Under the Cobblestones

by Aline Riva

The twisted face that covered the medium's features curled into a snarl.

  “Deep under stones, Thornton, gone forever more!”

  Zack got up in anger and the chair clattered back behind him.

  “Give me back my bones!” he yelled, and as he let go of the hands he had been linked to, the apparition vanished from the features of Grace, who gave a sharp gasp and slumped forward.

  Grace recovered quickly once the lights were on and the window was opened up to let in some fresh night air. She kindly thanked Sarah for the hot sweet tea as she sipped it and then set it down on the table and looked to the others.

  “I'm afraid I can't risk this again,” she told them, “Not just because you broke the circle, Zack, but because Frederick's spirit is very strong and I would go as far as to say inherently evil. I doubt if a blessing on the place would keep him out,” then she looked to Kyle, “You have to keep away from anything closely linked to your great great grandfather. Don't go back to that grave site again, because he will possess you and use you to vent his hatred on Zack,” she said, and Kyle's face, which was already pale, paled even further.

  “What did he mean when he said he was disappointed in me, that I wasn't a Brackenby?” he asked.

  “Probably that he's disappointed you're not an evil bastard like he was,” Sally suggested as she looked in concern at her husband, “And you look really shaken up, Kyle. I think we should go home now.”

  He looked across the table at Zack and Sarah.

  “My wife's right,” he said, “I should go home. It's been an eventful evening.”

  Sarah stayed at the table with the medium while Zack walked Kyle and Sally to the door.

  “It certainly has been eventful,” Sarah remarked.

  Grace set down her tea cup and looked across the table at Sarah.

  “I don't want to frighten you,” she said, “But Zack is in a great deal of danger. Not only from the spirit of Frederick, but from the memories that are awakening from his former life. The cunning man had satanic links. He's beginning to feel a fascination with that. Keep him away from the dark side of the craft.”

  Sarah's eyes clouded with confusion.

  “Zack's not interested in magic!” she exclaimed.

  The medium lowered her voice as she looked at her knowingly.

  “It was his former life. Those memories have woken up. It will change him, Sarah. All you can do is try and protect him from the temptation of it, because that temptation will be strong.”

  Chapter 7

  The medium's warning lingered with Sarah, it was still on her mind the next day when they took a drive into the village and then as he parked the car in the usual spot behind the supermarket, she looked at him and wondered if Grace could have been wrong. This was Zack, not Thornton. The cunning man had been and gone and even if Zack remembered more than he had told her about his past life, he was still Zack, with his car and his mobile phone and those great jeans that hugged his hips. He was a man of the modern age, not some Edwardian warlock...

  They got out of the car and began to walk towards the village square.

  “Kyle's going to check through the rest of the old archives today,” he said, “Let's hope he turns something up.”

  “Grace said he had to stay away from anything linked to Frederick,” she recalled.

  He glanced at her and shrugged off her concerns at once.

  “She said to keep away from the grave, not from the old office!”

  “I know that, but it's still linked to him.”

  “Don't worry,” he replied, “We know what happened at the graveyard – that was different, a close link to the burial place.”

  They had just reached the corner where the street opened up into the village square, and she turned in surprise to Zack as a sudden idea hit her.

  “Wait...what you just said...”

  He blinked.

  “What of it?”

  “What if you have some kind of tie to your old bones?” she asked, “What if you would just know if you passed over them? If ghosts know where their bones are laid to rest, could a reincarnated person know if they were close to their old body?”

  He stared at her for a moment, and then he started to smile as he shook his head.

  “I don't know, but you were Lillith and you have to admit it, Sarah - you felt nothing at her grave.”

  “But you remember so much more than me,” she reminded him, “Maybe that makes all the difference? It could be worth a try.”

  He paused for thought.

  “Maybe,” he replied, “But where do I start?”

  She looked about the square.

  “He's under cobblestones,” she reminded him, and they looked to the empty market square, where the ground was full of them.

  Moments later, as Zack took careful slow paces over the empty market square, he exchanged a glance with Sarah and they both laughed, noticing they were attracting looks from passers-by as they wondered why he was walking so carefully over the empty market place.

  “Anything?” she asked him.

  “Like what?” he said, “I don't know what I'm supposed to be feeling!”

  “A buzz, a tingle, some kind of flashback?”

  He stepped closer to the middle of the square and looked over at her.

  “You're guessing.”

  “So are you,” she reminded him.

  He continued to pace the empty square, as she stood back watching, and then he came back over to where she waited for him and shook his head.

  “Nothing,” he told her.

  “Then we need to take a wander,” she replied.

  “Around the whole village?”

  She thought about it. All of the smaller streets were cobbled, so were many pathways and even floors in half of the older buildings in Harpley.

  “We would have to knock on every door in the village,” she said to him.

  He nodded.

  “And I don't think anyone would believe I'm cobblestone inspector.”

  They exchanged a glance, and he smiled and she laughed softly.

