The Man in the Moss

From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):

MEN

What part have men really played in the history of Bridelow?

Not perhaps, if we are honest, a distinguished one, except for our late friend the Man in the Moss, who - we are told - gave his life for our community.

We have, I suppose, dealt with the more mundane elements: the business matters, employment, the sustenance of a measure of wealth - enough, anyway, to keep our heads above the Moss.

And we - that is, male members of the Dawber family - have acted as local chroniclers. Albeit discreet ones, for I am sure that if this present manuscript were ever to see the light of day our so-far hereditary function as the compilers of the dull but worthy Book of Bridelow would cease immediately to be a tolerated local tradition.

But as for the important things in life (and death), well, all that traditionally is the preserve of the women, and as far as most of the men have been concerned they are welcome to it. We are, in the modern parlance, a Goddess-orientated society, although the role of the Christian deity is more than politely acknowledged. (Thank You, Mother - and You too, Sir, is one of our phrases.)

However, men being men, there have been occasional attempts to disrupt the arrangement. And when a man is possessed of abilities beyond the normal and a craving for more, then, I am afraid, the repercussions may be tragic and long-lasting.

CHAPTER I

Macbeth pumped money into the coinbox, all the loose change he had.

A young female voice said, 'This is ... hang on, I can't make it out ... two four oh six, I think. I don't live here, I've just picked up the phone.'

Macbeth could hear a lot of people talking excitedly in the background. He said, 'Can I, uh, speak with Moira? Moira Cairns?'

'This is Bridelow Rectory.'

'Sure. I need to speak with Moira. Can you get her to the phone?'

'I'm sorry, I'm pretty sure we haven't got a Moira. We've got a Maureen. Would you like to speak to her?'

The glass of the phone booth was streaked with rain. It was going dark; all he could see were the lights of a fast-food joint over the road. Didn't even know which town this was. He'd just kept stopping at phones, ringing this number. First time anyone had answered.

The young female voice asked, 'Are you still there?'

'Yeah, yeah, I'm still here. Listen, ask around, willya? Moira Cairns, I ... Chrissake, she has to be there.'

There was a long pause, then, 'I'm sorry,' the female voice said coldly. 'Your speech is profane. Goodbye.'

And hung up on him.

Hung up the fucking phone, just like that!

Macbeth raced out of the booth and across the street, bought a burger with a ten-pound note and got plenty of change. The burger was disgusting; after two bites he tossed it into a waste bin and took his change back to feed the phone.

He wasn't about to waste this number, all the time it had taken to obtain it. The call to the Earl, the waiting around for Malcolm Kaufmann, the blackmail.

'I called the Earl this morning, Malcolm. You remember the Earl? The man who asked if this Rory McBain, who was booked to entertain his guests, could perhaps be replaced by Moira Cairns? This coming back to you, Malcolm? The way the Earl was prepared to, uh, oil the wheels?'

This last item was a lucky guess, the Earl having denied any suggestion of making it worth Kaufmann's while.

None the less, it had gone in like a harpoon, spearing Malcolm to the back of his executive swivel chair.

'See, the longer it takes for me to find her, Malcolm, the more likely it seems I'm gonna have to reveal to Moira the extent of your co-operation in this, uh, small deception.'

At which Malcolm had pursed his lips and written upon his telephone memo pad a phone number. All he had. He swore it. Moira had phoned yesterday, left this emergency-only contact number, along with a message: no gigs until further notice.

'She done this kind of thing before?'

'All too often, Mr Macbeth.'

On top of the coinbox, Macbeth had three pounds and a couple of fifty-pence coins. He dialled again.

This time it was a different voice, male.

Macbeth said, 'Who's that?'

'This is Chris.'

'Chris,' Macbeth said. 'Right. Listen, Chris, I need to speak with Moira. Moira Cairns. You know her?'

'Oh,' said Chris. 'You rang a few minutes ago. You were abusive, apparently."

'Je—!' Macbeth tightened his grip on the phone, calmed himself, 'I'm ... sorry. Just I was in a hurry. It's kind of urgent, Chris. Please?'

'Look,' Chris said. 'We're strangers here. Why don't you speak to Joel? Just hang on.'

Macbeth fed a fifty-pence coin into the phone. Presently a different guy came on. 'This is the Reverend Joel Beard. Who am I speaking to?'

'Uh, my name is Macbeth. I was told I could get Moira Cairns on this number, but nobody seems to know her, so maybe if I describe her. She's very beautiful, has this dark hair with ...'

'With a vein of white,' the voice enunciated, slowly and heavily.

Macbeth breathed out. 'Well, thank Christ, I was beginning to think I'd been fed a bunch of ... what?'

'I said, what did you say your name was?'

'Macbeth. That's M ... A ... C ...'

'Ah. That's an assumed name, I suppose. I'd heard you people liked to give yourselves the names of famously evil characters as a way of investing yourselves with their - what shall we call it - "unholy glamour".'

'Huh ... ? Listen, friend, I don't have time for a debate, but it's now widely recognised that the famously evil, as you call him, Macbeth was in fact seriously misrepresented by Shakespeare for political reasons and, uh, maybe to improve the storyline. He ...' - shoving in a pound coin - 'Jeez, what am I doing? I don't want to get into this kind of shit. All I want is to talk with Moira Cairns, is that too much to ask? What the fuck kind of show you running there?'

A silence. Clearly the guy had won himself an attentive audience.

'The woman you're seeking' - the voice clipped and cold - 'has been driven away. As' - the voice rose - 'will be all of your kind. You can inform your disgusting friends that, as from this evening, the village of Bridelow, erstwhile seat of Satan, has been officially repossessed ... by Almighty God!'

'YEEEESSSS!' The background swelled, the phone obviously held aloft to capture it, a whole bunch of people in unison. 'PRAISE GOD!'

And they hung up.

Macbeth stood in the rain washed booth, cradling the phone in both hands.

'Jesus Christ,' he said.

Back in his hire-car, windows all steamed-up, he slumped against the head-rest.

Is this real?

I mean, is it?

The Duchess had indicated Moira had gone to this North of England village for the purpose of laying to rest the spirit of her old friend Matt Castle, whichever way you wanted to take that.

Whatever it meant, it had clearly left the local clergy profoundly offended.

But while Macbeth's knowledge of Northern English clerical procedure was admittedly limited, the manner of response from the guy calling himself The Reverend Joe-whoever and what sounded like his backing group was, to say the least, kind of bizarre.

Wherever she goes, that young woman, she's bound to be touched with madness.

Yeah, yeah, can't say I wasn't warned.

But there is a point at which you actually get to questioning yourself about how much is real. Or to what extent you are permitting yourself to be absorbed into someone else's fantasy.

But not unwillingly, surely?

Well, no. Not yet.

Truth is, it's kind of stimulating.

The time was 5.15. Macbeth left the car and returned to the diner across the street, on the basis that one sure way of restoring a sense of total reality would be another attempt to consume a greasy quarter-pound shitburger and double fries.

About an hour ago, before leaving Glasgow, he'd found a Sunday-opening bookshop where he bought a road atlas and a paperback.

He laid the paperback on his table next to the shitburger.

The cover showed a huge cavern full of stalactites and stalagmites. The angle of vision was roof-level, and way down in the left-hand corner was a small kid with a flashlight.

The book was called Blue John's Way. From inside the title page Macbeth learned it had been first published some thirty years ago, and this was apparently the seventeenth paperback impression.

On the inside cover, it said,

THE AUTHOR

John Peveril Stanage has emerged as one of the half-

dozen best-loved children's writers of the twentieth

century.

Basing his compelling stories on the history,

myths and legends of the Peak District and the

southern Pennines, of which he has an unrivalled

knowledge, he has ensnared the imagination of millions

of young readers the world over.

Mr Stanage's work has been translated into more

than fifteen languages and won him countless awards.

Not over-enlightening, and there was no picture. But then, Macbeth thought, the guy didn't exactly look like a favourite uncle; maybe the publishers figured he'd scare the readers.

But then again, that was obviously part of his intention, if Blue John's Way was typical.

A quote on the back from some literary asshole on the London Guardian said the book conveyed a powerful sense of adolescent alienation.

The bookseller had told Macbeth a growing number of adults were hooked on Stanage's stories for kids; apparently he was becoming a minor cult-figure, like C. S. Lewis.

'In America, I'm told,' the bookseller said, 'his books aren't even marketed as children's fiction any more.'

'That so?' Macbeth, whose reading rarely extended beyond possible mini-series material, had never previously heard of Stanage. 'He live down in - where is it? - the English Peak District?'

'He's publishing under false pretences if he isn't.'

You got any idea precisely where?'

A shrug. Negative.

This morning, under pressure, the Earl had admitted to Macbeth that he personally had been unfamiliar with the work of Moira Cairns until a member of The Celtic Bond steering committee had drawn his attention to it. Yes, all right, forcefully drawn his attention ...

'So it was Stanage who was insistent Moira should be hired for this particular occasion?'

'He was keen, yes ...'

'How keen?'

'He's a great admirer of her work.'

'Tell me, Earl, why is Mr Stanage on your steering committee?'

'Well... because he's a great authority on an aspect of Celtic studies- the English element - which is often neglected. And because he's ... he's very influential.'

And also rich, Macbeth thought. That above all. The crucial factor. The reason you're taking all this shit from me, Earl, the reason you deigned to accept this call at all.

Macbeth propped the paperback against a sauce bottle and re-read the blurb.

John Clough is an unhappy boy growing up fatherless

in a remote village in me Northern hills.

He has never been able to get on with his mother

or his sisters who live in a strange world of their own,

from which John, as the only male, is excluded. At

weekends, he spends most of his time alone in the

spectacular limestone caverns near his home, where

he forms a special bond with the Spirits of the Deep.

With the Spirits' help, John discovers the dark secret

his mother has been hiding - and sets out to find his

true identity.

Macbeth went back to the counter, ordered up a black coffee and opened up the road-atlas.

'How long you figure it would take me to get to ... uh ... Manchester, England?'

'Never been, pal. Five hours? 'Pends how fast you drive.'

Last night Macbeth had called his secretary in New York to find out how seriously they were missing his creative flair and acumen. His secretary said he should think about coming home; his mom was working too hard. Which meant his mom was working them too hard and therefore enjoying him being out of the picture.

So no hassle.

Five hours? A short hop.

But they claimed Moira had been given an assisted passage out of town. The woman you're seeking has been driven away.

So she might no longer be in that area.

But she would not be the easiest person to get rid of if she still had unfinished business.

Macbeth was getting that Holy Grail feeling again. The One Big Thing.

What the fuck ... He climbed back into the Metro, started up the motor.

CHAPTER II

'Right, let the dog see the rabbit. That the photo, Paul? Ta.'

'Got to be him, Sarge.'

'Not necessarily, lad, all sorts come out here purely to top umselves. I remember once . . 'It is, look ...'

'Aye, well done, lad. Never've thought he'd have got this far in last night's conditions, no way. But where's the gun?'

The body lay face-up in the bottom of the quarry, both eyes wide as if seeking a reason from the darkening sky.

'Hell fire, look at state of his head. Must've bounced off that bloody rock on his way down. You all right, Desmond?'

'Just a bit bunged-up, Sarge. Reckon it's this flu.'

'Hot lemon. Wi' half a cup of whisky. That's what I always take. Least you can't smell what we can smell. Hope the poor bugger shit hisself after he landed.'

'What d'you reckon then?'

'Harry, if you can persuade your radio to work, get word back to Mr Blackburn as he can call off the troops, would you? And let's find that gun, shall we? I don't know; be a bloody sight simpler if we hadn't got his missus bleating on about him charging after Satanists.'

'Haw.'

'Ah now, don't knock it, Desmond. If you'd seen some of the things I've seen up these moors. All right, more likely poor sod'd been trying to find his way back home, terrible bloody conditions, gets hopelessly disorientated, wandering round for hours - what's he come, six miles, seven? - and just falls over the edge. But this business of intruders, somebody'll want it checked out, whoever they were, whatever they was up to ...'

'Or if they even existed.'

'Or, as Paul says, if they even existed, except in the lad's imagination. I'd let it go, me, if we find that gun. Accidental, and you'd never prove otherwise, not in a million years. What we supposed to do, stake out the entire moor every night till they come back for another do?'

'Poor bugger.'

'Aye. Glad we found him before it got dark, or we'd be out here again, first light. Well, look at that, what d'you know, it's starting raining again, Desmond.'

'Yes Sarge.'

'Hot lemon, lad, my advice. Wi' a good dollop of whisky.'

Oh Lord, we're asking you to intercede, to help us sanctify this place, drenched for centuries in sin and evil. Oh Lord, come down here tonight, give us some help. Come on down, Lord ... shine your light, that's what we're asking ... come on ...'

'SHINE YOUR LIGHT.'

'Yes, and into every murky corner, come on ...'

'SHINE YOUR LIGHT.'

'Through every dismal doorway ...'

'SHINE YOUR LIGHT.'

'Into every fetid crevice ...'

'SHINE YOUR LIGHT.'

And Willie shouted it too.

'SHINE YOUR LIGHT.'

It was easy. It was just pulled out of you, like a handkerchief from your top pocket. Nowt to it.

At first he'd felt right stupid. Felt bloody daft, in fact, as soon as he walked in, wearing his suit, the only suit in the place, so it was obvious from the start that he wasn't one of them.

