The Man in the Moss

            'What about love?' said Chrissie.

            'I don't understand,' Roger said.

            'No. I don't suppose you do. So what did he have to say to you?'

            'Who?'

            'Him.'

            'Oh.' Roger stood up, drenched and shiny, and rubbed his knees as if they were stiff. 'Do you know, I can't really remember. I expect it'll come back to me'

            He didn't look at her and began, seeming oblivious to the rain, to stroll away along the path which led back from the plateau's edge and wound down towards the Moss.

            Chrissie waited until he'd gone from sight and then gently placed her stone beneath the seat and stood very quietly and said the words they'd told her to say.

A curious thing.

            Soon as Ernie Dawber admitted he too could see the balls of light, then they became clearer.

            'It's a bit like ball-lightning,' Ernie said. 'There's been quite a lot of research, although the scientific establishment hasn't formally acknowledged it.'

            Talking in his schoolmaster's voice, Macbeth thought, because it puts him on top of a situation he doesn't understand any more than the rest of us.

            They do seem to be a manifestation of energy anomalies within the earth's magnetic field. Often occur, I'm told, on fault-lines.'

            'What's that mean?'

            'And there's also a theory that they can interact with human consciousness. So that when we perceive them we actually bring them into existence, if that isn't back-to-front logic.

What do you say, Willie?'

            I'm more worried about that tree-thing, Mr Dawber. Young Benjie calls it a dragon. Bog oak, I thought it were. Come up out of t'Moss, all of a sudden like. Got a wicked kind of...'

            Macbeth said, 'There are people out there, around the tree.'

            'Daft buggers.' Ernie squinted through the rain.

            Macbeth was watching a haze of light rising from the tree, as if someone had set fire to it. But the flames, instead of eating the wood, had risen through it, like one of those phoney log- effect gasfires.

            The light had risen above the tree and its boughs looked to be clawing at it, as though to prevent it escaping, and the Moss itself seemed to rise in protest. Macbeth felt a thickening tension in his gut.

            Mouth dry, he watched the haze of light spread out like a curtain and then hover over the Moss, maybe six or ten feet from its surface.

            'This is ... unearthly.'

            The light was drifting towards the edge of the Moss, towards the hulk of a building near the peat's edge.

            'All things are natural,' Ernie Dawber said with a tight-jawed determination. 'If some are ... beyond our understanding.'

            'What's that place?' Thought he was hearing distant screams.

            'Back of the pub,' Willie said. 'That's th'owd barn back of the pub, where we used to rehearse wi' Matt.'

            'The light's over it. The light's hanging over the roof.'

            Ernie Dawber said, 'I don't think I can see it any more.'

Moira Cairns put down the guitar and turned towards the door.

            Two of them.

            The mosslight on the two tombstone speaker cabinets either side of the door.

            Both of them standing in the entrance with the cabinets either side of them.

            John Peveril Stanage and the girl, Therese.

            'So kill me,' Moira said simply.

            'You know we can't,' Therese said. 'Not until you give him back.'

            Moira reached to the table and turned the lamp on to them. Not much energy left in it now but enough to show her neither of these people was wet. Had they been inside the inn all the time? Had they been expecting her? Or was this merely the nearest vantage point for the Moss?

            'Who are those people out on the Moss, then?' Moira asked. 'With the devil tree.'

            'Do you know, m'dear,' he said, 'I can't actually recall any of their names.'

            She remembered him so well now. The dapper figure, the white hair rushing back from his grey-freckled forehead like breakers on an outgoing tide. The cherub's lips. A man as

white as the bones tumbling from the walls.

            'I can't believe,' she said, 'all the trouble you've gone to. Getting to know Matt inside out, all his little compulsions. What are we looking at here? Years?'

            'We don't have time for a discussion,' Stanage said. 'We want you to release him. You can't hold him for much longer, you simply don't have the energy.'

            Moira said, 'Where's the Man? Made a big mistake, there, you know, John. You stole him away, you took responsibility for him. You took responsibility for the vacuum. The Moss'll no' wear that. Was an old guy in the village tonight, he'd figured out the way to square things with the Moss was another sacrifice. Maybe that was right.'

            'It was absolutely right, m'dear,' Stanage said with a sudden smile. 'Saw to that on the very stroke, I believe, of midnight. When the Beacon of the Moss was extinguished, so was someone's life. A young, fit, active life ... a jolly good replacement for the Man, if I say so myself.'

            'Who?' Moira felt her face-muscles tightening, also her stomach.

            'Why ... just like the original sacrifice ... a priest. The Triple Death - a blow, a slash - and a fall. And then gathered up and offered to the spirit of the Moss - our spirit. All square, m'dear. All square.'

            'The Reverend Joel Beard? You killed the Reverend Joel Beard?'

            'And consigned him to the Moss. Well, hell, sweetheart, don't sound so appalled. No friend of yours, was he? He struck you, word has it.'

            'I suspect he mistook me for your friend,' Moira said. She let her gaze settle on Therese. Worryingly young. Black hair, perhaps dyed, sullen mouth. And the cloak. Her cloak.

            'This is the wee slag, then, is it, John? Doesny look a lot like me. Did she wear a wig before she got hold of the real thing?'

            'She's angry enough, Moira,' Stanage said less cordially. 'Don't make it worse.'

            'She's angry? With me? Aw, Jesus, the poor wee thing, ma heart goes out. She's no' satisfied with ma hair now? Would she like to cut off ma leg? Would that make her happy, you think, John?'

            Therese hissed and uncoiled like a snake and took a step towards Moira. Stanage laid a cautionary hand on her arm. Emerging from his dark sleeve the hand looked as white as an evening glove.

            'This is futile,' Stanage said abruptly. 'Leave us, Tess. Would you mind awfully?'

            'I can take her,' Therese spat. 'She's old. Her sexuality's waning. She can't hold him. I can take him from her. Watch me.'

            'Tess, darling, no one is questioning your lubricious charms, but I suspect this is not about sex. Leave us.' Steel thread in his voice. 'Please?'