Hard Light (25 page)

I looked at him dubiously. “Kind of bizarre souvenirs. Is that what they sell in their shop?”

“The Boudicca shop's mostly British antiquities—legal ones. They have suppliers out in the field; everything's registered before they take it on to sell. But the grave goods from Kethelwite, that's what they used to open the shop after Mallo got out of prison. Up until then it had all just been lying around their flat. Like I said, souvenirs. Tamsin was furious—she said the artifacts belonged to her, she thought of them as family heirlooms. She went into a red rage when she found out they'd been sold.”

“That's when they all fell out?”

He nodded, and his fingers closed around the bone disc. I didn't stop him from gently sliding it from my grasp.

“This,” he said, and held it up. “This was mine. I found it when I was ten, that time in the fogou, and I gave it to Poppy as a present. I wrapped it and everything.”

As he spoke, he turned the disc, tracing the eye on each side. “I just thought it was so amazing—an eye! The bizarre thing is that the few thaumatropes they've discovered in Europe predate our barrows by thousands of years. So how did it get here? Trade routes? Or did someone independently come up with the idea in West Penwith five thousand years ago?”

“You know an awful lot about some pretty obscure shit.”

“I grew up surrounded by it.”

“All those ruins—no one ever studied them? No excavations? Archaeologists, nothing like that?”

Adrian shrugged. “The barrows go back thousands of years. So yes, at some point someone must have explored them, a farmer or maybe one of Tamsin's ancestors. Gentleman antiquarian. But archaeologists or treasure hunters? Absolutely not. That land was in Tamsin's family for centuries, and they did not look kindly upon trespassers. So, no Victorian antiquarians raiding the tombs. No crazy hippie witches, except for Tamsin's friends. Every cairn and field system in the UK is on the ordnance survey map, or in Julian Cope's book—he begged Tamsin to let him look at the fogou. Every
rock
in this country is mapped—except the ones at Kethelwite.”

“What about Google Earth?”

“From the air, all you can see is moor—gorse, blackthorn, maybe some rocks. Everything's hidden in plain sight.”

He handed the thaumatrope back to me. I looked at him in surprise. “You don't want it?”

“If I'd wanted it, I wouldn't have given it to Poppy.” After a long moment, he nodded. “No, you keep it. I think she would have wanted you to have it.”

I stared at him, then at the bone disc. Finally I slipped the rawhide over my head again. “She told me a fan gave her one of these after a show one night in Paris. This would've been before you and her … got involved. Did she ever tell you about that?”

He pondered before answering. “I'm pretty sure not—it's something I would have remembered.”

“You're kidding me.” My disbelief flared into outright suspicion. “Two different people gave her the exact same thing? The same
prehistoric
thing?”

Adrian smiled. “You know, it doesn't surprise me one bit.”

He turned to gaze out at the moor. “Poppy didn't believe in coincidence. She thought the world had a plot, even if we didn't understand what it was. That there might be consequences to our actions that we'd never understand or even know about, but that would all make sense, if you could stand back far enough to see the pattern.”

He turned to me. “Haven't you ever felt that way?”

“Never,” I said. But I was no longer sure that was true.

 

31

We got back into the Land Rover. “Who lives here?” I asked Adrian as he pressed the ignition button.

“People who can't afford to move. And a lot of people who can—every other farm's a second home now. There was a tinning industry here for thousands of years, one of the oldest industrial sites in Europe. But the last mine closed in the 1990s. The fishery's pretty much been destroyed. You have gastropubs and holiday camps—caravans, surfers at St. Ives. But the farmers barely get by.”

We rounded a blind curve. Ahead of us, the moor sheared off into cliffs, hundreds of feet high. Beyond was the sea—deep indigo churned white along the rocky shore. I saw no sign of human habitation. It didn't look like land's end but world's end.

Without warning, the Land Rover halted beside a block of granite painted with faded white letters. KETHELWITE FARM. Beyond, a dirt track arrowed into the moor. Knee-high ruts were gouged into the soil, where the snow was already starting to melt. Adrian pulled out his e-cigarette and drew at it, exhaling blue vapor into the chilly air. Finally he gunned the motor and pulled the Rover onto the dirt track.

