by Phil Rickman
Cathy said, 'Listen, the night Dic brought you to the rectory, afterwards he had a few drinks, got a bit ... mixed up? He was approached. There was a sexual approach. He thought it was you.'
'What a compliment.'
Cathy frowned. 'Next day he told me about it He's always told me things. He was in a hell of a state. He needed ... calming down. You can tell how easily they get people.'
Moira nodded. She knew well enough.
'I said you were with me the whole time,' Cathy said, 'so it couldn't have been you.'
'Thank you.'
'And then we talked about it for ages. It was our only way in. For Dic to go along with it, see what happened. I think he saw it as a way of getting out of the influence of his dad and Stanage and the whole thing.'
Moira started shaking her head. Lamb to the slaughter.
'He's been through hell.' Cathy's eyes looking hot with sorrow. 'Yes, they've got Matt's body. Yes, they've been … arousing him.'
Moira covered her face with her hands.
'There's Stanage and this Therese. Calls herself Therese Beaufort. He claims, apparently, that she's his niece. That's crap. All kinds of people've been attracted to him over the years. He's, you know, he's ... magnetic'
'I know.' Moira rubbed her eyes. 'I know his kind. Who else?'
'Detritus. There's a Satanic-type cult based in Sheffield that's been holding rituals on the moors, in the old Bronze Age circles. Been going on for years. They move as close as they can to Bridelow - it's got a reputation in the occult world, you can imagine. Place of power.'
Moira felt herself back in the churchyard, deformed stone across the moor, hopping like a toad, a quick splash of blood ...
'Therese,' Cathy said. 'Tess - she's Tessa-something, Dic says, she came up from the Welsh border - Tess brings them along. They're revolting. That farmer - there was a farmer killed on the moor, Sam Davis - he came to see Pop last week. Lights in the night, rams killed. His wife reckoned they were even sacrificing babies.'
'It's not unknown,' Moira said. 'I believe some of these cults are actually breeding babies for sacrifice. How did that guy die?'
'Fell down a quarry at night. How do you know that, about the babies?'
'Read it in the News of the World,' Moira said quickly.
'Look, you say they get as close as they can to Bridelow. But they can't get in, right!' You told me the other night there were defences. The kind you can't see.'
Milly said, 'Jack could let them in. Down in Cambridge, Jack was mixing with all kinds of people. Jack was learning all the time. We had to do something or else Bridelow'd be ... just like everywhere else. Soiled. Only more so, because ...'
'… because it was a place of power. Right?'
'We had to do something,' Milly said. 'Or Ma did. Ma was the only one could do it.'
'Why?' Moira hunched forward, hands clasped. 'I mean, what? What could Ma do?'
Milly looked down into her lap where Willie's hand lay.
'Come on, Milly,' Moira said almost angrily. 'What is it you're not telling me? Cathy, do you know?'
Yes,' Cathy said. 'I think so.'
CHAPTER VII
Ernie had taken off his hat, placed it on the hallstand, where it was still dripping five minutes later when Shaw Horridge shouted, 'Get out. Get out, Mr Dawber. Get out before I kill you!'
Six months ago Ernie would have had a regretful laugh at that. Six months ago, Shaw wouldn't have been able to say it without a hell of a struggle. Now it was quite apparent that Shaw would indeed like to kill him and certainly could. And it wouldn't be his first time.
Feelings. Ernie had ignored his feelings, his whimsy. They
were never specific enough, never quite accurate. He was a man and also a scholar in his own small way, and feelings, in Bridelow, were what women had.
And now, when it was probably too late, he was finding out what feelings were for.
He stood by the hallstand. Over his head hung a leaded lantern in a wrought-iron frame. Tasteful; one of Liz's earliest purchases.
'Your mother's no more in Buxton, lad, than we are now.'
'She is!' Shaw seemed about to stamp his foot. With his folded umbrella he prodded the air an inch or two from Ernie's eyes.
Ernie didn't move. 'Nearest she got to Buxton is a BMW motorcar at the bottom of a bank. She's in a police mortuary lad. That's where your mother is.'
Known it as soon as he and Willie had found the Cairns lass. Known it, really, for most of the day. That she was dead..
'You're off your head, Mr Dawber.'
