by Jeff Noon
“Moonsilver is what we call the berries of the myre tree. They are very poisonous, and even three or four of them can slow the body’s system down, to a standstill. We teach our children from day one to never eat them, or even touch them. Sadly, some do not learn.”
“So, you do think it was suicide?”
“Yes, of course. He made a choice.”
“Why would he kill himself?”
Higgs thought for a moment. And then she said, “The Tolly Man came to visit him.”
“What do you mean?”
“The Tolly Man appears once a year, on Saint Algreave’s Day. A villager dresses up in the twigs and branches of the myre tree. It’s a tradition.”
Nyquist remembered the strange figure he’d seen in the peep show machine.
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Oh, don’t worry. We remove the berries before making the mask.”
“But why… why would the Tolly Man lead to suicide?”
“It doesn’t. But thoughts of the Tolly Man can easily scare us. He is a figure of evil repute, some call him a demon. And so, if a villager kills themselves in this way, using the myre berries, then we say that the Tolly Man has come to visit. That’s all.”
Nyquist took a breath. He tried to keep his mind clear. He asked, “And what about the raven in the cage? Is that another of your traditions?”
“No. That’s just a puzzle.”
“And I need to solve it.” He frowned. “One thing’s for certain: we’re not dealing with an everyday suicide. Something crazy went on in that house last night.”
“Is something worrying you, Edmund?”
“You know why I’m here, in the village.”
“And you think this… this death is connected to your missing father?”
“Higgs, I know it is.”
“Please, please, please, please, please, please, please don’t call me that! Don’t call me that name. I hate and detest that name, and everything it stands for. My name is Alice. Doctor Alice Grey!”
The saints had taken her over completely. Nyquist watched her mask as she struggled to bring herself back under control: the emotions half hidden, half on display. But at last she managed it, and she said, “I’m very sorry for my outburst. But you have to know, Edmund, this is one of our most important days. Brother and sister died to save the village from intruders, only sixty years ago, in 1899. It’s a date that every schoolchild learns in their first history lesson.” She added calmly, “The Greys are our most recent martyrs.”
Nyquist nodded. “Of course, I understand.”
Higgs pushed the stem of her pipe through the mask, into her mouth. It looked absurd. But she seemed happy enough with the effect, and puffed contently, all upset forgotten.
“What’s the story with Hilda?” he asked. “With Alice, I mean. When did she fall silent?”
“Three years ago. Saint Meade’s Day, 1956. She gave up speaking for the day, as she must, and never opened her mouth again. Nobody knows why.”
“Do the saints often have that kind of effect?”
“No, not often. Our rules give us sustenance. They protect us.”
“But sometimes it goes wrong, people take it too far? Is that it?”
She didn’t answer.
Nyquist watched the goldfish at their play, seeking the exit door of the bowl. He said, “I might pay Yew Tree Cottage a visit.”
“Why?”
“I left something behind, in the birdcage.” He looked at his hands as he said this, at the cuts on them.
The doctor looked at him in surprise. “You were fighting the raven?”
“I was trying to retrieve stolen property, but the blighter kept pecking at me. It wouldn’t let me anywhere near.”
“They do like to hoard. What was it, that was so important?”
“It’s personal.”
Higgs looked at him through a drift of blue smoke from her pipe. For a moment she frowned, and her mask crinkled slightly. Then she shook her head at the whole affair.
“One more thing,” Nyquist said, “I have to go to King’s Grave today. It’s a field, out beyond–”
“I know where it is.”
“There’s a house out there, that I need to visit.”
“I can take you there in the afternoon. I have to drive out that way, to see a patient.”
“Thank you.”
Doctor Higgs knocked out the remains of her pipe in an ashtray. “There’s one condition though. Well, two actually.”
“Go on.”
“You have to call me Alice, and nothing but Alice. Alice Grey. And I’ll call you Edmund, and you’ll damn well respond.”
“Granted.”
“And one more thing; wear the mask.”
“That’s three conditions.”
“Wear the bloody mask. Because if you don’t…”
“I know. I’ll get attacked. I’ve already had stones thrown at me.”
