Dimensions - Lynne North (uplifting book club books txt) 📗

and shivering at the same time, she propped herself up so she wouldn’t drift back into sleep. The pain eased. Leah’s hand went to the necklace. Damn it, one of the points must have been pressing into her. In anger, she tried to take it off, but her sleep-numbed fingers couldn’t work the fastener. Too tired to keep trying, she swung the star around to the back, leaving only the chain at the front, and lay down. When she next opened her eyes, it was daylight.
After stretching, Leah got out of bed and walked to the bathroom. She yawned and ran her hand through her tangled hair. As she looked at herself in the mirror, the star caught her attention. Shining brightly against her chest, it gave Leah a start. With the sight of it came the memory of the dream. She touched the star with care. It felt cold, hard and inanimate. Fool, what did she expect? It had been a very realistic dream, and hadn’t she put the star to the back? She must have been restless for the remainder of the night, and swung it around again. Leah leaned closer to the mirror. She could forget about buying the silver dip; she might have got her money’s worth after all.
“I’m beginning to like you,” she said to the mirror image of the star. Despite the dream, she meant it. It looked right. Her blue eyes looked back at her, and the star glinted.
At first, the dreams troubled her, but as they continued, night after night, they became intriguing. They always followed much the same pattern. She was at Stonehenge, and the stones were alive to her touch. So was the star. It even got to the stage where she thought, Ah, I’m here again. Not exactly an awareness of a dream, but a memory of a continuing process. Something expected, and meant to be. When Leah considered her dream during waking hours, she kept thinking it would eventually go further. It never did.
She read books on ‘The Meaning of Dreams’ but Stonehenge didn’t figure in any of them. She’d also mentioned it in the office one afternoon, when Pat, Mr Hopkin’s secretary was telling them about a crazy dream she’d had. No one knew any more about recurring dreams than Leah. She’d hoped someone might.
One morning, Leah awoke with the solution. Go to Stonehenge. It wasn’t too far. Maybe that might lay the ghost to rest. Perhaps she was destined to find something, or to meet someone, there. Who knows? She would drive out the following weekend.
The dreams stopped.
At first, Leah was surprised, then annoyed. Some premonition. Maybe she wouldn’t go after all. She had made her plans though, and she’d always intended to go sometime. She made her decision
The weekend came, and Leah set off dressed in jeans, sweatshirt and jacket. Her sense of direction wasn’t usually much to be praised, but to her surprise, the drive turned out to be easy. Her old faithful car seemed to find its own way with no real help from her.
From first sight of the circle, Leah had an overwhelming urge to enter it. After parking as near as she could, she left the car and walked towards the stones. Shouldn’t there be barriers? Everything seemed pretty odd. Where was everyone else? Where were the cars and tourists? This was a popular spot. Part of Leah knew full well that something wasn’t right. She’d seen television reports of Stonehenge at the Solstice. No one was allowed right up to the ancient circle, to prevent damage. She wasn’t dreaming again was she? Leah touched the nearest stone. It was hard, cold and rough under her fingers. She was making something of nothing. So there were no barriers today, no cars, and no people. She stopped there, because it was becoming increasingly harder to convince herself that everything was normal. Despite the fear welling inside her, she stepped between the nearest monoliths.

***

Jeron was the first to see the swirling mists of the turquoise image crystal begin to clear. He called out to his four companions, who ceased their muted conversation and turned to study the forming image. Firstly, the Stones became clearer, bold and powerful through the wandering vapours. Then, in the centre, a figure began to appear; as yet faceless and formless and more like a thickening of the mists rather than an actual person.
“The Outlander has answered the call,” said Algard softly. “The time has come again to go to the Stones of Tempus. No time passes for the Outlander now, but we must hurry. Time is passing for us, and with each day the Lords of Darkness become stronger.”
The white robed lords turned to leave, but on passing the crystal, Triol glanced again.
“By the sacred Stones of Tempus,” he breathed in shock. “It is a woman!”

