The Greenstone Grail by Jan Siegel Read Free Book Online

it was too dark to see very far, Michael took some pains to explain about the benefits of the view. When they dimmed the light Annie saw a shiny new moon in a sky full of crispy stars, and shadowy fields stretching away towards the village, and the twinkling of illuminated windows in the nearest houses. She turned back, and there was Michael’s crooked smile, soft in the dimness, and his glasses hiding the expression in his eyes. He turned up the light, and she found herself looking at a picture of Rianna on a sideboard, a very glamorous picture, black-and-white, with a cloud of dark hair framing her artistic cheekbones, and deepset eyes darkly made up under the flying line of her brows.
    ‘She’s very beautiful,’ Annie said politely.
    ‘I know,’ said Michael. It might have been her fancy that he sounded almost rueful.
    When their glasses were empty, he said: ‘I’ll walk you home.’ And then: ‘Damn. It’s later than I thought. I’ve got a call coming in, from the States.’
    ‘I’ll be fine,’ Annie assured him.
    I like him, she thought, but I don’t like the house. Apart from his bit. There’s something wrong about it, something …
    Something to do with Rianna Sardou.
    She set off down the lane, hugging her coat round her in the cold, lost in her own reflections. The awareness didn’t come upon her suddenly; rather, it was a gradual feeling, a creeping change in the night, a slow prickle down her spine. There was a moment when she stopped, and glanced back, seeing nothing, and felt that the wrongness which she had sensed in the house had come with her, following her, becoming a shadow at her heels, a listener on the edge of hearing. There was a horrible familiarity about it. And then a shiver seemed to run through the hedgerows, as if a darkness slipped between the leafless stems, and she caught the whisper of words that could not be discerned, a whisper quieter than quiet, so close to her ear she expected to feel the chill of its breath on her cheek.
    Them
.
    She didn’t run: there was no point. She walked very quickly, trying not to look back again, counting her paces in heartbeats. The lane dipped as it ran through the meadows and for a few minutes she could see no lights ahead, and she was alone, or not alone, and behind her she knew the shadows were playing grandmother’s footsteps, and the whisper was so intimate she could imagine disembodied lips moving within an inch of her face. She fancied there was a cold touch on her nape, as if a groping hand reached out to seize her – and then she saw the lights of a house in front, and the fantasy withdrew, she began to run as though released from a spell.Past gardens and back gates, into the village street, down the road to the bookshop. She shut and locked the door, but she knew it would be no use: no door had ever kept
them
out save that of Thornyhill. She stumbled to the phone and pressed out a number with unsteady fingers.
    Ten minutes later Bartlemy was sitting in her little back room, filling much of it, a quiet, reassuring presence.
    ‘After Nathan was born,’ Annie was saying, ‘I always thought I went a little crazy.
They
were part of the craziness – that was what I told myself. Until now. But
you
saw them, didn’t you? The night we came to Thornyhill. You saw them following me.’
    ‘Oh yes,’ he said calmly. ‘I saw them.’
    ‘What are they? Who are they? Why have they come back?’
    ‘If I knew the answers to those questions,’ said Bartlemy, ‘I would be a wiser, if not a happier man. I know only what I have observed or deduced. They seem to have no real substance, yet they exist. They are made of shadow and fear. There are always many, a swarm rather than individuals. They are like nothing I have ever seen before, and I have seen many strange things. I was able to keep them away from Thornyhill – my influence is strong there – and I hoped they were gone for good, but clearly that isn’t so. Yet why should they