by Amy Cross
***
Addendum – In my haste to set down my thoughts on the stone circle, I neglected to note one other strange event that took place tonight. I imagine that it shall come to nothing, but it rather sticks in my mind.
Upon my return to the guest house, I found to my dismay that my diary – the very book in which I am writing now – was no longer in my breast pocket. I searched my person, but swiftly it became clear that I had dropped the book somewhere on my travels since leaving Le Compte's home. I hurried back out into the street and retraced my steps to the edge of town, but at that point I realized that perhaps I would never be able to find the diary again.
As I turned to go back to the guest house, however, I was suddenly accosted by a young woman who came running out from the shadows and stopped directly in front of me. The first thing I noticed about her was that her clothing was very unusual, unlike anything I have seen before. She had a rather startled expression, and for a moment I began to wonder if she was perhaps a little simple in the head, but finally she held out her hand and I saw to my shock that she was holding my diary.
“Wherever did you find it?” I asked as I took it from her.
“It was...” She paused, as if uncertain as to her answer. Looking back over her shoulder for a moment, she seemed worried that someone might be coming after her. Finally she turned back to me with a look of genuine fear in her eyes. “It was just...”
I waited patiently for her to finish the sentence.
“You should have it,” she said finally. “Not him.”
“I am so grateful to you,” I continued. “I would have been quite lost without the notes I've been making.”
“I read it,” she replied. “Every page.”
“You did?” I must admit that I was rather surprised that she had intruded in this manner, but I chose to bite my tongue. “Well, I suppose that there is nothing too scandalous between its covers. I use it not to record my personal thoughts, but to make notes about my work. I hope that you didn't find them too dry.”
“I just...”
I waited patiently for her to continue, but it was becoming evident that the young lady was trouble by something.
“I thought you should have it,” she said eventually. “And thank you.”
“For what?” I asked.
“The...” Again, she paused, seemingly unable to complete more than a single sentence at a time. “I have to go,” she added finally. “He's coming. He'll find me if I stay. If you see him, don't tell him you saw me, or tell him I went down a different street!”
I tried to ask what was wrong, but she grabbed me rather rudely by the lapels.
“Promise you won't tell him which way I went!” she hissed.
“Who are you running from?” I asked.
“Just promise!”
Feeling that she was quite out of her senses, I told her that I would do as she asked. I offered to accompany her to her home or to the police station, but she said she could deal with the problem herself. I have no doubt that her fear was genuine, but I'm still not certain that she was of sound mind. I suppose every place, even a paradise such as Thaxos, can produce a feeble mind now and again.
“He won't hurt you,” she told me, letting go of my lapels. “I don't think so, anyway. It's not you he wants. It's me.”
“Well,” I replied, “that is good to hear. I am quite sure I have done nothing to upset anyone in my short time here. Are you supposed to be out alone? If someone is waiting for you, or looking for you, perhaps it would be better if I escorted you to them?”
At this point, she seemed startled by some thought, and she muttered a few more words before turning and hurrying away. I stood and watched as she disappeared around the corner, and I must confess that at this point I was starting to wonder what had just happened. She seemed almost scared, as if she was being pursued, yet there was clearly no-one else out in the streets at such a late hour. Still, I was glad to have the diary back, and I resolved to take better care of it in the future. When I opened it, however, I was surprised to find that one of the blank pages at the back had been ripped out. The young woman had made no mention of this, yet I am quite certain that the page was intact when I last had the diary. Why she would have done such a thing, I cannot imagine.
I do hope that she will be okay. Even now, I wonder if I should have reported the matter to the local police, just in case anything happens. I might drop by in the morning and let them know what happened.
But now I must sleep. Tomorrow is set to be a long and interesting day, and since it is to be my last on Thaxos before I catch the ferry back to Athens, I must make the most of both the time and the light. I might not be able to solve the entire mystery of that stone circle in one day, but I am certain I can make inroads and perhaps uncover a few pointers. It has been a long time since I felt so enthused about a project. The stones of Thaxos await!
V
“I ventured all the way to the stones and had cause to examine the land a little further out,” Kate read aloud as she stood on the clifftop, with a gentle breeze blowing in from the sea.
