The Man in the Moss

CHAPTER I

Nobody in the house had been able to get to sleep anyway, because of the rain, and then The Chief started to howl, a terrified yelping sort of howl, sending Benjie hurtling down the stairs and his mam screaming from the landing, 'He'll go in a kennel, that dog, I'm warning you!' And The Chief carried on howling, even with Benjie's arms light around his neck, and Benjie shouted back Up, 'It's that dragon again, Mam!'

Heard his mam snort from the landing.

Mumbling into the dog's fur,'... same as killed me gran.'

And Benjie thought he should get dressed and take The Chief out into the street so his howling would wake up the whole village and everybody would be able to escape before the dragon came out of the Moss.

Moira was already dressed when they heard Alfred Beckett shouting in the Post Office, 'Shop! Shop!'

Milly brought him through and Alf stood there, getting his breath back, raindrops glittering in his moustache.

'They've put it out!' he gasped, holding on to the back of the sofa. 'Bastards've put out the light.'

Willie pushed past him and dashed through the office to the front door. 'He's right.'

'Beacon of the Moss,' Milly explained to Moira.

'What's that mean? That it's out?'

'It's happened before, obviously, power-failures and such, but with all the rest of it...'

'You're saying it's cumulative, right?'

'I'll go up,' Willie called back.

'No,' Moira snapped. 'There's been too much rushing in, far's I can see. Cathy, the Mothers - how many are there?'

'It's a ragbag,' Milly said.

'How d'you call a meeting?'

'The old days, used to be said we never needed to call them at all.'

'Well, how about we try the phone, huh?'

'They'll all be in bed.'

'Jesus wept! If I had any hair I'd be tearing it.'

Dic Castle knew that a common way of committing suicide was to cut your wrists while lying in a bath of warm water and that it was largely painless, letting life seep away.

He was not in a bath of warm water, but he supposed sedation had the same effect in that he was aware of not trying to scream through the sweating adhesive tape across his mouth but just sitting there, bound by string and wire to his chair wondering how long before it was over.

His hands were painlessly numb, cloth tourniquets around both wrists so that the blood flow was regulated, like an egg-timer.

He wasn't even resentful any more. He'd got Moira out. He'd led them away from her and they didn't know she'd gone with the sound of the rain muffling her hysteria. Him? They thought he'd just chickened out and run away, and now they'd caught him, and maybe this was what they'd intended for him all along.

Blood to blood.

He watched their faces: Philip, the glum satanist; Owen the ex-nurse who'd given him valium through a vein; Andrea the care-in-the-community mental patient who'd killed but not exactly murdered two small boys many years ago; Therese, who thought she was already halfway to being a goddess; Dr Roger Hall, who just wanted to meet the Man in the Moss.

Real evil, Dic realized, was a bit bloody pathetic.

Outside, the apprentice at the gate, was feeble Shaw Horridge, probably more inadequate than any of them because he had had money and privileges on a scale incomprehensible to most of the others.

Over in the loft at the church, Dean - also known as Asmodeus - had been hiding for hours with Terence, the hulking occult bookseller from Salford, awaiting their mentor the revered John. Slaveringly eager for whatever grotesque experience he'd prepared for them, the more perverse the more sensuously exciting.

Dic had ceased some while ago to be shocked. He'd already seen in his father the damage caused by the perversion of a Utopian dream. He was twenty-four. He'd seen Matt Castle's jolly, infectious pioneering spirit shrivel to a sour fanaticism. And then he'd died.

And now, because of his father. Dic would die too. Taped into a wooden chair with the blood draining slowly from his wrists.

Blood to blood.

Dic was staring across the circle, with a vaguely surprising sense of pity, into his father's eyes, when a movement made him turn his head. Therese had shuddered.

Therese was sitting cross-legged, although her legs were hidden in cloak and shadow. There were candles, ordinary white candles, in glass jars because of the draught, seven of them arranged around the circle, which had been painted on the wooden floor in white and was actually two concentric circles a yard apart. In the space between the circles they all sat, like shadowy party goers gathered for charades.

Dregs.

But Therese had shuddered.

'Yes,' she breathed. 'He's done it. Can't you feel it?'

And as if she'd signalled to them, the inadequates started mumbling, some far back in their throats, making unintelligible noises as though trying to disengage their dentures.

Revolting bastards.

In time, the mumbling became more intense and seemed to encompass the figure sprawled, rotting and stinking, in the wooden armchair.

Dic could look at it now with little sense of shock and no sense of relationship. At the withering lips drawn back, the yellow of teeth, the stiff, spouting hair above eyes wide open but glazed like a cod's eyes on the slab.

His father.

Of course, if you'd suggested to Chris that it was a game, a recreation like golf or squash or amateur theatricals, Chris would have been most resentful and his reply would probably have been - as he would now admit - somewhat pompous and self-righteous.

Born in Hemel Hempstead, Chris was an accountant in Sheffield. He was thirty-seven, had had his own house, on what was now a minimal mortgage, since the age of nineteen. So that when he married Chantal four years ago life had not exactly been an uphill struggle, with foreign holidays and two cars from the beginning. And the fact that God had not yet seen fit to bestow upon them a child, well, perhaps that indicated God had other work for them.

Chris had always been a churchgoer. However, as he'd intimated in passing to the American, Macbeth, the Anglican faith had long since ceased to satisfy his intense need for a more dynamic relationship with his deity.

Baptism into the Church of the Angels of the New Advent, with its full-throated, high-octane worship and its promise of real religious experience, was the fulfilment of what Chris had been anticipating all his thinking life.

Within eighteen months, he'd become an elder of the Church, dealing with its finances, investing its reserves, getting the best deal for God.

It filled his life. God, therefore, filled his life.

And God was not a hobby.

The validity of the Church of the Angels of the New Advent had been confirmed by the acceptance at theological college of one of its founders. Brother Beard, who had been called by God to go out into the 'straight' Church and reform it from within.

God's reasoning had become all too clear to Chris when Joel had been called to Bridelow.

His appearance at their house last night in search of sanctuary had made Chris - and he was sure he could also speak for Chantal - feel very honoured and (he would have admitted this now) very excited.

When Joel had spoken of his discovery of the symbols of pagan devil-worship in the Lord's house, Chris had been, on the surface, appalled, and underneath (he might not yet have admitted this) thrilled.

And when Joel had telephoned them this morning with a dramatic plea which said, more or less, Bring in the troops, the war has begun, Chris's blood had begun to race.

It was not a recreation. It was not a hobby. It was not just an unusual and stimulating way of spending Sunday, hiring a coach and everyone piling in, prepared to fast through the night (bar the odd cup of coffee) to bring light where once was darkness

It was a war.

When the initial joyous element had been rather dispelled of mental stress by, first, Joel and then (perhaps influenced by Joel's rather overheated display) Chantal, Chris, the Lord's accountant, had decided that a more precise and ordered approach was required if they were to avoid further humiliation.

When they'd returned, a little shamefaced, he'd taken it upon himself to bar the church doors and state that there was to be no more wandering in and out for coffee and anyone experiencing anything irregular should simply clasp the hand of his or her brother or sister and pray for it to pass.

And there had been hymns and prayers (without hand-clapping, since they had learned that some faiths considered there to be a demonic element in this), and the familiar flow of exultation had once more been attained.

Until Chris himself had heard a distant crash from somewhere above and foolishly disregarded it until the reality of their struggle became distressingly (at first) evident.

He heard and felt it begin.

It began with a cooling of the air and a creeping change in the vibe of the chant.

Hoooolyamallaaagloriagloriamalalaglorytogodglorytogod

The girl next to him had been singing melodiously, her voice high and pure and sweet.

And then too sweet.

Cloying in fact, with an acrid saccharine aftertaste, which he was actually beginning to taste in his own throat. And then becoming simpering and childish. Peevish and playground- rhythmical.

holygod holygod holyholyholygod

goldyhod goldyhod golyhold holygold

godlyhole godlyhole godlyhole...

