The Man in the Moss (57 page)

           
'No ...' Sam Davis wanted chanting townies in robes and
masks. He wanted sick, stupid people. Wanted to see them dancing, getting
pissed wet through. Wanted to hear them praying to the fucking Devil, with
their fire hissing and smouldering in the rain. Didn't want this. Didn't want
it. No.

           
When the shadow stretched and the torch beam began to
shrivel, as if all the light had been sucked out, leaving only a thinly shining
disc at the end of the torch, Sam felt his bowels give way.

           
All the rage and aggression slithered out of him like the
guts of a slaughtered pig, and the void they left behind was filled with a
cold, immobilizing fear.

Lottie Castle came awake in
swirling darkness.

           
Awakened by the cold air on her own body, exposed to the
night, the sheets and blankets thrust away, her nightdress shed.

           
Her body was rolling about on the bed, drenched in sweat,
arms and legs and stomach jerking and twitching with electricity, nipples rigid
and hurting.

           
What's happening, what's
happening
?

           
She was ill. Her nervous system had finally rebelled
against the months of agony and tension. She was sick, she was stricken. She
needed help, she needed care. She should be taken away and cared for. She
should not be alone like this, not here in this great shambling mausoleum.

           
Lottie began to pant with panic, feeling the twisted
pillow sweat-soaked under her neck as it arched and swayed. She couldn't see
anything, not her body, not the walls, nor even the outline of the window
behind the thin curtains.

           
It couldn't be darker. But it wasn't silent.

           
And fright formed a layer of frost around Lottie's heart
as she became aware that every muscle in her body was throbbing to the shrill,
sick whinny of the Pennine Pipes, high on the
night.

CHAPTER
IV

At 8 a.m., the Sunday sky
hung low and glistened like the underside of a huge aircraft.
           
It didn't menace Joel Beard,
God's warrior, skimming across the causeway, hands warm in his gauntlets, deep
and holy thoughts protected inside his helmet, his leathers unzipped to expose
the cross.

           
Nourished by little more than three hours' sleep at Chris
and Chantal's place in Sheffield, he felt ... well, reborn. Talked and prayed
and cried and agonized until 2 a.m. Old chums, Chris and Chantal. Born Again
brethren, still with the Church of the Angels of the New Advent. Still strong
in their faith.

           
'I sometimes wish I'd never left.' Joel reaching out for
reassurance.

           
'Why? It was your great mission, Joel - we all knew that,
it's terrific - to carry our commitment, all our certainty, into the straight
Church.'

           
'But it's just so ... lonely, Chantal. I didn't realise
how ... or how corrupt. That there were places where the Church allowed the
evil to remain - real evil - for a quiet life. A quiet life - is that what it's
come to? I mean, tonight, going back to the church, after this fiasco with the
grave, it was there for anyone to see. The ghastly light from the clock that
isn't really a clock, and all the sneering gargoyles and the place over the
door where this revolting
Sheelagh na gig
thing used to be ... And you realise ... it's everywhere. How many country
churches have these pagan carvings, the Green Man, all kinds of devil-figures?
Demons. Twisted demon faces, everywhere, grinning at you - it's
our
Church!'

           
Yes ... yes ... yes ... the pieces of so-called character
clinging to old churches like barnacles to a wreck, the very aspects of ancient
churches that tourists found so picturesque ... 'Oh, yes, I've always been fond
of old churches.' As if this was some sanctified form of tourism, when really
they were soaking up the satanic.

           
'What it means is that the Church has been sheltering
this filth, pressed to its own bosom, for centuries. What everyone finds so
appealing about these old parish churches are the things that should not be
there.
Am I the only one to see this
?'

           
They'd brought him food and coffee. Made up a bed for him
in the sitting room. Sat up half the night with him. Prayed with him in his
agony.

           
'I've had visions. Dreams. I've been tested. All the time
I'm there I'm tested. It tries to twist me. How can I handle this? I'm only one
man.'

           
'No. You're not only one man, Joel. We're here. We're in
this together. Tens of thousands of us. Listen, you were our emissary. You've
seen and you've come back. We hear you, Joel. We hear you!'

           
Yes.

           
He slowed for the cobbles, bumping up the street towards
the church, its stonework black with age and evil.

           
'Say the word, Joel. Just say the word. We're with you.'

           
'I'm tired. I've only been there a couple of days, and
I'm exhausted.'

           
'You'll sleep tonight, Joel. We'll cover you with our
prayers. You'll sleep well.'

           
And he had. Even if it was only for a few hours. He'd
awoken refreshed and ready for his first morning worship at St Bride's, no
prepared sermon in his pocket, no script, no text. He would stride into that
pagan place and cleanse it with the strength of his faith. His sermon would be
unrehearsed; it would almost be like ... speaking in tongues.

Cathy said, 'You look
really awful.',
           
'Thanks.'

           
'I've been trying to understand it,' Cathy said.
           
'Don't. It won't do you any
good.'

           
Cathy pushed the fingers of both hands through her hair,
'I mean, they broke in here, in this really obvious, unsubtle way and they
didn't take the telly or the video, or even your guitar ... just this comb.
Does it look valuable?'

