#had to hit that “laying sideways hiding under the covers brightness fully down and drawing on the phone while my hand cramps” pose

[caninerat]

I couldn't sleep ⊙⁠﹏⁠⊙

Is this anything...it doesn't look like her but we ball

[monigheandonn1743]

The Diary

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3

“I’ll admit that it’s strange. But I’m no’ really sure what you can do.” Ned explained in a voice so muffled that Jamie could hardly hear him over racket he was making in the background. He was banging cupboards, rummaging through draws, running water. If he didn’t stop, jamie was about to completely lose his shit. “Whoever she is, apart from trespassing, she hasn’t broken any laws, and even if she had, what could we even do without a name. Are ye sure there’s nothing in the diary?”

“I can hardly bloody hear ye! So will ye stop what ye doin’ for five fucking minutes and focus on what I’m sayin!” He growled as he climbed off the air bed, kicking his sleeping bag to the floor when it tangled around his feet. “She’s been in my house, Ned. She’s researchin’ my family!”

“Aye, I hear ye. But without a name ye ken there’s nothin’ I can do.” He reiterated, his voice clearer now that he’d stopped making so much Goddamn noice. “All I can suggest is that you send me the book. I’ll go though it for ye an’ compile a list of names to see if I can find a connection. Or ye could ask around the village, find out if there’s been anyone new in the area.”

Jamie balked at the idea of sending the diary to Ned. He didn’t know why, but just the thought of his lawyer going through it turned his stomach. He didn’t owe this woman a goddamn thing, she was invading his privacy, but for some unknown reason he couldn’t bring himself to let Ned invade hers.  

It almost felt too personal to share with anyone.

“I’ll go though it myself, It’ll be quicker, an’ I’ll send ye the list tomorrow.” He huffed as his eyes scanned the floor, looking for the book. “But I’ve no got time to be goin’ door to door. I pay ye enough to do the leg work, so send someone else up to fucking do it!”

“I’ll have Graham up there tomorrow.”

“Good. Tell him to keep it to himself.”

“Aye.”

Hanging up, he flexed his fist around his phone, and let his his head fall back. He was attempting to steady his breathing, taking deep breaths in though his nose and letting them out through his mouth, slowly, steadily. Putting into practice the relaxation techniques the doctor had given him. But he wasn’t sure how well they were actually working.

This project was supposed to be giving him an outlet for the stress. Yet he was more tense now than he had been when he left Edinburgh this morning. Between the state of the house, the diary and the girl, he wasn’t likely to make it through the trip alive.

He needed to let it all go, to put it to rest, to forget that he’d ever seen her and just get on with the job he was there to do. It was one random moment of insanity, and it was over and done with. The diary would be harder to forget, but he had to try. He’d spend tonight reading it from cover to cover, find what he needed, and hand the whole thing over to Ned.

He had a team of lawyers for a reason, and they could damn well earn their keep.

Taking one last deep breath, he straightened himself, and turned to look for the book. He’d expected it to be right there, sitting on the rug at the bottom of the bed where he’d thrown it. But it wasn’t. With his brows furrowed, he turned in a circle, scanning every inch of the room, from the window to the door.  

It was here, he knew it was. He’d seen it hit the wall, and fall to the floor.  

But there was no sign of it.  

Dropping to his hands and knees, he moved from the bed, to the wardrobe and then over to the chest of draws. Using the torch on his phone, he searched beneath each one carefully, yet he found nothing but dust-moats, dirt, cobwebs and a creepy dolls head. Growling in frustration, he sat back on his hunches, and looking around the room again.  

Jesus fucking Christ!

“Where the hell is it?” He growled, as he pushed back up onto his feet and turned off his torch. After shoving his phone in his pocket, he grabbed the edges of the wardrobe and heaved it away from the wall so he could check behind it.

It had to be in here somewhere.  

He was alone in the room, and he hadn’t left it for a second. So if, God forbid, that damn woman was sill here, hiding somewhere in his house, there was no way she could have been in and moved it.

The bedroom door was shut for fuck sake!

With no luck behind the wardrobe, he moved the chest of draws, the bedside tables, the curtains, the rug, his bag and the damn air mattress. But it was nowhere to be seen.  

Just like the girl in the garden the fucking thing had disappeared.  

