by Phil Rickman
Thrusting her hand again and again into the harmonica pocket. Nothing. She pulled out the guitar, laid it on the bed.
Turned the case upside down. Picked up the guitar and shook it violently, and listened to nothing rattling inside.
When, slowly, she straightened up, her back was hurting.
She felt arid, derelict. She felt old but inexperienced, incompetent. She felt like an old child.
Numbly, she reached behind the bedroom door for her cloak, to cover her thin, goosebumpy arms.
The cloak was not there. They'd taken that too.
Sam stumbled no more than twice. He knew his ground. Didn't need no fight, although he had the powerful police torch wedged in his jacket pocket, case he needed to blind anybody.
It was pissing down. Sam wore his old fishing hat, pulled down, head into the rain.
Never been raining when these buggers'd been up here before. They wouldn't like that. Be an advantage for him, two years windblasted, rained on, snowed on.
There was a moon up there, somewhere buried in clouds, so the sky wasn't all that black. When his eyes had adjusted he could see the outline of the hill, and when he got halfway up it he could make out a couple of faint lights down on the edge of Bridelow.
But no lights above him now.
Moving round so he'd come to the circle from the bit of a hump behind it, he climbed higher, a lone blue-white disc floating into view, vague through the rain and mist. Beacon of the Moss.
Bloody church. Bugger all use they'd been, pair of um.
When he came to the bracken, Sam stopped, stayed very still, listening. Thought by now he'd have seen their lights, heard some of the chanting, whatever they did.
Sam went down on his haunches, the rain spattering the bracken. Quietly as he could, he snapped shut the breech of the gun, jammed the butt under his elbow and crouched there, waiting.
The rain corning down hard and cold, muffling the moor, seeping through his jacket. Might've brought his waterproof, except the thing would have squeaked when he moved. Have a hot bath when he got in, slug or two of whisky.
Sam hefted the twelve-bore. His mouth felt dry.
They were here. He could feel it. They were close.
Bastards. Stay aggressive. Aggression generated heat and aggression was better than fear.
Right. Sam moved in closer. He reckoned he was no more than twenty yards from the circle; couldn't see it yet. Just over this rise.
They were there; no question. But were they lying low, expecting him? Had they somehow heard him coming?
Sam pulled in a deep breath, drawing in rainwater and nearly choking. He stuck his finger under the trigger guard and went over the rise like a commando, stopping just the other
side, legs splayed.
'All right, you fuckers!' he bawled. 'Nobody move!'
And nobody moved. Nothing. Not even a rabbit in the grass. Only the sound of the rain battering the bracken.
Holding the gun under his right arm, Sam fumbled for his torch, clicked it on, swirled the beam around, finding one, two, three, four, five stubby stones, a circle of thumbs jabbing out of the moor.
'Where are you? Fucking come out! I'll give you your bloody Satan!'
Not frightened now. Bloody mad. 'Come on!'
He thought about firing a shot into the bracken, case they were flattened out in there. But it wasn't likely, was it?
No, they'd gone. He switched off the torch, pushed it back in his pocket and did a 180-degree crouching turn, with the gun levelled.
Behind him, up on the moor, he glimpsed a fleeting white light. Didn't pause to think. Right. They're on the run. Move it.
Half-aware that he was departing from his own useless piece of moorland, Sam set off under a thickly clouded night sky with little light in it but an endless supply of black water; his jacket heavy with it and his faithful fishing hat, which once had been waterproof, now dripping round his ears like a mop rag.
He thought of his bed, and he thought of his kids and his wife, who he supposed he loved really, and he thought this was the stupidest bloody thing he'd do this year and maybe next, but...
... but them bastards were not going to get away with it, and that was that.
He tracked the light. Just one light, hazy, so probably a fair distance away. Heather under his boots now, waterlogged but better than the bracken, and the light was getting bigger; he was closing in, definitely, no question.
Two, three hundred yards distant, hard to be sure at night but the way the rain was coming down, crackling in the heather, there was no need to creep.
Sam strode vengefully onward.