           
Moira broke the end off a piece of toast and tried to eat
it. 'Looks like one of those metal combs you buy for grooming dogs, only not so
expensive and kind of corroded. Like a lot of stuff over a thousand years old,
it looks like junk.'

           
'Look,' Cathy said reasonably, is it not possible it just
sort of slipped out when you were bringing your stuff in? Should I search the
garden?'

           
Moira shook her head, gave up on the toast.

           
'Should we call the police?'

           
'No ... No, this is ... Only guy I ever took the thing
out for was ... Matt Castle, and I never wanted to. Look, I'm sorry. Your
father's had a coronary, you've got this Joel Beard moving into your house and
I'm rambling on about a damn comb. What time are you leaving?'

           
'This afternoon - sooner if I can.' Cathy said she'd wait
for the cleaner, to tell her to put Joel Beard in the room Moira had slept in
and to get Alf Beckett to fix the pantry window. Then she'd pack a couple of
suitcases for her father and drop them off at The Poplars, this home for
clapped-out clergy. And then think about going back to Oxford.

           
'What are you studying at Oxford?'

           
'This and that,' Cathy said. 'Where will you go? Home?'

           
Moira didn't answer. Where was home anyway? Glasgow? The
folk circuit? She felt motiveless. The white-tiled rectory kitchen looked
scuffed but sterile, like a derelict operating theatre. Getting to her feet was
an effort. The view from the window, of graves, was depressing. The sky was
like a crumpled undersheet, slightly soiled.

           
'I don't know what to do,' Moira said, and the words
tasted like chewed-out gum. 'When something dreadful's going down and you don't
know what it is or how you connect ...'

           
'Why do you have to connect? You just came to a friend's
funeral. You can go home.'
           
'Can I?'

           
'Just take it easy, that's all. You can't drive all the
way to Scotland without sleep, you'll have an accident. Why don't you book in
somewhere for a night?'

           
'I look that bad?'

           
'You look like somebody walked off with your soul,' Cathy
said with this shockingly accurate perception.

Holy Communion, by
tradition, was at 9, but by 9.15 nobody had arrived.

           
Joel went to pick up a stray twig in the aisle, a piece
of the Autumn Cross the cleaners had missed. He took it outside, through the
churchyard, and dropped it on the cobbles outside the lych-gate. Depositing it
safely on secular ground.

           
On his return he glanced above the doorway, where the
Sheelagh na gig
had hung, half afraid
the thing would have left some murky impression of itself on the stonework
beneath, but there was only dust. He'd sent the vile plaque to be locked away
in the school cellars until such time as a museum might be persuaded to take
it.

           
He waited, in full vestments, in the vestry doorway,
looking over the backs of empty pews towards the altar. Yesterday evening he'd
had Beckett bring the wine up from the cellar room and then had the room
locked, and he'd taken the key and hurled it away Across the Moss.

           
The church clock gave a single chime for 9.30. When
nobody came to Holy Communion. It didn't really surprise him. How could anyone
here kneel at the altar, accepting the blood and body of Christ - knowing what
they knew?

Knowing that stipends and
student grants added up to bugger-all, she tried to give Cathy some money for
the two nights' accommodation.

           
Cathy laughed. 'After you were burgled?'
           
Moira didn't think she looked
too convinced, about the comb. Understandably, perhaps.

           
They were standing by the front gate of the Rectory. She
felt weak and washed out and cold without her cloak. The raw air hurt her
cheeks and made her eyes water.

           
Cathy said, 'You look like you're coming down with
something. Hope it's not this Taiwanese flu.'

           
Moira looked down the hill towards The Man I'th Moss.
           
Either side of the cobbled
street, the cottages looked rough and random, like rocks left by a landslide.
She said goodbye to Cathy, kissed her on the check. Cathy's cheek felt hot and
flushed, Moira's lips felt cracked, like a hag's. She was remembering the day
the Duchess had given her the comb. How she'd stood before her wardrobe mirror
and the old comb had stroked fluidly through her short hair, like an oar from a
boat sailing with the tide, and the hair had seemed suddenly so lustrous and
longing to be liberated, and that was when it began, the five-year war with her
gran, who thought children should be seen and not heard and not even seen
without their hair was neatly trimmed.

           
'… if that's what you were thinking,' Cathy was saying in
a low voice.
           
'Huh?'

           
'I said ...' raising her voice,'... it wasn't Dic.'

           
'What wasn't?'

           
'Whoever broke in. You've been indicating it was a
personal thing. I mean, how many people would know about that comb anyway?'

           
'I didn't say anything.'

           
'You didn't have to. You thought it was Dic. Well, he
wouldn't do a thing like that and anyway he ... he's away teaching.'

           
'Where's he teach?'

           
'I'm not telling you,' Cathy said. Her pale eyes were glassy
with tears. 'Please, Moira, it wasn't him. It wasn't.'

           
Moira thought, What's happening to her? What's happening
to me? When she picked up her fancy, lightweight suitcase and her guitar case
they both felt like they were full of bricks, and her hair felt lank and heavy,
suffocating, like an iron mask, as she made her way over the cobbles to the
church car park.

In the room directly over
the Post Office, Milly Gill brought Willie Wagstaff tea in bed.