Finally, my legs obey.
Her skin is so dark she melts into the rock, more shadow than substance; tatters, a wisp of lace. For a second I feel her hand reaching out to me, but then she is gone and in the rock behind where she was standing I see it – the worry doll hidden deep in a crevice. I reach in for her, clasping damp, stringy cling film between my fingers, and my mouth fills with saliva, pooling under my tongue. I’m going to be sick. I lean down, glimpse swirling carpet. Something grabs my ankle. I feel his fingers. Old skin, cracked like rice paper. I force the doll back into the rock, but it’s too late for that. From where he lies on the floor I hear the croak of my name.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LUNCHTIME
When Georgie gets out to her car, she notices that the cloud cover has dropped down even lower than it was this morning. She can almost feel it, glistening, on her skin. Gives an eerie feel to the village, to the countryside, no doubts about that. Like there’s something unpleasant they’re going to find soon, and there’s not a thing Georgie can do to change it. These murders, they’re seeping deep into her mind while overhead the clouds are clinging onto the trees, easing their way in between the branches. The mist is shrouding the slopes of the hills beyond the village like dread, the hilltops above surreal in their clarity, separated from the ground beneath. The world is divided. She turns on her headlights, the heater too – there’s such a chill in the car. She’ll be driving right through the cloud mist, soon as she’s out of the village, soon as she’s heading for home.
She doesn’t get that far, though, has to slam on the brakes as she gets to the village square. Nearly hits poor Walt, not that he notices she’s even there. He’s in his dressing gown and walking boots, unlaced, wandering across the road towards the fountain. She reverses back to the kerb, parks up and opens the door. Steps out into air that feels heavy. Walt has made it to the fountain and by the time she’s reached the grass he’s climbed his way in. The stone of it glitters in this weather – must be the water droplets in the air, bringing out something crystalline. Beyond the village square, the houses fade into murk.
‘You alright there now, Walt?’
He looks startled when he sees her, like he wasn’t expecting anyone to be out here, even though he’s in the busiest part of the village in the middle of the day. Even though he’s just narrowly missed being knocked over by oncoming traffic.
That said, Georgie has to admit there’s no one else around. It does have a deserted feel to it today.
‘What are you doing there in the fountain?’
‘That you, Georgie?’
‘Yes, course it’s me, Walt, course it is.’
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Good. I was wanting a word, see.’
‘What can I do for you, Walt?’
‘Shh.’ He puts his finger to his lips. ‘It’s only you I want to talk to. Off the record.’
‘Right you are, Walt,’ she whispers, though she’s careful to articulate clearly – Trish says he’s going deaf, along with the rest of it.
‘In you come.’
‘What?’
‘In you come, Georgie.’
In the mist she realises what he means.
It’s about waist height, the fountain, so she pushes herself up backwards with her arms, sits for a moment on the edge of the fountain’s pool before shuffling down into it to sit beside him, feet tucked round to the side. There are stones in it, tiny round pebbles and shells she pushes away from under her legs. It’s not comfortable. She couldn’t say it was comfortable. But he seems happier now she’s in. Less anxious.
‘I knew you’d come,’ he says, hand on her arm. ‘I knew you understood.’
She nods to him, waits for more.
‘They’re ancient, you know.’
He keeps his voice low, and it does feel strangely private now, sitting in the empty fountain in the mist, barely able to see the length of the village square. Not another soul in sight, nor a sound either.
‘Are they?’
‘Oh yes, yes. They’ve been here for thousands of years. Visiting us for thousands and thousands of years. Tens of thousands, probably.’
‘How do you know?’ whispers Georgie.
‘You can see it, in the rocks,’ he says. ‘In the ancient rocks and stones of the land. You’re sensitive, aren’t you Georgie? The village needs someone like you. I think you’re someone who can be trusted with fragile things.’
Her fingers are straying around the pebbles that have been left in the fountain, sanded smooth over years of the rough tide.
‘Do you mean the cup and ring, Walt? The stone etchings buried in the woods out past the motte?’
‘That’s what they call it. But it wasn’t no cup they were carving, Georgie. You can feel the connection when you press your hand against the stone. Ten thousand years is a long time, but you can still feel it.’
His arms reach out in front of him, drawing circles within circles in the air.
‘That’s nice, Walt. I think that’s a nice idea.’
‘It’s not going to be the same when they come back next time, though.’
Her hand catches on something sharp.
‘When are they coming back?
He puts his finger to his lips.
‘I’m glad I can talk to you, Georgie,’ he says. ‘You can stay in the fountain for a while, if you like.’
She’s holding that sharp shell now, her fingers running along the edges of it, but she doesn’t break eye contact.
‘Where are you going, Walt?’
‘Following the birds,’ he says.
She watches as he slowly lowers his legs over the fountain’s rim, his shaking wrists barely able to support his weight. She watches in case he needs her help, but he manages on his own. As his feet reach the ground, he picks up his big holdall, his eyes glancing furtively round the empty square. Looking for all the world like he thinks someone might be following him. She glances down to her hand and gasps. There is a tiny human tooth nestled in her palm. A prickle crawls up her neck but Walt leans closer, nods his head a few times.
