Ghosts and Other Lovers (16 page)

Paul Staunton moved into his house on a day in June, a few days shy of the nineteenth anniversary of his father's death. The problems and sheer physical labor involved in moving had kept him from brooding about the past until something unexpected happened. As he was unrolling a new rug to cover the ugly checkerboard linoleum in the living room, something spilled softly out: less than a handful of gray grit, the pieces too small even to be called pebbles. Just rock-shards.

Paul broke into a sweat and let go of the rug as if it were contaminated. He was breathing quickly and shallowly as he stared at the debris.

His reaction was absurd, all out of proportion. He forced himself to take hold of the rug again and finish unrolling it. Then -- he could not make himself pick them up -- he took the carpet sweeper and rolled it over the rug, back and forth, until all the hard gray crumbs were gone.

It was time for a break. Paul got himself a beer from the refrigerator and a folding chair from the kitchen and went out to sit in the back yard. He stationed himself beneath one of the mimosa trees and stared out at the lush green profusion. He wouldn't even mind mowing it, he thought as he drank the beer. It was his property, the first he'd ever owned. Soon the figs would be ripe. He'd never had a fig before, except inside a cookie.

When the beer was all gone, and he was calmer, he let himself think about his father.

 

 

Paul's father, Edward Staunton, had always been lured by the thought of England. It was a place of magic and history, the land his ancestors had come from. From childhood he had dreamed of going there, but it was not until he was twenty-seven, with a wife and an eight-year-old son, that a trip to England had been possible.

 

Paul had a few dim memories of London, of the smell of the streets, and riding on top of a bus, and drinking sweet, milky tea -- but most of these earlier memories had been obliterated by the horror that followed.

It began in a seaside village in Devon. It was a picturesque little place, but famous for nothing. Paul never knew why they had gone there.

They arrived in the late afternoon and walked through cobbled streets, dappled with slanting sun rays. The smell of the sea was strong on the wind, and the cry of gulls carried even into the center of town. One street had looked like a mountain to Paul, a straight drop down to the gray, shining ocean, with neatly kept stone cottages staggered on both sides. At the sight of it, Paul's mother had laughed and gasped and exclaimed that she didn't dare, not in her shoes, but the three of them had held hands and, calling out warnings to each other like intrepid mountaineers, the Stauntons had, at last, descended.

At the bottom was a narrow pebble beach, and steep, pale cliffs rose up on either side of the town, curving around like protecting wings.

"It's magnificent," said Charlotte Staunton, looking from the cliffs to the gray-and-white movement of the water, and then back up at the town.

Paul bent down to pick up a pebble. It was smooth and dark brown, more like a piece of wood or a nut than a stone. Then another: smaller, nearly round, milky. And then a flat black one that looked like a drop of ink. He put them in his pocket and continued to search hunched over, his eyes on the ground.

He heard his father say, "I wonder if there's another way up?" And then another voice, a stranger's, responded, "Oh, aye, there is. There is the Sisters' Way."

Paul looked up in surprise and saw an elderly man with a stick and a pipe and a little black dog who stood on the beach with them as if he'd grown there, and regarded the three Americans with a mild, benevolent interest.

"The Sisters' Way?" said Paul's father.

The old man gestured with his knobby walking stick toward the cliffs to their right. "I was headed that way myself," he said. "Would you care to walk along with me? It's an easier path than the High Street."

"I think we'd like that," said Staunton. "Thank you. But who are the Sisters?"

"You'll see them soon enough," said the man as they all began to walk together. "They're at the top."

At first sight, the cliffs had looked dauntingly steep. But as they drew closer they appeared accessible. Paul thought it would be fun to climb straight up, taking advantage of footholds and ledges he could now see, but that was not necessary. The old man led them to a narrow pathway which led gently up the cliffs in a circuitous way, turning and winding, so that it was not a difficult ascent at all. The way was not quite wide enough to walk two abreast, so the Stauntons fell into a single file after the old man, with the dog bringing up the rear.

"Now," said their guide when they reached the top. "Here we are! And there stand the Sisters."

