The Cold Calling

‘Gave himself up, that shepherd. And a few sheep. I’m glad you spotted that, Robert. You’re starting to understand.’

‘And what’s the message, Adrian? What’s the coded message?’

‘You’ll see. You’ll know.’

‘That’s why we’re here. Right?’

No reply.

‘You said Stonehenge was pretty useless now … that’s why you’ve come here, right?’

Laughter. ‘These stupid railings. What do they think they’re keeping out?’

‘Or keeping in?’

‘Very good, Robert. Very perceptive. Are you standing up, Robert? I want to see you. So do the Knights.’

Maiden lay still. Thought he heard shouts from the circle. They were still there? What was she doing?

Adrian laughed. ‘Why don’t you come closer, Robert? Come and watch. It’s like an army. It’s regrouping. Gathering its forces. Conserving its energy, and it’s coming. It’s coming. It’s very close.’

The storm?

‘And what’s going to happen when it comes?’

‘I like you, Robert,’ Adrian said. ‘But you ask too many questions.’

Something came then. The first fork lightning, a jagged, white crack in the sky and it was close, speared the trees on the horizon and-

‘Told you!’ Adrian cried, splashed with ice-milk light, arms raised in euphoria, amid the Knights and the whump of thunder. ‘Told you, told you, told you! The next one that’s the sign — the next one will be it.’

No talking this one down.

‘All right, Adrian.’ He stood up. ‘I’m coming over.’

‘See?’ Grayle screamed, and she wasn’t the only woman there who did when all the stones lit up. ‘I thought you knew all about this stuff! Stone circles attracting lightning and all, on account of the streams crossing. You stay here, you’re gonna get blasted.’

‘Oh, let’s go,’ Janny sobbed. ‘It’s all ruined now, anyway. It was a stupid idea.’

‘No!’ Matthew shouted. ‘Grayle, I can’t believe you’re doing this. This is the most wonderful thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s a blessing. Tell her, Charlie!’

‘Well,’ Charlie said, ‘they do say an electric storm’s an Act of God, but whether …’

‘It’s a blessing! It’s absolutely tremendous.’

‘It’s ruined!’ Janny shrieked.

‘I can get you a church,’ Charlie said. ‘Phone call should do it.’

‘I think you better had.’ People pushing forward. ‘I’m the bride’s father, and I think she’s had just about enough of this nonsense.’

‘I don’t want a bloody church!’ Matthew shouted. ‘Just do the business, Charlie. Tie the knot.’

‘No! You don’t understand … There’s a killer out there.’

With Janny’s father, Grayle saw, was Duncan Murphy, the professor from Oxford; hadn’t noticed him before. ‘Come on, Grayle,’ he said, ‘I think you’ve made your point.’

‘Duncan, you have to listen me. There’s a mad guy …’

Duncan Murphy and some other man, they took an arm each and lifted her off her feet and back into the congregation.

He could see the Knights, but no Adrian.

No telling how much time he had. The only way he’d know what they were up against was to get inside those railings, step inside the tiger’s cage.

And then? Would he still be Robert then, when the energy exploded, when the shit hit the fan? Or would have become ‘the man’? Maybe ‘a poor specimen’. And later tonight, the Green Man would be talking his storm-lit death into the burial chamber at Black Knoll.

‘OK. I’m here, Adrian. Adrian?’

Walking those last few paces, his head was clearing. Pleasanter now, the night a bit cooler. Hands in his pockets, the essence of peat coming back to him. Damp and lonely.

A dodgy streetlamp flickering on and off and, even when it was on, it wasn’t fully on, so you could almost see the filament in the bulb, a worm of blue-white light. She was standing under the lamp and seemed to be going on and off like the light; you saw her and then you didn’t.

‘Emma?’

He saw the face of the woman under the lamp. It wasn’t Em’s, though she was about the same age. Her hair was in a bun. She had a case at her feet.

She disappeared in the lightning.

It came down, against all the earth-mystery rules, not in the circle, but in the pines, those skeletal, stalky pines.

But it lit the circle. Seemed as if it lit up every one of the seventy-plus cheesy, pockmarked, weathered stones. So savage and so bright was the lightning that it seemed you would have had time to walk round and count them all one more time before it faded.

Except that Grayle — and possibly she was the only one of them — was not looking at either the stones or the pines, a couple of which had caught fire, but at Janny’s wedding dress, the only thing here which was, conspicuously, not an unnatural, blazing white.

Janny’s wedding dress, from the waist to the prim, high neck, had grown a sunburst of deepest, rosiest red.

No … Jesus.

Grayle stood transfixed, feeling the hands of Duncan Murphy and the other guy dropping away, and then, spinning round, saw a small flash across the big, flat field and there was also a crack. Not the thunder, surely, because the thunder was almost directly overhead, like an avalanche in the sky, and Grayle wasn’t sure of the order any of this was happening because so many terrible things were happening.

But that was a shot. That, God damn it, was a gunshot.

At some point, Janny finally screamed, and maybe it was at the thunder or maybe because she saw that she was soaked with blood or maybe — in the light of the burning pine trees — she saw Charlie sinking slowly to his knees, as if he was praying for deliverance, with a hole the size of a fist in the front of his surplice and everything emptying out.

Several people saw Charlie fall and there were screams of incomprehension that the lightning could do this. A guy rushed forward, and a woman shrieked, ‘Don’t touch him … he could be live!’

But Grayle Underhill knew there was nothing live about Charlie any more and she found herself walking purposefully out of the circle and into the big, flat field where she’d seen the flash and where, by the light of the burning pines, she could now see some stones, hunched up like gloating old men.

‘Well, as you see,’ Adrian said, ‘it’s an old Mauser. Nothing fancy. 1941, bolt action. Had it since I was a boy. Used to be my grandfather’s, bit of a wartime heirloom. Super old thing.’

Maiden had been struggling to find the gate in the high railings surrounding the Whispering Knights. Could have tried to climb over but he’d never have made it, and Adrian would have shot him and left him bleeding there on top of the iron spikes.

But nothing like that. Adrian had opened the gate for him, peering at his face in the faint, sparky light from the blazing pines four hundred yards away. Adrian beaming. ‘Come in, Robert. You can come in now.’

Proudly showing him the set-up.

‘The sight …’ He detached the rifle from a metal frame wedged between two of the Knights. ‘Well, I simply bought that at a gun shop in Worcester. Utility stuff. The support I made myself.’

‘People say you’re very practical.’

‘One tries.’

Sharp screams of terror spattered the sky like sparks over the Rollright Stones. He must have killed or