'People pulled the stones out,' Mr. Kettle said.
'Precisely. And what happened? They lost touch with it.'
'Lost touch with what?'
'With the life force, Mr. Kettle! Listen, give me your opinion on this. Whaddaya think would happen if…?'
Max Goff walked right up to Mr. Kettle in the ill-lit square and looked down at him, lowering his voice as if he were about to offer him a tip for the stock market. Mr. Kettle felt most uneasy. He was getting the dead-sheep smell.
'Whadda you think would happen,' Goff whispered, 'if we were to put the stones back?'
Well, Mr. Kettle thought, that depends. Depends on the true nature of leys, about which we know nothing, only speculate endlessly. Depends whether they're forgotten arteries of what you New Age fellers like to call the Life Force. Or whether they're something else, like paths of the dead.
But all he said was, 'I don't know, Mr. Goff. I wouldn't like to say.'
CHAPTER IV
How old was the box, then?
Warren Preece reckoned it was at least as old as the panelling in the farmhouse hall, which was estimated to be just about the oldest part of the house. So that made it sixteenth century or so.
He was into something here all right. And the great thing, the really fucking great thing about this was that no other bastard knew about it. Lived in this house all his life, but he'd never had cause to poke about in the chimney before – well, you wouldn't, would you? – until that morning, when his old man had shouted, 'Put that bloody guitar down, Warren, and get off your arse and hold this torch, boy!'
Piss off, Warren had spat under his breath, but he'd done it, knowing what a bastard the old man could be when a job wasn't going right.
Then, standing in the fireplace, shining the torch up the chimney – the old man on a step-ladder struggling to pull the crumbling brick out – a bloody great lump of old cement had fallen away and broken up and some of the dust had gone in Warren's eye.