by Phil Rickman
It would do.
She sat back, closed her eyes against the lamp's beam, although the battery was running out and the light was yellowing. She imagined the Moss, black and cold and stagnant.
Now you're out there, you know the terrors the Moss holds, the deep, deep, age-old fear.
Death doesn't have to be like that, Matt.
Come on. Come on back. Come to the warm.
She pictured Matt as he'd been once. Stocky, muscular, vibrant with enthusiasm.
Come ...
... come to ...
to me.
And in a low and smoky voice, she began to sing to him.
The Mothers' Union was congregated in the high Norman nave of St Bride's Church.
Above the Mothers hung a ragged cross made of branches cut by Benjie from a rampant sycamore hedge at the bottom of the Rectory garden. The branches, still dripping, were bound with chicken wire and tangled up with hawthorn.
Cathy walked in, out of the rain, under the reassuringly gross, widened flange of the Sheelagh na gig, cement particles among the coils of her hair. Alf Beckett had also brought the statues out of the shed, and several long, coloured candles were now lit.
He was up in the lamp room now, fixing up a high-powered floodlight supplied by Stan Burrows, who'd been in charge of the electrics for the Bridelow Wakes party which was usually held on the Church Field on May Day Eve. (Except for this year, when there was still too much media attention, due to the bogman.)
'Twelve,' Cathy said after a quick head-count. 'We're waiting for Moira.'
'She doesn't have to be here,' Milly said. 'If she's with us, she's with us.' Cathy was glad to see Milly had at last taken charge.
The assembly was not inspiring, including, as it did, women like Dee Winstanley, who'd declined to follow her mother into the Union on the grounds that they didn't get on, and two lesbians who ran a smallholding up by the moor and had never been allowed to become active members because their motives were suspect.
A pile of wet stones glistened on an old wooden funeral bier under the pulpit.
'All right!' Milly clapped her hands. 'Let's make a start, shall we?' I want to begin by calling down a blessing on this church. If you'd all form a rough circle from where we've pushed the pews back.'
Milly wore a long, dark blue dress decorated by a single brooch in the shape of two intercurled holly leaves.
She closed her eyes.
'Our Father …' she began.
'And Our Mother …'
…sees herself in colours and
she weighs her powers in her hand …
'The Comb Song'. The song of night and invocation. In the singing of it, things happen.
And the comb, safe in its pocket in the guitar case protects you from evil.
But this is not your guitar. This is Matt's guitar. Singing the song of invocation to the dead strings of Matt's guitar in Matt's music room, and no protection.
It was 1.30 in the morning.
The women filed silently out of the church, most of them muffled in dark coats, under scarves and hoods so Macbeth couldn't tell who was who.
There was a bulky one he figured was Milly. Two who were slightly built were walking together.
'Cathy?' he whispered. 'Cathy?'
Neither of the women replied.
Each clutched a stone.
They walked out of the church porch under a weird carving of a grotesque, deformed creature, all mouth and pussy. At this point they divided, some proceeding down the path toward the main gate, two moving up toward the graves, the others following a narrow path down into a field which disappeared into the peatbog.
'Moira? Moira!'
No answer. The rain continued.
'… the fuck am I gonna do?'
'Nowt,' said Willie Wagstaff. 'Nowt we can do. It's in the lap of the gods.'
Ernie Dawber was with him, leaning on a walking stick. They moved under the porch with Macbeth, gazing out toward the Moss. Nobody spoke for a while, then he said, 'Hallowe'en's over now, right?'
'Samhain, lad,' said Ernie. 'Let's not cheapen it. In Bridelow we used to celebrate Samhain on November first, so you could say our day is just beginning.'
'Or not,' said Willie. 'As the case may be.'
'Or not,' Ernie agreed.
Macbeth said, 'How deep is the, uh, Moss?'
'Normally,' Ernie said, 'no more than a few feet in most places. Tonight? I wouldn't like to guess. I don't think we've ever had rain this hard, so consistently, for so long, have we,
Willie?'
