“Not dead, mourning for the dead,” murmured Kaylyn.
“Both—both living and dead, mingling their voices. Terrible—a chant of doom,” cried Evie.
Felicity stood frozen as the girls’ terror reached out to engulf her. For a heart-stopping moment she saw it: not a granite boulder in front of her but a gray, haunted face with hollow eyes, its features twisted in agony. Matted hair swirled around the head like snakes, vipers that would entangle and sting.
“No!” she cried, looking away and clutching the small cross she wore around her neck.
The image morphed back into the weather-beaten rock.
“All right.” Pretending a courage she was far from feeling, Felicity strode forward.
Still shaking herself, she grabbed Evie’s shoulders and shook her. “Evie, come on. Wake up. This is a nightmare.” It was inadequate, but the simplest explanation she could think of. They hadn’t used drugs, had they? Something she had inhaled a whiff of herself?
Evie looked up at her with wild, staring eyes. “Don’t you hear them? It’s so loud! There must be hundreds.” She shook off Felicity’s gripping fingers.
Felicity closed her ears, refusing the sounds she sensed assaulting her. “Kaylyn!” she all but shouted.
The girl didn’t seem to hear her. She appeared to be in a trance, staring fixedly at the largest of the roughhewn stones about halfway up the side of the cairn. She cried out, then her gaze froze on another, held for several long moments, then moved to another. “See!” she cried. “Faces! Horrible. Misshapen! Don’t you see them?”
Felicity refused to look, focusing on the girls instead.
Kaylyn held her hands out as if to ward off the specters. “Their flesh! It’s shriveling and falling off. Oh, I can’t look.”
But neither could she look away. “Skulls! Gaping eyes— staring at me!” Her voice came out in jerky sobs. Now she addressed the stones. “Stop it! Be quiet.” She clasped her hands to her ears. “Stop screaming at me. I can’t help you. I can’t! I can’t. Can’t…” The last was a whimper. If Felicity hadn’t caught her, Kaylyn would have fallen off her stone seat.
“Kaylyn, wake up. You’re all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” She had to say that, even though her own terror was barely in check. Only a few nights ago, she had heard a voice. Far less terrible, yet someone or something calling her.
Still, she must calm Kaylyn. “Don’t be silly. You were dreaming. They’re rocks. Nothing more. Come. Feel them.” She grasped the girl’s hand to guide it forward.
“No! I don’t want to touch it. I won’t!” Kaylyn jerked away from Felicity, her hysteria rising.
Felicity turned to run for Antony, but he was at her side. “I heard the screams. What is it?”
Felicity had to resist the urge to throw herself into his arms. Here was safety, sanity. Instead, she shook her head and told him as succinctly as she could, her voice almost steady.
“Right.” He went first to Kaylyn, who was again staring at the boulders as if they might spring to life. Antony bent over to her, both hands on her shoulders. “Close your eyes, Kaylyn. Breathe.”
She obeyed with a deep, shuddering breath.
“Now, say the name of Jesus.”
She pulled back fractionally. For a moment, Felicity thought the girl was going to refuse. Then it came out in a whisper, “Jesus.”
“Again. Louder,” Antony commanded.
Kaylyn took another breath. “Jesus.” It was firmer this time. “Now you.” He turned to Evie. She obeyed immediately, almost shouting the name.
Antony nodded and made the sign of the cross on the forehead of each girl. He motioned for Felicity to step closer. “Kyrie eleison.”
“Kyrie eleison,” Felicity responded. “Christe eleison.”
“Christe eleison.”
“Kyrie eleison.”
This time Evie joined in on the response, “Lord have mercy.”
“We beseech You, Lord, to make powerless, banish and drive out every diabolic power, presence and machination; every evil influence or malefice and all evil actions aimed against Your children…
“The Lord is my shepherd, He makes me to lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul…”
The calming words of the familiar psalm washed over Felicity, soothing her breathing and lowering her heart rate. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil…” When the prayer ended, Kaylyn was quiet, but her eyes still reflected a trapped, searching look.
