Phil Rickman - The Lamp of the Wicked

Just about every door on the top landing of that three-storey house had a hole bored in it, for crouching at and watching. Holes and watching. Watching through holes. It would always start like that.

‘You still doing it?’

He realized he’d shouted it down the valley, which was wide and shallow and ambered under the late afternoon sun.

It was a lovely place. It ought to be grim and stark, with scrubby grass and dead trees. The reality – the actual beauty, the total serenity of the scene – he couldn’t cope with that, didn’t want any kind of balm on the memories that had brought him out here.

Oh, aye, a lovely place to be buried, beneath the wide sky and within sight of the church tower. But not the way the two women had been buried, chopped like meat and stowed in vertical holes. Not, for God’s sake, like that.

And now he had to turn away, with the weary knowledge of how futile this was, because there was still too much hate in him.

What had happened – what had started him off – was spotting one of those neat holes that appeared sometimes in the clouds, as if the sun had burned through, like a cigarette through paper, and then vanished. He’d at once imagined a bright little bulging eye on the other side of it. And that was when he’d down the valley, this great mad-bull roar: You still screamed doing it? You still watching?

Now he was looking all around, in case someone had heard, but there was nobody, only his own car in this pull-in area right by the field gate, near the fingerpost after which the field was named.

One of the signs on the fingerpost was light brown with white lettering, signifying a site of historic interest and pointing, up a narrow road to his left, towards a church that was not visible. The one that you could see, looking down the field, must be the village church, where the ashes of the monster had been scattered.

They should’ve been flushed down the bloody toilet.

He shut his eyes in anguish. Get a grip!

The county boundary apparently ran through the field, but he didn’t know exactly where. Should’ve brought an OS map, but he wasn’t really sure what he was looking for. Didn’t really know why he’d come, except for the usual problem of not being able to settle, not being able to stop anywhere for long before it all caught up with him again. He’d be walking in and out of his house, driving to places and coming home without remembering where the hell he’d been, and then going into his own church and walking out of it again, uncomforted and fearful for his faith.

And still wanting confrontation . It was anger that brought him here, and he’d have to be rid of that before he could make any kind of start. If you were dealing with something that had been human, no matter how low, how depraved, it was incumbent upon you to operate in a spirit of consideration and sympathy and…

… love?

Oh, bugger that . He punched his own thigh in fury, thinking about old comrades – survivors and relatives of the war dead – who had made pilgrimages to battlefields aglow with poppies. How much love had they been able to summon for the bloody killers?

Not that this was really like that. The pity and the waste, oh aye. But the evil here had been slow, systematic, intimate and concentrated – some of it ending in this field, with the hacking and the dripping of blood and offal into the holes. The horror had been intensely squalid, and the hatred… well, there didn’t seem to have been any particular hatred.

That, in some ways, was the worst thing of all: no hatred.

Except his own.

He’d left his car and climbed over the gate, near two black, rubberized tanks. There was a mature oak tree on his right. There’d been references in the statements to an oak tree. But was this one too near the road?

Now, he kept his eyes shut listening. It was said that no birds sang at Dachau, but the little buggers were singing away here. He’d never been able to identify types of birdsong, though, only the mewling of the buzzards in the rough country where he lived.

Where he lived, the countryside was scarred by hikers and by soldiers training. Not so very long ago, this field had been lacerated by police with spades. But it had healed now, was already back to being a beautiful place. Was that so bad?

Only for me.

He found himself patting his pocket, in case it had fallen out. He knew the words – ought to after all this time – but there was also a notebook in his pocket with it all written down, in case he got resistance , something bent on wiping it from his head, and he had to read it from the page, shouting it out into some dark wind.

But there was no wind. It wasn’t even cold. He wanted challenge, he wanted resistance, he wanted to see the gloating in those little glittering eyes. Feel the watching. Experience the demonic. It didn’t matter what else he’d become, at the bottom of it he was a man and he couldn’t cope with it any other way.

Finally, in his desperate need for discomfort, he actually sat down by the hedge, letting the dampness soak through his pants. Which was daft and childish, but it sent him spinning back into the pain. It did that, at least.

And it started the memory like a silent film, black and white, ratchet click-clicking in the projector, no stopping it now. Here he is raging into Julia’s bedroom, throwing himself down, sobbing, both hands on the bedclothes either side of where she’s lying, feeling the still, waxy atmosphere in the bedroom and smelling the perfumed air.

She obviously sprayed perfume around first, to make it less unpleasant for whoever found her, if her body betrayed her, relaxing into death.

Typical, that.

He feels dampness. The dampness by the side of her. What must have happened, she swallowed a couple of handfuls of the pills and then, maybe half asleep, thought Not enough , and took some more, another handful. She was likely so far gone by then that the glass simply fell from her hand, spilling the rest of the water on the quilt and rolling away into the corner of the room, where he finds it. And then his gaze is tracking slowly around the bedroom with its mid-blue walls and its Paul Klee prints, noting, in the well of the pine dressing table, the vellum envelope.

Picking up the glass first, though, and laying it on the bedside table, a few inches from Julia’s hair – she must’ve combed it first, you can tell. Oh Christ, oh Christ . Turning away, moving slowly towards the envelope until he can read his own name written on the front.

Inside, on the creamy notepaper she always used – her one constant luxury; she never could abide cheap notepaper – it says, in big looping handwriting that soon becomes blurred:

I’ll keep it short, Shep.

I’m so, so sorry about this. But I do believe there is somewhere else – you showed me that – and that Donna needs me there now. She so needs someone to comfort her, I feel this very strongly. I’m so very sorry, because I love you so much, Shep, you know I do, and it’s only thinking of you and sensing your arms around me that’s going to give me the last bit of strength I need for this, so please don’t take your arms away and please, please forgive me, and please go on praying for us. I’m so SORRY.

He’d no idea how long he’d been there, when the farmer found him: sitting with his back to the hedge, staring down the valley at the sunlight over the church tower. Sitting there up against the hedge like a bloody old tramp, with his eyes wet and his wet pants sticking to his arse.