by Phil Rickman
I like to think of a three-pin plug, for the safe performance of which the third force, the Earth, is so essential, although I don't know if this is an adequate analogy
Whatever the explanation, the Celtic gods appeared to have demanded a sacrifice in triplicate before the necessary energy might be released.
And sometimes the cycle of death seemed to operate according to some pre-set cosmic mechanism. For instance, the eminent Celtic scholar Dr Anne Ross has described the legendary demise of the sixth-century Irish king Diarmaid, whose triple death - by weapon, drowning and burning - was foretold by seers. Diarmaid poured scorn on this until his enemies struck at the Feast of Samhain, when the hall was set ablaze and Diarmaid run through with a spear. Seeking safety from the flames, the king plunged, fatally, into a vat of ale.
The Celts have always had a great sense of comic irony.
CHAPTER II
Death. No peace in it.
You struggle towards the light and the light recedes, or maybe it's the bastard darkness has grabbed hold of your feet, hauling you back. Cloying, sweating darkness. Darkness like a black suit that's too small for you. Darkness like ... black peat ... the kind of dark you don't come out of until you're long, long dead and even then its somebody's mistake.
Anything's better than this kind of darkness. Forget about Heaven, Hell would be better.
Joke.
So, OK, this guy, he goes to Hell, right, and it's not what he was expecting, no hot coals and stuff. Just all these other guys standing around drinking cups of tea - up to their necks in liquid shit. And they pass him a cup and he's thinking, hey, you know, this could be a lot worse.
And then the Devil himself strolls in - horns, cloven hoofs, spiky tail, the whole getup, plus a big smile - and the guys' faces all drop.
And the first guy thinks, Hey, what's the problem, the Evil One seems affable enough? And then the Devil beams at them all and he says,
'OK, boys, tea break over, back to your tunnelling ...'
This could be the secret of the damned universe. Tea break over boys, back to the fucking tunnelling.
Oh, Jesus, help me. I'm cold and sweating and dead.
Timegap.
And you wake up into it again and there's the light in the middle distance, only this time the light doesn't back off, the light comes right at you, a big dazzling explosion of light and all you can think is, leave me alone, huh.
Just leave me alone, let me go back into the shit.
Into the black peat.
I'm not afraid of the dark. I'm crying, but I'm not afraid.
The minister's daughter, Cathy Gruber, pushed through the multitude of the Born Again, into the Rectory drawing room.
Mungo Macbeth following, wondering how come, she didn't throw all these jerks into the street.
A fire was blazing in the hearth, a sofa pushed close to the heat, a woman stretched across it; she had her eyes shut and she was breathing hard. Her long, dark hair hung damply over an arm of the sofa. A small group of people was clustered around. One guy was on his knees; he held an open prayer book.
It looked as still, as solemn and as phoney as a Pre-Raphaelite death scene, Macbeth thought, as Cathy knelt down next to the guy with the prayer-book.
'How is she now?'
'In and out of sleep.'
'Has she spoken about it? She has to, you know, Chris. If she keeps all the details bottled up, it's going to cause a lot of trauma.'
Chris said, 'Who is this man?'
'I believe we talked on the phone.'
'Oh. The American. I passed you on to Joel, didn't I?'
'Some asshole zealot,' said Macbeth, and Cathy frowned at him.
'I'm sorry to say poor Joel's still in there,' Chris said. 'Still in the church.'
'Best place for him,' Cathy said. 'Let him cool his heels for a while. Chantal, can you hear me?'
The woman on the couch moved, eyelids twitching like captive moths. Cathy held one of her hands. 'This really is a wonderful lady,' Chris said to Macbeth. 'I don't know what we'd have done.'
'Cathy?'
'Makes you think you underestimated the benefits of an old-fashioned Anglican upbringing. She's not at all fazed by any of this.'
'Why I'm sticking close to the kid,' said Macbeth. 'I was fazed clean outa my tree some hours back.' He nodded at the sofa. 'This lady your wife?'
'We're united in God,' Chris said as Chantal's eyes opened and then shut again.
'What happened to her?'
