by Phil Rickman
The rain noise again. But when the voice came back, it was stronger. As the tape continued, it became more confident, more fluent, more insistent.
… he is invisible in the greenery.
The Green Man.
The very oldest Guardian of the Earth, whose face one sees carved in stone above church doorways, his hair luxuriant with leaves, the leaves bearing fruit — stone nuts and stone berries. More leaves sprouting whole from the grinning mouth, foliage gripped between stone teeth. The grin that says, I am the Earth.
There was a crash. Cindy had slumped against the metal shelves, collapsing one.
‘It’s all right.’ He picked himself up. ‘Don’t mind me. Slipped. Clumsy. It’s all right … Maiden.’
Nobody spoke until the crackly, distorted tape was over.
The speakers hummed. Magda made no move to remove the cassette. Her hands were squeezed tight together.
‘It …’ Her voice cracked. She coughed. ‘It doesn’t sound like a dream.’
‘It wasn’t,’ Cindy said. ‘I can assure you of that.’
‘Christ, that’s why you asked if he could make a crossbow.’
‘Play the last bit again,’ Maiden said.
… broken the convention.
And wasn’t it easy?
‘His first kill.’
‘His first human kill,’ Cindy said.
‘The convention. The convention. ‘
Magda said, ‘Excuse me,’ and went out into the yard. They heard the slap of vomit.
‘She dug up Ersula’s body this morning,’ Maiden said. ‘She’s seen what he can do.’
‘Ah, me …’ Cindy took out the cassette tape, held it up between two fingers and dropped it in the box, as if it was radioactive. ‘Can you imagine anyone more despicable?’
‘And like all of them, like all serial killers, he doesn’t believe he’s doing anything wrong. He’s broken a convention. He’s feeling alive for the first time, the cunt.’
‘No … me, I meant. I wanted … so much to believe it. I wanted to be proved right. Can you imagine anyone more contemptible than that?’
‘Shut up, Cindy. If it hadn’t been for you …’
‘Maria. I knew that girl so well. She could talk to me. Damn. If I was any kind of shaman, I should have seen the danger, should have been able to warn her. I’m no bloody shaman, Bobby.’
‘Cindy, this was random, in its way. He just wanted a hunt saboteur. Someone he believed the Earth would be better off without. He thought it might be difficult, so it’d be better starting off with someone he expected not to like. It could have been any one of them.’
‘And it wasn’t difficult at all, in the end, was it, lovely? Wasn’t it easy? he says, Wasn’t it easy? ‘
Maiden walked to the door. He could see Magda Ring with her back to the perimeter wall, gazing nowhere.
What I find disturbing is the way he starts off saying “I” and then he switches off the recorder. We don’t know how long he’s sitting there. Could be a few seconds, could be an hour. Longer. But when he switches back on, he’s become “he”. He’s created this character. The Green Man.’
‘He hasn’t created him. He exists. He’s an ancient archetype, almost a god. Our friend Adrian is taking on his magic, his charisma.’
‘His voice changes. He’s immediately stronger, more fluent. He tells the story without hesitation.’
With an absolute belief in himself and his mission. A refuge, too. He can slip into the persona of the Green Man whenever … whenever it’s called for. This man is unbelievably dangerous. Do we know where he is now, Bobby? Could he, I mean, come back any time …?’
‘Not imminently. Gone, apparently, to a wedding.’
Cindy froze.
XLIII
Magda Ring was up against the wall, Cindy practically shaking her.
‘Where is he? How long ago did he leave? Whose wedding is it? Come on, girl!’
Bobby Maiden pulled him away. ‘Cindy, this guy performs quietly. He isn’t going to do it at a bloody wedding.’
‘You don’t understand.’ Cindy whirled on him. ‘Little Grayle. Grayle Underhill was going to a wedding. You might believe in coincidences, Bobby, but in my world they don’t exist. Where’s the wedding, my love?’
‘What’s happened to his accent?’ Magda, looking scared by now, began to slide away from Cindy along the wall. ‘Why’s he gone Welsh? You two … you aren’t police at all, are you?’
