by Phil Rickman
'It's this one,' Macbeth said behind her. 'Moira? Please?'
Moira turned and took a step forward and her foot squelched in it.
Congealing blood. Bucketsful.
You don't have to do anything like that,' Cathy said. 'It's not as if I'm asking you to bare your breasts or have sex with anyone under a full moon or swear eternal allegiance to the Goddess.'
'Pity,' said the blonde one, trying, and failing, to hold her cigarette steady.
'All you have to do,' Cathy said, 'is believe in it. Just for as long as you're taking part.'
'I don't, though, luv,' Lottie Castle said. 'And I can't start now.'
However, Cathy noticed, she couldn't stop herself looking over their shoulders towards what was probably the gas-mantle protruding from the side of the bar.
Cathy had heard all about the gas-mantle, from the policeman, Ashton, who was standing by the door at this moment, Observing but keeping out of it because - as he'd pointed out, there was no evidence of the breaking of laws, except for natural ones.
'Yes, you do,' Chrissie said. 'You've always believed in it. That's been half the problem.'
'And how the hell would you know that?'
'Oh, come on. The last couple of hours I've probably learned more about you than anybody in this village. And you know more about me than I'd like to have spread around.'
'Yes,' said Lottie. 'I suppose so. And how do you come into this, luv? Always struck me as an intelligent sort of girl, university education. Oxford, isn't it?'
'That's right, Mrs Castle, Oxford.'
'No polite names tonight. It's Lottie.'
'And I'm Chrissie,' said the blonde.
'You know about your husband,' Cathy said. 'You know what they've done.'
'Cathy luv, he ceased to be my husband the night he needed somebody else to close his eyes for him. Well, a fair time before that, if truth were known. I've had half a lifetime of Matt Castle, and that's more than anybody should have to put up with, and I can say that now, because I can say anything tonight, believe me.'
As soon as Cathy had walked in she'd spotted the two glasses, smelt the booze.
'All right,' she said. 'Forget your husband. Let's talk about your son.'
Lottie's face hardened immediately into something like a clay mask.
'Dic? What about Dic?'
'Just I don't think he's dead,' Macbeth said.
'Oh, Jesus. Jesus.' Moira put down her lamp in the blood, the light tilted up at Dic's face.
But they couldn't kill him, could they? For the same reason they couldn't kill you. Surely.
'Willie was right, Mungo. We should've been up here, mob-handed. Thought I was being clever. Being stupid. Stupid!'
But sometimes you can do more harm to someone than killing them'd be, you know?
'Tights,' Macbeth snapped. 'You wearing tights under there?'
'Huh ... ? No. What's ... ? Oh, Jesus... Dic ... please don't be dead.'
'Shit,' said Macbeth. 'Handkerchief?'
'I dunno what's in these pockets, it's no' my coat... yeah, is this a handkerchief?'
'How big is it? OK, tear it in half. Fold 'em up. Make two tight wads.' Macbeth was peeling off the thick adhesive tape binding Dic's arms to the chair-arms. Both arms were upturned, palms of the hands exposed. Veins exposed. There was a welling pool of rich, dark blood at each wrist and it was dripping to the floor each side of the chair. There was a widening pond of blood, congealed around its blackened banks. Late-autumnal flies from the roofspace crawled around, drunk on blood.
'OK, now you hold his arm above his head. You're gonna get a lot of blood on you.'
'I got more blood on me than I can handle,' Moira muttered. 'You sure you know what you're doing, Mungo?'
'I never did it for real before, but... Ah, you don't need to hear this shit, just hold his arms. Right. Gimme one of the pads. See, we got to hold the ... this is a pressure pad, right? So you push it up against the wound with both thumbs. Like hard. Idea is, we stop the blood with the pad, then I wind this goddamn tape round just about as ... tight... as I can make it,'
'Is he breathing?'
'How the fuck should I know? Now the other arm. Hold it up, over his head ... And, shit, get the tape off his mouth. Chrissakes, Moira, didn't we do that?'
The tape across Dic's mouth stretched from ear to ear. Moira tore it away, and Dic mumbled, 'Do you ... have to be so rough?'
Moira jumped away in shock. Macbeth yelled, 'Keep hold of that fucking arm, willya?'
