Remains of an Altar mw-8

by Phil Rickman

  It also fanned unevenly into the living room, where the glass protecting the photo of the whiteleafed oak had indeed been smashed, the picture tipped so that it looked as if the whole room was awry … as if a sudden gust of wind had rushed into it, tossing Winnie Sparke’s slight body back into the bookshelves in a hot shower of blood.

  53

  Unseeingness

  The line was open, but there was no voice. Then the signal cut out and the screen went dark and the music from Inn Ya Face was going whoomp, chissa, hiss, whoomp like machinery deep inside the hill.

  ‘Frannie?’ Merrily said urgently. ‘Frannie.’

  She looked up in blank despair from the lawn behind Caractacus. The moon was high but the house was in the shadow of the hill.

  All right, she’d try him.

  She went back to the path, opening up the phone again, illuminating the screen and scrolling down the list to bring up Bliss’s mobile number.

  Sorry, Bliss said, I’m norrin. Leave me a message.

  ‘Frannie. Please.’ Letting some very real distress come through – like she could prevent it. ‘Get back to me. Get back to me now.’

  When she snapped the phone shut, her hand was shaking. She could see this in the peachy glow from the kitchen door. She squeezed the phone hard, gripped the shaking hand with the other hand. Tried to pray for self-control. Couldn’t.

  She didn’t have a choice any more. She had to go back in there. Make sure. Merrily felt the tautness of impending panic in her chest, turned away and saw a glinting from the edge of the lawn, where it met the path.

  Knife?

  Merrily walked around it, the hill going whoomp, chissa, chissa, hiss, whoomp, the perpetual techno-choir from hell. She bent down and found the remains of a Bell’s whisky bottle, possibly smashed against the wall of the house. Tim Loste’s whisky. Smashed on his way out, after he…

  She shook the phone.

  Call me. Lol … Frannie … call me…

  What if they didn’t? What if Bliss didn’t call back for an hour or more? She should go back to Whiteleafed Oak. After … after she’d been back in there. After she’d gone back and checked once more. Made, dear God, absolutely certain that there was going to be no need for an ambulance.

  Calm down. This can’t be done without calm.

  It definitely was the Cello Concerto. But where a cello was veined and richly visceral, the whistled theme was faint and remote and fusewire-thin and painfully isolated.

  It was as if, Lol thought … as if this was how it was meant to be heard, to convey its meaning.

  In which case, its meaning was: solitary.

  The sky was clear and starry and smeared with a buttery northern light, and the whistling made slow, luminous coils and lonely whorls on the silence.

  Twice it had stopped and then started up again from a different direction, the way tawny owls might answer one another across the vastness of the valley.

  The oak tree was flat and featureless, like a massive spidery blot of Indian ink. Lol kept on walking towards it.

  A joke. But who, in this situation, wouldn’t be unnerved? It would be eerie enough after dark outside your own front door on Ledwardine market square – one reason being that nobody did this any more. Nobody seemed to whistle. No window cleaners, no butchers’ boys with baskets. And nobody whistled this achingly sad, regretful…

  As he approached the oak tree, the whistling seemed to develop a slow and rolling rhythm, like the breath-pattern induced, Lol caught himself imagining, by even, heavy pedalling on a gradual incline.

  Only me…

  He’d thought it was coming from under the tree, perhaps from the hollow that looked like a sacrificial pit. But when he reached the oak, the whistling was still some distance away, across to the right.

  It stopped again. Lol crept up to the oak and lowered himself between two of its varicose roots, pushing himself back into the bole, spreading out his legs against the roots, gripping cakes of bark in his palms and staying very still, just another part of the tree, an offering of himself in return for shelter – shelter against madness – as it began again.

  The moon was higher now, with an amber cast, and he saw, over to the right – the east? where the distant Eastnor obelisk was, anyway – he thought he saw a movement. He kept still, and the tune continued, fluidly, long beyond the point where his own version might have feebled out. Under the circumstances, with your own breath coming faster, all rational judgement in suspense, it was impossible not to imagine for one thought-dissolving moment…

  This time, when it was over, Lol spent some seconds with his eyes closed, trying to breathe evenly, before lifting his hands and beginning – with as lazy and relaxed a rhythm as he could summon – to applaud.

