Rab

The two main rules for the Servitor Class were simple: do right, do what you’ve been told, and no punishment will befall you. I had never been punished, and I was proud of that. The second rule was if you saw the Cloaked Man, avert your eyes and do not approach. The second rule seemed like a bad joke, but I was dedicated to the first.

I worked and lived at Sgàil Castle on a wide plateau, which was halfway up Ben Beag Mountain. The mountain was 3,300 feet above sea level. I was assigned to clean the high tower, which reached about 1,600 feet high; it leaned against the peak of Ben Beag at the top and connected to the castle below.

I climbed slowly up the wooden ladder, cleaning away the dust and dirt with a brush and a bucket. At the top, I couldn’t see the castle below, as the clouds were sinking beneath the mountain’s peak. The clouds had a mind of their own, floating around the mountain. The peak was beautiful, but cold and dangerous.

At the high tower entrance, I saw the Cloaked Man staring in my direction. I felt my stomach tighten. Was it him? I diverted my eyes, hiding them in my hands. Three minutes later, I felt the coldness build up in my body. I sensed a presence near me. I could hear light footsteps coming toward me. Five minutes later, I could barely breathe. Sometime after that, I peeked between my fingers. He was gone.

I ran back inside the tower. Down below, I couldn’t see anyone or hear feet stepping on the wooden ladder. I went down the ladder, not bothering to wash the inside of the tower, but I kept one eye on the darkness below in case someone appeared.

A few years later, I was in the library reading literature, history, philosophy, maths, and science.

“Ben,” Arran the librarian called me over. I walked toward him.

He continued, “Good to see you. Where’ve you been?”

“Working longer hours,” I responded.

“Heard the latest about the Laird?”

“Nope.”

“He’s ill.”

“Fatal?”

“Think so. Heard the son will get rid of us when he becomes the Laird. I’m not planning on waiting around.”

“Where will you go?”

“Try my luck in America. I have a brother there.”

Fifteen years later, I was thirty years old and had been working as a librarian for the last ten. I was a proud librarian, but I was forever cleaning the library space. It got dirty very quickly. It seemed I had never stopped being a servitor. I had never seen Arran do any cleaning when he was in this role.

The books were not organized in a method that made sense, so I invented the double-hyphen system. It was a simplistic system, which is why I believed it functioned so well. It ran discipline-author(s)-title—discipline meaning whether the book belonged to history, philosophy, mathematics, etc. Not all books had an author, so I would simply write a zero for the author to keep the system consistent. No one was around to argue with me. Six years ago, the other librarian, Brody, disappeared. No one knows what happened to him. He left no note.

On my day off, I went out into the garden and sat on a bench under an apple tree. William appeared from behind and sat next to me.

“Hello Ben. Where’ve you been? Haven't seen you for weeks,” William announced.

“The library. I rarely leave,” I responded.

“You weren’t there last week.” He looked at me, waiting for a response. When he didn’t receive one, he continued, “You notice people disappearing?”

“No. Well, Brody. But he disappeared years ago.”

“What happened?”

“No one knows. Because no one told me,” I laughed.

“Have you ever seen the Laird?” William did not laugh.

“No.”

“The Cloaked Man?”

“Once. At the Ben Beag peak. Eighteen years ago. You?”

“Never seen him. What happened?”

“I hid my eyes. Waited until he left.”

“Someone told me the Cloaked Man and the Laird are the same person.”

Afterward, I walked around the castle. There was an inner castle within the castle where no one was allowed inside unless designated for a special role. There was only one entrance into the inner castle, behind large double doors. They used to be guarded, but I noticed there was no one there as I walked by.

At night, I met up with William. We walked into the garden under the stars. Before we reached the tree, I turned around and looked back at the castle, turning my head up toward the lighthouse tower. You could see lights in purple, red, green, and blue—the colors seen in the Aurora Borealis. Why was the lighthouse even built? It wasn’t anywhere near the sea.

“Someone’s up there. Is it the Laird?” I asked William.

“No idea,” William responded.

William told me he believed he could get through those doors into the inner castle, but he needed a week.

During that week, I didn’t see anyone on Monday or Tuesday. But on Wednesday, I heard footsteps down the corridor. I saw the Cloaked Man walking away. When the Cloaked Man stopped and slowly turned around, I snapped the library door shut and hid in the cupboard.

On Thursday, I saw a young boy cleaning the corridor. When I tried to approach him, he ran away, disappearing around the corner. By the time I reached the corner, he was gone.

Friday was quiet, and Saturday was the same.