It was mid-afternoon and having worked in the archive all morning, she had finally decided to come out to the stones on the northern part of the island and search for the tunnel entrance that Beecham mentioned in his diary. She'd already read ahead and found some diagrams, as well as a map showing the approximate location, although several of the landmarks that had been used for reference points were no longer visible, which meant that she had only a rough idea of the spot. The whole area was covered with long grass, and she was already starting to wonder if she was on a hiding to nothing.
Still, anything was better than staying in the mansion and trying to not think about her dreams.
Making her way around the edge of the incline, she looked down at the grass in a vain attempt to see anything resembling the tunnel entrance that Beecham had sketched. It seemed impossible that such a thing could exist without someone else having found it. Over the next few minutes, she had a couple of false starts, and finally she completed a full circuit of the incline without finding anything. For a moment, she examined the sketches again, trying to work out where she'd gone wrong. Just as she was flicking through to the later pages, however, she heard a nearby rustling sound, and she looked over to the stones, expecting to find that someone else was around.
There was no-one.
She paused, as a slow sense of dread began to creep through her chest. The last time she'd been out alone on the island, she'd ended up half-dead, and now she was starting to wonder whether this latest trip had been wise. Edgar insisted that the wolf had been killed, but she found it hard to believe that a lone wolf could exist on Thaxos without at least a mate. Her heart was racing now, and she -
Suddenly she spotted a figure stepping out from behind one of the stones. It looked like one of Edgar's men, and although she usually found them a little creepy, for once she was actually glad to not be alone.
“Hey!” she called out.
The man ignored her, making his way around the edge of the stone circle.
“Hey!” she shouted again, this time waving at him.
Although he was now heading more or less in her direction, he made no effort to look directly at her.
She waved a moment longer, before lowering her hand. There was a strange look in the man's eyes, as if he wasn't really aware of his surroundings. She watched as he continued to walk around the circle, and then finally he stopped and placed a hand against one of the stones. It was as if he was feeling for something, and Kate watched as he stayed in position. Finally, figuring that she could be ignored no longer, she started making her way through the long grass, heading for the circle.
“Hello!” she called out to him. “Do you know if -”
Before she could finish, she felt the ground beneath her feet give way and she fell down into a narrow ditch, landing hard against the compacted mud. Letting out a gasp, she was about to get up when she realized tha
t the ditch was actually more of a long trench, leading down into the ground. Reaching out, she ran her hand along a piece of wood that seemed to be half-buried in the ground, and slowly she began to realize that she'd finally found the entrance described in Beecham's diary.
Checking the pages, she compared his sketches to the strut before her. It took a moment, but she was soon able to make an exact match.
Getting to her feet, she looked over the top of the long grass and saw that there was no sign of the man back in the stone circle. She waited for a moment, figuring that he must have disappeared behind one of the stones, but finally she realized that he seemed to have disappeared entirely.
“Hey!” she called out. “Hello?”
No reply.
Looking back down at the trench, she began to pull the long grass aside, and soon she was faced with the entrance to a passageway that seemed to extend down into the ground, heading directly beneath the stones. Grabbing the torch she'd brought from the house, she switched it on and shone the light into the darkness, but all she was able to make out were more struts as the tunnel went deeper and deeper. She could tell that it was leading directly beneath the stones, and she felt that this couldn't be a coincidence.
Taking a couple of steps forward, she gave the nearest strut a push, to check its strength. Although the wood seemed old and gnarly, the construction seemed sturdy enough, and she had her phone with her in case anything went wrong. She couldn't help but smile as she thought of all the Health and Safety forms she'd have to fill in if she was carrying out the search as part of an official project, and she figured that there were definitely some benefits to working alone. Inching a little further forward, she shone the torch against another strut and found more of the markings that Beecham had sketched. Every few steps, she glanced back over her shoulder, just to make sure that she could still see the way out, but her natural curiosity was winning the struggle and she headed further along the tunnel. Finally, after roughly twenty meters, she came to the end, where a wooden door had been set into an old oak frame, with carvings all around the edges.
