Published 'Gothic Light' 1992
“PLEASE let me grab some shut-eye!” grumbled the man to himself as he literally willed his own bones to soften so that they could counteract the bed’s hardness.
The other man, who was still sitting on his mattress in the far corner of the room, had been speaking of his previous experiences in this remote area of South East England. They had met whilst beating tracks between two dots on their respective maps and, having conducted fitful conversations along the way about this, that and the other, they decided to share the cost of a double room at the next inn, being cheaper no doubt than two separate single rooms.
They had quickly ascertained that they were both of an academic frame of mind, sharing an interest in Standing Stones. But having that in common did not prevent them from arguing about the various theories regarding the meaning of megaliths at, say, Carnac and Callanish.
James Fardew continued to toss and turn, trying to blot out the candlelight which flickered from beside his companion’s mattress. They had not predicted their dissimilar states of tiredness, and Fardew cursed the other man under his breath. Eventually halfdozing, he began to misplace his whereabouts...
Professor Oliver Gant had not told Fardew of his ability to remain awake for literally hours on end. It had not seemed necessary. He riffled through the vast tome which he had found in the bedroom’s makeshift tallboy. Gant had of course expected it to be a Gideon’s Bible, since the old religions still held water in these parts near London, but he was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a strange artefact bound in a substance which felt like black skin to the touch. There were highly polished gold corner-stops and an embossed title in a language that even he could not fathom. On first creaking open the frontboard, he whistled with delight at the glossy feast of spider-web illuminations.
As they had formerly wended their way towards the horizon of evening, Fardew and Gant had made a peculiar pair ... the former with his plus-fours and hunchback baggage, spectacles ever sliding on sweat like mating stick-insects; the latter older but sprightlier, tussling with his foundling walking-stick as if the shapes he fended off were perhaps more than simple shadows.
Their lively conversations soon petered out as the sun dipped beyond the Surrey Badlands. Gant believed that the stones hereabouts were typical of the Southern Mysteries and had been left lying around by turn-of-the-century tribes, only to tease future scholars such a Fardew as to ley-lines and geomantic zodiacs. And Gant had no illusions about the lucrativeness of his professorship at the Northern University; he was remunerated for waffling, so he waffled. Thus, he spoke to Fardew in undergrunts of the stones’ significance and, in the same breath, whispered of what “things” might be found under them...
He turned the title page of the black book, as Fardew’s snores punctuated the silence. Gant had surrendered to Fardew the tail-end of the desultory conversation, the latter mumbling a few unthought-out words as evitable sleep took sway, despite the bed’s discomfort.
“You know, Gant, what you said this afternoon, there’s something in it. Those standing stones outside here did have a certain look of, what can I call it ... fleshiness.”
Gant laughed to himself. But the stones could easily be seen as having a strange aura, conjured up by the translucent prisms of sunset slanting across the Mysteries and sheening the rutted boulders in pink and gold:... making them look almost sentient and sentry-like, as they led up to the inn.
Upon the innkeeper’s pulpit-like reception-desk had rested the largest guest register either of them had ever seen. The elderly woman receptionist found it difficult to separate page from page. Eventually, she fingered the area where she required them to signature, and both Gant and Fardew made forgeries with a flourish, but neither were conscious of their motives in so doing.
She carried their luggage and led them to the top of the building. The unnumbered rooms they passed were as silent as the grave -but, being long accustomed to such establishments, they feared that the small hours would fill with loud music and boorish laughter. Gant grumbled complaints, since he was of a mind to get his spoke in first. Fardew grudgingly nodded agreement. Neither need have bothered, since the woman was evidently stone deaf, still tottering in advance of them along the gloomy corridor.
Gant’s candle finally gave up the ghost, just as he reached the middle of the book. He had browsed upon the yellowing pages for hours and, despite the cold logic of his brain, drew esoteric conclusions from shapes of words which in the cold light of dawn would have signified next to nothing - or so he suspected. The darkness shrouded a carefully worked illustration of what seemed a black shiny monolith slowly rotating in even blacker space. He cursed, just as his companion Fardew had done earlier in a different context. He would not bother to relight the candle but take up the book come dawn’s return. He placed it on the floorboards beside his bed. He wondered if that stone deaf biddy would get them breakfast...
Fardew woke with a shudder. Or was it Gant? He could not be sure. The darkness around him glowed, even though it remained impenetrably black. In the distance, he caught the thud of feet stamping ... or could it have been the erratic beating of his heart? Burying his face in the pillow, he tried to muffle both sight and sound. And succeeded in sleeping against all the odds: dreaming of Morris-dancers and outlandishly large stone bones clacking instead of wooden batons and silent jingle-bells sparkling in alien sunlight.
Gant was abruptly wide awake, now certain he couldn’t be Fardew dreaming he was Gant. He had slept sporadically for most of his life, so the fact of being Gant was now incontrovertible. He even recalled his own theories on science and history, only recently expounded to the relative stranger who now shared the same room as himself. He looked across at the dark humping shape of what he took to be Fardew in the bed.
“Still worried about its hardness, no doubt,” Gant whispered to himself silently.
He was surprised he could see anything at all in the darkness, but waffling was his job, wasn’t it? And now being stone deaf, the sounds of the riven boulder gave no clue.
Come dawn’s return, the biddy smiled as she ladled scalding fat over the eggs in the pan, skinning the yolks. Morris-dancers were always hungry when they came to collect guests.
