by M. V. Stott
Trying not to look too closely at the corpse, I knelt down beside the woman.
‘What’s it like?’ asked Maya. ‘When you see the things you see?’
‘It’s… odd. It’s like watching something underwater, but their emotions, I get them sharp.’
‘Well, get on with it then, idiot,’ said Eva.
‘Okay, don’t rush me. I’m just preparing my… whatever it is that needs prepared.’
The truth was that this had never worked when I really wanted it to. Not directly at least. Something had always needed to distract me from focussing too closely on what it was I wanted to do. To force whatever it was inside of me to click into place and allow the magic to happen.
But not this time.
As soon as I laid my hands on the dry, waxy skin of the dead woman, it was like I’d been dropped into a freezing lake.
The “real” world was yanked away as a new one rushed headlong towards me.
My body trembled. I could hear a child chattering somewhere behind me. I knew I was seeing the woman’s memories, but part of me was still scared that if I turned around I’d see the tiny, withered corpse of the child creak into life, its locked jaw cracking as rough, garbled words forced their way out.
It was night.
There was no colour in the memory, everything was shades of black and grey, but I felt the night.
I could feel the woman’s contentedness too. She had a husband she loved, and a child she would die for. A child that she’d struggled for years to conceive before it had finally happened. And now her life was complete and she was looking forward to the future.
I couldn’t hear her thoughts, but I knew that was all true.
I felt the powerful love of a mother for her child coursing through me, and it was intoxicating, frightening. The strength of it. The sure and happy knowledge that there was nothing she wouldn’t do. That her own life would be a small price to pay in return for her child’s safety.
On that night, giving up her own life wasn’t going to be enough though, because something was hungry for more than just her existence.
A voice from the next room. Her husband.
‘What did you say, love?’ she asks.
‘There’s something in the back garden.’
‘What? What is it?’
‘Mummy, look at this picture of a cow I drew.’
The small, smiling girl holds up the wonky, crayon drawing of a cow, that looks nothing like a cow and has been scrawled in purple and red.
‘Oh, that’s wonderful! What an artist.’
‘I know!’
‘D’you think you’ll be able to sleep now?’
The child frowns, her forehead wrinkling, obviously pondering the question deeply. Finally, she nods.
‘Good girl.’
‘After one more bedtime story, Mummy.’
‘There’s definitely something in the garden.’
I try to stop the woman from moving towards the back room, from walking through to see what her husband is talking about, but it’s useless. I have no power over her actions, this had already happened, I’m just along for the ride.
‘Is it a fox? I saw a big one back there the other week.’
No, it isn’t a fox. Not this time.
Things move fast then.
A large, wide shape, taller than a person, hurtles impossibly through the patio doors, shards firing out, cutting into her flesh, her husband yelling and falling to the floor.
I say “impossibly”, as what throws itself through the glass doors isn’t a person, or even an animal. It isn’t a living thing at all.
It’s a stone.
A large standing stone, the kind you seen in ancient stone circles, strange pictures and symbols chiseled across its surface. Clear but weathered with age.
‘Mummy, what is that?’
Panic, terror, the woman rushes towards her daughter, picking her up and running for the front door.
‘Daddy! What’s the stone doing to Daddy?’
I can hear his screams, but she doesn’t look back. All that matters is getting her daughter to safety. To the front door. To the car. To anywhere but here.
But the front door opens and there stands a second stone. Giant. Filling the door frame. Purple sparks ripple up and down its surface.
No way forward, no way back, only up.
I know where this is going.
The woman screams, I scream, both of us, my throat raw and—
‘What the fuck is this?’
I felt like I’d been rear-ended in my car. I jolted forward, falling on top of the woman’s dried out corpse, then yelped in disgust and hopped backwards a couple of times.
‘I said, what the fuck is this?’
Detective Martins, Maya’s new partner, was stood in the doorway.
‘I brought in a couple of independent experts to give the crime scene a look over,’ replied Maya, ‘that’s all.’
‘Who’s the prick?’ asked Eva, gesturing towards Martins with her cigarette.
‘What did you say?’ replied Martins, taking a threatening step towards Eva. Eva didn’t even blink.
‘This is my partner,’ said Maya.
‘Tough break.’
‘And this the guy who’s neck deep in the missing nurse case,’ said Martins, jabbing a finger in my direction.
There was a lot of finger-pointing going on suddenly. Far too much for my liking.
‘Neck deep?’ I replied. ‘I’m not neck deep. I’m not even ankle deep, am I?’
Maya raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re a person of interest.’
That did not sound at all good.
‘You never told me you knew him,’ said Martins.
‘It wasn’t relevant. And I don’t know him. I just know that Mr Lake and Miss Familiar here have a deep knowledge of local lore and strange events.’
‘And action films of the 1980s,’ said Eva. ‘I’m a bloody Mastermind on that shit.’
Martins approached Maya, a scowl creasing his face. ‘Because of what happened to Detective Samm, I’ve been giving you a pass, but this here is bullshit. This is official police business, we don’t need a cut-price Mulder and Scully to help us out. Am I understood?’
