Free Scaderstone Pit (The Darkeningstone Series Book 3) by Mikey Campling

her hands in exasperation. “It’s just totally over the top, and I’ve never heard of anything like it. It’s not as though the dig is particularly important.”
    I took a long drink of my wine. “So, at your dig, there isn’t a…a black stone?”
    Cally shivered. “No, nothing like that, or I wouldn’t be here. I never want to see anything like that again.”
    “I understand,” I said. “But maybe, there’s something similar, or maybe—”
    “No,” she interrupted. “I told you, there’s nothing of the sort. It’s a Copper Age site. We’re looking for weapons, jewellery, the sort of things that look good on TV. There are a couple of menhirs nearby, you know, standing stones, but we’re not here to study them.” She gave me a resigned smile. “The producer thinks they look nice in the background. He says they add a bit of mysticism.”
    “Could there be some sort of connection between the standing stones and the black stone we saw?”
    “No,” she said. “And listen, I’m not interested in Neolithic stuff anymore. It’s not my field. So don’t expect me to be an expert, all right?”
    “Sorry. I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on, that’s all.”
    Cally took a breath. “OK. It’s just been a long day. And I need something to eat.” She looked around the restaurant. “I wonder how long our food will be.”
    We sat in silence for a long minute. It’s now or never , I thought. But I’d better watch my step . “I’m sorry if I’m dragging up unpleasant memories,” I said. “But I’d like to talk about the first time we met.”
    She looked down at the table and drew imaginary lines on the tablecloth with her fingertip. “OK. What you want to know? I was there on a dig, just helping out back then, and I saw you briefly and showed you the stone.” She hesitated. “After that, it’s all a bit muddled. I was an idiot. I’d been smoking a joint. It was all very…unfortunate.”
    “Cally, this is going to sound like a weird question, but when you saw me, what year do you think it was?”
    She looked up sharply. “Same as you I expect. I went to university in 2015, so it must’ve been the year before—2014.”
    I took a breath and let it out slowly. “No, it wasn’t. Not for me.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The year you saw me, Cally, it was 2010.”
    She shook her head. “No, like I told you, I was on that dig in the year before I went to Exeter. You must’ve got it wrong.”
    I leaned forward across the table and lowered my voice. “Listen, 2010 was the year I went into the quarry. And there’s no way I could get that wrong, because that was the year I went missing.”
    Cally’s stared at me in silence.
    “Let me show you something.” I took my wallet from my pocket and pulled out a newspaper cutting. I unfolded it and slid it across the table toward her. “My dad gave me this. You can see it was dated in 2010.”
    It wasn’t a long piece: a simple report giving my name and stating that I was a missing person. She read it quickly then looked me in the eye. “I hate to ask this, but what happened to you? Did you run away? Were you unhappy or something?”
    I almost laughed. “I don’t think I can explain all that, Cally. Not right now. But the point is this—you saw me before I disappeared. You saw me in 2010.”
    “Wait a minute. I remember something about this.” She looked down at the table, her brow furrowed. “That’s right. Before the dig started they had to wait for the police to say it was OK. There was something about a boy who’d been missing, but they’d found him.” She looked at me and shook her head. “But that can’t have been you. Unless you’d come back from wherever you’d been by then.”
    I ran my hands through my hair. I’d rehearsed what I was going to say to Cally a hundred times, but it was all going wrong. I shouldn’t have been surprised. How the hell could I explain what had happened when I didn’t even