Ancient Echoes

by Robert Holdstock

  ‘It’s the song. The words of the song.’

  ‘You don’t say …’

  – he obeyed (they were laughing at him) then inched the music up by degrees. The tape played endlessly – he’d only brought the one – his only comfort as the moors approached.

  By the end of the journey, he felt seriously like falling headfirst into Grimpen Mire – the muddy bog of Sherlock Holmes fame – to be dragged down until the black dogs swam for him, to be eaten in celebration on the rocks, the Antichrist, a victim of the old earth and its old powers.

  His imagination shifted into overdrive.

  What a story he would tell when the new term started!

  But instead, he walked and complained, and almost sobbed with relief when he was left in the hotel’s television lounge for most of the evening while his parents tucked into the a la carte menu, and shared hiking stories with an older couple who were walking the whole way from one end of the country to the other. (They hadn’t got very far then, Jack thought, until he realized they were almost at the end of the journey, eleven hundred miles down, sixty to go.)

  Angela called during the evening, but all she wanted to talk about was whether or not he’d had an encounter with the bull-runners, and to enthuse to him about something she’d read in her research.

  ‘Primal, primitive words and images might sometimes slip into a sort of sump, like a pit. They’re discarded, not needed by the main memory systems in the brain. But they form archaeo-stories which occasionally become sufficiently complex to filter back to the conscious level.’

  ‘Archaeo-stories.’

  ‘Yes. I read about them in a French Canadian journal of psychology. They’re events or images, or whole stories that have sort of created themselves out of our own reading, our own imagination – our experiences. They surface because they become energized from–’

  ‘You’ve been reading French Canadian journals of psychology?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I have. I’ve begun to understand what’s happening to you, Jack. Do you want to hear about this?’

  ‘What language are they written in?’

  ‘The journals? French, of course.’

  ‘I’m stuck here, up to my neck in mud, bog and black dogs, missing you, thinking of you all the time, and you’re reading French.’

  There was a moment of stunned silence. ‘The work is fascinating. Jack, I think Jandrok’s archaeo-story might explain–’

  ‘I want to be in bed with you,’ he whispered. ‘I want to be making love.’

  ‘Jack! Keep a grip! My parents often listen in.’

  ‘Are they listening in now?’

  ‘I haven’t heard the bips on the line. I don’t think so.’

  ‘Do you miss me?’

  ‘Of course. Of course I miss you. Jack, you’re only away for four days. I’ll see you next week.’

  ‘How’re the cousins?’

  ‘Big, loud, rude … very self-centred! But rather nice.’

  ‘Have they tried to seduce you?’

  He heard her gasp of irritation, could imagine her annoyance. ‘What do you mean try? Didn’t have to try, Jack. It’s three in a bed every night. You’re pathetic. Grow up!’

  The line went dead on her angry voice. Jack mimicked her fury into the mouthpiece then slammed the receiver down.

  Why did I do that?

  After a fitful night’s sleep, he got up and showered at six in the morning, dressed in walking clothes and stared out at the sweeping rain, the waving trees, the tumbling, tormented clouds rolling in from the Atlantic.

  ‘Great day for a walk!’ he sneered at the world outside. Then thought, so let’s go walking!

  When his parents came down to breakfast, he had already finished eating and was standing, fully clothed and ready for the elements, grim-faced and twitchy.

  ‘Hurry up,’ he said, to the amusement of other guests in the breakfast room. ‘Let’s not waste a moment of the day. Let’s get walking.’

  His father smiled at him half-heartedly. ‘It’s too wet for the moors. They’ll be too dangerous. We thought we’d take a coast drive, look at some castles.’

  ‘Not to cast any aspersion on the joys of a coastal ride, I’m for the moors. The black dogs are waiting for us. I feel a family like ours can take them on and triumph.’

  His father stared at him, frowning. ‘Shut up, Jack. It’s too risky to walk in weather like this. The mud softens up …’

  ‘Then I’ll see you later.’

  ‘Where the hell are you going?’

