Magic Falls Part Fourteen

I march over to him, wanting to slap the cigarette out of his hand, but restraining myself at the last moment.

“Who the hell are you?” I snap at him.

“I’m Jamie Moore,” he says. “Old friend of Jack’s, in’t that right, Jack?”

“I’ve known Jamie for a long time,” Jack says. “A lot longer than you, Darren.”

I look back at Jack. “Then how have I never met him?”

“I’ve only just bloody met you,” he replies.

“I know,” I say. “But…” How do I explain that I’ve already known him for months and months before now? 

I know he accepts the idea, but how do I explain how well I already know him?

“Jamie’s the guy that put me in touch with you in the first place,” he says. “I know I shouldn’t have thrown away your paper, but you have to admit that your story was….well, it was weird, and then Andrea went missing, and Jamie told me you were key to it all.”

“Relax, mate,” Jamie says, walking around me and towards the circle. “The issue here isn’t me. The issue here is this thing, isn’t it?”

“Exactly,” Jack says.

“Y’see, Darren – “ he gestures around the circle. “A bunch of poncy art students sculpt stuff that mean that every kid that walks through these trees, in this secluded part of ground in a secluded area of West Yorkshire is thinking about fairies when they do it.”

He begins to walk around the circle as he talks, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up. “And this is an area of highly concentrated potential for magic. There are a few of them dotted around the country. But areas where ley-lines converge in this kind of number? There aren’t many of them. Bretton Hall is one. Trafalgar Square is another. Glastonbury, Stonehenge, Avebury, the Rollright Stones...there are a handful more, but Bretton? Bretton’s the one everyone forgot about.”

“You’re walking around it widdershins,” I say to him.

“What is that?” Jack asks. “Jamie said it earlier. What is it?”

“Just means anti-clockwise, Jack, that’s all,” Jamie says, continuing to walk. “So, you’ve got this place with this high potential for magic, and then you take all of this concentrated belief of little kiddies believing that fairies live in the area. And that gives off a very bad signal.”

He stops walking. “What kind of signal?” I ask.

He lifts his foot to step into the circle. “The kind the faerie folk listen to.”

He puts his foot down and steps into the circle.

Nothing happens.

“But, see, they don’t want to speak to me.” He says. “See, I reckon Andrea is safe, because the faerie aren’t stupid. They haven’t been doing this because they suddenly got hungry or something.”

“So why are they doing it?” I ask. I’m still rankling at the feeling I’ve been manipulated, but if Jack’s daughter has been taken, then that comes first.

“They’re doing it because of you, Darren.”

Everything suddenly seems very quiet. Very still.

“What?”

“They’re doing it because of you.”

“What the… what do you mean?”

“Did Darren have something to do with Andrea’s disappearance?” Jack asks Jamie.

“Not quite, mate.” He replies. “But think about it. They take the daughter of his best friend. Of one of the Knights. That was sending a message, that was. And one that had to be delivered loud and clear.”

“Jack and I have only just met.” I point out. “How can they know about…”

“Don’t play stupid,” Jamie says, with a thin smile, and he starts walking towards me. “You came back. The faerie, they exist with a… different perception of time to us. So from their point of view, it’s already happened, and it never happened at the same time.”

“You know I came back?”

“I know. They know. Others know.”

I can’t help myself any more, and I rush him, tackling him to the ground. My hands find their way to his collar as I pin him down and shout at him. “Who are you?”

Despite the fact that he landed roughly, he isn’t winded. He just laughs in my face. “Talk about an awkward bloody question.” He says, as he pushes me gently off. “Who I am doesn’t matter. It never mattered. But you’ll find out, don’t worry.”

The laugh takes the wind out of my sails, and I slump back. “How do I know if you’re on our side?”

“You don’t.” he says, lighting another cigarette. “But you don’t have much choice. Look, if it makes you feel better, I don’t have much of a horse in this race. I’m more about keeping the status quo, and that means pushing a few things into the right places. Putting square pegs into round holes, for example. And right now, you’re a square peg, and that circle is looking awfully bloody round to me.”

“You said they want to send me a message,” I say.

“He’s a fast learner, this one, isn’t he?” he says to Jack.

“What message do they want to make clear to me?”

