The Grieving Stones

by Gary McMahon

  She remained where she was, near the door. “I’m going to have a quick wash and get some work done.” Could dreams infect people, she wondered, like a disease?

  He looked around the room. “It seems to me you’ve been busy already. What did you and Clive do last night, a spring clean? This place was a mess. Now it’s spick and span.” He stood. “I’m going out for some fresh air. You and your boyfriend can carry on doing whatever it is you like doing together. I might see you later, or I might go for a long walk into the village and see if I can find the others at the hospital.”

  At first she was puzzled by his attitude, but then she remembered hearing the bedroom door close last night as she and Clive had spoken of him. He’d obviously taken offence at what they’d said… whatever that was. She couldn’t remember the specifics. Despite not having been drunk, she felt hung-over.

  She watched Jake leave the house and then made her way to the tiny bathroom. Clive must have been busy elsewhere, or walking off his hangover; she hadn’t seen or heard him since getting up. She hoped she could get out of the house before he returned; she didn’t want to have to face him in case she mentioned his lies about how well he knew the local legend, and the fact that she’d discovered the pamphlet he’d written about the Staples Sisters. Not to mention her dream and what it might mean in terms of him being a potential threat to whatever forces they’d disturbed in this house.

  She used the toilet, had a wash at the sink, and then returned to the attic room to change into some more sensible clothing – a pair of jeans, a sweater, and a sturdy pair of boots. Grabbing her lightweight coat, she went back downstairs and left the house.

  The day was overcast but the sun was trying to burn off the fug. She could see it, bright behind the cloud cover, and the sight gave her a sense of optimism.

  I could live here, she thought. I could stay here and the place would repair and renovate itself without my help. All I have to do is allow it to breathe. By now she suspected that the gradual tidying up process the house was going through had something to do with the connection she felt with the old building. Grief House was slowly becoming a part of her, and she a part of it.

  Symbiosis…

  She and the house were exchanging some form of energy. The house was somehow using the resultant emotional cocktail to refresh, and possibly even renew itself; she was using it to learn how to live again. That was exactly how it felt. She’d been dead inside for a long time, ever since she had found Tony hanging by his neck in the spare bedroom of their neat little suburban home. But now she was starting to live all over again, urged on by this house. No, not just by the house; by whatever forces she and the house were concocting together.

  She walked down the other side of the hill towards the Grieving Stones, watching them grow bigger and more imposing in her field of vision. She spotted the small stream, which seemed to come out of the earth, a visible tendril of some ancient underground waterway, and further along the side of the hill she saw the two stones mentioned in the pamphlet. She hadn’t noticed them before because Clive had kept her focused on the Grieving Stones. Perhaps he had not wanted her to see them.

  She made her way down to the stones. They stood there, impassive, yet she knew they were waiting for her to reach them. The air started to hum, but at a level that she could feel on her skin rather than hear. She tasted metal on her tongue.

  “Hello, there,” she said when she reached them. “Hello, sisters.” She reached out and caressed the stones, first one and then the other. There was no mistaking the energy they held inside; she could feel it like a heartbeat against her fingertips.

  She closed her eyes and saw them from afar. The sisters. They were small and stooped and dressed in brown rags that had once passed for garments. They gathered herbs from the hillside, placing them in small baskets to take back to the house and prepare healing potions which they would sell or trade to the local people. They were not good, they were not evil. They were just two sisters trying to eke out a living in a world that did not look kindly upon women who lived without a man.

  In the distance, storm clouds gathered. Underfoot, the earth trembled.

  The sisters looked up from their work, at the angry sky… and then they turned to face her. She was too far away to see their features, but she knew immediately that they were not afraid of her and did not want her to fear them. She raised a hand and waved. The sisters waved back. They began to walk towards her, climbing the hill. She wished that she could walk down to meet them part way, but something told her that they had to come to her; she’d done enough by travelling this far, to the house. The rest was up to them, if only they could only find the strength to break through.

  She opened her eyes.

  “Found you.”

  She turned around and found Jake standing there, a daisy in his hand. He was picking off the petals and flicking them away.

  She loves me. She loves me not.

  “I thought you’d gone for a walk,” she said, backing up towards the stones.

  “I did… then I saw you here. I thought I might pop over and say hello.” He rolled the remains of the flower between finger and thumb, and then flicked that away, too. “You know, you remind me of my sister.”

  Alice made no response. Behind her, the stones thrummed with energy.

  “When she died… when I lost her… I didn’t know what to do. She was killed, you know. Murdered, in my opinion. By her dealer. Her pimp. He gave her the drugs.”

  Yes, she knew; they all did. Jake was a man who rarely kept his thoughts or his feelings to himself. He took over therapy sessions and made them about him. Usually he battled with Moira in this respect; both of them needed to be heard.

  “When they caught him, that bastard, and I found out that he’d also killed three other women, I was so angry, so upset. My Lisa, she never got the attention she deserved. Not in life, not in death. Those other women stole her thunder because he murdered them with his bare hands instead of a dodgy batch of drugs. And there was something else…”

  He seemed manic, on the verge of a breakdown. Mute rage and bitterness bled from his pores.

