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<h1>10</h1>

<p>'Meet Professor Sannholm,' Jimmy Allison said, introducing me to a small, fair-haired man with owlish, round-framed spectacles.</p>

<p>'Arthur, meet Nick Ryan.'</p>

<p>We shook hands. The professor was wiry and had a strong, firm grip. His hands were rough and calloused, surprisingly working-man's hands, on a lean frame with an academic face.</p>

<p>
    'Arthur's been working on his dig,' Jimmy said. We were in the lounge of the Chandler on the evening after I'd taken Barbara and Paddy on their picnic. It was still warm and sultry. The lager was cool and welcome, and the professor was no slouch when it came to downing half a pint in one swallow.</p>

<p>'Thirsty work,' he said, 'but very rewarding. It's been a good summer. I'll be reluctant to get back to campus, but what we've found on your rock should keep us going for a full term, thanks to Jimmy.'</p>

<p>
    'Arthur's found another wall,' Jimmy said.</p>

<p>'Not quite a wall. A ring. A concentric ring,' said the professor.</p>

<p>'Really quite amazing, really. It was Jim here who first led me to suspect the Roman fortification which we dug up some years back. Lovely work. A real solid wall.</p>

<p>'What puzzled us then, and still puzzles us now, is that they seem to have built it for no reason. There were no fortifications inside the wall, but there were some minor Roman artefacts outside. They must have just built it and packed up and left. In fact, it wasn't theirs at all. They just built up on top of an even earlier dyke. We think it's from a much earlier time than bronze age. It's got a typical paleolithic layer construction of old red sandstone. Quite fascinating actually.'</p>

<p>The professor was off and running on what was obviously his passion.</p>

<p>'And what's this other wall?' I asked.</p>

<p>'Well, it's hardly that, really. More an upraised ditch, as a matter of fact. It's concentric with the first wall, parallel to the dyke, but at least sixty yards away. If it's an earlier development, then it must indeed be old. I think we could be thinking in terms of about five to six thousand years ago. Much older than Stonehenge. In fact, if I'm correct, this will be one of the earliest fortifications on record.'</p>

<p>'I would have thought that the rock was fortification enough,' I said.</p>

<p>'Well, you would think so. But the dyke goes around Ardmhor in a semi-circle. I'm assuming that it was a sort of stockade, maybe to keep cattle in and thieves out. Like a walled garden. We still haven't found anything on the rock itself. Maybe it was too exposed for actual habitation. Perhaps it was a last-ditch retreat in case the first defences were breached. We don't know yet, but the finding out is sure to be interesting.'</p>

<p>Professor Sannholm - he insisted that I call him Arthur - took a second mouthful of his pint when he stopped for breath. 'Lovely stuff, that.'</p>

<p>I ordered another two and a whisky and beer chaser for Jimmy. Arthur lifted his and sunk another huge mouthful.</p>

<p>'Sweating like a horse, after a day's honest toil,' he said when he came up for air. 'Now, where was I?'</p>

<p>'Up to your armpits in mud,' Jimmy said, winking at me over his glass.</p>

<p>'Ah, no, as a matter of fact, it's all pretty good clay, mixed in with shingle. Polished river-bottom stuff, you know. Probably that part of the peninsula was under water just after the ice age. The land's been rising ever since, you know, since the ice retreated and all that weight was taken off.</p>

<p>'Anyway, the inside dyke is much smaller than the Roman wall. Just a series of small humps joined together and overgrown with moss and what have you. If you go just past the hedgerow you'll see where we've been digging.</p>

<p>'I wasn't convinced that it was a wall until we did a survey of the whole line. It was too parallel. Too much of a coincidence. Possibly the first stockade was too small when the population expanded, and they had to build again much further out to give them more space.'</p>

<p>I suddenly recalled old Kitty MacBeth and her tale. Her story didn't allow for an expanding population at all. Quite the reverse.</p>

<p>'So after the survey, I organised a dig, just to see what was there. Over the last few weeks we've taken off the top soil, and we found the shingle, which made us pretty certain that it was indeed man-made. You don't get shingle so near the surface there.</p>

<p>'The presence of shingle meant that it had been churned up a long time ago, but not as long as it had been since it was laid down initially. There wasn't anybody about here at that time, not unless they could have lived under two thousand feet of ice, that is.'</p>

<p>'Shingle doesn't sound like normal wall-building material,' Jimmy said.</p>

<p>'Yes, you're right of course,' Arthur said, brightly. He turned to me with a smile: 'If I could only persuade Jimmy to come and work with me I could get him a bursary, you know. He knows more about archaeology than my graduates, I'll swear.'</p>