Not that this had bothered them. They'd leapt on him - big, frightening smiles - and started hugging him.

'Welcome, brother, welcome!'

'Good to see someone's been brave enough to turn his back on it all. What's your name?'

'Willie.' Gerroff, he wanted to shout, this is no bloody way to behave in church. Or anywhere, for that matter, soft buggers.

'Willie, we're so very glad to have you with us. To see there is one out there who wants to save his soul. Praise God! And rest assured that, from this moment on, you'll have the full protection of the Lord, and there'll be no repercussions because you'll be wearing the armour of the Lord's light. Do you believe that? Is your faith strong enough, Willie, to accept that?'

'Oh, aye,' said Willie.

'No,' Milly Gill had said flatly and finally, when Mr Dawber wanted to go. 'It's got to be you, Willie. Mr Dawber looks too intelligent.'

'Thanks a bunch.'

'You know what I mean. You look harmless. It's always been your strength, Willie luv. You look dead harmless.'

'Like a little vole,' said Frank Manifold Snr's wife Ethel in a voice like cotton-wool, and Milly gave her a narrow look.

'Just watch and listen, Willie. Listen and watch.'

'What am I listening for?'

'You'll know, when you hear it.'

What he'd heard so far had left him quite startled. They sang hymns he'd never encountered before, with a rhythm and gusto he associated more with folk clubs. He felt his fingers begin to respond, tried to stop it but he couldn't. Felt an emotional fervour building around him, like in the days when he used to support Manchester City.

It had started with everybody - there'd be over fifty of them now - sitting quietly in the pews, as Joel Beard led them in prayer.

But when the hymns got under way they'd all come out and stand in the aisle, quite still - no dancing - and turn their faces towards the rafters and then lift up their hands, palms open as if they were waiting to receive something big and heavy.

When the hymn was over, some of the younger ones stayed in the aisle and sat there cross-legged, staring up at the pulpit, at their leader.

'Some of you,' Joel Beard said soberly, 'may already have realised the significance of tonight.'

Joel in full vestments, leaning out over the pulpit, the big cross around his neck swinging wide, burnished by the amber lights which turned his tight curls into a helmet of shining bronze.

A bit different from downbeat, comfortable old Hans with his creased-up features and his tired eyes.

But no Autumn Cross over Joel's head.

No candles on the altar. All statuary removed.

And despite all the people in their bright sweaters and

jeans, with their fresh, scrubbed faces and clean hair ...

... Despite the colourful congregation and despite the

emotion, the church looked naked and cold, and gloomy as a

cathedral crypt.

Joel said, 'Every few years, the realms of God and Satan collide. The most evil of all pagan festivals falls upon the Lord's day. Tonight, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, we pray for ourselves. For we are at war.'

Bloody hell, Willie remembered, it's ...

'It is Sunday,' Joel said quietly. 'And it is All-Hallows Eve.'

New Year's Eve, Willie thought.

Time was when they'd have a bit of a do down The Man. Except that always happened tomorrow, All Souls. Bit of a compromise, reached over the years with the Church. And a logical one in Willie's view. Imagine the reaction, in the days of the witch hunts, to a village which had a public festival at Hallowe'en. So they had it the following night, All Souls Night. Made sense.

Wouldn't be doing much this year, though. Bugger-all to celebrate.

'We have recaptured this church,' Joel Beard proclaimed, 'for the Lord.'

Sterilised it, more like, Willie thought, feeling a lot less daft, a lot more annoyed. Despiritualised it, if there's such a word.

'And it is left to us ... to hold it through this night.'

'YES!'

Oh, bloody hell, they're never!

'PRAISE GOD!'

'We'll remain here until the dawn. We'll sing and pray and keep the light.'

'KEEP THE LIGHT!'

It's a waste of time, Willie wanted to shout. It's a joke. Apart from the Mothers doing whatever needs to be done - in private - Hallowe'en's a non-event in Bridelow. Just a preparation for the winter, a time of consolidation, like, a sharing of memories.

'I would stress to all of you that it's important to preserve a major presence here in the church.'

Nay, lad, give it up. Go home.

Joel said, if anyone needs to leave to use the toilet, the Rectory is open. But - hear me - go in pairs. Ignore all distractions. And hurry back. Take care. Make your path a straight one. Do not look to either side. Now ... those who thirst will find bottles of spring water and plastic cups in the vestry. Do not drink any water you may find in the Rectory; it may have been taken from the local spring, which is polluted, both physically and spiritually.'

Willie was stunned. This was insane. This was Bridelow he was on about.

'And of course,' Joel said, 'we shall eat nothing until the morning.'

'PRAISE GOD!'

Willie slumped back into his pew next to a girl with big boobs under a pink sweatshirt with white and gold lettering spelling out, THANK GOD FOR JESUS!

'Have we been taken over, though?' Milly said. 'Have we lost our village? Gone? Under our noses?'

'Bit strong, that,' Ernie Dawber said with what he was very much afraid was a nervous laugh. 'Yet.'

They were in Milly Gill's flowery sitting room.

He'd set out for evensong, as was his custom; if there was a boycott it was nowt to do with him, damn silly way to react, anyroad.

She had caught up with him, suddenly appearing under his umbrella, telling him about the Angels of the New Advent. Time to talk about things, Milly said, steering him home, sitting him down with a mug of tea.

'You're the chronicler, Mr Dawber. You know it's not an exaggeration. You've watched the brewery go. You've seen people fall ill and just die like they never did before. You know as well as I do Ma didn't just fall downstairs and die of shock.'

'It's common enough,' Ernie said damply, 'among very old people.'

'But Ma Wagstaff?' Milly folded her arms, trying for a bit of Presence. 'All right? Who's taken the Man? Who's taken Matt Castle from his grave? Come off the fence, Mr Dawber. What do you really think?'

'You're asking me? You're in charge now, Millicent. I'm just an observer. With failing eyesight.'

'There you go again. Please, Mr Dawber, you've seen the state of us. We're just a not-very-picturesque tradition. What did I ever do except pick flowers and dress the well? And we meet for a bit of a healing - this is how it's been - and Susan says she can't stop long because of the child and it's Frank's darts night.'

'Young Frank needs a good talking to,' said Ernie.

'That's the least of it. They're all just going through the motions, and nothing seems to work out. It's like, we're going into the Quiet time - this is last midsummer - and Jessie Marsden has to use her inhaler twice. We can't even beat our own hay fever any more. It'd be almost funny if it wasn't so tragic.'

The image speared Ernie again. Ma showing him the Shades of Things and making him promise to get the bog body back. And him failing her, in the end. But need this be the end?

'Happen you need some new blood,' he said finally.

'I don't think that's the answer, Mr Dawber. The strength is in the tradition. New blood's easy to get. Remember that girl who showed up a couple of years ago? Heard about Bridelow - God knows how - and wanted to "tap the source"? Place of immense power, how lucky we were, could she become a ... a "neophyte", was that the word?'

Ernie Dawber smiled. 'From the Daughters of Isis, Rotherham, as I remember. Nice enough girl. Well-intentioned. You sent her away.'

'Well, Mr Dawber, what would you have done? We couldn't understand a word she was saying - all this about the Great Rite and the Cone of Power.'

'Come off it, Millicent. You knew exactly what she was saying.'

'Well... maybe it seemed silly, the way she talked. Made it all seem silly. It does, you know, when you give it names, like the Cone of Power. New blood's all right, in this sort of situation, when you're strong enough to absorb it. When you're weak it can just be like a conduit for infection.'

'That, actually,' Ernie said, 'was not quite what I meant by new blood. Let's try and look at this objectively. Everything was ticking over quite nicely - not brilliant, bit wackery round the joints - but basically all right, given the times we're in. Until this bog body turns up. The Man. It all comes back to the Man.'

'You think so, Mr Dawber? The Man himself, rather than what people have made of him?'

'It's all the same,' Ernie said. 'That's the whole point of a human sacrifice.'

Milly stood up and went to the window, opaque with night and rain. 'How long's it been raining now, Mr Dawber?'

'Over a day non-stop, has to be, and corning harder still. Stream's been out over the church field since tea time, and the Moss ... the Moss will rise. It does, you know. Absorbs it like a sponge. In 1794, according to the records, the Moss rose three feet in a thunderstorm.'

Ernie laughed.

'See, that's me. The chronicler, the great historian. Head full of the past, but we don't learn owt from it, really, do we? The past is our foundation, but we look back and say, nay, that was primitive, we're beyond that now, we've evolved. But we haven't, of course, not spiritually, not in a mere couple of thousand years. It's still our foundation, no matter how crude. And when the foundation's crumbled or vanished, we've got to patch it up best we can.'

Milly Gill didn't seem to be listening.

She said, 'I prayed to the Mother tonight. Sent Willy off to the church to learn what he could and then I went up to the Well with a lantern and knelt there in the rain at the poolside with the Mother's broken-off head in me hands, and I asked her what we'd done and what we could do.'

Milly fell silent. Ernie Dawber looked round the room, at the grasses and dried flowers, at Milly's paintings of flowers and gardens. At Milly herself, always so chubby and bonny. For the first time, she looked not fat but bloated, as if the rain had swelled her up like the Moss.

'And what happened?' Ernie said after a while. He thought of himself as one of the dried-out roots hanging in bundles from the cross-beam. Shrivelled, easy to snap, but possessed of certain condensed pungency. Put him in the soup and he could still restore the flavour. He looked closely at Milly and saw she was weeping silently.

'Well?' he said softly.

'If she was telling me anything,' Milly said, 'I couldn't hear it. Couldn't hear for the rain.'

Shaw said, 'What have you got on under that cloak?'

'Not a thing.' Sitting at Shaw's mother's dressing table, Therese had rubbed some sort of foundation stuff into her face, to darken her complexion, and painted around her eyes. 'But it's not for you tonight. You can get excited though, if you like - make him jealous.'

Shaw touched her shoulder through the black wool.

She turned and looked at him, her eyes very dark. The look said, Get away from me.

Shaw winced.

He looked over at the bed, at his mother's well-worn dressing gown thrown across it. He was surprised she hadn't taken it with her.

'Therese,' he said, 'how was she really? When she left.'

'Your mother? Fine. She'll be enjoying the change.'

'I'm not over-happy about it. She's a dismal old cow, but ...'

'Relax. Or rather, don't relax. Look, she didn't want to be here. She's really not very sociable these days, is she? Especially where the brewery's concerned.'

He watched Therese's eyes in the mirror. She could always, in any circumstances, make things happen. Yesterday, his mother had been almost hysterical when he said he'd be bringing the Gannons chairman over for drinks. This morning the old girl was missing but Therese - miraculously, shockingly - was in Shaw's bed, and Therese said, 'Oh, I popped in last night, and we had a terrific heart-to-heart, Liz and I. She's become far too insular, you know, losing all her confidence. Anyway, I persuaded her to go to the Palace in Buxton for a couple of days. Packed her case, ordered her a taxi before she could change her mind. Wasn't that clever of me?'

Yes, yes, he'd been so relieved. The old girl would have been suspicious as anything if he'd suggested it. He remembered the Malta idea. Hopeless. But trust Therese to win her confidence.

Trust Therese. Drifting around the house rearranging things; how the house had changed in just a few hours, a museum coming alive.

'What've you got there?'

She'd picked up a black cloth bag from the dressing table, tightened its drawstrings and set it down again.

'Hair.' She turned the word into a long, satisfied breath 'Beautiful, long black hair.'

'Hair?'

'With a single gorgeous strand of white. I had to use a wig for so long. But there's no substitute for the real thing.'

'Can I look?'

'Of course not. Don't you learn anything? If it's taken out now, it loses half its energy. That was why it was important to leave her as long as possible. And it's nicely matted with blood, too, now, which is a bonus.'

'It's all moving too fast for me,' said Shaw. 'That comb ... does that tie in?'

'Well, the comb was a problem at first, actually. It's had to be sort of reconsecrated. We're not touching that either until the moment comes.'

She stretched. Her slim arms - leanly, tautly muscular - emerging from the folds of the black cloak. 'Then I shall uncover the hair and run the comb through it. You know how combing your hair can generate electricity? If you comb it in the dark, looking into a mirror, you can sometimes see blue sparks. Ever done that?'

'With my hair?'

Therese laughed. 'Poor Shaw. One day, perhaps.'

Shaw said, 'I'm sure it must have grown another quarter of an inch since I ... you know, since Ma Wagstaff.'

'There you are, you see. First you simply felt better. Now you even look better. And after tonight ...'

Shaw said, 'I'm not sure I really want to be there. I'll be so scared, I'll probably screw up or something.'

'Nonsense.' Therese lifted the hood of the cloak. 'How do I look?'

Her voice had a husky, slightly Scottish edge.

Shaw shuddered.

CHAPTER III

Mungo Macbeth figured at first, irrationally, that he must have reached the coast.

Came over the hill through rain which was almost equatorial in its intensity, and there was this sensation of bulk water below and beyond his headlights. Too wide for a river - assuming Britain didn't have anything on the scale of the Mississippi in flood.

And there was a lighthouse across the bay. The light was a radiant blue-white and sent a shallow beam over black waves he couldn't see. Only, unlike a lighthouse, it wasn't rotating, which was strange.

Macbeth stopped the car and lit a cigarette. He'd pulled in for gas near Macclesfield, looked up into the hard rain and the lightless hills and abruptly decided, after six years, to take up smoking again. Thus far it was not a decision he'd had cause to repent.