'Not yet, lad. Soon, happen. But not yet.'
'I've told you once to get out. I won't tell you again.' Shaw's eyes glittered like broken glass.
'Kill me, eh?'
'You think I won't?'
'No, I know you would.' Ernie picked up his wet hat, held it in front of his chest like a breast plate. Took a big, long breath. Saw before him the little lad in Class I of the infants. Fair-haired, fair-complexioned, tall but slightly built. Brought to school that first morning by stocky, swarthy Arthur Horridge, Arthur's dark brown hair already greying at the temples.
Ernie looked into Shaw's pale, malevolent eyes. 'Just like you killed your granny, eh, lad?'
Shaw drew back across the hall. His mouth twisted up and opened on one side, his face alternating between a sneer and a stare of more than slightly crazed, vacant incomprehension.
'What's this? What's this nonsense? What are you babbling about? You're an old fool, Mr Dawber.'
'Haven't they told you, Shaw? Hasn't your father told you?'
'My father's dead.'
'I only wish he were, lad.'
'I... You…'
'Your father's Jack Lucas. John Peveril Stanage.'
'That's ... that's absolute crap.'
'You want to hear about this, Shaw?'
Shaw had backed up against the flock-papered far wall, his mouth twisting noiselessly from side to side, both hands over his head, hovering half an inch above his baldness.
'When I was a little lad' Ernie leaned his back against the hallstand, relaxed - 'there was a bit of a kerfuffle in Bridelow. Minor scandal, soon hushed up, years before I learned the details. Anyroad ... Ma Wagstaff ... Iris Morris in those days, young lass, bit of all right, too. But wild. Nowt anybody could tell her. Wasn't going to stay in little Bridelow, was she? Off to the city, our Iris, most weekends. Met a feller, as you'd expect. Educated smooth-talker, name of Lucas.'
Shaw Horridge was standing with his legs apart, panting a little.
'Came back pregnant. Wouldn't be the first one. Prospective father buggered off soon as he found out. The old story, and folks in Bridelow's always been liberal enough about that sort of thing. Except Iris was a bit special. Direct line, see. Presented to the Mother same week she was christened, expected, somehow, to have a daughter.'
'This is nonsense,' Shaw said. 'I'm going to kill you.'
'Hear me out first, eh?'
. 'I killed someone else tonight. I killed Manifold. Young Frank. I killed him ... just moments ago.'
'I don't think so,' Ernie said uncertainly. The idea of Shaw Horridge coping with Young Frank with a few drinks inside him was still a bit laughable. Wasn't it?
'I did- I'll show you.'
'Let me finish, lad, eh? Where was I? A daughter, yes. They expected she'd have a daughter first, that's the way it is usually. But no, it was a boy, and a most peculiar child. White. All over.'
'No!'
'Yes! Folks said, it's retribution. She sinned. Sinned not so much against God but against her heritage. And the child? A changeling, they said. Know what that is, Shaw? Child of another ... species, shall we say. A cuckoo. That was the word they used, changeling's my word, as a folklorist - all nonsense, of course, happen just a genetic throwback. But "cuckoo" was what they said. Not out loud, of course. Whispered it, though, when Iris wasn't about. But then she got married to Len Wagstaff and had three more, and the family closed ranks a bit and t
he things John did later were covered up. At first. Until it wasn't possible to cover them up any more.'
'What things?'
Pranks, at first. Not the worst you say about them, but if you were being charitable you'd call them pranks. Cruel pranks.'
'Perhaps they made him feel better,' Shaw said.
'Eh?'
'You do something brave, you push yourself. And you start to feel better.'
'Do you?'
'Yes. You can do anything if you push yourself into places you wouldn't normally go.'
'Oh, aye?'
'Look at this, for instance. How do you think I got this?'
He was doing it again, letting his hands hover half an inch from the bald part of his head.
'I don't understand,' Ernie said.
'Can't you see?' Shaw leapt about flinging switches until the hall was blazing with lights. Wall lights, ceiling lights, lights over five mirrors reflecting his bounding figure. 'Look. Look! I was completely bald at the front. Even two weeks ago, I was bald.'
'Aye?'