They guided the girls to the far end of the mountain, and Antony called the group together. “We’re going to say a Station before we go on, but I want to say a special prayer for protection first. Could you all gather in a bit closer together?”
When they were together, Antony extended his arm, his index finger held upward and inscribed a circle around them. “Protect your servants, Lord, from every threat or harm from the Evil One…”
At the end of their small service, Antony had a quiet word with Nancy. She nodded and began digging in her rucksack. She pulled out two small crucifix necklaces and gave them to Evie and Kaylyn, huddled together as if for comfort a bit apart from the group. Nancy put an arm around each girl and moved them forward. A few minutes later, Nancy’s clear, light voice drifted back to Felicity at the rear with Antony: “Walk, walk, in the light.” Felicity was almost certain Evie joined in. And could that rich alto be Kaylyn?
She turned to Antony. “Erm—that was a kind of exorcism you just did, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, no. Not at all. Just a simple prayer for protection. An exorcism would be much more—er, elaborate. It would need organization. Something to be used only in extreme situations.”
That had seemed plenty extreme for Felicity, but she didn’t argue. “What was that circle thing all about?”
“Standard practice when praying for protection from evil. The action is a form of prayer itself. It makes the words concrete.”
“Like crossing yourself or using holy water?”
“Exactly.”
Felicity was still thinking. “But what about exorcisms? You do believe in them, don’t you? They aren’t just something got up for sensational movies, are they?”
“Oh, yes. I believe.”
Felicity would have been less alarmed if his answer had been less fervent. She thought about quizzing him on what he thought about Hwyl’s death, but she didn’t really want to know.
Chapter 12
Wednesday afternoon
The track plunged so steeply downhill Antony felt like he had to lean backwards and walk on his heels just to stay vertical. His calves were beginning to rebel when they reached the metaled road and the glorious sight of the minibus and the welcome lunch Michael had set out for them.
A few minutes later, his sandwich devoured, Antony gratefully accepted a refill of tea from Lydia and indulged in a third chocolate-covered HobNob. In spite of the gray clouds in the distance he would allow his walkers an extra rest-time. It was much needed—at least by him. The spiritual confrontation at the cairn had been far more draining than anyone would suspect. As was the continued need for prayer and vigilance. He didn’t know what was going on or why, but whatever it was, it was obvious it wouldn’t do to let his guard down.
He leaned against a grassy mound and observed his charges. What a diverse lot, and yet, for the most part they were pulling together well. Ryan and Colin with their shared interests in the land were natural allies, and Ryan didn’t appear to mind Colin’s incessant chatter. Lydia, who had seen to everyone’s blisters last night with plasters and foam pads, was invaluable and was paying a bit more attention to her little brother after yesterday’s scare. At least when she wasn’t giving all her attention to Michael. Sometimes it seemed she watched him more closely than the child in her charge.
Nancy, having taken the remains of their lunches back to the minibus, turned to rejoin Kaylyn and Evie, sitting some distance apart. Antony smiled a
s Nancy broke into an easy run, leaping over the stones and tussocks in her path like a gazelle. Imagine having the energy. The Goth girls were a concern, but he couldn’t have been more pleasantly surprised than he had been by Jared—the one he had expected the most trouble from was one of the readiest to please.
Well, they were nearing the halfway point on their walking journey, and then the time at St Non’s Retreat was sure to be peaceful. But they had to get there first.
Antony closed his eyes and felt the sun warm on his face.
“If we carry on along the ridgeway walk we’ll get to see Twyn yr Oerfel—” Ryan’s voice jerked Antony out of his light doze.
“It looks really interesting,” Colin pointed to the map. “Round burial mounds marked with standing stones—”
“Possibly Neolithic,” Ryan added.
“No!” Antony replied more sharply than he meant to. “We’ve had more than enough of ancient interment sites for one day. Keep to the Rhymney Valley Ridgeway, then down past the old coal tips.” He stood to address the group. “All right, troops, a word of advice—there are no roads close enough for Michael to get to us for afternoon tea.”
A universal groan met his announcement. “So be sure your water bottles are full, and put an extra piece of fruit or a handful of biscuits—whatever you’ll want to snack on to keep your energy up—in your rucksacks.”
