by Gary McMahon
She watched him; his mouth, his eyes. He wasn’t mocking her, she could tell. “No, not exactly. Well… I’m not sure what I mean. There’s something in the house with us, but I have no idea what it is. I don’t believe in ghosts…” It was a weak way to end the sentence, but it was also true. Alice had never believed in anything that she couldn’t see, touch, smell, or taste. She hadn’t been prone to flights of fancy before Tony’s death; she had always been grounded in the real world. But lately she’d been sensing other things, creases and wrinkles in the skin of her previously ordered life.
“You’re tired. We both are. Maybe we should talk about this in the morning, when we’re thinking straight. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not dismissing what you’ve said. I just think we need to get some rest before discussing something this… this nebulous.”
She nodded. She opened her mouth and almost said more, but then thought better of it. Now wasn’t the time to tell the rest of her secrets. He’d just told her as much. She should listen to him and keep her mouth shut.
“Okay,” she said. “As usual, you speak a lot of sense.”
He twisted his torso, bent over, and picked up his cup. For a moment she’d thought he was leaning in for a kiss.
CHAPTER NINE
Back in bed, Alice thought about the conversation she’d just had with Clive. It was more about what she hadn’t said than what they had talked about. The gaps, the pauses, the things she’d left out. She hadn’t really been trying to tell him about the things she’d felt since coming here; she was building up to telling him something else.
The punch dummy had moved again. She was getting used to its roaming.
“I know you’re there,” she said. “I just wish I knew who you were.”
She got out of bed and walked over to the dummy. Its pink latex torso had been shaped to imitate muscle, a six-pack. Its blunt head was a blank slate; she could draw anything, any expression she liked, upon its smooth surface. It made her think of Tony, but it wasn’t her dead husband come back to haunt her. She knew that. The spirits here were more subtle, more ambiguous. They might not even be spirits at all.
So what are they?
She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything, not any more.
Surprisingly, the attic room had been tidied to the point that it now looked like a space someone lived in. Comfortable, neat, a little shabby around the edges of course, but nothing a little love and attention would not put right.
She wasn’t the one who was tidying the house. Alice was certain of it. She had not suffered a blackout since Tony’s funeral. Before that, the only other episodes she’d experienced were the ones caused by Tony’s fists.
No, it wasn’t her. It was somebody else.
She ran her hand over the dummy’s taut stomach, remembering how firm Tony’s body had been. He’d developed an obsession with working out; lifting weights, hitting the heavy bag in the gym, running miles at night with a weighted rucksack on his back because he had trouble sleeping. He had been such a fit man, a fine specimen, but inside he had been rotten. He’d used his hands when his mind was unable to cope. That was the simple fact of it, and nothing could change what had happened between them.
“Bastard,” she said.
She turned away from the dummy and walked across to a small wooden school desk that had been hidden by clutter but was now exposed. There were a few papers on top of the desk; sketches of the house from the outside, photocopied photographs of the landscape around the house. She opened the desk drawer and found a bunch of pamphlets with blue covers – multiple copies of a booklet on local history. Once hidden, the house was now uncovering things for her to see.
The pamphlet was slim, with only a few pages. Its cover boasted a faded, poorly reproduced monochrome photograph of the Grieving Stones. She read the title and author:
The Strange Story of the Staple Sisters
and the Grieving Stones
By Clive Munroe
She picked the top pamphlet and skimmed the pages. Badly typeset script, a basic font, and no interior illustrations. Ignoring Clive’s name on the cover for now, she flipped over the pamphlet in her hands and tried to see the publisher’s mark. There was none. Evidentially, it was self-published. He’d written this himself and then had copies printed. For what reason, she couldn’t even guess.
Alice carried the pamphlet over to the bed, sat down, and began to read.
The following account is based on information discovered by myself from several sources. I consulted parish records, old publications, and letters held in a private archive to pull together what I believe is a fascinating story of deceit, betrayal, and witchcraft in the area surrounding Bastion, an isolated village in England’s Lake District.
*
The word menhir is derived from the Middle Breton language: maen, “stone” and hir, “long”. These standing stones can be found across Europe, Africa and Asia either singularly or as part of a group of standing stones. There are something like 50,000 menhirs in Ireland, Great Britain and Brittany. They were constructed during many different periods of pre-history, and are often difficult to date, erected as part of a megalithic culture from Europe and beyond.
On the barren moorland above Bastion village, there is a site of only minor historical interest to professional historians but that has long fascinated the people of the area.
The standing stones above Bastion are known locally as The Grieving Stones. There are five of them, arranged in a line facing north, and each has a different sign or symbol carved upon its northward surface. The origin of these stones, and their markings, is unclear, but it is suspected that they formed part of an ancient ceremonial site. It is said by some that druids once sacrificed children beside these stones, and the grief of the murdered children’s wailing mothers fuelled whatever power was buried there.
