“Leys of power. A ley. It comes from the Saxon word for cleared strip of land. The lines! They are what is important.” He smacked a hand against the steering wheel. “The stones are just the signs. It’s the power in the Earth that is the key. And it’s all over the world. Here and there.” He slammed on the brakes and they came to a halt. “Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t” Ariana said. She was certain Atkins had set her up for taking the crystal skull. She felt a surge of anger over the petty squabbles of academic intellectuals interfering with a mission that involved the fate of the world. She pulled out her cell phone. “I’m calling for my helicopter to pick me up.” She could see another field in front of them and knew she could bring the chopper in. She had a beacon in her pocket that would give the pilot her location.
“Just take a look,” Davon said. He opened his door and got out.
The pilot answered the call on the first ring. Ariana could see Davon walking toward a bit of high ground. “Hold on,” she told the pilot. She turned off the phone and got out of the car. She followed Davon up the slight rise and joined him. Below them was a strangely shaped standing stone. Peering in the dark she could see two other groups of stones.
“The Rollright Stones,” Davon said. “This is where it happened.”
“What happened?” Ariana asked, but he ignored her as he began pointing and speaking.
“That’s the King Stone.” He then indicated a group. “Those are the Whispering Knights. They got that name from the way the stones all lean toward each other as if plotting against the king here.” He then pointed at the second group. “Those are the King’s Men. They form a perfect circle one hundred four feet across.”
Ariana was amazed at the change that had come over the man at her side. His voice was perfectly normal, and he recited the information as if he were presenting a lecture at the university. She realized she was most likely dealing with a paranoid schizophrenic, and at the moment she was seeing his lucid side.
“Scientists have come here and run their tests. They’ve found electromagnetic fluctuations and even traces of radioactivity. Locals have long claimed that going inside the circle of King’s Men and spending the night has a healing effect.” He gave a strange laugh. “No one does that anymore. Not since I did. Not after what happened.”
Ariana waited, knowing that to ask questions or interrupt might bring forth another paranoid phase.
“What they don’t understand,” Davon said, “is that the stones themselves are not the key. Even at Stonehenge, which everyone traipses to and slobbers over, it is not the stone.” He cut his hand back and forth in front of him. “It’s the lines. The power of the lines.”
“Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of Kings of England, was the first document to mention the stones and the power of the lines,” Davon said. “That was in the twelfth century. At least here in England it was the first mention. The Chinese recorded it much, much earlier. They called them lung mei, which translates as dragon paths, thus the name for my project.”
He turned to her. “You’ve heard of feng shui, haven’t you?” he asked. “It’s been revived lately and is actually quite popular.”
Ariana nodded. “The harmony of things, their placement.”
“Actually feng shui stands for wind and water. Most people only think of feng shui on a small scale,” Davon said. “Lung mei is feng shui on a planetary scale and actually supersedes feng shui. The first thing a feng master must do is orient on the dragon lines, the lung mei. Then the master must determine whether they are yin, which is the white tiger, the negative force, or yang, the blue dragon, the positive force.
“The Chinese believed there was tremendous power in the planet, and of course, there is. Earthquakes, volcanoes, the movement of the tectonic plates, even the tides; all are on a scale not able to be imitated by man even with our most powerful weapons. In a most basic and primitive way, the practitioners of feng shui are tapping into the power.”
Davon trust his hand back and forth again, a gesture that made Ariana take a half step back. “There was a group called the Straight Tracker’s Club that tried to line up the various megaliths and places of worship in England. Find the pattern. They found that the Rollright Stones are on line with the Long Compton Church, the Chipping Norton Church, and a tumulus near Charlbury.” He gave the edgy laugh again. “Their vision was so limited. The lines of power are much, much bigger than that. And they are all over the world, not just here in England and not just tied to the megaliths.
“In ancient China, straight lines on the landscape were considered evil. Spirits were said to travel along those lines. Feng shui actually started as the practice of placing tombs so they would not fall along one of the evil lines.”
He turned away from the Rollright Stones and looked off to the southwest as if he could see something in the dark. “South America. Have you heard of the Nazca Lines?”
“Stones aligned in the high desert?”
“Stones in the high desert lined up for miles and miles.” Davon corrected. “Some perfectly straight, going over ridges and through gullies. Others arranged in various intricate designs. By who? And why?”
He fell silent, and Ariana felt a need to get him back on track. “What happened to you inside the circle?” she finally asked.
Davon turned back toward the stones. “In 1936, at Loe Bar on the Cornish coast, where two leys form a node, a man reported seeing a medieval army appear out of nothing and then disappear. He went back thirty-eight years later and reported seeing the same thing as if not a day had passed. As did his wife, who accompanied him.
“In 1974, at the Chanctonbury Ring, a man I’ve talked to, walked into the center of the ring, and an invisible force lifted him off the ground over five feet and held him up there for a minute. Three other chaps who were with him saw this. Chanctonbury is a node for five local ley lines and is the side of an ancient fort.”
“In 1976, at the node of two ley lines near Cilicom, a man and a woman claimed their car engine suddenly dies and they were approached by an alien, a creature with white skin and unblinking red eyes that disappeared as suddenly as it appeared.
“Last year—“Davon began but then halted.
“Last year what happened?” Ariana pushed.
“Last year, I spent a night inside the King’s Men. I brought my air mattress and my sleeping bag, and I set up exactly dead center. Nothing happened for hours, and I finally fell asleep. Then, at three in the morning, something woke me. I sat up. At first I saw or heard nothing and thought maybe I’d had a bad dream. A fog had come in, and I could barely see the stones all around me.
“Then I heard the voices. Calling out for help. Asking for mercy. Dozens, hundreds, of voices. I’ve never heard such pain. It was terrible. Like souls in hell begging for release. And they were speaking in a strange language, but somehow I understood what they were saying. Then they came for me.”
“The people crying for mercy?”
“No. The aliens. Two of them. They just appeared in front of me. Smooth, white skin. Large, red eyes. With long, black cloaks. And they hung in the air over me, looking down. Their hands… they had claws on them, sharp ones, like that fellow in the American horror movie. I knew they were the reason the voices were calling for mercy, and I knew they were coming for me. I ran. Left my gear behind and ran. Didn’t use my camera or recorder. I just ran.”
Ariana waited, but he said nothing more. After a while, she took out her cell phone and called for the helicopter. Megaliths, lines of power, crystal skulls; she knew there was a connection with the Shadow, but she had no clue what it was or even how they connected with each other.