‘I am,’ Maiden said. ‘I promise you. I’ll show you-’
‘I don’t want to see your damned card again, I want to know what the hell’s going on.’
‘All right … look …’ Maiden held up one hand. ‘This guy’s a friend … contact … of Marcus Bacton’s. He’s suspected for some time that several murders in various parts of the country were down to one man, and the police didn’t want to listen. I’ve been listening. End of story.’
‘Where’s the wedding, my love?’ Cindy said insistently. ‘Which nice old pre-Reformation-church-on-an-alignment are we talking about?’
‘It’s not a church. It’s some sort of New Age nuptial thing. It’s at the Rollright Stones, in Oxfordshire.’
‘Oh, my Christ.’
‘Janny Oates, Matthew Lyall. They’re the couple. I don’t know where they live. They’ll be on our books, if you can wait. They did a course here, which is where Adrian-’
‘How long ago did he leave?’
‘Couple of hours … three hours … I don’t know. He didn’t take his Land Rover. Rushed in this morning, grabbed some things, said he had a lift.’
We can’t wait.’ Cindy rocked, tearing at his face with his fingers. ‘Bobby, we’re going. We’re going now.’
‘What about the rest of the tapes?’
‘Listen to them in the car.’ Cindy began to run across the courtyard, pulling car keys from his blazer pocket, shouting back over his shoulder. ‘She’s given him a lift. Bobby, she’s got this psychopath in her car!’
‘You’re not leaving me here!’ Magda clutched at Maiden’s jacket. ‘Not with that bloody open grave.’
‘Do you have a car?’
She nodded frantically, all sophistication abandoned.
‘Anywhere you can go?’
‘People in Hay … my new house …’
‘Do it. Don’t speak to anyone about this. Especially the police. No … Listen … give me a phone number. If you don’t hear from us by, say, seven tonight, call the police yourself. Tell them everything. Tell them where to find Ersula’s grave. Tell them … tell them DI Maiden, Bobby Maiden-’
The Morris Minor was clattering towards them, its passenger door flapping open.
Magda grabbed his wrist. ‘Pen.’
He found a chewed-off Bic in his pocket; she scribbled a phone number on the back of his hand.
‘She said her sister was in a, I think she said, dislocated state. When she met some people at the Rollright Stones. They’re nice, she said. The people, not the stones. I remember that.’
Cindy swung the car between the trees into the drive, almost scraping a Land Rover parked under a willow tree’s browning umbrella.
‘You need to know about the Rollrights, Bobby? I shall-’
A memory had kicked Maiden in the head at the sight of the Land Rover. He was in another passenger seat, a woman in a blond wig driving.
‘Cindy, stop … let me out. Half a minute.’
The Land Rover’s doors were unlocked. Maiden jumped in, rummaged around. Ordnance Survey maps, a thick paperback guide to stone circles of the British Isles, much thumbed. A hand lamp, pair of wellingtons and … He found the recorder wrapped in sacking underneath the driver’s seat, a cassette inside it, half wound. He slipped the cassette out, took it back to the Morris.
‘Ah …’ Cindy pulling sluggishly away before the passenger door was shut. ‘Rather hoping, I was, that you wouldn’t find that one.’
‘How do you know what’s on it?’
‘
I think that he wouldn’t be able to rest — would not be free of the Green Man — until it was done. Out of his system. The other one he recorded in the rain, before he left the scene, presumably.’
‘Sure,’ Maiden said quietly. ‘It’s also occurred to me why he may have done this. How it came about. Why he killed Em.’
‘Perhaps you won’t need to hear it then.’
‘Put it on.’ Maiden said.
When the Green Man started speaking, it was deliberate, unhurried, a voice full of an awful, calm, precise, relentless certainty.
… the energy at Black Knoll is having a most interesting effect on the woman. She is clearly reluctant to enter the precincts of the burial chamber. She stands there, her unruly blond hair pushed down by a cap and by the rain, and then all at once she cries out.
