Hungry Moon (18 page)

^{He felt a little better once he was in bed with Vera, one arm around her waist as she fell asleep, and yet he had the notion that if he slept the storm would waken him, or something would. He needed rest before he drove home tomorrow. At least Mann was inaudible. On his trip down the corridor to the bathroom Craig had passed Mann's room and heard a low sound that must have been the evangelist's voice, no doubt thanking God for the day's work. For a moment Craig had thought the moon had risen, but it had only been the light from Mann's room.}

^{TWENTY EIGHT}

^{The radio alarm wakened Eustace with static. He forced his eyes open and peered into the dark that was hissing at him, and eventually found the clock. 'Go on, you might as well go wrong,' he snarled at it, 'everything else has.' He was burrowing under the tumbled sheets, away from the panicky sense of not knowing what he'd said on Sunday in front of the crowd, when through the open window he heard the rattle as an awning was pulled out. Someone was opening a shop.}

^{He squirmed unenthusiastically out of bed and groped his way to the window. The chilly dark felt heavier than sleep. He pushed the halves of the window wider and craned his neck to see the clock above the assembly rooms. The lit face was dim as a smouldering fire, and he had to strain his eyes to convince himself of what it said. Though the hour felt like four in the morning, the clock out there agreed with his that it was half past six.}

^{'Stare all you like,' he muttered at himself. 'That won't make it go away. Reality's right and you're wrong.' He withdrew his head, feeling like a tortoise, sluggish and crusty, and collided his way across the room to the light switch. The light here and in the bathroom was muffled, brownish. Breakfast could wait: the sooner he finished at the sorting office, the fewer people he'd encounter on his rounds.}

^{He shivered as he stepped out of the cottage, for the street felt dank as mist. The unbroken clouds overhead looked like a starless night sky. Bedrooms and kitchens were lighting up, but they and the streetlamps on their pedestals of light seemed isolated by the dark. He kept his head down as he hurried to the sorting office.}

^{It was a small room behind the post office. Usually the driver of the delivery van from Sheffield would let himself in by the back entrance and leave the sacks of mail, but today the room was bare. Eustace sat on his stool and closed his eyes; staring at the pigeonholes under the fluorescent tubes made him feel he hadn't slept enough. The dark gave him the impression that no time was passing, but when he next glanced at his watch it was almost eight o'clock.}

^{He couldn't get through to Sheffield. Though the phone wasn't dead - he checked that by dialling to make it ring itself - he could reach nothing but a hollow stillness that made his ear tingle. He was still trying when the postmistress looked in from the shop. She lowered her round head as if she were preparing to butt him with her curly, sheeplike scalp. 'What's holding you up?'}

^{'Not a thing, I'm self-supporting.' Aloud he said, "There's been no delivery, and I can't raise Sheffield.'}

^{'Ridiculous,' she said as if she meant him. She dialled Sheffield and thrust the earpiece up beneath her white curls, took it away from her face to glare at it for not responding. She tried the phone in the shop and came back looking unhappier with him than ever. 'It must be something in the atmosphere. No wonder it's so dark,' she said, a connection he failed to grasp. 'But that's no excuse for lateness, no excuse at all.'}

^{She'd had little time for excuses even before she'd stood up for Mann. Since he'd said whatever dreadful things he'd said in front of them all on Sunday, she'd missed no opportunity to show her contempt for him. Next week he had to take her assistant from the counter on his rounds, obviously to train the burly youth as a replacement for himself. 'Well, what are you going to do now?' she demanded.}

^{'Maybe I should go over to Sheffield and find out what's wrong.'}

^{'And how will you get there, may I ask? There's no bus on Wednesdays. I've been thinking for a while that what your job needs is someone who can drive.'}

^{'At least I can go down to the main road in case the van's broken down.' And maybe he could hitch a lift and never come back. They'd been glad enough of him yesterday, when he'd made his rounds instead of going up to the cave, but now they wanted to see the back of him. Maybe that was one prayer of theirs he could make sure was answered.}

^{The High Street was crowded now, people going to work or to the shops or taking the children to school. Everyone was complaining about the weather. 'Which damned fool called this midsummer?' Eustace heard someone say in a voice like Mr Gloom's. He rushed himself past Phoebe Wainwright's street, past the thought of telling her he meant to leave or at least apologizing for having delivered the anonymous letter.}

^{He had a sudden panicky notion that whatever he'd said at the rally had been about her. He didn't want to think about that just now. He wanted to be out of Moonwell, out of the town's disapproval and the dark.}

^{Past the bookshop, which was lit but closed, the lamps gave out as the road climbed toward the ridge that overlooked the woods. He hoped that when he reached the ridge he would see sunlight on the horizon. As he made his way upward, keeping to the middle of the dim road, the tiers of streetlamps fell away behind and below him, toward the playing field where the goalposts looked like matchsticks now.}