“I’m not sure, but I suspect they want to negotiate. Y’see, they know all about this war that’s coming, and they want to make sure that whichever side wins, they’re not on the losing one.”

“What can you tell me about them?”

“Nothing. It’s against the rules.”

“There are rules?”

“There are always rules. All I’ll tell you is this. Just think about who they usually prey on. Think about it, and otherwise, do what seems appropriate.”

I look at the circle. “Why me?”

“Because of what you are.”

“What do you mean ‘what I am’?”

“Sorry,” he says, standing up. “I misspoke. Obviously. I meant to say ‘who you are’, didn’t I?”

Didn’t he, indeed. I look over at Jack, who is looking… well, is looking completely out of his element.

I think of Nina, and I know what I have to do.

“How do I do this?” I ask. “I need to walk around it, or, say something, or…”

“For most people, sure,” he says. “If they want them. They’re absolutely sodding gasping to speak to you though, Darren. So I reckon all you have to do is to step in.”

“Will this get Andrea back?” Jack asks.

“No guarantees, my son,” Jamie says. “It’s all down to Darren, now.”

They both look at me as I walk to the circle.

I can feel a crackling around it. Like static.

I lift my foot to step into it, and then put it down inside the circle.

As my foot makes contact with the ground, it happens. I just have time to close my eyes

           and                                   

                                            then

                                everything                                          






Continue to Part Fifteen

Magic Falls Part 13

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I’m sure that Bretton would be rather pretty by day, but between the endless winter that’s been causing consistent dark clouds and the fact that afternoon is slipping towards evening, and it just feels desolate and cold.

We drive down past some grey buildings, and park near the bottom of them. Fields with strange sculptures sweep out to our right towards the main buildings, but I can see further out, and the fields go on and on. There’s a river in front of us.

The Hall itself is a large, imposing building. As we walk towards it, Jack points between some of the smaller buildings. “That’s the pillar I was telling you about.”

“Convergence of ley-lines?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are the police?” I ask. “If there have been kids going missing, shouldn’t this place be… I don’t know, under lock-down or something?”

“There’s nothing here, Darren,” he says. “That’s part of the problem. They’ve not found a bloody thing.”

I follow him as we walk past the hall and down towards the river.

“It’s not really good conditions for this kind of thing,” I say. “Wouldn’t we be better doing this in the daytime?”

“I want to show you where she went missing, that’s all. We can start looking around the rest of it tomorrow, but before we do anything else, I want to give you a sense of it.”

I nod. “If that’s important to you.” I don’t fully understand, but I do want to help.

“I…” he hesitates. “It just seems important. To see that bit, and then you have some sense of it.”

“Okay,” I say quietly.

He starts walking again, turning right and up a field, away from the path. The sculptures begin to get less abstract, and more defined.

“It’s not far from here,” he says. “See those trees?”

There’s a sculpture of a man crouching, but it’s giant. He’s set apart from the trees themselves. “Yeah.”

“It’s just the other side of there. This was part of the area the students got to design and build years ago.”

There are strange details, as we walk closer, including a tree in a phone box. Sculptures built into walls and paths and ponds, and utilizing the nature around them.

“I would not want to be drunk around here,” I say. The sheer strangeness of the area means that I miss the village.

“Look down,” Jack says quietly, and I do, towards the foot of the fir trees we are near, and I spot them.

A series of doors, windows and buildings carved into the trees themselves. I drop to one knee to take a proper look. “Wow.”

“I know.”

“They’re impressive.” And they are. A little fairytale village carved into trees. They look functional. “They… look like they fit.”

“They do, don’t they?” he says. “Like they’re meant to be there.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve seen it before, but…”

I stand up. “Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“Why am I here?”

“What?”

“Seriously, what’s going on? There’s something here you’re not telling me.”

He looks away. “Jamie said you should be here.”

I don’t know what Jamie filled his head with, but I’m worried that Jack’s built me up as definitely being able to do something here. I feel like I’m an observer in a play, suddenly being asked to take a lead role, but with no knowledge of what’s meant to happen. Or even what my part is.

Wait.

An idea forms and instantly takes hold.