‘Oh come on, you’re fucking crazy! ‘
She begins to sob … standing on the Knoll, soaking wet and sobbing … before at last going to sit on one of the flat stones in the short avenue approaching the chamber itself.
The stones amplify her thoughts…
… so that the Green Man, lying snugly, invisibly, betwen two gorse bushes, knows at once that she is crying out for release.
It’s really quite astonishing. She has walked the line precisely, from the clearing, from stile to stile, the old sacrificial path. She has walked through the darkening rain, this woman who has crossed an ocean to present herself to the Earth.
And to the Green Man, Her servant, Her lover.
The woman whispers, ‘Ersula? ‘
And rises, screaming ‘Ersula!’ into the rain.
It is all that the Green Man can do to restrain himself from leaping to his feet in euphoria at this joyful union, across the Veil, a union which cries out to be complete.
How, then, should he facilitate the completion of the union? With his hands around the tender flesh of her throat?
Yes, she is begging now for deliverance. Her hands are clasped, she is swaying, her breath coming faster, in great gulps. The Green Man feels his fingers pulse. He begins to rise from the bracken, in his majesty.
And then, all at once, she rears up, her arms wide.
‘Oh God,’ she whispers. ‘Oh … God. ‘
And then turns and runs away, taking the castle line, looking over her shoulder, once, as if to say, Follow me, follow me!
‘Oh, Grayle,’ Cindy whispered. The voice broke off and there was only the sound of breathing in the night.
‘This is when she saw whatever she saw,’ Maiden said. ‘And then came running down to the Castle, looking shattered.’
‘Though not as shattered as perhaps she would have been if she had known how close she had come to death.’
It is dusk when the Green Man returns to the castle, in his vehicle this time, driving into a field and parking, without lights, behind a hedge almost opposite the entrance.
When the woman was taken into the house, earlier, he was baffled. Was it to be done here? And what of the man? Him too? It occurred to him that now, in the absence of the old witch, the castle would at last be fully open to him…
Cindy stopped the tape. ‘Mrs Willis, you see. He could not have killed with Mrs Willis present. And now she’s dead he demonizes her, he calls her a witch.’
‘Why? Why couldn’t he … with her around?’
‘He perceived too much power around her, too much light? I don’t know.’
‘But you said he killed her. ‘
‘And now I am unsure. We do know that he drew her out in the only way that would work. He approached her and asked her for healing. The one thing Mrs Willis could not deny him. This gift she believed she had received from the Holy Mother at High Knoll. She could never refuse healing, see? Couldn’t refuse at least to try. Thus are saints martyred.’
‘This is getting too apocalyptic for me, Cindy.’
Cindy didn’t reply, but put on the tape again.
… and when he returns at dusk, he knows the identity of the woman.
Full circle.
He has realized — everything is for a purpose — that it must be done in the knowledge of who she is and why she is here.
Sent.
Yes.
But what if she is no longer here? He does not even know where she is sleeping.
You fool, he tells himself. Have you no faith?
And as he is telling himself this, a car turns into the castle gateway.
The Green Man alights silently and follows on foot, waiting in deepest shadows, under the castle walls.
He sees a man leave the house and get into the car. As the door opens, the interior light identifies the woman and, before the car emerges from the castle gates, the Green Man is back in his own vehicle, searching, without lights, for the field entrance.
This time Maiden switched off.
‘He thought it was Grayle. He thought Emma was Grayle. Because of the blond wig.’
‘And he was locked into it by then,’ Cindy said. ‘It was ordained. From the moment he saw her on the Knoll he knew what he was going to do.’
‘He nearly ran into the back of us once. Em slammed on the brakes and this Land Rover nearly went in the ditch. And yet didn’t protest. No horn-blowing, nothing. I should have known.’
‘How could you possibly have known?’
They were off the single-track roads now, passing stone farms, paddocks.
‘Can you go any faster?’ Maiden said.
It’s a new experience for him. He does not normally use the modern roads which brashly thrust across the old straight ways. He wonders occasionally, now, if this is right and tells himself to have faith.
