Carved in Stone: Monochrome Destiny (21 page)

“Well,
that makes sense. 
Triskeles
have been found at
burial sites throughout the centuries.  The megalithic discovery I
referred to was at a passage grave dating from 3200BC.  But there have
been discoveries of
Triskeles
associated with burials
much more recently, usually on objects placed in the grave but also on
carvings.” He picked up the piece of paper, stood and began to pace.  “There
are other theories as to the
Triskele’s
meaning.  Some believe that it represents fertility, each arm representing
a trimester of pregnancy.  Some believe that it represents earth, water
and sky.  Celtic Christians used it to represent the holy trinity: the
father, the son and the Holy Spirit.  It can also represent the goddess as
the
Triquetta
does, but the meaning I told you, the
cycle of birth, life and rebirth makes more sense when it comes up at grave
sites.  These symbols have been seen in Ireland and across Europe. 
The symbol is used to help the spirit of the deceased be reborn.”

“Reborn?”

“Reincarnation,
the spirit moving on, like to heaven, or Valhalla.  Lots of religions
believe that the spirit lives on after death and this symbol is meant to help
them on their way.  Many ancient peoples went to great lengths to make
sure that the spirit of their loved ones could move on.  The pyramids in
Egypt have vent holes for the spirit to escape, to make its way to the
afterlife.  The last rights in Christianity are to help passage of the
spirit.”

“Wow. 
You really are into this stuff aren’t you?”  She stared at him as he paced
in his own little world.  The subject appeared to bring calm to him and he
spoke with authority.  It was super sexy.

Andrew
smiled.  “It’s just an interest really.” He put the sheet of paper back on
the table.  “You can see similar symbols on ancient sights all over the
world and they have similar meanings.  It’s like a puzzle.  How did
different peoples, of different faiths, who could never have met, know to use
the same patterns for the same meanings?”

Patterns and meanings, history and
magic.
 
She would revisit the churchyard.

Robyn had been
arriving at work early for some weeks.  The week before they would break
for the Easter Holidays was no different.  She walked into her classroom
on Monday and went straight to the windows to raise the blinds and let in the
morning sunshine.  Working her way around the large expanse of glass she
moved from window to window, yanking the blind chords down and tying them off
on the small hooks provided.  By the time she got to the last of the
windows, a pane that sat next to the fire escape and overlooked the small
garden to the rear of her room, she was out of breath from the exertion. 
These were not small windows, nor light-weight blinds.

Her
mind was swirling with images of symbols and churches.  She was desperate
for the term to end so that she could sneak back to the church without Andrew
knowing.  He would certainly not approve.  Robyn wanted to go back
for two reasons.  One, Andrew had intrigued her about the strange symbols
on the graves and she wanted to know if there were any on the building
itself.  Two, she wanted to hunt for the rest of Kat’s phone.  If she
could find the phone, she could prove it was Kat’s and maybe, just maybe, get
PC Godwin to help again.  She was desperate to contact her friend. 
Her relationship with Andrew had not progressed since that one unbelievable
night together.  She couldn’t deny the chemistry between them, hell, she
had no words to describe how he had made her feel, physically, but Robyn wanted
more and she couldn’t give more without speaking to Kat.  She also had the
added weight of the overheard conversation preying on her mind.  Even if
Kat reassured her that her leaving had indeed had nothing to do with Andrew, it
still left her doubts about his honesty.  God, how she wished she could
talk to Kat.  Kat would give her advice.  Robyn needed that.

With
her mind swirling, Robyn reached up and yanked the chord on the last
blind.  As the heavy cloth rose, a sneering face, half lit by the sun and
half in shadow, flashed into view.  Startled, Robyn flew backwards,
screamed and crashed into one of the heavy wooden benches behind her.  Stumbling,
she tripped over a stool and fell.  She collided heavily with the floor
and pain shot through her hip.

Holding
her aching hip, Robyn glanced to the window to see Derek Ellis smirk and walk
away.

Angry,
no livid, no furious, she got up from the floor as the pain in her hip shot
through to the bone.  Robyn knew she would develop a substantial bruise,
but it was the last thing on her mind as she righted the fallen stool and
slammed it back into place.  She’d had enough of Derek Ellis and his
campaign to get her to leave.

When
the pain subsided, Robyn marched out of the room.  Her face fixed like
thunder, she stormed down the corridor and past the Head Teacher who took one
look at her and pushed Mrs Young back into the safety of the office. 
Robyn heard him follow her but she had little care for what David Rowe thought
right at that moment.  Anger drove her on.

