The Cold Calling cc-1

by Phil Rickman

  The village itself, viewed from above, seemed almost circular, in its nest of wooded slopes. From the churchyard, you could look up and see the long, dark ridge of the mountains, but the eye would always be drawn back towards a single promontory which seemed to punch the sky like a dark, gauntleted fist.

  High Knoll. Or Black Knoll, as it was called in the village and now, to Marcus’s disgust, even on the maps. When you got there, it wasn’t so stark, although the grass was brown and rough around the stones.

  The burial chamber on the Knoll was far older than the church and even older than the Celtic hermit’s cell. Annie Davies would have been told (by her mother, at the village school) that it was where heathen folk once came to worship the sun. Ignorant people who thought the sun was a god.

  Perhaps Annie had been dismayed. Perhaps, whenever she’d tried to imagine God, she, like Marcus, had thought at once of the sun, the brightest light in the sky. Wondering if that made her a heathen?

  Perhaps, as she walked up to the big, broken table of stones, she’d decided that the prehistoric people couldn’t have been so very ignorant if they could find such a perfect place to greet the day. And anyway, Jesus hadn’t been born then, so how were they to know about the true God? They were worshipping the brightest light they knew; what was so wrong about that?

  Tommy Davies, who wasn’t well educated but was doubtless very wise, might have told her that the people who built the monument were his ancestors, the first farmers here. And that having the bits of old stones up there somehow kept the land in good heart.

  The burial chamber had been partially collapsed for centuries. It was unlikely that even Annie would have been able to get inside. Perhaps, that morning, she had clambered on top of the chamber, the huge capstone, and turned to watch the daily miracle of the sun trickling out of the horizon. And lifted her face to the sky.

  Was that when it had happened?

  About a hundred yards from the Knoll, along the steepening track of stones and baked red mud, Marcus had his first tantalizing glimpse of the top of the capstone.

  Just about make it in time for the dawn. Even more than three months after midsummer, the view of the dawn from High Knoll was never a disappointment.

  And then he heard voices.

  What?

  On the Knoll? Voices on the Knoll? At dawn? Marcus felt violated. He stiffened, snatched hold of Malcolm’s collar, clamped a hand over his muzzle.

  Accepting he had no right to feel like this. Wasn’t Castle land any more, although it was Marcus’s ambition — if, for instance, there was a sudden upturn (ha!) in the fortunes of The Phenomenologist — to buy it back one day. However, the elderly, reclusive Jenkins brothers, whose father had acquired the Knoll as part of a land package in the late 1940s, seemed to accept the footpath as a right of way, for the owners of the Castle, at least. On this understanding, Marcus laboured up here at dawn twice a week, summer and winter. And in all that time he’d never met a soul, except for the intense American girl that one occasion, and at least she’d had the bloody decency to consult him first.

  Because, at the Knoll, the dawn was his time. His and Annie’s and Sally’s.

  There was a clump of rowan below the summit, and Marcus crept between the trees, marching Malcolm ahead of him, and waited and listened. A man’s voice was drawling in that rhythmic up and down way that told you he wasn’t really talking to anyone he could see.

  ‘Now, this is a fairly unexceptional chambered tomb, dating back over four thousand years. We can’t get into the chamber any more because, as you can see, it’s collapsed in the middle. Of course, what we’re looking at here are merely the bones of the structure. Originally, all this would have been concealed by tons of earth, and all you’d have been able to see was a huge mound, with an opening … just … here. Now I say it’s unexceptional … except … for one aspect. The location.’

  There was silence for about half a minute. Marcus seethed.

  ‘How was that, Patrick? We could run some music under the bit where we open up to the dawn spectacle. Do you think? What’s that da da thing from 2001? Or is that a bit of a cliche?’

  ‘No, it might work. Roger … Just another thought. When I pull back, but before I open it out, if you were to stand fractionally to the left …’

  ‘How far? This?’

  ‘And back a bit. Hold it there. Spot on. What I was thinking, if we time this right, do it just as it’s breaking through, it’ll look as if the sun’s rising out of the top of your head. Nice effect. What do you think?’

  ‘Hmm. Yes, OK. Why not? Worth a try.’