^{When he made the ridge, he couldn't help sighing. Behind him the lights of Moonwell huddled together under the black sky. Around him the dark extended as far as he could see; he couldn't even distinguish the sky from the edge of the moor. He was seized by a yearning to go back to Moonwell, where at least there was company, however reluctant. He was going to look pretty odd to any drivers on the main road, a hitchhiking postman in uniform. Maybe that was how he should go on stage, give himself another chance where he might be appreciated. 'Maybe that's just what I've been looking for, but don't tell anyone, will you?' he said loudly, the dark closing in his voice, and stepped down toward the woods.}

^{Two steps and the slope cut off the lights of Moonwell. There was only the dark and the trees, still as fossils. Masses of foliage hung silently over the road, which grew much darker as soon as it led into the woods. The sooner he was through the woods, the sooner he'd be on his way - but he faltered to a standstill as he came abreast of the trees.}

^{He had to go on. The other road out of the Peaks was miles beyond the town, across the moors. The woods were the same old woods, he told himself, the dark was only another sunless day in the Peaks, even if unusually so. But the stillness of the woods made him struggle to breathe, and he could imagine how the road in there must sink into blind dark. 'What's up,' he growled at himself, 'afraid of a few falls in the ditch?' He lurched forward, but a shudder halted him. Nobody in his right mind would venture in there.}

^{Not without a flashlight, anyway. It wouldn't take him long to go back for one. He tried to ignore how relieved he felt as he turned away from the woods, told himself he was only in a hurry to get the flashlight. But he hadn't reached the top of the slope when he heard a car on the road.}

^{The dark disoriented him. At first he thought the car was coming through the woods. When the headlights appeared above him, he dodged hastily out of the way, forgetting to stick out his thumb. Nevertheless the car jolted to a halt. 'Want a lift?' the driver called.}

^{He was a man in his sixties with large ears, pouchy eyes, a few strands of grey combed over his skull in memory of his hair. His wife looked younger, jet-black hair, dark eyes in a face like china, but perhaps she wasn't. 'We saw you on stage at the pub,' she said to Eustace, pushing the passenger seat forward so that he could climb in the back. 'We liked your act, didn't we, Craig?'}

^{'Definitely,' the driver said with a reminiscent laugh. 'Hop in if you're bound for Sheffield.'}

^{"That'll do me.' He ought at least to find out what was hindering the mail. He tripped over the woman's seat-belt and almost ripped it out of its housing as he tried to disentangle himself. She and her husband watched with faint encouraging smiles that seemed to say they appreciated his inventiveness but would rather savour it under more appropriate circumstances. By the time he managed to tumble himself into the back, he felt like hiding under the seat.}

^{The car coasted forward under the cavernous arch of the oaks, and Eustace was disconcerted to find that he didn't feel much more at ease with venturing into the}

^{woods this way, trapped in the car, his eyes straining to see beyond the headlight beams as they poked jerkily at the dark. As soon as the beams passed the mouth of the woods, the trees on either side of the opening seemed to lurch forward. The chill of the dark settled into the car, and he saw that the driver was shivering as he craned over the wheel, staring at the rising banks that constricted the road as it grew steeper. Suddenly the car skidded to a halt, slewed across the road. 'I can't go this way,' the driver muttered. 'We'll take the other road.'}

^{He turned his head to see where he was reversing, and Eustace was dismayed by the hint of panic in his eyes. The car bumped into the yielding bank at the side of the road. Grass and ferns scraped the paintwork, and then the car was screeching back the way they'd come. Though the car was going faster, it seemed to take longer to drive out of the woods than it had to come in.}

^{The car raced up to the ridge, Moonwell glimmering ahead. The driver dragged at the handbrake and leaned over the steering wheel, one shaky hand covering his eyes. 'I'm sorry, I get like that sometimes. I thought I'd grown out of it. Sorry.' Eventually he straightened up, breathing deeply. 'You don't mind if we go the long way, do you? I'd like to get a newspaper to see what the weather's up to.'}

^{His wife massaged his shoulders as he drove down into Moonwell. Eustace might have cracked a joke to cheer them up if he'd been able to think of one. He felt redundant, and shyer than ever. At least the driver seemed happier once they reached the lit streets. He parked by the first newsagent's he saw and hurried in. Moments later he reappeared, frowning. 'I might as well not have bothered. No papers were delivered anywhere in town today, and nobody knows why.'}

^{TWENTY NINE}

^{There had been a moment when Craig thought they would never be out of the woods. He wouldn't be able to turn the car, he'd drive in search of a lay-by as the road grew steeper until the car went off the road in the dark, off a sheer edge, and they would be falling, falling... It had just been his old fear, he told himself as he went into the newsagent's. It ought to leave him once he was out of this wretched local weather.}