  Merrily took three or four long breaths before stepping into the kitchen.

  Walking directly through to the hall, this time touching nothing. Activating the living-room light by brushing the metal switch with her sleeve.

  Last time, she’d seen it only by the light washing in from the hall. Now, two big white wall brackets were flaring theatrically, scattering shadows, and it was so much worse: blood on the books, blood on the pictures, blood on the walls, blood on the writing table, gouts and drips and smears, and Winnie Sparke in silent freeze-frame.

  Winnie wore one of her long filmy dresses which seemed now as if it was hanging together in threads of blood and tissue. Her arms spread out across the bookcase, with books pulled out, and the empty fireplace. Her buckled bare knees, touchingly girlish. A breast partly exposed, cut into like a flaccid fruit. Her face ripped in several places, top lip joined to her nose by strings of blood and mucus. Her throat slashed many times.

  But the worst of it was never the gore. It was always the unseeingness of the eyes and the open mouth through which no breath passed.

  The room was hot and clammy and stank and, worst of all, it was so waxily still. Merrily swallowed bile, and then something overtook her and she was just standing there raging.

  ‘You got him out … You brought him home. Keeping your secrets, playing your cards —Why couldn’t you just talk to me? Talk to anybody?’

  She froze. What if he’s still here? What if he’s upstairs? What if he’s halfway down the stairs and listening?

  Not likely. Believe it. Seriously not likely. He was long gone. He’d gone lurching out with his whisky, draining the bottle and smashing it against the wall in his agony and self-hatred – please God, let it be self-hatred and repentance, let there be no more of this – and then he’d gone walking out on to the hill.

  Why?

  ‘I mean why, for Christ’s sake, has he done this to you, Winnie? His saviour, his mentor, his—?’

  There could be no halfway-rational explanation, not this time, not like the disposal of the drug dealer on the Beacon. This was frenzied. This was full on, the killer looking her in the eyes, as it was being done. This screamed insanity.

  Merrily looked into Winnie Sparke’s last frozen cry. Could only see one eye through the blood and the hair. Winnie Sparke’s good hair. And the eye was a dead eye. It had been floating in blood and now the blood had congealed around it like a stiff collar.

  ‘Why couldn’t you talk about it?’

  Letting the sob empty itself out of her, as she did all there was left to do.

  Pray.

  Her job.

  Take her and hold her and calm her. Take her from this place now. Take her into light.

  Following this with the Lord’s Prayer, the oldest exorcism.

  ‘… Power and the glory, for ever and ever, amen.’

  Quelling the dread, she opened her eyes.

  And was able, for just a moment, to hold herself in and remain calm in the presence of a new shadow in the room.

  Winnie Sparke hung there, no less dead. It was not Winnie Sparke who was breathing, who said, ‘Amen,’ softly from the doorway behind her.

  54

  Snaps Batons

  ‘Shouldn’t
have done that,’ he said sternly. ‘You broke the vibration.’

  Looming over Lol, nodding his head as though it was too heavy for him. He wore baggy grey sweatpants and a white singlet with dark stains and smudges on it.

  ‘Percussive noises…’ Clapping his hands clumsily; sometimes they missed. ‘… Break the connection. Gone.’

  He moved in his bent, shuffling way over to a half-collapsed bale of straw, flopping down on it with his legs apart, his hands clasped between them, his body rocking slowly.

  ‘Take a pew, old cock.’

  Lol found another damaged bale to sit on. There was a lamp on the floor between them, one of those battery-powered lanterns with a blue plastic shade, spraying a light like watered milk over the long shed that was either an open-fronted barn or a horse shelter.

  Whatever, it was a walk of only a minute or so from the oak, and he’d come wading out of it soon after Lol had started clapping. Staggering behind his lantern, dazed survivor of some Iron Age tribal skirmish. Lol had recognized him at once from Merrily’s brief description and his accent and the way his words came blustering out as if his lungs were organ bellows.

