Ghost Train

by Stephen Laws

  16The Giants’ Hills (Skendlebury). Long mounds with megalithic burial chambers. Evidence of sacrifices, as corpses were found lying together on beds of chalk within great timber enclosures which had then been covered over.

  Mark struggled to continue reading, remembering the wild Blue Man and his hideously transformed servants; the barbarous acts of torture which he was forced to witness; the feeling of being buried alive.

  17The Twelve Apostles/The Hanging Stones/The Death’s Head Stone/The Panorama Stone. Perched high above Ilkley are bizarre patterns recorded on the Hanging Stones. Clusters of similarly marked stones on the neighbouring hilltops of Baildon and Snowden Moors. Groups of carvings can be found on dozens of the flat rock outcrops on the edge of the moor.

  18The Devil’s Arrows. Three large megaliths considered to be ‘mark-­stones’, indicating a ley line or an intersection point between lines. Strange fluting sounds have been reported from these stones.

  19The Rudston Monolith. The tallest standing stone in Britain at 25 feet and weighing 40 tons. Situated just west of Bridlington in the grounds of Rudston Church, it has been dated back to 1600 BC and is assumed to have already marked some ritual pagan site before the Norman church was built around it, presumably to assert Christian authority over the stone, which is still said to have substantial mystical significance.

  20Danby Rigg. Complex ring cairn on the North Yorkshire moors. Its rubble bank is worn down and only one of its four stones remains. Excavators found two urns at its centre, upside down and containing cremated bone and charcoal.

  21Roughtinglinn and Duddo (Northumberland). The former is six miles north of Wooler. Carved cup-­and-­ring marks can be found on an extensive area of undulating sandstone. The markings have been likened to others throughout the country. Five stone monoliths can be found at Duddo.

  22Arthur’s Seat. This is a huge conical hill in Edinburgh which is considered to be an important geomantic point crossed by four ley lines.

  23The Callanish Stones. The village of Callanish lies on the West Coast of Lewis, fifteen miles from Stornoway. The circle and alignments are situated on a low promontory of land at the head of Loch Roag. Until fairly recently, certain families in Lewis were held in secret esteem as ‘belonging to the stones’, although the reasons are unknown. It is said that local people still congregate secretly at the Callanish Stones on May Day and Midsummer morning. On such occasions, it was believed that ‘something’, perhaps a deity, came to the stones and walked down the avenue, heralded by the call of a cuckoo . . .

  The book which Mark held in his hands had suddenly become loathsome, dangerous to touch. Again, he saw himself in a nightmare, fleeing down a line of jutting stones from something incredibly hideous which was right behind him.

  He had lied to Chadderton. He had bought the book only four months ago, deciding that he was going to kill the bad dreams once and for all; would prove to himself that no matter how real they seemed, they were only dreams . . . only nightmares. He had intended to look through the book quietly, when Joanne and Helen were asleep; flip over the pages one by one and look at the photographs until the book was finished and his nightmares had been exorcised forever. But he had never opened it. He had put it on the third shelf, where it had remained until the previous night. He realised that secretly he had felt that his mind might tilt over the edge into insanity if he had recognised, no matter how obscurely, any of the stones pictured in the book.

  Mark steadied his trembling fingers and turned to a large, full-­colour photograph of the Callanish Stones which, by some cruel twist of fate, mirrored his exact remembrance of those terrible stones from his dream. If it had been possible to photograph a dream, this would have been the picture. There was no room for doubt.

