Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

But this isn't just another bit of body. This is the complete perfectly preserved remains of the original sacrifice, laid down with due ceremony after undergoing the Triple Death.

This is powerful, this will reverberate.

And wise old Ma Wagstaff – realizing, presumably, just how powerful – mixes up her witch bottle with a view to protecting Matt's soul from any dark, peaty emanations.

Not realizing that it's the Man in the Moss who needs protection – against the tortured, corrupted, manipulated spirit of Matt Castle.

Got to get him back. Got to get him out of their control.

Got to lose all the hatred because that's their medium. Hatred. And lust. And obsession. When Stan the bartender and Gary the cop came for Dic, Macbeth was pacing the room, trampling in the blood. Where is she, where the fuck is she? Almost ready to shake the poor guy, get some sense out of him.

'God almighty!' he heard from the bottom of the steps. 'It's Young Frank!'

'Don't touch him. You can't help him now.'

'He were three-parts drunk. Fighting drunk. Drunk most nights since he lost his job.'

'Maybe he fell, maybe he didn't. Either way, I'm having this place sealed off, so watch where you're treading, Stan.'

'Hey, come on willya,' Macbeth shouted. 'There's a guy up here isn't dead. Yet.'

'We're coming,' Gary the cop said. 'And I don't like that smell one bit.'

Thirty seconds later, he's pulling the sacking from the stiff – 'Fucking Nora! – while Macbeth's demanding, 'Moira. You seen Moira? Lady with very, very short hair… Chrissakes!' And Stan's staring at all the blood, looking sick, and Dic's shifting very feebly in his chair.

'Right!' said Gary the cop. 'Who is this?'

Macbeth slumped against the wall. 'It's Matt Castle.'

'Thank you,' said Gary. 'At least we know he's not been murdered. Let's get an ambulance to this lad. And a statement later. I think…'

At which Dic came round sufficiently to start yelling, hoarsely, 'No! I'm not going to hospital! I won't!'

'Hey, hey… All right, we'll not take you to hospital, but you can't stop here.'

'Take me to Cath,' Dic said, and Ashton looked at Macbeth. Macbeth nodded, and Stan got his arm behind Dic and helped him to his feet.

'Keep his arms over his head,' Macbeth said, 'else he's gonna start bleeding again.' In back of Stan's ancient station wagon, Macbeth said quietly to Dic, 'Moira. Where's Moira go? Come on, kid, talk to me, I saved your goddamn life.'

'Said to tell you,' Dic mumbled, 'that… she'd gone to meet the Man.'

'Holy… shit! Macbeth slammed his fist into the back of the seat.

'Yeah,' Dic said. 'I didn't like the sound of it either, but there wasn't much I could do.' Drifting on an airbed of memories.

Hey, Matt, you remember the night the van broke down on the M1 and we put on a thank-you gig for the AA guys at three in the morning at the Newport Pagnell Services?

Blurry light coming off the Moss through the rain. They're out there, OK. And it's cold and it's wet and the Moss is filthy and swollen. No place to be, Matt. No place to commit yourself for all eternity.

Or until you might be summoned by those to whom you mortgaged your soul.

Hey, remember when you left the pipes in the hotel room in Penzance and Willie ran all the way back from the hall and I went on stage alone? And I only knew four solo numbers, and I'm into an encore of the first one before Willie dashes in with the pipes?

The slimy mosslight from the high windows awakening the barn, finding the womanly curves of the old Martin guitar. This was your place, Matt, this was where you put it all together, this was your refuge.

…So I wanted…I wanted in. To be part of that. To go in the Moss too…

But you don't now. Do you?

It's warm in here. (Aw, hell, it's freezing; you just better wish it warm, hen, wish it warm until you can feel it.)

She picked up the lamp from the floor at her feet and took it across to a wooden table. She switched it on, directing its beam to the centre of the settee, picked up Matt's Martin guitar, went back and sat in the spot, with the light on her face.

She strummed the guitar. The strings were old and dull and it was long out of tune. One of the machine-heads had lost its knob, so she just tuned the other strings to that one.

It would do.

She sat back, closed her eyes against the lamp's beam, although the battery was running out and the light was yellowing. She imagined the Moss, black and cold and stagnant.

Now you're out there, you know the terrors the Moss holds, the deep, deep, age-old fear.

Death doesn't have to be like that, Matt.

Come on. Come on back. Come to the warm.

She pictured Matt as he'd been once. Stocky, muscular, vibrant with enthusiasm.

Come…

… come to… to me.

And in a low and smoky voice, she began to sing to him. The Mothers' Union was congregated in the high Norman nave of St Bride's Church.

Above the Mothers hung a ragged cross made of branches cut by Benjie from a rampant sycamore hedge at the bottom of the Rectory garden. The branches, still dripping, were bound with chicken wire and tangled up with hawthorn.

Cathy walked in, out of the rain, under the reassuringly gross, widened flange of the Sheelagh na gig, cement particles among the coils of her hair. Alf Beckett had also brought the statues out of the shed, and several long, coloured candles were now lit.

He was up in the lamp room now, fixing up a high-powered floodlight supplied by Stan Burrows, who'd been in charge of the electrics for the Bridelow Wakes party which was usually held on the Church Field on May Day Eve. (Except for this year, when there was still too much media attention, due to the bogman.)

'Twelve,' Cathy said after a quick head-count. 'We're waiting for Moira.'

'She doesn't have to be here,' Milly said. 'If she's with us, she's with us.' Cathy was glad to see Milly had at last taken charge.

The assembly was not inspiring, including, as it did, women like Dee Winstanley, who'd declined to follow her mother into the Union on the grounds that they didn't get on, and two lesbians who ran a smallholding up by the moor and had never been allowed to become active members because their motives were suspect.

A pile of wet stones glistened on an old wooden funeral bier under the pulpit.

'All right!' Milly clapped her hands. 'Let's make a start, shall we?' I want to begin by calling down a blessing on this church. If you'd all form a rough circle from where we've pushed the pews back.'

Milly wore a long, dark blue dress decorated by a single brooch in the shape of two intercurled holly leaves.

She closed her eyes.

'Our Father…' she began.

'And Our Mother…'

…sees herself in colours and she weighs her powers in her hand…

'The Comb Song'. The song of night and invocation. In the singing of it, things happen.

And the comb, safe in its pocket in the guitar case protects you from evil.

But this is not your guitar. This is Matt's guitar. Singing the song of invocation to the dead strings of Matt's guitar in Matt's music room, and no protection. It was 1.30 in the morning.

The women filed silently out of the church, most of them muffled in dark coats, under scarves and hoods so Macbeth couldn't tell who was who.

There was a bulky one he figured was Milly. Two who were slightly built were walking together.

'Cathy?' he whispered. 'Cathy?'

Neither of the women replied.

Each clutched a stone.

They walked out of the church porch under a weird carving of a grotesque, deformed creature, all mouth and pussy. At this point they divided, some proceeding down the path toward the main gate, two moving up toward the graves, the others following a narrow path down into a field which disappeared into the peatbog.