The Man in the Moss (93 page)

           
The slimy mosslight from the high windows awakening the
barn, finding the womanly curves of the old Martin guitar. This was your place,
Matt, this was where you put it all together, this was your refuge.

           
...
So I wanted...I
wanted in. To be part of that. To go in the Moss too ...

           
But you don't now. Do you?

           
It's warm in here. (Aw, hell, it's freezing; you just
better wish it warm, hen,
wish
it
warm until you can feel it.)

           
She picked up the lamp from the floor at her feet and
took it across to a wooden table. She switched it on, directing its beam to the
centre of the settee, picked up Matt's Martin guitar, went back and sat in the
spot, with the light on her face.

           
She strummed the guitar. The strings were old and dull
and it was long out of tune. One of the machine-heads had lost its knob, so she
just tuned the other strings to that one.

           
It would do.

           
She sat back, closed her eyes against the lamp's beam,
although the battery was running out and the light was yellowing. She imagined
the Moss, black and cold and stagnant.

           
Now you're out there, you know the terrors the Moss
holds, the deep, deep, age-old fear.

           
Death doesn't have to be like that, Matt.

           
Come on. Come on back. Come to the warm.

           
She pictured Matt as he'd been once. Stocky, muscular,
vibrant with enthusiasm.

           
Come ...

           
... come to ...

           
to me.

           
And in a low and smoky voice, she began to sing to him.

The Mothers' Union was
congregated in the high Norman nave of St Bride's Church.

           
Above the Mothers hung a ragged cross made of branches
cut by Benjie from a rampant sycamore hedge at the bottom of the Rectory
garden. The branches, still dripping, were bound with chicken wire and tangled
up with hawthorn.

           
Cathy walked in, out of the rain, under the reassuringly
gross, widened flange of the Sheelagh na gig, cement particles among the coils
of her hair. Alf Beckett had also brought the statues out of the shed, and
several long, coloured candles were now lit.

           
He was up in the lamp room now, fixing up a high-powered
floodlight supplied by Stan Burrows, who'd been in charge of the electrics for
the Bridelow Wakes party which was usually held on the Church Field on May Day
Eve. (Except for this year, when there was still too much media attention, due
to the bogman.)

           
'Twelve,'
Cathy
said after a quick head-count. 'We're waiting for Moira.'

           
'She doesn't have to be here,' Milly said. 'If she's with
us, she's with us.' Cathy was glad to see Milly had at last taken charge.

           
The assembly was not inspiring, including, as it did,
women like Dee Winstanley, who'd declined to follow her mother into the Union
on the grounds that they didn't get on, and two lesbians who ran a smallholding
up by the moor and had never been allowed to become active members because
their motives were suspect.

           
A pile of wet stones glistened on an old wooden funeral
bier under the pulpit.

           
'All right!' Milly clapped her hands. 'Let's make a
start, shall we?' I want to begin by calling down a blessing on this church. If
you'd all form a rough circle from where we've pushed the pews back.'

           
Milly wore a long, dark blue dress decorated by a single
brooch in the shape of two intercurled holly leaves.

           
She closed her eyes.

           
'Our Father …' she began.

           
'And Our Mother …'

                                   
…
sees herself in colours and

                                   
she weighs
her powers in her hand …

           
'The Comb Song'. The song
of night and invocation. In the singing of it, things happen.

           
And the comb, safe in its pocket in the guitar case
protects you from evil.

           
But this is not your guitar. This is Matt's guitar.
Singing the song of invocation to the dead strings of Matt's guitar in Matt's
music room, and
no
protection.

It was 1.30 in the morning.

           
The women filed silently out of the church, most of them
muffled in dark coats, under scarves and hoods so Macbeth couldn't tell who was
who.

           
There was a bulky one he figured was Milly. Two who were
slightly built were walking together.

           
'Cathy?' he whispered. 'Cathy?'

           
Neither of the women replied.

           
Each clutched a stone.

           
They walked out of the church porch under a weird carving
of a grotesque, deformed creature, all mouth and pussy. At this point they divided,
some proceeding down the path toward the main gate, two moving up toward the
graves, the others following a narrow path down into a field which disappeared
into the peatbog.

           
'Moira?
Moira!'

           
No answer. The rain
continued.

           
'… the fuck am I gonna do?'

           
'Nowt,' said Willie Wagstaff. 'Nowt we can do. It's in
the lap of the gods.'

           
Ernie Dawber was with him, leaning on a walking stick.
They moved under the porch with Macbeth, gazing out toward the Moss. Nobody
spoke for a while, then he said, 'Hallowe'en's over now, right?'

           
'Samhain, lad,' said Ernie. 'Let's not cheapen it. In
Bridelow we used to celebrate Samhain on November first, so you could say our
day is just beginning.'