The road to the farm was almost a mile long, across rock-strewn fields that had long since reverted to moor. Gorse, desiccated heather and bracken, lethal-looking coils of blackthorn. The ocean might have been a thousand miles away. Adrian drove one-handed, deftly steering past a few contorted trees and countless piles of stones, easing the Rover up vertiginously steep, teeth-jarring tracks, up one hillside then down the other.

We reached a fast-moving stream, with a ramshackle bridge of buckled boards balanced on stone piers. I clutched the door handle as the Rover jounced across, but Adrian seemed utterly at ease. His urban skin had peeled away; the lines in his face smoothed out as Poppy's had when she first showed me the thaumatrope.

“I remember making that one.” He pointed to a heap of gray rocks. “Poppy would bring us down here and watch while we stacked cairns. That's what we did for fun. And you can see just how much fun we had.”

There must have been hundreds of cairns, some only three or four stones laid neatly atop each other, others four or five feet tall. I pointed to a massive stone fortress that loomed atop a distant promontory. “Did you make that?”

“That's Carn Scrija—Castle Scream. Natural outcropping.”

I squinted at the huge structure. “I can see a window.”

“Natural phenomenon. When the wind comes howling through that hole, you'd swear it was a person screaming. Hang on—”

The Land Rover crept down one last hill, slowing to a halt when we reached the bottom. Adrian let the shifter slip from his hand. The engine died.

“Home again, home again, jiggety jig,” he said.

Before us stretched a compound of stone buildings separated by bare earth churned into icy muck. A grim, two-story granite farmhouse, with a few deep-set windows and a low-pitched roof; long low barns of the same charcoal-gray stone; a number of makeshift sheds. It all looked untidy but not neglected.

Some outbuildings were of the same vintage as the house and barn—1700s, I guessed. Others were constructed of rusting corrugated metal and plywood, two-by-fours and cannibalized car bodies. A hut made of flat gray stones stood alongside a child's plastic sandbox shaped like a turtle, filled with rocks not sand. A doll clung to the metal chain of a sagging swing set. I saw an Alfa Romeo convertible, its cloth roof in shreds, and an antique tractor buried up to its axles in mud. Farm implements that belonged in an agricultural museum: scythes, wooden ox yokes, rusted axes.

Behind a metal fence near the stone barn, a shaggy brown cow bent over a pile of hay. It raised its head to regard us, its horns twin crescents above long-lashed black eyes. A timeworn sign perched above the barn's open door, and I recognized the logo for
Thanatrope,
with its rusted pylon and ghostly eye.

“What the
fuck
?”

Behind us, Krishna sat bolt upright and stared out the window. “Where the fuck are we? What are you
doing
?”

She tried to open the back passenger door, kicking at it frantically, but I knew her fury barely masked raw fear.

“Hey, chill,” I said.

“Krish, please—” Adrian began.

“Don't you fucking chill me!” She punched my arm, hard, then Adrian's. He flinched as she screamed, “Where's Tolly?
Where's Tolly?
”

I jumped from the car and yanked the back door open, grabbing her by one leg. Krishna fell out, Bruno's overcoat flopping around her like a blanket. “Shut the fuck up, okay? We're in—someplace.”

I looked accusingly at Adrian, who was trying to help Krishna up.

“Penwith,” he gasped. West Pen—
ow!
Goddamn it, Krish—”

“You're a fucking pervo!” She stumbled to her feet, shoved him away, and stared at me venomously. “And you! You drugged me up!”

“You did that all by yourself,” I snapped. “Do you even remember who I am? I'm Cass—we met at the Banshee in Camden Town.”

“Camden?” She blinked, pushed her matted hair from her face, and looked around. “What is this place?”

I looked at Adrian. “I'm gonna let you field that one.”

“Krishna, I need you to listen to me.” Adrian's deep voice seemed to drop another octave. “Something bad happened. Very bad.”

Krishna paled. “What?”

He gave her a quick account of Morven's and Mallo's deaths, but with no mention of Poppy. Krishna began to cry.

