December

by Phil Rickman

  There should not be electricity. There should not be concealed lighting in the low, vaulted ceiling.

  There should not be a low, wide table with about five hundred switches. There should not be a bank of tape-decks, each with twenty-four level-meters. There should not be a sheet of industrial glass and beyond it, under the curved, white stone ceiling of the cellar where the monks had stored their wine, a piano and a drum kit with tubular bells and four glass booths with mikes and coils of wire across the floor and ...

  'Welcome back,' Sile Copesake said.

  IX

  Like Chicken Bones

  Through the caravan window, he saw weak moonlight swirling like that Coffee-mate stuff in her thick glasses.

  She was different.

  Again.

  Something wrong. Well, yeah, her old man still missing. The way Weasel saw it, this was not necessarily a bad thing. Tom was out there finding himself. He wasn't a kid, he wasn't, like, handicapped.

  Well, this might have been a good thing, Tom experiencing life in the Big World for the first time in years. Except for the business of Sir Wilf and Lady Wilf. If Tom, as Weasel strongly figured, had seen it happen, he might be in a bad way, emotionally. Or however.

  Weasel had the caravan door open before she could knock.

  'Princess?'

  The kid stood there in the cold. Lemon-yellow shell-suit top, woolly beret.

  Lights on in the house behind her, a car parked across the big turning circle - this Broadbank geezer, Shelley's 'customer', the man Weasel had seen conversing with the late Sir Wilf in his garden that day. Weasel was not too worried; there was clearly nothing deeper to this guy than wanting to get his leg over Shelley, which Shelley could handle.

  Vanessa was saying nothing.

  What was worrying, she had that same look she'd had last night standing in the middle of the road like a little rabbit waiting to be flattened.

  'Princess, what you ...?'

  Weasel leapt down the steps, grabbed her by the shoulders.

  What was this?

  What it was, what was making her eyes swirl was the fact that they was pools of tears.

  'Listen.' Weasel shook her just a little. Kindly. 'He's OK, your old man. He's having a break, like a holiday. Just a little holiday.'

  Vanessa said, glasses so full of mist and night and steam and tears that Weasel couldn't see where her eyes were at, Vanessa said, 'He's going to die. He's going to die.'

  He had insisted they leave the curtains drawn back, and Meryl caught the reflection of occasional headlights on the darkened windows of the chalets opposite.

  Tom slept.

  Although it was only early yet, exhaustion had claimed him soon after the gentle, sorrowful therapy (think of it as therapy, Tom, you're no use to one another, you and Shelley, the way you are now. Just think of it as therapy).

  Even now, after the therapy, even now in sleep, his face was damp and worried.

  He was the most awesomely tragic man she'd known. What she'd come to realise was that he wasn't scared so much for himself, as of what he might bring down on others. He didn't fear the Man with Two Mouths - his poor, murdered father - so much as what this gruesome revenant might be heralding.

  I killed Debbie, Tom, lying flat on his back, no pillows, had said to the ceiling. I killed Debbie in every sense. See, he was there that night, the old man. Seen him first as a monk, by the gate at the Abbey. Frows back his cowl-fing and there's this gaping hole in his mush, stupid old bleeder.

  Never speak ill of the dead, Meryl had been told as a child.

  Come to warn me. Finks if he stands there and flashes his wound I'll get the message. Bleeding useless. 'Bout as much use as Hamlet's old feller. We fink the dead's gotta be wise. Big, big mistake. The dead's as confused - more confused - than what we are. Load of grief is all you get from the dead. Load of grief.

  And he'd seen him again, the Man with Two Mouths, at Martin's dinner party. Come to warn his son of impending tragedy, this had been obvious to Meryl.

  Yeah. Sir Wilf. Call that coincidence, Meryl? Busts frew me bleeding fence and dies? He's there now, Sir Wilf. Silly old git's polluted me energy field. Won't be long before some poor sod on his way home from the boozer'll be seeing him, standing at the roadside wiv his froat ripped out. "Scuse me, my man, but where exactly ham I?' And his lady wife, head underneath her arm, Anne Boleyn job. Soon as somebody sees 'em, it strengthens 'em, they get their energy from fear. People need to understand this. Fear feeds the dead.