<p>'Is there anything you don't know'? I asked Jimmy. 'You're a one-man encyclopaedia.</p>

<p>
    'I've just had more time than you to read the best books,' Jimmy said. 'Anyway, I wouldn't enjoy it if I was paid for it. Hobbies are for fun.'</p>

<p>'What about your organ playing?'</p>

<p>'Oh, that's business. The church can afford it,' Jimmy said, chuckling. 'If I get a better offer I'll play the Apollo.'</p>

<p>Arthur was winding up for his next lecture, gulping his lager. 'Today we found the definite proof. We'd dug down about six feet with no sign of anything but the conglomerate of shingle and clay, and then we hit the jackpot.'</p>

<p>'Well, tell us what you've brought up this time,' Jimmy demanded.</p>

<p>
    'Bones,' I said.</p>

<p>Arthur spluttered in mid-swallow, almost spraying the bar with lager. He turned to me, amazed. 'How the devil did you know what I was going to say?'</p>

<p>'Just a lucky guess,' I told him. Jimmy was looking at me with a strange expression. Arthur just stared.</p>

<p>'Well, you're perfectly right. That's just what we
    <em>did</em> find. And the remarkable thing about it is that it's unlike any other burial site I've ever worked on.'
</p>

<p>
    'It's a burial site, then?' Jimmy asked.</p>

<p>
    'We're pretty certain it is, but as I say, it's like nothing else before. This one is an upright grave. The body was bound with reed ropes and buried standing up. It's in a remarkably good state of preservation. Almost every bone is intact and in its proper place, probably because of the cementing quality of the clay. In fact, there are still some remnants of clothing which will give us a fair idea, I'm sure, of what our friends were wearing all those years ago.'</p>

<p>'But the strangest thing is that not only was our neolithic chap buried standing up, but his head was not where it should have been. It was there, all right, but not attached to the neck. 'It was carefully placed at his feet, facing forwards. Don't ask me why, but it was obviously a decapitation before interment. Never seen anything like it before in my life. Wonderful.'</p>

<p>There was the inevitable pause. Arthur was excited, and I could tell that Jimmy was interested.</p>

<p>I watched the two of them, and I felt a shiver. A cold wind played up and down my spine. It was a warm and sultry evening in our indian summer, and for me alone it was suddenly overcast as if a dark cloud came creeping up the firth and settled right over me.</p>

<p>Jimmy and Arthur started talking, but I was miles away. Their voices seemed to recede into the background. Instead, I was hearing Catriona O'Connor MacBeatha, old Kitty MacBeth, gripping my hand and telling me about the four walls. 'A wall of water, wall of stone, a wall of wood and a wall of bone.'</p>

<p>And when Arthur had been about to tell me what he'd found under the ground on his archaeological dig at Ardhmor, I had known, without any uncertainty, what it was.</p>

<p>Arthur had found and breached the fourth wall.</p>

<p>'The Connors and the MacBeatha have always had a watcher on the shore, to ensure that at least one wall remains until those came back who could kill the Cu Saeng for ever in this earth and send it back.'</p>

<p>Her voice came back, clear and sharp.</p>

<p>The tingling in my spine remained. I hadn't given too much thought to what the old woman had told me. It was just a legend.</p>

<p>But I was beginning to feel uneasy at the succession of coincidences. Things were a little too <em>pat</em>.</p>

<p>The world was beginning to get a little blurred at the edges. I wasn't sure at all what was happening. I wasn't sure at all that anything
    <em>was</em> happening.</p>

<p>But I sure as hell was beginning to get a bit edgy. I didn't like that feeling of unease that was trickling its fingers up and down my spine.</p>

<p>'Have another pint, Nick,' Arthur said, nudging me with his elbow and bringing me back to the here and now. I accepted and soon we were back in conversation, but my brain was still giving me muted alarm signals that I couldn't quite fathom out.</p>

<p>All of a sudden, I had the feeling that I wished Arthur had gone and dug somebody else's cemetery. I didn't care too much for that thundercloud that was hovering just at the other side of my consciousness.</p>

<p>Long after Arthur had gone home to his flat near the university campus, and I'd strolled along the tree-lined street to Jimmy's house where I'd seen my old friend quietly ensconced in his living room, I had some time to think things over.</p>