And then it happened very quickly ... sort of whooooosh, like a small hurricane of bad breath. There was a wafting sugary smell which soon became sweetly putrid, like the bad orange at the bottom of the bowl, as the chant, the pure song of Tongues, suddenly was sounding raucous and guttural, women cackling hideously (enticingly) and men making grunting, retching, foul pig noises.

We're doing it, Chris thought, in a kind of euphoric dismay, as a slimy earth taste arose in his throat. We are exorcizing the Evil.

Just that nobody had told him it would be quite so unpleasant (and stimulating).

When Paul, their musician - who had, admittedly, never been all that proficient - began to force a vicious, grinding discordance through the organ pipes, Chris stepped out into the aisle and ran up the steps of the pulpit from where he observed that at least five Angels of the New Advent had begun hurriedly to divest themselves of their apparel.

He also saw three men, one a kind of albino with a cherub's mouth, emerge from the vestry and calmly let themselves of the church by the main door.

They were laughing.

There was still no sign of Joel.

Joel?

Who was this Joel?

Chris saw no more, for he was attacked by one of his squealing sisters and his face clawed and he enjoyed it immensely.

Mungo Macbeth had specialized for over ten years in the downmarket kind of TV-movie in which people fell wildly in love and moved heaven and earth to find fulfilment in someone's arms.

Between times he'd done cop movies, about hard-bitten, cynical cops who, underneath it all, had feelings same as anyone else.

However, apart from the ones who'd given him parking and speeding tickets, Macbeth had never before met a cop who was not being played, at unreasonable expense, by some asshole with a beach house and security gates.

Love stories did not end, before they had even begun, with the death of the love object. And cop movies were never about cops who sat in your car in an endless monsoon, which, by the way, was becoming seriously frightening, and said, 'Well, I'm buggered if I know how to handle this, mate.'

They were parked up by the church in Macbeth's car on account of the grey-haired, weary-looking cop wasn't even sure his would stand up to the conditions.

Macbeth, also pretty tired, said, 'How about you just call up the precinct house and have a bunch of uniforms directed this way?'

Ashton said, 'How about you get sensible, pal?'

'I apologise.'

'Look,' Ashton said, 'it seems very likely a crime has been committed. But what scares the living shit out of me is that the possible criminal element in all this does not seem to be the worst aspect, if you get my meaning.'

'Yeah.'

'And if I were to contact my headquarters and somebody there did actually take me seriously, their first instruction - I know this much - would be: do nothing.'

Ashton scrubbed at the misted windshield. 'I'm not in the mood for some shiny-arsed politician telling me to do nowt. There's summat nasty here. I don't know how to react, but I

have to. Right?'

'I dunno, Macbeth said. 'It was different, somehow, when I thought Moira was dead.'

'How do you know she's not?' Ashton demanded, blunt as a sledgehammer.

'What are you saying?'

'Christ, I'm saying, help me. I'm saying I'm not playing this by the book because there's no book I know of covers it. I'm saying that normally, as a copper, I'd want nothing at all to do with you because I don't know you from Adam. But at least you look a bit too soft and innocent to be a villain, and if I'm not playing it as a copper I need some help and you're all I'm bloody got.'

'OK.' Macbeth said reluctantly, 'First question: you equipped with a piece?'

'Eh?'

'Are you armed?'

'Are you thick?' Ashton said. 'Or just American?'

Macbeth shrugged and started up the car. 'OK,' he said. 'Let's crash the party.'

Hoping Moira would be there but not...

... not involved.

'OK, Lottie said fifty yards from the church, make a right, so if I reverse ...'

He never got to do it. The hire-car was surrounded by people; they were banging on the windows and the roof.

Shortly after Shaw Horridge stopped screaming, Ernie Dawber tried to get past him to the front door, and this proved to be a bad mistake. His second bad mistake.

For a long time, Shaw had been tearing around the hall clutching at his head. He'd have been tearing his hair if there'd been enough to get a grip on.

It was a squarish hall with a high ceiling and these five mirrors, three of them full-length, put there by Liz to spread the light.

It had not been the place to break the spell.

How could the lad ever have convinced himself that his hair was growing again, when the opposite was true? Hadn't he looked in a mirror recently? And if he had, what had he seen?

Certainly not what all five mirrors had reflected tonight before Shaw's tenuous self-control had snapped and he'd picked up a chair of Victorian mahogany and swung it above his head around the walls, and his shining baldness was reflected a thousandfold in the hail of flying glass, as Ernie cowered on his knees by the hallstand, protecting his face with his hat.

When he made a dash for the door, Shaw was on him in one bound, his sharp, pale face aglitter with blood and glass bright as jewellery. 'How did you do it? How did you do it, old

man?'

It was some minutes before Ernie came to understand that the poor, crazed boy was holding him responsible for the disappearance of his hair.

'Listen to me,' Ernie said gently. 'They lied to you, lad. They lied about everything. Your hair, the brewery, your poor mother. They ...'

Bewitched him? Twisted his mind? Before Ernie could choose the least inflammatory words, Shaw's face convulsed.

He snatched up the chair again and smashed it down on the hallstand an inch from Ernie's ear, snapping off two legs.

'Get it back!' Shaw shrieked. 'Get my hair back!'

And if this was a dream it didn't matter. There'd be no awakening anyway. Dic thought about his mother, all she'd had to put up with from the bastard. She should have married a secondary-school head or a bank manager in Wilmslow, or an airline pilot working out of Ringway. All that grit gone to waste on a two-bit musical maverick committed to a primitive instrument you could barely get a proper tune out of.

Made him want to weep.

The candles were burning low. Either this or his vision was going.

... blood to blood.

He tried to catch the eyes of the bitch, Therese, as she cried, 'I conjure thee, Matthew! Empowered by the Highest Strength, I conjure thee!'

The candles guttered. The Pennine Pipes, lying like a dead cormorant in his father's rotting lap, began to throb and to squirm as though they were full of maggots.

'I conjure thee, Matthew, under penalty of being burned and tortured in the fires for ever and ever, I conjure thee to appear before me and to answer my questions ...'

Air farting through the Pennine Pipes until they squeaked and heaved, In their wrapping of black hair with a single white streak.

'I conjure thee, Matthew, by the power of thine own base desires, to appear before me in a pleasant and human form and to present to me the spirit of thy father of the Moss ...'

Slipping in and out of dream. Samhain, and they said the walls were thin as paper. He thought he saw a quiver on the yellow, peeling lips of his father's corpse.

'… I conjure thee.'

A man with a knife.

Nothing ornate or ceremonial. Just a cheap craft worker's knife with a red plastic handle.

One of the untouchables bending over Dic and huffing and panting.

'By the Highest Power and by the Angels of the Firmament ...'

The numbing power of the drug fell away from Dic like an old raincoat, leaving him naked, all his nerves singing, his cheeks bulging like a trumpeter's with a vast scream taped into his face for ever.

'Mmmmmmm!' he screamed into the adhesive tape.

'... and by the Angels of the Deep and with the blood that was thy blood and shall be again, Matthew ...'

The knife cut through the tourniquets at his wrists and Dic closed his eyes, feeling nothing in his numb, etiolated arms, and yet feeling the blood rise in fountains.

'I CONJURE THEE!'

CHAPTER II

'Hey... stop this bloody car... come on.'

Big, shambling guy Macbeth recognized as Stan, the bartender. But Stan wasn't interested in Macbeth.

'You're the copper, aren't you?'

'Happen,' Ashton said warily.

There was Stan and some of the other guys who'd been in the bar when Macbeth arrived, but not the kid who'd figured to punch him out. Also, there was Willie Wagstaff.. Macbeth leapt out, grabbed the little guy by the arm.

'Willie, hey, listen up. The body in the car ... this was not Moira.'

'Oh,' said Willie; his mind was clearly elsewhere; he kept glancing over his shoulder towards the church and around the street. Stan was bawling into the car window at Ashton.

'Bloody hooligans. Fanatics. You're the police, get um out!'

'Willie, that means she's not dead, you hear me?'

'I'm only one policeman, sir, and I'm off duty.'

