Read Online Ancient Echoes by Robert Holdstock - Free Book Online

anything about it. He watched the saturated landscape, hardly sharing the enthusiasm of his parents as they began to reach the deep country, with its signs and signals of a long forgotten past, the monoliths and grave mounds, the bleak castles slipping from the high hills where they had been built to stand forever.
Why does she always hate to be working?
    Angela, he had to acknowledge, annoyed him as much as she thrilled him.
    His small radio screeched to the strident, wonderful sounds of the punk rock band PIL. On each occasion that he was instructed to ‘turn the racket down’–
    ‘And stop singing that you’re the “Antichrist”. We’ve got the message. Jesus! have we got the message …’
    ‘It’s the song. The words of the song.’
    ‘You don’t say …’
    – he obeyed
(they were laughing at him)
then inched the music up by degrees. The tape played endlessly – he’d only brought the one – his only comfort as the moors approached.
    By the end of the journey, he felt seriously like falling headfirst into Grimpen Mire – the muddy bog of Sherlock Holmes fame – to be dragged down until the black dogs swam for him, to be eaten in celebration on the rocks, the
Antichrist,
a victim of the old earth and its old powers.
    His imagination shifted into overdrive.
    What a story he would tell when the new term started!
    But instead, he walked and complained, and almost sobbed with relief when he was left in the hotel’s television lounge for most of the evening while his parents tucked into the
a la carte
menu, and shared hiking stories with an older couple who werewalking the whole way from one end of the country to the other. (They hadn’t
got
very far then, Jack thought, until he realized they were almost at the
end
of the journey, eleven hundred miles down, sixty to go.)
    Angela called during the evening, but all she wanted to talk about was whether or not he’d had an encounter with the bull-runners, and to enthuse to him about something she’d read in her research.
    ‘Primal, primitive words and images might sometimes slip into a sort of sump, like a pit. They’re discarded, not needed by the main memory systems in the brain. But they form archaeo-stories which occasionally become sufficiently complex to filter back to the conscious level.’
    ‘Archaeo-stories.’
    ‘Yes. I read about them in a French Canadian journal of psychology. They’re events or images, or whole stories that have sort of created themselves out of our own reading, our own imagination – our experiences. They surface because they become energized from–’
    ‘You’ve been reading French Canadian journals of psychology?’
    ‘Yes. Yes, I have. I’ve begun to understand what’s happening to you, Jack. Do you want to hear about this?’
    ‘What language are they written in?’
    ‘The journals? French, of course.’
    ‘I’m stuck here, up to my neck in mud, bog and black dogs, missing you, thinking of you all the time, and you’re reading
French
.’
    There was a moment of stunned silence. ‘The work is fascinating. Jack, I think Jandrok’s
archaeo-story
might explain–’
    ‘I want to be in bed with you,’ he whispered. ‘I want to be making love.’
    ‘Jack! Keep a grip! My parents often listen in.’
    ‘Are they listening in now?’
    ‘I haven’t heard the
bips
on the line. I don’t think so.’
    ‘Do you miss me?’
    ‘Of course. Of course I miss you. Jack, you’re only away for four days. I’ll see you next week.’
    ‘How’re the cousins?’
    ‘Big, loud, rude … very self-centred! But rather nice.’
    ‘Have they tried to seduce you?’
    He heard her gasp of irritation, could imagine her annoyance. ‘What do you mean
try
? Didn’t have to
try,
Jack. It’s three in a bed every night. You’re
pathetic.
Grow up!’
    The line went dead on her angry voice. Jack mimicked her fury into the mouthpiece then slammed the receiver down.
    Why did I
do
that?
    After a fitful night’s sleep, he got up