  ‘Make a change,’ Marcus said loudly, coming out of the trees, ‘from it shining out of his fucking arse.’

  He hauled himself up onto the small plateau of the Knoll. Where there was hardly bloody room for him. The molten orb in the east turning five faces florid as they all spun at him.

  Young Fraser-Hale looked startled but otherwise unperturbed. The haughty Magda Ring said, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake,’ and slapped her clipboard like a tambourine. The cameraman swung round, aiming his lens at Marcus like an assassin with a rifle. The sound man resentfully snatched off his headphones. And Falconer …

  Falconer just smiled.

  ‘Marcus,’ he said.

  Falconer. In his fur-trimmed motorcycle jacket and his ridiculously tight jeans. Falconer who strode the hills with his ponytail swinging, followed by a string of adoring acolytes: the old ladies he charmed, the young ones who — by all accounts — he shagged senseless.

  ‘One realizes, old chap,’ he said, ‘how terribly fond you are of this place, but we are working and, as you see, space is somewhat limited.’

  Falconer, with his weekly television audience of an estimated six million.

  Marcus with his ailing private-subscription magazine, circulation just under eight hundred and slipping.

  His aversion to the man couldn’t be as simple as that, surely?

  ‘If I could just point out …’ the cameraman said, looking agitated, ‘that we’re going to have about four minutes, maximum, to get this shot before the sun goes behind a frigging cloud or something.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Falconer said. ‘Our friend just wandered up for a teensy snoop, and now he’s leaving. Aren’t you, Marcus? Old chap.’

  Old chap. Always a slight emphasis on the old.

  ‘As a matter of fact, no.’ Marcus flicked back his heavy, grey hair and straightened his glasses. ‘I don’t think I am.’

  Big problem was: most of the villagers seemed to love the bastard. The star-struck idiots on his damned courses taking all the rooms at the local hotels and pubs, filling up the holiday caravans on the mobile-home park; Jarman, the postmaster, claiming Falconer was the biggest boost to the local economy since they closed the bloody railway.

  But look at the bloody damage he’s doing, Marcus would protest, and they’d all stare at him, mystified. And Marcus would try to explain how the damned man was destroying the ancient sanctity. Because that was his thing: to demystify, unravel, explain, according to his own limited, prosaic criteria, the essentially inexplicable. Demolishing mythology, dispelling atmosphere, stealing the energy and giving nothing back.

  Except money.

  Marcus delivering his side of the argument in two successive issues of The Phenomenologist: why the ludicrous University of the Earth would ultimately be a bad thing for the area. Leaving copies lying around, pinning up the article on the village noticeboard. With the exception of Amy, at the Tup, the villagers didn’t understand. They all thought he was out of his bloody tree. And jealous.

  Falconer’s perpetually tanned face flexed and he flashed his white crowns. A combative, buccaneering smile, often seen on his accursed TV programme: the informed sceptic challenging the gullible, hare-brained mystic.

  Marcus released the dog and straightened up: six inches shorter than Falconer, two stones heavier, ten years older. Malcolm growled happily.

  ‘You get hold of that bloody
thing.’ The soundman backed away, protecting his privates. He wouldn’t know Malcolm was all mouth, no bite.

  ‘Dog’s got as much right to be here as you,’ said Marcus. ‘Probably more.’

  ‘You couldn’t be more wrong about that,’ Falconer said smoothly.

  ‘That animal touches me,’ the soundman said, ‘I’ll have the police in. Have it picked up and put down and you up in court.’ Turned on the cameraman. ‘I hate the country. You never told me there’d be any of this shit. You said there was no need for personal injury insurance. I’ve got kids, Patrick.’

  ‘Marcus,’ Falconer said, ‘did anyone ever tell you what an offensive little man you were? You’ve been here approximately half a minute, you’ve disrupted my shoot, upset my crew …’

  ‘Falconer.’ Marcus stared him in the eyes. ‘You have lived here less than six bloody months. In that short time, you have offended every one of my most basic sensibilities.’

  ‘Sensibilities?’ Falconer shook his head pityingly. ‘God preserve us.’

