The Alchemy Press Book of Ancient Wonders

by Peter

  Rounding yet another sweeping curve, he saw a whole gaggle of cyclists approaching and for a moment the familiar panic welled up again. He fought against it: they were just youngsters out to enjoy a ride. He saw now that there was at least one adult with them: maybe they were school kids on a trip. A few yards ahead, to his left, he noticed a large, open platform set into the side of the bank. It afforded spectacular views of the river valley below. A sign proudly proclaimed that it had been built using Lottery funding. He turned on to it, resting his bike against the wooden side and leaned on the far rail to study the river, though his attention remained fixed on the kids. He realised now that they were coming to the platform, too. At least some of them. And he felt his entire body trembling as if with a sudden, biting cold.

  He had been right about the adult. The man was clearly their teacher. He stood close to Vaughan, ignoring him and indicated the valley below to his audience, beginning a rehearsed monologue about its history and the people who had once roamed there. Vaughan caught snatches of it, partly muffled by the noise of the kids. Some were paying attention; others were mock-squabbling out on the track.

  “Saxons?” one kid repeated, picking up something the teacher had said. “Were there any battles here, sir?”

  “Loads,” said another kid. “Them fields must be full of bones.”

  There was laughter, but Vaughan felt his fingers gripping the wooden rail. In his own mind he could see the wolf pack as the raiders thrust their craft up the river, cutting a swathe through anyone opposing them. A sudden flurry of movement blurred the image: the kids were back on their bikes, the party readying to go back towards the town.

  “You okay?” said a lone voice. The last of the kids, a burly lad of probably fifteen was studying Vaughan, coarse hands wrapped around his handlebars as if ready to take off. In his eyes there was a kind of sympathy, as if somehow he read Vaughan’s uneasiness.

  Vaughan forced himself to smile. “Sure. I was miles away. Thanks.”

  The boy nodded as if they had shared some deep secret, then was off, rejoining his companions, where the noise of mild rebellion ebbed and flowed gently.

  Vaughan continued his journey, more quickly now. The route remained almost flat, allowing him to fly along. He had travelled five miles when he saw another old station up ahead. Like the one in the town, it had been preserved, part of its buildings modernised as a pub. Across the track from it was a rundown engine shed, its planks flaking, rotting in places. A sign announced that this housed the promised cafe. He swung off the track into a deserted car park and rested the bike up against the wall of the dilapidated building.

  Inside, at a counter piled with chocolate bars, biscuits and various sweets, a man in a tee- shirt welcomed him. Vaughan asked for a mug of tea, paid for it and went out into the sunlight to one of three tables. He unwrapped the pack of sandwiches Linda had given him and bit into the first. A thought occurred to him. He put the sandwich down in the paper and got up. He walked slowly to the track and looked back the way he had come.

  Someone was coming, half a mile away, framed like an insect in the curve of an overhead bridge. Vaughan watched, waiting for the figure to draw closer. But it seemed to be caught in time, motionless. He couldn’t make it out.

  “Your tea,” called the man from the cafe, jerking him back to his present surroundings. Vaughan went to the table and sat down, splitting a sugar sachet and spilling its contents into the mug that the man had set there.

  “First time on this ride?” the man asked affably.

  Vaughan nodded. “Yes. Very pleasant.”

  “Where you headed?” The man was wiping his hands on a stained rag, his shirt and trousers daubed with oil. Behind him in the shadows a score of bicycles were lined up, above them a sign offering hire rates.

  Vaughan shrugged, stirring his tea. “I guess I’ll just keep riding.”

  “About eight miles on, the track crosses a road that goes uphill to a small village. Can’t miss it, sits on the skyline. Best pub lunch around. Nice pint, too. You might like to try it.”

  “Thanks, I might do that.” Vaughan sipped his tea.

  The man pulled a spanner from a deep pocket and wiped it. “Other than that, there’s the monument. Lot of people enjoy the climb up to it. That’s another mile on from the village turning. Signposted, so you’ll find it easy enough.”

  “Monument?”

