Voices in Stone (10 page)

The woods were full of little paths. Animal tracks wiggling through the trees, crossing and crossing again. Isis just seemed to be taking one turn then another, randomly, but we kept going uphill. And Merlin was with us, even though we’d never asked him to come along. He walked slowly, like he wasn’t in any hurry, but his legs were so long he was going fast anyway. I kept thinking that this was just like one of the stories the police tell when they come into school for those ‘stranger danger’ talks.

I made plans in my mind for what I’d do if Merlin tried anything. Drop-kick him, grab Isis and run. He only kept walking though, and after a while we were so high I could see the whole valley below us, all the leaves rustling in
waves. A line of smoke drifted out of the trees, up into the blue. It must’ve been from the protest camp, but for a moment it was like going back thousands of years, to when there weren’t cars or towns or motorways, to when the whole country must’ve been wild woods and sparkling rivers. A robin sang its little up and down song, and everything was moving and stirring so you could almost feel the planet turning under your feet. Then, just on the edge of my sight, I thought I saw a little boy staring at me from between the trees.

Huuuurrr
…

I ran to catch up with the others, not looking back.

Merlin was talking to Isis about ley lines, and she had this studied look on her face, so I couldn’t tell if she was interested or just focused on walking.

I followed them, keeping my eyes on Merlin and trying not to see any little boys appearing in between the trees. I wished more than ever that I had a phone, so I could ring Mum, or the police, or someone. I decided on this thing I’d seen on TV, how if you’re kidnapped you should try to make friends with your captor, so they’ll see you as a person, not someone they can skin or whatever.

“How long have you been at the protest camp?” I asked him.

“I’m not in the protest camp,” he said. “I don’t see eye to eye with them.”

I wondered who he would see eye to eye with. Some of Dad’s conspiracy-freak friends probably.

“Okay – how long have you been in the woods then?”

“A year. Year and a half,” said Merlin.

“A
year
?” said Isis. “But what about in the winter? Aren’t you cold?”

Merlin shrugged. “My teepee’s got a wood burner, and this is a wood.” He picked up a stick from the ground. “I’m not short of fuel and I don’t need much.”

“But you don’t have electricity or anything.”

Merlin shrugged. “I’m not here to write a blog, I’m here to answer the earth’s cries.” He looked at Isis and me, weighing us up. “Same as you.”

“Actually my dad
made
me come.”

We walked in silence for a bit after that, then Isis said, “I know where we are.” There was something weird to her voice.

“You can feel the energy?” asked Merlin.

Isis shook her head. “I recognise this place. From when I came here before, with my mum in the summer.” She turned to Merlin. “Where the ley lines cross, is there a standing stone?”

“Yeah,” said Merlin. “An awesome one.”

Isis stood still, looking shocked, or scared, I don’t know. I wished we weren’t here, with Merlin and standing stones and invisible little boys. I also wished I hadn’t left a Mars Bar back in the camper van, because I was really hungry. A little further on the trees opened up and we were at the edge of a neat grassy clearing. The standing stone was in the middle, and another footpath led off from the other side of the clearing. The standing stone was small, more like a standing lump. It was the same kind of grey as the rocks at the quarry, but softer-looking, like it was being slowly washed away. Not impressive at all, and there wasn’t any sign of any ley lines, not that they even exist. I wandered over and read the notice attached to a little fence around the stone. I can’t remember exactly what it said…

No, you can remember. You will remember exactly, word for word.

Um, oh. It said:
THE DEVIL’S SPEARHEAD. THIS NEOLITHIC MONUMENT IS MADE FROM AN UNUSUAL LOCAL STONE TYPE, THOUGHT TO BE IGNEOUS IN ORIGIN. ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS THE STONE WAS ERECTED AROUND 3500 BC, BUT ITS ORIGINAL PURPOSE IS UNKNOWN. THE NAME DATES FROM THE LATE MEDIEVAL PERIOD, WHEN IT WAS BELIEVED THAT THE STONE HAD DROPPED TO EARTH DURING A BATTLE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL.

“Come on,” said Merlin, next to me. “Let’s hug.”

I jumped back, ready with my karate kick, but he didn’t mean me. He climbed over the fence and hugged the standing stone, face pressed against it, his eyes shut. When he spoke, it was like he was talking in his sleep.

“You should try it. It’s tingly.”

The day just kept getting weirder. Plus Dad and Cally were probably having fifty fits wondering where we were.

I turned to Isis. “So we’re here. Can we go back now?” She was at the edge of the trees, staring with this blank kind of expression.

Merlin opened his eyes. “I haven’t even done my chant yet.”

“Knock yourself out,” I said. “We’ll go back, I know the way.” Not that I really did.

Merlin looked like a kid who’s been told he has to leave the zoo. “At least hug the stone, or there’s no point even coming.”

I shook my head. “No thanks.” I glanced at Isis, but she hadn’t moved. She was staring like she was seeing something no one else could. What worried me was that this was probably true.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she said vaguely, like she was concentrating on something else.

“You’ll feel the energy,” Merlin wheedled at me. “Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not
scared
. This is just rubbish.”