  “They were younger, you see. Those other victims. Prettier. Lisa was… homely. She didn’t have much of a life. No hobbies. No interests other than getting high. She never got married, never had kids. Those other three women were mothers and daughters and wives. They had big lives, and those lives eclipsed that of my Lisa, even when they were dead. She was just a junkie whore… a non-person, at least in the eyes of the public.”

  There were tears in his eyes. He moved towards her, shrugging as if to say that he had no choice here, events were controlling him. When he got close enough, he reached out his hands and grabbed her.

  “Please,” she said. “I don’t want that.”

  It had been coming all along. She’d been expecting this situation to occur eventually.

  “I do. I need it. You’re so much like her… only prettier, and with a bigger life. I need something… I need anything. Just give it to me. Give me a bigger life.”

  She wasn’t afraid of him. He was pathetic, not powerful at all. He barely even knew what he was doing, or what it was he wanted. He was simply acting out of shabby desperation. He smelled of stale whisky and body odour and things that had broken long ago and been left to rot in the dark. His large face was pale and sweaty. He had a powerful physique, but in that moment she knew that she could overcome whatever physical presence he had. This silly man was no match for her, not when she had her sisters behind her.

  “Get off me,” she said, softly but firmly.

  The world froze. Time stopped and the sky turned bright; clouds parted, the sun shone through, creating a wide beam of pure and healing light.

  Alice wasn’t aware of the details, so she didn’t really appreciate what she was doing, but she moved sinuously and instinctively out of Jake’s grip. Like a dancer, she arched and curved her body, slipping easily out of his reach. He turned, attempting to grab
her again, but his feet went out from under him on the uneven hillside and he fell, cracking his head against one of the sisters with a sound that was dull and distant, like a gunshot heard from a mile away on a quiet day. He didn’t cry out; he was silent and as heavy as stone himself as he went to ground. She almost expected him to slide quietly into the earth, and to sink into the soil until he was gone, leaving no trace, even less of a trace than he had left behind in his life. His small, small life.

  Alice did not feel anything as she looked at the fallen man. There was no fear, no remorse, not even idle curiosity. This was just something that had happened. An event over which she’d had no control. A mess she needed to clean up, in much the same way as Grief House had begun to clean away its own mess.

  The clouds closed once again over the sun once again. Shadows fell, encouraging her.

  “I told you not to,” she said, bending down to Jake. There was blood on the side of his face, coming from a cut near his temple. “I don’t like to be touched… not by someone like you.”

  If anyone finds him, they’ll make me leave this place…

  The thought was hers but it felt as if someone else had placed it inside her head. She knew it was true; if the police were involved there would be an investigation, and that meant more people coming here, leaving her less of a chance to remain in the house on her own. This, she realised, had been her plan ever since she’d arrived here with the others, but it was the first time she had confronted it head on.

  Alice knew what she had to do and she did not feel bad about doing it. The worst of it was over, and she’d done worse things in her life. She’d had worse things done to her, too. She stooped again and started to drag Jake’s body down the hill. He was heavy, but gravity was in her favour.

  There was a copse of trees a few hundred yards down the slope. She could hide him there; she could cover him with leaves and twigs and dirt and branches, offering him into the embrace of the earth. Nobody would find him if she was careful enough, at least not for a while.

  Long enough, she hoped, for her to settle in properly and meet the sisters for real.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  When she got back to Grief House Alice was struck by the transformation. The stone walls were clean and dust-free, the door looked as if it had been repainted, and the windows glistened in the weak sunlight. She stood for a moment and admired the building, wishing that she could have seen it back in the day, when the sisters lived here. She knew for a fact that they would have been house-proud, but out of necessity rather than any other reason. It paid to keep a clean house. No vermin, no insects, no dark, filthy corners in which pestilence might breed.

  She went inside and inspected the interior. She hadn’t seen any piles of rubbish outside, so she had no idea where the junk had gone. The room looked much bigger than it had when she’d first arrived. The space was brighter, and welcoming. Even the stuffed animal heads had been taken down.

  “You’ve been busy,” she said to Clive as he came out of the kitchen, clutching a glass of water.

  “Huh… sorry?” His eyes were swollen, his skin pale, and his lips had a slightly bluish tinge.

  “Nothing… Are you okay?”

  He leaned in the doorway, one hand rubbing at his flat belly. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on last night – she assumed he’d slept in them. “No. To be honest, I’m not feeling well at all. I’m dizzy, I feel nauseous. I think I’m coming down with something. I wish Steve would hurry up and get back with the van.”

  She approached him and took him by the arm, leading him to the sofa. “Lie down. Steve will be back soon. He’s due back this afternoon. Why don’t you take a nap? You might feel better then.”

  He nodded. “Where’s Jake?”

  “He went out for a walk. I think he overheard us slagging him off last night. He seemed pissed off.”