“Believe me, Mr Grey. People have died over this, in the past.” She let this sink in and then added with a grin, “And if that happened, we might have to beatify you. Can you imagine?” And she laughed at loud, the mouth of the mask splitting apart as far as it could go. “Now go on, leave me be.”
Nyquist made his way outside. A mother and child were coming his way and the kid was already pointing at him and screaming blue murder. “Don’t be rude, Edmund,” the mother said to her boy, but she too was giving Nyquist the evil eye. So, he pressed the mask against his face, and immediately he received smiles from the mother, and giddy laughter from the child.
The mask settled and closed on his face. It felt cold to begin with, but soon a pleasant warmth took over. The mask tightened and slithered, finding the optimum bonding points. And then it tightened further, and sank into the flesh. And he was the mask, and the mask was him, and they lived as one being.
John Edmund Nyquist Grey walked up Pyke Road. Strangely, it felt perfectly natural to be viewing the world through two holes pierced in plastic. Each step, each breath he took, each movement, each smile and nod he was given by strangers… the more pleasant it felt. In fact, it was comforting. He couldn’t help but celebrate his new identity.
Edmund. Edmund Grey, Esquire.
Sir Edmund Grey of Hoxley-on-the-Hale. At your service.
He was giving himself up to the goodly whims of the daily saints, yes, it was starting to make sense, the comfort, to surrender the will in these areas, to give oneself over to some other, higher purpose…
Nyquist stopped where he was on the street and looked around. He could hear the rattle and snap of sticks knocking against each other. It was two men, fencing with their walking sticks, each with the spirit of youth in their limbs. They looked like geriatric Morris dancers. Were they fighting, or dancing? Both wore the mask of Edmund Grey. One spat at the other, a meagre amount of liquid from parched lips, squeezed through the mask’s aperture. The other cursed back and called his friend a stain upon the earth, for wearing the mask of Saint Edmund in such an uncouth fashion. The sticks clattered and parried. He could still hear them as he walked away up the hill.
There was no answer when he knocked on the door of Yew Tree Cottage, and all was quiet within. He peered through the window, seeing only an empty living room. He moved onto his second destination, the community hall. Here he studied the posters on the notice board until he found an advertisement for last night’s lecture.
Professor Bryars
presents a local history
told through icons, follies, bric-a-brac
and other miscellanea
Tea and biscuits
Entrance 1s
At the bottom of the poster a warning notice read, Spectators are advised that certain images may cause distress. He couldn’t remember anything disturbing in the portion of the slide show he’d viewed, or maybe he’d missed the best bit? But he remembered the image of the black tower that he’d seen, and how similar it looked to the building in the photograph. A fleeting glimps
e, one slide among many. He needed to make sure. He entered the hall and asked Alice at the reception desk for the whereabouts of Professor Bryars.
“You mean Alice Grey, last night’s lecturer?”
“I’m sorry. Yes. My mistake.”
“Not that she deserves such a name of course.” The receptionist’s mask froze and unfroze as her anger seethed beneath.
“Why, did she do something wrong?”
“She did, Edmund. She did. It’s the same every year.”
“Where do I find her?”
“Take the first left up the hill and then second right onto Fallow Lane. And then just follow the hullabaloo. You can’t miss it.”
And she was right. He saw the crowds gathered around the house as soon as he turned onto the lane. There were about thirty people, all masked as Edmund and Alice, of all ages of Edmund and Alice, with perhaps more Alices than Edmunds. He saw the two older Morris men in attendance, their differences put aside for the moment as they used their sticks to knock on the windows and door of number 9, where Professor Bryars lived. Everyone was shouting, their voices slightly muffled and restricted by the masks, but loud nonetheless, loud enough surely to stir the woman within the house. But nobody came to the door, nobody answered their call. And the shouts continued, the cries, the calls of abuse. Each protestor emboldened the one next to them, and the anger spread in this manner, person to person, until at last everybody there was crying out as one body. Nyquist watched from down the street. The noise and the emotions on display had momentarily drawn him back to his own sense of self, and he was concerned and distressed by what he saw, this sudden display of mob behavior from the villagers. His hands came up to his mask, to prize it from his face, but there seemed to be no purchase. The plastic covering slithered like jelly under his fingers and the edges were sealed.
