The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  'Lay him gently. You've done well so far. I'm proud of you. But lay him gently, he's ours now. And remember ... never forget ...'

  'I know ... I'll feel so much better afterwards.'

  'Shut up. Join hands. In a circle. Around the body.'

  It was not a rape; she was a whore, and a heathen whore. When he plunged into her, he found her as moist as black peat and packed just as tightly around him.

  Light into darkness.

  Not to be enjoyed. It was necessary.

  'Whore,' he gasped with every breath. 'Whore ... whore ... whore ...'

  Lifting his head to seek out her eyes, looking for a reaction, searching for some pain in them.

  'Whore.' Saw her mouth stretched into a static rictus of agony.

  'Wh ...' Tighter still around him.

  And dry.

  '... ore ...'

  Dry as stone.

  No.

  Too late; he thrust again. Into stone.

  The pain was blinding. Immeasurable. The pain was a white-hot wire driven through the tip of his penis and up through his pelvis into his spine.

  His back arched, his breath set solid in his throat. And he found her eyes.

  Little grey pebbles. And her mouth, stretched and twisted not in agony but ancient derision, a forever grin.

  '...in the midst of death we are alive . .

  '... WEAREALIVE!'

  ('Go on ... two handfuls ... stop ... not on his face ...shine the light... there ...')

  'Behold, I shew you a mystery. We shall not sleep, but we shall be changed. In a moment. In the twinkling of an eye. At the last trump -for the trumpet shall sound. And the dead shall be raised.'

  '... AND THE DEAD SHALL BE RAISED!'

  ('OK, now fill in the grave ... quickly, quickly, quickly ...')

  'Dust to dust, to ashes, to earth.

  'DUST TO ASHES TO EARTH!'

  ('Now stamp it down, all of you. Together ...')

  'And the dead shall be raised corrupted ... and we shall be changed.'

  '... WE SHALL BE CHANGED.'

  ('Douse the lights. Douse them!')

  CHAPTER IV

  Another hard, white day, and she didn't like the look of it. It had no expression; there was a threat here most folk wouldn't see.

  Not good weather, not bad weather. Nowt wrong with bad weather; you couldn't very well live in Bridelow if you couldn't put up wi' spot or two of rain every other day or a bit of wind to make your fire smoke and your eyes water. Or blizzards. Or thunder and lightning.

  But this was no weather. Just cold air at night and a threat.

  Everything black or white. Black night with white stars. White day with black trees, black moor, black moss.

  Cold and still. Round about this time of year there should be some colour and movement in the sky, even if it was only clouds in dirty shades of yellow chasing each other round the chimney pots.

  Shades. There should be shades.

  Ma Wagstaff stood in her back kitchen, hands on woollen-skirted hips.

  She was vexed with them cats too. She'd washed their bowl, first thing, and doled out a helping of the very latest variety of gourmet cat food Willie'd brought her from that posh supermarket in Buxton - shrimp and mussel in oyster sauce. And the fickle little devils had sat there and stared at it, then stared at her. 'Well, that's it,' Ma growled. 'If you want owt else you can gerout and hunt for it.'

  But the cats didn't want to go out. They mooched around, all moody, ignoring each other, looking up at Ma as if was her fault.

  Bad air.

  As Ma unbent, the cat food can in one hand, a fork in the other, her back suddenly creaked and then she couldn't stand up for the pain that started sawing down her spine like a bread knife.

  Then the front door went, half a knock, somebody who couldn't reach the knocker. As Ma hobbled through the living room, the white light seemed to be laughing heartlessly at her, filling the front window and slashing at the jars and bottles.

  The door was jammed and opened with a shudder that continued all the way up Ma's spine to the base of her skull.

  'Now then,' Ma said.

  On the doorstep was her youngest grandson with that big dog of his. Always went for a walk together before school.

  Benjie said nowt, grinned up at her, gap-toothed, something clutched in one hand.

  'Well, well,' said Ma, smiling through the agony. 'Where'd you find that?'

  'Chief found it,' said Benjie proudly. 'Jus' this mornin', up by t'moor.'

