The Stone Dweller's Curse: A Story of Curses, Madness, Obsession and Love

by Jacqueline Henry

  Tuesday, Middle of the Night - Muddow’s Field

  The surface of the loch rippled in the wind. Deidre stood on the Coffin Road catching her breath, her legs wobbling like jelly having run as much as she could to this point, stumbling, falling face forward a couple of times, trip hazards hidden in the surreal twilight that filled the sky. The Simmer Dim they called this strange, unnatural light, the sun just barely dipping below the horizon.

  The ridge of higher, drier ground that circumvented the boggy marsh around the loch was another five hundred meters or so along the track, five hundred meters of time she didn’t have. Instead, she headed downhill, and in her haste failed to map out a route, the slope becoming unexpectedly steep, confronted suddenly by a large eroded embankment she would now have to jump over. She jumped, the landing sharper than she expected, the angle propelling her downhill at speed until the ground turned to mush trapping her feet, the sudden retardation of her movement sending her face forward into shallow puddles of chilling water and muck, the biting intensity of the water taking her breath away. It was in her mouth, up her nose. She pushed herself up, gasping in shock and surprise as her hands sank into the fibrous surface, her arms completely immersed in a thick stew of cold wet mulch.

  ‘Oh shit!’ she exclaimed, breathless, lifting her head to keep her chin above the surface, the mirage of solid ground sinking beneath her weight. ‘Shit!’

  Dylan was gonna kill her. She couldn’t hide this from him. She was soaked, her jeans and boots waterlogged, the thick organic slush flowing up, in and under her jacket.

  It’ll be ok, it’ll be ok, she thought positively, keeping her head. Just get onto solid ground.

  Slowly, carefully she moved through the morass onto a higher, firmer island of turf, the surface still squelchy and tenuous but offering some stability in the mire. She was dripping wet, covered in a black porridge of grass particles, scratchy fibres and small clumps of moss. She promised Dylan she would never come back here and now she was covered in bog muck.

  Her clothes were sodden and heavy, cold as she picked her way across the mire to a firmer surface, finding higher ground away from the marsh, too exhausted to run, moving at a walking trot in an effort to make up for lost time and to keep her blood flowing.

  Boulders speckled Muddow’s Field like luminescent clumps of cream in the weird dim light of this middle of the night twilight. Her boots still squelching, she headed across the field to the chamber entrance, cold, drenched from head to foot, a cruddy coating drying in wet sodden clumps encrusting her jacket and jeans.

  Exhausted, she reached the opening, dropping to her knees in front of it, peering into the dark tunnel. She pulled the torch from of her pocket and switched it on. It still worked after her dousing but she wasn’t sure for how long, the batteries stolen from Dylan’s remote. The beam lit up the dark passageway. She’d made this midnight trip in order seal up the chamber, but she knew now as she crawled in through the opening, that had just been an excuse her conscious, reasoning mind could understand. She was drawn here like a divining rod to water, seeking out the source of the vibration that thrummed through her like a tuning fork on the edge of her nerves.

  The bones lay there, the cross resting on the ribcage glinting darkly in the torchlight. She cast the light around the small cavern, the urns catching her attention, standing in the looming darkness like three small thugs. She stepped over the small fire pit to examine them, noticing that one lay in shattered ruins behind the others as if hidden. She crouched down, her boots and jeans squelching, and set the torch upright on the floor, the light beaming up and spilling over the curved ceiling filling the small space with soft light.

  A cloth or skin of some sort, stiff and hard with age, sealed the tops of the urns. She touched one. It felt rigid but pliable, like a desiccated dog chew, markings still evident where a thin rope had once bound the material around the mouth of the urn. Deidre tugged gently at the corner hearing a dry crackling sound, the stiff cloth covering detaching with surprising ease.

