“Robert!” Mary shouted. “NO! YOU CAN’T BE DEAD! NO!”
Jamie held her close to him. He was dead. And it was all Archa’s fault.
“We… we need to go…” Jamie managed to say to her.
She couldn’t speak. Tears dripped down onto Jamie’s arm. Jamie tried not to. He had to be strong. But he couldn’t, and began weeping too.
Jamie couldn’t remember how long they just stood there, crying. It could have been hours, or it could have been seconds. Eventually, they managed to drag themselves out.
It was almost dark. They slowly made their way down the hill, but they still had miles to go. They said nothing the whole way.
After about half an hour they heard a helicopter flying near them. However, it had a searchlight scanning the hills. Jamie didn’t know what it was, but he pulled Mary and himself behind a wind turbine to hide from it. However, it found them.
It landed in an empty patch of flat land near them, and a man with a microphone got out.
“Mary! Robert! JAMIE!” he shouted. It was Sam!
“We’re… We’re here!” Jamie said.
Sam came and took them back to the helicopter, and it flew off. Jamie told him everything, starting with Robert’s death. He left out the ghosts, but Sam didn’t ask him how they’d done it. He was too upset to wonder. Mary said nothing during the whole trip home.
It landed outside Aith. They climbed out, and walked to the shop.
“We’ll deal with the stolen power,” Sam said, when Jamie asked about it. “But, one last question, what happened to Miss Manson?”
Jamie suddenly remembered her. He wished he had shot her. But he wasn’t a murderer. Mary shouldn’t have been either.
“She got away.”
They arrived at the shop, and Clarice came running out to greet them.
“You’re all alive!” she shouted happily. They went into the shop. It turned out everyone had been staying in the shop, as it had a weak backup energy supply that wasn’t affected by the Windites.
“Where’s your other son, Robert?” Someone asked eventually. Nobody said anything. Nobody needed to; the silence was enough.
Miss Manson was never found. Police had looked for her, but hadn’t found her.
The windfarm, now without the Windites, began producing more energy and Shetland slowly started getting it’s wealth back. Soon the damage would be reversed.
Wilson pleaded guilty to the crime of impersonating a policeman, and was sent to jail for a year and a half. Jamie saw him while going with Mary to visit her mother, and apologised. Wilson had ignored him.
Selena was found, and arrested. She was sent to prison for a life sentence, due to other crimes she had committed. They were both put into the recently constructed Lerwick prison.
Jamie’s house had to be knocked down, but the insurance money covered the costs of rebuilding it. They had lost quite a lot, but compared to Robert it was nothing.
Sam never truly recovered from Robert’s death. Mary didn’t either, but eventually managed to put it to the back of her mind after the funeral.
Mary didn’t know if she could make it through the funeral. But she managed… after many tears – from both her and Jamie.
As they left, Jamie saw something move behind the church.
“Mary look, there!”
“Where, I can’t see anything.”
They went round to look. Nothing was there.
“I thought I saw… a ghost,” Jamie said. “Sorry.”
“You did,” a voice behind him said.
They looked around, and Robert was standing there.
“Robert!” Mary cried, and ran towards him. She fell through his body. He was fading away.
“I never said goodbye…” he said.
“Come back!” Mary shouted. “COME BACK!”
And he was gone.
And she was crying again. Jamie couldn’t stand to see her cry. He looked into her eyes, and she looked into his.
“Jamie…” she said slowly.
Then, they kissed each other.
Except stories never end. People may live happily ever after, but you can’t summarise years of happiness in one sentence. And you can’t always presume people do live happily ever after, life isn’t like that. Happily ever after is just the wait until the next adventure…
© Copyright 2016 Mathew Nicolson. All rights reserved.