December

by Phil Rickman

  And so it was impossible.

  'Are you going to tell me about this, Moira?'

  'Huh? Oh ... it's nothing, Malcolm.'

  There's certainly no percentage in it for me, if that's what bothers you,' Malcolm said huffily. 'Before my time. I act purely as intermediary.

  'You know me better than that,' Moira said. 'And it's still nothing.'

  'I'm sure. Which is obviously why it's left you looking so shattered.'

  'Leave it, Malcolm.'

  'Will you contact this man?'

  'No.'

  And she meant no, by Christ she did.

  'Then ...' Malcolm lifted his telephone index and sent the five-foot-long fax billowing into the air, 'what about this man?'

  She pushed her chair back from the desk as the fax tumbled over her knees, straightening her legs and letting it fall to the thin carpet. She felt truly exhausted. What she really wanted was to leave the paper where it lay and scurry to the furthest corner and burrow there like a mouse, with her arms over her face.

  Malcolm had on his magistrate's face. 'You have led me to believe, Moira, that this Reilly is a rejected suitor who would not accept no for an answer and to whom your whereabouts must never be divulged.'

  'Please, I have asked you to leave this.' She was looking across at his filing cabinet, remembering the day she'd made all the drawers come shooting out, from approximately six feet away. But she'd been younger then and full of fury.

  Wouldn't work with Malcolm again, even if she could cut it.

  'And I was willing to accept that, why not?' he said. 'What business is it of mine? He sends his letters to this office, I pass them on or destroy them unopened, according to your instructions.'

  'For his own good,' she mumbled. 'Believe this.'

  'But a fax, you see, is essentially a public document. Plus, it arrived with a personal note to me saying please to give her this - very, very important. Read it if you like. And then a lot of spiel about an enormous power cut in Liverpool and John Lennon. It doesn't make a great deal of sense, indeed it suggests a condition bordering on dementia.'

  'Aye.' Moira sighed.

  'But it does have an urgency about it I find hard to ignore, so don't ask me to destroy it this time. You may shred it yourself, Moira, if you wish, but not in my office please. This time you take it with you.'

  He glared down at her as she bent and gathered up the fax. 'Must've been shorter Dead Sea Scrolls than this, Malcolm.'

  'And none more portentous, I don't doubt,' Malcolm said.

  'Look, there's another point...'

  From entering the office, she'd known what was coming.

  'If you do communicate with Mr Reilly, perhaps you'd give him another address to write to. Nothing personal, Moira, but ... Well, I don't think I'm prepared any longer to be a clearing house for the Nostradamus-like outpourings of your strange friends.'

  Moira nodded. There was nothing to be said about this. She did have strange friends.

  They looked at each other in silence for a few seconds and then he looked down at his desk and she said, 'Malcolm, are you saying you'd rather not represent me any more?'

  'Look ...' He sighed. 'Moira. With all the goodwill in the world, I can't truly see that there is very much left to represent.'

  'No,' she said. 'I understand that. Besides, the witchy woman aspect ...'

  'It's not that.'

  'No. Of course not.' She shouldered her bag. 'Well.' Gathered up armfuls of fax paper. 'Bye, then, Malcolm. Thanks for everything.'

  'Come back, won't you,' he said, 'when your affairs are unravelled.'

  But she left the office doubting it. Feeling red raw inside and embarrassed as hell, and all the more ridiculous for being swathed in fax.'

  On your own now, Donald the gypsy had said. On your own now and naked.

  Another day, another dusk. The afternoon was seeping away when they brought the vicar to the church.

  He'd been asleep in his living-room, in an easy-chair with its back to the window, the Bible on his knees, for the weight of it and that fact that the Bible - this Bible, old, brass-bound - seemed to prevent dreams. In bed, he sometimes slept with the bible across his legs, but occasionally it rolled away and the dark mirror of the night splintered into images.

