After about a half hour of slow going through the cow field, we came to another fence. As we approached it, the reality of our situation began to dawn.
From the road, these fences looked about four feet high at most and easy to scale and jump over. But when you get up close to them, they’re not only taller than that, but grown up all around the stone are bramble bushes. What was once an ordinary stone fence has become a stone fence with a natural razor wire barrier.
We just stood there in front of the impenetrable fortress of rock and brambles for a few minutes, speechless. It was getting late. We had spent more time in the shed getting a shovel than we had expected. And with the slow going through the field, it was now after 11:00.
“What now?” asked Jake.
“I’m sorry guys,” I said. “I’m not much good at this whole quest thing. Every idea I have turns to dog poop,” I said defeated.
“No need to apologize Em,” Jake reassured. “It was a good idea. How were you supposed to know the Irish protect their cow pie fields with natural razor wire?”
“Okay Jake, stop kissing Emily’s butt long enough to navigate us back to the road,” said Fanny.
We walked along the fence toward the road, climbed over the lower fence then started walking single-file again up the road. After about an hour of walking, I was sensing that we were not going in the right direction.
“Hey Jake, you sure we’re going the right way?” I asked.
“Pretty sure,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, back there when we were first started out, the moon was coming up in front of us.”
“Yeah.”
“Well now – it’s behind us,” I said.
We all stopped, and Jake looked back and up into the sky. “You’re right,” he said. “Crap, we must be going the wrong way.”
“Oh that’s great Jake! We’ve been walking for an hour in the wrong direction,” Fanny said as she flicked Jake in the head.
“Ow! Don’t flick me. You didn’t figure it out either Einstein,” he said.
“Okay guys, stop bickering. Jake, pull out that map,” I said.
“Problem is, I’m not really sure where we are,” Jake said as he shone the flashlight on the map. “There are so many little roads that intersect. I’m not sure what road we got onto when we went back over the fence.”
“Well, we know we’re going the wrong way right now, so we have to turn around and go back down this road,” I said.
“Yeah, but then what?”
Just then Fanny practically shouted, “Wait! I got it,” she said as she started to rummage through the backpack.
“What now? More tweezers?” Jake asked.
“No Jakester, something way better for this situation,” Fanny said as she pulled something small and rectangular from the pack. “My phone,” she said with a smile.
“You’re not thinking of calling a cab, are you?” I asked.
“No silly, something better. I got GPS on this thing. I totally forgot about it,” Fanny said.
“You’ve got GPS on your phone, and you’re just now telling us?” Jake said through gritted teeth.
“Don’t get your boxers in a knot Jake. I forgot, okay? Besides, I didn’t think you’d get us lost, nub.”
“Let’s not waste more time bickering. Fanny, get that thing fired up,” I said.
According to Fanny’s GPS, after an hour and a half on the road, we were now six miles from Monasterboice instead of five when we started out!
“Let’s get going then,” I said. “We gotta’ hustle before we run out of time.”
We walked as fast as we could along the edge of the narrow roads. We didn’t see a single car so I guess my worry about being caught out there wasn’t much of a problem. After almost two hours of walking and navigating the roads – tricky even with a GPS in rural Ireland - we saw a large stone tower in silhouette on the horizon to the east.
Monasterboice. The tower – just like the pictures we’d seen of it on the Internet. It looked ominous in silhouette against the large October moon. Even at that late hour there were crows circling around it calling out.
We were exhausted, but we ran to Monasterboice and got to the gate a little before 2:00 a.m. The air was chilly and filled with the smell of wet fall leaves, grass, and the slightly lingering odor of cow dung.
Our elation at finally finding the tower soon turned to despair as we saw that just like the cow and sheep fields, this site was surrounded by a grey stone fence all the way around. And this one had jagged stones turned on their sides all around the top. You couldn’t shimmy over that without ripping a huge gash in your stomach.
“Very effective security fences they have here,” Jake said as we approached.
“What now?” asked Fanny.
Neither Jake nor I had an answer to that. The cemetery with the large stone tower looked like an impenetrable fortress in the moonlight.
“I think we should walk around the outside of the fence – see if maybe there’s a place where the top stones have come off or something,” I offered.
“As good a plan as any,” Jake said as we headed out.
We trudged through a field on the south side of the site first. It wasn’t long before we saw what we were looking for – a place about two feet wide where the jagged capstones were missing.
“Bingo,” Fanny said as she started scrambling up the wall. Fanny’s a strong climber and small so it didn’t take her long to scale the wall and slide through the narrow gap between capstones. After she got up, she leaned over from the inside and put her hands out to help me up.
I’m not a strong climber and not nearly as small as Fanny. It wasn’t so easy for me to scale the wall and pop over. Fanny was pulling me, and I was pushing against the bumpy stones with my feet, trying to push my bottom half up the wall.
“Come on girl,” Fanny grunted. “Use your muscles.”
“I don’t have any muscles,” I said as I huffed and puffed.
“Jake make yourself useful. Push Emily’s butt up the wall,” Fanny said.
“I’m not going to – I can’t do that!”
“Why not?” asked Fanny.
