A Spectre in the Stones

by John Kitchen

  The way he said it made Lloyd look up sharply, and then Martin nodded, which didn’t help, because he said, “I know what he’s in to,” and straight away Justin hushed him up.

  “Trouble is,” Lloyd said, “Craig Donovan’s got a line on me. If I tell Dave anything, there’s going to be trouble for me as well as Craig, and that will mess with the trip on Saturday.”

  “Is it likely Craig will ask you to do it again?” Justin said.

  Lloyd nodded. “He’s got me doing it twice this week already.”

  “Okay. Do it this time, but make sure you don’t get caught. Then, if he asks you again next week after we’ve been to London, go to Dave. Once you’ve reported it, you’re in the clear, and that’s the main thing for the time being.”

  Now he was certain there was something bad going on and, next day, it made him doubly nervous. It was like delivering a primed grenade and, what was worse, as he made it towards the bike rack, he was collared by Miss Webb. She wanted him to do extra maths because she thought he was good enough to be fast tracked, and that was okay. It meant Justin might be right about him and university. But… this break… with a primed bomb in his back pocket and with Craig and the sixth form kid waiting, it all came at the very worst of times. He was like a cat on fire, and she hung on to him, too. It was nearly the end of break when he got away and he only just made it to the lanky-haired kid.

  The guy was looking seriously stressed.

  “Where the hell you been?” he said.

  “I got collared by Miss Webb, didn’t I?”

  “She didn’t find the stuff on you?” The boy’s eyes were darting around and his hand was out, twitching.

  “No,” said Lloyd. He pulled the envelope out and shoved it into the boy’s hand. “Craig told me this was homework and I can’t get my head around that. I mean, how has a pea-brain like him got the skill to do homework for a guy like you?”

  The sixth-form kid shoved the envelope in his pocket and pushed a ten-pound note into Lloyd’s hand. And all the time his eyes were darting. “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” he said. “Now get lost before anyone sees you.”

  That night, when he gave Craig the ten pounds, he told him.

  “I got collared by Miss Webb, didn’t I?” he said. “I couldn’t get away neither and I only just made it before the end of break.”

  “You didn’t let her see no envelope, did you?” Craig said.

  “It was in my back pocket. But it was risky. You got to find some other way of delivering this homework stuff. I mean, she was on for me to do extra maths, and that means I got to get coached in break, don’t it? I’m not going to be around to do this stuff.”

  “That’s your problem, black boy,” Craig said as he shambled off. “You try wriggling out of this, and I’ll see you’re in it so deep with Dave Trafford you won’t come up for air. So forget it.”

  Lloyd braced himself. After London, he’d blow Craig Donovan open. He’d got Justin’s backing now. Next time he got an envelope, he’d go to Dave. He’d tell him the reason why he was down in the computer room if necessary – and if Dave did gate him – what difference would that make? With the professor guy interested in all this stuff, there’d be too many people on Dave’s back for him to do any real damage.

  He could hardly wait for Saturday. There was only one thing that bothered him – and that was Caitlin. He wasn’t going to be there Saturday night and that would mean she would be free to wander again.

  He thought Martin could go down and stop her. He knew about the North Wing now – and about Brookley Henge and the displaced ley lines, but when he saw Caitlin at break, she wouldn’t even listen to the idea. “Don’t you tell Martin Doyle nothing,” she said. “I told you already, it’s got nothing to do with nobody but us.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t want to go down the cellar no more, facing that ghost. And with me being in London, there’s no way I can stop you,” Lloyd said.

  He could see she was scared. Her hands were twitching to go up to her ears again and, already, her feet were doing the little dance.

  “You don’t talk about that stuff,” she said, and it was in a half-whisper, as if the idea had paralysed her throat.

  “But you got to face it, Caitlin, man. If I’m not there – someone’s got to stop you – and Martin knows about the North Wing.”

  This time her hands did go up to her ears. “You’re not telling him,” she said and it was almost a yell of fear.

