at her caped back. She picks up the nuts from the cold ground and hurls them over her shoulder as she runs. Kirsty, now some way behind, tells them to stop. ‘He’s just a zombie!’ Lauren says.

‘She’s my arch-nemesis,’ Billy replies.

Lewis begins to wail. His dinosaur costume has become grimy and snot-streaked. ‘C’mon,’ says Kirsty. ‘It isn’t that bad a joke.’ The wailing grows into a scream and she looks uphill towards Niall’s parked truck in the distant smudge of the phone-box light. ‘Look, you guys go on ahead. He doesn’t like the cold, so we’ll go and sit a while with Niall. C’mon, you. No sweeties.’

Lauren chews her lip.

‘On you two go to Angela’s. It’s not that far.’

‘Is Dad coming?’ asks Lauren.

‘You know he’s not her biggest fan. C’mon. She won’t bite.’

 

Now alone, Lauren and Billy approach the third house, tucked away on a narrow side road, guarded by trees. They walk through its open black gates and up its curved drive, their feet sinking into tiny pebbles stolen from the local beach. Either side, scrawny birches bend back in the wind.

Angela and Malcolm Walker answer the door in soft Tattersall shirts, each leaning against a heavy stone wall. They look over their shoulders in tandem and call ‘Ann-Marie!’ into the gloomy hall. Ann-Marie Walker is home from boarding school. She appears, sixteen and pale with dark eyes like her father, hair the colour of school shoes. A silver stud catches the light in the left side of her nose.

‘Your hair’s so short now,’ says Lauren, stepping in from the cold and standing by the overloaded coat stand. She didn’t know boys’ hair could look good on girls. When Ann-Marie turns her head, Lauren counts the piercings on her right ear, unwittingly touching her own.

‘She takes them out during term time,’ Angela Walker says. Her accent is threaded with English vowels, though she has never lived there.

Ann-Marie gives her mother a look and shakes her head.

‘Came home full of metal,’ says Malcolm Walker in his Lowlands accent. ‘I said she’s to be careful she doesn’t end up with an ear like a Swiss cheese!’

‘Dad.’ With a backward glance, Ann-Marie slips back down into the cellar that is now a kitchen. Lauren has opened her mouth to sing but watches her disappear, crestfallen.

After ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, Angela and Malcolm Walker clap their hands and nod. Angela passes a flowery plate of toffee apples from the hall table, her auburn hair escaping its tortoiseshell clip. ‘They’re from the orchard,’ she says.

Lauren picks one up. It feels unwieldy on its thin stick. She tries to bite into it, but the amber glaze is solid and her teeth scrape against the sugar. She asks to see their Irish wolfhounds, big as bears, kept in the converted kitchen cellar.

Billy follows her down. It smells of damp and saddle-soaped horse tack. He says, ‘No one found my joke funny.’ Classical music murmurs from a scuffed stereo in the corner. Ann-Marie Walker is sitting at the broad oak table, her teenage head bent as she carves a jack-o’-lantern from a turnip. The sleeve of her grey turtleneck is rolled up past her elbow and Lauren can see her muscles flex under the material. A small pile of silver bracelets and rings lie on the knotted surface. She shows the children how much she has carved out of the middle of the vegetable. ‘It’s hard going,’ she says. ‘How’s school?’

Billy shrugs and kicks a ball towards one of the dogs, who bombs out from its basket.

‘Fine,’ says Lauren, absently, as the other dog comes close to her, sniffing for attention. Its coarse hair moves like rough seas.

‘Sure?’ Ann-Marie asks.

‘Yeah.’ Lauren looks back down at the dog, who is more interested in Billy’s ball game.

Ann-Marie props her head on one elbow. ‘You’ll tell me if that girl bothers you again, won’t you?’

‘Yeah.’ Lauren tries to pull the lace cuff of her sleeve over her wrist.

‘I love your hair, by the way.’ The brightness pops back into Ann-Marie’s voice as she carries on with her carving. ‘I think my mum’s got some sweets for you guys.’

On cue, they hear Angela on the creaky stairs, a little breathless as she bears her weight carefully. ‘Ann-Marie, have you shown them the turnip? Last time we were in Inverness, we bought this book on Halloween traditions.’

Ann-Marie flicks her eyes up and says, ‘It’s called Samhain,’ and goes back to work.

Lauren leans on the Aga, avoiding the Hunter wellies that are drying in front of it. ‘Are you off school?’ she asks Ann-Marie, who is looking at her strangely. ‘We had our tattie holidays already.’ She wonders then if Ann-Marie’s older brother Fraser is here too, before remembering he set off for university last month.

Before Ann-Marie can reply, her mother cuts in from the foot of the stairs. ‘That school is useless. They don’t know what they’re doing. Sometimes,’ she says, as if talking to an adult, ‘I think we should have sent her to school in Strath Horne with you, Lauren, not Edinburgh.’ A dog bounds up to Angela, its breath heavy and wet. ‘Get,’ she says, thrusting her arm towards its basket. ‘You’re not making a mess of me this time.’ In the kitchen light, her face looks bare except for a shade of autumnal lipstick and the chunky purple glasses that frame her eyes. Angela has the kind of eyes that like to peer into other people’s business. ‘Remember, wash your hands now before eating sweeties,’ she says to the children as they go to pet the retreating dog. ‘And it says, that book, they used to use turnips, so,’ she continues, nodding at the turnip, ‘bloody difficult, let me tell you. A lot of elbow grease.’ She moves over to the cherry-red kettle. ‘Who’s for tea?’

Billy is in his own world with the dogs and doesn’t respond.

‘Can I have a cup, please? Angela, why did they do that?’ asks Lauren, quietly.

‘The turnips? Oh, this is before we grew pumpkins. Hang on. I’ve made some other treats.’ She makes her way over to the larder like a blustery wind.

‘So,’ says Lauren, ‘you back for long?’

‘Um. A few days.’ Ann-Marie does not look up as she carves.

Angela returns to the table with ice-cream boxes repurposed as Tupperware. She adjusts her glasses and prises off the lids, revealing marshmallow top hats and meringues. ‘Happy Halloween!’

Lauren takes a bite of a top hat, smudging the lipstick trickle on her cheek.

 

Without Billy’s mum in sight, the children make their way back across the main road and uphill past Vairi’s. ...