  'Ta.' Ma took the bottle and fetched the child in for a chocolate biscuit from the tin. The bottle wasn't broken, but the cork was half out and the glass was misted. The bit of red thread that hung outside for the spirit to grasp was soaked through and stuck to the bottle.

  "Ey!' Benjie said suddenly. 'Guess what.'

  'I'm too owd for guessin' games, lad.'

  'Bogman's bin took!'

  'Eh?'

  'It were on radio. Bogman's bin stole.'

  'Oh,' said Ma, vaguely, 'has he?'

  The child looked disappointed. 'Are you not surprised?

  'Oh, I am,' Ma said. 'I'm right flabbergasted. Look, just get that stool and climb up theer and fetch us biscuit tin. Me owd back's play in' up a bit.'

  Ma held up the bottle to the cruel light. Useless.

  'Will it still work?' asked Benjie innocently, arms full of wooden stool. Ma had to smile; what did he know about witch-bottles?

  'Would it ever've worked, lad?' She shook her head ruefully, wondering if she'd be able to stand up straight before teatime. 'That's what I keep askin' meself.'

  Fine lot of use she was. She ought to be out there, finding out exactly what they were up against - even if it killed her - before two thousand and more years of care and watchfulness came to ruin.

  Oh, she could feel it ... mornings like this, everything still and exposed.

  She looked down at young Benjie, chomping on his chocolate biscuit. It will kill me, she thought. I'm old and feeble and me back's giving way. I've let things slip all these years, pottered about the place curing sick babbies and cows, and not seeing the danger. And now there's only me with the strength inside. But I'm too old and buggered to go out and find um.

  It'll come to me, though, one night. Ma thought, with uncustomary dread. When it's good and ready.

  But will I be?

  Joel Beard awoke screaming and sweating, coughing and choking on the paraffin air.

  He sat on the edge of the camp bed, with the duvet wrapped around him, moaning and rocking backwards and forwards in the darkness for several minutes before his fingers were sufficiently steady to find the candle on its tray and the matches.

  He lit the candle and, almost immediately, it went out. He lit it again and it flared briefly, with a curious shower of sparks, before the wick snapped, carrying the flame to the metal tray, where it lasted just long enough for Joel to grab his cross, his clothes and his boots and make it to the door.

  On his way through the tunnel to the steps, he knocked over the paraffin heater, with a clatter and crash of tin and glass, and didn't stop to set it upright.

  At the top of the steps he was almost dazzled by the white dawn, awakening the kneeling saints and prophets, the angelic hosts and the jewel-coloured Christs in the windows.

  Deliverance.

  He dressed in the vestry, where he found a mildewed cassock and put that on over his vest and underpants. But he did not feel fully dressed until his cross was heavy against his chest.

  The air in the nave felt half-frozen; he could smell upon it the bitter stench of autumn, raw decay. But no paraffin. And the cold was negligible compared with the atmosphere in last night's dungeon.

  He unbolted the church door, stood at the entrance to the porch breathing in the early morning air - seven o'clockish, couldn't be certain, left his watch in the dungeon, wasn't going back for it - and he did not look up, as he said, 'You're finished, you bitch.'

  And then went quickly down, between
the graves, to the gardener's shed, up against the perimeter wall.

  The shed was locked, a padlock through the hasp. He had no key. He shook the door irritably and glared in through the shed's cobwebbed window. He could see what he wanted, a gleaming edge of the aluminium window-cleaning ladder, on its side, stretching the length of the shed. He also saw in the window the reflection of a face that was not his own.

  Joel was jolted and, for a moment, could not turn round.

  The face was a woman's. It had long, dark hair, steady, hard eyes and black whore's lips. The lips were stretched in a tight, shining grin which the eyes did not reflect.

  Cold derision.

  Remembered pain speared Joel's spine as he turned, half-hypnotized by the horror of it, turning as he would turn to stare full into the face of the Gorgon knowing it would turn him into stone, like the angels frozen to the graves.

