December

by Phil Rickman

  'They went the same way, though, in the end,' Simon said.

  'Neurotic, reclusive.'

  'Yeah, I often wonder if there were other attributes in common. Talking to God and all that. You talk to God, don't you, Simon? Like a mate. Heard you exchanging a few words out there on the rock.'

  It seemed like a long-ago dream. What could he have been doing, hanging from a tree-root, challenging the Almighty to give him a sign or let him die?

  'I'm embarrassed,' Simon said.

  'Times when we all need to blow,' Sile said. 'Just a little out of character, in view of the way they talk about you in the village. Very laid-back, the word is. Not fazed by anything. Maybe a little bit prissy. Must've been a picnic working with Tom Storey.'

  'I think we kept each other on the rails,' Simon said. 'In a funny sort of way.'

  He closed his eyes. This whole situation was strangely dreamlike, the coincidence unreal. Divine intervention. He thought, this man - and maybe God - saved my life. In such circumstances, bewildered, lying deep in the cleft of rock in alignment with the Skirrid, what could he do but say, sure, I'll come with you. Wherever you're going.

  Sile had stopped, switched off the engine. When Simon opened his eyes, both the headlights and sidelights were out. It was fully dark, no moon. He couldn't even see Sile Copesake.

  He didn't move.

  'You know where we are,' Sile said.

  'I think so. Don't put the lights on yet. I may get scared and ask you to take me back.'

  'If that's what you want.'

  'Maybe you could tell me what this is all about. You followed me. You've been asking questions about me in the village. Does everybody know?'

  'About the Philosopher's Stone? I doubt that.' Sile's voice was comforting, like talcum powder. 'What you should know, Simon - well, a lot of things you should know, but we've got plenty of time - is that I'm on the board of TMM these days.'

  He let it lie a while. Through the windscreen, Simon saw big shadows looming like tall trees.

  'Am I supposed to know where this is leading?'

  Except that there was a breeze and trees moved in a breeze and these shadows didn't.

  Yes, he knew where they were. Too late now for prayer.

  When God picked you up, he invariably swung you around and threw you in the deep end.

  'I've never been back,' he said. 'A man called Eddie Edwards brought me half-way, but I couldn't go the distance. I saw the place and I chickened out.'

  'So why did you come to Ystrad Ddu, Simon?'

  He really did know the area, didn't he? A stranger would have pronounced it Istrad Doo. He'd been evacuated here? Right here?

  'For my part,' Sile said. 'I've come to face up to my responsibilities. To you and the others. And to ... this place.'

  Simon had opened his mouth to speak. The breath seemed to evaporate in his throat as, with a muffled click, the headlights came on and the Abbey reared up around them, white on black, in all its jagged, soaring, Gothic glory.

  VIII

  Spiritual Haven Garbage

  '... Davey ...?'

  After Case's carefully-planted landmine had gone up in his face, he'd stopped the tape to call up Prof. And then sat on the bed a while to consider his options. Thinking, Options is too soft a word. Options doesn't include expedients like emigration, suicide.

  And he'd not been able to think at all beyond that. Been about to unplug his answering machine, forgetting about the green figure 2 under the plastic bubble signifying another message.

  And then, bending down over the plug behind the TV, he'd heard the machine squawk once, like something trampled on, and in his head, distinct as a radio time-signal:

  '...Davey...?'

  He stared blankly at the answering machine for a moment; it had nothing else to say, the tape was not turning. He pushed the answer button again; it coughed up some white noise. Dave threw a mental shrug and left it, started to close his suitcase. And then

  '…Davey...?'

  The suitcase lid sprang up.

  Dave sat down on the bed. Fourteen years of impenetrable silence, silence as in frozen out, padded cell, transmission shutdown, and now:

  'Aw, shit, I still hate these machines.'

  The little round white plastic speaker crackled in irritation.

  'Like, what's with this Dave Kite, huh? What kind of name's that? I don't mean to be offensive, but you're no' exactly a natural predator ... Dave Sparrow, maybe. Jesus, I'm using up your tape. Nerves, you know? Listen, I ... I think maybe we fucked up in a big way, Davey. I'm sorry. It was my fault. What can I say about this, except... Just call me, huh? I'll be kind of in and out of Malcolm's. Kaufmann. I'll ... Just call me soon, OK, before I start regretting this. OK. Right. Bye, Davey... Bye.'

