The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  'Because ... because he was with someone I judged to be more reliable.'

  He didn't elaborate; Ashton didn't push the point either. Chrissie thought of the writer, Stanage.

  'So, anyway,' Roger said, 'it was Castle's funeral yesterday, and I thought I ought to show my face. I only went to the church service. Left before they actually put him into the ground. But I very much wish I'd stayed with it now, seen him buried.'

  'I might be thick,' said Ashton, 'but I'm not following this.'

  'All right, let's approach it from another angle. We've all been assuming that the break-in took place last night, right?'

  'Have we, Dr Hall?'

  'Ashton, look - can we stop this fencing? I know you're an experienced policeman and all that, but I've been doing my job for over twenty-five years too.' Angrily, Roger drew his chair from under the desk, scraping the Inspector's legs.

  'Look. Because of the funeral and one or two other things, I didn't come in here at all yesterday. And you only found out - about the burglary before me because our normally lazy caretaker just happened to try the doors for a change. Correct?'

  Ashton came slowly down from the desk, stood looking down at Roger. Interested.

  'But if he'd bothered,' Roger said, 'to check the doors the night before - and if he says he did he's probably lying, I know that man - he'd probably have found them forced then. My strong suspicion is the break-in happened the previous night. And that the body wasn't here at all yesterday.'

  'And what does that say to you?'

  'What it says to me, Inspector - and I might have to spend a bit of time explaining this to you - but what it says to me is that my bog body is buried in St Bride's churchyard.'

  'I see,' Ashton said thoughtfully. 'Or do I?'

  'The funeral!' Roger raised his hands. 'The grave - it's a double grave! What I'm saying is, dig up Castle's coffin, you'll find our body lying underneath. Trust me.'

  ... and there it was.

  Oh, Lord. Oh, Mother.

  Ma Wagstaff could see the thing from the top of the churchyard, the highest vantage-point in Bridelow.

  It hadn't been there a week ago, had it? There was a time when she knew this Moss better than anybody. Couldn't claim that now. Getting owd now. Letting it slide.

  Ma leaned on her stick and wondered if she could make it all the way out there without some help. She'd have been able to yesterday, but yesterday was a long time ago. Yesterday, though she hadn't realised it at the time, she still had some strength.

  She'd thought that sooner or later it would come to her, but instead it had sent her an invitation. Brought by a little lad who for no good reason had decided the dragon - because the dragon was there - was responsible for breaking up his Autumn Cross.

  And in a way he was right.

  Right about that thing out there; Ma could feel its black challenge. And looking across at it, she could tell why he thought it was a dragon - those little knobbly horns you could make out even from this distance.

  Only an owd dead tree, as sometimes came out of the Moss when there was storms and flooding.

  Bog oak.

  Except there hadn't been a storm.

  So it was black growth, like the blackness that grew in Matt Castle, and she had to gauge its strength.

  Ma hesitated.

  Not one to hesitate, wasn't Ma, but if she went out there she'd be on her own. As well as which, somebody needed her help this side of the Moss; she'd known this for days. Well, aye, people was always needing owd Ma's help, but this was somebody as didn't want to ask, hadn't for some reason been able to overcome a barrier, and until this barrier was overcome there was nowt Ma could do. Now she could feel the struggle going on, and when the plea came she must be there to answer it.

  Pulled this way and that, between the flames and the torrent. Oh, Lord. Oh, Mother, which way do I turn? Let it slide for so long, losing me grip.

  I'll walk out then.

  Walk out there following the river, staying near the water, gathering what power I can. Happen I can deal wi' this quick, nip it in t'bud. Stare it down, give it the hard eye, reshape it, turn it back into wood and only wood.

  Leaning heavily on her stick, Ma Wagstaff followed the old, steep narrow path down from the churchyard, meeting the thin river at the bottom of the hill where it went under the path - a little bridge, no more than a culvert - and there was a scrubby field to cross before they reached the Moss.

  I can make it. I can. Can I lean on you, Mother?

  The last few steps were going to be the hardest, by far.

  From two yards away, Ma Wagstaff's front door looked like the golden gates of heaven: unattainable.

