Phil Rickman - The man in the moss

'Yes,' Milly said, and they all looked at her. Milly looked down at the cats and said no more.

'I didn't notice that so much,' said Willie hurriedly, 'him being a few years older than me. What I noticed was the money. He always had lots of money. He was generous with it too, if you went along with what he wanted you to do. He could show you a good time, could Jack.'

Milly didn't look up. 'Not when you're ten years old,' she said.

'Uh… yeah.' Macbeth reached over to his slicker, pulled out the paperback, Blue John's Way. Ernie Dawber picked it up with a thin smile.

'You read it?'

'Leafed through it. In light of what I just heard, I wondered if maybe…'

'Not so much an allegory, Mr Macbeth, as…'

'Mungo.'

'When I know you better, Mr Macbeth. Not so much allegory as a case of "only the names have been changed".'

'So let me get this right…' Macbeth was cautious. 'This is a guy who gravitates towards the, uh, arcane. A guy who might like to try and harness other people's powers, maybe.'

Willie looked up. 'What are you thinking about?'

Macbeth finished up his whisky. It made him feel no better. 'I'm thinking about Moira Cairns,' he said soberly. 'And I'm thinking about a comb.' To Joel Beard, former teacher of physical education, the issue had always seemed such a simple one. If good was to triumph over evil then good required strength. Good needed to work out regularly and get into condition. Indeed, he found a direct correlation between the heavy pectoral cross and the powerful pectoral muscles needed to support it.

But he couldn't find the pectoral cross.

He'd found the wooden lectern, one of the owl's wooden legs missing, smashed up against the Horridge family tomb.

Now he was down on his hands and knees in the sodden grass, the rain pummelling his back.

Not that he felt powerless without the cross, not that he felt like a warrior without his sword; he could stand naked and know that his spiritual strength came from within, but…

'Mr Beard… are you here?'

Joel stopped scrabbling in the grass, felt his back stiffen. The fluid, tenor voice had curled with ease around the tumult of the night. It was, he realized suddenly, the voice of a man who might have been a priest.

It's all around you, Mr Beard… you'll see the signs everywhere… in the church…

Joel stood and was drawn towards the voice and the question which had tormented him for so many months.

'Who are you?'

They stood opposite each other at the porch door, Joel thought he was the taller, but only just. He couldn't see the man's face under his black umbrella.

The man stepped inside the porch and lowered the umbrella. 'You don't know me?'

'I've never seen you before,' Joel said, water cascading down his face. Sweet, refreshing rain? Rain out of darkness was not so sweet.

The man waited, languid, in the doorway under the porch lantern. He wore a loose, double-breasted suit of black or charcoal grey.

'It's many years since I was here, Mr Beard. It's changed, thankfully. Otherwise I simply wouldn't have been able to come in.'

Joel said, 'I took it upon myself to remove certain offensive artefacts.'

'Well done, m'boy.' The man's face split into a sudden grin, revealing large teeth, unexpectedly yellow in his candle-white face.

'Who are you?' Joel said. 'Why are you doing this?'

'My name,' said the man, extending a long, slender, white hand, 'is John. And I was born here.'

Joel took the hand firmly. He had developed a manly handshake which some recipients apparently found crushing.

This hand, he found when his fingers closed on it, was not crushable; it was like high-tensile steel.

He recognized strength.

'May I come in?' he asked politely.

'M' dear boy…' The man called John stepped to one side. 'Interesting weather, have to say that. Washes away the murk of the past, perhaps.'

'Did you find it was… murky… when you lived here?'

'Mr Beard, it was layer upon layer. Tell me – small point – what are your views on the ordination of women?'

'I deplore it,' said Joel from the heart. 'I shall always deplore it.'

'Well said. Probably hasn't escaped your notice that the so-called spirituality of this place has been steered for generations by women.'

'They call this spirituality?' Joel gestured towards the space where the pagan abomination had spread her legs.

John lifted his hands. 'My point entirely. Expressed, in various ways, many years ago. Before I was made to leave. Not much more than a boy at the time. Excluded. And then sent away. Do what they like, these close-knit communities.'

'Made to leave? Because you stood out against their witchery?'

John shrugged.

'It's barely credible,' said Joel.

'I'll be quite frank with you, Joel – may I call you Joel, I feel we've known each other so long now – I'll be quite honest, I promised myself that one day, I'd see them and their way of life destroyed. Can you understand that?' '"Vengeance is mine sayeth the "Lord." However, in certain circumstances, we're all tools, are we not? I've always seen myself as a tool.'

'Quite.' John pulled open the inner door into the church itself and stepped through into the amber-lit interior. He moved like a partially blind man, feeling his way. He kept touching things, placing his hands on the walls, the pillars, the pew-ends, as if surprised that he was not receiving electric shocks.

'It's been cleansed,' Joel said. 'But it's still vulnerable. Was Hans Gruber here in your time?'

'Who? Oh, the collaborating minister. No, I left many years before he arrived. Fellow called Boston in my day. But much the same, y' know. Much the same.'

'A quisling?'

'They're all tamed within a remarkably short space of time. Which is why I thought you should be alerted.'

'How did you know I'd come here?'

'Dear boy, could you have resisted it? Besides which, there was Archdeacon Flemming.'

'Oh.'

'Friends of friends, y' know.'

Joel was vaguely disappointed. He'd seen his mission to Bridelow in terms of divine orchestration rather than human machination. And yet, could not the two be interlinked?

'Gone mostly unchallenged for centuries y' know,' John said. 'And so when local papers were passed to me, relating your adventures in Sheffield, it was clear you were The Man for The Job, as it were. All the namby-pamby clerics around. All the airy-fairy, New Age nancy-boys. No. Anybody could rattle them, Joel, it was going to be you.'

John walked slowly up the nave. Even the amber lights failed to colour the pallor of his skin or the snow-white hair receding in ridges from his grey-freckled forehead.

'Used to have crosses here, made of twigs and things, dangling down. Kiddies would be sent out to collect the entrails.'

'Gone. I dealt with it. And their nasty little shrine at the edge of the moor.'

'But your friends have chickened out. Why was that?'

'There was.. Joel shook water from his curls, '… a manifestation of evil. Some of them couldn't… cope. John, I have to know… are you a priest?'

John's yellow teeth reappeared. 'Joel,' he said. 'I've told you as much as I can about me and more than I should.'

'I thought so,' said Joel. He paused. 'It isn't over, is it? If it were, you wouldn't be here.'

'Well deduced, Joel, m' boy. Have you ever been up to the lamp?'

Joel stared at him. He felt an almost chemical excitement in his stomach. 'The so-called Beacon?'

'I said we'd put it out, didn't I? I said between us we'd put out the Devil's Light. So. After you, m' boy.'

'Where?'

'To the stairs. Do you have a hammer?'

'I believe there's one in the shed, bottom of the churchyard.'

John looked at his watch. 'No time, old lad. Witching hour approaches. Have to make do with what we've got.'