The Emerald Throne

by Sarah Coley

She was wearing a black pinstriped trousers suit that fitted her slim build, and for once her long blond hair had decided to behave itself. Her thick rimmed glasses accentuated her ocean blue eyes, and she'd made sure she'd given Owen all the relevant paperwork for the case to bring with them. She straightened herself up before she knocked on the door.

  After several moments, Eleanor heard the distinctive sound of a door being unlocked, before it swung open revealing the occupant she'd come to see.

  By the look of him, he was a late middle age man with a balding head and glasses. He sported a pointy nose with a grey stubbly beard, and wore a thick wool jumper and smart trousers. The man quickly surveyed the pair before Eleanor remembered her reason for being there in the first place and spoke.

  “Hello, would it be possible to speak to Mr Charles Bourne please?”

  “I am he,” Mr Bourne replied with a slightly posh southern accent. He looked quickly from Eleanor to Owen as if apprehensive as to why a complete pair of strangers would suddenly appear at his door step and ask for him directly.

  Eleanor continued. “Hello, my name is Miss Eleanor Smith, and this is my assistant Mr Owen Wilson. I'm a private investigator that's been hired by the mother of the victim found not far from here just over a week ago. I was wondering if we might be able to ask you some questions?”

  “I already answered questions for the Police last week,” Mr Bourne replied. He eyed Eleanor suspiciously, and absentmindedly started to pull the door shut, clearly not trusting who he was speaking to.

  “I understand Mr Bourne,” Eleanor said hastily, ”but Mrs Bruton wanted me to do another investigation to ensure that all avenues have been covered regarding the last few hours of her son's life. I promise not to keep you too long.”

  Eleanor showed her ID badge to help Mr Bourne feel more at ease. He took a good look at Eleanor's credentials before seeming more convinced.

  “Well, you'd better come in then,” Mr Bourne sighed whilst moving out the way of the entrance so that Owen and Eleanor could step in.

  It was a plain house. The walls were all magnolia and the carpets cream. There wasn't an ounce of dirt anywhere and Eleanor began to wonder if Mr Bourne lived alone. As he ushered them into the large lounge, Eleanor noticed several pictures on the wall of himself with various people she presumed to be his family.

  He noticed her looking and said “that's my son Elijah, and my late wife Mandy. It's just me living here now. Can I get either of you a drink?” He offered whilst putting out a hand to suggest that Owen and Eleanor should sit. Eleanor perched herself on the edge of a black leather sofa and spotted that Owen had his note pad and pen primed.

  “No thank you,” Eleanor replied. Mr Bourne sat himself down in one of the single black chairs nearest the sofa and crossed his legs.

  “So, what would you like to know?” He asked.

  Eleanor smiled a professional smile at him.“It has been mentioned in the police report that you witnessed some strange lights on the night of the 16th of February. Could you tell us what you saw?” She looked at him intently waiting for a reply.

  “Well, I had just finished watching a late movie. I switched off the TV and locked the door before heading up to my bedroom ready to go to bed,” Mr Bourne had a look of concentration on his face as he tried to remember the exact details of that night, “I decided to look out the window to make sure I'd put the bins out ready for the collection the next day. It was then that I noticed these flashing lights coming from the woods across the way,” Mr Bourne pointed out his front window causing Owen to look up from is typing at the brightened window behind them.

  “And what did these lights look like Mr Bourne?” Eleanor asked.

  “Well, they were bright blue and came in bursts. Almost like there was a mini firework display going on in the woods. At first I thought it must be police lights or kids messing about, but then this big bolt of blue lightning came flashing up out the top of the trees,” Mr Bourne replied with enthusiasm.

  “What did you do next?”

  “Well, I watched. Didn't know what to make of it. It went on for a good 10 minutes or so and then, nothing.”

  “Did go out to investigate the lights?” Eleanor asked.

  “No. After they'd stopped I rang the police. I thought they were kids messing about with some new gadget or something.”

