The Man in the Moss (46 page)

           
Her senses froze.

           
'So, as I go into
the final round, as they say, I'm drawing strength from the both of you. The
bogman ... and you, Moira, Tomorrow's Sunday. I'll be going out on the Moss, to
play. Last time, I reckon. I'll need Lottie and Dic, poor lad, to get me there,
I'll send them away, then there'll just be the three of us.'
           
'No,' she said 'What
is
this?'
           
'Me and thee and him.'
           
Matt chuckled eerily.
           
Hard rain hit the Moss.
           
'No,' she said.

           
'Thanks, lass.
Thanks for getting me through this. Thanks for your spirit. And your body. It
was your body, wasn't it?'

           
She wrapped her arms around herself, began to shake,
feeling soiled.

           
'Ma said. You've
got to purify yourself. But there's a kind of purity in intensity of feeling,
isn't that right? Pure black light
.'
           
'I'll
play now,
' Matt said, and she heard him lifting his pipes onto his knees.

           
'If you're listening to this, it
means you're here in Bridelow. So find Willie, find Eric. And then find me.
You'll do that, won't you? Find me.'

           
The old familiar routine, the wheeze, the treble notes.
           
'I won't be far away
,' Matt said.

           
And the lament began. At first hoarse and fragmented, but
resolving into a thing of piercing beauty and an awful, knowing anticipation.

           
Out on the black Moss, as if hit by a fierce wind, the
dead tree lashed impatiently at its bones with its own sinuous branches, like
cords of gut.

           
Moira thought, There's no wind. No wind to speak of. The
Moss in the rain was dull and opaque, like a blotter. She didn't want to look
at the tree but a movement drew her eyes. Human movement.

           
An old woman was hobbling across the peat; she had a
stick. A stringy shawl wrapped around her head. She was approaching the tree
very deliberately, slow but surefooted.

           
She seemed to be wearing ordinary shoes, not boots or
Wellingtons; she knew the peat, where to walk.

           
Cathy had said.
You're
going to have to talk to Ma. If she'll talk to you.

It
is
her, isn't it?
           
The dead tree was about a
hundred yards away. The old woman was walking around it now, poking
experimentally at it with her stick and then backing away like a terrier.

           
A wavy branch lashed out, wrapped itself around the
walking stick. Moira drew breath.

           
Another movement, quick and sudden, and the shawl was
torn away from the woman's shoulders, thrown triumphantly up into the air on
the tip of a wavy branch, like a captured enemy flag.

           
'Holy Christ!' Moira was out of the car, leaving the
driver's door hanging open, stepping down from the causeway, hurrying into the
Moss.

           
Where the sinewy, whipcord branches of the old, dead tree
were writhing and striking individually at the old woman, Ma Wagstaff, pulsing
like vipers. Moira running across the peat, through the rain, desperately
trying to keep her footsteps light because she didn't know this Moss. There was
no wind. The rain fell vertically. Behind her Matt's music on the car stereo
was a dwindling whine.

           
'Mrs Wagstaff!' she screamed.
'Mrs Wagstaff, get away from it ...!'

           
In the distance, over the far hills, behind the rain, the
sun was a bulge in the white bandage of cloud and the flailing tree of guts and
bones was rearing up against it; she was maybe sixty yards away now and the
tree was tossing its head.

           
It had a head.

           
And its eyes were white; they were only holes in the
wood, letting the sky through, but they burned white, and it was not a case of
what you knew it to be, old and twisted wood, shrivelled, wind-blasted,
contorted by nature into demonic, nightmare shapes
  
this was the old mistake, to waste time and
energy rationalizing the irrational.
           
'Mrs Wagstaff, back off!'

           
What was the old biddy doing here alone? Where were the
Mothers' Union, when she needed back-up?
           
'Mrs Wag ... Don't ... don't
look ...'
           
Moira stumbled.

           
'Don't look at it,' she said miserably, for Bridelow Moss
had got her left foot. Swallowed it whole, closing around her ankle, like soft
lips.

White eyes.

           
Black, horned head, white eyes.
           
'It's thee. It were always
thee.'

           
Ma Wagstaff growled, stabbed at it one last time with her
stick - the wood was so hard that the metal tip of the stick snapped off.
           
'Mrs Wag—'

           
Woman's voice screaming in the distance.
           
Nowt to do wi' her. Ma's job,
this.

           
She moved away, like an old, experienced cat. Bait it.
'Come on, show thiself.' A dry, old rasp, not much to it, but she got it out.
'What's a tree? What's a bit of owd wood to me, eh? Show thi face. 'Cause this
is as near as tha's ever going to get to Bridlo'. We seen to thee once ... and
it'll stick.'

           
Backing away from it, and all the muck coming off it in
clouds. She was going to need some help, some strength. It'd take everything
she'd got - and some more.

           
And not long. Not long for it.

           
All-Hallows soon. The dark curtain thin as muslin.

           
Dead tree out of the Moss, and made to live, made to
thresh its boughs.

