The Grieving Stones by Gary McMahon Page B

obscured by long, dirty hair. She was only the first. There had been many more since then.
The sisters were dragged from the cottage. Mills accused them of practising the dark arts at the Grieving Stones, and claimed that they had summoned the hungry demon known as the Backwards Girl.
When the group took the sisters to the stones, Mills “discovered” the remains of the baby. It was the child of a local girl, born with a cleft palate. Mills said that the deformity was yet another sign of the devil.
Mag and Meg Staples were locked up. Two days later they were thrown in the river to see if they would sink or float – the true test of a witch. They both floated. The men of the village dragged them from the river and hanged them from a tree. One rather excitable report states that they took an hour to die, and during that time they did not struggle or cry out. They simply stared at Hedley Mills, smiling.
Hedley Mills claimed the sisters’ land and moved into the cottage to be near the Grieving Stones. Within six months he was dead of tuberculosis. On his death bed, he claimed that the Backward Girl had come to him and touched his forehead with her small, pale hand, making him ill. He said that the Staples sisters watched from the crag, standing in the shadow of the Grieving Stones.
To this day, two large rocks – natural geographical growths rather than man-made standing stones – carry the name The Staples Sisters. The rocks are located a few yards from the Grieving Stones, next to a narrow stream. From a distance, one of them looks a little like an old woman bending to the stream to take a drink. The other looks like a second woman kneeling and staring across the moor. It is said that on some nights they are joined by a third figure, that of a thin girl dressed in rags, her legs and feet bare and her back the same as her front.
    Alice shut the booklet and lay down on the bed, staring up at the sloped ceiling. The wooden panels had been washed; she could still see the stains where the water was drying.
    If Clive had written this guide, why had he lied to her earlier when he’d told her that he didn’t know much about the legend of the Grieving Stones and why had he downplayed his familiarity with the area? It made little sense. What was he trying to hide from her, and why?
    She already suspected that he had secrets; he might have slept with Moira at some point. That was what clearly the woman must have meant by her warning for Alice to be careful – to watch herself around the counsellor, because he was prone to take advantage of an emotional situation, a grieving woman.
    She rolled onto her side and stared at the opening in the attic floor. There was still a light on downstairs; she could see it flickering occasionally, as if it were candlelight. She imagined Clive crawling along the corridor, his belly on the floor, his fingers curled into claws and gripping the gaps between the floorboards: a sexual predator, hungry to satisfy his lust.
    The image didn’t quite fit.
    So why had he asked her here? He had an ulterior motive, that was for sure, but she couldn’t think what it might be other than to seduce her. But why would he do that with the others around? There had to be more to it than sex.
    When she’d mentioned the energy she felt inside the house, he had not reacted in the way she’d expected. Rather than laughing, or telling her not to be silly, he’d taken it in and asked her to postpone their conversation.
    Did he know more about what was going on here than he’d previously let on? Had he in fact brought her here because he’d predicted that she might feel some kind of connection with the genius loci of Grief House? Or were his reasons far darker than that?
    The Staples Sisters had been in touch with the spirit of this house; they had tapped into its energy and used it for healing, until Hedley Mills had grown jealous of the power they wielded and wanted it for himself.
    A typical man, using violence to