Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

So Shaw Horridge's body remained seated quietly at the top of the stairs in Ma Wagstaff's house while Shaw Horridge's spirit was in a state of supreme exultation.

His hair was growing again! He was alive and he had made it happen.

Just a fuzz at first, then thicker than a fuzz – almost a stubble. He'd heard of men going to Ma Wagstaff for her patent hair-restorer, some claiming it worked. A bit. But not actually sure whether it had or not.

Not like this. No doubt about this. Where there'd been no hair, now there was hair.

All around him were Ma Wagstaff's bottles full of maybes. Maybe if the wind's in the right direction. If the moon s full. If there's an R in the month. Quite sad, really. A grey little world of hopes and dreams. No certainties.

Hair-loss was natural in some people, his mother said. But it had taken Therese to prove to him that you didn't have to accept something just because it was supposed to be natural. Acceptance was just spiritual sloth.

Being truly alive was about changing things. Changing people, situations. Changing your state of mind. Changing the 'natural'.

Being alive was about breaking rules with impunity. Men's rules. Also the rules men claimed they'd had from God. 'Natural' rules. This was what she'd taught him. Learn how to break the rules – for no other reason than to break them – and you become free.

Thou shalt not kill. But why? We kill animals to eat, we kill people with abandon in wartime. We kill for the Queen, we kill for the oil industry? Where does the taboo begin?

He stretched his arms and yawned. Settled down to wait, aware of his breathing, fully relaxed. How could bad be bad when it felt as good as this. Eventually, kneeling messily in the rain, Moira pulled her shoe out of the bog.

The shoe was full of water; she shook it out and put it on. By this time the old woman had hobbled to the edge of the Moss, where there was a gate leading into a field, beyond which was the pub and, further up, the hill on which the church sat.

The dead tree was still. It looked hard, heavy, almost stone-like. Too dense to move in the wind, even if there'd been one. But it moved for me, she thought, limping back to the car. And it moved for Ma Wagstaff.

Such things were almost invariably subjective. Like, how often did two people see a ghost, at the same time, together? Ghosts and related phenomena were one-to-one. You saw it and the person with you said, hey, what's wrong with you, what are you staring at, why've you gone so pale?

But the tree moved for Ma Wagstaff. And it moved, no question, for me…

She climbed behind the wheel and sank into the seat, drained. The cassette tape had ended. She slipped it out of the tape deck.

Ma Wagstaff understands, the old bitch. She says to me, 'We can help you help him. But you must purify yourself…'

I am not getting this. Matt. What were you into, you and Ma?

And then… whuppp.

Moira reeled back in the seat as something hit the windscreen. Like a big bird, covering the sky, darkening the car, it flapped there, wriggling and beating at the glass.

'Holy Jesus.'

It was snagged in the wipers, but it wasn't a bird… only a dark blue woolly shawl. Ma Wagstaff's shawl, snatched from her by the devil-tree. Blown across the Moss. Blown hard, directly at the car, like it had been aimed.

Moira began to pant, closing her eyes tight, squeezing on the steering-wheel until it creaked.

When she opened her eyes the shawl had gone, and the vertical rain showed there was still no wind.

OK. Move.

She switched on the engine; slammed the BMW into reverse, pulled it back on to the causeway, pointing it at Bridelow. The sky was dirty now, but she wondered if it would still be white through the eyeholes in the thing of wood on the Moss.

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.

Right. Get off my back, Matt. You're sicker than I figured. Just get the hell off my back.

Moira drove erratically into the village street, bumping carelessly along the cobbles and over the kerb. Nobody about. No sign of the old woman. The cottages featureless and damp, in a huddle.

Pure black light.

Black light? White light? What is this shit? Wished she could call the Duchess, but the Duchess wasn't on the phone. The Duchess wants to contact anybody, she doesn't mess with phones.

Moira sat in her car at the bottom of the street, ploughing her fingers through her hair. Exposed. And scared?

Oh, yes.

And maybe half-deranged. Couldn't properly express in words what she was doing here. Like she'd been sucked into the smoking fireplace that night at the Earl's Castle and gone up the chimney and been spit out cold on Bridelow Moss.

Now everything was pointing at Ma Wagstaff, but Ma Wagstaff had run away.

She left the car in the street, squelched to the Post Office, peat water oozing out of her shoes.

'Willie's not in,' she panted at the big, flowery Girl-Guide postmistress. 'Where would I find his mother's place?' Weak as a kitten, Ma felt. Weak as a day-old kitten, its eyes not open yet. Weak and blind.

Help me, Mother.

Ma followed the river back, gratefully leaving the Moss behind. There was a crack starting in her walking stick where the black tree had snapped off the metal tip. Soon the stick wouldn't support even a skinny, spidery owd thing like her, and what would she do then?

It got her to the churchyard, God alone knew how, and she propped her old bones up against a stone cross. Looked up at the church porch, and it hit her like an elbow in the ribs.

Desecrated!

Oh, Mother. Oh, Jesus!

Over the door… a mess of crumbling old cement.

That vandal.

The Goths and the Vandals and the Angles and the Saxons and the Romans and the so-called Christians. All them raiders Bridelow had fought off over the long centuries. And the buggers still at the door with their battleaxes.

Inside the church, little Benjie's Autumn Cross all smashed. And the vile thing growing out on the Moss, waving Ma's lost shawl like a banner. And the seeping sickness within that saps health and takes jobs. And now Our Sheila smitten from the wall, thrown away like she was nowt more than one of them dirty magazines.

Grinding, in pain, the few teeth she'd got left to grind, Ma Wagstaff staggered through the graveyard, up to the top end, where Matt Castle lay, the earth still loose on him, covered by wreaths, already bashed about by the weather, petals everywhere.

The witch bottle lay in her coat pocket. Dead.

Moving like an owd crab on a pebble beach, Ma staggered by Matt's grave without stopping. The earth loose around him – not buried proper, not yet. Still air holes in the soil. Poor bugger might as well be lying stretched out on top.

The rain had stopped, but the clouds still bulged like cheeks full of spit. Ma stumbled out on to the moor, through the top wicket gate, between two tattered gorse bushes.

This was not the real moor; this was still Bridelow. Until you got over the rocks.

Below the rocks was the holy well, the spring, water bubbling bright as lemonade into a natural-hewn stone dish. The well they dressed with flowers in the springtime to honour the Mother and the water. Long before she reached it, Ma could hear it singing.

A rock leaned over the spring, like a mantelpiece over a hearth, above it the moor, which was not Bridelow.

Carved out of the stone, a hollow, with a little shelf.

On the shelf a statue.

'Mother,' Ma said breathlessly.

The statue was plaster. She wore a robe once painted blue, now chipped and faded. Her eyes were uplifted to the sky beyond the shelf of rock, her hands turned palms-down to bless the water trickling from the rock below her feet.