Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

Macbeth pushed his forehead up against the window, rolling it repeatedly on the cold, wet glass.

He was too tired for this but couldn't imagine how he'd ever sleep again. From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):

THE TRIPLE DEATH

Three was a sacred number for the ancient Celts.

I don't know why. Nobody does, obviously. But think of Christianity – the Holy Trinity. Now think of the Celtic triple goddess – maiden, matron, hag Think, if you like, of the Law of Three, as taught by the cosmologist Gurdjieff. '… One force or two forces can never produce a phenomenon,' writes his colleague, P. D. Ouspensky, going on to explain about (i) the positive force, (ii) the negative force and (iii) the neutralizing or motivating force.

I like to think of a three-pin plug, for the safe performance of which the third force, the Earth, is so essential, although I don't know if this is an adequate analogy

Whatever the explanation, the Celtic gods appeared to have demanded a sacrifice in triplicate before the necessary energy might be released.

And sometimes the cycle of death seemed to operate according to some pre-set cosmic mechanism. For instance, the eminent Celtic scholar Dr Anne Ross has described the legendary demise of the sixth-century Irish king Diarmaid, whose triple death – by weapon, drowning and burning – was foretold by seers. Diarmaid poured scorn on this until his enemies struck at the Feast of Samhain, when the hall was set ablaze and Diarmaid run through with a spear. Seeking safety from the flames, the king plunged, fatally, into a vat of ale.

The Celts have always had a great sense of comic irony.

Death. No peace in it.

You struggle towards the light and the light recedes, or maybe it's the bastard darkness has grabbed hold of your feet, hauling you back. Cloying, sweating darkness. Darkness like a black suit that's too small for you. Darkness like… black peat… the kind of dark you don't come out of until you're long, long dead and even then its somebody's mistake.

Anything's better than this kind of darkness. Forget about Heaven, Hell would be better. Joke.

So, OK, this guy, he goes to Hell, right, and it's not what he was expecting, no hot coals and stuff. Just all these other guys standing around drinking cups of tea – up to their necks in liquid shit. And they pass him a cup and he's thinking, hey, you know, this could be a lot worse.

And then the Devil himself strolls in – horns, cloven hoofs, spiky tail, the whole getup, plus a big smile – and the guys' faces all drop.

And the first guy thinks, Hey, what's the problem, the Evil One seems affable enough? And then the Devil beams at them all and he says,

'OK, boys, tea break over, back to your tunnelling…'

This could be the secret of the damned universe. Tea break over boys, back to the fucking tunnelling.

Oh, Jesus, help me. I'm cold and sweating and dead. Timegap. And you wake up into it again and there's the light in the middle distance, only this time the light doesn't back off, the light comes right at you, a big dazzling explosion of light and all you can think is, leave me alone, huh.

Just leave me alone, let me go back into the shit.

Into the black peat.

I'm not afraid of the dark. I'm crying, but I'm not afraid. The minister's daughter, Cathy Gruber, pushed through the multitude of the Born Again, into the Rectory drawing room.

Mungo Macbeth following, wondering how come, she didn't throw all these jerks into the street.

A fire was blazing in the hearth, a sofa pushed close to the heat, a woman stretched across it; she had her eyes shut and she was breathing hard. Her long, dark hair hung damply over an arm of the sofa. A small group of people was clustered around. One guy was on his knees; he held an open prayer book.

It looked as still, as solemn and as phoney as a Pre-Raphaelite death scene, Macbeth thought, as Cathy knelt down next to the guy with the prayer-book.

'How is she now?'

'In and out of sleep.'

'Has she spoken about it? She has to, you know, Chris. If she keeps all the details bottled up, it's going to cause a lot of trauma.'

Chris said, 'Who is this man?'

'I believe we talked on the phone.'

'Oh. The American. I passed you on to Joel, didn't I?'

'Some asshole zealot,' said Macbeth, and Cathy frowned at him.

'I'm sorry to say poor Joel's still in there,' Chris said. 'Still in the church.'

'Best place for him,' Cathy said. 'Let him cool his heels for a while. Chantal, can you hear me?'

The woman on the couch moved, eyelids twitching like captive moths. Cathy held one of her hands. 'This really is a wonderful lady,' Chris said to Macbeth. 'I don't know what we'd have done.'

'Cathy?'

'Makes you think you underestimated the benefits of an old-fashioned Anglican upbringing. She's not at all fazed by any of this.'

'Why I'm sticking close to the kid,' said Macbeth. 'I was fazed clean outa my tree some hours back.' He nodded at the sofa. 'This lady your wife?'

'We're united in God,' Chris said as Chantal's eyes opened and then shut again.

'What happened to her?'

'She was raped,' Chris said baldly.

Chantal moaned. Macbeth focused cynically on Chris, who looked to be about his own age and still had the remains of that bland, doped look you could guarantee to find on a proportion of fundamentalist Christians, Children of God, Mormons and sundry Followers of the Sublime Light.

Cathy stood up. 'Keep her warm. Call me if she wants to talk.' Maybe sensing the tension, she led Macbeth away.

The house seemed stuffed with men and women feeding their bland, doped faces with biscuits and potato-chips, drinking coffee from paper cups. They were in small groups, many holding on to each other, and they weren't talking much, although a few were praying silently, heads bent and palms upturned against their thighs.

Macbeth decided this was probably better than mass hysteria.

'You want coffee?'

Cathy shook her head. He followed her into the hall; she brought out keys, unlocked a door, led him into an unoccupied room with book cases and an upright piano.

Macbeth said, 'Cathy, reassure me. That woman really was raped? In addition to everything, we got a rapist on the loose?'

The girl pushed the door into place, stood with her back to it. 'She thinks she was raped. Seems she'd gone back alone to the church to plead with Joel to come out. Says she was thrown across a tomb and had sensations of… violation.'

Cathy looked him in the eyes, unsmiling. 'I'm afraid that what we have on the loose is something that used to be Matt Castle.'

The room was silent, apart from the rain on the window, which, by this time, Macbeth hardly registered.

'You believe that.' Already he knew better than to make it a question.

'It's a lot for you to swallow in one night,' Cathy said, 'but Bridelow used to pride itself on having a certain spiritual equilibrium. And now somebody's turned the place into a battlefield. Opposing forces. Black magic, as I understand it, doesn't work quite so well without there being something equally extreme to ignite it.'

'Like, opposites attract.'

Cathy nodded. 'My old man is an ordinary, old-fashioned country clergyman who's learned not to ask too many questions. Joel Beard's an extremist – same background as this bunch. Somebody engineered it that Joel should come to Bridelow with a mission to wipe out the remains of some very innocuous, downbeat paganism. We thought there was an understanding in the diocese that you don't put unstable fanatics into Bridelow, but I'd guess somebody was simply blackmailing the Archdeacon.'

'This is the boss-cleric.'

'As you say, the boss-cleric. Simon. Who's gay. And who's been more than a bit indiscreet in his time.'