THE SILENCE OF THE STONES: Will the secrets written in the stones destroy a young woman's world? The runes are cast. Who will die?

by Rebecca Bryn

  ‘Greg was born in Holloway. We discovered that much from his birth certificate.’

  ‘Nerys received treatment for her mental breakdown but she wasn’t allowed to keep you, Greg. I wanted to so much but the stigma at that time… the media hype, reporters stalking me everywhere I went. The name Nerys Reece was almost as infamous as Myra Hindley for a while. Then another case came along and the media moved on. People forgot Nerys.’

  Maddy examined her nail polish but James didn’t appear to notice her discomfort.

  ‘Getting you far away with a completely new identity seemed the only way to protect you, back then. Your adoptive parents kept the name Nerys had given you, but knew nothing of your circumstances and I never knew where you went. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.’ Tears glistened on James’ cheeks. ‘I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t do this.’

  He moved to sit beside his father. ‘Dad.’

  ‘Son…’ Soap and aftershave filled his lungs as they hugged, sobs wracking their bodies.

  ***

  The rune tiles lay on the white cloth. Rhiannon inspected them carefully. She’d been thinking of Elin and here was Ehwaz, the E-rune, closest to the centre. She smothered a bitter laugh. Ehwaz, the sign of the erect penis: Elin and Reverend Thomas should know all about that. She doubted Stuart or Reverend Thomas’ wife knew what was going on. Maybe it was time they did.

  She scooped the runes back into their bag and got stiffly from her chair as if she’d been stuck indoors for days. She remembered carving Ehwaz, E for Elin, on the stone opposite the one that bore Berkana, B for Bronwen, carved almost a year ago, but the days since then were a blank. There was no food in the fridge, no milk, no bread, and a pile of post lay on the mat. The remains of a marmalade sandwich sat on the breadboard. She didn’t like marmalade. She bent to retrieve the post: a week’s worth of junk mail.

  In the cupboard, she had an emergency supply of milk powder, but no sugar. She moved the living-room curtain to one side. It was time she found out who the young woman in Siân’s cottage was.

  Wunjo, reversed, faint as if it had been scrubbed, but still unmistakeable, adorned the girl’s door. She knocked. The young woman who answered it smiled in welcome.

  She held out a small blue jug. ‘I wondered if you had a drop of milk I could borrow.’

  The girl stared at the jug. ‘I’m sure I have. Come in.’

  The inside had changed little since last she was here, but dramatic canvases hung on the walls. Scenes of primal fury as storm made landfall. ‘These are good.’

  The girl returned with a full jug.

  ‘The paintings… did you do them?’

  ‘Yes. I seem to have inherited my aunt’s love of painting.’

  ‘I’m Rhiannon, by the way. I live across the green.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you. I’m Alana.’

  She looked around. ‘You’re renting the cottage?’

  ‘No, it belongs to me, now. Aunt Siân left it to me.’

  Palpitations fluttered against her ribs. ‘You’re Siân’s niece?’

  ‘She was my mother’s sister.’

  ‘I didn’t know Siân had a sister.’

  ‘I didn’t know I had an aunt. She and Mum fell out, years ago.’

  ‘That would explain it.’ She moved towards the door, eager to escape. ‘Thanks for the milk. I’ll replace it when I go shopping.’

  ‘There’s no need, really.’

  The door clicked shut behind her as she hurried across the green, through her front door and into her kitchen. She sank onto a chair. A niece… another accursed Ap Dafydd to dispose of. She shook the rune bag and fumbled inside, too shaken to concentrate properly. Algiz – she must resist temptation. It called for protection and shelter, new beginnings. What could this mean for the girl, Alana? The next rune was Sowilu, the sun sign – see her dark side, her destructive and self-destructive nature: seek healing and change. Ansuz, Alana’s name letter suggested blessings and wisdom: she must listen to the voice inside. The voice raised doubts. She’d sworn destruction on Siân's family, but protection, shelter? Would it be a mistake to harm her niece?

  She concentrated hard on the question. ‘Is this girl a danger?’ She pulled out another tile. Hagalaz – the destructive forces of nature and things beyond her control. Her hand shook as she drew the last tile of the telling of five. Wyrd – the blank tile, some said it was Odin’s rune. It wasn’t a rune she used in casting, it had no weight of history, yet it had come to her hand when she’d asked the question.

