Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

Safe to go to art college, finally? Did he even want to do that any more?

Marcus sat down with his whisky. ‘You’ll be there tomorrow, Maiden?’

‘Sure.’

‘Don’t have to, you know. If there’s a problem.’

‘I can’t avoid death for ever, can I? Besides, I was there when she …’

‘Yes.’ Marcus swallowed some whisky. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Thinking back to when Mrs Willis was lying on the stone and you said, Take her down, get her down. Why did you say that?’

‘I don’t know.’

And the statement scared him because it was so completely true. There was an area of himself that he really didn’t know. It was like carrying around a locked briefcase to which you didn’t have the key, and you couldn’t put it down because there might be a bomb inside.

‘Perhaps something’s reaching you, Maiden. When Anderson brought you back from the dead, she was imagining on the Knoll at sunrise. That sets up a connection. Not only between her and you but between you and the Knoll. Now don’t look at me like that, you cynical bastard!’

Maiden shook his head. He wasn’t going for this.

‘Did you know that burial chamber is a serious misnomer?’ Marcus said. ‘They were really initiation chambers. Yes, all right, the remains of the dead — funerary urns and things — were put in there, but that was part of it. The trainee shaman or whoever would spend the night inside the chamber and then, when the light came through, directly through the slit at midsummer, they would literally be enlightened, their consciousness raised.’

‘Andy told me.’

‘Did she also tell you how similar that was to the near-death experience? Hmm? The shaft of light out of complete darkness? That’s what they see, isn’t it?’

‘Not me, Marcus.’

‘Quite. If you saw only darkness and you felt only cold, that would account for your reaction to the Knoll, wouldn’t it?’

‘Possibly. I’m not qualified-’

‘Not long before she died, the old girl told me she was seeing black lights up there.’

‘Can you have black lights?’

‘Like to talk in metaphors, your psychics. She was saying something’s gone wrong. Perhaps Falconer’s fucked it up with his bloody experiments. Perhaps the light that came into you from the Knoll was black light.’

‘Don’t do this to me, Marcus.’

‘I’m trying to help you, you ungrateful bastard. Have a drink, you look completely shot at.’

‘Do you know why it’s called Black Knoll?’

‘Local name for it.’

‘But why exactly?’

‘Some bollocks. It’s irrelevant.’

‘You going to tell me?’

‘Just have a drink,’ Marcus said.

‘Missing?’ this Cindy said. ‘What do you mean, missing?’

‘I mean she never came home. Or, if she did, she didn’t make contact. Either way, that’s missing, isn’t it? Like, she’s missing out of my life.’

It wasn’t alcohol making her talk; Grayle was drinking Coke, or something that passed for it. Just she was getting past the stage of keeping quiet about who she was and what she was doing here. How many woman tourists travelled alone anyway?

The strange old dame — dressed like out of Agatha Christie, only more glitter — took in everything she said. Spoke in this light, flippant voice with a bizarre up-and-down accent and yet struck Grayle as being kind of heavy underneath.

What did I walk into here? Did she find me or did I find her?

Grayle swallowed an ice cube from the bottom of her Coke. Told this Cindy all about the dreaming. After a while, they bought more drinks and took them to a table at the back of the bar, and Grayle pulled out the sheaf of airmail paper.

‘See, my sister, she’s intense and hard-nosed, not easily fooled. But the dream thing had become like a personal obsession.’

‘Yes,’ Cindy said after she read the letter, except for the pages Grayle always held back. ‘No matter how analytical you are, experiments with the subconscious can be rather like putting a needle into a vein. The subconscious demands more. Ancient-site-dreaming is dangerously addictive.’

Grayle looked into Cindy’s still, green eyes. ‘How do you know this?’

‘Ah.’ Cindy sighed. ‘Ten, fifteen years ago, before it was fashionable, I decided to spend a night on the fabled slopes of Cader Idris.’

‘Cader …? What is that?’

‘It’s a mountain in North Wales where there’s a legend that if you spend a whole night there you will wake up either a poet or mad.’

‘Sounds kind of like Greenwich Village.’

Cindy smiled. ‘Gave me the taste for it. I slept around. Once dreamed for seven nights, either side of the full moon, under one of the trilithons at Stonehenge — that was in the days when you were still allowed inside. Oh yes, positively promiscuous, I was.’

‘Wow,’ Grayle said faintly.

‘It does change you. Most of my dreams became lucid dreams — the ones where you know you’re dreaming. Where you seem to have an element of control.’

‘Sure. Dream control. I did a column on it.’

‘And, of course, that’s when it becomes risky. You think you’re in control, but in fact your subconscious mind is starting to influence your conscious mind to an alarming degree. You think you’re drawing inspiration from God, or the Earth Mother, the mind of Gaia, depending on your religious or your scientific persuasion.’

‘Like with acid trips.’

‘Indeed. And it can send you quite mad. I wasn’t happy about it, so I stopped doing it. A shaman must, above all, have discipline. Be able to count on precision.’

Cindy smiled regretfully. Grayle sat back in her chair, against the ancient, grimy panelling. Through the brown, smoky air, she examined the weird old broad, from the purple hair to the chiffon scarf to the tweed skirt and the black-stockinged legs.

‘Hold on just one moment,’ Grayle said. ‘You said shaman ?’

‘The tribal shaman was the witch doctor, the priest, the counsellor, the psychiatrist, the one who interceded with the spirit world.’

‘Yeah, we have them. Collect Native American hand drums and feathers. Supervise sweat-lodges for overweight executives.’

‘We all have to make a living, Grayle. An actor, I am, by profession. Not a terribly successful one, but I’ve had my moments. Quite well known, I was at one time, on children’s television. Straight man to the more famous Kelvyn Kite. We never crossed the Atlantic, sadly. But, then, perhaps a four-foot-tall, talking bird of prey would have been a little esoteric for the American market.’

Holy Jesus, Grayle thought. Would somebody wake me up?

‘Always good with animals, I was,’ Cindy said wistfully. ‘Made Kelvyn myself, I did.’

‘So you … You’re a shaman, right? An English shaman.’

‘ Celtic shaman, if you don’t mind. Our oral tradition goes back to Taliesin, the bard, in the sixth century. And, further, to the builders of the dolmens and the stone circles. As for me, I trained for three years, on and off, with Dilwyn Fychan, of Machynlleth, and other individuals too private to be mentioned. It was a calling. Some of us are called. Some of us are aware, from an early age, that we are … different.’

Cindy crossed his legs.

‘The shaman, traditionally, has a foot in two worlds. Flits about. Passes from one sphere of existence to another. A condition usually reflected in his personal life and mode of dress. Neither one thing nor the other.’

Cindy smiled. Grayle stared.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘You’re, uh … like, a guy, right?’

‘Prehistoric sites were often misused,’ Marcus said. ‘Still are — satanic rites and all that nonsense. But this was nothing like that. This was a social thing. Ultimate degradation for an executed criminal. Making an example.’