The Guardian Stones (23 page)

Chapter Fifty

The Lord is thy keeper. The Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

The psalm the vicar recited came back to Grace as she made her way deeper into the forest.

…nor the moon by night….

The moon had long since set.

The horned moon, Grandma had called it.

The horned moon had gone to ground behind the mountains but not before placing its evil imprint on the night.

Grace followed the rut of a path, forcing herself to move deliberately. She didn't dare turn on her torch. She didn't want to alert whatever might be out there in the darkness. Whatever had sprung upon Susannah and Joe Haywood and most likely had ambushed Duncan Gowdy and the children as well.

She followed the lesser darkness where the path formed a gap between trees and bushes pressing in on either side.

Grandma must have come this way. It was the most direct route to the hilltop. But she hadn't caught up to her yet. Had the old woman wandered off the path and become lost?

It might be better than her reaching the Guardian Stones.

Grace felt the ground rising. Her breath came harder, not from exertion but fear. Grandma couldn't be far ahead now. If only Grace could risk calling out, not that the stubborn old woman would pay any attention.

Grace pushed on. Thorny brushes across the path might have been claws fastening on her. The touch of thick, heavy laurel leaves felt like the fingers of murderous hands. She pushed overhanging limbs aside with the rifle and ducked under them, trying not to make too much noise.

What was that?

She paused and peered into the suffocating night.

Beyond the path she discerned only gradations of black, hinting at trees and the bulky shapes of shrubbery, merging at a short distance into an utter void.

She had the uncanny sensation she was not alone. It was the panicked feeling she had upon awakening from a nightmare convinced a nameless something stood beside her bed. Now, here, the freezing fog of terror did not evaporate into wakefulness.

The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil, she muttered to herself. He shall preserve thy soul.

There. She heard it.

Voices.

She looked upwards.

An orange nimbus glowed over the summit.

***

Isobel Chapman stood silhouetted against the bonfire blazing in the stone circle atop Guardians Hill.

Draped in a ragged, blood-stained sheet, her hair wildly tangled with twigs and leaves, her face daubed with blood and ashes, she bore no resemblance to the young girl for which the villagers had mistaken her.

She threw another gobbet of flesh into the flames. As it hissed and popped, she raised her arms to the sky. Her band of naked children smeared with dirt circled the fire anti-clockwise, then halted and drew closer together, staring into the sparks that swirled upwards as if being drawn into a celestial whirlpool. Firelight and shadows played over demonic faces with the snouts of animals.

Isobel chanted words learned from the old woman.

The old woman didn't understand the knowledge passed down through the generations. Like everyone in Noddweir, she was blind. The villagers had mocked Isobel because she was not like them. How could she be? They were human. The ignorant, pitiful brute of a father, the weakling mother too frail to survive the performance of her only purpose, were not her true parents.

She was born of the Guardian Stones and the horned moon.

For thousands of years the stones had ruled the land, until their worshipers betrayed them. Then they slept fitfully, waiting.

What was a sleep of slow centuries to gods?

After they had borne her, they had whispered her destiny in dreams. Told her secrets. The old witch, unknowingly, had passed on the knowledge necessary to avenge the ancient betrayal. At the coming of Isobel's power in the metamorphosis of blood, the Guardians called her to them.

The Guardians dwell in deepest hell, went the rhyme Martha had taught her. Did the old hag not realize it was literally true?

Above the crackling flames she heard a boy crying for his mother.

Isobel pivoted and jabbed a finger at the child, who immediately subsided into quiet weeping. A bigger, chubby boy put his arm around the child.

“Bert,” the child sniffled, “can't you take me home, Bert?”

“Quiet! Don't let her hear you!”

But Isobel, senses grown preternaturally sharp, heard every word. She had no use for little snivelers or soft boys who showed them kindness. She would instruct Len Finch to slit their throats.

Afterward.

Isobel tilted her head back to address the sky and babbled in a high-pitched voice. “Wake, lord of the underworld! Hear me! I was yours from birth, favored, born under a horned moon. Ruler and protector of the wicked, lover of all evil, we bow to you as master.”

A bat materialized out of the night, tumbled through the rising sparks, and was gone.

Isobel's voice rose. “We have done all you asked. We have lied and stolen. We have killed and offered blood and torture to you. We have carved the magic life-beckoning symbols into the stones.”

By now her voice had risen to a shriek. “Come, lord of darkness, horned god, destroy! Kill them all! None are worthy to live! Torment them with long agonies! Make their children writhe in agony! Send your sacred fire to cleanse the earth of every trace of them!”

