The Prayer of the Night Shepherd mw-6

by Phil Rickman

‘No,’ Merrily said. ‘I… I remember it.’

  She stared at Danny, in his bottle-green farmer’s overalls. The dog began to whimper. A log shifted on the fire.

  ‘Oh God,’ Merrily whispered. ‘John Babbacombe Lee, the man they couldn’t—’

  Danny Thomas looked at her helplessly, his eyes wide with anguish. Danny had been crying. ‘Hang,’ he said. ‘The man they couldn’t hang.’ He pointed at the man on the stool in front of the fire. ‘And that… that’s Jeremy Berrows, the man couldn’t hang hisself. Stupid little bastard.’

  32

  Party Game

  ‘But he’s all right?’ Jane was sounding lost, disconnected, groping for certainties. ‘He won’t die?’

  ‘Not if he stays away from rope,’ Lol said.

  Hanged. A weighty word, full of ancient resonance and with only one definition: execution.

  ‘Lol… why? Why would he?’

  Jeremy Berrows. A harmless, benign little guy, Merrily had said, when she’d called to tell him it could be a long night. There were things, she’d said, that didn’t add up. Things that even Gomer couldn’t put together.

  ‘Was it like a cry-for-help thing, or what?’

  ‘I… wouldn’t think it’s what you do when you’re hoping someone’s going to discover you in time,’ Lol said. ‘Meanwhile, keep this to yourself, OK?’

  The lemon-yellow sleep light on the front of the computer was swelling and fading, swelling and fading. Here in the vicar’s study, where madness collected like dust. Flaky fantasies in the phone lines, images of the irrational only clicks away.

  ‘Why’s Mum gone to The Nant? Why did Gomer want her to go? I need to talk to her.’

  ‘If you do, it might be wisest to assume that she knows too much already for you to get away with… concealing anything.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘The White Company?’

  ‘Oh my God, who’s been talking? She knows about the documentary?’

  Lol said nothing.

  ‘Lol, look, all it was — I swear it — Ben and this guy Antony are shooting a TV thing about Conan Doyle and spiritualism, and Antony gave me a video camera. He wanted me to shoot stuff, when he wasn’t there. So, like, I wasn’t going to blow it, just because there were spiritualists involved. I mean, was I?’

  ‘No, you wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Only a lot of it was total bullshit. I was very naive. I was stitched up. I’m an extremely gullible person, and I wish I’d never come here, all right?’

  ‘I’d like to make some time to cry for you,’ Lol said, ‘but could you tell me about the Stanner Project first?’

  She was quiet for so long, he was beginning to think they’d lost the signal.

  ‘Oh God, you really do know everything,’ Jane said.

  Merrily followed Danny Thomas back into the kitchen, shut the door.

  ‘What about a doctor?’

  Danny dropped a scornful hiss. ‘What’s a doctor gonner do for his condition?’

  He went and half-sat on the edge of the kitchen table, hair matted on his face. When she’d put on the electric light, he’d switched it off again, as if there was something here that had to be contained in near-darkness to stop it spreading. A tongue of flame wavered on the wick of a small hurricane lamp on the draining board. This was the lamp that had been on a ledge in the barn when Danny had crashed in. When he’d seen something that he said was like out of a black acid-flashback.

  ‘Thought I was too late. All the beasts in there moaning.’

  And Jeremy Berrows in the meagre lamplight, stoically dangling.

  Danny roaring in agony and rage.

  Jeremy, seeing Danny in the entrance there, had started twitching and jerking, half-spinning on the rope, staring in terror at Danny out of his bulging eyes. Trying, for fuck’s sake, to finish it.

  ‘Sorry,’ Danny said, meaning his language. Merrily waved it away, and Danny said he must’ve gone temporarily insane hisself at that point, fumbling out his clasp-knife, clawing his way to the top of the scaffold of bales, slashing like a mad bastard at the oily rope.

  Lucky that Jeremy was old-fashioned about rope: none of your nylon for this boy.

  ‘Stretched under his weight, see. So his feet’s reaching the topmost bales, and he don’t even know it. Only wondering why it’s takin’ so long.’

  ‘Has he said anything?’

