by Gemma Amor
Or imprisoned.
I bent down, broke a crystal off at the root, and examined it. It was smoky, like quartz. I squeezed it. Smoky and solid. Treasure from another reality. Nightmare diamonds, I thought. I put it inside my pocket.
Something shifted inside the glass.
A tiny movement, but I caught it. I edged closer to the tree-bubble, leaned forward to get a better look, overbalanced...
...and fell headlong through the glass.
And I was somehow inside. Somehow part of the beauty, but instead of suffocating, instead of hanging suspended within the crystalline globule like a mosquito in amber, I was able to move and breathe within the glass, because this was just a dream, after all.
Wasn’t it?
The cherry tree held its arms out above me. It was even more beguiling, close up. The finches gripped the branches with their tiny clawed feet. As I stepped closer, there was a clear, distinct noise, like that of a thin crack appearing in a glass windowpane. Something small tumbled from a branch overhead, and fell at my feet. When I located it, I realised it was a single cherry blossom. I felt a surge of sadness, for the perfect thing was now a little less perfect, and I was to blame.
And then I saw what lay at the base of the tree.
Waiting for me.
It was smothered by the snarled tangle of tree roots that snaked and crisscrossed around my feet and then plunged down into the beach, anchoring the tree firmly in place. For this reason, it was hard to make out at first, but I eventually determined that it was an old, mossy rock, about the size of a large football, assimilated into the root mass like the head of a Buddha statue I had seen once in Thailand.
And carved into that rock, was a crude face.
A deity of some sort? A god? A former king, lord, pharaoh, leader...prophet? I knew, without knowing how I knew, that this was an ancient thing. The face was aged beyond my comprehension of time, and origin. It had squat, basic features. A wide mouth, like a frog’s. A flat, worn nose. The barest impression of eyes, depicted as two round, expressionless orbs.
The orbs were staring at me.
I felt something deep within my body wake up. There was no other way to describe it. It was a sensation of arousal, of something long dormant rising to greet the world.
The blank, primitive face glared at me from its throne of roots, and I couldn’t help myself. My hand itched and burned, and I couldn’t help myself.
I did something I shouldn’t have done.
I went to it, and reached out, and touched the face with my bare hands.
I knew as soon as I touched it that I shouldn’t have. An all-consuming wave of panic and dread swept me up the moment my fingers made contact with the soft, green stone.
There was a terrific rumbling, a movement from the bowels of whichever earth I was above. The tree juddered overhead. A small shower of petals drifted down around me like the ash that had drifted across the beach earlier.
I gasped, and fell back, and the face in the stone opened its eyes.
The crude orbs had been eyelids, closed eyelids. These slid backwards, mimicking the movement of the scale that cover’s a snake’s eyes. Beneath lay two dark, hungry spheres.
The god beneath the tree opened its mouth, and I saw my mistake for what it was: the rock was not a rock at all, nor was it a carving. Rather, it was something that had been sleeping, sleeping for many, many years beneath this cherry tree, safe, cradled, undisturbed.
And I had just woken it up.
The eyes, hideous and vacant and black, rolled. The creature spoke with a voice so loud my ears and nose erupted, blood fountaining down my chest and the sides of my face. The words were delivered in a language I didn’t recognise, but that hardly mattered.
I knew anger when I heard it.
I scrambled back like a crab, out of the tree-bubble, sobbing. But the damage was done. The beach trembled and quaked. Huge waves smashed against the shore with a sudden brute force. A lump of rock detached from the cliff nearby with a sharp crack, and smashed to the ground. Ash swirled around me, driven by a fierce, whipping wind.
What have I done? I thought, frantically slapping my own face, over and over, in one final, desperate attempt to wake myself up. Blood from my nose spattered to the sand, and a small grasping hand that poked out of the beach near my left foot trembled, then grew still.
What have I done?!
I didn’t wake up.
This isn’t a dream, I realised.
This is something else!