He turned off the wipers and the headlights; the rain spread molecules of blue light all over the windshield.

The sign had said Bridelow, so this had to be it.

Or rather, that had to be it.

The road carried on straight ahead and from here it looked likely to vanish after a few yards under the black water. Which was no way to die.

Macbeth finished his cigarette, slid the car into gear - still not used to gears - and then set off very slowly, headlights full on, thinking of Moira, how mad she was going to be when he showed up. Wondering what her hair would look like in the rain.

Moira Cairns: the One Big Thing.

The later it got, the harder it rained, the more frightened Lottie became of the night and what it might hold.

Not that she was inclined to show this fear. Not to the customers and especially not to herself. Every time she caught sight of her face in the mirror behind the bar, she tightened her lips and pulled them into what was supposed to be a wry smile. In the ghostly light from Matt's lovingly reconstructed gas-mantle, it looked, to her, gaunt and dreadful, corpselike.

Lottie shivered, longed for the meagre comfort of the kitchen stove and its hot-plate covers.

'All right, luv?' Stan Burrows said. 'Want a rest? Want me to take over?'

Big, bluff Stan, who'd been the brewery foreman - first to lose his job under the Gannons regime. If she could afford it, it would be nice to keep the pub, install Sun as full-time manager.

And then clear off.

Lottie shook her head. He must have noticed her agitation. She thought of a rational explanation to satisfy him.

'Stan, it isn't ... dangerous, is it? You know, with all this rain getting absorbed into the Moss. Doesn't flood or anything?'

'Well, I wouldn't go out theer for a midnight stroll.' Stan made a diving motion with stiffened fingers. 'Eight or nine foot deep in places. You might not drown but you'll get mucky. Still, I'm saying that - people have died out theer, but not for a long time. Don't think about it, best way.'

'Hard not to,' Lottie said. 'Living here.'

'Used to be folk,' said a retired farmer called Harold Halsall, 'as could take you across that Moss by night in any conditions. Follow the light, they used say. Beacon of the Moss. All dead now.'

'Fell in, most likely,' said Young Frank Manifold. 'Bloody place this is, eh? Moss on one side, moors on t'other, wi' owd quarries and such. Why do we bloody stay?'

Frank and his mates had spent the afternoon helping in the search for Sam Davis, found dead in a disused quarry just before dusk.

'Bad do, that, Frank.' Harold Halsall had picked up the reference. 'Used to be me brother's farm, that. Never did well out of it, our George - salesman now, cattle feed. Is it right that when they found yon lad's shotgun he'd loosed off both barrels?'

'Leave it, Harold,' said Stan Burrows, nicking a quick glance at Lottie. They'd spent nearly an hour discussing the Sam Davis incident before Harold had come in. Stan probably imagined that was adding to Lottie's nerves: the thought of being all alone here while whoever Sam had been chasing when he went over the quarry was still on the loose.

If it was only that ... Lottie turned away.

'Tell you what.' Young Frank'd had a bit too much to drink again. More than one person had been saying it was time he went out and found himself another job. 'I wish I had a bloody shotgun. Fire a few off outside t'church, I would.'

Lottie groaned. Tonight's other topic of conversation.

'Soon bring that bastard out,' said Frank. 'Him and his children of God. Then I'd fill him in, good.'

'Don't think you would, Frank,' Stan Burrows said. 'He's a big lad, that curate. Once had trials for Castleford, somebody said. Nay, he'll quieten down. Let him get it out of his system. All he's doing's making what you might call a statement.'

'Twat,' said Frank.

'Don't rise to it,' Stan said. 'Best way. Mothers'll not ...' Stan realised he'd uttered a word Lottie preferred not to hear in her bar. 'Aye,' he said. 'Well.'

It went quiet. Not sure what they were allowed to talk about. Be better for everyone, Lottie thought, when I've gone.

She heard running feet on the cobbles outside and the gaslight sputtered as the door was thrown open. The porch lamp showed up rain like six-inch nails.

All the lads looking up from their drinks.

'Jeez.'

He wore a sweater and jeans. He shook raindrops out of black, wavy hair. Lottie didn't recognise him.

'Wet enough for you?' she said. Nobody drove out for a casual pint at The Man I'th Moss on dark autumn nights, and he certainly wasn't dressed like a rambler.

'Wet enough for Jacques Cousteau,' he said and grinned, brushing droplets from his sweater. It was, Lottie noticed, a very expensive soft-knit sweater. Cashmere, probably.

Lottie laughed. 'What would you like?'

'Scotch,' he said. 'Please. Any kind. No ice.'

'Oh,' she said, surprised. 'You're American. Sorry, I didn't mean to say it like that.'

'Bloody hell,' Young Frank Manifold called over, 'I know visibility's bad out there, mate, but I think tha's missed the turn-off for Highway 61.'

It began just like any normal hymn - well, normal for them.

Sort of hymn Barry Manilow might have written, Willie thought. Slow and strong, with a rolling rhythm and a big, soaring chorus, undeniably catchy. One of the Angels of the New Advent was playing the organ, backed up by a portable drum machine with an amplifier set up under the lectern. Willie couldn't prevent his fingers going into action on his blue serge knees.

Didn't reckon much to the words. Modern language, but humourless. No style.

He glanced at the girl in the Jesus sweatshirt. Her eyes were glazed and unfocused. She had a certain look Willie had seen before, but usually on people who were on something.

High. She was high on God.

As he watched, slow tears rolled down her white cheeks.

The hymn soared on. Joel Beard stood in his pulpit, apparently soaring with it, eyes closed and palms upturned. Willie thought of his mother, now lying in a chapel of rest in Macclesfield. How was he supposed to make funeral arrangements when the service would have to be conducted by this pillock?

The drum machine stopped and then the organ trailed away, but the voices went on, and the words were no longer trite, no longer actually made any sense. Were, in fact, no longer what you might call words.

Willie listened to the girl.

'Holia ... holia ... amalalia ... awalah ... gloria ...hailolalala ...'

He was bewildered. All around him voices rose and fell and rose and swelled, ululating together in a strange, enveloping coda.

Everyone singing different words.

'Ohyalala ... holy ... holy ... malaya ... amala . . '

He looked up at Joel, presiding Angel, and Joel was smiling, with his eyes closed.

For a while Willie closed his own eyes and was at once carried away on it, drifting, aware that his fingers were stretching, feeling as if they were coming directly out of his wrists, nerves extending. His fingers moved very lightly against his thigh, sometimes not quite touching it.

Something fluttering like a small bird in his own chest and rising into his throat.

'Mayagalamata ...'

That was me.

Willie stopped, stood very still for a moment, opening his eyes and taking in the scene. All those upturned palms. All those eyes, closed or glazed.

He sighed and slid quietly out of the pew and down the aisle to the church door. It was bolted, but nobody heard him draw back the bolts and slip out into the teeming rain.

Standing in a spreading puddle at the edge of the porch, Willie looked up at where Our Sheila used to hold open her pussy. He closed his eyes against the cold dollops of rain.

'Speaking in tongues,' he muttered. 'Speaking, chanting, singing in tongues.'

Language of the angels. Open up your hearts to God and He'll fill your mouth with rubbish.

'It's a block,' he said to Milly Gill and Ernie Dawber. 'They're blocking everything out. They're surrounding um selves with sound and emotion. But it's like blanket emotion - you feel good, you feel you're being drawn into something. It's just like candyfloss. You know what I mean? Like ... psychic candyfloss.'

Ernie couldn't remember when he'd heard such a long speech from Willie Wagstaff. Always such a shy lad, in and out of class. You kept forgetting he was Ma's son and therefore, even in a Goddess-oriented society, he must have picked up a few tips.

'It's stirring things up, though,' Milly said. 'And that's not good at All Hallows. You've got to be very careful at All Hallows.'

'We probably asked for it,' Willie said. 'Whole congregation going on strike like that.'

'He provoked it,' Milly said. 'He destroyed things dear to us. He provoked us. Were we supposed to sit there and listen to his pious ramblings after that?'

'Perhaps,' Ernie said reasonably, 'that was what he wanted to do. Provoke a confrontation. It's no great secret, if you know what you're looking for, that the religious practices in Bridelow are not as elsewhere. His brand of Christianity views it with very serious disapproval, not to say abject horror.'

'Hans could've said no to him,' Milly Gill said, 'Hans could've said he didn't want a curate.'

'Hans was a sick man, Millicent. He did need the help. And Bridelow does change people, you know. Straightened out, a lad like Beard could even be an asset. It's just everything happened so quickly. Left on his own in what he sees as an evil, pagan parish … The way he is now, everything's either black or white. Which is what Ma warned me about. Beware of black, she said, and beware of white.'

'Aye,' Willie said. 'But where's the black corning from?'

'Mr Beard thinks we're the black,' Milly said.

Ernie almost smiled. There she was in one of her endless wardrobe of floral dresses sitting on her flower-patterned sofa with her flower pictures on the walls, bundles of dried flowers and herbs dangling from the beams. She was life, she was colour. Flowers were all the children she'd never had.

Even if the flowers were wilting.

'You keep saying that,' Willie almost snapped. '"He's God, we're Satan". You're avoiding the bloody issue. There is bad here. Real bad. Ma saw it coming, and we all said, Ah, poor old woman's off her trolley. We ignored the signs. Look at that bloody tree as suddenly appears out on t'Moss. Did anybody really check that thing out?'

'I never go on the Moss,' Ernie admitted.

'No, you don't, Mr Dawber. You like t'rest of us - we can't turn it into allotments, so we ignore it. And when somebody like Matt comes back and he looks out there and he says, Thai's where we're from ... Well, we pat him on the back; we know he'll settle down. That's the trouble, see, we've all bloody settled down ... even the Mothers've settled down. This is not a place you can totally settle down, you've always got to keep an eye open and perhaps Ma was the last one who did.'

It's a balancing act, Ernie Dawber heard in his head, Ma nagging him again. Willie was right. Even this morning, going up to find Liz Horridge, he was telling her to go away, leave me alone, Ma, get off my back.

'I were out there,' Willie said, 't'other morning. Wi' t'dog. Young Benjie kept going on at me - "Oh, there's a dragon out there, Uncle Willie." "Nay," I said, "it's bog oak." But I went out t'ave a look, just to satisfy him, like. Dog come wi' me ... and he knew what it were about. And what did I do? I buggered off sharpish. I dint listen to t'dog and I made fun of Ma. I made fun of Ma over Matt's coffin and the witch bottle - scared stiff she'd ask me to do it. I dint mind helping pinch t'bogman back, bit of a lark, that were. But opening Matt's coffin ...'

Willie shuddered. 'Wimp,' he said. 'That's me.'

'She was right,' Milly said. 'Matt wasn't protected. We were putting him in as the Man's guardian. What use is a guardian without a sword?'

As usual, Ernie Dawber, schoolteacher, man of words, man of science, was floored by the exquisite logic of all this.

'Who ... was it?' he asked delicately. 'Who dug them up?'

Milly's sigh was full of despair, 'I can't begin to guess, Mr Dawber. So many signs. We could see them, but we couldn't see a pattern. I've been praying to the Mother for a pattern. Can't seem to get through, even to meself. It's like all the wires are crossed. Or there's a fog.'

'There's a fog in the church,' Willie said. 'They're making one. White fog. You can't get through because it's like all your lines of communication've been pulled down. The holy well, the church. Ma. It's like the white and the black have joined forces to crush us.'

'And what are we supposed to do?' There was no colour in Milly's cheeks. 'What can we do when we're so weakened, and we don't know who we're fighting or why?'

Ernie Dawber thought, So many sad, bewildered, frightened people. An invisible enemy. An ancient culture feebly fighting for its soul.

He noticed that all of Willie's fingers lay motionless on his knees.

'You know what I think,' Ernie said calmly, 'I think we need another sacrifice.'

CHAPTER IV

Milly Gill shifted on the sofa. It creaked.

'Eh?'

Ernie Dawber smiled in a resigned sort of way. He was sitting on a straight-backed chair, still wearing his old gaberdine mac, his hat on his knees.

'I don't know the story of the Man in the Moss,' he said, 'any more than anybody does. Some say he came all the way from Wales, or even Ireland. That he was sent as a sacrifice. Well, that seems likely, but we don't really know for certain why he was sacrificed.'

Willie said, 'I thought...' Then he shut up.

'Some historians speculate it was to keep the Romans at bay,' said Mr Dawber. 'But we don't know that. And in the end the Romans weren't so bad. They were a relatively civilized people. Bit stiff and starchy, like Joel Beard, but nowt wrong with them really. They taught us how to build proper roads and walls and useful things like that, but I like to think we taught them a lot as well.'

'We?' said Willie.

'The Celts. The earliest real civilization in Europe. Cultured, spiritual. Knew how to fight when it was needed, but not military like the Romans. The Celts never sought to impose order, only to recognise the order that existed around them. And the moods of nature and the atmosphere. "Shades of things," Ma said.'

'Aye,' said Willie, remembering. 'Shades of things.'

'Moderation,' said Mr Dawber. 'Equality. Respect for each other, nature, animals. For religions. A simple, logical philosophy and one I've tried to pass on to generations of schoolkids, just like my forefathers did. And do you know ...'

