The Cold Calling Part 11

OK. Here goes.

Awakening (when you awake in a dream it becomes a lucid dream, remember?) with a stiff back. On the hardest mattress you can imagine.

Lying on my back. Neck stiff; can't move it.

Although, my G.o.d, how I want to. I just want to turn my head away from the suffocating stench.

The night sky is moonlit, but full of racing clouds. I want desperately to float up, into the wild, fresh night, chase the clouds rus.h.i.+ng past the moon, torn like rags, lacy scarves of vapor. (Lift ... lift ... you can do anything in a dream. Lift ... float.) Can't move. Pain. Muscles knotted, twisted like old lead pipes.

Stench of decay, corruption. Turn away.

A night breeze gets in my hair and my stinking bedfellow rattles beside me.

Finally. I am allowed to turn my head. Turn it oh Christ his way, into the stink and it fills my throat, and we are looking at one another and he's grinning his savage grin. His gums have gone. His jaws are agape like a trap, strands of yellow skin overhang his green-filmed eye sockets and the white, fleshless tip of his nose appears beaklike under the three-quarter moon.

And we lie there, side by side, shoulder to shoulder, his shoulder naked bone where it pokes through the ragged clothing ripped at by the buzzards and the breeze.

He's been dead a long time, I guess, my companion.

And I cannot wake up.

Presumably, the dream ends at some point but I do not wake up until morning and when I do I am trembling and drenched in a cold sweat so thick and glutinous it is almost like Jell-O, and I am virtually fused to that stone.

Scary fun, Grayle? You tell me.

Grayle found it more chilling each time she read it.

What was worst was that you would expect Ersula to offer a scientific explanation involving hypnagogic hallucinations or some such Ersula's predictable answer to stories about people who woke up and saw ghosts in their bedrooms. There was no attempt to explain this away; its effect on her had been too corrosive.

Grayle picked up the copy of The Phenomenologist Ersula had sent. What a rag. Badly printed, cheap paper, no layouts to speak of. No wonder it was entirely unknown even to Holy Grayle.

Still, there had to be a phone number in there somewhere. She'd call up this Marcus Backhouse or whatever he was called.

When she was sober.

VIII.

Wilts.h.i.+re The Holy of Holies.

Defiled.

Yesterday evening, the Green Man stood before a six-foot sa.r.s.en as it was being examined by people from the National Trust, a dozen or so tourists and villagers looking on in horror and disgust.

He'd been alerted to the atrocity by the lunchtime radio news and driven at once to Wilts.h.i.+re, the county of his birth. He drove between the fields where he'd hunted, learned to shoot, snare and gut. Where he'd learned, also, about the lines of ancient energy which gridded the fields, making Wilts.h.i.+re probably the only county in England where all the ground was sacred.

But the holiest ground of all was Avebury.

Perhaps because he grew up in its shadow, Stonehenge never had the same power for him as the henge-village in the Kennet valley, encircled except for the church by a ditch and the remains of the greatest Stone Age temple in the world.

The stones of Avebury were shaped by the Earth Herself. Each is an individual organism here a lion, here a human head, a fist, a gnarled p.e.n.i.s, a woman's pocked and scarred torso and upper thighs with a tightly clenched v.u.l.v.a. One can almost see them all flexing, pulsing, breathing, and he wanted immediately to offer a sacrifice. However, the problem with Avebury is the modern community at its heart. And the tourists. With their children, dogs, cameras, ice creams.

Always people. Their vulgarity and their ignorance. Even at dead of night, when this act of sacrilege was, presumably, carried out.

The affected stones had been covered ignominiously in sacking by the National Trust people.

To hide the abomination.

Dozens of disgusting, pseudo-cabalistic symbols had been scrawled over two of the outlying sa.r.s.ens, in white emulsion and black bitumen paint. The megaliths defaced from top to bottom, so that when the paint was cleaned off, the sensitive skin of mosses and lichens would also be scrubbed away, leaving the stones flayed and aching, as bald as housebricks.

Who was responsible?

So-called New Age travellers, perhaps, the itinerant vagrants who live on social security and consider ancient shrines to be their inheritance.

He was reminded yesterday of the eighteenth-century farmer who went around ma.s.sacring megaliths and rejoiced literally rejoiced in the name 'Stonekiller' Robinson. The Green Man does not know how the stonekiller had died but he hopes it was a long and exceedingly painful death.