^{The proprietor's pipe-stained smile faded as he watched Craig survey the counter. 'If it's a paper you want you're out of luck. Buggers who deliver them are on strike more than likely, only we can't check because the phones and radios don't work. We're used to freak weather round here, but never anything like this.'}

^{'So you don't know how long it's likely to continue, I imagine.'}

^{'All I can tell you is if there's going to be a storm, the sooner we get it done with the happier I'll be.'}

^{Craig went back to the car and announced the news to Vera and the comedian dressed as a postman - Eustace, that was his name. Behind the wheel again, he switched on the radio in the hope that he could prove the newsagent wrong, but when he tuned across the dial there wasn't even static, just a silence so hollow it felt capable of swallowing all sound.}

^{He drove past people gossiping in the light from shop-fronts. The long thin windows of the church shone through the trees. Beyond the chain of streetlamps,}

^{Hazel's house was dark. Craig wondered what she was doing. Living her own life, that was all he needed to know. So long as it was hers and not just Benedict's.}

^{A few yards past the cottage a sign indicated the end of the town's speed limit, a white disc crossed by a black bar like the pupil of a sheep's eye. The car climbed between ferns still as photographs to a ridge that overlooked the moors. Ahead the road meandered over slopes so smudged by the dark that he couldn't tell which was grass, which heather. The thought that this was late morning of a midsummer day weighed on him, made him feel desperate to be out from under the dark sky that seemed almost to touch the moors. 'Never mind,' Vera murmured, 'it can't go on forever,' and at that moment he thought he saw the faintest glimmer several slopes ahead.}

^{He sent the car forward as fast as he dared, not least because the sight of the headlights finding nothing but the road made him feel the dark was closing in. Tussocks blazed at the edge of the ditch, a sheep stared with yellow eyes. The road sloped up, the car raced over the crest, and Craig braked. There was sunlight on the farthest slope.}

^{It was only a strip on the horizon, as if the curtain of dark had been lowered all but an inch. That thought made Craig feel microscopic under the enormous blackness. The edge of the far slope shone green as new wet grass, so luminous it appeared to start forward from the dark, beckoning him. 'That's what we're looking for,' Eustace said, and coughed as though he'd spoken out of turn.}

^{'It certainly is,' Craig said, smiling at him in the mirror as the car gathered speed down the slope, past a sheep that was staring over the edge of the ditch, its chin resting on a tussock. The next upward slope was longer. He braked instinctively at the crest. For a moment, as the headlight beams jerked over the edge, he'd felt he was racing straight for an unfenced drop.}

^{The distant strip of light looked thinner. Never mind, it was only the edge of the sunlight, the promise of sunlit fields and roads and houses beyond the bleak, dark slopes. The splayed beams wobbled downward. Were they failing, or was there mist ahead? Certainly a chill was seeping into the car. He eased off the accelerator, and it seemed to take far too long for them to gain the top of the next slope, as if they were caught in a marsh of darkness. But when the car lurched over the rise and the moors opened around them, there was no sign of sunlight at all.}

^{'Good night,' Eustace muttered, presumably as a joke. Vera laughed, whether politely or nervously Craig couldn't tell. Either this rise wasn't as high as the others or the storm clouds or whatever they were had advanced a little farther, he told himself. He made himself press the pedal, though as soon as the car nosed downward, the headlight beams appeared to shrink. It wasn't mist, and he didn't think it was his vision. Best to drive as fast as he dared to recharge the battery - he would rather not get out of the car up here on the dark moors. Never mind that each jerk of the beams made him think he was driving off the road, over a sudden drop; he wasn't going that fast, not quite. The beams wavered up from the roadway and flashed the face of another sheep, peering over the edge of the roadside ditch.}

^{Vera stifled a cry. Surely it had only been the unexpectedness, Craig thought fiercely, hoping she hadn't noticed that the jaw was resting on the tarmac, the bulging yellow eyes not moving as the light swept across them. The sheep must have died in the ditch, the body must have been down there out of sight. The other sheep hadn't moved either, he remembered, and all he'd seen of it had been its head at the edge of the road. Maybe there was a killer dog loose on the moors. He shoved his foot down on the pedal, and the headlight beams scooped at the bare road, then shot over the top. His whole body jolted, and he dragged at the wheel, trod with all his weight on the brake. There was nothing beyond the crest of the road but dark.}

^{There must be. A road couldn't just stop in midair. It must be a sharp bend, unmarked or divested of its warning sign. He rolled his window down and craned out to look; then he made himself open his door and lean his shaky body out into the hollow stillness, the chilly dark. He could still see nothing beyond the small lit patch of road and the dim tussocky banks on either side of it but darkness that looked solid as black ice.}

^{He slammed the door and pressed himself against the driver's seat as if that would make the car more real, make his panic give way to reality. Perhaps if he switched off the headlights he might be able to see what really lay ahead. He was reaching tremulously for the switch when Vera said in a pinched voice, 'You're running the battery down. Let's go back.'}