  Marcus advanced on him. ‘Turned the whole valley into a sodding film set. Everywhere I go, there you are doing one of your inane “pieces-to-camera” on the psychology of Neolithic person … as though the whole bloody Stone Age is your bloody backyard.’

  ‘Well,’ Falconer said. ‘At least my version of pre-history is based on knowledge, as distinct from wishful thinking. But I really don’t have the time to discuss the nonsense of ley lines with an old fart whose opinions are irrelevant anyway, so-’

  ‘Bollocks! You don’t really know any more than the rest of us. You’re just a bloody academic vampire. A leech. ‘

  Marcus stopped, knowing he was losing it. Falconer was laughing.

  ‘Roger,’ the cameraman said. He looked about twenty-two, and petulant. ‘Just look at that sun, will you? We’re missing my shot. ‘

  ‘Oh dear!’ Marcus snarled. ‘You’re missing the little turd’s shot.’

  Falconer stopped laughing. There was clearly a real possibility they wouldn’t be able to video him with the sun beaming out of his head. Not today, anyway. Oh bloody dear.

  ‘All right, old chap.’ The great man stretched a stiff arm at Marcus. ‘Run along. Out!’

  ‘Out?’ Marcus stood his ground. ‘Out of the district? Out of the country? Who the fuck do you think you are?’

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you who I am.’ Falconer’s face hardened. ‘I am the owner of Black Knoll.’

  There was a moment of ghastly silence as the words hit Marcus like an anvil and all the breath went out of him. Before disbelief set in.

  ‘Rubbish. That’s … rubbish. Balls. You … you can’t just buy an ancient monument. Even you.’

  ‘Of course I can. And the land it stands on.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’ Marcus felt weak. Couldn’t be true. The Jenkins brothers knew how much he wanted the Knoll. Knew he’d get the money together one day.

  ‘Contracts were exchanged yesterday at four p.m., in Hereford.’ Falconer pausing to savour the reaction. ‘The Jenkinses are very happy indeed at the thought of getting rid of a useless, scrubby little mound without having to sell the meadow as well. If you’d like to see the paperwork, Marcus, call in at my office at Cefn-y-bedd. On your way down.’

  ‘But …’ Marcus couldn’t summon the breath; his chest felt tight as a bloody drum. Wait till he saw the Jenkins brothers, fucking traitorous bastards. ‘Why …?’

  ‘Because I like the bloody thing, Marcus. Because I want to study it in peace. Because the University of the Earth really ought to have its own ancient site, where my people can carry out their experiments uninterrupted by-’

  ‘Their experiments? This is a bloody shrine!’

  Falconer passed a hand across his eyes, tottered theatrically. ‘Bacton, people like you astonish me. You have the credulity of small children. Anything bizarre, anything determinedly unscientific, like the fantasies of some deluded, pubescent brat back in the twenties-’

  ‘It’s people like you’ — Marcus brandished a finger at him — ‘who hounded that child out of the village.’

  ‘And one can only be thankful, Marcus, that there weren’t people like you around to canonize her.’

  Marcus thought suddenly of Mrs Willis. Her recent, unprecedented tiredness, her headaches. His stomach went cold.

  ‘You don’t understand anything, do you? It’s a healing place. That’s why it was sited where it is. To channel solar energy.’

  ‘Sure, sure. Just one of the theories we’ll be putting to the test. Scientifically.’

  ‘With a view to disproving it. And meanwhile, what about the people who come up to draw on the energy?’ Marcus felt his lip tremble, picturing Mrs Willis making her way here in the dark, increasingly unsteady, but determined, knowing that the return journey would be so much lighter.

  ‘Balls,’ Falconer said. ‘I’ve never heard such complete balls.’

  ‘Roger …’

  ‘I’ll be right with you, Patrick. Marcus Bacton is leaving. And he’s not coming back. In future — and I’m making this clear now, in front of witnesses — he’ll not be welcome on this site.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’d bloody love to stop us coming here, but you know you can’t, so-’

  ‘Oh, I can, Marcus. It’s not a public right of way. When we install our fence …’

  ‘Fence? Fence?’ He’d bring Mrs Willis up here in defiance of the bastard, but how could he lift her over a fence? ‘You don’t know what you’re fucking doing …’

  ‘I’m fully cognisant of my legal position. Anyone wishing to visit Black Knoll will require permission which, in most cases, if we’re not working here, will be given. Between the hours of nine a.m. and six p.m.’