  The feeling of security the old Bible brought had evaporated in seconds when he'd found Eddie Edwards at the door with a wispy little woman called Helen Harris, who cleaned the church every third week. Trouble, Vicar. Something very strange. And they'd brought him to the church, practically pulling him up the few steps into the churchyard, cold dusk setting in around the mottled gravestones, bringing with it a spattering of rain, the vicar still shaky with sleep.

  And then the candles.

  There were ancient cowsheds grander than Ystrad Church. Which was fine by Eddie Edwards.

  Not that he was particularly Low Church or a Puritan or any of that Nonconformist nonsense. Just that a church like this one, you didn't need to lock it up between services, which was how a church should be - open, available. The place was like a block of stone, rock of ages; all that you could prise off and take away were slates from the roof.

  And, from inside, candles.

  A necessity, for the church had no electricity and no gas. Also candles were cheap and Ystrad folk thrifty. For as long as anybody local could remember there'd been two candles in tin dishes on the altar, big fat, white candles.

  Never anything like this. Mr Edwards had never seen - or smelled - anything like this in his life before.

  He pulled a pencil from his breast pocket and tapped at the wax ... not wax, tallow, anybody could sense that. Congealed, nauseous, like something out of an old chip pan abandoned for many weeks.

  And brown-black, like ancient earwax.

  'It makes no sense,' Mr Edwards kept repeating. 'What kind of sense does this make?'

  And yet he'd never imagined that the vicar, the irreverent reverend, would have appeared quite as disturbed as this. Not his style at all.

  Simon St John had sunk back into a front pew, the greying light from the dusty window over the altar shining on the outbreak of sweat across his forehead. Only once before had Mr Edwards seen him like this - the other day, in the shadow of the Abbey, when he'd turned away, used the F-word.

  'Thank you, Helen,' Mr Edwards said. 'No need for you to hang around.'

  And the poor woman went gratefully, and Mr Edwards said, 'I do not like this, Vicar.'

  'Mrs Harris found them?' It was as if the vicar was trying out his voice, seeing if he could still speak. The teatime light flashed pink on the whitewashed walls.

  'All of a dither, she was,' Mr Edwards said, 'because they were new candles, new this morning - they'd had to replace the old ones, see, not wanting to, they were hoping they'd last out until Christmastime.'

  Was it conceivable that these were the new candles, that something was wrong with them, that when exposed to cold air they could kind of ... decay?

  It was not possible.

  A full twelve inches high, these candles had to be. But … emaciated. Shrivelled and twisted, full of holes and notches, like sweating, putrid cheese, withered to a thickness of no more than half an inch in places.

  And yet hard. Hard as old bones.

  'Have you ever seen the like?'

  The vicar didn't reply. He came to his feet and stumbled to the door and stood in the arched doorway, which opened directly onto the churchyard, breathing in the darkening air, exposing his face to the rain.

  Without turning round, he asked Mr Edwards, 'Were they alight when she found them?'

  Mr Edwards was saying, 'Is this a joke, do you think? And if it is, why? And who? Who would want to come in here and replace our new candles with these raddled old things?'

  'Eddie, were they alight?'

  'Nonsensical, this is. Well... she told me ... poor woman, the shock of it ... that when she came into the church the candles were not alight and she did not notice them, but when she was get
ting on with the dusting - that back pew there, presumably, where the mat has been removed - suddenly there was a hissing in the air, spssss! And then a flaring from the altar. Wild, white flames on the end of both candles! Oh, hell, I do not know what she really saw, Simon, I'm just telling you what she told me. A state of terror she was in, certainly, when she arrived at my door. When we returned, all I can say is the candles were out. Only the smell in the air. You tell me, is this

  some kind of a joke?'

  Fucking things are black. You call that a bleeding joke?

  There was one tiny gleam of white between the closing clouds, like a mocking candle in the sky. Simon felt cold in his thin cassock. He was shaking with it and with fatigue and also revulsion.

  Fourteen years ago he could handle this, no problem. He remembered Tom Storey knocking one of the old, brown candles to the floor with the neck of his guitar and the flames igniting a pile of Dave's lyrics sheets. How he'd so casually stamped out the flames, thinking, got to stay calm, can't have Storey throwing another wobbly.

