The Man in the Moss (23 page)

           
Automatically, she glanced down to where his groin ought
to be, where the body was bent.

           
And then Chrissie made a little involuntary noise at the
back of her throat.

           
She glanced back at his face.

           
His twisted lips ... leering at her now.

           
Her eyes flicked rapidly back to his groin, back to his
face, back to his groin. She felt her own lips contorting, and she made the
little noise again, a high-pitched strangled yelp, and she began to back off
towards the door.

           
But she couldn't stop looking at him.

           
... what, no ...

           
... penis ... must have chopped it
off. Part of the ritual.
           
Chrissie's hands began to
tingle as they scrabbled frantically behind her back for the door-handle.

           
Get me
out
of
here.
           
Far from being emasculated,
the bogman, under his bubble, had the most enormous erection she had ever seen.

From
Dawber's Book of Bridelow:

NATURAL HISTORY

Bridelow Moss is believed
to be over four thousand years old, but there has been considerable erosion
over the past two centuries and the bog appears to have been affected by
pollution from industry twenty or more miles away, with much of the vegetation
being destroyed and the surface becoming even darker due to soot-deposits.

                       
Erosion is gradually exposing the hills and
valleys submerged under the blanket bog, and many fragments of long-dead trees,
commonly known as 'bog oak', have been discovered.

                       
Because of the preservative qualities of
peat, wood recovered from the Moss is usually immensely strong and was once
considered virtually indestructible ...

CHAPTER
IX

There was frost on the
morning of the day Matt Castle was to be buried, and the heaped soil beside the
prepared grave looked like rock.
           
The grave was in the highest
corner of the churchyard, and the Rector could see it from the window of his
study. A shovel was set in the soil, a stiff, scarecrow shape against the white
morning.

           
Hans turned back to the room and to the kind of problem
he didn't need, today of all days.

           
'I didn't know who else to come to,' the young farmer
said, the empty teacup like a thimble in his massive hands. 'I've got kids.'

           
'Have you told the police?'

           
'What's the point?' The fanner wore black jeans and a tan
leather jacket. He wasn't a churchgoer but Hans had christened his second
child.

           
'If you've been losing stock ...'

           
'Aye, one ram. But that were months ago. I told t'coppers
about that. What could they do? Couldn't stake out the whole moor, could they?
Anyway, like they said, it's not a crime any more, witchcraft.'

           
'Devil worship,' Hans said gently. 'There's a difference.
Usually.'

           
'All bloody same to me. With respect. Like I say, it's
not summat they warn you about at agricultural college, Vicar. Sheep scab's one
thing, Satanism's summat else.'

           
'Yes.' Hans didn't know what to do about this. The man
wasn't interested in counselling, sympathy, platitudes; he wanted practical
help.

           
'So I've come to you, like.' His name was Sam Davis. This
was his first farm. A challenge - seventy acres, and more than half of it
basically unfarmable moorland, with marsh and heather, great stone outcrops ...
and the remains of two prehistoric stone circles half a mile apart.

           
'Cause it's your job, really, int it?' said Sam Davis,
thrusting out his ample jaw. A lad with responsibilities. Two kids, a nervy
wife and no neighbours. 'T'Devil. An' all his works, like.'

           
And there he really had put his finger on it, this lad.
If this was not a minister's job, what was? Hans tried to straighten his leg.
Some minister he was, took him half an hour to climb into the pulpit.

           
'Tell me again,' he said. "There was the remains of
a fire. In the centre of the circle. Now ... on the previous occasion, you
actually found blood. And, er, the ram's head, of course. On the stone.'

           
'Just like they wanted me to find it,' Sam Davis said.
'Only it weren't me as found it, it were t'little girl.' He set his cup down in
the hearth, as if afraid he was going to crush it in his anger.

           
'Yes. Obviously very distressing. For all of you. But you
know ... It's easy for me to say this, obviously, I'm not living in quite such an
exposed ...'

           
'Hang on now, Vicar, I'm not ...'

           
'I know ... you're a big lad and well capable of taking
care of your family. The actual point I was trying to make is that it's easy to
get this kind of thing out of proportion. Quite often it's youngsters. They
read books and see films about Satanism, they hear of these ritual places, the
stone circles ... not in Transylvania or somewhere but right here within twenty
miles of Manchester and Sheffield ...'

           
'So you think it's youngsters, then.'

           
'I don't know. All I'm saying is it's
often
kids. The kind, if you saw them,
you could probably tuck a couple under each arm.'

           
'Aye, well, like I say, it's not me ... so much as the
wife. I wanted to wait up there, maybe surprise 'em, like, give 'em a bloody
good hiding, but ...'

           
'I think your wife was right,' Hans said. 'Don't get into
a vendetta situation if you can help it. It's probably a phase, a fad. They'll
go off and find another circle in a week or two, or perhaps they'll simply grow
out of it. You've told the police, and apart from the, er, the ram ...'

           
'I've not told coppers about last night. Only you.
There's nowt to see. Only ashes. No blood. No bits.'

