Phil Rickman - Midwinter of the Spirit

‘You tell her everything.’

‘Yeah,’ Jane said gloomily. ‘You tell her everything .’

‘How soon before the psychic things, the New Age stuff?’

‘I don’t know. It just happened. You’re talking all through the lunch hour, then you discover she’s got her own car, so she gives you a lift home. But, yeah, when I found out she was interested in like otherwordly pursuits, that was the clincher. Soul-mates! It’s just like so brilliant when you find somebody you can talk to about that stuff, and they’re not going: Yeah, yeah, but where do you go on Saturday nights? It just never occurs to you to be suspicious, you’re so delighted. And when she says, Hey, there’s this psychic fair at Leominster , you don’t go, Oh, I’d better ask my mum , do you?’

‘What happened at the psychic fair?’

‘We met Angela.’

‘Mrs Purefoy?’

‘If you say so. Although, when I look back, was she really doing the psychic fair? How do we know she read anybody else’s cards? See, it was Rowenna who first mentioned the fair. It was Rowenna who, when we’d been there a while and it was getting cold and boring, suggested we consult a clairvoyant in the nice warm pub. It was Rowenna who said she’d had a call from Angela wanting to see us again. I will struggle for a long time against things I don’t want to believe, Lol, but when the cracks start to appear…’

‘What was Angela like?’

‘Really, really impressive – not what you were expecting. Very smooth, very poised, very articulate and kind of upperclass. Like, you felt she had your best interests at heart at all times. And, of course, you believed every damn word she said.’

Lol smiled.

‘She said I had extraordinary abilities.’

‘Which, instinctively, you knew.’

Jane scowled.

‘I suppose she recommended you should develop them.’

‘She put me in touch with a group called the Pod.’

‘Meeting over the healthfood caff in Bridge Street.’

‘It was you then. I thought you hadn’t spotted me.’

‘If you’d been your usual friendly little self,’ Lol said, ‘I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. So what happens at the Pod?’

‘It’s good actually. It’s just about building up your awareness of like other realms.’

‘Nothing heavily ritualistic?’

‘Not at all. In fact – here we go – Rowenna’s already suggesting it’s kind of low-grade stuff. God, it’s so transparent when you start seeing it from another angle.’

‘It’s not really. It seems quite sophisticated to me. They introduce you into a group full of nice, amiable women who mother you along, don’t scare you off…’

‘So the Pod are part of this?’

‘I don’t know. They seem fairly harmless. Somebody apparently suggested you’d be an asset. That’s what I was told.’

‘Because of Mum? What is all this?’

‘It’s just about women clerics, I think,’ Lol said. ‘They’re still new and sexy, and it’s the biggest and most disruptive thing to happen in the Church for centuries. Angela’s involved with the Pod, right?’

‘I don’t actually think so. She’s never’s been to a meeting in the short time I’ve been going.’

‘She mention your mum?’

‘She said Rowenna’d told her. She said she was annoyed about that because she thought it was ethically wrong – some bullshit like that – to know things about people you were doing readings for. And, yeah, she’s like, “Oh, I can’t tell you anything tonight after all, I’ve probably got it all wrong” – until I’m begging her. And then all this stuff that I have to tease out of her and Ro, about needing to lead Mum into the light. And they’re dropping what now seem like really broad hints that if I don’t, some disastrous situation will develop. They just want to like… corrupt her, don’t they?’

‘I suppose so,’ Lol said. ‘And Merrily’s right: they’re getting at her through you. Whatever you might think, you’re the most important thing in her life. That must be obvious to them – you being the only child of a single parent.’

‘Who’s them?’

‘I don’t know. The idea of all these evil Devil-worshippers targeting priests, it just sounds so… and yet…’

‘We have to do something, Lol. I’m just like so boiling up inside. It’s like I’ve been raped, you know? We…’ Jane sprang up. ‘Hey! Let’s go and see Angela ! Now we know who she is, let’s just turn up on her doorstep and, like, demand answers.’

‘No!’

‘Why not?’

‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘ Why not?’

‘I’ve got to think about this.’

Jane frowned. ‘This is about Moon again, isn’t it?’

HUW LIFTED HIS black bag up on to the desk, switched on the lamp, and took out a fat paperback.

Merrily recognized it at once. The Folklore of Herefordshire (1912) by Ella Mary Leather had been, for several months, Jane’s bible, introduced to her by the late Lucy Devenish, village shopkeeper, writer of fairytales for children and a major source of the kid’s problematic interest in all things New Age. It was a formidable collection of customs and legends, gathered from arcane volumes and the county’s longest memories.

Huw opened it.

SECTION IV

SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA

(1) WRAITHS

Visitors , it would have said now, in Huw-speak.

Mrs Leather revealed that all over Herefordshire it was accepted – at least in 1912 – that the wraith of a person might be seen by relatives or close friends shortly before or just after death. The departing spirit was bidding farewell to the persons or places most dear to it; this was stated as a matter of fact. It seemed amazing that it had taken less than a century for believers in ghosts to be exiled into crank country.

Huw turned the page and pushed the book directly under the desk lamp for Merrily to read. He said nothing.

(3) DEMONS AND FAMILIAR SPIRITS

A Demon in the Cathedral

A very strange story of the appearance of a demon in the Cathedral is told by Bartholomew de Cotton. The event is supposed to have happened in AD 1290.

An unheard of and almost impossible marvel occurred in the Cathedral Church of the Hereford Canons. There a demon in the robes of a canon sat in a stall after matins had been sung. A canon came up to him and asked his reason for sitting there, thinking the demon was a brother canon. The latter refused to answer and said nothing. The canon was terrified, but believing the demon to be an evil spirit, put his trust in the Lord, and bade him in the name of Christ and St Thomas de Cantilupe not to stir from that place. For a short time he bravely awaited speech. Receiving no answer, he at last went for help and beat the demon and put him in fetters; he now lies in the prison of the aforesaid St Thomas de Cantilupe .

She looked up. ‘Who was Bartholomew de Cotton?’

‘No idea.’

‘Where’s the prison of St Thomas?’

‘Don’t know. Bishops did have their own prisons, I believe.’

‘So what does it all mean?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Huw. ‘It could be an allegorical tale to put the knife in for one of the clerics. Could simply be some penniless vagrant got into the Cathedral and nicked a few vestments to keep himself warm, and it got blown up out of all proportion.’

‘Or?’

‘Or it could be the first recorded appearance of the squatter .’

Merrily became aware of a thin, high-pitched whine nearby. Possibly the bulb in the desk lamp, a filament dying.

She realized fully now why Huw used all these bloody silly words: visitor , hitchhiker , insomniac . It was because the alternatives were too biblical, too portentous.