'She was raped,' Chris said baldly.
Chantal moaned. Macbeth focused cynically on Chris, who looked to be about his own age and still had the remains of that bland, doped look you could guarantee to find on a proportion of fundamentalist Christians, Children of God, Mormons and sundry Followers of the Sublime Light.
Cathy stood up. 'Keep her warm. Call me if she wants to talk.' Maybe sensing the tension, she led Macbeth away.
The house seemed stuffed with men and women feeding their bland, doped faces with biscuits and potato-chips, drinking coffee from paper cups. They were in small groups, many holding on to each other, and they weren't talking much, although a few were praying silently, heads bent and palms upturned against their thighs.
Macbeth decided this was probably better than mass hysteria.
'You want coffee?'
Cathy shook her head. He followed her into the hall; she brought out keys, unlocked a door, led him into an unoccupied room with book cases and an upright piano.
Macbeth said, 'Cathy, reassure me. That woman really was raped? In addition to everything, we got a rapist on the loose?'
The girl pushed the door into place, stood with her back to it. 'She thinks she was raped. Seems she'd gone back alone to the church to plead with Joel to come out. Says she was thrown across a tomb and had sensations of... violation.'
Cathy looked him in the eyes, unsmiling. 'I'm afraid that what we have on the loose is something that used to be Matt Castle.'
The room was silent, apart from the rain on the window, which, by this time, Macbeth hardly registered.
'You believe that.' Already he knew better than to make it a question.
'It's a lot for you to swallow in one night,' Cathy said, 'but Bridelow used to pride itself on having a certain spiritual equilibrium. And now somebody's turned the place into a battlefield. Opposing forces. Black magic, as I understand it, doesn't work quite so well without there being something equally extreme to ignite it.'
'Like, opposites attract.'
Cathy nodded. 'My old man is an ordinary, old-fashioned country clergyman who's learned not to ask too many questions. Joel Beard's an extremist - same background as this bunch. Somebody engineered it that Joel should come to Bridelow with a mission to wipe out the remains of some very innocuous, downbeat paganism. We thought there was an understanding in the diocese that you don't put unstable fanatics into Bridelow, but I'd guess somebody was simply blackmailing the Archdeacon.'
'This is the boss-cleric.'
'As you say, the boss-cleric. Simon. Who's gay. And who's been more than a bit indiscreet in his time.'
'And the blackmailer? Stand up, John Peveril Stanage?'
'This is the one man whose name is never mentioned in Bridelow. The one writer whose books you will never see on the paperback rack in Milly's Post Office.'
'You were outside when I told them about that stuff with the bones in Scotland?'
Cathy went on nodding. She looked very young. Still had on her damp dufflecoat and a college scarf wound under her chin. 'Mungo, I can't tell you how sorry I am about Moira. I sincerely blame myself. I should never have let her drive away in that state.'
He felt his eyes narrow. 'State?'
'I think I must have been the last person to see her alive. She was very down, I'm afraid. She'd picked up a bug of some kind. And she was upset over the burglary - someone broke in here and stole some things from her. Including this … famous comb. Which she kept in a secret pocket in her guitar
case.'
'They stole the case?'
'Just the comb. Seemed silly. 'I'm afraid I didn't really believe her about that, at first.'
'Shit.' Macbeth clenched his fists. 'How would this sonofabitch know precisely where she kept the comb?'
'Mungo …' Cathy hesitated. 'She told me she'd only shown one person where she kept that comb.'
'Wasn't me.'
'No,' said Cathy. 'It was Matt Castle.'
'The ubiquitous Matt Castle. What was her relationship with this guy?'
'She was in his band. And that was all. She was always very insistent about him never touching her.'
'Yeah, but I bet he wanted to.*
'I know he wanted to. He was crazy about her. Men tend to . . . Oh, gosh, I'm sorry.'
'The irony of it,' said Macbeth, 'is I never got to touch her either.'
'But I doubt,' Cathy said, not without compassion, 'if you're of quite such an obsessive temperament.'
'Something hurts, is all. Maybe it's self-pity. I, uh, thought she was gonna change my life.'