  Danny shook his head. He’d caught Jeremy as he fell, laying him out on the hay, the boy making this cawing noise like a stricken crow, wearing the mark of the rope like a red collar, bruises coming up under it. Long minutes passing before Jeremy would let Danny help him up and into the house.

  ‘Can he even speak?’

  ‘Can’t hardly move his head.’ Danny was intertwining his hands, like he was washing them slowly under a tap. ‘I can’t do n’more for him, vicar.’ He looked hard at her. ‘Can I?’

  ‘Is there a medicine chest? First-aid box?’

  ‘En’t that kind o’ first aid he needs.’

  ‘Would help if he was able to talk, though. Has someone gone for Natalie?’

  ‘We don’t know where she is. En’t at Stanner.’ Danny stood up. ‘Ah, damn. My idea we gets you yere, now I don’t know what to tell you. I still don’t know what brought him to this. Things about this boy we en’t never fathomed.’

  ‘Gomer thought maybe he’d just found out about’ — she glanced at the door, brought her voice down — ‘about Natalie? In the van?’

  ‘Couldn’t tell him, see, vicar. Had the perfect opportunity, couldn’t do it. Can’t hardly ask him now, can I?’ Danny hung his head, a slow smile shuffling into his beard. ‘You could, though, mabbe.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘And then ask him who she is.’

  ‘Natalie?’

  ‘Ask him who she is, really,’ Danny said. ‘This is what we wanner know, see.’

  Sounding as if there was something here that he half-suspected but didn’t dare approach.

  ‘It’s hard to believe how crazy they were, the Chancerys,’ Jane said to Lol. ‘You know about Thomas Vaughan. Black Vaughan?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘According to the legend, he was terrorizing Kington. After his death. The full poltergeist thing. The whole economy of the town under threat because people didn’t want to go there.’

  ‘This was when?’

  ‘Fifteenth, sixteenth century? If it happened at all. Folklore seems to work to its own calendar, doesn’t it? So they call in the Church. You know about that? Twelve priests confine the spirit in a snuff-box. Which might’ve been a metaphor — a way of explaining it to humble countryfolk who knew sod-all about states of consciousness but had a vague idea of what a snuff-box looked like.’

  ‘Did it work?’

  ‘To an extent. No more actual violence, just vague manifestations, like the Hound. Like warnings that it was only dormant. Maybe… hang on a mo, I’m just putting the phone down.’

  Lol heard Jane moving about. There was the sound of a door opening and then closing before she was back at her mobile.

  ‘Thought there might’ve been somebody around. This place is suddenly full of totally unbalanced people.’

  ‘Where are you?’ The Jane he knew would relish being around totally unbalanced people.

  ‘In my room. If the door had a lock I’d lock it. Jeremy… I don’t believe it.’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m just not sure who I can trust. Lol, if you talk to Mum, tell her we… would appreciate some help. But tell her to ring me first, not just show up.’

  ‘Who’s “we”?’

  ‘Amber. And me. Everybody else seems to have a finger in the pie.’

  Lol guessed he was about to hear things that Jane would never have passed on if she hadn’t been shafted over the video.

  ‘This is what Ben finally got from old Leonard. Walter Chancery got hold of the Vaughan story. Or rather, his wife did — Bella — who was well into this new fad for spiri
t-contact. See, what strikes me about all this is that it was probably the first time in recorded history when people weren’t terrified by the supernatural. Like the birth of New Age.’

  ‘Convinced the mystery of death was being unveiled to them.’

  ‘Totally. So when Bella hears the tale of Black Vaughan, she’s like, OK, let’s look at all this in the light of — wooh! — modern science! Meaning spiritualism. There’d been some sightings locally, mainly the dog — but when was that dog not seen around? So Bella Chancery’s like, Hey, let’s do something for the community. Lady Bountiful. These crass incomers, money coming out of their ears, but what they wanted was status — like in Society and also locally. They wanted to be lord and lady of the manor, that was how Leonard put it. They had a celebrated medium there by the name of Erasmus Cookson, who Bella shipped up from London. And because they were into spectacle and stuff, they all dressed up. They used the kitchen, because it had stone walls and it looked like you were inside a castle. The kitchen’s quite big, and they arranged it like the great hall of a castle, with candles everywhere.’