  “Okay, so maybe it was a bad idea. Shall we take half an hour to watch the world go by?”

  As she spoke she glanced in the direction of the tea room.

  “Good idea,”he replied, and as they walked towards the place they had last visited whilst in the square, her hand brushed his, and as it slipped into his and they walked hand in hand, they exchanged a glance and a smile, and kept their hands linked as they crossed to the other side.

  As they ordered a pot of tea and then sat in the same place they had sat on their first visit, as she looked across the table at him and their eyes met, he smiled and looked down at the lace table cloth, his face flushing as he met her gaze once more.

  “Since when did we start holding hands?”

  “Since today, I believe,” she replied.

  “So we did,” he agreed, and then his gaze lingered on hers as they said nothing but felt something unspoken pass between them that seemed so old and life long, that it had to be the past meeting with the present as they both felt their new level of closeness was now becoming something that now made perfect sense.

  They spent an hour in the tea room, just talking about their plans for the afternoon, and for once, the subject of the warlock bones did not come into the conversation. When they left the tea room they took a walk across the square and went into a book store, where Zack headed straight for the local history section to see if he could find anything on the Brackenby family, because his mind was, for once, on his plans for writing a book of his own.

  “I don't think there's much here about Harpley Village,” Sarah said as she browsed through a shelf, “Plenty about nearby towns and cities...Zack?”

  As she had turned around, she realised he was no longer beside her. She went down to the next aisle and looked up, and saw him there, at the end, browsing a middle shelf crammed with titles.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked as she joined him, and
then as he stopped flipping through a book entitled Occult Histories, she felt a chill run down her spine.

  “What are you doing? This is the occult and paranormal section – you won't find anything here on Thornton's disappearance – even the local papers at the time couldn't dig anything up!”

  “I was just interested,” he replied, and then he slid the book back into place on the shelf and looked to Sarah, whose face had turned pale.

  “What's the matter?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Nothing, I just thought it was a bit odd that you wanted to look at books about witchcraft,” she replied.

  He looked into her eyes, and in that moment, she swore his gaze had the same intensity as the look she had seen in the eyes of Thornton Ravencroft.

  “I remember more about him every day,” he said to her, “If wanted to use magic, I wouldn't need to read books. I used to be the cunning man, what more would I need to know?”

  And then he walked towards the open door of the shop and she followed, silently worrying for Zack as the warning uttered by the medium came back to her with alarming clarity.

  In the old dusty office at the Brackenby house, the window was open to let in fresh air and the sunlight fell on to a faded rug as Kyle crossed the room and went over to the big, heavy filing cabinet and tugged open a drawer where there were files marked 1912 – 1915.

  “I see Frederick had plans to let a railway company run a track through the back of the village at one point,” he said as he browsed through the paperwork,” and then he glanced to his wife, who was looking through a second drawer, “What a greedy bastard! He was rolling cash, he didn't need the extra money – and a lot of people would have lost their homes over it, too! I wonder who talked him out of it?”

  “Maybe it was Tabitha,” she suggested.

  “Would be nice to think he did actually value her opinion,” he agreed, “But from what I heard, he treated her like dirt.”

  Then he shuffled the papers and drew out another letter, and then he understood.

  “Oh, I see...yes, he was a greedy old bastard. He wanted much more than the railway company were prepared to pay to use the land – so they diverted through to what is now the nearest station about three miles north of here, they turned down his demands.”

  She closed the drawer and brought over another stack of old papers and set them down on the table.

  “I think Zack will like to see these, he could use them for his book – more lists of workers wages and details of how much profit the manor turned over on an annual basis. There's some later stuff here too from your grandfather's day – he was nothing like Frederick, he wanted to make sure his workers got a fair wage, its all set out in this book.” She held up a faded blue leather bound book, and he nodded and then looked back to the papers in his hands.

  “Granddad was a good man. Shame Frederick put such a stain on the family name, though.”

  “If we keep looking,” Sally added, “I bet we'll find out more about what happened to Thornton. Or at least a bit more about Lillith.” And then she scooped up an armful of old papers that had been cast aside as unimportant and left the room to throw them out.

  The sunlight was shining through the window and on to the table as he leant on the surface of the desk and read through the old paperwork. Then he looked up and out of the window, admiring the view of the sweeping driveway that led down to the main gates. It was a fine day and the sunlight on the trees made the place seem framed in beauty. It was the kind of day that made him feel glad to be alive – and that was a feeling he had not easily enjoyed for a long while...

  The thought ran through his mind that just maybe, at least for now, everything would be alright. He had the business running, the estate was doing fine, he had Sally and now he had new friends in Zack and Sarah – especially Zack, who did feel like a brother to him, because they were as close as Sally had predicted they would be, she had just known from the moment they first met that Zack was going to be a very close friend to him. Perhaps a new friendship and making a bit more of life was all he needed to do to chase away his fears, even if Zack had dragged him into the strangest mystery he was sure he would ever become tangled up in. Yes, he was feeling optimistic now, and that was something that had long been absent from his life. He was feeling so good that he even dared to think those test results would be all clear when the time came around again...

