The Man in the Moss (96 page)

All I do know is that extremism of any kind has never taken root in
Bridelow, where a practical paganism and a humble Christianity have comfortably
linked hands for so long. Many of the dead, sadly, were members of the
fundamentalist Christian group called, if I have this right, The Church of the
Angels of the New Advent. A large number of them, including their leaders, Mr
and Mrs Christopher Montcrieff, heard the mighty thunder-roar and - believing
it to be the dawning of the Day of Judgment, as forecast in the Book of
Revelations - rushed out of the Rectory into the street with arms and (I would
like to think) hearts upraised.
                       
And, in seconds,
were buried alive.
                       
Not that many
would have remained alive for long under that glutinous mess, most being
crushed or drowned or suffocated very rapidly, mouths and noses and lungs
clogged for ever. Some of those who did survive had been trapped in pockets of
air under beams or walls or other protective bullwarks - although just as many
were killed by masonry which was crumbling like crisp toast under the weight of
hundreds of tons of peat.

The first death, largely
overshadowed by what was to come, remains officially unexplained.

                       
The body in the BMW motor car did indeed
prove to be that of my old friend Eliza Horridge. There will be an inquest, and
it will probably record an Open Verdict, for Liz appears to have died not of
injuries sustained in a car accident and the subsequent fire but some hours
earlier and of hypothermia, due to exposure.

                       
There is no question that Liz was suffering
from an agoraphobia exacerbated by the fear that her presence was no longer
welcome in Bridelow following the sale of the brewery to Gannons (I feel,
therefore, that none of us who knew her is exempt from blame) and that, fearing
the imminent reappearance of her old lover, John Lucas (whom I shall
henceforth, to keep him at a distance, refer to by his adopted
nom-de-plume
of John Peveril Stanage)
courageously overcame her illness to seek the aid of her one-time protector,
Iris Wagstaff.

                       
And when Ma - who then had herself but a
short time left to live - failed to answer her door, Liz, feeling she dare not
return home, became confused and wandered out on to the moor. I cannot bring
myself to contemplate those cold, wet hours of mental agony and desperation
before she succumbed to fatigue and lay down to the sad sleep from which she
would never awaken.

                       
I can only assume that her body was
discovered on the moor by the sick, satanic brethren recruited by Stanage and
his temptress and conveniently employed, most of them, by Gannons. And then
(remember, we are not dealing here with wholly rational people) someone decided
to put Liz's body into the car, from which they had removed Miss Moira Cairns,
before destroying it. As the police could establish no link whatsoever between
Liz and Miss Cairns, it was assumed the car had been stolen, but inquiries, I
am told, are not yet complete.

                       
As to the part played in this affair by the
brewery ... Well,
its the economic heart of the village, it was obviously a target for someone
with malice in mind

                       
I realise now that perhaps the very first
death of what we might, quite justifiably, call Bridelow's War, was that of
Andy Hodgson, the young worker who 'fell' to the ground during the reassembly
of the rusted pulley-and-platform mechanism used originally for winching sacks
to the highest level of the brewery ... that old malt store which was to become
the unholiest of temples.

                       
It is my belief that Andy Hodgson was himself
a foundation-sacrifice to consecrate the malt store, in one of several
corruptions of Celtic ritual performed in an effort to crumble the edifice of
our tradition. The platform was later used, there can be no doubt, to winch up
the body of Matt Castle, stolen from its grave for despicable necromantic
purposes.

                       
It was early days, though, and Andy's death
was clearly less elaborate than that of poor Joel Beard, for whom I shall
always have a certain respect, whose body remains buried somewhere out on the
Moss, and perhaps far more deeply now than was ever intended.

                       
The brewery, in an eastern corner of the
village, much shielded by trees, was unaffected by the Burst. When a certain
police officer paid a discreet visit the following morning he did not find what
he apparently had been expecting. The remains of Matt Castle and Young Frank
Manifold had disappeared.

                       
A mystery? Not, I suspect, much of one. I
think, if I were to question a few former regulars of The Man I'th Moss,
particularly the estimable Mr Stanley Burrows, I might discover that, in the
aftermath of the Burst and all the panic and confusion, the number of bodies in
the bog had been surreptitiously supplemented.

                       
The aforementioned policeman, an untypically
thoughtful and philosophical officer approaching retirement, wishes it to be
recorded that he was
not
in Bridelow
on the night of the disaster and is unlikely to return. Although, I am
informed, this officer has been undertaking some private 'stress-counselling'
with a certain widow, in his own time.

It was to be two days
before the other bodies were discovered at the brewery. I shall come to this.

           
Those of us, including Benjie's dog and Ma's cats, who
sought sanctuary in the church remained unharmed, although it was terrifying to
feel the building almost rocking around us.
                             
Surrounded
by rescue-squads in the wan light of early dawn, we could see peat four or five
feet deep in parts of the churchyard, like an obscene black parody of
snowdrifts.

                       
Most of the graves had disappeared, just the
heads of
crosses showing. Our Sheila remained in position, looking perhaps more
disgruntled than usual with her most public parts gunged up with peat.

