The Man in the Moss

From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):

Although there has never been any excavation, it is presumed that the 'low' or mound on which St Bride's Church is built was a barrow or tumulus dating back to the Bronze Age and may later have been a place of Celtic worship.

Similar mounds have been found to enclose chambers, which some believe to have been used not so much for burial purposes as for solitary meditation or initiation into the religious mysteries. Some tribes of American Indians, I believe, fashioned underground chambers for similar purposes.

There has been speculation mat the small cell-like room reached by a narrow stairway from the vestry occupies the space of this original chamber. The official explanation for this room is that it was constructed as overnight accommodation for itinerant priests who came to preach at St Bride's and were unable, because of adverse weather, to return that night across the Moss. However, there are few recorded instances of this being necessary, and when, in 1835, a visiting bishop announced his intention of spending the night there 'to be closer to God' he eventually had to be found a room at The Man I'th Moss after being discovered naked and distressed in the snow-covered churchyard at three o'clock in the morning!

CHAPTER III

The Moss was like a warm bath, and he left it with regret.

Knowing, all the same, that he must. That there was nothing to be accomplished by wallowing.

So he strode out. And when he glanced behind him, what he saw took away his breath.

For it was no longer a black and steaming peat bog but a vast, sparkling lake, an ecstatic expanse of blue and silver reaching serenely to the far hills.

Its water was alive. Quiescent, undemanding, but surely a radiant, living element. No, not merely living ... undying. Immortal.

And the water was a womanly element. Light and placid, recumbent. Generous, if she had a mind to be. If you pleased her.

He felt tufts of grass crisp and warm under his wet feet and was embarrassed, thinking he would surely besmirch it with filthy peat deposits from his bog-soiled body. But when he looked down at himself he saw that his skin was fresh and clean - not from the bog, but from the lake, of course.

And he was naked. Of course. Quite natural.

He stood at the tip of a peninsula. He thought at first it was a green island because the mound which rose, soft as a breast, from its centre was concealing the hills behind. But as he ascended the rise, new slopes purpled into being, and when he reached the summit, the surrounding hills were an amphitheatre.

In the middle of which he stood.

Naked.

Appraised.

'Shade the light! Shade it, damn you!'

'What with?'

' Your hand, jacket, anything ... You poor little sod, you're really frightened, aren't you ... ?'

'No, it's just ...'

'Don't be ... Easier than you expected, surely, wasn't it? Soil's lovely and loose, obviously replaced in haste, everyone shit-scared, like you. Look, why don't you get the ropes? We can have this one out and into the Range Rover before we start on the other, OK?'

'All right. Now?'

'Got a firm grip, have we? You let it go and -I promise you, cock - we'll put you down there and bury you alive.'

' Yes, all right, yes, I've got it.'

'OK, now. Pull.'

'Oh ...agh ... Where shall I ... ?'

'Just at the side will do. Right. Fine. Now, let's have the lid off.'

'What...?'

'Have a little look at him, eh? Hah! See that ... not even nailed down, they really were in a panic, weren't they? To think I was once almost in awe of these little people. How wrong can ... Oh, now ... Oh, look at that.'

'Oh!'

'Go on. Have a better look. Get closer. Put your fingers on his eyes.'

'I can't, I ...Oh, God, how did I get into this?'

'No good asking Him, my friend, you've cut all your ties in that direction. .

Ernie Dawber was soon aware of Something Happening in the churchyard.

A light sleeper, Ernie. Eyes and ears of the community, twenty-four hours a day. The headmaster's house overlooked the playground on the one side, and from the landing window there was no hiding-place at all for a pair of eight-year-olds sharing a packet of Embassy Gold.

Ernie's replacement as head teacher came from Glossop and had not been prepared for such dedication. In fact he'd said, more or less, that if they made him live over the shop, as it were, they could stick the job. He was a good lad, though, generally speaking, so the Education Authority had accepted his terms, allowed him to commute from Across the Moss ... and sold the house to Ernie.

Who couldn't have had a better retirement present. He was always on hand - and more than pleased - to take groups of kids on nature rambles or do a spot of relief teaching in the classroom in an emergency.

And he could still watch the generations pass by. Through the landing window ... the schoolyard. While through the back bedroom window, on the other side of the house ... the graveyard. Full circle.

So all it took was the clink of a shovel, and Ernie Dawber was awake and up at the window.

They were being very quiet about it - as usual. He couldn't see much, just shadows criss-crossing through torchbeams, up at the top end, where the churchyard met the moor. Where Matt Castle had finally been planted and the earth piled at last on top of him.

Ernie watched for just over half an hour, and then the torches were extinguished.

'By 'eck,' he said, half-admiringly, hopping over the freezing oilcloth back to bed, 'tha's got a nerve. Ma.'

He remembered Joel Beard. What, really, could he have done? If their stupid curate was determined to spend the night in the little cellar under the church, how could he stop him?

Maybe the Rector's fears were unfounded. Maybe his experience and that of the Bishop all those years ago ... Well, they were sensitive men. Not all clergymen were, by any means, and this lad certainly looked, well, not dense exactly, that wasn't quite the word. Dogmatic, set in his beliefs. Blind to other realities.

But at least, tucked up in his cell, he wouldn't be aware of what was happening up in the churchyard.

And that was a small mercy, Ernie thought, getting into bed. He felt a trifle dizzy but decided to disregard it.

He thought he recognized the naked woman on the hill. There was something about her, the way she looked at him, the way she smiled.

The way she seemed to say, Are you man enough?

He stood above her. Confident of his superior strength, his muscular limbs, his halo of golden curls. Their power over women. Oh, he was man enough.

For had he not fallen into the black peat and emerged from clear water, as clear as the Sea of Galilee? And had not the peat been washed from him?

Now the female lay in the grass before him, close to the summit of the green mound, her legs spread. He knew what she wanted.

Her wild hair was spread over the grass. Hair which reflected the light, changing like water. Hair which rippled like the lake.

He smiled his most superior smile. 'I know what you want.' Disdainful.

And if there was no disdain in the reaction of his body, this was another demonstration of his power. Proof that he certainly was man enough.

But, gently, she shook her head.

First, you must recognize me for what I am. And then worship me.