They stood in a weedy, empty meadow just outside town -- rooftops could be seen just beyond a stand of trees about a half a mile away. And the Sisters, to judge from the old man's gesture, could be nothing more than some rough gray boulders.

"Standing stones," said Edward Staunton in a tone of great interest. He walked toward the boulders and his wife and son followed.

They were massive pieces of gray granite, each one perhaps eight feet tall, rearing out of the porous soil in a roughly triangular formation. The elder Staunton walked among them, touching them, a reverent look on his face. "These must be incredibly old," he said. He looked back at their guide and raised his voice slightly. "Why are they called the 'Sisters'?"

The old man shrugged. "That's what they be."

"But what's the story?" Staunton asked. "There must be some legend -- a tradition -- maybe a ritual the local people perform."

"We're good Christians here," the old man said, sounding indignant. "No rituals here. We leave them stones alone!" As he spoke, the little dog trotted forward, seemingly headed for the stones, but a hand gesture from the man froze it, and it sat obediently at his side.

"But surely there's a story about how they came to be here? Why is that path we came up named after them?"

"Ah, that," said the man. "That is called the Sisters' Way because on certain nights of the year the Sisters go down that path to bathe in the sea."

Paul felt his stomach jump uneasily at those words, and he stepped back a little, not wanting to be too close to the stones. He had never heard of stones that could move by themselves, and he was fairly certain such a thing was not possible, but the idea still frightened him.

"They move!" exclaimed Staunton. He sounded pleased. "Have you ever seen them do it?"

"Oh, no. Not I, or any man alive. The Sisters don't like to be spied on. They'll kill anyone who sees them."

"Mama," said Paul, urgently. "Let's go back. I'm hungry."

She patted his shoulder absently. "Soon, dear."

"I wonder if anyone has tried," said Staunton. "I wonder where such a story comes from. When exactly are they supposed to travel?"

"Certain nights," said the old man. He sounded uneasy.

"Sacred times? Like Allhallows maybe?"

The old man looked away toward the trees and the village and he said: "My wife will have my tea waiting for me. She worries if I'm late. I'll just say good day to you, then." He slapped his hip, the dog sprang up, and they walked away together, moving quickly.

"He believes it," Staunton said. "It's not just a story to him. I wonder what made him so nervous? Did he think the stones would take offense at his talking about them?"

"Maybe tonight is one of those nights," his wife said thoughtfully. "Isn't Midsummer Night supposed to be magical?"

"Let's go," said Paul again. He was afraid even to look at the stones. From the corner of his eye he could catch a glimpse of them, and it seemed to him that they were leaning toward his parents threateningly, listening.

"Paul's got a good idea," his mother said cheerfully. "I could do with something to eat myself. Shall we go?"

The Stauntons found lodging for the night in a green-shuttered cottage with a Bed and Breakfast sign hanging over the gate. It was the home of Mr. and Mrs. Winkle, a weathered-looking couple, who raised cats and rose bushes and treated their visitors like old friends. After the light had faded from the sky, the Stauntons sat with the Winkles in their cozy parlor and talked. Paul was given a jigsaw puzzle to work, and he sat with it in a corner, listening to the adults and hoping he would not be noticed and sent to bed.

"One thing I like about this country is the way the old legends live on," Staunton said. "We met an old man this afternoon on the beach, and he led us up a path called the Sisters' Way, and showed us the stones at the top. But I couldn't get much out of him about why the stones should be called the Sisters -- I got the idea that he was afraid of them."

"Many are," said Mr. Winkle equably. "Better safe than sorry."

"What's the story about those stones? Do you know it?"

"When I was a girl," Mrs. Winkle offered, "people said that they were three sisters who long ago had been turned to stone for sea-bathing on the Sabbath. And so wicked were they that, instead of repenting their sin, they continue to climb down the cliff to bathe whenever they get the chance."

