The Man in the Moss

by Phil Rickman

  'You need to talk to Mr Dawber. He's our local historian.'

  'And what would he tell me?'

  'Probably about the Celts driven out of the lowlands by the Romans first and then the Saxons.'

  'The English Celts? From Cheshire and Lancashire?'

  'And Shropshire and North Wales. It was all one in those days. They fled up here, and into the Peak District, and because the land was so crap nobody tried too hard to turn them out. And besides, they'd set up other defences.'

  'Other defences?'

  'Well... not like Hadrian's Wall or Offa's Dyke.'

  'The kind of defences you can't see,' Moira said.

  'The kind of defences most people can't see,' corrected Cathy. She looked up into the cold sky. Moira saw that all the clouds had flown, leaving a real planetarium of a night.

  Cathy said, 'She'd kill me if she knew I was telling you all this.'

  'Who?'

  'Ma Wagstaff, of course.'

  'And what makes you so sure she doesn't know?'

  'Oh, God,' Cathy said. 'You are like her. I knew it as soon as I saw you at the door.'

  'It's the green teeth and the pointy hat,' said Moira.

  'I don't know what it is, but when you've lived around here for a good piece of your life you get so you can recognize it.'

  'But your old man's the minister.'

  'And a bloody good one,' Cathy snapped. 'The best.'

  ' Right, Moira said. 'I'd like to meet him when he's feeling better.'

  'We'll see.' Cathy walked past her, out of the Rectory gates, stood in the middle of the street looking up at the church. 'It's a sensitive business, being Rector of Bridelow. How to play it. And if it's working, if it's trundling along ... I mean, things have always sorted themselves out in Bridelow. It's been a really liberal-minded, balanced sort of community. A lot of natural wisdom around, however you want to define wisdom.'

  The moonlight glimmered in her fair hair, giving her a silvery distinction. Then Moira realised it wasn't the moonlight at all, the moon was negligible tonight, a wafer. It was the light from the illuminated church clock.

  'They call it the Beacon of the Moss,' Cathy said.

  'Huh?'

  'The church clock. That's interesting, don't you think? It's not been there a century yet and already it's part of the legend. That's Bridelow for you.'

  'You mean everything gets absorbed into the tradition?'

  'Mmm. Now, Joel Beard ... that's the big curate with the curly hair, the one and only Joel Beard, Saint Joel. Now, Joel's really thick. He thinks he's stumbled into the Devil's backyard. He thinks he's been called by God to fight Satan in Bridelow because this is where he can do it one-to-one. In the blue corner Saint Joel, in the red corner The Evil One, wearing a glittery robe washed and ironed by Ma Wagstaff and the twelve other members of the Mothers' Union.'

  'The Mothers' Union?' Moira laughed in delight.

  'Thirteen members,' Cathy said. 'There've always been thirteen members. I mean, they don't dance naked in the moonlight or anything - which, bearing in mind the average age of the Mothers, is a mercy for everyone.'

  'Oh, Jesus,' said Moira, 'this is wonderful.'

  'It used to be rather wonderful,' Cathy said. 'But it's all started to go wrong. Even Ma's not sure why. Hey, look, have

  you anywhere to stay tonight? I mean, you want to stay here? There's a spare room.'

  This kid would never say she didn't want to be in the house alone.

  'Thank you,' Moira said. 'I think I'd like that.'

  Dic, who didn't drink much, had gone back to his father's pub and sunk four swift and joyless pints of Bridelow Black, sitting on his own at the back of the bar.

  At one stage he became aware of Young Frank pulling out the stool on the other side of his table. 'Steady on, lad.' Tapping Dic's fifth pint with the side of a big thumb. 'It's not what it were, this stuff, but it'll still spoil your breakfast.'

  Dic said, 'Fuck off, Frank.'

  Frank got his darts out of his back pocket. 'Game of arrows?' Dic shook his head, making Frank's image sway and loom like something on a fairground ride.

  'Come on, lad.' Frank's grating voice rising and fading out of the pub hubbub like a radio coming untuned. 'Life's gorra go on. You can't say you weren't expecting it. He were a good bloke, but he's better off dead than how he were, you got t'admit that.'

