Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Suppose you know,' Dic said, 'where they've gone.'

'We have to get you to a hospital.'

'When you're on valium and you're still terrified, you know it must be pretty awesome.'

'Looks pretty cruddy to me,' Macbeth said.

'We'll get you down the steps, OK? We'll get you out of here.'

'He's not sane, you know. I don't reckon he was all there to begin with, lived in his own fantasy world. Like Dad. And that guy Hall.' He closed his eyes. 'Bloody Cathy. The things you do for love, eh?'

'Mungo,' Moira said. 'How about you go downstairs to one of the offices, find a phone? Get us some transport for Dic'

'You'll be OK?' Macbeth looked like he couldn't get out fast enough.

'Sure. Get hold of Cathy. You got the number?'

'Called it enough times from the phone-booth.' He hesitated in the doorway, Dic's blood on one cheek.

'Go,' Moira said.

When they were alone, she said, 'Dic, I need to ask you… Matt…'

'I gave him blood,' Dic said. 'And you…' He nodded at the thing in the other chair.

Moira sighed. Sooner or later she had to face this.

She hooked a finger under a corner of the sacking.

The dead couldn't harm you.

'You get… used to him,' Dic said with a dried-up bitterness. 'You start to forget he ever looked any different.'

She pulled away the sacking. The smell was putrid. It was the kind of smell that would never entirely leave you and some nights would come back and hover over you like the flies that were clustering around Matt's withered mouth, the lips already falling from the teeth.

'I was afraid to look at him in his coffin,' Dic said. 'Mum said there was no shame. No shame in that.'

'Dic,' Moira said. 'What's that in his lap?'

'The pipes.'

'That stuff wrapped around the pipes.'

'You know what it is.'

Moira reached out with distaste and snatched the bundle from the lap of the corpse. Air erupted from the bag and the pipes groaned like a living thing. Or a dying thing. She cried out and dropped the pipes but held on to what had been around the pipes, black hair drifting through her fingers in the flickering candlelight. A glimmer of white.

'Which of them did it?' Her voice so calm she scared herself. 'Which of them actually cut it off?'

Dic said, 'The woman, I'd guess. Therese. They wanted him strong and… driven. You know?'

His eyes kept closing. Maybe he was about to pass out from loss of blood. She didn't know what you did in these circumstances. Did you let him rest or did you try to keep him conscious, keep him talking? He seemed to need to talk.

'I gave him blood,' he said. 'Blood feeds the spirit or something like that. Blood's very powerful in magic. And…'

He winced, coughed, nodded at the hair.

'… so's desire.'

'And what,' Moira said, staring into Matt Castle's impenetrable, sightless eyes, stuffing the hair into a pocket of the duffel coat, 'did he get from the bog body?'

'Wrong question.' Dic's eyes closed and didn't open for several seconds. Moira was worried. Dic said, 'I think you should be asking… what it got from him.'

His eyes weren't focusing. 'Listen, I don't know whether they got what they were after. All kinds of noises were coming out of… that.'

Moira picked up the sacking, tossed it over Matt with a shudder.

'Hall was trying to talk to it. Had a few phrases in medieval Welsh. I don't think it made any sense. In the end he was screaming at it. Stanage was screaming at Therese. It didn't go how they hoped.'

'Does it ever.'

'I can't believe these people.'

'I can,' Moira said. 'What went wrong?'

'Couldn't find the comb was one thing. Stanage was furious.'

Moira bent over him. His eyes were slits. 'Dic, why couldn't they find the comb?'

'Because I'd… taken it. I think. Earlier on. I took it out of the bag. Knew they were saving it for the climax.'

'Where is it now?'

He tried to shake his head. 'I'm sorry,' Moira said. 'We'll get you out of here. Listen, if I leave you now… can you bear it? Mungo'll be back in a minute. Only I want to get away on my own. Dic, can you hear me?'

Dic's eyes were closed. He was half-lying in his chair, hands still thrown back behind his head. There seemed to be no more blood seeping under the tape.

Didn't they say that your blood stopped flowing when you died?

Dic's canvas-seated wooden armchair still stood in the pond of his blood, mostly congealed, like mud, like the surface of a peatbog.

'Dic?'

No reply. But he was still breathing, wasn't he? She touched his fingers; they felt cold, like marble.

'Dic, tell Mungo… tell him not to worry. Tell him… just tell him I've gone to meet the Man.'

There was a strange luminescence over the Moss, as though the rain itself was bringing down particles of light. She could see its humps and pools, and she knew there were people out there, could hear their voices, scattered by the rain. The Moss was swollen up like a massive pincushion and every heavy raindrop seemed to make a new dent.

She walked openly to the door of The Man I'th Moss and hammered on it, shouted 'Lottie!' a few times. All the lights were on, lights everywhere, in the bar, in all the rooms upstairs.

But nobody here.

OK.

She switched on her lamp and walked around the back to the yard where the stable block or barn place was, Matt's music room. Its door hung open, the hasp forced. They hadn't even bothered to disguise their visit when they came to borrow the Pennine Pipes.

Switching off her lamp, Moira went quietly in. She put on no lights. The air inside seemed to ripple with greens and browns, like sea light.

Mosslight.

The carpets on the wall tautened the air. Dead sound. No echoes.

She took off her coat, found the old settee, the one with its insides spraying out. Sat down, with the lamp at her feet, and thought peacefully of Matt and felt no hatred.

All gone.

Released. It had taken her nearly ten minutes to get here. Ten minutes in which the rain had crashed down on her sparsely matted skull, and she'd yielded up her anger with a savagery even the night couldn't match.

Screamed a lot. Cursed him for what he'd done, all those years of lies and craving, abuse of Lottie, abuse of Dic, abuse of her from afar, divulging to the crazy Stanage the secret of the comb, letting Stanage set him up, set her up in Scotland.

Letting Stanage into his weaknesses. So that the long-haired girls appeared on cue. This Therese playing the part with an icy precision, drawing out of Man the thin wire of desire by which they could anchor him.

I used to think she was… a substitute. Me own creation. Like, creating you out of her…

While he was no longer sure that this was not, in essence, Moira.

… I should've known. Should've known you wouldn't leave me to die alone. I'm drawing strength from the both of you. The bogman and you…

Had Stanage known that Matt was dying? Was Man chosen because he was dying? So that his spirit, chained to Stanage and Therese, chained willingly to Bridelow by the old Celtic magic, could be controlled after his death?

So it could be used as a conduit.

To reach the Man, the spirit of the Moss, the guardian of the ancient Celtic community at the end of the causeway.

Moira walking quickly down from the brewery, finding her way quite easily this time back into the village. Avoiding the car racing with full headlights up the brewery road, probably in answer to Macbeth's summons. Avoiding any people she happened to see on the street – especially women.

This, God help me, is my task.

Go over it again. Get it right.

Here's what happened.

The villagers steal the Man to do with him what's been done so many times with bits of bodies found in the Moss: give him a good Christo-pagan burial at the next public funeral.