'Aw, Christ. You're no' dead.'
'I'm no' dead,' said Dic feebly, and be giggled.
'Don't talk,' said Moira. 'You're gonny be OK. Mungo?'
'He's lost a lot of blood.'
'Don't I know it. I'm paddling in it.'
'He needs to go to a hospital. This is strictly amateur hour. Can't say how long it's gonna hold. Far's I can see, they cut the vein. If they'd cut the artery this guy'd be long gone. They cut the vein, each wrist, taped his arms down. The blood goes on dripping, takes maybe a couple hours to drain the body. How long they had you like this, pal?'
'Not the faintest,' Dic said. 'I was on valium, I think. Intravenous. So I'd know what was happening but wouldn't care.'
'That's good. See, the dope slows down the metabolism and that goes for the blood flow too. This is weird stuff, Moira, this left me way behind a long time back.'
Moira said, 'Do you know why, Dic?'
Dic nodded at the hump under the sacks.
'Do me one favour,' Macbeth said. 'I saved your life, least you can do is let me keep that fucking thing under wraps.'
'That's Matt, isn't it, Dic?'
Dic nodded. He was lying back in his chair, both arms still flung over his head and black with dried and drying blood.
Moira didn't recall ever seeing courage on this scale. Maybe the valium had helped, but it was more than that.
'Suppose you know,' Dic said, 'where they've gone.'
'We have to get you to a hospital.'
'When you're on valium and you're still terrified, you know it must be pretty awesome.'
'Looks pretty cruddy to me,' Macbeth said.
'We'll get you down the steps, OK? We'll get you out of here.'
'He's not sane, you know. I don't reckon he was all there to begin with, lived in his own fantasy world. Like Dad. And that guy Hall.' He closed his eyes. 'Bloody Cathy. The things you do for love, eh?'
'Mungo,' Moira said. 'How about you go downstairs to one of the offices, find a phone? Get us some transport for Dic'
'You'll be OK?' Macbeth looked like he couldn't get out fast enough.
'Sure. Get hold of Cathy. You got the number?'
'Called it enough times from the phone-booth.' He hesitated in the doorway, Dic's blood on one cheek.
'Go,' Moira said.
When they were alone, she said, 'Dic, I need to ask you ... Matt .. .'
'I gave him blood,' Dic said. 'And you ...' He nodded at the thing in the other chair.
Moira sighed. Sooner or later she had to face this.
She hooked a finger under a corner of the sacking.
The dead couldn't harm you.
'You get … used to him,' Dic said with a dried-up bitterness. 'You start to forget he ever looked any different.'
She pulled away the sacking. The smell was putrid. It was the kind of smell that would never entirely leave you and some nights would come back and hover over you like the flies that were clustering around Matt's withered mouth, the lips already falling from the teeth.
'I was afraid to look at him in his coffin,' Dic said. 'Mum said there was no shame. No shame in that.'
'Dic,' Moira said. 'What's that in his lap?'
'The pipes.'
'That stuff wrapped around the pipes.'
'You know what it is.'
Moira reached out with distaste and snatched the bundle from the lap of the corpse. Air erupted from the bag and the pipes groaned like a living thing. Or a dying thing. She
cried out and dropped the pipes but held on to what had been around the pipes, black hair drifting through her fingers in the flickering candlelight. A glimmer of white.
'Which of them did it?' Her voice so calm she scared herself. 'Which of them actually cut it off?'
Dic said, 'The woman, I'd guess. Therese. They wanted him strong and ... driven. You know?'
His eyes kept closing. Maybe he was about to pass out from loss of blood. She didn't know what you did in these circumstances. Did you let him rest or did you try to keep him conscious, keep him talking? He seemed to need to talk.
'I gave him blood,' he said. 'Blood feeds the spirit or something like that. Blood's very powerful in magic. And …'
He winced, coughed, nodded at the hair.
'... so's desire.'
'And what,' Moira said, staring into Matt Castle's impenetrable, sightless eyes, stuffing the hair into a pocket of the duffel coat, 'did he get from the bog body?'
'Wrong question.' Dic's eyes closed and didn't open for several seconds. Moira was worried. Dic said, 'I think you should be asking ... what it got from him.'