Flesh and mask had merged completely together.
He stepped forward into the crowd. Straightaway the mask grew hot on his face and tightened even further, and he felt his features drawing in upon themselves. He was having trouble breathing, and his hands came up to the mask again, but not to pull it this time, but to press it more firmly into place, to become a Grey once more, purely Grey, to the core and proud of it, proud of the name and the power it gave him. There were fellows on every side and it felt good to be held within the mass, as one, one person with one name and one face and one voice, rising up in a chant of fear and aggression, growing ever louder. Edmund found himself entirely without control or choice, joining in with the chant.
Cover yourself. Harlot, cover yourself. Cover yourself!
He surged forward with the others, even closer to the house. A struggle ensued. He braced his hands against the garden fence. Something tapped him on the back of the head, a walking stick perhaps.
And then the door of the house opened.
Professor Bryars stood there, her face on full view for all to see.
No mask, no Alice.
The sight of it was dreadful enough to freeze the heart. Edmund himself was shocked by the naked flesh, the eyes, the line of the nose and the redness of the lips, the color in the cheeks, the wrinkles at the woman’s brow. How could such things be visible!
Bryars stood in the doorway, glowering at her visitors.
Nobody spoke, nobody moved.
From the tension in the air, it seemed that a fight was about to break out. But instead the professor raised her hand, showing the mask that she held. She placed this on her face and now Alice Grey looked out from the doorway. Of Professor Bryars, there was no sign. The crowd murmured as one, in peace, smiling as their masks smiled, and nodding as their masks nodded. The group broke apart and scattered until only one man was left on the pavement outside the house.
Edmund looked at Alice and Alice looked back.
“You’d better come in,” she said.
Ten minutes later they were sitting at a table in the living room, Edmund with a cup of tea in front of him, and a plate of Sutton’s bourbons, and the professor sipping at a glass of wine. He had the feeling it wasn’t her first of the day. Her mask was stained red around the lips, while biscuit crumbs and sugar granules clung to his. Edmund wondered if he might take another biscuit. Alice saw his need and pushed the plate forward, and Edmund took up the offer gladly. They had spoken only a few words until now, about the weather, the latest radio play, and the prospects of the Hoxley cricket team come the summer season. But when tea and wine were done Alice said to her guest, “I think we should remove our masks, what do you say?”
“Is that wise?” Edmund replied. “I’ve quite taken to mine.”
“Trust me.” Professor Grey smiled. “And then we can talk. Properly. Face to face.”
She left the room. Edmund looked around, taking in the furniture and fittings. Lots of brass ornaments, doilies, willow pattern plates, a souvenir ashtray of a seaside visit, and a set of Encyclopædia Britannica with a gap on the shelf where volume seven was missing.
The professor returned after a few minutes, carrying a large bowl of water, which she placed on the table in front of her guest.
“We wash it off, is that all it takes?”
“Not quite.”
“The water looks dirty.”
She smiled. “Just a few special ingredients of my own procurement. Don’t worry. I’ve done this many times before.”
Edmund’s mask creased with worry. There was something moving around in the water, something alive. “Is that a beetle?” he asked.
Alice explained brightly, “The masks, by their saintly nature, fall off quite naturally at six o’clock tonight. All I’m doing is speeding up the process.”
Edmund peered into the bowl. There were a number of the beetles, half a dozen or so – he couldn’t count them all for they kept moving about. And there was a silvery tinge to the water, which reminded him of something, something he had seen recently. He couldn’t quite place it.
Now the insects were emitting a kind of black ink from their rear glands.
“You’re not asking me to drink this, are you?”
“Edmund, that would be ridiculous. Simply lower your face into the bowl, that’s all.”
“Lower my face?”