'Well?' Shaw bent his head towards Ernie. It threw off light like a steel helmet. 'Well?'
'Well, what?'
Shaw straightened up. 'Know when it began to grow again? When I agreed to get rid of the old lady.'
'Your grandmother.'
'That's crap. You come here, you give me all this bullshit. How stupid do you really think I am, Mr Dawber?'
Ernie thought very carefully before he spoke.
'Stupid enough,' he said, stepping away from the hallstand, bracing himself, 'to think your hair is growing again.
The fire hissed again. There was a visible bubbling among the coals.
'Have to get Alf Beckett to fit you a cowl on t'chimney,' Willie Wagstaff said prosaically to Milly.
Moira moved her legs closer to the fire, feeling she might never be truly warm again.
'Your brother? He's your brother?'
'Half-brother,' said Willie. 'But it counted for nowt. Once he'd gone he were never spoke of again. And after that, Ma never looked back.'
'And there was a new respect for Ma,' Milly Gill said. That she was able to do it.'
'Do what? What did she do?'
'Personal banishing rite,' Milly said. 'She walked around the village boundary three times within a day and a night. She walked barefoot, placing stones. Calling on … elements not usually invoked. But he was a strong presence, even then.'
'Be July of that year when he come back,' Willie recalled. 'End of his second year at Cambridge. Arrived in a fancy sports car.'
'Wherever he went,' Milly said, 'he could make money or get people to give him things.'
'There's an owd tree,' Willie said, 'just this side of t'Moss, 'fore you get to t'pub. Jack piled his car into that. Broke both arms. Elsie Ball, as were landlady of The Man in them days, she dint recognize Jack at first. Went out to help him, but he wouldn't come out of his car, couldn't come out. Just sat there until the ambulance come. Ma were standing at top of street, she knew who it were. Too far apart to see each other's faces, but I remember Elsie saying clouds were hanging down, hanging low, like a thunderstorm were about to burst.'
'And then Jack went away,' Milly said, 'and we never saw him again. He knew he'd never get back in, long as Ma were …'
'Alive,' said Willie, and Moira saw the fingers of his left hand beginning to crawl up the side of his knee.
'So,' Moira said, 'if he wanted to get back …'
'Why should he? He were rich. He were becoming famous. He had everything he could wish for.'
'Except his heritage,' Moira said.
'He tried to destroy his heritage,' Milly insisted.
'No. He tried to restructure it, surely. He tried to rebuild it around himself. It was a placid, earth-related, female religion, and he wanted to harden it into something he could use.'
Milly looked at her with suspicion.
'I've encountered it before,' Moira said. 'No. He was never going to walk away from that. All the time he'd be building up his armoury of contacts inside Bridelow. Matt and Dic we know about. There are probably others.'
'Shaw Horridge.' Willie's fingers were drumming hard. 'The brewery. He'd bought into Gannons. He must've done that purely to get hold of Bridelow Brewery.'
Who took the comb?
... bloke coiled Shaw Horridge, but that's not important right now...
'Yes,' Moira said.
Willie's fingers going like hell, both hands now. 'The bloody scale of the thing! Too big for us to see. Maybe we never wanted to see it. He'd gone. Right, Ma says, that's it. Never mention him again and you'll never see him again. And we never have.'
'Except,' said Milly, 'in Shaw.'
Willie looked at her. Moira watched his eyes widen.
'It was a Mothers' thing,' Milly said. 'Never talked about. I think Mr Dawber knew, but that's all. Probably not many people remember now, and I was just a child, but when Eliza McCarthy first arrived in Bridelow it was as Jack's girlfriend. All Jack's girlfriends were from wealthy backgrounds. Liz didn't last long, I don't suppose she was beautiful enough. It was probably just the family link with the Duke of Westminster that interested him.'
Milly pulled one of the cats on to her lap, began to stroke it from neck to tail. 'What happened, I believe, is that they had a row and Jack just drove away and left her in tears in the street. Which was where Ma found her. This was before the banishing.'
'Aye,' Willie said, something dawning. 'She spent the night with us. It were the year before me Dad died. He'd gone to The Man, he were in t'darts team, and I remember lying in bed and hearing Ma and this lass talking for hours.'