  “You're going to die.”

  The colour drained from his face, turning it chalk white as he gave a gasp, freezing where he stood leaning on the desk...he knew that voice. It was the voice that had spoken through the medium the night before, it was Frederick Brackenby's voice...

  He closed his eyes as he wondered for a moment if the house was shaking, because the floor and the walls seemed to be rattled – and then he realised the shaking was coming from him as he stood there, shaking with fear as he tried to imagine pushing away the evil spirit.

  “Go away!” he whispered, not daring to open his eyes.

  “You're going to die,” Frederick said again, “Your blood is tainted by the curse, as was mine. Blame him, blame the man who wears Thornton's face. He is the warlock returned. The warlock put the poison in your blood and it will return because of him!”

  “SHUT UP!” Kyle yelled, turning around with eyes blazing as tears of anger sprang to his hazel eyes.

  And Sally stopped abruptly in the doorway, looking in bewilderment at her husband, who had turned to the empty space beside him and yelled at thin air.

  “Kyle?” she said gently, “What's wrong, love?”

  He looked to his wife, then he brought his hand up to his face and quickly wiped his eyes.

  “Nothing,” he said, “I thought I heard something...it was just me, I was imagining things...”

  Her arms were around him now and the feel of her closeness assured him of safety once more.

  “Are you having those thoughts again, the ones you had when you were ill?”

  He turned his face away, unable to look her in the eye as he felt sure that if he told her exactly what had just happened, she would want him to take a step back from the Thornton Ravencroft mystery, and he couldn't risk that, not now, because he knew - he just felt it - that soon Zack would need his help as he got deeper into the search for the bones, and it was going to get a lot worse, to the point that even Sally would want him to steer clear of it...

  He met her gaze.

  “Yes,” he said, feeling a sting of guilt for the lie, “I was okay and then I suddenly got all these thoughts flooding my mind...the usual, death, funerals, me sliding away and fading out of existence.”

  “Maybe you'll feel better when you've had the tests,” she replied, “I mean, once you have the all clear you can relax again.”

  “But for how long?” he asked her, and now real thoughts were creeping into his mind and biting back, his own fears threatening to smother him.

  “I'm going out for a while,” he said to her, “I'll go over to Zack's cottage and see how he's getting on.”

  “Are you sure you should?” she asked him, “I just walked in here and saw you ranting at your own imagination.”

  “And I'm not ranting any more. It's a nice day, I want to get out there and enjoy it,” he told her, and then he kissed her and forced a smile.

  “I'll be fine,” he assured her, then he walked out of the room and went through to the main office, then left by that door and went along the upper hallway, then he hurried for the staircase, keen to get away from his family home and the voice that had invaded his thoughts to play on his darkest fears.

  As they returned to the cottage and Zack closed the door, he stood there in the hallway and turned to Sarah and met her gaze.

  “It's been a nice day,” he said, and felt awkward as he saw the look in her eyes and guessed after holding her hand in the square, and later on again on the way back to the car, especially after the glance they had exchanged on the drive back home, it was a safe a
ssumption to assume that she was hoping for, and would very much welcome, a kiss.

  “Shall I get us a couple of cold drinks?” he suggested.

  “Zack,” she said, and she placed her hand on his shoulder.

  He looked to his shoulder, and in that moment she recalled how Lillith had done the same to Thornton, and just like Thornton, he took a step back and her hand slipped from the fabric of his shirt.

  “Let's not spoil it,”he said, “I'm not sure if I'm ready for anything right now...I'm not saying never, just, not yet. Can you understand that?”

  She nodded, and then she stepped closer and cautiously placed her hands on his shoulders as she smiled.

  “There's nothing to be scared of,” she said softly, “I'd never hurt you.”

  “I know that,” he replied, and then he gently held her, his arms were wrapped about her but he was barely holding her, as if afraid to fold her too tightly in his arms in case he couldn't let go again. Then he looked into her eyes.

  “I've had a bad time.”

  “So have I,” she replied, “And its in the past now. I think we were meant to meet like this.”

  He smiled.

  “Thornton and Lillith,” he said softly, and then as he looked at her and thought of the other life and the woman he had loved, he swore he saw her in Sarah's eyes, just for the briefest moment. That was enough for Zack to find the courage he needed, and he pulled her closer and their lips touched as they shared a tender kiss. Then he let go of her again and smiled as his face flushed.

  “Where was I...” he said, “Oh yes, lemonade, garden?”

  She smiled too.

  “I'll fix the drinks and see you out there,” she told him, and he looked at her with a new depth of affection in his gaze, and then turned away and headed for the back door.

  By the time Kyle had arrived, the lemonade in Sarah's glass was almost gone and the ice cubes were melted to fragments as she sat at the table watching with interest as Zack stood at the back of the garden, clipping at some plants with sharp scissors.