A Spectre in the Stones

by John Kitchen

  “I was beginning to think you wasn’t going to show,” he said. “Which would have meant your life was over.”

  Lloyd grinned. “It isn’t that easy, is it? Not locating one guy out of the thousands hanging round this place. I mean it’s hard, even when the guy’s as ugly as you are.”

  Craig led him across to the boiler house, which didn’t surprise Lloyd. “This guy who I’m doing the homework for,” Craig said. “He’s usually around here. And that’s where he’ll be tomorrow, but you got to be careful. You don’t go near him if there’s any teachers around. You got to understand that. And make sure no one sees you give him the envelope or take the tenner off him.”

  Lloyd thought Craig must think he was stupid. No kid in their right mind would believe you had to do all this just to pass over a bit of homework and, when they finally located the guy, he was certain.

  The kid was a good six feet tall. He had short blond hair – not quite a number one, but heading that way, and he had to be in the sixth form, or at least year eleven, and the idea of a half-formed brain cell like Craig Donovan doing this guy’s homework was like an amoeba teaching Einstein.

  “You’re sure it’s homework you’re giving him?” he said. “That guy’s year eleven or twelve at least.”

  “He’s big for his age,” Craig said. “And he’s as thick as two planks. It’s no sweat doing stuff for him – and it’s none of your business anyway. All you got to do is deliver the stuff.”

  He knew there wasn’t any point in pushing it. Like he’d said to Rudi, if it got out of hand, he’d sort it. For the time-being he just wanted to keep Craig off his back.

  “I’ll give you the homework before we go in the morning,” Craig said. “Down the shower room, just before we get on the bus – and that’s where you can hand over the tenner when we get back. Kids don’t go down there, not if they can help it. That’s a good place to meet.”

  With everything fixed, Lloyd searched out Rudi and, for the rest of the day, he kept well out of Craig’s way. He made a special effort to keep clear of other trouble too. He had to practise this diplomacy stuff. He noticed Caitlin giving him the occasional furtive glance. She seemed to have an even fresher complexion today and it was clear she’d showered and washed her hair again. She wasn’t dozing off in lessons either and she seemed sharper. She even got involved in classes, especially with Miss Webb, and he couldn’t resist saying something to her, just to see how she’d react.

  Caitlin didn’t give much, but she seemed happier, and when he told her he’d been moved back with Rudi and Martin, she even made a joke.

  “I’ll sleep even better knowing that, won’t I?” she said. “I mean, I won’t be lying in fear, thinking you might creep in on me while I’m sleeping.”

  Lloyd laughed. “In your dreams, man. I got better things to do with my life than creep in on you.”

  “Yeah?” she said. And there was a tantalising challenge in her voice. He liked that.

  “I’m going to get down the North Wing, though, every night, just to keep an eye out, in case you go off on your sleepwalking gig again.”

  “Don’t go getting caught then,” she said, and it was as if the barriers were down. There was no way she was ever going to get stuck into to a real conversation, but… it was okay… this thing with Caitlin.

  He knew he’d have to tell Martin about it, because, as soon as the carers had gone to ground, he’d have to leave the bedroom and it would be no use telling the guy he was going to the toilet. You couldn’t be in the toilet for the best part of an hour, not even after eating the food they dished up at Sarson Hall, and he’d have to go down to the North Wing every night till this was sorted, or until Dave moved Caitlin back into the main wing.

  He didn’t know how he was going to play it with the ghost either. He’d have to visit the cellar – every night probably – to keep it sweet, and he’d have to be double sure he didn’t get caught, certainly up until the weekend.

  That evening he and Rudi went to find Justin.

  He was around the back of the North Wing, digging over another barren patch of earth masquerading as a flowerbed. When he saw them, he straightened himself, levering up on his spade and his face lit into that smile again. The thing about Justin’s smile, Lloyd thought, was that with some people their mouth smiled while the rest of their face stayed dark. With Justin, all of his features smiled.

