Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Pouring all his worst fantasies into his books, huh?' Moira said.

'Something like that. Takes that American lad to come in here and drop Jack's name in our laps before we put two and together.'

'Oh,' said Cathy. 'Mungo! He still thinks…'

Moira spun so fast the towel unwound from her hair. Cathy's hand went to her mouth but failed to stifle a cry.

'They did that to you? They cut off all your…?'

Moira let the towel fall.

'Oh, Moira!' Tears sprang into Cathy's eyes.

Deliberately calm, Moira said, 'They needed my hair to entangle Matt's spirit. They locked me in an outhouse in the dark. They couldn't kill me because that would have released my spirit, defeating the object. So they kept me in this sensory vacuum, sedated with mogadon or some shit that turns you into a comatose non-person so that your energy, your personality, your essence can be… stolen.'

Moira stood up, reached under the mantelpiece for her stiffening jeans. 'Cathy, I… You invoked the awful word "Mungo".' Disgusted to feel a tiny smile pulling on the muscles at the corners of her mouth.

'He still thinks you're dead,' Cathy said. 'He's over at the Man. I'd better call him.'

'Uh huh.' Moira shook her head. 'I don't know how Macbeth got here or why, and I don't have time to find out. I'm starting to see everything. Clear as hell.'

Her mind burning up with it. They stood either side of the Beacon of the Moss, heads bowed.

Joel had asked, 'Shouldn't we pray?'

'We should meditate,' John had said.

Joel stood in the blueness of it and tried to concentrate his mind, to absorb the rise and fall of Tongues from beneath, to achieve a holy stillness. But his thoughts lumbered ape-like around the shadowed walls of the chamber. He could not see John's face, could only sense the man's awesome containment.

'It's time,' John said very quietly, raising his head.

Reaching up, beyond the top of the great lantern, examined the chain by which it hung from the thick, long smoke-blackened beam. 'Come beneath it, Joel. Catch it as I release it.'

And while Joel crouched, arms full of light, John reached up and unhooked the chain.

The lamp was unexpectedly heavy. Joel stumbled but held it, pulling down several feet of electric flex which had coiled between the beam and the wall. The lamp did not go out.

'Good,' John said. 'Now lower it to the floor.'

They both stood back. The pointed top of the lantern was now on a level now with Joel's groin.

'Kick it in,' John urged.

Joel tried to see his face but saw only the bared blue teeth and blue steel ripples of hair.

He couldn't move.

'This is the pagan light. This is the lure. Very few people dared cross the Moss, Mr Beard. except those for whom the devil lit the way. Have you heard that legend? Have you heard it?

'Yes!' Joel panicking. 'I heard it from you. You told me.'

'And do you believe it? Consider the evidence.'

'I believe,' Joel intoned, 'that this is a place of pagan worship. I have seen the signs. I have seen the woman with the opened cunt. I have dreamed of her. And I have seen the dead walk.'

'And you know that this night is Samhain, the Feast of the Dead, and that the light is shining out across the peat to welcome the dead to this place.'

'It shall not happen.'

Joel lifted his foot, aware as never before of its size and its weight, and he plunged it, with a shattering, through the glass lantern and watched the shower of shards, blue and then white, pierce the tumbling shadows,

'The bulbs, Joel. Now the bulbs!' . Joel felt his lips stretched tight as his foot went back again and again, lightbulbs exploding, all of them, whorls of jagged colour, and then there was the creak of a door opening, a rapid clumping of footsteps and his neck was wrenched back and the last thing he saw before the last bulb blew was John's luminescent teeth as the man held up a scimitar of white glass, nine inches long.

Joel bit rubber, and felt his knees buckle before he was even aware of the single dull, heavy blow on the back of his head.

For a long time here was only night, and then there was a lake and a naked woman on a hill, and the woman smiled with a sorrow deeper than the lake and Joel wanted to scream, I recognise you. I recognise you now, for what you are…

But the woman was gone and there was only a void of dark sorrow and John's voice, coming very quickly, words running together, some in an archaic and alien language, and a few that he could understand.

'… that by the laying down of the blood…

Another, deeper male voice joining John's in fractured counterpoint.

… and shall be recompensed for that which we have borrowed…'

Joel trying to speak, his arms pinned behind him, confusion and humiliation turning to a savage anger as his chest swelled and his elbows jerked and there was a grunt behind him and he spat out the rubber and jerked his head forward and inside him he let out a great roar of rage.

And only a liquid gurgle came out, and he felt his very soul was pouring out through his throat and something heavy thrust into the small of his back and there was a shattering explosion and Joel was out into the flooded sky and falling through the slipstream of his blood.

Nobody in the house had been able to get to sleep anyway, because of the rain, and then The Chief started to howl, a terrified yelping sort of howl, sending Benjie hurtling down the stairs and his mam screaming from the landing, 'He'll go in a kennel, that dog, I'm warning you!' And The Chief carried on howling, even with Benjie's arms light around his neck, and Benjie shouted back Up, 'It's that dragon again, Mam!'

Heard his mam snort from the landing.

Mumbling into the dog's fur,'… same as killed me gran.'

And Benjie thought he should get dressed and take The Chief out into the street so his howling would wake up the whole village and everybody would be able to escape before the dragon came out of the Moss. Moira was already dressed when they heard Alfred Beckett shouting in the Post Office, 'Shop! Shop!'

Milly brought him through and Alf stood there, getting his breath back, raindrops glittering in his moustache.

'They've put it out!' he gasped, holding on to the back of the sofa. 'Bastards've put out the light.'

Willie pushed past him and dashed through the office to the front door. 'He's right.'

'Beacon of the Moss,' Milly explained to Moira.

'What's that mean? That it's out?'

'It's happened before, obviously, power-failures and such, but with all the rest of it…'

'You're saying it's cumulative, right?'

'I'll go up,' Willie called back.

'No,' Moira snapped. 'There's been too much rushing in, far's I can see. Cathy, the Mothers – how many are there?'

'It's a ragbag,' Milly said.

'How d'you call a meeting?'

'The old days, used to be said we never needed to call them at all.'

'Well, how about we try the phone, huh?'

'They'll all be in bed.'

'Jesus wept! If I had any hair I'd be tearing it.' Dic Castle knew that a common way of committing suicide was to cut your wrists while lying in a bath of warm water and that it was largely painless, letting life seep away.

He was not in a bath of warm water, but he supposed sedation had the same effect in that he was aware of not trying to scream through the sweating adhesive tape across his mouth but just sitting there, bound by string and wire to his chair wondering how long before it was over.

His hands were painlessly numb, cloth tourniquets around both wrists so that the blood flow was regulated, like an egg-timer.

He wasn't even resentful any more. He'd got Moira out. He'd led them away from her and they didn't know she'd gone with the sound of the rain muffling her hysteria. Him? They thought he'd just chickened out and run away, and now they'd caught him, and maybe this was what they'd intended for him all along.