The lights were tiny, some distance away, a short procession of them. Torches, lanterns, Tilley lamps; whatever, people were carrying them, and they were carrying them openly across Sam Davis's farmland, and Sam gripped the bedroom window ledge, bloody mad now.

'Right!'

'No!'

'I'm gettin' shotgun ...'

'Sam, no... !'

'Shurrup,' he rasped. 'You'll wake kids.'

'I'm not letting you.' He heard her pull the cord to the light over the bed.

'Look ...' Sam turned his back on the window. Esther, all white-faced and rabbit-eyed, sitting up in bed, blankets clutched to her chin. 'They're makin' a bloody fool o' me, yon buggers,' he whispered. 'Don't even hide their bloody lights no more.'

'We should never've come here.'

'Oh, don't bloody start wi' that again.'

'Why d'you think it were so cheap? It's a bad place, Sam.'

'It's the best we'll bloody get.'

'Nobody wanted it, and I don't just mean the land.'

'Aye,' he said. 'I know you don't mean the bloody land, rubbish as it is.'

'I'm scared,' she said, all small-voiced. 'It's an awful thing t'be scared of your own home, Sam.'

He snatched a glance out of the window; the lights had stopped moving, they'd be clustered up there in a circle of their own around what was left of the stone circle.

'Sam!'

'Shurrup!'

'Aren't you scared? Really. Aren't y—'

'Listen. What it does to me ... it just makes me tampin' mad. Been goin' on weeks, months ... and what have I done about it? Tell me that? Am I going t'stand here for ever, like an owd woman, frickened t'dearth?'

'You went to the vicar. That new feller's coming tomorrow. You said he were coming tomorrow.'

'Waste of bloody time. And the coppers. I keep telling yer. Couldn't even charge um wi' trespass 'cause it's got to be trespass wi' intent to do summat illegal, and worshipping the devil int even a criminal offence no more - sooner bloody nick you for a bald tyre. Bastards. Useless bastards. All of um.'

Kept saying it. Kept repeating it because he could hardly believe it, the things you could get away with. Was he supposed to sit around, with his finger up his arse, while them bastards up there were shagging each other front and back and sacrificing his beasts? No bloody way!

'You go out there,' Esther said, 'and I'm ringing the police, and I'll ring the bloody vicarage too and tell um where you are, I don't care what time of night it is.'

'Oh, shit!' Sam advanced on the bed, spreading his arms wide, cold by now in just his underpants. 'Bloody hell, woman. What do you suggest I do, then?'

'Come back to bed,' Esther said, trying her best to smile through the nerves that were making her face twitch. 'Please, Sam. Don't look. Just thank God they're up there and we're down here. Please. We'll talk about it tomorrow.'

'Well, thanks very much for your contribution.' Sam sighed. '"We'll talk about it tomorrow." Fucking Nora.'

He took one last glance.

The circle of light did not move.

'I've had it wi' talk,' Sam said.

First you must recognize me. For what I am.

'Recognize you?' He laughed. 'For what you are?'

He stood above her, looking down on her. The elongated shadow of his penis divided her lolling breasts like a sword.

'I know what you are,' he said. 'I know precisely what you are.'

He saw a blue calm in her eyes that was as deep as the lake, and for a moment it threatened to dilute his resolve.

Then he heard himself say, 'How dare you?'

She lay below him, placid, compliant.

'You're just a whore. How dare you seek my recognition? You're just a ... a cunt.'

In an act of explicit contempt he lowered himself upon her, and her hands moved to her crotch, thumbs extended, to open herself for him.

He's ... quite small, isn't he? I somehow expected him to be bigger. More impressive.'

'Quite manageable, really. Oh my, earth to earth, peat to peat ... it would have been rather less easy to get at him in a week or two. Watch it now, be careful of his eyes. Mustn't be blasé.'

'I'm not. It's just I'm actually not as worried about, you know, touching this one. It doesn't seem like a real body, somehow. More like a fossil.'

'Lay him gently. You've done well so far. I'm proud of you. But lay him gently, he's ours now. And remember ... never forget ...'

'I know ... I'll feel so much better afterwards.'

'Shut up. Join hands. In a circle. Around the body.'

It was not a rape; she was a whore, and a heathen whore. When he plunged into her, he found her as moist as black peat and packed just as tightly around him.

Light into darkness.

Not to be enjoyed. It was necessary.

'Whore,' he gasped with every breath. 'Whore ... whore ... whore ...'

Lifting his head to seek out her eyes, looking for a reaction, searching for some pain in them.

'Whore.' Saw her mouth stretched into a static rictus of agony.

'Wh ...' Tighter still around him.

And dry.

'... ore ...'

Dry as stone.

No.

Too late; he thrust again. Into stone.

The pain was blinding. Immeasurable. The pain was a white-hot wire driven through the tip of his penis and up through his pelvis into his spine.

His back arched, his breath set solid in his throat. And he found her eyes.

Little grey pebbles. And her mouth, stretched and twisted not in agony but ancient derision, a forever grin.

'...in the midst of death we are alive . .

'... WEAREALIVE!'

('Go on ... two handfuls ... stop ... not on his face ...shine the light... there ...')

'Behold, I shew you a mystery. We shall not sleep, but we shall be changed. In a moment. In the twinkling of an eye. At the last trump -for the trumpet shall sound. And the dead shall be raised.'

'... AND THE DEAD SHALL BE RAISED!'

('OK, now fill in the grave ... quickly, quickly, quickly ...')

'Dust to dust, to ashes, to earth.

'DUST TO ASHES TO EARTH!'

('Now stamp it down, all of you. Together ...')

'And the dead shall be raised corrupted ... and we shall be changed.'

'... WE SHALL BE CHANGED.'

('Douse the lights. Douse them!')

CHAPTER IV

Another hard, white day, and she didn't like the look of it. It had no expression; there was a threat here most folk wouldn't see.

Not good weather, not bad weather. Nowt wrong with bad weather; you couldn't very well live in Bridelow if you couldn't put up wi' spot or two of rain every other day or a bit of wind to make your fire smoke and your eyes water. Or blizzards. Or thunder and lightning.

But this was no weather. Just cold air at night and a threat.

Everything black or white. Black night with white stars. White day with black trees, black moor, black moss.

