Holy-Stoning
What dark family tradition awaits young Zak one lonely autumn night?
‘Why do I have to go?’
I pull back as my older sister drags me into the briny gusts.
‘We all have to do it.’
‘That’s not a good reason. I don’t want to.’
‘Neither did I, but I’m alive, aren’t I?’
The argument is the same one we’ve had a dozen times this week. The hem of her coat scrapes the ground, picking up a border of dirt, the same flecks of mud making their way up my ankles. Nothing is ever clean. We crest the hill and Fi keeps a hold of my hand, like I might blow away if she lets go. I would, I can find my way back home from here. Ahead, a sweep of land, a gentle U-shape running down to a windswept cottage uncomfortably close to the cliff edge. A few yards to the right, the land drops off into the sea - sometimes literally – and beyond is the promontory that holds the ruined church. This is my first visit to Grandma’s house, but I have heard it described so many times, and vividly, from every conceivable relative, that no aspect of this view is a surprise.
‘Come on, it’s too cold to hang about,’ Fi says, striding down towards the battered pile of stones Grandma calls home. At the threshold, Fi enters without hesitation. But the stones stop me. The grain of ancient sediment whispers a warning, takes the stability from my thighs, the salt-laced breath from my chest. Before me is a dark rectangle, the unknown, the smell of sage, lavender and deep, rich seaweed masking odours I cannot place. I imagine an invisible hand on my stomach, pushing me back. The windy clifftop is as fine a place to stay as any. A real hand lunges from the shadowed doorway and yanks me through.
There is one room, partitioned in the corner where a small wooden bed sits strewn with blankets, and a washbasin and chamber pot in the other. Grandma is already milling the flour. The last time I saw her was after Father died three years ago. She looks ten years older now, her hair fine to the point of transparency, skin leathery, spotted and sagging.
‘Come over, Zak, take the handle,’ she calls, without looking up. She turns a small wheel, forcing two quern stones against each other. A hole at the centre opens to feed in more grain. I cannot delay, it takes only two steps to cross the room and be at her side. She releases the handle into my grip. It’s warm, and as I turn it, the vibrations run in murmurs up my arm. My mouth dries out, and dust from the milling flies everywhere – up my nose, settling on my tongue, on my clothes and clinging to my eyelashes. Gran picks up a small black bowl. It holds a selection of grey chunks that I wish were anything other than what they are. Gran pinches two between the bulbous joints of her fingers and drops them into the miller. Crunch, scrape, crunch.
We clean while the bread is baking. Move dirty rags over the gritty table, sweep the floor with a broom that was not new in the previous century. The wind batters the door from the outside, like it’s trying to warn me, inviting me outside.
‘Stop thinking about it, Zak,’ Fiona says, resting her elbow on her broom. ‘You just eat the bread, speak to the dead, nothing to it.’
‘I don’t want to,’ I croak, my throat still dry from the dust, but they both hear, both eye me like half-starved wolves.
‘What they have to say will guide you on your life’s journey,’ Grandma adds.
I know what they tell kids to get them to eat. But I’ve heard otherwise. The stone comes from St. Helen’s church, ruined by both neglect and coastal erosion, but the site had an older church before, the scene of devastation and murder when it was raided by the Danes. They say the second church shouldn’t have been built over such a place, that it’s cursed, and this is why the sea itself claims it, piece by piece. Others say the stones have healing powers, being still consecrated, and are used to clean their homes or bring luck - Holy-stoning. Gran is the only person I know who makes us eat it.
It smells like regular bread, the top toasted golden, streaked with crusted cracks. I don’t want to touch it, never mind eat it.
‘It might cure you,’ Fi says, with an encouraging nod towards the spectral loaf. I am prone to fainting fits, but I have learned how to fall. It’s not a problem worth eating cursed bread for. My face must display as much.
‘Or it might provide you with a modicum of reverence for your ancestors. Eat the bread,’ Gran says. An order this time. Who knows what dark force she might unleash if I disobey. A pickled toad under my pillow, a straw doll in my image with pins in its forehead. I tear off a chunk of bread and put it in my mouth. Begin to chew. At first it’s crispy, a good hint of salt and some flavour from the rustic grain. Then it softens, my mouth over-watering, a mushy clod forming on my tongue. I can’t swallow, won’t. It mats the roof of my mouth, moulding around my teeth. I’m going to choke, I know it, the stones warned me.
‘Swallow, you idiot!’ Fi hisses, pouring a cup of water, shoving it at me. I lean forward, want to spit it out, scrape at the mushy paste with my fingernails. Gran grips my wrists with whip-stick fingers. I hang over the table, mouth agape, drool hanging in threads.