  “Yes, standing stone. Oldest one around. You get a nice view up there. Probably why it was put there. I’ve got a brochure somewhere. I’ll find it for you.” The man slipped back into the cool of the building. When he came back he had several sheets and brochures.

  Vaughan took them mechanically. The man tapped one of the brochures; it had a photo of a standing stone on its cover, a tall menhir, with a bike nearby to give an idea of its size, which was about eight feet.

  “What do I owe you for these?”

  “Keep them.” The man grinned. He realised that Vaughan was not going to engage in conversation, so left him to his tea.

  Vaughan flicked through the literature. He found himself drawn back to the monument. In the brochure it talked about Neolithic times and the people who had lived in the local landscape. There were several legends about the monument, the most popular being that it was a gift from the old gods, a protective talisman that watched over the area. A Saxon warlord, Brunna, had met a sticky end there, tracked and cut down by local tribesmen as a reward for his brutal treatment of them.

  Vaughan finished his sandwiches and tea and got back on the bike. He coasted to the track and again looked back the way he had come. Although the day remained brilliantly hot and cloudless, there were shadows along the route, under the distant overhead bridge. Something clung to those shadows, man-sized but indefinable. He pulled his gaze from it and kicked off.

  The man in the cafe watched him indifferently. He gathered up the brochures and papers and took them back into the cafe and put them with the others before returning to his world of gears and chains and wheels.

  Vaughan rode steadily for another half an hour, seeing less fellow cyclists now as he began to penetrate the deeper forest where only the more enthusiastic went. The sense of timelessness and tranquillity enfolded him even more completely; the town he had left earlier could have been a hundred miles away. A stream tumbled through the woods on one side of him and a wall of pines closed in from the other. The track rose slowly and he twisted the handlebar grip to drop a gear.

  Ahead of him, on the left, he could see a bench, one of a number that had been set aside periodically. But someone was sitting on this one, head bowed as if in deep thought. Vaughan watched apprehensively as he neared the figure and then realised as he drew closer why it had mildly disturbed him. It was a sculpture, made entirely from wood, its arms and knees slightly green with age. As he rode past, Vaughan had the strangest sensation that it would look up and hail him.

  It didn’t, of course.

  A hundred yards further along, he stopped and looked back. The wooden figure remained in place, but behind it, emerging from the curve of the track, a lone walker was approaching. Vaughan tried to study its detail, obscured by a clutch of shadows. He waited. But it had become strangely motionless, like the sculpture. Almost as if it were waiting.

  An abrupt burst of sound jarred his nerves, bells jingling madly behind him. He swung round, terrified, only to see two very young girls come pedalling past him, grinning like miniature demons. Beyond them, their mother looked askance at him, apologising profusely for their abandoned behaviour.

  Unable to speak, he stood rigidly to one side as the group sped on, receding in an instant, leaving him in a muck-sweat. He clawed with blind instinct at his belt for a weapon, a gun. If he had been armed he would have flicked off the safety catch, swung the muzzle around and unleashed a withering storm. For a moment he was in the desert, snared by the horrors of war, every sound a threat, every heartbeat a gunshot.

  It all receded as quickly as it had burst on him a
nd the forest closed in again. Vaughan wiped streaks of perspiration from his face, watching the trio of cyclists disappearing, the last ting of a bell snuffed out by distance. It was a while before he was able to continue, riding at a steady pace once more, his body again fused with the machine, effortlessly rolling forward.

  He passed an old station platform, almost hidden by weeds and huge tufts of grass, with a broken sign that revealed part of a name. There were no buildings here, just trees and a rotted fence, more evidence of distant life. Beyond the next turning, something partially blocked the track. It looked at first to be a large sack, its contents spilling from a long rupture. But as Vaughan approached he knew it for something else. A corpse. A cloud of flies swarmed noisily up from it as he neared it. He knew the rotten smell of a carcass. This was a large animal, probably a badger. But he sped by quickly, flapping at the hail of flies. They hummed about him like bullets.