Maybe it was due to forging on with his head down and his eyes slitted to keep the water out... maybe this was why Sam didn't realise for a few seconds that the light was actually coming, much more quickly, towards him.
A shapeless light. Bleary and steaming and coming at him through the rain ... faster than a man could run.
'Hey ... !' Sam stopped, gasping, then backed away, bewildered. His index finger tightened involuntarily and the gun went off, both barrels, and Sam stumbled, dropping it.
Something squelched and snagged around his ankle like a trap. He went down, caught hold of it - curved and hard - and realised, sickened, that he must have put his foot through the
ribcage of a dead sheep.
Pulling at the foot, dragging the bones up with it, he saw the light was rising from the moor in front of him, misty and shimmering in the downpour.
And it seemed to him - soaked through, foot stuck in a sheep - that the light had a face, features forming and pulsing, a face veiled by a thin muslin curtain, the fabric sucked into a gaping mouth.
Sam's mouth was open too, now; he was screaming furiously into the rain, wrenching the torch from his pocket, thumbing numbly at its switch, until it spurted light, a brilliantly harsh directional beam making a white tunnel in the rain and mist, straight up into the face.
Where the tunnel of light ended suddenly. A beam designed to light up an object eighty yards away, and it shone as far as the rearing figure of light, a matter of four, five feet away. Where it died. In the beam, the figure of light turned into a shadow, a figure of darkness and cold.
'No ...' Sam Davis wanted chanting townies in robes and masks. He wanted sick, stupid people. Wanted to see them dancing, getting pissed wet through. Wanted to hear them praying to the fucking Devil, with their fire hissing and smouldering in the rain. Didn't want this. Didn't want it. No.
When the shadow stretched and the torch beam began to shrivel, as if all the light had been sucked out, leaving only a thinly shining disc at the end of the torch, Sam felt his bowels give way.
All the rage and aggression slithered out of him like the guts of a slaughtered pig, and the void they left behind was filled with a cold, immobilizing fear.
Lottie Castle came awake in swirling darkness.
Awakened by the cold air on her own body, exposed to the night, the sheets and blankets thrust away, her nightdress shed.
Her body was rolling about on the bed, drenched in sweat, arms and legs and stomach jerking and twitching with electricity, nipples rigid and hurting.
What's happening, what's happening?
She was ill. Her nervous system had finally rebelled against the months of agony and tension. She was sick, she was stricken. She needed help, she needed care. She should be taken away and cared for. She should not be alone like this, not here in this great shambling mausoleum.
Lottie began to pant with panic, feeling the twisted pillow sweat-soaked under her neck as it arched and swayed. She couldn't see anything, not her body, not the walls, nor even the outline of the window behind the thin curtains.
It couldn't be darker. But it wasn't silent.
And fright formed a layer of frost around Lottie's heart as she became aware that every muscle in her body was throbbing to the shrill, sick whinny of the Pennine Pipes, high on the
night.
CHAPTER IV
It didn't menace Joel Beard, God's warrior, skimming across the causeway, hands warm in his gauntlets, deep and holy thoughts protected inside his helmet, his leathers unzipped to expose the cross.
Nourished by little more than three hours' sleep at Chris and Chantal's place in Sheffield, he felt ... well, reborn. Talked and prayed and cried and agonized until 2 a.m. Old chums, Chris and Chantal. Born Again brethren, still with the Church of the Angels of the New Advent. Still strong in their faith.
'I sometimes wish I'd never left.' Joel reaching out for reassurance.
'Why? It was your great mission, Joel - we all knew that, it's terrific - to carry our commitment, all our certainty, into the straight Church.'
'But it's just so ... lonely, Chantal. I didn't realise how ... or how corrupt. That there were places where the Church allowed the evil to remain - real evil - for a quiet life. A quiet life - is that what it's come to? I mean, tonight, going back to the church, after this fiasco with the grave, it was there for anyone to see. The ghastly light from the clock that isn't really a clock, and all the sneering gargoyles and the place over the door where this revolting Sheelagh na gig thing used to be ... And you realise ... it's everywhere. How many country churches have these pagan carvings, the Green Man, all kinds of devil-figures? Demons. Twisted demon faces, everywhere, grinning at you - it's our Church!'
