Hungry Moon (20 page)
Authors: Ramsey Campbell
Tags: #Druids and Druidism, #England, #Christian Ministry, #Science Fiction, #Horror, #Evangelistic Work, #General, #Fiction, #Religion, #Evangelism
'You leave them to me,' she said in a voice that warned him not to argue. Nothing was further from his mind. He thanked her, dashed back to the High Street, and dodged into Kiln Lane. In a minute he'd run to the end of the terrace of cottages and was at the path to the moor.
The light of the last streetlamp didn't reach far up the path. He blinked at the looming sky and reminded himself that he was here for his father. He remembered treading on the eyeless lizard that day at the cave with Miss Kramer, remembered wishing his father could see him tread on it so that he'd know Andrew was starting to be a man. Now Andrew had to be more of one, had to let his father know there was nothing at the cave to be frightened of, nothing to make his father crazy as he'd looked the night he'd sneaked up to the cave. Andrew closed his eyes and prayed, and then he started upward.
Once he was above the lamps, they showed him the edge of the path. He stayed well back as he clambered toward the unmoving sky. He felt as if it were pressing down on him, lowering itself spiderlike to meet him. He grabbed the charred edge of the moor and hauled himself onto the moorland path.
When he stumbled to his feet, he saw how alone he was. The ashen moors stretched around him, while below him the lights of Moonwell looked like matches stuck upright in the dark to smoulder. He'd hoped to see cars on the Manchester road, but it was out of sight beyond the woods. He felt as if the world had gone away, abandoned him on the dead moor.
He was shivering, worse when he tried to stop. If it was dead, he told himself, it couldn't hurt him. All he had to do was look in the cave. How could he tell his father not to be frightened if he was scared himself? He took one faltering step along the path, a darker band through the sullen dimness that coated the slopes, and suddenly his shivering turned into running, just as uncontrollable. Heather crumbled underfoot with an unpleasant oily softness whenever he strayed from the path. He ran up the slope to the stone bowl and fell to his knees at the top.
Ash crawled on his legs and scratched in his throat, made his mouth taste smoky. He rubbed his stinging eyes and peered down toward the cave. It looked just as it had since the wall had fallen in, except darker beneath the black sky. He couldn't make out more than a large dark blotch without depth at the centre of the bowl. It didn't seem enough to tell his father. He had to go closer, look in.
As soon as he stepped into the stony hollow, he felt he was going to slip. He sank to his knees again and began to crawl backward to the cave. As the top of the slope rose above him, the sky seemed to close down like a lid. Now he was afraid of crawling too far without noticing. He hitched himself round, trembling with the stony chill, and went down head first toward the cave.
There was no sound except for the scrape of his toecaps on stone, the dragging of his body as he inched forward on his stomach. Near the cave the slope grew steeper - too steep for him to cling to while he craned over the edge. He lurched to his feet and ran around the cave, a few feet from the edge, to where the slope was gentler and the cave went straight down. He threw himself on his stomach again, gasping and shivering, and shoved himself forward. Five shoves that bruised his chest, and he was at the edge. He levered himself another few inches with his elbows and gripped the edge with both hands, then he leaned over.
There was nothing but dark below him, a dark that felt much closer than the sky and colder. He pushed himself forward a last inch to make certain. As his eyes adjusted, he made out the far wall of the cave, stretching down into blackness. It didn't feel especially like a holy place, but was he sure he knew what a holy place was supposed to feel like? Surely all that mattered was that it was empty, cleared of all the bad that filled the sky. He was raising himself on his elbows so as to inch backward when he thought he saw a movement in the cave.
He craned out further, his elbows trembling with the strain. Perhaps it was just the way things sometimes seemed to move about in the dark when you couldn't see them properly. Then the movements clarified and separated, and he saw that there were three shapes, three insects crawling up the rock. Why should the sight of a few insects make him feel he couldn't breathe? His head was swimming by the time he realized that since the pale, thin shapes were crawling on the wall where it merged with the dark, they must really be larger than he was.