  Liz Horridge was aware of her mouth being wide open, gulping, a fish out of water, metabolism malfunctioning

  Agoraphobia.

  Say it!

  AGOR ... A ... PHOBIA!!! Common-enough condition, always so hard to imagine, until it came upon you in panic-attacks, convulsions, stomach-cramps.

  Yet this ... more like claustrophobia ... not enough air ... lungs bursting.

  She'd tried to do it in planned stages, like an invalid learning to walk again. The first stage had been waiting for the postman, whom she hadn't seen face-to-face for months. When the van drew up, she'd be watching from the dining-room window, and if the postman was carrying a parcel she would run to open the front door, leaving it slightly ajar, and by the time he was tossing the parcel on to the mat, Liz had taken cover.

  Yesterday, almost sick with apprehension, she'd waited for the post van down by the main gate, rehearsing how she'd handle it. Just taking a walk. Normally go the other way. Yes, it is cold. Bright, though. Bright, yes. Thank you. Good morning.

  When the postman didn't come, she was so relieved. It had been foolish. Trembling, she'd returned to the house to make Shaw's breakfast. But Shaw had gone. To be with her. Whenever he went out without saying even vaguely where he was going, it would always be to be with her.

  Therese Beaufort had come into the house only once, had been polite but dismissive, had shown a vague interest in everything, except Liz, at whom she'd looked once, with a chilly smile before reappraising the drawing room, as if sizing it up for new furniture. Now she merely parked outside and waited, expressionless, not looking at the house (yes, I've seen your mother now, thank you).

  And now there was ...

  Look, Liz, why don't we meet up?

  And

  Chairman's hoping to drop by tonight.

  Fear. Despair. She'd walked away, down the drive, down the road, into terror, knowing she could not go home tonight. To the village, to Ma Wagstaff, to plead for sanctuary.

  Liz Horridge fell down, tearing her skirt, feeling the small, jutting stones of Ma Wagstaff's front path gashing her knees. She began to crawl towards the door, feeling the emanations of the stone buildings heavy on her back as if they would push her into the little pointed stones beneath her.

  The whitened donkeystoned step gleamed like an altar.

  Liz rose on her knees, tried to reach the knocker but managed only the letter-box which snapped at her fingers like a gin-trap.

  'Mrs Wagstaff: she managed to wail. 'Please, Mrs Wagstaff ... let me in ...'

  But nobody came to the door.

  'I'm sorry! I couldn't stop it! It wasn't my fault about the brewery. Please ... He's coming back. Please let me in.'

  And then the stones came down on her. The weight of the village descended on her shoulders, taking all the breath from her and she couldn't even scream.

  CHAPTER II

  'Didn't know I was coming back to die ... I mean, that's what people do, isn't it, and animals, go back home to die? But I wouldn't have. If I'd known. Last thing they need here's any deadwood.'

  The voice frail, but determined. Going to get this out, if it ...

  Killed him. Yeah.

  'Just as well, really. That I didn't know.'

  All Moira could see through the windscreen was the Moss. The vast peatbog unr
olling into the mist like the rotting lino in the hall of her old college lodgings in Manchester, half a life

  away.

  The BMW was parked in the spot at the edge of the causeway where yesterday she'd sat and listened to the pipes on cassette. Now it was another cassette, the one from the brown envelope inscribed MOIRA.

  'Funny thing, lass ... this is the first time I've found it easy to talk to you. Maybe 'cause you're not there. In the flesh. Heh. Did you realise that, how hard it was for me? Lottie knew. No hiding it from a woman like Lottie. Shit, I don't care who knows. I'm dead now.'

  Matt laughed. The cawing.

  She'd followed Lottie into a yard untidy with beer kegs and crates. Beyond it was a solid, stone building the size of a two-car garage. It looked as old as the pub, had probably once been stables or a barn.

  'Matt's music room,' Lottie said.

  She'd been almost scared to peer over Lottie's shoulder, into the dimness, into the barnlike space with high-level slit windows and huge, rough beams. Dust floating like the beginnings of snow.

  Lottie silent. Moira, hesitant. 'May I?' Lottie nodding.

  Moira slipping past her, expecting echoes, but there was carpet and rugs underfoot and more carpet on the walls to flatten the acoustics. She saw a table, papers and stuff strewn across it.