'You knew, Willie. You knew, goddamn it.'

'They don't know you're on your own,' Stan said. 'Supposed to be flaming Christians, should've heard the language. Just knock on t'door and tell um t'sling their hooks. What's the problem? We're getting wet.'

Macbeth said, 'Goddamn it, you know ... Willie, where is she?

Gary Ashton, annoyed, was out of the car, slamming the door, holding both hands up. 'All right! Quieten down. What's so important?'

Macbeth backed out, looked around the small assembly. 'Cathy know about this?' Willie nodded urgently.

Eight or nine of them now, almost a mob. Macbeth said, 'Gary, there's a bunch of well-meaning but seriously misguided people in there. Take it from me, these guys aren't shitting they need to be got out.'

'And we need to get in,' Stan said soberly. 'Just don't want more trouble than we can handle.'

Ashton stood in the rain pulling on his jaw. 'OK,' he said eventually. 'If I can clear this church out for you, maybe you can do something for me afterwards, all right?'

Stan shrugged, causing his old-fashioned plastic raincoat to crackle. Willie said something about Mr Dawber, looking upset, his fingers compulsively chinking the coins in his pocket.

'And another thing,' Ashton said. 'I'm not a policeman. You've never seen a policeman here tonight. You got that?'

Moira pulled on the navy blue duffle coat. 'Jesus, haven't worn one of these in years. This makes me a Mother?'

'Mother, maiden, hag,' Cathy said. 'It's all the same in Bridelow.'

'Just as well,' Moira said. 'I don't qualify as any of the above. Where are we going?'

Milly led her out into the street. 'Not far. Mind you don't drown in the gutter.'

Not far turned out to be Ma Wagstaff's little stone terraced cottage, its step awash but still gleaming white in the beam of the lamp Dic had given to Moira.

'Listen, I'm getting worried about Dic,' she'd said a few minutes earlier to Cathy.

'Me too,' Cathy said. 'But they couldn't kill him, could they? For the same reason they couldn't kill you. Surely?'

'No,' Moira had said dubiously. 'But sometimes you can do more harm to someone than killing them'd be, you know?'

Milly unlocked the front door and put on lights. Moira took in a tiny and ancient parlour with more bottles than a pharmacy. Or maybe this was a pharmacy. There was a light of sadness over the room.

'I don't know where to start,' Milly said.

'Well, we don't have much time. Where'd she keep her … you know, recipes and stuff?'

Milly smiled wryly. 'In her head.'

'Oh, shit.' Moira began to open cupboards in the side and found more bottles. There were a few dozen books; maybe there'd be papers stuffed inside one of them. 'What's upstairs?'

'Her bathroom. Her sewing room. Her bed.'

'Are we sure she copied it down?'

'I remember seeing a map, a plan, kind of. I know I did. Keeping Jack out, it wasn't something you went into lightly, you know.'

Moira felt a light breeze on one side of her face. It smelt vaguely of sage.

'Something that hadn't been done for centuries,' Milly said. 'And it had to be exact. I don't know what to say, maybe if …'

Moira turned very casually around and looked back through the doorway into the hall.

Where she saw a little woman in misty shades of grey and sepia, a little woman who might have been formed - had it been daylight, had there been sun - by the coalescence of dustmotes.

The little woman slowly shook her head.

And disappeared.

Moira turned back into the room. 'It's not here,' she said softly. 'Ma Wagstaff had no map.'

Chris picked up the pink T-shirt and held it up in front of him and started to laugh.

Across the front of the T-shirt was inscribed, THANK GOD FOR JESUS.

He looked at it for long seconds. It made no sense to him. No sense at all any more. It was gaudy. It was trite. It was meaningless. The girl, who was called Claudette, looked a whole lot better without it, curled up asleep under the pulpit draped in velvet curtains torn down from the vestry.

Nice tits, Chris remembered. Paused. Wasn't that a pretty bloody sinful thing to contemplate in the House of God?

Yeah, well...

She'd be pretty cold, though, Claudette, when she awoke. It was getting bitter in here. Those amber-tinted lights created a completely false impression of warmth, making the pillars seem mellow.

The communion wine had helped a bit. Gerry, the solicitor from Rotherham, had found two bottles in the vestry. Well, why not? It was a so-called pagan place, wasn't it? It wasn't a sin to drink heathen wine.

Sin. Chris shook his head. So trite.

Only problem was, after that wine, he wanted a pee.

'Forget it,' he'd decreed automatically about a quarter of an hour ago. 'Nobody goes out.' Although for the life of him he couldn't remember why nobody should go out. Except that while it might be cold in here it was extremely wet out there. Frankly, Chris reckoned he could probably use a piss, a pint and a bag of chips in that order.

Stupidest thing they'd done had been to let the bloody bus go. That was Joel again, silly sod. Burn your boats, he'd instructed them. Well, it was all right for him, he'd cleared off somewhere. Least he could have done was left his mobile phone around; they could have got Reg Hattersley out of bed and bribed him to fetch his coach back.

Chris surveyed his little band, all forty-seven of them, The Angels of the New Advent. High-flown name, eh, for an assorted bunch of misfits whose sole connecting factor was the conviction that their lives were one course short of a banquet. Only one course, note, they all had their own houses and decent cars and dishwashers, etc.

Some of them were wandering around, rubbing their heads. A couple had lit cigarettes. His watch told him it had gone midnight. This was getting ridiculous.

He remembered the singing breaking up into self-parody and a few of them had torn clothes off, mostly the ones clad in propaganda clobber like this silly T-shirt. And then there'd been isolated outbursts of anger and resentment, mostly towards Joel Beard, who'd brought them to this dump and then abandoned them - but not before going berserk and assaulting Martin, who'd lost a tooth, and Declan, who was convinced he was suffering delayed concussion. And, of course, convincing Chantal she'd been raped by an evil spirit.

'I ask you …' Chris said scornfully, aloud.

When someone started banging on the door, he wandered across, suspicious.

'Whosat?'

'Who am I talking to?' An authoritative kind of voice.

'Yes?' Chris said, equally peremptory.

'This is the police,' the voice said levelly. 'I don't know who you are but I have to inform you that you have no legal right to occupy this building and I'm suggesting you vacate it immediately. If you unbolt this door and everyone comes out without any trouble, I can promise you that no further action is likely to be taken. If, however ...'

'Yeah?' Chris said. This really was the police?

A distant voice berated him, his own voice within his chest. He heard it say, Get thee hence, tempter, what he might well have said out loud an hour ago. What a plonker he'd been.

I do strongly advise you, sir, not to play silly-buggers. Open this door, please.'

Chris gazed at the oak door, probably six inches thick, at the iron bolts, four inches wide.

Where is your power? the inner voice bleated pathetically at the policeman. Blow it down, why don't you, with your foul, satanic breath.

Must've been nuts, Chris thought. All of us. Mass hysteria.

'Yeah, all right,' he said resignedly and drew back the bolts.

There were cheers of relief from the brothers and sisters sprawled among the pews.

Though glances were exchanged, Milly didn't ask her how she knew there was nothing in the house. There was silence, then Milly said, 'What are we going to do now?'

'Don't know about you,' Moira said. 'But I think I'm gonny cry.'

'Moira.' Willie was in the doorway, about a yard from where Ma's ghost had stood.

Milly shook her head. 'It's not here, little man.'

Willie nodded, unsurprised. 'She weren't much of a filer-away of stuff. 'Cept for foul-smelling gunge in the bottom of owd bottles.'

'Don't knock it,' Moira said. Less than half an hour after forcing down Ma's Crisis Mixture, she was, inexplicably, feeling stronger than she had in some while.

'Moira ...' Willie glanced behind him to where the rain bounced off Ma's moon-white doorstep. 'Don't you think ... ?'

'Yeah,' Moira said. 'I know. I know.' She sighed. 'OK. Come away in, Macbeth.'

Suddenly self-conscious, she found herself mindlessly reaching for the duffel-coat hood to cover the desolate ruins of her hair. 'Ach,' she said, and let her hands fall to her sides.