Cold and still. Round about this time of year there should be some colour and movement in the sky, even if it was only clouds in dirty shades of yellow chasing each other round the chimney pots.

Shades. There should be shades.

Ma Wagstaff stood in her back kitchen, hands on woollen-skirted hips.

She was vexed with them cats too. She'd washed their bowl, first thing, and doled out a helping of the very latest variety of gourmet cat food Willie'd brought her from that posh supermarket in Buxton - shrimp and mussel in oyster sauce. And the fickle little devils had sat there and stared at it, then stared at her. 'Well, that's it,' Ma growled. 'If you want owt else you can gerout and hunt for it.'

But the cats didn't want to go out. They mooched around, all moody, ignoring each other, looking up at Ma as if was her fault.

Bad air.

As Ma unbent, the cat food can in one hand, a fork in the other, her back suddenly creaked and then she couldn't stand up for the pain that started sawing down her spine like a bread knife.

Then the front door went, half a knock, somebody who couldn't reach the knocker. As Ma hobbled through the living room, the white light seemed to be laughing heartlessly at her, filling the front window and slashing at the jars and bottles.

The door was jammed and opened with a shudder that continued all the way up Ma's spine to the base of her skull.

'Now then,' Ma said.

On the doorstep was her youngest grandson with that big dog of his. Always went for a walk together before school.

Benjie said nowt, grinned up at her, gap-toothed, something clutched in one hand.

'Well, well,' said Ma, smiling through the agony. 'Where'd you find that?'

'Chief found it,' said Benjie proudly. 'Jus' this mornin', up by t'moor.'

'Ta.' Ma took the bottle and fetched the child in for a chocolate biscuit from the tin. The bottle wasn't broken, but the cork was half out and the glass was misted. The bit of red thread that hung outside for the spirit to grasp was soaked through and stuck to the bottle.

"Ey!' Benjie said suddenly. 'Guess what.'

'I'm too owd for guessin' games, lad.'

'Bogman's bin took!'

'Eh?'

'It were on radio. Bogman's bin stole.'

'Oh,' said Ma, vaguely, 'has he?'

The child looked disappointed. 'Are you not surprised?

'Oh, I am,' Ma said. 'I'm right flabbergasted. Look, just get that stool and climb up theer and fetch us biscuit tin. Me owd back's play in' up a bit.'

Ma held up the bottle to the cruel light. Useless.

'Will it still work?' asked Benjie innocently, arms full of wooden stool. Ma had to smile; what did he know about witch-bottles?

'Would it ever've worked, lad?' She shook her head ruefully, wondering if she'd be able to stand up straight before teatime. 'That's what I keep askin' meself.'

Fine lot of use she was. She ought to be out there, finding out exactly what they were up against - even if it killed her - before two thousand and more years of care and watchfulness came to ruin.

Oh, she could feel it ... mornings like this, everything still and exposed.

She looked down at young Benjie, chomping on his chocolate biscuit. It will kill me, she thought. I'm old and feeble and me back's giving way. I've let things slip all these years, pottered about the place curing sick babbies and cows, and not seeing the danger. And now there's only me with the strength inside. But I'm too old and buggered to go out and find um.

It'll come to me, though, one night. Ma thought, with uncustomary dread. When it's good and ready.

But will I be?

Joel Beard awoke screaming and sweating, coughing and choking on the paraffin air.

He sat on the edge of the camp bed, with the duvet wrapped around him, moaning and rocking backwards and forwards in the darkness for several minutes before his fingers were sufficiently steady to find the candle on its tray and the matches.

He lit the candle and, almost immediately, it went out. He lit it again and it flared briefly, with a curious shower of sparks, before the wick snapped, carrying the flame to the metal tray, where it lasted just long enough for Joel to grab his cross, his clothes and his boots and make it to the door.

On his way through the tunnel to the steps, he knocked over the paraffin heater, with a clatter and crash of tin and glass, and didn't stop to set it upright.

At the top of the steps he was almost dazzled by the white dawn, awakening the kneeling saints and prophets, the angelic hosts and the jewel-coloured Christs in the windows.

Deliverance.

He dressed in the vestry, where he found a mildewed cassock and put that on over his vest and underpants. But he did not feel fully dressed until his cross was heavy against his chest.

The air in the nave felt half-frozen; he could smell upon it the bitter stench of autumn, raw decay. But no paraffin. And the cold was negligible compared with the atmosphere in last night's dungeon.

He unbolted the church door, stood at the entrance to the porch breathing in the early morning air - seven o'clockish, couldn't be certain, left his watch in the dungeon, wasn't going back for it - and he did not look up, as he said, 'You're finished, you bitch.'

And then went quickly down, between the graves, to the gardener's shed, up against the perimeter wall.

The shed was locked, a padlock through the hasp. He had no key. He shook the door irritably and glared in through the shed's cobwebbed window. He could see what he wanted, a gleaming edge of the aluminium window-cleaning ladder, on its side, stretching the length of the shed. He also saw in the window the reflection of a face that was not his own.

Joel was jolted and, for a moment, could not turn round.

The face was a woman's. It had long, dark hair, steady, hard eyes and black whore's lips. The lips were stretched in a tight, shining grin which the eyes did not reflect.

Cold derision.

Remembered pain speared Joel's spine as he turned, half-hypnotized by the horror of it, turning as he would turn to stare full into the face of the Gorgon knowing it would turn him into stone, like the angels frozen to the graves.

He saw the still figure of a woman on the other side of the church wall, the village street below her. Her back was turned to him. Slowly, she began to walk away, and because the wall blocked her lower half she seemed at first to be floating. Her long, black hair swayed as she moved, and in the hair he saw a single thin, ice-white strand.

Joel felt a twisted revulsion. Twisted because there was inside it a slender wafer of cold desire, like the seam of white in the hair of the woman who walked away.

He watched her, not aware of breathing. She was wearing something long and black. He watched her until she was no more, and not once did she turn round.

Joel sobbed once, felt the savage strength of rage. He bunched a fist and drove it through the shed window.

Ernie Dawber had heard about the bogman on the morning news. So he wasn't exactly surprised when,' round about 10.30, he heard a car pulling up irritably in the schoolhouse drive.