  It signified the unknowable: the beginning and the end.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tap, tap, tap… tap, tap. Alana prowled around the house in the dark, hammer in hand, unwilling to alert any possible intruder to the fact she was awake. Gales off the Atlantic sculpted the shapes of the hawthorns on her hedge-banks darker than the night sky, but none of The Haggard’s windows rattled when she tried them. The television aerial was nailed to one of the ceiling joists, so the tapping wasn’t that. She’d checked the shed door last time she’d heard the noise and that wasn’t the culprit.

  There had to be a logical explanation. She stood still, listening. It wasn’t the slow drip of the kitchen tap, nor the one in the bathroom: it wasn’t that regular, and it was sharper, somehow.

  It was stupid, ridiculous to even think it, but it sounded like someone tapping a signal… as if trying to get her attention. The thought refused to go away, even though it was crazy. She was alone in the house: she’d checked the cupboards, looked for doors and hatches that could lead to a cellar or hidden loft area. She dressed: there was nothing left but to check outside.

  She switched on her torch and drew the bolts. Someone painted signs on her door when she was asleep. Why? Did they wish her ill? That person could be outside, waiting for her.

  She was being melodramatic, letting the dark make more of this than there was. Letting herself be prey to night terrors, like the dream of zombies and the nightmares of Mike. If this was someone’s attempt at frightening her away from the village, it wouldn’t work: she wasn’t to blame for her birth, any more than Saffy was. Trembling, she turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

  Tap, tap… tap… tap, tap, tap… The sound was louder, definitely an outside noise. She swung the torch in a wide arc causing distorted shadows to flee across the garden. She moved the beam back again, more slowly. Nothing. No-one.

  Tap, tap, tap. Heart in mouth, she swung around. A rose branch, loosened from its tie, tapped against the window. She let out the breath she’d been holding. All these disturbed nights for a rose branch…

  She tucked it into place and re-fastened it securely. Maybe now she’d get some sleep.

  She took a cup of tea back to bed, but sleep eluded her. Today, but for Mike, would have been her second wedding anniversary. She and Tony would be married; maybe there would have been a baby on the way, a child she could love. She sat, staring at the stars through the Velux window, imagining what life could have been. She drew her knees to her chest, and hugged them, letting her head rest against them and her hair fall across her face and cascade across her arms. Tears ran down her cheeks and fell into the black well of despair.

  She missed Tony so much her chest hurt when she breathed; two years hadn’t dimmed the pain. She took a deep, shuddering breath and garnered her resolve. Wishing the past away had never solved anything: feeling sorry for herself was letting Mike win. She’d do what she always did when life got too much to bear, throw her fear and grief and anger into a painting: it was only since Mr John came along that she’d realised they might be more than bin-fodder.

  A virgin canvas was Mike’s face. She daubed hatred, thick and black, and scoured wheals across it with the sharpened end of her brush. She threw down her brush and let her fingernails scrape tramlines across the canvas. Red followed the black, splattered like blood, Mike’s blood: it ran into the jagged grooves and across the painting, leaking away his life. Blue was the pain i
n her heart, white her loneliness. The small splash of yellow was that faint hope that maybe, one day…

  She stepped back, wiping her hands on a cloth, and considered her work. It was a mess, and yet there were elements she could develop: passages that worked. It was cathartic, apocalyptic. Mike might have destroyed her relationship with Tony, but he hadn’t destroyed her.

  Her nerve endings sang, alive with emotions that howled to be let free. If she could learn to channel them, find a market for work like this, then Mike had unwittingly given her something precious, something other than Saffy: passion, and the need to express it. He’d given her a future.

  She picked up more yellow on her brush and swung a trail of pure joy across the canvas and the walls. She wasn’t a victim anymore, she was a survivor, and her revenge would be success.

  The sound of a lorry reversing towards the cottage made her dump her brush into a jar of water: she hadn’t noticed it getting light outside. The tarpaulins on the back of the lorry, hopefully, covered the limestone blocks for her scaled-down mock-up.

