Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'No,' she said 'What is this?'

'Me and thee and him.'

Matt chuckled eerily.

Hard rain hit the Moss.

'No,' she said.

'Thanks, lass. Thanks for getting me through this. Thanks for your spirit. And your body. It was your body, wasn't it?'

She wrapped her arms around herself, began to shake, feeling soiled.

'Ma said. You've got to purify yourself. But there's a kind of purity in intensity of feeling, isn't that right? Pure black light.'

'I'll play now,' Matt said, and she heard him lifting his pipes onto his knees.

'If you're listening to this, it means you're here in Bridelow. So find Willie, find Eric. And then find me. You'll do that, won't you? Find me.'

The old familiar routine, the wheeze, the treble notes.

'I won't be far away,' Matt said.

And the lament began. At first hoarse and fragmented, but resolving into a thing of piercing beauty and an awful, knowing anticipation.

Out on the black Moss, as if hit by a fierce wind, the dead tree lashed impatiently at its bones with its own sinuous branches, like cords of gut.

Moira thought, There's no wind. No wind to speak of. The Moss in the rain was dull and opaque, like a blotter. She didn't want to look at the tree but a movement drew her eyes. Human movement.

An old woman was hobbling across the peat; she had a stick. A stringy shawl wrapped around her head. She was approaching the tree very deliberately, slow but surefooted.

She seemed to be wearing ordinary shoes, not boots or Wellingtons; she knew the peat, where to walk.

Cathy had said. You're going to have to talk to Ma. If she'll talk to you. It is her, isn't it?

The dead tree was about a hundred yards away. The old woman was walking around it now, poking experimentally at it with her stick and then backing away like a terrier.

A wavy branch lashed out, wrapped itself around the walking stick. Moira drew breath.

Another movement, quick and sudden, and the shawl was torn away from the woman's shoulders, thrown triumphantly up into the air on the tip of a wavy branch, like a captured enemy flag.

'Holy Christ!' Moira was out of the car, leaving the driver's door hanging open, stepping down from the causeway, hurrying into the Moss.

Where the sinewy, whipcord branches of the old, dead tree were writhing and striking individually at the old woman, Ma Wagstaff, pulsing like vipers. Moira running across the peat, through the rain, desperately trying to keep her footsteps light because she didn't know this Moss. There was no wind. The rain fell vertically. Behind her Matt's music on the car stereo was a dwindling whine.

'Mrs Wagstaff!' she screamed. 'Mrs Wagstaff, get away from it…!'

In the distance, over the far hills, behind the rain, the sun was a bulge in the white bandage of cloud and the flailing tree of guts and bones was rearing up against it; she was maybe sixty yards away now and the tree was tossing its head.

It had a head.

And its eyes were white; they were only holes in the wood, letting the sky through, but they burned white, and it was not a case of what you knew it to be, old and twisted wood, shrivelled, wind-blasted, contorted by nature into demonic, nightmare shapes this was the old mistake, to waste time and energy rationalizing the irrational.

'Mrs Wagstaff, back off!'

What was the old biddy doing here alone? Where were the Mothers' Union, when she needed back-up?

'Mrs Wag… Don't… don't look…'

Moira stumbled.

'Don't look at it,' she said miserably, for Bridelow Moss had got her left foot. Swallowed it whole, closing around her ankle, like soft lips. White eyes.

Black, horned head, white eyes.

'It's thee. It were always thee.'

Ma Wagstaff growled, stabbed at it one last time with her stick – the wood was so hard that the metal tip of the stick snapped off.

'Mrs Wag-'

Woman's voice screaming in the distance.

Nowt to do wi' her. Ma's job, this.

She moved away, like an old, experienced cat. Bait it. 'Come on, show thiself.' A dry, old rasp, not much to it, but she got it out. 'What's a tree? What's a bit of owd wood to me, eh? Show thi face. 'Cause this is as near as tha's ever going to get to Bridlo'. We seen to thee once… and it'll stick.'

Backing away from it, and all the muck coming off it in clouds. She was going to need some help, some strength. It'd take everything she'd got – and some more.

And not long. Not long for it.

All-Hallows soon. The dark curtain thin as muslin.

Dead tree out of the Moss, and made to live, made to thresh its boughs.

Him.

Taunt it.

'You're nowt.' Words coming out like a sick cough. 'You're nowt, Jack. You never was owt!'

Dead tree writhing and slashing itself at her, and though she was well out of range by now, she felt every poisoned sting.

Get it mad.

'Ah…' Ma turned away. 'Not worth it. Not worth me time. Bit of owd wood.'

But her heart was slamming and rocking like an old washing-machine.

Black horned head, white eyes.

Dead, but living in him.

White eyes.

There was a metallic snapping sound followed by a faint and desperate wailing.

'Mrs Wagstaff…'

The voice was familiar. But it didn't matter.

This was a funny little house, bottles and jars on every ledge, even on the edges of individual stairs. Sprigs of this and that hung from the ceilings and circulated musty smells.

The witch's den.

He sat in silence at the top of the stairs. Unperturbed.

'Please, Mrs Wagstaff… let me in…'

Then silence. He smiled. As children, they'd clustered by the church gate and whispered about the witch's house, not daring to go too close. See the curtain move…? It's her. She's coming… '

It hadn't changed; only his perspective on it. The wicked witch. Perspectives changed. Now it was cool to be… wow, wicked! But Ma Wagstaff wasn't authentically wicked, never had been. Ma Wagstaff, let's face it, wasn't quite up to it and wouldn't be now. She'd conned them, generations of them.

Now I'm really rather wicked, he thought. If there's such a thing. Or at least I'm getting there.

He didn't move. His body didn't move.

The reason it didn't move was he didn't want it to. Suddenly, he had true self-control, and this amazed him. Or rather it amazed him to reflect on what a bag of dancing neuroses he used to be, so untogether he couldn't even regulate the sounds coming out of his own mouth.

Sher-sher-Shaw. Ster- ster-stuttering Shaw.

Amusing to imagine what he'd have been like if he'd been given this present task even a month ago, when he was still unconvinced. When he used to say, It's, you know… bad, though, isn't it? It might be fun, it might be exhilarating, but it's bad, essentially. Surely.

And were you good before, Shaw? Were you good when you were stuttering and dithering and letting your father dominate you? Is that your idea of what it means to be good? In which case, how does it feel to be bad'

Terminology. Nowadays Bad was cool, like Wicked. A step in the right direction.

How's it feel? Feels good. Alive. Quite simply that. I didn't know before what being alive meant. I said to her, haven't you got to be dead to be undead? And she said, what makes you think you aren't?

So I was dead and now I'm alive. I know that when I pull the handles, turn the switches, press the buttons… something will happen.

They'd told him he'd seen nothing yet. They'd told him there would be a sign. And now there was. And what a sign. Once again, Shaw couldn't resist it. He allowed his right hand to remove its leather glove and brush its palm across the top of his head.

A delicious prickly sensation.

The first time he'd felt it, he'd wanted to leap up and squeal with joy. But there was no need to do this any more. He could experience that joy deep inside himself, knowing how much more powerful and satisfying the feeling was if he didn't allow it to expend itself through his body, dissipating as he hopped about like a little kid, punching the air.