Mean Spirit

here from Castle Farm. This was about 1920 and I think it was her birthday. She would be thirteen, and I guess all her hormones were churning up like the inside of a washing machine, so maybe she was ready for anything.’

Grayle laid a hand on the collapsed capstone.

‘This monument is about four thousand years old and was oriented, we think, to the midsummer sunrise. A shaft of first light would pass through a slit in the stones and into the chamber. Though with the capstone collapsed, it’s hard to see precisely how that worked now, but you get the idea.’

Persephone Callard nodded. Perhaps faintly bemused about why Grayle had insisted on bringing her up here, banging on the dairy door in the morning mist.

Bemused — that was no bad thing.

‘So Annie Davies is up here — we don’t know whether she was standing on top of the capstone, which was already partly collapsed by then, or if she was inside. It’s still possible to get inside, if you’re small.’

‘Like you,’ Callard said.

‘Yeah, I did it, once. It was … strange. A strange experience. Anyhow, this is where she had the vision. On midsummer morning the sun came down in a giant red ball and settled on the ground and it rolls towards her along the hills, and out of the sun strolls this … lady. It’s hard to get a picture of it on a dull day in the wrong season, but-’

‘It isn’t hard at all.’ Callard wore jeans and a black, hooded sweatshirt. No time for make-up and her hair was still loose. ‘These places were very carefully sited according to the landscape and the heavens and the effects they have on you. Can we see Castle Farm from here?’

‘Down behind those trees. You can see the village over there, St Mary’s … the church … Uh, the legend of High Knoll is not too well known on account of the villagers, for all kinds of reasons, covered it up about Annie Davies. The Border temperament: play it down, don’t draw attention. No way did they want another Bernadette. Plus, the Anglican Church was apparently suggesting the kid was either lying or evil.’

‘Typical.’

‘Yeah. And when Marcus heard about it, he was … well … You know Marcus.’

‘Furious.’ Callard looking amused now. The wind blew her tobacco hair across her face.

‘See, for Marcus, this story … these stones, symbolized a whole lot of things about how it all went wrong. About people closing their eyes to the miraculous — turning a blind eye to the Big Mysteries. The establishment clamping down on whatever it can’t fit between its own cramped parameters.’

‘’Twas ever thus, Grayle.’

‘He hasn’t had a lot of luck, Persephone. His wife and his little daughter both died; there was some talk of medical negligence, which is how come he hates doctors. Doctors and lawyers and politicians and scientists and … teachers.’

‘Yes. A teacher who hated teachers. I remember.’

‘So when The Phenomenologist came up for sale … and also Castle Farm, which at the time was even more rundown … Marcus grabbed the chance to get out of formal education and into … into finding out stuff, undermining received wisdom, spreading a sense of wonder. He likes to be called a crank, an anarchist, an old curmudgeon. And maybe … maybe a crank is a fine thing to be, you know?’

Persephone Callard pulled the hair out of her face. Her amber eyes glittered. ‘Let me try and analyse what you’re saying, Grayle. Why you brought me here.’

‘Well, I’ve come to realize what part you played in all this, is all.’ Grayle turned away, watching a buzzard wheel and mew. ‘You were his first big breakthrough. Incontrovertible evidence of the world being a bigger place. Marcus’s Philosopher’s Stone. If Annie Davies was the legend and the inspiration, you were the proof. And maybe, all the time he was scraping together the money, he was holding you in front of him, just as much as Annie.’

‘Whereas you know I’m just spoiled and neurotic.’

‘Aw, look, I never …’ Grayle tugged her hair into bunches. ‘I’m not a sceptical person. I’m a gullible person. Holy Grayle, remember? Mind so wide open you could store a Freightliner in there. Underneath, I wanna believe what you’re saying, what you represent, just as much as he does.’

‘Oh, sure.’ Callard walked around the burial chamber until she was facing Grayle across the capstone. ‘But you also want to protect him. Because suppose Callard’s lying. Or fooling herself. Or become a psychiatric case? Or always was? Suppose she’s not a Big Mystery at all, just a medical anomaly? What’s that going to do to poor old Marcus — finding out that everything he cares about is founded on angel dust?’

Grayle bent and rested her cheek on the cold stone. She felt suddenly near to tears. It sometimes happened at High Knoll.

Callard said, more softly, ‘There’s something else about this place, isn’t there? It means something to you.’

‘It …’ Grayle sighed. ‘This was also the place Ersula — my sister — came. When she was a research archaeologist at Cefn-y-bedd. The University of the Earth?’

She straightened up, folded her arms on top of the stone.

‘They had a research programme into the effects of ancient monuments on human consciousness, which involved sleeping out at places like this and recording your dreams. It was how she got killed.’

Callard stepped back from the stones. ‘Here?’

‘I don’t think she was killed here. They found her body in a shallow grave, a co-worker at the centre and a police detective, Bobby Maiden … But that’s all over, the killer dealt with and all. You read about it. Everybody read about it.’

‘But this is why you came back here, to work? To be near …?’

‘Or in spite of being near. I’d got to know Marcus, I liked what he believed in …’

‘Until now?’

‘I don’t know.’

Callard said, ‘You want me to leave.’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know that he can help you. He has a lot of books and a lot of contacts. He’ll find out if any other mediums ever got stuck with a … presence … they couldn’t lose. He’ll find out how they handled it. But in the end, I-. Look, you don’t need to involve Marcus. He’s sick. Why can’t I help you?’

Callard blinked. ‘How?’

‘Practical stuff. Seems to me if there’s an immediate problem it relates to you and me and what happened the other night. Like, personally, I’m not gonna be able to rest until I find out what that was all about and what I did to that guy … who he was, all of that.’

‘Don’t go thinking that’s your problem. It isn’t.’

‘It is now,’ Grayle insisted. ‘Also, on the most basic level, I need to get my car back. So … what I figured … maybe you could take me over there this morning, while Marcus is poring over his files and phoning his mediums. And then when we get the car or … or we deal with that in some way … we could go over to Cheltenham, see this Barber …’

‘He’s in France.’

‘Oh.’

‘And I wouldn’t want to go back there.’

‘Isn’t that just the place you oughta go? He has to know stuff that could help you. Like suppose his apartment was like haunted — infested with this … this presence? How do you know he didn’t plan to unload the shit on you? Seffi, however you look at it, that bastard was holding out.’

‘And what do I do? Offer to give it back to him? No. It was a bad place. I couldn’t go back.’

‘Bad place? What’s that mean?’

‘Oppressive. I don’t know.’ Across the big, flat stone, Callard looked vague. ‘I’m just a receiver, a monitor. I’m not the whole computer.’

She turned her back on the stones, walked away to the new stile and the pathway down the hill.

Grayle followed, pausing to pat the capstone. ‘Wait there, OK?’

It was Marcus’s long-term plan, if The Vision ever made real money, to try and buy this scrubby field and this monument and then erect a pedestal with a glass case on top to relate the story of Annie Davies and the day the sun rolled across the hill.