  Shelves supported by cement-spattered bricks held books, vinyl records and tapes. Heavy old speaker cabinets squatted like tombstones and there was a big Teac reel-to-reel tape machine. Matt's scarred Martin guitar lay supine on an old settee with its stuffing thrusting out between the cushions.

  Hanging over the sides of a stool was something which, from across the room, resembled a torn and gutted, old, black umbrella.

  She'd walked hesitantly over and stared down at the Pennine Pipes in pity and horror, like you might contemplate a bird with smashed wings. It was as if he'd simply tossed the pipes on the stool and walked out, forever, and the bag had maybe throbbed and pulsed a little, letting out the last of Matt's breath, and then the pipes had died.

  Moira's throat was very dry. She was thinking about Matt's obsessions: the Pennine Pipes, the bogman and ...

  'Can't help your feelings, can you? Like, if you're a married man, with a kid, and you meet somebody and you ... and she takes over your life and you can't stop thinking about her. But that's not a sin, is it? Not if you don't ... Anyway, I never realised that you ... I never realised.'

  Matt's voice all around her now. Car stereos, so damned intimate.

  Lottie had turned away, calling back over her shoulder, 'I'll be in the kitchen. Stay as long as you like. Lock up behind you and bring me the key. The parcel's on the table.'

  And was gone, leaving Moira alone in the barn that was like a chapel, with the pipes left to die.

  On the table, a thick, brown envelope which had once held a junk-mail catalogue for Honda cars. It had been resealed with Sellotape and

  MOIRA

  was scrawled across it.

  Inside: the tapes, four of them, three of music. And this one, a BASF chrome, marked personal.

  'Not a sin ... if you don't do owt about it. But I always found it hard to talk to you. I mean ... just to talk to you. Till it came time to tell you to get out of the band. That was easy. That was a fucking pushover, kid. I'm sorry the way that worked out, with The Philosopher's Stone. Sounded like a big opportunity. Like, for me too - chance to make the supreme sacrifice. But we can't tell, can we? We never can bloody tell, till it's too late.'

  Rambling. He'd have been on some kind of medication, wouldn't he? Drugs.

  'But when they told me I'd had me chips, I did regret it. Regretted it like hell. I thought most likely you'd just have told me to piss off, but there might have been a ... Anyway, I'd have given anything for just one ... just one time with you. Just one. Anything.'

  Christ. Moira stared out of the side window to where half a tree had erupted from the Moss, like bone burst through skin.

  'When you wrote back and you said you were too busy, I was shattered. I'd convinced meself you'd come. I just wanted to at least see you. Just one more time.'

  Moira bit down on her lower lip.

  'I'd tried to write a song. Couldn't do it. It was just a tune without words. Nothing. Best bloody tune I ever wrote, which isn't saying much - play it for you in a minute. Won't be much good, the playing, what d'you expect? Be the last tune I ever play. Gonna play it over and over again until I get it perfect, and then I'm gonna get Lottie to take me out and I'll play it to the fucking Moss. The Man in the Moss. That's what it's about. The Man in the Moss. That'll be me, too. Want to die with this tune in me head. This tune ... and you.'

  She felt a chill, like a low, whistling wind.

  'It's called Lament for the Man. I want the Moss to take it. A gift. Lament for the Bridelow Bogman. Soon as I read about him, months ago, before it came out about the sacrifice element, I was inspired by him. Direct link with me own past. The Celts. The English Celts. Like he'd come out the Moss to make a statement about the English Celts. And I was the only one could interpret it - sounds arrogant, eh? But I believe it. Like this is what me whole life's been leading up to.'

  Man starting to cough. On and on, distorting because the recording level couldn't handle it. The car-speakers rattling, like there was phlegm inside.

  'Fuck it,' Man said. 'If I go back and scrub this I'll forget everything I was gonna say. Sorry. Can you handle it? See, this was before they'd completed the tests on the bogman, before it was known about the sacrifice. Even then I was pretty much obsessed. I didn't care if we spent every penny we'd got. Lottie - she's a bloody good woman, Moira, I never deserved Lottie - she went along with it, although she loved that chintzy house in Wilmslow and she hated The Man I'th Moss, soon as she clapped eyes on it. But she went along with it. Sometimes I think, did she know? Did she know before me, that I was gonna snuff it? She says not. I believe her.'