  'Frank!' Dic clambered to his feet, sank the rest of his pint, most of it going into his shirtfront. 'Fucking leave it, will you?'

  And then he was weaving and stumbling between the tables and out into the night.

  He stood in the doorway a while, getting his breath together, then he strode across the forecourt and on to the street. The cobbles gleamed, frosty already, in the light of the big clock in the sky, shining like the earth from the moon in those old space pictures.

  Dic began to moonwalk up the street, taking big strides, crashing into the phone box outside the post office, giggling like a daft sod. Coming up by the church, where he'd talked to Moira Cairns - there was her BMW, still parked there. Moira Cairns ... Wouldn't mind poking that sometime, give her one for his old man. Maybe she owed him one, part of his inheritance.

  He wished he had his pipes with him. Give them a fucking tune. Give them a real tune. Bastards. What were they at? What were they fucking at down there? Hands in Dad's coffin, sick bastards.

  Standing by the lych-gate with its cover like a picture-postcard well and a seat inside. Went in, sat down. Out of the blue light in here, anyroad. Right under the church but the sloping roof blocked it out. Dic nestled in the darkness, feeling warm. Closed his eyes and felt the bench slipping under him, like dropping down a platform lift into a velvet mineshaft. Dic threw his arms out, stretched his head back, accepting he was pissed but feeling relaxed for the first time since he didn't know ...

  He giggled. There was a hand on his thigh.

  It moved delicately up to his groin like a big spider.

  'Feels good,' Dic said, pretty sure he'd fallen asleep on the bench. Lips on the side of his neck and his nostrils were full of the most glorious soiled and sexy perfume.

  The hand sliding his zip down, easing something out.

  He pulled in his arms, hands coming together around the back of a head and soft hair. Hair so long that it was brushing the tip of his cock.

  'Moira,' Dic whispered.

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

  Although there has never been any excavation, it is presumed that the 'low' or mound on which St Bride's Church is built was a barrow or tumulus dating back to the Bronze Age and may later have been a place of Celtic worship.

  Similar mounds have been found to enclose chambers, which some believe to have been used not so much for burial purposes as for solitary meditation or initiation into the religious mysteries. Some tribes of American Indians, I believe, fashioned underground chambers for similar purposes.

  There has been speculation mat the small cell-like room reached by a narrow stairway from the vestry occupies the space of this original chamber. The official explanation for this room is that it was constructed as overnight accommodation for itinerant priests who came to preach at St Bride's and were unable, because of adverse weather, to return that night across the Moss. However, there are few recorded instances of this being necessary, and when, in 1835, a visiting bishop announced his intention of spending the night there 'to be closer to God' he eventually had to be found a room at The Man I'th Moss after being discovered naked and distressed in the snow-covered churchyard at three o'clock in the morning!

  CHAPTER III

  The Moss was like a warm bath, and he left it with regret.

  Knowing, all the same, that he must. That there was nothing to be accomplished by wallowing.

  So he strode out. And when he glanced behind him, what he saw took away his breath.

  For it was no longer a black and steaming peat bog but a vast, sparkling lake, an ecstatic expanse of blue and silver re
aching serenely to the far hills.

  Its water was alive. Quiescent, undemanding, but surely a radiant, living element. No, not merely living ... undying. Immortal.

  And the water was a womanly element. Light and placid, recumbent. Generous, if she had a mind to be. If you pleased her.

  He felt tufts of grass crisp and warm under his wet feet and was embarrassed, thinking he would surely besmirch it with filthy peat deposits from his bog-soiled body. But when he looked down at himself he saw that his skin was fresh and clean - not from the bog, but from the lake, of course.

  And he was naked. Of course. Quite natural.

  He stood at the tip of a peninsula. He thought at first it was a green island because the mound which rose, soft as a breast, from its centre was concealing the hills behind. But as he ascended the rise, new slopes purpled into being, and when he reached the summit, the surrounding hills were an amphitheatre.

  In the middle of which he stood.

  Naked.

  Appraised.

  'Shade the light! Shade it, damn you!'

