The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [134]
The Long Barrow.
The path climbs the downland towards the barrow. A pulse throbs in my temple. Panting in the claggy air, I can’t stop myself glancing uneasily over my shoulder, sensing someone or something behind, shadowing my footsteps. Like one who on a lonesome road, doth walk in fear and dread…But when I turn the whole narrow valley is laid out below me, empty.
And having once turned round, walks on, and turns no more his head…
The ground levels out towards the barrow, sinister in the fading light, with its massive stones guarding the forecourt.
Because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread.
Pressure builds up in my ears, my heart kicks, pumping ice-water and adrenalin and superstitious terror. The fiend isn’t behind, but ahead: a shape wrapped in darkness, on the mown grass in front of the barrow. Twilight has wiped blank its face. Wearing a cloak emblazoned with mystic symbols, motionless, cross-legged, stiff-armed, head tipped back, it stares at a starless sky. Behind it, an unearthly light seeps out of the barrow between the megaliths.
Not cool to run, but on this occasion…
Too late: I’ve been seen. The shape moves its head. A grey shadow slips from its side.
CHAPTER 35
‘I knew you were coming,’ says Bryn.
Cynon the Barbarian, giving up the struggle to masquerade as Hell Hound, is as pleased as ever to see me, leaping up and trying to land flying licks on my face, dancing away, then coming back for another slobbery go.
Bryn’s wrapped in a dark, fleecy blanket, beaded with dew, whose mystic symbols turn out to be the crest of Newcastle United Football Club. The unearthly glow between the megaliths is a small campfire in the mouth of the barrow.
His rucksack is open beside him, by his bare feet an enamel mug and a half-empty tin of baked beans with a plastic fork sticking out of it.
‘Your boy around too?’ I ask. ‘Weren’t you going to bring him with you for Solstice?’
‘Didn’t work out.’ He reaches for the beans. The blanket slips from one shoulder, revealing he’s bare-chested beneath it. ‘None of it: home, boy, lady. Goddess told me I’d be better off alone.’ He rummages in the rucksack and produces a plastic cap that fits exactly over the can’s rim. Waste not, want not. ‘Tomorrow’s breakfast,’ he says apologetically.
‘You haven’t got a paracetamol in there, have you?’ I ask. My head is still thumping.
‘Got something better.’ He pulls up a Velero flap on a pocket of the rucksack, with a tearing sound that sets my teeth on edge. ‘Try one of these. Tramadol. It’ll take the edge off anything. Headache?’
‘That’s it.’
He nods. ‘Give it ten and it’ll be gone.’ He pops the pill out of its blister pack and proffers it on a grubby palm. ‘Sorry. No washing facilities up here. There’s bottled water to wash it down, though. Have two–that’ll magic away the pain.’
I take a long swig of water with the pills–headache probably dehydration as much as anything–and settle myself on the ground. ‘What–’
‘Sssh,’ he says. ‘Give it time to work. Breathe steady.’ We sit in companionable silence, gazing upwards, looking for stars coming out, but the cloud’s too thick. The air’s still, the quietness occasionally broken by the far-away hum of traffic on the A4. The ache in my temples eases. With it, the huge over-inflated stress-zeppelin that is Frannie, the row with John, dead Steve, live Ed, television that may or may not be about my grandfather, seems to shrink and float away into the distance. A sense of well-being steals over me.
Eventually Bryn shifts his position and smiles.
I smile back. ‘Better already.’
‘Good.’ Quiet confidence in his voice; he’d known it would work. ‘I were thinkin’ of walkin’ up to the Wansdyke, spend the night watchin’ for crop circles. If you’re there when one forms…amazin’. Sun comes up and there she is, grown like a mushroom in the dark. But now…’ He pats Cynon, snuggled against the Newcastle blanket. ‘Have to wait for your walk till mornin’, boy.’
‘Are you camping in Tolemac?’ I ask, massaging crampy calves.
‘No, no. Sleepin’ here, in the womb