In the 1600s, during the English Civil War, two sisters lived in a house close to the stones. They were named Mag and Meg Staple, and they made a living creating medicines from locally foraged plants and herbs. They were known as witches, but because they helped the local farmers with their ailments, they were pretty much left alone to live in peace.
This all changed, however, on the day Mag experienced her vision.
She was up on the crag above the cottage where she and her sister lived, collecting herbs for a poultice. The day was a dreary one; it had rained in the morning and the terrain was tricky underfoot. Mag made her way down from the crag with a full basket. When she reached the Grieving Stones, she stopped for a rest. The sisters knew of the power associated with the ancient stones, and the place was a location of special interest to them. They often prayed here, but not to the Christian God. The deities they spoke to were older and darker, and part of the brutal landscape.
On the day in question, Mag was not here to pray. She simply wanted a rest before going home to her sister. She sat at the foot of the stones, staring across the expanse of the moor, past the point when it began to slope steeply downwards towards the village below. A narrow stream wound its way between small rocky outcroppings, where it ran down to join the river a mile and a half away. Mag stared at the water, perhaps thirsty. She stood and walked across to the water, knelt beside it, and cupped her hand beneath its surface. The water was cold and refreshing. She closed her eyes as she drank. When she opened them again a thin girl was standing directly in front of her, facing the other way. The girl was dressed in dirty rags; her legs and feet were bare.
Mag greeted the interloper but received no response. Again she tried to speak with the girl but the stranger just stood there staring across the moor. Mag stood and backed away. She had a strange feeling about this.
The girl began to turn around, but instead of a face coming into view, all Mag saw was the back of a head. The girl was the same all the way round: wherever she turned, she was facing away. Mag fled the scene and didn’t stop running until she was back at the cottage with her sister.
This was not the first time
someone had seen the “Backwards Girl”, but nobody else had been so close. The other sightings over the years had all been at a distance. They were mere glimpses, as opposed to Mag’s up-close encounter. The story spread through the area, and people stopped coming to Mag and Meg for their cures. People said that the witch sisters were meddling with things best left alone. They said that the Backwards Girl was the devil, come out to play.
A local farmer and land-owner, Hedley Mills, took an interest in the story. He was fascinated by the dark arts, and had never been comfortable with the sisters living so close to the borders of his own land and potentially interfering with his own studies. He stirred things up, sowing more seeds of mistrust, and this culminated in a small group of villagers climbing up to the cottage where the sisters lived.
Hedley Mills had always coveted the land upon which the sisters lived. It was theirs by right, left to them by their late father, but Mills had always wanted to own the land, and the Grieving Stones. He knew what power it was said they contained and believed it to be real; he wanted to claim that power for himself.
He led the villagers up to the cottage. Earlier, he had visited the Grieving Stones and covered the fresh corpse of a baby with gorse, as if it had been hastily hidden. Hedley Mills was no stranger to killing: many years before, he had raped and murdered a wandering waif, a young girl dressed in rags. Her legs and feet bare and her face obscured by long, dirty hair. She was only the first. There had been many more since then.
The sisters were dragged from the cottage. Mills accused them of practising the dark arts at the Grieving Stones, and claimed that they had summoned the hungry demon known as the Backwards Girl.
When the group took the sisters to the stones, Mills “discovered” the remains of the baby. It was the child of a local girl, born with a cleft palate. Mills said that the deformity was yet another sign of the devil.
Mag and Meg Staples were locked up. Two days later they were thrown in the river to see if they would sink or float – the true test of a witch. They both floated. The men of the village dragged them from the river and hanged them from a tree. One rather excitable report states that they took an hour to die, and during that time they did not struggle or cry out. They simply stared at Hedley Mills, smiling.
Hedley Mills claimed the sisters’ land and moved into the cottage to be near the Grieving Stones. Within six months he was dead of tuberculosis. On his death bed, he claimed that the Backward Girl had come to him and touched his forehead with her small, pale hand, making him ill. He said that the Staples sisters watched from the crag, standing in the shadow of the Grieving Stones.
To this day, two large rocks – natural geographical growths rather than man-made standing stones – carry the name The Staples Sisters. The rocks are located a few yards from the Grieving Stones, next to a narrow stream. From a distance, one of them looks a little like an old woman bending to the stream to take a drink. The other looks like a second woman kneeling and staring across the moor. It is said that on some nights they are joined by a third figure, that of a thin girl dressed in rags, her legs and feet bare and her back the same as her front.
Alice shut the booklet and lay down on the bed, staring up at the sloped ceiling. The wooden panels had been washed; she could still see the stains where the water was drying.
If Clive had written this guide, why had he lied to her earlier when he’d told her that he didn’t know much about the legend of the Grieving Stones and why had he downplayed his familiarity with the area? It made little sense. What was he trying to hide from her, and why?
She already suspected that he had secrets; he might have slept with Moira at some point. That was what clearly the woman must have meant by her warning for Alice to be careful – to watch herself around the counsellor, because he was prone to take advantage of an emotional situation, a grieving woman.