When he stumbled over the threshold, this Mungo Macbeth, of the Manhattan Macbeths, he was looking no more smooth and glamorous than the average drowned-rat hiker from the moor.

Willie had told her briefly how the guy had driven all the way from Glasgow with three crucial words: John, Peveril and Stanage.

'Mungo,' she said, her voice unexpectedly husky, 'I don't know what I'm gonny do with you, and that's the truth.'

Macbeth smiled, a soft, stupid, wet-faced smile; she could tell he hadn't even noticed her hair.

'The one big thing,' he said, almost in a whisper, and made no sense.

It fact it was all crazy, Moira thought. Horrifically crazy. He shouldn't be here. He didn't know what the hell he was into. He didn't have a chance.

And did any of them?

CHAPTER III

Eventually, Benjie had persuaded his mam to let him take The Chief to his bedroom, where the German Shepherd squeezed himself into the gap between the wardrobe and the wall, sat there with his ears down and panted a lot.

'Come on, lad,' Benjie whispered, sitting up in bed in old ninja turtle pyjamas. But The Chief wouldn't move. He kept himself in this dark corner and there was pleading in his sad, brown eyes.

Above the noise of rain, Benjie could hear other village dogs howling in the distance. When he lay down and shut his eyes he realised that the way The Chief was panting meant he was really howling too, but The Chief was smart, the last thing he wanted was to have himself taken out to the shed.

When Benjie opened his eyes again, he saw light-beams flitting across the curtains, like car headlights.

Which would have been all right, only the back of the house overlooked the Moss and there were no cars on the Moss, except months ago when the lorries and JCBs had been out building up the road and they'd found the bogman.

Benjie scrambled to the end of his bed, leaned over and stuck his head through the gap in the curtains.

He gasped.

It were like Fireworks Night out there.

Lights all over the Moss, like smouldery bonfires. Lights swooshing like rockets, through the rain, from one side to another, sometimes going across each other.

But no noise except for the howling dogs and the rain.

The lights lasted no more than ten seconds and then it was all gone and Benjie couldn't see anything apart from the water rolling down the glass.

But when he lay in bed, the light showed up in the space between his eyes and his closed eyelids. He saw the Moss lit up greenish now, all green and glowing, except for the Dragon Tree.

And that was twice as big now, its branches, all gnarled and knotted and black among whirling, spinning lights, two of them spiking up into the sky ... arms like giant horns with groping claws on the end. And the whole thing was breathing, dragging up big, soggy lungfuls of peat, and soon it was going to burst and its arms would gather up the whole village.

Benjie felt a scream coming on and chewed the bedclothes instead, not wanting to be put out in the shed with The Chief and get gobbled up first.

Macbeth watched Chris and Chantal sink side by side into the sofa at the Rectory. They didn't seem like the same people. 'I really am tired,' Chris said. 'I'm shagged out.'

And then, clearly shocked at himself, he looked up at Cathy. 'I'm sorry. I don't know what I'm saying. Catherine, has something got inside me? Am I possessed?'

Cathy waved it away. 'Chris, you've got to tell me very quickly, no evasion. What happened in there?'

Chris tugged at his beard. 'I just don't know. First of all, it was fine, we felt... how we used to feel. Holy. Special. And then it all went wrong ... really quickly. It went... dirty.'

'It was like baptism,' Chantal said, hugging herself with goosebumpy arms. 'Only in reverse. In our baptism ... our re-baptism, we throw off some of our outer clothes - symbolically - and we're submerged in water. It could be a river, or we'll hire a public pool for an afternoon, and you come up cleansed and purified.'

'That's it,' Chris said, eyes full of agony. 'That's right. Only this was like being submerged and some of us threw off our Christian clothes and we came up not so much dirty ... well, yes, dirty - but worse, really. Like it was before.'

'People smoking,' Chantal recalled. 'In church. But it didn't feel like church, it didn't feel like anywhere.'

'Yeah, and blaspheming in an everyday sort of throwaway fashion. And we drank ... God forgive us, we drank the Communion wine, like it was any old pop. It didn't matter. We were like the mass of godless people out there, we didn't need religion any more, we had no use for it. Catherine, I'm confused. We'll burn in hell for this, I think we've started to burn.'

'It's OK,' Cathy said soothingly. 'The fire's out, now.' She turned to Moira and Macbeth. 'It's obvious, isn't it? It was the final sterilization.'

'Well ...' Moira said. 'You can't just drain the power of centuries out of stone, you can only take it out of people, you let them absorb it through their mindless, passive ritual and then you snuff out the light, blow their shaky faith up their faces and leave them empty and when they walk out totally knackered like this guy here, they've drained out everything that was left in the church.'

'Forgive me,' Macbeth said, 'Why'd they wanna do that?'

'Because the church is the sacred centre of the village,' Cathy said. 'It's got to be neutralized before you can ...' She stopped for breath and couldn't go on.

'Replace it with something black and horrible,' Moira said.

'What ... what can we do to help?' Chris asked, rather feebly..

Cathy rounded on him. 'You can keep your bums on that settee, call in all your friends and don't move until your coach comes for you. And then you can go away for ever."

'Steady, Cathy.' Moira took her arm.

'Wants to know if he's possessed?' Cathy said with a sharp laugh. 'Well, of course he's possessed. Possessed of a very slow brain. Moira, look, there's a copper out there who wants to go up the Hall with Stan Burrows and a bunch of his mates and do some sorting out, as they put it.'

'So stop him,' Moira said.

'You try and stop him!'

'Look, they go up there mob-handed, God knows what could happen. It's pretty damned obvious - and we're looking at something planned months ago - that Stanage has shut down the church to deflect a lot of energy towards the second natural focus, the second-highest building in Bridelow. The brewery, right? And what's at the very top of the brewery building?'

'Th'owd malt-store,' Willie Wagstaff said impatiently. Disused. Moira, happen this is over me head, but why don't we go up there mob-handed and flush the buggers out?'

'Because you can't fight this thing with primitive violence. I swear to you, Willie, those guys go up there they'll wind up killing each other. It's like, how come you can put a bunch of ardent, Bible-punching born-again Christians in a church and they come drifting out an hour or so later with this amazing born-again apathy?'

'He's right, though, Moira,' Cathy said. 'We can't just stand around doing nothing. Somebody ought to go up there.'

It's what I've been trying to tell you!' Willie cried, all eight fingers beating at his thighs. 'Somebody has. Mr Dawber's up there. And Mr Dawber's been in a mind to do summat daft.'

'OK,' Moira said. 'Come on, Willie.'

'We'll go in my car,' Macbeth offered, moving to the door.

'Ah ... not you, Mungo.'

'What ... !' Macbeth counted three seconds of silence before he tore off his black slicker and slammed it to the Rectory lino with a noise like a gunshot. Willie jumped back. On the sofa Chris and Chantal gripped hands.

'Now listen up!' Macbeth snarled. 'Everybody just fucking listen up! I have had it. I have had it up to here with getting told to butt out. I am sick to my gut with being treated like some goddamn halfwit with a stupid name who had the misfortune to be born five generations too late to be part of any viable heritage. Either I'm in, or I start figuring a few things out for myself, and maybe I'll kick the wrong asses and maybe I won't, but that's your problem not mine.'

It all went quiet. Shit, Macbeth thought. Which reject script did that come out of? He picked up his slicker and put it on.

'OK,' said Moira carelessly. 'You drive, Mungo. Cathy, I don't know what to say, except please keep that cop off our backs for as long as you can. And maybe if you can get the Mothers together in one place, that might be best. Would everybody fit into Ma Wagstaff's parlour?'

Some of what happened next Macbeth did not follow. Several times he wished he'd never left Glasgow.

Once, he wished he'd never seen Moira Cairns.

Twice Ernie Dawber had said his throat was very dry and would it be possible to get a drink of water?

He was sprawled in a corner between the hallstand and the front door. There was broken glass all around him. He thought he'd sprained his ankle when he fell.

