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  Table of Contents

  Get Tracy’s Free Starter Library

  About Samhain Crossing

  Praise for Tracy’s Short Paranormals Collection

  SAMHAIN CROSSING

  Samhain Crossing

  Get Tracy’s Free Starter Library

  Did you enjoy this story? How to make a big difference!

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Copyright Information

  About Samhain Crossing

  They recognize each other across twenty centuries.

  On the ancient Celtic feast day of Imbolc, a mysterious, but empty, box is discovered, built into a wall of a first century structure in the ruins of Carn Euny in Britain. Itching for distraction, the dig team drop a note into the box, and the next morning find an answer written in ancient Latin.

  Dig director, Doctor Daria Caitini, declares the response a hoax, but when more and more letters arrive on each successive Celtic feast day, Daria finds herself drawn into corresponding with the writer, a first century druid called Cadfan, who is hunted by the Romans, and who recognizes her dedication to her work and her essential loneliness, too….

  This story is part of the Short Paranormals Collection.

  Eva’s Last Dance

  Solstice Surrender

  Samhain Crossing

  Three Taps, Then…

  The Well of Rnomath

  A paranormal romance novelette

  Praise for Tracy’s Short Paranormals Collection

  Solstice Surrender begins with a scene that we all wish would happen to the bullies of the world. I found Solstice Surrender to be a non-stop action- packed adventure. The Best Reviews

  It has taken me longer to stop crying than it took to read this story. There is such depth of emotion in the words. So much life. I'm left feeling such a tangle, sadness, pain, regret, and joy. All this in only a few pages. Absolutely brilliant creation by a top class author! - Reader Review for Three Taps

  The must read story of the year. The way this author uses her words to draw you into her story is like a work of art. Fallen Angels Reviews

  Oh lordy! Wasn 't sure at first just what to think would happen...and true to Tracey!! She had me at the Well!! And oh howdy! What a twist in the ending!! Ha..enjoyed my read...you will too. Reader Review for The Well of Rnomath

  SAMHAIN CROSSING

  By Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Samhain Crossing

  Carn Euny, Cornwall. Imbolc, February 1 of Prevous Year.

  Daria should have recognized that her staff were becoming bored, that morale was dipping, long before the Imbolc incident. She was an excellent archeologist and had worked damned hard to earn her doctorate. But if she had a weakness at all, it was this. She was often blind to the emotional states of other people, because for her, the work came first.

  The revisionist dig at Carn Euny had been underway for just over a year. There was enough work to be done on the site that Daria could remain happily occupied here for years, yet.

  She didn’t understand why the students and her assistants said Carn Euny was in the middle of nowhere. True, there was nothing around them but barely green, wind-swept and stone-studded hills, but Penzance was only twenty minutes away. And yes, it had proved impossible to rig up any sort of internet node out here, but it wasn’t as though they were living in tents on the site—which Daria would have preferred, to save the short commute each day. Everyone was boarding in Penzance, where the internet was readily available.

  The Imbolc prank was something only well-educated, terribly young students could have dreamed up. The day before Imbolc, the team working in the round chamber beside the fogou had found the stone box high up in the wall, where the curve of the wall became the roof. A flat slab of rock had hidden it, but a careless nudge with a rock hammer had loosened the cover. Behind the slab was an open space lined with more flat rock, which meant it had been built and wasn’t simply a hollowed-out part of the hillside the fogou and the chamber were beneath.

  The space was eighteen inches deep, two feet across and about eight inches high. Other than ancient dust built up in the corners, the thing was featureless. Like all fogous and the chamber itself, the square space had no conceivable purpose. It just was.

  The students had called Daria in to inspect the space. She found it interesting, but not terribly exciting, ordered photos, measurements and records be made, then returned to the ruins of the village beyond the buried tunnel. That had been her mistake.

  The next morning, barely ten minutes after the bus carrying the majority of the students to the site had deposited them in the public parking area, one of them, Georgina, arrived breathless in the courtyard of House I. “You’d. Better. Come. See. Doctor. Caitini,” she gasped and bent over with her hands on her knees, panting.

  Daria patted her back as she passed. “You really must stop smoking, Georgina.”

  Georgina nodded, then hung her head. “Chamber,” she added as Daria stepped past her.

  House I was very close to the east end of the ancient tunnel, and the corbelled chamber was at that end of the twenty meter tunnel, too. It took less than five minutes to clamber out of the excavation pit and into the long tunnel. Daria could hear the excitement in the echoing voices coming from the chamber.

  She stripped off her gloves and tucked them into her coat pocket as she moved through the narrow, but thick, portal and into the chamber itself.

  Everyone was gathered around the folding table, which had been parked in the middle of the chamber where natural daylight poured through the hole in the wooden roof that had been constructed over the chamber last century. They were examining something in the weak morning light, their heads close enough together that she couldn’t see what it was.

  Daria moved toward the table. “What have you found?”