'Aye,' Willie said, it worked. It always worked. Kids leave school, bugger off to the cities, rebel against their parents and their parents' values and that. But there's summat about Bridelow. What we learned here, we didn't reject. I suppose ... 'cause it was so different. Radical, like, in its quiet way.'

'Little island, Willie. Sacred island of the Celts. Little island of moderation in an ocean of extremes. Takes some protecting that. A balancing act.'

Mr Dawber turned his hat round on his knees. He's nervous, Willie thought.

'I've written a new edition of The Book of Bridelow. What you might call the unexpurgated edition. Just for me own benefit really. Just to reason things out. You'll find it in a blue typing paper box on top of the big bookcase in my study.'

Willie said, 'Why're you telling us that?'

'Maybe it should be printed. Just one copy, to be kept in safekeeping, for posterity. As a reminder of how Bridelow was and why it was what it was. To look back on when everything's changed, when the outside world's absorbed us.'

Willie looked hard at the stately old chap, trying to remember what Mr Dawber had been like when he was young, when he'd taught him for four years. He couldn't.

He glanced at Milly, who was silent, pensive. 'Mr Dawber,' he said, 'why are you telling us now?'

'You see, that's the obvious explanation to me,' said Mr Dawber, looking down at his hat. 'That's what he died to save. Not to prevent anything as transient as another Roman invasion. He died to protect a way of life, a whole attitude. The Celtic way. Something worth dying for, don't you think?'

'Happen,' Willie said cautiously.

'I think I'd like to die for that,' said Mr Dawber.

Milly Gill leaned forward on the floral sofa and lifted one of his liver-spotted hands from his hat brim. 'What are you trying to say, Mr Dawber?'

The old chap said, 'Difficult times, lass. The outside's invading us. The White. The Black. Joel Beard. Gannons.'

'Yes,' Milly let go of his hand, 'it is an invasion. The worst kind. The kind you don't notice until it's on you.'

'You see, I don't quite know how it's done,' Mr Dawber said, matter-of-factly. 'I thought you might.'

'How what's done, Mr Dawber?'

'Why, the Triple Death, of course.'

'I don't like the way you're talking, Mr Dawber.'

'You see, I wouldn't like to cause any trouble for anybody. That is, I wouldn't like it to look like murder. So what I'll do is happen retire to the seaside. Health reasons. The owd chest's never been good. Got relatives in Bournemouth, you know.'

'Bournemouth,' Milly repeated.

'Aye, and nobody'll be interested enough to prove otherwise. I've packaged up the deeds and stuff, of the house, and I've left them with the manuscript, to go to Hans when he returns. With instructions that the house should be let, peppercorn rent, to somebody as needs one. Happen a new historian. Won't be called Dawber, but that wasn't much of a tradition, was it? Anyroad, I've tied things up very nicely, actually. I'll've gone. To the seaside.'

'Aye,' Willie said. 'You sound like you could use a holiday, Mr Dawber. Good long rest, eh?'

'I'll have that all right. In the Moss.'

Wearing a chilling half-smile, he carried on talking as if he couldn't see the pair of them staring at him, frozen.

'You know, when I first read the British Museum report it sounded quite horrific, but the more I thought about it ... Well, the garrotting bit and the cutting of the throat - that was mostly symbolic. He wouldn't have felt any of that because they'd have tapped him on the head first, you see.'

'Mr Dawber ...' Milly stood up. 'I can't believe what I'm hearing and I'll not have you talking like this in my house any more.'

I'm an owd man, Millicent. I've done me bit, had some good times.'

'And you'll have some more.'

'No.' He shook his head. 'There'll be no more good times for any of us, unless we do summat drastic. They've taken the Man in the Moss. This is far worse than the University or the British Museum taking him. He's gone to the dark. And it's All-Hallows. The Celtic New Year's Eve.'

'I know what day it is,' Milly snapped. 'I'm supposed to be a bloody witch. '

Time of change. Time to look back, store what's useful and important, discard the old stuff as isn't. Time when worlds overlap. Time to act. Sit down, Millicent.'

'Act?' Willie came aware of the power of the sheeting rain, could hear it smashing at the roof slates. A power surge brought a quiver to Milly's tulip-shaded standard lamp.

The lady bartender said, 'Stan, would you take over, I'm sorry,' and steered Mungo Macbeth into a back room, a big, chilly-looking kitchen.

'Who are you?' she demanded.

He told her his name again. He insisted he was a friend of Moira's. He repeated what he'd said in the bar, that he needed to talk to her. Urgently.

'She's not here. Why did you think she would be?'

The woman was good-looking with a strong face, but she also looked like she was carrying a lot of trouble, her eyes vibrant with anxiety. She crossed the flagged floor to a big iron stove and laid her hands on it.

Macbeth said, 'I didn't think she'd be here, specially. Not this inn. This was the first place I came to, is all. With lights on. After I crossed the bridge.'

'What bridge?'

'Over the water.'

'It's a bog,' she said, it's not water.'

'I'm a stranger. Never came this way before. I'm sorry if I seem ignorant, Mrs ...'

'Castle,' she said.

'Oh, Jesus,' Macbeth said, 'I guess that means you're Matt Castle's ...'

'Widow.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Why should you be?' she said sharply. 'You didn't know him, did you?'

All you could hear in the kitchen was the sound of rain splashing on the yard outside with the force of a broken fire-hydrant.

'No,' he said, 'I knew that Moira ... thought a lot about him.' Shit. What'd I walk into here?

'Yes.' She bit her lip. 'Look, the last I heard, Moira was staying at the Rectory.'

'I called the Rectory. There were quite a few people there. They said she was, uh, no longer around.'

'The Born Agains, that would be. What would they know? How far've you come?'

'From Glasgow.'

'Glasgow? You drove all the way down from Glasgow? In this? Well, Mr ... I'm sorry ...'

'Macbeth.'

'Yes. Well, I suppose it isn't too surprising. Quite a few blokes have done crazy things for Moira Cairns.' A faint smile penetrated the anxiety. 'Look, we'll make some phone calls, shall we? See if we can find out where she is. There's a chap called Willie Wagstaff who might just know. It's funny he's not in tonight, actually. I'll give him a ring.'

'You're very kind. I'm sorry. I just had no idea who you were.'

'That's all right.'

'Is this your inn? What I mean is, you, uh ...'

'Do you need somewhere to stay tonight, Mr Macbeth?'

She gave him a look that was almost a plea.

'I guess I do,' he said. 'You have a room?'

'Yes,' she said gratefully, 'I have a room.'

'I've spent the last couple of days studying and thinking,' Mr Dawber said. 'In the end, you see, I'm a man of logic.'

Christ, Willie thought, preserve us from logic

'Bridelow's is a peculiar logic, but logic it is. But our grasp of it has been gradually weakened.'

'Can't build a wall,' Willie said. 'Can't keep the modern world out for ever.'

'We did have a wall,' Milly said despondently. 'But I don't think I was cut out to be a brickie.'

Willie longed to give her a cuddle. For his benefit as much as hers. Longed to build up the fire, with crackling logs to block out the rain. His kind of wall. He thought about Joel Beard and his born-again mob, exulting and singing in tongues in the dying church: their kind of wall.

Mr Dawber picked up Milly's chubby hand and held it. 'Tonight, lass. If this wall finally comes down, it'll most likely be tonight, because somebody has the Man and they'll use him for evil. And that'll finish it.'

Old bugger's spent more than a couple of days on this, Willie thought. Ma's been schooling him. They're looking for openings. Looking for cracks in the wall. Been gathering out there for years, hundreds of years.

Mr Dawber looked steadily at Milly. 'You've got to replace the Man, my dear.'

'Her?' Willie spluttered. 'She has?'

'Ma would have taken charge, but sadly, she's not here. Which puts you in the firing line, Millicent, I'm afraid, and you've got to be strong. You're a big girl, if you don't mind me saying so. Big enough to wield the knife.'

Milly screamed and dragged her hand away.

Mr Dawber said, 'I know it'll hurt you more than it hurts me, and I'm sorry, I really am, lass.'

He stood up and straightened out the skirts of his mac. 'When I said I didn't go out on the Moss any more, I wasn't being strictly truthful. I spent a lot of time out there last summer after the Man was found, working out where he lay in relation to the village and also in relation to the path marked out by the Beacon of the Moss. Result is, I know just the place to do it.'

'Nay,' Willie said. 'Moss'll have shifted. Besides, there were no beacon in them days.'

'You mean there was no church clock. The beacon was a real beacon on the hill where the church now stands. And the Moss was more like a lake. Water to reflect the light.'

Willie stood up. 'Look, Mr Dawber, we'll forget you ever sad all this if you will.'

Mr Dawber put on his hat. 'I'll leave you two for a bit. Perhaps you might summon the Mothers, what's left of them as are well enough to come out on a night like this, and have a chat about it.'

"Hey, come on,' Willie said. 'Get some sleep, Mr Dawber. We'll see you tomorrow, have a proper chat. All right?'

'No, I'll not sleep. I've a few things to sort out. Few private things to burn. Letters and such.' He looked at his watch, it's ten to nine now. I'll be back for you soon after eleven.'

Milly shrank away from him. 'Mr Dawber, you don't seriously ...'

'I do,' he said sternly. 'And it's got to be tonight. Tonight has the power. The word is Samhain, Millicent, although I realise the Mothers have gradually dropped the old terminology. And on a practical level, the Moss is swollen with rain; when it goes down, things will be absorbed again, taken in.'

'Mr Dawber,' Milly Gill whispered, 'don't do this to me. Please.'

'Perhaps, before I return, something'll have happened this night to make you see the sense of it. Ma dead? That young lad up on the moors? How many do you want? Where, for instance, is ... ?' He pulled down his hat. 'Never mind.'

He turned round at the door, and a broad smile was channelled through the wrinkles, from the corners of his mouth to his eyes, and his face lit up like a Christmas tree.

'I'm not unhappy, tha knows. Be a lovely thing.'

Mr Dawber turned the key in the double lock and unbolted the front door to the fierce rain and the night.

CHAPTER V

'You been there before? The house?'

'Mmmm.'

' I suppose,' Chrissie said, 'I should be flattered. It's possibly our first official date.'

'What did you say?' His eyes flicking over to her then back to the road, quick as the windscreen wipers.

'You haven't been listening to anything I've been saying, have you?'

'Of course I have.'

'Doesn't matter. You're obviously preoccupied.'

She hadn't wanted to come with him anyway, being actually in the process of trying to lose his attentions without losing her job. Even if he had been comparatively spectacular in bed of late.

'Did you say something about a date?'

'I said it was possibly our first official one. Where we're actually seen together without a collapsible coffin between us. I was being flippant, Roger.'

'You're here as my assistant,' he said coldly.

'Oh, thanks very much. You'll be paying me, then.'

Actually, there was no real need to be especially nice to him. No way he could get her fired, knowing what she knew about him and his dealings behind the scenes with the man they were going to meet.

'What a bloody awful night,' she said. Now they were up in the hills it was coming down so hard the wipers could hardly keep up. 'I wonder what witches do when it's pissing down.'

'What?' Almost a croak.

'Witches.'

'What about witches?'

'It's Hallowe'en. I was wondering what witches do when it's raining this hard. Whether they call it off. Or do it in the sitting room. Can't dance naked in this, can you? Well, I suppose you could. You're on a pretty short fuse tonight, Roger.'

'No, 'I'm not,' he snapped.

'Why don't you just tell me what's bothering you. Apart from the usual, of course.'

He didn't reply.

Sod this, Chrissie thought. 'Anyway, it was my understanding that your friend John Peveril Stanage lived in Buxton or somewhere. Why, pray tell, is he holding his Hallowe'en party in Bridelow?'

'Look.' It was too dark to see but she could tell his hands were throttling the steering-wheel. 'It's not a party. It's just a gathering. A few drinks and ... a few drinks.'

'But not a party.' She was starting almost to enjoy this.

'And the reason it's In Bridelow ... the Bridelow Brewery's been bought by Gannons Ales, right? And it now emerges that Stanage has been a major Gannons shareholder for some years and recently increased his holding, oh ... substantially. Is now, in fact, about to become Chairman of the Board.'

'I suppose he's got to do something with all his book royalties and things. Apart from setting up bogman museums.'

Roger didn't rise to it, kept on looking at the road, what you could hope to see of it. 'Seems Shaw Horridge - that's the son of the original brewery family - is about to become engaged to Stanage's niece. They own Bridelow Hall. Which is where we're going.'

'I'll probably be underdressed,' Chrissie said, putting on a posh voice, 'for Braidelow Hawl.'

If it was that innocuous, why was Roger so nervy?

'Where's your wife tonight?'

'Working.'

'How are things generally?'

'So-so.'

'Everything all right in bed these days?'

'Chrissie, for Chr—' He hurled the car into low gear and raced up a dark, twisty hill.

'No clammy, peaty feelings any more?'

'What the hell's the matter with you tonight?'

'What's the matter with you?'

When they crested the hill she saw a strange blue moon. 'What on earth's that?'

'It's the Beacon of the Moss,' Roger said in a voice that was suddenly tired. 'Look, I'm sorry. Sorry I ever got committed to Stanage. I admit I'm in too deep, all right?'

She saw the bog below them. In the headlights it looked like very burned rice-pudding.

'It's as though he owns a piece of me,' Roger said. 'Bought me just as surely as he's bought Gannons Ales. I mean, last weekend, when I went to London ... Chrissie, I didn't go to London. I was at Stanage's place.'