'When you ter-tell me.' Shaw Horridge was still standing, feet apart, amidst the wreckage of the mirrors. His mouth looked permanently twisted because of a cut which

extended his lower lip. There were stripes of blood down both cheeks. Freckles of glass still glittered either side of his thin nose.

'What can I tell you?' Ernie croaked. 'He planted his seed in Bridelow and that seed turned out to be you. Was Ma going to have your mother turned away, same as they did with your father, and leave Arthur Horridge humiliated three days from the altar? 'Course she wasn't, she'd been in the same situation.'

'I cer-cer ... I cer-cer-can't accept it, Mr Der-Der ... Aaargh!' With both fists, Shaw began to beat his own head.

Ernie felt his agony, the way he used to experience the lad's frustration all those years ago, when Shaw was the best reader in the class and couldn't prove it.

'They never told you, because not many outside the Mothers' Union knew about it. Me, I put two and two together after a bit, but I said nowt. It was none of my business. Ma kept an eye on you but she'd never go too close. She never wanted you to be tempted or to get too close to the shadow side. For your own good. Please, lad ... a cup of water?'

'If I ter-turn my ber-back on you, you'll be ... out.'

'I don't think I can even walk, lad.'

'How der-der-do I know that? Ker-ker-keep talking.'

Ernie swallowed. 'I ... remember once, Arthur came to see me. Arthur knew, of course. Arthur was inclined to link your stammer directly to the circumstances of your conception, and he said, Ernie, he said, why doesn't she do something? Ha? Why doesn't she cure the poor lad's stutter? Arthur, I said, if you knew how much pain that causes Ma, her own grandson …'

'Ger-grandson!' Angry tears joined the blood on Shaw's cheeks. 'I used to stand outside wer-with the other ker-ker-kids der-daring each other to look into the wer-windows. She'd cher-chase us all off. Wer-wer-witch. Owd witch!'

She was frightened, Shaw. Frightened for you. Scared that one day she might have to banish you as well because of what might be in your blood. Didn't want you exposed to the shadow side. That's why after your ... after Arthur died, she'd never come up to see your mother, even when Liz became agoraphobic and wouldn't come down to the village. She didn't want to go near you. She didn't want you ever to know who you were or to become drawn to the shadow side.'

Which, in the end, he thought, you were. You were a sitting duck.

Wanted to ask, What happened to your mother? What happened after she forced herself to come down to the village and scream tor sanctuary outside Ma's door? While you were inside, presumably. For who else would it be? Who else could destroy Ma's defences so surely? Who else would Ma allow to push her downstairs?

'I didn't ker-kill her, you know,' Shaw said suddenly. 'She said she was der-der-dead already. Dead already!'

And at that moment, directly above Ernie's head, the door chimes played their daft little tune and there was a banging on the glass panels and, 'Mr Dawber! Ernie!'

Shaw jerked from the waist, as if the electric doorbell had been connected to his testicles. 'Ger-go away!'

Ernie grabbed a breath and raised his voice. 'It's Willie Wagstaff, Shaw. Let him in, eh?'

'Mr Dawber!'

'Come on, Shaw!' Ernie shouted. 'You know Willie!'

Across the hall, the front door shuddered as a boot went into it, flat, under the lock. Shaw leapt across the hall and threw himself against the back of the door as the foot went in again, and then he sprang back, lurched towards Ernie, face full of blood and glass, terror, confusion and fury. He turned, tore open a white-panelled door on the other side of the room and flung himself into the passage beyond as the front door heaved and splintered open.

Willie was alone. His eyes flickered under his mousy fringe in the bright lights. 'Ernie.'

'Give us a hand, Willie. Done me ankle, I think.'

'Where's the lad?'

'Let him go, eh? He's got a lot to think about. We need to get to the brewery, if it's not too late.'

'Never mind that.' Willie got a hand under Ernie's arm 'Can you ... that's fine. That's excellent, Mr Dawber. Hang on to me. The brewery ... Moira's seeing to that.'

'That lass? By 'eck, Willie, you're ...'

'She's not just "that lass", Mr Dawber, take my word. Anyroad, Mungo's with her, the Yank. He give me his car keys; we need to get you back. You're our last hope, Mr Dawber. Come on. I'll tell you.'

The body was up against a huge metal tub. There was the smell of beer, the smell of vomit and a smell Macbeth would soon recognise again as the smell of blood.

'I don't know him,' Moira said. 'I've never seen him before.'

Macbeth covered his mouth with his hand. This was it. The final proof he'd half-imagined he was never going to get, that this affair was real, life and death. Bad death.

'This is crazy, Moira." He grabbed hold of the iron railing, for the coldness of it. Only it was slick with something and he jerked his hand away. 'I never saw a stiff before. Never saw a dead relative. Never went to a funeral with an open coffin.'

Moira had nothing to say to this. She turned her lamp on man's face. His whole head was a weird shape, like it had been remoulded. Violently. There was blood over the face and down from the rim of the big tank. Macbeth felt his gut lurch. He leaned over the side of the huge beer vat and he threw up, shamed by the way it echoed around the scrubbed metal.

He turned back to Moira, wiped his mouth. She was kind enough to direct the beam of her lamp away from him. Real macho stuff, huh? Either I'm in this with the rest of you or I'll go solo, start kicking asses.

Or maybe I'll just throw up the shitburger I had near Carlisle.

'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That was unavoidable. Thing is, I do recognise him. His name is Frank. He was in the pub earlier, was pretty smashed.'

He certainly looks pretty smashed now,' Moira said, sounding harder than he liked to hear. He was shocked.

'He fell?' Looking up the steps, all slimy with something that stank.

'You could convince yourself of anything, Macbeth. OK, after you.'

'Up there?'

'Well, we're no' going back now.'

Oh, shit. Please. Get me outa here.

'OK. You stay down here, then. Wait for me.'

'No! Jesus. But, like, I mean, what if they're waiting for us?'

'There's nobody here, Macbeth.'

'How'd you know that?'

'I was ... listening. And watching. And ... you know.'

No, he didn't fucking know. But he wasn't going to make an issue of it. He went slowly up the metal steps. She stayed at the bottom, lighting his way, until he reached a blank wooden door.

He hesitated, looked back down the stairs at where the beam bounced off the white walls and cast a soft light on her. She looked smaller than he remembered inside this bulky duffel coat, too big for her by a couple of sizes. And yet she seemed strangely younger, without most of her hair.

Well, shit, of course he'd seen that, soon as he'd walked in out of the rain. It was the most awful mutilation, like slashing the Mona Lisa, taking the legs off of the Venus de Milo. It was a goddamn offence against civilization.

But was it self-mutilation? Was it like a novice nun cuts off, all her hair to give herself to Christ?

And this was why he'd never even mentioned it. This was why, Willie being in the car too, all he'd said to her by way of explanation for him being here was, 'The Duchess asked me to lookout for you.'

To which she'd made no reply.

Moira's face creased sympathetically now in the white light. 'Look, Mungo ... fact is, if the sight of this poor guy made you chuck your lunch, you're not gonny find it too pleasant in there. There's no shame in that. Willie's pretty squeamish, too, which is why he was glad to go off in search the old schoolmaster guy. So ... if you ... what I'm saying is, this isn't your problem. You really don't have to put yourself through this.'

'And you do?'

'Yeah,' she said. 'I'm afraid I do. Me more than anybody."

He just stared down at her.

'Goes back nearly twenty years. This is the consequences of getting involved with Matt Castle.'

'He's dead.'

'Yeah,' Moira said.

Macbeth said, 'People here keep seeing his ghost. That's what they say. You believe that?'

'Yeah,' Moira said.

'What am I gonna find behind that door?'

'You don't ever have to know, Mungo. That's what I'm trying to tell you.'

'Aw, shit,' Macbeth said. 'The hell with this.' He scraped the hair out of his eyes, opened them wide and pushed open the door with his right foot.

CHAPTER IV

Willie's youngest sister was in her dressing gown, making tea. 'Sleep through this weather? Not a chance. Our Benjie's messing about up there, too, with that dog. I've told him, I'll have um both in t'shed, he doesn't settle down.'

