They watched from the shadows, feral eyes tracking her as she walked towards one of the big Edwardian houses that lined the avenue.

She was a large, statuesque woman, exuding an affluent air. Jewellery at her throat, ears and be-ringed fingers shimmered authentically beneath the street lamps. She headed towards the end house, an odd singing chant issued from it and drifted to their ears. Sean thought it must be some kind of prayer meeting, then he felt the others tense and knew it was about to happen.

‘Now!’ Frosty muttered and broke from the darkness loping towards her. She wasn’t aware of his presence until it was too late. ‘Trick or treat!’ he sneered, punching her as she turned. The woman gave a muffled scream and crumpled to the floor.

‘Frosty!’ Sean spoke out alarmed, bringing up the rear and gawping. The sound of the blow had a sickening flat timbre that jolted him. He couldn’t believe this was happening, couldn’t believe he was involved. ‘Don’t hit her!’ But his tone lacked conviction, sounded more like a plea.

The woman moaned, sprawling on the slick tarmac, one hand raised to her cheek. Sean instinctively moved to help but a figure behind pushed him out of the way, snatching at the shoulder bag she still clutched. Everything was happening too fast, he heard Frosty snarl a threat, ‘let it go,’ as his accomplice continued to tug brutally almost dislocating the woman’s shoulder until she conceded her grip.

‘Bitch!’ Melanie screamed, tossing the bag to Frosty and lunging forward again. There was a pleading wail from the ground and Melanie straightened, long blonde hair swinging in time with the amulet dangling from her hands. She laughed. ‘Gotcha!’

They ran! Above the pounding of their feet on the damp, leaf-strewn road Sean could here the woman, her voice pitched high calling for help. The door to the house opened and light fell across the road. People, lots of them, spilled out into the garden and all thoughts but escape left his head.

Shouts echoed and adrenaline surged. Their legs punched the tarmac as they made for the gap in the privet hedge. Behind it lay the park, darkness and cover. Sean followed Frosty and dived for the gap, erupting through to the other side in a shower of leaves and dew, feeling Melanie cannon into his back and send him sprawling. The other two didn’t wait but raced on, scything through the grass towards the safety of the trees in the distance. Fleets of crane flies rose up in alarm at their passing.

It seemed to take forever to cross the open ground. Sean wondered how in hell he’d got himself into this mess. He’d been warned they were bad news…losers but he’d been smitten by their dangerous, anti social cool, flattered they’d even noticed a sad, friendless geek like him. At first it had been lame stuff, bunking off, lipping back teachers, a bit of shoplifting…but it had just got worse. He’d learned too late the boy’s nickname had nothing to do with the shock of. White-blonde hair and pale eyes and everything to do with the cold, violent streak that manifested often enough to terrify Sean into going along with anything they demanded now.

Climbing the parks boundary wall they disappeared into the warren of housing estates that clustered along the town’s outskirts. Frosty led the way, slipping down an alley to leap a sagging split rail fence, crossing the boundary between town and country and heading for the wooded hills beyond.

A ragged autumn sky hurtled overhead, broken free from its mooring in some distant wasteland. Despite the darkness they found their way easily along the familiar muddy track, plunging into the woods along the ridge of the hill and on towards the old quarry. The bleak, accusing scream of a vixen marked their passing.

The cave was a quarter of the way down an incline scooped from the hillside, blanketed by the thick foliage that had clawed its way back to reclaim the disused site. They stumbled and slid down the precarious slope grabbing onto branches as they went and reached the flattened shelf at its mouth. The town spread out below them, flickering serenely. Only the faint barking of a dog betrayed life.

Melanie lit two candles, placing them in one of the niches carved into the chalky soil as Sean settled himself, wincing at the chill earth floor. The car seat over in the corner was Frostys‘, christened the throne and only marginally more comfortable with it’s faint smell of cat pee and stuffing dribbling from the cracked leather.

Melanie hovered, full of nervous energy, tugging at the bag hanging from Frosty’s hand. ‘Let’s have a look, see what she’s got. It weighs a fuckin’ ton,’ she observed, testing its weight.

The usual detritus spilled out, paper tissues, a half empty carton of mints, a lipstick and compact winked despondently but what landed last with a heavy thud was totally unexpected. They leant over and Sean felt an inexplicable trepidation.

‘What the f…’ Frosty spat as they stared at the scattered contents.

