by Peter Ness
Leaning against a metal pole at the corner of the haystack now, I peered back up at them. Joe leant over the edge, poking her tongue at me. As a haystack it was ordinary, some four meters high and wide, and at least six meters long. The bales of hay were around a meter long by half a meter wide, but less deep. A few loose bales lay on the ground nearby. If you fell from that height you may get badly injured. Even landing on a bale of hay may be a painful experience.
I finished lining my pockets with stones and clambered to the top of the haystack, climbing up the swaying ladder, checking every so often to make sure that no more water bombs were coming down over the side.
‘What’d you find? Come on Heni, show me,’ demanded Jo. I passed it across. Shrugging her shoulders, hands in the air, she handed it back. ‘Hah! It is just a coin with a hole in the middle,’ she said, in a rather disappointed voice.
‘What is it? Show me,’ Brian asked. I handed it to him and he handed it back with a ‘boring!’
‘I don’t know what it is, but it’s rather cool—,’ I said juggling with it. Pulling an old broken and frayed shoelace out of my pocket, and feeding the shoelace through the hole in the middle of the coin-like object, I made it into a pendant. Tying a knot in the end of the shoelace, I drew it tight to ensure that the knot did not come loose. Pleased as punch now, I slid the pendant over my neck. Fondling it, I beamed proudly.
‘Here’s — Blackie! Got any water bombs left Brian?’ I asked. Brian passed one over. It went flying through the air, hitting and splattering a tin can a few meters away from the dog. ‘Oh! Darn! I missed. He didn’t even get wet.’ The dog turned and scowled at me: if dogs could talk.
‘Heni. You couldn’t hit a barn door if you were leaning on it!’ complained Brian. I passed him a handful of stones, which he duly placed in his pockets. Boys always have a few in their pockets. He lined up a fence post, this time with a rock. It bounced beside Blackie’s back legs.
‘Hah! You missed too. Sucker!’ Jo laughed. Blackie yelped, skulking off with his tail between his legs. He hated us just now.
‘Assholes,’ Blackie coughed back at us. ‘All humans are skunks.’
‘I wasn’t aiming at the dog dummy,’ Brian replied. A second rock crashed into the tin can sending it flying, hurtling through the air. ‘See. Got it! That time.’
‘Hey! You little monsters get down! And stop throwing stones at Blackie, this instance!’ Mother hollered at us, fist in the air. She had eyes in the back of her head — a pair of them. Turning away now she began taking washing off the clothes line.
I raised my hand to wave at her then suddenly slipped to one side, losing my footing. Frantically, eyes widening, I clutched at the loose hay sliding through my small fingers. Brian and Jo dived across desperately trying to grab me, but my hand slipped past Brian’s outstretched fingers. I slid over the side, falling the whole four meters, hurtling rapidly towards the ground. I smashed into the ground hard with a dull thud!
‘Heni—? Are you okay?’ Jo stood above me now, peering down, poking at me with her foot. A pool of blood was forming, oozing onto the ground near my head. They both gazed down now.
‘Crikey. I think he’s dead?’ Brian said, looking at his reflection in the dark pool. He dipped his foot in it, ripples formed. I rolled over groggily squinting back up.
‘I don’t think so,’ Jo responded haughtily as she nudged me gently with the toe of her shoe. I jerked my bruised arm away in response to her foot touching it.
‘What happened?’ I asked, groggily, rubbing my forehead. I looked at the blood dribbling off my fingers. A sharp piece of hay stalk had sliced an incision in my forehead.
The small pendant around my neck, which we had all dismissed as just a coin, was now flashing a pale blue strobe of light.
‘Stone the crows, he’s alive!’ Brian said in a surprised voice, staring intently at me. ‘You fell and hit your head,’ he stated emphatically. Of that, he felt certain.
‘I don’t think so! He just floated to the ground,’ Jo said. ‘Like this—. I saw it.’ She gave a demonstration of a feather dropping with her hand.
‘Heni fell and hit his head. I heard the thud and I saw the blood ooze out on the ground with white goo,’ Brian corrected her, ‘Yuk!’
‘Well, Brian. I saw what I saw. Heni didn’t fall. He just floated to the ground,’ Jo said, ‘like a Super Hero.’
