She learned that there were only fifteen confirmed fogous in the United Kingdom, but similar structures — called erdstall tunnels — could be found all over western Europe. Although there was no uniformity in structure, both fogous and erdstalls were dry stone chambers, about six feet deep and five feet wide, usually found near the center of ancient settlements. There was no clear consensus on their function. Food storage and shelter were obvious explanations, but the discovery of what appeared to be religious artifacts had led some scholars to believe that the fogous served a ritualistic purpose. The author of the book had gone a step further, proposing that the fogous were doorways between the human world and the world inhabited by faerie creatures, which reminded Jade of Roche’s comments about Changelings having their roots in faerie lore. What was not so apparent however was why Roche had chosen to expend his last breath to point her in this direction. There was nothing in the book that leapt out at her.
The next morning, she and Kellogg went back to work at Roche’s home, and while she found nothing more in the dead man’s personal effects to help make sense of the clue, she was able to make a few casual inquiries of Kellogg, and learned that Roche owned a hunting lodge near Kilmaurs, west of Glasgow. Kilmaurs, which took its name from the Gaelic Cil Mor Ais, which meant “Great Cairn”, was the site of a fogou that had yielded several artifacts including a knobby orb of carved stone, the purpose of which, like the chamber in which it had been discovered, remained a mystery. It was, as Professor might say, pretty thin soup, and she had no idea what it was she was supposed to be looking for, but Jade felt certain that Roche had been trying to direct her to the fogou at Kilmaurs. If she was wrong, there were still fourteen other possibilities.
As she left the motorway behind and began navigating the narrow backroads through farm country, her excitement began to wane a little. There would be no concealing the fact that she was an outsider and there was no telling how the local residents would react to her presence. Without their help there would be little chance of finding Roche’s hunting lodge, to say nothing of the fogou site. Dealing with the natives, whether it was a primitive tribe in Central America or a rancher in middle America, was one of the most challenging aspects of archaeology, but through trial and error, Jade had developed a knack for charming even the most suspicious locals.
After booking a room for the night at a roadside inn, Jade asked the clerk about the fogou, and after some confusion stemming from her pronunciation—“D’ya mean the fuggy hole at Jocksthorn Farm?”—she was given a hand-drawn map that would, if the clerk was not having a bit of fun at her expense, take her right to the “fuggy hole.” Jade thanked the clerk and then asked for a dinner recommendation.
“You’ll want to visit the Weston Tavern,” the clerk told her. “Try the haggis, neeps and tatties, if only to say you did.”
“I’ll do that,” Jade lied. For the first time since his departure, Jade was actually glad for Professor’s absence, as he would have almost certainly double-dog dared her to eat the traditional Scottish meal of sheep’s stomach stuffed with organ meats and oatmeal, and served with turnips and mashed potatoes. As it was, she had no intention of stopping for dinner, not with the goal finally within reach.
Armed only with a flashlight, she braved the chilly rain and set out on foot from the hotel for the two mile walk to Jocksthorn Farm, a forested parcel of land that jutted up out of the rolling fields like an island in a sea of green. After a quick look around to make sure that no one was around to observe her, Jade, hopped over the low stone guardrail and ventured into the woods.
The map was of little use since there were no landmarks to speak of, but twenty minutes of methodical searching finally brought her to a fenced area surrounding a hole in the ground that, if the hotel clerk was to be believed, was the entrance to the fogou. Jade climbed the fence, switched on her light and dropped into the opening.
The ground at the bottom of the hole was covered with loose soil and moss, but just a few steps into the covered passage brought Jade to a tunnel with gently sloping walls of carefully fitted stones — a technique called “battering”—reinforced every few feet with buttresses and corbels, and roofed with large stone slabs that easily held the weight of the earth above. The floor was damp but mostly clean and free of debris. Jade proceeded slowly down the passage, playing the beam of her light on every crack and crevice, looking for anything that might reveal the reason for Roche’s interest, but aside from the obvious craftsmanship required to construct the subterranean vault, there was nothing remarkable about the tunnel leading into fogou. After about twenty-five feet however, the passage opened into the central chamber and Jade was obligated to revise that opinion.
The heart of the fogou was a broad circular chamber. The battered stone walls sloped outward gently up to a point higher than Jade’s waist, then reversed, with each successive layer of rock overhanging the layer beneath it to create an inward slope that continued all the way up to form a domed ceiling. It took Jade a moment to realize that she was standing in a roughly spherical room, remarkably similar to the cavern she and Rafi had fallen into in Peru.
Jade glimpsed something out of the corner of her eye, a man standing beside her, lurking in the gloom. She spun toward the shape, aiming the light where she thought his eyes would be, but the flashlight beam revealed nothing but stacked rock.
She took a deep breath, trying to calm her racing heart. Her eyes had tricked her. The similarity to the Paracas chamber had triggered a subconscious memory of the strange “ghost” hallucinations, and her imagination had taken care of the rest. That was the most plausible explanation, but she could not shake the feeling that she was missing something.
She took another breath. She had not thought about the ghosts since leaving Peru. That particular mystery had taken a back seat, yet she recalled now that Roche had asked about her discovery. Almost as if he knew, she thought. As if he had seen something like it.
Jade shone the light around, searching for more ghosts, but instead of the elusive and ephemeral shapes, her beam picked out something almost as fleeting. A shadow, sliver thin, cast by a rock protruding ever so slightly from the thousands just like it, stacked up to form the curving walls of the fogou. She took out her pocket knife, a Victorinox Swiss Army Tinker model. Professor had laughingly called her “MacGyver” when she’d purchased the slim red folding knife, but it was a lot easier to keep in a pocket than the bulky Leatherman multi-tool he favored. She opened one of the smaller blades and worked it into the crack between the stones. The protruding rock shifted enough for her to grab one end with thumb and forefinger, allowing her to wriggle it loose, revealing a small cavity the width of her thumb.
Her light glinted off a polished surface inside the hollow and a probing finger teased out a rectangle of plastic that she immediately recognized as a USB compatible thumb drive. Jade closed her fist around in and allowed herself a smile off satisfaction. Without a computer, it was impossible to say what the external storage device contained, but her instincts told her that she had found Roche’s missing manuscript.
She turned to leave but then froze as her light revealed something else, a human shape standing in the mouth of the tunnel, and this time, it was no ghost.
NINE