The Onset

Douglas came up behind me as I sat in the parlour chair that evening, a large book spread out on my lap.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

His hands rested gently on my shoulders.

"Looking for that plant," I answered, sticking a finger between the pages to mind my place.

"The one I saw in the stone circle. See…" I flipped the book open.

"It could be in the Campanulaceae, or the Gentianaceae, the Polemoniaceae, the Boraginaceae—that's most likely, I think, forget-me-nots—but it could even be a variant of this one, the Anemone patens."

I pointed out a full-colour illustration of a pasqueflower.

"I don't think it was a gentian of any kind; the petals weren't really rounded, but—"

"Well, why not go back and get it?" he suggested.

"Mr Crook would lend you his old banger, perhaps, or—no, I have a better idea. Borrow Mrs Fiona's car, it's safer. It's a short walk from the road to the foot of the hill."

"And then about a thousand yards, straight up," I said.

"Why are you so interested in that plant?" I swivelled around to look up at him.

The parlour lamp outlined his head with a thin gold line, like a medieval engraving of a saint.

"It's not the plant I care about. But if you're going up there anyway, I wish you'd have a quick look around the outside of the stone circle."

"All right," I said obligingly.

"What for?"

"Traces of fire," he said.

"In all the things I've been able to read about Beltane, fire is always mentioned in the rituals, yet the women we saw this morning weren't using any. I wondered if perhaps they'd set the Beltane fire the night before, then come back in the morning for the dance. Though historically it's the cow herds who were supposed to set the fire. There wasn't any trace of fire inside the circle," he added.

"But we left before I thought of checking the outside."

"All right," I said again and yawned.

Two early risings in two days were taking their toll. I shut the book and stood up.

"Provided I don't have to get up before nine."

It was in fact nearly eleven before I reached the stone circle. It was drizzling, and I was soaked through, not having thought to bring a mac. I made a cursory examination of the outside of the circle, but if there had ever been a fire there, someone had taken pains to remove its traces.

The plant was easier to find. It was where I remembered it, near the foot of the tallest stone.

I took several clippings of the vine and stowed them temporarily in my handkerchief, meaning to deal with them properly when I got back to Mrs Fiona's tiny car, where I had left the heavy plant presses.

The tallest stone of the circle was cleft, with a vertical split dividing the two massive pieces. Oddly, the pieces had been drawn apart by some means.

Though you could see that the facing surfaces matched, they were separated by a gap of two or three feet.

There was a deep humming noise coming from somewhere near at hand. I thought there might be a beehive lodged in some crevice of the rock, and placed a hand on the stone in order to lean into the cleft.

The stone screamed.

I backed away as fast as I could, moving so quickly that I tripped on the short turf and sat down hard. I stared at the stone, sweating.

I had never heard such a sound from anything living. There is no way to describe it, except to say that it was the sort of scream you might expect from a stone. It was horrible.

The other stones began to shout. There was a noise of battle and the cries of dying men and shattered horses.

I shook my head violently to clear it, but the noise went on. I stumbled to my feet and staggered toward the edge of the circle. The sounds were all around me, making my teeth ache and my head spin. My vision began to blur.

I do not know now whether I went toward the cleft in the main stone, or whether it was accidental, a blind drifting through the fog of noise.

Once, travelling at night, I fell asleep in the passenger seat of a moving car, lulled by the noise and motion into an illusion of serene weightlessness.

The driver of the car took a bridge too fast and lost control, and I woke from my floating dream straight into the glare of headlights and the sickening sensation of falling at high speed.

That abrupt transition is as close as I can come to describing the feeling I experienced, but it falls woefully short.

I could say that my field of vision contracted to a single dark spot and then disappeared altogether, leaving not darkness, but a bright void. I could say that I felt as though I were spinning, or as though I were being pulled inside out.

All these things are true, yet none of them conveys the sense I had of complete disruption, of being slammed very hard against something that wasn't there.

The truth is that nothing moved, nothing changed, nothing whatever appeared to happen and yet I experienced a feeling of elemental terror so great that I lost all sense of who, or what, or where I was.

I was in the heart of chaos, and no power of mind or body was of use against it.

I cannot really say I lost consciousness, but I was certainly not aware of myself for some time.

I "woke," if that's the word when I stumbled on a rock near the bottom of the hill. I half slid the remaining few feet and fetched up on the thick tufted grass at the foot.

I felt sick and dizzy. I crawled toward a stand of oak saplings and leaned against one to steady myself.

There was a confused noise of shouting nearby, which reminded me of the sounds I had heard, and felt, in the stone circle.

The ring of inhuman violence was lacking, though; this was the normal sound of human conflict, and I turned toward it.