  It scared him. He looked around the grounds because no way did he want some teacher muscling in.

  “Well, what are we going to do?” he said.

  She stood there looking lost. It was hard not to put an arm around her, because this was freaking her out.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “I could try and talk to the ghost,” said Lloyd. “The trouble is, he don’t show up no more. It’s just dust swirls when I go down.”

  “Couldn’t you not go to London?” Caitlin said – but that was a non-starter.

  “This London trip is big, man. The only thing I can do is go down the cellar and hope the ghost shows up, and if it does, I’ll tell it about you.”

  It didn’t have a lot going for it, but it was the only plan he had and, on Friday night, when he went down to the cellar, the swirls seemed to have more urgency. Eventually they did materialise into the Beaker man. It didn’t move out from the wall but its echoing sighs and hisses filled the room and this time Lloyd succeeded in talking.

  He told it everything: about the stone circles and the destruction up at the henge; about the dowsing and the fractured ley lines; about the forces he’d picked up around the North Wing and in the cellar. He even told it about the professor up in London and their visit. He couldn’t be certain it made any sense, but the sighs and echoes did follow a pattern, sometimes slow and even like the last gasps of the dying, and then more animated, as if it was trying to tell Lloyd something. There were even a few attempted words, and the more excited passages of breathing seemed to fit with stuff about destruction and broken ley lines, and the North Wing. It also got quite excited when he mentioned the mound – and that puzzled Lloyd.

  When he got to the subject of Caitlin, though, and explained about this kid sleepwalking into the cellar, and how he’d steered her back to her room, and how she was likely to show up instead of him tomorrow night, there was nothing but the slow laboured breathing, and he couldn’t be certain it understood or took in a word.

  Caitlin would go down the cellar tomorrow for sure – and doubts kept him awake for most of the night.

  Chapter 12

  Tiredness didn’t get in the way of his excitement the next morning, though.

  He and Rudi were wrapped in their own world at breakfast and the pandemonium raging around them hardly made any impact at all.

  “It’ll be great, man,” Lloyd said. “’Specially for you, seeing as you haven’t been to London before. It’s dead good.”

  “How is it that you’ve been?” Rudi said.

  “Me and Lee Peddar – we used to ride the trains. The other home was right by the station. It wasn’t no trouble.”

  Rudi looked at him. “But the money for the fares? Did you get that with your paper round?”

  “There wasn’t no barrier at the station was there? It was easy. We just got on the train. It didn’t cost nothing.”

  “But that’s illegal. It’s like stealing.”

  “No it isn’t,” Lloyd said. “I mean, the train’s going to London anyway. It don’t cost nothing extra to take me and Lee.”

  “If you got caught though.”

  “We didn’t. That was the fun of it.”

  Justin was waiting with his van when they’d finished breakfast. They took the travel case, still packed from last week. There was room for Rudi’s stuff too. For Lloyd, this was the fulfilment of a dream. His travel case, him going somewhere on a train, it was magic and it was official, with tickets and reserved seats and an authentic
ity that put it in a different league from riding the trains with Lee Peddar.

  They left the van at the car park by Didcot Parkway station. They had window seats and Lloyd let Rudi face the engine.

  “It’s good in London,” he said. “It’s like, to get around, you got these trains that go under the ground. You go hundreds of feet down and you need escalators and stuff.”

  Rudi grinned and gazed out of the window. The clouds were thinning and a faint haze of shadow was etching the fields.

  “And it’s like, when you get near Paddington there’s these railway lines, miles across – like a whole field of them, and Paddington’s massive, isn’t that right, Justin? And the streets, man, down Oxford Circus – there’s so many people, you got to push your way through – people shopping in big-brand stores. You got taxicabs – there’s hundreds of them – and buses! I mean, you got to see it, man.”

  “I have,” Rudi said. “I’ve seen it on films and TV. I know all about the Underground and cabs and that.”