The
main hall was bustling with pupils and staff and without breaking step, Robyn
headed to the library, where Derek now stood guarding the entrance.  His
smug expression only fuelled her rage.

Robyn
walked straight up to Derek and, despite the difference in stature, slammed
into him.  She pushed him backwards into the library, to avoid the pupils
seeing the coming confrontation and managed to catch him by enough surprise
that she got him through the door before he stopped.  Not intimidated in
the slightest, Robyn remained in his personal space.

“Who
the hell do you think you are?” she shouted, standing on tip toes to get as
close to his face as possible.  “How dare you try to intimidate
me!
”

They
weren’t alone in the room.  Other staff members were using the photocopier
or printers before the morning meeting and the sudden bang when the door had
flown open had drawn a large audience, but Robyn was too far gone to stop.

 
“
Wha
. .
” Derek tried to reply but
Robyn was not about to let him speak.

“You
pathetic, insignificant, little man,” she seethed, “stay the hell away from
me.” 

Derek
stared with incredulity.  His eyes flitted around the room, all too aware
that others were observing the confrontation.  “Don’t you speak to me like
. . .
”

“Like
what? I’ll speak to you any way I damn well please.  You have picked on
the wrong woman, do you hear me? I will not stand for it anymore.”  The
rage flowed so freely that she felt stronger, bigger.  She stood, inches
from Derek, and bellowed in his face as she shook with fury.

“You
little bitch!” He regained his disdain as the element of surprise wore off.

“Oh
yeah, resort to name calling,” Robyn knew she was winning.  “Stay away
from me and my classroom with your pitiful bullying tactics.” She turned to
leave.

“This
is not the end of it,” he said to her back, trying to regain some control.

Robyn
spun to face him and took a large step towards him.  “Bring it on.” She
stared until he had no choice but to avert his gaze.  Robyn left the room.
She could almost hear the mouths closing as she walked out the door and past
the Head.

Robyn walked
through the little gate, back to the churchyard.  The grass had grown
longer in the warmth of the spring sunshine and she had to wade through the
tall blades.

She’d
scouted the bank behind the church thoroughly and had found no more pieces of
Kat’s mobile phone.  It was disappointing but she wasn’t going to let it
defeat her.  There was something about the symbols that she had found that
tugged at her subconscious.

Starting
at the church porch, she made her way around the graves, checking the symbols
on each one and reacquainting herself with the layout of the churchyard. 
Focussing on the
triskele
rather than the mass
graves, she found more headstones carved with the symbol, a lot more.

Questions
began to form.  Questions of Wiccan or Pagan practices, but she was no
closer to enlightenment.

Robyn
turned to the church.  Andrew had mentioned that some ancient buildings
had symbols carved upon the walls.  She needed to know if this one did.

Starting
at the porch, Robyn made a thorough sweep, checking the boarded up door and
windows, even looking behind guttering, but found nothing.  She was more
than halfway around the church when something caught her eye.  There was
something strange about one of the boarded up windows.  The plywood that
covered them, greyed from weather and age, had dark trails bleeding down from
rusty screws.  But one panel was different.  One greying, rust and
water stained panel had shiny, new, silver-headed screws glinting in the
sunlight.

Robyn
walked up to the board and pressed her fingertip to a screw head.  It was
sharp, new.  She stood at the back of the building, next to the bank that
had produced the mobile phone cover and she could not believe that it was a
coincidence.  She turned, and marched back to her cottage.

Just over an
hour later, Robyn returned with a bag.  She dropped the pack, unzipped it
and plunged her hand in to find the screwdriver she had fetched, among other
things, from the cottage.  She started with the screw on the bottom right
of the board.

It
came out easily, as did the bottom left.  The top two would not be so
simple. 

A
stone sarcophagus lay tight against the church wall, just to the right of the
window.  It stood three feet high and without thinking about the callousness
of what she was doing, driven only by her desire for the truth, Robyn stood on
the monument to reach the top right screw.  Unfortunately, the sarcophagus
was too far to the right.  She needed to be more central.

Four
feet away, underneath the window, stood a plain headstone.  Rectangular
and fashioned out of one complete slab, it stood straight and true.  Robyn
held onto the stone window frame with her fingertips and stretched out her left
leg.  Pointing her toes to extend her reach as far as possible, she
lurched through the air praying that her foot would find its mark.  As she
moved sideways across the gap, she lost her tenuous grip on the window frame,
and held her breath in anticipation of a fall.  Her heart skipped, but,
with a jolt, her foot hit something solid.

