The Guardian Stones (4 page)

Chapter Six

I'm dreaming, Emily Miller told herself as she stepped into the middle of the Guardian Stones.

A voice had called her name. Then she found herself leaving the forest to stand in the moonlit clearing. She didn't have her walking stick. How would she manage to get back down the hill?

And where was her dog Patch, who always accompanied her on walks?

Thunder rumbled and clouds swarmed past the moon. Foxgloves all around bobbed and weaved, brushing her nightgown. Their knowing touch repelled her and she flinched away. What foolishness brought her outside with a storm on the way? And not even properly dressed? What would people think, seeing her walking home in her nightgown?

She started back the way she'd come but a shadow crept out from the base of the stubby stone in her path. The shadow lengthened impossibly as it flowed away from the knee-high stone, resolving into the shape of a tall, hooded figure.

Emily whirled in the opposite direction. Grotesque shadows were crawling out from all the stones. Some might have been cast by men, others by creatures Emily could not imagine. Yet there was no man or creature to cast them, only the stones.

The thunder grew louder. Emily felt the ground vibrate. The air buzzed as if it were alive. Light drained out of the clearing. Looking up, Emily saw black clouds devour the moon. No, she realized, not a cloud. A buzzing, thickening swarm of enormous flies.

Thunder was incessant.

“Emily! Emily!”

She lay on her back in bed, the acrid smell of smoke stinging her nostrils. The thunderous banging continued.

Someone was hammering at her door.

“Emily! Get up! Fire!” came a shout, followed by more knocking.

Emily forced herself out of bed, threw on her dressing gown, and hobbled downstairs to the front door. She was slow, still feeling the effects of her exertions searching for Issy. Her heart was jumping from the terror of her nightmare. She opened the door to see Tom Green looming there.

“Your shed's on fire, Miss Miller. Get dressed and come outside, just in case. We're working on getting it out as fast as possible, but you never know.”

Emily peered up at him. “Young man, I don't hear any devil's flies buzzing around at the moment so there's no fear of them seeing the fire, if that's what's worrying you.” She used the same tone she might have if Green had been a naughty child stealing sweets from her shop. “I shall be out in a few moments.”

It took more than a few moments to dress and make her way to the back of her house. Her heart kept leaping, pausing for too long then leaping again, like a nearly exhausted rabbit trying to escape a trap.

Shouts mixed with lurid language as villagers tackled the burning shed. Trembling firelight revealed a chain of men passing along buckets of water in a long line from the pond behind Susannah Radbone's house across the street.

Emily followed the swirl of sparks upward into the black sky until they vanished into the moon hanging there.

For a moment she lurched back into her nightmare. She clenched her hand around her walking stick and blinked to clear her head. In her dream she had not recalled her journey to the stones, so why should she recall returning to her bedroom?

“Don't worry,” Green was saying beside her, “they've got a good grip on it.”

“Aye,” Duncan Gowdy paused for a moment, wiping his brow on the sleeve of his shirt. “Very suspicious, the whole thing, if you ask me.”

Emily stared at the shed, still upright. There seemed to be more smoke than fire, but it was difficult to see the extent of the damage. She was having trouble breathing so she moved away until the air tasted fresher. Several women appeared, hair in curlers, nightgowns showing beneath hastily donned coats. Emily feared they would trample her vegetables, but nobody did. Every family cultivated and knew the importance of kitchen gardens.

“Ain't you going to help with the buckets, Constable?” came a woman's voice. One or two sniggers greeted the sally.

“Just stay well back now,” Green replied. “We don't want no accidents.”

The shed door fell forward, releasing a cloud of smoke.

A sudden silence fell.

A smoldering shape lay on the shed floor.

“It's Issy!” a woman shrieked. “My God!”

“Too small,” Duncan muttered. “It's more the size of—”

“My dog! It's Patch!” Emily wanted to scream but couldn't. Her chest felt paralyzed.

She started toward the shed but hands grabbed her and held her back. She heard someone talking to her but the words were lost in a wave of dizziness and intermittent darkness. For an instant she heard the buzzing of the flies, saw the moon darkening.

Then she was sitting on the ground and saw Duncan and Green standing nearby. Duncan said, “That poor animal. To burn so much so quickly I wager he was soaked in lamp oil and—” He broke off. “Emily, are you all right?”

Emily nodded, felt a hand touch her shoulder.