‘A good offering,’ he says. ‘Generous, to give the milk teeth. They’ll like that.’
Georgie stares at him. He stares back, waiting, as she slowly tips her hand until the tooth falls back into the fountain. The skin on her palm is tingling, cold.
‘Don’t know about you, Georgie, but I feel better now.’
Her mouth is too dry for her to reply; he doesn’t notice her silence, though, he’s drifting away already.
‘Well then. So long, Georgie,’ he says, turning and heading towards Church Street, leaving her alone with the contents of the fountain. She feels nauseous, swallows it down, is conscious of her own breath as she watches him go.
‘So long, Walt,’ she whispers, once he’s disappeared into the mist that has obscured each street of the village from the next. Pushing down from the fountain, she takes a moment to brush her clothes clean, to make sure there are no remnants on her hands, her skin. It’s the middle of the day but it feels like night’s descending, and when she gets back to the car she notices she’s left her headlights on. In their beams she can see tiny specks, and she thinks at first they might be the first drops of the rain that’s coming. But then she realises they are tiny insects, moths, fluttering low to the ground and drawn to the light. She gets into the car and shuts the door hurriedly. She wants to get home now, to see Fergus, to heat up some of her chicken and vegetable soup. To get away from all of this. But when she gets home he’s not there.
She puts the soup in the microwave. It’s frozen. Then she calls his name. When there’s no answer, she finds herself looking through every room in the house, though quite what she’s searching for she can’t say. He’s left the computer on. She pushes the mouse a fraction and the screen comes alive. All his photos are there, and the notes he’s been taking for his website. The Archaeological Society of Burrowhead and Warphill. Georgie closes her eyes for a second, listens to the soft ticking of the clock
in the hall, the occasional creak of the radiators, the pulse of her home. Then she sits down and pulls the chair closer to the desk. There’s no sign in the browser history of any job searches, just pages and pages of Iron Age archaeology, carvings and artefacts, burial sites, articles on Lindow Man, and a gruesome story about the skeletons of a pregnant woman and a young man found in an underground shaft in East Yorkshire, a wooden stake pinning their arms together. Georgie feels sick. He has a Word document entitled ‘The Threefold Death’ on his desktop, but when she opens it the document is empty.
The desktop background is a photo of them, Georgie and Fergus, from ten years ago. She’d just made inspector back then and he was project manager at the BAE nuclear site down the coast. They look so hopeful, in that photo. Standing together in a garden alive with the yellows and purples of spring bulbs. She’s hit by a wave of exhaustion at always being the one to worry, about the future, about money, about keeping them afloat and paying for the Wi-Fi he’s using not to look for work but to research, what, ancient human sacrifice. In the kitchen, the microwave pings. Exhaustion doesn’t cover it. She moves to the table and eats her soup in silence.
TIME SLIPPING BY
Fergus finds himself standing before the menhir, in the shadow it casts on the ground. It rises above his head, wider at its top than its base. The sky is heavy again; that storm from yesterday’s not finished yet. But as he reaches out his hand, ready to touch it, something like static repels him and he can’t bring himself to make contact with the curves and dips in the stone. Stepping back, he carefully places his bag on the ground and pulls out the box that contains his new drone, finally fully charged. It took some patience, sitting at home with it plugged in, waiting, waiting; increasingly irritated by all the clingy plastic packaging it had come in. He wishes everything in this world could be recycled. But then the red light turned to green and here he is, the drone in his hands, ready to fly. It is a beautiful creation, the round central body of it gleaming black in the storm light, the four winged arms slender and perfectly balanced, the propeller blades themselves so delicate they become almost transparent as he switches it on and they start to spin. Holding it out gently in front of him, he lets go and, miraculously, it stays airborne, hovering before him.
He pulls out his phone, opens the app, makes the connection. His own face appears on the screen, pale-skinned and freckled, with the remnants of a flush in the cheeks from the cycle over here. He tries a smile, then presses ‘Capture’. What a remarkable thing. He touches the controls and the drone flies up and to the right, looking down at him, insignificant beside the standing stone to his left, his shadow lost within it. He brings the drone in lower, to the blades of grass around the stone’s base, to the way some have been flattened while others seem to be reaching towards it. Then something changes and he’s not sure how it happens but he’s drawn upwards, high over the standing stone, soaring, weightless, and the grass seems to blur, to become a swathe of greens and browns that blend into the background, undulating and indistinct. The drone rises again and his gaze follows it up to where the clouds, the greys and purples of the storm are swirling, and they too have lost their edges, become an impression of depth and danger so the only thing between the ground and the sky, the only thing that matters, is the menhir.
