Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Aye,' said Milly. 'I suppose I can.'

'Don't you start losing heart, lass. Hey, our Sal's on her way too, what about that?'

'Never!' said Cathy. 'Ceramic hob on the blink, is it?'

'I'm persuasive, me, when I put me mind to it.'

'That'll make it ten, then,' Cathy said. 'Still, not enough. But we're getting there. Please, Milly, please don't go negative on me now.' Macbeth closed the door behind him, as if to prove he wasn't really a wimp and could handle this alone, and he didn't come out for a long time, maybe half a minute, and there was no sound from him either. And Moira panicked. I was wrong. They're all there. They're waiting for us.

'Moira,' he called out, more than a wee bit hoarse, just at the point when she was about to start screaming. 'I think I need some help.'

At the foot of the final stairway, the air was really sour, full of beer and vomit, blood and death. She took a breath of it, anyway. She was – face it – more scared than he was, and whenever she was really scared, she went brittle and hard, surface-cynical. A shell no thicker than a ladybird's.

She wanted a cigarette. She wanted a drink.

She wanted out of here.

'Hold your nose,' Macbeth advised, opening the door. He sounded calm. Too calm. He was going to pass out on her any second.

And of course she didn't hold her damn nose, did she, and the stench of corrupted flesh nearly drove her back down the steps.

'I covered that one over,' Macbeth said. 'Couldn't face it.'

A circle within a circle. Candles burned down to stubs, not much more than the flames left, and all the rearing shadows they were throwing.

'Watch where you're walking,' Macbeth said.

The attic light was brown and bleary with sweat, grease, blood. Several chairs inside the circle. Two of them occupied.

One was a muffled hump beneath old sacking. 'All I could find,' Macbeth said. 'I don't think you should uncover it. I don't think anybody should. Not ever.'

A yellow hand poked out of the sacking.

She stared at it, trying to imagine the yellow fingers stopping up the airholes on the Pennine Pipes.

'It's this one,' Macbeth said behind her. 'Moira? Please?'

Moira turned and took a step forward and her foot squelched in it.

Congealing blood. Bucketsful. You don't have to do anything like that,' Cathy said. 'It's not as if I'm asking you to bare your breasts or have sex with anyone under a full moon or swear eternal allegiance to the Goddess.'

'Pity,' said the blonde one, trying, and failing, to hold her cigarette steady.

'All you have to do,' Cathy said, 'is believe in it. Just for as long as you're taking part.'

'I don't, though, luv,' Lottie Castle said. 'And I can't start now.'

However, Cathy noticed, she couldn't stop herself looking over their shoulders towards what was probably the gas-mantle protruding from the side of the bar.

Cathy had heard all about the gas-mantle, from the policeman, Ashton, who was standing by the door at this moment, Observing but keeping out of it because – as he'd pointed out, there was no evidence of the breaking of laws, except for natural ones.

'Yes, you do,' Chrissie said. 'You've always believed in it. That's been half the problem.'

'And how the hell would you know that?'

'Oh, come on. The last couple of hours I've probably learned more about you than anybody in this village. And you know more about me than I'd like to have spread around.'

'Yes,' said Lottie. 'I suppose so. And how do you come into this, luv? Always struck me as an intelligent sort of girl, university education. Oxford, isn't it?'

'That's right, Mrs Castle, Oxford.'

'No polite names tonight. It's Lottie.'

'And I'm Chrissie,' said the blonde.

'You know about your husband,' Cathy said. 'You know what they've done.'

'Cathy luv, he ceased to be my husband the night he needed somebody else to close his eyes for him. Well, a fair time before that, if truth were known. I've had half a lifetime of Matt Castle, and that's more than anybody should have to put up with, and I can say that now, because I can say anything tonight, believe me.'

As soon as Cathy had walked in she'd spotted the two glasses, smelt the booze.

'All right,' she said. 'Forget your husband. Let's talk about your son.'

Lottie's face hardened immediately into something like a clay mask.

'Dic? What about Dic?' 'Just I don't think he's dead,' Macbeth said.

'Oh, Jesus. Jesus.' Moira put down her lamp in the blood, the light tilted up at Dic's face.

But they couldn't kill him, could they? For the same reason they couldn't kill you. Surely.

'Willie was right, Mungo. We should've been up here, mob-handed. Thought I was being clever. Being stupid. Stupid!'

But sometimes you can do more harm to someone than killing them'd be, you know?

'Tights,' Macbeth snapped. 'You wearing tights under there?'

'Huh…? No. What's…? Oh, Jesus… Dic… please don't be dead.'

'Shit,' said Macbeth. 'Handkerchief?'

'I dunno what's in these pockets, it's no' my coat… yeah, is this a handkerchief?'

'How big is it? OK, tear it in half. Fold 'em up. Make two tight wads.' Macbeth was peeling off the thick adhesive tape binding Dic's arms to the chair-arms. Both arms were upturned, palms of the hands exposed. Veins exposed. There was a welling pool of rich, dark blood at each wrist and it was dripping to the floor each side of the chair. There was a widening pond of blood, congealed around its blackened banks. Late-autumnal flies from the roofspace crawled around, drunk on blood.

'OK, now you hold his arm above his head. You're gonna get a lot of blood on you.'

'I got more blood on me than I can handle,' Moira muttered. 'You sure you know what you're doing, Mungo?'

'I never did it for real before, but… Ah, you don't need to hear this shit, just hold his arms. Right. Gimme one of the pads. See, we got to hold the… this is a pressure pad, right? So you push it up against the wound with both thumbs. Like hard. Idea is, we stop the blood with the pad, then I wind this goddamn tape round just about as… tight… as I can make it,'

'Is he breathing?'

'How the fuck should I know? Now the other arm. Hold it up, over his head… And, shit, get the tape off his mouth. Chrissakes, Moira, didn't we do that?'

The tape across Dic's mouth stretched from ear to ear. Moira tore it away, and Dic mumbled, 'Do you… have to be so rough?'

Moira jumped away in shock. Macbeth yelled, 'Keep hold of that fucking arm, willya?'

'Aw, Christ. You're no' dead.'

'I'm no' dead,' said Dic feebly, and be giggled.

'Don't talk,' said Moira. 'You're gonny be OK. Mungo?'

'He's lost a lot of blood.'

'Don't I know it. I'm paddling in it.'

'He needs to go to a hospital. This is strictly amateur hour. Can't say how long it's gonna hold. Far's I can see, they cut the vein. If they'd cut the artery this guy'd be long gone. They cut the vein, each wrist, taped his arms down. The blood goes on dripping, takes maybe a couple hours to drain the body. How long they had you like this, pal?'

'Not the faintest,' Dic said. 'I was on valium, I think. Intravenous. So I'd know what was happening but wouldn't care.'

'That's good. See, the dope slows down the metabolism and that goes for the blood flow too. This is weird stuff, Moira, this left me way behind a long time back.'

Moira said, 'Do you know why, Dic?'

Dic nodded at the hump under the sacks.

'Do me one favour,' Macbeth said. 'I saved your life, least you can do is let me keep that fucking thing under wraps.'

'That's Matt, isn't it, Dic?'

Dic nodded. He was lying back in his chair, both arms still flung over his head and black with dried and drying blood.

Moira didn't recall ever seeing courage on this scale. Maybe the valium had helped, but it was more than that.