The Grieving Stones by Gary McMahon

torso had been shaped to imitate muscle, a six-pack. Its blunt head was a blank slate; she could draw anything, any expression she liked, upon its smooth surface. It made her think of Tony, but it wasn’t her dead husband come back to haunt her. She knew that. The spirits here were more subtle, more ambiguous. They might not even be spirits at all.
    So what are they?

    She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything, not any more.
    Surprisingly, the attic room had been tidied to the point that it now looked like a space someone lived in. Comfortable, neat, a little shabby around the edges of course, but nothing a little love and attention would not put right.
    She wasn’t the one who was tidying the house. Alice was certain of it. She had not suffered a blackout since Tony’s funeral. Before that, the only other episodes she’d experienced were the ones caused by Tony’s fists.
    No, it wasn’t her. It was somebody else.
    She ran her hand over the dummy’s taut stomach, remembering how firm Tony’s body had been. He’d developed an obsession with working out; lifting weights, hitting the heavy bag in the gym, running miles at night with a weighted rucksack on his back because he had trouble sleeping. He had been such a fit man, a fine specimen, but inside he had been rotten. He’d used his hands when his mind was unable to cope. That was the simple fact of it, and nothing could change what had happened between them.
    “Bastard,” she said.
    She turned away from the dummy and walked across to a small wooden school desk that had been hidden by clutter but was now exposed. There were a few papers on top of the desk; sketches of the house from the outside, photocopied photographs of the landscape around the house. She opened the desk drawer and found a bunch of pamphlets with blue covers – multiple copies of a booklet on local history. Once hidden, the house was now uncovering things for her to see.
    The pamphlet was slim, with only a few pages. Its cover boasted a faded, poorly reproduced monochrome photograph of the Grieving Stones. She read the title and author:
    The Strange Story of the Staple Sisters
    and the Grieving Stones
    By Clive Munroe

    She picked the top pamphlet and skimmed the pages. Badly typeset script, a basic font, and no interior illustrations. Ignoring Clive’s name on the cover for now, she flipped over the pamphlet in her hands and tried to see the publisher’s mark. There was none. Evidentially, it was self-published. He’d written this himself and then had copies printed. For what reason, she couldn’t even guess.
    Alice carried the pamphlet over to the bed, sat down, and began to read.
    The following account is based on information discovered by myself from several sources. I consulted parish records, old publications, and letters held in a private archive to pull together what I believe is a fascinating story of deceit, betrayal, and witchcraft in the area surrounding Bastion, an isolated village in England’s Lake District.
    *
The word menhir is derived from the Middle Breton language: maen, “stone” and hir, “long”. These standing stones can be found across Europe, Africa and Asia either singularly or as part of a group of standing stones. There are something like 50,000 menhirs in Ireland, Great Britain and Brittany. They were constructed during many different periods of pre-history, and are often difficult to date, erected as part of a megalithic culture from Europe and beyond.
On the barren moorland above Bastion village, there is a site of only minor historical interest to professional historians but that has long fascinated the people of the area.
The standing stones above Bastion are known locally as The Grieving Stones. There are five of them, arranged in a line facing north, and each has a different sign or symbol carved upon its northward surface. The origin of these stones, and their markings, is unclear, but it is suspected that they formed part of an ancient