His eyes weren't focusing. 'Listen, I don't know whether they got what they were after. All kinds of noises were coming out of... that.'
Moira picked up the sacking, tossed it over Matt with a shudder.
'Hall was trying to talk to it. Had a few phrases in medieval Welsh. I don't think it made any sense. In the end he was screaming at it. Stanage was screaming at Therese. It didn't go how they hoped.'
'Does it ever.'
'I can't believe these people.'
'I can,' Moira said. 'What went wrong?'
'Couldn't find the comb was one thing. Stanage was furious.'
Moira bent over him. His eyes were slits. 'Dic, why couldn't they find the comb?'
'Because I'd ... taken it. I think. Earlier on. I took it out of the bag. Knew they were saving it for the climax.'
'Where is it now?'
He tried to shake his head. 'I'm sorry,' Moira said. 'We'll get you out of here. Listen, if I leave you now ... can you bear it? Mungo'll be back in a minute. Only I want to get away on my own. Dic, can you hear me?'
Dic's eyes were closed. He was half-lying in his chair, hands still thrown back behind his head. There seemed to be no more blood seeping under the tape.
Didn't they say that your blood stopped flowing when you died?
Dic's canvas-seated wooden armchair still stood in the pond of his blood, mostly congealed, like mud, like the surface of a peatbog.
'Dic?'
No reply. But he was still breathing, wasn't he? She touched his fingers; they felt cold, like marble.
'Dic, tell Mungo … tell him not to worry. Tell him … just tell him I've gone to meet the Man.'
CHAPTER V
There was a strange luminescence over the Moss, as though the rain itself was bringing down particles of light. She could see its humps and pools, and she knew there were people out there, could hear their voices, scattered by the rain. The Moss was swollen up like a massive pincushion and every heavy raindrop seemed to make a new dent.
She walked openly to the door of The Man I'th Moss and hammered on it, shouted 'Lottie!' a few times. All the lights were on, lights everywhere, in the bar, in all the rooms upstairs.
But nobody here.
OK.
She switched on her lamp and walked around the back to the yard where the stable block or barn place was, Matt's music room. Its door hung open, the hasp forced. They hadn't even bothered to disguise their visit when they came to borrow the Pennine Pipes.
Switching off her lamp, Moira went quietly in. She put on no lights. The air inside seemed to ripple with greens and browns, like sea light.
Mosslight.
The carpets on the wall tautened the air. Dead sound. No echoes.
She took off her coat, found the old settee, the one with its insides spraying out. Sat down, with the lamp at her feet, and thought peacefully of Matt and felt no hatred.
All gone.
Released.
It had taken her nearly ten minutes to get here. Ten minutes in which the rain had crashed down on her sparsely matted skull, and she'd yielded up her anger with a savagery even the night couldn't match.
Screamed a lot. Cursed him for what he'd done, all those years of lies and craving, abuse of Lottie, abuse of Dic, abuse of her from afar, divulging to the crazy Stanage the secret of the comb, letting Stanage set him up, set her up in Scotland.
Letting Stanage into his weaknesses. So that the long-haired girls appeared on cue. This Therese playing the part with an icy precision, drawing out of Man the thin wire of desire by which they could anchor him.
I used to think she was ... a substitute. Me own creation. Like, creating you out of her ...
While he was no longer sure that this was not, in essence, Moira.
... I should've known. Should've known you wouldn't leave me to die alone. I'm drawing strength from the both of you. The bogman and you ...
Had Stanage known that Matt was dying? Was Man chosen because he was dying? So that his spirit, chained to Stanage and Therese, chained willingly to Bridelow by the old Celtic magic, could be controlled after his death?
So it could be used as a conduit.
To reach the Man, the spirit of the Moss, the guardian of the ancient Celtic community at the end of the causeway.
Moira walking quickly down from the brewery, finding her way quite easily this time back into the village. Avoiding the car racing with full headlights up the brewery road, probably in answer to Macbeth's summons. Avoiding any people she happened to see on the street - especially women.
This, God help me, is my task.
Go over it again. Get it right.
Here's what happened.
