The Queen of Sinister

by Mark Chadbourn

  The shadows stretched out as the day drew to a close and soon Crowther was ready to begin his preparations. He took them to the centre of the circle where they could watch the sky for the exact moment of sunset. None of them were prepared to back out, despite Crowther's ominous information; even Mahalia was insistent.

  'So you really know what you're doing?' Matt asked in a tone that suggested he didn't think the professor knew at all. Crowther ignored him, but Matt persisted. 'People always said these stone circles had something mysterious about them,' he continued. 'Everybody thought it was just superstition.'

  This time Crowther couldn't resist. 'There you have it. The clues have been before us for centuries, but in our arrogant belief that earlier people were ignorant, uneducated, superstitious barbarians, we ignored the truth that was hidden away in the old stories. Things that seem inherently stupid on the surface are metaphor and symbol. The stones coming to life, moving around, that means...'

  'I'm not so sure that's a metaphor,' Caitlin whispered.

  Everyone followed her gaze to the stones, which now appeared to have a thin blue light limning their edges in the setting sun. The stones themselves had taken on a ghostly quality, which could well have been a trick of light and shadow, but made it seem as if they were in one place, then another, then back again.

  'The stones are dancing,' Caitlin said with Amy's voice.

  'What's going on?' Matt asked.

  'Reality warp,' Crowther said in a hushed voice. 'This is where we got the legend that the stones here could never be counted correctly ... different answers on different days. Reality here is thin, warping with the stresses of the energies concentrated in this spot.'

  'What kind of energy?' Matt asked. 'Radiation?'

  'Earth energy, spirit energy - it's called the Blue Fire, and it's in everything. If I could see it, it would be so much easier to find the patterns that would help us to open the door,' Crowther complained.

  'People can see it?' Matt said.

  'Some. Those who've learned, or who have special abilities. You need to manipulate the Blue Fire to break through to the other side, but most normal people don't have the perception to do that.' He delved into the depths of his knapsack and pulled out a small plastic bag of some dark substance.

  'What's that?' Mahalia asked suspiciously.

  'Amanita muscaria. The fly agaric mushroom. These are from Mexico. You wouldn't believe the trouble I had tracking them down.'

  'Magic mushrooms?' Matt said.

  'I'm not eating those,' Caitlin/Amy whimpered. 'It's poison!'

  'There are dangers involved in everything,' Crowther said curtly. 'Ancient Siberian shamen used these mushrooms to induce out-of-body experiences and mystical and prophetic visions. There was a cult of the sacred mushroom in Mexico. The pre-Columbian Indians, circa 1500 bc, called it God's Flesh. Academics have even stated that Amanita muscaria was a significant part of the founding of Christianity alongside Jesus Christ himself. All our religions ... civilisation itself... would not have come about if not for this tiny fungus.'

  'I knew a girl in Southampton who freaked out on them,' Mahalia said.

  'They're not meant for everyone.' Crowther opened the bag and poured the shrivelled mushrooms into his palm. 'It's special because it activates the "God zone" in our brain and allows us to contact the divine, the place where higher forces live, the home of dreams, visions and imagination ... the Otherworld. We're going to open the doors of perception.'

  Mahalia shook her head. 'I don't like drugs. They stop you keeping an eye on the world. They're a luxury for the weak and the lazy.'

  'We're not talking about hedonism, little girl,' Crowther said witheringly. 'We're talking about the only possible way we have of getting from here to there. Well, for you and me at least - she'll be fine.' He nodded to Caitlin, who shied away in a little-girl manner. Crowther leaned towards her. 'I'm not going to make you take them,' he said loudly and insensitively. He turned over the fungi thoughtfully. 'One codicil: Aldous Huxley said, "once the doors of perception are unlocked, the path to hell is as open as the path to heaven.'"

  'Oh, give it here if it'll shut you up.' Mahalia grabbed some of the mushrooms and stuffed them into her mouth. Carlton watched her chew and swallow, then followed suit. Matt was next, a little reluctantly, and then Crowther took his portion.

  'What now?' Matt asked.