‘Oh rubbish! Stop making things up Jo! You just imagined it. Heni smashed his head on that rock. Look at the blood all over the ground. Careful you don’t step in it,’ Brian replied. ‘He has a nasty cut on his—. By crikey—, look at the size of that horrid gash on his forehead.’ He used his fingers to estimate the size for Jo.
‘Okay, smarty pants. Where’s the blood? And—, where’s the cut? Plus, why is that coin thing-a-me-jig around his neck flashing blue?’ Jo replied, snorting indignantly. ‘And look. His body’s not even on the ground.’
Brian pushed me with his foot and I floated sideways.
‘What the heck—?’ he spat out in surprise, jumping backwards. ‘You’re right Jo. He is floating.’ Brian kicked me again, just to make sure, and this time, much harder.
‘Ouch! That hurt!’ I squealed, rolling over. Clambering to my feet, and then rubbing my forehead, I glanced down at my hand. ‘Where’s all the blood?’
‘The ground was covered with an ocean of blood. Your forehead had a deep gash in it too — but now it’s gone. Maybe I’m just seeing things,’ Brian said, rubbing his eyes.
‘Well. I saw it too to start with—, but then it just evaporated, like fog,’ Jo added.
‘Okidoki.[15] Well. I’m okay now. Not even a scratch,’ I replied yawning. ‘In fact, I feel fine.’ We began to lope towards the house.
‘Are you sure? You fell a heck of a long way. You’re lucky to be alive,’ Brian said, a frown developing.
‘How come that thing is still flashing blue?’ Jo said, ‘Ouch! It’s hot.’
‘What the heck is it anyway?’ Brian asked. ‘Ouch! You’re so right Jo. It is hot.’ He withdrew his searing hot hand from the pendant in a flash, flicking it to cool it.
‘It doesn’t feel hot to me,’ I replied, picking it up between my hands and tucking it into my shirt. ‘In fact, I reckon it’s pretty darn cool. Don’t you?’
‘Maybe it’s got magical powers?’ suggested Jo. ‘Why don’t you do it again?’
‘Yes. That’d be fun,’ I thought.
‘Magical powers? Baloney, Heni just got lucky, that’s all,’ Brian replied cynically. The pendant flashed a dull green. Then it churned like a lighthouse beacon. Our mouths dropped open.
‘Huh?’ We all said in unison.
Suddenly time stopped. Then, it began to rewind.
I found myself flying through the air and in an instant we were all sitting back on the top of the haystack.
‘Hey! Crikey! What the heck just happened?’ Brian asked.
‘Yeah, what just happened? I just felt time turn back on itself,’ Jo added, flabbergasted. ‘Heni, watch out! You’re gonna — fall.’ Clutching at thin air I began to slide off the hay stack once more. Jo grabbed desperately for my arm, watching my brown eyes opening ever wider. Brian dived for my arm frantically, but it was to no avail.
‘Gya!’ I crashed hard into the ground with a loud reverberating thud!
The next thing I knew Jo and Brian were standing over me, peering down.
‘Crikey!’ Brian muttered. ‘It happened again!’
‘I wonder if he’s still alive—, this time—?’ Jo asked.
‘Yeah, let’s find out.’ Brian kicked me hard in the ribs. My body swayed back and forth in the breeze, levitating like a hovercraft above just the ground.
‘Oh! Crappers! That hurt like hell,’ I screeched with excruciating pain, rolling over on my back and grabbing at my burning ribs. Then my eyes flickered over my blood-drench hand. ‘Blood!’ I gasped, rolling over and standing up. The pendant flashed blue.
‘Bloody hell! What the
frigging hell just happened?’ Brian asked.
‘Where’s the blood Heni? I see no blood. Hey! That thing is magic. Can I have a go?’ Jo asked excitedly, ignoring Brian’s swearing. ‘I wanna have a go.’
‘No! No way! We don’t even know if it works,’ I replied clutching back the pendant. ‘That was like deja-vu, though, wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah! Maybe we all had a mass hallucination—?’ Brian added.
‘A mass hallucination,’ I replied. ‘Yeah, that explains it. We just imagined it.’ The three of us started wandering back to the house. I glanced across at the large cement slab Dad and Uncle Ashton had laid as the foundations for the games room and patio extension to the house. Half a dozen pallets of bricks and cement were stacked behind the outside toilet. The first bricks had been laid for the games room already.