In my room, I tucked a dagger into my belt and grabbed an oil lamp, a bottle of whisky, and two mugs. I met William late Saturday night in a dark corridor that led to a small room. It had a table with two benches on either side. I took out the bottle of local whisky and poured it into the two mugs.

“Are you ready?” I asked William, lighting the oil lamp.

“Aye,” William said, taking a long sip of his whisky.

When we left the dark corridor, the hallway was empty. At the double doors, William took out master keys, but neither fit into the lock. I pulled on the handle, and to our surprise, the door opened. We wandered inside, using the oil lamp to light the way. When we got through the door, it was not what I expected.

We saw a large courtyard with a tree in the centre. We both looked up at the lighthouse tower; there was no light coming from it now. There were a main entrance and a smaller side entrance. On the right, there was a stairway leading down to what might have been the servitors' quarters. We chose the main entrance, running up the stairs.

We checked some of the rooms along the way out of curiosity. They were usually empty and very quiet as I scanned the darkness with the lamp. In one room, there was a small bed, unbalanced due to a broken leg. At the top of the building, six levels high, was a maze of tight corridors. I could hear a draft of wind alongside the dripping water falling on us from the ceiling. At the end of a corridor, we found the centre of the maze and the entrance to the tower.

I could feel pain in the backs of my legs, and I was breathing heavily as we walked up the spiral staircase. William managed the stairs better than I did. From a light at the top, we could see the staircase curving all the way up, and a silhouette was reflected on the wall.

When we reached the top, an armoured knight stood guard at the entrance, with a torch on the other side. William took small steps over to the knight. He lifted the visor with his middle finger. There was nothing inside—only darkness staring back. William let the visor slip down. We tiptoed past the knight and up a ladder to the top of the lighthouse tower.

The equipment was highly advanced. Somehow, I had imagined there would be a beautiful view when we got up here, but all I saw was the darkness of the night sky.

“Where is the Laird?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” William replied, though it was more of a rhetorical question.

We went down the spiral staircase, through the maze, and searched the rooms we hadn’t investigated before. We found nothing.

When we reached the ground floor, we decided to investigate the servitors' quarters. Some of the stone steps sloped downward, and I felt as though I might slip, so I held the handrail tightly as I descended. At the bottom, we found a prison with twelve cells. They were all empty except for one at the back. Inside, a man was chained in the dark corner of the cell. One of the master keys opened the lock, and the cell door swung open. I approached the prisoner.

“Who are you?” I asked, his face appearing as the light from the oil lamp pushed the shadows back. He had a long brown beard and a bald head.

“Hamish,” he replied. I didn’t recognize him.

“Where have you been, Hamish?” asked William, who clearly recognized him.

“I was taken.”

“Who took you?” I asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me. It’s not a who, but an it. My grandfather called them Sluagh. They’re fairies that can look like people.”

I didn’t believe him, but William seemed to.

“That’s why there’s always a cloud over the mountain. It’s not clouds—it’s human souls,” William stated.

I nearly laughed. William used the other master key to unlock the chains and free Hamish. We went back into the courtyard and up the steps. William and Hamish walked back toward the outer castle.

I looked up and saw the colours of the Aurora Borealis coming from the lighthouse once again. Someone was up there.

“Where are you going?” I asked William.

“We’re leaving. Down the mountain. At dawn, we’ll get the ferry to the mainland.”

They both walked away, unbothered by whether I followed or not. I was a librarian; I could not believe such nonsense.

I ran back up into the central entrance of the inner castle, still carrying the oil lamp and the dagger in my belt. I forced my legs up the lighthouse tower’s spiral staircase. At the top, the knight was still there. I moved past it, but when I tried to climb the ladder, a hand grabbed my arm from behind and pulled me back. It was the knight. It shoved me against the wall and began strangling me with a vice-like grip. I kicked it away with both feet. The knight fell through a gap between the railings, plunging five levels. I heard the crash of metal on the stone floor below.

I went up the ladder to the lighthouse and peeked out. I saw the Cloaked Man. He looked in my direction. I couldn’t see his face under the hood. Then I heard an incredible shriek, and the Cloaked Man ran toward me.

My heart was racing. I jumped down the ladder and ran as fast as I could down the spiral staircase. I could hear a continuous, heavy thud behind me, getting closer. At the bottom, I jumped over the fallen knight, kept going through the maze, and didn't dare slow down.

I was breathing rapidly when I reached the ground floor at the courtyard. I ran back through the outer castle and into the garden. I glanced behind me and saw nothing.

My legs were struggling, but I walked cautiously down the mountain path to a fishing village. I bought passage on a ferry taking people across the sea to the mainland. The strange thing was that I could not see William or Hamish on board. To be honest, I never saw either of them again.