Free Lazar by Lawrence Heath

another stile embedded in another hedgerow.
    On the far side stood the monastery.
    Jan climbed the step and stood astride the stile for a second
while she looked at the broken piles of stone and masonry stretched across the
field. In her imagination they looked like the weathered bones of some great,
beached leviathan washed ashore and left stranded by the storm that had swept
the medieval town away. The fractured arches were its ribcage, the window in
the east wall a socket in its skull. Jan shook the image from her head and
smiled, and then jumped down.
    Having now served its purpose, Jan thrust the guidebook into
her back pocket as she walked across the sun-baked meadow toward one of the few
remaining monastery walls that still stood to its full height. At its centre
was a doorway. Jan paused, when she reached it, and looked through the opening,
down the hollow body of the nave toward the pointed arch of the east window. She
closed her eyes for a moment and tried to recall the image of the monastery
that had appeared on Hal’s computer screen. This was the main entrance to the
church, if she remembered rightly – the west door.
    She stepped through it. As she did so, she felt her left arm
knock against something, or somebody. She turned round and stepped back in a
single movement. The entrance was empty. There was nothing, or nobody, there
– nor in the field beyond. All was silent and still and clear-cut in the
bright July sunlight. Jan stared hard at the doorway. It was far too wide for
her to have brushed against its stone jamb accidentally. But she had definitely
bumped into something. Or had she? She was rubbing her elbow, but that was
instinctive. Perhaps it was all in her mind.
    She shivered. It suddenly occurred to her that there was more
of the chill of stone than the warmth of summer skies on this side of the
entrance. She looked around. The walls along either side were hardly higher
than one metre and the sun was directly overhead. There was hardly a shadow to
be seen. So why did she feel so cold? Was that all in her mind as well?
    What Jan saw next made her blood run even colder.
    It was Margaret. There was no doubt about it. Even though the
vague, white figure was a long way off, Jan just knew that it was her. But how did she know? She could not possibly recognise her from this distance. And how
could she be so sure? The Margaret she had met before had been melancholic
– despairing, even. This girl was skipping carefree across the grass swinging
a basket in her hand. But it was her.
    Or is she just a figment of my imagination, along with
everything else? Jan questioned her own senses for the third time. Perhaps
there’s a part of me that wants so much to see Margaret again that it’s
conjured up her image in my mind’s eye.
    Whoever, or whatever, she was, she was fast approaching the
monastery. Jan walked over to the remains of the wall along the north side of
the aisle. It came up to just below Jan’s waist, and at first she considered
climbing over it, but in the end decided to stand and wait for Margaret to come
to her.
    As the girl came nearer Jan noticed that she wasn’t wearing
modern clothes – she had a long, grey woollen dress on, that reached down
to the ground. “I don’t think I’ve got an outfit like that in my mental databank,” Jan said to herself,
and smiled, and as she did so she realised that she wasn’t frightened. “She may
be dressed like a medieval ghost this time, but she’s nothing like as sinister
as she was before.”
    But there was something
slightly odd in her demeanour. Although Margaret was heading in Jan’s
direction, she was not coming directly toward her. In fact, Margaret didn’t
seem to be aware of Jan’s existence at all. Jan waved; she failed to notice. Jan
called her name; she didn’t hear.
    As much irritated as fazed by Margaret’s behaviour, Jan made
to climb over the wall in order to confront her, but she hit her knee against …
against what?