She ran her fingers through the deep grooves of what appeared to be letters cut into the wood. Her first instinct was to assume that they were of Druidic origin, but she quickly realized that they were closer to the Hieroglyphs of Ancient Egypt, although in general they seemed to be something completely new. For the most part, they were unfamiliar shapes, sometimes with small images scratched into the lettering, but she could tell from there was some kind of syntactical logic. A whole language, buried under a hill on Thaxos, unseen by human eyes for many years. She was already starting to think that she might get an academic paper out of the discovery.
Reaching down, she pushed the door handle. At first it stuck, but finally – to her surprise – it creaked down and she heard the latch disengage. The door slowly inched open, revealing darkness on the other side, and Kate felt cold air against her skin, as if there was a faint draft coming from within. Although she knew that she should probably be a little more cautious, she nevertheless pushed the door all the way open and shone the light from the torch into the void ahead.
The first thing she saw was a huge piece of stone, running down from the low ceiling to the floor. Reaching out and running her hand against its surface, she realized that it was one of the stones from above, extending all the way down through the soil and into the chamber. She took a step forward and, spotting a rock on the floor, she used it to prop the door open. There was another large section of stone nearby, and it soon became clear that all the stones above were deep enough to reach the chamber, lining a large round room.
Stepping forward, she swung the torch around, unable to believe what she'd found.
Between each of the stones, wooden panels were set into the walls, and the panels themselves contained a mixture of carvings and shelves. Candlestick holders were attached to each shelf, with half-melted candles still in position and dried wax on the sides, while the air smelled musty, as if the place hadn't been disturbed for a long time. Heading over to the wall, Kate saw that the carvings were mostly in the same format as those she'd found on the main door, although there were also images showing crudely-drawn figures engaged in various activities. Shining the torch up to the top of the panel, she saw that a few words had been carved in a separate section, along with what appeared to be English translations:
“Gothos,” she whispered, reading aloud. “Sangreth. Karakh. Attaroth.”
The words meant nothing to her, but she made a note in the back of Beecham's diary, where he'd left several blank pages. Making her way to the next panel, she found an elaborate carving that seemed to depict some kind of church or cathedral, with strange wolf-headed creatures partially submerged in the surrounding mud. There was some text above the image, which she cross-referenced with the earlier panel and thereby translated as 'Sangreth'. The next panel was even stranger, showing what appeared to be a battlefield with a naked man standing atop a large stone, and the symbols for 'Gothos' carved into the sky. Heading around the room, she found more and more of these illustrations, and it soon became clear that they were an attempt to tell some kind of story. Characters reappeared, and although she wasn't certain she was reading the panels in the correct order, she began to get a vague idea that they were an account of a great battle, perhaps even a war. Finally she reached a larger panel, showing the naked man standing alongside several of the wolf-headed men, with huge spiders towering above them.
“Karakh,” she read, from the text on this image.
Leaning closer, she examined the carved spiders. They seemed huge, as if they were twenty feet taller than any of the humans around them.
“Freaky,” she muttered, reaching out and running a fingertip through the grooves and contours of the carving. It was unlike anything she'd ever seen before.
Taking a step back, she tried to work out exactly what she'd found. She'd expected the stones to be thousands of years old, but the carvings seemed to be much newer, perhaps hailing from only a few centuries earlier. It was possible that someone had co-opted an older site of worship, although her gut instinct told her that this was unlikely; the most plausible explanation was that the chamber was newer than she had originally believed, and that it had simply been designed to seem older. Whoever was responsible had clearly used a lot of time and money on the project, but it was clear that the place had long since been abandoned.
Glancing across to the next panel, she noticed another door. She made her way over and tried the handle, only to find that it was looked. She couldn't understand why someone would have left the main door open but another, internal door locked, and although she tried a couple of times to shoulder-barge it loose, she finally realized that she'd have to return the next day with some lock-picking equipment.