  The room instantly fell silent. The students and assistants parted, letting her step up to the table. Aldin Guillory, the most senior of her site assistants, hefted a pale cream colored, stiff sheet of paper that curled at each shorter end. “It was in the safe, Dr. Caitini.”

  Daria pulled her gloves on and took the sheet, then moved so the light played on it. “Someone must have put it there last night,” she murmured.

  The ink on the paper was fresh and dark, and the writing quite legible. She automatically began translating the ancient Latin. “This is a strange jest you leave for me to find, Kilroy, but my days are long, and the distraction most appreciated. I thank you, too, for removing the debris and dust from the box. What manner of parchment do you use? I’ve not seen such smoothness before. Nor such a strange color of ink. If you are so moved to relieve a man of boredom, do explain yourself.” It was signed, simply, “C.”

  Some throats were cleared around the table as Daria read the note. Aldin shifted on his feet.

  Daria lowered the parchment. “This is a joke, yes?”

  Aldin grimaced. “The note they left there yesterday was the joke and they admitted it straight away.”

  “What note? The one this letter speaks about?”

  “Here,” one of the students said, shoving their phone toward Daria. “We took photos.”

  Daria glanced at the screen. The photo showed a perfectly ordinary sheet of printing paper. On the bottom half of the page, someone had used an ordinary ball point pen to write in neat printed letters: Kilroy hic erat.

  Kilroy was here, Daria translated for herself.

  On the top half of the sheet was the classic Kilroy cartoon image of a man with a large nose peering over a wall or fence, two hands on either side of his bald head.

  “You…left that in the safe?” Daria asked, glancing at the blank maw, high up in the wall. A sturdy box had been placed beneath it for everyone to be able to reach the safe.

  Nods. Sober expressions.

  “And this note was in the box this morning, when we got here,” Aldin added.

  “Someone is pulling your leg,” Daria said firmly. “Someone on one of the other teams heard what you did, and wrote this to keep the joke going.” She hefted the parchment. “It’s not even a very good fake. This parchment is still nearly white, instead of dark yellow, and the ink is too fresh. Although his Latin is excellent.”

  She ran through the teams in her mind, but couldn’t think of anyone with such an advanced knowledge of ancient Latin, who could pull this off. She let the parchment curl up loosely. “We have better things to do than be pulled off-course by a stunt. Back to work, everyone. Lady Calstone will be here in five days. I want to report to her that we’ve finished stage three.”

  Obediently, they moved away from the table, some wandering out of the chamber and the others returning to their work. Aldin stayed at the table. “It was just a simple joke,” he said gently.

  “And now it is finished,” Daria said firmly. She hesitated. “Did they really remove the dirt
and dust from the safe?”

  Aldin held up his hand. “It was just dust.”

  “Which could have been analyzed for residues,” Daria pointed out. “It was reckless. I expect better.”

  Aldin nodded. “Yes, Doctor Caitini.”

  She picked up the loosely formed scroll. “Thank you,” she said stiffly and moved back through the tunnel, heading for the admin tent. The tent was in the middle of House II.

  Jenny looked up from her laptop as Daria entered. “Dr. Caitini?”

  Daria hesitated, still deciding if it was a good idea or not. Then she thrust the scroll at Jenny. “Add this to the artefacts for dating, will you?”

  Jenny glanced at the scroll, startled. “This? For carbon dating?”

  “Yes.” Daria remembered to smile at her. “Please and thank you.” She went back to work, figuring that would be the end of the matter.

  Four days later, the latest radio carbon dating results arrived from the accelerator mass spectrometry facility in Bristol and the parchment was pronounced to be approximately four months old, which firmly placed the note in the hoax category.

  Daria kept the note on her desk and would read it every now and then, puzzling over who might have written it. The cadence and the grammar were flawless, so much so that she even thought she could detect a note of loneliness in C’s writing voice.

  Daria learned purely by accident that the joke had continued on. Several weeks later, she overheard Georgina talking about the latest letter she had posted that morning.

  “Posted?” Daria had repeated, sitting up. She had been lying on a blanket on the cold, hard ground, soaking up some of the weak March sunlight. It was a rare day when the wind was not blowing, there were no clouds, and it was warm enough to relax. “Posted where?”

  Georgina swung around, her expression dismayed. “I thought you were sleeping!” Then she rushed to cover it up. “I’m sorry I woke you.”

  Daria shook her head. “What did you post, and where? There is no post office nearby.”

  Georgina plucked at the knee of her jeans, while everyone else she had been talking to watched her warily. “It was nothing. I put a silly letter in the box.”

  Daria bent her knee and wrapped her hands around it. “The box…in the chamber?”

  Georgina press her lips together. Then she nodded reluctantly.

  “I see,” Daria said. “Is everyone posting notes?” She glanced around the group.

  Damian leaned forward. “We figured, whoever answered last time might answer again. It’s just a bit of fun.”

