Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

And where one of the horns went into a knob, there was even the beginnings of another face, like one of them gargoyles on the guttering at St Bride's.

But what was worse than all this was the way the thing thrust out of the peat, twelve feet or more, two big branches sticking out either side of the neck-piece, like hunched shoulders, and then smaller branches like dangling arms and hands and misshapen fingers, like they had arthritis in them, like the Rector's fingers.

And when a gust of wind snatched at it, the whole thing would be shivering and shaking, its wooden arms waving about and rattling.

Dancing about.

Willie remembered something that used to scare the life out of him when he was little. The teacher, Ernie Dawber's uncle, telling them about Gibbet Hill where hanged men's skeletons used to dangle in chains, rattling in the wind.

'Oh, come on…!' Willie said scornfully. He was shivering himself now – cold morning, coldest this year, not expecting it, that's all there is to it, nowt else.

'Come on.'

Walked away from it across the Moss, towards the little lad and the village, wanting to run, imagining Benjie screaming, Run, Uncle Willie, run! It's come out of t'bog and it's after you…!Run!

He kept on walking steadily, but the fingers of both hands were drumming away, going hard and steady at his thighs.

'Bog oak,' Willie made himself shout. 'Bog oak!'

Across the border, heading south, Moira ignored all the big blue signs beckoning her towards the M6. Motorways in murky weather demanded one-track concentration; she had other roads to travel.

You should take a rest, Moira. The Duchess. Unravel yourself.

Well, sure, nothing like a long drive to a funeral for some serious reflection… for facing up to the fact that you were also journeying – and who knew how fast? – towards your own.

The countryside, getting rained on, glistening drably, looked like it also was into some heavy and morose self-contemplation. It was almost like she'd left Scotland and then doubled back: there were the mountains and there were the lochs. And there also was the mist, shrouding the slow, sulky rain which made you wet as hell, very quickly.

Cumbria. She stopped a while in a grey and sullen community sliding down either side of a hill. Wandered up the steep street and bought a sour, milky coffee in a snack-and-souvenir shop. A dismal joint, but there was a table where she could spread out the map, find out where she was heading.

Many places hereabouts had jagged, rocky names. Nordic-sounding, some of them. The Vikings had been here, after the Romans quit. And what remained of the Celts? Anything?

She looked out of the cafe window at a ragged line of stone cottages with chalet bungalows, Lego-style, on the hillside behind.

She watched a couple of elderly local residents stumbling arm-in-arm through the rain.

English people.

… this guy was telling us, at the conference this afternoon, how the English are the least significant people – culturally, that is – in these islands… mongrels… no basic ethnic tradition.

And what the hell, Moira wondered, were New Yorkers? Mungo Macbeth, of the Manhattan Macbeths. Could you credit it?

Moira had another go at the coffee, made a face, pushed the plastic cup away.

She sighed. Poor Macbeth. Poor glamorous, superficial Macbeth. Who, back home, through the very nature of his occupation and his connections, would likely have whole queues of mini-series starlets outside his hotel room. Who, in New York, would have been chasing not her but his lawyer, wondering if a bonestorm was an Act of God or maybe worth half a million in compensation.

But who, because this was Scotland, the old ancestral muckheap, and because of the night – the crazy, surrealistic, Celtic night – had behaved like a man bewitched.

Moira took her plastic cup back to the counter, which was classic British stained-glass – stained with coffee, congealed fat, tomato ketchup.

'On your own?' the guy behind the counter said. He was lanky, late-twenties. He had a sneery kind of voice out of Essex or somewhere. Nowhere you went these days in Britain, did the people running the tourist joints ever seem to be locals.

She said, 'We're all of us alone, pal.' And, slinging her bag over her shoulder, headed for the door.

'You didn't finish your coffee,' he called after her. 'Something wrong with it?'

'It was truly fine.' Moira held up the back of a hand. 'Got all my nail varnish off, no problem.' About half an hour later, she surrendered to the blue signs. On the motorway the rain was coming harder, or maybe she was just driving faster into it. At a service area somewhere around Lancaster, she found a phone, stood under its perspex umbrella, called her agent in Glasgow and explained where she was.

'Previous experience, Malcolm, told me not to call until I was well on the road, or you'd instantly come up with a good reason why I wasn't to cross the border.'

'Never mind that. I have been telephoned,' Malcolm said ponderously, the Old Testament voice, 'by the Earl's man.'

Oh, shit.

'Hoping you were fully recovered.'

'Right…' she said cautiously.

'And most apologetic about the abrupt termination of your performance the other night by the inexplicable precipitation from the walls of approximately a hundred stags' heads. Now, was that not an extraordinary thing to happen?'

'Bizarre.'

'Several people had to be treated for minor lacerations, and there were two broken arms.'

'Oh, dear.'

'So naturally the Earl wanted to reassure himself that you had not been damaged in any way.'

'I'm fine. Just fine.'

'Because you seemed to have disappeared. Along with one of his guests, a gentleman called, er, Macbeth.'

'Sorry,' Moira said. 'No more money.' She hung up and ran back into the rain, black hair streaming behind her, before he could say anything about witchy women. The psychic thing.

A millstone, a fucking albatross.

She started the car, the eight-year-old BMW with a suitcase in the boot, the suitcase jammed up against the Ovation guitar steeping in its black case like Dracula in his coffin – we only come out at night, me and that guitar, together. With sometimes devastating results.

The damned psychic thing.

If you really could control it, it would be fine. No, forget fine, try bearable. It would be bearable.

But going down that old, dark path towards the possibility of some kind of control. Well, you took an impulsive step down there, the once, and you found all these little side-paths beckoning, tiny coloured lanterns in the distance – follow me, I'm the one.

You dabbled. I said to you never to dabble.

The coloured lanterns, the insistent, whispering voices.

The comb has not forgiven you. You have some damage to repair.

Yes, Mammy. She drove well, she thought, smoothly, with concentration. Down into England.

The way – many years ago, a loss of innocence ago – you travelled to the University in Manchester for all of four months before, one night, this local folk group, Matt Castle's Band played the student union.

Matt on the Pennine Pipes, an amazing noise. Growing up in Scotland, you tended to dismiss the pipes as ceremonial, militaristic.

Matt just blows your head away.

The Pennine Pipes are black and spidery, the bag itself with a dark sheen, like a huge insect's inflated abdomen. Matt plays seated, the bag in his lap, none of this wrestling with a tartan octopus routine.

'Where d'you get these things?'

'Like a set, would you, luv?'

'I wouldn't have the nerve, Mr Castle. They look like they'd bite.'

An hour and a couple of pints later he's admitting you can't buy them. There are no other Pennine Pipes. Perhaps there used to be, once, a long, long time ago. But now, just these, the ones he made himself.