  It was as if his whole body was smiling – even his hair danced when he smiled.

  “You ready for a trip to Brookley Henge?” he said.

  “We going now?” Lloyd asked.

  “Yep.” Justin laid his spade to one side.

  “What about dinner?” said Rudi.

  “Dave said I could get you fish and chips in Brookley.” And that made Lloyd’s eyes widen.

  “How you swing that, man? You got something on Dave or what? That’s like giving us a treat and Dave don’t do treats.”

  “I must have, mustn’t I?” Justin laughed. “Because he said it was okay for you to go to London this weekend, too.”

  “That is so amazing,” Lloyd said. “You got to be some sort of a genius.”

  They stacked the tools back in the North Wing. “You’ll need a jacket,” said Justin and he pulled his anorak around him. He had an old, clapped-out van and in the back there were pieces of sacking wrapped neatly around a pile of digging implements. Lloyd noticed that they were all immaculately clean.

  “That your university training?” he said. “Taking care of all them tools?”

  Justin grinned. “Old habits die hard.”

  “They shouldn’t be old habits. That’s what you should be doing. It’s a waste, you hanging around here when you could be doing big things with your studies and stuff.”

  They clambered into the van. “How do you know we’re not doing big things here, with you, a fully equipped dowser? And we will be working with the professor from now on. It’s a bit like university.”

  “That’s true, man,” Lloyd said. “With you and the professor and everything.”

  “Is that what you’d like to do then?” said Justin.

  “If I had the brains. And I wouldn’t drop out like you done neither.”

  Justin eased the van down the drive and he was grinning again.

  “I don’t reckon you would,” he said “And don’t you do yourself down, Lloyd Lewis. You’ve got the brains, no sweat.”

  The henge was bleak and grey, just as it had been the last time they were there. It was a weird place, and the weirdness wasn’t just the look of it, although that was bad enough – random stones blackened with age, rising from other stones that were lying like dead corpses. It made Lloyd shudder just to see them. But it wasn’t just how the place looked. It was the fact that the stones seemed so much like dead corpses. It was as if this was some kind of ancient battlefield, and the overgrowth of brambles and bracken added to this feeling. Most of all, though, it was the ambience. The forces of life had been drained from the place. There were no birds, no insects and, up here, on a barely used minor road, there wasn’t even a passing car to suggest life. Sunlight never touched the place – and the abandonment could be felt.

  They didn’t say a lot. They just wandered around, as if their thought patterns needed to adjust.

  Rudi was the first to speak. He’d gone out on a limb, away into the bracken and he’d found one of the scars.

  “What do you think, Justin?” he said. “Would there have been a stone here?”

  Justin and Lloyd fought their way through and Justin paced around, feeling the indentation with his foot. Lloyd could see a faraway look in his eye, and a kind of warmth. It was as if he was into his own comfort zone.

  “You should be doing this fulltime, man,” he said. “Places like this was what you was made for. Any fool could see that, couldn’t they, Rudi?”

  Rudi nodded and Justin laughed. “Would you like to rephrase that?” he said.

  Lloyd grinned. “No way, man. He knows what I m
ean.”

  “You’re right, though,” Justin said. He sighed and looked away into the distance. “Right on both counts, I think – about me and archaeology – and about this imprint. This has definitely been left by a Standing Stone.”

  “There’s loads more. They’re all around the place,” Lloyd said.

  They forced their way deeper into the bracken, pushing through the scrubland and at last Justin stopped and stared around him.

  “Like you said, this would have been a complete circle once – and you’re right about it being ransacked. There’s no sign of the missing stones. Most likely people took them to build hedges and stuff.”

  While he was talking, Lloyd had wandered away towards the centre and suddenly he stopped. “There’s another pit in here,” he said. He crouched into the scrub. “It shouldn’t be, should it? I mean, this isn’t part of no circle.”