  'Now?' Crowther grabbed Caitlin and made her stand in the focal point of the circle. 'You wait there,' he said to her, 'and do what I say the second I say it.' To Matt, he said, 'Meanwhile, we wait for the hallucinogen to take effect ... and we hope.'

  A sense of awe had descended on the entire stone circle, pregnant with possibility. No birds sang; the trees barely stirred in the breeze. The sun slipped to the horizon, bringing gold to the face of the stones, ploughing long shadows into the heart of the ring.

  'A fairy circle,' Mahalia said in a whisper, the first stages of the trip evident in her voice.

  'Exactly,' Crowther said. 'Metaphors and symbols, all hiding a deeper truth.' They listened to the silence for a few moments and then the professor added, 'We are Psychonauts, embarking on a journey beyond reality. Few have been this way before us.'

  'Let's hope we come back,' Matt said.

  'Look.' Caitlin/Amy pointed past the shimmering ethereal stones to a hazy area in the field beyond. Ghostly but unthreatening figures appeared and then faded, walking through their echo-lives oblivious to Crowther and the others.

  'The dream zone,' Crowther said. 'Reality is thinning.'

  Caitlin glimpsed people in ancient dress, images she distantly recalled from storybooks, some dressed in clothing styles she didn't recognise, others that looked barely human. And briefly she saw five people staring back at her - a man with dark hair, another whose torso was covered with tattoos, a thin Asian man, a woman with brown hair and another with dyed-blonde hair. They appeared to be trying to communicate with her, but they were gone before Caitlin appreciated their presence. Caitlin looked round; Mahalia had seen them too.

  'Magic,' Matt said dreamily. 'Everywhere.'

  'In the local stories, this place was supposed to be the favourite haunt of Oxfordshire fairies and Warwickshire witches,' Crowther said. 'The last Oxfordshire fairies were seen disappearing down a hole under these stones in the eighteenth century. It was reported, written down - an eyewitness account. Amazing.'

  The air had grown unseasonably warm, and a hazy, cosseting feeling enveloped them all; they felt at peace yet excited about what lay ahead. Distant music floated in and out of their hearing, merging with the sound of the wind.

  But just as they began to enjoy the warm, joyful atmosphere, Carlton began to whimper. Caitlin didn't have to ask what was wrong: she could feel exactly what Carlton was sensing: a dull psychic warning of impending danger. If they hadn't been in that spot, tripping, they would never have perceived it, but now it was like an alarm bell tolling.

  'What's going on?' Matt asked fearfully.

  'Don't get worked up,' Crowther cautioned. 'The drug will magnify your emotions. You'll panic.'

  'Don't get worked up?' Amy was gone, and now the neurotic, frightened presence of Briony dominated. 'You know what's coming.'

  'What is it?' Matt said, urgently.

  'Things have been tracking us,' Caitlin said. 'Tracking me. They won't give up.'

  'Stay calm.' Crowther laid a heavy hand on Caitlin/ Briony's shoulder.

  'What things?' Matt searched the area. The sun was now just a thin line of red at the horizon, and the shadows surged everywhere amongst the trees.

  'The Whisperers.' Caitlin/Briony hugged her arms around herself.

  'Can you feel that?' Matt stood up, ready to roam to the edge of the circle to search the growing dark until Crowther grabbed his jacket and pulled him back down.

  And then they all could feel it: a wave of black despair washing across the land, rising inexorably up to the higher ground where the stones looked out. The Whisperers were com
ing.

  'What are they?' Caitlin/Briony asked desperately. 'How can they make us feel this way?'

  Mahalia grabbed Crowther's arm and said ferociously, 'How much longer before this thing works?'

  'I don't know. I don't know if it will work.'

  Mahalia whirled around. 'We're too exposed here. We need to find shelter ... somewhere we can defend.'

  'They shouldn't be able to step into the circle,' Crowther said. 'The Blue Fire will keep them out.'

  'But if we don't cross over, they can just wait outside the stones until we starve,' Mahalia said.

  A thin purple light was visible far away down the valley, but drawing quickly closer.

  'Come on!' Caitlin screamed. It felt as if all her occupants were struggling to gain control.