  'What with?'

  ' Your hand, jacket, anything ... You poor little sod, you're really frightened, aren't you ... ?'

  'No, it's just ...'

  'Don't be ... Easier than you expected, surely, wasn't it? Soil's lovely and loose, obviously replaced in haste, everyone shit-scared, like you. Look, why don't you get the ropes? We can have this one out and into the Range Rover before we start on the other, OK?'

  'All right. Now?'

  'Got a firm grip, have we? You let it go and -I promise you, cock - we'll put you down there and bury you alive.'

  ' Yes, all right, yes, I've got it.'

  'OK, now. Pull.'

  'Oh ...agh ... Where shall I ... ?'

  'Just at the side will do. Right. Fine. Now, let's have the lid off.'

  'What...?'

  'Have a little look at him, eh? Hah! See that ... not even nailed down, they really were in a panic, weren't they? To think I was once almost in awe of these little people. How wrong can ... Oh, now ... Oh, look at that.'

  'Oh!'

  'Go on. Have a better look. Get closer. Put your fingers on his eyes.'

  'I can't, I ...Oh, God, how did I get into this?'

  'No good asking Him, my friend, you've cut all your ties in that direction. .

  Ernie Dawber was soon aware of Something Happening in the churchyard.

  A light sleeper, Ernie. Eyes and ears of the community, twenty-four hours a day. The headmaster's house overlooked the playground on the one side, and from the landing window there was no hiding-place at all for a pair of eight-year-olds sharing a packet of Embassy Gold.

  Ernie's replacement as head teacher came from Glossop and had not been prepared for such dedication. In fact he'd said, more or less, that if they made him live over the shop, as it were, they could stick the job. He was a good lad, though, generally speaking, so the Education Authority had accepted his terms, allowed him to commute from Across the Moss ... and sold the house to Ernie.

  Who couldn't have had a better retirement present. He was always on hand - and more than pleased - to take groups of kids on nature rambles or do a spot of relief teaching in the classroom in an emergency.

  And he could still watch the generations pass by. Through the landing window ... the schoolyard. While through the back bedroom window, on the other side of the house ... the graveyard. Full circle.

  So all it took was the clink of a shovel, and Ernie Dawber was awake and up at the window.

  They were being very quiet about it - as usual. He couldn't see much, just shadows criss-crossing through torchbeams, up at the top end, where the churchyard met the moor. Where Matt Castle had finally been planted and the earth piled at last on top of him.

  Ernie watched for just over half an hour, and then the torches were extinguished.

  'By 'eck,' he said, half-admiringly, hopping over the freezing oilcloth back to bed, 'tha's got a nerve. Ma.'

  He remembered Joel Beard. What, really, could he have done? If their stupid curate was determined to spend the night in the little cellar under the church, how could he stop him?

  Maybe the Rector's fears were unfounded. Maybe his experience and that of the Bishop all those years ago ... Well, they were sensitive men. Not all clergymen were, by any means, and this lad certainly looked, well, not dense exactly, that wasn't quite the word. Dogmatic, set in his beliefs. Blind to other realities.

  But at least, tucked up in his cell, he wouldn't be aware of what was happening up in the churchyard.

  And that was a small mercy, Ernie thought, getting into bed. He felt a trifle dizzy but decided to disregard it.

  He thought he recognized the naked woman on the hill. There was something about her, the way she looked at him, the way she smiled.

  The way she seemed to say, Are you man enough?

  He stood above her. Confident of his superior strength, his muscular limbs, his halo of golden curls. Their power over women. Oh, he was man enough.

  For had he not fallen into the black peat and emerged from clear water, as clear as the Sea of Galilee? And had not the peat been washed from him?

  Now the female lay in the grass before him, close to the summit of the green mound, her legs spread. He knew what she wanted.

  Her wild hair was spread over the grass. Hair which reflected the light, changing like water. Hair which rippled like the lake.

  He smiled his most superior smile. 'I know what you want.' Disdainful.

  And if there was no disdain in the reaction of his body, this was another demonstration of his power. Proof that he certainly was man enough.

  But, gently, she shook her head.

