The Stone

It was a dark and stormy night…

Except, of course, it wasn't!

It was a glorious Italian summer evening, the sort that stays with you long after the sun has set and the years have carried away almost all of the details.

I was nineteen, hopelessly romantic, and having the time of my life.

And forty years later, I can still remember that sound.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

✦ ✦ ✦

It was the summer of 1986, my second summer working in Italy. I had been invited to spend several weeks working for a successful engineering company in Bologna. My duties included office work and interpreting between Italian, French and German executives.

I thought it was all terribly glamorous.

The managing director, Signor Bellandi, was a man of considerable wealth and influence.

I was staying with his family at their beautiful villa in the hills south of Bologna, reached by a long, winding driveway. Cypress trees stood like dark green sentinels. Apricot trees grew beside the swimming pool.

In the mornings, the aroma of freshly brewed coffee seemed to materialise from nowhere, accompanied by wonderful little pastries filled with custard or fruit.

It was another world. A safe, perfect world.

And then there was Enzo.

Twenty-four years old, dark-haired, thoughtful, highly intelligent, and possessed of the most extraordinary piercing blue eyes I had ever seen.

There was already something between us. Something unspoken, although increasingly difficult to disguise.

Nothing had happened, not yet, but there was that delightful awareness of the other person, the accidental brushing of hands, the glances that lasted a moment longer than they should.

That particular evening, Enzo and his younger brother Sandro invited me out with two of their friends.

Sandro was driving Enzo's white Volkswagen Golf. We collected Paolo and Federico, a very tall young man with a wicked sense of humour, and set off for a pizzeria in the countryside.

I remember sitting in the car, my right elbow resting casually on the open window, projecting an air of sophisticated nonchalance.

At nineteen, I was quite convinced I could pull it off.

On either side of the road, fields of sunflowers stretched towards the horizon, their golden faces turned towards the sun.

Warm air rushed through the windows as the five of us sang along enthusiastically to the latest tunes.

Simple Minds were playing Don't You (Forget About Me) - and oh, how ironic that title would become.

We turned off onto a chalky-white country road, the Golf stirring up little clouds of dust, and eventually reached the pizzeria.

I cannot remember what I ate. Isn't that strange? I can remember so much of that evening with almost photographic clarity, yet the pizza itself has vanished into the mists of time.

I do remember how wonderful it was. The food, the animated Italian conversation, the laughter, the easy camaraderie.

We were young, happy and carefree.

Nothing bad in the world could possibly touch us.

After dinner, someone suggested driving further into the hills to watch the sunset.

There was an old church, they said, standing high above the valleys. A beautiful place to watch the sun go down.

It sounded perfect. And it was.

The church stood alone on its hillside, surrounded by trees and open countryside. Its walls were a warm, earthy orange-beige, the colour of sun-baked terracotta.

We climbed onto a low wall overlooking the valley and sat in a row, perched with our legs dangling over the edge.

Below us, the countryside stretched away in folds of green and gold. Cypress trees punctuated the hillsides, their narrow silhouettes rising towards the sky.

A gentle breeze carried the scents of warm pine resin and wild thyme. Dry summer leaves rustled in the trees, while unseen insects filled the air with their rhythmic chirring.

There were no other people.

Just the five of us.

The evening light was magnificent.

As the sun descended, the church walls changed from golden ochre to glowing orange, then rose, then a deep, glorious red.

I sat beside Enzo, close enough for my shoulder to rest against his arm.

His dark hair stirred slightly in the warm breeze.

When he turned towards me, the sunset caught in his astonishing blue eyes, reflecting little fragments of orange and gold.

I remember thinking that I had never seen anyone quite so handsome.

Our hands rested on the wall between us.

I don't remember which of us moved first, but somehow our little fingers found one another and entwined.

Neither of us said anything. Neither of us moved away.

I was nineteen, in Italy, sitting beside a handsome young man, with my whole life stretching ahead of me.

It was a perfect moment.

I wanted it to last forever...

But the sun continued its descent.

The colours deepened, faded, and finally surrendered to the gathering twilight.

We had spent the evening delighting in the last of the sunlight.

