Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

Denny’s head swivelled. ‘She sleep up there?’ He made for the stairs to the loft. He hadn’t seen the lawn, so he wouldn’t know that what they really needed was the bathroom. ‘Kathy!’

Two doors behind the stairs: one ajar, through which Lol could see kitchen worktops and the edge of a cooker; the other door shut.

Lol opened it and went in.

Into the square, white, bitter-smelling, metal-smelling bathroom, quietly closing the door and snipping the catch, sealing himself in with her. Like he should have done on Saturday night – resisting the hostile thrust of the barn – when she’d said, I don’t want you to come in .

His back against the door, he saw first, on the wall over the bath like an icon, the photograph of a smiling man standing before a Land Rover.

On the rim of the bath were pebble-smooth shards of black pottery, arranged in a line.

‘No sign,’ he heard Denny shout from upstairs, sounding relieved, almost optimistic, because he hadn’t found her dead in her futon.

Lol saw the crusted brown tidemark on the porcelain around the overflow grille, like sloppy dinner deposits around a baby’s mouth. Presumably a tap had been left running and the overflow had gulped it all down and regurgitated it on to the snowy lawn, stopping only when the primitive water tank ran dry.

‘Lol?’ Denny’s feet descending the stairs. ‘Where’d he go?’

It was dreamlike. Lol thought at first – from the position of her, the stillness of the tableau – of Ophelia in that sad, famous Pre-Raphaelite painting.

The thin pine door bulged against him as Denny tried to open it, and then battered it with his fists, making it vibrate against Lol’s back until Lol almost tripped and fell forward towards the bath. And he cried out, ‘Oh God!’ seeing it now as it was: graceless, peaceless, sorrowless – nothing like Ophelia.

Who wouldn’t have been naked or grinning like Moon was grinning, congealing in her stagnant pool of rich, scummy, pinky-brown, cold water. With eyes open, like frosted glass, and lips retracted over stiff, ridged gums and sharp white teeth.

Beautiful Moon, so defiantly disgusting now with her cunning, secret, bloodless grin and her blood-pickled fingers below her breasts – on the waterline, on the bloodline. And the wrists ripped open: not nice neat slits – the skin was torn and ruched.

‘Lol!’ Denny screamed, and the pressure on Lol’s back eased, telling him Denny was about to hurl himself against the door.

She’d been here a long time, you could tell. This hadn’t happened this morning or even last night; this had to be Saturday night, maybe only hours after he’d brought her home and meekly taken no for an answer… almost gratefully, because he’d already had the sense of something dark and soiled. He should have said: Moon, there are things we have to talk about. He should have said this long ago – after the crow. He should have gone long ago to Merrily Watkins.

Swallowing his nausea, he went closer and bent over the bath. On the bottom, between Moon’s legs, lay the eroded filelike blade, ragged and blackened and scabby and old, very old.

He remembered those slender but unexpectedly hardened hands fouled by crow’s blood, and turned away, and opened the door to Denny.

I’d like to sleep now, Lol .

SOPHIE SAID, ‘Was it very horrible?’

‘It was, actually.’

‘It’s so utterly distressing.’ Sophie’s face creased into shadows. ‘I once read a book by a reformed Satanist who said that when they break into a church and do appalling acts, it has an almost intoxicating effect. Afterwards they feel a terrible elation. Almost… sexual.’

‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘by the very nature of what they are, they’re not going to walk out feeling disgusted and nauseous, are they?’

Sophie shuddered.

When she’d gone, Merrily rang Huw Owen.

No reply, no answering machine.

She thought about calling Lol to rearrange that chance encounter with his troubled friend, Moon, but then Sophie came through again.

‘Merrily, it’s Chief Inspector Howe on the line.’

‘Oh. Right.’

‘Ms Watkins?’

‘Good morning.’

‘Ms Watkins, I, er… I’d like to consult you – as an expert.’

‘Me?’

‘Indeed,’ Howe said.

‘Heavens.’ What seemed likely was that the Superintendent, after a lunch with the Bishop, had strongly suggested Annie Howe consult Merrily over something, anything. Howe would be disinclined, as acting DCI, to make waves.

‘Ms Watkins?’

‘Sorry, just swallowing one of the pills I’ve been prescribed for moments of overexcitement.’

Howe sighed. ‘Perhaps we could meet. I gather you’ve been cleaning up after devil-worshippers.’

‘Blanket term, Annie. I’m not convinced.’

‘Good. That’s what I wanted to discuss with you.’

‘One o’clock? Pub?’

‘No, I’ll come to your office,’ Annie Howe said, keeping it official, hanging up.

Sophie came back again. ‘The Reverend Owen now. Take it on my phone if you like. I have to powder my nose.’

It seemed that Sophie didn’t feel she was ready to hear about this incident in detail.

‘Hard to get rid of the taste, in’t it, lass?’

‘Hard to lose the smell.’

‘Number twos as well?’

‘Not that I could detect, but I didn’t go prying into too many dark corners.’

‘Aye, well, your problem here,’ Huw said, ‘is deciding whether this is the real thing or just kids who think it’d be fun to play at being Satanists for an hour or so.’

‘I thought you didn’t get away with just playing at it.’

‘In my experience you don’t, but let’s not worry about poor little dabblers at this stage. Tell me again about the bird.’

‘Well, it was… had been a crow or a raven. Is there much difference? I don’t know. It had been cut open, and its entrails spread over the altar. There are kind of twin chancels in this church, but this was the real altar, on the right.’

‘Two chancels?’

‘Side by side. Very unusual. Quite a special little place.’

‘Let me have a think.’

Merrily looked down from Sophie’s window at white roofs on cars and people hurrying. Hereford people were essentially country folk, and country folk had no great love for snow. Certainly not November snow. Never a good sign; winter was supposed to settle in slowly. What if this went on until March or April?

‘Two chancels,’ Huw said. ‘They might see this as representing a dualism: left and right, darkness and light.’

‘Actually, there was some blood on the other table, too, as if the sacrificed crow had been brought from one side to the other.’

‘How do you know it was sacrificed?’

‘I don’t. It would be nice – nicer – to think it was already dead, and they just wanted to make a mess. Huw, the way you’re talking suggests you think this was the real thing.’

‘It’s possible.’

‘If it was the real thing, what would be the motive? What would they be after?’

‘Kicks… a buzz… power. Or – biggest addiction of the lot – the pursuit of knowledge. Nowt you won’t do to feed your craving. Ordinary mortals – expendable like cattle. Kindness and mercy – waste of energy. Love’s a drain, faith’s for feeble minds. Can you understand that? To know is all. Can you get a handle on that?’

‘No. That’s why I’m a Christian.’ Working towards it, anyway. Made it to the pious bitch stage .

‘Mind, a crow splattered over a country church, that still has the touch of low-grade headbangers. What are you going to do about it?’