Triskellion

by Will Peterson

  Gabriel’s voice – rhythmic, soothing, persuasive – had kept her calm.

  “Take it, Rachel. Don’t be afraid. You have the right…”

  As they approached the 4 × 4, stacked high with Dalton’s equipment, the door of the hall crashed open, casting a yellow wedge of light across their path. Masked by the shadow of the car, Rachel and Adam ducked behind the wheel and saw Dalton come charging out of the hall, quickly followed by Laura Sullivan. They were arguing, and as they approached the car, their voices became clearer.

  “No way,” Dalton shouted. “We need to sit on this thing for a few more days. I just need to get back up to town for a day or two, that’s all, so I can manage the announcement properly. Just think of the news conference with all the major channels there. Just think of the headlines when I tell the world what I’ve found.”

  “Chris, this isn’t all about you,” Laura snapped. “This isn’t about making news stories. It’s far more important than that. Look … it’s not a news conference we need, it’s a controlled lab. Somewhere out of the way of prying eyes, with all the equipment we need, so we can make sure exactly what we’ve got on our hands here. Then we can decide whether we let anyone know what we’ve got. I mean … it might be safer not to, you know?”

  “Are you joking?” Dalton spluttered. “This will make our careers.”

  “And what about the golden blade?” Laura’s tone was calmer, more conciliatory. “Who are you going to hand that over to?”

  “Who said anything about handing it over?” Dalton said. “Listen, haven’t you ever had a present so good, so completely wonderful, that you just wanted to lock yourself away in a room all on your own and look at it?”

  Laura shook her head and tried to speak, but Dalton cut her off.

  “Well, this is my present. I found it. It’s up to me what I do with it. It’s a gift.” Dalton gave Laura a smug smile as though there was nothing further to be said on the subject. “Now lock the bloody door and let’s go. See if we can get a drink before the pub closes…”

  As Dalton walked to the car, Rachel and Adam ducked down a little further. They watched as Laura reached into her pocket for the keys and then froze, peering towards the back of the car as though she had caught their movement in the shadows. As though she were looking right at them.

  “Hurry up,” Dalton shouted, firing up the ignition.

  Laura shouted over the engine roar. “You’re bloody mad. It’s not ours to keep…”

  Dalton ignored her and revved the engine.

  Laura turned and looked towards the door of the church hall. She seemed to hesitate for a few seconds before turning back, then running to the car and climbing into the passenger seat. The car churned up clods of mud and grass as it lurched quickly away across the gravel of the church path.

  Rachel and Adam spluttered, fanning away the exhaust vapour that had engulfed them as Dalton and Laura had driven off. As the rear lights of the car faded past the church, they took the few remaining steps up towards the darkened church hall.

  Adam pushed open the door. “She forgot to lock it,” he said.

  “Maybe.” Rachel remembered the look on Laura’s face and couldn’t help wondering if she’d left the door unlocked deliberately, for them.

  Then Adam turned. “What the hell’s that?”

  The noise was coming from the woods: a terrible clattering and shouting that beat like the heart of something dark and dreadful as it drifted across the fields. Looking, Rachel and Adam could see the golden aura from a large fire rising above the trees.

  They felt the hair on their necks prickle.

  “Come on,” Rachel said. She pushed past her brother and stepped into the chill of the church hall.

  The Green Men chopped fresh wood every day and there was plenty to keep the fire burning. To stoke up its heat and its roar. The flames rose high above the treetops, and sparks crackled up in their wake: bright for just a second or two against the dark sky, before floating gently back towards the earth, like dying fireflies.

  The huge fire blazed in the middle of a circle ten metres across; a ring of battered vehicles, of old oil drums, and of the Green Men themselves who walked in step round its perimeter, beating out a slow and steady rhythm as they waited for their leader.

  Wearing dirty furs and strips of ragged leather, their headpieces decorated with skulls and feathers, they beat with logs and metal pipes against the drums and tree stumps. Many of their faces had been blackened with earth, and their mouths, when they opened them to chant, were red and wet like animal guts in the glow from the fire.

  “Tri-skellion… Tri-skellion…”

  The rhythm got faster and the noise more intense as Hilary Wing moved slowly into the circle. His face was a mask, the blue eyes blazing in the firelight and standing in contrast to the black-painted flesh round them. He walked once round the fire, moving in the opposite direction to his men, laying a hand on the shoulder of each before he climbed on to the roof of his camouflaged camper van and held up his arms.

  He waited for silence.

  “We came together to celebrate earth and sea and sky,” he said. “And to keep the ancient ways alive. We gather in these woods because we understand that the present is shaped by the past and because those that forget this have sacrificed their future. We are the memory of this place, and we are its hope.”

  The Green Men banged against the drums to show their approval, urging Hilary Wing on. He acknowledged their enthusiasm, nodding like a triumphant politician as he waited for the racket to subside.

  “We are its only hope because only we have understood the threat to its existence. The attack on everything that makes us as we are, that makes our lives here so precious. We are its only hope because, ultimately, we are the only ones with the guts to fight back…”

  There was more noise from the circle of figures that hung on every word, still as standing stones. And now the chanting began again; quieter this time, then growing louder as the excitement increased. The voices of the Green Men were a chorus of roars and grunted urges that lifted the words of Hilary Wing higher even than the flames.