‘It has you, boy. It’s in you already. You must swallow,’ Gran insists. I squeeze my eyes shut and try. Bit by cloddy bit, it passes into my gullet, and Fiona pours some water into my mouth. When the last of it is gone, I gag, but it does not come back up. Gran yields my hands.
They release me after, ‘to play’. My stomach roils. The wind churns, the sea tosses itself against our cliffs, eating away at the island. Low clouds advance from the west and threaten to engulf everything. The day is gone, and I’m too old to play in the way they mean. I sit on an outcrop of grass, back to the ruined church. I feel it watching me, the souls of the dead villagers who took sanctuary there scratch at my shadow. Maybe there is time to go home, leave them both, go back to where there will be a fire spitting in the hearth and a thick meat stew bubbling away.
I get up, but there’s a characteristic numbing of my fingers, a hollowness in my gut, and I have less than a moment to decide where to fall.
When I wake, all is changed. Night has risen, the smell of burning is in the air, and I ache. All of me aches, as though I’ve aged decades in the time I was senseless.
‘Zak! Zak?’ a voice calls, perhaps Fiona, but she sounds far away, and in the dip of the land here, it might be from any direction. I look about but can’t see the cottage. As I stand, shooting pains fire up my ankles, into my unsteady knees, along my spine. I’m normally a bit stiff after blacking out. This is different. I attempt to straighten, find a curve remains between my shoulders no matter how hard I try to lift my head.
‘Why is it that you faint?’ A second voice asks, hoarse, the rattle of an animal’s last breath.
‘I don’t know,’ I whisper.
‘Remember,’ it says, and hunched, I turn about to find the source of the voice. Shadows gather at my right side, but I cannot face them directly. They remain bodiless. The command is unhelpful. How can I choose to remember something I don’t?
More shadows merge, a ring forms around me. To take a step, I have to swing my hip round, my right leg refusing to bend at the knee. Each time I land on my joints, pain fires up, higher, into my sides, then ribs, collarbone. It doesn’t stop me. I must get away from these arcane things of pure darkness that roll in like the fog. The circle tightens. My breath shallows as my ribcage is restricted. I try to force more air in, and it feels like I’m cracking apart. My hands are useless, arms stuck, bent at the elbow. I manage to raise them, enough so they are at least in front of my face.
‘Bone grows on bone. The more you struggle, the deeper you sink.’
Another guttural moan, echoes of the dead giving me orders.
I can’t think past the pain, the growing sense of entrapment, panic exploding in my chest with a sick sense of inevitability. I cast back, floundering through memory, every bad choice, embarrassment, neighbourhood tragedy. What did I do? What was my fault? The urge to resist, and attempt escape remains. The opaque forms watch on as I jerk against the rigidity of my hips, shoulders, neck. I am hobbled, becoming frozen in place, my bulging joints stretching the skin. My bones creak as they rasp together.
‘Time’s almost up, Zak.’
I overbalance, landing on my side in a blaze of agony. Needles in my flesh like a hundred bee stings, iron hot pokers twisting inwards. At that euphoric precipice between pain and unconsciousness, I see it. The night they came for my parents.
They were smugglers, part of the chain – half the island is – they stored, sometimes transported the goods. I recall an unfamiliar sailor asking about tallies, like there was something missing. A couple of days later, they came back. Him, two others I knew from the ring, and a third. This is what they want. They want to know who killed them. For what? Vengeance? The whole thing was a set-up, accusing my parents so they could go on the take themselves. Everyone knows it, but no one can prove it. No one saw but me.
The third man crunches a fist into my father’s cheekbone. The sailor grabs my mother, wraps an arm round her neck. There is a struggle to keep them quiet, and a second man latches onto my mother’s legs as she lashes out. They argue about what to do next. My father stares at the man before him with such disgust I marvel that he does not wither into ash, but the two remaining set upon him, and put a cushion over his face. Mother reacts wildly, she is strong, and in the fight, there’s a snap, and she goes limp. Father doesn’t last much longer, as the last of the air is pressed from his lungs. Two barrels are rolled out, my parents squashed into one each. The last thing I see is him, a triumphal smile on his face as he disposes of the evidence – my uncle.
Feeling returns to me in terrible waves. I choke on my own breath, shiver uncontrollably. Ice curls over me as a shadow figure passes by my face, pauses, vanishes. They all vanish. My joints slowly shrink, and my second skeleton retracts. I lie still until I am myself again.
‘I know who it was,’ I say, staggering into the cottage. ‘I spoke with the dead.’
Grandma and Fi look at me, don’t speak in the spell of the moment. The half-eaten loaf remains broken. ‘What good will it do?’
‘That’s not for us to say. The dead guide you as they see fit. They want it known,’ Gran says softly. I am weak, the image of my mother wrestling against those men comes into mind, but I pull back from the urge to slip away. I take a deep breath, and speak the names.