69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess (11 page)

Broomend of Crichie doesn’t look like much now but a few thousand years ago it was probably the most important ritual centre in what subsequently became known as north-east Scotland. We swung left by a petrol station and parked the car behind it. We climbed over a gate and across an overgrown field. I couldn’t see the stones but Alan led me straight to them. I didn’t clock the ditched henge in the field until we got right up to it. Long grass covered the dip and the weed growth was even more luxuriant around the remains of the stone circle. Only two of the original stones remained and they’d been disturbed. A Pictish symbol stone had been moved from its original position 150 yards away and placed alongside these stanes when a 19th-century railway line was being laid. There were entrances to the henge from the north and south and lines of standing stones had once led from these to other circles long since destroyed.

Alan plonked Dudley down beside the symbol stone and took a photograph of the dummy. Then he picked me up and pulled me against him while simultaneously steadying himself against one of the other stones. Alan forced one of his knees between my legs and lifting my skirt proceeded to yank down my panties. I leant back against Alan and spread my legs so that he could rub my clit. Soon he was working one of his fingers in and out of my moist chink. I pushed myself upwards and worked my hands behind my back. I fumbled for a few seconds but before long I’d undone my partner’s belt, unzipped his flies and pushed his pants down around his ankles. Alan removed his finger from my hole and I guided his prick up the moist passage. I had Alan pressed back against the stone and worked his meat at my own pace. Alan was caught between a rock and a hard place. When he came it was because I wanted him to shoot his hot spunk into my steaming cunt. We had a simultaneous orgasm and afterwards, while I was still speared on Alan’s semi-flaccid dick, he used his ventriloquist’s skills to transform Dudley into a voyeur who thanked us profusely for fulfilling his deepest fantasy.

After adjusting our clothing we got back into the car and headed down the A96 to Kintore. We parked in the centre of the village, right by the kirkyard. I stood with one arm around Dudley as I leant against the side of the symbol stone in Kintore churchyard while Alan took a snapshot. Alan carried Dudley around to the other side of the stone, where he handed me the camera so that I could take a picture of the two of them holding hands. After this we got back in the car and made our way to the standing stones near the west gate of Dunecht House. These stanes provided a backdrop for more photographs. At some point before we parked the car to one side of Midmar Kirk, Alan began talking about Nicholas Royle. I recognised the name as that of an anthologist and critic. Alan said he couldn’t fault my knowledge as far as it went but that Royle’s other skills had clearly been honed by his extensive output of fiction. In many ways Royle was working a similar territory to Conrad Williams, making good use of an intimate knowledge of both literary and genre fiction. Alan certainly rated Royle’s first novel
Counterparts
, which boasted a schizophrenic narration that could only be read as a full-frontal assault on the bourgeois subject.

Midmar was unlike any of the stone circles I’d seen so far, not only was it situated next to a church but a graveyard had been built around it. A very well-maintained lawn was laid out inside the circle of stones and the resultant over-definition made me think of it as a hyperrealist recreation of an ancient monument. The fact that the recumbent and its two flankers were massive added to the impression that Midmar was nothing other than an overblown simulation. Finally, the grading of the stones was simply wrong, indicating that at some point they’d been disturbed and whoever had restored them had done so incorrectly. Once we’d placed ourselves on the lawn inside this circle, my companions began babbling about assorted Aberdeenshire antiquities. I don’t remember exactly what Dudley said but the gist of it may be gained from some automatic writing I recently made after shoving a vibrator into my cunt as a means of opening my body up to psychic influences and subtle messages.

‘The worship of rude stones, as representing or containing a deity is supposed to have come from the fall of meteoric showers, which the ancients naturally regarded with deep wonder, and imagined to be representatives sent down from heaven to man. Of the continuity of religious worship at these dedicated spots, through all the developments of paganism and through the most absurd development of all, from paganism to Christianity, there cannot really be any valid doubt. If the outlying stone is due SW, and if the normal line from the centre of the recumbent stone is due north-east, the magician looking along that line will see the sun rise at midsummer, whether he stands at the outlying stone or at the middle of the recumbent stone. The circles were clocks and the magician had his way of making his announcements of the passage of time by night without making any noise or waking any one of his community, he simply burnt a handful of dry grass. Likewise, the Gaelic
clachan
(church) means “stones”. Kirk was so called because it was the one stone building in the neighbourhood. But local enquiries show that in many parts the question “are you going to kirk?” is put in the term “are you going to the stones?”’