'In Buxton?'

'In Buxton, yes. That's where ... Look, I'm a scholar, an academic, not religious, not impressionable. I'm basically a very sceptical person, you know that.'

Chrissie stifled it. 'Absolutely.' She allowed herself a deep, deep breath. 'But tell me this: who gave the bogman a penis?'

Roger slowed down for the causeway across the Moss. He seemed to slump on the wheel; she could have sworn she actually heard him gulp.

'I did.'

Ha!

'I used a piece of gut, what they thought was part of the duodenum.' He sounded relieved to be telling someone. 'Moulded with peat and something Stanage gave me ... a ... a stiffening agent.'

How ridiculously sleazy it sounded. Hadn't done much laughing, though, had she, when she saw the thing lying there projecting its bloody great menacing cock into the lights?

Actually, it was pretty sick.

They set off very slowly across the causeway. It seemed to be raining harder than ever here.

'Why?' she said. As if she really didn't know. Scholar. Academic. Sceptic. Not impressionable. Ha.

'He insisted it'd ... you know ... do the trick. Said I'd obviously become very close to the bogman, and the bogman had - this sounds very stupid - power. And I should use it.'

'You didn't laugh in his face because you needed him.'

'No! I didn't laugh because ... because he isn't a man you can laugh at. You'll know what I mean when you meet him. Look, do you really think I'd go discussing my private difficulties with ... well, with anyone? I mean, my bloody wife's a doctor, and I couldn't talk to her about it. Of course, I did think things would be different with you.'

'Because I was a bit of a slag, I suppose. And not very bright in comparison with Doctor Mrs Hall. And because I was impressed with this big glamorous archaeologist who was on telly a lot, and flattered.'

'No, of course not, what do you think I... ?'

'Stick to honesty, Roger, you were doing very well. So you discussed your little ... problem with Mr Stanage.'

'I didn't intend to. Well, obviously. He just seemed to know. He looked at me ... into me, almost. Smiling faintly. As if he'd decided to find something out about me that I didn't want him to know. And then he said, "Try something for me, would you?" Sympathetic magic, he called it. I knew if I didn't give it a go, he'd know somehow. And if anyone saw it, I'd just blame the students. But then ...'

'But then it started to work,' Chrissie said. Or something did. Probably the power of suggestion.

'As you know,' he said.

'You must have been half-dismissive and half-elated. And half-frightened, I suppose. I know that's three halves, but I'm not very bright, as we established. God almighty, Roger, what

have you got yourself into?'

'He's ... a strange man. His knowledge is very extensive indeed. But, yes, there is something I can't say I like.'

'Some of his books are very weird, Roger.'

'I haven't read his bloody books.'

'You should.'

'Just keep your mouth shut when we're there, that's all.'

'At the party?'

'It's not. . :'

'What is it, then?'

Roger drove up off the causeway, past the entrance to the big stone pub, The Man I'th Moss, and into the main village street. Halfway up the street, greasy light seeped out of a fish and chip shop, but it seemed to have no customers; not surprising in this weather. The blue moon turned out to be shining out of the church wall - must be a clock with a face each side of the steeple. But no hands, no numerals. How strange.

The clock lit up the inside of the car and Roger's bearded face. Chrissie began to feel uneasy.

'Come on, then, Roger.' As if the blue clock was lighting him up for interrogation. 'What else are you hiding?'

'Yes.' He turned right before the church, back into darkness. 'I'll tell you. Stanage says he can get the body back.'

'Oh, yes. Who from?'

'I don't know.'

'How?'

'I don't know.'

'What do you know?'

'He says we should all get together, those of us who've been close to him.'

'Him?'

'Him.'

Chrissie lit a cigarette. 'Turn 'round,' she said.

'What?'

'Turn the fucking car 'round, Roger, I'm not having anything to do with this.'

He stopped the car abruptly in the narrow road and it skidded into the kerb. The rain drummed violently on the roof and splashed the dark windows. It was savage and relentless, like a thrashing from God.

'Chrissie, please ...'

She blew smoke in his face.

He choked back a cough. 'Chrissie, I don't want to go on my own.'

'Grow up, Roger.'

'Listen, I'm just a little bit scared too, can't help it. If only for my ... for my reputation.'

'Well, naturally.'

'But I can't not go, can I? And say goodbye to everything … make him, you know ...'

'Make him what?'

'Angry,' he said pathetically.

She couldn't see his face; she didn't want to. She gritted her teeth. 'Turn it 'round, I said.'

Lay off, eh, Frank?'

'I wanna know. Come on, he can't just fucking show up, middle of the night, and not tell us why. Don't want no more fucking mysteries in this place. Had it up to here with fucking mysteries.'

'Go home, Frank, you've had too many.'

'Too many what? Listen, fart-face, you're not my fucking foreman no more. Not your pub, neither. What's your name, mate?'

Macbeth had had too many bad experiences of telling his name to guys in bars. 'Kansas,' he said. 'Jim Kansas.'

'... kind of fucking name's that?'

'Frank, if you don't go home …'

'Aye? Go on. Finish sentence, Stan. What you goin' do if I don't go?'

'I shall pick up that big bottle of Long John,' said Mrs Lottie Castle, appearing in the doorway, 'and I'll use it to bash out all of your front teeth, Frank Manifold. That's for starters.

Out!'

'It's raining,' Young Frank said.

And he giggled. But he went.

Macbeth started to breathe again.

'Sorry,' the barman Stan said to him. 'Everybody seems to be on edge tonight.' The other guys in the bar were draining their glasses, coming to their feet. 'We'll leave you to it, Lottie, I think. Shut the place, I would. You'll get no more custom tonight. Not in this.'

Now Stan looked meaningfully at Macbeth. Lottie said, 'He's staying.' Stan nodded dubiously and didn't move. 'He's an old friend of Matt's,' Lottie said. 'Couldn't make it for the funeral.'

'Right.' Stan accepted this and shrugged into his overcoat. 'Night then, Lottie. Good night, Mr Kansas.'

Macbeth was curious. This woman didn't know him from Bill Clinton and here she was letting her regular customers and the help go and him stay the night. Normal way of things, the woman being a widow, this would've been no big surprise, he had to admit. But she was a very recent widow. Also, she didn't seem to have even noticed what he looked like.

She looked tired. Drained. Eyes swollen. She dragged out a weary smile.

'Mr ... Mungo. I've located Willie Wagstaff. He doesn't know where Moira is, but he says he doesn't mind talking to you if you don't keep him too long. He's at his girlfriend's - that's the Post Office. About a hundred yards up the street, same side.'

'Right. Uh, what did you ... ?'

'I told him I thought you were all right. I hope you are.'

Macbeth said, 'Mrs Castle, what's going on here? Just why is everybody on edge? Who're all these people at the Rectory?'

'Ask Willie,' she said. 'And just so you know, he used to play the drums in Matt's band, so he's known Moira a long time. Do you want to borrow an umbrella?'

'Thanks, I have a slicker in back of the car. What if I'm late?'

'I'll still be up,' Lottie Castle said. 'Whatever time it is. Just hammer on the door.'

Lottie bolted the door behind him, top and bottom. Then she went through to the back door and secured that too.

She put on some coffee, partly to combat the rain noise with the warm pop-pop-pop of the percolator.

Earlier she'd pulled through a three-seater sofa from the living room that never got lived in. There was a duvet rolled up on the sofa.

Tonight's bed. Would have been, if she'd been alone in the pub. She'd put the American in Bedroom Three, the one Dic used when he was here. Soon as he'd left yesterday she'd changed the bedding, aired the room. It was just across the passage from her own.

Were bad dreams somehow stopped at source when you were no longer alone in the building?

That, of course, would depend on whether they were dreams.

On the refectory table was a local paper with the phone numbers of two estate agents ringed, the ones that specialised in commercial properties. Give that a try first, see if anyone was interested in a loss-making pub, before resorting to the domestic market.

Former village inn. Full of character. Dramatic rural location. Reduced for quick sale.

Well, did she have a choice? Was there any kind of alternative?

Lottie poured coffee, strong but with a little cream which she left unstirred, thin, white circles on the dark surface, because black coffee was apt to make her think of the Moss.

She left the cup steaming on the table, stood in the centre of the room for a moment with her sleeves pushed up and her hands on her hips.

'Matt,' she said, 'you know I didn't want to come, but I didn't complain. I supported you. I gave up my lovely home.'

Strange, but all the time he was dying he never once allowed a discussion to develop about her future. But then, they never actually talked about him dying; just, occasionally, about him being ill. And he obviously wasn't afraid; he was just - amazing when you thought about it - too preoccupied.

'You were always a selfish bastard, Matt,' she said.

Standing on the flags, hands on hips, giving him a lecture.

Don't see why I should feel ashamed, do you?'

Feeling not so unhappy, because there was someone to wait up for.

She left on a wall-lamp in the kitchen, went through to the bar, leaving the door ajar. Switched the lights off one by one at the panel beside the mirror, leaving until last the disused brass gas-mantle which Matt had electrified.

The porch-light would stay on all night, gilding the rippling rain on the window. Lottie moved out into the darkened, stone-walled bar, collecting the ashtrays for emptying.

Wondering what Willie would make of the American with the silly name who'd driven down from Glasgow on the wettest Sunday of the year to find Moira Cairns.

Matt would have done that. Matt would have killed for Moira, and there was a time when she would have killed Moira because of it, but it didn't seem to matter any more.

When the gaslight came back on behind the bar, Lottie dropped all the ashtrays with a clatter of tin.

The gas mantle was fitted with on electric bulb under the little gauzy knob thing and it looked fairly realistic. Or so she'd thought because she'd never seen the original gas.

Until now.

Oh, yes. This was gas, being softer, more diffused; she almost felt she could hear a hiss. Did they hiss? Or was that Matt?

Matt, whose face shone from the mirror behind the bar, enshrouded in gaslight.

Lottie stood with her back to the far stone wall. Her hands found her hips. Against which, untypically, they trembled.

She said, very quietly, 'Oh, no.'

Ernie Dawber knew that if he allowed himself to think about this, he would at once realise the fundamental insanity of the whole business.

He would see 'sense'.

But Bridelow folk had traditionally answered to laws unperceived elsewhere. Therefore it was not insane, and it required another kind of sense which could never be called 'common'.

So he simply didn't think about it at all, but did the usual things he would do at this time of night: cleaned his shoes, tidied his desk - leaving certain papers, however, in quite a prominent position.

Love letters, they were, from a woman magistrate in Glossop with whom Ernie had dallied a while during a bad patch in his marriage some thirty years ago. He'd decided not to burn them. After all, his wife had known and the woman was dead now; why not make one little bequest to the village gossips?

In the letter he was leaving for Hans, he'd written: 'Let the vultures in, why not? Let them pick over my bones - but discreetly. Let it be so that nothing of me exists except a name on the cover of The Book of Bridelow:

Suddenly, he felt absurdly happy. He was going on holiday,

He made himself a cup of tea and set out a plate of biscuits, wondering what archaeologists two thousand years hence might have made of this:

The stomach yielded the digested remains of a compressed fruit not indigenous to the area but which may have constituted the filling for what nutritional documents of the period tell us were called 'fig rolls'.

He chuckled, ate two biscuits, drank his tea and sat back in his study chair, both feet on his footstool. He did not allow himself to contemplate the kind of knife which might be used to cut his throat or the type of cord employed for the garrotting or whether the blow to the back of his head would be delivered with a carpenter's mallet or a pickaxe handle.

But feeling that he should at least be aware of what had happened on this particular day in the world he was leaving he switched on the radio for the ten o'clock news.

Not such a bad time to be leaving. Chaos behind what used to be the Iron Curtain, more hatred between European nations than there'd been since the war. A psychopath killing little girls the West Country.

But then, at the end of the national news, this:

Police who earlier today found the body of a man after a

nine-hour search of the South Pennine moors say they've

now discovered a woman's body, less than a mile away, in

the burned-out wreckage of a car.

However, they say there appears to be no link between

the two deaths. The first body, found in a quarry, has now been

formally identified as a 27 year-old farmer, Peter Samuel Davis.

The woman's body, not yet identified, was badly burned

after the car, a BMW saloon, apparently left the road in wet

conditions, plunged over a hundred feet into a valley bottom

and burst into flames.

Ernie switched off the radio, his fingers numb, picked up his telephone and rang the Post Office.

Perhaps, before I return, something'll have happened this night to make you see the sense of it.

Sense, he thought, feeling cold all of a sudden. It's all gone beyond sense.

CHAPTER VI

Chrissie shrieked, 'Come on, come on, come on!' and beat with both fists on the door until it shook.

She was wearing a short mac said to be showerproof, but that depended what you meant by shower and she'd taken no more than two minutes to run like hell down the street and she was panting and absolutely bloody soaked.

When the door opened, Chrissie practically fell inside. 'God!' Shaking water out of her hair.

Expecting glasses chinking, laughter, maybe the clunk-ding of a one-armed bandit. Certainly not silence and dimness and a red-haired woman with lips drawn tautly back and pain-filled, frozen eyes.

'I'm sorry ... I mean, this is a pub, isn't it? You're still open aren't you? I mean if you're not, I only want to use the phone. To call a taxi.'

'Box,' the woman said in a strangled whisper, as if she had a throat infection. 'Up the street.'

'Yes, I know, but I've no change, I... excuse me, but are you all right?'