  The difference then was he felt in control, thought he was beginning to understand. Felt that, within himself, he was already a priest, possessed of the essential priestly calm which allowed him to wander across and coolly sump out burgeoning hellfire.

  But the sudden shock of it penetrating his world again, after all these years. For God's sake, these could be the very same candles. Candles from the Abbey. Candles from the time of Aelwyn.

  He began to mumble a prayer, conscious that Eddie Edward, was watching him, but he couldn't help that

  'Oh, Father … Please. Don't let me fuck up. Let me get it right this time.'

  Mr Edwards wandered across, patted him on the shoulder. | 'Go home, Simon. I'll deal with them.'

  'Deal?'

  'I'll throw them away.'

  'Of course,' Simon said. 'Thank you. But I'll stay until it's done, if you don't mind.'

  He watched Mr Edwards pick up a large duster Helen Harris had left behind and fold it over his hand to prise the candles out of their holders. They were surprisingly stiff.

  'Bugger,' said Mr Edwards. 'How long have they been here, for heaven's sake? It's as though they've been burning for hours and the wax has expanded.'

  He wrapped the stinking, brown candles carefully in the duster and they both took them around to the dustbin at the rear of the church.

  'Bloody kids,' said Mr Edwards. 'Though where they got them from I cannot imagine. Do you want to lock up the church tonight?'

  'I don't think so,' Simon said wearily, lifting the dustbin lid. 'I don't think it would help.'

  Mr Edwards glanced at him with curiousity. The candles did not land softly in the bin but clanged as if in protest.

  When they were walking away, there was another resounding clang from the bin.

  'Bloody things,' Mr Edwards said.

  When he and the vicar had gone their separate ways, Mr Edwards took Helen's big duster from his pocket and returned the dustbin.

  It was dark now. Too dark to see inside the bin. He had to put his whole arm inside, reaching down to the very bottom before one of the discarded candles slid greasily into his palm.

  He brought it out - just one would do - and wrapped it in the duster.

  Something very strange here, and he had to know.

  VII

  Delphinium Blue

  Everything was the same. And yet nothing was.

  There was this small, cheap, private hotel outside Greenock where she stayed when the finances were wobbly. A good Presbyterian house, with no bar and therefore no commercial travellers. But always a room - with a single bed - to spare for a respectable woman on her own.

  Mrs Coffey, the widowed proprietor, would have noticed

  that this time the dark-haired, dark-eyed woman didn't have a guitar case with her. Would be gratified to think that the woman had at last found a respectable job.

  Would never know how alone Moira was this time. How the guitar had been like a sister, and her moulded leatherette case had also enclosed, in a concealed velvet pocket, the famous family heirloom, one comb.

  What you see, Mrs Coffey, is a very confused woman entering middle age with no mother, no job and no past that bears contemplation.

  It was nearly seven p.m. when she arrived; she didn't feel like one of Mrs Cs traditional home-cooked dinners. She went to the window of her room and found that a new building had gone up across the street. Although the hotel was still called the Clydeview this development would effectively block out what used to be Moira's morning glimpse of ,he glum, grey sea.

  Everything the same; nothing the same

  She drew the curtains and fell down fully dressed on the bed, under the dingy, brown-framed picture of a sad-looking Saviour on the Mount.

  Within a minute or two, she was unhappily asleep and dreaming of poor Dave Reilly, reams of fax paper around him from nose to feet, like a winding sheet.

  What was he supposed to do after this? Go home to his bland, clean, modern vicarage, light the fire, make a sandwich, watch TV?

  Simon went, instead, head first into the night, pushing through a hardening rain, eyes open wide.

  Reverberating in his head, as he walked, was the sound of the disgusting candles when Eddie Edwards had tossed them into the dustbin behind the church, the mocking, cackling clang.

