Buried Fire (7 page)

High on the Wirrim, two boys stood on the lip of a hollow, scanning the clusters of stones, the purple harebell wedged in corners, the alien brightness of coke cans and crisp packets dotted here and there among the grass.

"The Pit," said Stephen. "So it happened here."

"Over on the far side, beyond that stone."

"Right," said Stephen. "I see."

"Look," Michael snapped at him, "I know you don't believe me, and I don't care. Too bad. So just leave out the sarcasm." He sat down decisively and rubbed his eyes. Their aching had got worse the higher he went; a dull pressure which flared angrily whenever they moved. It made him irritable, a feeling which was worse now that he had made the climb, and knew that it proved nothing.

"I don't quite know what you were hoping this proved." Stephen casually echoed his thoughts. "I should give you a hiding for this; but frankly I can't be bothered." He half-walked, half-cantered down the slope and into the hollow, and wandered off across it, leaving Michael sitting.

"What proof can I give you, you idiot?" he said under his breath, and with this exclamation, he felt the pain in his head flare, and his eyes refocus.

The earth was red, like old blood or weathered brick. It seemed to radiate a heat he could not feel from a centre somewhere deep below the surface, a hidden bruise beneath the skin. Stephen's soul moved across that skin, its pale lights fluttering and winking with their small foolish anger. The glow around its form was weak and feeble beside the livid red of the waiting earth. It made Michael laugh to see its frailty, and he saw the horse head look back at him, stare, and turn away.

Then it seemed to Michael that the earth was clear as glass beneath him, and that somewhere fathoms down through all that redness a thing was rising. Up it came, slowly swirling, coiling, curling, a ball of movement underground. He saw the red strata of the rock below distort briefly as it passed across them. And he felt its purpose.

Stephen was standing in the centre of the hollow when he heard his brother laugh once, gutterally; a harsh sound. He turned with a start, but Michael was staring down into nothing, and with an exclamation of disgust he resumed his fevered thinking. His brother was either lying or mad, and he could do nothing about it whichever it was. He was stupid to have come.

Then he heard Michael calling for him to wait. He ignored the urgency in the voice, and kept walking. But footsteps came running behind him and a slight fear entered his heart and made him turn.

"Michael, keep away. I've had enough. Just piss off."

"Stop! Stop here and listen to me. Listen, Stephen, I've got proof." Michael's face was flushed, lit up with joy and expectation.

"Don't give me any of that crap."

"I've got proof, I tell you. It's coming."

"What? You've flipped. Just keep away from me. Look, keep your hands off!"

Michael had grabbed the front of Stephen's shirt, wrenching it towards him with clenched fists. Stephen caught both wrists and tried to wrest them loose, but Michael's grip was iron-strong. His face was locked in a grin of fierce effort, and for the first time since the scream the night before, Stephen grew scared. He punched upwards between his brother's arms, catching him on the side of the jaw. Michael's head jerked back and he swore savagely, but he didn't loose his hold. Stephen hit out again in blind panic, then closed, locking Michael's head from the side and dragging him down with him to the ground. They rolled there, gasping and swearing. Stephen was the stronger, but Michael was possessed with a wild energy and gave no quarter.

At last, driven to desperate lengths, Stephen managed to land a punch below his opponent's ribcage. While Michael was foaming and gasping for breath, he wrestled himself free and sat squarely on his chest, gripping his hair with both hands.

"Now," he snarled, "I really am going to kill you."

But Michael gazed up through half-closed eyes and laughed at him, and something rose swiftly from the ground and engulfed them before Stephen could think or move.

He fell through the earth, into a secret place where a restless power awaited him.

He came to a halt with the soft slowness of a stone dropping through syrup. It was cold around him, the slow remorseless cold which over many nights will shatter solid rock without a sound. But somewhere close a fire burned.

He felt bones underfoot, and hard cold things, which had once been beautiful under a warm sun. Up ahead was an abyss of black. Nothing moved, but he felt something offered to him, and acceptance surge in his breast.

Then he tried to step forward, and something snagged his foot. He looked down, and saw among the bones his brother lying under him, smiling up in vindicated triumph. And with that, a bubble of fear came vomiting up from inside his stomach, and he was lifted by that fear up and away with vicious speed, up and out through the cold earth until the sun broke suddenly on his back once more.

But the air was thick and acrid, and his eyes were blind, and his skin stung him.

Then Stephen, with a soundless cry, flung himself to one side, out into the summer air. And the lizards scattered.

"Well," said Michael, "you really messed that up."

Stephen was lying on his back in the grass of the hollow, with his mouth open and eyes blinking. It took him a moment to realise where he was, or recognise the figure who stood over him.

"Mikey, your nose is bleeding."

"Yes. You punched me, remember."

"Did I? Sorry, Mike. Hey, Mike, I feel wonderful."