  ‘Wasn’t working anyway, tell the truth. Ran out of puff. You need to do the whole jolly thing. All the way through until you become—’

  He stopped, blinking slowly. Sliding back along his bale, bringing down a straw-storm from another, his mouth slack.

  ‘Really don’t know … wassa matter with me tonight.’

  What was obviously the matter was coming sickly sweet and sour off his breath. Lol didn’t get too close. It was as well to remember this guy was only here because of a shortage of evidence.

  His weighty, ragged moustache hung down either side of his mouth, more Mongol warlord than Victorian composer, his stomach overhanging his sweatpants, like a bag of sugar under his singlet.

  ‘I look all right to you?’

  ‘I suppose,’ Lol said.

  Aware of Tim Loste really looking at him now, trying to focus over the moist pink bags under his eyes.

  ‘Trying to remember … where exactly are you from?’

  ‘Me? Led—’ Lol thought about it, changed his mind. ‘Knights Frome.’ He paused. ‘Mate of Dan’s?’

  ‘Dan?’

  ‘Dan from Much Cowarne?’

  ‘Dan! Good Lord, yes.’ Tim made to clap his left knee, missed and clapped the hay, tumbling sideways, kicking over the lantern. Lol caught it. Tim pulled himself upright. ‘Super chap. Just … you know … went into it. Didn’t inter … inter … lectulise…’

  ‘Finest tenor in Much Cowarne,’ Lol said.

  ‘Absolutely. Wherever the fuck Much Cowarne is.’

  They both laughed. Lol looked out of the open front of the barn across the moonlit landscape. It was like being in a grandstand. The field seemed luminous, and there was another oak tree with two dead branches, bleached like bones.

  ‘You on your own?’

  Tim squinted up at the wooden rafters and the flaking galvanized roof. The light was fanning out from the circular lamp like a merry-go-round with moths riding it.

  ‘For the moment,’ Tim said.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She?’ ‘

  Winnie Sparke.’

  Tim let his head fall forward into his big hands, began breathing hard into them, like some kind of exercise to head off an asthma attack. Lol saw dark stains between Tim’s fingers.

  He said, ‘Are you…’

  Tim’s shoulders were heaving.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I’m…’ Tim peered out through his fingers. ‘I think I’m in a bit of a mess, frankly, old cock.’

  ‘You walked here?’

  ‘Don’t remember.’

  ‘Where’s Winnie?’

  Tim looked at him silently through those discoloured fingers.

  ‘Winnie said you’d meet us here. She talked to my friend. On the phone. She said you’d meet us here.’

  ‘Winnie? I…’ His voice dropped. ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘Did she walk over with you? From Wychehill?’

  ‘No. Just the two of us.’

  ‘But you’re alone.’

  ‘I think … think something happened.’

  Lol felt a small abdominal chill. His glasses kept misting. He took them off, rubbed them on his sleeve, put them back quickly.

  ‘On the way here?’

  ‘Don’t remember,’ Tim said.

  ‘Look…’ Lol brought out his mobile, flipped it open. ‘I think we could do with some help here.’

  ‘Help,’ Tim repeated. Vaguely, like he was recalling something. ‘Help me.’ His voice melting into a wail, as he came to his feet. ‘Help me, I’m— Who’re you calling, old cock?’

  ‘Just a friend.’ Lol brought up Merrily’s number. ‘She’ll get us some help.’

  Peering at the keys through misting glasses, he sent the call, listened to Merrily’s phone ringing.

  And then Tim lurched at him, ramming him off the bale, snatching the phone as it flew up. Lol leaping up, making a grab for it, but Tim was taller and fumbled it well out of his reach.

  Lumbering out of the barn into the night, twisting around, his arm going back, this monstrous baby throwing something out of its pram.

  Lol saw his phone disappearing into the night like a tiny silver spacecraft.

  For a while, in the red-spattered white room, neither of them spoke.

  Syd Spicer was in dark jeans, black clerical shirt, dog collar. His small eyes were flat and unmoving.