'Could it flood?'
'Soaks it up,' said Ernie. 'Like a sponge. It's rivers that flood, not bogs.'
'There's a river running through it, isn't there?'
'Not much of one.'
'What are those women doing?'
'We never ask, lad,' said Ernie.
'Ever thought of becoming a local tour guide?'
Ernie shrugged.
Macbeth said, 'What are those lights?'
'I can't see any lights, lad.'
'It's gone. It lasted no time at all. It was, like, a white ball of light. It seemed to come out the bog. Then it vanished.'
'Didn't see it. Did you, Willie?'
'OK,' Macbeth said. He was getting a little pissed with this old man. 'Tonight, Mr Dawber, it's my belief you seriously offered your life for this place. I'm not gonna say that's extreme, I don't have enough of a picture to make judgements. What I would like to know is ... that, uh, compulsion you had ... has that... passed?'
Seemed at first like Ernie Dawber was going to ignore the question and Macbeth could hardly have blamed him for that. Willie Wagstaff didn't look at the old man. Rain apart, there was no sound; Willie was not performing his customary drum solo.
Then Ernie Dawber took off his hat.
'It seems silly to me now,' he said in his slow, precise way. 'Worse, it seems cowardly. I went to see the doctor t'other night. Been feeling a bit... unsteady for some weeks. They'd done a bit of a scan. Found what was described as an inoperable cyst.' Ernie tapped his forehead. 'In here.'
Willie's chin jerked up. 'Eh?'
'Could pop off anytime, apparently.'
'Aw, hell,' Macbeth said. 'Forget I spoke.'
'No, no, lad, it was a valid question. I've been writing a new history of Bridelow, one that'll never be published. Chances are I'll not even finish the bugger anyroad but it's about all those things I didn't dare put into the proper book. Maybe it's the first proper book, who can say?'
'I'd like to read that,' Macbeth said. 'One day.'
'Don't count on it, lad. Anyroad, I thought, well ... it's given you a good life, this little place. You and a lot of other folk. And now it's in trouble. Is there nowt you can do? And when you're on borrowed time, lads, it's surprising how you focus in directions nobody in their right minds'd ever contemplate.'
He chuckled. 'Or maybe it's not our right minds that we're in most of the time. Maybe, just for a short space of time, I entered my right mind. Now there's a cosmic sort of conundrum for you ... Mungo.'
'Thanks,' Macbeth said. He put out his hand; Ernie took it, they shook. 'Now, about those lights ...'
'Aye, lad. I saw the lights. And that's another conundrum. The Moss is no man's land. No man has cultivated it. No man has walked across it in true safety. What we see in and on and around the Moss doesn't answer to our rules. I've not answered your other question yet, though, have I?
Macbeth kept quiet. There was another ball of white light. It came and it went. In the semi-second it was there Macbeth saw a huge, awesome tree shape with branches that seemed to be reaching out for him. Involuntarily he shrank back into the porch.
'Is it past?' Ernie considered the question. 'No. If I thought it'd do any good, I'd be out there now offering my throat to the knife.'
He turned back toward the Moss. There was another light ball. Coming faster now.
'Quite frankly, lad,' said Ernie conversationally, 'I think it's too late.'
/>
And in the chamber of the dead
forgotten voices fill your head . ..
It said, hoarsely. Going to show me?
Moira tried to stay calm but couldn't sing any more. She was desperately cold.
This famous comb.
This time she had no comb to show him.
But you never leave yourself open like that. You never confess weakness to them.
'What will you give me if I show you the comb?'
Six pennorth o' chips.
Laughter rippling from the corners of the room. The lamplight was very weak now in her face.
Behind the light, a shadow.
CHAPTER VI
They had told Chrissie to look out for a seat at the top of the church field. It wasn't hard. The church field was the piece of uncultivated spare land continuing down from the last of the graves to a kind of plateau above the Moss. Chrissie's torch found the seat on the very edge of the plateau.
What she hadn't expected was to find someone sitting on it.