  He saw the still figure of a woman on the other side of the church wall, the village street below her. Her back was turned to him. Slowly, she began to walk away, and because the wall blocked her lower half she seemed at first to be floating. Her long, black hair swayed as she moved, and in the hair he saw a single thin, ice-white strand.

  Joel felt a twisted revulsion. Twisted because there was inside it a slender wafer of cold desire, like the seam of white in the hair of the woman who walked away.

  He watched her, not aware of breathing. She was wearing something long and black. He watched her until she was no more, and not once did she turn round.

  Joel sobbed once, felt the savage strength of rage. He bunched a fist and drove it through the shed window.

  Ernie Dawber had heard about the bogman on the morning news. So he wasn't exactly surprised when,' round about 10.30, he heard a car pulling up irritably in the schoolhouse drive.

  Hadn't given much thought to how he was going to handle this one. Too busy making notes for a daft book that would never get published.

  The page he was writing, an introduction, began:

  Bridelow might be said to operate on two levels. It has what you might call an underlife, sometimes discernible at dusk when all's still and the beacon is about to light up ...

  He looked up from the paper and the room went rapidly in and out of focus and swayed. Bugger. Not again. Damn.

  He pushed his chair back, swept all the papers from his desk into an open boxfile and went to let the man in.

  'A raw day, Dr Hall.'

  A word, Mr Dawber, if you're not ... too busy.'

  Innuendo. It was going to be all innuendo this time, he could tell.

  'I'm a retired man. I'm not supposed to be busy. Come in. Sit down. Cup of tea? Or something a little ...'

  'No, thank you. Nothing.' Oh, very starchy. 'It's interesting that you don't seem at all surprised to see me, Mr Dawber.'

  'I'm not daft,' Ernie said. 'That's how I got to be a headmaster.'

  Underneath Hall's open Barbour jacket was a suit and tie. An official visit.

  'Well, at least shut the door,' Ernie said. 'It's the worst kind of cold out there.'

  The archaeologist consented at last to come into the study. Ernie closed the boxfile and placed it carefully under his chair. 'Look around,' he said. 'You don't need a search warrant.'

  'I haven't said anything to the police,' Hall said. 'Not yet. I'm giving you a chance either to bring it back or tell me where it is.'

  Ernie didn't insult him by asking what he was talking about. 'Dr Hall, this is a very serious allegation.'

  'Don't worry, I know enough about the libel laws not to make it in public. That's why I've come to see you. If we can keep it between the two of us and the, er ... if it comes back undamaged, that'll probably be as far as it goes.'

  'Now look, you don't really trunk ... ?'

  'Oh, I don't for one minute think you were personally involved. Besides, you were at the funeral, I saw you. Wouldn't have been time.'

  'So I'm just the mastermind. The brains behind the heist. That it?'

  'Something like that.'

  'All right,' said Ernie Dawber. 'I'll be straight with you. Yes, I did come to you on behalf of the village and urge you to put that thing back in the bog. That was me, and I meant it. But - and I'll say this very slowly, Dr Hall - I do not know who stole the bogman from the Field Centre. I'll say it to you and I'll say it again before a court of law.'

  And he truly didn't know. Nobody ever knew these things apart from those concerned.

  Had his suspicions, who wouldn't have?

  But nothing black and white. Ma Wagstaff was right. There was never anything in black and white in Bridelow, which was how it was that balance and harmony could always be gently adjusted, like the tone and contrast on a television set.

  Shades of things.

  Oh, aye, naturally, he had his suspicions. Nowt wrong with suspicions. Suspicions never hanged anyone.

  Roger Hall had changed colour. His beard-rimmed lips gone tight and white. Dr Hall's tonal balance was way out.

  'It's here, Dawber. I know it's here.'

  'You're welcome to search ...'

  'I don't mean this house. I mean in Bridelow. Somebody has it ...'

  'Don't be daft.'

  'That's if it hasn't already been put back in the bog. And if it has, we'll find it. I can have two coach loads of students down here before lunch. We'll comb that moss, inch by inch, and when we find the area that's been disturbed ...'

  'I wish I could help you, Dr Hall.'

  'No, you don't.'

  Ernie Dawber nodded. That was true enough. No, he didn't.