  The torch light faded and she picked it up, shook it, strengthening the light and pointed it into the mouth of the urn. A thick layer of flaky fragments lay at the bottom. Placing the torch on the floor again, she picked up the urn and tipped its contents onto the floor, a cascade of grainy dirt pouring out, particles billowing in the torchlight. A large clump followed, landing onto the heap sending clouds of ancient dust blooming through the air. She coughed, uselessly waving away the cloying miasma, inhaling more. It was in her eyes, coating her throat, choking her as the torchlight faded to a faint halo, the batteries dying. She stood up, coughing, her eyes streaming as she rushed for the exit, feeling the cold hard stone of the chamber wall as her face crashed against it in the moments before she blacked out.

  Taran

  The pain reached subliminal levels. Taran oscillated between delirium and long black periods of unconsciousness, his feverish brain allowing small glimpses of reality and awareness. How long had he been lying here? Days, nights had come and gone, feeling the cold, the thirst, unable to react, his conscious mind separating from his tortured body, waiting for a death that never came. The barbarians had forgotten about him, thinking him dead in the outer field by the burn. One had come to piss in the burn, standing a few feet away from him, sighing, groaning and farting, the long hot stream flowing on forever. Taran hadn’t moved, couldn’t.

  Rain came. Cold wet splashes of dousing rain. It fell against his parched lips, trickling into his mouth. He turned his head, suffering the spasms that ignited a fire within him, opening his mouth to accept the nectar of his Gods, the stench of his own putrefying body assaulting his senses, the air he breathed redolent with death. And silence.

  He listened, hearing the crash of the waves beyond the headland and birds calling in the distance, wind and rain spattering on the ground, no coarse language, no guttural shouts and cruel laughter. They were gone. The barbarians had left his soil. This realisation permeated through the thick sponge of pain like an elixir, reinvigorating him, elation buoying up an irrational joy. He was still alive, he'd lived through this. Breeta would come back soon, she would save him. He moved slowly, a growl escaping from him as he carefully elevated himself on one arm, scanning the headland where he’d last seen Breeta’s shadowy figure blending into the early morning. How long ago? How many days had he lain here? A shimmering cloak of rain now shrouded the valley and he lifted his face to it, praying to both their Gods that Breeta was safe, hope teasing him that she would appear over the hazy rise at any moment.

  Reluctantly, he looked down at his side. Blood oozed from the hole in his tunic, a dark rust coloured puddle forming around him in the rain. Weak with pain and fatigue, his hands shaking violently, he plucked handfuls of moss from the side of burn and carefully lifted his tunic. Whimpering, he pressed the moss against the opening in his flesh, his heart wrenching as he desperately scanned the headland again. He didn’t know if he could survive this.

  ‘Breeta!’ he called hoarsely, his shaking hand feeling for the cross beneath his tunic, pressing it hard against his chest, investing all his yearning, his want, his desolation into this talisman.

  He needed her; he needed her love, her warmth and her touch. He needed to know that she was safe. He looked across to the farmstead littered with bloated bodies both human and animal, the ground black with their congealed blood, slick and oily in the rain. The sheep, the pigs, the ponies had all been put to the slaughter, the crop of barley, days away from harvest, had been plundered, the small village decimated, their stone homes in ruin. The devastation was complete. He shied away from the sight, his eyes turning to the headland again, searching. Breeta should have come back by now. She was still alive, safe, hiding in the Priest’s chamber. He’d seen her make it over the headland.

  Taran dragged himself closer to the burn, drank his fill before manoeuvring into a position to push himself upright. He screamed in agony, his head swooning, and stood swaying on his feet, breathing heavily
, holding his balance, the rain cooling his feverish flesh. A wooden shaft protruding out of the ground in the middle of the inner field caught his eye and he took his first excruciating step towards it.

  His dog Wrapyn lay in the ruined field of turnips, eyes open, blank, glittering in the rain, a splintered spear embedded deep in its side. The hound had shared a bed with him and Breeta through many winter nights. Taran stepped closer grasping the shaft, groaning, biting down on the pain as he broke it away from the dog’s body, using it as a crutch and continuing on, one lurching agonising step after another, away from the reeking fetor of death.

