Phil Rickman - The Cold Calling

‘This is getting too apocalyptic for me, Cindy.’

Cindy didn’t reply, but put on the tape again.

… and when he returns at dusk, he knows the identity of the woman .

Full circle .

He has realized — everything is for a purpose — that it must be done in the knowledge of who she is and why she is here .

Sent .

Yes .

But what if she is no longer here? He does not even know where she is sleeping .

You fool, he tells himself. Have you no faith?

And as he is telling himself this, a car turns into the castle gateway .

The Green Man alights silently and follows on foot, waiting in deepest shadows, under the castle walls .

He sees a man leave the house and get into the car. As the door opens, the interior light identifies the woman and, before the car emerges from the castle gates, the Green Man is back in his own vehicle, searching, without lights, for the field entrance .

This time Maiden switched off.

‘He thought it was Grayle. He thought Emma was Grayle. Because of the blond wig.’

‘And he was locked into it by then,’ Cindy said. ‘It was ordained. From the moment he saw her on the Knoll he knew what he was going to do.’

‘He nearly ran into the back of us once. Em slammed on the brakes and this Land Rover nearly went in the ditch. And yet didn’t protest. No horn-blowing, nothing. I should have known.’

‘How could you possibly have known?’

They were off the single-track roads now, passing stone farms, paddocks.

‘Can you go any faster?’ Maiden said.

It’s a new experience for him. He does not normally use the modern roads which brashly thrust across the old straight ways. He wonders occasionally, now, if this is right and tells himself to have faith .

And his faith is amply repaid when they leave the road and enter a wooded enclosure whose antiquity is immediately apparent to the Green Man. He does not need his map. He knows from the contours of the landscape and the ancient sanctity of this area, between the Black Mountains and the Brecon Beacons. Here rise some of the tallest and finest standing stones in the land. He is at once at home. His spirit burns .

It is an inn. The sign says, Open to Non-Residents. He is gratified to note that his is not the only all-terrain vehicle in the car park. Through a ground-floor window, he can see into the bar, which is quite full of people who, from their clothes, he can tell are mainly local. He does not see the woman there .

He must be careful not to bump into her; she will recognize him at once. But he is beginning to feel secure and protected. He enters the bar, speaks to no-one, passes through to the toilets and then to the reception area .

It seems that they are staying the night. There’s no-one at the reception desk, which is fortunate. The keys to the rooms are on a board on the wall. Three are missing. Rooms two, five and ten. There is no-one to see him as he casually ascends the stairs .

On the first landing he tries doors. Only one room is accessible: room seven, at the very end, which has no lock or handle, only a freshly drilled hole .

His footstep echoes in an unfurnished room. There is a smell of sawdust. He switches on the light to discover that room seven is presently undergoing refurbishment. There are scattered tools and heaps of plaster and some paint-stained overalls .

He hears voices from the landing and creeps back to the door .

Because of the age of the house, the passage is narrow, and the two people are in single file, walking away from him towards the stairs, the woman obscured by the man, whose back is turned to the Green Man until he half turns to make sure he has locked the door of room five, and the Green Man recognizes him at once, from Castle Farm. He’s probably the nephew of Marcus Bacton, and he poses a slight problem. For the Green Man’s human quarries, to date, have all been hunted singly .

Well, no hurry. They’re obviously going for dinner. Now that he knows, the Green Man emerges and takes a leisurely look around the upper rooms of this pleasant old house. He finds two ugly metal fire escapes, geomantically disastrous for such a building, but obviously useful to him tonight. In fact, he uses one to effect his exit, wedging the door open just a slit, using a chisel he has found in room seven .

Who knows? The chisel may be useful later. At the bottom of the fire escape, he finds himself in near-complete darkness amid trees and bushes, but, when he emerges onto a lawned area, the moon emerges too, from behind a cloud, and he can see the lie of the land as far as the mass of the mountain called Sugar Loaf .

He walks round the perimeter of the building and arrives on the other side of the fire escape, where he discovers a narrow path leading through bushes to higher ground .

A mound, in fact. A distinct mound! Elation blossoms like a golden flower in the Green Man’s groin .

Not yet .

The mound is flat-topped. A tumulus, surely! A holy place. A small area has been dug, where some fool has attempted to plant flowers .

The Green Man sits on the mound, in meditation, for some time, perhaps hours. He sleeps. The moon is in his eyes. In his dream, the moon becomes a Druid’s shining sickle. He awakes and, for a moment, it seems that the moon is finely rimmed with blood. When he comes to his feet and stretches, he is cold but braced. And certain in his mind. At last, the Earth calls to him .

He removes his clothes. He stands in his majesty atop the holy mound, lifts his arms to the shadow of the Sugar Loaf. He is not at all cold now. He feels the flow of energy through the land … he knows instinctively that this is a crossing point. The Earth calls again to him, and he lies down upon the area of attempted cultivation, and he penetrates Her .

‘Am I getting this right, Cindy? This guy fucks flowerbeds ?’

‘And probably rubs damp soil into his skin.’ Cindy didn’t look at him. ‘And eats it, of course. He sees the Earth as his lover. He wants to be a part of Her and Her of him. In Her, in him. Think about it. But resist, at all times, any temptation to regard this man as ludicrous.’

‘Unlikely,’ Bobby Maiden said grimly.

And thought about it. Thought the unthinkable. About the smell and the taste of the grave. About the smell and the taste as he lay with Em. And his reaction to it. It made him want to put his shoulder against the car door and hurl himself into the road.

‘Calm yourself, Bobby.’

‘What are the chances,’ he said tautly, ‘of him being impotent with women?’

‘Considerable, I would say.’

‘And what Magda says about him being besotted with Ersula Underhill? Do you think he was perhaps more besotted with the idea of getting close to someone he knew he was ultimately going to kill?’

Cindy waited to pull onto the main road that would take them into the city of Hereford.

Maiden pushed in the cassette.

Returning by the fire escape — fully dressed, of course — he enters room seven. He sees it with new eyes. At one end of the room lies a roll of carpet. And the retractable knife used to cut it. In a cleaner’s cupboard in the bathroom, he has found a pair of ladies’ rubber gloves which he somehow manages to stretch over his hands. He dons the paint-splashed overalls, which also are a little tight, but not too much of a problem .

He waits in room seven, but not for long. He knows he must act before the earth-energy dissipates in this filthy secondhand atmosphere, this central-heating smog .