  The driver knocked the door. ‘You got the plague, love?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  He pointed to the thick black symbol on her door. It looked like a lop-sided cross, the sort of thing Saffy might draw as a kiss. It was another, different sign. Her stomach flipped, sure this was no kiss. She was getting as paranoid as Elin and Harriet, locking and bolting her doors, imagining stray rose branches were Morse code messages from the dead. Or maybe word of her illegitimate, adulterous birth had spread: if they found out about Saffy she’d be tarred and feathered. Her new-won determination resurfaced. ‘Take no notice, I’m the unclean. Is that my stone?’

  ‘Sign here… where do you want it?’

  ‘In the garden, through the side gate if you can.’ She took the delivery note. ‘I need to be sure it isn’t damaged.’

  The Hiab crane made short work of lifting the pallets of stone blocks over the hedge-bank and into the garden.

  She checked them for cracks and faults, and signed the delivery note. She’d worry about positioning them so she could begin carving, later, if she ever got the mini-prototype to feel alive, and anyway, even if she wasn’t too tired to think straight, it was too cold to work outside today.

  A car parked on the far side of the green, and a man and woman got out. They walked across to the fire-blackened house and stared at it. The fire-investigation team had come and gone, according to Harriet. Insurance assessors? The girl held up a camera and took several photographs before ducking under the barricade tape left by the fire officers. She stopped short of going inside, but her camera flashed as she took another photo through the door. Reporters? They weren’t the first.

  She went back to work on a painting she’d begun the previous day, capturing the clarity of light reflected from the sea onto the underside of cloud. A knock on the door interrupted her before she could add the cloud shadows to the sea. ‘Damn.’

  ‘Hello.’ The girl had wide blue eyes and orange hair. Blue and orange were complementary colours. The man’s eyes were sepia brown like moorland peat pools. There was something about him.

  ‘Sorry?’

  The girl repeated what she’d said. ‘I’m Maddy, this is Greg. No-one seems to be answering their doors, except your neighbour and she took one look at the sign on her door and ran for a scrubbing brush. What are the signs for? Several of the houses seem to have one.’

  ‘Do they?’ She looked across the green, involuntarily. Elin put down her bucket and hurried towards the chapel. Two more doors opened and women, with a backward glance at The Haggard, scuttled after her. A curtain moved in the house with too-small windows. The villagers were closing ranks, and she was definitely being shut out.

  ‘The signs?’ Maddy repeated.

  ‘Kids, I expect.’ She frowned: half the houses were shut up for the winter. The rest were mostly occupied by elderly couples. ‘Now I come to think of it, that’s why the village is so quiet. I don’t think there are any children.’

  Maddy took a step forward. ‘Can we come in?’

  ‘I’m rather busy.’

  ‘We won’t hold you up. It’s just that…’ The deep brown eyes pleaded and her heart constricted. ‘Maddy’s a freelance reporter. I’m a musician… I’m hoping to do a gig while we’re in the area. Perhaps you’ll come?’

  She tried to swallow. ‘Might liven the place up a bit.’

  He smiled briefly. ‘But that isn’t why we’re here. I’m looking for my mother.’

  ‘I’ve only been here a couple of weeks. I’ve hardly met anyone, yet.’

  ‘My mother is Nerys Reece. You’ve probably heard of her.’

  ‘I know the name.’

  ‘Then you’ll know she was convicted of killing children from this village, years ago. She’s been released and I… I need to find her… find out what really happened.’

  She began to shut the door. ‘One of those children was Cadi, my half-sister.’

  Maddy moved to stop her. ‘The other was Bethan, Greg’s sister.’

  ‘Please.’ Greg’s eyes bored into hers.

  Her heart skipped a beat. ‘You’d better come in.’

  She gathered together drawings from the settee and wished she’d vacuumed. Limestone dust from the carving she’d brought inside to finish had walked all over the floor. ‘Sorry about the mess.’

  ‘Do you remember Cadi or Bethan?’

  ‘No. Cadi and I have the same father but I was brought up in Leicester.’

  Greg picked a drawing from the floor. ‘I see.’

