Phil Rickman - The Cure of Souls

It went so quiet you could even hear the Frome moving below.

‘Ah,’ Lol said.

‘Redefine your goals. That kind of thing.’

‘Damn,’ Lol said.

‘Nice tune,’ Merrily said.

They both stood with their backs to the door, so there was no way out, short of physical violence. And although they were both seriously into middle age, they were big people. She was kind of pudgy-armed and hefty and he was tall and thin and, although he didn’t look too well, he did look desperate enough to damage somebody.

Like, for instance, somebody who might know where his daughter was but was refusing to tell him.

‘Honest to God,’ Jane said, scared, ‘we didn’t even know she was missing. We came here to see her.’

Invoking God because it looked like this might well cut some ice here. The room was too bright from a big white ceiling bowl loaded with high-wattage bulbs. There was a wooden crucifix on the mantelpiece over the Calor gas fire and round the walls these really awful religious paintings by one of those pedantic Pre-Raphaelite guys who thought it was important to paint every blade of grass individually.

‘I wouldn’t lie,’ Jane insisted. ‘My mum’s a vicar. I wasn’t brought up to lie, OK?’

‘Your mother knows you’re here, then?’ said Mr Shelbone. He had a weak voice that sounded kind of laminated, and Jane felt slightly sorry for him; it was clear his wife called the shots.

‘Of course she doesn’t,’ Mrs Shelbone snapped. ‘Her mother seems to know very little of what goes on.’

Jane let the slur go past. ‘No, she doesn’t. But only because I feel responsible for dropping her in it when I didn’t tell her at the time because I didn’t think there was anything particular to worry about, but now I know I was wrong, and I want to put it right.’ She drew a long breath.

‘Why should we believe you?’ Mrs Shelbone demanded. ‘How do we know you’re not just sensation-seeking?’

‘This is silly. Jane’s only trying to help.’ Eirion’s Welsh accent coming through. ‘That’s all she wants – and to find out what’s going on.’

‘And what,’ said Mr Shelbone, ‘ is going on, in your opinion?’

Jane swallowed. It was one thing telling Amy what kind of psychotic slag Layla Riddock was; it was something else laying it on her parents in her absence. Serious as this whole thing could turn out to be, it broke some kind of code of honour. You didn’t grass until you reached the stage where it was impossible to deal with it yourself.

This didn’t seem to worry Eirion, however. Maybe he’d just had it with the whole thing. Or maybe he thought this was the stage.

‘It comes down to bullying, Mr Shelbone. Your daughter’s been picked on by an older girl, who evidently thinks she’s… something special.’

‘Picked on?’

‘Ensnared. You must know what I’m talking about. Especially as it’s been suggested to us today that she – this girl – might have wanted to use Amy to get at—well, to get at you.’

Mr Shelbone was silent. Once Eirion mentioned the Christmas Fair, Layla Riddock would be in the frame. Best to leave it here, Jane decided. They should say as little as possible, get out and go and grovel to Mum, let her decide what to do.

‘Sit down.’ Mr Shelbone indicated a sofa in a pine frame, like the bottom half of a bunk.

Jane said, ‘We have to be…’

Eirion just shrugged and went over to the sofa and sat down.

‘Now then, son,’ said Mr Shelbone. ‘Let’s start at the beginning.’

‘Well, her name’s Layla Riddock,’ Eirion said.

LOL TENSED. There was the tower across the fields, just as he’d seen it the first time, the tip of its witch’s hat askew, as if a low-flying aircraft had clipped it. He remembered how he’d thought it looked like a fairy castle, with that glow in the window.

Where a glow was now.

‘What?’ Merrily demanded.

‘There’s—’ He sagged, his back to a tree trunk, the breath forced out of him as if he’d been punched. ‘Sorry, it’s just the moon. It’s just a reflection of the moon.’ It seemed to be everywhere tonight.

‘What did you think it was?’

‘How about we go back?’ He searched for the path, then spotted where he’d gone wrong the last time: there was a stile he could have climbed over to follow a circular route back to the bridge, and another path that led into the tangled wood. ‘Merrily?’

‘Erm… Lol, how do I get to the old hop-yard? Where you saw Stephanie that night?’

‘ Oh no.’ Lol stood in the middle of the path, ‘I really don’t think so.’

‘Lol…’

‘Merrily – tell me . That’s why we’re here?’

‘Look,’ she said, ‘I haven’t got the gear, I haven’t got the holy water, I haven’t got the sacrament. But I can pray. I can do the words.’

‘Words?’

‘Words to get them out of here.’

‘Who?’

‘Stock, Stephanie… Call it precautionary. Call it—’

‘To stop them becoming earthbound, right? To fix it so nobody in the future goes for an innocent walk in that field and’ – Lol actually shivered – ‘sees something.’

‘All right, to try and fix it. You’ve got to try, haven’t you? It’s what I do. Like I keep telling people. I’m actually trying very hard to believe it’s what I’ve been put here to do.’

‘Cure of souls,’ Lol said. He sensed how close she was to tears.

‘Yes.’

‘Souls of the living or the souls of the dead?’

‘Don’t you know ?’

‘Merrily, it’s just a phrase I heard with the right balance, the right metre. If it sounds right, use it. What does it mean?’

‘It’s,’ she shook her head at him, ‘just an old description of what we do – what we’re supposed to do. Implies we have curative powers, which I suppose we don’t, most of us. We just know how to ask nicely. And all I want to do now is say, Please God, will you accept the souls of these two people, help them break the bonds of obsession, anger, lust, hatred – help them leave it all behind. Is that so bad?’

‘You’ve known you were going to do this ever since we left the Boswells, haven’t you?’

Something to prove , he thought. Stock’s death must have made her wonder if she wasn’t so much a force for good as a force for chaos.

‘It kind of grew,’ Merrily said. ‘It’s a responsibility. Least I can do. You don’t have to join in or anything. Just point me in the right direction. If you think it’s crap, that’s OK.’

Lol nodded. ‘Joining another river,’ he murmured.

‘Sorry?’

‘Just another song.’

The trees were closing overhead, the moon shining through a grille of high branches like the wires around a hurricane lamp. He wasn’t even sure of the way, but he was in no doubt that they’d get there.

He wondered if Merrily was secretly hoping that if she prayed in the haunted hop-yard God would mystically grant her knowledge, an explanation of the deaths of both Stephanie and Gerard Stock.

Because it seemed unlikely that anyone else could.

‘You know what I’m beginning to think?’ she said, with alarming synchronicity. ‘I’m thinking Stock – because of his professional history, because of his attitude – was sorely misjudged. I’m tempted to think he approached Simon St John out of pure need, having come to the conclusion – very gradually and very reluctantly, no doubt – that Stephanie was possessed by something evil. I think it was her he wanted exorcized, not the kiln.’

‘But wasn’t the type of guy who could ever come out and say that.’ Lol held up a branch for her to duck underneath. ‘So he laid it on Stewart. The obvious ghost.’