If I had been a better chick, a wiser chick for sure, I might have taken stock of the vicious terrors of that Sunday night. Maybe spent time considering the other strange events that were piling up around me: the discovery of the protection spell in Carmen/Rozalie’s old house, the tension in the village, the rolling of the stone, the movement in the force and such. You know – reflected. Like normal people do.
As it turns out, however, I was not one of the sensible categories of human species and so on Monday morning when I woke up again, although the residue of nightmare was still bitter on my lips, I decided to shift it by focusing on the imagined torso of the curator: specifically, his six-pack, which I was yet to see for myself but had glimpsed through tight T-shirts. That was much much nicer than thinking about stuff that spun you out.
So, once I had visualised enough detail, my mood pepped up sufficiently for me to jump in the shower and blast the creepy vibes of the automaton dream completely out of my head.
I did concede one thing however, and told Sam about the noises. I wasn’t sure if I had dreamt them or not but I thought it best to take a belt and braces approach – the last thing I wanted was the attic-room floor falling in on my bed.
To my surprise he agreed to go up and check it out.
‘Well?’ I said, when he came back downstairs.
‘A few droppings up there. Mice, or maybe bats. I’ll ask Bronson to check it out.’
‘And the Madam Zelda machine?’
‘What about it?’ he said. He hadn’t combed his hair and the front locks were falling over his eyes.
‘Was it covered up? Did it look okay?’
‘Of course,’ he said and pushed back his fringe so that I could see he was sending me one of his inquisitive looks. ‘Why wouldn’t it?’
‘Oh nothing,’ I told him and shut up.
I knew it was in his nature to press me, so muttered some excuses about doing chores in Adder’s Fork. Then I gathered myself together and did just that.
I was at the village shop when the next thing happened. I’d powered up there in my new Dolus Speeds, to cheer myself up. And they were working too. The trail of stars I had left in the dust looked rather magical, like a tiny cartoon Milky Way.
‘Woah those trainers are blinding,’ said Steve as I came in. ‘Where’s me sunnies?’
‘They’re great aren’t they? Girl can’t go wrong with a pair of scarlet trainers,’ I said as I handed over my launch-party dress. ‘Can I book this in for dry cleaning?’
Steve, the proprietor, dragged his eyes away from my trainers and held the dress up to the light, as he had recently taken to doing with some of my finer pieces. I watched him shake his head and tut, ‘Mmmm, not sure about this one. Your last gown was too tight across the hips. No give in it. Quite uncomfortable to sit in. Got anything bigger?’
I rolled my eyes, as I had also taken to doing, and told him to ‘give over’, when Nicky appeared in the doorway to the upstairs flat and started joking about the colour not suiting Steve.
Which I thought quite rich really, as Nicky himself was often to be seen out and about sporting terrible waistcoats the like of which you only ever saw on children’s TV presenters of the seventies. In fact, the analogy tickled me so much I told him that.
He didn’t seem to find the comparison funny, but Steve was chuckling as he wrote me out a docket.
Then the bell over the door tinkled.
The shopkeeper raised his eyes and did a micro-scowl in the direction of the woman who came in. Nicky followed suit then speedily about-turned and retreated upstairs to the safety of the flat. I recognised the new customer as Neighbour Val of kimono fame, the impassioned protestor who had thrown herself on the Blackly Be boulder Friday night.
Obviously a woman who meant business, she was trying hard to catch her breath, but continued her march to the counter. Conventional pleasantries were dispensed with rapidly and she launched straight in. ‘Steve, start the tweetathon.’ Her voice was compelling (scary). Under the artificial light I saw her skin was glistening. ‘Looks like the builders are back. Plus some environmental hippies have shown up by the Blackly Be, talking about some protected species in Silva Wood. Hate to say it but they might be on to something. We need to rally whoever we can.’
Steve scratched his chin and crossed his arms and said, ‘I don’t know why we weren’t consulted, Val. Nicky was saying that you’d have thought the council would have had to work their way through reams of red tape to sell off that land …’
Val sucked her teeth. ‘Corruption, Steve, corruption. It’s always the way. Rich people get to do what they like. They’ve got enough money to grease palms and lick the council’s arse.’
An unexpected and unpleasant mental image popped up on my mental screen – a local Leytonstone councillor with a very large behind.
‘You wait,’ said Val, noticing me. ‘They’ll have your Witch Museum next. Once they get the Blackly Be, nothing’ll be sacred.’
‘It’s not for sale yet,’ I said wondering if they’d notice the last word, which had popped out of my mouth before my brain had engaged.
They didn’t.
Steve was holding his phone close to his eyes, peering over the top of his glasses and jabbing at the screen.