Hadn't given much thought to how he was going to handle this one. Too busy making notes for a daft book that would never get published.

The page he was writing, an introduction, began:

Bridelow might be said to operate on two levels. It has what you might call an underlife, sometimes discernible at dusk when all's still and the beacon is about to light up ...

He looked up from the paper and the room went rapidly in and out of focus and swayed. Bugger. Not again. Damn.

He pushed his chair back, swept all the papers from his desk into an open boxfile and went to let the man in.

'A raw day, Dr Hall.'

A word, Mr Dawber, if you're not ... too busy.'

Innuendo. It was going to be all innuendo this time, he could tell.

'I'm a retired man. I'm not supposed to be busy. Come in. Sit down. Cup of tea? Or something a little ...'

'No, thank you. Nothing.' Oh, very starchy. 'It's interesting that you don't seem at all surprised to see me, Mr Dawber.'

'I'm not daft,' Ernie said. 'That's how I got to be a headmaster.'

Underneath Hall's open Barbour jacket was a suit and tie. An official visit.

'Well, at least shut the door,' Ernie said. 'It's the worst kind of cold out there.'

The archaeologist consented at last to come into the study. Ernie closed the boxfile and placed it carefully under his chair. 'Look around,' he said. 'You don't need a search warrant.'

'I haven't said anything to the police,' Hall said. 'Not yet. I'm giving you a chance either to bring it back or tell me where it is.'

Ernie didn't insult him by asking what he was talking about. 'Dr Hall, this is a very serious allegation.'

'Don't worry, I know enough about the libel laws not to make it in public. That's why I've come to see you. If we can keep it between the two of us and the, er ... if it comes back undamaged, that'll probably be as far as it goes.'

'Now look, you don't really trunk ... ?'

'Oh, I don't for one minute think you were personally involved. Besides, you were at the funeral, I saw you. Wouldn't have been time.'

'So I'm just the mastermind. The brains behind the heist. That it?'

'Something like that.'

'All right,' said Ernie Dawber. 'I'll be straight with you. Yes, I did come to you on behalf of the village and urge you to put that thing back in the bog. That was me, and I meant it. But - and I'll say this very slowly, Dr Hall - I do not know who stole the bogman from the Field Centre. I'll say it to you and I'll say it again before a court of law.'

And he truly didn't know. Nobody ever knew these things apart from those concerned.

Had his suspicions, who wouldn't have?

But nothing black and white. Ma Wagstaff was right. There was never anything in black and white in Bridelow, which was how it was that balance and harmony could always be gently adjusted, like the tone and contrast on a television set.

Shades of things.

Oh, aye, naturally, he had his suspicions. Nowt wrong with suspicions. Suspicions never hanged anyone.

Roger Hall had changed colour. His beard-rimmed lips gone tight and white. Dr Hall's tonal balance was way out.

'It's here, Dawber. I know it's here.'

'You're welcome to search ...'

'I don't mean this house. I mean in Bridelow. Somebody has it ...'

'Don't be daft.'

'That's if it hasn't already been put back in the bog. And if it has, we'll find it. I can have two coach loads of students down here before lunch. We'll comb that moss, inch by inch, and when we find the area that's been disturbed ...'

'I wish I could help you, Dr Hall.'

'No, you don't.'

Ernie Dawber nodded. That was true enough. No, he didn't.

Joel lugged the ladder through the graveyard and into the church, dragging it along the nave, putting it up finally against a stone pillar next to the rood screen. He shook the ladder to steady it, then began, with a cold determination, to climb.

In his ankle-length black cassock, this was not easy. Close to the top, he hung on with one aching, bruised and bloodstained hand, the big, gilded cross swinging out from his chest, while he rummaged under the cassock for his Swiss Army knife, using his teeth to extract its longest, sharpest blade.

The topmost branches of the Autumn Cross were almost in his face. It was about six feet long, crudely woven of oak and ash with, mashed up inside for stuffing, thousands of dead leaves and twigs, part of a bird's nest, shrivelled berries and hard, brown acorns.

Disgusting thing.

Fashioned in public, he'd been told, on the field behind The Man I'th Moss, with great ceremony, and the children gathering foliage for its innards.

'Oh, Lord,' Joel roared into the rafters, 'help me rid your house for ever of this primeval slime!'

He leaned out from the ladder, one foot hanging in space, tiny shards of glass still gleaming amidst the still-bright blood on the hand gripping a rung. His fatigue fell away; he felt fit and supple and had the intoxicating sensation of grace in his movements.

Deliverance.

Orange baling-twine bound the frame of the cross to a rusted hook sunk into a cross-beam. He swung his knife-arm in a great arc and slashed it through.

'Filth!' he screamed.

The Autumn Cross fell at once, and Joel watched it tumble and was glad.

A beginning.

The sapless, weightless artefact fell with a dry, slithering hiss. Like a serpent in the grass, he thought, satisfaction setting firm in the muscles of his stomach, his head filled with a wild light.

He did recoil slightly, throwing the lightweight ladder into a tilt, as the so-called cross burst apart on the stone flags, fragments of leaves and powdery dust rising all around until the belly of the church was filled up with a dry and brackish-smelling sepia mist.

Joel coughed and watched the filthy pagan detritus as it settled. A bigger job than usual for the women on the Mothers' Union cleaning rota.

He hoped the foul bitches would choke on the dust.

CHAPTER V

With a nod to Our Sheila, Moira slipped quietly into St Bride's church just before 10 a.m.

To be alone. To confront the spirit of Bridelow. Maybe find something of Matt Castle here.

Special place. Matt had said, a long, long time ago on a snowy night in Manchester. It's got ... part of what I've been trying to find in the music. That's where it is ... where it was all along.

Cathy Gruber had persuaded her to stay the night in the guest room. She'd slept surprisingly well, no awful dreams of Matt in his coffin. And awoken with - all too rare these days - with a sense of direction: she would discover Matt, trace the source of the inspiration. Which was the essence of the village.

Bridelow, last refuge of the English Celts.

A more pure, undiluted strain than you'll find anywhere in Western Europe.

She stopped in the church porch.

Who said that? Who said that?

The American said it. Macbeth.

Macbeth?

