Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

… also, apart from placing his hand over hers on the gear shift that time, his interest in her as a woman seemed actually to be receding.

No problem. Sure, a good-looking guy, and she was unattached, but anything of a personal nature could only be a complication and right now she had enough of those. It was just that a little recognition , that’s all, of mutual attraction, generally made things easier.

Ho-hum. Too late now. They’d soon be among a whole bunch of people, celebrating, having a good time. The pub was just outside Stow-on-the-Wold, and less than a dozen miles from the Rollright Stones. It was old, like the Ram’s Head at St Mary’s, but it had polished panelling and brass lamps, and it was full, suggesting a wealthier, more populous area.

‘Well, all right.’ Adrian sawing up pink steak, real efficient. ‘A lot of the people on the courses are, naturally, New Agers, and it’s my job to keep them amused. But, really … I mean, some of them are such incredibly silly, shallow, inconsequential people that it’s a struggle sometimes to hide one’s contempt.’

Jesus, was this Ersula or was this Ersula? ‘What about Janny and Matthew? They’re kind of New Age, aren’t they?’

A shadow crossed his eyes. ‘They’re nice people. They’re friends.’

Something here she wasn’t getting. ‘How’d you get into this stuff, Adrian?’ Grayle abandoned onto a side plate the cob of squelchy, white bread that came with her lunch.

‘Didn’t get into it.’ He pushed a piece of meat into his mouth. ‘Got into me. You don’t want that bread?’

‘Sure, help yourself. It ?’

‘The Earth. Always aware of Her, of course.’ He grabbed the bread, took a bite. ‘Grew up in Wiltshire. Father was an army officer. Stonehenge was always there. Better seen from a distance, rather lost its magic with all the main roads and tourists. And the army, all manoeuvres, no real … Anyway. At least Avebury’s surviving. Despite the undesirables it attracts. At Avebury, I had a sort of vision. A calling, I suppose.’

‘In a church-minister kind of way?’

‘In exactly that kind of way.’

‘To go out and spread the word about earth-mysteries?’

‘But that’s not enough, is it? Everybody’s just living on the Earth. We should live in Her and She in us. We should move with Her, breathe with Her.’

Sounded kind of sexual. ‘Where’d you get this, Adrian? Where’d it come from?’

‘From?’ He looked surprised. ‘From the Earth, of course.’

‘No, I mean, which books, in particular?’

‘Books?’ He was almost shouting. Strands of steak clung to his teeth. ‘I received it from the Earth , Grayle. I received it.’

‘Yeah, sure, but …’ Feeling herself going red. ‘I mean … how?’

He looked at her for a long time, the way a teacher looks at the dumbest kid in the class when the kid reveals, by some inane answer, that it hasn’t grasped what the lesson was even supposed to be about.

‘The dreaming,’ Adrian said.

‘I’m sorry … You get guidance from dreams. Of course.’

‘Guidance? Instructions! Look, you don’t seem to realize, the dreaming is the University of the Earth. You’re surrendering your consciousness to the oldest teacher of all. And when you’ve been doing it for so long, when you’ve shown you’re ready to serve Her, the Earth will tell you what She wants from you.’

Ersula had written, What you are dealing with here is the unconscious and that must be lift to find its own route to what you would probably call enlightenment .

‘Adrian, how long you been doing this?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Several years. Put it this way.’ Adrian began to mop up the remains of his gravy with the remains of Grayle’s cob of white bread. ‘So far, I’ve spent … hold on, tell you exactly … seven hundred and thirty-eight nights in ancient sites.’

‘What?’

‘It was why I just had to have this job. I can take groups of students all over the country to sleep at sacred sites. Go alone, first, of course, to test them out.’

She had a picture of him, some big boy scout with his knapsack, leading a crocodile of well-heeled innocents in anoraks.

‘The sites know me now. Most of the guardians know me. Of course, if a certain guardian has a particularly fearsome aspect, I won’t take students there.’ Adrian grinned. ‘Wouldn’t do to lose one of the poor punters through a heart attack or something.’

Grayle recalled Matthew Lyall talking of the grotesque hag-like guardians invading your dreams, barring the way. Also recalled what Cindy had said about the death of Mrs Willis at the Knoll. A stroke.

‘Can be quite terrifying at first,’ Adrian said. ‘Mind you, it can also be a wonderfully healthy thing. Quite often, after a dreaming, you’ll notice that the subject’s health has improved.’

He looked past Grayle, at green hills through a window, his knife in one hand, the last of the bread in the other. ‘Funny thing. When I spend a night in an ordinary bed, I feel quite disoriented. Dislocated, you know?’

Dislocated? Jesus, was this any wonder after seven hundred and thirty-eight nights inside prehistoric ritual temples? According to Ersula, just a couple of experiences could blow your mind. Well, it was clear enough now: what this guy did, he OD’d … he OD’d on the dreaming . Turned himself into a dream-junkie.

‘But, Adrian, what happens when the dreaming experiment comes to an end? When all the stuff goes into the computers?’

Adrian threw down his knife. ‘It will never end. It’s already way beyond an experiment. Do you really think we can learn all the Earth has to teach us in a few years? In a lifetime, even?’

‘Let me get this right.’ Oh boy, just when you think all the world’s crazies are gathered in LA, with a small New York overspill … ‘You see the University of the Earth developing into some kind of channel … into like a universal planetary consciousness?’

‘Already is. And one day I’ll prove it. At present, She speaks to just a few of us, in our dreams. One day, quite soon, She’ll speak to everyone. You’ll hear Her. You’ll all hear Her.’

‘The EVP tapes? You think one day you’ll get to record the voice of …?’

‘Perhaps we already have. We just can’t understand it. Any more than we understand when She speaks to us in the wind, the sound of waves on the shore.’

‘Well,’ Grayle said. ‘I guess he even convinced Ersula.’

‘Who? Who convinced Ersula?’

‘Roger.’

‘Roger?’ Adrian pushed aside his plate. ‘What does Roger know?’ He stood up. ‘We’d better go. Do you need to use the loo or anything?’

* * *

Sky coming to the boil. Finger of lightning prodding languidly out of sweating clouds. Below, several sheep already struck down, a heavy tumble of bodies, milk-eyed heads flat to the plain.

A few yards away, the shepherd lying dead. His dog, back arched, howling a pitiful protest at the vengeful heavens.

Energy. The hideous energy of violent death. In this painting, only Stonehenge was truly in its element. Whitened, as though lit from within by electric filaments, the stones exulted in the storm.

Inside his tightening chest, Maiden felt he was howling like the sheepdog.

The print, gilt-framed, hung at the foot of the wide wooden staircase in the panelled hall at Cefn-y-bedd.

A phone was ringing somewhere then stopped when an answering machine collected the call. Maiden’s chest felt bruised with memory. His mind rewinding at speed. The lightning striking again and again. Revelation. Big lights, a distant roar. Hospital smells. He remembered, the evening he walked out of Elham General, seeing Turner’s painting of the angry sea around Fingal’s Cave. Feeling that same tightness in the chest. It had not been the same image, but the style … the elemental rage … that was the same. What did it mean?