           
Him.

           
Taunt it.

           
'You're nowt.' Words coming out like a sick cough.
'You're nowt, Jack. You never was owt!'

           
Dead tree writhing and slashing itself at her, and though
she was well out of range by now, she felt every poisoned sting.

           
Get it mad.

           
'Ah ...' Ma turned away. 'Not worth it. Not worth me
time. Bit of owd wood.'

           
But her heart was slamming and rocking like an old
washing-machine.

           
Black horned head, white eyes.

           
Dead, but living in him.
           
White eyes.

CHAPTER
III

There was a metallic
snapping sound followed by a faint and desperate wailing.
           
'Mrs
Wagstaff...'
           
The voice was familiar. But it
didn't matter.
           
This was a funny little house,
bottles and jars on every ledge, even on the edges of individual stairs. Sprigs
of this and that hung from the ceilings and circulated musty smells.
           
The witch's den.

           
He sat in silence at the top of the stairs. Unperturbed.

           
'Please, Mrs
Wagstaff ... let me in ...'

           
Then silence. He smiled. As children, they'd clustered by
the church gate and whispered about the witch's house, not daring to go too
close.
See the curtain move ... ? It's
her. She's
coming ... '

           
It hadn't changed; only his perspective on it. The wicked
witch. Perspectives changed. Now it was cool to be ... wow, w
icked
! But Ma Wagstaff wasn't
authentically wicked, never had been. Ma Wagstaff, let's face it, wasn't quite
up to it and wouldn't be now. She'd conned them, generations of them.

           
Now
I'm
really
rather wicked, he thought. If there's such a thing. Or at least I'm getting
there.

           
He didn't move. His body didn't move.
           
The reason it didn't move was
he didn't want it to. Suddenly, he had true self-control, and this amazed him.
Or rather it amazed him to reflect on what a bag of dancing neuroses he used to
be, so untogether he couldn't even regulate the sounds coming out of his own
mouth.
           
Sher-sher-Shaw. Ster-
ster-stuttering Shaw.
           
Amusing to imagine what he'd
have been like if he'd been given this present task even a month ago, when he
was still unconvinced. When he used to say, It's, you know ...
bad
, though, isn't it? It might be fun,
it might be exhilarating, but it's bad, essentially. Surely.

           
And were you good
before, Shaw? Were you good when you were stuttering and dithering and letting
your father dominate you? Is that your idea of what it means to be good? In
which case, how does it feel to be bad'

           
Terminology. Nowadays Bad was cool, like Wicked. A step
in the right direction.

           
How's it feel? Feels good. Alive. Quite simply that. I
didn't know before what being alive
meant
.
I said to her,
haven't you got to be dead
to be undead?
And she said,
what
makes you think you aren't?

           
So I was dead and now I'm alive. I know that when I pull
the handles, turn the switches, press the buttons ... something will
happen.

           
They'd told him he'd seen nothing yet. They'd told him
there would be a sign. And now there was. And what a sign. Once again, Shaw
couldn't resist it. He allowed his right hand to remove its leather glove and
brush its palm across the top of his head.

           
A delicious prickly sensation.

           
The first time he'd felt it, he'd wanted to leap up and
squeal with joy. But there was no need to do this any more. He could experience
that joy deep inside himself, knowing how much more powerful and satisfying the
feeling was if he didn't allow it to expend itself through his body,
dissipating as he hopped about like a little kid, punching the air.

           
So Shaw Horridge's body remained seated quietly at the
top of the stairs in Ma Wagstaff's house while Shaw Horridge's spirit was in a
state of supreme exultation.

           
His hair was growing again! He was alive and he had made
it happen.

           
Just a fuzz at first, then thicker than a fuzz - almost a
stubble. He'd heard of men going to Ma Wagstaff for her patent hair-restorer,
some claiming it worked. A bit. But not actually sure whether it had or not.

           
Not like this. No doubt about this. Where there'd been no
hair, now there was hair.

           
All around him were Ma Wagstaff's bottles full of maybes.
Maybe if the wind's in the right direction. If the moon s full. If there's an R
in the month. Quite sad, really. A grey little world of hopes and dreams. No
certainties.

           
Hair-loss was natural in some people, his mother said.
But it had taken Therese to prove to him that you didn't have to accept something
just because it was supposed to be
natural.
Acceptance was just spiritual sloth.

           
Being truly alive was about changing things. Changing
people, situations. Changing your state of mind. Changing the 'natural'.

           
Being alive was about breaking rules with impunity. Men's
rules. Also the rules men claimed they'd had from God. 'Natural' rules. This
was what she'd taught him. Learn how to break the rules - for no other reason
than to break them - and you become free.

           
Thou shalt not
kill.
But why? We kill animals to eat, we kill people with abandon in
wartime. We kill for the Queen, we kill for the oil industry? Where does the
taboo begin?

           
He stretched his arms and yawned. Settled down to wait,
aware of his breathing, fully relaxed. How could bad be bad when it felt as
good as this.