“I can’t touch her butt,” said Jake. “That wouldn’t be. . . a proper thing to do.”
“Jake,” I huffed. “It’s okay. Desperate times, desperate measures, remember? Push my butt over this wall before Fanny rips my arms out of their sockets.”
After a few seconds, I felt Jake’s small hands shoving on my posterior. He had them just kind of resting there, not pushing at all.
“Come on Jake! This isn’t the time to cop a feel – push!” I cried. With that Jake gave a mighty shove and I was up and over the rock wall. Fanny let go of my hands, and I fell over and right on top of her. “I’m over,” I said.
“Really? Hadn't noticed," she said as she scrambled out from under me.
“Okay Jake. Your turn,” I said.
“Not happening,” Jake said back.
“What do you mean? You gotta’ come over too.”
“I can’t. There’s no one over here to shove my butt over,” he said. “Here, I’ll toss over the backpack and hand you guys the shovel. You can take it from here.”
“No, Jake, we’re all in this together, remember? We’ll get you over.”
Just then the backpack came flying over the wall, landing with a thud.
“Here’s the shovel,” he said handing it over the wall as Fanny leaned over and grabbed it.
“You guys go on in and try to find it. I’ll wait here for you. Now get going – we’re running out of time.”
He had a point. It was getting late, and we didn’t know how to find the torc. As we looked around we saw that we were in a graveyard, full of large headstones, Celtic crosses and low gravestones. We could search for days and not find what we were looking for – and that’s if we knew what we were looking for.
“Okay, Jake. You’re right. But don’t go anywhere. I don’t want to lose you out he
re,” I said.
“You won’t lose me,” he said.
“Make yourself useful then Jake,” Fanny quipped. “Be a lookout and if you hear or see anyone coming, hoot like an owl or something so we know to hide.”
We heard Jake mutter something under his breath as we walked away from the wall. “What’s the plan, Em?” Fanny asked.
“I’m not sure Fanny. I guess we need to walk up and down the rows, looking at the markers, you know, to see if we see a clue. Maybe a symbol or letters or something.”
Easier said than done, especially in the dark. The ground sloped up slightly from the wall and then there were somewhat even rows, but every now and then there would be a large rectangle of stone placed around a grave, only about two inches off the ground. The perfect height to cause someone to trip! Fanny and I must have each tripped and fallen face first into a gravel-filled grave about three or four times. Our shins and legs were scraped and bruised.
Row after row of old stone grave markers and large and small Celtic crosses. Fanny and I used the flashlight to illuminate each grave marker we could see, but even the light wasn’t much help.
“I can’t make out any letters on most of these,” I said.
“I can’t either,” said Fanny.
Feeling with our hands didn’t help. We knew we were looking for a marker or grave from over a thousand years ago so we could ignore the modern ones with words etched in marble. All the older ones had been worn down by weather and were covered with lichens and moss.
We had walked through probably half of the cemetery when we heard a scuffling in the leaves behind us. Fanny and I both jumped and turned around, moving together almost as one unit. Fanny shone the flashlight directly in front of us. We didn’t see anything but again heard the scuffling of leaves.
We held our breath and didn’t move a muscle. Here we were in an old graveyard in the middle of the Irish countryside during a full moon with crows calling out overhead. It doesn’t get much creepier than that. We heard something coming toward us. It sounded too large to be a cat this time.
“Who’s there?” I called out into the dark.
“It’s me,” Jake said as he finally made it into the small pool of light made by the flashlight.
Fanny and I both released our grip on each other and began to breathe again.
“Jake, you major pain, what the hell are you doing? You scared the crap out of us,” Fanny said.
“Oh, good to see you too.”
“You shouldn’t sneak up like that. You should have called out or something,” Fanny replied. Her voice was filled with annoyance. Fanny didn't like to show weakness, especially around Jake.
“What? And miss the opportunity to see your face just now?"
Fanny lightly punched Jake's arm for good measure. He rubbed his arm where she hit him, but he continued to smile, enjoying the rare moment when he got the better of Fanny.
“How’d you get in?” I asked.
“Oh that. Well I sat there for a while but then just couldn’t take it anymore so I started walking the fence to see if I could find a way in. If you guys had gone a little ways further along the fence, you would have seen a wrought iron gate. They forgot to lock it. All I had to do was pull it open and voila! Jake’s in.”
“I’m glad Jake. We need your help. We’ve gone through row after row of graves – watch your step, by the way – some of them are raised. But most of the old ones don’t have any visible writing left. We could be here for days and not see a single clue,” I said.
Jake looked thoughtful for a minute. Sometimes, when he’s thinking hard, you can practically hear wheels spinning in his brain.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said at last. “Em, remember when I was saying names of burial sites, and you got that chill up your spine when you heard Monasterboice?” he asked.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, maybe you can use your second sight – or whatever you call it – you know, to sense when we’re in the right place.”
“I don’t know Jake. I don’t really have control over that stuff. It seems to come and go as it pleases. I can’t just turn it on when I want to.”
“But maybe you could try,” said Fanny. “We don’t have a lot of options.”