'Maybe she has.'
'You mind if we get off this subject? Tell me about Castle.'
'Yes.' Cathy sat on the arm of what must have been her father's wing-backed fireside chair. 'Matt's son, Dic, reckons his father's lust … unrequited lust … for Moira, just got progressively worse with age. Eventually developing into almost a … perversion? About women with long, dark hair.'
Macbeth was seized, for the first time, by the reality of something more potentially soul-damaging than either grief or anger.
He said, 'That woman in the room across there …'
'Yes,' Cathy said calmly. 'I noticed that too.'
This was more like it. This was much more like Hell.
'Christ, I feel just awful.'
Pain in the head, behind the eyes. A growling pain. Put me back. Put me back into the nice, warm shit.
'You've got to come with me,' the Devil urges.
Hot coals roaring and crackling all around. The inside of a furnace, but without the pretty colours. A black furnace with one cold, flashing, piercing flame.
'Piss off, leave me alone.'
'Look, I haven't got much time.' Stabbing her through the eyes with his needle of light.
'You've got all the time there is, pal, all the time there ever was and all the time there's ever gonny be. That no' enough for you?'
'Please. For Christ's sake.'
'Listen, will you get rid of the damn light?'
'Sorry. I forgot you'd been in the pitch dark so long. I'll put it under my jacket, that any better?'
'Yeah. You're OK, Satan, you know that?'
'Try and sit up.'
'Get your fucking hands off me!'
'Listen to me, you have to get moving.'
'Who is this?'
'It's me. Dic. Dic Castle.'
Light on his face. Dark red hair, Matt's jawline, Matt's stubborn lips.
She coughed. It made her head ache. She said, all she could think of to say, 'Was it you? Was it you who took my comb?'
'No,' he said. 'No I didn't. I know who did.'
'Who?' Her back hurt as she sat up. Like it mattered now.
'Bloke called Shaw Horridge. But that's not important right now.'
'No.' The name didn't seem to mean anything to her.
'Look, Dic, I don't want to seem stupid, but what are you doing here? What am I doing here? And where in Christ's name is here?'
Maybe they were both dead. Maybe he'd been sent to offer her a cup of tea.
'It's a storage building, back of the brewery.'
'Brewery?'
'Bridelow Brewery. You have to come now, Moira. Please. I'm supposed to have gone for a pee, that's all. They're going to start wondering where I've got to, and then we could be in a lot of trouble.'
She stood up. There was mist to struggle through, thick grey mist. A monster rose over her and opened its jaws.
Bridelow. Bridelow Black.
Her hands fiddled with her clothes. Sweater. Jeans. She seemed to be fully clothed. She felt naked and raw.
'Thought I was fucking dead. Dic, why am I no' dead?'
'They've had you on drugs.'
'Sure as hell wasn't speed, was it?'
'I don't know. I really don't know much about drugs.'
'Bridelow Brewery,' she said. 'Why's that scare me? Bridelow Brewery. Bridelow Black.
On her feet now, panting, leaning against something, maybe a wall, maybe a door. He'd put out his light. They were just a couple of voices. 'Bridelow Black,' she breathed. 'Ran me off the road. Ran me over a damn precipice.'
'No precipice. There was a fiat area over the wall next to the road. Then a slow drop after that. There was a lot of mist. They took you out ...'
'Fat guy with a half-grown moustache.'
'Yeah. Name's Dean-something. Calls himself Asmodeus, after some biblical demon. Looks like a dickhead, but he isn't.'
'He hit me. Also, some big bastard in a dog-collar hit me. Everybody hits me.'
'Can you walk?'
'Three of them in the lorry. They were dragging me away. Who the hell are these people?'
'They all work at the brewery. Gannons fired the local men, brought in these people. Occult-followers from Sheffield and Manchester. Small-time, no-hope urban Satanists. You can practically pick them up on street corners. Doesn't really care any more who he brings in, any low-life shit'll do.'
'Who's this?'
'Stanage.'
'Sorry, my head's, like, somewhere else. I'm not following this. Who's …'
'Can you walk!'
