The Truth Against the World (19 page)

“Have a look at this,” he said. “I kept staring at my pictures of the clifftop, over and over, wondering if I'd missed some detail.” He pulled up a picture and held it out in front of me: the grave plaque, the slate embedded in the ground. “And then I saw this.” He swallowed, and I could see his hand trembling just slightly. “I saw it that day, too, but I forgot about it.”

I looked at him questioningly and he enlarged the picture, zooming in on the bottom right corner. “At first all you see is weeds and dirt, but look.” He pointed.

I saw a glint of something metal, sticking up out of the ground. A corner.

“I wasn't sure what I was looking at, but when you said that about the metal box … ” He looked at me, his face serious. “If we can get back to that spot, we can find out for sure, yeah?”

“As long as nobody's taken it,” I said. “But maybe you're right.” Then again, maybe it was just a scrap of aluminum can. I was afraid to hope too much, but I said, “So let me show you the key.”

I unfastened the locket around my neck, popped open the compartment, and poked at the smaller hasp inside until the second door opened and the key fell out into my lap.

“It must open something,” I said.

“Keys usually do.” Gareth gazed at it. “We'd just have to try it, of course. But I don't know for sure where the plaque is. My mum and dad said you can walk there from the beach, though.”

“Well, we've both dreamed about the place, and you have a map. Why don't we go look for it tomorrow?” I felt like my entire body was humming, and I didn't know if it was excitement or fear or exhaustion.

“Okay, but we should maybe study the map first. And the bus schedule—”

“It'll be fine.” I had to know for sure what Gee Gee had been hiding. I had to know who Olwen was. “I know we have to do this. I know we'll find it. If we're meant to.”

He nodded, not arguing the point.

We sat in silence. I didn't know what Gareth was thinking, but I was already making a mental list of what I'd need to bring tomorrow.

After a minute, he shifted, scooting to the edge of the cushion. “Suppose I'd better get back.”

“Wait.” I took a deep breath. “I didn't tell you the rest of my dream.”

“Oh—right,” he said with an unreadable look. “So tell me.”

“After the part about the metal box … ” I stopped. I couldn't look at him. “Like I said, you were in it. I dreamed we were walking on a path by the ocean. The two of us.”

There was a short silence. Then: “The stars started
going out,” Gareth said, his voice hoarse.

“Then everything went dark and we were underground … ”

“ … in the cromlech, listening to Olwen,” Gareth finished, staring at me, his eyes wide. “She wants her mum.”

Goose bumps rose up all over my arms. It had felt like more than just a dream. It had felt like … like a real place, somewhere we'd been together. In a way, I'd known this since the funeral, when he'd looked at me with that strange expression on his face.

I looked at his hands, gripping the edge of the couch cushion, and felt suddenly shy.

“We have to go there,” I said, winding a lock of hair around my finger. “She wanted you to come back.”

Gareth looked haunted. “I guess she would have been your great-aunt if she'd survived. But there must be more to the story. Why'd she choose me?”

“You were there,” I pointed out. That much seemed obvious.

He nodded, but his expression was full of doubt. And fear.

“We'll find out,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

“Yes. But are you sure tomorrow is good? Don't you want some time to, I don't know, recover?”

“Gareth, I don't have that kind of time,” I said desperately. “I don't know how much longer we're going to be here.” I looked at him pleadingly. “I'll do it alone if I have to.”

“No, I'll go,” he said quickly. “I'm the one who's been to the place, after all. I'll study the map tonight and we can take the bus out there tomorrow and hike around.”

“Okay, good.” I got up and he followed me to the door, where we hovered awkwardly, carefully avoiding touching each other. It felt like any physical contact might be too much, too intense; or worse, that it might suck me back into the darkness of a dream world.

I wasn't sure I could handle that again.

19

Nid anhawdd ond cael gwirionedd.

There is nothing difficult
but to find the truth.