Val spluttered. ‘What? You think your intentions have any relevance. They don’t matter.’ She crossed her arms and did a head wobble. ‘These people, they want something – they get it. It’s a disgrace. Happening up and down the country. No one gives a toss about what the community want. It’s all about filthy lucre.’
Yep, I thought, and that’s what I’d be concentrating on when I put the museum up for sale. But not yet. I didn’t want to right now. I had fish to fry and eggs to lay. Not that I was a takeaway food vendor or a chicken. Other than wanting Sam to accompany me up into the attic at night. But that was a dream, I reminded myself and tutted out loud.
‘Exactly,’ said Neighbour Val, regarding my expression. ‘She got it,’ she said to Steve. ‘The penny’s dropped with this one.’
‘Right,’ said the shopkeeper after a moment. ‘I got “Karen Vicar”, “Duncan Rotary” “Marion Scouts”. I’ll text them first.’
‘You,’ Val said waving a finger at me. ‘Should get Samuel up there pronto. He might be able to talk sense into them.’
I backed over to the doorway and did some co-operative nodding.
Steve let out a grunt and leant on the counter. ‘Val, love, what shall I say?’
Neighbour Val’s face blushed and took on a hyena-fierce expression. ‘We need to stop a crisis in the making,’ she said and thumped her fist on the counter for emphasis. ‘Tell them to get to the Blackly Be on the double. It’s do or die.’
We couldn’t have known how prophetic those words were to be.
I phoned Sam on the way up to the boulder site and told him what was going on.
‘I’ll be as fast as I can,’ he said. I could hear him running down the stairs as he cut the call.
There was a good crowd already there when I arrived. I saw Florian down the front with a couple of crusty-looking dudes I didn’t recognise. The backs of their T-shirts bore slogans that started with ‘No to …’ something indecipherable. I thought about joining them but was intersected and then cut off by the Scout mistress and a mixed group of post-retirement-age adults wearing shorts and backpacks and toggles.
When Sam turned up it was hot on the heels of several members of the rotary club and a substantial representation from the parish God squad. There was evidently a graphene-level strength of feeling about this matter locally.
So many had come out. Did none of them work?
Maybe it was all too exciting to resist. I couldn’t imagine the sleepy little village had seen this high a security presence in recent times. The developers must have reckoned on trouble and had evidently been in contact with the local constabulary.
Four coppers were positioned around the fast-swelling crowd. Interspersed between them were employees of a private hire security firm: bouncer-like and tough in black uniforms with possibly padded vests or ginormous pecs.
On seeing them, Karen, the rev, guided her flock to the back. I could hear her urging the parishioners ‘to protest with peace in your hearts’. There was some low-key grumbling, but they seemed largely to toe the line. Though a couple of their posse, conceivably Morris dancers, got their hankies out and waved them at a young officer in what I thought was rather a provocative manner.
Over on the pub side however things were less sedate. Partly because the Granddad bloke had appeared and started poking his crutch at one of the bobby’s behinds. This was causing much hilarity and encouraging gestures from the onlookers that had spilled out of the Seven Stars.
Beyond the police, builders were carrying out their orders with brisk efficiency, clearing the space round the boulder, sporadically punctuating the work with ‘I’m just following orders’ and other platitudes along the lines of having to make a living. It didn’t cut it with the villagers who were responding with one- and two-fingered salutes and a variety of original and quite amusing jeers. One of the workmen might have been local as he went as red as a Rouge Dior lippy. Up the Morris dancers’ end shedloads of Judas jokes were flying about.
A couple of suits with hard hats and clipboards hovered in the background. I wondered briefly if they were the developers. This, however, was dirty work. It was far more likely that the real culprits behind the impending destruction of the local landmark would be paying other people to supervise it for them. No doubt the new owners were on a golf course or a beach in Marbella or maybe watching with glee from a blacked-out Mercedes nearby.
Perhaps it was a lapse of perspective, after all it was just a rock, but I did kind of feel that there was Bond-villain-style treachery afoot.
Everything, like EVERYTHING – the tension, noise and hanky waving – ramped up a notch when the builders withdrew, leaving the Blackly Be boulder standing like a lonely lamb waiting for its slaughter.
When the digger trundled down the road and turned left into the cordoned-off arena you could have cut the air with a knife.
The line of people in front of Sam and me booed.
Florian’s mates started chanting about greed and ‘developer scums’.
In amidst all this came a loud smashing sound. We rotated to view the near side of the pub where someone had chucked a silver tankard through the window of a sleek BMW.
One of the policemen, a sergeant, started making flapping movements with his arms and directed his unit to drive back the gathered crowd.
Taking this as a cue, the digger moved forwards. A couple of the security guys broke off from the front and went to walk beside it. Drawing up alongside the Blackly Be the digger paused ominously. Then, to gasps and some spontaneous moaning, it slowly raised its giant claw.