“Come along, dear,” said a familiar voice. Turning she saw a tall, thin woman with cropped gray hair. Her friend Susannah Radbone.

“I'm taking you to my house,” Susannah told her.

Duncan helped her back to her feet and Emily allowed herself to be led across the street.

“I'm dreaming,” Emily said in a dazed voice. “I was dreaming I was at the Guardian Stones and I'm still dreaming. It happens, sometimes, you dream you've woke up but you haven't. I dreamed about Patch. Is Patch…?”

“There now, Emily.” Susannah settled her friend in the kitchen. “I'll make tea. We'll find out who's responsible for this outrage and make sure he's punished.”

Even by lamplight Susannah's scrupulously neat little kitchen looked exactly as always. There was no dream-like quality to it at all.

Emily burst into sobs.

It took some time before she calmed down sufficiently for tea to be made and it had hardly been poured when a boy with tousled hair looked into the room.

“Miss Radbone, what is all the noise about? Are we being invaded?”

“No, Reggie. If we had been the church bells would be ringing. There was a fire at Emily's house.”

“A fire!” His voice betrayed childish excitement and his gaze moved to the hall leading to the door.

“It'll be out by now,” Susannah said sharply. “Go back to bed like a good boy.”

Reggie's face clouded with disappointment. “Can I take the kitty with me?”

“Just for a little while.”

The boy limped across the room, clinging to the backs of chairs and the windowsill to reach a black cat sleeping beside the stove. He scooped the animal up and with a sweet smile and quiet goodnight went back out.

Susannah sighed. “Such a shame. I've given him a ground floor room so he doesn't need to climb stairs. He will always need a leg brace and crutches. He's still upset about being sent away from home, and now there's this business with Issy and—” She broke off.

“Polio must have been sent by the devil,” said Emily. “Like Hitler and whoever….did…did that to Patch.”

Susannah made no reply, merely patted Emily's arm.

“Reggie's a good-hearted lad,” Emily sniffed. “He always brought a scrap of something as a treat for Patch whenever he came to my shop, and now….”

She started to cry again.

Even though she was sure now she was no longer dreaming, the night had become a nightmare.

Chapter Seven

Saturday, June 14, 1941

Edwin felt uncomfortable as he stepped into the outhouse in Grace's back garden. His only previous experience of outhouses had been during visits to the family cottage many years before. As a child he had been self-conscious about performing his bodily functions outside, as it were, and he still was.

He pulled the door shut, fastened the flimsy latch, and gave the door handle a few tugs to make sure it would stay closed. Light shone through around the sides of the door, and from between the wall planks. A bird twittered nearby.

Edwin felt acutely exposed.

He had not expected to encounter such primitive sanitation arrangements again. During those family vacations, he and his playmates had been fascinated by the mysterious depths beneath the outhouse. They tossed pebbles down and listened to the hollow sound they made hitting whatever lurked below. Finally Edwin shone a flashlight in. It had not been a pleasant sight.

After he and Elise had begun courting he convinced her to visit the cottage. In those days, Edwin shared a tiny apartment with another assistant professor and though he and Elise had been furtively and hastily intimate before, this was the first time they had spent the night together and awakened pressed against each other.

It was a profound experience, Edwin told her as they lingered in the bed together.

He'd been hurt when she giggled.

“I'm not making fun of you.” she said. “Who but you would say something like that? Now let's be profound again.”

And why should a memory like that intrude while one was in an outhouse? Edwin wondered. It wasn't appropriate. Life, on the whole, was a messy and undignified affair. Men had philosophized on the meaning of existence for thousands of years, but it was arguable that the human brain was nothing more than a pot full of chemicals with delusions of grandeur.

***

Even before Edwin stepped into the kitchen he caught the delicious smell of vegetable soup simmering on the back of the stove. Unfortunately Special Constable Tom Green bulked large in front of the stove. His bland, pudgy face looked annoyed as he spoke to Grace.

“Bad news?” Edwin asked.

“Len and Mike Finch and Bert Holloway have gone missing from the Wainman farm,” Grace told him.

Edwin tried to sort the names out and match them to what he had learned since his recent arrival in the village. The Finch boys were the pair involved in the pond incident, and hadn't Bert Holloway been the fat little egg-thrower Grace hauled out from behind a hedge?

“It's not unusual for them to go off for a day,” Green said.