Yes ... yes ... yes ... the pieces of so-called character clinging to old churches like barnacles to a wreck, the very aspects of ancient churches that tourists found so picturesque ... 'Oh, yes, I've always been fond of old churches.' As if this was some sanctified form of tourism, when really they were soaking up the satanic.
'What it means is that the Church has been sheltering this filth, pressed to its own bosom, for centuries. What everyone finds so appealing about these old parish churches are the things that should not be there. Am I the only one to see this?'
They'd brought him food and coffee. Made up a bed for him in the sitting room. Sat up half the night with him. Prayed with him in his agony.
'I've had visions. Dreams. I've been tested. All the time I'm there I'm tested. It tries to twist me. How can I handle this? I'm only one man.'
'No. You're not only one man, Joel. We're here. We're in this together. Tens of thousands of us. Listen, you were our emissary. You've seen and you've come back. We hear you, Joel. We hear you!'
Yes.
He slowed for the cobbles, bumping up the street towards the church, its stonework black with age and evil.
'Say the word, Joel. Just say the word. We're with you.'
'I'm tired. I've only been there a couple of days, and I'm exhausted.'
'You'll sleep tonight, Joel. We'll cover you with our prayers. You'll sleep well.'
And he had. Even if it was only for a few hours. He'd awoken refreshed and ready for his first morning worship at St Bride's, no prepared sermon in his pocket, no script, no text. He would stride into that pagan place and cleanse it with the strength of his faith. His sermon would be unrehearsed; it would almost be like ... speaking in tongues.
Cathy said, 'You look really awful.',
'Thanks.'
'I've been trying to understand it,' Cathy said.
'Don't. It won't do you any good.'
Cathy pushed the fingers of both hands through her hair, 'I mean, they broke in here, in this really obvious, unsubtle way and they didn't take the telly or the video, or even your guitar ... just this comb. Does it look valuable?'
Moira broke the end off a piece of toast and tried to eat it. 'Looks like one of those metal combs you buy for grooming dogs, only not so expensive and kind of corroded. Like a lot of stuff over a thousand years old, it looks like junk.'
'Look,' Cathy said reasonably, is it not possible it just sort of slipped out when you were bringing your stuff in? Should I search the garden?'
Moira shook her head, gave up on the toast.
'Should we call the police?'
'No ... No, this is ... Only guy I ever took the thing out for was ... Matt Castle, and I never wanted to. Look, I'm sorry. Your father's had a coronary, you've got this Joel Beard moving into your house and I'm rambling on about a damn comb. What time are you leaving?'
'This afternoon - sooner if I can.' Cathy said she'd wait for the cleaner, to tell her to put Joel Beard in the room Moira had slept in and to get Alf Beckett to fix the pantry window. Then she'd pack a couple of suitcases for her father and drop them off at The Poplars, this home for clapped-out clergy. And then think about going back to Oxford.
'What are you studying at Oxford?'
'This and that,' Cathy said. 'Where will you go? Home?'
Moira didn't answer. Where was home anyway? Glasgow? The folk circuit? She felt motiveless. The white-tiled rectory kitchen looked scuffed but sterile, like a derelict operating theatre. Getting to her feet was an effort. The view from the window, of graves, was depressing. The sky was like a crumpled undersheet, slightly soiled.
'I don't know what to do,' Moira said, and the words tasted like chewed-out gum. 'When something dreadful's going down and you don't know what it is or how you connect ...'
'Why do you have to connect? You just came to a friend's funeral. You can go home.'
'Can I?'
'Just take it easy, that's all. You can't drive all the way to Scotland without sleep, you'll have an accident. Why don't you book in somewhere for a night?'
'I look that bad?'
'You look like somebody walked off with your soul,' Cathy said with this shockingly accurate perception.
Holy Communion, by tradition, was at 9, but by 9.15 nobody had arrived.