  Across the Moss she could see the pub, a huge grey boathouse on the edge of a dark sea, its backyard a landing stage.

  'And then, soon after we came, the report came out about the bogman. About what he was. A sacrifice. To appease the gods so they'd keep the enemy at bay, make this community inviolate. Protect these Celts, these refugees from the fertile flat lands, the Cheshire Plain, Lancashire, the Welsh border. Invaders snatching their land, Romans, Saxons. And this, the old high place above the Moss - maybe it was a lake then. Bridelow.'

  Man's voice cracked.

  'Bridelow. The last refuge. I cried. When I heard, I cried. He went willingly. Almost definitely that was what happened. Almost certain he was the son of the chief, everything to live for - had to be, see, to make a worthwhile sacrifice.'

  Voice gone to a whisper.

  'Gave himself up. Willingly. That's the point. Can you grasp that, Moira? He let them take him on the Moss and they smashed his head, strangled him and cut his throat, and he knew ... he fucking knew what was gonna happen.'

  She stared through the windscreen at the Moss. Thick, low cloud lay tight to the peat, like a bandage on its putrefying, suppurating skin.

  'Hard to credit, isn't it? I mean, when you really think about it. When you try and picture it. He let the buggers do it to him. Young guy, fit, full of life and energy and he gives himself up in the most complete sense. Can you understand that? Maybe it affects me more because I've got no youth, no energy, and what life there's left is dribbling away by the minute. But by God ... I realised I wanted a bit of that.'

  She thought about the bogman. The sacrifice. She thought about Matt, inspired. Always so contagious, Matt's inspiration. She thought, I can't bear this ...

  'Can you get what I'm saying? Like, they took him away, these fucking scientists, with never a second thought about what he meant to Bridelow and what Bridelow, whatever it was called back then, meant to him. So I wanted ... I wanted in. To be part of that. To go in the Moss, too. Lottie tell you that? Lottie thinks it's shit, but it isn't ... '

  'No,' Moira whispe
red. 'It wouldn't be.'

  ... want some of me out there. With him. He's my hero, that lad ... I'm fifty-seven and I'm on me last legs - nay, not even that any more, me legs won't carry me - and I've found a fucking hero at last.'

  Matt starting to laugh and the laughter going into a choke and the choking turning to weeping.

  'Me and Ma Wagstaff met one day. One Stormy day. Ma understands, the old bitch. Willie's Ma, you know? Says to me, "We can help you help him. But you must purify yourself."'

  Out on the Moss, the dead tree like bone was moving. It had a tangle of thin branches, as if it were still alive, and the branches were waving, whipping against the tree.

  'She says. "You have to purify yourself".'

  The tree was a bad tree, was about to take its place alongside the encroaching stone toad on the moor, the eruption of guts on an ancient, rough-hewn altar. Bad things forcing themselves into Bridelow.

  'And then you came home ...'

  Moira's eyes widened.

  'I used to think she was ... a substitute. Me own creation. Like, creating you out of her, you know what I mean? An obsession imposes itself on what's available. But I should've known. Should've known you wouldn't leave me to die alone.'

  Her senses froze.

  'So, as I go into the final round, as they say, I'm drawing strength from the both of you. The bogman ... and you, Moira, Tomorrow's Sunday. I'll be going out on the Moss, to play. Last time, I reckon. I'll need Lottie and Dic, poor lad, to get me there, I'll send them away, then there'll just be the three of us.'

  'No,' she said 'What is this?'

  'Me and thee and him.'

  Matt chuckled eerily.

  Hard rain hit the Moss.

  'No,' she said.

  'Thanks, lass. Thanks for getting me through this. Thanks for your spirit. And your body. It was your body, wasn't it?'

  She wrapped her arms around herself, began to shake, feeling soiled.

  'Ma said. You've got to purify yourself. But there's a kind of purity in intensity of feeling, isn't that right? Pure black light.'

  'I'll play now,' Matt said, and she heard him lifting his pipes onto his knees.