'Really don't know. Better come in.'

'Thanks. God, what a night.'

'Car …' The woman cleared her throat. 'Excuse me. Your car broke down?'

'Actually, I had a row with my boss ... boyfriend. Well, not either after tonight. I just got out of his car and walked off. Well, ran off, with this weather, I mean, isn't it awful? I'm making a puddle on your floor. Sorry.'

When she'd rubbed the rain out of her eyes, Chrissie saw she was indeed it what seemed to be a public bar. Nobody here, apart from her and the woman. 'Hey, I'm sorry. I really thought you were open and the door had just jammed or something and... You're really not well, are you?'

The woman had her back to the bar which was dark, only the shapes of bottles gleaming. 'Can you ...' She gripped the edge of a table as if to steady her voice. 'Excuse me, but can you see a light-fitting, like an old gas-mantle, side of the bar?'

'Er,... yes. Yes, I think so.'

'Is at on?'

'Well, no.' Could she be blind?

Then the woman just son of folded in on herself as if afflicted by some awful stomach cramp or period pain, and Chrissie' s brain dried out quickly. The Man I'th Moss. This was Matt Castle's wife. 'Hey,' she said, 'come on, sit yourself down. You on your own?'

Mrs Castle nodded and Chrissie led her to a corner seat opposite the bar and bent down to her. 'Make you a cuppa tea?'

She shook her head. 'I've got coffee. I'm OK. Honestly, Just a shock. I've had a shock.'

'Can I send for anybody? Relatives? A doctor?'

'Please,' Mrs Castle said. 'Just don't go, that's all. Come through. Phone's in the kitchen.' She got up and walked to the bar, and when she reached it a tremor seemed to pass through her and she pushed quickly through a door in the back wall.

Chrissie followed her into a big farmhouse-type kitchen, taking off her sodden mac and tossing it into a corner, useless thing. Underneath, she was wearing her navy-blue suit over a light blue silk blouse and pearls. Classy and understated for John Peveril Stanage's soiree, she thought with a sardonic shudder.

'Just keep talking." Mrs Castle said. 'I'll be all right in a minute.' She was wearing a big, sloppy Icelandic-type sweater, but she still looked almost blue with cold and she hunched herself over the stove. Chrissie went and stood next to her and folded her arms.

'Well, this chap I was with, called Roger. Married, of course. I'm his bit on the side, except that's not as frivolous or irresponsible as it sounds, for either of us ... well, it never is, is it, really?'

Mrs Castle was just looking into space. There was a full coffee cup on the table, but the coffee had gone cold, a whirl of cream almost solid on the top like piped icing.

'Roger's a prat,' Chrissie said. 'There's no getting around that. He's got a terrific opinion of himself and yet at the same time he's obviously a bit intimidated by his wife - she's a doctor. He wanted something else, less demanding. Which was me. One slightly shop soiled divorcee off the bottom shelf - flattering, eh? High powered wife, so he's looking for something cosy and undemanding and, worst of all, a bit cheap, you know what I mean?'

Mrs Castle nodded and struggled to smile, a little bit of colour in her cheeks. She was actually very attractive, good bones.

'I mean, you talk about undemanding, he didn't even have to go anywhere to pick me up. We work in the same office, I'm his secretary-cum-personal assistant - soon found out what that meant.'

Realising she'd never talked to anybody about her and Roger before. Maybe this could turn out to be unexpectedly therapeutic.

'But at the end of the day,' Chrissie went on, 'his biggest love - I mean, listen to this - his biggest love, who's far more important to Roger than cither me or his wife - is a squidgy little brown man who's been dead about two thousand years and came out of a bog. Now, can you ...? Ow!'

A kind of mad revulsion in her eyes, Mrs Castle had suddenly swung round from the stove, grabbed hold of Chrissie's wrist and was digging her nails into it.

As if, Chrissie thought, pulling away, cold, to make sure I'm actually flesh and blood.

'I tell you what, Mrs Castle. I reckon you're the one who would benefit from talking about it.'

'Where are we going exactly?'

'Rog, mustn't be so anxious, m'friend! Mind holding the umbrella? Oops! Two hands, please, or you'll lose it.'

Huge golf umbrella; anything else would have been turned inside out by the sheer force of the downpour. Hard, vertical, brutal rain.

'There, that's stopped 'em from dithering.'

'I wasn't d—'

'Surrounded by ditherers. Don't worry, I like 'em. Shaw used to be a ditherer, didn't you, Shaw? Ditherer, stammerer, cowardly little bastard. Fixed it, though, didn't we? Fixed everything. Right, then, if we're all ready, in we go. Been here before, Rog?'

Darkness. Cold.

'Never. Pretty chilly, isn't it?'

'Chilly? This? Hear that. Tess? Poor Roger thinks it's chilly This is Tess, my niece, aren't you, darling? And what shall we say about these others? What they are is a bunch of unfortunates befriended by the lass, she's so ... good ... hearted.'

'Uncle, please ...'

'Apologies, my love. Yes, up the stairs is where we go. Onwards and upwards. Into the Attic of Death, do you like that?

'Not really.'

'Relax, relax. Relaxation. The key to everything, Shaw knows that, don't you, m'boy? Up again. Ought to be a lift, be totally cream-crackered, time we get there. How you feeling now, Rog?'

'A touch light-headed, now, actually. How many drinks did I have, I can't...'

'Just the one, Roger, just the one. Famous for our cocktails aren't we, Tess?'

'What's that smell?'

'New one on you, is it, Rog? What a terribly sheltered life you must have had, m'boy.'

'Oh, dear God.'

'Ah, now, let's not bring that chap into it, Roger.'

'I'm going to be sick.'

'No you're not, you're going to get used to it. No time at all. Now relax, the dead can't harm you.'

Don't look at it, don't look at it, don't . . . Oh, Lord, what's happening to my head?

'No, actually. I'm lying again. That's a common myth perpetuated by morticians. You're quite right, the dead can indeed harm you, in the most unexpected ways. The dead can harm you horribly.'

Laughter. Laughter all around.

By the time Macbeth walked into the room behind the Post Office the sense of there being something deeply wrong at this rain-beaten village - everybody seems to be on edge tonight - had become so real it was starting to affect the air; the atmosphere itself seemed thin and worn and stretched tight like plastic film, and faces were pressed up against it trying to breathe.

Two faces. One chubby and female that ought to have looked healthy and a small, male face under a brown fringe, a face out of Wind in the Willows or somesuch.

Both faces pressed up against the tight air of a small and crowded room full of flower pictures, flower fabrics and flowers.

Macbeth finding it hard to introduce himself. 'I, uh …' Harder still to explain what he was doing here. 'Mrs Castle - Lottie, right? - thought maybe you could tell me where I could find a ... a friend of mine.'

'Aye,' the little guy said. 'Look, can I ask you, how close were you to Moira, lad?' A slow, kindly voice, but Macbeth felt the damp behind it.

'I guess I'd like to be closer,' he said frankly.

Rain from his black slicker dripping to the floral carpet.

Rain making deltas on the window and small pools on the sill.

Rain coming down the chimney and fizzing on the coal fire.

And yet all the flowers in the room - on the walls, in the pictures, on the woman's dress - contriving to look parched and dead.

The woman said bleakly 'Since Willie spoke to Lottie we've had a phone call.'

'Moira?'

The woman's wise eyes were heavy with a controlled kind of sorrow.

A hammer inside Macbeths head beat out no, no, no.

'Sit down, lad,' the little mousy guy said, pulling a chair out from under a gate-legged mahogany dining table. On the table was a bottle of whisky, it's seal newly broken; beside it, two glasses.

'Well, of course I don't believe in it, you see, Chrissie. I never have. All right, maybe it's not a question of not believing. I mean, is there a name for a person who just simply doesn't want to know?'

Chrissie warmed both hands around her coffee cup. 'For that matter, is there a name for a man who professes to be above all that superstitious nonsense but is more than happy to let it cure his impotence, and then he can go back to not believing in it again?'

'I think "bloody hypocrite" might be one way of putting it.' Lottie said. 'But …'

'But tonight... God, am I really saying this? Tonight you saw the ghost of your husband.' Chrissie shuddered; it really did go all the way up your spine. 'Wasn't going to use that word. Never liked it.'

'Ghost?'

'What does it mean, Lottie? Was he really there? I mean his …?'

'Spirit? Was his spirit there?' Lottie's voice rose, discordant like a cracked bell. 'Yes. I think it was. And crushed. His spirit crushed.'

She thrust a fist to her mouth, swallowing a sob, chewing her knuckles.

'Let it come,' Chrissie said, and Lottie wept some hot, frightened tears. 'Yes, he was a man of spirit, always ... endless enthusiasm for things, what first attracted me. But there's a negative side to enthusiasm, isn't there?'

'Ob ... session?'

Lottie sniffed. 'First there was the woman. Moira. Not only beautiful, but young and - worst of all, worst of all, Chrissie - talented. The thing I couldn't give him. Support, yes. But inspiration ... ?'

'You're beautiful too,' Chrissie said ineffectually.

'Thanks,' Lottie said. 'Was. Maybe. In the right light. Doesn't mean a lot on its own, though, does it? Don't get me wrong, it never ... flowered, this thing over Moira. They never actually did it. I know that now. But I think that's worse in a way, don't you? I mean, the longing goes on, doesn't it? The wondering what it might have been. Maybe I should have let him work it out, but I gave him an ultimatum: her or me and his son, Dic. He'd have lost Dic, too. It coincided, all this, you see, with an offer she got to join another band. He made her take it. It was "the right thing to do".'

'Martyrdom,' Chrissie said.

'He didn't get over her exactly. He just went in search of a new obsession and ended up reviving an old one. Which was coming back to Bridelow. Not my idea of heaven on earth.'

'Not tonight anyway,' Chrissie said, looking over to the window. It was like staring into a dark fish tank.

'Naturally, I encouraged him. Sent him up here at weekends with Dic and a picnic lunch. Safe enough - I just didn't think it would ever happen. Then they found that blasted bog body and he just went nuts over it. Kept going to see the damn thing, like visiting a relative in hospital or prison or somewhere. Next thing, he hears the brewery's been flogged off and this place is on the market, and I was just carried along, like a whirlwind picks you up and you come down somewhere else you never wanted to be.'

Lottie stopped, as if realising there was little more to be said. 'And then he got ill and died.'

She nodded at the door to the bar. 'That gas-mantle. He worked for hours on it. Place was a tip, plastering needed doing, but all he was bothered about was his precious gas-mantle. Bit of atmosphere. Matt all over: tunnel vision.'

'I read once ...' Chrissie hesitated. 'An article in some magazine at the dentist's. This chap said there were certain things they came back to. Gh ... dead people ... Christ, that sounds even worse. Anyway, things they'd been attracted to in life.'

'Aye. Makes sense he'd come back to his bloody gaslight, rather than me.'

'I didn't mean it that way. Sort of landmark for them to home in on. Like a light in the fog. You could always have it taken down.'

'He'd go daft. He'd hold it against me for ever.'

'What did he look like? His old self, or what?'

'He looked terrible.' Lottie started to cry again. Why can't you ever learn to button it, kid? Chrissie told herself.

'It was very misty,' Lottie said through a crumpled handkerchief. 'He kept fading and then ... like a bad TV picture in the old days, remember? As if - I suppose your chap was right - as if he was trying to hold on to his old gas-mantle, for comfort, and something was trying to pull him back.'

'Back where?'

'Into the darkness behind the mirror. He couldn't see me, I'm sure he couldn't see me at all. Am I going mad, Chrissie?'

'No more than any of us. Do you want me to stay with you tonight? I've nowhere else to go.'

Lottie's hands clutched each other, began to vibrate. She's wringing her hands, Chrissie thought. I've never seen anybody actually wring their hands before.

'The truth is,' Lottie said, 'I hated him by the end. There was nothing left but the negative side. No enthusiasm, only obsession. He was, when it comes down to it, a very nasty man.'

Lottie stared into her empty coffee cup as if trying to read a message in the grains. 'But he was also dying, you see, and you aren't allowed to hate dying people, especially if the nastiness is to some extent out of character and therefore, you think, must be connected with the dying.'

Chrissie lit another cigarette. 'When my mother was dying, towards the end, I wanted it to be over. For her sake. But, if I'm honest, partly for my sake too.'

'I don't think we're talking about the same thing, luv. Christ almighty ...' Lottie covered her ears - '... isn't that bloody rain ever going to stop?'

'Listen to me,' Chrissie said. 'When you thought... when you saw this ... when he was in the mirror, tonight ... did, you hate him then?'

'No. I felt sorry for him. Don't get me wrong, I was very frightened, but at the bottom of that there was a pity. It was the gas-mantle. Putting that together, wiring it up, was about the only innocent, gentle thing he did here. I was irritated at the time, but when I look back ... It's the only thing makes me want to cry for rum.'

Chrissie stood up. 'I don't know why, but I think we should put it on. The light, I mean. The gas thing.'

'Why?'

'Because if that represents the nice, harmless side of him, perhaps you should show him you recognise that. I don't know, maybe it's stupid. But perhaps he wants your forgiveness, perhaps he wants to know you remember that side of him. The good side. So maybe, if you gave him a sign that you understood, then he ... he'd be ... you know ... at peace. Isn't that what they say?'

'Who?'

Chrissie shrugged. 'Old wives, I suppose.'