“Are you telling the truth about Andrea, Jack? I will kill you if – “

“Yes.” I see fear creep across his face, and I almost instantly lose my anger and indignation. “Yes, I’m telling the truth, about Andrea and the others. I just… Jamie convinced me that you’d be able to help, and…I’m desperate, Darren.”

“Okay.” I say. “Okay.”

The area is freaking me out slightly. More than slightly, actually. It feels like it’s…been allowed to grow wild.

“The last time she saw Andrea, she was standing here. She walked over that way – “ he points towards a path. “- for a minute, and then looked back and she was gone.”

He walks over that way and then looks back. I look around, and realize that while there are trees around, there aren’t many places to hide.

“It’s quiet enough here that if someone was around, we’d know about it, I reckon,” I point out. “Someone would have to be actively hiding to have snatched her.”

“That’s what I thought,” Jack says. “If Lorna didn’t see her, then she’d have heard something. She said she was singing a little bit to herself, and then it just stopped.”

One of the plus points about the fields surrounding this area is the comparative lack of hiding places. There are paths leading into another part of the forest, though, and I’m about to look further into them when Jack calls me back.

He points down towards me on the ground. “Look at that,” he says. “That’s strange.”

I look down. The dark, cold and rain are not sharpening my observational powers.

"What is?" I ask.

"Look at the ground. It's different around here."

I try, but for the life of me, I can't see whatever it is that he's talking about.

"What am I meant to be seeing?"

"No, not there," he says. "Take a couple of steps back, and then look again, but don't try to focus on any one part of it."

"You're making it sound like a magic eye painting. I could never do them either."

He gestures around in a circle. "Look. You see it?"

I don't, but I try to do what he says. Instead of looking intently, I try to look more generally, and take in the whole picture rather than a series of details.

And then I see it.

A darker, slightly raised piece of grass, with some mushrooms growing in it. It isn't strong, and it isn't obvious, but once you spot it, it's very much there.

"Strange, isn't it?" He says.

As I look at it, everything I know about it comes immediately to mind. All at once, unbidden.

"It's a fairy ring," I say.

"I don’t know what that is."

"You never heard about them when you were a kid?"

"I didn't pay much attention to things as a kid. I can tell you a lot about TV at the time, but not things I was told."

"They're supposedly planted by fairies. They're how they travel between their world and ours. And if you get trapped by one..."

He looks concerned all of a suddden, and I almost kick myself. "What?"

"...I don't remember. There's something though." Don't tell him about the dancing, I think.

“You know we’re both talking seriously about this, don’t you?” He asks me.

“Are we?”

“Well, I am,” he says. “I know it sounds stupid, but I am. I’m not ruling anything out. Whatever it takes to find Andrea… or…you know…what happened to her.”

I notice the effort he takes to stop his voice cracking. “Then we’re taking this seriously,” I tell him.

“So tell me what it is that happens.”

I take a moment before I do. “They’re traps. By the fairies. For children. You walk around it three times, or five times, or…whatever. It’s like ‘Bloody Mary’. Or ‘Candyman’. Something like that. You… I don’t know, you’re supposed to say a rhyme or a verse or something, and walk around it before trying to cross it."

"Widdershins." A voice that I don’t recognise says.

"What?" I look around, trying to see where it came from.

"You have to go round it widdershins. Or it doesn’t work." the same voice says.

I look behind me, and it takes me a moment to see him, and once I do, I wonder why I didn't see him earlier, as he's standing right there.

"Jamie!" Jack says, with a look of relief.

He's in his forties, I'd guess, and has dirty blonde hair. He looks smart and scruffy at the same time. He's wearing a white shirt and black tie, but it's loose and looks like he hasn't taken it off in days, and it's covered by an old, battered brown mac. He takes a drag from a cigarette. The smoke swirls around him.

"Hello, squire." Jamie says to me. "Been wondering when you'd finally turn up."

Magic Falls Part Eleven

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I open the door and let Jack in.

"What's wrong?"I ask.

"It's my daughter," he says. "She's missing."

The last I'd seen of Jack, he'd driven away, refusing to talk to me any further. I hadn't been expecting this turnaround.

"She lives with her mother, doesn't she?" I ask.