“Fuck!” He screamed, as he threw his sleeping bag back onto the bed and yanked the bedroom door open. “I swear to God, if you’re still in this fucking house, you better damn well leave!” He yelled into the hall, before slamming the door and grabbing the chair.  

He wedged it tightly beneath the door handle, checked that it wouldn’t move, then stepped back clutching at his chest. The tight, clenching spasms echoed down his arm, numbing his fingers, and coating his brow in small beads of sweat.  

He shook his hand, attempting to ease the odd feeling, as he moved shakily over to the bed and grabbed his rucksack. The pain was getting worse, it always did before it got better, so he quickly popped two pills out of the packet and swallowed them dry.  

“Fucking hell.” He groaned, as he lay back carefully on the bed and closed his eyes. The pain was debilitating, and he rubbed firmly at the place where his aching heart lay, hoping to God it would pass soon. If it didn’t, he’d be calling his own air ambulance, and praying that he lived long enough for his sister to kill him.  

She hadn’t wanted him to come here alone, she was scared to death of this very thing happening, and had begged to come with him. But she had responsibilities, a husband and a child, and he’d needed the space.  

But maybe that hadn’t been the best idea he’d ever had.  

The heart attack that had sent him to the hospital had thankfully been small, and this time he hadn’t needed surgery. But if he didn’t get his stress and blood pressure under control, next time he might not be so lucky.  

He didn’t have coronary artery disease. There were no blocked arteries or plaque build up, he’d never smoked or taken drugs. He exercised daily, ate healthy - when he had time to eat at all - and he didn’t have high cholesterol. What he did have was coronary artery spasms caused by stress and there was no cure. At only thirty six he’d already damaged his heart beyond repair, and to prevent fucking it up completely he needed to change his lifestyle.  

And this wasn’t helping!

Gradually, the pain eased, and his oxygen staved heart fell into its natural rhythm. He took a deep breath, and then another, before he peeled open his eyes and glanced over at the chair. He laughed hollowly and shook his head. He was being a dick. He knew full well that no one had been in the room, no one had touched the diary. But on the slight chance that she was still in the house somewhere, he’d leave it there.  

He didn’t really fancy get shanked or molested in his sleep.

Moving his eyes from the door, he looked over at where the diary should be and sighed. Had he well and truly lost his mind? Had he imagined it just as surely as he’d imagined the girl? He’d swear on his own life that he’d touched it, smelt it, read it. But he was genuinely doubting his own sanity.  

Objects, and people, don’t just vanish into thin air.  

Unless they’re not real!

In frustration, he ran his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes again. He couldn’t think about this now. He couldn’t think about it at all. He wasn’t ready to face the real possibility that he was going insane.

He woke with a start, his heart pounding and his whole body soaked in sweat. He’d been dreaming, he knew he had, but as his bleary eyes scanned the pitch black room, the memory of it faded and he couldn’t quiet grasp the edges.

Actually, he couldn’t even remember falling asleep at all. He did a quick inventory, and found that he was still fully dressed, sprawled sideways across the bed, with his feet planted firmly on the floor. It was dark, so dark that he couldn’t even see his hand as he raised it to swipe at his face.  

Dropping it to the bed, he searched blindly across the mattress for his phone. Fruitlessly patting at his sleeping bag, and knocking his rucksack to the floor, in his vain attempt to find it. As he moved to sit up, he felt the solid mass digging into his thigh, and flopped back down onto the bed so he could dig it out of his pocket. It came to life as he lifted it towards his face, and he squinted painfully against the sudden brightness.  

Five past three.  

What the hell had woken him up at five passed three in the morning? He usually slept like the dead and had to force himself awake when his alarm went off at six.  

With a deep, tired groan, he sat up, and after stretching the kinks out of his back, he flicked on the torch and shone it around the room. The chair was still pushed firmly against the door handle, the curtains were still open and the window was locked. Huffing out a deep breath, he turned it toward the bedside table looking for his water.  

His mouth was so dry his tongue was practically glued to the roof of his mouth. But as he grabbed for it, both the bottle and his phone slipped from his fingers and clattered down onto the wooden floorboards.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

With a shaking hand he fumbled across the floor for his phone, cursing as he knocked it under the bed, and had to fall to his knees to find it. But once he did, he brought it back up and aimed the light directly at the diary.

It was sat there, as plain as day, on the bedside table as if it had been there all along. But it hadn’t, he fucking knew it hadn’t! He’d checked over it, under it, around it, and there had been no damn diary!  