  “A gadget that can shoot lightening into the sky?” Owen interjected in a dry tone.

  Eleanor flashed her colleague a sharp expression. “I apologize for my assistant, he’s still training.”

  Mr Bourne smiled warmly. “That’s quite alright. Your assistant is right. Now I’ve had time to think on it, how could it have been; when it happened though, I logically jumped to the most rational conclusion.

  “What did the police say regarding the incident?” Eleanor asked.

  “They were very professional. Said they would send somebody out. Of course no one turned up until the next day. That's when one of them came to question me.”

  “What time approximately did you see the lights?” Eleanor asked whilst pretending to check her notes.

  “Let me see. One in the morning I’d say. I checked my clock as I came upstairs,” he replied.

  Eleanor was listening intently. She had more questions forming in her mind as she listened to Mr Bourne’s statement, such as why didn't you get a neighbor to look at the lights as well, or are you absolutely sure of what you saw, but she knew she had to keep a professional stance. She quickly looked at Owen to make sure he was getting everything down, which by his frantic scribbles he was, before she turned back to Mr Bourne.

  “When did you find out that Mr Bruton had been found dead in the woods?” She asked.

  “The next day when the police came round. I couldn't understand any of it.”

  “What do you think caused the lights Mr Bourne?” Eleanor was eager to know his views of the events.

  “To be honest, I haven't got a clue. I've never seen anything like that before and I hope I never do again. Doris from next door mentioned something about seeing the lights when she was younger. She said it was ghosts paying a visit. Complete nonsense if you ask me.”

  Eleanor smiled and saw that Owen had done the same. “Thank you for your time Mr Bourne. It's been most helpful.”

  “Not a problem,” he replied whilst standing, “let me show you out.”

  After both Eleanor and Owen got into the car, Eleanor switched on the engine and started to pull out onto the road. Owen put his notes into his folder and sat back in his seat.

  “So what do you think?” He asked Eleanor whilst staring straight ahead.

  “It doesn't seem to make any logical sense. I'd say he'd dreamt the whole thing up if it wasn't for the dead body found at the scene,” Eleanor replied whilst shaking her head.

  “What about the whole ghost thing? I'm not saying it actually is a ghost or anything like that, but maybe there's some sort of Electromagnetic disturbance in the area?” Owen had a crazed look of excitement in his face.

  Eleanor Rolled her eyes. “You've been reading too many Sci Fi novels. I'm still going with freak electrical storm.”

  “So what's next?” Owen asked whilst looking over to Eleanor.

  “We visit the scene of event.” Eleanor turned off towards Glastonbury Tor.

  Chapter 2

  Eleanor and Owen approached the scene to a wooded area where the accident had occurred. It was easy to find due to small sections of Police tape precariously blowing in the wind, having been left draping off trees. The area where the killing had taken place was a small section of woodland to the south of the Tor. Looking over, Eleanor could just make out the houses where she had interviewed Mr Bourne earlier that day.

  There was a track leading to the woods from the car park Eleanor had parked in that cut across a field to the wooded area beyond. When they arrived at the scene, the woods were dense enough that the car and houses were no longer visible from where they stood.

  Eleanor noticed
that the trees had buds on them were they were just starting to get their leaves, although the woodland still held onto the feeling of winter with its bare twisted branches and empty woodland floor.

  They decided to comb the ground looking for anything that the police could have missed. As Eleanor walked through the shards if police tap, the carnage caused by the electrical blast became obvious. The floor was chard and burnt, and several trees were split and warped with the force of the impact.

  The devastation seemed to go on for quite a way, but as Eleanor walked around a particularly scorched tree trunk, she began to notice something unsettling. She walked faster, surveying small black markings and burnt branches of trees. She walked one way and then another, taking in the disaster around her. It was then that she realized with an uneasy feeling that if she were to fly up above the trees, she would find that the pattern of devastation was in a perfect circle stretching at least 20 ft in diameter. Was that even possible? She didn't have any knowledge of lightning strikes, or what happened to the ground when one hit, but she figured that it was very unlikely to create a perfectly symmetrical shape. She quickly decided she had to test her discovery on her young friend.

