The Man in the Moss (91 page)

           
'There's always a chance,' Cathy said, and even Willie
thought her voice was starting to sound a bit frail. She was overtired, lumpy
bags under her eyes, thin hair in rat's tails.

           
'What?' said Milly, approaching hysteria - and Willie had
never seen
that
before. 'Against a
feller who's spent half a lifetime stoking up his evil? Against that hideous
girl? Against all them practising satanists?'

           
'They're idiots,' Cathy said. 'Any idiot can be a
satanist.'
           
'Aye,' said Milly, 'and any
idiot can make it work if they've got nowt to lose.'

           
'All
right
.'
Cathy turned to Willie. 'How's Alf getting on?'
           
'Moaning,' Willie said.
'Reckons cement won't hang together wi' all the rain. Stan Burrows and them've
fixed up a sort of a shelter for him. I told him, I says, you can do it again
proper sometime, Alf, just make sure it sticks up tonight. I called in at
Sal's, too, and young Benjie'll be along wi' a pile of stuff for a new cross.
Reckon you can fettle it?'
           
'Aye,' said Milly. 'I suppose
I can.'

           
'Don't you start losing heart, lass. Hey, our Sal's on
her way too, what about that?'

           
'Never!' said Cathy. 'Ceramic hob on the blink, is it?'

           
'I'm persuasive, me, when I put me mind to it.'

           
'That'll make it ten, then,' Cathy said. 'Still, not
enough. But we're getting there. Please, Milly,
please
don't go negative on me now.'

Macbeth closed the door
behind him, as if to prove he wasn't really a wimp and could handle this alone,
and he didn't come out for a long time, maybe half a minute, and there was no
sound from him either. And Moira panicked.
I
was wrong.
They're all there. They're
waiting for us.

           
'Moira,' he called out, more than a wee bit hoarse, just
at the point when she was about to start screaming. 'I think I need some help.'

           
At the foot of the final stairway, the air was really
sour, full of beer and vomit, blood and death. She took a breath of it, anyway.
She was - face it - more scared than he was, and whenever she was really
scared, she went brittle and hard, surface-cynical. A shell no thicker than a
ladybird's.

           
She wanted a cigarette. She wanted a drink.

           
She wanted
out
of
here.

           
'Hold your nose,' Macbeth advised, opening the door. He
sounded calm. Too calm. He was going to pass out on her any second.

           
And of course she didn't hold her damn nose, did she, and
the stench of corrupted flesh nearly drove her back down the steps.

           
'I covered that one over,' Macbeth said. 'Couldn't face
it.'

           
A circle within a circle. Candles burned down to stubs,
not much more than the flames left, and all the rearing shadows they were
throwing.

           
'Watch where you're walking,' Macbeth said.

           
The attic light was brown and bleary with sweat, grease,
blood. Several chairs inside the circle. Two of them occupied.

           
One was a muffled hump beneath old sacking. 'All I could
find,' Macbeth said. 'I don't think you should uncover it. I don't think
anybody
should. Not ever.'

           
A yellow hand poked out of the sacking.

           
She stared at it, trying to imagine the yellow fingers
stopping up the airholes on the Pennine Pipes.

           
'It's this one,' Macbeth said behind her. 'Moira? Please?'

           
Moira turned and took a step forward and her foot
squelched in it.

           
Congealing blood. Bucketsful.

You don't have to do
anything like that,' Cathy said. 'It's not as if I'm asking you to bare your
breasts or have sex with anyone under a full moon or swear eternal allegiance
to the Goddess.'

           
'Pity,' said the blonde one, trying, and failing, to hold
her cigarette steady.

           
'All you have to do,' Cathy said, 'is believe in it. Just
for as long as you're taking part.'

           
'I don't, though, luv,' Lottie Castle said. 'And I can't
start now.'

           
However, Cathy noticed, she couldn't stop herself looking
over their shoulders towards what was probably the gas-mantle protruding from
the side of the bar.

           
Cathy had heard all about the gas-mantle, from the
policeman, Ashton, who was standing by the door at this moment, Observing but
keeping out of it because - as he'd pointed out, there was no evidence of the
breaking of laws, except for natural ones.

           
'Yes, you do,' Chrissie said. 'You've always believed in
it. That's been half the problem.'

           
'And how the hell would you know that?'

           
'Oh, come
on
.
The last couple of hours I've probably learned more about you than anybody in
this village. And you know more about me than I'd like to have spread around.'

           
'Yes,' said Lottie. 'I suppose so. And how do you come
into this, luv? Always struck me as an intelligent sort of girl, university
education. Oxford, isn't it?'

           
'That's right, Mrs Castle, Oxford.'

           
'No polite names tonight. It's Lottie.'

           
'And I'm Chrissie,' said the blonde.

           
'You know about your husband,' Cathy said. 'You know what
they've done.'

           
'Cathy luv, he ceased to be my husband the night he
needed somebody else to close his eyes for him. Well, a fair time before that,
if truth were known. I've had half a lifetime of Matt Castle, and that's more
than
anybody
should have to put up
with, and I can say that now, because I can say
anything
tonight, believe me.'

           
As soon as Cathy had walked in she'd spotted the two
glasses, smelt the booze.