The drone’s automatic focus kicks in, the image on the screen resolving and enlarging in a way that makes Fergus sway. He’d fall if he kept looking up, but he can’t bring himself to look down; all he can see is the top of the stone, the deep concentric rings etched there, drawing him closer to something lodged within. He can’t make out what it is at first, he just stares at his phone as the image resolves, magnifies, blurs, enlarges, resolves; it looks like a shiny marble has been placed there, glinting wet with dew or rain. Right there, on top of the standing stone. It enlarges again and he stumbles backwards, his wrist turning, his phone dropped suddenly into the mud. It’s an eye. He’s sure, it’s… God, please not human, but he saw it, he can still see it, staring up at him from his phone’s screen in the dirt, staring up from the carved rings of the standing stone to the gusting clouds overhead. His legs won’t move. His feet are sinking into the ground, the soil itself pulling him deeper. He closes his eyes, breaks contact, takes a breath and stumbles backwards, picks up his phone. Closes the app, fast. Calls the police. Stay where you are, they tell him. Some officers are on their way.
So he stays put. Forces himself to look straight ahead – and there in front of him is the standing stone, tall and, suddenly, astoundingly beautiful. The moss and lichen covering it make the most extraordinary colours, purples and maroon and a vivid, glowing gold, and between them the stone’s contours are undeniably man-made. At last he can reach out a hand; he needs to understand their shape, the curves and patterns that disappear into the stone like footprints in wet sand, but under his palm he can feel them. He’d expected the stone to be roughened by rain and erosion, coated in guano, but he is wrong: the texture is even, almost sleek, and the shapes and ridges that his fingertips locate are precise. There’s a heat to it, as though it’s been storing up the sun’s energy. He’s searching for letters, for something he can make sense of in the shapes etched flawlessly into the stone. There are curves and rings, horizontal lines that seem to lead somewhere until they thin and vanish, and at one point he imagines an animal, a horse or a deer, but then it is gone. There’s a curved dip he presses into with his thumb, and lines reaching out from a central ring, branching like the veins of a leaf. How can they not have a whole display dedicated to this in the museum; why is this stone left out here as though no one cares? It should be studied. It’s extraordinary. But then, he wouldn’t move it. It belongs here more than him, more than any of them. These markings, they cover the whole surface. He needs both hands to follow their shapes as one minute he is kneeling, pressing into a hollow in the stone with his curved fist, and the next he is reaching up, searching for figures near the slant of the stone’s head and he finds himself leaning against the stone with his whole body, pressing his forehead into it and he’s getting another of his migraines, it’s hard to think when he feels like this, the pain behind his eyes is so severe he can’t focus on the world around him, needs to close his eyes and block everything out, except for the stone, the menhir, the warmth of it against his skin and for a second, the slightest of moments, he thinks it has grown, it stretches up ten feet, twelve, into the sky and the next thing he knows Suze is there, Suze from the Crackenbridge police, touching him on the shoulder.
‘Fergus,’ she’s saying. ‘You called us out, remember?’
He blinks. Pulls himself away from the stone, even though he can still feel it, connected to him, and points up towards where the eye is still lodged on the top.
‘You haven’t moved it, have you?’
It’s not exactly suspicion in her voice, more a kind of assumption that he might have done something daft.
‘I couldn’t even reach it,’ he says. Even he can hear that he sounds defensive. It’s not often he misses wearing a suit and tie, or having authority over his staff. ‘I haven’t done anything to it.’
The drone, he notices, is lying placid on the grass.
‘Okay,’ she’s saying. ‘Calm down now—’
‘I’m perfectly calm.’ Though his head is splitting, this is one of the worst migraines he’s had, he can hardly keep focus on anything, what with the piercing light in the sky and the way she’s talking to him.
‘Of course you are, Fergus,’ she’s saying, and she’s holding him by the arm now, taking slow steps back from the stone as though he needs to be talked down from some kind of stand-off, as though it could explode any minute and he’s the one holding the trigger. ‘I’m going to call this in, okay, get some help on the way if we can. We’re a bit short-staffed today, you know how it is’ – the truth is he’s been assuming something bad was going on since he found the bedroom empty this morning and Georgie gone without so much as a note – ‘and then you can tell me ex
actly what happened.’
‘Of course,’ he says, straightening up now and pulling his arm free. ‘I’m glad I’m the one who found it. Not kids playing or… I’m here for research.’
‘That so?’ she says, phone to her ear, eyes sticking to his.
He feels himself being pulled back to it. The height of the stone, the heat of it, all those carvings, but at the same time he knows not to turn away.
‘I’m setting up an archaeological society,’ he says. ‘For the local area.’
She sort of half-laughs at that.
‘We had to study that in school. The Celts and the Druids.’ She pulls a face and does jazz hands. Whispers ‘human sacrifice’ in a spooky voice.
Fergus frowns, covers it with a smile. If she wants to think he’s daft, then he’s going to let her think it.
‘Well, I guess this might get folk more interested in the history round here,’ she says. ‘That’s something. We’re a gruesome lot, aren’t we?’
‘Who?’
‘Human beings,’ she says, with a shake of her head. ‘Folk’ll be round here looking for the other eye, soon as word gets out.’
‘I’m not going to tell anyone.’
He blinks again and there it is: the standing stone.
When the Dead Come Calling Page 11