Through the sacking, he heard the stones calling out to him in their pain and, from beneath his feet, the Earth shrieking for revenge.

Knowing then that he had been sent for, that he was to be the instrument.

Parking his car for the night on the outskirts of Marlborough, he walked to the Ridgeway and joined a line from the Avebury circle and walked on until he found the place.

They always turn out to be marked in some way, these sacred sites, but sometimes the marker is far from obvious and takes time to discover. It might be a small stone hidden in a wood or obscured by tufts of moorland gra.s.s. Or lost among buildings, because sometimes the place will be in the middle of a village, even a large town.

For instance, earlier this year, the Green Man slept in a hollow in the ramparts around an Iron Age fort contoured into the summit of a holy hill. There were pine trees here, as well, and through his dreams galloped the spectral figure of the Knight of Swords, from the Tarot. The Knight was riding down from a hill with stark pines upon it. His sword was raised. He was on a mission of vengeance.

There was no denying the command.

At first light this day, the Green man followed an obvious alignment from the hill to a church steeple in the centre of the town below. The church was locked, the churchyard deserted. He walked on. The town was empty, there was very little traffic. Following the line, he arrived at the stump of an old market cross, a familiar marker. The line followed a paved, pedestrianized area into a small shopping arcade, where the frontage of one shop jutted out beyond its neighbours into the middle of the line.

The shop was ... an ironmonger's.

The first sign.

In its doorway was a large cardboard box. Inside it was a young vagrant.

The box was not quite long enough to accommodate him, so he had protected his feet from the cold by encasing them in another, smaller box. On it was a line-drawing of a carving knife and one stencilled word.

MEATMASTER.

All the confirmation the Green Man needed. Putting down his rucksack in the silent, newly cobbled arcade, he located the serrated-edged sheath knife he sometimes used to skin rabbits.

He remembers how the vagrant awoke with half his throat open, that soundless liquid scream again.

The remains of the Barber-Surgeon are on display in Avebury's small museum.

The skeleton was found under Stone Number Nine in the henge circle.

His profession was suggested by the implements discovered on the body scissors and what was believed to be a medical probe. The dates on the coins he carried suggested he died in the early 1320s. Surgeons, in those days, needed no more qualifications than those required for cutting hair.

It seems likely that the Barber-Surgeon was involved in a medieval a.s.sault on the stones at the instigation of the Christian Church, attempting to stamp out pagan rituals still carried on there.

Tragically ha he appeared to have died when the stone toppled upon him.

This is possible. There are many tales of foolhardy country people who tried to dig up ancient menhirs provoking thunderstorms, even being struck by lightning.

During his dream below the pines last night, the Green Man learned the truth: that the Barber-Surgeon had been abducted by the guardians of the stones and given in sacrifice. Bludgeoned to death and placed beneath the stone.

In his dream, the Green Man was kneeling under the pines in a dense mist which sliced off the tops of the trees. He had held out his hands and into them was placed something grey and misty but quite heavy.

When he awoke, he found, not fifteen yards from where he'd slept, a single stone, about eight inches long and three to four inches wide.

This dawn arrives wearing a mist as fine as lace, the sun tossed carelessly in its loose folds.

Too bright. He will have to thicken the mist.

This is quite easy. Most people can learn to do it. However, most people would do it in reverse; they teach themselves to s.h.i.+ft clouds and dissolve them by pure concentration. A simple example of the way human consciousness can learn to interact with nature. With practice, the clouds can almost be blown away in seconds. Pffft!

Actually, producing clouds, adding density to the atmosphere, is more interesting and far more powerful.

Close the eyes, imagine (create!) cold in the body. This is done, initially, through the feet, the cold drawn up from the dark places of the earth (best achieved when standing on stone) and sent to the base of the spine to form an icy ball around the spinal chakra. Slowly, the cold is drawn through breathing into each of the body's seven power-centres, and then projected into the aura. Finally, often in a fit of s.h.i.+vering, the command is given.

It is easier at dawn, when the sun is vulnerable and unsure of itself. From the pines, he watches it fade. The Earth senses the commitment and he feels radiant in Her trust.

The stand of pines, on its small hill, is surely as old as the great stones three miles to the south. This can be felt. These trees and generations of their ancestors, st.u.r.dy and aloof, taller than many a church steeple.

But the power of this site is probably unknown. Except to the Green Man.