Maya looked coolly at her partner. ‘I wouldn’t push any further at that, Detective.’
‘You know, I really don’t mind just, leaving,’ I said, the tension in the room so thick it could crush a bear.
A really big bear.
‘Stay where you are,’ said Maya, not taking her eyes off Martins. ‘This is the fifth case, and an outside perspective is appreciated. All that matters is stopping any more deaths. Not ego. Not pride. Understood?’
Martins glared at her.
‘Okay, now kiss,’ said Eva.
Martins snorted and turned to me, fists clenched. For a horrible moment I thought he might be about to propel his large knuckles into my face.
‘I don’t trust you, Lake.’
‘Understood.’
‘A man with no past who likes weird stuff, and a friend who’s dropped off the face of the earth. I don’t care what Myers here thinks of you, I think you stink, and I am watching you.’
‘Thank you.’
Martins cast a cold look back to Maya, then stomped out.
‘Well, that was all very arousing,’ said Eva, taking a drag of her smoke.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ said Maya, ‘his bark is worse than his bite.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Well, no. His bite is really, really bad. What happened to the secret room?’
‘Oh,’ said Eva, shambling over to where the room had been, and now wasn’t. ‘Soon as I heard that big lump of rage and repressed sexuality lumbering in I snapped the spell that was hiding it back in place. Best not to involve the likes of him in certain aspects of this case, right love?’
‘Right,’ agreed Maya.
‘So?’ Eva waved her cigarette towards me, spilling ash like confetti, ‘what did you see w
hen you touched up that dead woman?’
‘Did you see the killer?’ asked Maya.
‘Yeah, I saw them.’
‘So who is it then?’ asked Eva. ‘What did the shit-head look like?’
And so I told them about the sentient killer rocks.
Maya might, might, have been a little sceptical.
‘Bullshit.’
Just a little.
7
I was woken the next morning by the insistent electronic beeping of my utter swine of an alarm clock, which needled me from my too-short slumber.
It was seven in the morning and I was due for my shift at the hospital in less than an hour. I slapped the alarm quiet and zombie-walked my way to a hot shower.
As the water battered my face, I replayed the previous night’s events. Something was murdering people with a connection to magic. “The Uncanny”, as Eva would say. People like me. And the something doing the killing—or pair of somethings, going by what I’d seen through the eyes of the dead mother—were giant rocks. Monoliths, the kind you see parked in circles in countryside fields. Ancient rings of standing stones, where sprites and fairies might appear when the moon was full.
Or naked, thrashing ladies, like in The Wicker Man.
Clean, dry, and dressed, I slumped on the couch with a cup of tea and a slice of toast. I checked my phone to see Eva had sent me a text.
Me. You. Stone hunting.
Apparently I’d earned the privilege of having her phone number.
I messaged back that I’d catch up with her after my shift, then scrolled through my emails. There was one there from someone I didn’t know, with the intriguing title, ‘Please Help Me’. It had come from someone called Annie Royal. The message had been sent to my “professional” weird investigations site (emphasis on the inverted commas). Before I started to find out who I was, I ran a not-at-all-successful sideline job, investigating strange goings-on in the local area. In doing so, I’d hoped I might stumble across something that shone some light on my past. Having learned what I now know, I sometimes wonder if I should have stayed quiet and kept the blinkers on.
The email was sparse. It simply read: Mr Lake, I’d like to hire you. Annie.
A week ago, I’d have replied right away, but on that day, after everything I’d been through, I found my thumb swiping and deleting the message. No time for anything else right now. I was up to my nose in weird as it was.
The message did remind me of something I’d been meaning to do though, namely shutting down my other website.
The other one was really just a cry for help into the digital wilderness. My face, the point of my discovery ten years previously, and a question: ‘Who am I?’ There was a space to leave messages – not that anything ever got left there these days. I used to check it more out of habit than hope, refreshing the page on a thirty-second basis on my worst days, but now I didn’t need it at all. Time to shut that puppy down.
But as I fired up my laptop and accessed the site, something gave me pause.
A new message.
Joe, help me, I don’t know where I am.
The name next to the message read “Chloe”.
Well, that was some low down, mean-spirited, nasty, poop-stinking trolling right there. What kind of person pretends to be a missing woman? A missing woman who was actually dead.
An image of Chloe reaching for me from the hospital’s bathroom mirror flashed through my mind’s eye.
It was a nasty trick, that’s all. Some local kid with the emotional depth of a cockroach, or Piers Morgan, sending messages, hoping to get a rise out of me. But a little part of me wondered. Maybe even hoped.
Either way, the laptop closed without the website being decommissioned. Because maybe.
Just maybe.
Hey, it wouldn’t be the strangest thing to have happened recently.
‘You look worse than usual, and you usually look like crap,’ said Big Marge as I stumbled through the automatic doors to the reception desk, trying not to trip over my own feet.
‘Thanks for sugarcoating that, Biggie.’
‘You still not sleeping?’
‘Oh, I slept, unfortunately for a rather stunted length of time. I was out painting the town red. Wine, women, and song; you know how it is.’
‘Oh, I do, I get the distinct feeling you don’t, though.’