I screamed. There was no way off this beach. There was no way to wake up from this hellish dreamscape. I would be trapped here forever, stuck as fast as the bodies in the sand, an angry god’s eyes upon me, its voice ravaging my fragile mind, and…
And...
And then something monstrous bellowed in the distance.
‘No more, please no more,’ I whispered, squeezing my eyes shut in denial and clapping my hands, my treacherous, meddling hands, to my face.
There was a flash of movement from behind the closed lids. A shadow moved across them.
A big shadow.
An impact tremor ran beneath my feet, and then another. Huge and heavy footsteps approached.
Something was coming.
I took my hands away, shaking in fear, and saw, for a split second too long, something vast.
Something black.
Something hideous.
It stalked on two legs across the sand towards me. It was massive, and fast, and moved in a dangerous, fluid, predatory way.
It looked like a giant man.
I screamed again.
Then, the creature was gone. It vanished, mid-stride.
The seagull that had been perched on the roof of the drowned house took flight, fighting the fierce wind that now blew. It circled above my head and screeched at me in derision. The bird’s taunting cries took on form, like human words, and I thought that I heard it squeal out my name, over and over, ‘Megs!’ ‘Megs!’ ‘Megs!’
I cowered beneath it, and as I did so, without warning, I felt the sand under my feet soften, I felt myself sinking down, down, down, the beach rising up past my ankles, past my knees, past my waist, up to my chest, closing in around my neck, and I found I was not ready to die, I found I could think of no worse fate than to let the beach swallow me whole, I found I was stuck, helpless, as my death came at me, a smooth avalanche of oblivion, and then finally, finally, I awoke to a gathering darkness, and my house, and the sound of Matthew calling my name.
9. Calling
‘Megs? Megs, wake up!’
Matthew stood behind me, gripping my shoulders, shaking me.
‘Megs!’ He hissed again, and this time, I roused, gasping and shaking as if surfacing from deep beneath the waters of a pool. Then, instinct took over, and I flailed, struggling against Matthew’s hold, useless gibberish words spilling from my lips. I was stuck, I was stuck in the sand, and there had been things on the beach, such terrible, terrible things, and there had been a tree with an angry god beneath it, and there were corpses scattered across the sand like driftwood, and I was stuck, I was stuck...I was...
Only I wasn’t. I was standing in the hallway of Taigh-Faire, half-naked. My right hand was tugging on the door of the cupboard under the stairs, my fingers stinging as if I’d been slapping the wood, trying to get in.
My breathing slowed. Matthew kept a firm but gentle grip on my shoulders. I stopped fighting him when I felt something cold in the palm of my left hand. I opened it.
My hand had been curled tight around something small, and angular, and hard. I blinked, and saw a crystal lying upon my palm, flecked with smoky grey lines and ash-coloured flaws.
I dropped it.
Dream-crystal.
I shook my head, over and over, as if trying to shake water out of my ears. It can’t be. It can’t be!
Was I actually awake? Or was this just another part of the nightmare?
The crystal hit the floor and broke into tw
o pieces. As I stared at them, terrified, they vanished.
Into thin air.
Permanence had become a thing of the past.
Two dark, wet spots took the place of the crystal shards on the floor. I sniffed. There was blood dripping from my nose. It splatted by my feet. I touched my ears. Those were bleeding, too.
I remembered a great, thundering voice speaking alien words of displeasure.
What the fuck was happening to me?
Cold, disoriented and bloody, I finally reached out for the warmth of another human being. I reached out for Matthew.
‘M- Matthew?’
He took my hands in his, and spoke softly, reassuringly. He was always so kind. So kind.
‘It’s okay, Megs. It’s okay. You’re awake now. You were sleepwalking. I didn’t hear you at first, you were so quiet, but then you started hammering on that door as if your life depended on it. Scared the living Jesus out of me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quietly, but I couldn’t concentrate on him. Something nagged at me, something beyond the mental struggle I was having to reconcile what I’d seen with what I knew to be possible. I was awake, I had to be, but what about the crystal in my hand? The nosebleed? How could someone…
How could a person bring those back from a dream?