  His narrow, allegedly handsome face flushed with triumph, Falconer waited for the significance of this to dawn, as it were, on Marcus.

  ‘You bastard,’ Marcus whispered. ‘You utter, crass bastard. ‘

  Falconer flicked a contemptuous hand at him, walked off and went to stand by the burial chamber. ‘Too late, Patrick?’

  ‘Not if we’re quick,’ said the cameraman.

  Marcus turned abruptly away so they wouldn’t see the tears in his eyes, his jaw quaking. Sensing his distress, Malcolm kept close to his legs as he made his way down from the Knoll.

  ‘He can’t,’ Marcus told the dog. ‘He fucking can’t. ‘

  The rising sun full in his face.

  For Annie Davies, the sun had come down and appeared to roll along the ground, between the hills, a great, glowing ball. Just rolling, in total silence. But also vibrating … shimmering.

  ‘And if that animal happens to shit on my land,’ Falconer called after him, ‘clean it up, would you? Old chap.’

  V

  The sky was boiling over.

  A finger of lightning prodding almost languidly out of the deep, dark, sweating clouds as if it was attached to the arm of a vengeful god. There was a flock of sheep, several already struck down, a heavy tumble of bodies, milk-eyed heads flat to the plain.

  A few yards away, the shepherd lay dead. His dog, back arched, howling a pitiful protest at the heavens.

  Terror, death.

  And only the great stones in their element. Whitened, as if they were lit from within by electric filaments, the stones exulted in the lightning.

  Energy. The horrific energy of death.

  The sky boiled over and yet it was cold. So cold.

  All through the night, he cowered in terror on the plain as the frigid lightning struck and struck again, like a white snake.

  Sister Andy had hardly slept, feeling close to feverish. And in the morning, when she ought to have been totally clapped-out, she felt stronger and years younger. There was a polish on the world. The colours were brighter.

  Very much like the time when she herself was cured. What was this saying to her?

  Don’t dwell on it. At the best of times, Sister Andy was ever a fatalist. It cannae last, hen.

&nb
sp; Coming on nightshift, she dumped her bags in the office and went straight to find Jonathan.

  ‘So. How is he tonight?’

  ‘Your miracle?’ Jonathan beamed at her. ‘He wakes up. He looks bemused. He drinks half a cup of tea and he goes back to sleep. He’s fine. He’s restored all our faith.’

  Andy shook her head, looked down at her hands. All worn and scoured, the texture of grade four sandpaper.

  Something moved in mysterious ways.

  ‘He saying much?’

  ‘Not a great deal.’

  ‘It’s a bloody miracle he can even activate his lips. Four minutes gone? Jesus God.’

  ‘Maybe it just seemed like four minutes,’ Jonathan said. ‘We were all a little …’

  ‘Hysterical? I don’t think so, Jonathan.’

  They’d all be backtracking now, of course. The paramedics saying maybe we were wrong, maybe he was alive when we brought him in. Debbie Barnes saying maybe he wasn’t flatlining three minutes plus. Well it couldn’t have been that long could it, or he’d have come round as a cabbage; you could turn him into coleslaw and he wouldn’t notice.

  ‘You think it was mass hysteria, Jonathan?’

  ‘I think it would be a black day for all of us if you were to leave, Sister Andy.’

  ‘Aw.’ Andy turned away, embarrassed. ‘It really wasnae me, y’know?’

  He was blinking at her with the undamaged right eye. The left eye would take a while to clear. It looked like the RAF symbol, circles of red, white and blue, but not necessarily in that sequence. She’d been there the first time the good eye opened. And there to hear the first word he’d spoken when, against all the medical precedents she could recall, his brain broke surface.

  He’d said, Cold.

  Which was how Andy had been feeling, entirely convinced they’d lost him, the way the sun turned black fast as a shutter coming down over a camera lens.