He turned the light back to the door and after climbing to his feet, he stumbled over to it to check that it was secure. It was, and so was the window. So unless there was a secret passageway he hadn’t seen in his search, nobody had been in here.  

Panicked and confused, he made his way slowly back over to the bed and stood staring down at the book, hesitant to touch it. If he was stark raving mad, there was no point going through it anyway. Anything he found would just be a product of his insanity.  

But if he wasn’t?

He pursed his lips, trying to decided what the hell he should do. If he reached for it, was he giving in to his psychosis? Would he wake up in six months time, with his arms strapped to his chest, and the walls around him padded and soundproof?

Probably.

But if he didn’t, if he left it there and tried to ignore it’s existence, his curiosity would eventually send him over the edge regardless.  

What he needed was a way to prove that it was real. To have someone else read it, touch it, and confirm that he didn’t already have one foot in to loony bin.

“Get a fucking grip, Fraser.” He groaned as he quickly reached for the diary and just as quickly placed it on the bed.  

Turning off his torch, he opened his camera app and snapped a photograph of the front cover. When the picture came up, clearly showing the leather bound book, he flipped it open and took one of the first page. Over and over, page by page, he took one photo after another, even a few of the blank ones, before he closed it and took a shot of the back cover.  

He’d keep them to himself for now, but if it vanished again, he’d send a couple on to Ned, or maybe Gail, with some pretence or another. But for now, he needed to believe that he’d just missed it in his search.

Not seeing the wood for the trees and all that.  

With a sigh, he toed off his shoes, stripped down to his boxers, and after grabbing the diary, he climbed onto his sleeping bag. He wouldn’t sleep now, he was too agitated, and he wanted get started on the list for Ned. So he propped himself up against the pillows, lay the diary on his stomach, and opened the photographs.

He flipped passed the one of the cover, and had intended to skip the first page. He’d already read it, and knew all the names she’d mentioned. But he stopped and brought the phone closer to his face. It wasn’t the page he’d thought it would be. It was just a short passage, and it was written in a different hand, in a different pen, and it had a name clearly inscribed at the top.

Claire.

He’d been relying on the light from his screen and the flash when he’d taken the pictures. So he wasn’t sure if he’d missed a few pages and this was further in. Or whether he’d not noticed it when he’d read her first entry. But he had to know.  

So, he closed down the photos, tuned on the torch, and placed his phone on his chest. The light shone up towards the diary as he lifted and opened it to the first page. There was no natural bend in it, the spine hadn’t been broken in like it had on the subsequent pages. So it almost clung to the leather cover.  

That’s why he’d missed it, and as he read it, he wondered if she had too.

My dearest Claire,  

I know well how you will bemoan my having purchased this journal for your use. In fact, I can all but see the chastisement in your dark expressive eyes.  

But I beg of you, please accept it as a small token of our friendship, and of the gratitude and affection I have long since felt towards you.  

You are an exceptional young woman, Miss Beauchamp, with a beautiful heart and an extraordinary mind. Both are deserving of a place to run free, and I pray you will find that within these empty pages.

Yours eternally,

William Fraser.

31st December 1746

He flipped the page and reread her first entry before snapping the book shut and closing his eyes.  

He wasn’t an expert, but even his could see that the writing was vastly different. There were no similarities at all between the lettering. So clearly the first page had been written by someone else.  

So where did that leave him with the theory that it was a story, or the delusions of a living breathing woman? Had she dragged someone into it with her? Or could there be a simpler explanation?  

Occam’s razor.

Had he been completely wrong? Could the book be from 1747? In all his years of experience in old estates, he’d never seen anything so well preserved. But the diary hadn’t been completed, the last entry had been about the mother dying in childbirth sometime in June 1747.  

If something had happened to the author, the one that William Fraser was clearly so in love with, he could have preserved it. But that didn’t explain how it had found its way beneath the mattress.

He brought it up to his nose, and once again sniffed at the cover. It smelled and looked so new compared to the ones he’d seen in the library.  

Shit.

The library.

There were other books just like this down there. So, surely if it was older than it looked, they would be from a similar time? He’d go though the diary now, and then check the others in the morning to see if he could find any links. If there wasn’t any, he’d send the details onto Ned. If there was, he could finally put the damn thing to rest.  

But first he needed a drink.

And to find a place to piss without going outside.

Chapter 4