  “But it isn’t the same. It isn’t like seeing if for real, is it Justin?”

  Justin had his broadest smile on and his eyes were dancing. “You’re like a little kid, Lloyd Lewis,” he said, and Lloyd sat back in his seat.

  “Well, it’s good, going to London. I always wanted to do travelling. That’s why I got the travel case.” He watched the wooded hills of the Thames valley slide past, and then he looked across at Rudi again. “This train’s doing a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour. Do you realise that? That’s over two miles a minute. That’s more than twice as fast as your old van would go, top speed, down a hill with the wind behind it, isn’t that right, Justin?”

  Justin grinned again and, for a while, Lloyd didn’t say anything more. He just watched the landscape mutate towards the conurbation of Reading while the clouds continued thinning and the shadows became more distinct.

  He did manage to point out the vastness of Reading station – just in case Rudi hadn’t noticed, and then he explained that Paddington was even bigger. “It’s like it’s all covered with this massive glass canopy, with steel girders,” he said.

  As they shot through Ealing Broadway, he pointed out the Underground. Rudi was beaming, but he didn’t say anything. Lloyd decided he was probably too overwhelmed, so he sank back in his seat to drink in the unfolding vastness.

  By the time they reached Paddington, the sun was out at full strength and, for the first time in a fortnight, he saw the sky a cloudless blue.

  Going on the tube to Russell Square meant a whole new commentary, working the ticket machines, how to tread on and off the escalators without putting your life in jeopardy. Then there was the joy of going up the escalator that goes down when there weren’t too many people around. He was a talking encyclopaedia about cleaning the tunnels, about the rodent population, about which lines were deepest, and how, in the war, they used tube stations as air-raid shelters. It was all dished in Rudi’s direction on account of Rudi not having been to London before, and he didn’t take any notice of Rudi’s gentle insistence that he already knew about the Underground.

  The professor had suggested they meet in the foyer of the British Museum. He thought that would be more impressive than his office at the university… and he wasn’t wrong.

  “What about that?” Lloyd said as they walked into the massive edifice. “That’s sick, Rudi, man.”

  He stood there, taking in the white central precinct, the pillars and the huge glass roof and Rudi grinned.

  “Yeah, sick,” he said, and Lloyd dug him in the ribs.

  Justin was searching out the professor, and they headed around the plaza, defining the central shopping-enclosure.

  James Appleyard was sitting at a table in the food hall, and he wasn’t a bit like a professor. He was slim and had dark hair and he was really casual looking.

  His handshake was firm. “Lloyd, Rudi, how marvellous to meet you,” he said, and close up he didn’t look much older than thirty. His clothes were trendy, and the guy had gelled his hair.

  “You’re dead young for a professor, man,” Lloyd said. “I reckoned you’d be some kind of grizzled-up old guy with a long beard and glasses. You look good, don’t he, Rudi? I mean, I thought professors wore old scruffy suits and had beer guts.”

  Professor Appleyard laughed and his eyes were dancing. “I do have glasses,” he said. “Little half-rimmed jobs so I can peer over the top at my students. They tell me it gives me gravitas.”

  Then he turned to Justin and Lloyd saw his eyes soften. “Justin,” he said. He threw his arms around him as if they were long-lost brothers. “It’s been too long, mate.”

  Justin was hugging him back and in no way did it look like they were a professor and his renegade student.

  The professor organised drinks and a snack. “Coke? Would that suit?” he said “And they do these wicked triple-chocolate muffins.”

  “That would be great,” Lloyd said. “Isn’t that right, Rudi?”

  Rudi nodded and Lloyd sensed he was still overawed. The professor was a real knockout. He wasn’t like Dave and the carers, or the social-workers. He didn’t have any of their patronising twaddle.

  When they’d settled, he asked about their journey and the home, and then he asked about the supernatural things that were going on. It was easy to talk to him. Lloyd had been afraid he’d be a bit awestruck, but, with no disrespect, talking to this guy was like talking to a mate.