  “Tri-skellion … Tri-skellion … Tri-skellion…”

  “Tonight is the most important night of our lives. Tonight, those that condemn what we do, that see us as little more than a joke, will have cause to thank us, and to regret their ignorant contempt. We have put on bells and danced on their village green. We have smiled and posed for pictures with children and with grinning visitors. We have played our parts very nicely, but tonight we will show those that dare to steal from us that we can fight as fiercely as any animal in these woods when it is threatened.”

  The chanting and the pounding grew louder still, and a small group peeled off from the circle and walked across the clearing to the great uprooted tree on its outskirts.

  The small deer that was lashed to the trunk writhed against its bonds as they approached. Struggled in vain as one of them drew out a knife and went about his work.

  When it was over, the creature was laid on a thick branch decorated with leaves and creeping ivy, and carried across to Hilary Wing as the noise from the Green Men rose to fever pitch.

  Wing bent down to stroke the neck of the slaughtered deer, then raised himself up again and painted his face in streaks of the animal’s bright blood. Once more complete again, the circle roared its approval and, holding his arms aloft, Hilary Wing was forced to scream to make himself heard.

  “Green Men have gathered on this spot for centuries, and tonight we must embrace their spirits and the spirits of the creatures they have chosen to live alongside. We must harness their strength and their passion and their rage. We must take back what is ours by right.”

  On the fire, a huge log erupted into a cascade of sparks, as though the spirits that Hilary Wing believed still moved through the woods were signalling their support.

  “We have danced and smiled enough,” Wing said. “We are the guardians of the Triskellion – the
chalk circle, the village and yes, even the amulet itself. We have a duty to defend ourselves, to defend what we stand for. Now … it is time to fight!”

  And the Green Men cheered as Hilary Wing jumped down from the camper van; flailed their arms like wild animals when he ran across to a huge motorbike and started it up.

  As the engine roared into life, a vast flock of crows exploded from the trees above him and rose into the glowing night sky like a black cloud as if they had been generated by the flames. The birds drifted, cawing as though they were in terrible pain, and following the procession of cars and trucks that trailed after Hilary Wing, out of the woods and towards the village.

  * * *

  In the all but deserted lounge of The Star, Commodore Wing limped behind the bar and reached for the bottle of red wine that Tom Hatcham had opened for Hilary earlier.

  “Don’t, Gerry.” From her wheelchair at the corner table, Celia Root reached a hand out towards him. “Please don’t drink any more…”

  The commodore put the bottle down, moved back towards the table. “You’re right. Drinking isn’t going to help.” He dropped into a chair next to Celia Root and let out a long and desperate sigh. “Nothing is going to help.”

  “What have we done?” she said.

  “You know very well what we did.”

  She shook her head. “No, I mean, why is it so bad? It didn’t feel bad, at the time, did it?”

  The commodore looked across at her and smiled. He had no need to answer that question.

  “Anyway, isn’t it all just a silly superstition?”

  “Not silly…”

  “Like something out of an old horror film?”

  Commodore Wing knew that there was a lot more to it than that. Though he couldn’t be sure exactly what would happen if the Triskellion were made whole again, he knew that it was what the boy Gabriel had come for.

  He knew who Gabriel was.

  And he knew why Celia Root’s grandchildren … his own grandchildren would be the ones to find it.

  It was a story he had heard from his own father, as his father had heard it from his father before him: one that had been passed down through generations of Wings, going as far back as it was possible to go.

  Back to the traveller and his bride. To their twin children. To the bodies whose recent desecration had signalled the beginning of the end.

  “Gerry?”

  He looked up, realized that he had been deep in thought. Buried as deep in the past as those bodies had been. “Sorry, I was miles away.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  He tapped arthritic fingers against the top of his walking stick. “Probably nothing that any of us will see straight away, but things will change. It’s special here, you know it is, we all know it is … and it’s the Triskellion that has given us these … gifts.”

  “So if it goes, the gifts will be taken with it?”

  “I’m afraid so…”

  Celia Root nodded, as though the commodore were confirming her worst fears. She lifted up her face to his. “What about Rachel and Adam?” she asked. “What will Hilary do?”

  “I’ve never known what my son was going to do.”

  “I won’t let any harm come to them.”

  “Of course not…”

  “Then we must do something.”

  The commodore shook his head. He needed that drink more than ever. “I can’t stop it.”

  With a shaking hand, Celia Root reapplied her bright red lipstick. She snapped the compact shut and waved an arm towards the empty bar. “Those people needed your guidance, Gerry, and it wasn’t there. You still owe them something. You still have a duty.”

  For a few seconds there was only the deep “tock” of the old clock above the bar, and the bells and beeps from the fruit machine in the next room. Then Commodore Wing rose slowly from his chair and began to push Celia Root towards the door.

  “Let’s hope we’re not too late,” he said.

  They moved through the door and outside into the chill, began to move towards the commodore’s car.

  “It’s funny,” the old woman said.

  “What?”

  “How a blessing can become a curse.”

