The Grieving Stones

by Gary McMahon

  Clive moaned. He wasn’t saying anything, just making a sound in his sleep. He looked worse than before. His lips were so dry they looked as if they might start to crack. His eyes bulged beneath the waxen, purplish lids.

  Then, as if this were a dream she was having rather than anything happening in real life, his features became fluid and his face turned smooth and pink, his arms were pulled right into his torso, and it was no longer Clive lying there on his back. It was the punch dummy.

  “I’m glad I don’t have to watch you die,” she said, running a finger along the dummy’s forehead and drawing an imaginary line down its blank face.

  Alice sat down in the middle of the floor and crossed her legs, a yoga pose she remembered from years ago, when she’d took some classes to avoid Tony’s black moods. She closed her eyes and saw them standing there, the sisters. They were pleased with her. Their faces were dark, masked by shadow, but she knew that they were smiling. She felt them urging her on, wanting her to go further, to get closer so that they might finally touch her.

  For the first time in her life, Alice felt truly loved.

  She stood and went to the kitchen. She took the knife from the drawer. The blade winked at her; the handle felt firm in her hand. She walked back into the main room and crouched down beside the punch dummy. She touched its egg-like face; it didn’t move a muscle. The skin was pulled taut across that dome of a head, tight and drum-like.

  “I don’t want to do this,” she said. “Not really. But I think I have to. I need to complete the ritual, seal the circle.”

  Without saying another word she pressed the blade of the knife against the dummy’s exposed throat and slashed it sideways, opening up its rubbery flesh. The cut opened, blood pulsing out of the wound. She began to saw at the neck, hoping that she could finish the job quickly so that she could move on. She’d never killed anything in her life; she was no good at this.

  But I can’t kill something that was never alive in the first place, she thought, smiling.

  Behind her, the sisters began to slowly clap their hands; a spontaneous round of applause.

  Alice took the pamphlet out of her pocket and looked at the title page. She’d been mistaken after all; it wasn’t written by Clive. The author was called Colin Barlow; the names didn’t even look the same. It was someone she’d not even heard of.

  “What is this?”

  The sisters continued to applaud. She turned around and saw them standing there, clapping their hands. They were each wearing a stuffed animal head as a mask – very much like the trophies that had been on the wall when they’d arrived here. One of them wore a fox’s head; the other’s face was hidden beneath that of the odd deer-like creature that she knew for certain was the same one they’d killed on the road during their journey here.

  The two figures started to shuffle slowly backwards, still clapping, and into the kitchen. Even when they were no longer visible to her, Alice could hear the sound of their sharp, cold hands slapping together.

  The punch dummy was gone. She looked down at Clive, at last feeling some form of regret.

  Clive had no answers to her questions, so she shuffled over on her backside to the centre of the room, closed her eyes, and waited for a sign.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  When Alice opened her eyes the house looked the same. Whatever regenerative process had been set in motion by her arrival was done; the house was finished. It looked as if someone had gone through the entire house and cleaned every corner, washed every window, thrown out each piece of junk that had been stored here.

  Before her, on the carpet, was the stuffed deer head: a small offering from her hosts. She reached out and picked it up. It wasn’t stuffed after all; the head was hollow. She knew what she was expected to do, but one last remnant of the person she had been made her pause. She thought for a moment… Is this it? Is this the place I’m meant to be?

  The only answer she could think of was, Yes.

  Slowly, carefully, she raised the deer head high into the air, and then, without any kind of rigmarole, she placed it over her head. Despite the lack of gravitas to the moment, it felt ritualistic. Whatever chain of events had been triggered when she got here, they were coming to an end – or at least they were approaching a point from which there was no return.

  Even though her face was covered, her vision obscured, by the deer head, she could see perfectly. If she closed her eyes, she knew that she would still be able to see.

  She stood and walked to the door, opened it, and saw the sisters walking ahead of her; they were moving around in a circle, walking in an anti-clockwise direction around the house. She followed them, knowing exactly where they were heading.

  But she was wrong. The sisters were not going to the Grieving Stones; they walked past them, down the hill, and towards the copse of trees where she’d hidden Jake’s body.

  She paused at the standing stones, looked at them through the dead deer’s eyes, and wondered if she’d be able to pull off the mask and run away. The desire for escape passed over her quickly, leaving behind a sense that any chance of changing her mind was long gone. She was meant to be here. This was her place now, and she had to follow through on her actions. She had to complete this, whatever it was.