“The stone’s an energy channel, that’s probably why you’re feeling jittery and snappish.”

“I’m not either of those,” I snapped. “Because there’s no energy, and no ley lines! It’s just a rock.” I really wanted that Mars Bar.

“A rock carved by ancient hands and put in this place, thousands of years ago,” said Merlin, settling back into his hug, “soaking up the vibrations like a sponge.”

My life is full of freaks, all of them banging on about
their own stupid stuff. Like my dad, like Merlin. Even Isis was being a bit of one then.

“So what if it’s been here thousands of years?” I shouted. “The rock it’s made out of must be
millions
of years old! Millions of years of being just an ordinary bit of our planet. A few thousand years as a standing stone is nothing compared to that – if I spend a minute in the shower, it doesn’t make me a dolphin!”

I reached over the fence to slap the stone, make my point.

“There’s nothing special…” But even as my fingers brushed its surface, I saw them.

Pale colourless figures, surrounding me in a circle. All different heights and none with a proper face. As I stared, hardly able to breathe, one of the shapes began to shimmer and solidify, turning from a wraith into a human. A black man, with wide eyes and a worn-in kind of frown. He put a hand out towards me and it looked real, even to the bitten fingernails, but his clothes were just smears of colour. A bit of red, a bit of blue.

Meeeeeee
, he said.

Another of the figures shimmered into human. An older black guy, his hair going grey, his face wrinkled.

Meeeeeee
, he said.

One of the shorter figures shook itself into being a boy. About ten years old, with hair cropped short and sticky-out ears. I took in a shaky-sharp breath. It was me, when I was younger.

Pleeeeeeeezzzzz
, he said.

I stared at them, heart battering inside me. More of the shapes shivered and shuddered faces onto themselves and
all
of the smaller ones had mine.

They began closing in, their hands reaching, all moaning the same words.

Meeeeeeee. Pleeeeezzzz. Meeeeeeee. Meeeeeeee. Pleeeeeezzz.

One of them ruffled into nothing as Merlin moved straight through it. He was frowning at me.

“You okay, man?”

Meeeeeeee. Pleeeeezzzz. Meeeeeeee. Meeeeeeee. Pleeeeeezzz.

“Are you feeling ill or anything?”

What I really noticed was their eyes. Not the colour, but the emptiness. The only thing in them was the deepness of space, and I thought,
This is it. This is where
the ghosts kill me, or suck out my brains or whatever.

“Isis.” I tried to shout, and it came out a squeak.

I could hear Isis’s feet on the grass, heading into the clearing, and I knew I had to make a run for it. Dodge between the zombie-ghost things before they closed in completely.

My heart was beating so hard I thought I was going to be sick. I counted down to make myself do it.

Three…

Meeeeee
…

Isis walked straight past me, up to the standing stone.

Two…

Pleeeeeezzzzzz
.

She touched it with her hand.

One…

The circle of ghosts vanished.

It felt inevitable somehow, being here with the standing stone. A piece of rock, and yet it had already twisted the direction of her life before now. When she’d been here with Cally and Philip Syndal, the Devourer had been stalking her through the clouds. The time before, when she’d been only seven, they’d been making their way towards here when Angel was hit by a car and killed. She didn’t listen to what Gray and Merlin were saying, her only interest was in the stone itself. And when Gray froze, wide-eyed and staring, she barely noticed.

Her memories fluttered, but couldn’t give her an answer to the desperate feelings, which had brought her here. Only the standing stone could tell her.

Gray called her name but only the stone mattered, her fingertips reaching out to touch it. Cold and gritty, slicked with damp…

Everything flipped.

Isis was looking at herself. Her own face, her slightly widened eyes, the stretch of her arm. She could also see Gray and Merlin, the grass and the encircling trees. She had a goldfish-bowl view of things, and when she attempted to pull her hand back from the rock she couldn’t work out how to. She was immobile, pinned in place.

What’s happening?

She tried to cry out, but couldn’t find her mouth or lungs. Arms, legs, body, head – those all belonged to the girl she could see standing in front of her. Isis herself didn’t seem to have them any more. Instead she had the hills dreaming beneath her, and if she dipped her mind downwards…

I have to get out!

She fought to reach her body but even as she struggled Isis saw herself back away from the stone. And now it was Gray who had his hands on the rock, mouth open and eyes blank. Then Merlin, his arms stretched
around the standing stone – around her. Merlin vanished, and a small boy slapped his palm on the standing stone, on her, turning back to shout at someone Isis couldn’t see.

A succession of people materialised: men, women and children, on their own and in groups. Fingers tapped her, hands brushed casually past. Some clambered to sit on top of her, others leaned against her, posing for photos. Ones and twos soon added up to hundreds. The days peeled backwards into weeks, then years. Hundreds of people became thousands. All the people who’d ever visited here.

Isis was caught inside the standing stone, and she was able to distinguish accompanying phrases for every touch, people’s thoughts jumping from skin to stone.

I won the race with Daddy!

Thought this would be bigger.

Look at me, I’m on the top!

Well that was a long walk for not much.

What a beautiful place.

Better hold my stomach in when they take the picture.

