'If you're a science-fiction reader,' Barbara was saying to Ken, 'you won't be interested in Sentinel Hill.'
'Fan, dear, not reader.' He was lifting the last of his beer to Maureen's lips. 'I don't want to seem hidebound,' he said.
Maureen caught his hand and wiped her mouth. 'Come on, you two, drink up,' she called. 'I want to play my radio.'
Ken pulled her to her feet and led her toward the door. Their shadows drew across the farmers and refreshed them: gargoyles, yes, but protective as a church. 'Don't let's go tonight,' Barbara whispered. 'Let's go home instead.'
'We will, of course, afterwards. Your parents are away all weekend, after all.' Douglas stood; above his head a flake of ash fluttered in the oil-lamp. 'We don't want to seem unfriendly,' he said.
Beyond the houses in the square outside the pub stretched a field, iced by the moon, sharp as the surface of December air which instantly moulded to her. If they invited Ken and Maureen to her home for Christmas Eve next week perhaps the others wouldn't mind their driving back to Exham now —but no doubt Ken and Maureen would be otherwise occupied. She'd tried her best; she didn't want to make a scene. 'Would you really rather not go to the hill?' Douglas asked.
'I don't want to spoil the evening for everyone. I'm the only one who can drive.'
In the back seat Maureen switched on the radio. Singing, the car swung about and rushed headlong from the village, its lights touching small high empty windows, projecting a tilted ploughshare on a barn. Ahead Barbara saw avenues of bleached trees sweep to meet them, immediately engulfed by shadow, threshing as they passed. On the road stones gleamed like toads; one hopped. She wasn't sure how far ahead the hill would rise. 'I don't like the name,' she said.
'What name?' Douglas enquired abstractedly, moving his arm along the back of the seat.
'Oh, Doug. Sentinel Hill.'
'I shouldn't think you would,' Maureen said. 'They're supposed to guard the hill against anyone who doesn't make a sacrifice to them.'
'I don't know what you mean,' Barbara declared; the bloodless trees waved wildly, a sinister greeting. 'I suppose I've been brought up apart from such things. Who guard? A sacrifice to whom?'
'The Sentinels. You remember, Doug, that girl was saying they make pilgrimages to Rollright from Birmingham on Walpurgisnacht. I gather something like that happens here. Have you been to a Convention, Barabara?'
'She hasn't yet but I hope she will next year,' Douglas said.
'I thought next Easter you might come up to Exham,' said Barbara, 'to stay with us.'
The highest twigs pulled free of the moon like strands of cobweb, and the hill swelled up before her. Above the depression into which her car slowed as if summoned, the ring of shapes stood white and waiting. She could no longer play for time. She turned the car so that it was poised for the road; the headlamps spotlighted a gate into a field opposite, one bar comfortingly askew, pale uncombed grass beyond, barbed wire atop the gate silver as tips of lightning. 'I'll leave the engine running,' she said. 'We won't be long.'
'Think of the petrol,' Douglas expostulated.
'I don't want the engine to catch cold.'
'I shall bring my radio as protection,' decided Maureen, and dragged Ken toward the figures. Over the tinny jangle and the announcer's voice Barbara heard Ken: 'I hope we're not going to stay all night, this seems a bit futile to me.' The radio faded; soon it would be inside the circle. Barbara felt obscurely disturbed; it seemed like an insult, a blasphemy. Nonsense. The Sentinels were relics, no more.
Douglas took her hand and began to climb. He caught her glancing back; but all he could see was the car, thumping like his heart, and a gate. He felt deliciously unnerved. The moon stood above the circle like the beginnings of a face; ominously still against the tethered trees, the Sentinels surveyed the countryside. On one side of the circle, silhouettes of branches rippled like unquiet muscles; opposite, a figure held its stumps before it like a dog beneath the moon, begging or about to pounce. He hoped Barbara felt frightened too. He wanted her to grip his hand until it hurt.
They met the others in the center of the ring. Their coats were shaken by the wind, the girls' headscarves blew out like flats. 'It's senseless to call them the Sentinels,' Barbara said, 'when some of them are facing inward.'
Maureen surveyed the circle, the rough ambiguous hump each back presented. 'I don't know where you get that,' she called above the radio. 'They're all facing outward.'
'But as we came up I thought—Oh, well. Doug must be affecting me.'
'There is a story, though, that you can't count them,' Maureen continued, craning on tiptoe, clutching Ken's shoulder for support. 'Eighteen, I make it.'
'Seventeen, surely,' Ken argued. 'You must have counted twice.'
'I have eighteen too,' Douglas said. 'Barb?'
'Oh, I don't know. You're all pretty close, I'm sure. Yes, yes, eighteen. No, nineteen.'
'We must split up and go round,' Maureen said. 'Me and Ken, you and Barbara. Here's where we start.' She ran and crowned one figure with the radio. At once a voice sang from its erased mouth.
They followed her, bruising the moon-painted turf. 'We'll go anti-clockwise,' Douglas said. 'One. Two.' The radio's song streamed away on the wind. The Sentinels waited to be discovered. From the road they hadn't looked like this to Barbara: each face set back in a cracked cowl, fragments of the cheeks emerging from shadow like petrified sponge; beneath the cowl, the folds and ridges of what once might have been a cloak, from which protruded hands or wrists held high like the parodied paws of an animal. The heads came up to Barbara's shoulder. 'What were they supposed to be?' she asked, instantly regretting.
'Six. Seven. I don't know. Not human, anyway. Look at those pores. As though they'd suck your soul out. Or something might crawl from one of them.' He thought he remembered a story like that. 'Now, Barb, I didn't mean it. I was only joking.' He embraced her.
She closed her eyes. Not here, she thought, but she opened her mouth. Behind her eyelids floated fear; the moon was steady, waiting patiently, old as the Sentinels. They swayed. Something supported her. Two hands clutched her waist. She struggled and looked down. They were stone stumps. She choked; for a timeless second she was wedged, caught. She slipped on the turf and was free.
'I'm sorry I brought you,' Douglas said. Ken and Maureen passed them, counting: 'Now then, we're winning!' Maureen laughed.
The next face was blank as the moon, except for the eyes. They must have been deep indeed; in one a hollow spider tattled in a cobweb, like a loose eye. 'Do we count this?' Douglas wondered, pointing.
Inside the circle, behind the figure, a bud of stone grew from the earth. She couldn't see what it was meant to be.
Douglas drew her to stand by the Sentinel while he tried to connect the protrusion with the figure. Unwillingly she glanced at what stood by her shoulder. From this angle she thought she saw the hint of a mouth; it was grinning. The head was about to turn; the eye would come first, the cob-webbed eye rolling in glee. 'Come on, Doug,' she said unevenly. 'The others want to go.'