  She felt the need to explain further, to drip words into the awkward silence. ‘My mother and Cadi’s mother were sisters but… Mum and Dafydd, my aunt’s husband, had an affair. There was a huge falling out.’

  Greg turned the drawing around as if to determine which way was up. ‘I can imagine.’

  Maddy rescued them. ‘You said were sisters.’

  ‘Aunt Siân died last year. She left me this cottage so she must have felt I was blameless. I found some old newspaper cuttings, photos, odd personal letters. Nothing much.’ She nodded towards the portrait over the fire. ‘That’s Cadi. That’s my sister.’

  Greg stared at the portrait. ‘I wonder what did happen to her and Bethan.’

  ‘You don’t believe your mother killed them?’

  ‘My father doesn’t think so. He said she was distraught when Beth went missing.’

  ‘And Nerys has been released?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘About a year ago. The evidence against her was found to be unsafe. We’ve searched records, been in touch with the prison authorities. She’s vanished. It’s as if she never existed.’

  She glanced at the drawing Greg was studying. ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. Would you, in her circumstances?’

  ‘No. You’re probably right.’ Greg put down the drawing. ‘I knew we were wasting our time, Maddy. This is the last place Nerys would want to be.’ He stood up. ‘Nice to meet you…’

  ‘Alana. Sorry I couldn’t help.’ She didn’t want him to leave. He would leave a space only he could fill. ‘Can I get you a coffee before you go?’

  Maddy smiled. ‘That would be lovely. I don’t suppose I could see the newspaper cuttings, could I? They may have some info I haven’t found yet.’

  ‘I’ll get them.’

  ***

  Greg watched Alana climb the steep stair to the loft. There was something about the girl, an attraction he couldn’t deny, and it wasn’t just the tight jeans. The Celt calling the Celt? Judging by her canvases propped against the walls and the carving on the pedestal, she was the free spirit he’d never quite managed to be. Like Maddy, she was doing her own thing and it was obvious she’d drawn on resources and passions deep inside herself. Maybe he should try writing his own songs, not pumping out other people’s work, however much he admired it.

  ‘That’s all there is.’

  Maddy spread the cuttings across the table and studied them. Alana retu
rned with coffee.

  He indicated the drawing he’d been looking at earlier. ‘Is this a preliminary sketch for the carving?’

  Alana’s smile lit the room. ‘One of many. It’s a drawing of symbols I found on some ancient stones up on the moors. One of them was daubed on my door when I first came here.’

  ‘The intoxicated cross?’

  ‘No. In fact, there have been three different ones altogether.’

  Maddy looked up from her cuttings. ‘There was one on the door of the burned-out house, too.’

  Alana shivered. ‘You think it’s some sort of warning?’

  Maddy shrugged. ‘Interesting thought.’

  ‘Not when one’s daubed on your door, it isn’t!’

  ‘Sorry… can’t help being a journalist. It’s intriguing though.’

  He put a tentative hand briefly on Alana’s arm: her muscles were well-defined, strong, but she was trembling. ‘I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.’

  Alana changed the subject. ‘Did you find anything in the cuttings, Maddy?’

  ‘Not really. In the local rag it says your half-sister was known as Cadi Ap?’

  Alana bit her top lip. ‘Her surname was Ap Dafydd. There must have been another Cadi in the village. For all I know Cadi may be a common name.’ She turned the carving on its pedestal. ‘The symbols must mean something. An ancient language, maybe. I wanted to make the stones speak again but I can’t seem to connect with them.’

  Maddy sat on the arm of the sofa, next to him and held up a sketch of the old gravestones. ‘They look like they’re whispering secrets.’

  Alana smiled. ‘That’s what I thought.’

  He pointed to the carved symbol that looked like a figure with both arms raised. ‘This reminds me of my foster-sister trying to dance.’

  Alana laughed. ‘Greg, I could kiss you.’

  She rootled through a stack of paper and spread sketches across the floor. She jabbed a finger at one. ‘These are static. It’s why the prototype doesn’t live, but the symbols, in the shape of children playing… like a Ring o’ Roses, that’ll be full of life. I’ll get permission to erect the full-size sculpture here, on the green, in memory of Bethan and Cadi, all the children who died… all the children who must have died here over the centuries.’