“That’s it. Quite simple. And hold it there for a minute. A minute and a half, at the most. Just hold your breath and don’t open your mouth.”
“It’s not poisonous, is it?”
The professor grinned. She was holding a bath towel. “Come on. I’ll do the same. And then I’ll tell you the story of the black tower.”
Yes, that’s all he wanted. Edmund lowered his face into the filthy water. He felt his mask submerging and growing slightly colder. And then darkness covered him as the towel was placed over his head and shoulders, blocking out the light.
The beetles slithered across his lips.
A SPELL FOR THE WICKED
The first thing he felt was a jab of pain against his skin, a sharp pain and then another, and one more, and he thought that the mask had fallen away and that his skin was bare and being attacked, but it wasn’t that, his face and head were still covered, still in darkness, and he felt a sudden panic as though he couldn’t breathe, his mouth was closed and his eyes were screwed tight as he felt further stabs against his cheeks and brow, one, two, three stabs, and the panic came again, stronger than before. I am what I become, a villager, a true resident of this place and the rightful and trueborn occupant of this mask, and it will never leave me, and that is that. His mind wandered. The thorns pressed into his skin, jabbing again and again until his face was wet with blood. He could feel it spreading all over his mask and filling his eyes and his mouth, the thorns pricking at his temples and his brow and when he forced his eyes open he knew where he was, he could see through the gaps in the woven twigs and branches and the barbed wire that bound it all together around his head, bound and tied, he was the Tolly Man, hearing the chant of the children as they danced. Sing along a Sally, O, the moon is in the valley, O. Now he was dancing
too, slow and heavy on his feet, one and two and three and four, around and around the green we go. He was looking out at the village through the mask of the Tolly Man and the villagers pranced before him and laid their sacrifices of blood and flesh and feathers at his feet. Come to grief or come what may, Tolly Man, Tolly Man, come out to play. Their song was a prayer in the moonlight.
FAMILY HISTORIES
Half an hour later Nyquist was sitting on a chair in a darkened room as one slide after another passed through the beam of a lantern, sending its image to the screen that rested against the wall. Professor Bryars was feeding her collection of slides into the slot one at a time, causing the light to wax and wane, as the moon did the same, the moon on the screen that Nyquist viewed in various places and phases – now a crescent, now full, now a slither at the edge of a black globe. The moon as it appeared over Hoxley, over the woods, over the fields beyond the village.
“This is my night-time selection,” Bryars explained. “I have views for every season and every time of day and weather condition. All taken from the archives.” Her voice trembled with passion. “The village never fails to delight me; its people, its history, the way it interacts with land and sky.”
One slide, another, image after image. Nyquist was completely spellbound, his face lit, then dark, lit, then dark, his eyes sparkling then eclipsed. He couldn’t turn his head away.
“I wish all my viewers were so entranced,” Bryars said.
The single member of the audience didn’t reply, for a single word would destroy the atmosphere. It was quite simple: he felt he was watching his own life, but in secret. Some other version of himself had lived here in the village, he was sure of it, had lived and died here and been born again, and died again and lived again, and so it went on down the years and the centuries. He was looking at a well of images drawn from deep within, never before seen until this moment, but each one sounding a toll of bells in his mind.
From the darkness they rose, these glades and bowers, the children’s games, the tree struck by lightning, the old house that was no longer standing, Miss Ida Pearson’s Depiction of Her Perplexing Dream in Watercolor (Framed), a looking glass with the photographer shown in reflection. The sights of the village and its residents moved back and forth in time, from sepia to monochrome to color and back again, the years mixed up: some of the images with a distinct hand-tinted look, others barely seen through a haze of distortion – the flowers that won first prize at the fair, the ladies in their Sunday best, the Whitsun marches, the sun glinting on the instruments of a brass band, the Morris troupe in full costume sitting outside the pub drinking pints of ale, the young girl who seemed to live again in the room, animated by light and shade and chemicals on film. Other images were more unreadable: a spider in a shoebox, a patch of earth, a bloodied knife, the silhouette of an airplane above the woods, the shadow of the Tolly Man on the village green.