  First, you must recognize me for what I am. And then worship me.

  The lights were tiny, some distance away, a short procession of them. Torches, lanterns, Tilley lamps; whatever, people were carrying them, and they were carrying them openly across Sam Davis's farmland, and Sam gripped the bedroom window ledge, bloody mad now.

  'Right!'

  'No!'

  'I'm gettin' shotgun ...'

  'Sam, no... !'

  'Shurrup,' he rasped. 'You'll wake kids.'

  'I'm not letting you.' He heard her pull the cord to the light over the bed.

  'Look ...' Sam turned his back on the window. Esther, all white-faced and rabbit-eyed, sitting up in bed, blankets clutched to her chin. 'They're makin' a bloody fool o' me, yon buggers,' he whispered. 'Don't even hide their bloody lights no more.'

  'We should never've come here.'

  'Oh, don't bloody start wi' that again.'

  'Why d'you think it were so cheap? It's a bad place, Sam.'

  'It's the best we'll bloody get.'

  'Nobody wanted it, and I don't just mean the land.'

  'Aye,' he said. 'I know you don't mean the bloody land, rubbish as it is.'

  'I'm scared,' she said, all small-voiced. 'It's an awful thing t'be scared of your own home, Sam.'

  He snatched a glance out of the window; the lights had stopped moving, they'd be clustered up there in a circle of their own around what was left of the stone circle.

  'Sam!'

  'Shurrup!'

  'Aren't you scared? Really. Aren't y—'

  'Listen. What it does to me ... it just makes me tampin' mad. Been goin' on weeks, months ... and what have I done about it? Tell me that? Am I going t'stand here for ever, like an owd woman, frickened t'dearth?'

  'You went to the vicar. That new feller's coming tomorrow. You said he were coming tomorrow.'

  'Waste of bloody time. And the coppers. I keep telling yer. Couldn't even charge um wi' trespass 'cause it's got to be trespass wi' intent to do summat illegal, and worshipping the devil int even a criminal offence no more - sooner bloody nick you for a bald tyre. Bastards. Useless bastards. All of um.'

  Kept saying it. Kept repeating it because he could hardly believe it, the things you could get away with. Was he supposed to sit around, with his finger up hi
s arse, while them bastards up there were shagging each other front and back and sacrificing his beasts? No bloody way!

  'You go out there,' Esther said, 'and I'm ringing the police, and I'll ring the bloody vicarage too and tell um where you are, I don't care what time of night it is.'

  'Oh, shit!' Sam advanced on the bed, spreading his arms wide, cold by now in just his underpants. 'Bloody hell, woman. What do you suggest I do, then?'

  'Come back to bed,' Esther said, trying her best to smile through the nerves that were making her face twitch. 'Please, Sam. Don't look. Just thank God they're up there and we're down here. Please. We'll talk about it tomorrow.'

  'Well, thanks very much for your contribution.' Sam sighed. '"We'll talk about it tomorrow." Fucking Nora.'

  He took one last glance.

  The circle of light did not move.

  'I've had it wi' talk,' Sam said.

  First you must recognize me. For what I am.

  'Recognize you?' He laughed. 'For what you are?'

  He stood above her, looking down on her. The elongated shadow of his penis divided her lolling breasts like a sword.

  'I know what you are,' he said. 'I know precisely what you are.'

  He saw a blue calm in her eyes that was as deep as the lake, and for a moment it threatened to dilute his resolve.

  Then he heard himself say, 'How dare you?'

  She lay below him, placid, compliant.

  'You're just a whore. How dare you seek my recognition? You're just a ... a cunt.'

  In an act of explicit contempt he lowered himself upon her, and her hands moved to her crotch, thumbs extended, to open herself for him.

  He's ... quite small, isn't he? I somehow expected him to be bigger. More impressive.'

  'Quite manageable, really. Oh my, earth to earth, peat to peat ... it would have been rather less easy to get at him in a week or two. Watch it now, be careful of his eyes. Mustn't be blasé.'

  'I'm not. It's just I'm actually not as worried about, you know, touching this one. It doesn't seem like a real body, somehow. More like a fossil.'