  “Owen, come and look at this.” She ushered him over.

  Owen stopped what he was doing and walked over to stand next to Eleanor.

  “Tell me what you see,” She commanded. She was forever helping Owen come to his own conclusions. She figured this was the best method to helping someone to learn.

  “Scorch marks everywhere.” He replied and started to walk around. “ In the trees, on the ground, literally everywhere. Not a nice way to go.” He looked at her whilst shaking his head.

  “But what do you notice about the pattern of the burning?” She asked.

  “What do you mean?” He relied.

  Eleanor sighed and marched over to the edge of the carnage.

  “Look. You can clearly see the burning here on this tree, but next to it nothing. If we move around.” Eleanor raced to another part of the wood. “Again, here burning; here, nothing. Can't you see? There's a pattern. It's forming a perfect circle!”

  Owen's brow creased and he shook his head. “How is that even possible? Surely if the lightning hit, there would be an area of intense scorching and then sporadic burning throughout. It's almost like there's been a blast of energy that's stopped in a perfect circle.”

  Owen turned to Eleanor. “What the hell would cause that?”

  Eleanor got the impression he was asking himself more than to her. She shook her head in response and continued to look around.

  “Well I'm backing the Alien theory.” Owen whispered to himself as he walked away.

  Eleanor smirked. “I want to see if there's anything else around here. We should split up.” She suggested.

  They continued to search the area for quite some time. Eleanor was using all her concentration to examine every inch of ground in minute detail, but the more she looked, the more things started to look the same and her ability for close attention to detail began to waver. Apart from the occasional blackened scorch marks dotted along the ground, she could see nothing but a sea of brown dead leaves with the occasional branch or twig thrown in for variety. She was just about to give up and call it a day when something sparkled in her peripheral vision. Eleanor turned to see what it could be.

  Small streaks of gold were sitting just under a recently moved pile of leaves. She picked up a small twig next to her and began to move some dried up crispy leaves left over from the previous fall out of the way, being careful not to let her hands touch any potential evidence. The more she moved the leaves aside, the more she began to realize that what had caught her eye initially was in fact a chain to a necklace. It was probably made of gold by the lack of visual wear and tear.

  She pulled out a pair of metal tweezers from her pocket together with a small clear bag and began to delicately extract the necklace from its resting place on the forest floor. When she'd nearly got the chain off the woodland floor, she noticed a distinctive weight at the hidden end. She figured there must be a pendant or beads weighing it down and as it cleared the last of the leaves she could see that she was right. In the middle of the chain hanging from the tweezers was the most beautiful green stone she had ever seen. It was about the size of a plum but flatter like a pebble. The colouring on the stone was a swirl of dark emerald, almost like a lapis lazuli stone if it had been green. Eleanor carefully lifted the necklace over and into her evidence bag, being careful not to drop it whilst it hung precariously from the tweezers. She sealed the bag and put it into her pocket. She didn't see how the necklace could have anything to do with the case, but it was the only lead she'd managed to find and she wasn't going to leave it behind. She called over to Owen and together they began to walk back to the car.

  “Did you manage to find anything?” she asked.

  “No” Owen relayed whilst shaking his head and placing his obviously cold hands in his pockets. “Although how you're supposed to find anything on that woodland floor in beyond me. What about you?” He looked at Eleanor with a sideways glance.

  Eleanor felt suddenly very possessive of the necklace, as though she wanted to keep it to herself. She shrugged her shoulders. “Something. Maybe. I'll show you later. I want to keep a visual on the area this evening from the car. I'm guessing this is a one time event but if someone did managed to create all this, they're bound to come back.”

  Owen nodded his head as they reached the edge of the woods.

  Several hours later, they both sat in layers of clothing staring out their car at the clear night sky. They'd stopped at a nearby café to get some dinner and Eleanor now sat hugging a cup of warm coffee on her hands.

