Fergus McPherson was a fraud. Educated at Winchester and Cambridge, he had never been further north than Buxton, for the Festival. Nevertheless the red hair looked Scottish and he discovered a talent for accents which got him in trouble at school. Having spent most of his time at university in plays and revues, he scraped a Third; by which time he’d decided that his future lay in acting.

So, armed with his hair, his name and his gift for mimicry he cornered the market in characters called Scottie, Angus, Jock etc. Truth to tell, his accents were only approximate, because he was lazy. But so were casting directors, so his career progressed in a stately fashion among the supporting actors, always in demand for a week or two’s work.

Furnished with a nest egg from his numerous cameos, he decided that maybe he ought to see Scotland after all this time, and took himself on a walking tour of the Highlands. It was unsettled weather for walking, but he persevered, telling himself it was good for him. One day he was walking round the edge of a lake, trying to summon enthusiasm for the scenery when he would rather be on the Regent’s Canal. Much to his surprise, he saw a phone box right on the water’s edge: a traditional VR red box of a kind he thought had been swept away by mobile phones. Perhaps they were behind the times in Scotland, perhaps there was no mobile signal. 

As he approached the phone box, the telephone inside began to ring. He frowned in surprise. Surely it must be a wrong number. He hesitated. It continued to ring. After a deal of dithering, his curiosity got the better of him and he went into the box and answered it.

‘Mr McPherson? Mr Fergus McPherson?’ A soft Highland accent.

‘Yes,’ he said startled.

‘The selkies are not pleased with you.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Selkies. The seal folk. I am a messenger from the Unseelie Court.’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘We deal out punishments for great wrongs. And sometimes just for the hell of it.’

‘I’ve done nothing wrong.’

‘You are a parasite and a fraud. You have been making money by impersonating a Scot and depriving good Scottish actors of a living.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘Is it? If trans actors demand that they alone can play trans characters, why shouldn’t Scottish actors play Scottish characters?’

‘That’s not the same thing.’

‘We will be the judge of that. You dinna argue with the selkies.’

Fergus started to feel uneasy. This had to be some kind of practical joke. 

‘I’m going to hang up now and be on my way.’

‘Are you now?’ The selkie chuckled. Fergus with rising panic dropped the phone and pushed at the door of the phone box. It was shut as firmly as if welded to the frame. He screamed in terror, though from the outside there was no sound.

The water frothed in a whirl. From out of it rose something the diameter of an underground sewer pipe, but covered in plates or scales. At the tip was a cluster of spikes, making something akin to a medieval bludgeon. It thrashed around as the water churned. With a crash the spiked tail hit the phone box, hard enough to smash the reinforced glass panes. Fergus bellowed at the top of his lungs, though there was none to hear him; the lakeside was deserted.

The tail wound round the phone box, which began rocking on its concrete base. So strong was it that the frame of the booth bent in its grip. At first the cubicle swayed, then pivoted with an increasing pulse. The wobble turned into a lurch as the box, and Fergus, were plucked from the stand, to hover about a metre off the ground. 

The cast iron coffin, for such it was, was swung out over the water, before being dragged into the dark icy depths of Loch Ness.

Peter Scott-Presland