<p>Something was going on that I couldn't figure out, something that was making me uneasy. I couldn't write worth a damn. I couldn't even order my thoughts properly, which was not true to character.</p>

<p>Yet when I'd taken Barbara and Paddy for a picnic on Loch Lomondside, only twelve miles away as the crow flies, the ideas came bubbling up like a hot mineral spring. Out there in the fresh air and sunshine, I could feel the creativity I knew I had, welling up and overflowing. When we came back over the black hill and along the Kilcreggan Road to Arden, they all leached away like soil on a hillside under a steady drizzle. I didn't even notice it, taken up as I was with Barbara's conversation. It was only when I got back to my house and sat down to order up all those ideas that I found they'd evaporated.</p>

<p>There were a few more things I thought about as I strolled along in the dim twilight. I was in a state of puzzlement; unsure, unsteady and unready.</p>

<p>Certainly, I was unready for what happened next.</p>

<p>I waked round a corner into the main street and came almost smack into Badger Blackwood. Even then I still had to think and stop myself from calling him that, although Colin wouldn't have the sense of self to mind.</p>

<p>Colin pulled himself up short just before he crashed into me and knocked me to the ground. He was breathing fast and heavy, obviously with exertion. An inch or two taller than me, but a bit heavier, Colin would have been a heartbreaker with the ladies, but for his childhood accident. Even the two lines of white that had grown in along the deep lacerations that had raked his scalp almost from brow to nape would not have seriously detracted from his face.</p>

<p>He had a wide forehead and black eyebrows and deep dark eyes that would have set hearts a-flutter.</p>

<p>But there was no sparkle in them. They were all but empty; vapid, docile eyes. The boy had been a devil-may-care, quick-witted adventurer. The adult that he had become was devoid of all that.</p>

<p>At first he didn't recognise me. He just stood there, panting and trying to mumble some apology or whatever, not certain which way to go around me.</p>

<p>'Hello Colin,' I said, raising a hand up to his shoulder. His chest was heaving.</p>

<p>Recognition dawned, if dully. 'N-N-Nicky. It's them!' he wailed, and jerked his hand behind him. I could see some figures coming along the street at a fast walk.</p>

<p>
    'Who?' I asked, trying to calm him down. 'What's wrong'?</p>

<p>'Th-them. People,' he stammered.</p>

<p>'Hey you,' a voice came out of the gloom between the street lamps. I still couldn't make out the faces.</p>

<p>'Come here, you big daft bastard,' came the voice. Harsh and vicious, and full of drink.</p>

<p>Colin tried to push past me, but I stopped him.</p>

<p>
    'It's all right, Colin. Everything's OK.'</p>

<p>'You stupid big fucker. I'm going to kick the shit out of you,' yelled the voice, closer. Colin's chest started to heave again in a fit of panic.</p>

<p>'You hear me? I'm going to batter your thick brain in.'</p>

<p>I looked over Colin's shoulder and saw four people just coming into the light. I could have guessed. Billy Ruine and his brother Tommy, along with two young layabouts from the Milligs. They were in their early twenties, a mean little bunch with the kind of low-life spite that seems to be prevalent in small groups in small towns.</p>

<p>The four figures loomed closer.</p>

<p>'Well, well. Look who it is,' Billy Ruine said. 'Fuckin' local hero, eh?'</p>

<p>I stepped around Colin, who flattened himself up against the wall, trying to make himself disappear into it.</p>

<p>
    'What's the problem, Billy?' I asked, trying to sound calm and reasonable.</p>

<p>'No problem for me,' Billy said. He was a lean, mean little guy, maybe a couple of inches smaller than I, built like string and wire, with a narrow face and a wide mouth with a gap where he'd lost a tooth. The last time I'd seen him he was holding his nose and promising revenge after I'd straight-armed him. 'Big problem for you, and your fuck-wit pal,' he said, and one of the other guys hovering behind him sniggered.</p>

<p>'I don't think we need any of this. Why don't you go and pick on somebody else?'</p>

<p>'Because that stupid bastard got right up my nose. And you get right up my nose. All right?'</p>

<p>I turned to Colin who was still backed against the wall, his face a picture of fright and bewilderment. 'Let's go home, Colin.'</p>

<p>I had just started to move when I felt a hand on my sleeve. I spun round quickly and dug my elbow under Billy Ruine's ribs and there was a fleeting satisfaction in the bellow of air that whooshed out.</p>

<p>It was a good hit, but there was no point in hanging around to see if my luck would hold. The odds were against it.</p>

