Dark Forces

by McCauley, Kirby

  “We’re good Christians here,” the old man said, sounding indignant. “No rituals here. We leave them stones alone!” As he spoke, the little dog trotted forward, seemingly headed for the stones, but a hand gesture from the man froze it, and it sat obediently at his side.

  “But surely there’s a story about how they came to be here? Why is that path we came up named after them?”

  “Ah, that,” said the man. “That is called the Sisters’ Way because on certain nights of the year the Sisters go down that path to bathe in the sea.”

  Paul felt his stomach jump uneasily at those words, and he stepped back a little, not wanting to be too close to the stones. He had never heard of stones that could move by themselves, and he was fairly certain such a thing was not possible, but the idea still frightened him.

  “They move!” exclaimed Staunton. He sounded pleased. “Have you ever seen them do it?”

  “Oh, no. Not I, or any man alive. The Sisters don’t like to be spied on. They’ll kill anyone who sees them.”

  “Mama,” said Paul, urgently. “Let’s go back. I’m hungry.”

  She patted his shoulder absently. “Soon, dear.”

  “I wonder if anyone has tried,” said Staunton. “I wonder where such a story comes from. When exactly are they supposed to travel?”

  “Certain nights,” said the old man. He sounded uneasy.

  “Sacred times? Like Allhallows maybe?”

  The old man looked away toward the trees and the village and he said: “My wife will have my tea waiting for me. She worries if I’m late. I’ll just say good day to you then.” He slapped his hip, the dog sprang up, and they walked away together, moving quickly.

  “He believes it,” Staunton said. “It’s not just a story to him. I wonder what made him so nervous? Did he think the stones would take offense at his talking about them?”

  “Maybe tonight is one of those nights,” his wife said thoughtfully. “Isn’t Midsummer Night supposed to be magical?”

  “Let’s go,” said Paul again. He was afraid even to look at the stones. From the corner of his eye he could catch a glimpse of them, and it seemed to him that they were leaning toward his parents threateningly, listening.

  “Paul’s got a good idea,” his mother said cheerfully. “I could do with something to eat myself. Shall we go?”

  The Stauntons found lodging for the night in a green-shuttered cottage with a Bed and Breakfast sign hanging over the gate. It was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Winkle, a weathered-looking couple, who raised cats and rose bushes and treated their visitors like old friends. After the light had faded from the sky, the Stauntons sat with the Winkles in their cozy parlor and talked. Paul was given a jigsaw puzzle to work, and he sat with it in a corner, listening to the adults and hoping he would not be noticed and sent to bed.

  “One thing I like about this country is the way the old legends live on,” Staunton said. “We met an old man this afternoon on the beach, and he led us up a path called the Sisters’ Way, and showed us the stones at the top. But I couldn’t get much out of him about why the stones should be called the Sisters—I got the idea that he was afraid of them.”

  “Many are,” said Mr. Winkle equably. “Better safe than sorry.”

  “What’s the story about those stones? Do you know it?”

  “When I was a girl,” Mrs. Winkle offered, “people said that they were three sisters who long ago had been turned to stone for sea-bathing on the Sabbath. And so wicked were they that, instead of repenting their sin, they continue to climb down the cliff to bathe whenever they get the chance.”

  Mr. Winkle shook his head. “That’s just the sort of tale you might expect from a minister’s daughter,” he said. “Bathing on the Sabbath indeed! That’s not the story at all. I don’t know all the details of it—different folks say it different ways—but there were once three girls who made the mistake of staying overnight in that field, long before there was a town here. And when morning came, the girls had turned to stone.

  “But even as stones they had the power to move at certain times of the year, and so they did. They wore away a path down the cliff by going to the sea and trying to wash away the stone that covered them. But even though the beach now is littered with little bits of the stone that the sea has worn away, it will take them till doomsday to be rid of it all.” Mr. Winkle picked up his pipe and began to clean it.