           
'How far is the nearest circle from where you live?'

           
'Half a mile ... three-quarters. But it's a tricky climb
at night, can't do it wi'out a light, and wi' a light they'd see me comin'.
Jeep's no bloody use either, on that ground.'

           
'So you saw the fire ...'

           
'Bit of a red glow, that were all.'

           
'And your wife heard ...'

           
'She
thought
she heard. Like I say, could've bin a sheep ... fox ... owl ... rabbit.'

           
'But she thought it was ...'
           
'Aye,' said Sam Davis. 'A
babby.'

'There's a dragon,' the boy
said, and his bottom lip was trembling. 'There
is
...!'

           
'Gerroff,' said Willie Wagstaff.

           
He'd been for his morning paper and didn't plan to bugger
about on a day as cold as this, wanted to get home and put a match to his fire.

           
'You go an' look, Uncle Willie.'

           
This was Benjie, nearly eight, Willie's youngest sister
Sally's lad. Tough little bugger as a rule. He had The Chief with him, an
Alsatian, Benjie's minder.

           
Willie folded up his paper, stuck it under his arm. 'What
you on about at all?'

           
'...'s a dragon, Uncle Willie ...'s 'orrible ...'

           
He was about to cry. Pale too. Cheeks ought to be glowing
on a morning like this. Especially with having the day off school, to go to
Matt's funeral.

           
Then again, could be that was at the bottom of this.
Death, funerals, everybody talking hushed, a big hole being dug in the
churchyard for the feller he called Uncle Matt. And Benjie trying to understand
it all, seeing this great big dragon.

           
'All right,' Willie said, pretending he hadn't noticed
the lad was upset. 'I'll buy it. Where's this dragon?'

           
'On t'Moss.'

           
'Oh, aye. And what were you doin' on t'Moss on your own then,
eh?'

           
'I weren't on me own, Uncle Willie. T'Chief were wi' me.
An' 'e dint like it neither.'

           
The big dog flopped his mouth open, stuck his tongue out
and looked inscrutable.

           
'Gerroff,' said Willie. 'That dog's scared of nowt. All
right, lead the way. But if you're havin' me on, you little Arab, I'll ...'

When the farmer had gone,
Catherine came in with a mid-morning mug of tea for Hans, and he asked her,
'You hear any of that?'

           
'Bits.' His daughter sat on the piano stool. She was
wearing a plain black jumper and baggy, striped trousers with turn-ups. 'Got
the gist. What are you going to do about it, Pop?'

           
'Well,' said Hans, 'I don't really know. Obviously I
don't like the sound of this baby business. And I'm not one to generalize about
hysterical women. But still, I think if a child had gone missing virtually
anywhere in the country we'd have heard about it, don't you?'

           
Cathy looked serious, as she often did these days, as if
she'd suddenly decided it was time to shoulder the full responsibility of being
an adult, as distinct from a student.

           
'No,' she said. 'Not necessarily.'

           
'What do you ... ?' Hans looked puzzled. Then he said,
'Oh. That.'

           
'It's been exaggerated a lot, of course, but that doesn't
mean it doesn't go on, Pop.'

           
'You're beginning to sound like Joel Beard.'
           
'Oh, I don't think so.'

           
'Well,' said Hans, 'if there really is a possibility of
something of that nature, then he should tell the police, shouldn't he? But
where's his evidence? His wife thought she heard a baby crying. As he said, it
could have been any one of a dozen animals, or the wind or ...'

           
Cathy said, 'A friend of mine at college did a study of
so-called ritual child abuse. What it amounts to, in most of the cases which
have been proved, is that the ritual bits - the devil masks and the candles and
so on - are there to support the abuse clement. Simply to scare the children
into submission. So in most cases we're not talking about actual Devil worship
...'

           
'Just extreme evil,' Hans said. 'Where's the difference
exactly?'

           
'I'm not an expert,' Cathy said, 'but I rather think
there is a difference.' She grinned slyly. 'I think it's something Ma Wagstaff
could explain to you if you caught her in the right mood.'

           
Cheeky little madam. Hans smiled. 'I'm the accredited
holy man in these parts, in case you'd forgotten. Anyway, why didn't young Sam
go to Ma Wagstaff for advice?'

           
'Because he hasn't lived around here very long. He
doesn't know the way things operate yet.'

           
How they changed. There'd been a time, not so long ago, when
Cathy had been dismissive, to say the least, of Ma Wagstaff and all she stood
for.

           
'And you do, do you?' Hans said. 'You know how things
operate.'

           
'I'm getting an inkling.'

           
'Perhaps we should discuss this sometime.'

           
'I don't think so,' Cathy said.

           
Hans frowned.

           
'I don't think words can really pin it down,' she said.
Or that we should try to.'

           
She looked at him blandly. All open-faced and pain-free.
Twenty-three years old, a light-haired, plain-faced girl - even Hans had to
admit she was no great beauty. However, there was a knowingness about her that
he hadn't been aware of before.