  By the time his father had gathered his wits and come out of the small hotel into the rain, Jack was standing in the bushes, concealed and grim. When the man on the steps disappeared inside again, he ran quickly through the grounds, across the main road, and began to pick his way across the fields to the rise of land that marked the bleak moors.

  In two hours, he was high above the town and could look back at the grey stones and slates of the hotel itself, nestling among black winter trees in the curve of the river. The rain had eased, but was still strong; importantly, the wind had dropped and the wind-chill was no longer as discomforting and dangerous as it had been earlier.

  There were a few other people striding up the slopes, some of them with dogs which ran in a bedraggled, miserable way rather than leaping and barking for exercise. Jack followed them, pacing along the muddy path, stopping only when he saw a distant shape, a solitary figure moving along the ridge, dark against the grim sky, ascending a path towards the main Tor.

  Something about the stride …

  He pressed on. Sheep moved away from him, almost silent in the downpour. A vixen moved around them, a huge creature, rust-red and lithe as she trotted cautiously downwind of the flock, looking for anything lame or small. After a while she vanished into the mist and the sheep relaxed.

  He was suddenly alone on the moors, no sign of life, animal or human, just the dull if verdant bog grass, the grey, mist-shrouded rocks of the tors, the swirl and drum of rain. He struck out for Wolf Tor, the highest point, and after crossing a ruined stone wall, an old boundary marker, he found a crude path that wound towards the summit.

  Between one glance at the Tor and the next, the tall man had appeared there, watching him, rain pouring from his leather hat, glistening on the long raincoat.

  This was Jack’s second encounter with Garth before the Spring, and he sensed at once that something was wrong. He trudged along the path, wiping the water from his eyes, aware that the man was standing in the lee of the craggy rocks, smoking and staring back.

  Face to face, Garth looked pale and haunted, his gaze watery, unfocused, cast more to the wide and bleak land below this summit than to the breathless boy in his anorak, jeans and muddy boots.

  ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

  Garth ground the cigarette against the massive grey monolith beside him. ‘Angela told me. I paid a visit to her father two days ago. I thought it might be an idea to see you. Especially out here.’

  ‘On the moors?’

  With a cryptic smile, Garth said, ‘Wide, wild open spaces – easier to dowse. Easier to hear. If there’s anything below the earth, moorland like this reveals it quickly.’

  ‘I saw you in Exburgh – before Christmas. You ran away …’

  ‘I had things on my mind. I couldn’t talk to you just then. But I’ve been keeping an eye on you, Jack.’

  Jack stared at the man, cold in the rain, tugging his weatherproof tighter around his neck to stop the icy trickle of water down his neck.

  Garth asked, ‘Dream of Greenface lately?’

  ‘A little. It comes and goes; it always has. There’s a strong feeling of a bull in the tunnel, below the shoe shop. I got scared again.’

  ‘You went back?’

  ‘I went back. There’s a real life in that place. Just like you said. The hidden city is alive.’

  Garth stood for a few moments in silence, hands in pockets, watching the boy. Then he said, ‘You might be in trouble,
Jack. I can’t be sure; but I thought I ought to warn you. To take care.’

  ‘In trouble?’ Jack shivered at the words.

  ‘They won’t let you alone. The bull-runners. You’re their channel to freedom. They’re coming closer. Can you feel that?’

  ‘Not for a while, now. I hear them, but they’re not close. Can you? Do you see them too?’

  Garth shook his head. He lit another cigarette, huddled against the rain, his face momentarily wreathed in coils of an almost blue smoke.

  ‘Glanum is alive. You’re right. But not the ruins below Exburgh. That’s just an echo in stone. It’s important to make the distinction, Jack. What’s alive is in you and in me. We’re part of the same haunting, but it’s coming at us in different ways. The bull-runners have you in their sights; I have Glanum in mine.’

  ‘What do the bull-runners mean to the city?’

  ‘To the city? I don’t know. To the heart of the city? They belong together. Jack, I’ve been hunting Glanum for longer than you’d believe. Since before the Sixties!’ he added with a grin. ‘I’ve been hunting it so long I’ve forgotten when it started. I’ve even forgotten how it started … except that …’

  He had drifted for a moment, eyes narrowed, thinking hard, remembering. Then he shook his head.