  And as he walked swiftly along the slanting, hillside lane into Ystrad Ddu, the twisted, skeletal candles went on clanging, as though they were inside Simon's skull, bone on bone. He kept rubbing the rain into his face and hair, as if this could stop it.

  A dozen or so lights showed in the houses and in the bar of the Dragon, which was able to survive because the licensee was also the local newsagent and fuel-merchant. Out there, along the valley where the Abbey crouched, there was nothing but darkness and falling water.

  Simon reached the village hall, a feeble, tin-hatted bulb over the door, as two women lowered their umbrellas and went in.

  'Good evening, ladies,' he called in his cheery vicar's voice.

  They both nodded, and then the door slammed.

  Good. It was Women's Institute night. Simon waited a while in the darkness until he could be sure all the women had gone in. Then he ran to a cottage set back from the road and knocked lightly on its front door.

  'Who is it?'

  'It's Simon St John. The vicar.'

  'Mother's out.'

  'I know,' Simon shouted through the rain and the door-panels. 'I wanted to talk to you, Isabel.'

  After a moment, the cottage door opened smoothly, and Isabel Pugh looked up at Simon from her fire lit world. It was raining much harder now; his cassock was soaked through, water dripping down his clerical collar.

  The front door opened directly into the living-room. There must have been a small hallway once, but the dividing wall had been knocked down, perhaps because it would have been impossible to manoeuvre a wheelchair around the corner to the door.

  The stairs were in the enlarged room and there was also a square hole in the ceiling for a chairlift like a fireman's pole. A coal fire burned in a big black stove, blasting heat out of the door, out to the path where Simon stood and dripped.

  'If this is an excuse to come in and take all your clothes off,' Isabel Pugh said, 'be my guest.'

  Moira awoke suddenly, after no more than half an hour. She was feeling awfully cold. On her own now, and worse than naked, her first thought was. It doesn't have to be like this.

  Did it not?

  She arose stiffly and put on the light, a forty-watt bulb in a faded shade with burn-marks like black bruises. She went and stood by the lukewarm radiator under the drawn curtains. It was a grumbling old accordion of a thing; shivering, she pressed her thighs against it, but the heat was dying on her. She was probably the only guest; Mrs Coffey wasn't going to waste any warmth on her.

  She filled the kettle at the basin, plugged it in on the unit, dumped a couple of teabags in the pot. She knew this kettle of old; getting
it to boil was going to be like climbing Ben Nevis in a wheelchair. She plucked the rolled-up fax from her bag and took it back to the cooling radiator.

  Dear Moira, Maybe you read about it in the papers … what happened in Liverpool on December 13th, 1993.

  I don't think so. Maybe I read the wrong papers.

  It was like an Act of God …

  Aye, well, everything happening to Davey was either an act of God or the Other Guy. Or due to the malfunctioning of something less reliably good or evil out there on the supernatural shop floor.

  The fax told her about an entire city losing its electricity after the million-to-one failure of a couple of transformers. About this happening in the thirteenth minute of the thirteenth hour, of the thirteenth day of the dreadful month of December, and more or less exactly thirteen years since …

  See, the other problem with Davey was, it always came back to John Lennon, everything funnelling down to this one disaster, Dave's personal vortex. Dave saying, OK, Lennon may not actually have been shot on the thirteenth, but it happened on a Monday and sure enough, in 1993, the thirteenth was the first Monday after the anniversary of the murder. And the thirteenth is, after all, the thirteenth.

  Davey, listen ... She wanted to reach out and grab him by the psychic lapels, give him a good shaking ... you can do anything with dates, times, synchronicity, all this shit. Damn it, you should have learned that by now.

  She tossed the fax on to the bed, turned back to the vanity unit, pulling out a kind of piano stool to sit in front of the mirror. Reaching down unthinking for the guitar case, where an ancient Celtic comb with many missing teeth had lived in a velvet-lined pocket. How many times, weary in this very room, had she drawn out the comb, let it glide through her hair, drawing blue sparks in the dark. Bringing the place alive.