  She set off towards the trees. The sisters were out of sight now, but that didn’t matter; she knew where they were, and that they were watching with interest. She entered the shadows of the trees and made her way to the spot where Jake lay. The leaves and twigs she’d scattered across his body had shifted, perhaps moved by an animal. The upper half of his body was on display. He was lying on his front, so thankfully she was unable to see his face, but she could make out the blood. There was a lot of it, spattered on the ground beside his head. Up close, she saw that his skull had fractured; there was a hollow above his ear, from which the blood had clearly flowed. There was no blood running now, of course. He’d been dead too long.

  “Help me,” she said, looking towards the sisters. They were standing several yards away, still wearing shabby animal heads – different ones now, that she hadn’t seen before. She couldn’t discern which one of the sisters was wearing which head, but it didn’t matter. For all intents and purposes, they were one being: and she was to be the third part of the elemental cocktail that would transform them from the ethereal to the corporeal. She realised now that it was her flesh and blood and spirit that was the final piece in the puzzle. Once she joined them completely, they could walk freely across the land, no longer bound to Grief House and its environs.

  She looked back down at Jake. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I killed you.” He hadn’t fallen; she had pushed him. She remembered it clearly now: turning, twisting, insistent that no man would ever put his hands on her in that way again, she had pushed him hard in the chest, and because of the slope and the angle at which he’d been standing, he’d gone down, smashing his head against the stone.

  So she had killed before after all.

  Nor was this the first lie she had told herself. She had spent her entire life blocking out the truth, creating layers of reality in which certain events could be covered over and lost. Until now. Until she had found this place and allowed it to peer deep inside her and see through those layers to what was at her core.

  Many years ago, in another lifetime, she had mindlessly and mechanically killed a tabby cat. She realised now that the cat’s sacrifice had merely been the beginning of a long and complex ritual that was only now reaching its climax. It had never been a conscious thing, just a natural sequence of events. Like the body’s monthly cycle or the movement of the planets across the sky.

  Something that just happened because it was meant to happen.

  There had never been a second cat; the killer black feline she falsely remembered was a metaphor, a figment of her imagination created to cover up the cracks and hide the truth. A black cat; a witch’s familiar. Even her unconscious mind, it seemed, enjoyed a sly joke.

  Her parents had never mentio
ned the incident again because they were afraid to face the reality of what their daughter had done; they were complicit in her self-deception. They’d cleaned up her mess and carried on as normal, blind to everything but the image they chose to see. They didn’t want to think their perfect little girl might have something wrong with her, or that a secret darkness dwelled within her heart.

  And had not the discovery of Tony that day been simply another fragment in the grand design of her life, a piece of a puzzle that, once solved, would eventually lead her here? It had felt right to stand there and watch her husband struggle to take his last breath. An essential rite; something she needed to witness if she was to move on and take her first awkward steps along the path to wisdom.

  Rocked and buffeted by the forces of revelation, Alice knelt down and started to cover Jake’s body over again, using her hands to dig a shallow grave in the soft earth beneath the trees. This time she took more care and spent more time on the task. She owed him that much at least, and the longer he stayed hidden the more time she would be allowed to bed herself in here, to make the house a proper home.

  Once she was done, she walked out of the copse of trees and back to the stones. She glanced at the other stones – the ones the pamphlet had said represented the sisters. There were three of them now, but one of them was a lot smaller than the others and lacked any kind of recognisable form. Given time, she knew it would grow and develop; left alone, it would become her stone doppelgänger.

  She smiled.

  Trudging back to the house, Alice felt more tired than ever before. The weight of the world was upon her, but soon she would be able to throw it off and roam free, dancing in the shadows with the sisters. They would join together, creating a fearsome power, and then all three of them would skip back into the real world – the place from which they had been banished for so long. The sisters had been thrown out of existence by Hedley Mills, a man who had wanted their power for himself. Alice had been smothered out of her own life by a man who used his fists to control her. They were not much different, the sisters and she. Oppressed, made into victims. Soon they would be able to strike back at everyone who had caused them harm.

  As she walked, she felt changes occurring in her mind and in her body. She was quickly regressing to a point in her life when she had not known violence, an age when everything was bright and the future beckoned to her with promise. She was young again, just a young girl, with tousled hair and bare feet. She started to run, feeling the grass and the stones on the soles of her feet. It was invigorating, and for the first time in many years she felt as if she might be able to throw off the bonds that had held her down for most of her adult life.

  Even beneath the glorious black deer head, she was aware of physical changes taking place. Her features were shifting, flowing like liquid, and reforming as something else. She felt her eyes sink deep into her skull, and then they were covered over by skin, and then hair. Yet still she could see, as if the third eye in her mind allowed her vision.

