Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'You mean everything gets absorbed into the tradition?'

'Mmm. Now, Joel Beard… that's the big curate with the curly hair, the one and only Joel Beard, Saint Joel. Now, Joel's really thick. He thinks he's stumbled into the Devil's backyard. He thinks he's been called by God to fight Satan in Bridelow because this is where he can do it one-to-one. In the blue corner Saint Joel, in the red corner The Evil One, wearing a glittery robe washed and ironed by Ma Wagstaff and the twelve other members of the Mothers' Union.'

'The Mothers' Union?' Moira laughed in delight.

'Thirteen members,' Cathy said. 'There've always been thirteen members. I mean, they don't dance naked in the moonlight or anything – which, bearing in mind the average age of the Mothers, is a mercy for everyone.'

'Oh, Jesus,' said Moira, 'this is wonderful.'

'It used to be rather wonderful,' Cathy said. 'But it's all started to go wrong. Even Ma's not sure why. Hey, look, have you anywhere to stay tonight? I mean, you want to stay here? There's a spare room.'

This kid would never say she didn't want to be in the house alone.

'Thank you,' Moira said. 'I think I'd like that.' Dic, who didn't drink much, had gone back to his father's pub and sunk four swift and joyless pints of Bridelow Black, sitting on his own at the back of the bar.

At one stage he became aware of Young Frank pulling out the stool on the other side of his table. 'Steady on, lad.' Tapping Dic's fifth pint with the side of a big thumb. 'It's not what it were, this stuff, but it'll still spoil your breakfast.'

Dic said, 'Fuck off, Frank.'

Frank got his darts out of his back pocket. 'Game of arrows?' Dic shook his head, making Frank's image sway and loom like something on a fairground ride.

'Come on, lad.' Frank's grating voice rising and fading out of the pub hubbub like a radio coming untuned. 'Life's gorra go on. You can't say you weren't expecting it. He were a good bloke, but he's better off dead than how he were, you got t'admit that.'

'Frank!' Dic clambered to his feet, sank the rest of his pint, most of it going into his shirtfront. 'Fucking leave it, will you?'

And then he was weaving and stumbling between the tables and out into the night.

He stood in the doorway a while, getting his breath together, then he strode across the forecourt and on to the street. The cobbles gleamed, frosty already, in the light of the big clock in the sky, shining like the earth from the moon in those old space pictures.

Dic began to moonwalk up the street, taking big strides, crashing into the phone box outside the post office, giggling like a daft sod. Coming up by the church, where he'd talked to Moira Cairns – there was her BMW, still parked there. Moira Cairns… Wouldn't mind poking that sometime, give her one for his old man. Maybe she owed him one, part of his inheritance.

He wished he had his pipes with him. Give them a fucking tune. Give them a real tune. Bastards. What were they at? What were they fucking at down there? Hands in Dad's coffin, sick bastards.

Standing by the lych-gate with its cover like a picture-postcard well and a seat inside. Went in, sat down. Out of the blue light in here, anyroad. Right under the church but the sloping roof blocked it out. Dic nestled in the darkness, feeling warm. Closed his eyes and felt the bench slipping under him, like dropping down a platform lift into a velvet mineshaft. Dic threw his arms out, stretched his head back, accepting he was pissed but feeling relaxed for the first time since he didn't know…

He giggled. There was a hand on his thigh.

It moved delicately up to his groin like a big spider.

'Feels good,' Dic said, pretty sure he'd fallen asleep on the bench. Lips on the side of his neck and his nostrils were full of the most glorious soiled and sexy perfume.

The hand sliding his zip down, easing something out.

He pulled in his arms, hands coming together around the back of a head and soft hair. Hair so long that it was brushing the tip of his cock.

'Moira,' Dic whispered. From Dawber's Secret Book of Bridelow (unpublished):

Although there has never been any excavation, it is presumed that the 'low' or mound on which St Bride's Church is built was a barrow or tumulus dating back to the Bronze Age and may later have been a place of Celtic worship.

Similar mounds have been found to enclose chambers, which some believe to have been used not so much for burial purposes as for solitary meditation or initiation into the religious mysteries. Some tribes of American Indians, I believe, fashioned underground chambers for similar purposes.

There has been speculation mat the small cell-like room reached by a narrow stairway from the vestry occupies the space of this original chamber. The official explanation for this room is that it was constructed as overnight accommodation for itinerant priests who came to preach at St Bride's and were unable, because of adverse weather, to return that night across the Moss. However, there are few recorded instances of this being necessary, and when, in 1835, a visiting bishop announced his intention of spending the night there 'to be closer to God' he eventually had to be found a room at The Man I'th Moss after being discovered naked and distressed in the snow-covered churchyard at three o'clock in the morning!

The Moss was like a warm bath, and he left it with regret.

Knowing, all the same, that he must. That there was nothing to be accomplished by wallowing.

So he strode out. And when he glanced behind him, what he saw took away his breath.

For it was no longer a black and steaming peat bog but a vast, sparkling lake, an ecstatic expanse of blue and silver reaching serenely to the far hills.

Its water was alive. Quiescent, undemanding, but surely a radiant, living element. No, not merely living… undying. Immortal.

And the water was a womanly element. Light and placid, recumbent. Generous, if she had a mind to be. If you pleased her.

He felt tufts of grass crisp and warm under his wet feet and was embarrassed, thinking he would surely besmirch it with filthy peat deposits from his bog-soiled body. But when he looked down at himself he saw that his skin was fresh and clean – not from the bog, but from the lake, of course.

And he was naked. Of course. Quite natural.

He stood at the tip of a peninsula. He thought at first it was a green island because the mound which rose, soft as a breast, from its centre was concealing the hills behind. But as he ascended the rise, new slopes purpled into being, and when he reached the summit, the surrounding hills were an amphitheatre.

In the middle of which he stood.

Naked.

Appraised. 'Shade the light! Shade it, damn you!'

'What with?'

' Your hand, jacket, anything… You poor little sod, you're really frightened, aren't you…?'

'No, it's just…'

'Don't be… Easier than you expected, surely, wasn't it? Soil's lovely and loose, obviously replaced in haste, everyone shit-scared, like you. Look, why don't you get the ropes? We can have this one out and into the Range Rover before we start on the other, OK?'

'All right. Now?'

'Got a firm grip, have we? You let it go and -I promise you, cock – we'll put you down there and bury you alive.'

' Yes, all right, yes, I've got it.'

'OK, now. Pull.'

'Oh…agh… Where shall I…?'

'Just at the side will do. Right. Fine. Now, let's have the lid off.'

'What…?'

'Have a little look at him, eh? Hah! See that… not even nailed down, they really were in a panic, weren't they? To think I was once almost in awe of these little people. How wrong can… Oh, now… Oh, look at that.'

'Oh!'

'Go on. Have a better look. Get closer. Put your fingers on his eyes.'