  ‘When you surfaced, Jack … when I found you – with your link with the bull-runners, I knew I was close to the end of the search. But I forgot the danger – to you, I mean. And since I can’t tell exactly what’s going to happen to me from one Godforsaken moment to the next, I thought I should find you. To tell you – warn you – that you might be in a lot of trouble.

  ‘But wherever I am, I promise you one thing–’

  He squeezed the life from the cigarette and flicked it into the rain, then tightened his coat and tugged his wide-brimmed hat lower across his face as he smiled at the boy.

  ‘– I’ll keep an eye on you!’

  And he turned and strode down the hill, a blurring figure in the misting rain walking deeper into the moors, heading towards the quaking ground, the low tors and fifteen miles of dangerous desolation. Jack wanted to call after him, but no words came. He watched silently until the city dowser was obscured by rain and distance, then turned back to the hotel.

  Garth was on his mind all the time, now; in dreams, at school, even when with Angela in the privacy of his house, his parents at work. When he articulated the ‘presence’ of the strange man, it was always in words that suggested a final reckoning was coming close.

  ‘Something’s going to happen …’

  ‘But with Garth, not the bull-runners.’

  He hadn’t experienced any dramatic closeness of the bull-runners for a long time, now, and yet, especially when he was out on the hills, he could hear the woman’s breathing, her torn, ragged breath; his limbs sometimes ached with running when he had been standing still. There were shadows that alarmed him, of beasts rising from the marshes, or emerging from the swollen, roaring river down which he sensed he was swimming.

  But they were not close. Only Garth was close. He was abroad in Exburgh, hugging the shadows of the old city, walking at dusk across the neon-lit streets, smoking, always smoking, glancing round, following the signs of the hidden town, kneeling at the ghosts of the shrines.

  ‘He’s keeping an eye on me.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Angela turned in bed, her fingers walking across Jack’s chest, marking out each rib until he squirmed. She was pungent with a perfume called Opium, and with sweat, her long hair tousled, damp and matted across her forehead.

  ‘I just feel it. He’s here … he’s close.’

  ‘Why hide?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If I hadn’t met him, I’d think he was another of your archaeo-stories.’

  She had meant the reference to be a moment of humour, but Jack repeated the word in exasperation and Angela turned irritably away, propping her head on her hand, picking up the book by Jack’s bedside and snorting with derision as she saw that it was a ‘Help to Pass Advanced History’ book, a time-saver for slow students.

  Jack was hopeless at history. He should never have agreed to take the subject in his final year.

  Angela’s paper had been rejected by Nature, and then by two psychology journals, and then by New Scientist, Science, and finally by the local paper. Most disappointing of all, when she had sent a copy of her essay to the Canadian scientist whose work had so inspired her, Jandrok had sent back a kind but short note through his secretary to the effect he was fascinated by her theories but regretted he had no time to deal with individual correspondence on the nature of his ideas.

  She had taped all the letters of rejection to the inside of her school locker and could occasionally be found staring at them, and willing harm and despondency upon the authors.

  The paper had impressed her teacher, however, and under his tutelage she was preparing for a University course in Psychology, attending an evening class and reading more widely in the subject. The school curriculum was insufficient to address the level of her understanding, and she was clearly being marked out for a top college of further education, probably at Cambridge.

  The unexpected sound of a car pulling into the drive interrupted both tension and passion in the mad scramble for clothes. By the time Jack’s mother had opened the front door, both pupils were staring at open books on the dining table, their overt dishevelment put down to natural, youthful scruffiness.

  9

  He was laughing, chin up, and shaking his head …

  Greenface was exploding in his face, sunlight making her glorious as she leapt from the stained glass of the church window …

  Garth followed, reaching down to him, shaking him …

  ‘Quiet! Jack, be quiet! Sssh!’

