It was like Stonehenge. Terah found himself in shock. After everything he’d experienced, he’d not been prepared for this. “Stone circles,” Calum said on their short walk through the woods to the clearing, “have an ancient pedigree. Stonehenge and Avebury are the most famous, but you find them all over the world. Up in the Orkney Islands the Ring of Brodgar is in impressive sight, standing out alone on Stenness. People don’t hear about it because it takes considerable effort to get there, but once you’ve seen it—felt it—you’ll know that these stone circles were numinous places. We don’t know why they built them, but the put considerable resources into doing so.
“Or think of Göbekli Tepe. At least ten millennia old, and fine work indeed. And it was built in Turkey before agriculture even developed. There are stone circles in Israel. In northwest France. They’re likely to be found in other locations as well. I knew that when I finally had a place of my own, I would have to contribute to the tradition. The Ring of Rothochtaid isn’t ancient, of course, but it is megalithic.”
Terah was in awe. He walked up to the massive stones. “I visited Stonehenge once, but you had to keep to the trail, far from the trilithons. This is something else.”
“You can feel the power, can’t you? There’s something spiritually powerful about stone circles. That’s what led Lindsey here.”
Such was the draw of the towering megaliths that Terah didn’t take the excuse to look at her.
“I was struck by lightnin’ right in the middle.”
That drew Terah’s gaze. “Here?”
“I’d escaped from a bad situation. I’d been wanderin’ through the woods, and I found this place. I was transfixed, like you are. I wasn’t worried about the storm.”
“I saw it happen,” Calum confirmed. “She wasn’t harmed. I took it as a sign. She became my pupil.”
“But why?” Terah asked, hand on a large monolith.
“What do you know about geology, Terah? Not much? What are stones but concentrations of minerals. Don’t worry, I’m not some crystal reader. Still, we do well to pay attention to minerals. Our bodies are made of them. Yes, organic, flexible, mobile, but minerals. Everything comes from stars, they say. Well, everything physical. Science still has trouble explaining exactly what life is, but we assume stones aren’t animate. They don’t move on their own. Or do they?”
“Calum showed me a film of trees movin’—not in the wind, but actually movin’ across the ground. Time lapse, shot over years. They move, but not on our timescale.”
“And so do rocks,” Calum added. “We call it erosion. We say that they are just obeying gravity. What if there’s more to it than that? Really long timescales we call geologic ages. We know even the continents move. They’re far too slow for us to see, but they do move. Even if you can’t let your mind go that far, consider that we’re made of the same things, in different concentrations. In my days as a commodities trader I learned quite a lot about natural resources—crass capitalistic label that it is. Minerals have always been deemed quite valuable.
“You asked about stone tape over breakfast. The science of ghosts—yes, there is such a thing—the science of ghosts lags behind other sciences because it receives very little funding from universities, governments, or corporations. Although people are utterly concerned about what happens after death and ghosts have been reported from all civilizations throughout history all across the world, the science of ghosts is laughed right out of higher education. We haven’t yet figured out how to measure the non-material. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Privately funded research groups do explore ghosts scientifically. No, I don’t mean those guys on television who take high tech equipment and call that science. Serious work, low profile, slowly, steadily adding to our knowledge of the spiritual world.
“One of the theories that has developed about ghosts, particularly those that are non-interactive, is that they are kind of like tape recordings. They can be seen doing the same activities in the same place, over and over. They ignore people who happen to see them, just like the figures on television ignore viewers. How could they be ‘taped’? The qualities of some stones seem to be conducive to keeping ghosts around. Particularly granite. Around here we don’t have tons of granite like some mountainous regions do, but other mineral combinations may do the same thing, but less effectively.
“Concrete isn’t exactly a new invention. It is big industry in this area, however. Mostly they use local rock—why pay for shipping stone if you can use what the local quarry has? And making entire buildings out of concrete is something new, relatively speaking. Ghosts have been reported in poured concrete structures. The thing is, the stone is broken and mixed up. How would a recording survive?” He looked at Lindsey. “I suspect stone tape couldn’t account for the ghosts at Honest Oahusha for that reason. I’ve been thinking about it. They must be a different variety of ghost.”
“And Wednesday is a demon, not a ghost,” she confirmed. “We saw some strange things there. I saw them long before Terah showed up. Wednesday was always havin’ sex with ghosts. I figured he was a stone tape, but the ghosts were interactive. Some of them, anyhow.”
“Interactive how?”
“They moved stuff around. Heavy stuff. They knew I was there. Mostly they left me alone, but they did interact some times.”
“Their love making,” Terah blushed, “seemed real enough. I thought they were actual people. That’s how I met Lindsey.”
“Whoa, let’s explain that. I found Terah watchin’ ‘em go at it. I knew he was there, makes more noise than a bulldozer. I hadda make sure he wasn’t a threat.”
Calum nodded. He spread his arms expansively. “This stone circle may be fairly recent, but it participates in the creation of energy that ancient peoples began exploring. It drew Lindsey, among others, to my home. And some of the other visitors have been most unexpected indeed.”
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