  He was rising now, the landscape beyond the woods to his left steepening as it became the foothills of the tors. Again he thought of the steam train, burrowing with metal determination through the forest, easing up the incline, relentless. He pushed himself harder, blowing out air and with it the memory of the dead creature. Eventually he came to a gate. There was a road crossing the track, with another gate beyond, but this could not be the one that the man in the cafe had spoken about. He would ride on. He crossed the road and as he closed the second gate, he looked back the way he had come. For a long time he watched the curve of track. Someone was coming. At any moment they would appear. He would wait, damn them, until they showed themselves.

  Minutes passed. The world had frozen, focused on the path. Nothing moved. Then, from somewhere up above the valley, a sound reached out for him. A rattle of gunfire, far away. A farmer maybe, scattering crows. The sound broke his concentration on the path and shook him out of his torpor. At once he swung on to the bike and was off, the ground softer here, no tarmac covering it, the fallen leaves and small branches forming a mulch in places that threatened to skid the wheels. He was glad to concentrate on riding.

  By the time he eventually reached the crossroad that he’d been told to look for, the one that led to the village and the promised pub, he was ready for a cool drink; the sun close to its zenith, urged him to sanctuary. But as he was about to turn on to the road and its twisting incline, his instincts warned him to wait. In the desert, in action, nothing had been left to chance. No one walked forward without taking everything in. Even then, there was no certainty of safety. Men died. Those mines—

  He drew back. This was rural England. There were no land mines here. It was a remote country road, empty, hardly a shadow crossing it. Yet as he stared at it, he could not bring himself to ride on. Perhaps his experiences had developed in him a super-sense, a prescience. He swung back on to the old railway track. What was it the man at the cafe had said? A monument. There was something about a mile further on.

  The trees closed around him and he was riding down a tunnel, the path arrowing directly ahead for half a mile. The air in here was cool, refreshing as he rode faster. There was a distinct sense of relief at not having taken to the road. Maybe he just didn’t want human company. It would have been inevitable at the pub, however remote.

  Soon he was out in sunlight again, the track branching slightly over to the fields and tors above them. He was pedalling steadily and almost missed the sign. It leaned over, pointing more to the ground than the fields. But it read The Monument. He braked, crunching gravel and faced a stile in the low hedgerow, with a small iron gate beside it. He could see from tyre tracks that it was regularly used by cyclists.

  Through the gate, he looked up at the curve of a bleached field. The track was faded but wove its way up to the brow of the hill. There was an open space here and part of an old iron fence which seemed to serve as a hitching rail for visiting cyclists. Soft laughter made him start, but it was just a couple whom he hadn’t noticed, a young man and woman, back-packers. The man bent down and unlocked the two cycles that Vaughan now saw by the fence. The woman approached him with a wave.

  “Hi,” she called cheerily. “Are you going up to the monument? It’s not far.”

  He pulled himself together. “Yes.”

  “It’s lovely up there.” She gazed up at the hill crest, smiling at whatever private secrets it held for her. “Really magical.”

  Beside her, pushing the two cycles, the man beamed at Vaughan. “Hi. You can leave your bike here. Don’t worry if you haven’t got a lock. It’s secure enough.” He tugged a plastic bottle from his belt. “Do you have water?” He held it out invitingly.

  Vaughan shook his head. “No, that’s fine. Have you seen the monument?”

  “Yes, it’s a menhir. A tall standing stone. Must be eight feet tall,” said the man, taking a pull at his water bottle.

  “It’s supposed to be a gift from the gods,” said the girl. “Sent to protect the land from evil spirits.”

  “I read something about it in the brochure.” Vaughan nodded, digging into his pockets. But he remembered he had left the brochure with the other stuff back at the cafe.

  The man exchanged a final, slightly embarrassed grin and then he and his girl were through the gate and gone, melting into the woodland. Vaughan was left alone with a deep silence, broken only by the drone of a bee.

  He leaned his bike against the old fence and began the walk up the path, glad to stretch himself. His body had quickly become used to the exercise again after such a prolonged recuperation. His awareness – his former desert sense – had sharpened acutely. Surprising how quickly it all came back. Like riding the bike, he supposed.