"Well you've no right to. You should have stayed where you were. What made you go tumbling off? God knows what that's done – you were hardly in there a moment. There's no way you can have absorbed anything."

"I don't know. But listen, Mike – was that what happened to you before?"

"Of course. I didn't know until now, because I was asleep then. But I recognised the feeling when it passed through me. You've cocked it up big time. You should have stayed in there longer."

"I don't know; it didn't feel – but I feel great now."

"Well, you won't have the sight. Remember the state I was in afterwards. You've got to pay for these things, Stephen."

"You seem to know an awful lot about it all of a sudden."

"I don't have to prove it to you any more, do I?"

"No. But I'm just as confused, only – God, where the hell did it come from, Mikey?"

"It rose up. That's all I know. Now, if you feel so great, how come you're still lying there?"

"I'll get up. Give us your hand."

Michael extended an arm and pulled Stephen to his feet. He stood there for a moment, shaking gently, blinking round like a man with a fever risen out of bed.

All of a sudden, without warning or any pain, his focus changed. He cried out as he saw his brother in another shape.

"My God!" he cried. "Michael – you're beautiful!"

Michael started and clutched at him. "You can't," he hissed. "Not as easily as that! You're lying!"

But the dragon's thought flowed through his brother's veins like wine, filling him with a high and giddy exhilaration. He stretched his arms out wide, his fingers splayed in the air; then he spun around, taking in the world with savage, greedy eyes. At the third spin of his feet, he lost his balance, teetered wildly for a moment and fell heavily among the heather, laughing even as the wind was driven from his body.

"Oh, Michael," he said, sitting up slowly between gasps, "how can you, how can you be so – serious? Smile for me! Have you looked in a mirror? Did you know that you're a cat, Michael? Your hackles are up, Mikey, swirling blue and exploding like fireworks. You're not happy, are you, not at all, but it's you all right. You're summed up perfectly!"

He laughed again, leaning back in the gorse and gazing up at the two-tone sky, where the flat slab of space seemed underlaid with red and the clouds were flecked with grey.

Michael watched with an impassive face. "You'll be able to control it in a little while," he said. "But you'll be sick first." He frowned. Cat-souled? Could that be right? He felt his own solitariness, his watchful caution. It might be true.

For nearly five minutes, Stephen lay on his back and burbled softly, his body shaking and twitching with little repressed tremors of delight. Michael watched him, almost unconsciously changing the focus of his eyes. Stephen's form blurred and his horse-like face appeared, gazing up amid the heather, with its fluid surface spiralling with colour. The colours welled up from within like eruptions under glass, spread outwards across the surface with an eager haste, and were swiftly drawn in again. The intensity of movement was greater than before, the colours brighter and more varied, though there seemed a slightly lurid sheen to them which had not been there before.

'It'll be too much for him,' he thought. 'He'll be sick soon.'

And with that to comfort him, he rose, and left the burbler lying, and went to the ridge to look out across the valley.

The afternoon was old, and the sunlight which had bathed the countryside all day was showing the first signs of retreat. The pale blue of the sky was sapped of colour, and the furthest hills and fields were faint under a distant veil. The air was still. He shifted his focus automatically, and saw the colours darken. The sky changed to its reddish tint, the fields to a rusty brown, the coppices and skirting of woodland a dull dark brown. The people below – and there were some, out in the furthest fields – suddenly sprang into prominence. He had hardly been aware of them before, lost like ants in the vastness of the scene. Now, the brightness of their souls revealed them: they glittered like tiny moving jewels.

How delectable they were. But what was it that made them shine so? And if they sparkled like that when they were so far away, how bright would they look when all collected together? Michael wished he was on the crowded green at that moment, to see for himself.

A sudden noise behind him reminded him of Stephen. He waited a little longer before going back with a sympathetic face.

Even after the nausea, Stephen still wore an expression of delight, though the lines in his face were etched with weariness. He could no longer see, except for a searing light which pained him, but instead of keeping his eyes shut, he rolled them up so that only the whites showed. It gave him a very unpleasant aspect, which Michael lost no time in pointing out, but Stephen only replied, "I can't help it. I can't shut them. The urge to look is too strong, but it hurts me when I do. This way, it pains me least."

Michael helped him stand, took his arm around his shoulder and set about guiding him from the Pit. His brother was still shaking like a panicked rabbit, but he walked easily, sensing where to place his feet with a surprising confidence. After those last words, Stephen kept silent as they took the path downhill, and Michael did not break in upon it. A mood of anxiety and envy had come upon him. When the bubble had encased them, its taste and feel had been familiar, but he had known, with as much certainty as if he had been told, that its purpose was with Stephen, and that Stephen had in some way rejected it. Stephen had only been immersed for a minute or so – and that he should have received the gift despite it, Michael resented deeply. They descended the Wirrim without words.

By the time they got to the cottage, it was nearly seven. The sky was lit with a pale evening blue in which cold stars already shone, and shadows were gathering under the elms outside the gates. Here, they loitered.