'Where's Martin?'

'Working up Bolton again. Takes what he can. Bloody Gannons.'

'Right,' Willie said. 'Well, if you can get dressed, our Sal. You've been re-co-opted onto t'Mothers.'

'Get lost, Willie. I told Ma years ago, I said I'll take a back seat from now on, if you don't mind, it's not my sort of thing.'

Aye, well, no arguing with that. Certainly wasn't her sort of thing these days. Sal's kitchen was half the downstairs now. Knocked through from the dining room and a posh conservatory at the back. Antique pine units, hi-tech cooker, extractor fan. All from when Horridges had made Martin sales manager, about a year before Gannons sacked him.

'Anyroad,' Sal said. 'Can't leave our Benjie. God knows what he'd get up to, little monkey.'

'Well, actually,' Willie said, 'I wouldn't mind getting the lad in as well. We're going to need a new Autumn Cross, a bit sharpish.'

'Be realistic. How can a child of his age go out collecting bits of twigs and stuff on a night like this?'

'Aye, I can!' Benjie shouted, bursting into the kitchen, already half-dressed, dragging on his wellies. 'I can, Uncle Willie, honest.'

'Get back to bed, you little monkey, if I've told you once tonight, I've ...'

'Lay off, eh, Sal. We need everybody we can get.'

'Is this serious, Willie? I mean, really?'

Willie said nothing.

'What's in that briefcase?'

'This and that.'

'Uncle Willie,' said Benjie, 'T'Chief's been howling.'

'They're all howling tonight, Benj.'

'And t'dragon. T'dragon growed, Uncle Willie. T'dragon's growed.'

When Milly caught Cathy's eye over the heads of the assembled Mothers they exchanged a look which said, this is hopeless.

Altogether there were seven of them squeezed into Ma's parlour, standing room only - although at least a couple were not too good on their pins and needed chairs.

'Susan!' Milly cried. 'Where's Susan?'

'Staying in with the little lad,' Ethel, Susan's mum, told her. 'Frank's not back. Likely on a bender. She won't leave the little lad on his own on a night like this.'

'Wonderful!' Cathy moaned. 'Hang on, what about Dee from the chippy? Needs must, Ethel.'

'She's had a shock, what with Maurice, she won't even answer the door.'

'Well, get somebody to bloody break it down. And if Susan's got to bring the kid along, do it, though I'd rather not. That'll be nine. Willie! How's it going? Any luck?'

'We found it, I think.' Willie came in clutching Mr Dawber's old briefcase. 'Here, make a bit of space on t'table.'

'How is he?'

'He's resting. Had a bit of a do wi' Shaw Horridge.' Willie was spreading out sheets of foolscap paper. 'Thank God for Mr Dawber, I say. Anything to do with Bridelow he collects. Whipped it off Ma 'fore she could put it back of t'fire.'

'Looks complicated.'

'It's not as bad as it looks. They're all numbered, see, and they join up, so we've got a complete map of t'village wi' all the key boundary points marked. Ma did um all barefoot. But

that were summer. What you want is one woman at each, and each to take a new stone. Alf's got um ready for consecration, like, end of his yard.'

'How big are they, these stones?'

'Size of a brick, maybe half a brick. Some of um are bricks, come to think of it. Ma used a wheelbarrow.'

'We'll never do it,' Milly said in despair. 'Are you proposing to send old Sarah out to the top of Church Field with half a brick?'

'She could do one of the closer ones,' said Cathy. 'If you or I take the Holy Well …'

'We still haven't got enough.' Milly lowered her voice. 'And what kind of commitment we'll get out of half this lot I don't know. Ma was right. We've been hopelessly complacent. We let things slide. We haven't got a chance.'

'There's always a chance,' Cathy said, and even Willie thought her voice was starting to sound a bit frail. She was overtired, lumpy bags under her eyes, thin hair in rat's tails.

'What?' said Milly, approaching hysteria - and Willie had never seen that before. 'Against a feller who's spent half a lifetime stoking up his evil? Against that hideous girl? Against all them practising satanists?'

'They're idiots,' Cathy said. 'Any idiot can be a satanist.'

'Aye,' said Milly, 'and any idiot can make it work if they've got nowt to lose.'

'All right.' Cathy turned to Willie. 'How's Alf getting on?'

'Moaning,' Willie said. 'Reckons cement won't hang together wi' all the rain. Stan Burrows and them've fixed up a sort of a shelter for him. I told him, I says, you can do it again proper sometime, Alf, just make sure it sticks up tonight. I called in at Sal's, too, and young Benjie'll be along wi' a pile of stuff for a new cross. Reckon you can fettle it?'

'Aye,' said Milly. 'I suppose I can.'

'Don't you start losing heart, lass. Hey, our Sal's on her way too, what about that?'

'Never!' said Cathy. 'Ceramic hob on the blink, is it?'

'I'm persuasive, me, when I put me mind to it.'

'That'll make it ten, then,' Cathy said. 'Still, not enough. But we're getting there. Please, Milly, please don't go negative on me now.'

Macbeth closed the door behind him, as if to prove he wasn't really a wimp and could handle this alone, and he didn't come out for a long time, maybe half a minute, and there was no sound from him either. And Moira panicked. I was wrong. They're all there. They're waiting for us.

'Moira,' he called out, more than a wee bit hoarse, just at the point when she was about to start screaming. 'I think I need some help.'

At the foot of the final stairway, the air was really sour, full of beer and vomit, blood and death. She took a breath of it, anyway. She was - face it - more scared than he was, and whenever she was really scared, she went brittle and hard, surface-cynical. A shell no thicker than a ladybird's.

She wanted a cigarette. She wanted a drink.

She wanted out of here.

'Hold your nose,' Macbeth advised, opening the door. He sounded calm. Too calm. He was going to pass out on her any second.

And of course she didn't hold her damn nose, did she, and the stench of corrupted flesh nearly drove her back down the steps.

'I covered that one over,' Macbeth said. 'Couldn't face it.'

A circle within a circle. Candles burned down to stubs, not much more than the flames left, and all the rearing shadows they were throwing.

'Watch where you're walking,' Macbeth said.

The attic light was brown and bleary with sweat, grease, blood. Several chairs inside the circle. Two of them occupied.

One was a muffled hump beneath old sacking. 'All I could find,' Macbeth said. 'I don't think you should uncover it. I don't think anybody should. Not ever.'

A yellow hand poked out of the sacking.

She stared at it, trying to imagine the yellow fingers stopping up the airholes on the Pennine Pipes.

'It's this one,' Macbeth said behind her. 'Moira? Please?'

Moira turned and took a step forward and her foot squelched in it.

Congealing blood. Bucketsful.

You don't have to do anything like that,' Cathy said. 'It's not as if I'm asking you to bare your breasts or have sex with anyone under a full moon or swear eternal allegiance to the Goddess.'

'Pity,' said the blonde one, trying, and failing, to hold her cigarette steady.

'All you have to do,' Cathy said, 'is believe in it. Just for as long as you're taking part.'

'I don't, though, luv,' Lottie Castle said. 'And I can't start now.'

However, Cathy noticed, she couldn't stop herself looking over their shoulders towards what was probably the gas-mantle protruding from the side of the bar.

Cathy had heard all about the gas-mantle, from the policeman, Ashton, who was standing by the door at this moment, Observing but keeping out of it because - as he'd pointed out, there was no evidence of the breaking of laws, except for natural ones.

'Yes, you do,' Chrissie said. 'You've always believed in it. That's been half the problem.'

'And how the hell would you know that?'

'Oh, come on. The last couple of hours I've probably learned more about you than anybody in this village. And you know more about me than I'd like to have spread around.'

'Yes,' said Lottie. 'I suppose so. And how do you come into this, luv? Always struck me as an intelligent sort of girl, university education. Oxford, isn't it?'

'That's right, Mrs Castle, Oxford.'

'No polite names tonight. It's Lottie.'