'Probably what you heard was Ma warning her off Jack. Next day, when Jack didn't come back, Ma introduced Liz to Arthur Horridge and two months later they were engaged. Well ... four days before the wedding, Liz is hammering on Ma's door in a terrible state. She's pregnant.'
Milly hauled the second cat on to her lap as if she needed reinforcement. 'Jack. Jack on the outside. He can't get into Bridelow but he can still get to his ex-fiancée.'
'Bastard.' Both of Willie's hands fell away from his knees.
Cathy shook her head in distaste. 'How could she?'
'You didn't know him,' Milly said. 'When I was nine years old he took me and two other little girls for a walk on ... Oh, you don't want to hear, it was nothing by comparison with what else he's done. But he could walk in and even if you didn't really like him he'd get what he came for. Liz - it wasn't rape- as such, you could learn to live with that. Anyway ... Ma had a long chat with Arthur Horridge and Shaw was born, and he was Arthur's son and nothing more was ever said.'
'I can't believe all this,' Willie said. 'Can't believe we never thought. We didn't think of the bugger any more - better not to. Wrote his books under the name John Peveril Stanage, we knew that, so it was as if the Jack Lucas we knew had gone for good.'
'Pouring all his worst fantasies into his books, huh?' Moira said.
'Something like that. Takes that American lad to come in here and drop Jack's name in our laps before we put two and together.'
'Oh,' said Cathy. 'Mungo! He still thinks ...'
Moira spun so fast the towel unwound from her hair. Cathy's hand went to her mouth but failed to stifle a cry.
'They did that to you? They cut off all your ... ?'
Moira let the towel fall.
'Oh, Moira!' Tears sprang into Cathy's eyes.
Deliberately calm, Moira said, 'They needed my hair to entangle Matt's spirit. They locked me in an outhouse in the dark. They couldn't kill me because that would have released
my spirit, defeating the object. So they kept me in this sensory vacuum, sedated with mogadon or some shit that turns you into a comatose non-person so that your energy, your personality, your essence can be ... stolen.'
Moira stood up, reached under the mantelpiece for her stiffening jeans. 'Cathy, I ... You invoked the awful word "Mungo".' Disgusted to feel a tiny smile pulling on th
e muscles at the corners of her mouth.
'He still thinks you're dead,' Cathy said. 'He's over at the Man. I'd better call him.'
'Uh huh.' Moira shook her head. 'I don't know how Macbeth got here or why, and I don't have time to find out. I'm starting to see everything. Clear as hell.'
Her mind burning up with it.
They stood either side of the Beacon of the Moss, heads bowed.
Joel had asked, 'Shouldn't we pray?'
'We should meditate,' John had said.
Joel stood in the blueness of it and tried to concentrate his mind, to absorb the rise and fall of Tongues from beneath, to achieve a holy stillness. But his thoughts lumbered ape-like around the shadowed walls of the chamber. He could not see John's face, could only sense the man's awesome containment.
'It's time,' John said very quietly, raising his head.
Reaching up, beyond the top of the great lantern, examined the chain by which it hung from the thick, long smoke-blackened beam. 'Come beneath it, Joel. Catch it as I release it.'
And while Joel crouched, arms full of light, John reached up and unhooked the chain.
The lamp was unexpectedly heavy. Joel stumbled but held it, pulling down several feet of electric flex which had coiled between the beam and the wall. The lamp did not go out.
'Good,' John said. 'Now lower it to the floor.'
They both stood back. The pointed top of the lantern was now on a level now with Joel's groin.
'Kick it in,' John urged.
Joel tried to see his face but saw only the bared blue teeth and blue steel ripples of hair.
He couldn't move.
'This is the pagan light. This is the lure. Very few people dared cross the Moss, Mr Beard. except those for whom the devil lit the way. Have you heard that legend? Have you heard it?
'Yes!' Joel panicking. 'I heard it from you. You told me.'
'And do you believe it? Consider the evidence.'
'I believe,' Joel intoned, 'that this is a place of pagan worship. I have seen the signs. I have seen the woman with the opened cunt. I have dreamed of her. And I have seen the dead walk.'
'And you know that this night is Samhain, the Feast of the Dead, and that the light is shining out across the peat to welcome the dead to this place.'