  The climb was not steep, winding gently across the thick grass. This field had not been planted with wheat, rape or any other crop for some time, he imagined, probably because of its erratic contours. The grass up here grew waist high beside the track. He paused and looked back. Already the landscape of the railway valley was spreading out below in a long line from left to right, stained by its trees. His bike was a miniature metal trinket far away, the sun glinting on its tiny frame.

  By the gate, a solitary figure hopped over the stile. Not a cyclist. Vaughan squinted at it. It was not moving. It had an odd shape, as if it wore a thick coat, totally inappropriate for the searing heat of midday. Why wasn’t it moving? He turned away, climbing swiftly again. When he paused, another twenty yards further on, he looked back. The figure had moved on to the track, but as he studied it, he could see that it had again stopped moving. It only moves when I’m not looking at it, he thought irrationally.

  Drenched in perspiration and suppressing a wave of panic, he made his way on up the path. He could see the tor clearly now and its stone guardian. A last look back showed him only the lush expanse of grass, the lower path – and its other occupant – hidden by the shoulder of the hill. For the second time that day he reached for weapons he was not carrying. He wiped stinging perspiration from his eyes. Quickening his pace, he strode on up to the edge of the tor. The grass petered out and became a cropped carpet of moss and scrub, small chunks of granite poking through it. Now the tall stone, a single, isolated block of dark grey, was no more than fifty yards away. It looked as if it belonged at Stonehenge, or some other ancient circle.

  He turned again, studying the lake of grass that lapped silently, almost sensuously at the tor. Where was the figure? Surely it must be coming into view soon. He waited, mouth dry, wishing he had accepted the young man’s offer of a drink.

  There! Some distance from the track, in the grass. It was airless up here in spite of the height. Not even a breeze. Yet the grass was moving. In more than one place. At least three patches of grass were being disturbed. Vaughan could just about discern hunched shapes. What were they? Kids? Yes, that must be it. Stupid, fucking kids playing a game. A war game. Sneaking up on him.

  His attention was tugged back to the path. As if it had risen up from the deep grass, the figure was there. Muffled, heavily clothed, as if against a winter b
last, not summer heat. Or protected against the ferocity of the desert. No, that was ridiculous. Around it, the smaller shapes hopped like broken insects. Impossible to see them properly.

  Vaughan spun round and broke into a gentle run up the last of the slope. Suddenly the menhir loomed over him like a huge fist. The sun was behind it, making its silhouette more foreboding. And yet, didn’t they all say that it was protection against evil? He stood in its shadow, heedless at first of how unnaturally cold it was. Behind him he heard the same far-off sound he had heard earlier. Farmer shooting crows.

  Except that farmers didn’t use machine guns. He swung round. Where? Where had that sound come from? Way off in the distance he could see smoke, curling up in a number of places. Bonfires. They reminded him all too easily of the fires of war, spewed up from the fall of bombs. His eyes focused again on the grass. At last the figure was emerging. Vaughan could see now what it was wearing. It was not an overcoat or any kind of western dress. It was what they called a mufti. The man was an Arab.

  He did move now. Stumbling, holding his stomach as if it pained him. His robes were light coloured, except for the area he was holding, which was a vivid scarlet. On either side of him, other figures held back, still obscured by the grass.

  Vaughan swore. He had seen this man before, months ago. Seen him and – shot him. In the madness of war. The village. In the bloody mayhem, the snarling of the machine guns. The insurgents. The men, their wives – their children. War levelled all. No rules, no mercy, no rational thought.

  He felt his back bump up against the monument. As soon as his body was in contact with it, he felt himself pulled to it, as if a huge magnet had attracted a chunk of metal. Hands clawing at the air impotently, he could not pull loose. Like a fly stuck on wallpaper, he wriggled, but the monument had him. The creature on the path staggered forward, leaking blood, the bullet-torn body impossibly alive. In the grass, the others waited like coiled snakes for the command.