Yeah, quoting somebody ... some writer addressing the Celtic conference. Stanhope, Stansfield, some name like that ... from the North of England.

Connections.

She felt like a small token in a board-game, manoeuvred into place by the deft fingers of some huge, invisible, cunning player.

And she knew that if she was to tap into Matt's imagination, she was also going to have to confront his demons.

As she walked - cautious now - out of the porch, into the body of the church, something whooshed down the aisle and collided with her at chest-level.

'Hey!' Moira grinned in some relief, holding, at arm's length, a small boy.

'Gerroff!' Kid was in tears.

'You OK? You hurt yourself?'

The child tore himself away from her, wailing, and hurled himself through the door, an arm flung across his eyes, like he'd been blown back by an explosion.

Moira's grin faded.

Something had changed.

The place looked bare and draughty. Even through the stained-glass windows, the light seemed ashen and austere. On a table near the entrance, next to the piles of hymn books, al1 the lanterns and candlesticks had been carelessly stacked, as if for spring cleaning. One of the slender, coloured candles had rolled off the edge and lay snapped in two on the stone flags.

She picked up the two halves, held one in each hand a moment then placed them on the table and wandered up the central aisle of a church which seemed so much bigger than yesterday at Matt's funeral, so much less intimate, less friendly.

Something was crunched under her shoe. She looked down and saw curled-up leaves and broken twigs, shrivelled berries and bracken and acorns and all the rustic rubble of autumn scattered everywhere.

Like a savage wind had blown through the nave in the night. Looking up, she saw what was missing, what the mess around her ankles was.

Somebody smashed the Autumn Cross.

'No accident, this,' Moira said aloud. Shivered and wrapped her arms around her sweatered breasts. It was still cold, but after what she'd learned last night, she'd left the black cloak at the Rectory. This was obviously not a place in need of a spare witchy woman.

She stood by the rood screen and looked back down the naked church. She looked down at the mess all around her, on the stone floor and the scratched and homely pews. Saw, for a moment, a scattering of bleached white skulls. But she knew almost at once that it wasn't the same.

Or at least that she was not to blame this time.

This was a rape.

She experienced a moment of awe. I walked into someone else's conflict.

But it was not quite someone else's conflict. There was a connection, and the connection was Matt Castle.

Last night, she'd said to Cathy, just as abrupt as the girl had been, 'Why did they open Matt's coffin? What was in that bottle?'

'Ah.' Cathy's eyes cast down over the steaming mug of chocolate. 'You saw that.'

'Don't get me wrong, I'm not normally an intrusive person, but Matt meant a lot to me.'

'Dic obviously thinks so.'

'Oh. You heard that. I wondered if maybe you had one of those pianos that plays itself.'

'Those pianos don't play bum notes.' Cathy looked offended. 'No, I didn't have my ear to the door. Dic and I went for a drink the other night. I drove, he got a bit pissed. He said his father ...'

'The boy's way off. There was nothing more complicated than friendship between me and Matt. He never ...'

He never touched me.

Moira stumbled and fell into a dusty pew. Sat staring into the vaulted ceiling where the cross had been, but seeing nothing.

He never touched me.

That was true. Never a friendly kiss. Never a celebratory hug when a gig had gone down well or the first album had gone into profit. Never touched me sexually. He never came near.

But he looked.

Often she'd feel his moody gaze and turn and catch his eyes, and she'd smile and he wouldn't, and then he'd look away.

She bent painfully over the prayer-book shelf.

Clink. From outside, the sound of a chisel on stone.

I was thinking, if we'd slept together, just once, to kind of get it over, bring down that final barrier ...

No. Wouldn't have got anything over. Would have started something bad. You knew that really, just as you really knew what was going on inside Matt Castle and chose to ignore it. Just a crush; he'll get over it. He didn't. He couldn't. He made you leave the band, before ...

The clinking from outside was coming harder. Maybe they were demolishing the joint entirely.

Too choked to think about this any more, stomach tight and painful, Moira stood up, made her way slowly down the aisle to the doors. But when she grasped the ring-handles, the doors wouldn't open.

'Owd on! You'll have me off.' Sound of someone creaking his way down a wooden ladder up against the doors.

She leaned her back against the doors, took a few deep breaths, and called out after a few seconds, 'OK?'

'Aye.' The porch doors opened, and there was a smallish guy in his sixties, flat cap and a boiler-suit. Big, soft moustache, like a hearth brush. 'Sorry, lass, dint know there were anybody in theer.'

He held a mallet and a masonry chisel. There were chips of grey stone and crumbly old concrete around the foot of the step-ladder.

'Storm damage?' Moira said.

'You what?'

'You repairing storm damage?'

'Summat like that.'

But then, looking up at the wall above the porch, she saw where the chippings had come from.

From the stones supporting the Exhibitionist. The Sheelagh na gig. Our Sheila.

'You're taking her down?'

'Aye.' He didn't sound too happy.

'Why?'

He gave her a level look. 'Alfred Beckett, verger, organist, dogsbody. Who are you?'

She grinned. Fuck it, she was here now, in the open, uncloaked. 'Moira. Moira Cairns. Used to work with ... Matt Castle.'

The name felt different. A different, darker Matt Castle.

'Matt Castle, eh?' said Alfred Beckett. 'Right. 'Course.' He seemed to relax a little. 'How do.' He stuck out a stubby hand and Moira took it, stone dust and all. He had a firm grip; it pulled her back into what people took for the real world.

'So, Mr Beckett ...' She glanced up at the ancient woman squashed into a stone plaque, fingers up her fanny. A few strokes of the chisel away from a serious loss of status.

'Aye,' Mr Beckett said, like a ragged sigh, and Moira saw he wasn't far from tears. He said he was following instructions. Didn't want to do it. Hated doing it. But he wasn't in an arguing position, was he? Vergers being a good way down the ecclesiastical hierarchy.

'And if I don't do it,' he said, 'he'll do it hisself. And he won't be as careful as me.'

'Mr Beard,' Moira said.

'Aye. He'll smash her, like ...'

'Like the Autumn Cross.'

'I'll see she's all right,' Alfred Beckett said. 'I'll keep her safe until such time as ...'