<p>The three others gathered around Billy who was still trying to suck air back in again, so Colin and I took advantage and ran down the alley. From behind us I could hear yelling. Almost at the end of the alley, and heading towards the turn that would take us down to Elm Street, I heard that Billy had got his voice back.</p>

<p>'Get the bastards. I'll kill them. I'll fuckin' murder them,' he shrieked. Right in my ear I heard Colin whimper in terror.</p>

<p>Then from nowhere something hard came out of the night and hit me smack on the back of my head and everything went straight into slow motion.</p>

<p>There was a shock of pain and I started to pitch forward towards the wall just ahead of us. I remember a sudden instant wave of nausea as my knees gave way from under me. There was a sound of clanging in my ears and the other sounds, the thudding of our feet and the shrieks of the enraged Billy, faded away along with everything else. I took a long dive into darkness.</p>

<p>In the dark, faces loomed up at me coming out of the shadow and flickering in a grey light then fading out again. Processions of them.</p>

<p>I saw:</p>

<p>Andy Gillon lying in the mud under the fallen tree on his farm. His eyes were locked into mine, but they were white and wide and dead. The tree gave a great lurch off his body and everything that was inside him spilled out into the marsh, with a slithering, sucking noise. They coiled and looped I with a life of their own. Too much, too many. Gillon's eyes opened wider and wider; huge eyes with nothing in them, staring straight into mine and I couldn't turn away. The glistening slimy ropes slithered around him like slimy bonds and there was a smell like vomit. They piled up and around, binding his upstretched arms and coiling around his silently screaming mouth, and then they started to pull him into the mud. I could see his hands opening and closing like talons as they disappeared into the marsh and he was gone, leaving nothing but bubbles that oozed to the surface and burst slowly.</p>

<p>I turned and I saw Edward Henson - who I recognised although I'm not sure I had ever seen him before - walking down the farm lane, with no hands at the ends of his shredded arms. He looked at me and his eyes were white, and dark blood spurted from the rags he had instead of elbows and wrists. He walked towards the mound and the ground opened in front of him and a thing of bone and skin crawled out. It had no head. And all the time, I could hear the deep breathing from behind me, a rasp of dry leaves.</p>

<p>Grandfather said: 'You've been a bad boy Nicky. A bad boy.'</p>

<p>He towered over me and his eyes were white and the smell of his breath was foul. He raised his walking stick high and brought it down on the back of my head and made the world spin.</p>

<p>He roared incoherently and the wind took him and his voice and blew him into the darkness of Ardmhor.</p>

<p>Barbara screamed a long scream and I saw fire and a huge bird with a beak like a dagger, and then Colin and I were standing holding her hand on the bank of the stream when a big man in a fur cloak stuck the butt of his spear into the soft earth and disappeared.</p>

<p>'Come back,' Colin yelled. 'Come back!'</p>

<p>'. . . Come back to us, have you?' Kitty MacBeth said, and for a horrible moment I was still in the depth of a dream.</p>

<p>Light was in my eyes, causing needles of pain that orbited on the inside of my skull and set off bombs way at the back where the nausea bubbled. I tried to sit up the world spun.</p>

<p>'No, just lie back and rest,' she said, and put a cool, surprisingly soft hand on my forehead. Her face was a blur.</p>

<p>
    'You're all right. You're in your own home,' she said. 'You've had a sore bang on your head.'</p>

<p>'What happened? How did I get here?'</p>

<p>'Wait until you've had a drink,' Kitty said. 'I think you'll probably live. I put a compress on your head. The bleeding stopped a while ago, but you've been concussed, I shouldn't wonder, and you've got a lump the size of a pigeon egg.'</p>

<p>'Billy Ruine. He was after Colin,' I said, braving the thudding pain to sit up. I was in my own bed in my own room, which swayed just a little as I moved.</p>

<p>
    'Where's Colin? What the hell happened?' Recent memory was still in a fuzzy world.</p>

<p>She gave me a large glass of cold water which made me feel slightly better than hellish, but not a lot.</p>

<p>'I sent him home last night after we put you to bed. He's all right, poor soul,' Kitty said.</p>

<p>'He says somebody threw a rock at you. Lucky you're not dead. Could have knocked your brains out, and then where would we be?'</p>

<p>'I remember Ruine and his mates chasing us, then something hit me. But how did I get here? And how did
    <em>you</em> get here?'</p>