‘They’re so short-sighted,’ Sam shouted over the increasingly tumultuous uproar. ‘Has anyone else spoken to the developers about what it means to the village? There must be a compromise to be had.’
I took a square look at the digger. ‘You want to negotiate with that?’
Sam shook his head and pointed out the two men with clipboards. ‘Let’s start with them.’
I thought we were probably shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted and won the Grand National but said okay.
As we were pushing and shoving our way through the collection of bodies, the digger revved up. Very, very loudly. A chorus of hissing rang out over the road.
‘There’s no need to make it so theatrical,’ I heard Sam murmur. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder at me. ‘It’ll make them worse.’
But most of the workmen seemed to be enjoying the drama.
With a screech of gears and a muffled thud, the claw dropped into the earth around the Blackly Be.
A number of protestors paused in their moans, temporarily stunned.
Around us there was a collective intake of air that sounded like whistling. For a moment, the jostling down the front stopped.
A rush of shocked awe passed among the villagers.
Disregarding, or perhaps, inspired by this reaction, in his booth the driver of the excavator pushed a lever forward. The huge metallic jaw began to rip through the grass and earth around the boulder.
A Mexican wave of twitches rippled through the dumbfounded onlookers.
Over near the pub people were moving. A strangled cry went up from Granddad who then fell to the ground. I wasn’t sure if it was more play-acting, nobody was. Two of the watching drinkers rushed over to him. A bunch of angry shouts went off close by. The shoving started again. The nearest policeman lost his hat.
Things were getting heated.
After swinging its bursting jaw over to the side, the digger spat earth onto the floor, creating a pile of debris. Once fully emptied, it wasted no time in returning, revving up and pounding the ground again.
The sharp jagged side of the claw made easy work of the grass and topsoil. As it continued down deeper, the earth started lifting in dark sheets that cracked and crumbled into the bucket so easily they might have been made of chocolate sugared icing. The strength and power of the thing made me shiver, a contemporary metal dragon plaguing the village.
Good job I wasn’t a virgin.
‘Quick,’ said Sam and grabbed my hand, scooting through the dense pack of Forkers. I followed him as closely as I could, but it wasn’t easy: the energy of the crowd was turning, bodies were growing tense and hard-muscled. As I nudged forward, some of my neighbours gave me uncharacteristic little pushes back. All their voices had taken on a pinched quality.
One of them, that could have been Neighbour Val, hollered out with fury: ‘I am not having this.’
In response the driver grinned, blew his horn and revved the digger up again.
We all looked on with increasing discomfort as the claw crashed down, ploughing back into the earth beside the Blackly Be, closer and so much faster now, sacrificing accuracy.
Coming back too quick, the corner of the jaw bashed into the boulder’s side.
Though it was just a knock, a dislodged splinter of stone flew up at an odd angle and hit one of the nearby security enforcers. Crying out in pain, blood started pumping from the cut it had made on his forearm.
To repetitious gasps of ‘Oh no!’ ‘It’s happening!’ and one random ‘How’s your father’, the bodies before us seemed to compact and I was sucked into their collective form.
As the digger ploughed on regardless, further and further into the earth, something in the crowd shifted from reaction to action. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that lit the paper which catalysed the energy of the crowd into motion. But somewhere between ‘How’s your father’ and a scream of rage that popped out of one of the scoutmasters, I found myself carried forwards by a storm surge of Adder’s Forkers.
Flowing through the police line, they charged at the digger.
Jostled in the stampede, my leg caught on something or someone and before I realised what was happening I had lost my footing and was propelled forwards into bodies and darkness, unable to get my hands up or gain purchase on anything or anyone.
For a brief moment I felt myself sail through the air, then with an ‘oof’ I landed on someone’s back. Possibly one of the adult scouts. Someone else fell over us. I wriggled out of the scrum to discover I was only metres away from the metal dragon.
In the booth the driver chuckled at the chaos beneath and swung the claw to empty its load onto the growing mound of debris.
But this time it didn’t fall as easy as icing sugar. This time there were clots and sticks and clumps in it.
And something shiny and metallic that caught the sun as it tumbled onto the pile.
I realised someone next to me was on his knees shouting. Sam.
I couldn’t make out what he was saying at first. Well, that’s not true. I could make it out quite clearly in fact. I was just having a job of processing it. Because what he was saying seemed wrong and surreal and completely out of place.
But his words had an immediate effect on the nearby police sergeant who checked over the bucket and immediately started waving his arms back and forth at the driver: cease, desist.
‘Halt now,’ he ordered.
The security team complied.
This time even the digger obeyed him.
When the engine ceased, for a moment, there was a speck of calm. But it was the eye of the storm.
Sam’s voice was still frantic but had taken on a weary breathlessness.
‘Stop, stop,’ he was shouting. ‘That’s a pelvis. You’re disturbing human bones.’