  Jack came out of the dream and sat up. The bedroom window was open, the air in the room crisp and fresh. Garth settled back on his haunches, a crouched shape by the bed, his body rank with sweat, his breath heavy with the smell of tobacco.

  ‘Who’s Jocelyn?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Jocelyn?’

  ‘You were moaning the name Jocelyn when I came in through the window. So who is she? Your new girlfriend?’

  Jocelyn?

  Jack’s head cleared suddenly. ‘Jocelin! He’s a priest. In the book I’m studying. The Spire.’

  ‘Never heard of it. Who wrote it?’

  ‘William Golding.’

  ‘Him I’ve heard of.’

  Jack was still disorientated. What was Garth doing in his room at – he checked his bedside clock – four twenty five in the morning.

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to fetch you. I’m expecting to leave today. It’s taken longer than I thought. I need some help.’

  ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘I’m leaving. What’s it about? The Spire.’

  ‘A priest.’

  ‘Jocelin. We already got that far. But what about him? Why does he make you dream?’

  ‘He wants to build a spire on his Cathedral. But it’s going to be too high, too heavy. The foundations won’t hold it. But it’s his dream and he won’t listen to common sense.’

  Garth seemed taken with the idea, looking away, thinking hard before he said quietly. ‘Like the Tower of Babel, then. Building for personal glory rather than the glory of God.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure …’

  ‘The Spire isn’t ready to be built. The human mind that wants to build it is too far ahead. Dreaming. But the building won’t accept it. The earth won’t accept it. Am I right?’

  Jack didn’t know. He’d prepared several set-answers to do with the book, and with William Golding in general. But mediaeval priests and the construction of churches in the Middle Ages held as much interest for him as … well, mediaeval priests and the construction of churches in the Middle Ages! If the Antichrist had featured, Beelzebub, Satanism, maybe some exorcism, even a minor demon or two, the story might have take
n on a different dimension.

  ‘It’s a bit dry. It’s about more than the story itself. Subtext, metaphor, all that stuff.’

  ‘I know. I know,’ Garth said wearily. ‘All that stuff.’

  ‘Lots of vertigo, though. That’s cool.’

  ‘But a dry book. Like stone? Like earth?’

  ‘Yeah. I suppose so.’

  Garth smiled. ‘Or maybe you just don’t get it. Yet.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And the earth itself may have some surprises for you. Get up, Jack. Get dressed.’

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I told you. I’m expecting to leave today.’

  ‘Leave for where?’

  ‘Good question.’

  ‘What’s happening to you?’ Jack asked gently, suddenly sad.

  ‘The White Whale,’ Garth said, winking at the boy. ‘Come on. Get dressed. And make a substantial packed lunch. We have some walking to do. Vertical walking,’ he added with a leathery grin. ‘As opposed to horizontal.’

  Jack left a note on the breakfast table, pretending that he had left early for a swim before school, a less frequent occurrence now than a few years ago, but a suitable enough explanation for his absence.

  Garth had hired a car, a sleek, peacock-green Renault whose back seats were now pushed down to make sufficient space for two heavy coils of rope, each with a gleaming grappling hook at its end.

  ‘You can drive, can’t you?’

  ‘No. Not officially.’

  Garth spun the wheel too hard for its power-assisted steering and the car skidded and screamed on the road as it sped away towards the hills. ‘Well, that’s too bad. You’ll just have to take a chance. It’s easy enough to handle.’

  As he spoke, he crashed the gears, which complained with ear-splitting stridency. He frowned as he stared down at the gear lever. ‘I’m used to automatics; this was all I could get at short notice. Where’s the overdrive?’

  ‘You’re about to hit the kerb!’

  ‘Shit!’

  By the time they parked, in the thin woodland that ran along the bottom of the Mallon Hills, the day had developed into strong sunshine and warm breezes and Jack felt he had aged ten years, the result of the dowser’s appalling driving. From the car park they could see the traffic heading to Exburgh for the start of the working day. But away from all that, the hills rose in silent, solitary splendour, cloud-shadowed and brilliant with dew. Everything here was fresh, unspoiled, the new season bringing a scintillating green to the land.