  By the time she reached the house she was altered. She was like a child again, but with the mind of a woman. She reached up and took off the animal head, pushed open the door, and walked into the house. Her house.

  There was a fire burning in the grate. When she looked at the windows, a premature night had fallen. The house smelled of herbs and butchered meat. She walked over to the mirror above the mantelpiece, and when she looked at her reflection in the glass she was not surprised by what she saw.

  There was no face on the front of her skull, just a repetition of the back of her head, and yet she was able to see herself; when she looked down at her body, there were no breasts, no knees; no feet, only a glimpse of the back of her heels. She was the Backwards Girl. She had been this person all along, on the inside, just waiting to get out. She remembered the time, so long ago, when she had approached one of the sisters when she’d seen her drinking from the stream. The time had not been right then; the time would not be right when she did it again. The time was now. The time was never-ending.

  If she still had eyes, they would have been filled with tears.

  “I can still see you,” she said through a mouth that wasn’t there. “I can always see you.”

  She felt the sisters standing behind her, a comforting presence. They began that same slow round of applause she had heard before, encouraging her to continue with the transformation. She didn’t know what she would eventually become, but she was certain it would be better and stronger than the person she had been.

  Grief House seemed to agree. It shifted slightly on its stone foundations, putting her at ease, taking on a shape in which she felt even more comfortable. The house, she now realised, was a cocoon. She could remain here until she was ready to hatch out.

  Urged on by her new sisters, Alice sat down on the floor and waited for the changes to finish.

  *

  Minutes, hours, years later, there was a sound outside. She heard it clearly through her new ears despite lacking the ability to discern from which direction it came. Everything was confusing. Back was front. Right was wrong. Left was right. She was The Backwards Girl.

  A distant engine – the van was approaching along the narrow hillside road and pulling up on the other side of the field and the trees. Steve had finally returned, just as he had promised. Some men, it seems kept their promises; some men were true to their word.

  She glanced over at Clive’s body on the sofa, the blood congealed into a thick jam. Something wasn’t right here. Many things were not right – the entire world had tipped and tilted and altered her perceptions. Hadn’t she cut the dummy and not Clive? She could no longer be sure of what had happened – what was still happening.

  The knife was on the floor where she’d dropped it, near his limp, dangling hand. The sisters were not here; they had blended with the walls or the floor or the ceiling, resting until it was time for them to come and join with her. Alice knew they could see her, and they were watching over her, but she had not heard them move for some hours. There was a comfort in their silence, though, and she knew that it would not be long until they stirred.

  She scuttled crab-like to the window, running on her hands and feet, back arched, spine bent and creaking, back-to-front and front-to-back. She was slowly losing her sight, but she didn’t need to see. She could smell him out there, an interloper; an unwanted visitor she hoped would go away soon.

  She heard Steve’s footsteps on the ground as he approached the house. He stopped outside the door to Grief House and started to knock; he shouted Clive’s name.

  She held her breath.

  “Where the hell are you? Is everyone okay?”

  She did not reply.

  After what seemed like a long time, the knocking ceased. He walked back across the field to the van, slammed the door, and started the engine. Alice could hear every sound he made; they were preternaturally clear. The van drove away, heading back down the hill towards the main road, spitting loose stones from beneath the wheels.

  She did not have long. She knew that. He would go to the police and they would come here, trying to find out what had happened. They would not leave her in peace. She would be disturbed, and if they saw her as she looked now they would be afraid.

  She crab-walked widdershins around the room, knowing that it was a magic way of moving, and then she sat down on the floor and picked up the knife, rubbing at the sharp edge of the blade with the ball of her thumb until it drew blood.

  She would stay here until they came, and then she would remain inside for as long as she could – until they broke down the door to drag her out, clawing and spitting and fighting all the way.

  But until then she would stay for as long as she was able. She would hold the fort until her sisters stepped forward to help her.

  If possible, she would stay here and haunt this house forever.

  /end

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Nathan Ballingrud for his generous introduction, and to Gary Fry
for reading, and being enthusiastic about, an early draft of this story.

  As always, I’m indebted to my wife and son for putting up with this madness. One day, my dears, the pattern will become clear and everything will make sense.

  Special thanks must go to Graeme Reynolds who stepped in to save this story from a fate worse than death when the publisher who’d originally bought it crashed and burned. I suspect that occult forces may have had a hand in this, and the novella finally found its true home.

  And finally, thanks to everyone I train with at the Leeds Karate Academy for keeping me sane and healthy while I write this stuff.

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