           
'Or not,' said Willie. 'As the case may be.'

           
'Or not,' Ernie agreed.

           
Macbeth said, 'How deep is the, uh, Moss?'

           
'Normally,' Ernie said, 'no more than a few feet in most
places. Tonight? I wouldn't like to guess. I don't think we've ever had rain
this hard, so consistently, for so long, have we,

Willie?'

           
'Could it flood?'

           
'Soaks it up,' said Ernie. 'Like a sponge. It's rivers
that flood, not bogs.'

           
'There's a river running through it, isn't there?'

           
'Not much of one.'

           
'What are those women doing?'

           
'We never ask, lad,' said Ernie.

           
'Ever thought of becoming a local tour guide?'

           
Ernie shrugged.

           
Macbeth said, 'What are those lights?'
           
'I can't see any lights, lad.'

           
'It's gone. It lasted no time at all. It was, like, a
white ball of light. It seemed to come out the bog. Then it vanished.'
           
'Didn't see it. Did you,
Willie?'

           
'OK,' Macbeth said. He was getting a little pissed with
this old man. 'Tonight, Mr Dawber, it's my belief you seriously offered your
life for this place. I'm not gonna say that's extreme, I don't have enough of a
picture to make judgements. What I would like to know is ... that, uh,
compulsion you had ... has that... passed?'

           
Seemed at first like Ernie Dawber was going to ignore the
question and Macbeth could hardly have blamed him for that. Willie Wagstaff
didn't look at the old man. Rain apart, there was no sound; Willie was not
performing his customary drum solo.

           
Then Ernie Dawber took off his hat.

           
'It seems silly to me now,' he said in his slow, precise
way. 'Worse, it seems cowardly. I went to see the doctor t'other night. Been
feeling a bit... unsteady for some weeks. They'd done a bit of a scan. Found
what was described as an inoperable cyst.' Ernie tapped his forehead. 'In
here.'

           
Willie's chin jerked up. 'Eh?'

           
'Could pop off anytime, apparently.'

           
'Aw, hell,' Macbeth said. 'Forget I spoke.'

           
'No, no, lad, it was a valid question. I've been writing
a new history of Bridelow, one that'll never be published. Chances are I'll not
even finish the bugger anyroad but it's about all those things I didn't dare
put into the proper book. Maybe it's the first proper book, who can say?'

           
'I'd like to read that,' Macbeth said. 'One day.'

           
'Don't count on it, lad. Anyroad, I thought, well ...
it's given you a good life, this little place. You and a lot of other folk. And
now it's in trouble. Is there
nowt
you can do? And when you're on borrowed time, lads, it's surprising how you
focus in directions nobody in their right minds'd ever contemplate.'

           
He chuckled. 'Or maybe it's not our
right
minds that we're in most of the time. Maybe, just for a
short space of time, I
entered
my
right mind. Now there's a cosmic sort of conundrum for you ... Mungo.'

           
'Thanks,' Macbeth said. He put out his hand; Ernie took
it, they shook. 'Now, about those lights ...'

           
'Aye, lad. I saw the lights. And that's another
conundrum. The Moss is no man's land. No man has cultivated it. No man has
walked across it in true safety. What we see in and on and around the Moss
doesn't answer to our rules. I've not answered your other question yet, though,
have I?

           
Macbeth kept quiet. There was another ball of white
light. It came and it went. In the semi-second it was there Macbeth saw a huge,
awesome tree shape with branches that seemed to be reaching out for him.
Involuntarily he shrank back into the porch.

           
'Is it past?' Ernie considered the question. 'No. If I
thought it'd do any good, I'd be out there now offering my throat to the
knife.'

           
He turned back toward the Moss. There was another light
ball. Coming faster now.

           
'Quite frankly, lad,' said Ernie conversationally, 'I
think it's too late.'

                                   
And in the chamber of the dead
                                   
forgotten
voices fill your head . ..

           
It said, hoarsely.
Going
to show me?

           
Moira tried to stay calm but couldn't sing any more. She
was desperately cold.

           
This famous comb.

           
This time she had no comb to show him.
           
But you never leave yourself
open like that. You never confess weakness to them.

           
'What will you give me if I show you the comb?'
           
Six pennorth o' chips.

           
Laughter rippling from the corners of the room. The
lamplight was very weak now in her face.

           
Behind the light, a shadow.

CHAPTER
VI

They had told Chrissie to
look out for a seat at the top of the church field. It wasn't hard. The church
field was the piece of uncultivated spare land continuing down from the last of
the graves to a kind of plateau above the Moss. Chrissie's torch found the seat
on the very edge of the plateau.