                       
Although their yards and gardens were
submerged, the houses on the right of the street, had been spared the worst,
and these included Ma Wagstaff's cottage, wherein we came upon something
inexplicably strange.

                       
Dic Castle was sitting in Ma's old
rocking-chair in an
atmosphere of unexpected tranquility. He had been brought to the house at his
own request after Stan Burrows and a certain policeman had been unable to find
Cathy Gruber.
                       
Curiously calm,
Dic had insisted they leave him alone, and with so many horrors competing for
their attention they didn't argue for long.

                       
And so the lad sat himself down in the
rocking chair and slept through all the roaring and the screaming, and he
dreamed of an old lady rather irritably bandaging his wounds, continually
assuring him that she had better things to do.

                       
I myself have seen those wrists. Now, still
within a week, the scars are scarcely visible.

                       
I am a schoolteacher and an historian, a man
of facts. I make no comments upon this.

The American, Mr Macbeth ..
. Mungo, why not? ... could so easily have followed the rest of us into the
church and saved himself, but instead displayed exceptional and foolhardy
courage.

                       
I doubt if he himself knew whether it was
Cathy or Miss Moira Cairns he thought he could save. But in his desperate race
down the village street he must have felt himself to be close to the epicentre
of an earthquake, drenched by the insidious black liquid, with cobs of
semi-solid peat falling like bombs all around him and the crackling roar of
collapsing buildings on the western side.

                       
Eventually, the young man reached The Man
I'th Moss, and must have been horrified by what he found.

                       
For the pub began with the second storey, its
ground floor buried under a black avalanche, the lantern over the front door
half submerged but still eerily alight.

                       
Mungo knew the peat would be far too deep to
enable him to reach the rear of the building in the normal way, so he waded out
to the boundary wall - now no more than a foot above the surface - clambered on
to it and moved perilously, like a tightrope walker, around the forecourt until
he reached the yard at the rear, at the end of which was the remains of the
barn which had been used by Matt Castle for his music.

                       
An ante-room to hell.

... Oh, Jesus ... the fuck
am I gonna do? I can't handle this. There's nobody alive here. There ... is ...
nobody ...
alive.

           
Clawing at his eyes, filling up with the black shit.

           
And what if I find her body? You expect me to deal with
that, Duchess? You sent me down to here to bring her body back, that it? Well,
fuck you. Duchess, f ...

           
Hold it.

           
Voices. Close up.

           
Maybe these were echoes of voices from before the deluge,
peat preserving the last blocked screams of the dying.

           
'Drop it. Darling ... simply drop it. It'll pull you
down. Drop the stone - listen to me, now - drop the stone and wade away because
- believe this - another four or five paces and you'll be in over your head,
and it won't matter. Drop the stone and back away now and save yourself. All
you can do, m'dear.'

           
'Get
stuffed!'

           
Cathy.

           
Macbeth saw that after the rain, after the blast, there
was a lightness in the sky, still night but somehow drained of darkness. A
phoney dawn, bringing things and people into visibility.

           
Cathy was waist-deep in the peat, her fine, fair hair
gummed to her skull. She was looking up, but not at the rained-out sky.

           
Above her, balanced upon a fallen roof-spar, an
apparition glowing white, or so it seemed, undamaged by the night or the storm
of peat, was the writer, John Peveril Stanage.

           
Macbeth crouched on his wall.

           
It was clear that Stanage knew exactly why Cathy was
holding, above the level of the peat, a single grey boulder, the kind from
which these tough drystone walls had been constructed.

           
And it was clear also that he believed - part of the
psychological mesh he'd helped weave, the mystical dynamic he'd set in motion
long ago - that if this boulder should be put
in place, in some
particular
place,
he'd be able to proceed no further in the direction of Bridelow.

           
He
believed
this.

           
In the air, a glimmering, light on metal.
           
Stanage had hold of a length -
five feet or so - of copper pipe.

           
This was not mystical.

           
Even as Macbeth struggled to his feet, the pipe began to
swing.

           
'No!'

           
As he fell from the wall, the pipe smashed into Cathy.

           
Macbeth rolled into three feet of liquid crud and came up
like a sheep out of the dip, found it hard to stand upright, the stuff up
around his waist and it was so goddamn heavy, filling up the pockets of his
slicker; he shrugged out of the slicker, stood there, breathing like a steam
engine, black shit soaking into his fucking useless Bloomingdale menswear
department cashmere sweater.

           
'Cathy... where the f... ?'
           
'Who are
you?'
said Stanage.

           
Macbeth scraped peat out of his eyes. 'It doesn't
matter,' he said.

           
He heard Cathy spluttering beside him, glanced briefly at
her - something oozing out the side of her head, something that wasn't peat. He
pushed himself in front of her, slime slurping down the front of his pants; cold
as hell.

           
'Cathy, just do as he says and get outa here,
willya."
           
Cathy's hands came out of the
mire with a kind of sucking sound and they were still clutching the grey stone.
He saw her grinning, small white teeth in a small blackened face.