Isobel paused, panting, and threw the sheet she wore into the fire. It fluttered like a great bird, then caught fire and disintegrated. Heat beat against her skin like the black wing of a fiery demon. Sparks settled on her arms, burning pinpoints.

She knelt, naked, and screamed at the sky. “Blood and fire and death and pain! And if any live, give them to the dark gods of Hell men call cancer and pox and deaths of babies unborn!”

Long shadows radiated outwards from the ancient stones, gyrating in the lighting from the surging flames. Were the stones dancing too? Did they shift and move to pull themselves up from the ground? Each stone flung a shaft of darkness upwards, darker than the night.

Isobel clawed at the dirt, ripped up earth and grass and foxgloves and flung them into the flames.

The foxgloves shrieked as they withered.

Isobel leapt up and danced and her followers danced with her, frolicked in a temple abandoned by worshipers for thousands of years, circled by infinite pillars of darkness.

Again the sinister words of Martha's rhyme came back to her. Circle round, unholy ground.

She danced until she was giddy with exhaustion, until the fire in her lungs was indistinguishable from the fiery heat assaulting her flesh, her hair smoldering as sparks flew out, caressing kisses of fire. She threw her head back and gazed upwards.

She sensed a trickle of blood run down the inside of her thigh.

Already alive with newfound strength, Isobel was ready to receive the ultimate power.

She felt it.

A vibration.

A buzzing. As of enormous flies.

Chapter Fifty-one

Lightning bolts of pain ran through Martha's chest as she labored to the top of Guardians Hill. Normally she would have sat down, but now it didn't matter. She paused to rest many times as she made her slow, roundabout way upwards to avoid detection.

As if a force held her back.

She would not sit down again.

Struggling on, she heard Isobel's demonic chant grow louder.

She touched the effigy made of twisted sticks dangling on string around her neck. A cross formed from the gnarled roots of herbs hung there too. The persuasions she spent the day concocting were sewn into her shapeless, flowered dress in packets and stoppered medicine bottles.

Martha called her concoctions “persuasions.” However, those she carried tonight were not meant to persuade, but rather to command. Far removed from her usual cosmetic lotions and herbal remedies, these required a sacrifice.

She stopped at the clearing's edge where the stone circle stood and watched the demon child with her animalistic tribe dance recklessly before the flames. Their long shadows flickered across the old woman who waited still, unseen, gathering up what little strength she had left.

How had she failed to see Isobel for what she was?

Had the ancient stones blinded her?

In recent years people began to call Martha senile. She heard them when they thought she wasn't listening. It was true, words skittered out of her grasp when she sought them, things went missing, she forgot what happened ten minutes before, or found herself somewhere and couldn't recall how or why she'd got there.

Yet as her mind disengaged from the familiar world, she saw more clearly the world hidden beneath what people called reality. Saw the shadow hanging over Noddweir, felt the icy rivulets of evil oozing from Guardians Hill, heard the circled stones murmuring to each other in the night as they came awake after thousands of years.

Finally she understood fully certain pieces of wisdom passed down to her.

The demon child threw back her head and gazed into the sky.

Martha stepped out into the firelight.

***

Edwin crashed blindly through the trees. He was being followed.

He'd lost the path. It didn't matter. His destination was the hilltop. He simply needed to keep climbing.

And hope whatever followed didn't catch up.

A low-hanging branch raked his face. He grabbed at his eyeglasses, barely saving them from being knocked off.

He wasn't certain how he could help if he did overtake Grace, but he had to try.

How many nights since Elise's accident had he lain awake replaying the scene outside the theater? Could he have acted like men in movies who took the chance to be heroes? He could have done whatever was necessary if Fate had played fairly with him. It seldom did in real life.

He shoved his eyeglasses back into place. There was a rustling not far off. He looked over his shoulder.

Did that sapling move?

There was no wind.

Edwin turned and struggled on, eyes narrowed, toward the hill top. The lurid glow of fire rose into the sky. It did not penetrate down the hillside into the trees.

Something grabbed his face. Invisible. Clinging to his nose and mouth.

A spider web.

He flailed at it, momentarily, stupidly, panicked at the thought of the bulbous spider that must have woven it and might now be crawling in his hair or down the neck of his shirt. He took a few steps backwards, tried to wipe the web off his hands.

His foot found nothing but space. He rolled down a dirt bank into a muddy puddle, his heart pounding as if it were about to explode.