  Staunton leaned forward in his chair. “But why should spending the night in that field cause them to turn to stone?”

  “Didn’t I say? Oh, well, the name of that place is the place where the stones grow. And that’s what it is. Those girls just picked the wrong time and the wrong place to rest, and when the stones came up from the ground the girls were covered by them.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Staunton said. “There are standing stones all over England—I’ve read a lot about them. And I’ve never heard a story like that. People don’t just turn to stone for no reason.”

  “Of course not, Mr. Staunton. I didn’t say it was for no reason. It was the place they were in, and the time. I don’t say that sort of thing—people turning into stones—happens in this day, but I don’t say it doesn’t. People avoid that place where the stones grow, even though it lies so close upon the town. The cows don’t graze there, and no one would build there.”

  “You mean there’s some sort of a curse on it?”

  “No, Mr. Staunton. No more than an apple orchard or an oyster bed is cursed. It’s just a place where stones grow.”

  “But stones don’t grow.”

  “Edward,” murmured his wife warningly.

  But Mr. Winkle did not seem to be offended by Staunton’s bluntness. He smiled. “You’re a city man, aren’t you, Mr. Staunton? You know, I heard a tale once about a little boy in London who believed the greengrocer made vegetables out of a greenish paste and baked them, just the way his mother made biscuits. He’d never seen them growing—he’d never seen anything growing, except flowers in window boxes, and grass in the parks—and grass and flowers aren’t good to eat, so how should he know?

  “But the countryman knows that everything that lives grows, following its own rhythm, whether it is a tree, a stone, a beast, or a man.”

  “But a stone’s not alive. It’s not like a plant or an animal.” Staunton cast about for an effective argument. “You could prove it for yourself. Take a rock, from that field or anywhere else, and put it on your windowsill and watch it for ten years, and it wouldn’t grow a bit!”

  “You could try that same experiment with a potato, Mr. Staunton,” Mr. Winkle responded. “And would you then tell me that a potato, because it didn’t grow in ten years on my windowsill, never grew and never grows? There’s a place and a time for everything. To everything there is a season,” he said, reaching over to pat his wife’s hand. “As my wife’s late father was fond of reminding us.”

  ****

  As a child, Paul Staunton had been convinced that the stones had killed his father. He had been afraid when his mother had sent him out into the chilly, dark morning to find his father and bring him back to have breakfast, and when he had seen the stone, still moving, he had known. Had known, and been afraid that the stones would pursue him, to punish him for his knowledge, the old man’s warning echoing in his mind. They’ll kill anyone who sees them.

  But as he had grown older, Paul had sought other, more rational, explanations for his father’s death. An accident. A mugging. An escaped lunatic. A coven of witches, surprised at their rites. An unknown enemy who had trailed his father for years. But nothing, to Paul, carried the conviction of his first answer. That the stones themselves had killed his father, horribly and unnaturally moving, crushing his father when he stood in their way.

  It had grown nearly dark as he brooded, and the mosquitoes were beginning to bite. He still had work to do inside. He stood up and folded the chair, carrying it in one hand, and walked toward the door. As he reached it, his glance fell on the window le
dge beside him. On it were three light-colored pebbles.

  He stopped breathing for a moment. He remembered the pebbles he had picked up on that beach in England, and how they had come back to haunt him more than a week later, back at home in the United States, when they fell out of the pocket where he had put them so carelessly. Nasty reminders of his father’s death, then, and he had stared at them, trembling violently, afraid to pick them up. Finally he had called his mother, and she had gotten rid of them for him somehow. Or perhaps she had kept them—Paul had never asked.

  But that had nothing to do with these stones. He scooped them off the ledge with one hand, half-turned, and flung them away as far as he could. He thought they went over the sagging back fence, but he could not see where, amid the shadows and the weeds, they fell.