  Joel lugged the ladder through the graveyard and into the church, dragging it along the nave, putting it up finally against a stone pillar next to the rood screen. He shook the ladder to steady it, then began, with a cold determination, to climb.

  In his ankle-length black cassock, this was not easy. Close to the top, he hung on with one aching, bruised and bloodstained hand, the big, gilded cross swinging out from his chest, while he rummaged under the cassock for his Swiss Army knife, using his teeth to extract its longest, sharpest blade.

  The topmost branches of the Autumn Cross were almost in his face. It was about six feet long, crudely woven of oak and ash with, mashed up inside for stuffing, thousands of dead leaves and twigs, part of a bird's nest, shrivelled berries and hard, brown acorns.

  Disgusting thing.

  Fashioned in public, he'd been told, on the field behind The Man I'th Moss, with great ceremony, and the children gathering foliage for its innards.

  'Oh, Lord,' Joel roared into the rafters, 'help me rid your house for ever of this primeval slime!'

  He leaned out from the ladder, one foot hanging in space, tiny shards of glass still gleaming amidst the still-bright blood on the hand gripping a rung. His fatigue fell away; he felt fit and supple and had the intoxicating sensation of grace in his movements.

  Deliverance.

  Orange baling-twine bound the frame of the cross to a rusted hook sunk into a cross-beam. He swung his knife-arm in a great arc and slashed it through.

  'Filth!' he screamed.

  The Autumn Cross fell at once, and Joel watched it tumble and was glad.

  A beginning.

  The sapless, weightless artefact fell with a dry, slithering hiss. Like a serpent in the grass, he thought, satisfaction setting firm in the muscles of his stomach, his head filled with a wild light.

  He did recoil slightly, throwing the lightweight ladder into a tilt, as the so-called cross burst apart on the stone flags, fragments of leaves and powdery dust rising all around until the belly of the church was filled up with a dry and brackish-smelling sepia mist.

  Joel coughed and watched the filthy pagan detritus as it settled. A bigger job than usual for the women on the Mothers' Union cleaning rota.

  He hoped the foul bitches would choke on the dust.

  CHAPTER V

  With a nod to Our Sheila, Moira slipped quietly into St Bride's church just before 10 a.m.

  To
be alone. To confront the spirit of Bridelow. Maybe find something of Matt Castle here.

  Special place. Matt had said, a long, long time ago on a snowy night in Manchester. It's got ... part of what I've been trying to find in the music. That's where it is ... where it was all along.

  Cathy Gruber had persuaded her to stay the night in the guest room. She'd slept surprisingly well, no awful dreams of Matt in his coffin. And awoken with - all too rare these days - with a sense of direction: she would discover Matt, trace the source of the inspiration. Which was the essence of the village.

  Bridelow, last refuge of the English Celts.

  A more pure, undiluted strain than you'll find anywhere in Western Europe.

  She stopped in the church porch.

  Who said that? Who said that?

  The American said it. Macbeth.

  Macbeth?

  Yeah, quoting somebody ... some writer addressing the Celtic conference. Stanhope, Stansfield, some name like that ... from the North of England.

  Connections.

  She felt like a small token in a board-game, manoeuvred into place by the deft fingers of some huge, invisible, cunning player.

  And she knew that if she was to tap into Matt's imagination, she was also going to have to confront his demons.

  As she walked - cautious now - out of the porch, into the body of the church, something whooshed down the aisle and collided with her at chest-level.

  'Hey!' Moira grinned in some relief, holding, at arm's length, a small boy.

  'Gerroff!' Kid was in tears.

  'You OK? You hurt yourself?'

  The child tore himself away from her, wailing, and hurled himself through the door, an arm flung across his eyes, like he'd been blown back by an explosion.

  Moira's grin faded.

  Something had changed.

  The place looked bare and draughty. Even through the stained-glass windows, the light seemed ashen and austere. On a table near the entrance, next to the piles of hymn books, al1 the lanterns and candlesticks had been carelessly stacked, as if for spring cleaning. One of the slender, coloured candles had rolled off the edge and lay snapped in two on the stone flags.