  Beyond the backbeat of London traffic, a seagull keened.

  When Meryl rang, Martin Broadbank was microwaving a TV dinner-for-one purchased from his own supermarket in Cirencester, still unsure about whether he was supposed to take the disgusting thing out of the packet first.

  'Where are you?' he demanded.

  'Martin.' Meryl sounding strangely breathy. 'I'm with … I've found Tom Storey. Perhaps you could tell Mrs ... Shelley that he's all right.'

  'Well, that's super,' Martin said. 'That's the news I've been hovering over the phone waiting for all day. Tom Storey, the deranged hermit who destroyed my dinner party, is all right. God, that's taken a load off my mind. Now where the hell are you, Meryl?'

  'It's very complicated, Martin. More complicated than I can begin to tell you.'

  'Try me.'

  'I can't, Martin. Really. It involves spheres of existence which you ... I can't. Just tell Shelley. He wants Shelley to know that he's OK. And that he'll be in touch when he ... when he gets himself sorted out.'

  'Spheres of existence?' Martin roared. 'Get back here! At once!'

  'I can't. Maybe tomorrow, the day after. He needs me ... my help.'

  'Oh, he needs your help …'

  'We're connecting, Martin, it's ...'

  'And I don't need your help? I just pay to hear your voice from a distant phone box? Meryl, I've spent the entire day pacifying the police, entertaining Storey's charming but conversationally limited daughter, handling Shelley with kid gloves, or rather not handling her at all. And now I come home to a dark, silent house and a cold bed and you tell me you're out there "connecting" with this lunatic. Who's going to cook my breakfast in the morning, Lady fucking Bluefoot?'

  Seconds later he let the phone slip from his ear. He couldn't believe it.

  Meryl had hung up on him.

  The police arrived informally, shortly before 8 p.m.

  Eddie Edwards, watching from behind a curtain in the darkened front bedroom at his home, the Old Vicarage, was rather disappointed at first, when merely this elderly, grey Ford Sierra pulled up under his porch light and just one man emerged and with no great hurry.

  He was tall but slumped. Walked with his neck bent, looking from a distance like an old-fashioned lamp-post.

  'Coffee, I think, my love,' Eddie called to his wife, to get her out of the way, waiting for the ring before moving towards the door. Only one man; maybe it wasn't such a big deal after all.

  'Mr Edwards?'

  To his surprise, the policeman had a denser Welsh accent than you generally found in this part of the world, indicating origins considerably further west. He had a long, thin, pale face, like a half-moon.

  'Oh, ah, Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones, sir, Gwent Police.' Sounded as if it was already well past his bedtime.

  'You're not from these parts,' Eddie said brightly.

  'Nor indeed, it seems, are you,' said Supt. Jones, adding hopefully, 'Siarad Cymreig?'

  'Lapsed, I'm afraid. Used to, see, but you get out of it, especially around here. Carmarthen, is it, you're from, Mr Jones? Come in, sit down.'

  The policeman handed his overcoat to Eddie and bent his head to enter the sitting-room, which still had an air of Vicarage a
bout it, thanks to Marina and a lot of chintz.

  'From Pontmeurig, I come, sir, originally.'

  'My God, there's an outpost. Must seem like the bright lights where you are now. Newport?'

  'Abergavenny. Mind if I smoke? So many people in horror of the humble cigarette these days, I live in constant fear of an even more terrible backlash against my historic pipe. And his pipe did indeed look historic. Eddie spread his hands in happy acquiescence. Something less forbidding, somehow, about a pipe-smoker.

  'Part of our great heritage, the pipe.' Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones bent over an old-fashioned chromium lighter with a flame like oxy-acetylene. 'Course, I haven't seen this candle yet, but I don't somehow think I'd care for one on my fiftieth birthday cake.'

  'Not ... not for a few years yet, surely,' Eddie said, thrown a little by the unobtrusive way this man changed gear.