Swinging the torch to the center of the chamber, she spotted some kind of table. Making her way over, she found that it was in fact an intricately-carved stone altar, complete with more illustrations around its edges. She reached down and ran a hand across the surface, feeling the cracks that ran through the stone, although she pulled her hand away when she realized that some of the cracks were stained dark red, almost as if blood had flowed. The red stain seemed to head deep into the stone, only to emerge as vein-like lines near the base, and there was what appeared to be a kind of basin designed to collect anything that flowed down from the top of the altar. Taking a step back, she turned and counted the panels that ran along the main walls, and she realized that there were thirteen. Pausing for a moment, she finally understood the purpose of the chamber. It was some kind of church.
“This is it,” she whispered, as a sense of awe rose through her body. “I'm going to be...”
She paused as, for a moment, she imagined herself presenting a research paper on the chamber. She was convinced that she'd found evidence of a hitherto unknown culture, and even if it had been confined merely to Thaxos – which was unlikely, though possible – she knew that the discovery was signi
ficant. She was familiar with the myths and legends of hundreds of European religions and cultural groups, and the carvings on the walls fitted into none of them. In addition, she found it impossible to believe that this chamber was an isolated location. Although she knew it was a little early to be jumping to conclusions, she was starting to think that perhaps she had stumbled upon the first sign of a culture that had deliberately kept itself hidden for centuries, just as Edgar has once suggested. Her mind was already filling with plans to excavate the entire site and -
Edgar.
She thought back for a moment to one of her first conversations with Edgar, when the subject of the stones had first come up:
“The most convincing study I read,” he'd told her, “postulated that the stones were put in place by a forgotten civilization that once inhabited the island. There are certainly a few other indications of a religious or at least faith-based purpose, perhaps even human sacrifice. So perhaps there was a civilization here that has so far, for various reasons, completely eluded the history books.”
“Sounds a bit melodramatic,” she remembered replying. “Do you really believe that could be true?”
She couldn't help but smile as she realized that the truth seemed to be much closer to Edgar's theory than to her own. In fact, she was starting to wonder whether he perhaps knew more about the stones than he'd let on. After all, he seemed to enjoy playing games, and she felt that it definitely wouldn't be beyond him to deliberately hold back information. If that was the case, however, it meant that Edgar could also help her to learn more about whoever had built the chamber. She was starting to feel as if she might truly be on to a big discovery.
First, though, she needed to keep it secure.
Hurrying back to the door, she stepped out of the chamber and then kicked the rock aside. The door swung shut and she made sure it was firmly closed before heading back along the tunnel and finally emerging, blinking and hiding her eyes from the sun, back in the open air.
She stood for a moment, still trying to get her head around everything she'd just seen, and finally she realized that she needed to start planning. The longer she waited, the more she risked having someone else make a similar discovery. She knew she needed to work fast, but also that she needed to be discreet. There were a few people back in London who she trusted enough to enlist in the project, but as she made her way through the long grass and headed back to the -
Suddenly she froze.
Staring up at her from the grass, with the sunlight glinting against its bleached bone, there was a human skull.
VI
August the third, 1919 – It seems that my plan to work out at the stones today has not met with universal good humor!
This morning at breakfast, I regaled my host with the details of my meeting with Baron Le Compte last night, and I can honestly say that I saw the color drain from his face. It was as if I had claimed to have supped with Satan himself! Although usually a jolly fellow, my host immediately became extremely sullen, and he attended to my breakfast needs with the minimum of care and attention. Presently he disappeared into the kitchen, only to emerge a little while later and tell me in no uncertain terms that I should immediately leave Thaxos. When I asked him why, he said only that it would be unwise to become too drawn into the affairs of the island, and that every second I stayed would represent a further danger.
I politely disagreed with him, of course, but he was absolutely adamant that I should leave. I informed him that my ferry ticket was now booked for tomorrow, the fourth, and that I had pressing work to complete today at the stones. This did nothing to calm his fears.
When I tried to change the subject and bring up the strange encounter with the panicked young woman, he seemed unsurprised and informed me that this was the least of my worries. He offered to contact the ferry company himself and have my ticket changed, but eventually I grew rather tired of this superstitious nonsense so I cut my breakfast short and told him that I would be out all day. He took this news rather badly, but I became a little firmer and informed him that at my age I am more than capable of looking after myself. I believe that this point finally made him realize that his words were falling on deaf ears, and I should think that after I left the room he felt thoroughly ashamed of himself.