The Stone Dweller's Curse: A Story of Curses, Madness, Obsession and Love

by Jacqueline Henry

  She couldn’t talk to him about this. She couldn’t tell anyone about this. She would just have to suffer it in the hope that her subconscious would work it out, digest it, process it, box it away and move on.

  It did not.

  It was over a year later when she had the dream about Dylan. It was the first dream she’d had about him, at least, the first one she remembered. The dream had been very short, Dylan standing by Brud Stone, his back to her, staring out to sea. She’d walked up to him and he turned and smiled. That was it, nothing more. But the sense of it had been strong, real, as though she’d bumped into him in the street in real waking life, reigniting feelings she thought had been extinguished. She could see his face again, a face that had been blurred by the passage of time that she could now recall in stark, defined clarity. The sense, the feel of the dream lingered, resonating, taking her back to an emotional landscape she’d been exiled from, leaving her unsettled and dislocated.

  She retrieved the shell from the box buried in a wardrobe of the spare room, placed the shell in the drawer of her bedside table.

  Now, looking back at that time, she could probably say that dream heralded the beginning of the end of her relationship with Peter Hamm. She liked Peter a lot, loved spending time with him. He was casual and relaxed and easy to be around. He’d sewn the loose thread of her life into his and she would be forever grateful to him for bringing her through that empty valley of her life. So it took her a long time to admit to herself that she didn’t love him, longer still to admit this fact to Peter.

  He’d surprised her, taking the closure of their relationship very well, accepting, like an employee being told they’d lost their job because the business had gone bankrupt. It was no fault of theirs; it was just the way it was, an unintentional fact that must be faced. They’d remained friends and he even drove her to the airport and said he would keep an eye on her place, pick up the mail while she was away visiting her family in Scotland.

  Deidre smiled to herself as the sign for Haardale appeared out of the murky drizzle-filled distance.

  Visiting family in Scotland she’d said to him. Just for a couple of weeks. She’d booked a room at Stayne House for a month. She had an open return ticket, giving Peter a false return date of late August, advising that this date could change ‘due to unforeseen weather conditions’. The truth was that she didn’t know how long she would be away for, she didn’t know how long her excavation of Betarra would take, or how she would go about doing it, or what she would find. All she knew was that she was very excited. All she knew was that she’d found a purpose to her life again.

  Walter’s Store, Merchants since 1882 sat hunkered down against the weather. A warm yellow light spilled out from the front door window into the dankly darkening afternoon and she could see figures moving inside, their forms warped in the streaky wetness of her side window as she drove by, on past Haardale Kirk and left onto the narrow road that followed the curve of the bay around to Stayne House.

  Obscured by the blanket of drizzle, dots of light pierced through the gloom guiding her up the hill towards the house and into the car park occupied by two other vehicles. Excitement churned in her belly like an unfurling snake ready to explode out of her, the wide grin on her face evolving to uncontrollable giggling.

  She left her luggage in the car and sprinted through the rain to the back of the house, to the mud room and opened the door. Voices could be heard from the dining room and she took a moment to compose herself, wiping the rain from her face, adjusting her hair before opening the door and stepping inside.

  Heads turned towards her, all talk ceasing moments before she heard her name cried out, accompanied by the sound of chairs scraping across flagging as Mavis and Vee rushed towards her, Stuart standing back, waiting his turn to envelope her in his arms.

  Her sleep was long and deep and Deidre opened her eyes feeling immediately disoriented, her thoughts tumbling down a long chute, accelerating as she sought traction. Place: Stayne House, day: unsure, year: confused, emotional state: to be advised.

  She sat up, squinted out the window to the bay lit by a low sun. Early morning or late evening? Middle of the night? Time, she remembered, went by its own rules here and time didn’t really count in a place that was timeless.

  Stretching luxuriantly, she lay back down and closed her eyes, contentment infusing her mood like chocolate in warm milk. She’d been away for so long and although she’d thought about this place all that time, and missed it, it wasn’t until now that she’d returned, that she realised how much. To be waking up in this room again where nothing had changed since she’d left it two years ago. Even the floorboards still creaked in the same place and probably had done so for over a century and would continue to do so long after she’d gone. She could have walked into yesterday two years in retrograde.

  Throwing the blankets off, she sat up and got out of bed, eager to walk the Coffin Road, to get back to the valley, to study the hidden remains of Betarra and start exploring.

  Small hand tools, trowels and hand shovels, a mini mattock hanging from the side of her backpack, clinked as she made her way to the Coffin Road, specialist tools she’d purchased on line from an archaeologists website in the weeks before her departure. They were heavy and weighed her backpack down but she would only have to carry them there once, her plan being to leave them at the croft at the end of each day.

  Standing at the top of Ayres Kame she gazed out across the valleys to the headlands beyond. She could see Brud Stone in the far distance and Muddow’s Table rising up above Muddow’s Field, hidden from view by the peat field and Swabbie bog. Neeps Boulder, unmoved since she last saw it. She was here, breathing in the cool, crisp air flavoured by the sea, hearing, feeling the boom of crashing waves against the granite walls of the headlands, the squawking birds filling the endless sky. And the light, the special light of this place.

  She continued walking, heading towards the loch to the higher ground that circumnavigated the marshy terrain of the bog, her first point of call being the Priest’s chamber to ensure that Taran and Breeta still rested there, undisturbed, walking only as far as she needed to see over the lip of the bog and into the field. Relieved, she saw that the rocks she had placed to block up the entrance remained intact and so retraced her steps back towards Muddow’s Table deciding to take the more rugged shortcut down the side of the hill and across the floor of Erdin Valley to Betarra.

  Brud Stone stood high on the headland of Erdiness, still looking like a contemplating suicide, still undecided whether to make the commitment or not. Deidre made her way past the ruins of a derelict croft and down into the valley, her eyes falling onto Hart Croft on the far side. Squinting, lifting her hand to shade her eyes from the sun, she felt her heart thump to the beat of a tachycardiac Charleston. Although it was still a small distance away, she could see that something was different. She picked up her pace, her eyes straining to capture the detail of the structure.

  A roof, it wore a thatched roof.

  She started running, sliding the backpack from her shoulders and leaving it where it fell.

  The once empty window frames now reflected the sparkling surface of the ocean like a twinkle in its eyes, a door filling the empty void of the threshold.

  A stitch burned in her side as she approached, the air rasping in her lungs, her legs quivering jelly. She couldn’t make sense of this, fear and anger heating her blood, wondering if someone had assumed the rights to her property, her inheritance, her history. Outraged, she wrapped her fingers around the door handle, determining that should the door be locked, she would smash the windows in.

  The handle turned, the door opened and she stepped inside.

  Empty. The stone flagging had been cleared of weeds and new wooden mantelpieces framed the fireplaces, but nothing more – other than the vase of dried heather sitting on the mantelpiece. She stepped over to it, taking note of previous bunches of dried heather discarded in the hearth.

  ‘Do you kno
w how many times I’ve changed that heather?’

  Deidre swung around. Dylan stood in the doorway, looking just as she remembered him. He held a bunch of white heather in his hand. ‘I thought you might’ve come back last summer,’ he said and shrugged. ‘But I knew you’d turn up here sooner or later.’

  His voice, just to hear it again, it took her breath away, the sight of him seizing her heart.

  She ran to him, into his open arms, feeling them enclose around her and she knew she was home, that this was where she belonged. Beside him.