  'Week on Friday,' said Superintendent Jones mournfully. 'At least advancing age allows one to exhibit eccentricities. I could go quite over the top, see, on this business. Get the church sealed off, fill it up with little men in plastic suits, have my boys doing house-to-house. Make no mistake, Mr Edwards, we are talking Dead People here. Babies even, who knows until we hear from the lab.'

  'Babies. Good God, man!'

  'Newborn babies, it's been known.'

  'You have reports on this kind of thing?'

  'Like most men of limited intellect, I take the News of the World,' Gwyn Arthur Jones said drily. 'What I am getting at, Mr Edwards, is that other men might call out the troops but brought up in Pontmeurig one learns caution. Your vicar, now what does he have to say?'

  Eddie hesitated. 'He, er, he doesn't know yet, Superintendent. I haven't had a chance to see him. I did call, see, but he wasn't in. It's a busy job nowadays, for a vicar, with all these cutbacks. Four churches, he has, to look after.'

  In fact, he'd been several times to the vicarage, banging furiously on the door, but not a sound, not a light.

  'As cautious as myself, you are, obviously.' Gwyn Arthur Jones observing him shrewdly through a brackish smoke which reminded Eddie of autumn bonfires. 'So tell me all about it. No hurry. Do I smell coffee?'

  It occurred to Eddie Edwards that at least you knew where you were with a handful of police cars with sirens and Alsatian dogs. With Gwyn Arthur Jones it was probably going to be less spectacular but rather more complicated.

  Simon St John, sweating now, said, 'I don't know whether I can.'

  Sile Copesake had bounded to the ground, like a man half his age, leaving the engine running for the lights. Now he was holding open the passenger door for Simon.

  The Abbey sprouted all around them like a giant fungus stimulated by the light. Simon imagined it was sensing him. As if each broken arch had exposed nerve-endings.

  'When I was a lad,' Sile said, 'I used to come here at night, alone, just to see if I dared.'

  He put out a hand to help Simon down. Simon took it and held it but stayed where he was.

  The hand was dry and firm. Simon held on to the hand, for what it might tell him. Is he frightened now? Can he sense it too?

  The first time he'd shaken hands with Tom Storey, over fifteen years ago, there'd been a burning sensation all the way up to his shoulder, coloured lights in his head.

  Nothing. He let Sile Copesake's hand go.

  'OK, Simon?'

  To Copesake, this would be just a ruined building, scary at one time, when he was a kid, because it was old and isolated and he knew what it had been. But now ...

  An incredibly obvious question occurred to Simon. It came very slowly, the way thoughts did in dreams, taking a long time to shake itself out of the mists.

  He said, 'What are we doing here, Sile?'

  Having intended to ask, what are you doing here? By this time only vaguely aware of clinging to a rock face in a deliberate position of extreme jeopardy and Sile Copesake materialising like an angel beamed from the Skirrid.

  Simon stepped down from the Discovery feeling like someone getting out of bed after a long illness. Sometimes situations developed which seemed so charged with significance that your over-developed senses missed the obvious, the prosaic, the truth.

  Sile had said:

  What you should know is that I'm on the board of TMM these days.

  Not that he'd been sent to save him, to extricate him from his madness. Just that he represented a major recording company.

  'Let me show you something,' Sile, the recording company shareholder, said nonchalantly, walking towards the shadowy hulk of the Abbey.

  What is this?

  Very warily, Simon followed the wiry, leathery figure through the ruins, keeping away from the stone. Mustn't touch the stone; full of old blood, might bleed on .you.

  Sile had left the headlights on, with the engine obediently running, to light them along the path through the east transept or the south chapel or whatever the fuck it was, to the base of the tower. This was the other side from the courtyard where the cars had been parked during sessions.

  'Mind the steps.' Rattle of keys.

  'We're going in? How come you've got keys?'

  'Because we own it, Simon. You could say we inherited it from the fat man.'

  'But you knew it as a kid. You personally. You told me that.'

  Stone steps led downwards. This side, you entered the building on a lower level.

  Sile was just a voice talking easily in the darkness at the bottom of the steps.