***

The nausea struck Leah the moment her foot passed the stone. “Oh God,” she muttered, holding her head. She turned to get out of the circle, to walk away, cursing herself for ever coming here in the first place. Her steps took her in the direction she believed to be out, so how in Hell’s name did she end up right in the centre of the circle? She groaned and swayed as the stones began to turn, her senses spinning into a vortex of oblivion. Her last thought before the mercy of unconsciousness was, it’s a dream. It’s only a dream. I must wake up. She sank to her knees.
When a vague awareness returned, Leah was lying down. Moist grass cushioned her outstretched fingers, and hard ground grazed her cheek. One eye flickered, saw the tall ancient stones, and closed again.
With the belief she must have fainted, Leah pushed herself up onto one elbow, then into a sitting position. She clenched her eyes and teeth against the sickness that welled up inside her. As she took deep breaths, the air smelt keener and sharper. She tried to calm her ragged nerves. She had never fainted before, and prayed she never would again. Despite the cool air around her, her skin was warm and clammy. After running her hand across her eyes, she opened them and blinked. Leah looked around herself properly for the first time since the faint.
“Oh my God. What’s happening to me?”
Once she had stood up on unsteady legs, Leah staggered to the nearest stone and leaned heavily against it. Cold granite met her hand. A quick look around told her the stones remained the same, but nothing else did.
Her car was gone, so was the road she had driven along and the fields she had crossed. Leah shook her head in disbelief. This couldn’t be true. Above her, twin suns began to push through shifting clouds, drifting overhead. A pale mauve coloured sky disturbed her sense of normality. The stones she leaned against looked a strange shade, and even her skin had taken on a different hue. Leah thought she was going to be sick. She slumped to the ground, leaning against the hard rock and resting her head back onto it. Of its own volition, her hand went to the star around her neck. In frenzy, she gripped it, trying to wrench it from her throat. The chain remained firmly attached. All Leah succeeded in doing was hurting her neck and hand. Head bent to her knees, she sobbed in fear and anger. She knew she was going mad.
When her weeping subsided, Leah looked up again. Her red-rimmed eyes tried to make sense of what she knew she couldn’t be seeing. She decided for sanity’s sake, that she must still be in a faint, and hallucinating.
A strange land spread before her. In other circumstances, she might have considered it beautiful. Flat fields spread out into the distance, interspersed by blue water and grey rocks. The colours assailing Leah’s senses evoked the names of blue, green, red; but these bland descriptions couldn’t do them justice. The shades were different. They had much more depth, and a quite overwhelming vibrancy. Once again, Leah believed she must be dreaming, because only in her dreams had she ever seen such vivid colours. The strange shade of the sky was affecting the hues of everything around her. Small hills dotted with woods raised themselves from the flatness of the landscape. Even at this distance, Leah could see that the trees bore no real resemblance to any she knew. This clarity of vision both pleased and surprised her, because her eyesight had never been the best. She always wore glasses for driving, and had left them in the car. Her fears and misery were momentarily forgotten while she took in more of her clear and fantastic surroundings.
In the midst of a meadow, three huge trees stood with tall branches decked by almost silvery leaves. The thickness of the trunks of these mighty trees could only be guessed at this distance, but they must be at least two metres across. Huge snake-like roots parted the reddish brown earth in places, with blue-grey boulders wrapped in their coils. At the base of one particular boulder lay a pool of limpid water, shining silver under the twin suns with a light that came from within its depths.
After dragging her eyes away from the pool, Leah turned her attention toward a hill with a dark tower rising sheer from the rocks and boulders. Castle-like in appearance, but consisting of one central turret with a walled surround, it pointed heavenwards like a finger in warning.
Though the day was bright, orange glows came from the high window slits. Leah wondered if daylight was ever allowed inside. It gave a sense of both power and foreboding. She wished she hadn’t spotted it. At that moment, her eyes caught movement, the first she had seen in this strange place. A drawbridge was lowered over the still waters of the moat surrounding the tower. The chains extended to their full length and the wooden bridge touched down on the track leading from it. Five figures rode out; one after the other. The whiteness of their billowing robes was startling in the otherwise richly coloured surroundings, as was the silver-white of the swift, sleek horses they rode. When the riders came nearer, Leah’s breath caught in her throat. It was all too clear that no horses on earth could move at such speed, and the gleaming silver horns rising proudly from the centre of each creature’s forehead made the truth obvious. The figures were riding unicorns. More to the point, they were also, without doubt, heading straight for her.
It was then she heard the wet, snuffling sound. As she looked around herself, the approaching riders all but forgotten, Leah strained to hear the sound again. She caught movement from the corner of her eye. By the time she turned her head in its general direction, all she saw was a vague sense of something disappearing behind one of the huge stones. In a panic now, frozen to the monolith against which she clung, all Leah could do was wait for it to reappear.
When it did, Leah felt her heart stop. The creature looked vaguely human, but the similarity ended there. Even stooped, it stood taller than Leah’s five foot four. Sickly white skin hung from its bony frame in long, pendulous flaps. It gave the impression of its skeleton having shrunk, leaving nothing for the excess skin to hold on to. The head was bald, apart from a few tufts of hair here and there on the scabrous scalp. Pus oozed from sores all over its body. The creature’s bloodshot eyes stared about wildly, the holes in its face dilating to sniff the air, searching. Couldn’t it see her? Was it blind? Leah didn’t move, or make a sound. Her very soul wanted to scream