Return to the Stones by Jeremy Burnham

Author:Jeremy Burnham [Jeremy Burnham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Su paced the room, wondering what to do. She couldn’t tell Tom what the print-out had revealed, because she didn’t want to scare him. Nor could she show it to Matthew, for the same reason. She thought about taking it to her mother, but she wouldn’t understand the danger Tom was in. Which left Adam.

She found him at his desk in the study, examining the sarcophagus-carving through a magnifying glass. ‘Did you find him?’, he asked anxiously.

‘Yes. I told Mum and Matt’.

‘Thank goodness for that. Where was he?’

‘At the edge of the south inner circle. Having a row with Dai’.

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know – I couldn’t hear what they were saying. But for some reason they seem to hate each other’.

‘Did he come back with you?’

‘No. He said it wasn’t safe’.

Adam frowned. ‘Not safe? What do you suppose he meant by that?’

‘No idea. But he told me he was okay, and not to look for him. He just wanted to get his head straight’.

‘D’you think we ought to call the police?’

‘No, Grandpa, that’s the worst thing we could do. He’ll come back when he’s ready’.

‘You’d better be right, young lady’, said Adam grimly, ‘or you will incur my extreme displeasure’.

Su put the print-out on his desk. ‘I took this with my smartphone’.

He stared at it, puzzled. ‘What’s it supposed to be?’

‘It’s supposed to be Tom and Dai’.

‘Must be something wrong with the camera then. I’ll take it back to the shop I bought it from. It should still be under guarantee’.

He tried to hand it back to her, but she refused to take it. ‘It’s not the camera, Grandpa. Take of another look - at the shadows in the middle of those two pillars of light’.

Adam picked his magnifying glass and peered closely at the photograph. ‘They look like filaments inside a couple of giant light-bulbs’.

‘No, they’ve got to be Tom and Dai. It’s exactly where they were standing when I filmed them’.

‘Why would they be emitting light?’

‘I don’t know. But the camera never lies’

‘Of course it does. There was a photograph of some fairies in the nineteen-twenties which even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed was genuine. Needless, to say, it turned out to be a hoax.’.

‘This isn’t a hoax’, said Su. She perched on the edge of the desk. ‘I think Tom’s being...I don’t know...inhabited by something. An evil spirit’.

Adam frowned. ‘You mean, this Jarman character?’

‘Yes. That’s what they used to believe in the old days, wasn’t it? That people could be possessed by demons?’

‘Those were old wives’ tales. The poor women they burned or drowned as witches were probably suffering from mental illness’.

‘There’s nothing wrong with Tom’s mind’, said Su. ‘At least, there wasn’t before he came to Milbury. I’ve always known there was something weird about this village. Things happen here that don’t happen anywhere else. And you know it too, don’t you?’

Adam, who had tried to shield her from the past, was shocked that he hadn’t been successful. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘There are some things you won’t talk about.

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