He sighed, fished a packet of Arrowmint chewing gum out of the top pocket of his boiler-suit. Moira accepted a segment and they stood together chewing silently for a minute or so.

Then Mr Beckett said, 'Aye. It's a bugger.'

A scrap of cement fell from Our Sheila.

Moira said, 'But isn't she - excuse me, I'm no' an expert in these matters - isn't she protected in some way?'

'No, lass, she's ...'

'I meant, isn't she a feature of a listed historic building?'

'Oh,' said Alfred Beckett. 'Aye. Happen. But Mr Beard reckons she's not safe and could fall on somebody's head. Same as she's not done for the past umpteen centuries.'

'Aye,' Moira said eventually. 'It's a bugger all right.'

'Now then. Why aren't you at school?'

Benjie threw his arms around Ma's waist and burrowed his head into her pinny. He started to sob.

She pulled him into the kitchen, shut the back door. 'Now, lad. What's matter? Tell owd Ma.'

Ma Wagstaff sat her grandson on the kitchen stool. Spine still giving her gyp, she reached up for a bottle of her special licorice toffees. Never been known not to work.

When it was out, Ma said, 'The bugger.'

Benjie with his swollen eyes and his wet cheeks bulging with toffee.

'The unfeeling, spiteful bugger,' Ma said.

Biggest thing that had ever happened to Benjie, Ernest Dawber putting him in charge of the Autumn Cross - a whole afternoon, inspecting the twigs and branches, acorns, bits of old birds' nests and stuff the other kids had brought, saying what was to go into the cross, what was right for it, what wasn't good enough. Standing proudly, top of the aisle, the day Alfred Beckett had come with his ladder, and the cross, all trimmed and finished, had been hoisted into place, and everybody cheering.

Biggest thing ever happened to the lad.

'Leave him to me,' Ma said. 'I'll sort that bugger out meself, just you see if I don't.'

Benjie stared at her, wildly shaking his head, couldn't speak for the toffee.

'Gone far enough,' Ma said. 'Got to be told a few things. For his own good, if nowt else.'

'No!' Benjie blurted. 'Don't go near it, Ma.'

Ma was taken aback. 'Eh?'

'...'s getting bigger, Ma. Every day, 's getting bigger.'

'What is, lad?'

'The dragon!' The little lad started crying again, scrambling down from the stool, clutching Ma round the waist again, wailing, 'You've not to ... You've not to!'

Eh?

Mystified, but determined to get to the bottom of this, Ma detached his small hands from her pinny, squatted down, with much pain, to his height. 'Now then. Summat you've not told me. Eh? Come on.' She held his shoulders, straightening him up, feeding him some strength, not that she'd much to spare these days. 'Come on. Tell owd Ma all about it.'

He stared into her face, eyes all stretched with terror. 'Bigger, Ma ... 's bigger.'

'He might look big to you, Benjie,' Ma said gently. 'But he's only a man.'

'No. 's a dragon!'

'Mr Beard?'

"s a dragon.'

So the new curate was in combat with the Forces of Evil.

As represented by Our Sheila and the Autumn Cross.

And whatever Willie's Ma was doing inside Matt Castle's coffin.

Last night - early this morning - as the dregs of hot chocolate were rinsed from the mugs, she'd at last got it out of Cathy, what it was all about - or as much of it as Cathy knew.

'So, the coffin's on the ground and the light's been lowered, and the lid is open ...'

'I didn't see it!'

'And your friend, old Mrs Wagstaff has her hands inside ... and I'm wondering if maybe the old biddy has a passing interest in necrophilia ...'

'That's a terrible thing to say!'

'I know ... so tell me. What's going on, huh?'

'It was ... I think it was ... a witch bottle.'

'I thought you said she wasny a witch.'

'It's just a term. It's a very old precautionary thing. To trap an evil spirit ... ?'

'Matt's spirit ... ?'

'No ... I don't know. Maybe if there was one around. In there with him.'

'In the coffin?'

'I don't know ... it's no good asking me. You're going to have to talk to Ma. If she'll talk to you.'

And Lottie. Today it was important to talk to Lottie, because Lottie was not part of this place, had not been returning, like Matt, to the bosom of a tradition which was older than Christianity.

... a more pure, undiluted strain ... than you'll find anywhere in Western Europe ...

Moira had come through the lych-gate, was standing at the top of the cobbled street, the cottages like boulders either side under a blank, unyielding sky - a sky as hard as a whitewashed wall.

... this writer ... Stanton, Stanhope ...

... he's on his feet, and is he mad... this guy's face is ...

this guy's face is ...

this guy's face is ...

White.

CHAPTER VI

The plump woman in the village Post Office looked like a chief Girl Guide, whatever they called them now. Also, although she wore no wedding ring, she struck Moira as a member of the Mothers' Union.

'I wonder, um, could you help me? I'm looking for Willie Wagstaff.' She'd forgotten to ask Cathy where Willie lived, and Cathy had set out to drive fifteen miles to the hospital to visit her dad.

'Willie? Have you been to his house?'

Moira smiled. 'Well, no, that s ...'

'Sorry, luv, I'm not very bright this morning.' The postmistress rolled her eyes. 'Go across street, turn left and after about thirty yards you'll come to an entry. Go in there, and you'll see a cottage either side of you and it's the one on the left.'

Moira bought ten postage stamps and two packets of Arrowmint chewing gum in case she ran into Alfred Beckett again.

There was no answer at Willie's house, a narrow little cottage backing on to other people's yards. Moira wondered if he lived alone. She squashed her nose to the front window. There was a bowl of flowers in it, with ferns. A woman's touch. Females had always been drawn to Willie, born to be mothered. In the old days, it used to be said that otherwise worldly mature ladies would turn to blancmange when little Mr Wagstaff smiled coyly and let them put him to bed.

Moira was not that mature, yet. The reason she needed Willie was to talk about Matt, and also to meet his mother. She came out of the entry, unsure what to do next. There was no one else in the place she knew, except ...

At the bottom of the village street, Moira found herself facing the pub, the last building, apart from a couple of wooden sheds, before the street widened into the causeway across the peatbog.

This was the difficult one.

Against the white morning, the pub looked hulking and sinister, like a gaol or a workhouse. Stonework so murky that in places it might have been stained by the peat. Outside on the forecourt, a man in an apron was cleaning windows.