It was a large, flat oval of stone, flinty grey and polished to a shiny buff. Even the chill air failed to disperse the musty, derelict odour it gave off. Markings were scattered across its shell.

‘Bollocks no credit cards, not even a purse.’ Frosty straightened and kicked at the pile.

‘Can’t even get a KFC.’ Melanie sneered but tossed the amulet and chain in the air, catching it with an impudent chink. ‘But we can fence this tomorrow, at least.’

Frosty perched on the lip of the seat, lifting the stone and giving it another cursory glance before reaching up and snatching the amulet from a beaming Melanie with his other hand. ‘Hold up! What’s this?’ He placed the stone on the floor and draped the amulet across it. At first the gloom made it difficult to see what he alluded to but the candles sputtered, throwing a smear of light across the cave.

Sean peered at the oval of jet and saw the strange angular symbol highlighted in red enamel. An echoing shape was stamped in bass relief in the centre of the stone. Crude markings decorated its rounded edges.

‘What’s all that about?’ Melanie wondered. ‘They’re the same.’

‘Might be a family heirloom, a coat of arms maybe?’ Frosty looked pleased with himself.

Sean didn’t think so. He regarded the symbols for a few moments his eyes flickering between the stone and the amulet and back again. A coat of arms was usually intricate, fancy but the shape before him seemed archaic, even primitive. The kind of slashing Sigel a wide-eyed shaman would carve into a tree or piece of rock.

It might mean we get a bit more for the both of them together.’ Frosty said. ‘They might even be really valuable.’

They began to cackle like lunatics, Melanie hopping from foot to foot. Frosty leapt up to join in, gyrating obscenely behind her.

Sean didn‘t share their optimism. He turned and gazed through the opening into the slash of night, taking deep breaths of the cool air. The echo of that brutal punch repeated endlessly in his mind, a stern faced hindsight re-playing it again and again, reminding him with a rueful shake of the head that he had once been desperate to cultivate their approval and company.

Laughing, Frosty returned to the middle of the cave and swept the stone from the floor and tossed it over. ‘Take a look at this and see what it says.’

Sean flinched, hands grasping it reluctantly. Something about it repulsed him. It felt cold and slick, a serpents coils brushing his skin. The other two looked on expectantly. Having an educated wannabe gangsta in their crew had some advantages even if mugger’s assistant wasn‘t one of them. Despite his reluctance Sean knew better than to decline and draw attention to their lack of reading skills.

The cloying odour wafted upwards again. ‘It’s like a rune,‘ he speculated. ‘But I’m not sure what language it‘s written in.’

They mumbled, their curiosity frustrated while his was further piqued. He scrutinised the script, tantalisingly familiar yet hard to pin point.

‘It might be Middle English,’ he offered eventually.

Melanie grimaced. What’s Middle English for fucks sake, what’s up with just normal English?’

‘It’s what they spoke in the old days you thick slag!’ Frosty snapped. ; So what’s it say, what’s it about?’

Sean shook his head. ‘It’ll take a bit of time to decipher….’ His voice trailed off as he studied the stone, engrossed.

Frosty lost interest. ’Well it better be worth some dosh.’ He sat back on the throne, fishing a half smoked spliff from his jacket pocket and lighting it from one of the candle flames. Melanie shuffled over purring at his legs.

Sean ignored them, pouring over the stone as though consulting an oracle. The night deepened and slipped by unnoticed. Outside the wind whispered secrets. A peculiar expression stole across his face, somewhere between vacant and all seeing and not at all like the slack masks sported by the others as the spliff took effect.

Eventually Frosty stirred, his eyes hooded and speech slurred. ‘Let’s get going, I need food.’

Sean flinched as though emerging from a trance, wondering for a moment where he was.

Frosty turned to him as he shook his head and rose slowly from the floor. ‘Leave ‘em, stash ‘em under the chair they’ll be safe.’ Like an ugly, battle scarred tom he had marked this place and was sure of his territory. No one would dare to venture in, let alone take what was in here.

As they were about to head out into the night he blocked Sean’s path.

‘Just one thing I’ve been meaning to say Seanie,’ he swayed drunkenly. ‘I don’t tolerate disloyalty.’

‘Disloyalty…’ Sean repeated dumbly.

