The Man in the Moss (99 page)

           
Man Castle is crouching on the Moss.
He is very still, still as stone. Still as the bounding toadstone on the moor
before it leaps.

           
His feet do not touch the peat. He's
maybe five yards away but I can smell his breath. He is breath, all breath, a
mist on the Moss. He's in his element is Matt Castle.

'I don't remember this,' Mungo
said. 'I don't remember any of it.'

           
'These things sometimes happen out of time, you know?'
Moira looked up at where the Beacon of the Moss shone down, not blue, somehow
pale gold, like an early sun. 'In a twinkling.'

           
She looked down at the plastic lamp, its back piece
hanging off where you put the batteries in. 'Dic gave me this when he rescued
me from the outhouse. It's just a wee, cheap thing, made in Taiwan, where the
flu comes from. It had gone out, and then it came on, and when it came on Matt's
... essence, spirit ... began to squirm, like Dic was sending him a message,
you know? And I turned around and ...'

...
the light shines in the eyes of John Peveril Stanage and Stanage backs off,
backs off too far. He's starting to scream - agony, bitter frustration, and
somehow I'm hitting him with the light, the finest, brightest light ever came
out of Taiwan ... and his eyes are this orangey colour floating further back,
further away, like the diminishing tail lights of a car disappearing into the
night...

'Kept hitting him with the
light, Mungo, but he'd gone over. Gone out of the Bridelow circle. Maybe a
couple of feet was all it took. Like an electric fence, you know? Shock just
hurled
him back. Maybe he drowned. Was no' my problem.'

           
She was still fiddling with the lamp, trying to put it
back together.

           
'And then there was just the two of us. You puking your
guts out, Mungo. I don't know what happened. Maybe we're talking Providence,
maybe ... Here, hold on to this a wee minute.'

           
She gave him the plastic base and two batteries fell out
and plopped into the peat. Then something else fell out after them and she
caught it.

           
What this was, Macbeth saw, was a little metal comb. Like
a dog comb with a whole bunch of teeth missing.

           
'Dic' Moira stared at the comb. 'He stole it back. He
told me, but I …'

           
Moira Cairns started to laugh. Mungo Macbeth never heard
anyone sound quite so elated. Laughing fit to cause ripples in the peat.
Laughing enough to bring on another goddamn bog blow-out.

           
She fell down in the swirling street with a filthy splash
and she dragged him down on top of her, both arms around his neck, the comb in
one hand, and she was kissing him hard on the mouth and the peat on her lips
tasted like maple syrup.

           
When eventually they came to their feet, she linked her
arm into his and started to lead him along the western side of the street to
where the Beacon of the Moss flashed a tired signal to the sun. The black peat
was quite deep around them, but it was feeling cool, now, and good.

           
'Tea break's over,' she said, turning towards him, the
peat around her lips. And she started to laugh again, in lovely big peals. '
Teabreak's over, boys. Back to your
tunnelling, yeah?'

           
Mungo Macbeth said, 'Huh?'

From
Dawber's
Secret
Book of
Bridelow
(unpublished):

Hans.

                       
Before I go
...

                       
I can
understand your feelings about the death of the young farmer, Sam Davis, but I
don't think you should blame yourself; from what you've told me he was a
headstrong lad and if he'd listened to you in the first place he'd have left
well alone and might be alive today.
                       
Easy for me to
say, but it's what I believe.
                       
And at least his
stories of night activity among the circles on the moor were our pointer to the
location of the bog body.
                       
It was obvious
what they would do with him: switch him from the sanctity of the churchyard to
the poisoned earth of a once-holy place which had systematically, over a long
period, been reconsecrated in the name of evil.
                       
Cold storage.
Nowhere colder.
                       
The policeman, I
understand, expected to find him in the loft at tile brewery, but his body was
never taken there. I suspect that even Stanage knew that his ancient spirit
would be impossible to confront unless it was diffused through Matt Castle.
Matt Castle, who they thought they could command. We are all so stupid, are we
not, to believe that anything beyond the physical can ever truly be controlled
by mankind?

                       
So we all went up there, that's me and the
Mothers and a few lads to do the labouring. Went by day, stroke of noon, with
as much brightness in the sky as anyone has a right to expect this time of
year.

                       
You know, that place still reeks so much of
evil that it could be an environmental and spiritual menace for centuries. I
don't know what they'll be able to do about that.

                       
Anyroad, Willie Wagstaff and Stan Burrows
went in and dug up the bogman and dumped him in a wheelbarrow, and we brought
him back to Bridelow.

                       
Where he now lies in what I think you will
agree is a
place of ultimate safety.

No witch bottle. We didn't
want to insult her.