The villagers steal the Man to do with him what's been done so many times with bits of bodies found in the Moss: give him a good Christo-pagan burial at the next public funeral.
But this isn't just another bit of body. This is the complete perfectly preserved remains of the original sacrifice, laid down with due ceremony after undergoing the Triple Death.
This is powerful, this will reverberate.
And wise old Ma Wagstaff - realizing, presumably, just how powerful - mixes up her witch bottle with a view to protecting Matt's soul from any dark, peaty emanations.
Not realizing that it's the Man in the Moss who needs protection - against the tortured, corrupted, manipulated spirit of Matt Castle.
Got to get him back. Got to get him out of their control.
Got to lose all the hatred because that's their medium. Hatred. And lust. And obsession.
When Stan the bartender and Gary the cop came for Dic, Macbeth was pacing the room, trampling in the blood. Where is she, where the fuck is she? Almost ready to shake the poor guy, get some sense out of him.
'God almighty!' he heard from the bottom of the steps. 'It's Young Frank!'
'Don't touch him. You can't help him now.'
'He were three-parts drunk. Fighting drunk. Drunk most nights since he lost his job.'
'Maybe he fell, maybe he didn't. Either way, I'm having this place sealed off, so watch where you're treading, Stan.'
'Hey, come on willya,' Macbeth shouted. 'There's a guy up here isn't dead. Yet.'
'We're coming,' Gary the cop said. 'And I don't like that smell one bit.'
Thirty seconds later, he's pulling the sacking from the stiff - 'Fucking Nora! - while Macbeth's demanding, 'Moira. You seen Moira? Lady with very, very short hair ... Chrissakes!' And Stan's staring at all the blood, looking sick, and Dic's shifting very feebly in his chair.
'Right!' said Gary the cop. 'Who is this?'
Macbeth slumped against the wall. 'It's Matt Castle.'
'Thank you,' said Gary. 'At least we know he's not been murdered. Let's get an ambulance to this lad. And a statement later. I think...'
At which Dic came round sufficiently to start yelling, hoarsely, 'No! I'm not going
to hospital! I won't!'
'Hey, hey ... All right, we'll not take you to hospital, but you can't stop here.'
'Take me to Cath,' Dic said, and Ashton looked at Macbeth. Macbeth nodded, and Stan got his arm behind Dic and helped him to his feet.
'Keep his arms over his head,' Macbeth said, 'else he's gonna start bleeding again.'
In back of Stan's ancient station wagon, Macbeth said quietly to Dic, 'Moira. Where's Moira go? Come on, kid, talk to me, I saved your goddamn life.'
'Said to tell you,' Dic mumbled, 'that ... she'd gone to meet the Man.'
'Holy ... shit! Macbeth slammed his fist into the back of the seat.
'Yeah,' Dic said. 'I didn't like the sound of it either, but there wasn't much I could do.'
Drifting on an airbed of memories.
Hey, Matt, you remember the night the van broke down on the M1 and we put on a thank-you gig for the AA guys at three in the morning at the Newport Pagnell Services?
Blurry light coming off the Moss through the rain. They're out there, OK. And it's cold and it's wet and the Moss is filthy and swollen. No place to be, Matt. No place to commit yourself for all eternity.
Or until you might be summoned by those to whom you mortgaged your soul.
Hey, remember when you left the pipes in the hotel room in Penzance and Willie ran all the way back from the hall and I went on stage alone? And I only knew four solo numbers, and I'm into an encore of the first one before Willie dashes in with the pipes?
The slimy mosslight from the high windows awakening the barn, finding the womanly curves of the old Martin guitar. This was your place, Matt, this was where you put it all together, this was your refuge.
...So I wanted...I wanted in. To be part of that. To go in the Moss too ...
But you don't now. Do you?
It's warm in here. (Aw, hell, it's freezing; you just better wish it warm, hen, wish it warm until you can feel it.)
She picked up the lamp from the floor at her feet and took it across to a wooden table. She switched it on, directing its beam to the centre of the settee, picked up Matt's Martin guitar, went back and sat in the spot, with the light on her face.
She strummed the guitar. The strings were old and dull and it was long out of tune. One of the machine-heads had lost its knob, so she just tuned the other strings to that one.