  He had done a lot in two days, and Paul Staunton was pleased with himself. All his possessions were inside and in their place, the house was clean, the telephone had been installed, and he had fixed the broken latch on the bathroom window. Some things remained to be done—he needed a dining-room table, he didn’t like the wallpaper in the bathroom, and the backyard would have to be mowed very soon—but all in all he thought he had a right to be proud of what he had done. There was still some light left in the day, which made it worthwhile to relax outside and enjoy the cooler evening air.

  He took a chair out, thinking about the need for some lawn furniture, and put it in the same spot where he had sat before, beneath the gentle mimosa. But this time, before sitting down, he began to walk around the yard, pacing off his property and luxuriating in the feeling of being a landowner.

  Something pale, glimmering in the twilight, caught his eye, and Paul stood still, frowning. It was entirely the wrong color for anything that should be on the other side of the fence, amid that tumbled blur of greens and browns. He began to walk toward the back fence, trying to make out what it was, but was able only to catch maddeningly incomplete glimpses. Probably just trash, paper blown in from the road, he thought, but still… He didn’t trust his weight to the sagging portion of the fence, but climbed another section. He paused at the top, not entirely willing to climb over, and strained his eyes for whatever it was and, seeing it at last, nearly fell off the fence.

  He caught himself in time to make it a jump, rather than an undignified tumble, but at the end of it he was on the other side of the fence and his heart was pounding wildly.

  Standing stones. Three rocks in a roughly triangular formation.

  He wished he had not seen them. He wanted to be back in his own yard. But it was too late for that. And now he wanted to be sure of what he had seen. He pressed on through the high weeds and thick plants, burrs catching on his jeans, his socks, and his T-shirt.

  There they were.

  His throat was tight and his muscles unwilling, but Paul made himself approach and walk around them. Yes, there were three standing stones, but beyond the formation, and the idea of them, there was no real resemblance to the rocks in England. These stones were no more than four feet high, and less than two across. Unlike the standing stones of the Old World, these had not been shaped and set in their places—they were just masses of native white limestone jutting out of the thin soil. San Antonio lies on the Edwards Plateau, a big slab of limestone laid down as ocean sediment during the Cretaceous, covered now with seldom more than a few inches of soil. There was nothing unusual about these stones, and they had nothing to do with the legends of growing, walking stones in another country.

  Paul knew that. But, as he turned away from the stones and made his way back through the underbrush to his own yard, one question nagged him, a problem he could not answer to his own satisfaction, and that was: Why didn’t I see them before?

  Although he had not been over the fence before, he had often enough walked around the yard—even before buying the house—and once had climbed the fence and gazed out at the land on the other side.

  Why hadn’t he seen the stones then? They were visible from the fence, so why hadn’t he seen them more than a week earlier? He should have seen them. If they were there.

  But they must have been there. They couldn’t have popped up out of the ground overnight; and why should anyone transport stones to such an unlikely place? They must have been there. So why hadn’t he seen them before?

  The place where the stones grow, he thought.

  Going into the house, he locked the back door behind him.

  ****

  The next night was Midsummer Eve, the anniversary of his father’s death, and Paul did not want to spend it alone.

  He had drinks with a pretty young woman named Alice Croy after work—she had been working as a temporary secretary in his office—and then took her out to dinner, and then for more drinks, and then, after a minor altercation about efficiency, saving gas, and who was not too drunk to drive, she followed him in her own car to his house where they had a mutually satisfying if not terribly meaningful encounter.

  Paul was drifting off to sleep when he realized that Alice had gotten up and was moving about the room.

  He looked at the clock: it was almost two.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked drowsily.

  “You don’t have to get up.” She patted his shoulder kindly, as if he were a dog or a very old man.

  He sat up and saw that she was dressed except for her shoes. “What are you doing?” he repeated.

  She sighed. “Look, don’t take this wrong, okay? I like you. I think what we had was really great, and I hope we can get together again. But I just don’t feel comfortable in a strange bed. I don’t know you well enough to—it would be awkward in the morning for both of us. So I’m just going on home.”