Welsh proverb

Gareth woke to the sound of his phone's alarm beeping quietly at him. He sat up and rubbed the back of his neck, which had a crick in it from the lumpy pillow. It was eight o'clock—an hour before he'd agreed to meet Wyn for their search for the cromlech.

Search for the Cromlech. It sounded like a Star Trek movie.

“Our mission: to explore strange old beaches … To seek out old graves and old ruined churches … To boldly go where all the local teenagers have snogged before,” he muttered to no one in particular, trying to psych himself up. The house was empty; his great-granddad had already left for Sunday morning chapel.

It struck Gareth, again, that he and his great-granddad hadn't talked much during the visit. Yes, he'd spent a lot of time with Wyn and her family, but that didn't fully explain it. When his family had visited in the spring, Great-Granddad was his usual opinionated self. But this time … maybe he was getting lonely and shouldn't be living by himsel
f
? Or maybe he was more upset about Rhiannon's death than he wanted to admit. Gareth wasn't sure.

After breakfast, he made a couple of sandwiches and threw them into his rucksack along with a pair of oranges and a few water bottles. When he opened the front door to leave, a folded note fell onto the door mat. A flyer, probably. Or a note from Mrs. Tilly asking Great-Granddad to come round for tea again. She was forever knocking at the door instead of just using the phone like everyone else.

Gareth picked up the note and was going to set it on the kitchen table, but his curiosity got the better of him. He unfolded the sheet of paper.

If You Had Any Sense At All You'd Stop Asking So Many Questions And Leave Well Enough Alone. Some Secrets Are Best Left Buried. Stop Disrupting The Peace Of Our Town, Please.

It had been written in generically blocky, hand-printed letters. And it was obviously meant for Gareth himself.

For a moment, he didn't know whether to be worried or burst out laughing. “Stop disrupting the peace of our town, please”? He smirked. Obviously someone didn't want them to find out what happened—probably some gossipy old bat with nothing better to do. But a melodramatic note wasn't going to stop him. He crumpled the note and stuffed it into his jacket pocket with a wry smile.

What about Wyn, though? Had she been threatened, too? A thread of worry made his smile falter. What would they do if she had?

A sea of other what-ifs swirled in his mind as he locked the door and walked down the lane toward Cwm Road. What if Wyn wasn't waiting at the bus station? What if the bus didn't come? What if they couldn't find the place? What would happen if they never found the metal box? What if they were looking in the wrong place?

What if it
was
the right place?

That thought was just as frightening.

At least one of his fears was allayed when he got to the tiny cottage of a bus stop and Wyn was waiting outside for him.

“G'morning,” he said, feeling his face flush for no reason.

“Hi.” Wyn was shifting from foot to foot in the morning chill. She looked exhausted, and her eyes were puffy and red. She also looked different, somehow, and he realized it was because she wasn't wearing her usual long skirt and sweater, with her hair hanging long and straight. Instead, she wore jeans and a dull beige jacket that was too big for her, and her hair was pulled tightly back.

“Are you sure you want to do this now?” he asked. “We co
uld wait until tomorrow.”

“Um, no. It took me half an hour to convince my parents to let me out of the house today. We are definitely going.” Wyn frowned.

“Okay.” Gareth took a step back. If she was up for it, so was he. He had to be.

They chatted idly while waiting for the bus to arrive, Wyn asking him questions about his family and about his life in London. She didn't mention anything about getting a note, and he decided against telling her. She had plenty to worry about already.

The bus when it arrived was clean and new-looking, and it cruised quietly through the middle of town, then out into the hills to the south, green hulks still cloaked with rags of mist. Gareth was trying not to think about Olwen, but he kept envisioning the ghost girl's ethereal, floating dress and her mournful eyes. He couldn't let Wyn go to the gravesite on her own. Especially after getting that note.

Gareth looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She was staring out the window, one hand playing with the zipper on her jacket. He saw her chest rise and fall in a silent sigh.

