"Her spirit is still with us, my child. Her father is still alive, albeit not of sound mind."

Martin struggled to contain his frustration. "Don't you think her spirit would want her son to know who his father is? And what about you? You've kept this secret for over forty years. The entire town believes I'm Ruby Savage's son. Why don't they remember my real mother? Doesn't your goddaughter's memory mean anything to you?"

The reverend's face reddened. He poured himself another drink, downed it and poured another. "Very well. You're right, of course. Rosalee's memory should indeed be honored."

Martin thanked him.

"You may want to retract your gratitude once you've heard what I have to say. I believe what she told me—what I revealed to her father after her service—is what drove my dear friend to insanity."

"What is it, Reverend? Please."

"Rosalee and her father were avid hikers," the reverend began. He sighed deeply through his nostrils, brushed a withered hand through his snow-white hair. "After her mother passed, the two of them explored the entire island from top to tail. One day, according to my goddaughter, they came upon something neither had seen before. There were standing stones below the bluffs."

Martin and Sheila shared a look.

"I'm not certain how much of her story is true or imagined. If I were an outsider considering the things she'd told me that day, I would say she made up the entire thing in order to cope with the truth of it, with the trauma. But since I know this town, and the many peculiar things that have occurred here over the years, I'm apt to believe her."

He peered inauspiciously first at Sheila, then Martin before continuing.

"Rosalee feared the stones, you see. She told me she sensed something wrong about them. Something perhaps evil. But Michael's curiosity got the best of him." The reverend swallowed another hard gulp of whiskey and grimaced. "She told me... he was writhing against the stones... almost as if he were in the throes of an unholy madness. Like a bacchanalian reveler in ancient Rome. And suddenly he began to seize. His eyes rolled back, so that only the whites were showing. The moment dear Rosalee stepped into the circle to help him, she was consumed by their power. What happened next..."

The reverend trailed off, but their imaginations filled in the blanks, having experienced it themselves. The stones had appeared to them. Upon entering the circle a sort of orgiastic psychosis held them in its sway until the act it drew them there to perform was completed.

A fertility ritual.

The stones had been waiting for them.

Primed by the blood sacrifice of a child, like Ruby St. John.

"You're saying my father—"

"Is also your grandfather," Reverend Atkins said, his eyes lowered. "Yes, I'm afraid so."

Barrows Bay had experienced many deaths during childbirth over the years, the reverend told them. Far more than the national average for a town of its size.