  Two pages of the volume had been turned over at the corners. Mark turned to the first and saw that Chadderton had underlined a section in pencil. He read:

  Standing stones may not be merely the oldest monuments in the world but perhaps the most remarkable. Antiquarians and prehistorians have been baffled by the thousands of stones, single monoliths and rough stone circles which are scattered apparently at random throughout the British Isles. Occult theorists dismiss orthodox archaeology and suggest that the stones follow lines of energy and power meandering across the landscape in certain patterns. Early man was aware of this power and harnessed it by erecting places of worship at highly charged points along the path. There are reports of individuals receiving shocks when they touch these once holy stones, but the monoliths are apparently only charged with power at certain times. These ‘ley lines’, then, represent invisible tracks on which some power may once have flowed and could be seen as the veins of a life force which formed around the globe as the earth cooled. Perhaps the rocks themselves are capable of being ‘charged’ with vibration. Alfred Watkins, author of The Old Straight Track, published in 1925, first propounded the ‘ley line’ theory. Riding across the hills near Brew­ardine in Herefordshire, he pulled up his horse to look across the landscape and became aware at that moment of a network of lines standing out like glowing wires all over the surface of the country; lines which intersected at the sites of churches, old stones, prehistoric burial chambers and other spots of traditional sanctity . . .

  . . . The term for the ancient art of divining centres of energy on the earth’s surface and the alignments which link them, is ‘geomancy’: a prehistoric tradition of spiritual land management through magical divination; ‘spiritual engineering’. It was used in ancient times to find the correct sitings for places of worship and their geometrical relationship with burial places, wells, beacons and astronomical observations. Religious sites were positioned upon these lines of energy, especially at intersections where the flow crosses . . .

  . . . The complex image of the dragon motif in legend and mythology has been regarded as colourfully allegorical, but there is a body of belief that the symbol may refer to the earth current charted by these ley lines. Indeed, the ‘Dragon Current’ of Feng Shui, an ancient Chinese geomantic system in the siting of tombs and other buildings, specifically avoided the occurrence of straight lines in the countryside because of the belief that baleful influences travelled along such routes . . .

  . . . It has been suggested that crimes of violence and suicides occur more frequently on ley lines because of the electromagnetic field which affects the brain. As an interesting aside, sightings of ‘elemental’ spirits on ley lines and poltergeist activity where ley lines intersect are said to be frequent. Representing the dark side of Nature, elementals take many forms and are believed to be disembodied non-­human forces deriving their existence from earth ‘currents’ and appearing to humans in many varied guises, based on the viewers’ own subconscious thought patterns . . .

  . . . Who were the druids? Very little is known about them. Druidism would appear to have been a basic form of sun and nature worship, practised by all the Celts. Relying on oral traditions, it left no written records. Arriving in Britain some 1,500 years after the building of Stonehenge, Julius Caesar wrote: ‘They have discussions concerning the stars and their movements, the size of the universe and the earth, the order of nature, the strength and power of the immortal gods, and hand down their learning to young men . . . The druid priesthood is taught to repeat a great number of verses by heart, and often spends twenty years on this preoccupation; for it is deemed unlawful to commit their statutes to writing for two reasons: to hide their mysteries from the knowledge of the vulgar, and to exercise the memory of their scholars.’ Strabo added: ‘On account of their evil sacrifices the Romans endeavoured to destroy all the superstitions of the druids, but in vain.’

  . . . Some occultists suggest that the druid culture and religious practices were founded on a much older religion which contained the secrets of Stonehenge, a structure which the druids merely venerated as a symbol of forgotten knowledge. Many believe that they inherited a system of Bronze Age r
eligion, magic and astronomy, guarding ancient secrets in a desperate nationalistic resistance against the Roman invaders . . .

  ‘Well?’ Chadderton’s voice startled Mark from his reading. The passages that Chadderton had underlined in the book had turned his insides to ice. The book felt frozen to his hands, as if he could not drop it even if he wanted to. Chadderton was sitting with his chin cradled wearily in the cup of one palm, elbow on the chair rest.

  ‘Well,’ echoed Mark, his voice sounding dry and rusty.

  ‘What does your new-­found instinct tell you about all that?’

  ‘It tells me that a lot of it is true,’ said Mark. His voice sounded far away, as if someone else was talking and he was listening. ‘A network of megalithic standing stones and burial chambers stretching across the British countryside to serve some kind of purpose. All linked somehow. Some of it they’ve got wrong . . .’ Is this really me? thought Mark, ‘. . . the druids did inherit a special knowledge from another ancient race, they knew just what they were doing when they . . . when they . . .’