<p>'From what he tells me, he picked you up and carried you. Somebody came out of one of the houses when they heard the racket and chased the others off. I met Colin just at the end of the street, still with you slung over his back. I had to stop him, for I'm sure he would have kept on going until morning.'</p>

<p>'And what were you doing out here at that time of night?'</p>

<p>'That must be one of those coincidences,' Kitty said. 'I was out looking for my cat. I've thrown the crutch away and put on a smaller splint. I think the old leg is knitting together well. I'll soon be out and about like a spring lamb again.'</p>

<p>At the side of the bed were two walking sticks cut from branches, like the blackthorn one I had made for my grandfather as a kid.</p>

<p>'Should you really be walking about yet?'</p>

<p>'Probably not as far as I did tonight, but the exercise is good for me, and I have to get myself in shape again. There's work to be done, and I need to be walking to do it.'</p>

<p>She looked at me with that wild, piercing stare. 'What was all the trouble about anyway?'</p>

<p>'Oh, Billy Ruine's been giving Colin a bad time for a while now. I just tried to get him away. Something hit me, and then I woke up.'</p>

<p>I didn't mention the dreams.</p>

<p>'Well, you've been thrashing about and shouting at the top of your voice as if all the devils of hell were after you.'</p>

<p>'Maybe they were. Concussion's a bugger. My head feels as if it's been pulped.'</p>

<p>
    'You'll heal. You'd better. I need you,' the old woman said matter of factly. 'We all do.'</p>

<p>I phoned Barbara in the morning, just to let her know what happened, and probably looking for a bit of sympathy too, but there was no reply. I was hoping she might come down and minister to me while I bravely suffered. I had to make do with Kitty who hobbled all the way from the point about mid morning and shushed away my concern for her healing leg.</p>

<p>She forced me to drink something that tasted like liquid bramble jam with cinnamon which, despite being a witch's brew, was the nicest experience of the day so far. Whatever it did, it also brought back my appetite, and within the hour I was on my second plate of thick broth.</p>

<p>Despite the sticks, Kitty worked quietly and efficiently with an economy of movement, although she favoured the damaged leg. She didn't say much either. I'd only met her once before, really; that day down at the point when she'd told me all those strange things, so I didn't know that much about her either.</p>

<p>When she saw I'd finished the soup, she took the plate away, and somehow made it downstairs, which I shouldn't have allowed.</p>

<p>Then she came slowly back up again. There was a pause after six slow steps, then she must have eased herself over the seventh, because there was no creak. When she came into the room she looked at me and said: 'You wanted me to miss it. So I did.'</p>

<p>I had no reply to that. Kitty sat on the bed for a minute then she asked me if I'd thought about what she'd told me down at her shack. I told her I'd thought some, but it was all a bit mixed up and fantastic so far.</p>

<p>
    'You'll be thinking more about it, then when you're ready, I want you down to my place, so I can tell you some more,' she said. 'I found my cat. It was on your front doorstep when I got back.'</p>

<p>'Must have followed you,' I said.</p>

<p>'I don't think so. Some of it was on the doorstep. Some on the grass and some on the pathway. It's been torn to pieces.'</p>

<p>I was about to say something. Some platitude or whatever you say to somebody who's just found their pet ripped to bits, but Kitty didn't let me.</p>

<p>'Before you say it's a coincidence, it's a message,' she said.</p>

<p>'From who? I mean whom?'</p>

<p>'Ah, you don't listen, do you? It was torn apart by some animal and left where we would see it. That's what happens you know.</p>

<p>'Hate and violence is coming. You have to be protected.'</p>

<p>I sat forward quickly before I remembered about the pain involved in sudden movements. Whatever Kitty's brew had contained, it certainly helped dull it.</p>

<p>'I don't know what you're talking about. I remember what you told me the other day. About Ardmhor. But what's that got to do with your cat?'</p>

<p>'The cat's nothing. I don't keep familiars. It was just a stray that wandered in last year and stayed the winter. I looked after it and it kept me company, that's all. But now it's dead, and in your garden. And
    <em>I'm</em> in <em>your</em> house.</p>

<p>It can't get out because of the walls, but it sends out its hate and infects.'</p>

<p>'Who does?'</p>

<p>'Cu Saeng. The sleeper. It made the dogs kill the cat to let me know it wants you. It wants revenge.'</p>

<p>'For what?'</p>

<p>'For what was done to it. For the binding. And for what you did.'</p>

<p>'What the hell did I do?'</p>

<p>'You stopped it.'</p>

<p>
    'How?'</p>

<p>Kitty sat at the edge of the bed and stared at me.</p>

<p>
    'You've a lot to learn, you know. And little time to learn it. Listen to me, and I'll tell you something.'</p>