  The remaining sun was just the slightest sliver, as if the sky was cut and bleeding. Yet oddly the blue glow edging the stones was growing brighter, running in veins and capillaries down the very rock as if infusing them with life. The air became charged with magic.

  A ragged breathing rose above the stillness. Mahalia drew one of the knives from her harness and turned in the direction of the sound. Purple mist drifted languorously through the trees and soon after a figure came stumbling through it. But this was not one of the Whisperers. It had the shape of a man, though the purple light was leaking out of him as if he were a fractured steam pipe.

  Carlton whimpered; Mahalia crouched low to the ground, ready to fend off any attack.

  The figure reached the edge of the stones and they recognised him as the hermit who had tried to drive them away from the Motor Museum. But he was no longer as he had been.

  'My God! What have they done to him?' Crowther breathed, transfixed.

  The man could barely be called that any more. Bones protruded through his skin as if it had been broken and the frame had torn through, but without blood; instead there was that purple light. His skull shimmered in a spot where there should have been hair and scalp; an eye stared out of a harsh orbit. He somehow managed to lurch forwards even though a thigh bone was cracked and exposed. The numerous ridges and furrows of exposed bone made him resemble some kind of walking dinosaur.

  And as he moved, he moaned, a thin whine of pain and despair that provided a backdrop to words that could not have been his. 'There is no hope,' he said with an unsettling, otherworldly sibilance. 'It ends here. You end here.' Rusted sword-blades emerged from both of his hands where they had been embedded in the bone.

  Behind him came the dark, lumbering shapes of the Whisperers on their mounts, black against the shadows but their eyes lit with purple. The colour itself had begun to make Caitlin feel queasy. They were approaching the circle on every side, drawing in their ring of terror.

  And if they couldn't enter the circle, their herald had no such qualms. He crashed across the barrier, swinging those sword-blades wildly. Mahalia ducked at the last moment, narrowly escaping the loss of her head. Carlton scampered on all fours to the other side of the circle where he was feverishly aware of the Whisperers just a stone's throw away.

  The man turned on Crowther, his crazed attacks unpredictable.

  'LET ME OUT!' The terrible voice roared at the back of Caitlin's head: the Fifth, the one the others all feared. 'LET ME OUT! LET ME BRING MY FURY TO BEAR!'

  'No!' Caitlin told herself. 'Never, never, never.'

  Matt threw himself forwards, knocking Crowther out of the path of the killing blow. The sword drove into the soft earth.

  'Life winds down to decay, then death,' the herald continued. 'All things are ending, always.'

  The drug was slowly working its magic in all of them, spinning up the spiral dance of the trip. The visual hallucinations were taking over from the auditory and emotional twists. The world within the circle was like a dream of bursting flowers and life, while the darkness howled at the stones from without.

  'Now!' Crowther yelled at Caitlin. 'Slam your hand on the ground! There! There!' Frantically he pointed to a spot near her feet.

  Caitlin did as she was told and instantly lines of Blue Fire ran from each stone towards a focal point in the centre of the ring. The coruscating energy crackled, rising up like liquid, then forming odd geometric shapes. A massive structure of shimmering sapphire was forming over them.

  The herald turned on Caitlin. He pointed one of the swords towards her throat, then drove it forward. She was rooted.

  Matt knocked the blade away at the point when Caitlin closed her eyes in acceptance that it was all over. The rusted metal tore through the flesh of Matt's forearm, but still he turned and smashed a fist into the herald's jaw. The attacker stumbled, off-balance. Before he could right himself, Mahalia appeared between his legs, thrusting a screwdriver up into his groin. Like a rat, she darted underneath him and came up, bringing a knife in a sideways motion across the herald's throat. Purple light was everywhere, mingling with the blue luminescence until they were all lost in colour.

  As the herald went to his knees, Crowther yelled with a raw throat, 'Get to the centre! Where the light is strongest!'