Of course, modern research suggests that the chief alignments of recumbent stone circles are lunar rather than solar, and Alan was not slow to highlight other peculiarities in Dudley’s pronouncements. After trashing the views expressed by his dummy, Alan pointed out the Sunhoney stone circle on farmland about a mile away. Rather than offering clues to the identity of the lost tribe, a number of seekers had concluded that this site was the scene of macabre occult practices. On 3 June 1944 John Foster Forbes took his scryer Miss Iris Campbell to the monument to make a psychometric reading, the results of this bizarre session are recorded in the former’s
Giants of Britain
, a masterpiece of crank research. Forbes and Campbell are not the only nutters to conclude these eldritch stones mutely signal some unspeakable evil. Hippie headcase Paul Screeton in the book
Quicksilver Heritage
claimed that black magic has been practised at the site in recent years and found the circle so unpleasant that he says in print he would not like to revisit it.

When Alan told me this I knew instinctively where everything we were doing together would end. After we’d taken some pictures of Dudley sprawled on the lawn enclosed by the Midmar stone circle, Alan suggested we make our way to Sunhoney. I insisted we wait, we were not ready, for the time being we should stick to the trail K. L. Callan had laid out for us in
69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess.
Cullerlie was our next destination, some low-lying stanes set amid rich farmland and built without a recumbent. The circle contained a number of tiny ring cairns. Alan leant Dudley against one of the eight stones that constituted the main attraction and took a photograph. After checking his watch Alan said we had to split. We headed back to Aberdeen along the A944. When we pulled up in Union Grove my friend Rita was walking away from Alan’s flat. My companion leapt out of his car and went chasing after her. I ducked into the stairwell to retrieve the books I’d left there but they’d gone. By the time I got back onto the street, Rita was touching Alan’s arse as he locked his car. I told Alan I’d see him in the morning and went home. I was more than happy about the fact that Rita had shown up so unexpectedly, I wanted some time on my own to read Christopher Burns and a whole bunch of other things.

SEVEN

I DREAMT
I stood on the summit of a precipice, whose downward height no eye could measure, but for the fearful waves of a fiery ocean that lashed, and blazed, and roared at its bottom, sending its burning spray far up, so as to drench my dreaming self in sulphurous rain. The whole glowing ocean below was alive – every billow bore an agonising soul that rose like a wreck or a putrid curse on the waves of earth’s ocean – uttered a shriek as it burst against that adamantine precipice – sank – and rose again to repeat the tremendous experiment! Every billow of fire was thus instinct with immortal and agonising existence – each was freighted with a soul that rose on the burning wave in torturing hope, burst on the rock in despair, added its eternal shriek to the roar of that fiery ocean, and sunk to rise again – in vain – and forever!

Suddenly I felt myself flung half-way down the precipice. I stood, in my dream, tottering on a crag midway down the precipice – I looked upwards, but the upper air showed only blackness unshadowed and impenetrable – but, blacker than that blackness, I could distinguish the giant outstretched arm of Dudley that held me as in sport on the ridge of that infernal precipice, while another, that seemed in its motions to hold fearful and invisible conjunction with the arm that grasped me, as if both belonged not to Dudley but some being too vast and horrible even for the imagery of a dream to shape, pointed upwards to a dial-plate fixed on the top of that precipice, and which the flashes of that ocean made fearfully conspicuous. I saw Dudley’s mysterious single hand revolve – I saw it reach the appointed number of 69 – I shrieked in my dream, and, with that strong impulse often felt in sleep, burst from the arm that held me, to arrest the motion of the hand.

In the effort I fell and, falling, grasped at aught that might save me. My fall seemed perpendicular – there was nothing to save me – the rock was smooth as ice – the ocean of fire broke at its foot! Suddenly a group of figures appeared, ascending as I fell. I grasped at them successively – first Dudley, then Alan – Rita – Jill – Karen – Hannah – Suzy – Michael – all passed me – to each I seemed in my slumber to cling in order to break my fall – all ascended the precipice. I caught at each in my downward flight, but all forsook me and ascended.