  “That was weeks ago,” Daria pointed out, feeling a touch of annoyance…and a heavier wariness. Lady Calstone always asked about the morale of the dig staff, whenever she inspected the work she was paying for. This “bit of fun” was clearly helping Daria’s staff find some enjoyment with their work.

  Georgina’s face brightened. “It was Imbolc, when we got the first answer. We were thinking that maybe they’ll answer us on the next Celtic feast day.”

  “Which was Ostara, two days ago,” Daria pointed out.

  Damian looked put out by the observation, but Georgina shook her head. “The quarterly feasts. That’s Beltane, on the first of May.”

  Daria pressed her lips together. She wanted to tell them it was a stupid idea, but held her teeth together. “As long as it’s your time you’re wasting,” she said instead. “Not mine or Lady Calstone’s.”

  Crystal, Lady Calstone, arrived in early April, and found Daria in the admin tent, going through the financial reports. Lady Calstone had once been Crystal Johnston, a long, leggy, blond Texas girl, with a checkered career in acting and modeling, culminating in her marriage to Baron Calstone. She had acquired an interest in history. Anything older than Texas caught her attention, and there was a great deal of history surrounding the Calstone baronial seat that was much older than Texas.

  Crystal settled her well-shaped rear upon the corner of the table and smiled down at Daria. “Sweetheart, you’ll get wrinkles if you go around frowning like that all the time.”

  “I have the financials for you.” Daria held them out.

  Crystal waved the sheets away. “I’m sure they’re perfect as usual. Where is everyone? Don’t tell me you gave them a day off!”

  “It is Easter Friday,” Daria pointed out.

  Crystal laughed. “I know that, darling. I wasn’t sure you did.” She reached into the very large handbag hanging from her shoulder. “I had a feeling I’d find you here. The only person more interested than me in finding out what Carn Euny was all about is you.” She put a bottle of dark spirits on the table with a flourish of her long-nailed hand, that made the gold bracelets jangle. “Teddy has a god-awful Sunday brunch-lunch-dinner party lined up for the weekend, all black tie and snotty. So I told him I was taking Friday for me.” She dug in the bag and produced two glasses. “Time to talk sexy stuff at me, honeybunch.”

  Daria smiled. She had quickly learned that sexy stuff, for Crystal, was anything older than two hundred years. Crystal wanted shop talk. She didn’t want footnotes or proof. She wanted speculation, a glimpse of what it was really like, back in time.

  Crystal was paying for the dig, so Daria reached for one of the glasses as Crystal cracked the seal on the bottle—it would be bourbon, of course—and settled in to keeping her employer blissfully happy.

  Several hours later, Daria began to run out of tall tales and shop gossip. She cast about for something new to talk about and her gaze fell on the white scroll, which was still sitting between the gas lantern and her reference books. “I don’t think I told you about the mystery C man, did I?”

  Crystal shook her head and reached for the nearly empty bottle. “He a sailor?”

  “C as in Crystal, not sea as in ocean,” Daria replied. She told Crystal about the prank that had taken on a life of its own, and how everyone was writing notes and letters to C, waiting for him to reply at Beltane. “They’re adding photos and books and all sorts of junk. It’s a joke of course,” Daria finished. “Nothing will happen at Beltane, and it will be all over and done with.” She pushed her glass at Crystal as the blond beckoned with her fingers, the bourbon bottle held nearly horizontal in her other hand.

  “Sounds like exactly what this place needs,” Crystal replied.

  “Well, it’s certainly improving everyone’s Latin,” Daria admitted.

  “Have you written to C yet?” Crystal asked.

  “Me?” Daria laughed. “I’m letting them do it. I don’t have to get in the mud and roll around with them.”

  “Why not?” Crystal asked, lowering the bottle. “Might be the best thing you could do.”

  “It would just encourage them.”

  “It would tell them you do have a sense of humor.”

  Daria stared at Crystal’s perfectly symmetrical features, so unlike her own. “You’re serious?”

  “As serious as I can get with half a twenty-six in me,” Crystal assured her.

  Daria blinked. She wasn’t entirely sure what Crystal had just said, but she grasped the general idea. “They’ll laugh at me for being gullible,” she said quietly. “They’ll think I believe it. Then they will never take me seriously again.”

  “They’ll think you’re having some fun, just like they are, and they’ll like you for it.” Crystal got to her feet. “I told the driver to come back at three.” She wavered and gripped the table. “Think about it. And I’ll see you next month.”

  Crystal swung her big handbag over her shoulder, straightened up her coat, and headed out into the late afternoon sun, while Daria stared at the scroll.

  Sometime later, Daria lit the gas lantern, for night had fallen over the dig. She ate the two energy bars in her pockets, then pulled a sheet out of the printer and paused with her pen over the paper. She was still under the influence…but who really cared? No one, not even the joker who’d spoken of being lonely and needing distraction.

  “I’ll give you lonely,” she whispered and wrote quickly, for Latin was very nearly her mother tongue.

  I’m sitting in a ruined village, where no one now lives, and realize that has been my entire life, so far. Ruins and relics….