  They all scrambled to the place where music swirled all around like a tornado and a rush of excitement came up through the ground and into their heads. Crowther made some strange gesture with his hands, whispered a word they couldn't comprehend, and then there was a sound like thunder and the world rippled and fell away.

  chapter five In the footsteps of Infinity

  'There are fairies at the bottom of our garden.' Rose Fyleman

  The new world came up at them in a flash of white and they hit it hard, crashing to their knees and sucking in a huge gulp of air as if they had fallen from a high place. A fleeting memory of somewhere wonderful and blue slipped from their thoughts the moment they tried to catch it. Yet the sensations came too thick and fast for reflection on the transition. Snow lay thickly all around and a blizzard roared with such force they had to hunch against it like old men, yelling so their disbelief and amazement could be heard. Within seconds they were shaking with the bitter cold.

  Despite their situation, Caitlin's eyes sparkled with wonder. 'I can't believe it! We're ... we're ...'

  'In Fairyland,' Crowther said wryly. Good humour transformed his face. 'For those who have studied the Kabbalah, this is Yesod, land of dreams, first staging post for the dead. We all go here in our sleep sometimes.' He looked around, scarcely believing it himself.

  'This is ... just ... amazing.' Even though he was buffeted by the blizzard, Matt stretched out his arms so he could fill his lungs. 'The crossing was so ... wild.' He struggled to find words to describe the experience. 'I felt like I was filled with energy ... like my thoughts were electric ... like they were spinning around the universe. And here, it's ... magic.'

  They all knew what he meant. The very essence of reality was heightened, as if they had walked through the screen into a movie. Colours were brighter, textures more evocative, aromas unbelievably heady, sounds so vibrant they had to stop and listen in amazement to the music the wind made. Suddenly there was no such thing as mundanity and boredom. Magic burned in even the smallest thing and anything was possible. The sheer wonder of it made their heads spin.

  'It's like a drug,' Caitlin said. 'You could lose yourself in it.' She thought for a moment and then added, 'Who'd want to go back after experiencing something like this?'

  'Who indeed?' Crowther said.

  The cold was too much for them to wallow in the experience. 'We have to find shelter before we freeze to death,' Matt yelled. He took in their position in a second. At their backs were the loftiest mountains any of them had ever seen, the peaks snow-capped and filled with the dreams of childhood, solid against a sky of threatening slate-grey cloud. Protecting his eyes from the stinging snow, he motioned down the slope.

  The snow was knee-deep and it was hard going as they trudged downwards, but at least the gale was at their backs. Soon Matt spotted a gully filled with boulders as large and misshapen as mythological beasts. He led them directly into
it, relishing the protection it gave them from the wind and the worst of the snow.

  Once in the shelter, they relaxed a little, but after the initial exhilaration, worries surfaced. Mahalia checked back up the slopes, the haunting images of the Whisperers still echoing through her mind. 'Can they follow us?' she asked.

  'I don't know,' Crowther replied, 'but I have no intention of waiting around to find out.'

  Caitlin was still dazed by the crossing. More than for the rest of them, the lure of the blue world they had passed through so quickly remained strong. 'What did they do to that poor man?' she said. 'It was as if they'd tried to turn him into one of them.'

  'He looked like some kind of zombie,' Mahalia said.

  'Maybe that's what they do - take people over.' Matt was checking his arm.

  'What is it?' Crowther asked.

  'The hermit guy wounded me. Pretty badly.' Matt held up his arm to show them. 'But it's healed.'

  'A quality of the Blue Fire,' Crowther said. 'It has strong healing properties—'

  'That blue, blue world ...' Caitlin said dreamily.

  Carlton started suddenly, his eyes wide.

  'What is it, mate?' Mahalia hurried to his side and followed his gaze, but there was only the thick snow running along the edge of the gully and the grey sky beyond. The boy shook his head, unsure.

  'He's probably disorientated,' Crowther said. 'Understandable. We've done something remarkable here - travelled between worlds to a place that has influenced our dreams for millennia—'

  'Oh, stop being so pompous,' Mahalia said. 'Carlton's probably dealing with it better than you. Don't forget—'

  'I know,' Crowther said, adding in a childishly mocking voice, 'he's special.'

  Mahalia shook her head in disgust at the professor's immature manner before leading Carlton gently away. 'Don't worry, mate,' she said gently, 'we'll keep a good lookout.'

  They continued to pick their way along the gully, their teeth chattering. The gully ridge and the boulders obscured any view of their exact location, although it was clear they were on the lower slopes of the monolithic range.