Normally, this time of night, she'd have been scared to death of getting mugged. Somehow, holding this daft stone, that didn't seem a possibility.
She found herself sitting next to him on the wooden bench in the pouring rain. Someone had lent her a long, dark blue cagoule and she knew very little of her face would be visible.
It was like a dream. 'Hello, Roger,' she said.
He turned his head. His hair was flat and shiny, like tin. His beard dripped into the neck of his blackened Barbour.
He peered at her. He didn't seem to recognise her nose. 'Is it Chrissie?'
'It is indeed. Not a very nice night, Roger. One way and another.'
He was silent a long time. Then he said, 'I spoke to him.'
'Him?'
'Him.'
'That must have been nice for you both.'
'So it was worth it,' Roger said. 'In the end.'
'Was it? Was it really?'
'Oh, yes. I mean, it's knowledge, isn't it? Nothing is more valuable than knowledge.'
'What about love?' said Chrissie.
'I don't understand,' Roger said.
'No. I don't suppose you do. So what did he have to say to you?'
'Who?'
'Him.'
'Oh.' Roger stood up, drenched and shiny, and rubbed his knees as if they were stiff. 'Do you know, I can't really remember. I expect it'll come back to me'
He didn't look at her and began, seeming oblivious to the rain, to stroll away along the path which led back from the plateau's edge and wound down towards the Moss.
Chrissie waited until he'd gone from sight and then gently placed her stone beneath the seat and stood very quietly and said the words they'd told her to say.
A curious thing.
Soon as Ernie Dawber admitted he too could see the balls of light, then they became clearer.
'It's a bit like ball-lightning,' Ernie said. 'There's been quite a lot of research, although the scientific establishment hasn't formally acknowledged it.'
Talking in his schoolmaster's voice, Macbeth thought, because it puts him on top of a situation he doesn't understand any more than the rest of us.
They do seem to be a manifestation of energy anomalies within the earth's magnetic field. Often occur, I'm told, on fault-lines.'
'What's that mean?'
'And there's also a theory that they can interact with human consciousness. So that when we perceive them we actually bring them into existence, if that isn't back-to-front logic.
What do you say, Willie?'
I'm more worried about that tree-thing, Mr Dawber. Young Benjie calls it a dragon. Bog oak, I thought it were. Come up out of t'Moss, all of a sudden like. Got a wicked kind of...'
Macbeth said, 'There are people out there, around the tree.'
'Daft buggers.' Ernie squinted through the rain.
Macbeth was watching a haze of light rising from the tree, as if someone had set fire to it. But the flames, instead of eating the wood, had risen through it, like one of those phoney log- effect gasfires.
The light had risen above the tree and its boughs looked to be clawing at it, as though to prevent it escaping, and the Moss itself seemed to rise in protest. Macbeth felt a thickening tension in his gut.
Mouth dry, he watched the haze of light spread out like a curtain and then hover over the Moss, maybe six or ten feet from its surface.
'This is ... unearthly.'
The light was drifting towards the edge of the Moss, towards the hulk of a building near the peat's edge.
'All things are natural,' Ernie Dawber said with a tight-jawed determination. 'If some are ... beyond our understanding.'
'What's that place?' Thought he was hearing distant screams.
'Back of the pub,' Willie said. 'That's th'owd barn back of the pub, where we used to rehearse wi' Matt.'
'The light's over it. The light's hanging over the roof.'
Ernie Dawber said, 'I don't think I can see it any more.'
Moira Cairns put down the guitar and turned towards the door.
Two of them.
The mosslight on the two tombstone speaker cabinets either side of the door.
Both of them standing in the entrance with the cabinets either side of them.
John Peveril Stanage and the girl, Therese.
'So kill me,' Moira said simply.
'You know we can't,' Therese said. 'Not until you give him back.'
Moira reached to the table and turned the lamp on to them. Not much energy left in it now but enough to show her neither of these people was wet. Had they been inside the inn all the time? Had they been expecting her? Or was this merely the nearest vantage point for the Moss?