  Meryl had listened avidly, curled up against him, surrendering easily to the palpitating excitement. He was part of her destiny, this man, and together they were approaching something of universal magnificence. Afraid? Of course she was afraid. Oh God, she was afraid.

  And wasn't it wonderful?

  The Abbey. It all centred upon this Abbey. Earlier, Meryl had been to the garage shop for crisps and soft drinks. And a book of maps.

  She'd sat on a bench near the cash-till and pored urgently over the map, following the road down to Gloucester and then Ross-on-Wye and then Monmouth. Monmouth to Abergavenny. And then ...

  A very rural area. Other abbeys were marked. Tintern, Llantony, Abbey Dore. Two hills outside Abergavenny, the Sugar Loaf and the Skirrid. Somewhere around there, had to be.

  Altogether a journey of less than two hours. Perhaps ninety minutes.

  So close, this place where part of Tom Storey's spirit was trapped.

  All I can say, that man Stephen Case had told them at dinner, is it's music which seems to enter a different spiritual dimension.

  Music Tom and his friends had made at the Abbey.

  What we want is for Tom and the others to go back into the studio and complete it. Perhaps... to the Abbey? Don't you think it would be cathartic for Tom to go back?

  And Shelley had said, I think it would be insanity to go back.

  But what she meant, Meryl was sure, was, I couldn't go back. I couldn't go with him. It would be too much. I've had enough. I could not take it.

  No, Meryl thought, looking down at the troubled face of the sleeping giant. But I could.

  'See now, by here. Just stuck on the altar. Disgusting. Helen Harris it was found them. You want to speak to her?'

  The candleholders were empty on the white-draped altar. Lit by overcoated Eddie's sputtering Tilley lamp, the little church looked more like a stone cowshed than ever.

  Except for there being no cows. Cows were something Eddie could deal with. Policemen, usually, were also something he could handle.

  Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones was something else. But if he wanted to talk to Helen Harris this would at least give Eddie a bit of a break; he could nip off to fetch the lady leaving Gwyn Arthur - oh, aye, it was Gwyn Arthur now, another dangerous sign - to sniff around, search for clues, whatever it was they did, these coppers.

  What they did these days, it seemed, was to turn the spotlight on you psychologically.

  'Go and fetch Helen now, shall I?'

  'Not for the moment, Mr Edwards. It's you I'm more interested in.'

  Oh hell.

  'What I'm curious about, Eddie, see, is why you suddenly had the idea to send this candle away for analysis.'

  Eddie cast around inside his hopeless old brain for something convincing. Had it all worked out a couple of hours ago. Now he just gave up.

  'I'll be honest with you, Gwyn. I don't know. Just a feeling I had.'

  Gwyn Arthur suddenly smiled broadly, which made Eddie feel extremely nervous. Going to pull out his handcuffs in a minute, this bugger.

  'There you are, see!' The long, thin policeman expansive now, back to the altar, pipe in hand. 'You can do it!'

  'What? Do what?'

  'Tell it like it is, as they say in the American films. "Just a feeling." Magnificent. Why not indeed? Where would any of us be without these moments of "just a feeling"? Now all I need to know' - jabbing his pipe stem at Eddie's chest - 'is what lies behind this feeling.'

 
Oh bugger. Why do you keep letting yourself in for these situations? Why can't you ever keep your bloody old retired nose out of it?

  'Black magic?' Gwyn Arthur sniffed. 'Rubbish, man! Dead babies? Nonsense! You know what this is all about.'

  No, I don't, I bloody well don't! But the bloody vicar does. And where is the bugger now, when I need him?

  'Gwyn,' he said, 'how can I explain a feeling?'

  Bloody feeble that sounded. Never been more grateful in his life to hear, behind him, the rattling of the cast-iron ring handle and the door getting itself pushed open, a little awkwardly.

  As you would expect from a woman in a powered wheelchair encumbered by a giant blue cycling cape.

  'Good evening,' said Gwyn Arthur Jones, all proprietorial, the way these policemen could get during an investigation.

  'Isabel,' said Eddie. 'What brings you out this cold night? Superintendent, this is Miss Isabel Pugh, who handles the church accounts and everybody else's for miles around.'

  'Gwyn Arthur Jones,' said Gwyn Arthur pleasantly.