He jerked forward with the shock of it, and almost lost his balance. The rim of the cave cut into his hands as he saved himself barely in time. He was praying that he wasn't really seeing what was down there, but every second made them clearer. They were the colour of the lizard he'd trodden on, the colour of things that lived in the dark. They had long fingers they were using to climb the rock, slowly but relentlessly. Two of them were raising their smooth heads toward him in a way that made him think they had no eyes, while the one in the middle seemed to have no head.
That was the sight that convulsed his body, threw him back from the edge so violently that he had no grip on the stone for a moment, almost slid down the slope and over the rim. He staggered dizzily to his feet and fled sobbing up the stone bowl. All the way along the charred path he kept glancing back in terror of seeing the pale shapes crawling after him over the dead slopes beneath the black sky.
He fell several times on the path down from the moors. He had no idea how long he'd been up there, how long his parents might have been waiting for him. He couldn't even tell them what he'd seen, or his mother would want to know why he'd gone up to the cave, and that would make his father worse. The cave wasn't holy, it wasn't even dead, unless the things he'd seen were breeding in it like maggots. All Mr Mann had done was drive them out, and where would they go now? He was terrified of blabbing all this to his parents because he couldn't stop himself. But when he fled along Kiln Lane and into the shop, his parents weren't there. 'We have to stay here until your mummy and daddy come back,' Miss Ingham told him. 'Something's happened at the priest's house and they've gone to see if they can help.'
THIRTY TWO
Father O'Connell must have been trying to open the front door. His blood was on it, and on the walls and carpet just inside the presbytery. Perhaps his dog had only leaped at him to stop him from opening the door, perhaps she hadn't attacked him until he tried to fight her off, unless she'd been so maddened by the dark she had gone for him at once. He must have fled along the hall to grab the phone, presumably to use as a weapon, the way he was holding the receiver. If he hadn't, Diana thought with a clarity that threw the horror into sharper relief, the dog might not have come after him to finish him off.
The driver's wife was digging her nails into her cheeks while she stared and screamed as if she would never stop. 'All right, Vera, come away now, don't look any more,' Craig said, putting his arm round his wife's shoulders as Diana coaxed her out of the presbytery, away from the sight of Father O'Connell, of the remains of his hand that had clung to his throat as he'd died, trying to hold his throat together. 'There's nothing we can do here,' Craig murmured, and Diana felt more alone than ever.
Vera balked as soon as she was out of the presbytery. She stared at the sky and began to shake, gripping her hands together. She was moaning now, small distressed sounds. When Craig murmured, 'Let's get you to a doctor,' she gazed at him with icy contempt. 'There's only one place in this town I want to go.'
'I'll get the police,' Eustace said hastily. He sidled past the onlookers who were gathering outside the gate, but the dressmaker who lived in his road stepped in front of him. 'Not so fast. What's up?' she demanded.
Eustace sidestepped. 'Father O'Connell's dead,' he threw back.
The woman nudged the gate open with her stomach. 'His dog turned on him,' Diana explained, but the woman ignored her until she'd stepped into the presbytery and seen for herself. She swung round, looking grimmer. 'What's it got to do with you?'
'I found him,' Diana said, which was all she intended to say except to the police. She watched as people ventured up the path to the front door and recoiled, and she was thinking of forbidding anyone else to gawk, closing the door if she had to, when the police car drew up at the gate.
The inspector had a long, bony face, a thin, silvery moustache, prim, almost invisible lips like an old woman's. He gestured the onlookers back from the gate with a single precise wave, then he marched up the path, his head lowered slightly as if he was determined not to be distracted by the blackness overhead. 'Please wait here,' he said in a quiet, clear voice to Diana and the elderly couple, and went into the house.
The crowd was drifting back toward the gate, perhaps to be near the streetlamp. Diana noticed Andrew's parents frowning at her. She turned her back on them as the inspector came out of the presbytery. 'Which of you found the body?'
