“They are only stones,” she said to herself again, and began to walk down the centre of the circle towards the Rocking Stone, defying that engulfing, fateful silence with all her strength. Within a dozen yards of it something stopped her, as surely as if a hand had caught her back. She stood still, not breathing.
Was it fancy? Was it reality? The monstrous thing was moving! Like a seated giant giving her salutation it swayed slowly forward. And what were those long, crimson streaks upon it that gleamed as if wet in the moonlight?
She stood as one transfixed, possessed by horror. A devil’s paradise! The words rushed meteor-like through her brain. Surely this gruesome place was haunted by devils!
Fascinated, she watched the great stone. Would it leave its resting-place, roll down to her, annihilate her? Had it started upon its dread course she knew she could not have avoided it. She was paralyzed by terror, possibly the more intense because of its utter unreason.
That some animal might have set the thing in motion was a possibility that did not even cross her mind. She knew, without any proof, that some evil influence was at work. She could feel it with every gasping breath she drew.
Downwards and yet further downwards rocked the great Stone, and at the last there came a grinding noise as though some substance were being pulverized beneath it. It was unutterably horrible to the looker-on, but still she could not turn and flee. She was as much a prisoner as though she were indeed tethered to one of those grim monsters that stood about her.
Spell-bound as one in a nightmare, she stood and watched, quaking and powerless, saw the thing begin to lift again like some prehistoric beast of prey rising from its slaughtered victim, saw it roll slowly back again soundlessly, as if on hinges, with the inevitable poise which alone kept it in its place, saw the dreadful crimson streaks and patches that dripped down its scarred front. And suddenly the bond that held her snapped. She turned from the dreadful sight and fled through the ghastly solitude as if she fled for her life.
Again the cry of the owl sounded, much nearer now, and she thought it was the shriek of a pursuing demon. Through that grass-grown place of sacrifice she tore like the wind, so goaded by fear as to be hardly conscious of direction. And now the shriek of the demon had become a yell of mocking laughter that died away with dreadful echoes among the Stones. . . .