'Old mothers in this village. OK.' Lottie came wearily to her feet. 'Let's try it.'

'Might make you feel better.'

'Might, at that.'

They went through to the darkened bar and Chrissie lifted the flap and went round to the customers' side, so they were standing either side of the brass mantle. In the arrow of light from the kitchen, she could see it was on a hinged base screwed into the wooden frame of the bar and projecting about eighteen inches. Behind it, on Lottie's side, was the mirror in a Victorian mahogany frame. Chrissie made herself gaze into the mirror and saw only her own dim reflection, looking rather pale and solemn.

'Perhaps we could say a prayer, Lottie.'

'No, thanks,' Lottie said.

'Well, at least think of him as you press the switch. Think of the good times.'

'My memory isn't what it was,' said Lottie. 'No, I'm sorry. You're doing your best. All right. Matt, listen, if you can hear me …'

At the end of the gas-mantle a feeble glow appeared.

'Switch it off a second, Lottie. Let's get this right.'

'I didn't …' Lottie said, in a voice which rose in pitch until it cracked. '…switch it on.'

'Merciful God,' Chrissie pulled from somewhere in her past, 'please…'

The small light at once flare to a dazzling, magnesium white. Huge shadows reared. Lottie screamed once and backed off into the kitchen.

When the bulb exploded, with a crack like snapping bone, Chrissie found herself at the far end of the bar trying to hug the stone wall.

CHAPTER VII

'Listen,' Macbeth said, clutching Milly's plump arm, 'let me call the cops. Maybe it wasn't her car.'

'Don't make it worse, lad,' Willie Wagstaff said, his eyes hollowed out with grief. 'I've already been on to um. I said me wife were out in a BMW and I were worried sick after hearing the news. I didn't want to get involved in identification or owt, so in the end I said the wife's car were red and they said this one was grey - had been grey - and give me the registration, and I went off, sounding relieved. Relieved. Jesus.'

'I don't understand.' Macbeth stared desperately around the room. 'These things don't happen. I just don't fucking understand.'

'They do happen,' Willie said hopelessly.

'Especially here.' Milly was looking hard into the fire. 'Especially now.'

'Shurrup,' said Willie gruffly. 'How far you come, lad?'

'Glasgow.' The One Big Thing, he thought. God damn. And closed his eyes against the pain.

'She was special,' Willie said. 'We all knew that.'

'Yeah,' he whispered.

'Special like your mother,' Milly said. 'I think we knew that too. And now they're both dead.'

'Leave it, luv. It's coincidence.'

'Is it?'

Macbeth opened his eyes. Something badly wrong here, but did he care? And what could he do anyway? One week. Before that, Moira Cairns had been a face on an old album cover.

One week. A chance meeting, an inexplicable cascade of bones, a talk on the terrace in the aftermath.

There'd be another album now. The Best of Moira Cairns. In memoriam. Even if he'd never met her, he'd be grieving. In one week, she'd become the core of his existence - a woman whose last glance at him had said, fuck off.

'There was a guy,' he heard himself saying, 'who meant her harm.'

Donald told me the dogs disliked this man intensely. On sight.

Willie Wagstaff and his girlfriend were both staring at him.

'The Duchess wanted me to look out for her, you know? The Duchess said wherever she went she'd be ... touched with madness.'

'Who's the Duchess?' Willie asked. Macbeth noticed that the fingers of Willie's left hand had struck up a rhythm on the side of his knee. He seemed unaware of it.

Macbeth said, 'Her mother.'

'The gypsy?'

Macbeth nodded. He looked out of the window. A big van with a blue beacon and an illuminated sign had stopped down the Street. The sign said, Ambulance. 'Is this rain never gonna ease off? Is it normal?'

'No,' Milly said, it's not normal. Who was the man? You said there was a man. Who... meant her harm.'

Macbeth's mind slipped out of gear for a moment. He panicked, clutched at the air.

The air in the room, so dense. The rain bombarding the roof. The Duchess said, If there was a problem and you were to deal with it, she need never know, need she?

And how badly he'd wanted to deal with it and wanted her to know, and now it was too late to deal with it and, sure, she would never know.

'John Peveril Stanage,' he said.

And the other two people in the room slowly turned and looked at each other, and Willie blanched.

The fingers of both hands were slamming into his knees and this time he was aware of it but seemed unable to stop it.

When the ambulance arrived at the chip shop for Maurice Winstanley, both Maurice and his wife, Dee, were in a state bordering on hysteria.

'I knew summat like this'd happen. I never wanted to open, me,' Dee shrilled, a skinny little woman - how could you work in a chip shop and be that thin? It fascinated one of the ambulance men for a couple of seconds until he saw how badly burned Maurice was.

They had to treat his arm best they could, but there wasn't a whole lot they could do on the spot, what with Maurice gawping around and then kind of giggling with pain, and his wife going on and on like a budgie on amphetamines.

'I says to him. Who's going to come out for chips, night like this? He says, What about all them young people up at church, they'll be starving before t'night's through. I says, All right, I says, you want to do it, you can do it on your own.'

The ambulance man had fancied a bag of chips himself, especially after that drive over the hills and across the Moss: gruesome - he'd been driving and felt sure he could see the bloody peat rising and sucking; put one wheel in there you'd have had it.

'All right, Mr Winstanley, if we can get you out this way ...'

'Where's your stretcher, then?'

'He can walk, can't he, Mrs Winstanley? I was going to say, we need to get him in as quick as we can. He might need to go to the burns unit.'

But chips would never be the same again. How gut-churning an appetizing smell like that could become when, on top of battered cod and mushy peas, there was the subtle essence of frazzled flesh, the result of Maurice Winstanley's right arm blistering and bubbling in the fryer.

'Lucky you haven't got a heart attack case, as well,' Dee said. 'He let out such a shriek.'

'I'm not surprised, luv. Any of us'd've gone through the roof.'

'Oh, this were before he stuck his arm in t'fat. I says, Now, what's up, I says. And he turns round, white as a sheet, I says, Whatever have you done? And then he does it. Thirty years frying and he shoves his arm in. I don't think he knew what he were doing at all.'

In the ambulance, racing back across the Moss, Maurice shivered and shook a lot, a red blanket round him, his arm in about half a mile of bandage. 'Never believe me, lad, she never will. I wouldn't believe me.'

'Don't matter how long you've been at it, Mr Winstanley, you can always have an accident.'

'No, not that.' Now Maurice looked like a chip shop proprietor. Maurice was a fat man. Maurice's big cheeks had that high-cholesterol glow about them and there were black, smoky rings around his eyes.

'She had to believe that, naturally,' Maurice said. 'She seen it happen. Fact it were only t'bloody agony of it brought me 'round, see, and I couldn't even feel that at first. I were looking at it a good two seconds. I thought, what's that pink thing in t'bloody fat?'

'Don't think about it, Mr Winstanley. We'll not be long now. What d'you reckon to United's chances, then?'

'I don't want to talk about United, lad! I hate bloody soccer. Listen, no, it weren't that she'll not believe, I've allus been a clumsy bugger. No, see, what it were as caused it in t'first place, I'd just seen summat as frightened life outer me. Froze me to t'spot, you know? Numb, I were. Numb.'

'Sounds like my mother-in-law.'

Ok, Christ." said Maurice Winstanley, subsiding into his pain. What's the bloody use?'

Even though Deirdre Winstanley opened all the windows into the place, the smell of fried skin wouldn't go away; only seemed to get stronger.

When she opened the door, Susan Manifold, having seen the ambulance ran across the street through the torrent, asking her what was wrong, could she help.

'His own fault,' Dee said. 'Silly bugger. Thirty years, I don't know.'

'Will he be all right?'

'Will any of us?'

'I'm sorry?' Susan Manifold stepped inside the chip shop, to escape the wet, wrinkling her nose at the smell.

'Well, look at it.' Dee gestured at the water, now level over cobbles and the drains weren't taking it. She seemed more worried about that than Maurice's injury, or perhaps she was looking for something to take her mind off it.

'Will it flood?' Susan asked.

'Never has before, but there's always a first time. Look at them drains. Is there nowt you can do?'

I'm not a plumber,' said Susan.

'No,' said Dee. 'But you're a Mother.'

'Oh, come on!' Susan flicked back her ash-blonde fringe. We can't alter the weather.'

'Could've, once. Not you, maybe, Susan. Happen before your time.'

'Old wives' tale,' Susan said carelessly, and the full horror of what she'd said came back at her like a slap in the mouth. She was betraying Milly Gill and the memory of Ma Wagstaff.

But, God help her, Mother help her, she had no belief in it any more.

Upset, she walked back across the drowned cobbles, Frank wasn't home yet from the pub. When he did arrive he'd be drunk and nasty. Another problem the Mothers were supposed to be able to deal with.

Dee Winstanley slammed the door. That was stupid, what she'd said. Stupid what Susan had replied. Stupid what Maurice had done. Stupid to have lived behind a stinking chip shop for thirty years.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

And the smell wouldn't go away; the layer of fat, from fish and pies and peas and fried human skin, hung from the ceiling like a dirty curtain, and the fluorescent tubelight was a bar of grease.

Dee threw up the flap, stumbled behind the counter, slammed down the chromium lid on a fryer full of flabby chips congealing together like a heap of discarded yellow rubber gloves.

Couldn't clean that tonight. Just couldn't.

'Cod and six pennorth o' chips. Please.'

The nerve of some people. 'We're closed,' Dee yelled into the thick air around the high counter.

'... and six pennorth o' chips.'

Dee sighed. Some people still thought it was funny to demand six pennorth o' chips, same as what they'd asked for in old money when they were kids.

'We've had to close early,' she explained patiently. 'Maurice's had an accident. Gone to hospital. All the chips are ruined.'

She peered through the shimmering grease at the persistent customer. Recognised the voice straight away, just couldn't put a name to it.

'…pennorth o' chips. Please '

The customer clambered through the lardy light and she heard the clatter of coins on the glass counter.

'You deaf or summat Matt? I can't serve you. It's Maurice ...they've taken Maurice off in th'ambulance. He's had a ...'

' .. and six pennorth.. :

At first there was no sound in the crowded, flowery sitting room, except for the endlessly percussive weather and Willie Wagstaff 's fingers on his jeans picking up the same rapid rhythm.

'John Peveril Stanage,' Macbeth repeated in a stronger voice, because the name'd had the same effect as throwing three aces into a poker game.

Doing this for the Duchess.

Willie said, 'Never heard of him,' about a second too late to be convincing, and Macbeth, suddenly furious, was halfway out of his chair when there were four hollow knocks at the front door, all the more audible for being way out of synch with Willie's fingers and the rain.

'Mr Dawber,' Milly Gill said tonelessly, but made no move to answer the door.

CHAPTER VIII

Milly Gill half rose and then sat down again and looked at Willie and then at Mungo Macbeth.

'I'm sorry, Mr Macbeth. Sorry to've given you such awful news. But...' Spreading her hands: what else can I do?

Telling him to get the hell out in other words.

Macbeth stood up but made no move toward the door. 'I don't think so,' he said.

The hollow knocking came again, a little faster this time, a little closer to the tempo of Wagstaff's restless fingers.

'Why d'you do that?' Macbeth said, in no mood for tact. 'With your fingers.'

Willie looked non-plussed, like nobody ever asked him that before.

'He has a problem with his nerves,' Milly Gill said hastily. 'If you don't mind, Mr Macbeth, there's a gentleman come to see us.'

So they know who it is. Knocking comes at the door, latish, and they know what it's about before they open up.

'Sure,' Macbeth said. 'Thanks for your time.' Maybe he should go. Cancel his room at the inn, drive out of here, head back north. Maybe organise a flight home. And call on the Duchess? Could he ever face the Duchess again?

He nodded at Willie Wagstaff, followed Milly Gill to the door.

'Good luck,' he said, not sure why he said that.

And then something told him to turn around, and he found Willie on his feet, a whole series of expressions chasing each other across the little guy's face like videotape on fast-forward.

'Look.' Willie was clasping both hands between his legs like a man who badly needed to use the John. 'It's not nerves. It's ...'

'Hey.' The big woman pulled back her hand from the door catch. 'A few minutes ago you were telling me to shut up.'

'I know, lass, but happen we've kept quiet too bloody long. This ... Moira. Dead. Finished me, that has. Too many accidents. Going right back to that lad who fell off top of the brewery. Too much bad luck. And when I hear Jack's name ... Hang on a minute, lad. Milly, let Ernie Dawber in.'

Milly said, 'If it's Jack - which I...' She swallowed. 'If it is, we've got to sort it out for ourselves.'

'Oh, aye. Like we've sorted everything else out. Let him in.'

This Ernie Dawber was a short, stout, dignified-looking elderly guy in a long raincoat and a hat. He didn't look pleased at being kept wailing in the rain. He looked even less pleased to see Macbeth.

'This bloke's a friend of Moira's,' Willie Wagstaff explained.

'Mungo Macbeth.'

Old guy's handshake was firm. Eyes pretty damn shrewd. 'My condolences,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

'Mr Dawber,' Willie said, 'I'll not mess about. This lad - Mungo - reckons Moira ...' He took a breath. 'He reckons there's a connection with Jack. With... John Peveril Stanage.'

Willie's voice was so thick with loathing that Macbeth had to step back.

'Not possible,' Ernie Dawber said. 'I know what you're saving, but it's not possible.'

