The Dream Weavers by Barbara Erskine (books you have to read txt) 📕

with this tomorrow.’ She was right. It had become cold in the room. In the fireplace the logs had burned down to ash.

The following afternoon, after consulting his map, Simon drove his children over to the village of Marden, near the Iron Age fort of Sutton Walls, and down a long lane towards the church. Besides being the scene of Ethelred’s muder, this was one of the places, he explained, where they had found archaeological traces of Anglo-Saxon habitation, making the fields round here a potential site for Offa’s palace.

Emma stood at the back, just inside the door of the church, watching her father and her brother as they wandered up the aisle to stand in front of the chancel, staring up at the high windows. Normally she was the one to poke around old churches while her brother scoffed about the stupidity of people believing the garbage that was religion when it was nothing but mind control over the masses, fading him out with the ease of long practice, quietly enjoying the beauty of old stone and ancient art, but there was something about this church that made her uncomfortable. The Church of St Mary the Virgin was very large, almost as broad as it was long, airy and friendly. Or at least it should feel friendly. Behind her, someone had turned a corner of the nave into a library and there were masses of books there, lots of notices on a board, kids’ toys, but there was also a huge amount of dark wood here at the back. So, where was the gushing spring her father had mentioned?

There was a door in the panelling at the rear of the church with St Ethelbert’s Room written on it. She tiptoed across and pushed it open. It led into a dark, empty room lined with chairs. There, standing rather forlornly in the middle of the floor, was a narrow wooden structure, looking more like a plant stand than anything else, with a brass plate labelling it as St Ethelbert’s Well. She studied it, puzzled, then knelt and lifted the small wooden lid at its base. A circular hole, dry at the bottom, was all there was to see of the sacred spring. She felt a massive jolt of disappointment. She had, she realised, been expecting something much more spectacular: bubbling water, or at least a magical pool. Not Lourdes perhaps, but not this. She gazed down it for several seconds, then slowly replaced the lid and stood up, glancing back through the door.

Up at the east end of the church, Simon and Felix had stepped up into the polygonal apse with its huge network of roof beams. Walking back into the nave Emma felt her stomach suddenly churning uncomfortably. Her pulse was racing. She wondered if she was going to be sick. Clutching the back of the pew nearest to her, she closed her eyes and tried to breathe deeply and slowly. After a minute she opened her eyes again and saw a young man, no, a boy, much the same age as Felix, standing there, between her and the porch. Tall, wrapped in a long cloak, his eyes were wide, scared, pleading as they sought her face, his mouth open as if in protest as her ears were filled with the sound of a long agonised scream.

The next thing she knew, she was running through the churchyard, dodging between the graves, heading through the long grass as fast as she could, twisting her ankle on the uneven ground.

‘Emma! Wait!’ Her father’s voice, behind her.

Get away. She had to get away.

She came to a stop on the bank of the river that flowed along the edge of the churchyard, staring desperately down into the water. Somewhere she could hear a bell ringing.

‘Emma, what is it?’ She flinched as Simon put his hands on her shoulders. She was shaking violently as she subsided onto her knees on the muddy ground.

‘Bloody hell, Em!’ Felix appeared at her father’s side. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’

She was gasping, unable to speak, her heart still thundering in her chest. Simon slipped off his jacket and wrapped her in it, then he squatted down beside her, his arms round her. ‘It’s all right, he murmured. ‘You’re safe. You’re OK now.’

They stayed like that for several minutes. Felix opened his mouth, about to make a facetious remark, then he thought better of it. He leaned against a tombstone nearby, watching his sister as her colour began to return.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last. It came out as a whisper. ‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘That’s all right, darling.’ Simon gently pulled her against him, feeling her body relax a little.

‘Can you hear the bell?’ She put her hands over her ears.

That was too much for Felix. ‘The bells; the bells!’ he intoned in a voice full of mock horror.

‘Stop it, Felix!’ his father rounded on him. ‘What bell, Em? I can’t hear a bell.’

She swallowed hard. ‘It’s stopped.’

‘Can you stand up?’ Simon straightened painfully. The ground was damp and cold, and a bitter wind was finding its way into his bones now he had given up his jacket.

Emma nodded. She scrambled to her feet and stood forlornly looking down into the river. ‘What happened to that boy?’

‘What boy, darling?’

‘The boy in the church. The boy who screamed.’

‘It was you that screamed, Em!’ Felix put in. ‘I’ve never heard anything like it. They pay women who can scream like that, you know, for film soundtracks.’

Emma ignored him. ‘His face was so kind; and it was filled with so much horror.’

‘Excuse me!’

They hadn’t noticed the elderly man approaching across the churchyard. ‘Are you all right?’ He was bent, his face weathered. As he reached them, he was pulling off a pair of gardening gloves. Simon looked up to see where he’d come from and noticed a wheelbarrow, fork and spade under a tree. ‘I couldn’t help seeing the young lady was upset.’

‘She’s fine, now. Thank you.’ Simon gave him an