The Grieving Stones Read Online Free Page A

weird post-incident quiet.
    Steve and Jake were fussing over Moira, who was leaning over the seat and trying to climb into the back with them. Alice undid her seatbelt, slid open the side door, and tumbled out of the van, leaving them to their ridiculous hysterics. The fresh air hit her hard, making her realise how stuffy it had been inside the van. It was no longer raining but the road was still damp. She blinked at the daylight, feeling oddly displaced, as if she didn’t belong here in this hostile world.
    She heard sounds behind her: the van doors opening, footsteps on the hard road. Moving away from the others, she walked along the damp verge behind the van and spotted something on the road. It was an animal, but at this distance she couldn’t be certain of the species. Her head began to clear as she made her way towards the slumped form, glancing both ways along the quiet road to ensure that she was not about to be flattened by a speeding vehicle.
    The animal was clearly dead. As she got closer, she was still unable to identify what it was. There was a resemblance to a small deer, but it was the wrong colour – were there any black deer in England?
    “Messy.” Clive was standing behind her. She hadn’t been aware of his approach.
    “The poor thing…” She squatted down and reached out to the dead animal, but stopped short of actually touching it.
    “It must’ve come from out of one of those fields. Or the trees beyond.”
    She didn’t look up at Clive, only at the animal. Its eyes were open wide, the large black pupils obscuring most of the white. There was blood on its face. Its mouth was open, the tongue lolling from one corner.
    “It’s beautiful,” she said.
    “What’s that?” Clive bent down towards her and she flinched, as if from an anticipated blow. “Are you okay?”
    “Yes…yes, I’m fine.” But she wasn’t. All she could think of was a period of her childhood when she’d owned two cats. Felix and Oscar. One of the cats was jet-black, with short hair; the other was a long-haired tabby. They’d never got on, those two. Always fighting. Never able to occupy the same room without one of them chasing after the other, claws swinging.
    She remembered coming downstairs early one morning, unable to sleep for reasons long forgotten. She had gone into the kitchen to pour a glass of milk, then into the lounge to watch some early morning television before her parents got up for work.
    She had seen the fur first. Huge clumps of it on the carpet, the sofa, even a few bits stuck to the wall, low down near the skirting board. Long fur. Tabby fur. Then there was the blood. Like a delayed reaction, she only saw the blood after the fur. There was a lot of it.
    Terrified, she had backed slowly out of the room and sat at the bottom of the stairs until her father got up. He disposed of the mess without making a fuss. The black cat – Oscar – simply vanished from the house the next day, without either of her parents saying another word about it. Nobody had asked her how she felt. It was like some dirty little secret they were never allowed to mention again.
    A few days later she was playing outside in the garden. She saw a small black shape moving in the bushes. Slowly, she made her way over to the spot where she thought she had seen Oscar. Bending down, she pushed aside some foliage and looked under the bushes. There was nothing there. The feeling of having just missed seeing the cat stayed with her for a long time. She often glimpsed dark movement at the periphery of her vision, but whenever she turned her head there was nothing to see.
    It was like catching sight of a ghost, or a visual echo, a living memory.
    She’d never owned a cat again, despite experiencing the occasional urge to buy one. Sometimes she felt as if that beautiful yet savage black cat had never left her; it stalked her from a distance, watching from the borders of her life.
    “Are you sure you’re okay, Alice?”
    She stood,