'Who are those people out on the Moss, then?' Moira asked. 'With the devil tree.'
'Do you know, m'dear,' he said, 'I can't actually recall any of their names.'
She remembered him so well now. The dapper figure, the white hair rushing back from his grey-freckled forehead like breakers on an outgoing tide. The cherub's lips. A man as
white as the bones tumbling from the walls.
'I can't believe,' she said, 'all the trouble you've gone to. Getting to know Matt inside out, all his little compulsions. What are we looking at here? Years?'
'We don't have time for a discussion,' Stanage said. 'We want you to release him. You can't hold him for much longer, you simply don't have the energy.'
Moira said, 'Where's the Man? Made a big mistake, there, you know, John. You stole him away, you took responsibility for him. You took responsibility for the vacuum. The Moss'll no' wear that. Was an old guy in the village tonight, he'd figured out the way to square things with the Moss was another sacrifice. Maybe that was right.'
'It was absolutely right, m'dear,' Stanage said with a sudden smile. 'Saw to that on the very stroke, I believe, of midnight. When the Beacon of the Moss was extinguished, so was someone's life. A young, fit, active life ... a jolly good replacement for the Man, if I say so myself.'
'Who?' Moira felt her face-muscles tightening, also her stomach.
'Why ... just like the original sacrifice ... a priest. The Triple Death - a blow, a slash - and a fall. And then gathered up and offered to the spirit of the Moss - our spirit. All square, m'dear. All square.'
'The Reverend Joel Beard? You killed the Reverend Joel Beard?'
'And consigned him to the Moss. Well, hell, sweetheart, don't sound so appalled. No friend of yours, was he? He struck you, word has it.'
'I suspect he mistook me for your friend,' Moira said. She let her gaze settle on Therese. Worryingly young. Black hair, perhaps dyed, sullen mouth. And the cloak. Her cloak.
'This is the wee slag, then, is it, John? Doesny look a lot like me. Did she wear a wig before she got hold of the real thing?'
'She's angry enough, Moira,' Stanage said less cordially. 'Don't make it worse.'
'She's angry? With me? Aw, Jesus, the poor wee thing, ma heart goes out. She's no' satisfied with ma
hair now? Would she like to cut off ma leg? Would that make her happy, you think, John?'
Therese hissed and uncoiled like a snake and took a step towards Moira. Stanage laid a cautionary hand on her arm. Emerging from his dark sleeve the hand looked as white as an evening glove.
'This is futile,' Stanage said abruptly. 'Leave us, Tess. Would you mind awfully?'
'I can take her,' Therese spat. 'She's old. Her sexuality's waning. She can't hold him. I can take him from her. Watch me.'
'Tess, darling, no one is questioning your lubricious charms, but I suspect this is not about sex. Leave us.' Steel thread in his voice. 'Please?'
Therese gathered up her cloak and left without another word. Stanage closed the door and barred it. Moira instinctively moved into a corner of the ruptured settee, clutching the electric lamp to her breast.
'Right. Bitch.' Obviously a man who could shed his charm like an overcoat that'd become too heavy. She became aware of a scar about an inch long under his right eye, a souvenir from Scotland.
And he was aware she was looking at it.
The barn seemed to shift on its foundations, and there was a crunch and a series of flat bangs. She didn't let her eyes leave him; she knew what it was: books falling over as a shelf collapsed. The shelves were all makeshift, held up by bricks.
Neither of them had moved.
'Don't make me angry,' Stanage said.
'We seem to be a little short of bones in here,' Moira said. 'That affect your performance, does it? Books just don't respond so effectively. Maybe you just don't have that same affinity. I borrowed one of yours from ma wee nephew one time. Thought it was really crap, John. Lacked authenticity, you know?'
John Peveril Stanage was tightening up inside, she could tell that, could feel the contractions in the air. Mammy, help me. Mammy, wherever you are, I'm in really heavy shit here, you know?
'You want me to sing to you, John? Would that help your concentration?'
She began to sing, very softly.