'Guess I can. Question is, do I want to?'
Then walk out of here. Do it now. You walk out of here in a straight line until you get to the road. No, look, I'll come with you as far as the entrance, OK, then I've got to get back or I'm dead. I'll give you the lamp, but don't use it till you're out of sight of the brewery. Go to the Rectory. You remember where the Rectory is?'
'Rectory. Yeah. Near the church.'
'You remember Cath?'
'Dic,' she said, 'what's that noise? I was thinking it was the hot coals.'
'Coals?'
'Never mind.'
'It's just the rain, Moira. The rain on the roof. It's raining heavily, been like this for hours. You're going to get wet, can't be helped. OK, I'm opening the door. You see anybody ... anybody ... run the other way. Tell Cath ... are you taking this in?'
'Doing ma best, Dic.'
'Tell her they're going to put out the light. In the church. The beacon.'
'Who's "they"?'
'Moira, listen, they've got my dad propped up in there. And his clothes. And the pipes. And me. And ... you. Please, just go!'
' What did you just say?'
A shuddering creak and he pushed her out, and it was like somebody had thrust her head down the toilet and flushed it.
She gasped.
'Come on.' He took her arm. She could make out the shapes of trees and a sprinkling of small lights among the branches.
'Not that way.'
'What's that tower?'
'Part of the brewery. Can't you go any faster? I'm sorry. They catch you, I'm telling you, they'll kill you.'
She'd stopped. She was shaking. Somebody was pouring bucketfuls of water directly into her brain. She clapped her hands to her head.
She screamed.
'Christ's sake, shut up!'
'Dic. My hair!'
Voices. Lights.
'Moira, run! Take the lamp.' Thrusting it into her hands, heavy, wet metal. 'Don't use it till you're away from here.'
Running footsteps.
'My hair's gone!'
He pushed her hard in the back and then she heard him take off in the opposite direction, shoes skidding on the saturated ground.
'Dic?'
'Run!' He was almost howling. 'Just run! Don't lose that lamp!'
'Dic. what have they done to my hair? Where have they taken my fucking hair?'
CHAPTER III
Surprising how vulnerable you felt in a tomato-coloured Japanese sports car up here on a night like this. Ashton took it steady.
He wondered: how much water can a peat bog take before it turns into something the consistency of beef broth?
Not his manor, the natural world. The unnatural world was more like it. A number of the people with whom Ashton conversed at length - usually across a little grey room with a microphone in the wall - were creatures of the unnatural world.
As for the supernatural world ...
I don't know why, Ashton told himself as he drove towards Bridelow Moss, but in a perverse sort of way this is almost invigorating. To be faced with something you can't arrest, matters which in no way can ever be taken down and used in evidence.
Completely out of your depth. He looked down at the Moss. There was an area of Manchester called Moss Side, in which the police also sometimes felt out of their depth, so choked was it with drugs and violent crime. Did the name imply that once, centuries ago, it had been on the edge of somewhere like this?
And, if so, how much had changed?
Not the kind of thing policemen tended to think about.
Gary Ashton, facing retirement in a year or two, spent an increasing amount of time trying to think about things policemen did not tend to think about. Intent on not becoming just a retired copper' working as consultant to some flash security firm and tending people who couldn't give a shit with his personal analysis of the criminal mind and endless stories about Collars I Have Felt.
Just lately, Ashton had been trying to talk to people as people, knowing that in a very short time he would be one of them.
A well-controlled tremor in her voice. 'Inspector Ashton, I'm extremely sorry to bother you at this time of night, but you did say if anything else disturbing occurred, I should let you know immediately.'
Yes, yes, Mrs Castle, but I meant in the nature of a break-in. Unless a crime has been committed or is likely to be, I'm sorry but this is not really something the police can do anything about.
Except, he hadn't said any of that.
What he'd said was, 'Yes, I'll come, but as long as you understand I won't be corning as a policeman.' Turning off the telly in his frugally furnished divorced person's apartment, reacting to a peculiar note of unhysterical desperation in a woman's voice and getting into practice for doing things not as a policeman.