  ‘When they what?’ snapped Chadderton, now leaning forward intently.

  ‘When they . . .’ and the spell was somehow broken. ‘It’s gone. The feeling’s gone.’ The book suddenly slipped from Mark’s lap and thudded to the floor. He made an effort to pick it up, felt pain stabbing through his back. Chadderton moved across quickly and retrieved it. He was looking at Mark in the same way that he had looked at him yesterday in his hotel room, with an expression that seemed to indicate that he was humoring a lunatic. Chadderton’s look, the feeling of knowing, the fact that Joanne and Helen were in hospital, the pile of ashes on the carpet upstairs, the dreams. All of these things suddenly converged on Mark in a furious rage.

  ‘Don’t you look at me like that, you bastard! You know what you’ve seen. You’ve been through your own private hell. You saw what happened upstairs. You experienced the same kind of thing that we all did. So don’t let’s go back to playing the game of: “Should-­I-­believe-­him-­or-­should-­I-­ring-­the-­booby-­hatch” . . .’

  Mark’s outburst seemed to register with Chadderton. The expression changed, softened, as he sat back in the chair with the book.

  ‘You’ve read everything I underlined in the book?’

  Again, angrily: ‘Yeah. Just about.’

  ‘All right . . . all right . . . I spent all night poring over this book and there were times when I felt like getting that whisky bottle from upstairs and starting on a bender that I would never come out of. Drink myself to death. But I stuck with it – followed through with the logic of it. And now I think I’ve got an answer. I want you to listen to me, bear with me. By the time I’m finished, you may feel like ringing the booby-­hatch yourself. On the other hand, that special “feeling” you’ve got just might agree with me.

  ‘Your book says some people believe that thousands of years ago . . . in the Bronze Age, I think it says . . . or maybe even earlier than that, people were able to tune in on special lines of power running through the earth. They erected holy places and standing stones at key points along the flow – a whole pattern of them across the country. A long, laborious task. The book says that it was all started by early man; that the druids inherited the knowledge and kept it going. But nobody knows what the power is, how it could be harnessed if it ever existed, and what purpose it was supposed to serve. Okay. Now, bear with me. I’m just kind of summing up in my own mind, from what I’ve read. Whatever purpose these “ley” lines were supposed to serve, the whole scheme of things was screwed up by the Romans when they invaded. You might say that the druids ended up relegated to variety hall status. And when the Christian conversion was established, they knocked down all kinds of stuff, built churches over the sites, uprooted standing stones.

  ‘Let’s suppose that over thousands of years, these stones and sacred burial places have been built along the lines of force for a very special, single purpose. In the book it hints that the idea was to achieve some kind of perfect “pattern” across the country. But what if the purpose wasn’t meant to be beneficial to mankind? What if all these inter-­connecting “ley” lines, all those harnessed lines of power, were being drawn up for . . . for an evil purpose? Now, this Azimuth thing, you say it’s evil . . . a very old, very ancient evil force. What if the purpose was to summon Azimuth? To summon him by completing a mystical pattern right across the countryside?

  ‘There’s no mention of this Azimuth thing in the book,’ he continued, ‘but if it’s an ancient, evil power . . . as you say . . . then the chances are that it was some kind of god. Or, as the book says . . . a very powerful “elemental” force. I think the entire system, built over thousands of years, was like a mystical circuit. Once it was completed, they could summon up their god and bring him here to Earth. But the work wasn’t completed. The Romans and the Christians saw to that. And when all of those standing stones were knocked down or pulled up, the “circuits” which had been established so far were disconnected. But if the circuit wasn’t completed, how come this thing is here with us now? Right? How did it get here? Why is it riding the King’s Cross line? I think you’ve probably already guessed what I’m going to say next . . .”

  Mark nodded, and his instinct told him that everything Chadderton was saying was true.

  ‘There was a big railway boom in the nineteenth century,’ Chadderton continued. ‘All kinds of main lines being built all over the country. The King’s Cross to Edinburgh line was first established in 1852. And I think the engineers who laid that line unknowingly completed some special part of that “ley circuit”. Somewhere along the way, a crucial inter-­connection of standing stones, burial sites, ley lines and megalithic monuments was made with the railway line itself.’

