Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘Well, I didn’t actually… It was before .’

‘When you entered the church?’

‘I…’ Merrily remembered standing outside the church talking to the policemen – with a stiffness and a clamminess in her vestments. Had she felt that in the car on the way there? Possibly.

‘Think back, Merrily. Who were you with when you first experienced something amiss?’

‘Policemen? I don’t know, can’t think. I’m mixed up and a bit anxious because I’m sitting here, a minister of the Church, unburdening myself to a practising occultist who, by force of willpower, has created a haunted house.’

‘Who would you normally go to for spiritual help?’

‘Huw, my course tutor, who was in the church with me when I exhibited what must have seemed to him like many of the symptoms of demonic possession.’

‘In which case, why the blue blazes—?’

‘It’s complicated.’

‘All right.’ Athena White placed a hand on Merrily’s knee. It didn’t feel like a cloven hoof. ‘Go home, pull your bed into the centre of the room, and draw a pentacle…’

‘You have got to be joking!’

‘All right, a circle – in salt, or even chalk – around the bed. Perform whatever rite your religion allows, but supplement it, when you’re lying in bed, by visualizing rings of bright orange or golden light around you and above you, so that you are enclosed in an orb of light. Keep that in your mind constantly until you fall asleep. If you awake in the night, visualize it at once, intact. This should bring you unmolested to the morning.’

‘A circle?’

‘Don’t be afraid of it. There is but one God. Consider it heavenly light – angelic.’

Huw and Dobbs? Merrily frowned. She always knew it had to be something like this.

‘Secondly, take the robes – vestments – you were wearing in the church when you were spiritually assaulted and burn them. You could try to bless them or sprinkle them with holy water, but it’s really not worth it. Get rid of them.’

Merrily supposed this made sense.

‘But that is not enough, and you know it, Merrily. Until you trace it to its source and eradicate it, you’re always going to be a magnet for the obscene advances of this earthbound essence. This Denzil Joy. One can almost see him now, bloating your aura. You absolutely cannot afford to rest – indeed, you will not rest because of who you are – until you put him to rest.’

‘Yes, I was going to ring you,’ Dick Lyden said, agitated. ‘The boy’s back already, and he’s not terribly happy.’

‘ He’s not happy…’ Lol dragged the phone over to the armchair.

Dick said, ‘Laurence, it was my understanding that Denny’s studio was a proper professional operation – not some Mickey Mouse outfit. You know what this is costing me, don’t you?’

Lol assured Dick that, while this was not the biggest studio around, it was one in which he personally would be delighted to record.

Dick said, ‘As long as it didn’t bloody well blow up, presumably.’

It didn’t blow up, Lol told him. Denny blew up, pressured beyond reasonable resistance by the song they were laying on him. When Denny had heard enough of it, wires became detached.

‘I’m not paying the man to be a bloody critic,’ Dick said. ‘I don’t like any damned song they do either, and I haven’t even heard them.’

Lol said, ‘Do you and Ruth talk about your work much, over the family supper, comparing notes, that kind of thing?’

‘What the hell has—?’

‘For instance, did you talk much about Moon in front of James?’

Dick’s voice dropped like it had been fast-faded. ‘What are you saying?’

Lol said, ‘James, as you may have gathered, isn’t satisfied with an EP – he wants an album. Denny and me, we were a bit underwhelmed by the quality of what we’d heard so far. We suggested the boys run through the rest of their material, so we’d know what we were looking at. Most of it wasn’t wonderful either.’

To be fair, it wasn’t badly played, and the harmonies were as neatly dovetailed as you might expect from newly retired cathedral choirboys. It was the material – derived from the work of second-division bands which were already derivative of other second-division bands twenty years earlier – that didn’t make it. Denny had, in reality, told Lol – behind the protection of thick glass – that they would make a recording of such pristine quality that the deficiencies in the area of compositional talent would stand out like neon.

‘Well, James’s mate Eirion isn’t entirely insensitive.’

‘Really?’ Dick said. ‘His old man runs Welsh Water.’

‘Eirion can tell Denny isn’t impressed, so after about three routine power-chord numbers he gets the band into a huddle, and then he and James sit down with acoustic guitars and they go into this quiet little ballad which James introduces as “The Crow Maiden”. Perfect crystal harmonies – you could hear every word.’

‘Get to the point.’

‘I tend to remember lyrics – remembered the last verse, anyway, so I wrote it down.’ Lol began to unfold a John Barleycorn paper bag. ‘It’s really subtle, as you can imagine – still you’ll probably get the drift. You ready?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake—’

Lol held up the paper bag, and recited:

‘Found your refuge in the past

‘You hid beneath its shade

‘And when you knew it couldn’t last

‘You took your life with an ancient blade .

‘CROW MAIDEN

‘CROW MAIDEN

‘YOU’RE FADIN’

‘AWAY…’

‘Would you like that again?’

You could hear Dick’s hand squeezing the phone.

‘The little shit,’ Dick said.

FRIDAY MORNING, SIX a.m. A cold morning moon through new glass. And a smell of putty in the vestry at Ledwardine, where Merrily stood before the wardrobe, frozen with indecision.

She had the Zippo. The Zippo would do it.

What are you waiting for?

She hadn’t slept well, but she had slept until five, with – all right, yes – the bed in the middle of the room inside a circle of salt. All of which she’d swept into a dustpan before she left the vicarage, in case she didn’t return before first light and Jane came looking for her, popped her head around the bedroom door and – God forbid !

She was half ashamed, half embarrassed – and had, as soon as she arose, knelt before the window and apologized to God, if He had been offended by the circle and the salt. But she was, in the end, helplessly grateful. For the first time in days, she had not awakened feeling ill, congested, soiled, or worse.

Grateful to whom, though? She’d prayed for a peaceful night, prayed for the soul of Denzil Joy. But it was, to her disquiet, the orange-gold orb of Athena White which had coloured her dreams.

Was she balancing at the top of the slippery slope into New Age madness? Into Jane country? And if she burned the cassock and surplice?

Last night, in her state of compliance at the Glades, half hypnotized by the extraordinary Miss White, this had seemed entirely logical. This morning, she’d been dwelling on it with increasing horror – a bonfire of these vestments was wholly sacrilegious, the most explicit symbolic rejection of her vows.

She’d prayed hard over this one, kneeling under the window, summoning the blue and the gold. Oh Jesus, give me a sign that this is acceptable in Your eyes .

Please God, don’t take it the wrong way. Infantile? God listened to your heart.

You will not rest – until you put him to rest .