  Isabel Pugh nodded briefly to him, looked around, and then suddenly spun her chair, forcing Eddie up against a pew end with the wheels trapping his legs.

  'Eddie Edwards, what the hell is going on here? Funny brown candles on the altar, and now it's a police matter. What is it we don't know?'

  'Hey now . . Eddie put his hands on the chair's armrests. 'Ease up, now, girl.'

  'And what,' said Gwyn Arthur, leaning down, 'have you heard about these "funny candles". Miss Pugh?'

  He was, Eddie decided, about to become a touch exasperated, suspecting, perhaps, that somebody was, to put it crudely, pissing up his leg. Isabel, meanwhile, was explaining drily that if you didn't know about the candles you were either stone deaf or you weren't a resident of Ystrad Ddu.

  'I see.' Gwyn Arthur straightened up. 'Very well. I shall leave you two to have a little chat and see what information you remember that you had forgotten, if that makes any sense. What I shall do, I think, is wander along to the vicarage to see if the Reverend Simon St John has returned.'

  He smiled. A certain menace in that smile now, Eddie Edwards thought.

  Isabel waited silently for a moment watching the church door after it had closed behind the policeman.

  The Tilley lamp made a gassy sound. Eddie thought, as he had thought many times, what a tragedy it was, this lovely-looking girl imprisoned in metal and in Ystrad Ddu.

  Satisfied that they were at last alone, she regarded him inquiringly.

  He took a deep breath. In his experience Miss Isabel Pugh did not appreciate people fancy-dancing around a difficult subject.

  'Human fat,' he said hoarsely. 'The bloody candles were made with human fat.'

  'Shi-it.' Isabel sank back into her chair as if she'd been pushed. Oh, he'd surprised her all right, no question about that.

  'Aye, that too, I shouldn't wonder. Shit.' And he told her about sending the candles away for analysis, knowing she'd ask the same questions as the copper and forestalling her by sighing heavily.

  'It's the vicar, see.'

  'Simon?'

  'If that bugger doesn't know more than he's saying about those candles I'm an Englishman.'

  Somehow, this time, she did not look quite so surprised, merely asking, 'Where is he?'

  And so Eddie told her of all the times he'd been knocking on the vicarage door, the place in darkness. 'I thought we were friends,' he said. 'I thought he was about to confide in me. I...'

  He took a chance.

  '... I know there is something about the old Abbey.'

  Isabel looked up at him, golden-streaked hair gleaming with speckles of rain in the lantern-light. All the aggression had evaporated from her voice.

  'He came to see me, Eddie. He caught me by surprise, because he wanted to know about the Abbey, what happened to me there. Threw me at first, the vicar asking that. We were going to talk about it. We almost did, but ...'

  'Aye. I know how it is.' He didn't, in fact, know anybody to whom Isabel Pugh had spoken regarding the circumstances of her accident.

  'And then,' she said, 'I thought about it when he'd gone and I decided that I did want to. I wanted to talk to him. He wasn't like a vicar at all, he was just like ... like a chap. With problems. Most vicars, they never admit to having problems same as the rest of us. At first - you know the way I am - at first, I was trying to shock him.'

  Isabel smiled. 'No shocking him. So the next night I rang him up. I wanted to talk, Eddie.' The smile had vanished. 'Wanted desperately to talk.'

  He could understand her desperation, the way some local people regarded her. And her always so proud and self-sufficient. Would never look for sympathy among the natives of Ystrad Ddu.

  'And he was a different man,' Isabel said. 'Spoke on the phone as if we had never met. Cold. Remote. So remote.'

  Eddie saw the loneliness in her eyes. He felt so helpless, wished there was something meaningful he could do for her, say to her, this bright, clever girl condemned to Ystrad Ddu and memories of the bloody Abbey.

  'I tell you one thing.' He put a hand on her blue-caped shoulder. 'That man is scared. He's more scared than you or I.'

  'And I'm supposed to find that comforting?' Isabel said. 'Jesus, did you have to put them back?'

  'What?'

  'One of those reconstructions, is it?'

  'What are you ...'

  And then he saw.

  'Oh, my Christ!'

  Stiff in the candleholders on the altar, shiny in the lamplight, and yellowish, like chicken bones.

