To Dream of the Dead

reactivated by more recent activity, you might be looking at no more than an old imprint.’

‘By definition, a place memory without soul or consciousness.’

‘If you accept, as I would, that ritual sites were usually in places of strong natural energy, that makes sense, aye.’

‘What if it’s something of human origin?’

‘Way back?’

‘For the sake of argument.’

‘Happen a ritual sacrifice, then. Could even be a willing sacrifice, someone who’d elected or consented to look after the ritual site for all eternity and was then ceremonially slaughtered and buried there, or cremated.’

‘But that’s all theoretical, isn’t it? And can only ever be. Goes too far back.’

‘In that case, if there’s owt there you’ve got a few centuries of experience to tap. You could talk to folk. Got to be some memory.’

‘But if the people living there have not requested assistance and are never likely to…’

Merrily paused for a reality check — if the Stookes were lying, all this was academic.

In the windscreen, the tadpoles were still aglow and wriggling. The lights of Ledwardine? Couldn’t be. Not from this distance, in conditions of seriously reduced visibility.

‘You could still go it alone, if you felt it was necessary. Or you could — as there’s already controversy over it — offer to bless the stones. And then make it a bit more than a blessing.’

‘That’s not a bad idea.’

‘You’d have to decide, on the evidence, whether a personality is involved,’ Huw said. ‘Whether you’re asking for the place to be calmed or a spirit to be released. You could argue that if the stones are about to be put back up, with a conservation order, well… a nightwatchman’s entitled to redundancy. Retirement. A nice, long rest.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Keep us informed, anyroad,’ Huw said. ‘Now bugger off home.’

He was gone.

Merrily got out a cigarette and smoked half of it before fastening her seat belt and leaning over to make sure that the Boswell guitar case was safely wedged in the gap between the front and rear seats. She switched on the wipers, and pulled into the road. The lights in the windscreen were closer, and they actually were moving and some of them were blue. Shadows paddled across the lights. She flipped the headlamps up to full beam.

Two men coming towards her, carrying something between them.

White lettering on blue.

ROAD CLOSED.

Merrily braked.

But hang on, this was the link to the bypass, the great lifeline. It was on fairly high ground, this couldn’t be about flooding. We never looked back, Lyndon Pierce said. Benefits of progress, people.

She lowered her window. Guy coming over — traffic cop, yellow slicker, fluorescent armbands. Merrily leaned out into the rain.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Road’s closed.’

‘Yes, I can — What is it, a crash? An accident?’

Always seemed to be one, coming up to Christmas. Joy to the world.

‘Can I ask you to turn round, please, madam? Just turn round here and get yourself back on the main road.’

‘But how long—?’

‘And take a different route, if you don’t mind.’

‘But the other road’s going to be flooded, isn’t it? How do I get into Ledwardine?’

‘You don’t,’ the traffic cop said. ‘Nobody does tonight.’ He sighed. ‘Or even, I’d say, this side of Christmas…’

CHRISTMAS EVE

When powerful interest groups combine, archaeological guidance can be subverted or ignored.

Huw Sherlock, archaeologist, Third Stone

45 Caple End

Going to see the Riverman wasn’t much of a journey any more. On the edge of the cobbles, Jane lost her footing, swaying like a tightrope walker before going down on one knee into a depth of water that surprised her.

Squatting down to squeeze some out of her jeans before her welly could become flooded, she looked up to see an ovoid moon with a wide halo of dirty yellow, like a tallow candle.

Over a Christmas-card village?

No, not at all. Christmas-card villages were always lit with a warm haze of security. Pre-dawn, in the stillness of no-rain, Ledwardine looked stark and stripped, rigid with shock, its black timbers receded into shadows and its white plaster turned to bone.

Slopping down Church Street under moonlit, mushroom-coloured clouds, Jane was glad Eirion hadn’t woken when she’d slid out of his bed to creep back to her apartment to wash and dress.

Last night she’d needed him with her, but afterwards there had been bad dreams. She’d been walking, then running through the churchyard in the blinding rain, trying to find Lucy’s grave. Knowing roughly where it was and taking different turnings, the cold mud thickening on her legs, but the graves always had the wrong names on them, and then she’d wind up on the footpath which led into the old orchard, where she didn’t dare look up because she knew the remains of old Edgar Powell’s blown-off head were up there.

And then she did look up… and awoke.

As one did.

Dreaming of the dead again, but there was no rain this time, only what had already fallen, massively, and now she was alone on the Isle of Ledwardine, under the yellow moon.

She’d thought there might be some people still around. There’d been a few out until well after midnight, bunched together, talking on mobiles, waiting for news. Barry at the Black Swan and his evening staff had kept the long bar open until one, though mainly for coffee. Jane had taken one out to Gomer, waiting on the square with Gwyneth. Who was going to pay Gomer Parry Plant Hire for all this work? Probably nobody. He was doing it for Ledwardine.

Jane stood watching the moon reflected in the deep water at the bottom of Church Street, most of the village bridge invisible now, a few nervous lights on in the hestate, but no more giant Santa’s sleigh. No Christmas lights on the square, either: the Christmas tree had been unplugged before midnight, as if someone had felt there was a need to conserve electricity now that the village had become isolated.

Nobody had seen it happen. Everybody had been very confused last night; nobody could quite grasp what it meant. What are we going to do? If she’d heard that once, she’d heard it a dozen times, from both men and women.