And his faith is amply repaid when they leave the road and enter a wooded enclosure whose antiquity is immediately apparent to the Green Man. He does not need his map. He knows from the contours of the landscape and the ancient sanctity of this area, between the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons. Here rise some of the tallest and finest standing stones in the land. He is at once at home. His spirit burns.
It is an inn. The sign says, Open to Non-Residents. He is gratified to note that his is not the only all-terrain vehicle in the car park. Through a ground-floor window, he can see into the bar, which is quite full of people who, from their clothes, he can tell are mainly local. He does not see the woman there.
He must be careful not to bump into her; she will recognize him at once. But he is beginning to feel secure and protected. He enters the bar, speaks to no-one, passes through to the toilets and then to the reception area.
It seems that they are staying the night. There’s no-one at the reception desk, which is fortunate. The keys to the rooms are on a board on the wall. Three are missing. Rooms two, five and ten. There is no-one to see him as he casually ascends the stairs.
On the first landing he tries doors. Only one room is accessible: room seven, at the very end, which has no lock or handle, only a freshly drilled hole.
His footstep echoes in an unfurnished room. There is a smell of sawdust. He switches on the light to discover that room seven is presently undergoing refurbishment. There are scattered tools and heaps of plaster and some paint-stained overalls.
He hears voices from the landing and creeps back to the door.
Because of the age of the house, the passage is narrow, and the two people are in single file, walking away from him towards the stairs, the woman obscured by the man, whose back is turned to the Green Man until he half turns to make sure he has locked the door of room five, and the Green Man recognizes him at once, from Castle Farm. He’s probably the nephew of Marcus Bacton, and he poses a slight problem. For the Green Man’s human quarries, to date, have all been hunted singly.
Well, no hurry. They’re obviously going for dinner. Now that he knows, the Green Man emerges and takes a leisurely look around the upper rooms of this pleasant old house. He finds two ugly metal fire escapes, geomantically disastrous for such a building, but obviously useful to him tonight. In fact, he uses one to effect
his exit, wedging the door open just a slit, using a chisel he has found in room seven.
Who knows? The chisel may be useful later. At the bottom of the fire escape, he finds himself in near-complete darkness amid trees and bushes, but, when he emerges onto a lawned area, the moon emerges too, from behind a cloud, and he can see the lie of the land as far as the mass of the mountain called Sugar Loaf.
He walks round the perimeter of the building and arrives on the other side of the fire escape, where he discovers a narrow path leading through bushes to higher ground.
A mound, in fact. A distinct mound! Elation blossoms like a golden flower in the Green Man’s groin.
Not yet.
The mound is flat-topped. A tumulus, surely! A holy place. A small area has been dug, where some fool has attempted to plant flowers.
The Green Man sits on the mound, in meditation, for some time, perhaps hours. He sleeps. The moon is in his eyes. In his dream, the moon becomes a Druid’s shining sickle. He awakes and, for a moment, it seems that the moon is finely rimmed with blood. When he comes to his feet and stretches, he is cold but braced. And certain in his mind. At last, the Earth calls to him.
He removes his clothes. He stands in his majesty atop the holy mound, lifts his arms to the shadow of the Sugar Loaf. He is not at all cold now. He feels the flow of energy through the land … he knows instinctively that this is a crossing point. The Earth calls again to him, and he lies down upon the area of attempted cultivation, and he penetrates Her.
‘Am I getting this right, Cindy? This guy fucks flowerbeds?’
‘And probably rubs damp soil into his skin.’ Cindy didn’t look at him. ‘And eats it, of course. He sees the Earth as his lover. He wants to be a part of Her and Her of him. In Her, in him. Think about it. But resist, at all times, any temptation to regard this man as ludicrous.’
‘Unlikely,’ Bobby Maiden said grimly.
And thought about it. Thought the unthinkable. About the smell and the taste of the grave. About the smell and the taste as he lay with Em. And his reaction to it. It made him want to put his shoulder against the car door and hurl himself into the road.