Feeling a bit desperate, he reached into his bag for the old Ordnance Survey map he'd rescued from his parents. He carefully spread it out across both their laps and pointed at one of the likely seeming spots he'd circled in pencil.

“I found three possible places,” he said, trying to sound optimistic. “There are only three here that have ruins, cairns, and standing stones all together. So I looked for that when I checked over the map last night.”

“Wow, that's great,” Wyn said, turning to face him. She smiled, but it seemed to take an effort. “Did any of them ring a bell?”

“Well, no,” he admitted. “One of the spots seems a bit far, though. A couple of miles away from the beach, it looks like. Here's the one just to the east, and the other one a few miles further.” He jabbed a finger at the map and accidentally poked her in the knee. “Sorry. There's also one to the west, right here, but I don't think that's it.”

He was more nervous than he wanted to let on, even to himself. He wasn't sure what the cost of failure would be, but if it meant getting phone calls from a ghost for the rest of his life, he wanted no part of it.

“When's the last bus back?” Wyn asked, after a moment of silently staring at the map.

He took his phone out and checked the schedule. “Four o'clock, looks like. Good thing it's not raining today.” The sun was still weak but poked promisingly through the slight cloud cover. It would be chilly, but it probably wouldn't be wet. He had a fleeting visceral memory of falling on his hands and knees into the wet grass, his phone flying off into the darkness of the cromlech, and shivered slightly.

A few minutes later, the bus stopped at one end of a small, crowded parking lot. The caravan park was at the opposite, western end, with its orderly rows of trailers; the beach itself was right in front of them. When the bus doors opened, a blast of cool air swept in, smelling of brine and decaying sea life.

Gareth hitched up his backpack and they began to weave through the cars in the parking lot. The beach was thronged with people, and children in sun suits and hats ran everywhere. Most of the people were gathered by the caravans, where the sand formed a nearly perfect beige arc and the water was a clear green-blue. Toward the eastern end, the ocean's surface was darker, the water deeper and constellated with lumps of rock. The largest of these was covered in a clamoring mass of seabirds.

“It really does look like Northern California,” Wyn said. “I can't believe so many people are hanging out on the beach in this weather, though.”

“Believe me, this is nice for South Wales,” Gareth said. “If it's not freezing and raining on you, then it's off to the seaside.” They reached the sand, their shoes sinking into the soft surface, and stopped.

“That's true back home, too. The water's usually too cold for me, though.” Wyn laughed briefly, then went quiet again.

“I guess we'd better figure out what to do next,” she said, staring out at the water.

Gareth nodded and brought the map back out. “I'm thinking we should start with the two areas we're already closer to, on the east side,” he said. “First, this one, which should be just up that path—” He pointed toward a trail that led from the parking lot up to a clifftop viewpoint. “And if that's not it, we can hike to the one that's farther away.”

“What about the third one?”

“I don't know if we'll have time today. We can always come back and try again.”

“My parents are already talking about leaving,” Wyn said, her voice soft. She looked down at the sand. “I don't know if I'll have another chance.”

“Well, if it helps, I'm almost positive it isn't the one off to the west,” Gareth said, trying to sound more confident than he felt.

“I hope you're right.” Wyn grimaced. “It's a good thing you brought the map.”

Gareth folded it up and put it back in his pocket. “Off that way, then,” he said, pointing to the eastern trailhead.

They walked along the beach as far as possible, the breeze occasionally gusting into a salty, misty wind that whistled past his ears. The cries of the seabirds were eerily like those of the playing children in the distance. He could taste the salt on his lips.

Wyn was quiet on their walk up the dirt trail, but he could sense her tension. He was anxious, too, more and more so as the morning wore into midday. Then, without warning, they reached the first of the spots he'd circled on the map.