  “The ghost is one of the Beaker people,” he said. “Justin figured that out from the drawings I done, and it was weird because one time when the guy turned up he had all these artefacts, like he wanted to help me identify him.”

  “Really?” the professor said. “That’s amazing.”

  Hanging from the back of his chair was a sort of man-bag and he delved into it, pulling out a notepad. “Do you think you could still remember? Could you sketch the artefacts for me now?”

  “No sweat. I could do the ghost too if you like. I seen the guy so many times, I know him off by heart.” He sketched out the ghost in both guises, cloaked and with the cross-gaiters, and he drew the artefacts, while the others watched.

  Justin glanced at the professor. “Brilliant, isn’t he?”

  “Absolutely amazing,” said the professor. “These are so detailed

  I could use them in a textbook.” Lloyd could tell he wasn’t blagging either – and that made him feel really good. He put a hand on Lloyd’s shoulder and looked him straight in the eyes. He had soft eyes – hazel coloured, warm. “These drawings are stunning, Lloyd,” he said.

  Lloyd leaned back, admiring his own efforts. “Thanks, professor, man,” he said. “That’s respect, that is. I appreciate that.”

  “You don’t have to call me professor, either,” he said. “James will do.”

  “You don’t mind us calling you that?”

  “Not at all. It makes me feel younger having young guys calling me James. Now, tell me about the haunting. Justin says you have a theory.”

  He took a bite into his triple-chocolate muffin and followed that with a swig of Coke. “It isn’t nothing really,” he said. “I bet it’ll sound rubbish to you, but what I figured is this: this ghost – he was the one what built Brookley Henge, right? And when we went up there with Justin we found like these dents in the ground where a double henge use to be – and that means, when he built it, it was important, okay? The thing is, it got vandalised – like some guys have been up there and taken all the stones. So, for starters, the ghost isn’t that pleased.”

  The professor nodded. “Yep. I wouldn’t be that pleased either.”

  “But there’s more, isn’t there? This ghost, I reckon it wants me to do something about it. I mean, it figured I could do dowsing. It made this sign and Justin worked out it was a divining rod.”

  Professor Appleyard leaned back in his chair. “And can you?”

  “Yeah, it’s dead good.”

  “I don’t suppose you could tell me what it feels
like, this divining?”

  Lloyd looked at him, because he figured the guy was seriously on the right wavelength. “That is one big sensation, man. I mean, when you walk across say, a ley line, it’s like the power comes through your nerve-endings. Like it’s speaking to all the muscles in your body and the feelings, they fill you up like the oldest forces in the earth inside you – the forces of creation going through you, direct to the rod.”

  The professor nodded. “That’s so amazing,” he said.

  “Yeah, well… and this is the rubbish bit. When we went up to Brookley Henge to trace the ley line, Justin figured it would go off south to Stonehenge, which it did… and then it was supposed to go north to Avebury. But it didn’t do that. We kept getting like these bits of force all broken up, scattered all over the field – and I figured that… and I know this is rubbish… but… well… say the stone circles was set out like sign posts – like links in the chain and, over time they kind of developed a power over the forces – like they focused them – from one henge to the next and, when the circle was messed up, then the directing power was lost so, instead of running in a straight line, the forces all got scattered – like they got no guidance no more and don’t know where to go.”

  “Fragmented ley lines,” Justin said, and the professor nodded.

  “That’s quite a theory – and you’ve got some good evidence to support it. It would certainly explain the paranormal activity.”

  “Yeah, but… what I don’t get is this. Why is all the activity going on down in Sarson Hall. I mean, that’s miles clear of Brookley Henge, and it isn’t even in the path of the ley lines.”

  “What did you say the home was called?” the professor said.

  “Sarson Hall,” said Lloyd. He spelt it out and, as he was doing this, Justin sat back on his chair and gave a sort of gasp.

  “That never occurred to me,” he said, looking straight at the professor. “And that would explain a lot.”