It never occurred to us that something might be lurking in the darkness, waiting for the light to disappear.

Eventually, we decided to leave.

Our conversation continued as we wandered through the church grounds towards the car. The air was still warm and our footsteps crunched through the brittle, sun-scorched grass.

I remember very little about the church building itself.

What I remember is the stone.

It lay in the open churchyard, an enormous circular slab of weathered grey rock, about the size of a large dining table and perhaps fifteen centimetres thick.

Its surface was pitted with darker patches of grey. The edges had clearly been cut and shaped by human hands, though centuries of exposure had left them rough and worn.

It reminded me of a gigantic millstone.

It was slightly raised above the ground, apparently covering something beneath it.

I wondered what it was.

One of the boys, I think Federico, suddenly stopped.

"Attenzione! Non toccare la pietra!"

Careful! Don't touch the stone!

I halted.

My left foot was barely a couple of centimetres from the edge.

"Why?" I asked.

Federico shook his head.

"Non camminarci sopra. Porta sfortuna."

Don't walk on it. It's bad luck.

He was usually the joker of the group, but there was something different about his voice.

Someone mentioned an unfamiliar word: Ossario.

I asked what it meant.

An ossuary, they explained. A place where the bones of the dead were kept.

Ancient bones. The remains of people long forgotten.

I stared at the great grey circle.

Nobody touched it. Nobody stepped onto it.

One of the boys muttered something about old stories associated with the place. Another suggested we should leave it alone.

“Let's not tempt fate.”

Nobody laughed.

That struck me as odd. Federico, who had spent most of the evening making jokes, was now standing unusually still.

I looked from one to the other trying to see their faces. In the faded light, their expressions were difficult to read.

I wanted to ask what stories they meant but something in their manner stopped me.

A breath of warm air stirred the dry grass around our ankles. Somewhere behind us, leaves rustled softly.

It was only a stone, after all.

An enormous, ancient stone, certainly, but nothing more.

So why did none of them want to go near it?

I looked down again.

My left foot was still resting in the dry grass, almost touching the rough edge of the stone.

I remember that detail with extraordinary clarity.

My shoe.

The brittle grass.

The enormous grey slab, its surface growing indistinct in the deepening darkness.

Then somebody swore urgently, breaking through the stillness.

And then someone shouted: "Si muove!"

It's moving!

I looked at the stone.

I couldn't see it moving.

It was too dark now to distinguish its edges clearly.

But I heard something.

No, that's not quite right.

I felt something.

Somewhere deep inside my stomach, an extraordinary low resonance began.

How to describe it? It wasn’t a vibration through my feet; it wasn’t like an earthquake; it wasn’t anything that made the ground visibly shake.

It was something far more dreadful.

A deep, slow, grinding rumble. Stone against stone.

It was as though two ancient mountains were being ground against one another, somewhere in the darkness beneath us.

A sound so profound that it seemed to belong to the earth itself.

And it continued.

Slowly.

Relentlessly.

Without interruption.

An immense, inexorable grinding.

“Quick! Run!”

"It is moving!"

The voices rose in sudden panic.

Then came the sound of running feet.

The brittle grass crackled beneath them.

I heard someone shout again, further away this time.

The boys were running.

All of them.

I stood without motion, without sense, without hope.

My eyes remained fixed on the stone.

My heart was hammering so violently that I could feel each beat in my throat.

I was petrified.

Not merely frightened.

Petrified.

As though some dreadful spell had turned me to stone.

(The irony would have amused me under different circumstances.)

Then I heard the car doors.

One slammed, then another.

They were leaving.

They were actually leaving me there.

Alone.

In the dark.

Beside that terrible stone.

And still the grinding continued.

I could no longer hear the insects.

I could no longer hear the leaves in the breeze.

The world had shrunk to a single enormous grey circle and the horrifying sound that seemed to emanate from it.

Had the stone shifted?

Was there a gap opening beneath its edge?

I couldn't tell.

I couldn't make myself look away either.

I remember thinking, with the absolute certainty that only sheer terror can bring, that whatever lay beneath that slab was coming for me.

I would end up down there with the ancient bones.