At least, he thought it was the spot—there was no visible marker, but there was a ruined building off to their left, about halfway up a lush green hillside. But it was wrong. It was nothing but a set of four crumbled walls, with some farmer's sheep grazing all around and even in the middle of the old building. One or two of the woolly, black-faced sheep bleated in alarm as they passed, looking up stupidly.

Gareth knew with an unwavering certainty that this was not the place, and said so.

Wyn's face fell. “I guess I knew it, too,” she said. She looked around, then back at him. “I'm just scared we won't find it.”

He shrugged. “I guess we should go on. Or do you feel like stopping for lunch? I brought some.”

“Let's stop closer to the ocean,” she said. They walked down the path a little bit farther, skirting a two-foot sinkhole that led down into crashing surf. Cresting a small rise, they came upon a standing stone.

Gareth sat down, leaning his back against the scarred and pitted surface of the ancient stone. Wyn followed suit, and they watched the tiny people swarming across the beach below as Gareth brought out the sandwiches and oranges he'd packed.

“Here we are,” he said. “Cheese and tomato.”

“To-MAH-to,” she repeated, then raised her eyebrows at him.

“I realize you eat to-MAY-toes over in the States, but we don't get those here.”

“Right-o.” Wyn laughed, seeming more relaxed than she had earlier, and took the water bottle he handed her.

After a quick lunch, they double-checked the map and set off down the trail to find the other site. Time was getting short, and they set a brisk pace. Up one rise, down the next; looping slightly inland among meadowlike grassy fields, and then back toward the sea, turquoise waters punctuated by lumps of dark rock. They occasionally passed the purplish stack rock that had always fascinated Gareth as a boy, rising up the cliffs in narrow columns like layers of stone flipped diagonally.

The whole time they walked, his sense of familiarity grew, and his unease. A headache began to throb behind his temples. The minutes ticked by. Neither of them spoke. Gareth wondered if Wyn was feeling what he was feeling—creeped out.

The path they were on was just like the one in his dream.
Their
dream.

The main difference between the dream and reality, though, as far as he could tell, was that they were walking along without conversation. In fact, the silence between him and her and the sea was nearly tangible, pushing them apart like an invisible wind.

Also, of course, in the dream they'd been holding hands. Another key discrepancy.

Gareth thought about reaching across that unseen divide. His hand twitched, but he kept it at his side.

Then, the path widened, and it was suddenly just as Gareth remembered it. The sea smell of the wind, the grassy, flower-speckled meadows stretching to either side in expanses of green and yellow and purple. As they panted up a slight slope, the path turned inward—and there, beyond a series of gentle rises, was the ruined church, its crumbling spire just visible above the hillside.

And there was something else: a chain-link fence, stretching as far as he could see in either direction.

Gareth's heart sank. He jogged a few steps closer, Wyn right on his heels. A large, official-looking sign was attached to the fence, reading in red, angry letters:

Perygl / Danger
Dim Mynediad / No Entry

In smaller print beneath, it said:
Closed for restorations. Please keep out of the construction area. The National Trust and CADW will reopen the Llanddewi Historical Preserve in January. Thank you for your cooperation.

“January?” Gareth said faintly. “They must be joking.” What would they do now? All the awful feelings of nervousness and dread he'd been trying to ignore threatened to come crashing down on him.

“But this is the place, isn't it?” Wyn said in a small voice. “It looks so familiar.”

“Yes, it's definitely the right place.” Gareth didn't know how to react. A surge of disappointment swept over him and he turned away, away from the sign and the forbiddingly tall chain-link fence that hadn't been there just a few months ago. He put a hand to the back of his neck and stared down at the trampled grassy path.

Several minutes passed, neither of them saying a word. The only sounds were the whooshing of the wind and the occasional cry of a gull. Gareth's brain felt totally empty. He couldn't imagine what to do now.

Then, barely audible, Wyn said, “I think we should go in.”

Gareth looked at her. Was she daft? “Er, maybe you didn't see it, but there's a giant fence and a ‘do not enter' sign,” he said. “That's going to make things difficult.”