'No?' said Willie.

'He was banished, Willie. In the fullest sense. Forty-odd years ago. In all that time he's never once tried to come back. And if your ma was here now she'd go mad at you for even saying his name.

'Aye. But she's not. She's dead.' Willie's voice hardened. 'Suddenly. Under very questionable circumstances.'

Ernie Dawber shook his head. 'You're clutching at straws.'

Milly Gill said, 'Leave it, Willie. We've problems enough. Jack couldn't set foot in this village ...'

'While Ma was alive!' Willie shouted.

'He's a rich man now, Willie, he's got everything he needs. And like Mr Dawber says, he's never once tried to get back in. Why should he?'

'Aye,' said Willie. 'Why should anybody want owt to do wi' Bridelow? Why's Bridelow suddenly important? Why's it on everybody's lips when things here've never been so depressed? Why? - Mr Dawber'll tell you, he's got the same disease.'

'Willie, stop it off!'

Willie brought a hand down on the gateleg table with a crack. 'Bogman fever! That little bastard's contagious. Look at Matt, he got too close for his own sanity. How close did you get, Mr Dawber, that you want to die for it as well? Did you ever think it'd got at your mind ... staid, cautious old Ernie Dawber, man of letters?' He turned away. 'Ernie Dawber, human sacrifice. Don't make me laugh!'

'Stop it!' Milly Gill advanced on Willie like she was figuring to pull him apart. 'How dare you, little man? There's things we never can laugh at. Maybe something's turned your mind.'

'Jesus.' Macbeth stepped between them. 'Bogman fever? Human sacrifice? What kinda shit is this? Guy in the bar said everybody was on edge tonight, I figured he was making small talk. Back off, huh?'

Removing his hat, Ernie Dawber stepped further into the room, leaving the door ajar behind him. No visible ease-up in the rain. 'Could I ask you, Mr …'

'Macbeth. Like the evil Scottish King, had all his buddies iced.'

'That's as maybe,' Ernie Dawber said. 'But could I ask you, sir, what precisely is your interest here?'

'I got nothing to hide.' Macbeth let his arms fall to his sides. 'I fell in love with a woman.'

The noise from outside was like Niagara.

'And now she's dead,' Macbeth said. 'Some bastard's keeping secrets about that, maybe it's time for me to research a few ancestral vices, yeah?'

He shifted uncomfortably. Starting to sound like some steep-jawed asshole out of one of his own TV shows.

'Perhaps,' said Ernie Dawber, 'we should all calm down and discuss this. And for what it's worth - history being my subject - despite the Bard's best efforts to convince us otherwise, Macbeth was actually quite a stable monarch.'

'Ernie ...' Macbeth pulled out a chair. 'I wasn't so pissed about this whole thing, I could maybe get to like you.' He sat. 'Now. Somebody gonna tell me about John Peveril Stanage?'

Only Milly Gill still looked defiant. She folded her arms, pushed the door shut with her ass.

'Oh, hell, tell him, Willie,' Ernie Dawber said.

It had been novelty value, and now it was wearing off.

Chris wasn't stupid; he wasn't blind, being born-again to God didn't blind you to common sense.

Most of them were young. They sought, Chris conceded, a vibrancy and an excitement in religion which the Church had failed to give them. They found it at outdoor rallies, in marquees and packed rooms that were more like dancehalls. And now they were back where, for many of them, it had begun first time around in the stone clad starkness of an old-fashioned church. To defend it, Joel had told them. Against evil. But an evil they could not see, nor comprehend.

And Chris, an elder of the Church of the Angels of the New Advent, was asking himself: is this man, this figure of almost prophet-like glamour, this embodiment of the biblically angelic, is this man entirely sane?

'Joel.' Chris shambled over to the lectern, a lean, bearded man in a lumberjack shirt. 'Er, how many hours has it been exactly ?'

'Are you counting, Chris?'

'No, but ... I know the heat's on in here, but it's still pretty cold. Bit of an ordeal for some of these kids.'

'You're saying their faith isn't strong enough?'

Like the PE teacher he used to be, Chris thought. Loftily disdainful of youngsters shivering on a wintry playing field.

'Of course not,' Chris said. 'But don't you think ... don't you think this church is clean now?'

'This thing is deep-seated, Chris.' Joel clutched at the lectern for strength, the muscles tautening in his face. 'You think you can eradicate centuries of evil in a few hours?'

He looked down at the wooden pedestal lectern, as if seeing it for the first time, and then sprang back. 'Look! Look at this!'

The lectern was supporting a black-bound Bible, open across spread wings of carved oak.

'It's an eagle,' Chris said. 'Lots of them are eagles.'

'This is not an eagle.' Joel's hands retracted as if the lectern were coated with acid. 'Look.'

Chris didn't understand.

'An owl is a pagan bird,' Joel intoned calmly, like a bomb-disposal expert identifying a device. 'Step away from it. Go down and open the door.' He closed his eyes, breathed a brief, intense prayer for protection, gently detached the Bible, carried it to a choir stall.

And then hefted the lectern in both arms, as though uprooting a young tree.

'Door!'Joel gasped.

Feeling less than certain about this, Chris preceded him down the aisle. Hesitantly, he held open the church door and then the porch door until Joel had staggered out and, with an animal grunt, hurled the lectern far into the rainy tumult of the night.

They heard it crash against a tombstone.

'Filthy conditions.' Joel stumbled back into the church slapping at his surplice, a strange, fixed look on his face. 'Is this natural, all this rain? Is it natural, Chris?'

'It's only rain, Joel.'

'You're not seeing this, Chris, are you? You're not seeing it at all.'

All heads were turned towards him as he walked back up the aisle. Chris sensed an element of uncertainty among their devotion. Perhaps Joel was slightly aware of it too, for he raised his eyes to the altar. 'Oh Lord, give them a sign. Give them proof!'

He stood where the lectern had been, his coronet of curls looking dull, as if tarnished by the rain. Chris found himself praying silently for deliverance from what was becoming a nightmare.

'It was ...' Joel spread his big hands helplessly the width of the aisle... evil. Don't you see? It wasn't an eagle, it was an owl. A symbol of what they would call "ancient wisdom". It was a satanic artefact. Can't you understand? It had to be removed.'

'Praise God,' someone called out, but only once and rather feebly.

A man in a white T-shirt drifted up to Joel as if to congratulate him, shake him by the hand. When Joel opened his arms to embrace his brother, he felt a blast of cold air against his chest.

Puzzled, he looked down and saw that his pectoral cross was missing. Must have become hooked around the lectern, and he'd thrown it out of the door as well. He felt angry with himself. Now he had to visualize the cross. But he saw his brother Angel's open arms and he smiled.

His brother was smiling back. His brother's eyes were brown and swirling like beer-dregs in a glass.

'Thank you,' Joel said. 'Thank you for your support. Thank you for your faith.'

Couldn't recall the name. But he knew the face, although he d seen it only once before.

'Joel,' Chris said, 'you OK?'

Seen the face by lamplight and edged with lace in a violated coffin.

Joel's eyes bulged. He felt his jaw tightening, his lips shrinking back over his teeth, his throat expanding under pressure of a scream.

But he didn't scream. He would not scream. Instead, he stretched out his arms and grasped his terror to his bosom.

'Joel!' A voice behind him, Chris? But so far away, too far away, a dimension away from death's cold capsule in which Joel embraced a column of writhing darkness comprised of a thousand wriggling, frigid worms.

'Begone.' But it came out breathless, thin and whingeing, from between his clenched teeth.

He tried to project the missing pectoral cross in front of him, a cross of white fire.

Gasping, 'In the name ... name of God.' As the cold worms began to glide inside his vestments and to feed upon him, to devour his faith. 'In God's name ... begone!'

'Joel, stop it.' Hands either side of him, clutching at his arms.

The cross of fire had become a cross of ice.

Joel roared like a bull.

They were pinioning his arms while the cold worms sucked at his soul. His own brothers in God offering him as sustenance for the voracious dead.

'Aaaaargh.'

A boiling strength erupted in his chest.

In the centre of the silence, the black bag was brought to the woman.

From the bag, a thick, dark stole uncoiling. A slender vein of silver or white.

Winding it around her hands like flax and holding it up and showing it to the corpse, twisting it in the candlelight.

Hair. Human hair, two feet of it, three, bound together, with a strip of grey-white hair rippling through it.

The woman's hands moving inside the tent of hair with a certain rhythmical fluidity, as the pipes moaned, an aching lament. The watchers mumbling and, out of this, a single voice rising, a pale ribbon of a voice singing out, 'I conjure thee.'

And winding back into the mumbling with the winding of the hair.

'He's coming.

He's coming and he's strong.'

Up against the vestry wall, four of the men around him so he couldn't break away, he wailed in despair, 'Whose side are you on?'

Blood in the aisle. One man sitting up on the flags, head in his hands, semi-concussed.

Chris pressing a tissue to a burst lip. 'Joel, it's all gone wrong. You're seriously scaring people. Some of the women want to leave, get out of here.'

'They can't. They can't go out there now. Not safe, do you not see?'

'Joel, I'm sorry, they're saying it's probably safer out there than it is here with ... with you.'

'Lock and bar the doors. Go on. Do it now. LOCK AND BAR THE DOORS!'

'Joel, please, they're saying you ... All that screaming and wrestling with ...'

'With evil! The infested dead!'

'... with yourself, Joel! Oh, my God, this is awful. Somebody wipe his mouth.'

'Where is he?'

Joel flailed, but they held him.

'Where is he? The spirit. Was he expelled? Tell me.'

'Let's go back to the Rectory, shall we? Have a cup of coffee? Come back later. When we've all, you know, calmed down.'

'What's happened to your face?'

'You hit me, Joel.'

'No.'

'Yes! You were like a man poss ... We couldn't hold you. Please, Joel. You've been under a lot of stress.'

'... fighting it ... fighting for our souls. Stinking of the grave. . , filthy womancunt. .. let me . ..'

'Come on. You're scaring people. Let's get some air. Please.'

'Matt Castle. Spirit of Matt Castle. Soiled. Soiled spirit.'

'Joel, Matt Castle's dead ...'

'And was here!'

'Look, Declan's hurt. I think he hit his head. He needs a doctor. Please.'

'Illusion. Temptation. They want you to open the doors and let them in. If you don't do it of your own free will, they'll get inside you, fill you up with worms, make you think things that aren't true. Let me go, I command you to let me go.'

'Let him go.'

'Chris?'

'Just let him go. We can't hold him all night.'

'Matt Castle. Its face was Matt Castle's. But I looked into its eyes and its eyes were the eyes of Satan.'

'Yes. Yes, but it's gone now, Joel. I swear to you it's gone. You ... you defeated it. You were more powerful. You ... you threw it to the ground and it... sort of disintegrated.'

'Ah.'

'Yes, we saw it. We did. Didn't we, Richard? So, Joel, come back to the Rectory, OK? You need a coffee. And a lie down. After your exertions. After your ... Oh God, help me ...'

'... was it wearing?'

'… your struggle.'

'What was it wearing?

'I ... Well, it wasn't ... I mean, too clear. Not from where we were standing. A ... a shroud, was it? And glowing. Sort of glowing?'

Joel felt his face explode. 'Liars!'

His chest swelled, arms thrashed. One man was thrown across the vestry like a doll, spinning dizzily around until the stone wall slapped into his nose; they heard him squeak and a quick crack of bone, and then Joel's white surplice was blotting up bullets of blood.

'Come on! Let's get out now. Don't go near him.'

'What about Martin?'

'Pick him up, come on. Oh, my God. It's all right. It's all right. Somebody stop them screaming.'

Joel heard scrambling and scuffling, stifled shouts and squawks and screams, bolts being thrown, the soulless slashing of the rain and a shrilling from inside of him, something squealing to be free.

At first he wouldn't move, paralysed with dread. Then he began to laugh. It was only the mobile phone at the leather belt around his cassock.

He pulled it out and inspected it. A deep fissure ran from the earpiece to the push-buttons. He had difficulty dragging out the aerial because its housing was bent. The phone went on bleeping at him.

He tried to push the 'send' button, but it wouldn't go in. Joel became irrationally enraged with the phone and began to beat it against the wall. Went on beating it when the bleeps stopped and a tinny little faraway voice was calling out, 'Mr Beard.'

Would have continued until it smashed to pieces in his hand, had he not recognised the voice.

'Mr Beard, can you hear me?'

'Yes.'

'Are you all right, Mr Beard?'

'They've all gone.'

'Who?'

'The Angels.' He giggled. The Angels have flown.'

'As angels are apt to do. You won't run away from this, will you?'

'Never!'

'Mr Beard, I told you once - do you remember? - about the Devil's light. How no one could cross the Moss at night except for those for whom the Devil lit the way.'

'Yes. I remember. Isn't it time you told me who you were?'

'I'll do better than that, Mr Beard. I'll meet you '

'When? Where?'

'Tonight. Stay in the church. Be alone.'

'No choice, have I? And yet I know ...'

'You could always run away from it.' Teasing.

'I'll never do that. I'm not afraid, you know. I ... tonight I've embraced evil and I know ... I know that I am never totally alone.'

'Well said, m'boy. Together we'll put out the Devil's light.'

'Thank you,' Joel said. 'Nobody else believes in me. Thank you. Thank you for everything.'

He started to weep with the joy of the sure knowledge that he was not alone.