My last despairing reverted glance was fixed on the dial of sexual variations – the upraised black arm seemed to push forward the hand – 0 then 1 then 69 – it was stuck fast at the oral fixation stage – I was a baby – I fell – I sank – I blazed – I shrieked! The burning waves boomed over my sinking head, and the dial of sexual variations boomed out my dreadful secrets – ‘Anna had sex with a ventriloquist’s dummy!’ – and the waves of the burning ocean answered, as they lashed the adamantine rock – ‘Anna’s desires are an ocean, an illusion, and now she will make love to herself, to me, the sea!’
⁸
At this, I awoke. The entry bell was ringing. It was Karen, one of my friends from college. I buzzed her in to the tenement.

It was raining and the streets were not yet busy. I put the door on the latch. Moments later Karen pushed her way into my bedsit and handed me a curt note from one of my professors. I threw it into the bin. He wanted me to provide an explanation of why I’d missed a tutorial. I decided to lie and say I was sick. A terrible fever. I’d been laid up in bed for days. Karen made tea as I dressed. She poured me a cup and we exchanged pleasantries. She was concerned about me, said she couldn’t cover up my absences from college much longer. I told her I’d go in soon, but insisted I should stay off sick for one more day. I scribbled a note for her to hand in on my behalf. Karen giggled at her complicity in my skiving. I made toast and shared it with my friend.

The rain eased off as I made my way up Union Street to Union Grove. I let myself into Alan’s flat. I don’t remember exactly when he gave me the key but I know it was some time before I had the dream about the burning sea. Alan was in bed, asleep with Rita. When I woke them Alan wanted a three-way fuck but I said later. We had things to do and bed-hopping could wait until it was dark. Alan resigned himself to waiting for nookie and got up. Rita wanted to waste time putting on make-up but I told her not to bother since we’d be climbing Tap o’ Noth later and she’d only sweat it off. Alan was out of both coffee and eggs, so we just jumped into his car and headed for Inverurie. I wanted to go to a café in the town centre but Alan thought it unlikely that any of them did anything but instant coffee, so we went to Safeway instead.

Rita was embarrassed when we propped Dudley up in a chair at our table. The women doling out the fry-ups recognised us from the day before and were friendly. I used the toilets, which were spotlessly clean. We drove through Oyne, Insch and Kennethmont to get to Rhynie. Our first stop was the Old Kirkyard. This was a disappointment. The Pictish symbol stones had been moved into a horrid wooden construction to protect and preserve them from moss damage. The effect wasn’t hypperreal, it was mundane. There was no longer any aura of mystery about the stones. We spent a couple of minutes looking at them and left. There were more symbol stones on Rhynie Square, a very pleasant tree-lined village green. The atmosphere was picturesque rather than sublime and above all else pleasing. We lingered among these stones because one goes to such sites for the atmosphere as much as anything else.

Scurdargue car park at the bottom of Tap o’ Noth was only a few minutes’ drive from Rhynie. Alan weighed Dudley down with some bricks and slung the dummy over his back. We had to explain to Rita that we were attempting to test the credibility of novelist K. L. Callan’s non-fiction work
69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess.
Rita found it hard to believe that anyone would even claim to have carted the corpse of a dead princess around the principal monuments of Aberdeenshire, let alone actually do it. Fortunately Alan had a copy of Callan’s tract in the car, so I was able to flash it at her. While I was doing this I clocked a bunch of film books Alan had stacked behind the driver’s seat. I figured he was intending to sell them to the Old Aberdeen Bookshop. I made a mental note to ask him about them before we headed back to the Granite City.

We cut across a tree-fringed field. Then along a hedge-lined path and across another field. From there a path wound around the hill which was oval and extremely regular in shape. Alan complained that the ascent was boring. He preferred roughness and sudden variation. The local tourist board went to great lengths to stress that the hill was composed of Rhynie Chert, a rock that contains some of the oldest known fossils in the world, including that of
Rhyniella praecursor
, the earliest insect fossil. While this might have provided fuel for the imagination of a horror writer such as H. P. Lovecraft, it didn’t do much for Alan because the fossils were microscopic. Alan set a cracking pace despite having Dudley and a bunch of bricks strapped to his back. Rita whinged that the climb up the hill, which took all of 40 minutes, was exhausting.