  ‘Well done,’ he said.

  Merrily came shakily to her feet, her jeans damp at the knees. Didn’t even remember kneeling down.

  ‘Not many of us would’ve done that, Merrily. Not alone, in a situation like this.’

  Neither of them spoke again until they were on the back lawn and the air was the kind you were prepared to breathe.

  She waited while Spicer shut the back door. He was, she noticed, wearing black gloves.

  ‘I was once,’ he said, ‘in another life, given some crude medical training. I think what you need is a hot, sugary brew and a sit-down.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Of course you’re not all right. Who could be?’

  ‘Can you get the police? I need to go somewhere. Right away.’

  ‘Merrily—’

  ‘I have to collect Lol. I’ll come straight back.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Just bear with me.’ She prodded Lol’s number into the mobile. It rang and rang. Christ. ‘Call the police.’

  ‘That’s in hand. Merrily, you can’t go anywhere.’ She walked away down the side of the house. It had gone too far, now. She was in over her head, just wanted to get over to Whiteleafed Oak, find Lol. Patch things together, make sure Jane was all right and then go to the police and, if necessary, answer questions until the sun came up. She looked back at Spicer.

  ‘What about Tim Loste?’

  ‘He can take care of himself, I hope.’

  ‘I mean, what’s he going to do now? Where’s he going to go?’

  ‘Merrily—’

  ‘He’ll have gone out on the hill.’ Stopping next to the brutalized oak, failing to prevent her voice rising to an unnatural shrillness. ‘He always does. He has a place he goes to. Where he went to with Winnie. Which is the place where I left Lol because Winnie said they’d meet us there. And Lol’s not answering his phone. And there’s a man out there fresh from…’ pointing wildly at the house ‘… that!’

  Spicer stepped back, shaking his head. Merrily walked down towards the road, feeling in her left-hand hip pocket for her keys, aware that he wasn’t following her. At the bottom of the drive, she realized the car keys weren’t in her pocket.

  Must have left them in the ignition. She’d only got out to look at the sapling.

  She stopped at the side of the road, looked from side to side. Couldn’t take it in at first. She turned on Spicer, bewildered. He shrugged. />
  ‘I meant to tell you. That was why I came in. Only it got … superseded.’

  ‘Someone’s nicked my car.’

  ‘Yeah. I saw you drive past. About twenty minutes later, the car comes back the other way, couple of kids in it. I didn’t figure you’d have asked them to go down the shop and get you some cigarettes.’

  She leaned against the railings. Closing her eyes.

  ‘A gift is a gift,’ Spicer said. ‘Sadly, for what it’s worth, I reckon you’ve just become the first genuine victim of the notorious criminal element frequenting the Royal Oak.’

  Suddenly, without preamble, like a baby, Tim was howling. Crashing back and flinging himself face down into the rotting hay and straw, beating his fists into the broken bales. Lol ran past him into the open, saw how long the grass was and the nettles. Saw that the chances of finding the phone before the morning were remote, and even then…

  Better to take off fast, get away, run back to the centre of the hamlet, wait there for Merrily. Bang on someone’s door and ask to use the phone. He started to walk away.

  ‘Don’t … go.’ Sour whisky-breath on the air. Tim Loste standing very close behind him. ‘Think I need help.’

  It was as if throwing the phone out of the barn had expelled what remained of his energy. Blown out his candle. He went back and sat down meekly on his bale, looking at the baked mud floor, then up at Lol in the lamplight.

  ‘I remember Dan. Dan’s got a beard. Tall as me. Bald.’

  Lol stood in the open mouth of the barn, considering the options. He could probably walk out of here now and keep walking and Tim wouldn’t necessarily follow him. But what would that achieve?

  ‘You’re not Dan, are you?’ Tim said.

  ‘I’m Lol.’

  ‘Kind of name’s that?’

  ‘Short for Laurence.’

  ‘Lol.’ Loste sounding it like a bass note.

  ‘And who are you?’ Lol asked him.

  ‘Me?’ Tim Loste leaned back into the hay. ‘I’m the chap who’s come here to see God.’