After the usual stimulating rounds of floor mopping, toilet tissue replenishment, and lightbulb replacement, I found myself back in the bathroom where I’d recently had my Chloe-vision.
I approached the mirror, a little nervous, scanning for any signs of her. It had been a trick of the mind, that’s all. Had to have been. But that didn’t stop the hairs on the nape of my neck from standing up and doing a little boogie. Hope is a bastard.
‘Hello? Are you there?’ I asked.
Silence.
No sign of her.
I reached out a hand towards the mirror, part of me wondering if it would pass right through the glass, Alice style. What if there was a hidden world beyond it, where Chloe, now magically alive and not evil, was waiting for me with a smile and a hug, and much mouth mushing?
My fingertips met the cold, very solid surface of the mirror. Of course.
‘Chloe, are you there? Did you leave me a message?’
‘I knew it, you’re mental.’
I turned with a yelp of surprise to see Dr Neil stood in the doorway, arms folded, eyes set to “rotten bastard”.
‘You know, we really must stop meeting like this,’ I said, ‘people will talk.’
I headed towards the exit, but Dr Neil stood his ground.
I squared up to him. ‘I’m not currently possessed with the power to walk through people, so if you could shift your pasty body to the left, I’ll be on my way.’
‘Still no sign of Chloe,’ he growled. ‘Where is she, Lake?’
I sighed. ‘How many times? I don’t know. I really wish I did.’
‘The police are onto you, you know. That detective was very interested in what I had to say about you.’
Oh, this was new. And perhaps explained Detective Martins particular interest in little old me.
‘You rotten bastard,’ I said, ‘stop trying to get me in trouble. This isn’t a game. Someone’s missing.’
‘Right, and yet for someone who claimed to be oh so close to Chloe, you don’t seem all that upset. Word on reception is that you were out living it up last night, having a rare old time.’
‘What? Oh, no, that was just flimflam.’
‘Charlotte from the canteen overheard you and Big Marge talking. Bragging about the women you were cavorting with, isn’t that true?’
‘You’re wasting your time with me, Dr Neil. I appreciate that you want Chloe back—I do too—but I’m not your man.’
‘I’ll catch you out, Lake. Or the police will. Don’t think we won’t.’
Great. Not only had Dr Neil taken his crazy up a notch, now he was involving a detective in a case that—unbeknownst to him—I was already up to my neck in.
A sudden thought struck. ‘Did you leave a message on my site?’
It wasn’t Chloe, obviously, or even some kid with too much time on their hands and a sociopathic streak, it was this piece of work trying to get me to confess, or let something slip.
‘What?’ he said.
‘Yeah, nice try, but no go.’
‘I haven’t left you any messages. What are you talking about?’
‘Oh, ha, exactly what the message leaver would say! Checkmate.’
But Dr Neil’s expression of bewilderment told me I was barking up the wrong tree. I can read him like a book, and this book was titled ‘What In The Flying Fuck Are You On About?’
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Forget about it.’
‘What message?’
‘Sorry, I’d love to stay and chat, but I dislike you immensely. Bye-bye.’
I levered Dr Neil aside and made my exit.
8
Two hours l
ater, and I was stood with Eva in a stone circle, peering at a crude pencil drawing that I’d scrawled of the rocks I’d seen in the dead woman’s memories.
‘Well?’ said Eva.
We were high up and the afternoon wind toyed with my magnificent hair.
‘No, I don’t think it’s any of these. Plus the tallest stone here comes up to my waist, the ones I saw were at least as tall as me.’
‘Lanky stones, got it.’
This was the third local stone circle we’d paid a visit to that afternoon, and we had so far struck out at all three. All of the circle stones I saw were much too small. Too narrow. Too weathered. And none of them featured the engravings I’d witnessed on the murder stones.
We made our way back down the hill and clambered inside of the Uncanny Wagon, setting off for circle number four. You’ll find this sort of thing dotted all over Cumbria, the county of England I live in. Evidence of a lively past, they say. Pagans dancing to the setting sun of the Summer Solstice, druids with sickles, blood sacrifices, fun for all the family.
‘Is there any truth to the story of, uh, naked women dancing around stone circles?’ I asked, as nonchalantly as I could.
Eva was settled in her usual position, stretched out across the back seat of my car. ‘Wicker Man?’
‘Yep.’
‘Oh yes. Tons of that stuff.’
‘Blimey.’
‘And not just women. I remember you on at least six separate occasions skipping around the circle we were just at, the moonlight bouncing off your man-bits.’
‘You’re kidding me!’
‘Nope. Or maybe. One of the two. Reality and fiction don’t really get on in my head.’
The next circle we toured was another bust. All of the stones looked the size of children huddling on the grass.
‘This one feels a bit… familiar,’ I said, ‘did I…?’
‘Yup. In fact, I think you grazed your penis here,’ she said with a cackle, slapping a particularly pointy-looking rock.
We piled back into the car and onto stone circle numero cinq.
The whole time we’d been driving around and completely failing to find either of the standing stones I’d witnessed, I’d had one thing rolling over and over in my mind.
‘So, uh, about Chloe…’