‘But, but it was cool anyway, hey what?’ Brian suggested, interrupting my thought process.
‘Mass halucino what? Yeah, maybe, that’s what happened,’ Jo added. ‘Yeah, that was just so cool.’
Jo took off now, rushing to the house, getting there first. She dragged open the door for Mother who was still getting the washing off the line. Jo followed her inside and then they both came out again to collect more clothes from off the washing line.
‘Heni fell off the haystack and hit his head,’ Jo told Mother, holding the door open as they walked back outside together. ‘But, he’s okay now. The fall might-a knocked some sense into him though, with some luck.’
‘Come here Hen,’ Mother looked concerned, so she walked over and looked at my forehead. ‘Huh! You don’t have even a single bruise, just a bit of loose dirt in your hair. But, you kids need to be more careful. Someone might get hurt.’ She ruffled my hair with affection. Mother then turned her attention to Brian. ‘Your mother just phoned. You’d better head off home now. It’ll be dark soon. Take Heni’s push bike. You can bring it back tomorrow. Go now. And, make sure you go straight home. Heni! Go tie up the dog. Feed the chooks. Collect the eggs—, and make sure you get it all done and come inside before it gets too dark. And—, be quick. This place gives me the creeps at night.’
‘Me too,’ Brian added, chewing on a gum leaf.
Mother held the screen door open with her knee while opening the inner door to the house. She hurried in now carrying a bundle of sheets in her arms, the door slamming shut behind. Then empty handed, she opened it again yelling for Jo.
‘Hey Jo! Jo! Once you finished getting the rest of the washing off the line can you come inside and help me prepare the table for dinner?’
#
One month before that, India, Junapani, Nagpur-Katol Road: August, 1973
‘Well, Robin,’ Dr. Ravi Shrivastava said waving his hands, ‘this megalithic structure is the last of the Junapani sites we have time to visit today. And, it’s the most promising. If you take a look at this stone you can see a depiction of the constellation known as Ursa Major.’
‘Aye. Ye mean the small cup-sized pits carved into the rock?’ Robin Grady replied, rotating to survey the other large rocks.
‘Yes. We found some pottery and a few iron daggers at this site, but that’s about all so far. And, Nagpur University's Archaeology department excavated around fourteen stone circles at Mahurjhari several years ago. It’s the same story there. But as you can see, the Junapani megalithic structures are all mostly burial sites.’
‘‘Tis like searching for a needle in a haystack,’ Robin sighed. ‘And, many like this contain markings indicating that they are aligned to the stars? How many megalithic structures do ye say there are?’
‘At Junapani? They are extensive. Close to 200 have been catalogued so far,’ Ravi replied. ‘But, as I said, this is one of the more promising from our perspective.’
‘So far?’ Robin scratched his head and leant against the large boulder.
‘Yes, but, you and I are only interested in those that stand out as major Stonehenge and that narrows things somewhat,’ Ravi replied. ‘It seems that, now that we are searching, megalithic structures are turning up everywhere. Kerala and Vidarbha also have a rich heritage of megalithic sites. And then, there are also Stonehenge near Maram Village in Manipur—. Now what?’
‘Well Ravi, I guess you have a solid thirty years of work ahead of you here then,’ Robin replied. ‘Good luck with that. Now, I guess we head back to Hyderabad and make arrangements to fly to the Zorats Karer site in Southern Armenia. We can go via Iran.’
#
39 Years later. Southern Armenia, Karahunj near Sisian. Early August, 2012
A woman and two men bent, peering down at a geophysics map laid out on a fold-up table in front of them. The white tent flap behind them blew back and forth in the stiff breeze.
‘Well, Dr. Hani, I’ve marked the areas on the Zorats Karer map that we dug up back in 1973,’ an aged and wrinkled shell of a man, Dr. Ravi Shrivastava, pointed with a wavering finger.
‘Aye, but even though we were allowed to excavate at our pleasure back then —there were no rules stopping us digging up whatever we liked — we amn’t found nothing and so far amn’t found nothing now either,’ an aged Robin Grady hobbled around the table. ‘For thirty years Kirin kept telling me that we were looking in the wrong place. “UK, UK,” he said. He is usually correct. We should have listened.’