           
'All right,' she said. 'Forget your husband. Let's talk
about your son.'

           
Lottie's face hardened immediately into something like a
clay mask.

           
'Dic? What
about
Dic?'

'Just I don't think he's
dead,' Macbeth said.

           
'Oh, Jesus. Jesus.' Moira put down her lamp in the blood,
the light tilted up at Dic's face.

           
But they couldn't
kill him, could they? For the same reason they couldn't kill you. Surely.

           
'Willie was right, Mungo. We should've been up here,
mob-handed. Thought I was being clever. Being stupid.
Stupid!'

           
But sometimes you
can do more harm to someone than killing them'd be, you know?

           
'Tights,' Macbeth snapped. 'You wearing tights under
there?'

           
'Huh ... ? No. What's ... ? Oh, Jesus...
Dic ... please don't be dead.'

           
'Shit,' said Macbeth. 'Handkerchief?'

           
'I dunno what's in these pockets, it's no' my coat...
yeah, is this a handkerchief?'

           
'How big is it? OK, tear it in half. Fold 'em up. Make
two tight wads.' Macbeth was peeling off the thick adhesive tape binding Dic's
arms to the chair-arms. Both arms were upturned, palms of the hands exposed.
Veins exposed. There was a welling pool of rich, dark blood at each wrist and
it was dripping to the floor each side of the chair. There was a widening pond
of blood, congealed around its blackened banks. Late-autumnal flies from the
roofspace crawled around, drunk on blood.

           
'OK, now you hold his arm above his head. You're gonna
get a lot of blood on you.'

           
'I got more blood on me than I can handle,' Moira
muttered. 'You sure you know what you're doing, Mungo?'

           
'I never did it for real before, but... Ah, you don't
need to hear this shit, just hold his arms. Right. Gimme one of the pads. See,
we got to hold the ... this is a pressure pad, right? So you push it up against
the wound with both thumbs. Like
hard
.
Idea is, we stop the blood with the pad, then I wind this goddamn tape round
just about as ... tight... as I can make it,'

           
'Is he breathing?'

           
'How the fuck should I know? Now the other arm. Hold it
up
, over his head ... And, shit, get the
tape off his mouth. Chrissakes, Moira, didn't we
do
that?'

           
The tape across Dic's mouth stretched from ear to ear.
Moira tore it away, and Dic mumbled, 'Do you ... have to be so rough?'

           
Moira jumped away in shock. Macbeth yelled, 'Keep hold of
that fucking arm, willya?'
           
'Aw, Christ. You're no' dead.'
           
'I'm no' dead,' said Dic
feebly, and be giggled.
           
'Don't talk,' said Moira.
'You're gonny be OK. Mungo?'
           
'He's lost a lot of blood.'
           
'Don't I know it. I'm paddling
in it.'
           
'He needs to go to a hospital.
This is strictly amateur hour. Can't say how long it's gonna hold. Far's I can
see, they cut the vein. If they'd cut the artery this guy'd be long gone. They
cut the vein, each wrist, taped his arms down. The blood goes on dripping,
takes maybe a couple hours to drain the body. How long they had you like this,
pal?'

           
'Not the faintest,' Dic said. 'I was on valium, I think.
Intravenous. So I'd know what was happening but wouldn't care.'

           
'That's good. See, the dope slows down the metabolism and
that goes for the blood flow too. This is weird stuff, Moira, this left me way
behind a long time back.'

           
Moira said, 'Do you know why, Dic?'

           
Dic nodded at the hump under the sacks.

           
'Do me one favour,' Macbeth said. 'I saved your life,
least you can do is let me keep that fucking thing under wraps.'

           
'That's Matt, isn't it, Dic?'

           
Dic nodded. He was lying back in his chair, both arms
still flung over his head and black with dried and drying blood.
           
Moira didn't recall ever
seeing courage on this scale. Maybe the valium had helped, but it was more than
that.

           
'Suppose you know,' Dic said, 'where they've gone.'

           
'We have to get you to a hospital.'

           
'When you're on valium and you're still terrified, you
know it must be pretty awesome.'

           
'Looks pretty cruddy to me,' Macbeth said.

           
'We'll get you down the steps, OK? We'll get you out of
here.'

           
'He's not sane, you know. I don't reckon he was all there
to begin with, lived in his own fantasy world. Like Dad. And that guy Hall.' He
closed his eyes. 'Bloody Cathy. The things you do for love, eh?'

           
'Mungo,' Moira said. 'How about you go downstairs to one
of the offices, find a phone? Get us some transport for Dic'

           
'You'll be OK?' Macbeth looked like he couldn't get out
fast enough.

           
'Sure. Get hold of Cathy. You got the number?'

           
'Called it enough times from the phone-booth.' He
hesitated in the doorway, Dic's blood on one cheek.

           
'Go,' Moira said.

           
When they were alone, she said, 'Dic, I need to ask you
... Matt .. .'

           
'I gave him blood,' Dic said. 'And you ...' He nodded at
the thing in the other chair.

           
Moira sighed. Sooner or later she had to face this.
           
She hooked a finger under a
corner of the sacking.
           
The dead couldn't harm you.