The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror by Stephen Jones

Author:Stephen Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510749870
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTY MINUTES LATER they were walking across the drought-blonded grass of the Downs. To their left, Bolbury’s topknot of oaks and ashes dominated the landscape. To their right, the downland’s natural patchwork billowed out toward the distant sparkle of sea. Yes, Keira thought, there is a hint of otherness about Bolbury Down.

Daisy unlocked the gate in the tall railings that surrounded the fenced-off dew pond and they stepped inside the enclosure. “Nothing much to see,” she observed. Daisy crouched to pick up several flat stones from the heap piled at the water’s edge. “Jack likes to play,” she said at Keira’s curious glance. “The trick is to hit that rock on the far side.” She stooped to skim the stone across the water and swore when it sank a bounce shy of the mark.

Keira stared across the rough circle of inky liquid, wondering how she hadn’t noticed the rock before. Yes, it was concealed by a tussock of sedge that was defiantly green against the straw-paleness covering the rest of the hillside, and yes, it was on the far side of the pond, but it was very nearly in the boulder category; close to knee-height and dazzling white. She crouched low and took several shots of it across the pool. The water levels had not dropped after several weeks of drought, but she didn’t buy Daisy’s tale of it being linked by a tunnel to the well sunk deep beneath Bolbury’s hillfort.

Daisy sent another stone skimming across the pool, leaving small blips in the surface that reverted rapidly to its habitual glassy stillness. Her third missile knocked against the rock with a sharp, metallic chime that made Keira wince.

“Yes!” Daisy punched the air and then stared at the target.

A small wing of crows screamed their way overhead, and from some way off Keira detected the distant swish of traffic. The only signs that anything in the world had moved for a count of ten.

Daisy’s expectant smile faded and she dropped the remaining stone in her hand back onto the small cairn. “Finished?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Good. It’s getting late.” Daisy headed for the gateway. “Get a move on or you’ll lose the light inside the fort.”

Keira couldn’t argue with that. Evening shadows were overrunning the path to the hilltop already, so that the ground seemed to slope away on either side far more steeply than she knew it did. The illusion was so great that she held her arms out for balance as they made their way toward the hill’s summit.

The famous tree ring at the top of the hill marked the defensive ditch around Bolbury Down’s Iron Age fort. Rangers had laid a path within the circuit so that school children and the general public could walk around the inside of the fort without causing erosion. No trees grew within the fort itself, however. Only bracken and brambles, and the odd foxglove and willow herb, so that the tall iron fence topped with razor wire stood at the center in splendid isolation.

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