Mr. Winkle shook his head. "That's just the sort of tale you might expect from a minister's daughter," he said. "Bathing on the Sabbath indeed! That's not the story at all. I don't know all the details of it -- different folks say it different ways -- but there were once three girls who made the mistake of staying overnight in that field, long before there was a town here. And when morning came; the girls had turned to stone.

"But even as stones they had the power to move at certain times of the year, and so they did. They wore away a path down the cliff by going to the sea and trying to wash away the stone that covered them. But even though the beach now is littered with little bits of the stone that the sea has worn away, it will take them till doomsday to be rid of it all." Mr. Winkle picked up his pipe and began to clean it.

Staunton leaned forward in his chair. "But why should spending the night in that field cause them to turn to stone?"

"Didn't I say? Oh, well, the name of that place is the place where the stones grow. And that's what it is. Those girls just picked the wrong time and the wrong place to rest, and when the stones came up from the ground the girls were covered by them."

"But that doesn't make sense," Staunton said. There are standing stones all over England -- I've read a lot about them. And I've never heard a story like that. People don't just turn to stone for no reason."

"Of course not, Mr. Staunton. I didn't say it was for no reason. It was the place they were in, and the time. I don't say that sort of thing -- people turning into stones -- happens in this day, but I don't say it doesn't. People avoid that place where the stones grow, even though it lies so close upon the town. The cows don't graze there, and no one would build there."

"You mean there's some sort of a curse on it?"

"No, Mr. Staunton. No more than an apple orchard or an oyster bed is cursed. It's just a place where stones grow."

"But stones don't grow."

"Edward," murmured his wife warningly.

But Mr. Winkle did not seem to be offended by Staunton's bluntness. He smiled. "You're a city man, aren't you, Mr. Staunton? You know, I heard a tale once about a little boy in London who believed the greengrocer made vegetables out of a greenish paste and baked them, just the way his mother made biscuits. He'd never seen them growing -- he'd never seen anything growing, except flowers in window boxes, and grass in the parks -- and grass and flowers aren't good to eat, so how should he know?

"But the countryman knows that everything that lives grows, following its own rhythm, whether it is a tree, a stone, a beast, or a man."

"But a stone's not alive. It's not like a plant or an animal." Staunton cast about for an effective argument. "You could prove it for yourself. Take a rock, from that field or anywhere else, and put it on your windowsill and watch it for ten years, and it wouldn't grow a bit!"

"You could try that same experiment with a potato, Mr. Staunton," Mr. Winkle responded. "And would you then tell me that a potato, because it didn't grow in ten years on my windowsill, never grew and never grows? There's a place and a time for everything. To everything there is a season," he said, reaching over to pat his wife's hand. "As my wife's late father was fond of reminding us."

 

 

As a child, Paul Staunton had been convinced that the stones had killed his father. He had been afraid when his mother had sent him out into the chilly, dark morning to find his father and bring him back to have breakfast, and when he had seen the stone, still moving, he had known. Had known, and been afraid that the stones would pursue him, to punish him for his knowledge, the old man's warning echoing in his mind:
they'll kill anyone who sees them.

 

But as he had grown older, Paul had sought other, more rational, explanations for his father's death. An accident. A mugging. An escaped lunatic. A coven of witches, surprised at their rites. An unknown enemy who had trailed his father for years. But nothing, to Paul, carried the conviction of his first answer. That the stones themselves had killed his father, horribly and unnaturally moving, crushing his father when he stood in their way.

It had grown nearly dark as he brooded, and the mosquitoes were beginning to bite. He still had work to do inside. He stood up and folded the chair, carrying it in one hand, and walked toward the door. As he reached it, his glance fell on the window ledge beside him. On it were three light-colored pebbles.

He stopped breathing for a moment. He remembered the pebbles he had picked up on that beach in England, and how they had come back to haunt him more than a week later, back at home in the United States, when they fell out of the pocket where he had put them so carelessly. Nasty reminders of his father's death, then, and he had stared at them, trembling violently, afraid to pick them up. Finally he had called his mother, and she had gotten rid of them for him somehow. Or perhaps she had kept them -- Paul had never asked.