'And I'm Chrissie,' said the blonde.

'You know about your husband,' Cathy said. 'You know what they've done.'

'Cathy luv, he ceased to be my husband the night he needed somebody else to close his eyes for him. Well, a fair time before that, if truth were known. I've had half a lifetime of Matt Castle, and that's more than anybody should have to put up with, and I can say that now, because I can say anything tonight, believe me.'

As soon as Cathy had walked in she'd spotted the two glasses, smelt the booze.

'All right,' she said. 'Forget your husband. Let's talk about your son.'

Lottie's face hardened immediately into something like a clay mask.

'Dic? What about Dic?'

'Just I don't think he's dead,' Macbeth said.

'Oh, Jesus. Jesus.' Moira put down her lamp in the blood, the light tilted up at Dic's face.

But they couldn't kill him, could they? For the same reason they couldn't kill you. Surely.

'Willie was right, Mungo. We should've been up here, mob-handed. Thought I was being clever. Being stupid. Stupid!'

But sometimes you can do more harm to someone than killing them'd be, you know?

'Tights,' Macbeth snapped. 'You wearing tights under there?'

'Huh ... ? No. What's ... ? Oh, Jesus... Dic ... please don't be dead.'

'Shit,' said Macbeth. 'Handkerchief?'

'I dunno what's in these pockets, it's no' my coat... yeah, is this a handkerchief?'

'How big is it? OK, tear it in half. Fold 'em up. Make two tight wads.' Macbeth was peeling off the thick adhesive tape binding Dic's arms to the chair-arms. Both arms were upturned, palms of the hands exposed. Veins exposed. There was a welling pool of rich, dark blood at each wrist and it was dripping to the floor each side of the chair. There was a widening pond of blood, congealed around its blackened banks. Late-autumnal flies from the roofspace crawled around, drunk on blood.

'OK, now you hold his arm above his head. You're gonna get a lot of blood on you.'

'I got more blood on me than I can handle,' Moira muttered. 'You sure you know what you're doing, Mungo?'

'I never did it for real before, but... Ah, you don't need to hear this shit, just hold his arms. Right. Gimme one of the pads. See, we got to hold the ... this is a pressure pad, right? So you push it up against the wound with both thumbs. Like hard. Idea is, we stop the blood with the pad, then I wind this goddamn tape round just about as ... tight... as I can make it,'

'Is he breathing?'

'How the fuck should I know? Now the other arm. Hold it up, over his head ... And, shit, get the tape off his mouth. Chrissakes, Moira, didn't we do that?'

The tape across Dic's mouth stretched from ear to ear. Moira tore it away, and Dic mumbled, 'Do you ... have to be so rough?'

Moira jumped away in shock. Macbeth yelled, 'Keep hold of that fucking arm, willya?'

'Aw, Christ. You're no' dead.'

'I'm no' dead,' said Dic feebly, and be giggled.

'Don't talk,' said Moira. 'You're gonny be OK. Mungo?'

'He's lost a lot of blood.'

'Don't I know it. I'm paddling in it.'

'He needs to go to a hospital. This is strictly amateur hour. Can't say how long it's gonna hold. Far's I can see, they cut the vein. If they'd cut the artery this guy'd be long gone. They cut the vein, each wrist, taped his arms down. The blood goes on dripping, takes maybe a couple hours to drain the body. How long they had you like this, pal?'

'Not the faintest,' Dic said. 'I was on valium, I think. Intravenous. So I'd know what was happening but wouldn't care.'

'That's good. See, the dope slows down the metabolism and that goes for the blood flow too. This is weird stuff, Moira, this left me way behind a long time back.'

Moira said, 'Do you know why, Dic?'

Dic nodded at the hump under the sacks.

'Do me one favour,' Macbeth said. 'I saved your life, least you can do is let me keep that fucking thing under wraps.'

'That's Matt, isn't it, Dic?'

Dic nodded. He was lying back in his chair, both arms still flung over his head and black with dried and drying blood.

Moira didn't recall ever seeing courage on this scale. Maybe the valium had helped, but it was more than that.

'Suppose you know,' Dic said, 'where they've gone.'

'We have to get you to a hospital.'

'When you're on valium and you're still terrified, you know it must be pretty awesome.'

'Looks pretty cruddy to me,' Macbeth said.

'We'll get you down the steps, OK? We'll get you out of here.'

'He's not sane, you know. I don't reckon he was all there to begin with, lived in his own fantasy world. Like Dad. And that guy Hall.' He closed his eyes. 'Bloody Cathy. The things you do for love, eh?'

'Mungo,' Moira said. 'How about you go downstairs to one of the offices, find a phone? Get us some transport for Dic'

'You'll be OK?' Macbeth looked like he couldn't get out fast enough.

'Sure. Get hold of Cathy. You got the number?'

'Called it enough times from the phone-booth.' He hesitated in the doorway, Dic's blood on one cheek.

'Go,' Moira said.

When they were alone, she said, 'Dic, I need to ask you ... Matt .. .'

'I gave him blood,' Dic said. 'And you ...' He nodded at the thing in the other chair.

Moira sighed. Sooner or later she had to face this.

She hooked a finger under a corner of the sacking.

The dead couldn't harm you.

'You get … used to him,' Dic said with a dried-up bitterness. 'You start to forget he ever looked any different.'

She pulled away the sacking. The smell was putrid. It was the kind of smell that would never entirely leave you and some nights would come back and hover over you like the flies that were clustering around Matt's withered mouth, the lips already falling from the teeth.

'I was afraid to look at him in his coffin,' Dic said. 'Mum said there was no shame. No shame in that.'

'Dic,' Moira said. 'What's that in his lap?'

'The pipes.'

'That stuff wrapped around the pipes.'

'You know what it is.'

Moira reached out with distaste and snatched the bundle from the lap of the corpse. Air erupted from the bag and the pipes groaned like a living thing. Or a dying thing. She cried out and dropped the pipes but held on to what had been around the pipes, black hair drifting through her fingers in the flickering candlelight. A glimmer of white.

'Which of them did it?' Her voice so calm she scared herself. 'Which of them actually cut it off?'

Dic said, 'The woman, I'd guess. Therese. They wanted him strong and ... driven. You know?'

His eyes kept closing. Maybe he was about to pass out from loss of blood. She didn't know what you did in these circumstances. Did you let him rest or did you try to keep him conscious, keep him talking? He seemed to need to talk.

'I gave him blood,' he said. 'Blood feeds the spirit or something like that. Blood's very powerful in magic. And …'

He winced, coughed, nodded at the hair.

'... so's desire.'

'And what,' Moira said, staring into Matt Castle's impenetrable, sightless eyes, stuffing the hair into a pocket of the duffel coat, 'did he get from the bog body?'

'Wrong question.' Dic's eyes closed and didn't open for several seconds. Moira was worried. Dic said, 'I think you should be asking ... what it got from him.'

His eyes weren't focusing. 'Listen, I don't know whether they got what they were after. All kinds of noises were coming out of... that.'

Moira picked up the sacking, tossed it over Matt with a shudder.

'Hall was trying to talk to it. Had a few phrases in medieval Welsh. I don't think it made any sense. In the end he was screaming at it. Stanage was screaming at Therese. It didn't go how they hoped.'

'Does it ever.'

'I can't believe these people.'

'I can,' Moira said. 'What went wrong?'

'Couldn't find the comb was one thing. Stanage was furious.'

Moira bent over him. His eyes were slits. 'Dic, why couldn't they find the comb?'

'Because I'd ... taken it. I think. Earlier on. I took it out of the bag. Knew they were saving it for the climax.'

'Where is it now?'

He tried to shake his head. 'I'm sorry,' Moira said. 'We'll get you out of here. Listen, if I leave you now ... can you bear it? Mungo'll be back in a minute. Only I want to get away on my own. Dic, can you hear me?'

Dic's eyes were closed. He was half-lying in his chair, hands still thrown back behind his head. There seemed to be no more blood seeping under the tape.

Didn't they say that your blood stopped flowing when you died?