  ‘Why would they dress up?’

  ‘For the exorcism. They recreated the exorcism of Black Vaughan. If you look in Mrs Leather you’ll see there’s quite a lot to go on. The dialogue between Vaughan and the priests? Total pantomime, but that wouldn’t worry them.’

  ‘Where did they get twelve priests?’

  ‘Well, they didn’t, obviously. Just got friends in — house guests, people down from London, and dressed them up like monks or something. And servants to make up the numbers. And this Erasmus Cookson, who was like some kind of showbiz spiritualist and who may have been a charlatan, for all I know.’

  ‘And Arthur Conan Doyle?’

  ‘And Conan Doyle. Absolutely. Doyle was in the area with relatives, right? In fact, one theory is that it was nothing to do with helping the community, they just — this is the kind of people they were — staged the whole thing for the benefit of this big celeb.’

  ‘And what happened?’

  ‘And they even had an actual snuff-box? You imagine that? They were probably going to tie a brick to it and toss it in the sodding pond.’

  ‘Hang on, Jane.’ Lol awoke the computer, brought up Matthew’s last message.

  We believe that his initial baptism — a ‘baptism of fire’ — occurred at Stanner Hall… little more than a party game for his amusement… turned into something profoundly disturbing

  ‘So what happened that disturbed Conan Doyle enough to send him into complete denial and turn the Hound into a detective story with a weak ending?’

  ‘This is what Ben’s asking. He videoed Leonard talking about it, and Leonard’s telling Ben what I’ve just told you, and Ben’s like, “What happened?” in his calm interviewer’s voice, like he really couldn’t give a toss. And Leonard’s sitting there with this thin little smile on his lips, and Ben’s going, “Leonard, what happened?” You can feel him just longing to walk into shot and shake the old guy — I wanted to. And Leonard’s just shaking his head sadly. “Stupid stories, Mr Foley, to frighten the children, I’m not going to pass on stupid stories.” And that’s where the video ends, with this shot of Leonard sitting there shaking his head, with a bit of dribble at the corner of his mouth.’

  ‘So after Ben showed you the video—’

  ‘He didn’t. He doesn’t know I’ve seen it. Amber gave it me to watch.’

  ‘So you don’t know if he found out any more after he’d stopped recording — if this guy told him the rest, off the record.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re not going to do anything, are you?’ Lol said. Because Jane, slighted, was an unexploded device.

  ‘Look, if they’re planning to recreate the recreation of the exorcism of Black Vaughan — yeah, I know, where do you get twelve priests in a snowstorm? — but whatever they have in mind, it’s got to be spiritually offensive, hasn’t it? So I’ve said I’d go along with Amber, who thinks it’s time to talk to Mum.’

  ‘You want her to raid the joint in the name of the Church?’

  ‘She could talk to people. She’s the Diocesan Exorcist, that must count for… Lol…’ He could almost feel the heat of her breath in his ear, as if she was cupping her hands around the receiver. ‘You don’t think they want that?’

  He saw where she was going. ‘Jane, let’s not—’

  ‘According to Amber, Ben’s original idea was that Mum would be part of the documentary — like formally protesting on behalf of the Church? But suppose what he really wanted was that she should be involved as an exorcist. If you were doing it now — putting Vaughan to bed — who else would you use? Lol, they—’

  ‘Jane—’

  Jane’s voice was hoarse. ‘Suppose they want her to take on Vaughan?’

  ‘That’s crap.’

  ‘It’s so not crap, Lol. It’s the sort of thing Foley would think of as soon as he found out what my mother was.’

  ‘Jane.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t do anything. Think of all the times you’ve been wrong and the damage it’s caused.’

  ‘Only maybe this time I’m not wrong,’ Jane said.

  Pocketing her phone, holding the videotape inside her fleece, she went out onto the upper landing and down the stairs that came out near the fire doors concealing the passage that led to Hattie Chancery’s room.

  She imagined Alistair Hardy lying in Hattie’s bed, in the dark. Silverskin eyes watching him from a corner of the room. And then, as he was close to sleep, a hissing, and something cold writhing all over him: whoop, whoop.

