Whispers in the Heather

A Story by PA1

In the misty highlands of a remote Scottish village, an unseen presence has begun to affect the townspeople in strange and deeply personal ways. Old arguments settle without a word.

Clachbrae sat where the hills folded in on themselves like secrets. There were no main roads. No street signs. The closest post office was in a town an hour’s walk south, but no one in Clachbrae much cared to send or receive.

Here, people lived slow lives. They knew the names of every sheep. They baked bread on Thursdays. They hung tin charms in windows�"not because they were superstitious, but because their grandmothers had been.

In April, the heather bloomed early.

And that’s when the first change came.

Agnes MacIver had worn black for six years. Her husband had died in his sleep after fixing a fence and leaving the kettle on. She spoke rarely, smiled less, and kept to the shadows of her cottage like grief itself was a drafty corner.

One morning, she stepped outside to hang laundry. The wind blew from the moors, high and cold.

And it sang.

Softly�"just a few bars�"but it was his song, the one Alastair hummed while building things.

She stood there for an hour, eyes wide, socks forgotten in hand.

When she walked into the village the next day, she wore a grey scarf.

Not black.

Callum Bain hadn’t spoken a word in his ten years of life.

Not from fear. Not from trauma. The doctor from Aberdeen had said, “He simply doesn’t see the need.”

He watched more than most. Listened, too. And he was the first to notice the mist didn’t settle right anymore. It clung to the heather like breath to a window. It swirled at the edge of the pastures. It moved when nothing else did.

Then, one night, he hummed.

Just once. A tune no one recognized�"slow, strange, almost mournful.

His mother wept beside the wall.

By morning, the melody had spread through town like smoke. Everyone swore they’d dreamt it.

Ewan McCrae and his brother had argued about land for fifteen years. A rock wall separated their properties�"and their lives. Neither crossed it. Neither spoke. Not even when their sheep intermingled.

Then one day, Ewan found a lamb stuck in a gorse bush.

It wasn’t his.

He looked up. His brother stood on the other side.

They stared.

The wind rustled the heather�"soft, persistent, like a voice about to speak.

Ewan stepped forward.

So did the brother.

No words were exchanged. None needed. They freed the lamb together, and neither mentioned the wall again.

“Something’s in the heather,” whispered Bess the midwife as she set wildflowers on the sill.

“The old stones are warmer than they should be,” muttered Gregor at the smithy.

“I saw a shadow, but it didn’t cast one,” said Maisie, aged five.

No one agreed. No one disagreed.

The thing�"if it was a thing�"was never seen. Only felt. It moved through memory, through grief, through silence and sleep. It didn’t touch so much as... remind.

People started leaving offerings.

Old buttons. Songs written on napkins. A lock of hair, silver and curled.

The wind always came after.

By midsummer, the village was quieter. Not sullen�"still. Children played slower. Adults paused longer.

The church bells stopped ringing�"not by decree, but by mutual forgetfulness.

Laughter still came. But it felt softer. As if the whole of Clachbrae was leaning in to listen for something not yet spoken.

No one talked of curses.

No one dared call it holy.

It simply was.

Like breath. Like memory.

Like something older than language.

A man arrived in August. Outsider. Boots too clean, voice too loud.

He asked about the songs. The dreams. The boy who hummed.

He called it mass hysteria. Said he worked for a university.

People smiled, nodded.

Said nothing.

He walked the moors. Left in two days.

Didn’t say goodbye.

But he left his notebook on a pub table. Just a page torn out.

“Whatever it is,” it read, in messy scrawl,
"it doesn’t want to be seen. It wants to be remembered."

By December, the heather wilted.

The wind quieted.

The dreams faded.

But things had changed.

Agnes joined the Sunday teas. Ewan rebuilt the stone wall�"this time, with a gate.

Callum spoke now and then. Only to his mother. Only when the wind rose just right.

And still, on some mornings, if you stood at the edge of the village, where the grass gives way to endless purple bloom, you could almost hear the tune.

Not music, exactly.

More like a whisper. Or a memory wearing someone else’s coat.