A red-haired woman appeared in the porch, handed the man a steaming mug of tea or coffee, stopped and stared across the forecourt. Waited in the doorway, watching Moira.

You ready for this, hen?

'They're not Ancient Monuments, these circles. Ancient, possibly. Monuments ... well, hardly.'

Joel Beard kicked at a stubby stone.

'No signs pointing um out, anyroad,' said Sam Davis. 'Not even proper tracks.'

'That's because they're not in the care of any Government or local authority department. Unlike, say, Stonehenge, where you have high-security fences and tunnel-access. Which is why these places are so open to abuse.'

The Reverend Beard, in his dark green Goretex jacket and his hiking boots, striding through the waist-high bracken. Action priest, Sam thought cynically.

'Lights, you say?'

Although they were less than a hundred yards from the first circle, it wasn't even visible yet. This was the most direct route from Sam's farmhouse, but he reckoned that mob last night must have come in from behind. over the hill.

'Cocky bastards,' Sam said, breathing harder, keeping pace with difficulty, due to shorter legs. 'Bold as brass. If wife hadn't kicked up, I'd've been up theer last night.'

Sam bunched his fingers into fists. 'I'd give um bloody devil worship.'

'I know how you feel,' the minister said, 'but you did the right thing in coming to me. This is my job. This is what I'm trained for.'

Sam Davis watched the big blond man flexing his lips, baring his teeth, steaming at the mouth in the cold air. It was all Esther's fault, this, making him drag the Church into it.

'Look, Mr Beard ...'

'Joel ...'

'Aye. Thing is, I don't want to turn this into some big bloody crusade. All I want is these buggers off me property. Know what I mean?'

The Reverend Beard stopped in his tracks. 'Sam, have you ever had foot-and-mouth disease on your land?'

'God. Be all I need.'

'Swine fever? Fowl pest? Sheep scab?'

'Give us a chance, I've only been farming two year.'

'The point I'm making,' Joel Beard said patiently, moving on, as the bracken came to an end and the ground levelled out, 'is that when a farmer's land is infected by a contagious disease, it's not simply a question of getting rid of the afflicted livestock. There are well-established procedures. For the purpose of, shall we say, decontamination.'

'Aye, but ... let's get down to some basic facts, Joel. Who exactly are these fellers? Your mate, the Vicar ... now he reckoned it's just kids, right?'

... could probably tuck a couple under each arm ...

'Kids?' said Joel Beard.

'For kicks,' Sam said. 'Like drink. Drugs. Shoplifting. Kicks.'

'Hans Gruber said that?'

Sam shrugged. 'Summat like that. Right, this is it.'

'I beg your pardon ...'

'The main circle. You're in t'middle of it, Joel. Told you it weren't much.'

Around them, sunk into tufts of dry, yellow grace, were these seven small stones, stained with mosses and lichens, none more than a couple of feet high, in a circle about fifteen feet in diameter. Sam found it hard to credit them being here, in this formation, for about four thousand years.

'Don't know much about these things meself,' Sam said. 'Some folk reckon they was primitive astronomical observatories. You could stand in um and see where t'sun were risin'. Or summat.'

Personally, he didn't give a shit. By his left boot were two flat stone slabs, pushed together. The ground had clearly been disturbed. There were blackened twigs and ashes on the slabs.

'... but what that's got to do wi' bloody sacrifices is ...'

'Sam!'

The Reverend Joel Beard shot up, like a charge of electricity had gone through him, and then, yelling 'Get back!', seized Sam Davis by the shoulders and shoved him out of the circle.

'What the ... ?' Sam struggled out of Joel's grip, stumbled back into the bracken.

Joel was still in the circle, swaying like a drunk, swallowing big, hollow breaths through his mouth. His body bent into a fighting stance, hands clawed, eyes blinking.

Sam Davis stared at him. He was going to kill Esther for landing him with this big tosser.

'There's evil here,' Joel said.

Stupid sod looked ready for war. All that bothered Sam was how close the battlefield was to his kids. Down below, half a mile away, his farmhouse and its barns and buildings looked rickety and pathetic, like matchstick models he could kick over with the tip of his welly.

Joel Beard had closed his eyes. The sun, shuffling about behind weak clouds, had actually given him a faint halo.

For getting on ten minutes, Joel didn't move, except, at one point, to lift up both hands, on outstretched arms, as if he was waiting, Sam thought, for somebody to pass him a sack of coal. Then he spoke.

'I give you notice, Satan,' Joel said in a powerful voice, 'to depart from this place.' He'd unzipped his jacket to reveal a metal cross you could have used to shoe a horse.

Then he raised his hands so that they were parallel to his body and began to push at the air like this mime artist Sam had once seen on telly, pretending he was behind a pane of plate glass.

'Bloody Nora,' Sam muttered to himself, crouching down among the ferns, unnerved by the whole thing but determined not to show it, even to himself. 'Got a right fuckin' nutter 'ere.'

Shaw Horridge watched them through binoculars from the Range Rover. It was parked on a moorland plateau about half a mile away. The binoculars, being Shaw's own, were very good ones.

The Range Rover belonged to a squat, greasy little man who lived in Sheffield and was unemployed. He called himself Asmodeus or something stupid out of The Omen.

'They're moving on, I think,' Shaw said.

Asmodeus had a beard so sparse you could count the hairs. He had the seat pushed back and his feet on the dashboard. 'Good,' he said, as if he didn't really care.

Shaw lowered his binoculars. 'What would you do if they came up here with spades and things?'

'I'd be very annoyed indeed,' Asmodeus said in his flat, drawly voice. 'I'd be absolutely furious. So would Therese, wouldn't you, darling?'

Therese was stretched out on the rear seat, painting her fingernails black. Shaw scowled. He didn't like Asmodeus calling her darling. He didn't at all like Asmodeus, who was unemployed and yet could afford a newish Range Rover.

And yet he was still in awe of him, having seen him by night, this little slob with putrid breath and a pot-belly, not yet out of his twenties and yet able to change things.

And he was excited.

'But what would you do?'

Asmodeus grinned at him through the open window. 'You're a little devil, aren't you, Shaw? What would you do?'