  It took him the better part of the day to cross the valley, stopping frequently and passing out many times. It was late in the day by the time he’d reached the narrow track leading up to the headland. An easy gradient, he’d walked up it many times. He’d watched Breeta scale it with ease, her dark nebulous form like the shadow of a bird in the early morning mists. He stood resting his weight on the broken shaft of the spear, his eyes following the seemingly insurmountable incline to the top before taking his first tortuous step upwards.

  The sun had started its descent into the sea by the time he reached the flat open expanse of the headland, the pain in his side incredible, his body slick with oozing blood and sweat. He paused, resting heavily on the wooden shaft, his eyes scanning Penntyr Field that stretched out before him, searching for any sign of life. Focussing his eyes and concentration in the dimming light, he surveyed the contours of the extensive moorland, the entry to the Priest’s chamber indiscernible in the rocky rubble strewn across the field. Other than the burn spouting towards the shore, there was no movement, no smoke, no signs of life, only the evidence of a recent disturbance on the ground near the small inlet below, the green hue churned to brown, trampled by a great many feet.

  The savages had been here he realised with sickening dread, desperation dampening his hope.

  ‘Breeta!’

  The sea exploded behind him surging up from Aennod’s Glup. He moved on, one gruelling step after another, harbouring the hope that Breeta was there, safe in the Priest’s chamber, hiding in the dark, too afraid to light a fire, too afraid to return, held at bay by the pall of death wafting over the headland from Betarra. He imagined her emerging from the entrance, running to him, relishing the relief he would feel, his eyes burning into the dark void in the distance, willing her to step out.

  ‘Breeta!’

  The small underground beehive dwelling had been built long ago, in times before memory, before history. No one knew who constructed it, or why; too small for a family, solitary and far away from other settlements, the stories told tales of a Druid Priest, a sorcerer who had once lived there, permeating the walls with the potent powers of the Gods. Respect, fear of this place had passed on through the generations, entry to the tiny cell forbidden.

  Paying no heed to old tales told by their elders, it was still in use by those who had more important matters to attend to. A place of refuge when caught in the storm, a hide out for young boys with other things on their minds, a place for time away from the spouse, and a meeting place for illicit lovers.

  New lovers. New love.

  It was an easy task for Taran to segregate his life into two distinct parts; the seasons and years before he saw Breeta, and those that followed.

  He first became aware of her existence at the wedlock feast of DerLei of Pente and his new bride from across the wide water. Breeta had come to the isle as an adjunct, the sister of the new bride, new stock for the Pente settlement bloodline, betrothed to DerLei’s younger sibling, Alac, still a boy yet to grow facial hair.

  Singular and separate, strange to those around her, Breeta stood alone at the wedlock feast, her spoken tongue different to those of these valleys. Exuding colour, she looked unlike anyone Taran had ever seen before, her eyes matching the clear shallow sea on a warm summer’s day, her hair rippling like gentle waves against the shore and as vibrant as a deep setting sun. She bore an ornamentation of the new Christian God. The Christian men from the south sometimes came to these valleys dressed in their long hooded robes, trying to impress their new God upon the inhabitants of Betarra and Pente settlements. They spoke in a foreign tongue, brandishing objects similar in shape to that which hung from Breeta’s long delicate neck, the Christian object black and weighty, incongruous against skin so creamy white and soft.

  Unaware and inexperienced to emotions of this nature, the intense and sudden feelings she aroused in him overwhelmed him. He watched her from a distance, awed, entranced, unable to turn his eyes away from her.

  From that moment and for the days, weeks and months that followed, she filled his head and made his heart bound, made him sick with longing and weak with hunger. She could devastate and inflame him with one casual look in his direction. Bewitched, he wondered if she practised the art of sorcery, her presence disrupting his daily occupations, finding it difficult to sow barley or tend the sheep when his eyes, with a will of their own, forever sought her out on the hillsides and glens, tracing the silver line of the burn where he knew she collected water. Sighting her, he would abandon his activities, drawn to where she was like one under a spell, never a word passing between them. Unable to approach her, unable to walk away, he stood rooted into the ground like Brud Stone.