‘Gaining permission from the Armenian authorities this time round was very tough,’ Ravi added. ‘It’s much harder to bribe officials these days,’ he laughed. ‘In the end, they agreed to let us dig in two areas. And, those areas had very strict controls and had to be supported by solid geophysics.’
‘Yes, but this time we have accurate coordinates,’ Dr. Jo Hani said. ‘What was in the first digging?’
‘Well, we found lots of bones,’ Ravi pointed his shaky finger. ‘Follow me and I’ll show you. And, it’s been agreed that we can extend the diggings for research purposes.’ They stopped to examine a line of boxes on the ground.
‘So, this area must be related to where they prepared the food for the feasts. A slaughter house, maybe? Or, is it a burial?’ Jo asked picking up a bone and examining it. ‘This one is from an Ox. And, that one you’re holding is from a boar or a pig I suspect.’
‘Or, something like that,’ Ravi replied. ‘More like a cooking place scoured with bones. And, way over here, on the opposite side of the Stonehenge, at the same coordinates and opposing direction, we did find a human burial site of sorts. Let’s wander over and take a look.’
#
Some ten minutes later:
‘Well, this is just as interesting. What have we here?’ Jo asked, peering down into the excavation.’
‘We found a burial site,’ Dr. Ravi Shrivastava explained. ‘So far there’s only one body, but we do expect to find more.’
‘We’re getting a much better idea of how the locals lived back then, but this appears to be the burial site of a small child — and the necklace ye found amn’t not the one we’re searching for,’ Robin replied.
‘Yes, we’re not sure whether it’s a human sacrifice or not as yet,’ Ravi replied. ‘We should know in a few days, but as Robin says “it’s no monk.”’
‘And, although the child may well be royalty — we can tell that from the clothing and the way the body is buried —the necklace found amn’t no pendant,’ Robin added.
‘So, what you’re both saying is that we’re still up shit creek?’ Jo asked, playing with her hair. ‘Okay. Where do we go from here?’ she threw her hands into the air.
‘Robin here thinks that we’re searching in the wrong Stonehenge,’ Ravi sighed. ‘Ah. I can hear the flutter flutter of your helicopter in the distance Robin. And, you Dr. Hani, can you spare me a few more days. The students could learn a lot if you could—’
‘Well, since I have another week it would be remiss of me not to stay and help you catalogue the items that you’ve excavated so far,’ Jo replied, ‘and, we may get lucky. I gather you’ll be working on this for another few months?’
‘Yes, it will take months to finish sifting through everything,’ Ravi added, ‘and your opinion would be valuable. But, it may take years to interpret and publish everything.’
‘And, it does appear that we may have the wrong site,’ Jo sighed. ‘Not to worry. I find this uniquely fascinating. And, I can’t wait to help you analyze things in more detail.’
‘Let’s head back and look at the map again,’ Ravi suggested. ‘There’s still one dig we haven’t finished excavating as yet.’
‘Ah. My helicopter has arrived,’ Robin pointed as the helicopter flapped overhead and then set itself down. Its rotor sliced slowly around, winding to a halt.
‘Well. I guess I’ll see you in Mumbai on Friday then Robin,’ Jo said, shaking his hand. ‘I’m sure the story we’ll find here will prove immensely useful in understanding the way people lived, their customs and technology, and how the Stonehenge and megalithic structures were laid out.’
‘Exactly! And, that can only help when we move to the next site,’ Ravi finished, grasping Robin’s hand tightly. ‘See you on Friday then Robin.’
‘Mumbai it is then. I’ll prioritize all the other target sites and let ye know where we head from here,’ Robin added.’
#
London: Early August, 2012
‘Okay. Peter. You have the book? Quick! Give it to me.’
‘Look! They just found the magic pendant,’ Peter spat out, jumping up and down on the lounge excitedly. ‘It’s drawn here, like a sketch. And, Uncle Heni flew through the air — like this. See. It shows it here too.’
‘Okay. Okay. I can see the pictures. Wow! He’s not a bad artist. That’s assuming Uncle Heni drew them of course. That’s funny. It almost comes to life like a moving hologram when I look at it. In fact, they all do. I never noticed that before. Now, just sit down and hush up,’ Andrea said. ‘Where were we? Okay. Are you ready for it Peter? Here we go — September 17, 1973. It was Monday, and as Monday’s go this was not a good day.’
Chapter 12: The confidence man