"Damn. The Pope's here," said Michael in a low voice, surveying the small car squeezed into one corner of the drive. "Now what do we do?"

"Not much we can do, is there? I need to sleep."

"We can't have them seeing you like this. That'll confirm all their prejudices. Depends where they are. Hold on, I'll see."

He left Stephen among the trees and moved off, keeping to the edges of the drive, where the gravel was sparse and overgrown with weeds. A minute later he was back, breathing heavily.

"They're in the sitting room. The Pope's yakking and Sarah looks angry. There's a storm brewing."

"Good. Maybe we can slip past."

"If we go round the back, we can have you in bed before the dust settles."

Michael led the way around the edge of the drive to the side gate. It opened with a squeal which made him cringe, and they passed though into the garden. The path ran down the side of the house, under the gaze of a small open window which belonged to the sitting room. From it came Sarah's voice raised in anger.

"We'll have to duck down low by the window," Michael whispered. "You go first and I'll say when."

Stephen inched his way along, feeling the pebbledash against his fingers on the right. As he drew close to the window, Sarah's words became distinguishable.

"Why don't you tell her about it, since you know each other so well! I've got more important things to do than waste my time listening to all this rubbish."

"Now look—" Tom's voice was heavy with annoyance.

"You've plenty of excuses to work late now. See if I care."

"This is ridiculous. What's put this into your head?"

"What are you waiting for?" Michael prodded Stephen in the small of the back. "She'd be better off without him, and you know it. Come on, let's go."

Stephen bent down, almost double, and scuttered sightlessly under the window. Michael followed him, and together they moved away towards the corner of the house. Behind them, their sister's angry voice continued to sound out into the dusk.

On his way back, Tom took a detour. He had wound down the window and his face was buffetted by the air of late evening, warm, scented and mazy with insects. His body seemed compressed with tension and anger; a jagged spring coiled in his chest, its end stabbing at his lungs and sending a sharp tightness out into his shoulders and arms. His foot hit the accelerator savagely; each curve of the drowsy lanes was a challenge to be snapped at. In such a mood, he could not go home. Not yet.

The road made a wide arc through the darkening fields, and flirted with the southernmost fringes of the Russet. For nearly all its length, the trees were banked on one side of the road only, their impassive columns buttressed against the strips of arable land. At one point however, the trees extended beyond the road to form a separate, isolated square of forest. This was Crow Wood.

Tom stopped the car. When he got out, he took two long breaths, leaning back against the warm metal. The sky was blending with the black leaves overhead.

He should have been more patient, shouldn't have got angry. Sarah was still upset about her brother, and rightly so. He should have spent less time talking about his own problems, and listened like a priest should. But to bring up Elizabeth Price, when he hardly knew the woman . . . Crazy! Where on earth had that come from?

He sighed heavily. Nothing seemed to be making sense any more. In the space of a day, everything had shifted. Nothing was right. Why break into a church? Why dig up an old stone? Why get worked up over an old cross?

Why spend hours in a library, when you didn't know what you were looking for?

No, but there was something to be found. Tom was sure of it. And he had one lead still to follow.

He must get some sleep. But first, to get rid of the tension, he set off at a run, following a beaten path into the trees.

Tom forced himself to run at speed. The tension in his chest pained him, but he ignored it, letting his arms and legs work to their full, and soon the ground was flashing past at a disembodied pace. His eyes were locked ahead, his body straining, and the residue of frustration and weariness was lost in the air behind him.

When, in a state of emptiness, he slowed, heart racing, breath jerking with life, he found he had come to the ruin in Crow Wood. There was a small clearing among beech trees, its floor pierced in many places with saplings and forest fronds and now thick with dusk. A wall of bricks, slightly taller than head height and punctured by the thin skeleton of a window, rose from the bracken on one side of the clearing. Another wall, at ninety degrees to the first, attained a lesser height and stretched into the darkness. The ground was ridged and tussocked with the chaos of fallen masonry.

Tom's shoes crunched on brick fragments. He walked into the centre of the dead house. The inner surface of the wall was jet black. White moths flew around his head, spreading silence with their wings. A lone timber, charred along one length, was propped against the wall. A beer can had been lodged carefully on top of it. Moving closer, he made out faint signs drawn on the bricks. He struggled to read them, his eyes screwed up . . .

The words had been scraped on the charcoal lining of the bricks, and showed through red against it:
Sandra 4 Lewis. 1979.

Tom turned away. Alfred Willis had died here, a hundred years ago. He tried to imagine the smell of burning, the heat, the trees orange and red with flames, the sounds. But a hundred years of green silence covered those images and smothered them.

Tomorrow he would check the County Records. Somebody must have a copy of Willis's book. He would find it, read it, and then he would stop chasing shadows.

He walked back to the car and drove home slowly.