  Chadderton spread the RAC map out across the coffee table again and motioned to Mark to move closer.

  ‘I marked out all the sites that you say you dreamed about and tried connecting them up myself to see if they made any sense. At first, they didn’t. Until I looked through the appendix of the book and saw this . . .’

  He flicked through to the back of the book and handed it back to Mark once more, tapping a photograph emphatically. Mark looked at the photograph and saw instantly that yet another detail of his terrible nightmares existed in reality.

  He saw an ornate grille of iron bars set into a wall. And beyond those bars lay a simple block of limestone, two feet square.

  ‘Is that the stone crossed by iron bars you kept dreaming about?’

  Mark nodded weakly and read the text below the photograph.

  The London Stone. An interesting relic which can be found on the north side of Cannon Street, opposite Cannon Street station, and situated in a niche behind ornamental iron bars set into the wall of the Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation. According to one tale, Brutus, the semi-­mythological founder of London, laid the stone as an altar and ordained that so long as it remained invio­late, London would be safe. Although regarded by some archaeologists as the ‘milestone’ from which the Romans measured distances along their network of roads, it is believed by others to have an older, more occult significance. It has been moved three times in the last 250 years.

  ‘There’s more,’ said Chadderton, retrieving the book. ‘You told me that sometimes you dreamed of being buried alive and then finding yourself floating up through a station platform in King’s Cross. Well, listen to this . . . “Boadicea, the pagan warrior queen, fought her last battle against the Romans at Battle Bridge in 61 AD. Her army was slaughtered and she killed herself with poison given to her by her Chief Druid, Sywedydd. No burial remains have been found. But some say that her body, priests, entourage and potent mystical symbols lie buried beneath Platform 10 of King’s Cross Station, the site of the climactic battle.” ’

  ‘King’s Cross station is built on a mystical site?’

  ‘Why not? It says in the book that London was a powerfu
l magical “centre” and that there are probably a great many undiscovered ancient sites which have simply been built over. They dug up a temple not far from St Paul’s Cathedral not so long ago. It says that Westminster is built on the site of a druidical circle. Here’s something else . . . In the appendix relating to Arthur’s Seat in Edinburgh it says that, in 1836, two kids searching for rabbit burrows discovered seventeen four-­inch coffins containing miniature wooden figures in different costumes, which had apparently been buried there in a cave at various intervals over many years.’

  The stone. The platform. The coffins.

  ‘So . . .’ continued Chadderton, scribbling furiously on the RAC map, ‘we mark the London Stone here and King’s Cross here. Arthur’s Seat is already marked. We have to assume that the sites you’ve dreamt about have a special significance, okay? Even though there are hundreds of these standing stones and whatnot on the west coast which must still all be part of the overall pattern. Thank God, the Bristol railway line isn’t affected. Now watch . . .’

  Beginning at the southernmost site marked on the map, Chadderton drew a rough connecting line between each site, moving north. Moments later, he had completed a zig-­zag pattern the length of the country.

  ‘Notice anything interesting?’

  ‘Yes. Apart from the southernmost and northernmost sites, the King’s Cross line traverses and intersects with the pattern you’ve just drawn.’

  Chadderton’s eyes had lit up as he started to speak faster, more urgently: ‘So, by accident, a certain part of the overall circuit was completed by the King’s Cross line. But I suppose that originally these lines were constructed with some kind of . . . magic, or invocation, or special ritual . . . whatever . . . The railway line itself was a sheer fluke. It brought Azimuth here. It summoned him, or it, up from wherever the hell it was. But it couldn’t get through completely. Remember what you told me about your feeling that this power was “a prisoner of the stones”? Aynsley said it, too. Well, that’s exactly what it is. Azimuth was summoned, but it’s trapped on that particular stretch of railway line and it can’t get off. Invisible but real, riding that line for the past one hundred and thirty years. And it’s been feeding from people who’ve travelled on that train . . .’