  “Ok, Eleanor, I can see my own breath in this car. Can we not keep the air con on a bit so I can begin to remember what my feet feel like.” Owen looked over to her with a pleading face.

  “For a bit but I don't want to drain the battery. Anyway, if you're going to follow this line of work, you'll have to get used to long stake outs whatever the weather,” Eleanor replied, not taking her eyes off the woods. She reached down and put the air con on before returning to her avid concentration.

  “Yes, and when I do stake outs, I'll be sure to do it from a warm building or car.” Owen said jokingly. “So, what's this piece of evidence you found earlier.”

  Eleanor hadn't brought up the topic of the necklace whilst they'd eaten dinner. She was feeling protective over it as it was, never mind the fact that she didn't want to contaminate any potential evidence any more than she already had. She reached reluctantly into her pocket and produced the bag. Owen took it straight out of her hands, and before she had time to move he'd opened the bag and was handling the pendant.

  “What the hell do you think you're doing?” Eleanor shouted whilst waving her hands frantically in the air. “That's potential evidence that you've just put your grubby hands all over you idiot. Even if it did contain fingerprints, you've just contaminated it.”

  Eleanor was livid and she became acutely aware that her eyes were probably darkening. They always did that when she was angry. Owen liked to call it the black eye moments. Realising he'd overstepped the mark in this, he quickly tried to justify his actions.

  “How is a woman's necklace anything to do with the death of our victim. Firstly, the chances of this being murder are considerably slim, and secondly, unless he was a cross dresser on weekends, this probably didn't belong to him.”

  Eleanor rolled her eyes in frustration. “It could belong to a suspect if there is one or it could have been a present Mr Bruton had bought a girlfriend. We could have had another lead.” Eleanor’s voice was getting higher and higher pitched as she spoke. She quickly calmed her breathing before she began to hyperventilate.

  “I'm sorry if I upset you.” Owen said, realizing how angry she'd become, “but I honestly don't think........what the hell?” Owen was staring at the pendant.

  “What?” Eleanor snapped impatiently.


  “It's heating up. The rocks heating up. Here, feel.” Owen threw the necklace into Eleanor's hands. She caught it and immediately felt the heat coming from it. She checked the air con to make sure there was no warm breeze blowing on the stone but she couldn't find any. There was no logical explanation to why the stone would heat up. Then, a few moments later she began to notice a buzzing coming from the stone. It felt as though a mobile phone was going mental on the palm of her hand, but she knew it was just a rock. “ It's buzzing. I can feel it buzzing.” Eleanor said, panicking. She threw the necklace back to Owen.

  Things were starting to get too strange for her. The eye witness, the perfectly symmetrical area of burning and now this. Things were defying the laws of reason and she wanted to run and hide in the safety of her own understanding. Just when she was thinking of grabbing the cursed thing and throwing it out the window, she saw a massive blast of blue electricity coming up out of the woods in front her. The earth beneath the car began to shake.

  Chapter 3

  The vicious earthquake, that shook the car to its very core, lasted only a few seconds. Eleanor had grabbed onto her steering wheel whilst the onslaught had happened, desperate to ground herself and feeling that was the only way.

  As the shaking died down to nothing more than a low hum, she turned to look at her assistant. He had braced one knee on the dashboard and one hand on the roof of the car; his eyes were wide with shock. In his other hand he still clutched the necklace that Eleanor had thrown aside just moments before. Seeing that her eyes were on him, he looked down at the pendant and examined it with a creased brow.

  “The vibrations have stopped and it's cold again.” He moved the pendant round in his hands, examining it from all angles, as if hoping to find the answers to the recent phenomenon written on the stone. Realising what he was doing, he passed it back to Eleanor. She held it for a few moments but felt nothing but the cold, solid stone it had originally been. In synchronization, the pair turned their attention back to the woodland in front of them, looking for answers in the gloom.