Searching Pictish Ghosts

Mark, a sixty-two-year-old librarian, is verbally abused while camping in the Chaco Canyon National Park. Lacking in courage to confront his tormentors, he packs his things and heads home. Along the way, he reflects that he has been bullied his whole life. The realization throws him into a state of despair. In a dream, a wise man tells him that to gain confidence and self-respect, he must undertake a daring journey into the unknown. Needing inspiration, he visits the public library, where he reads about a man's winter stay in a Highlands cabin and about invisible eyes stalking him on his way to the outhouse. Deciding that the spying eyes belonged to Pictish ghosts, Mark leaves for Scotland, intending to ask them to reveal the secrets of their ancestors' bravery and courage. After days of exploring Stone Age monuments on the mainland and on the adjacent islands, he encounters Debbie, an American tourist, in the Dunvegan castle. They agree to go on a hike, but she fails to appear. On his last day in the British Islands, he chances upon her at Stonehenge in company of her ex-boyfriend. While her ex-boyfriend leaves to get cigarettes from his car, Mark, strengthened by the lessons taught to him by the Pictish ghosts, asks her to elope with him. He's proud of himself, for he is showing the daring of a Pict.