‘You’re bleeding, come here.’ Matthew tutted and pressed a handkerchief he drew from his pocket onto my nose, tilting my head back. I let him do this, my mind otherwise occupied. I let him cluck and fuss over me as he stemmed the flow of blood.
‘Honestly, I don’t know how you’ve managed this long without me, Megs,’ he scolded, gently.
Was it a dream, or not? This question consumed me. If so, it was unlike any other dream I’d ever experienced. So vivid. So awful. And I had this unpleasant, lurching, gut-wrenching feeling inside of me. As if I’d done something wrong. The feeling you get when you know you’ve made a mistake, a huge mistake.
The more I came to, the more aware of my body I was. I found that my headache was back. In its wake followed the aching skin, the feverish chills. My mind wheeled round and around. I thought of a green, mossy stone, a crude face carved into it. I thought of a woman reaching out, touching what should not be touched. I shuddered, violently. Matthew soothed me and held me close, to warm me up.
So kind.
‘Megs?’ Matthew tried to get me to look at him, but I froze suddenly, and shrugged him off. The nagging thing that had been bothering me took on form, substance. I felt a sharp, cool breeze whistling out from under the cupboard door, past my legs. I frowned. There had been no draft there before. I remembered. There had been a draft in the cellar, around the capstone, but I hadn't felt it beyond the door.
‘Can you feel that?’ I asked, pushing Matthew away and moving to unlatch the door. ‘That draft. It shouldn’t be...there shouldn’t be…’
A strange feeling came over me. What was that noise I could hear? High-pitched, it set my teeth on edge. It was like a moan, or a single, long note played off-key.
‘Megs?’ Matthew’s eyes were full of concern. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’m not sure,’ I replied, feeling suddenly very far away from everything.
‘Come away, Megs,’ he said, and I felt a flash of annoyance. The noise grew a little louder.
‘I need to check something out,’ I argued, with some force this time, unlatching the cupboard door with cold, fumbling fingers. Matthew stared at me, perplexed.
‘At this hour? What on earth for? There’s nothing in there, Megs. You just had a bad dream. Come on, come away, we need to clean your face.’
I ignored him, and opened the cupboard door.
‘Megs, you’re being silly. Besides, there’s no power, you’ll never find what you need under there in the dark!’
‘Help me with this,’ I replied, grabbing hold of the vacuum cleaner that I’d put back after my last visit to the cellar.
‘Megs.’ Matthew’s voice took on some urgency. ‘The gas hob still works, I made tea,’ he continued, and there was an odd, heavy look on his face. ‘Come away from there, would you, and have a cuppa with me first? I have things…’ He took a deep, shaking breath. ‘Things I want to say.’
Poor Matthew. He had come such a long way.
‘I don’t like tea,’ I murmured, perhaps cruelly.
‘Please?’ He asked, the question almost a plea.
‘No,’ I shook my head. ‘No. There is something...something I need to do.’ I didn’t know what it was, exactly, but I knew it to be true. There was something down there beneath the house that needed my attention, and needed it urgently. I could hear it singing to me, high and steady.
I started dragging things out of the cupboard. Matthew tugged on the back of my shirt, and I felt another flash of annoyance.
‘Megs? Are you still asleep, Megs? Megs!’
‘Leave me alone, Matthew!’ I spun around, and gave him a savage look. I sounded cold, and hollow, even to my own ears. ‘Don’t you understand? I have something I have to do.’
But Matthew didn’t leave me alone. He blinked, and smoothed the hurt look on his face away with an expert haste that would have made me regret my actions had I been in my right mind. Then he muttered something under his breath, and began to help me clear out the cupboard, revealing the small, hidden cellar door on the far wall once again.
It waited for us, so dark and black in the gloom that it burned a rectangular mark into my vision, and when I blinked, I still saw it, like a white shadow on a photograph negative.
