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truly in place, reinforced with everything he could pour into
them. Which, he admitted to himself, rather defeated the
objective.
"I'm not exactly looking forward to this." But it was
why he was here, so& He looked around, saw a small gap
in the hedge that might allow him through, and started
towards it. "I think I should be nearer the centre."
"If there is one," Jack reminded him. "These silted-
up pits are just as likely to be natural as manmade."
"I know."
The gap provided only a thinning in the otherwise
healthy hedgerow, and it had been made sheep-proof with
three strands of barbed wire. The two men managed to
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scramble over without tearing their jeans or castrating
themselves and pushed through the hazel barrier.
A pleasant, sun-dappled place, the copse seemed
alive with birdsong and the breeze through the leaves. They
worked their way steadily into the heart of it, finding it to
be comparatively easy going. The undergrowth wasn't as
heavy as Mark had expected, and there were paths, narrow
ones, winding among the trees. But they hadn't been made
by human feet.
"Deer," Jack said, pointing to narrow slotted hoof
prints. "And rabbits. Badgers and foxes as well, probably."
"Jack Faulkner, last of the Mohicans." Mark smiled,
the attempt at humour only partially disguising the tension
shivering down his spine.
Jack chuckled quietly and patted his shoulder. "Any
time you're ready, Merlin."
"Damn it." He sighed and stopped. They were in a
small clearing around the grey-green hulk of a long-ago
fallen tree, and Mark decided it was as good a place as any
to check for phenomena. So far he had picked up nothing,
and since he had been expecting something like the psychic
assaults he'd suffered in the church and the castle, he didn't
know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
The downed tree offered the possibility of a seat,
and Mark found a makeshift resting place where the trunk
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The Psychic's Tale Chris Quinton
forked. He wedged himself into it, the moss-coated bark
striking chill and damp through his jeans and tee-shirt.
"Okay," he said with a confidence he did not feel, and
closed his eyes.
The Safe Room formed around him, familiar and
secure. Very secure, though it had never been tested by
anything as powerful and malevolent as Jonathan Curtess.
Mark turned on the TV. On the wide screen, static resolved
into an indistinct shades-of-grey image of the hilltop,
blurring and rippling as if it lay behind thick, distorted
glass. No fields, no hedges and trees. Just coarse grass
and right in front of him stood the bulk of a sarsen
embedded on end in the ground. There was nothing nearby
that would allow Mark to get an idea of scale. The sarsen
could have been anything from five feet tall to fifteen, a
comparatively slender pillar of weathered stone. Beyond it,
he could see more stones, smaller, blockier, set in a curving
line, and part of a shallow bank. The circle, then, with a
central monolith and surrounding ditch and bank, just as
Jack had suggested it might be.
Formless shadows drifted around the central stone,
moving with seeming purpose. Mark had the impression of
daylight, but there was no colour, no definition, and no
sound but a faint static when he upped the volume.
"Mark?" A distant voice seeped into his awareness.
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"Can you hear me? Are you okay?"
"Yes. I'm fine." His own voice sounded as if it came
from a long way off. It felt very strange, actually talking to
a living someone while he was in his Safe Room. "This is
the place. It's got a taller stone standing in the middle. All
the others I can see are squarish, lower. And it's got a bank.
Not high, but there. It's all hazy, though. Indistinct. Can't
hear a thing. Can't feel a thing& "
"That's good, right?" Jack sounded nervous.
"Don't know. Maybe. But I can only see what's in
front of me. I need to see more."
Mark got up from the couch and moved to one of
the windows, pulling back the curtains. Yes, the circle was
out there, and there were two additional taller stones in it, a
wider gap between them to make an entrance of sorts. The
shadows were still there, ten or more milling around.
People, his gut feeling told him, doing whatever they'd
done four hundred years ago. Not ghosts, exactly, just an
imprinted replay of the event. Jonathan Curtess's death?
Possibly. He shivered.
Quickly, Mark drew open the other curtains, but
gained no more information. The scenes were remarkably
similar in their lack of colour and substance.
"Mark?"
"I think I have to go outside," he said reluctantly.
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The Psychic's Tale Chris Quinton
"I'm not getting anything in here."
"In where? The circle?"
Mark didn't answer. He unlocked the door and
stopped, his hand on the bright brass handle. He did not
want to do this. Curtess had died a cruel death here. But the
curse had to be broken, lifted, ended somehow, and every
instinct insisted it had to start with Curtess himself.
"Okay," he said, and opened the door on a bright
summer day.
The moment he crossed the threshold Mark became
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