Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

When it came to it, truth was Frank didn't hate Born Again Christians anywhere near as much as he hated Gannons.

Which, he supposed, must be why he'd ended up pissing hard and high against the main door of the brewery, thinking maybe he could kick a couple of windows in before he sobered up.

Which was how come he saw the lights.

And how come he found the main door wasn't locked.

Well, this were a bit of a turn up. Frank stood a while getting rained on and stared upwards. Summat weird about this. Light coming out the sides of the wooden boards on the topmost windows, the owd malt store as was.

From what Frank had heard from his ex-workmates and his dad, that malt store hadn't been used in twenty years. When Gannons had the winching system repaired on the outside of the building there was no suggestion it had been for winching sacks all the way up to the top again, because the owd malt store'd been shut and boarded up. Make it look authentic for was what everybody thought.

Frank wandered around to the side of the building, and there was the platform thing… right at the top.

Summat had been winched up there tonight. Obviously.

Fucking cowboy brewers. Happen the owd malt store'd been refurbished. Happen they was having a little cocktail party up there for the directors.

Right then. See about that.

Frank went in. She knew, sure, how ill she was, soaked through and shivering, feverish, temperature racing up the thermometer, about to ring the little bell.

Knew also that she could never look into a mirror again. Not ever.

And yet her mind had never seemed so clear. A cold searchlight, ruthlessly spearing into dark and musty corners.

Felt weak as hell and sore, and she walked with difficulty through the leafless, waterlogged wood. But her mind was an athlete, leaping chasms of dark thoughts. Her mind was an engineer constructing complex bridges.

'What we're looking for,' Moira mumbled, stopping, moving closer to the stocky, blistered trunk of an oak, switching off the lamp, 'is something long-term.'

Like a long-term connection between Matt and Stanage.

This had happened before; Matt's enthusiasms were unstoppable. If Matt finds interesting echoes in a book, Matt goes in search of the author.

Take this as fact. Matt meets Stanage. Matt and Stanage find so much common ground that secrets are shared… at least on Matt's side.

Nobody other than Matt could have told Stanage about Moira Cairns and the comb. Say that by the time these two men meet, she's – stupidly – recorded 'The Comb Song' and both Matt and Stanage are scenting magic. And Stanage has stored all this away for future reference.

Moira sank down against the fat, scabby tree trunk, finding an almost sheltered spot between two huge protruding roots, enclosing her like legs. Sheets of rain on three sides; like touching in a cavern behind a waterfall.

OK.

If Stanage has learned about the comb he's learned a whole lot more of Matt's secrets, maybe passing on a few tantalizing but useless bits of information of his own about the old Celts and the Pennine Pipes in return. Worth it, because he sees such terrific potential in Matt, the most wonderful raw material for his own research.

Because Matt, maybe like Stanage, is ruled by his compulsions. Only Stanage is cleverer.

She closed her eyes and she was back in the ballroom of the Earl's Castle.

His face is an unhealthy white. He has light grey eyes and grey freckles on his expanse of forehead. There's a whiteness all about him, growing into arms like the branches of trees. Like antlers.

He is linked to the skulls on the walls. He is the horned god, the hunter of heads.

He has taken her hair.

And she sees it all with such brutal clarity, detached from her wonderful, magical comb-reared hair, her earliest, most important expression of individuality and free thought.

Hands to her head, couple of inches left, less in places. Aw, what the hell, you're alive, what d'you want, huh?

Revenge? She shivered with fever and fury.

Hands inside the guitar case. Stanage is feeling for the comb. He is feeling for your soul.

Two hundred miles away Matt Castle is lying in wait for death. Maybe Matt, in the last morphine minutes of his life, is also reaching out for you. Those arms of sick smoke coiling out of the baronial fireplace.

If Stanage gets access to your soul, to the core of Matt's craving…

… then Stanage will have a link with Matt that extends beyond death.

Stanage will have a hold on Matt's spirit.

With the comb and the cloak and the…

'Long-haired girls. Always The long, dark hair.'

Dic.

'After a charity gig. She was waiting for him in the car park. About twenty-one, twenty-two. About my age. Long, dark hair.'

The craving kept alive in the darkness of shop-doorways and the backs of vans.

And manipulated. And moulded and twisted.

Stanage has recreated me as spirit-bait for Matt. He's taken my soul and thrown away the husk.

But why, Moira wondered, so physically, achingly tired now, enclosed in the roots of a malformed oak tree, an electric lamp on her lap, why can I think so well? Why can I see all this so clearly, unless that's to be my final torture?

That and a dawning, unquenchable hatred for Matt Castle. Frank made his way, quietly as his shoes would allow, up the narrow iron stairs, past the deep fermenting-tanks. Up another flight, past the coppers. It were bloody dark, but Frank had been up here that many thousand times it didn't matter. And the smell, the lovely, familiar smell. Better than sight, that smell. Better than women.

Halfway up the third flight leading to the mash tuns, Frank choked back what he thought was going to be a hiccup but turned out to be a sob. He stopped in a moment of despair. How was he going to live the rest of his life without this wondrous rich, stale, sour, soggy aroma? How was he going to survive?

He clambered to the top, staggered out on to the deck clutching for support at the thick copper pipe connecting the malt mill to the mash, the big Luna around him, his old mates. Get um out, a voice was rasping in his gut. Gannons. Get the bastards out. Get the brewery back for Bridelow.

He leaned, panting, over the side of one of the tuns and his breath echoed in its empty vastness.

One more flight. He went three-quarters way up to a door that'd always been kept locked for safety's sake for as long as he'd worked there.

Voices behind it.

'… not terribly subtle. What time is it?'

'Coming up to eleven-fifteen.'

'No time for that, then. Really, I' – a light laugh, half-exasperated – 'just can't get over what you've done. I really didn't think you were that clever. Now, look. You know, presumably, that we mustn't actually kill you. Not yet, anyway.'

'Don't care. Do what you want. You're just a slag. Couldn't have a…'

A crash. A moan. A rolling on floorboards.

All right, come on, pick him up. Sit him next to his dear daddy. Let him have a good whiff. Bind his arms very firmly, palms up, OK? And at approximately ten minutes to twelve… are you listening? At ten minutes to twelve, you can open his wrists.'

Frank was in a fog. He heard it all but couldn't make sense of the words and some kept repeating on him.

Kill… whiff… palms up… open his wrists.

It was a woman's voice, not a local accent. More words rambled down the steps, Frank's brain tripping over them, sometimes he seemed to hear the key words before they joined actual sentences.

Trickle.

'Don't go mad. Just want a trickle at first. Steady plop, plop, plop. We'll be well into it by then. Once you get the trickle going, you come back and join us. Very quietly. You say nothing.'

Blood to blood.

'What if he screams?'