1940
Samina knew she was dreaming. She knew without any doubt that her physical body was still lying safely beneath a light cotton sheet in her stuffy little bedroom in London. She knew that elsewhere in the house lamps burned, water pipes quietly clanked and her father pottered around, keeping busy. A night owl, Marcus Hart always wrote his best work in the hours just before dawn. Samina knew all this, yet she was still afraid.
Beneath her bare feet, the grass was damp and chilled, while above her head the sky was a great swathe of crisp deep blue, cloudless, the stars pale and indistinct. In her ears echoed the roar of the sea, waves crashing onto rocks and cliffs. She could smell the summer night; humid and alive, a faint but sinister fragrance of fire overlaying the more benign scent of nature. Her mouth hummed with the metallic taste of fear. Her senses were alert and functioning, all insisting that this was no dream. That this was real.
In her bed, Samina moaned and turned as in the dream she was drawn forward. Up a sharp incline through bracken, gorse, and heather, and past a twisted, tortured tree, stunted by the constant battering of the wind. This was a place where her physical feet had never walked, where she had never drawn breath, but somehow she knew it well. The landscape was alien, yet familiar; terrifying, yet compelling.
She moved around a curving corner, pushing back her hair as it immediately blew back into her face. Samina could taste the tang of salt on the wind, the air so clean in her lungs. There was no smog here, no smoky chimneys and pollution, only salt and grass. Over the rhythmic peal of the sea, she could now hear the steady beat of drums; so there were people present too? She wanted to hesitate, to linger here for an age, knowing that nearby something bad was waiting, something terrible, but there was no choosing in this dream.
A faint cry of pain sent fresh fear to paralyse her legs. Standing, shaking, her hands trembling in the faint light, Samina gathered together the last of her courage to step out past a shoulder of rock and gorse, and simultaneous terror, shock, and recognition shuddered through her.
A stone circle. A dozen standing stones, much taller than her, seven or eight - possibly even ten or eleven - feet high. Close to the cliff’s edge stood an arch; two even taller, more slender stones, capped with an almost level lintel stone. Ten further stones stood almost equidistant apart, some leaning as others stood as straight as they had the day they were lifted into position. Near the centre of the circle was a much larger, but squat stone, maybe six feet tall; jagged, like a rotten tooth, pointing towards the clear sky.
Gathered in the circle were many figures, white-robed and hooded, terrifying in their featureless state. Samina felt herself shrinking back towards the shelter of the rocks, her fear instinctive, but she needn’t have worried. They were unaware of her, concentrating instead on the jagged stone and the horizon beyond the arch, so Samina moved forward, her heart hammering in her throat. The light was growing stronger, and she could see the scabrous central stone more clearly now. Samina stopped again, her heart filling with horror and her mind with terror.
A boy stood on the damp grass, chained to the central stone facing the gateway, the sea, and the sky beyond, his head hanging down for his chin to rest on his collarbone. A twisted circle of thorns clung to his hairless scalp, a woven bramble crown piercing and tearing his delicate flesh, and vivid bruises and blackish blood stained the vulnerable, pale skin of his naked head.
The boy was crucified, his arms strung backwards, taut against the stone, and his feet pulled apart, fastened to chains at the base. Fighting fresh nausea, Samina realised that those chains pierced his hands and feet, actually passing through his flesh, but she could see that although the chains themselves were heavy and rusting, the large steel links puncturing his hands and feet were new, marked only by blood and not rust.
Banding his upper arms were circlets of dull metal, but from this distance, Samina couldn’t tell if they were decoration or shackle, while around his wrists and ankles thick cuffs, obvious bonds, pinched and scoured his skin. His naked body and limbs were smeared with blood, black in the grey light, and dark bruises mapped past brutality on his flesh. At his bleeding feet smoked the remains of a small fire, the ground scorched black and loose ash swirling in the dawn breeze.
A scene of shocking brutality, but more than that, the boy’s plight frightened Samina because she sensed significance in it. A terrible, monstrous purpose.
The stars were fading, the night dying. Samina was aware that while some of the gathered people had their eyes fixed on the boy, others were intently watching the horizon. Even in her terror, instinct told her there was something special about this new day, this particular dawn. The drums seemed louder now, and she could see two robed men beating on them, their hands flying in perfect rhythm. One of them chanted along to the beat, his voice haunting, and shivers passed down her spine.
As pale light broke over the tranquil sea one man, tall and lean, stepped towards the boy, leaning down to lift his chin and kiss his bloody mouth. Now that the boy’s face was more visible to her, Samina could see vicious bruises, swollen features, and raw, scraped flesh. Despite hearing no words and understanding the man did not speak to the boy, she nevertheless realised there was communication going on between the two. She sensed great tenderness, compassion, even love, but how could that be? How can the man love a child and yet torture him in such a dreadful way? The concept was beyond her comprehension.
Chanting and drums ceased, an expectant silence falling as the sky brightened with the dawn. The man reached out to tenderly touch the boy’s cheek before he kissed his brow, stepping away and tipping his head to the sky.
As his hood fell back Samina gasped in both wonderment and fear to glimpse a face so beautiful, so strange, it only added to her conviction that this entire scene couldn’t possibly be real. His skin, lit by the rosy pre-dawn light, was bone-white and flawless. High, sharp cheekbones sat below long, almost slanted, eyes of an indeterminable colour but most definitely dark. A narrow mouth was set unsmiling above a firm, angular clean-shaven chin, and pale blond hair fell down his back to the base of his spine. He looked like an angel, Samina thought randomly. Not a pretty, Nativity angel from a child’s story, but a serpent-eyed, angel who could call on the wrath of God and destroy worlds with a sweep of his hand. Instinctively stepping backwards, she felt the cold, immovable rock at her back, and she wished with all her heart that she were safely home in Highgate, but the dream refused to end and let her go.
From the people in the circle rose a faint murmur evolving into song as the drums sounded again, louder and faster. Her attention was drawn back to the sea, and Samina could see a sliver of red on the horizon, rays of crimson on the undulating waves. She gasped as a glowing red orb rapidly climbed out of the sea, becoming orange, turning to gold, brightening with every second to bleach the sky and disperse the night. Long rays of perfect light broke onto the grass at their feet, the sun rising swiftly until the moment it appeared to pause, hanging in the gateway, perfectly spaced between the left and right stone. A heartbeat of such beauty and awe Samina forgot to be afraid.
The chanting and drums faded again, and in the exquisite silence that followed, the angel-man threw back his head and arms to speak words in a strange language that she didn’t understand. He called out to the north, the south, the west, and finally to the climbing sun in the east. After addressing the dawn in alien, guttural words, he drew a long-bladed knife from his robe, returning to face the boy and bringing Samina’s fear crashing back. The sun rose above the stone lintel and, with perfecting timing, the angel-man allowed the weapon to drop. The knife flew, a newborn sun shimmering holy fire on a silver blade, falling to the boy’s chest to open his flesh. Crimson blood flowed with terrifying suddenness, streaking his white skin to pool on the scorched earth at his feet as he slumped in his fetters.
Unable to help herself, Samina screamed and screamed, horrified to realise with heart-stopping panic that they were turning towards her. Nightmarish faceless creatures in their dark hoods. The angel-man frowned. Lord, could they see her? Could they possibly hear her? But this was only a dream. Wasn’t it?
She fled, terrified of what they would do to her if they caught her. Stumbling away from the circle, back along the rough cliff-top path towards a distant white building, she ran and ran. Panting, crying, sobbing...
Sunrise Photo by Mike Quine (2021) - used with permission
Copyright © 2024 The Kindred - All Rights Reserved.
Powered by GoDaddy