  “So that’s why you brought your own car.”

  “Go back to sleep. I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “Your leaving disturbs me.”

  She made a face.

  Paul sighed and rubbed his eyes. It would be pointless to argue with her. And, he realized, he didn’t like her very much—on any other night he might have been relieved to see her go.

  “All right,” he said. “If you change your mind, you know where I live.”

  She kissed him lightly. “I’ll find my way out. You go back to sleep, now.”

  But he was wide awake, and he didn’t think he would sleep again that night. He was safe in his own bed, in his own house, surely. If his father had been content to stay inside, instead of going out alone, in the grey, predawn light, to look at three stones in a field, he might be alive now.

  It’s over, thought Paul. Whatever happened, happened long ago, and to my father, not me. (But he had seen the stone move.)

  He sat up and turned on the light before that old childhood nightmare could appear before him: the towering rocks lumbering across the grassy field to crush his father. He wished he knew someone in San Antonio well enough to call at this hour. Someone to visit. Another presence to keep away the nightmares. Since there was no one, Paul knew that he would settle for lots of Jack Daniel’s over ice, with Bach on the stereo—supreme products of civilization to keep the ghosts away.

  But he didn’t expect it to work.

  In the living room, sipping his drink, the uncurtained glass of the windows disturbed him. He couldn’t see out, but the light in the room cast his reflection onto the glass, so that he was continually being startled by his own movements. He settled that by turning out the lights. There was a full moon, and he could see well enough by the light that it cast, and the faint glow from the stereo console. The windows were tightly shut and the air-conditioning unit was laboring steadily: the cool, laundered air and the steady hum shut out the night even more effectively than the Brandenburg Concerti.

  Not for the first time, he thought of seeing a psychiatrist. In the morning he would get the name of a good one. Tough on a young boy to lose his father, he thought, killing his third drink. So much worse for the boy who finds his father’s dead body in mysterious circumstances. But one had to move beyo
nd that. There was so much more to life than the details of an early trauma.

  As he rose and crossed the room for another drink (silly to have left the bottle all the way over there, he thought), a motion from the yard outside caught his eye, and he slowly turned his head to look.

  It wasn’t just his reflection that time. There had been something moving in the far corner of the yard, near the broken-down fence. But now that he looked for it, he could see nothing. Unless, perhaps, was that something there in the shadows near one of the fig trees? Something about four feet high, pale-colored, and now very still?

  Paul had a sudden urge, which he killed almost at once, to take a flashlight and go outside, to climb the fence and make sure those three rocks were still there. They want me to come out, he thought—and stifled that thought, too.

  He realized he was sweating. The air conditioner didn’t seem to be doing much good. He poured himself another drink and pulled his chair around to face the window. Then he sat there in the dark, sipping his whiskey and staring out into the night. He didn’t bother to replace the record when the stereo clicked itself off, and he didn’t get up for another drink when his glass was empty. He waited and watched for nearly an hour, and he saw nothing in the dark yard move. Still he waited, thinking, They have their own time, and it isn’t ours. They grow at their own pace, in their own place, like everything else alive.

  Something was happening, he knew. He would soon see the stones move, just as his father had. But he wouldn’t make his father’s mistake and get in their way. He wouldn’t let himself be killed.

  Then, at last—he had no idea of the time now—the white mass in the shadows rippled, and the stone moved, emerging onto the moonlit grass. Another stone was behind it, and another. Three white rocks moving across the grass.

  They were flowing. The solid white rock rippled and lost its solid contours and re-formed again in another place, slightly closer to the house. Flowing—not like water, like rock.

  Paul thought of molten rock and of lava flows. But molten rock did not start and stop like that, and it did not keep its original form intact, forming and re-forming like that. He tried to comprehend what he was seeing. He knew he was no longer drunk. How could a rock move? Under great heat or intense pressure, perhaps. What were rocks? Inorganic material, but made of atoms like everything else. And atoms could change, could be changed—forms could change—