She wanted to screw her eyes shut against the torrent,
but she didn’t have eyes any more. Instead the thoughts continued pouring in, while the clothes of her visitors changed from ones she recognised to ones she’d seen in photographs, to garments she only knew from history books. Victorian ladies in long skirts; a shepherd in his smock; children wrapped in rough cloth without any shoes.

The years blurred into centuries, time moving differently, backwards and forwards at the same time, as if she was living in a far wider stretch of time than the tiny moment of present that she’d had when human. If Isis concentrated, she could still see Merlin and Gray in the clearing, even see herself, but it was hard to fight the babble of thoughts coming at her from everyone visiting the standing stone in her thousands of years of now. She tried to remember the feeling of her own body but it was lost hundreds of years ago, or maybe hundreds of years in the future.

For long periods she was alone with the weather and the passing seasons. The only touch of human hands came on moonless nights, when people placed bunches of wild flowers at her feet or tied lengths of cord around her, twisted with wishes.

Let him love me.

Make my child well again.

Bring them home safe.

Stop her cow giving milk, the stupid old hag.

People’s language changed, but she understood their meanings from the pictures in their minds, the forms that come before words. A Roman legionary put a coin at her base and asked for warmer weather.

On and on, backwards and forwards, until the hands on her were the ones that had carved her out of the ground and set her in place.

Special,
came the thoughts as she was put in position.
Now there is a place for you.

And the thoughts of these people were vivid and bright. Memories filled their minds with a sound like the roaring of a storm, and a perfect circle punched through a cloudy sky. They remembered looking up from their crops and animals, and crying out in fear and wonder.

Their hands stayed on her after they put her in place.
Talk to us.

“I don’t understand. What do you want me to say?”

Isis gasped at the sudden sound of her own voice. She was back in her own body again, arm outstretched, her
fingertips touching the cold, grainy surface of the standing stone.

She put a hand to her chest, feeling its rise and fall. Put her other hand to her cheek and the curves of her face.

“What did you just do?” asked Gray, his voice trembling and scared.

“I…” She shook her head. “How long was I standing here?”

“No time at all,” said Gray. “You haven’t even been there a second.”

Their walk back was quick, both of them keen to get away.

Gray was ahead of Isis, his shoulders hunched and pulled in on himself. Isis was relieved he wasn’t speaking. She didn’t want to talk, because she had no words to fit what had just happened to her. Merlin led the way, his few attempts at conversation trailing off in the face of their silence. After a short distance, he glanced back at them, then took out his mobile phone and began to chat with someone. “No, I’ve been up at the stone. I’ve got a couple of kids, found them in the woods, just wondered if… Oh,
you have, okay… No! I’m bringing them straight back! Haven’t taken them anywhere!”

In front of Isis, Gray slowed down, letting Merlin go ahead of them. Then he turned around.

“Are you contagious?” he hissed.

Isis looked at him, astonished. “What are you talking about?”

“Being psychic,” said Gray. “Are you like a carrier or something? Is that what all the stuff with me holding Angel’s hand, and seeing the Devourer and… everything! Is that what it was all for, so you could make me like
you
?” The last word was grated out. “Because I don’t want it! I don’t want any of that stuff!”

Isis stared at him, pulled out of her own strange experience by his anger.

“Have you… seen a ghost?”

Gray nodded.

“When?”

He nodded his head, back towards the clearing. “And in my garden.”

“What did they look like?” she asked, not caring about what he’d seen in his garden. But at the standing stone,
had he seen them too, the succession of people going backwards and forwards in time?

But Gray only frowned, and muttered, “Me.”

“What?”

“They looked like me.”

Isis found herself smiling in answer, trying to puzzle what he meant.

“Ghosts of yourself?”

“Don’t laugh!” snapped Gray.

“I’m not. I’m sorry. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a ghost that looked like me. And if you’d caught being psychic from me, wouldn’t you be able to… I don’t know, see Angel for yourself?”

“I must be going mad then,” he said miserably. “I thought I was getting better, but then up there…” He looked at Isis. “Maybe it’s post-traumatic stress from what happened in the summer? Maybe my brain can’t cope with what yours can.”

“No!” She wasn’t going to believe that! She couldn’t bear to think she might be hurting him, by pulling him into her strange world. “It’s got to be something else.” She tried to think. “What
exactly
have you seen?”

“These fuzzy shapes at the standing stone. Some of them looked like me.”

Isis held onto a small tree, steadying herself on the steep little track they were heading down. The trees and the slope of the land all looked so ordinary, yet completely alien, as if she’d never seen such things before. And it didn’t feel right to be walking either, one foot after another, only going forwards, when she knew that wasn’t how it worked at all.

“Maybe we’re both crazy,” she said to Gray. “Something really strange happened to me up there too.”

His mouth opened with a question, but before she could tell him more, Merlin was stamping back up the path to find them.

“Your parents are at the protest camp, having hysterics about you,” he said. “You never told me you’d gone off without telling them. Sounds like they were about to call out Search and Rescue.”

He looked at the two of them, and whistled. “You two got a real faceful of energy at the standing stone, didn’t you? Told you that place was powerful. You gotta be careful around that many ley lines.”