The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  'Oh, aye,' said Willie.

  'No,' Milly Gill had said flatly and finally, when Mr Dawber wanted to go. 'It's got to be you, Willie. Mr Dawber looks too intelligent.'

  'Thanks a bunch.'

  'You know what I mean. You look harmless. It's always been your strength, Willie luv. You look dead harmless.'

  'Like a little vole,' said Frank Manifold Snr's wife Ethel in a voice like cotton-wool, and Milly gave her a narrow look.

  'Just watch and listen, Willie. Listen and watch.'

  'What am I listening for?'

  'You'll know, when you hear it.'

  What he'd heard so far had left him quite startled. They sang hymns he'd never encountered before, with a rhythm and gusto he associated more with folk clubs. He felt his fingers begin to respond, tried to stop it but he couldn't. Felt an emotional fervour building around him, like in the days when he used to support Manchester City.

  It had started with everybody - there'd be over fifty of them now - sitting quietly in the pews, as Joel Beard led them in prayer.

  But when the hymns got under way they'd all come out and stand in the aisle, quite still - no dancing - and turn their faces towards the rafters and then lift up their hands, palms open as if they were waiting to receive something big and heavy.

  When the hymn was over, some of the younger ones stayed in the aisle and sat there cross-legged, staring up at the pulpit, at their leader.

  'Some of you,' Joel Beard said soberly, 'may already have realised the significance of tonight.'

  Joel in full vestments, leaning out over the pulpit, the big cross around his neck swinging wide, burnished by the amber lights which turned his tight curls into a helmet of shining bronze.

  A bit different from downbeat, comfortable old Hans with his creased-up features and his tired eyes.

  But no Autumn Cross over Joel's head.

  No candles on the altar. All statuary removed.

  And despite all the people in their bright sweaters and

  jeans, with their fresh, scrubbed faces and clean hair ...

  ... Despite the colourful congregation and despite the

  emotion, the church looked naked and cold, and gloomy as a

  cathedral crypt.

  Joel said, 'Every few years, the realms of God and Satan collide. The most evil of all pagan festivals falls upon the Lord's day. Tonight, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, we pray for ourselves. For we are at war.'

  Bloody hell, Willie remembered, it's ...

  'It is Sunday,' Joel said quietly. 'And it is All-Hallows Eve.'

  New Year's Eve, Willie thought.

  Time was when they'd have a bit of a do down The Man. Except that always happened tomorrow, All Souls. Bit of a compromise, reached over the years with the Church. And a logical one in Willie's view. Imagine the reaction, in the days of the witch hunts, to a village which had a public festival at Hallowe'en. So they had it the following night, All Souls Night. Made sense.

  Wouldn't be doing much this year, though. Bugger-all to celebrate.

  'We have recaptured this church,' Joel Beard proclaimed, 'for the Lord.'

  Sterilised it, more like, Willie thought, feeling a lot less daft, a lot more annoyed. Despiritualised it, if there's such a word.

  'And it is left to us ... to hold it through this night.'

  'YES!'

  Oh, bloody hell, they're never!

  'PRAISE GOD!'

  'We'll remain here until the dawn. We'll sing and pray and keep the light.'

  'KEEP THE LIGHT!'

  It's a waste of time, Willie wanted to shout. It's a joke. Apart from the Mothers doing whatever needs to be done - in private - Hallowe'en's a non-event in Bridelow. Just a preparation for the winter, a time of consolidation, like, a sharing of memories.

  'I would stress to all of you that it's important to preserve a major presence here in the church.'

  Nay, lad, give it up. Go home.

  Joel said, if anyone needs to leave to use the toilet, the Rectory is open. But - hear me - go in pairs. Ignore all distractions. And hurry back. Take care. Make your path a straight one. Do not look to either side. Now ... those who thirst will find bottles of spring water and plastic cups in the vestry. Do not drink any water you may find in the Rectory; it may have been taken from the local spring, which is polluted, both physically and spiritually.'

  Willie was stunned. This was insane. This was Bridelow he was on about.

  'And of course,' Joel said, 'we shall eat nothing until the morning.'

  'PRAISE GOD!'