Robyn
slapped her free hand flat onto the board over the window and her body stopped
moving. 

Precariously
positioned across the gap, flat up against the board, she lifted the
screwdriver.

Holding
the screwdriver at the far end of the handle to utilise its full length, Robyn
reached up, twisting her left foot so that her weight was on the ball of her
foot.  She pushed upwards, pointed her toes and stretched her arms,
shoulders and back in order to push the bit of the screwdriver into the head of
the screw and feel it lock onto its target.

She
balanced there, swaying slightly, holding just the tip of the handle and began
to turn the screwdriver anticlockwise.  With each quarter turn, the screw
moved out further and her sense of accomplishment grew. 

Suddenly,
Robyn’s ears were battered with a cracking, splintering noise.  It
bellowed out into the quiet as the big piece of plywood gave way and swung
down, scraping across the front of the next board along.

Her
free hand, the one that had lain flat on the board to give her balance, was
whipped aside.  She lost her grip at the same time that the sound made her
jump.  Robyn’s right foot slipped off of the edge of the sarcophagus and
almost simultaneously, her left fell from the gravestone.  She fell
backwards.

Tensing
on the way down, expecting pain, Robyn hit the ground squarely on her
back.  In a rapid exhalation she lost all her breath, leaving her lungs
entirely deflated as her head thumped into the dry soil.

Panicked,
Robyn lay still, trying to entice her lungs to breathe in, but they wouldn’t.
 Her chest burned as she lay prone, but still the air wouldn’t come. 
Desperation had tears flowing.

Finally,
her diaphragm recovered from the shock and she sucked in huge lungful. 
The chilled air hit her lungs, hurting as she sucked it down.  It was
wonderful.

Moving
slowly, Robyn stretched to assess the damage and was pleased to find only mild
aches.  Slowly, she rolled over, before standing up.  She had managed
to fall onto the soft, long grass and had miraculously avoided all the
gravestones and debris.

Taking
a deep breath to steady herself she looked up to the window. 

The
board now hung at an angle.  Held by only one screw, it had stopped
swinging and come to rest at an angle over the other board.  It looked
precarious, but it wasn’t going to fall.

The
opening revealed half of an old leaded window.  Plain glass, not stained,
the window was made up of three vertical panels.  By removing the plywood,
Robyn had revealed the right hand panel and half of the middle one.  The
top half of the glass was perfect, each little diamond held in place by the
strips of lead.  In the bottom half of the right hand panel was a gaping
hole.  Glass was missing and the lead had been pushed aside.

Robyn
stared into the cavern beyond the hole and slowly realised that the angle of
the lead meant that it had been pushed outwards.  She needed to get
inside.

Putting
the screwdriver back into her bag, she pulled out a torch, slung the bag over
her shoulder and once again climbed the sarcophagus.  This time, she
crawled onto the windowsill to look inside. 

The
torch beam cut through the darkness inside and lit up pews, hymn books and
kneeler cushions.  Eerily, it looked like the last sermon had finished and
the church had been locked up and boarded without anything being removed at
all.  The floor directly under the window showed no sign of broken glass
and neither did the pew beneath the window.  The sill was also clean.

Robyn
put her hand through the hole and placed her palm down on the cold stone of the
wide sill inside the church.  It was wide enough to crawl inside.

Before
dropping down onto the pew below her, Robyn turned.  She pulled the
hanging board back into place to hide her entrance and entombed herself in the
darkness.

The
church interior was just as she had expected.  The altar, complete with
brass cross, still had a material covering; the hymn choices were still on the
wall; religious icons, including the statue of Jesus on his cross were
displayed throughout the interior; the walls held memorial plaques and the dark
pews faced the front, regimented either side of the aisle.  There were
even kneeler cushions still placed neatly underneath the seats and at the back
of the church stood the font and a large oak door that led into the bell ringing
chamber.

Robyn
played her light around and picked out particles of dancing dust in the
beam.  The church had obviously lain untouched for years and the exposed
stone walls had provided a good source of dust; a thick layer covered
everything.  She could smell the musty scent of the dust mingled with the
decaying material of the kneeler cushions and the hymn books, but there was
nothing in her path, so she stepped forwards to the centre aisle.