The way led through a blessedly refreshing forestry plantation. Then on the top of a flat green ridge they stopped to view the broad green Sirhowy Valley to the north and the Rhymney Valley to the south. Antony observed Ryan pointing in the distance to what might well be standing stones, and decided this would be a most appropriate time for a Station. He motioned for Nancy, carrying the cross, to stand beside him. “Jesus is stripped of his clothing.”
Turning their back on the ancient ritual route, the pilgrims’ trail once more turned sharply downhill. At the edge of a steep green hill, Ryan stopped and pointed with his trekking pole. “Down there—that’s the remains of the Bedwas Colliery. Not much left now, they filled in all the tunnels with rubble when the mine was closed after the miners’ strike in the eighties. And here,” he pointed almost directly beneath their feet, “is the tip. Covered most of this whole hillside twenty-five years ago.”
Now with the vegetation of a quarter of a century doing its best to reclaim the ravages of the industry, it was hard to picture what it must have been like when the whole mountain was buried under millions of cubic meters of excavated mining debris. But still the slag heap loomed over the valley, a harsh black wound. Antony tried to imagine what it must have been like when the smokestacks from the works belched out black coal smoke and the trams dumped carloads of fresh waste on the hillsides daily.
“Don’t get too close!” Nancy’s warning to Evie broke in on Antony’s reverie.
He turned to see Nancy, holding the cross in one hand, reach for Evie with the other to pull her back from the edge of the tip. Whether she reached too far, or Evie jumped back too swiftly and bumped her, or the weight of the cross caused her to overbalance was never certain, but before Antony’s horrified eyes, Nancy plunged down the coal tip.
Her sharp cry was drowned by the scrabble of sliding rocks. Nancy was carried downward by the tumbling debris, her scarlet shirt a blood-red blot on the black slag. Don’t let it start a landslide, Antony prayed. He closed his eyes against visions of the falling rock starting a slip that would move the mountain to the valley floor. With Nancy beneath it.
The rock continued to clatter, sounding ever louder to Antony’s desperate ears. But when he managed to tear his eyes open he could see that, although some loose stones were still plummeting downward, Nancy’s descent had stopped. Perhaps fifty feet below them she lay on the top of the mound. Unmoving.
“Nancy!” Antony’s own voice rang in his ears, but he was aware of others calling as well. He checked his impulse to plunge down the tip to her. The debris was stable for the moment. The worst thing they could do would be to dislodge more on top of her.
Jared knelt and reached over the edge to pick up the cross she had dropped when she pitched forward. He scrambled to his feet as Antony approached. “Maybe we could form a sort of chain down the tip. I could hold the cross out to her—a lifesaver, like. We could pull her back.”
Nancy still had not moved or responded to their shouts.
Antony shook his head. “Best to approach from the side, I think. I don’t want to loosen any more stones on her.” How many had already pummeled her? At least she wasn’t buried. He was grateful for that. But she must be badly bruised. Maybe concussed. Perhaps worse.
They scrambled down the grass beside the tip. When Antony judged he was about level with Nancy’s feet, he took a tentative step onto the tip. Stones turned and shifted beneath his feet. He waited for them to stabilize, then took another step. This was like trying to walk on marbles. They shifted under him, sending him to his knees. He regretted wearing shorts.
“Father, wait. Let me.” Without pausing for a reply, Jared stepped out onto the tip just below Antony. Scuffing each foot to gain a purchase with every step, Jared used the cross like a walking stick on the uphill side, digging it well in with each move forward.
“Be careful. It’s looser further out,” Antony warned. Looser and steeper as the slag heap mounded.
Two more steps, dislodging more stones each time, and Jared dropped to his hands and knees to accomplish the final twenty feet or so crawling, leaving the cross behind. Antony, likewise crawling, moved over to regain their emblem and held it up, praying.
Rocks crunched against each other and a few more tumbled down the tip as Jared inched forward. Antony held his breath as Jared called, “Nancy? Steady on. Can you hear me?”
Jared turned back to Antony and the others waiting on the verge behind him. “She’s breathing.”