  Willie slumped back into his pew next to a girl with big boobs under a pink sweatshirt with white and gold lettering spelling out, THANK GOD FOR JESUS!

  'Have we been taken over, though?' Milly said. 'Have we lost our village? Gone? Under our noses?'

  'Bit strong, that,' Ernie Dawber said with what he was very much afraid was a nervous laugh. 'Yet.'

  They were in Milly Gill's flowery sitting room.

  He'd set out for evensong, as was his custom; if there was a boycott it was nowt to do with him, damn silly way to react, anyroad.

  She had caught up with him, suddenly appearing under his umbrella, telling him about the Angels of the New Advent. Time to talk about things, Milly said, steering him home, sitting him down with a mug of tea.

  'You're the chronicler, Mr Dawber. You know it's not an exaggeration. You've watched the brewery go. You've seen people fall ill and just die like they never did before. You know as well as I do Ma didn't just fall downstairs and die of shock.'

  'It's common enough,' Ernie said damply, 'among very old people.'

  'But Ma Wagstaff?' Milly folded her arms, trying for a bit of Presence. 'All right? Who's taken the Man? Who's taken Matt Castle from his grave? Come off the fence, Mr Dawber. What do you really think?'

  'You're asking me? You're in charge now, Millicent. I'm just an observer. With failing eyesight.'

  'There you go again. Please, Mr Dawber, you've seen the state of us. We're just a not-very-picturesque tradition. What did I ever do except pick flowers and dress the well? And we meet for a bit of a healing - this is how it's been - and Susan says she can't stop long because of the child and it's Frank's darts night.'

  'Young Frank needs a good talking to,' said Ernie.

  'That's the least of it. They're all just going through the motions, and nothing seems to work out. It's like, we're going into the Quiet time - this is last midsummer - and Jessie Marsden has to use her inhaler twice. We can't even beat our own hay fever any more. It'd be almost funny if it wasn't so tragic.'

  The image speared Ernie again. Ma showing him the Shades of Things and making him promise to get the bog body back. And him failing her, in the end. But need this be the end?

  'Happen you need some new blood,' he said finally.

  'I don't think that's the answer, Mr Dawber. The strength is in the tradition. New blood's easy to get. Remember that girl who showed up a couple of years ago? Heard about Bridelow - God knows how - and wanted to "tap the source"? Place of immense power, how lucky we were, could she become a ... a "neophyte", was that the word?'

  Ernie Dawber smiled. 'From the Daughters of Isis, Rotherham, as I remember. Nice enough girl. Well-intentioned. You sent her away.'

  'Well, Mr Dawber, what would you have done? We couldn't understand a word she was saying - all this about the Great Rite and the Cone of Power.'

  'Come off it, Millicent. You knew exactly what she was saying.'

  'Well... maybe it seemed silly, the way she talked. Made it all seem silly. It does, you know, when you give it names, like the Cone of Power. New blood's all right, in this sort of situation, when you're strong enough to absorb it. When you're weak it can just be like a conduit for infection.'

  'That, actually,' Ernie said, 'was not quite what I meant by new blood. Let's try and look at this objectively. Everything was ticking over quite nicely - not brilliant, bit wackery round the joints - but basically all right, given the times we're in.
Until this bog body turns up. The Man. It all comes back to the Man.'

  'You think so, Mr Dawber? The Man himself, rather than what people have made of him?'

  'It's all the same,' Ernie said. 'That's the whole point of a human sacrifice.'

  Milly stood up and went to the window, opaque with night and rain. 'How long's it been raining now, Mr Dawber?'

  'Over a day non-stop, has to be, and corning harder still. Stream's been out over the church field since tea time, and the Moss ... the Moss will rise. It does, you know. Absorbs it like a sponge. In 1794, according to the records, the Moss rose three feet in a thunderstorm.'

  Ernie laughed.

  'See, that's me. The chronicler, the great historian. Head full of the past, but we don't learn owt from it, really, do we? The past is our foundation, but we look back and say, nay, that was primitive, we're beyond that now, we've evolved. But we haven't, of course, not spiritually, not in a mere couple of thousand years. It's still our foundation, no matter how crude. And when the foundation's crumbled or vanished, we've got to patch it up best we can.'