“No, no, no…”

“I know, it's horrible.” Adrian laid a tentative hand on her shoulder. “I'm sorry I had to tell you.”

“Did you go the police?” Krishna's voice faltered.

“No. I thought it was more prudent to leave.”

“With her?” Krishna whipped around to fix me again with that Medusa glare. “Me, now Adrian—are you having it off wth him too?”

Adrian said, “Don't be stupid, Krish.”

“Stupid? You did everyone else, right? You and…”

She began to cry again, smacking her palms against the car. Adrian ran a hand through his hair. He turned to get his backpack from the Rover and hoisted it over his shoulder.

“Stay here,” he said. “In the car. Keep your heads down. The keys are in there. Krish, if you see anyone coming, text me.”

“Where are you going?” I demanded.

“I need to talk to Tamsin.”

He walked off, his Doc Martens ringing against the frozen ground. Krishna clutched the too-big coat around her spindly frame. Her eyes widened.

“Tamsin's,” she repeated, her teeth chattering. “That's where we are?”

“I think so.”

“Fuck me.”

“Do you know her?”

“Morven's told me about her. She—”

She turned to scan the outbuildings and muddy drive, frowning. “I been here, I think. When I was a kid. With the caravan. My mum and dad knew someone here.”

“Tamsin?” I asked. Krishna shrugged. “What about a girl named Poppy Teasel? A singer.”

“I've heard that song,” she said softly. “‘The wind, the wind…' My mum used to play that in the caravan. You know her? Poppy?”

“I've met her. Amazing voice.”

Krishna's face twisted. Her eyes narrowed: She looked at me as though I'd struck her. She drew a long hissing breath, and began to sing.

“The wind, the wind, the wind blows high

All the children say they'll die

For want of the Golden City…”

I felt as though I might jump out of my skin. As uncannily as she'd channeled Ronnie Spector singing “Be My Maby” at the Banshee, she now channeled Poppy Teasel, head thrown back as she gazed into the sky. Moisture glistened beneath her eyes as she repeated the last line, her voice rising to a shout that became a hoarse scream.

“For want of the Golden City

For want of the Golden City

For want of the Golden City…”

She fell silent and began to tremble uncontrollably inside the heavy overcoat, hugging her arms to her chest. My flesh crawled: The song's final notes rang in my head like the impact of a blow. After a long moment, I forced myself to speak.

“Back there in London, when we found you—heroin?”

“Not your fucking business,” she said dully. “I drank too much, is all. And it wasn't heroin, it was K.”

“What's going on with Adrian? Are you and he involved?”

Krishna gave me a look that combined repulsion and disbelief. “You having me on? Not if he were the last man in London.”

She stared at the house, then broke into a run, her feet sliding across the icy ground. When she reached the door, she flung it open and stormed inside. Seconds later I heard her excoriating someone in an enraged shriek.

“… never fucking told me!”

I dug my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket, shivering. I waited to see if anyone would emerge from the house, but the argument continued unabated, Adrian's deep voice vying with Krishna's.

The frigid wind whipped at me so relentlessly, I might not have been wearing a jacket at all. I pulled up my collar. Across the muddy yard, the Highland cow looked up to regard me with eyes dark and liquid as Krishna's. It stepped to the barbed-wire fence, shook its head, and snorted, nostrils flaring, before turning to race across its paddock, hooves churning the frozen mud.

I got my bag from the Land Rover, found the bottle of Vyvanse, and took four. I opened one of the screwtop wine bottles from the service area and drank until I felt the familiar burn in my chest.

I capped the bottle and stuck it back in my bag. A few yards away, the stone barn loomed dark against the early morning sky. I trudged over and stopped in front of the open doorway.

Above me, the sign painted with the
Thanatrope
logo knocked rhythmically against the wall in the wind. The eye made sense, now that I knew its origin in the bone amulet around my neck.

But the pylon remained inexplicable, though not out of place within this barren landscape of stone and ancient ruins. I shut my eyes and saw molten whorls of crimson where the sun struck my eyelid, the skeletal outline of the pylon.