Joel went to pick up a stray twig in the aisle, a piece of the Autumn Cross the cleaners had missed. He took it outside, through the churchyard, and dropped it on the cobbles outside the lych-gate. Depositing it safely on secular ground.
On his return he glanced above the doorway, where the Sheelagh na gig had hung, half afraid the thing would have left some murky impression of itself on the stonework beneath, but there was only dust. He'd sent the vile plaque to be locked away in the school cellars until such time as a museum might be persuaded to take it.
He waited, in full vestments, in the vestry doorway, looking over the backs of empty pews towards the altar. Yesterday evening he'd had Beckett bring the wine up from the cellar room and then had the room locked, and he'd taken the key and hurled it away Across the Moss.
The church clock gave a single chime for 9.30. When nobody came to Holy Communion. It didn't really surprise him. How could anyone here kneel at the altar, accepting the blood and body of Christ - knowing what they knew?
Knowing that stipends and student grants added up to bugger-all, she tried to give Cathy some money for the two nights' accommodation.
Cathy laughed. 'After you were burgled?'
Moira didn't think she looked too convinced, about the comb. Understandably, perhaps.
They were standing by the front gate of the Rectory. She felt weak and washed out and cold without her cloak. The raw air hurt her cheeks and made her eyes water.
Cathy said, 'You look like you're coming down with something. Hope it's not this Taiwanese flu.'
Moira looked down the hill towards The Man I'th Moss.
Either side of the cobbled street, the cottages looked rough and random, like rocks left by a landslide. She said goodbye to Cathy, kissed her on the check. Cathy's cheek felt hot and flushed, Moira's lips felt cracked, like a hag's. She was remembering the day the Duchess had given her the comb. How she'd stood before her wardrobe mirror and the old comb had stroked fluidly through her short hair, like an oar from a boat sailing with the tide, and the hair had seemed suddenly so lustrous and longing to be liberated, and that was when it began, the five-year war with her gran, who thought children should be seen and not heard and not even seen without their hair was neatly trimmed.
'… if that's what you were thinking,' Cathy was saying in a low voice.
'Huh?'
'I said ...' raising her voice,'... it wasn't Dic.'
'What wasn't?'
'Whoever broke in. You've been indicating it was a personal thing. I mean, how many people would know about that comb anyway?'
'I didn't say anything.'
'You didn't have to. You thought it was Dic. Well, he wouldn't do a thing like that and anyway he ... he's away teaching.'
'Where's he teach?'
'I'm not telling you,' Cathy said. Her pale eyes were glassy with tears. 'Please, Moira, it wasn't him. It wasn't.'
Moira thought, What's happening to her? What's happening to me? When she picked up her fancy, lightweight suitcase and her guitar case they both felt like they were full of bricks, and her hair felt lank and heavy, suffocating, like an iron mask, as she made her way over the cobbles to the church car park.
In the room directly over the Post Office, Milly Gill brought Willie Wagstaff tea in bed.
'Shouldn't've bothered,' Willie grumbled.
Milly said, 'I'm your mother now.'
'Don't say that.'
Balancing her own cup and saucer in one hand - the Mothers were supposed to be good at balancing things - she got gracefully back into bed with him. She was wearing an ankle-length floral nightdress tied over the breasts with an enormous pink bow. She looked like a giant cuddly rabbit, Willie thought, never more grateful for her than he had been this past night.
'I'm everybody's mother now,' Milly said miserably. 'Who else is there? Old Sarah?'
'Shit,' said Willie, 'I don't want it to be you.'
Milly shrugged her big shoulders and still kept the cup balanced on the saucer, 'I've lived opposite Ma for twenty years. I've studied her ways, best I can. I've been ... well.. . almost a daughter-in-law.'
'I was always led to believe,' Willie said, 'that Ma was supposed to announce her successor. "There's one as'll come after me." And it weren't you, luv, I'm sure of that.'
'No,' said Milly. 'But Ma thought she'd be around for another ten years yet. I know that for a fact. Ma thought she'd see in the Millennium.'