  Milly Gill didn't seem to be listening.

  She said, 'I prayed to the Mother tonight. Sent Willy off to the church to learn what he could and then I went up to the Well with a lantern and knelt there in the rain at the poolside with the Mother's broken-off head in me hands, and I asked her what we'd done and what we could do.'

  Milly fell silent. Ernie Dawber looked round the room, at the grasses and dried flowers, at Milly's paintings of flowers and gardens. At Milly herself, always so chubby and bonny. For the first time, she looked not fat but bloated, as if the rain had swelled her up like the Moss.

  'And what happened?' Ernie said after a while. He thought of himself as one of the dried-out roots hanging in bundles from the cross-beam. Shrivelled, easy to snap, but possessed of certain condensed pungency. Put him in the soup and he could still restore the flavour. He looked closely at Milly and saw she was weeping silently.

  'Well?' he said softly.

  'If she was telling me anything,' Milly said, 'I couldn't hear it. Couldn't hear for the rain.'

  Shaw said, 'What have you got on under that cloak?'

  'Not a thing.' Sitting at Shaw's mother's dressing table, Therese had rubbed some sort of foundation stuff into her face, to darken her complexion, and painted around her eyes. 'But it's not for you tonight. You can get excited though, if you like - make him jealous.'

  Shaw touched her shoulder through the black wool.

  She turned and looked at him, her eyes very dark. The look said, Get away from me.

  Shaw winced.

  He looked over at the bed, at his mother's well-worn dressing gown thrown across it. He was surprised she hadn't taken it with her.

  'Therese,' he said, 'how was she really? When she left.'

  'Your mother? Fine. She'll be enjoying the change.'

  'I'm not over-happy about it. She's a dismal old cow, but ...'

  'Relax. Or rather, don't relax. Look, she didn't want to be here. She's really not very sociable these days, is she? Especially where the brewery's concerned.'

  He watched Therese's eyes in the mirror. She could always, in any circumstances, make things happen. Yesterday, his mother had been almost hysterical when he said he'd be bringing the Gannons chairman over for drinks. This morning the old girl was missing but Therese - miraculously, shockingly - was in Shaw's bed, and Therese said, 'Oh, I popped in last night, and we had a terrific heart-to-heart, Liz and I. She's become far too insular, you know, losing all her confidence. Anyway, I persuaded her to go to the Palace in Buxton for a couple of days. Packed her case, ordered her a taxi before she could change her mind. Wasn't that clever of me?'

  Yes, yes, he'd been so relieved. The old girl would have been suspicious as anything if he'd suggested it. He remembered the Malta idea. Hopeless. But trust Therese to win her confidence.

  Trust Therese. Drifting around the house rearranging things; how the house had changed in just a few hours, a museum coming alive.

  'What've you got there?'

  She'd picked up a black cloth bag from the dressing table, tightened its drawstrings and set it down again.

  'Hair.' She turned the word into a long, satisfied breath 'Beautiful, long black hair.'

  'Hair?'

  'With a single gorgeous strand of white. I had to use a wig for so long. But there's no substitute for the real thing.'

  'Can I look?'

  'Of course not. Don't you learn anything? If it's taken out now, it loses half its energy. That was why it was important to leave her as long as possible. And it's nicely matted with blood, too, now, which is a bonus.'

  'It's all moving too fast for me,' said Shaw. 'That comb ... does that tie in?'

  'Well, the comb was a problem at first, actually. It's had to be sort of reconsecrated. We're not touching that either until the moment comes.'

  She stretched. Her slim arms - leanly, tautly muscular - emerging from the folds of the black cloak. 'Then I shall uncover the hair and run the comb through it. You know how combing your hair can generate electricity? If you comb it in the dark, looking into a mirror, you can sometimes see blue sparks. Ever done that?'

  'With my hair?'

  Therese laughed. 'Poor Shaw. One day, perhaps.'

  Shaw said, 'I'm sure it must have grown another quarter of an inch since I ... you know, since Ma Wagstaff.'

  'There you are, you see. First you simply felt better. Now you even look better. And after tonight ...'

