Chapter 1: The Woman in the Wynd

Chapter 1: The Woman in the Wynd

The rain in Edinburgh didn't so much fall as it seeped out of the bruised purple sky, turning the cobblestones of Mary King's Close into a slick, black mirror reflecting the weak glow of the gas-style lamps. It was the kind of damp that got into your bones, a perfect atmosphere for a ghost tour, which was both a blessing and a curse.

"And if you listen closely," I said, pitching my voice to carry over the hiss of the rain and the nervous shuffling of my flock of tourists, "you can still hear the screams of the plague victims, walled up and left to die by a terrified city council." I paused for effect, letting the silence hang. "Or it could be the lads from the pub down the street getting kicked out. It's a fifty-fifty shot, really."

A few weak chuckles rippled through the group of ten huddled under a dripping archway. Americans, mostly, judging by the pristine waterproofs and hopeful expressions. They wanted to be scared, to touch the grimy past of my city. I just wanted to get paid so I could afford something other than instant noodles for dinner. Being a struggling comedian by night and a purveyor of historical horrors by, well, also by night, wasn't exactly lucrative.

My gaze swept over the damp faces, and that’s when I saw her.

She wasn't huddled. She wasn't shivering. She stood at the edge of the group, seemingly untouched by the miserable weather. While everyone else leaned in, desperate for the shelter of the stone above, she stood perfectly still, her black coat shedding the rain as if it were an annoyance beneath her notice. Her hair was a severe, straight fall of jet-black, and her face, pale and angular, was an unreadable mask. But it was her eyes that snagged the breath in my chest. They weren't just dark; they were the colour of a gathering storm over the North Sea—deep, turbulent grey, and utterly devoid of the morbid curiosity that lit the faces of the others.

She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the slick, dark wall of the close, as if she could see right through the centuries of stone and grime.

I shook myself, annoyed at the distraction. She was just another customer. A very intense, possibly Scandinavian customer who could probably kill a man with a stern look. My desire for a simple, straightforward tour and a pint afterwards was being derailed by a pretty face. Get a grip, MacLean.

"Right," I clapped my hands together, the sound a dull smack in the damp air. "On we go. Our next tale of terror and poor sanitation is just down this wynd. Mind your step; the stones are slick with… let's call it ‘history’."

I led them deeper into the labyrinthine alleys of the Old Town. The world narrowed to the claustrophobic press of stone tenements, their upper floors leaning in so close they nearly kissed, blocking out what little light remained in the sky. I launched into the story of Johnny Scrimgeour, a Covenanter preacher who was garrotted in this very spot by government dragoons for his rebellious sermons. I embellished it, of course. That was the job. I added details of the slow, agonizing strangulation, the bulging eyes, the desperate clawing at the wire that bit deep into his throat.

"They say his ghost still wanders this wynd," I finished, dropping my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Searching not for revenge, but for a single breath of air he was denied."

A satisfying shiver went through the group. Success. I glanced towards the woman in black, expecting to see at least a flicker of manufactured fright. Nothing. Her storm-grey eyes were now fixed on me, her expression unreadable. It wasn’t skepticism; it was something colder. It felt like… assessment. Like a master butcher watching an apprentice clumsily saw at a joint of meat. An uncomfortable heat crept up my neck.

"Any questions?" I asked, my usual sarcastic smirk feeling tight on my lips.

"He wasn't searching for breath," she said. Her voice was low and clear, cutting through the drizzle with an authority that made everyone turn to look at her. "He was searching for the man who betrayed him. The one who sold the location of the safe house for thirty pieces of silver."

The detail was so specific, so jarringly out of place, that it threw me completely. It wasn't in any of the history books I’d read. It sounded like a fact, not a flourish.

"Right, well," I stammered, recovering. "An interesting theory. Perhaps a historian in our midst?"

She just stared at me, the silence stretching. The air grew thick with awkwardness. I cleared my throat, forcing a laugh. "Moving on! The night is young and full of terrors, and I'm contractually obligated to show you at least three more."

We navigated another tight turn, emerging into a slightly wider courtyard, dominated by a single, skeletal tree. I was about to start my story about the Greyfriars poltergeist when a woman from Ohio, Brenda I think her name was, let out a piercing shriek.

It wasn't a fun, theatrical shriek. It was raw, jagged, and full of genuine horror.

All heads snapped towards the darkest corner of the courtyard, where a narrow passage led off into oblivion. Brenda was pointing a trembling finger. Her husband, a large man in a bright yellow poncho, lay crumpled on the ground.

For a moment, I thought he'd slipped. My first emotion, shamefully, was annoyance at the paperwork I'd have to fill out. Then I saw the unnatural angle of his head and the dark stain spreading across the collar of his garish poncho.

Panic erupted. People screamed, backed away, fumbled for phones with trembling hands. I moved forward on instinct, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

"Stay back! Someone call an ambulance! Call the police!" I shouted, the words feeling clumsy and inadequate in my mouth.

I knelt beside the man, my hand hovering over his neck, already knowing what I wouldn't find. His eyes were wide open, staring at the indifferent sky with a horrifying, bulging surprise. A thin, horribly neat line was cut deep into his throat, almost hidden in the folds of his neck. Around it, the skin was a mess of brutal, clawed scratches. It looked exactly… exactly like I had described the death of Johnny Scrimgeour not ten minutes earlier.

My blood ran cold. It was impossible. A sick, horrifying coincidence. It had to be.

The wail of sirens cut through the night, their blue lights beginning to strobe against the ancient stone walls, painting the scene in frantic, flashing colours. The police arrived, cordoning off the area with a grim efficiency that spoke of long practice in this city of dark corners.

In the ensuing chaos, as I was giving a shaky, nonsensical statement to a constable with weary eyes, I scanned the crowd of terrified tourists being herded away. The woman in the black coat was gone. Vanished as if she’d been a figment of the rain-soaked night.

A detective, a grim-faced woman with tired lines around her mouth, was crouched over the body. "See anything, son?" she asked, her voice a gravelly Glaswegian rumble that was at odds with the Edinburgh quiet.

"No… I mean, we just found him," I mumbled, my mind a whirlwind of confusion and fear.

Then one of the paramedics moved his light, and it fell across the victim's hand. And I saw it.

Scratched crudely onto the back of the man’s hand, cutting through the skin, was a symbol. A spiral that tightened into a jagged, three-pronged shape at its center.

My vision tunnelled. The sounds of the courtyard—the crackle of police radios, the sobbing of the victim's wife, the relentless drumming of the rain—faded to a distant hum.

It was the symbol from my nightmares.

The one that had haunted my sleep for as long as I could remember. A meaningless, terrifying shape that I’d never seen anywhere in the waking world. Until now. Etched into the flesh of a dead man, killed in a way I had just described, on my tour, on a night that had begun with a simple desire for a quiet pint.

This wasn't a coincidence. This was a message. And as I stood there, shivering in the cold Edinburgh rain, a single, horrifying thought solidified in my mind: the woman in black hadn’t just been a tourist. And this story wasn't over. It was just beginning.