Shaw said, because Therese was there, 'Kill them.'

'Whaaay! You hear that, Therese? Shaw thinks he'd kill them.'

Therese lifted newly painted nails into the light. 'Well,' she said, 'we might need the priest, but I must say that little farmer's beginning to get on my nerves.'

Shaw tensed.

'Tell you what, Shaw,' Asmodeus said. 'We'll give you an easier one. How about that?'

They sat at one end of a refectory table, near an Aga-type kitchen stove, their reflections warped in the shiny sides of its hot-plate covers. Moira kind of jumpy inside, but Lottie pouring tea with steady hands, businesslike, in control.

And this was less than twenty-four hours after the set-to at Matt's graveside, Lottie laying into Willie and Willie's Ma and the other crones, while the minister was helped away into the vibrating night.

Over fifteen years since they'd been face to face. Lottie's hair was shorter. Her face was harder, more closed-up. Out on the forecourt, it had been, 'Hello, Moira', very nonchalant, like their meetings were still everyday events - no fuss, no tears, no embrace, no surprise.

No doubt Dic had told her Moira was around.

She sipped her tea and said Lottie was looking well, in spite of ...

'You too,' Lottie said, flat-voiced. 'I always knew you'd become beautiful when you got past thirty. Listen ... thanks.'

'For what?'

'For not coming when he wrote to you.'

'I was tied up.'

'Sure,' Lottie said. 'But thanks anyway. Things were complicated enough. Better this way.'

'This way?'

'His music,' Lottie said. 'His project. His beloved bogman. Now stolen, I believe.'

'Lottie, maybe I'm stupid, but I'm not with you.'

'It was on the radio this morning. Thieves broke into the University Field Centre out near Congleton and lifted the Man in the Moss. I find it quite amusing, but Matt would've been devastated. Like somebody kidnapping his father.'

'Somebody stole the bogman? Just like that?'

Lottie almost smiled. 'Hardly matters now, though, does it? Listen, I'll take you down in a bit, show you his music room. He left some stuff for you.'

'For me?'

'Tapes. Listen, I'm not pushing, Moira, but I think you should do it.'

'Do it?' She was starting to feel very foolish.

'Get together with Willie and Eric and Dic and record his bogman music. I don't know if it's any good or not, I haven't heard much of it, but Matt saw it as his personal ... summit? His big thing? Life's work?'

Moira looked hard at her, this austere, handsome woman, fifty-odd years old. Looked for the old indomitable spark in the eyes. Truth was, she was still indomitable, but the eyes ... the eyes had died a little. This was not the old Lottie, this was a sad and bitter woman playing the part of the old Lottie.

'Then we'll do it,' Moira said. 'Whatever it's like.'

'Good. Thank you. But don't decide yet. You see - I'll be frank - if you'd come when he wrote to you ... Well, he was quite ill by then, into the final furlong. He wasn't fit to record. Not properly. And then there was the other problem. And don't say, what other problem ... let's not either of us insult the other's intelligence.'

'OK.' Moira leaned back and slowly sipped her tea. They sat there in silence, two women with little in common except perceived obligations to one man.

Mammy, how was he when he died? Can you tell me that?

This was the woman who could tell her. But Lottie had never had much patience with religion of any sort - organized or ... well, as disorganized as whatever it was Ma Wagstaff was trying to do last night with her patent witch bottle.

'Lottie,' she said, 'I'm sorry. I didn't know. Well, maybe I knew inside of me, but I was young, too young to understand it. And nothing happened, Lottie, I swear it.'

Lottie shrugged. 'Better, maybe, if it had. Better for me, I can tell you, if he'd gone off with you. But after sticking with it, through all kinds of ... Well, I wasn't prepared to have him spending his last days ignoring me, eaten up with old lust and regrets. So I'm glad you couldn't come.'

Lottie took her teacup to the sink, dropped it into a plastic bowl. The sink was a big, old-fashioned porcelain thing, pipes exposed underneath it with bits of rag tied around them. No what Lottie's used to, Moira thought. Lottie is stainless-steel and waste-disposal.

'You've ... had problems, then.' Christ, everything I say to this woman is just so fucking facile ...

Lottie turned on the hot tap, held both hands under the frenzied gush until the steam rose and her wrists turned lobster-red. 'You could say that.'

Eventually, turning off the water, wiping her hands on a blue teatowel, she said, 'I was married for twenty-eight years to a man who collected obsessions. The Pennine Pipes. The Mysteries of Bridelow. The Bogman ...'

Moira said nothing. She was feeling faint. Her breath locked in her throat. She was getting a strong sense of Matt's presence in the room.

'... and you,' Lottie said.

In the lofty, rudimentary kitchen, Moira heard a roaring in her head, saw a flashing image of Matt in his coffin, white T-shirt, white quilted coffin-lining, before it was washed away by the black tide carrying images of a stone toad, dancing lights, the steam from writhing intestines liberated on to a flat stone ...

'On me night he died ...'

Moira swallowed tea, but the tea wasn't so hot any more and she was swallowing bile.

'On the night he died,' Lottie said, 'he sexually assaulted a nurse in the hospital.'

I'm not hearing this.

She started to look wildly around the kitchen. High ceiling with pipes along it ... whitewashed walls with crumbling plaster showing through in places ... stone-flagged floor like the church of St Bride ... two narrow windows letting in light so white it was like a sheet taped across the glass.

And this awful sense of Matt.

'The nurse had long, dark hair,' Lottie said, almost wistfully. 'He addressed her as Moira.'

The silence was waxen.

She felt scourged.

Lottie said, 'I wanted you to know all this ...'

Matt was dodging about under the table, behind the pipes, vibrant, shock-haired Matt reduced to a pale, fidgeting thing, hunched in corners, flitting, agitated, from one to another, giving off fear, hurt, confusion.

'... before you made a firm decision about the music. You see? I'm being open about it. No secrets any more.'

Moira looked up into the furthest comer, near the back door, and a cobweb inexplicably detached itself from the junction of two pipes and hung there, impaled by a shaft of white light, heavy with glittering flies' corpses.

'Come with me.' Lottie rolled down the sleeves of her cardigan and strode across the kitchen to the back door, with a long, gaoler's key.