Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

She'd walked hesitantly over and stared down at the Pennine Pipes in pity and horror, like you might contemplate a bird with smashed wings. It was as if he'd simply tossed the pipes on the stool and walked out, forever, and the bag had maybe throbbed and pulsed a little, letting out the last of Matt's breath, and then the pipes had died.

Moira's throat was very dry. She was thinking about Matt's obsessions: the Pennine Pipes, the bogman and…

'Can't help your feelings, can you? Like, if you're a married man, with a kid, and you meet somebody and you… and she takes over your life and you can't stop thinking about her. But that's not a sin, is it? Not if you don't… Anyway, I never realised that you… I never realised.'

Matt's voice all around her now. Car stereos, so damned intimate.

Lottie had turned away, calling back over her shoulder, 'I'll be in the kitchen. Stay as long as you like. Lock up behind you and bring me the key. The parcel's on the table.'

And was gone, leaving Moira alone in the barn that was like a chapel, with the pipes left to die.

On the table, a thick, brown envelope which had once held a junk-mail catalogue for Honda cars. It had been resealed with Sellotape and Moira was scrawled across it.

Inside: the tapes, four of them, three of music. And this one, a BASF chrome, marked personal.

'Not a sin… if you don't do owt about it. But I always found it hard to talk to you. I mean… just to talk to you. Till it came time to tell you to get out of the band. That was easy. That was a fucking pushover, kid. I'm sorry the way that worked out, with The Philosopher's Stone. Sounded like a big opportunity. Like, for me too – chance to make the supreme sacrifice. But we can't tell, can we? We never can bloody tell, till it's too late.'

Rambling. He'd have been on some kind of medication, wouldn't he? Drugs.

'But when they told me I'd had me chips, I did regret it. Regretted it like hell. I thought most likely you'd just have told me to piss off, but there might have been a… Anyway, I'd have given anything for just one… just one time with you. Just one. Anything.'

Christ. Moira stared out of the side window to where half a tree had erupted from the Moss, like bone burst through skin.

'When you wrote back and you said you were too busy, I was shattered. I'd convinced meself you'd come. I just wanted to at least see you. Just one more time.'

Moira bit down on her lower lip.

'I'd tried to write a song. Couldn't do it. It was just a tune without words. Nothing. Best bloody tune I ever wrote, which isn't saying much – play it for you in a minute. Won't be much good, the playing, what d'you expect? Be the last tune I ever play. Gonna play it over and over again until I get it perfect, and then I'm gonna get Lottie to take me out and I'll play it to the fucking Moss. The Man in the Moss. That's what it's about. The Man in the Moss. That'll be me, too. Want to die with this tune in me head. This tune… and you.'

She felt a chill, like a low, whistling wind.

'It's called Lament for the Man. I want the Moss to take it. A gift. Lament for the Bridelow Bogman. Soon as I read about him, months ago, before it came out about the sacrifice element, I was inspired by him. Direct link with me own past. The Celts. The English Celts. Like he'd come out the Moss to make a statement about the English Celts. And I was the only one could interpret it – sounds arrogant, eh? But I believe it. Like this is what me whole life's been leading up to.'

Man starting to cough. On and on, distorting because the recording level couldn't handle it. The car-speakers rattling, like there was phlegm inside.

'Fuck it,' Man said. 'If I go back and scrub this I'll forget everything I was gonna say. Sorry. Can you handle it? See, this was before they'd completed the tests on the bogman, before it was known about the sacrifice. Even then I was pretty much obsessed. I didn't care if we spent every penny we'd got. Lottie – she's a bloody good woman, Moira, I never deserved Lottie – she went along with it, although she loved that chintzy house in Wilmslow and she hated The Man I'th Moss, soon as she clapped eyes on it. But she went along with it. Sometimes I think, did she know? Did she know before me, that I was gonna snuff it? She says not. I believe her.'

Across the Moss she could see the pub, a huge grey boathouse on the edge of a dark sea, its backyard a landing stage.

'And then, soon after we came, the report came out about the bogman. About what he was. A sacrifice. To appease the gods so they'd keep the enemy at bay, make this community inviolate. Protect these Celts, these refugees from the fertile flat lands, the Cheshire Plain, Lancashire, the Welsh border. Invaders snatching their land, Romans, Saxons. And this, the old high place above the Moss – maybe it was a lake then. Bridelow.'

Man's voice cracked.

'Bridelow. The last refuge. I cried. When I heard, I cried. He went willingly. Almost definitely that was what happened. Almost certain he was the son of the chief, everything to live for – had to be, see, to make a worthwhile sacrifice.'

Voice gone to a whisper.

'Gave himself up. Willingly. That's the point. Can you grasp that, Moira? He let them take him on the Moss and they smashed his head, strangled him and cut his throat, and he knew… he fucking knew what was gonna happen.'

She stared through the windscreen at the Moss. Thick, low cloud lay tight to the peat, like a bandage on its putrefying, suppurating skin.

'Hard to credit, isn't it? I mean, when you really think about it. When you try and picture it. He let the buggers do it to him. Young guy, fit, full of life and energy and he gives himself up in the most complete sense. Can you understand that? Maybe it affects me more because I've got no youth, no energy, and what life there's left is dribbling away by the minute. But by God… I realised I wanted a bit of that.'

She thought about the bogman. The sacrifice. She thought about Matt, inspired. Always so contagious, Matt's inspiration. She thought, I can't bear this…

'Can you get what I'm saying? Like, they took him away, these fucking scientists, with never a second thought about what he meant to Bridelow and what Bridelow, whatever it was called back then, meant to him. So I wanted… I wanted in. To be part of that. To go in the Moss, too. Lottie tell you that? Lottie thinks it's shit, but it isn't… '

'No,' Moira whispered. 'It wouldn't be.'

… want some of me out there. With him. He's my hero, that lad… I'm fifty-seven and I'm on me last legs – nay, not even that any more, me legs won't carry me – and I've found a fucking hero at last.'

Matt starting to laugh and the laughter going into a choke and the choking turning to weeping.

'Me and Ma Wagstaff met one day. One Stormy day. Ma understands, the old bitch. Willie's Ma, you know? Says to me, "We can help you help him. But you must purify yourself."'

Out on the Moss, the dead tree like bone was moving. It had a tangle of thin branches, as if it were still alive, and the branches were waving, whipping against the tree.

'She says. "You have to purify yourself".'

The tree was a bad tree, was about to take its place alongside the encroaching stone toad on the moor, the eruption of guts on an ancient, rough-hewn altar. Bad things forcing themselves into Bridelow.

'And then you came home…'

Moira's eyes widened.

'I used to think she was… a substitute. Me own creation. Like, creating you out of her, you know what I mean? An obsession imposes itself on what's available. But I should've known. Should've known you wouldn't leave me to die alone.'

Her senses froze.

'So, as I go into the final round, as they say, I'm drawing strength from the both of you. The bogman… and you, Moira, Tomorrow's Sunday. I'll be going out on the Moss, to play. Last time, I reckon. I'll need Lottie and Dic, poor lad, to get me there, I'll send them away, then there'll just be the three of us.'