  'Been used for all kinds of enterprises, this place - hotel, outward-bound centre. And it was for sale again, summer 1980. And it was cheap. And Max Goff thought, what an amazing place for a studio. Everybody was doing it in those days, competing to offer the weirdest setting for big money bands to record in. Castles, disused railway stations. Bids going in for the pyramids, I shouldn't wonder.'

  'And Max Goff,' Simon said slowly, 'being into New Age philosophy and psychic studies ..." Did the guy think he didn't know all this?

  'Cemented in blood,' Sile said. 'Soon as he heard that, he was fishing for his cheque book. He loved old places with an atmosphere. Yeah, I knew it as a kid, and it was a shock coming back in the seventies, seeing the state it was in. Poor old Abbot Richard wouldn't even recognise the location. It needed somebody like Goff to throw money at it.'

  Simon still wouldn't go down the steps. A cold rain was flushing out his brain at last.

  'It was only cheap, Sile,' he said, 'because it had a reputation. It was unlucky. Still collecting blood. You know about the young couple who fell out of the tower?'

  Silence.

  'We didn't know that,' Simon said. 'We were given all this holy ground, spiritual haven garbage. So when things started to go wrong, we naturally thought it must be us sinners.'

  'Yeah.' Sile's voice was coming out of the well of darkness like some kind of Delphic oracle. 'It fucked you up, right? All four of you.'

  'You have a nice line in understatement, Sile.' Wondering how much Copesake knew.

  A lot, as it turned out.

  Tom Storey climbs into bed,' Sile said, 'and pulls the covers over his head. Moira Cairns melts back into the folk circuit. Reilly emerges as some screwed-up kind of alternative comic. And you take holy orders. That's drastic, Simon.'

  'I think that part would have happened anyway,' Simon said cautiously. 'Sooner or later. Maybe, without the Abbey episode, it would have turned out less ... fraught. I don't know.'

  He heard Sile unlocking a big door with, presumably, a big key. A lot of echo, like entering a dungeon in some medieval epic.

  Simon still didn't move. 'I don't think I want to go down.'

  'But I think you have to,' Sile said. 'Else why did you come back? You came back because it fucked you up and you want to get unfucked, right?'

  Simon went down one step.

  'And you figured that now you were a priest of God you might have the wherewithal to straighten things out.'

  Simon went down another step. 'How naive we all are,' he sai
d. The darkness held him like a stiff, black funeral coat.

  'No, maybe you're right,' Sile said. 'Maybe you could reverse things. Which is what you're thinking you ought to have done first time round, am I right?'

  'We were comparative youngsters.' Simon took another step into the dark. 'And we didn't know what we were up against. I didn't know until I left here. I thought I was handling it rather well.'

  Two more steps and he was at the bottom. Standing where he'd stood in a thousand dense dreams, carrying on talking, but his nerves were singing.

  'We destroyed the tapes, you know. I thought that would be an end of it. I still don't understand why it ... Realising in a flush of panic that he was alone in the bottom of the well, stone walls close on either side, stone underfoot, stone overhead, all

  that blood, and ...

  'Sile? Where are you?'

  Sile laughed. It came from inside. 'You're doing very well, Simon.'

  'I can't see you.'

  'Hold tight to the wall. Follow my voice.'

  'I don't want to touch the fucking wall!'

  Sound of another door opening.

  'OK, Simon?'

  'I want to get out.'

  Turning to find darkness behind him now.

  'No, you don't. Not really.' No echo to Sile Copesake's voice any more. Tight, muted. Inside the derelict abbey, and no echo.

  'What are you doing to me?'

  Sile said, 'I'm trying to help you. Come on. Here we go.'

  Lights blasted at him, brutal lights beating down on him from all sides.

  Simon rolled away, arm across his eyes, blinded, but more frightened by what he'd seen in the shattering atom of time before he'd shut out the glare.

  'Sorry, mate, pressed the wrong switch.' Click, click, click. 'That's better.'

  It had been a vision. A memory flash. His mind had done it.

  But then ... there should not be electricity in the Abbey. The Abbey was derelict.