  Justin scrambled over to where he was crouching. Then he walked further into the growth and stopped. “There’s another one here,” he said.

  “What’s that mean?” said Lloyd. “Was there two circles?”

  “It looks like it. It looks like this place was a double henge, and that’s weird because no documentation has ever claimed that.”

  He grinned. “You’ve made a bit of an archaeological discovery, Lloyd Lewis. Because being a double henge makes it an important site.”

  They followed the course of the inner-circle and found other indentations. Some were so faint it needed imagination just to identify them, and Lloyd was beginning to feel impatient.

  “Isn’t it about time I done some dowsing?” he said. “I mean, that’s what we’re up here for.”

  Justin laughed. “Sorry. But what with you finding this other ring and everything – we’ll have to get a proper archaeological investigation going. We’ll get Professor Appleyard on to that when we go to London.”

  They pushed back towards the half-wrecked stones, and Justin fetched the hazel twig from the van. When he came back he had a compass too, and an ordnance survey map. They laid the map out and searched for Stonehenge. Then he worked out the bearings with the compass. “A ley line would run directly from here to there,” he said.

  They went out beyond the stones and Lloyd’s senses were buzzing. If this worked out, he was about to experience the most ancient of primordial forces right through his body and that was mind-blowing. Justin pointed out the direction of Stonehenge and he began to wander around, holding the divining rod in front of him. He’d moved beyond the stones now, because the stones themselves were giving him sensations, a bit like the mound and the North Wing.

  He needed to find a new force but, for a while, nothing happened.

  Then the rod twitched and, as he moved west, the sensations grew. “I got something,” he shouted. “It’s like – I’m going into a path and the further in I get, the stronger it is.”

  The rod was quivering, and there couldn’t be any doubt. He’d hit on some force and, to him, it was like dynamite.

  Justin held him still. He was looking closely at his compass. “You want to go south,” he said. “If you can track a force in that direction, then we’ve got a ley line.” He looked at Rudi and his eyes were sparkling. “Fantastic, isn’t it?”

  “Awesome,” said Rudi.

  They watched as Lloyd followed the route. And the dowsing rod twitched and shivered. The ley line was heading straight off towards Stonehenge. Its force rippled through him right to his fingertips and it was magical. He carried on following it until the hedge blocked his way – and there was no break. The line was strong, and it was a force that was as ancient as the world.

  “It’s like – I’m touching creation, man,” he whispered. “That’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever done.”

  “It’s massive,” Justin said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I can’t wait to see James Appleyard’s face when we tell him on Saturday.”

  But Lloyd had moved away from the hedge and out of the force field. He was looking across to the other side of the henge. “What about over there?” he said. “Where would it go if I went over there?”

  “Avebury, I think,” said Justin.

  “Shouldn’t I try the line to Avebury then?” said Lloyd. “See where the forces go from here. And I got to pick up readings away from the stones. I mean, it’s like, them stones, or where they used to be, is creating a kind of interference. If I could get in that field over there…”

  They went back onto the road. The growth in the field was more controlled, as if a farmer had been grazing animals, or he’d cut the grass and Lloyd could wander without having to contend with scrub and bracken; but it took him a long time to get any sort of response. He could see Rudi and Justin watching, and there was a look of mingled anticipation and apprehension on their faces.

  Eventually he wandered back towards the stone circle and, near the hedge, he picked up a few flickers. Then he moved north, following the line he thought would lead towards Avebury and the movement in the twig became stronger – but suddenly, with a shudder, it fell limp.

  He tried again, retracing his steps and going off in a slightly different direction. But the same thing happened, a flicker, then a surge, and then… nothing.

  “What’s wrong?” Justin said.

  “Come over here and you’ll see. I picked something up, look.” He went back to the power force and showed them. “But when I move away it drops off.”

