Lindow Moss: The Present Day
Her own scream shattered the silence: Claire Vanarvi jerked awake with a heart jolting start in the darkness of the tomb. She forced open her eyes and to her relief found she was out of bed and standing by the window, drenched in sweat but shivering: the central heating had long since gone off and the room was cold. She stood taking deep gulps of air as she tried to re-orientate herself. Eventually things came into focus and she recognized the familiar features of her bedroom. Feeling her way back to bed she turned on the bedside light and looked at the alarm clock; it was just past four in the morning. She sat on the bed trying to breathe deeply and evenly but however hard she tried her heart wouldn’t stop pounding.
So it was back after ten years’ remission: night sensations of the restless dead. This time it had been different. There was something familiar about the dream; not the ancient ritual and living burial; but the place. She recognized the place. This made it personal like a warning aimed at her. She re-crossed the room to the window, pulled back the curtain and looked out. It was still and dark and beyond the orange glow of the streetlamp the shapes of the trees that fringed the Moss cast moving shadows even though there was no breeze.
She went back to bed but sleep was no longer possible and anyway she daren’t drift back into the nightmare waiting in the darkness of the tomb. The dream had been too clear, too detailed and the woman frighteningly familiar. She didn’t want to even think about it so got out of bed and padded in bare feet to the bathroom, the soft pile of the carpet feeling strangely comforting.
Skendleby Description:
In the countryside around Alderly edge scarred by the mansions of football and celebrity something hidden for millennia is restless and something ageless watches. It stirs echoes in the mind of psychic healer Claire Vanarvi disturbing her sleep and directing her towards the archaeological dig in the grounds of Skendleby Hall where an unexpected and unique Neolithic chamber is about to be excavated.
The excavation disturbs the villagers who believe the land cursed but also the new owner of Skendleby Hall Si carver who, with the help of a corrupt politician, plans a massive development on this area of green belt. What none of them know is the nature of what they are about to unleash. Only Claire and a self loathing agnostic vicar stand in the way of something which has implications that extend beyond the universe as we understand it. Skendleby is a tale of Christmas haunting, quantum strangeness, fear, love, faith, greed and global warming.