  Eddie Edwards closed his eyes, his heart feeling like it would burst through his overcoat.

  'Eddie?'

  Just the one eye struggled open to watch white light shivering on stone, the shadow of an occupied wheelchair painting the floor between the pews and the altar.

  Clutching his chest, as if to restrain his bolting heart, Eddie dared to raise his gaze, and one was smoking - smoking!

  As if it had just been blown out!

  'Eddie?' Isabel Pugh reached up from her chair, grabbed his arm. 'Eddie!'

  X

  Monkscock

  Several times, Shelley had been on the point of calling the police to report her husband missing.

  It was all so terribly difficult. The police would hardly be doing their job if they didn't see it as a too-remarkable coincidence, a man disappearing the same night as a horrific death-crash outside his home, resulting in two visits on the same day to the same prestigious dwelling in a reputedly 'select' part of the Cotswolds.

  She'd been glad when Martin Broadbank had arrived without telephoning first. If he'd phoned she'd have been obliged to put him off.

  It had soon become obvious that he had something on his mind and was unsure how to tell her. When she'd put her dilemma to him, he'd looked immediately uncomfortable, so she knew it must concern Tom.

  'Shelley, I don't know whether ...' Martin fingered his coffee cup. He was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing a quilted body-warmer over his polo shirt. A gold identity bracelet on his left wrist said, not quite gentry. Which she rather liked. He was a rogue, of course; as a businessman, he'd conspired with Stephen Case to bring Tom to the dinner-table. But that had been done in all innocence; he was an innocent sort of rogue, the bastard.

  'Oh hell,' Martin said abruptly. 'The fact is, Meryl called me. She says she's with Tom.'

  'With Tom?' Shelley's heart leapt. And then confusion seized it. 'Where?'

  'That's the problem. She wouldn't say. She said she was helping him. Something about "spheres of existence …"'

  Shelley sat down opposite him, hands flat on the table.

  'Shelley, this is all getting a bit beyond me. I've never felt quite so ...'

  He looked up at her. Bemused was the least of it.

  Meryl. The housekeeper. The woman dressed alluringly in black, the sort of housekeeper you might get from an escort agency. The woman who had passed out when Tom ...

  'There'
s an aspect of Meryl you should know about,' Martin said reluctantly. 'She's obsessed with ...' He looked embarrassed '... I don't know, psychic nonsense. We're supposed to have a ghost and she talks to the thing all the time. I've always thought it was pretty harmless. I mean, it has been pretty damned harmless, until... oh God, this is ridiculous.'

  'No it isn't,' Shelley said.

  'Thanks.'

  'Christ, I'm not saying it to make you feel better, Martin! I've had to live with it for over thirteen years, and it's not bloody ridiculous. If you say the woman's obsessed, that's ... that's not harmless at all.'

  Remembering now how kind Meryl had been, telephoning hotels and places to see if Tom had booked in. Oh yes, really bloody kind.

  'Are you trying to tell me,' she said tightly, 'that your housekeeper is almost as psychologically disturbed as my husband? Are you telling me these two are shacked up together somewhere, smoothing each other's psyches? By God, you've set us all up, haven't you, Martin?'

  'I'm sorry,' Martin said humbly. 'I had no idea, believe me. Meryl accused me of playing God, inviting you and Tom and Case and then sticking the Tulleys on the list just for the hell of it. It ... seemed like an amusing thing to do.'

  'Ha ha,' Shelley said bitterly.

  'I mean, I was being perfectly genuine about the Love-Storey displays, all that.'

  'Do you pay this woman? Meryl?'

  'You make her sound like a prostitute. It isn't like that at all. It's just been a sort of comfortable arrangement, for us both.'

  Shelley asked him, 'Have you any idea where they might have gone?'

  He shook his head.

  'Well, this is bloody marvellous,' Shelley said, defeated.

  And then the back door opened, and Vanessa was standing there.

  'Hullo,' Martin said cheerfully. 'How are you this evening?'

  The poor child looked so forlorn. Her glasses were misted; it was a wonder she could see where she was going.

  'Hey,' said Shelley brightly, 'where've you been, lady? I thought you were watching telly.'

  Vanessa said nothing. Shelley became aware of Weasel in the shadows behind her. Weasel mumbled, 'Any news?'