Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'This thing is deep-seated, Chris.' Joel clutched at the lectern for strength, the muscles tautening in his face. 'You think you can eradicate centuries of evil in a few hours?'

He looked down at the wooden pedestal lectern, as if seeing it for the first time, and then sprang back. 'Look! Look at this!'

The lectern was supporting a black-bound Bible, open across spread wings of carved oak.

'It's an eagle,' Chris said. 'Lots of them are eagles.'

'This is not an eagle.' Joel's hands retracted as if the lectern were coated with acid. 'Look.'

Chris didn't understand.

'An owl is a pagan bird,' Joel intoned calmly, like a bomb-disposal expert identifying a device. 'Step away from it. Go down and open the door.' He closed his eyes, breathed a brief, intense prayer for protection, gently detached the Bible, carried it to a choir stall.

And then hefted the lectern in both arms, as though uprooting a young tree.

'Door!'Joel gasped.

Feeling less than certain about this, Chris preceded him down the aisle. Hesitantly, he held open the church door and then the porch door until Joel had staggered out and, with an animal grunt, hurled the lectern far into the rainy tumult of the night.

They heard it crash against a tombstone.

'Filthy conditions.' Joel stumbled back into the church slapping at his surplice, a strange, fixed look on his face. 'Is this natural, all this rain? Is it natural, Chris?'

'It's only rain, Joel.'

'You're not seeing this, Chris, are you? You're not seeing it at all.'

All heads were turned towards him as he walked back up the aisle. Chris sensed an element of uncertainty among their devotion. Perhaps Joel was slightly aware of it too, for he raised his eyes to the altar. 'Oh Lord, give them a sign. Give them proof!'

He stood where the lectern had been, his coronet of curls looking dull, as if tarnished by the rain. Chris found himself praying silently for deliverance from what was becoming a nightmare.

'It was…' Joel spread his big hands helplessly the width of the aisle… evil. Don't you see? It wasn't an eagle, it was an owl. A symbol of what they would call "ancient wisdom". It was a satanic artefact. Can't you understand? It had to be removed.'

'Praise God,' someone called out, but only once and rather feebly. A man in a white T-shirt drifted up to Joel as if to congratulate him, shake him by the hand. When Joel opened his arms to embrace his brother, he felt a blast of cold air against his chest.

Puzzled, he looked down and saw that his pectoral cross was missing. Must have become hooked around the lectern, and he'd thrown it out of the door as well. He felt angry with himself. Now he had to visualize the cross. But he saw his brother Angel's open arms and he smiled.

His brother was smiling back. His brother's eyes were brown and swirling like beer-dregs in a glass.

'Thank you,' Joel said. 'Thank you for your support. Thank you for your faith.'

Couldn't recall the name. But he knew the face, although he d seen it only once before.

'Joel,' Chris said, 'you OK?'

Seen the face by lamplight and edged with lace in a violated coffin.

Joel's eyes bulged. He felt his jaw tightening, his lips shrinking back over his teeth, his throat expanding under pressure of a scream.

But he didn't scream. He would not scream. Instead, he stretched out his arms and grasped his terror to his bosom.

'Joel!' A voice behind him, Chris? But so far away, too far away, a dimension away from death's cold capsule in which Joel embraced a column of writhing darkness comprised of a thousand wriggling, frigid worms.

'Begone.' But it came out breathless, thin and whingeing, from between his clenched teeth.

He tried to project the missing pectoral cross in front of him, a cross of white fire.

Gasping, 'In the name… name of God.' As the cold worms began to glide inside his vestments and to feed upon him, to devour his faith. 'In God's name… begone!'

'Joel, stop it.' Hands either side of him, clutching at his arms.

The cross of fire had become a cross of ice.

Joel roared like a bull.

They were pinioning his arms while the cold worms sucked at his soul. His own brothers in God offering him as sustenance for the voracious dead.

'Aaaaargh.'

A boiling strength erupted in his chest. In the centre of the silence, the black bag was brought to the woman.

From the bag, a thick, dark stole uncoiling. A slender vein of silver or white.

Winding it around her hands like flax and holding it up and showing it to the corpse, twisting it in the candlelight.

Hair. Human hair, two feet of it, three, bound together, with a strip of grey-white hair rippling through it.

The woman's hands moving inside the tent of hair with a certain rhythmical fluidity, as the pipes moaned, an aching lament. The watchers mumbling and, out of this, a single voice rising, a pale ribbon of a voice singing out, 'I conjure thee.'

And winding back into the mumbling with the winding of the hair.

'He's coming.

He's coming and he's strong.' Up against the vestry wall, four of the men around him so he couldn't break away, he wailed in despair, 'Whose side are you on?'

Blood in the aisle. One man sitting up on the flags, head in his hands, semi-concussed.

Chris pressing a tissue to a burst lip. 'Joel, it's all gone wrong. You're seriously scaring people. Some of the women want to leave, get out of here.'

'They can't. They can't go out there now. Not safe, do you not see?'

'Joel, I'm sorry, they're saying it's probably safer out there than it is here with… with you.'

'Lock and bar the doors. Go on. Do it now. LOCK AND BAR THE DOORS!'

'Joel, please, they're saying you… All that screaming and wrestling with…'

'With evil! The infested dead!'

'… with yourself, Joel! Oh, my God, this is awful. Somebody wipe his mouth.'

'Where is he?'

Joel flailed, but they held him.

'Where is he? The spirit. Was he expelled? Tell me.'

'Let's go back to the Rectory, shall we? Have a cup of coffee? Come back later. When we've all, you know, calmed down.'

'What's happened to your face?'

'You hit me, Joel.'

'No.'

'Yes! You were like a man poss… We couldn't hold you. Please, Joel. You've been under a lot of stress.'

'… fighting it… fighting for our souls. Stinking of the grave.., filthy womancunt… let me…'

'Come on. You're scaring people. Let's get some air. Please.'

'Matt Castle. Spirit of Matt Castle. Soiled. Soiled spirit.'

'Joel, Matt Castle's dead…'

'And was here!'

'Look, Declan's hurt. I think he hit his head. He needs a doctor. Please.'

'Illusion. Temptation. They want you to open the doors and let them in. If you don't do it of your own free will, they'll get inside you, fill you up with worms, make you think things that aren't true. Let me go, I command you to let me go.'

'Let him go.'

'Chris?'

'Just let him go. We can't hold him all night.'

'Matt Castle. Its face was Matt Castle's. But I looked into its eyes and its eyes were the eyes of Satan.'

'Yes. Yes, but it's gone now, Joel. I swear to you it's gone. You… you defeated it. You were more powerful. You… you threw it to the ground and it… sort of disintegrated.'

'Ah.'

'Yes, we saw it. We did. Didn't we, Richard? So, Joel, come back to the Rectory, OK? You need a coffee. And a lie down. After your exertions. After your… Oh God, help me…'

'… was it wearing?'

'… your struggle.'

'What was it wearing?

'I… Well, it wasn't… I mean, too clear. Not from where we were standing. A… a shroud, was it? And glowing. Sort of glowing?'

Joel felt his face explode. 'Liars!'

His chest swelled, arms thrashed. One man was thrown across the vestry like a doll, spinning dizzily around until the stone wall slapped into his nose; they heard him squeak and a quick crack of bone, and then Joel's white surplice was blotting up bullets of blood.