  “This is going really well, isn’t it? This weekend of therapy. One person is in hospital, another wants to go home, a third is wandering around the countryside in a fucking huff…” He winced, bit his lip. “Ouch. Stomach cramp.”

  “I’m getting something out of all this. I’m glad I came.”

  He stared at her, his tired eyes filled with disbelief. “You’re kidding me?”

  “No. Everything seems a lot clearer to me out here. I’m not sure what it is about this place, but I like it here. Especially now that the house has been cleaned up and it looks all shiny and new.”

  Clive looked around, his pale face serious. “Are you taking the piss? This dump? We were supposed to be cleaning it up, getting rid of a lot of this trash. I feel guilty that we’ve barely even touched it.”

  Alice shook her head. Could he not see what she saw? “You must be in a bad way. Here, drink your water.”

  He took small sips from the glass. “Thanks.”

  “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What?” His voice was dreamy, drifting.

  “I found the pamphlet. The one you wrote.”

  “What?”

  “The pamphlet. You told me you didn’t know much about the local legends, but you wrote a pamphlet about the Staple sisters and the Grief Stones… the Backwards Girl. All of it. There was no need to lie to me, you know… no need at all.”

  “No… not me. I don’t know what you mean.” His eyelids flickered; he was going down into the darkness.

  Alice smiled took the glass and put it on a small table near the head of the sofa. “You just curl up and rest. Shout if you need me. I’ll let you know when Steve gets back.”

  “Yes…” His eyes were closing; he was drifting already. “I feel weird… a little sleep would be good.”

  Alice picked up the glass and sniffed it. She couldn’t smell a thing. She turned her head and glanced over at the kitchen doorway, to see a small, dark figure vanishing back into the other room.

  She sniffed the glass again. “What did you give him? Was it one of your potions?”

  A small sound from the kitchen: half laughter, half coughing.

  “Don’t hurt him… he hasn’t done anything wrong. Just told a few little white lies…”

  That sound again, but this time it was trying to form into a word: “Hed…Hedleeeee…”

  “Hedley? Hedley Mills?” She remembered the name form the pamphlet, of course, and last night’s dream. That had been the landowner who’d instigated the hanging of the sisters. He’d obviously murdered them because they were inconvenient, a nuisance, and to get his hands on the power she could feel here even now, thrumming like a machine in the background.

  “Clive… Clive is Hedley Mills? No. You’re wrong.”

  Silence.

  She turned and looked at Clive. He was sleeping. Could it be true? Was he in thrall with the spirit of Hedley Mills? It made a kind of sense. The ghost of the old aspiring occultist was controlling him, and had made him bring her here so that he could use her to tap into the energy within the house, and perhaps even help him defeat the sisters.

  She remembered what he’d said about the human mind clutching at linear stories to try and make sense of the world. She also recalled his statement about everyone embracing their own madness. And wasn’t that what she was doing here, embracing her madness?

  A week ago none of this would have made sense; she would have laughed at herself for even thinking these thoughts. But now… here and now, cloistered in this place, she believed that it was true. There were far greater forces at work here than the ones she’d known all her life. She’d been blind; the world was a stranger, darker place than she’d ever suspected.

  “Don’t kill him,” she said, setting the glass back on the table. As the light caught it, the water inside seemed to glow for a second. Whatever the sisters had put into his drink, it was part of the odd, ambiguous magic infesting this place. It wasn’t good, it wasn’t bad, it just was. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Just keep him out of the way for a while, don’t let him die.”

  Something in the ki
tchen snickered. A shadow passed slowly across the floor near the doorway. Then the house went quiet.

  “I almost told you something earlier.”

  Clive did not move.

  “I almost told you what really happened. I suppose it’s okay now; I can tell you. I doubt you’d even be aware that I had.”

  His left eyelid twitched, but he didn’t wake.

  “I’d been out, just driving. I was scared to go home because I knew what kind of mood Tony was in. When he got like that, the best thing to do was to leave him alone.

  “When I got back home the lights were still on, so I knew he was still there. I braced myself for the violence, and then I went inside. The house was quiet… so very, very quiet. I walked through into the kitchen but he wasn’t there. I went upstairs, to our room, but he wasn’t there either.

  “Eventually I found him.

  “He was in the guest room, dangling from the ceiling beam by a clothesline. He’d fashioned it into a noose. When I got there he was still alive. That’s it. My big secret. He was still alive when I found him, but rather than try to save him, or phone an ambulance, I just stood there. I stood there and I watched him die.

  “I’ve tried to bury it for so long, and so deep, that I don’t remember a lot about the next few minutes. I do recall him trying to reach out to me, but he couldn’t lift his hand. I think he might have changed his mind. He tried to speak but all that came out of his mouth was a kind of liquid gurgling, and a lot of stringy spit.

  “Finally he stopped trying to move. He just hung there, with his bare feet dangling inches from the carpet. I watched him for a little while longer, detached, and then I went downstairs to call the ambulance. By the time they arrived, I’d managed to reconnect with the moment and started to cry. As I spoke to them, I convinced myself that he was dead when I found him, and that I’d called the ambulance immediately.”