<p>I leaned back against the pillow and Kitty told me about 1991. She told me how the summer had started warm and dry and how Hugh Henson - father of the boy I'd dreamed about- had ended up under his plough with his hands cut off. And there was the dog fight down at the Milligs when the pit-bulls had gone mad and savaged one of the men to death. And there were fights and accidents and a suicide. There was the herd of cows that had gone off the top of the cliff at Langcraig.</p>

<p>It was a summer when the town itself seemed to go bad.</p>

<p>'And then it stopped. You stopped it with the girl and the boy. It stopped on the night we took you from the jaws of that rock, and it has been gone ever since.'</p>

<p>'But I don't remember a thing about that.'</p>

<p>'Maybe you don't. But Cu Saeng does. That's what I've been trying to tell you.'</p>

<p>'Look, Kitty, I feel as if I'm caught up in one of these farces. I haven't a clue what's going on. I remember the legend you told me, but it's all Greek to me. This Cu Saeng. This spirit. What is it supposed to be, anyway?'</p>

<p>'Cu Saeng. The ravener. It is a force of hunger and hate. That's what it is, and all your computers and cell-phones and televisions won't change that. I told you how they raised it, and how they bound it with the walls.</p>

<p>'But I have to tell you now that the walls are wearing down. The Cu Saeng gets stronger and its force reaches out. It reaches for you. It will twist and turn everything against you. Just Watch.'</p>

<p>Kitty smiled, but it was no smile at all. 'Already you've taken a blow. And so have I. That is the start.'</p>

<p>'Those walls you were talking about,' I said. ' Remember? The water, stone and wood and bone . . .'</p>

<p>
    'Yes?'</p>

<p>'One of them's already down.'</p>

<p>
    'What?' Almost a gasp. 'What do you mean?'</p>

<p>'I was speaking to the professor who's doing a dig there. You were right. They did find bones where you said they had been buried. And the corpse had lost it's head.'</p>

<p>Kitty's eyes blazed blue.</p>

<p>'Fools. Damned fools. And damned more than they know.' She put her head in her hands and rocked backwards and forwards.</p>

<p>Then she stopped rocking and looked up. 'That's what's made it stronger. It reaches out through the gaps.</p>

<p>'You must get better, and soon,' she said. 'I think you are going to need all of your strength.'</p>

<p>Over and over, parts of what Kitty said came back to me, chipping away at my natural scepticism. The more I thought about it, the more I came to believe that something was definitely wrong.</p>

<p><em>Cu Saeng</em>. The Ravener. The Sleeper.</p>

<p>I wasn't convinced. But I knew the old woman was convinced, and despite local rumour she seemed pretty steady on her feet, no matter how strange her tale.</p>

<p>But some spirit? Some age-old monster trapped by cave men? I don't think I was quite ready for that yet. I've covered stories in South America where healers claim they have taken tumours out with their bare hands. I couldn't disprove it, so I can't say they don't. On Haiti I was shown a horrible something that a contact swore was a zombie. I couldn't say, one way or the other.</p>

<p>I believe there could be a sasquatch or a yeti or whatever, and I don't laugh at people who believe in the Bermuda Triangle although I don't subscribe myself.</p>

<p>But a monster spirit? Here in Arden? In the new millennium?</p>

<p>I would need more to go on before I put my money on it.</p>

<p>I thought about the dreams that were still scaring me out of sleep. I thought about Andy Gillon and what he said to me as he spilled his life out in front of my eyes.</p>

<p>I recalled that horrific thing that I had imagined, the one that looked at first like my grandfather.</p>

<p>And I thought of that night down on the rock when the wind was blowing the rain hard into my face and the bramble thorns had reached out to catch me.</p>

<p>I seriously considered the possibility that good old Nick Ryan was quickly and quietly cracking up.</p>

<p>Then I spent a couple of days reading through the wealth of Jimmy Allison's work on his history of Arden. That did me a whole lot of good.</p>

<p>On Thursday morning I woke up out of a dreamless sleep.</p>

<p>Sometime in the night a whole lot of the information I had churned around in the past couple of days had settled itself into some sort of order.</p>

<p>I decided I wasn't cracking up.</p>

<p>I wasn't exactly sure I knew what was happening. But I knew there was something awfully bad going on around here.</p>

<p>And I knew that for some reason I was part of it.</p>

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