  Rachel and Adam spent five minutes looking for the light switches and then gave up. It wasn’t completely dark inside the hall. Pale, blue-white work lights glowed from the sealed-off area in which the archaeological team had been working, pulsing softly from behind the curtains of thick plastic that had been hung in a layered square round the centre of the room.

  The hall was surprisingly high-ceilinged, and even though they were whispering, the children’s voices seemed dangerously magnified as they moved slowly through the eerie half-light.

  “Could this place be any spookier?” Adam asked.

  “I doubt it,” Rachel said. Gabriel’s voice was still there inside her head, telling her not to worry, but it was getting harder by the second.

  “What’s that?” Adam froze, and the urgency of his question made Rachel start.

  “What?”

  “That noise…”

  They stood and listened. Coming from the other side of the room, from the part where they knew the bodies to be, they could hear a faint hissing sound. Rachel thought it sounded like a long, sad sigh.

  Adam had read her thought. “Like a dying breath, more like.”

  Then Rachel remembered the tour that Laura had given them earlier, when she’d taken their DNA samples. “It’s the sprinkler they use to make sure the bodies don’t dry out. They must have it on a timer or something.”

  “I knew that,” Adam said.

  They moved slowly towards the first layer of polythene sheeting. The shadows that had been cast against the thick, creamy plastic by the equipment tables and by the sarcophagus beyond, seemed to shift and shudder as they approached. This time it was Rachel who knew what Adam was thinking. “It’s probably just the spray moving across the lights,” she said. “Or maybe it’s the movement of the plastic sheets, you know? A draught from somewhere…”

  “There is no draught,” Adam said.

  “Well, something’s making me feel cold…”

  They stepped closer and Rachel lifted a hand to push aside the polythene.

  “Are we sure it’s here?” Adam asked. “I didn’t see it before.”

  “It has to be here.”

  “Well, if it is, they’ve probably got it under lock and key. It is gold, you know.”

  Rachel reached into the back pocket of her jeans, produced the chisel and the rusty screwdriver that Jacob had given her before they’d left. “Well, it shouldn’t be a problem. They thought we were thieves before, right? Might as well live up to our reputation.”

  Adam held out a hand. “I’d best take them. I’m stronger.”

  Rachel handed them over, feeling a surge of affection for her brother, still brave – or still pretending to be – after everything that he had been through. “Let’s get this over with,” she said.

  They moved inside the first layer of plastic sheeting. In front of them lay the long table displaying artefacts from the dig. Each one was labelled and had been carefully cleaned.

  “It’s not here,” Adam said.

  “You take a closer look,” Rachel said. “I’ll see if there’s anywhere they might have locked it up.” While Adam stayed at the table, Rachel moved on, skirting carefully round the edge of the raised platform on which the sarcophagus itself was laid. She pushed through another two layers of plastic sheeting until she had emerged at the far side of the hall. It was even darker here, but she could see that she was wasting her time. There was a low stage and an old piano. There were a few dusty bookshelves, some cupboards containing old parish newsletters, a tea set and hot-water urn.

  There was nowhere secure enough to have stored the golden blade.

  “Any luck?” Adam whispered.

  “Not so far. What about you?”

  Adam said something in response, but Rachel didn’t
really take it in. She had pushed aside another translucent curtain and moved back inside the cordoned-off area and was walking slowly towards the platform.

  Towards the sarcophagus.

  Gabriel’s voice was still there inside her head, but fainter now, all but drowned out by a buzzing; by a low hum like the pulse of something electrical. Like a powerful current that flowed through her as she was drawn to the coffin. To the bodies…

  She stepped up on to the platform, inched slowly to the edge of the sarcophagus and looked down.

  It was her first real look at what had been found beneath the chalk circle. The images that she had seen on the TV screens could not do justice to it.

  It was the heads that drew her. The faces…

  At first she could not be sure if the faces – the bones exposed beneath tattered, leathery remnants of flesh – were preserved as masks of happiness or horror. A cap of some sort, almost fused to the male head and indistinguishable from the flesh itself gave the head a pointed appearance. Expressionless eyes stared hollow, their eyeballs long gone, but their lids dried into almond shapes, making the male figure look almost oriental. On the female, a thin row of dark lashes still framed the empty sockets, softening them, as did the remaining hank of chestnut hair that was twisted round her face. Desiccated lips had drawn back to nothing: thin-lipped holes exposing rows of browned teeth, which made the mouths look like those of chattering monkeys.

  Were those grimaces or grins?

  Seeing their arms still locked in an eternal embrace, Rachel had just decided that the expressions were closer to contentment than terror when her eyes dropped down to the torsos, and she quickly changed her mind.

  She covered her mouth to stifle a scream, then called for Adam.

  He came running, bursting through the plastic curtains and leaping up on to the platform beside her. “What? Jeez, you scared the life out of me…”

  Rachel just pointed.

  Adam leant forward and peered into the coffin, the milky half-light casting a pale glow across the bodies.

  “What Laura said about them not being complete. She wasn’t kidding…” Rachel could still hear Gabriel’s voice, but now it was fractured and faint. It sounded as though he was crying.