Thank You, Lord. Now Antony could breathe again.
Nancy gave a soft moan as Jared boosted her to a sitting position. “You’re all right. I’ve got you. Can you just sort of scoot, like, if I help?”
It was a slow process, made slower by the fact that when Nancy put any weight on her right foot she cried out in pain. Eventually they reached Antony, and the two men essentially dragged Nancy the rest of the way to the blessedly firm purchase of the grassy hillside.
“Someone ring Michael,” Antony directed. “We need the minibus.”
“Already done.” Lydia held out her mobile.
“He’ll meet us here.” Ryan indicated the spot on the map. “It’s the closest he can get to us.” He traced a mark indicating a narrow track coming off a thin yellow line that ended at the base of the tip.
“That’s almost all the way down.” Antony’s heart sank.
“Here you go, Ryan, we’re nearest the same height.” Jared grasped his own forearm with his right hand and reached for Ryan’s right forearm, indicating that Ryan should likewise grasp his left arm, forming a square seat. “Now, if you’ll just, like, put your arms around our necks, we’ll have you down in no time.” They bent down to where Nancy sat, looking dazed. “You aren’t too dizzy, are you?”
Nancy took her hand away from her forehead, leaving a black smudge. All those who had been on the tip looked like chimney sweeps. “I’ll be all right. I have a headache.”
“Hold on, then.” Nancy’s rescuers lifted her aloft. “You’re amazing, Jared. Where did you learn that?” Felicity, following behind them with Nancy’s rucksack, asked.
“Took a St John Ambulance course. Thought it might come in useful if I was around someone who needed helping.”
The line moved slowly with their delicate burden, but even so there was no sign of Michael with the van when they reached the appointed track. “I thought he’d be here by now.” Antony assumed he would have been at the church in Bedwas where they were to stay for the night. It was less than a mile away, surely. “Where was he when you rang him?” he asked Lydia.
“He didn’t say. It’s such a narrow
track, though, he couldn’t drive very fast.”
Still, it was the better part of an hour before Michael arrived, and Antony noted mud on the tires and on Michael’s shoes. “What took you so long?”
“Getting supplies,” Michael answered. When Antony opened the back of the van to get the first aid kit out, however, he noticed fresh mud on the shovel. Antony frowned.
Lydia put the theory work she had done for her nursing diploma to good use, gently exploring Nancy’s ankle. “That’s good, nothing broken. You’ll need to keep off it for a while, though.”
“Thank you. I’m so lucky to have you.” Nancy looked around and gave a weak smile. “All of you. Thank you for the rescue.”
“What happened?” Adam asked.
Nancy shook her head. “I—” She paused as if considering her answer. “I don’t know. My head isn’t very clear.”
Lydia took a crêpe bandage from the kit and expertly wrapped the ankle. “Wish I had some ice to put on that. We’ll buy a bag of frozen peas at the first supermarket we come to. In the meantime, keep it elevated.”
“How wonderful to have a trained nurse with us,” Felicity said.
“Well, not really trained yet. My practical placement in a clinic starts in September. In Bangor—at the foot of Mount Snowdon. I expect I’ll get lots of hillwalking cases to work on there.”
Lydia started to close the first aid kit when she spotted the blood running down Jared’s leg. “That looks like a nasty gash. Come here, let me clean it.” Cleaning the wound took longer than the bandaging, but eventually they were ready to move forward, Lydia sitting beside Michael in the front of the minibus, her two patients behind them. “You want to ride, too, Squib?”
Adam shook his head. “You go on,” Felicity waved to the crew in the van. “I’ll look after Adam.”
He frowned. “I’m fine. I don’t need looking after.”
Antony smiled. “That’s all right, then. Want a turn carrying the cross?”
Adam was obviously pleased with the suggestion, because he strode out, even walking ahead of Ryan. Since the track ran along a hedge at the top of the fields and then became hollowed it was easy enough to follow, in spite of the fact that it had started to rain again. Antony, who hadn’t bothered to pull up his hood, felt the raindrops making little rivulets in the coal dust on his face. He hoped it wouldn’t stain his collar.
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