“They don't usually leave an obscene goodbye note,” Grace snapped. “This time they won't be back.”

Green winced and retreated. “Miss Miller has reported items stolen from her shop. They might have robbed the place and ran off. Yes, you might have something there, Grace.”

“I know I'm right. The note, the robbery, killing Patch…it was all a gesture of contempt for us. I'm more worried about Bert than the Finch brothers. They're tougher than he is.”

“They certainly sounded it yesterday,” Edwin put in. He knew about the fire at Miss Miller's shop and how some fiend had burned her pet dog to death. Grace had told him when she came in the night before and found him up, awakened by the commotion. If the Finch boys could stoop to something like that it was just as well they were gone.

“Jack Chapman came round agitating about Issy,” Green said. “He told me one of them Finches stabbed him yesterday when he pulled Violet out of the pond. I reckon that's why they've done a bunk. Unless it's because they had something to do with Issy's going missing. I didn't mention that to Chapman. Those boys think they're tough, but they'll learn better soon enough. When I catch up to them.”

Observing Green's attempt to look savage, Edwin wondered what variety of petty clerk he'd been before the war handed him a plum role in law enforcement. Tom Green had better hope he didn't catch up with the Finch boys when he was alone.

Edwin inquired about Isobel.

“Nothing further to report,” Green told him. “My theory is she ran off, to Craven Arms maybe, or Bishop's Castle. Bragged about her plans to the boys and now they've followed her. Or else they put her up to it, or frightened her away. They might have attacked her like they did Violet.” He looked to Grace for agreement but she turned away, picked up a wooden spoon, and gave the soup a stir. Steam rose from the pot.

“Did they take their ration books?” Edwin asked. “Check the stores they're registered with. They have to eat.”

“Oh, I'm sure they were careful to take their ration books!” Green gave a short, humorless laugh. “These are criminals, professor, not good law-abiding citizens. They'll just swipe what they need.” The constable looked at Grace. “That soup smells better than what they serve at the pub. You're a woman of many talents.”

“Martha keeps a pot of soup on the stove all the time,” Grace said. “She throws everything in. Chicken bones, vegetable scraps. Makes good stock.”

“I wouldn't mind sampling it sometime.”

“I'll ask Martha to send the recipe over to Meg Gowdy at the pub.” Her tone was curt and cold.

“Oh, well. I don't want to put anyone to any trouble.” Downcast, Green lumbered off, limping noticeably.

Exaggerating lameness failed to elicit sympathy from Grace. She didn't turn from the stove until he was gone.

“That constable is certainly keeping you up to date,” Edwin observed.

“He's appointed me his unofficial deputy, since I helped my father that way. It gives him an excuse to pester me.”

Grace's color was high, as the Victorians might have said. Whether from anger or the steam from the soup, Edwin couldn't say. He realized he was staring at her. Embarrassed and hoping she hadn't noticed, he sat down at the kitchen table and studied the tablecloth as intently as if there were a chess problem marked out on its red-and-white-checkered pattern.

“Those kids would really run off without their ration books?” he asked. “Can they steal what they need?”

“They're cunning little beasts, trying to get home. Once back in Birmingham, dirty and tired and hungry, their parents will regret having had them evacuated. Well, in the case of the Finch boys, their mother will regret it. Their father ran off before the war.”

“Do they supply you with their family histories when they arrive?”

“Hardly. Harry Wainman, who's been putting them up at his farm, got the story out of them and he's got a big mouth. Apparently the mother's quite respectable but what with her working in a factory all day they just ran wild. Never in school, already been prosecuted for petty thieving.”

“Why would they tell things like that to Harry Wainman?”

“Bragging.”

“Perhaps it's just as well a pair like has taken off. But then there's Bert Holloway and Isobel Chapman and it's two days since she went missing.”

Grace shrugged. “We've covered every inch of forest near the village. She's run off and no one is surprised. That's what you'd expect of her.”

“Well, you can never be sure. Children get a bad reputation and—”

“Sometimes they deserve the reputation.” Grace scowled at him.

“I suppose you're right.” Edwin recalled how many of Elise's reclamation projects hadn't worked out. She forget those immediately and remembered the successes. “It's just troubling to imagine kids out there, in some sort of trouble.”

Grace's expression softened. “You have children then?”

“No. Actually. We wanted children, but…” Edwin trailed off, feeling he'd said too much.