Stygian darkness pressed on all sides. Only directly overhead hung a hint of the lighter night sky.

The crater. He must have fallen into the bomb crater he'd seen on his first day in Noddweir.

He was fortunate he hadn't broken anything. Or at least it didn't feel as if anything was broken, though one knee throbbed. His fingers clutched a large stone sticking up from the muck. That must have been the culprit.

He pushed himself to his feet.

From above came a demented shriek, more animal than human. Weight smashed into Edwin's back, drove him down again. The thing on top of him snarled, clawed, and bit.

Edwin's shoulder blazed with pain.

Reaching around, his hand found a face. He shoved and the teeth let go. His assailant dived for his neck. Edwin tried to throw the attacker off and failed. The thing moved with inhuman speed, strength, and ferocity.

He remembered the rock, grabbed it. Struck backwards to dislodge the clinging monster.

To Edwin's horror the rock clanged ineffectually on metal.

***

When Martha approached the bonfire, Isobel looked away from the sky. The tribe fell silent. Crouching, sub-human shapes, their gas masks gave them the appearance of gargoyles or monstrous frogs.

Passing between two ancient stones surmounted now by towering pillars of darkness, Martha touched the charms around her neck and murmured words she had never understood until this night. Tentacles of shadow which sought to bar her writhed away. Now… at last…she was fully aware of the reality which had eluded her for a lifetime.

Isobel's eyes shone wolf-like in the firelight. “Stupid old woman! What do you think you're going to do?” She laughed. The sound was ancient, hollow, echoing up from a corridor reaching thousands of years into the past.

Gooseflesh rose on Martha's arms. “I'm going to put an end to your wickedness, Isobel.” She couldn't stop her voice from quavering. “I know how. I was your teacher, remember, Goddess forgive me.”

Isobel's lips curved in a gargoyle's smile. Smoke curled up from her tangled hair where sparks landed. “I should have had you killed after I left, old woman. Len, Mike. Throw her into the fire!”

Martha stroked a hand over her dress, feeling the packets and bottles of persuasions fastened inside. She clutched the charms hanging from her neck.

Two demons loped toward her, filthy hands outstretched.

There must be a sacrifice, but she could not bear to be touched by those vile things.

She stepped toward the conflagration. The heat roasted the skin of her face red. Another step and the white cloud of hair around her head exploded into flame. She started to chant. The chant rose into a scream as she took a final step into the flames. Sparks licked the hem of her dress, then raced up its sides, and spread. A bottle exploded.

Over the roar of the blaze, the buzzing of a monstrous fly grew louder.

***

Edwin lashed backwards with the rock once more and again it rang on metal. He felt skin being torn from his throat. The horror clinging to him fought with superhuman strength as he tried futilely to push it off or squirm out of its grasp.

Then abruptly the pressure ended.

The weight fell away.

He heard a thump.

“Edwin! Are you all right?”

Grace's voice.

Turning over, he could barely make out the motion as she brought the rifle butt down with another thump on the featureless shape beside him.

A torch flicked on for long enough to reveal Reggie Cox sprawled out, naked and covered in dirt. The light glinted off the metal brace on his leg.

Grace turned the torch off and knelt down. Her fingers found the wound on Edwin's neck. “It isn't bleeding badly. He missed the artery, thank God.”

“Martha,” Edwin managed to say. “Did you find Martha?”

Grace's lips tightened. “Not yet. When I heard the commotion I turned back. A good thing I did, too.”

Edwin got up unsteadily as Grace scrambled up the side of the crater. When she reached the top she stopped, looked upwards, and came sliding back in an avalanche of earth and stones.

“Oh my God! Get down Edwin! Get down!”

He looked up at the sky before Grace yanked him off his feet.

Something dark was moving across the stars.

***

As the old witch burned, her screaming chant rose into an ear-piercing screech, rose until it left the range of human hearing.

Weirdly colored flames burst from her fiery clothes, sending serpentine coils of smoke charging upwards between the infinite shadow pillars. The demons leapt and howled and shook their fists.

The air vibrated with a monstrous buzzing.

Martha burned furiously, with preternatural speed. In a moment she was nothing more than a flaming, silent totem.

Isobel stepped as close to the fire as she dared, exulting as the blistering heat caressed her.

She gazed upwards, toward a dark shape approaching.

She heard an eerie whistling roar and another and another, louder, ever louder.

Isobel raised her arms to greet the coming of the power.