‘What the hell is that?’ Matthew breathed.
‘The way down,’ I replied, and I could feel a strong, whistling draft, bursting out from the small gap beneath the wooden door. It brought with it the smell of the cellar, and that salty tang to which I was quickly becoming accustomed.
I lifted the latch. A fresh blast of freezing cold air pummeled our faces. Matthew rubbed his eyes. ‘Christ!’ He said, blinking dust and grit away. ‘What the hell have you got down there, a portal to another world?’
And I remembered a beach in my dream, where the sand was glass and a tree bloomed eternal inside a crystal cage, and I knew it was all connected, my dream, the stone face in the tree roots, the beach, the giant that stalked the sands there, the cemetery in Laide, the wooden structure by the side of the road, the strange folk I had met, the peculiar symbols all around me, my Granny, this house, the cellar carved from bedrock, the chalk giant by the loch on the way into Laide, the circular capstone that lay beneath us...
And the Island.
I made a move towards the now yawning black mouth in front of us, and Matthew grabbed for me again, pulling me up short. I bit back an angry retort. I was growing tired of being manhandled.
‘Wait,’ he said.
I glared at him.
‘What do you think is down there, Megs?’ He asked, and it was a fair question, I supposed. ‘Why the urgency? What’s going on?’
I didn’t have answers for him. I just knew I had to. I had to go down, I had business to attend to. I didn’t know what it was, I didn’t know anything beyond the driving sense of urgency that pushed me through the squat little door and down the rough-hewn steps. It was impossible to explain this to him, impossible to explain how I knew that ignoring whatever it was that called to me would have disastrous, catastrophic consequences. I had no choice. This was now the only course of action open to me.
‘Can you just…’ I searched for the words, removing his hand from my arm as calmly as I could.
‘What? Leave you alone? I’m not feeling very welcome, Megs, I have to say.’
I sighed. An older version of me may have pointed out that I hadn’t invited him to Scotland, rather he had just shown up on my doorstep, groceries and assumptions in hand. I might have pointed out that, although it came from a place of concern and love, driving all the way upcountry to see me the day after my husband broke from me was also a rather selfish act, and it may have been better to have thought about my nee
d for space, and distance, and time, before entertaining any new relationship, for that was undoubtedly why he was here: to declare his love, unchanged and constant.
I might have also pointed out that I wasn’t sure how I felt about him in return. Not yet. I knew there was love, I knew my stomach still flipped when I thought about us together, but that was as far as I had gone with that particular thought process. Just because Tim had moved on at lightning pace, didn’t mean I was ready to do the same.
I might have said these things, but I didn’t. I did not have the energy for anything other than what lay below my feet. Whatever that was.
‘Can you just trust me?’ I finished, eventually, and there wasn’t much Matthew could say to that. He nodded, and I handed him the torch that hung on its nail by the cellar door.
Then, we went down.
10. Open
As soon as we got to the bottom of the steps, it made itself known. The high-pitched, keening, whistling noise, coming from the far end of the cellar. My headache spiked in response to it.
The capstone waited for us there, cold, smooth, and patient. The draft I had felt before had intensified, and the air was all but screaming as it blasted through the thin space around the edge of the stone.
‘What the hell is that?’ Matthew breathed, but I didn’t answer. He was not real to me at that moment in time. The only thing real to me was the stone. The sound of the wind leaking out from behind it. The growing pressure behind my eyes and across the back of my skull.
I knelt, almost reverently.
And then I placed a hand on the capstone, and felt the peculiar vibration I had come to expect surge through my skin. It travelled along my arm, and around my body. I wondered distantly at the damage these hands were doing to all the things they came into contact with: people, places, traditions, ancient things I didn’t understand. What power there was in a single, unschooled touch. This time, however, I didn’t pull my hand away. This time, I gritted my teeth and told Matthew to hold his light closer to the stone, revealing the symbol.