They have been priming the place, he and the Earth, through the hours of the night, he lying supine under the harvest stars or sitting cross-legged and straight-backed in meditation among the needles and the brittle cones. The weight of antic.i.p.ation kept him awake, the certainty that someone would be sent. And, of course, the special energy of the site itself. Once, there was s.e.x: his p.e.n.i.s summoned aloft by the thrusting pines, Earthen lips exquisitely cold around it.

And then came the dream. The dream of the Barber-Surgeon. The dream sent to him from the great stones of Avebury in their agony.

The one who has been sent comes in a straight line (of course) through the mist, following the green road between the fields.

It is almost nine o'clock, later than the Green Man expected.

Still, the longer the wait, the greater the acc.u.mulation of energy. He feels Her moving close to him and his whole body hardens as he stands, legs apart, among the ancient pines.

Actually, this person is not quite what he expected. He was envisaging a New Age traveller. Or two. Two would be a challenge, although not much of one when one takes into consideration that element of surprise.

The man wears a waterproof jacket, flat cap and new-looking walking boots. He has a small backpack, carries a pair of rubber-covered binoculars and an Ordnance Survey map in a plastic sleeve.

He looks very respectable, fairly intelligent. Not the sort of person you would expect to deface an ancient monument.

Not your decision ... Not your place to question ...

No. Of course not.

'Good morning,' the man says cheerfully. Panting slightly as he reaches the top of the little hill and turns to make a theatrical point of admiring the half-misted view. 'Wonderful!'

They share a smile. The Green Man wonders if he should tell the newcomer what is to happen. This would be even more powerful. Especially if he was able to understand the complexity of it. And be proud.

'You are with our lot, aren't you?' The man chuckles. 'Thought everybody was having a bit of a lie-in. After last night. By Jove, it doesn't take prisoners, that real ale, does it? Mind you, I find this is the best way to clear your head. Make yourself get out of bed. Let the country air get at it. Beats aspirin, does country air.'

'Our lot?'

'The t-Oh.' He peers at the Green Man. 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, you're not, are you? Sorry, sorry. Many apologies. There's a collection of us, you see, from clubs in the north Midlands. Twitchers birdwatchers. Every year, we go to a different county for a long weekend. Only, the first night it always gets a bit convivial. Demob-happy, you see.'

A birdwatcher!

And one with the garrulous self-importance of a minor local autocrat council official, bank manager or some such. A birdwatcher. No guts for the kill. He's not meant to know, he would never understand. He's cra.s.s, an idiot, unworthy of the honour of knowledge.

'Super day, though.' The birdwatcher sets down his pack and sits on it. 'Been camping?'

Also, a poor specimen. Not very big, not very young, not very fit and depressingly unaware.

'Used to go in for camping when I was younger. My wife and I, that is. Couldn't get her into a tent nowadays. Don't mean she wouldn't fit, although there'd not be much room for anyone else, I have to say. It's just ...'

He takes off his cap, smooths down his hair, replaces the cap.

'... just that women seem to get older younger than we do, if you see what I mean. Lose their instinct for adventure. No spirit. On holiday, are you? Know the area well?'

'Yes.'

He sniffs. 'Call ourselves birdwatchers. Just an excuse really. To get away from the wives, get some fresh air, have a few pints in peace. Ah, well. '

He breathes deeply and closes his eyes. Sitting on his pack with his knees together, his hands clasped around them. And at that moment, the sun finds a hole in the mist and lays a white beam up to his feet.

Yes.

Feel it. Feel it rise through the soles of the feet, up the backs of the braced legs into the spine, out to the shoulders, rippling down the arms, the wrists, the gloved hands behind the back, gripping the stone.

'So what do you do,' the Green Man asks mildly, 'when you're not birdwatching?'

The eyes tip open. 'You'll laugh. I run a small chain of ladies' hairdressers in Wolverhampton. '

And the Green Man does laugh, with the sheer joy of the revelation, the fitting of the last segment of a perfect circle.

He sees a first flicker of uncertainty in the birdwatcher's colourless eyes as the little man attempts to rise, before the stone crunches his nose, like a red pepper. His eyes flicker rapidly through an amazing range of emotions: outrage, disbelief, terror ... and, finally, pleading. He opens his mouth and the Green Man stops his scream with the stone, and the birdwatcher gags on blood and smashed teeth. Soon there is a quite terrific amount of blood, mixed with vomit, and it forms a warm delta between the exposed roots of the tallest pine.