‘Yeah you know man, like when people lit out when it gets a bit lary…like it did tonight.’ He smiled easily. ‘I don’t like people that try and slither away or turn their back on their friends when things get rough. You know what I mean dontcha.’

Frosty’s pale grey eyes seemed to draw a bead on his rigid face. Sean nodded anxiously.

‘I’m glad, ‘cos the last one that did that to me….’ he paused and his eyes sparkled beatifically, ‘let’s just say he aint gonna be doing it to anyone else.’

Melanie sniggered and blew out the remaining candle, plunging Sean into darkness.

***

They bid him mumbled, wasted goodbyes at the split-level fence, turning at the mouth of the alley and staggering off into the labyrinthine streets. Sean went left, ostensibly heading for the better part of town then ducked down behind a parked car until their staggering figures dissolved into the night.

It was unnerving making his way back to the cave alone. The moonlit landscape of chromed hills and silvered forests, made him tiny and insignificant. In the rising foreground clusters of wild hawthorn poked shaggy heads above the earth like trolls waiting in ambush. The night seemed to hush and draw into itself in preparation for something portentous. His inelegant scrabble down the quarry slope broke the stillness.

He lit the candles again and sat on the throne, reaching underneath for the stone, eager now, no shred of the previous distaste remaining. He shifted its smooth, weighty contours in his hand and felt an exhilarated foreboding as though on the threshold of some mind blowing revelation. With his finger he brushed the markings carved all along it’s edges like a blind man reading Braille, feverishly drinking in the archaic script. He became lost as it spoke to him, not through the words but by some weird osmosis of touch the mechanics of which he didn’t understand, nor care to.

Eventually, he lifted his head, sated.

He thought about Frosty’s blunt warning. By the time they were done with him his life would be a ruin. The future, once a bright road of universities, employment and prospects was now a derelict weed choked track. Sean wondered if this had been the main motivation for their attentions all along, to drag him down to their hopeless level

He looked down at the hotchpotch of footprints on the earthen floor, picking out the distinctive tread of both Frosty and Melanie’s trainers. The moon crept out from behind a ragged cloud, leering conspiratorially above the shrub-choked quarry and granting him more than enough light to see by. On the shelf a box of tea candles threw flickering shadows.

He knew what he had to do.

Reaching under the chair again and inclining his head he draped the amulet over his shoulders and lifted the stone.

***

Sean took a detour on the way home from school. In the pale October afternoon the innocuous, leaf strewn Avenue looked suburban and safe, giving no clue to the brutal events of the previous night.

He went to the house at the far end, knocking decisively at the front door. It opened and the woman stood there. She still appeared affluent and well turned out but a large bruise spread an ugly stain across her cheek.

‘Yes?’ she snapped, not recognising him.

Sean crouched down taking the stone and locket from his school bag, saying nothing as he handed them both to her.

She couldn’t quite disguise the astonishment as she reached out well-manicured but lacerated hands to take them. She regarded Sean more thoughtfully.

‘You’re a very sensible boy.’

‘I never wanted any part in it.’

‘Nevertheless these items are very important to my colleagues and I. If we’d had to call up…’ she hesitated, ‘assistance to find and bring them back it wouldn’t have been nice for you or your friends.’

‘I realise that,’ Sean replied evenly, watching the woman flinch as if a series of electric shock had run through her body. She looked down at the stone, slack jawed, all pretence gone. Cocking her head to one side she appeared to be listening attentively.

‘In fact I took the liberty of calling someone up myself,’ he added by way of explanation.

She stared at the stone for a long time, eventually lifting her eyes to return his gaze with new respect. It was the first time an adult had really looked at him in such a way. ‘Clever boy!’ she said eventually

He shrugged, it spoke to me, like it speaks to you, guided me. I had everything I needed there, footprints, the herbs growing outside…four candles for the four elements.’

‘It’s said the stone chooses its pupils,’ the woman said approvingly. ‘You have a talent for it obviously,’

He thought back to his day at school. Frosty and Melanie both absent, the special assembly held just after lunch and the Headmaster walking to the front of the stage, pale and visibly shaken.

He smiled a wide, satisfied smile. ‘I think I do yes.’

For a long moment she regarded him, then stepped aside and beckoned him into the house. ‘Please come in, there are some people here who would very much like to meet you.’

He paused considering, perhaps these would be the kind of friends who were right for him.

He hesitated for a moment then stepped forward and into the house.