  Then one day she smiled at him, her eyes locking onto his, holding them. He felt as though he’d been pushed off the edge of a cliff and he was soaring like a bird rising with the wind.

  All other needs of his existence ceased to matter, spending long wakeful nights feverish at the thought of her, her smile, that look she’d given him intensifying his desperation with each passing day, his change in behaviour noticed by others. He’d become unreliable, leaving the harvest field, his tasks unfinished, sheep allowed to wander, becoming lost.

  ‘She’s a pretty thing to look at, little brother,’ Morleo said, coming up behind him where he sat watching Breeta in the distance as she gathered heather. Taran turned around, startled out of his reverie. ‘But she’s betrothed to Alac of Pente as you know,’ Morleo said and Taran swung his head around, petulantly returning his gaze to Breeta. ‘This is a deal set by elders before the she was born,’ Morleo continued. ‘It would be best for you to forget her, Taran, to never look her way again.’

  ‘Alac of Pente hasn’t seen his eleventh summer!’ Taran retorted, his eyes fixed on Breeta. ‘They have her penned like a heifer waiting for the bull to grow horns!’

  ‘If you interfere with this betrothal you will cause bad blood between the settlements. Do you want to carry that on your shoulders? Then you’ll be offered no bride to choose from.’

  ‘I don’t want another bride!’ he exclaimed, pushing himself off the rock he sat on, facing Morelo with his hands balled into fists. ‘I don’t want to choose another!’

  ‘You will! And you will start tending the sheep like you ought.’

  ‘You might be the eldest brother Morleo, but you’re not an elder yet. You can’t tell me what I will and won’t do.’

  ‘I’m not telling you Taran, I’m speaking the words of Denk. It is at his request that I sought you out this day to have these words. Denk has had words with Carvost from Pitloch. They have a woman in their settlement, a widow, a young widow in need of a new partner. We think that you will be well suited to her.’

  Taran shook his head, turning his back on Morleo, staring out across the valley through hot, stinging eyes, willing Breeta to look his way, to wave, to acknowledge him somehow in front of Morleo.

  ‘Why can’t Denk have words with the Pente elders, ask them to release her from the boy and allow me to betroth her?’ He felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder, his gaze across the valley unwavering. He continued. ‘Crotus would be a much better match for Alac. She is three summers younger than he. There’s more than eight summers between Alac and Breeta.’

  ‘Breeta?’ Morleo questioned. ‘Brother already knows the name of the woman from across the wide water.’

>   Taran turned, looked up at Morleo, older, taller, wiser than him. ‘I have pain in here,’ he said thumping his hand against his breast, ‘it’s tight and never goes away. It feels like an evil god lives inside me creating storms in my chest. I can’t bear this pain she creates inside me. It makes me sick in my belly, it burns as if there is a fire inside me.’ He raised a hand to his forehead, pressed it against his skull. ‘She lives in my head and won’t leave me alone. Is she a sorceress, Morleo? Has she poisoned me with a spell?’ he asked woefully, looking back across the valley as Breeta headed back towards Pente settlement, laden with armloads of heather.

  ‘Yes, brother, she is a sorceress,’ Morleo replied and Taran turned to him, hearing a light amusement in his brother’s voice. ‘She is a woman,’ Morleo continued, ‘and they have powers we will never understand, powers that can bring great men down with a single look.’ He wrapped his arm around Taran’s shoulder, leading him back towards Betarra. ‘I feel pity for you, little brother, for you will not stand a chance against such a force.’

  Taran placed his hands against the monolith, pressing his forehead against the cold granite, praying to the God that had placed this great stone here on the edge of the land.

  He worshipped often with his people at the foot of this almighty pillar in supplication for plentiful crops and healthy beasts that would feed and clothe them through the long winter months when darkness filled the sky and the green valleys turned white.

  He prayed now, eyes closed, his fingers tracing the swirls and circles inscribed on the rock face by people long gone, reliving Breeta’s smile, the way her eyes had held his, locked onto them as if trying to convey an unspoken message.