She rolled onto her side and stared at the opening in the attic floor. There was still a light on downstairs; she could see it flickering occasionally, as if it were candlelight. She imagined Clive crawling along the corridor, his belly on the floor, his fingers curled into claws and gripping the gaps between the floorboards: a sexual predator, hungry to satisfy his lust.
The image didn’t quite fit.
So why had he asked her here? He had an ulterior motive, that was for sure, but she couldn’t think what it might be other than to seduce her. But why would he do that with the others around? There had to be more to it than sex.
When she’d mentioned the energy she felt inside the house, he had not reacted in the way she’d expected. Rather than laughing, or telling her not to be silly, he’d taken it in and asked her to postpone their conversation.
Did he know more about what was going on here than he’d previously let on? Had he in fact brought her here because he’d predicted that she might feel some kind of connection with the genius loci of Grief House? Or were his reasons far darker than that?
The Staples Sisters had been in touch with the spirit of this house; they had tapped into its energy and used it for healing, until Hedley Mills had grown jealous of the power they wielded and wanted it for himself.
A typical man, using violence to get what he wanted.
Was Clive just another in a long line of abusers?
Did he want to hurt her, just as her dead husband had once done?
Alice closed her eyes. Her mind was racing. These were new thoughts, irrational subjects, that she had never before considered.
The black deer they had killed on the road as they’d travelled here was waiting behind her eyelids. It was standing in the middle of the road, its guts hanging in wet loops, and staring at her with eyes that looked disturbingly human.
What do you want?
The deer’s head twitched; its hooves scraped on the hard road. It bolted. Alice ran after it, faster than she could ever have moved in real life. She became an animal herself: quick, agile, graceful.
The deer stopped in front of Grief House, went down on its front knees, and bowed its ragged head. Its eyes were so familiar…they were like Clive’s eyes.
Show me.
The door to Grief House opened. Blood spilled out, through the doorway, over the threshold, and towards her in a living red wave. The white-tipped blood wave washed over her, cleansing her; she opened her mouth and swallowed it by the gallon as she was submerged. Soon she was standing at the bottom of a deep red ocean, yet she could see through the thick fluid clearly. Above her, there was only red. Around her, only red. Below her, the sodden ground was stained red.
Grief House swayed before her, its outline becoming fluid, like the malleable body of some beautiful underwater creature. Its walls were soft, its doors and windows took on new shapes and the slate roof arched like a spine. The black deer with Clive’s tender eyes drifted down from above, its innards trailing like tendrils. Hanging onto its rear legs were two small women, their pale faces like half-finished masks.
The deer set down on the roof of Grief House. The women stepped away, moving down slowly towards Alice, their feet moving as if they were walking and not floating through the endless blood-sea. They stopped a few yards away from her, watching. She knew who they were but even at such close quarters she could not make out their features. They were faceless, like the punch dummy in the attic room, but she knew they were smiling.
Both women held out their hands, opening their fingers. Bubbles rose from the palms of their hands. Inside each bubble was an eye, and every one of them was open and staring at her.
Accept me.
The eyes blinked. The bubbles began to burst. The two women turned and one of them grabbed the black deer. The other one took out a large knife and slashed its throat.
“Hedley Mills.” The voice was hers, but it was coming from the dying deer’s mouth. She was speaking through the animal.
Alice allowed her legs to go from under her and floated on her back in the warm red sea. She closed her eyes again, and, if only within the dream, she slept
soundly.
PART THREE
GOING HOME
CHAPTER TEN
When Alice first woke up the following morning she suspected that she might still be dreaming. The quality of the light was strange; sharp and brittle. The air felt heavy, as if it were pressing down upon her as she lay in the small bed. She sat up and saw that the punch dummy had moved again. This time it was turned away from her, facing the wall, as if she’d upset it in some way.
“Fuck off,” she muttered, getting out of bed. She put on some shorts, a white t shirt, and a pair of flip-flops, and went downstairs. Jake was already up, sitting on the sofa drinking coffee. He didn’t look good.
“Morning,” she said.
“Hi.” His eyes were red-rimmed, slightly bloodshot. “Steve called. They kept Moira in overnight so he stayed with her. I told him we didn’t need the van for anything so he’s coming back later this afternoon. He’s planning to drop off the van and get a taxi to the train station. He doesn’t want to spend another night here.” He looked away from her. “I can’t blame him.”
“Didn’t you sleep well?”
He shook his head. “I had… bad dreams… nasty dreams. About… well, I’m not really sure. That deer we hit on the way here, but it had a human head. Witches. Fires in the sky. A young girl who had no face, just the back of her head all the way around.” He laughed, but it was a bitter sound. “I had a little extra to drink last night, just to help me get off to sleep. The whisky in my flask must be stronger than I thought, especially on top of all that wine.”