Another soul claimed.

Another forgotten person beneath the stone.

I don't know how long I stood there.

It might have been seconds.

It might have been minutes.

Time had ceased.

Then something grabbed me from behind!

Two hands seized my shoulders.

For one terrible instant, I thought that was my end.

It had me!

The dreadful thing from beneath that stone had reached me.

I didn't scream.

There was no sound inside me capable of becoming a scream.

Then one of those hands caught mine.

And pulled.

Hard.

Enzo!

He had come back.

The spell shattered.

One moment I was frozen, utterly incapable of movement. The next, every instinct in my body screamed a single command: RUN!

And I ran. We ran.

I don't remember Enzo saying anything; I only remember the insistent pull of his hand, the dry ground beneath my feet and the overwhelming need to escape.

Run. Keep running. Don't stop.

I didn't look back.

I don't remember reaching the Golf.

I don't remember opening the door or climbing inside.

My next memory is of sitting in the car, gasping for breath, surrounded by four young men whose faces looked as frightened as mine must have been.

Nobody laughed.

That was what frightened me most.

The boys who had teased and joked all evening were utterly silent.

Sandro drove.

The Golf hurtled down the pale gravel track, its tyres throwing up great clouds of dust that billowed around us in the headlights.

The winding road seemed to disappear into a grey haze.

I sat in the back, clutching Enzo's hand. I think somebody on my other side held my other hand.

Nobody sang.

Nobody joked.

Nobody spoke.

There was only the sound of the engine, the tyres scattering gravel, and our own ragged breathing.

We were five young people who had gone out for pizza and a beautiful sunset.

Now we were five terrified survivors, fleeing something none of us understood.

I remember looking at Enzo.

The young man whose blue eyes had reflected the sunset only a short while earlier looked utterly terrified.

He squeezed my hand.

I held on.

We dropped the friends off and eventually returned to the villa.

Nobody suggested going to bed.

Instead, we stayed in the lounge, huddled together on the sofa, unwilling to separate.

Sandro sat, lost in thought.  Enzo sat curled up, his knees drawn tightly against his chest, his arms wrapped around them.

I had never seen him like that.

He was usually so thoughtful, composed and quietly confident.

Now he looked like a frightened child.

We sat close together as the hours slipped by.

I don't remember anyone speaking about what had happened.

I don't remember anyone offering an explanation.

Perhaps none of us dared.

Eventually, the approaching morning reminded us that we would have to return to our ordinary lives.

Their father would be getting up for work.

So would I.

We couldn't remain huddled together indefinitely, however desperately we might have wanted to.

One by one, we went to our rooms.

Morning arrived as though nothing had happened.

Sunlight flooded the hills.

The familiar smell of freshly brewed coffee drifted through the villa.

There were little pastries for breakfast, some filled with sweet custard, others with fruit.

The apricot trees stood peacefully beside the swimming pool.

Everything was exactly as it had been the day before.

Except us.

Signor Bellandi drove me to work as usual.

At the factory, he stepped out of the car and resumed his role as managing director, quietly commanding the respect of everyone around him.

I went about my duties in the office, translating, answering questions and behaving like the capable young woman I was supposed to be.

Nobody would have guessed that anything extraordinary had happened.

If Signor Bellandi noticed that something was amiss, he had the good grace not to ask.

None of us spoke of the stone again during the remaining weeks of that glorious Italian summer.

✦ ✦ ✦

Forty years have passed since that night in those hills above Bologna.

I have forgotten some of the details: I cannot remember what I ate or drank at the pizzeria, or how I got into the car.

But I remember the sunflowers.

I remember the smell of pine and wild thyme.

I remember the sunset reflected in Enzo's extraordinary blue eyes, and the gentle pressure of his little finger entwined with mine.

And I remember the stone.

That enormous, ancient circle of grey rock.

And my left foot, perilously close to its edge.

And the sound. Dear God, that sound.

And I have never known whether it truly moved at all.

Perhaps I am better off not knowing.

Perhaps, somewhere deep inside, we understood that certain things are best left buried.

Never to be spoken of, lest they be resurrected.

Until now …