The Man in the Moss (65 page)

           
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.