As
she walked, she came to realise that something was missing.  Pointing the
beam of light to the floor, back the way she had come, and then up and down the
aisle, she knew what it was.  There was no thick layer of dust on the
floor.  She played the light over the floor opposite.  The other pews
were covered: dust on the pews, on the floor, on the books, on the cushions, on
everything.  From the window to the aisle however, there was only the
faintest coating.

The
clean floor was like a path to follow.  It took her to the aisle and then
towards the front of the church.  When the floor ahead was once again dusty,
she stopped and looked down.

Set
into the floor, flush with the slabs, was a huge iron grate that had been cast
in a lattice of tiny diamonds.  Kneeling down, Robyn could see that the crisscross
pattern of the grill covered an opening beneath the church.
 
Shining the torch through the mesh, she could
see steps: steps that were devoid of dust.  Laying the torch on the floor,
the beam angled across the grate so that she could see, Robyn hooked her
fingers into the fretwork and tugged.

The
weight of the grill was monstrous.  Using all of her strength, she
couldn’t move it at all.  She tried placing her feet squarely on the floor
just behind the grate, and crouching down to get better leverage, but although
she felt the grate lift the slightest distance, she couldn’t pull it further
and had to let it fall back into place.

Breathing
heavily from the exertion, Robyn picked up her torch and looked around.

Towards
the back of the church there were more pews, but little else.  Robyn
headed to the front, intent on finding something to help her prise the grate
open.  There were wooden flag poles on the wall and wooden candlesticks on
the altar which would do little good, but she did find a tall, cast iron,
candelabra and a long handled iron candle snuffer.

Dragging
her discoveries to the grate, Robyn fished out a claw hammer from her
bag.  Using the sharp claws to get into the gap between the grate and its stone
surround, she began to lever the grate up.  She managed to lift it enough
to thrust the candle snuffer handle underneath before letting the pressure on
the hammer go and sitting back to catch her breath.  Once recovered, she used
the long handle of the candle snuffer to further lever the grate up. 
Metal screeched on metal and the handle bent, threatening to break but she
persevered.  The noise echoed off of the interior walls; like the church
was howling at her to desist from this unwelcome intrusion, but she would not
stop.

Eventually,
she raised the grill out of its frame by an inch and slid one of the feet from
the more substantial candelabra underneath it.

With
the thicker, stronger candelabra, Robyn raised the grate enough to slide it to
the side leaving a three inch gap.  She then braced her back against a pew
and managed to shove the grate aside with her feet.
 
The gap was wide enough for her to access the
interior.

Excited
and apprehensive, Robyn grabbed her torch and bag and twisted through the gap
to descend into the stygian darkness below.

The
musty smell that had filled the church changed immediately, becoming damper as
an essence of mould and mildew hung in the undisturbed air.  Robyn checked
her footing and let the white beam of the torch light her way as she carefully descended
further.

Above
her, the roof arched beautifully, if not a little low and at the end of the
tunnel like stairway, the space opened up into a room.  Robyn had entered
a crypt underneath the church.  It was small, square, with smooth walls
and a vaulted ceiling.  There was an old oak door at one end and a wooden
piece of furniture leant against the wall on the left.  It looked like an
old pulpit.  In the centre of the small room, the largest and most
prominent feature was a stone coffin. 

Relatively
featureless, the top of the coffin had a smooth and slightly rounded,
lid.  It looked as if it had been built there.

Circling
the coffin, looking for the familiar symbols, Robyn stumbled on something
attached to the uneven flagstone floor.  Her hands shot out to steady
herself, finding the cold stone of the coffin, but she lost her grip on the
torch.  It clattered against the floor and sent a beam of light dancing
around the small confines before it came to a standstill by the wooden door.

Cursing
herself before crouching to pick up the light, Robyn noticed two things. 
The first was a noise. With her ear close to the wood of the door, she could
hear a familiar sound from the other side, a sound that was out of place. 
The second was a glinting in the light of the torch.  Something was
underneath the old wooden podium.

Spellbound,
Robyn crawled forwards.  She couldn’t make out what the object was as it
lay against the cold stone wall, right underneath the wooden structure and she
had no choice but to lie flat on the floor and thrust her arm into the small
space to reach it.  Curling her fingers over her find, Robyn pulled it out
into the light.

Robyn
stared at the highly polished steel in her hand.  The object had a shaft
about ten centimetres long that was hollow and what appeared to be a handle at
one end but the shaft protruded a little and it would be difficult to
hold.  It was in the shape of a cross, but she was certain that it was not
a religious artefact.  Aware that time was
precious,
she put the object in her bag and turned to the door.