  “Perhaps this isn’t the ley line. Perhaps that runs from somewhere else. Go up and down the field. See if you can pick up an area of force in a different location,” Justin said.

  Lloyd wandered from one side of the field to the other, with the divining rod thrust out in front of him, and there were surges, near the hedge and further away, but no continuous line. It was all random patches.

  “It’s like all the force has been broken up,” he said.

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Justin said. “The henges link ley lines across the country. We’ve got a line coming from Stonehenge. There’s got to be one going off towards Avebury.”

  Lloyd tried again, combing the field from top to bottom, but none of the surges ever seemed to link, and, by now, it was beginning to get dark.

  They went back into the henge and sat on one of the flattened stones. “None of it fits,” Justin said at last.

  “Do you think Professor Appleyard would know why it’s happening?” Rudi said.

  “I’ll have to give him a call, because I can’t figure it out,” said Justin.

  But there was an idea forming in Lloyd’s head. “I know this may sound stupid,” he said, mulling over the words. “And I don’t know much about all this stuff – not like the professor and all that, but – say these stone circles are like guiding pointers for the ley lines. It’s like they direct them from one stone circle to the next – like joining up the dots. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  Justin looked at him. “Yes… go on.”

  “Well, say – because some guys wrecked the stones and made off with them – say this place has been trashed so much, it’s kind of lost its power to do the guiding so now there isn’t no line running from here to Avebury. Say – by ripping out all them stones, they smashed the system. That would be why there are just bits of broken power all over the field.”

  “I’ve heard about that,” Justin said. “Disrupted ley lines, and I’ve heard people say they can cause the most violent of paranormal disturbances.”

  “Would that be why all this weird stuff is going on back at the home?” said Rudi.

  Lloyd leaned forward, gripping his hand around the divining rod. “The thing I don’t understand,” he said. “And I said this before, isn’t that right, Rudi? If the disruption stuff is caused by what’s going on up here, then why is the Beaker guy and all the poltergeists running riot down Sarson Hall? I mean, that’s a good four miles away, and Sarson Hall isn’t even on no line.”

  He turned the hazel branch over in his hand. “It still don’t
make sense, do it? I mean, that’s the trouble with all this stuff. None of it fits together. It’s like – it ought to fit – it ought to be simple – but it isn’t. And that’s doing my head in.”

  Chapter 11

  When they’d finished at Brookley, it was back to the main wing, and sharing a bedroom with Martin.

  They needed to prepare him for Lloyd’s excursions to the North Wing but he was already in bed, flat on his back with his duvet dragged around his neck. He was staring at the ceiling and his loose curls were splayed out across the pillow. His head and his hair were all they could see, and there was very little expression on his face. He did give the slightest glimmer of a quizzical grimace when Lloyd began to explain what was going on.

  “I got to go back down the North Wing, when the kids have stopped mucking around and the carers are out the way,” said Lloyd.

  “Why you going down there?” The muffled voice came from beneath the duvet. “You got something going with Caitlin Jamieson or what?”

  Lloyd laughed. “It isn’t got nothing to do with Caitlin Jamieson.”

  They tried explaining what had happened with the ghost and the poltergeist, and about the ley lines and Brookley Henge, but Martin just slid into a whole new realm of boredom.

  “You know what, Lloyd Lewis?” he said. “You got problems. I forgot about you and all this curse stuff. If I’d remembered, I wouldn’t have said nothing to Dave about you coming back in here. It’s boring if you want to know, and either you’re round the twist – or you really have got something going with Caitlin Jamieson and you’re using this for cover.”

  Rudi said about the divining but his reaction to that was even more dismissive.

  “You got to think I came down on a sunbeam, mate,” he said. “You two’s as bad as one another, and it’s all rubbish, so give it a rest.”

  “Well, I got to go out,” Lloyd said. “So I can get down the cellar to see the ghost, and I’ll be gone for a good hour. And it’s likely I’ll have to do it every night, so you better get used to it.”