"Yes. I thought you might know that." He wipes his eyes again, and sits down. It is obviously an effort for him to keep his emotions under control.

"You look like you could do with a drink," I say. I certainly could.

"Please."

"What would you like?"

"Do you have whiskey?"

"God, yes."

I walk into the kitchen and pour us both a large drink, and then make my way back, handing him one of them.

"How long has she been missing for?"

"Two weeks now. I... we've been working with the police, but a friend of mine thought that you may know more about this."

"A mutual friend?"

"Jamie Moore?"

I frown. "I don't know him."

"Well, he knows you. He said you may be able to help."

I look down at my whiskey glass, and am slightly disturbed to realise that it is already mostly empty. The last few weeks of living on my own have not led to good habits.

"Tell me what happened." I say. "I'm not sure what I'll be able to do, but if I can help, I will."

"I need someone with an open mind. You already talked about magic. You talked about how more was going to happen. I think it's already happening, and this is what's happened to my daughter."

He is sweating and agitated. I can see his grey hair is flattened with perspiration and hair gel, which is unlike him. "I'm sorry about not believing you last time we spoke. It just sounded so... ridiculous. Unbelievable. "

"But you believe now?"

"Yes."

"What changed your mind?"

"It's connected with what happened to Andrea. It's not easy to explain."

"I'll help if I can," I say. "Please, just ... tell me what happened."

He nurses his drink, while he begins to talk.

I realise that this is the first real conversation with him that we've ever had. Well, that he's ever had. Not counting him surreptitiously throwing away the contact details I had written down for him.

This is surreal. Not just what he was saying, but the knowledge that we'd been such good friends, and this was something that he had never experienced. Last time around, I hadn't approached him first. He'd heard about me and Nina, and sought us out.

This was completely different. And not only because the last time I'd dealt with him, his daughter hadn't gone missing.

When he'd come to me before, he'd proposed the Knights. This time around, I'd effectively pushed the idea onto him. Stupid of me, really. I knew from experience that he generally needed to believe something was his idea in order to think it was a good one.

"It was in a place in West Yorkshire. Near Leeds. Well, Wakefield, really. There's this sculpture park. Used to be a college, too. Arts place.

"My ex-wife, Lorna, she... she took Andrea there for days out. It's a five hundred acre estate, and it's... well, it's lovely, really. It's in the middle of nowhere, and there's a lake, and a learning centre, and a mansion, and a cafe.... it's a nice place. That feels important to point out. It's this nice place in the middle of nowhere.

“And Lorna was there with Andrea, and they were just walking around. Andrea wants to do something to do with nature when she grows up. Landscaping or something, I don't know. But she loves fields, trees, plants... the lot. She's eight years old, and it's all she talks about.

“So there they were, walking around, and there are these bits of the park that are... they're like a fairytale village or something. Silly, really. Done by students back when it was a college. She really likes it.

“The place was deserted. That's what Lorna says, and you know... we don't get on that well now, we try and everything, but... I believe her. She's not stupid. And she takes Andrea's safety carefully. She's not... overprotective, but if she says she knew where she was, then she knew where she was.

“And they were in this field, walking away from these sculptures, and Lorna turned arouud and Andrea was gone. Just gone.”

His voice cracks and he downs his drink.

“The police looked, and they… there was nothing. She just vanished. They closed down the roads, because they thought someone had snatched her at first. But there was nothing.

“It was broad daylight, and there was nobody around. She just vanished.”

He stands up, putting the glass on the table and I notice that his hand is shaking. He turns, then sits. Uncomfortable, unsure if he should stand or not.

“I don’t…” I say, uncomfortable talking at all now. “I don’t know what I can do to help, here. This all sounds strange, but… why do you think…”

“She’s not the only one,” he says. “Don’t you watch the news? There have been others. Children vanishing into thin air. Nobody seeing a thing, but nowhere they could have gone.”

I realize my mouth is open, and my brain tries to catch up. I am speaking again, but not entirely sure what I’m saying. “But what does that have to do with…”

“Jamie said to talk to you. He said that you could help.”

“I…”

This is a friend of mine. I may be something of a mess right now, but Jack is my friend, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“I want you to come with me. I’m going back up there, and I want you to come. Help me search. Help me find her. Please.”