'Technically I did,' Diana said.
v
There was a murmur from the crowd, which he ignored. 'What do you mean, technically?'
‘I was the first person into the building. As soon as Father O'Connell's dog ran out, I went in to see what had happened to him. As you saw, he -'
He held up one hand almost negligently, as if she ought to be alert for his cues. 'How did you open the door?'
'Why was she here at all?' someone in the crowd - she thought it might be Andrew's mother - said loudly. 'She never even goes to church.'
'Perhaps if a few of you had kept on going to his church . . . ' Diana shouldn't have responded; she was losing the control she'd been exerting over herself ever since she'd found Father O'Connell. 'How did we open the door?' she said to the policeman. 'He must have been trying to open it when the dog attacked him. It wasn't locked.'
'Are you saying it was wide open?'
'No, I'm saying it was ajar and we pushed it open when we couldn't get an answer, and that was when the dog ran off.'
'Ran where?'
'Up there,' Diana said, glancing at the moors, which loomed closer as the black sky pressed down.
'As Postman Gift told me,' he said, as though at least the confirmation was something he could approve of, and addressed the crowd. 'Please don't approach Father O'Connell's dog if you should see it. I have an officer searching for it now.' To Diana he said, 'I think you should tell me why the four of you were coming to see the priest.'
She felt as if the dark were hovering closer in case she even thought of telling. Not here, she decided, not now. 'We weren't coming to see him. I heard the dog and it sounded as if something was wrong. I'm afraid I stepped straight in front of these people's car. It was my fault it skidded.'
Craig was beginning to confirm her story when Vera interrupted. 'It isn't that simple,' she cried. 'It was the dark.'
The policeman raised his eyebrows. 'What was the dark?'
She seemed to swallow what she'd meant to say, perhaps because he looked suspicious of her, not recognizing her. 'It made the dog attack Father O'Connell,' she stammered. 'The dog must have been driven mad to attack him, a priest.'
'A funny kind of priest that preached against another man of God,' someone in the crowd said, just loud enough to be heard. 'Maybe God wouldn't have let him die that way if he'd supported Godwin.'
Diana swung round, glaring at the crowd. 'Why don't you say what you really mean, that you think he deserved to die? He was a damn sight more tolerant than any of you, and a lot closer to God if anyone is. Maybe that's why you're glad to see the last of him.'
Vera seemed to have thought better of swallowing her words. 'I didn't mean only the dog,' she blurted out to the policeman. 'We've just come back from trying to drive home to Sheffield. We couldn't get past the dark.'
'You mean you hadn't enough petrol.'
Vera clenched her fists. 'No, I don't mean anything of the kind. We came to a place on the road where there was nothing but dark, no way to the main road. We were cutoff.'
The policeman glanced at Craig, as if for sense. "That was how it seemed to me,' Craig admitted.
'And the phones don't work,' Eustace put in. 'We're cut off that way too.'
'Please keep your voices down. I'll have to have all this looked into.' The policeman's lips looked even primmer, as if he were offended by the complications. He went to the gate to clear a path through the crowd as the town ambulance drew up. He wanted to believe that the dark was nothing more than a freak of the weather, Diana thought. What would it take to persuade him otherwise, and everyone else? She had a sudden terrible suspicion that something soon would.
T feel as if nobody knows we're here,' Vera said in a choky voice, then she rallied. 'Come on, Craig, I don't want to stay here. Take me back to the hotel.'
'We'll have to find someone to fix the tyres,' Craig said as if defying any of his listeners to contradict him, and ushered her away as the stretcher-bearers went into the presbytery. Eustace stayed near Diana. 'Please let me know if you plan to leave town, in case I need to question you further,' the policeman said to her, and she heard her unspoken cry trailing away in the dark inside her skull: ‘I can't leave, don't you understand? None of us can leave . . .'