We didn’t have time to look at each grave in this place with our little flashlight – there had to be hundreds of stones in this place. Besides, even if we looked at each one, our eyes were no use here. Any information that might have been a clue for us had long since worn away.
“Okay, I’ll try it,” I finally said. “I’m not sure what to do though – you know – to turn on my receiver.”
“What did you do when you were younger?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know. I mean, when I was little, it was just like always on. I didn’t have to turn it on.”
“Well, try to meditate or breathe or something,” said Fanny.
“Yeah Em, that’s a good idea. Maybe if you quiet your mind and try to kind of tune into the torc, maybe it will lead you to it,” Jake said.
“But Jake, we’ve walked through about half of this place already. And there wasn’t any hair raising going on. I think we’re at a dead end.”
“We still have about half to go. Besides, what do we have to lose?” Jake asked.
He had a point so I did what Jake suggested. I sat on the ground, closed my eyes and tried to get quiet. It seemed so silly. Fan started giggling and that got me laughing. Jake looked stern and serious, which made us laugh more. But after a few minutes and Jake pleading with us, we stopped and I tried again.
This time, after just a couple of minutes, I was able to quiet my mind a bit. At first I felt sleepy. I could have just laid down there and taken a nap on the hard ground between all these gravestones. But then a sort of peace came over me, and I started to daydream, just like on the airplane.
I saw the same green hills and a circle of stones. I saw the face of a beautiful woman with long wavy red hair. At first I thought it was my mom, but it wasn’t. Then I saw it. The torc. Just as in my dream before. Shiny and golden and glowing – hovering right in front of me. I felt like I could reach out for it. Then I saw the initials ‘SCS’ in my mind. Then the dream was gone.
I opened my eyes half expecting myself to be surrounded by lush green hills with the torc hovering before me, but I was still in the graveyard. Fanny was lying down, maybe asleep. Jake was still sitting across from me, his eyes droopy but awake.
“Well?” Jake asked.
“I don’t know exactly, but I think we should look some more,” I said.
I got up and began walking, not sure why I was going where I was going. My feet seemed to steer me to the west corner of the graveyard. Fanny and Jake followed behind. My feet led me to this small grave marker almost on the very edge of the cemetery.
It was different from all the others. It wasn’t shaped like the usual tombstone but instead was sort of a small obelisk shape. It stood only two feet or so above the ground, and it looked like it used to have a point on top but it had worn down. It was covered in lichens and moss – now almost entirely a yellowy green rather than grey stone.
It was such a small, plain stone, most would probably walk by it and not notice it at all. No crosses or carvings or writing. But as soon as I approached it, I got that tingly feeling again all up and down my spine and my arms. The hairs all over my body were standing on end.
I bent down and gingerly put my hands on the stone, feeling for a mark of some kind. I didn’t feel any markings with my fingers, but as I touched it, I saw the letters ‘SCS’ appear in my mind again, just like in my dream. Then, just as in my dream, I could see verdant hills and a circle of stones in my mind’s eye. And then there it was – the torc – gold and glowing right before my eyes. The vision was so powerful it made me dizzy, and I started to wobble.
“Em, are you okay?” asked Jake as he bent down to steady me.
“This is it,” I said in a low voice. “Here. We dig here.”
Fanny and Jake just looked at each other and at me, their mouths open just like when I’d thrown Muriel against the wall. It was like they were in a daze.
“Jake, Fanny,” I said. “We’re running out of night. Come on, let’s dig.”
Jake came out of his stupor and started to dig. Soon Fanny had had enough of Jake’s slow and methodical digging. She grabbed the shovel from him and began practically hacking at the ground.
“Be careful,” said Jake. “You don’t want to break it.”
Fanny dug with that little shovel for close to an hour without finding anything except earthworms and slugs. Just as the first light of dawn was starting to peak out over the hills to the east behind us, Fanny hit something hard.
“Hey, I’ve hit something,” she said.
I shined the flashlight into the hole. There was something in there all right. All three of us used our hands and the shovel to uncover the object.
“Do you think this is really a grave?” Fanny asked.
“I don’t know, but this is creeping me out a bit,” I said. “I don’t want to find a corpse or anything.”
But our fears were soon alleviated. Not a coffin at all. Soon we had the shape of what we were after, and it was a fairly small box, no more than six inches all the way around. In no time, we had it out of the ground completely and began wiping it off.
“It’s metal,” Jake said. “And look, it has something carved on the top.”
“What is that,” asked Fanny?
It was a tree – a large and magnificent tree with many branches. It looked like an oak tree. But the weird thing was that all its branches ended in a flame. A flaming tree.
“Open it Emily,” Jake said as he pushed the box into my hands.
“No, you open it,” I said trying to shove it back to Jake.
“No, you should open it,” he said.
He was right of course. But the truth is, I was afraid. What would happen when I opened it? Would that torc thing crawl up my arm and wrap itself around me? Would I suddenly become someone – or something – else? Would the ground open up and swallow me into it like it did with Saorla?
I tried to open the box, but it was stuck. Then Jake tried but no use.
Emily's House (The Akasha Chronicles) Page 9
