Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

More of an escalating gurgle actually. Both women jerking to their feet in quaking revulsion, clutching at one another, chairs flying…

… as, with a series of sickening ripping sounds, several other skulls cracked themselves from the walls, all at once…

(Look!' Some guy grabbing the Earl by the shoulders, shaking him.)

… and began to descend in, like, slow motion, some so old they fell apart in the air and came down in pieces.

Moira's audience in cowering disarray. 'Stop this!' the Earl commanding irrationally, limbs jerking in spasms, semaphoring incomprehensible fear, like a spider caught in its own web.

'Stop it! Stop it at once!'

This tumultuous tending and creaking from all the walls. Even the great fire looking cowed, burning, back, low and smoky as though someone had thrown muffling peat at it.

Next to the fireplace, this severe and heavy lady – a matriarch of Welsh-language television, it was said – just sitting there blinking, confused because her spectacles had been torn off and then trodden on by a flailing bearded man, some distinguished professor of Celtic Studies, eyes full of broken glass, one cheek gashed by a blade of bone.

And, pulling her gaze away from this carnage, in the choking maw of the great fireplace Moira thought she saw a face… so grey it could only have been formed from smoke. The face swirled; two thrashing arms of smoke came out into the room, as if reaching for her.

Moira whispered faintly, 'Matt?' But it was smoke, only smoke.

The butler guy weaving about helplessly in the great doorway as the stag skulls fell and fell, this roaring, spitting avalanche of white bone and splattering glass, battered heads and scored skin, people yelping, moaning, hurling themselves under collapsing tables, craving shelter from the storm. She caught the black guitar case as it fell towards her. Caught it in her arms.

Come to mammy.

She sat bewildered on the bottom step of the dais, in the refrigerated air, in the absurdly shocking mess of glass and antlers.

I have to be leaving, she thought.

Hands on her shoulders. 'You OK? Moira, for Chrissake…?'

'Get the fuck off me!'

But it was only the American, Mr Semtex.

'Please… You OK? Here, let me take that…'

'No! Let it alone, will you?'

She saw the white-faced man on his knees, not six feet away. He was holding one of the skulls, a big skull, one antler snapped off halfway, ending in a savage point, a dagger of bone. There was blood on the point.

And blood welling slowly out of his left eye, blood and mucus, a black pool around the eye.

The other eye was very pale, grey going on pink. He was staring at her out of it.

Moira clutched the guitar case defiantly to her throbbing breast.

'Just hang on in there, pal,' the American said to the white-faced man. 'We're gonna get you a doctor.'

Ignoring the American, the man with the injured eye said (and later the American would swear to her that he hadn't heard this, that the guy was too messed up to speak at all)…

The man said, very calm, very urbane, 'Don't think, Miss Cairns, that this is anything but the beginning.'

In Matt Castle's band, Willie Wagstaff had played various hand-drums – bongo-type things and what the Irish called the bodhran, although Matt would never call it that; to him it was all Pennine percussion.

This morning, without some kind of drum under his hands, Willie looked vaguely disabled, both sets of fingers tapping nervously at his knees, creating complex, silent rhythms.

Lottie smiled wanly down at him. They were sitting on wooden stools at either end of the kitchen stove, for warmth

'Can you finish it, Willie? Can it be done?'

Willie looked up at her through his lank, brown fringe, like a mouse emerging from a hole in the wall. Lukewarm autumn sunbeams danced with the dust in the big kitchen behind the public bar. Such a lot of dust. She'd been neglecting the cleaning, like everything else, since Matt had been bad. Now it was over. Dust to dust.

Willie said, 'We got two or three instrumental tracks down, y'know. The lament. It all got a bit, like… half-hearted, as you can imagine. Me and Eric, we could see it weren't going to get finished. Not wi' Matt, anyroad.'

'I want it finished,' Lottie said crisply. 'It was his last… I'm not going to use the word obsession, I've said it too much.' She hesitated. '… I'm not religious, Willie, you know that, not in any… any respect.'

Willie gave three or four nods, his chin keeping time with the fingers on his knees.

'But I just feel that he won't be at peace… that it won't be over… until that music's finished.'

'Aye.' Willie's fingers didn't stop. Nerves.

'So what about Dic?' Lottie said.

'Will Dic want to do it?'

Lottie said grimly, 'He'll do it. Is he good enough?'

'Oh, aye,' Willie said without much difficulty. 'I reckon he is. With a bit of practice, like. But really, like, what we could do with is…He beat his knees harder to help him get it out. '… Moira.'

'She rang me,' Lottie said. 'Last night.'

Willie's eyes lit up, expectant. Dear God, Lottie thought, they're all in love with her.

'Actually, it was early this morning. I mean very early. Gone midnight. The kind of time people don't ring up unless it's an emergency.'

'Oh,' Willie said, and his hands were suddenly still.

'She asked me about Matt. She said, was he ill? I told her yes he was very ill. I told her it was close to the end. I told her…' Lottie stood up and put her hands on the warm metal covers over the hot-plates of the kitchen stove, pressing down with both hands, hard. 'I didn't need to tell her.'

Willie was quiet.

'We didn't say much. She started to explain why she'd put him off when he wrote to her. I stopped her. I said we'd discuss it some other time.'

There was a new kind of silence in the room.

'I put the phone down,' Lottie said. 'It was about twenty-five past twelve. I waited for a minute or two, in case Dic had heard the phone, but he was fast asleep. I thought, I'll make some cocoa, take it up with me. But I didn't move. I knew. I mean, why should she suddenly ring after all these years at that time of night? And sure enough, not five minutes had passed and the phone rang again, and it was Sister Murtry at the hospital. And I just said, He's gone, hasn't he?'

There was more silence, then Lottie said, 'I've not slept since. I've just sent Dic to bed for a few hours. I'm not tired, Willie. I'm not using up any energy – not thinking, you know?'

Lottie sat down again. 'I shan't be staying here. Only until it's done. His bloody project. I think coming back here, buying the pub, the whole bit, that was all part of it. The project. All I want is to draw a line under it, do you see? I mean, I hope somebody'll buy the pub, somebody sympathetic, but if not…' She shrugged. 'Well, I've got to get away, regardless.'

Willie nodded. Fingers starting up very slowly. 'Um… what about Moira?'

'I'm not inviting her to the funeral, that's for sure.' Lottie folded her arms, making a barrier. 'If she wants to help complete these songs, that'd be… I'll not be begging. No more of that. And another thing, Willie – tell whoever needs to be told, tell them I'm not having anything to do with these stupid… traditions. You know what I'm saying? Matt might've accepted it, I don't. All right?'

'Aye, all right,' Willie said, not sounding too happy. But that was his problem, Lottie thought. 'Yeh,' he said. 'I'll tell her.'

When Willie had gone, Lottie pushed her hands on to the hot-plate covers again, seeking an intensity of heat, needing to feel something. Something beyond this anaesthetized numbness.

Wanting pain – simple pain. Loss. Sorrow.