  Shaw said, 'I'm not sure I really want to be there. I'll be so scared, I'll probably screw up or something.'

  'Nonsense.' Therese lifted the hood of the cloak. 'How do I look?'

  Her voice had a husky, slightly Scottish edge.

  Shaw shuddered.

  CHAPTER III

  Mungo Macbeth figured at first, irrationally, that he must have reached the coast.

  Came over the hill through rain which was almost equatorial in its intensity, and there was this sensation of bulk water below and beyond his headlights. Too wide for a river - assuming Britain didn't have anything on the scale of the Mississippi in flood.

  And there was a lighthouse across the bay. The light was a radiant blue-white and sent a shallow beam over black waves he couldn't see. Only, unlike a lighthouse, it wasn't rotating, which was strange.

  Macbeth stopped the car and lit a cigarette. He'd pulled in for gas near Macclesfield, looked up into the hard rain and the lightless hills and abruptly decided, after six years, to take up smoking again. Thus far it was not a decision he'd had cause to repent.

  He turned off the wipers and the headlights; the rain spread molecules of blue light all over the windshield.

  The sign had said Bridelow, so this had to be it.

  Or rather, that had to be it.

  The road carried on straight ahead and from here it looked likely to vanish after a few yards under the black water. Which was no way to die.

  Macbeth finished his cigarette, slid the car into gear - still not used to gears - and then set off very slowly, headlights full on, thinking of Moira, how mad she was going to be when he showed up. Wondering what her hair would look like in the rain.

  Moira Cairns: the One Big Thing.

  The later it got, the harder it rained, the more frightened Lottie became of the night and what it might hold.

  Not that she was inclined to show this fear. Not to the customers and especially not to herself. Every time she caught sight of her face in the mirror behind the bar, she tightened her lips and pulled them into what was supposed to be a wry smile. In the ghostly light from Matt's lovingly reconstructed gas-mantle, it looked, to her, gaunt and dreadful, corpselike.

  Lottie shivered, longed for the meagre comfort of the kitchen stove and its hot-plate covers.

  'All right, luv?' Stan Burrows said. 'Want a rest? Want me to take over?'

  Big, bluff Stan, who'd been the brewery foreman - first to lose his job under the Gannons regime
. If she could afford it, it would be nice to keep the pub, install Sun as full-time manager.

  And then clear off.

  Lottie shook her head. He must have noticed her agitation. She thought of a rational explanation to satisfy him.

  'Stan, it isn't ... dangerous, is it? You know, with all this rain getting absorbed into the Moss. Doesn't flood or anything?'

  'Well, I wouldn't go out theer for a midnight stroll.' Stan made a diving motion with stiffened fingers. 'Eight or nine foot deep in places. You might not drown but you'll get mucky. Still, I'm saying that - people have died out theer, but not for a long time. Don't think about it, best way.'

  'Hard not to,' Lottie said. 'Living here.'

  'Used to be folk,' said a retired farmer called Harold Halsall, 'as could take you across that Moss by night in any conditions. Follow the light, they used say. Beacon of the Moss. All dead now.'

  'Fell in, most likely,' said Young Frank Manifold. 'Bloody place this is, eh? Moss on one side, moors on t'other, wi' owd quarries and such. Why do we bloody stay?'

  Frank and his mates had spent the afternoon helping in the search for Sam Davis, found dead in a disused quarry just before dusk.

  'Bad do, that, Frank.' Harold Halsall had picked up the reference. 'Used to be me brother's farm, that. Never did well out of it, our George - salesman now, cattle feed. Is it right that when they found yon lad's shotgun he'd loosed off both barrels?'

  'Leave it, Harold,' said Stan Burrows, nicking a quick glance at Lottie. They'd spent nearly an hour discussing the Sam Davis incident before Harold had come in. Stan probably imagined that was adding to Lottie's nerves: the thought of being all alone here while whoever Sam had been chasing when he went over the quarry was still on the loose.

  If it was only that ... Lottie turned away.

  'Tell you what.' Young Frank'd had a bit too much to drink again. More than one person had been saying it was time he went out and found himself another job. 'I wish I had a bloody shotgun. Fire a few off outside t'church, I would.'