  Jane smirked. He’d probably enjoy it.

  At least she now had an idea why Ben wanted Hardy in that room. With Hattie Chancery identifying herself with Ellen Gethin, and all that black hound in the pack stuff, there could be quite a strong link here…

  Suppose Lol was right, and Ben had managed to get more information out of Leonard, even if it wasn’t on camera. Well, she couldn’t ask Ben outright without causing a row over Amber letting her watch the tape, but…

  … but she could ask Frank Sampson, who’d been there holding Leonard’s hand. It was a bit late but, if they were going to try and involve Mum in this, it was very much legit to give him a ring.

  Right, then.

  As she walked down the red stair-carpet, the videotape tumbled out of her fleece and went bumping down the final steps ahead of her. She grabbed the box, fumbled it back under her fleece, firing glances around the reception area.

  Nobody about, not even Amber.

  Whom, of course, she could no longer trust either. Amber might be planning to walk out on Ben, but she was just as dependent on this crazy investment as he was. She, too, had everything to lose.

  And where was Natalie? Why hadn’t she come back? Did she know about Jeremy?

  This was a nightmare.

  The phone started ringing behind the reception desk, Jane instinctively moving to answer it, then stopping. She stood by the desk, in the shadow-flecked light from the too-small chandelier, waiting to see if anyone else would respond. Nobody showed. Not even a demented old woman, some years dead, leaning on the ghost of a Zimmer frame.

  Jane ignored the phone, ran down the steps to the kitchen to put the tape back. The snow-glare from the high windows showed her where everything was; she didn’t bother to put on lights as she walked across the echoey stone flags to the island unit, stretching away like a mortician’s slab. Something was on top of the unit: the video camera that was supposed to be welded to her hands.

  Stuff you, Antony, with your Glasgow hard-boy chic. Jane bent to the cupboard from which Amber had pulled the videotape, opened it up and slid the tape out from under her fleece, stowing it on an empty shelf. As she came to her feet, she noticed that the light in the room was changing colour, like someone had shone a torch in here.

  She stood up, backing away to the nearest wall. The light didn’t go out, it swelled yellow and orange, a reflection from
somewhere igniting like a match in the lens of the camera on the island unit. She looked up, and saw that it was all concentrated in the nearest high window: a billowing light around an intense core, like a gas jet.

  She didn’t understand. If this was the window facing Stanner Rocks, then the rocks were on fire.

  33

  Time Nearly Up

  Merrily had her coat off: no dog collar, but the pectoral cross on display.

  ‘Jeremy, would it be all right if I were to pray with you?’

  Wearing a white T-shirt with holes in it, he was hunched forward in the rocking chair, what seemed like permanent tears, hard as plastic bubbles, on the edges of his eyes.

  ‘You don’t wanner bother ’bout me.’ His voice was high and gritty, as if there was sharp sand in his throat. He turned away and winced. ‘Waste of space, I am.’

  Merrily put both her hands over his. ‘Don’t move your head, if it hurts.’ On her knees, she shuffled out of his line of sight, kneeling on the rag rug next to Flag, the sheepdog, in the furnace light from the range. Danny and Gomer had gone into the kitchen, leaving her to it, just her and the dog. The heat was intense, the dog was panting, Jeremy’s seared throat looked like roast ham in the firelight.

  Merrily closed her eyes.

  ‘Oh God, only you know why Jeremy was driven to try to take his own life. Bring him from this suffocating place. Calm his emotions and his fears, strengthen him, give him the help he needs to…’

  Couldn’t go on. This was trite and meaningless. She was disgusted with herself and opened her eyes because she knew that he was looking at her. His eyes were blue-grey and flecked with uncertainty like the skies in March.

  ‘Jeremy,’ she said. ‘Why?’

  Jane tracked Ben out of the lobby into the porch, shooting him as he bent to lace up his hiking boots.

  ‘Jane, what the hell are you doing?’

  She didn’t reply, but took care to stay well back so he couldn’t snatch the Sony 150 from her again. She didn’t even know if the battery was still active; it was the gesture that counted. Independent working woman with a video.