Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Aye,' Moira said, 'there's no life here.' She bent down, dipped her hands in the pool. It felt stagnant. If Ma Wagstaff had come up here hoping for some kind of spiritual sustenance, she'd have gone away pretty damn depressed.

'Used to take it all wi' a pinch of salt,' Willie said, 'I mean… bit of nonsense, really. But we come up here. Every May Day we'd come up here, whole village at one time, all them as could walk. Then back to The Man, couple o' pints… bite to eat…'

Willie smiled. 'Good days, them, Moira. When you think back on it.'

'Hang on,' Moira said. 'There's something here.'

With both hands, she lifted it out, the spring water dripping from her palms. Dripping like tears from the eyes of the battered plaster head of the Mother of God.

'Oh, hell,' Willie said sorrowfully.

'The Mother?'

Willie nodded. 'There's three of um. Three statues. The young one, the Virgin, she's brought up on Candlemas – St Bride's day, beginning of February. Then the Mother – this one – at Lammas. Then, at All-Hallows, they bring the winter one.'

'The Hag,' Moira said.

Willie nodded.

'The Threefold Goddess,' Moira said. 'Virgin, Mother, Hag.'

'Summat like that. Like I say… pinch of salt. Women s stuff.'

'Your ma… she'd never be taking it with a pinch of salt.

'No,' said Willie.

'What about Matt?'

'He were different,' Willie said, 'when he come back. When we was lads it were just the way things were, you know? One of us'd be picked to collect stuff for t'seasonal crosses, collate it like, sort out what were what. We didn't reckon much on it. Bit of fun, like.'

'As it should be,' Moira said, pushing her sodden hair back to stop it dripping down her jacket. 'How else d'you get kids into it if it's no' fun?'

'Matt come back… wi' a mission. Know what 1 mean? Horridges had sold off brewery to Gannon's and Gannon's didn't want t'pub – it were doing nowt, were it? Local trade and a few ramblers of a Sunday. Perked up a bit when t'bogman were found, but not for long – nine day wonder sorta thing.'

'So Matt returns to buy the pub. Local hero.'

'Exactly. Spot on. Local hero, I tell thi, Moira… honest to God, he were me mate, but I wish he'd not come. You know what I mean?'

'I do now,' Moira said, hearing the tape in her head. 'He was an emotional man. An impressionable man. An obsessive man.'

Willie snorted. 'Can say that again.'

'But not a bad man,' Moira said.

'Oh no. I don't think so.'

'So somebody – or something was using him. He was a vessel. Willie, this bogman…?'

'Oh, bugger.' Willie looked up into the sky, now putting down water with a good bit more enthusiasm than the Holy Spring. The coins in his pocket chinked damply, 'I'm saying nowt. You've gorra talk to Ma.' He heard her creaking into the hall below. 'Gerrout from under me feet, Bobbie.'

The cat.

Heard her feet on the bottom stairs and slid himself into a room which, as he'd ascertained earlier, was a box room full of rubbish, tea-chests, heaps of old curtaining, a treadle sewing-machine shrouded in dust.

Took her a long time and a lot of laboured breathing to reach the top of the stairs. Heard her in the bathroom, the dribble and the flush and the old metal cistern filling up behind her with a series of coughs and gasps.

He brought a hand to the crown of his head, felt his emergent, urgent bristles one last time, for luck. Luck? You made your own. He put his glove back on. For a moment, a while back, someone hammering on the front door had flung him back to that night last summer in the stolen car. The police! But then he'd concentrated – go away – and the knocking had stopped.

Flexing and clenching his powerful, leathered hands, he moved out onto the landing as the old woman sighed and braced herself to go downstairs.

Not much left of her. Old bones in a frayed cardigan. Hair as dry and neglected as tufts of last summer's sheep wool caught in a wire fence.

Some witch, he thought, rising up behind her.

Quite slowly – although he knew he'd made no sound – she turned around and looked up at him, at his fingers poised above her bony, brittle shoulders. Then at his face.

And he looked at hers.

They'd always said, in the village, how fierce her eyes were. How she could freeze you where you stood with those eyes, turn you to stone, pin you to the wall.

Shaw Horridge grinned. Come on, then.

Wanting her to do that to him. Focus her eyes like lasers. Wanting the challenge, the friction. Wanting something he could smash, like hurling someone else's Saab Turbo into a bus shelter.

Wanted to do it and feel better.

But her eyes surprised him. They were as soft and harmless as a puppy's.

For a moment, this froze him.

'Come on,' he said, suddenly agitated. 'Come on, witch.'

She stared calmly at him, heels on the very edge of the top stair. Wouldn't take much of a push. That was no good.

He said, 'Where's your magic, eh? Where's your fucking magic now?'

She bit her worn-down bottom lip, but otherwise didn't move. 'Don't you know me?' she said. 'Do you not know me?'

He shook his head. 'You're going to die,' he said. 'Don't you realise that?'

The withered old face crumpled into an apology for a smile. 'I'm dead already, lad,' Ma Wagstaff said, voice trickling away like sand through an egg-timer. 'Dead already. But it's nowt t'do wi' you. You'll be glad of that, one day.'

Her ancient face was as blank as unmarked parchment as she threw up her arms, hands wafting at the air. Her body seemed to rise up at him, making him lurch back into the landing wall, and then she flopped down the stairs, with barely a bounce, like an old, discarded mop.

The gypsy guy with the beat-up hat and the Dobermans wasn't too sure about this. Still looked like he'd prefer to feed the stranger to the dogs.

'No,' Macbeth said, 'I don't even know her name.' Had to be easier getting to meet with the goddamn Queen. 'All I know is she isn't called Mrs Cairns.'

The guy's heavy eyebrows came down, suspicious. 'Who is it told you where to come?'

'Uh, Moira's agent. In Glasgow. Listen. I'm not with the police, I'm not a reporter.'

'OK, well, you just stay here, pal,' the gypsy guy said, and to make sure Macbeth didn't move from the gates of the caravan site he left the two dogs behind. Macbeth liked to think he was good with dogs, but the Dobermans declined to acknowledge this; when he put out a friendly hand, one growled and the other dribbled. Macbeth shrugged and waited.

The gypsy was gone several minutes, but when he returned he'd gotten himself a whole new attitude. Unbolting the gates, holding them back for the visitor. 'Wid ye come this way, sir…' Well, shit, next thing he'd be holding his hat to his chest and bowing. Even the Dobermans had a deferential air. Macbeth grinned, figured maybe the old lady had sussed him psychically, checked out his emanations.

Whatever, in no time at all, here's Mungo Macbeth of the Manhattan Macbeths sitting in a caravan like some over-decorated seaside theme-bar, brass and china all over the walls.

'I'll leave ye then, Duchess…?'

'Thank you, Donald.' Lifting a slender hand loaded up with gold bullion.

She was Cleopatra, aboard this huge, gold-braided Victorian-looking chaise longue. She had on an ankle-length robe, edged with silver. Had startling hair, as long as Moira's, only dazzling white.

'Well, uh…' This was bizarre. This was an essentially tricky situation. Awe was not called for. And yet this place was already answering questions about Moira that he hadn't even been able to frame.

She said, 'Call me Duchess. It's a trifle cheap, but one gets used to these indignities.'

Didn't look to be more than sixty. Younger by several centuries, he thought, than her eyes.