Dic's canvas-seated wooden armchair still stood in the pond of his blood, mostly congealed, like mud, like the surface of a peatbog.

'Dic?'

No reply. But he was still breathing, wasn't he? She touched his fingers; they felt cold, like marble.

'Dic, tell Mungo … tell him not to worry. Tell him … just tell him I've gone to meet the Man.'

CHAPTER V

There was a strange luminescence over the Moss, as though the rain itself was bringing down particles of light. She could see its humps and pools, and she knew there were people out there, could hear their voices, scattered by the rain. The Moss was swollen up like a massive pincushion and every heavy raindrop seemed to make a new dent.

She walked openly to the door of The Man I'th Moss and hammered on it, shouted 'Lottie!' a few times. All the lights were on, lights everywhere, in the bar, in all the rooms upstairs.

But nobody here.

OK.

She switched on her lamp and walked around the back to the yard where the stable block or barn place was, Matt's music room. Its door hung open, the hasp forced. They hadn't even bothered to disguise their visit when they came to borrow the Pennine Pipes.

Switching off her lamp, Moira went quietly in. She put on no lights. The air inside seemed to ripple with greens and browns, like sea light.

Mosslight.

The carpets on the wall tautened the air. Dead sound. No echoes.

She took off her coat, found the old settee, the one with its insides spraying out. Sat down, with the lamp at her feet, and thought peacefully of Matt and felt no hatred.

All gone.

Released.

It had taken her nearly ten minutes to get here. Ten minutes in which the rain had crashed down on her sparsely matted skull, and she'd yielded up her anger with a savagery even the night couldn't match.

Screamed a lot. Cursed him for what he'd done, all those years of lies and craving, abuse of Lottie, abuse of Dic, abuse of her from afar, divulging to the crazy Stanage the secret of the comb, letting Stanage set him up, set her up in Scotland.

Letting Stanage into his weaknesses. So that the long-haired girls appeared on cue. This Therese playing the part with an icy precision, drawing out of Man the thin wire of desire by which they could anchor him.

I used to think she was ... a substitute. Me own creation. Like, creating you out of her ...

While he was no longer sure that this was not, in essence, Moira.

... I should've known. Should've known you wouldn't leave me to die alone. I'm drawing strength from the both of you. The bogman and you ...

Had Stanage known that Matt was dying? Was Man chosen because he was dying? So that his spirit, chained to Stanage and Therese, chained willingly to Bridelow by the old Celtic magic, could be controlled after his death?

So it could be used as a conduit.

To reach the Man, the spirit of the Moss, the guardian of the ancient Celtic community at the end of the causeway.

Moira walking quickly down from the brewery, finding her way quite easily this time back into the village. Avoiding the car racing with full headlights up the brewery road, probably in answer to Macbeth's summons. Avoiding any people she happened to see on the street - especially women.

This, God help me, is my task.

Go over it again. Get it right.

Here's what happened.

The villagers steal the Man to do with him what's been done so many times with bits of bodies found in the Moss: give him a good Christo-pagan burial at the next public funeral.

But this isn't just another bit of body. This is the complete perfectly preserved remains of the original sacrifice, laid down with due ceremony after undergoing the Triple Death.

This is powerful, this will reverberate.

And wise old Ma Wagstaff - realizing, presumably, just how powerful - mixes up her witch bottle with a view to protecting Matt's soul from any dark, peaty emanations.

Not realizing that it's the Man in the Moss who needs protection - against the tortured, corrupted, manipulated spirit of Matt Castle.

Got to get him back. Got to get him out of their control.

Got to lose all the hatred because that's their medium. Hatred. And lust. And obsession.

When Stan the bartender and Gary the cop came for Dic, Macbeth was pacing the room, trampling in the blood. Where is she, where the fuck is she? Almost ready to shake the poor guy, get some sense out of him.

'God almighty!' he heard from the bottom of the steps. 'It's Young Frank!'

'Don't touch him. You can't help him now.'

'He were three-parts drunk. Fighting drunk. Drunk most nights since he lost his job.'

'Maybe he fell, maybe he didn't. Either way, I'm having this place sealed off, so watch where you're treading, Stan.'

'Hey, come on willya,' Macbeth shouted. 'There's a guy up here isn't dead. Yet.'

'We're coming,' Gary the cop said. 'And I don't like that smell one bit.'

Thirty seconds later, he's pulling the sacking from the stiff - 'Fucking Nora! - while Macbeth's demanding, 'Moira. You seen Moira? Lady with very, very short hair ... Chrissakes!' And Stan's staring at all the blood, looking sick, and Dic's shifting very feebly in his chair.

'Right!' said Gary the cop. 'Who is this?'

Macbeth slumped against the wall. 'It's Matt Castle.'

'Thank you,' said Gary. 'At least we know he's not been murdered. Let's get an ambulance to this lad. And a statement later. I think...'

At which Dic came round sufficiently to start yelling, hoarsely, 'No! I'm not going to hospital! I won't!'

'Hey, hey ... All right, we'll not take you to hospital, but you can't stop here.'

'Take me to Cath,' Dic said, and Ashton looked at Macbeth. Macbeth nodded, and Stan got his arm behind Dic and helped him to his feet.

'Keep his arms over his head,' Macbeth said, 'else he's gonna start bleeding again.'

In back of Stan's ancient station wagon, Macbeth said quietly to Dic, 'Moira. Where's Moira go? Come on, kid, talk to me, I saved your goddamn life.'

'Said to tell you,' Dic mumbled, 'that ... she'd gone to meet the Man.'

'Holy ... shit! Macbeth slammed his fist into the back of the seat.

'Yeah,' Dic said. 'I didn't like the sound of it either, but there wasn't much I could do.'

Drifting on an airbed of memories.

Hey, Matt, you remember the night the van broke down on the M1 and we put on a thank-you gig for the AA guys at three in the morning at the Newport Pagnell Services?

Blurry light coming off the Moss through the rain. They're out there, OK. And it's cold and it's wet and the Moss is filthy and swollen. No place to be, Matt. No place to commit yourself for all eternity.

Or until you might be summoned by those to whom you mortgaged your soul.

Hey, remember when you left the pipes in the hotel room in Penzance and Willie ran all the way back from the hall and I went on stage alone? And I only knew four solo numbers, and I'm into an encore of the first one before Willie dashes in with the pipes?

The slimy mosslight from the high windows awakening the barn, finding the womanly curves of the old Martin guitar. This was your place, Matt, this was where you put it all together, this was your refuge.

...So I wanted...I wanted in. To be part of that. To go in the Moss too ...

But you don't now. Do you?

It's warm in here. (Aw, hell, it's freezing; you just better wish it warm, hen, wish it warm until you can feel it.)

She picked up the lamp from the floor at her feet and took it across to a wooden table. She switched it on, directing its beam to the centre of the settee, picked up Matt's Martin guitar, went back and sat in the spot, with the light on her face.

She strummed the guitar. The strings were old and dull and it was long out of tune. One of the machine-heads had lost its knob, so she just tuned the other strings to that one.

It would do.

She sat back, closed her eyes against the lamp's beam, although the battery was running out and the light was yellowing. She imagined the Moss, black and cold and stagnant.

Now you're out there, you know the terrors the Moss holds, the deep, deep, age-old fear.

Death doesn't have to be like that, Matt.

Come on. Come on back. Come to the warm.

She pictured Matt as he'd been once. Stocky, muscular, vibrant with enthusiasm.

Come ...

... come to ...

to me.

And in a low and smoky voice, she began to sing to him.

The Mothers' Union was congregated in the high Norman nave of St Bride's Church.

Above the Mothers hung a ragged cross made of branches cut by Benjie from a rampant sycamore hedge at the bottom of the Rectory garden. The branches, still dripping, were bound with chicken wire and tangled up with hawthorn.

Cathy walked in, out of the rain, under the reassuringly gross, widened flange of the Sheelagh na gig, cement particles among the coils of her hair. Alf Beckett had also brought the statues out of the shed, and several long, coloured candles were now lit.