Therese gathered up her cloak and left without another word. Stanage closed the door and barred it. Moira instinctively moved into a corner of the ruptured settee, clutching the electric lamp to her breast.
'Right. Bitch.' Obviously a man who could shed his charm like an overcoat that'd become too heavy. She became aware of a scar about an inch long under his right eye, a souvenir from Scotland.
And he was aware she was looking at it.
The barn seemed to shift on its foundations, and there was a crunch and a series of flat bangs. She didn't let her eyes leave him; she knew what it was: books falling over as a shelf collapsed. The shelves were all makeshift, held up by bricks.
Neither of them had moved.
'Don't make me angry,' Stanage said.
'We seem to be a little short of bones in here,' Moira said. 'That affect your performance, does it? Books just don't respond so effectively. Maybe you just don't have that same affinity. I borrowed one of yours from ma wee nephew one time. Thought it was really crap, John. Lacked authenticity, you know?'
John Peveril Stanage was tightening up inside, she could tell that, could feel the contractions in the air. Mammy, help me. Mammy, wherever you are, I'm in really heavy shit here, you know?
'You want me to sing to you, John? Would that help your concentration?'
She began to sing, very softly.
...for the night is growing older
and you feel it at your shoulder ...
She could feel Matt Castle at her shoulder, a wedge of cold energy.
And more.
'Shut up,' Stanage said.
Could smell the peat in him now.
Pulling the blue plastic lamp between her breasts until it hurt. Feeling the shadow behind her, huge and dense and pungent with black peat. Don't turn around. Don't look at him.
But John Peveril Stanage was looking. Stanage was transfixed.
All at once there was complete quiet.
The rain,' Macbeth said. 'The rain stopped.'
Damn futile observation; everybody here could tell the rain had stopped.
He found he was in the middle of a crowd under the smiling snatch people called Our Sheila; been so busy watching the weird lights on the Moss he hadn't noticed the Mothers returning. Without their stones.
One of them standing next to him, shaking out her hair. 'Where's Moira?' It was Milly.
'She's not with you?' Cold panic grabbed his gut. 'You're telling me you haven't seen her?'
'We couldn't wait for her. We had thirteen stones to put down. Cathy's had to take two.' Milly glanced around. 'Cathy not back yet?'
'Listen ...' Macbeth grabbed her shoulders. 'Moira told Dic she'd gone to ... meet the Man. I figured that meant she was part of your operation.'
Milly shook her head. 'I'd be terrified to meet the Man. I don't know, Mungo. I really don't know what she meant. I'm sorry.'
'You all right?' Willie demanded.
'Tired. Exhausted. We've done all we can. Willie. That's the most I can say. I doubt it'll be enough.'
'Oh.' Mr Dawber, looking out across the Moss. 'Oh, good God.'
In the centre of rainless stillness, there came a noise overhead like deep, bass thunder. Like the exploding of the night. Like the splitting of the sky.
And they all saw it.
The reason they all saw it was that Bridelow Moss was suddenly lit up like a football ground.
The Beacon of the Moss was back, not blue this time but ice-white and a thousand times more powerful.
'It's Alf s arc light,' some woman explained. 'Knew he'd have it fixed before long. What was that b ... ? Oh, Mother. Oh, Mother, help us! What's that?'
At first, Macbeth was simply not able to believe it. There was no precedent. It was outside the sphere of his knowledge.
First thing he saw, snagged in the floodlight, was the malformed tree with branches like horns. The horns of a stag-beetle, he thought now. Because an insect was what the tree resembled.
Or a bunch of brittle twigs.
Insignificant compared with what was growing out of the Moss, beyond, behind and far, far above it.
It was happening on the edge of the light, at what was surely the highest point of the Moss. Macbeth thought of a mushroom cloud. He thought of Hiroshima. He thought of Nagasaki. He thought in images on cracked film in black and white.
He heard shrill screams from the Moss and he thought, Shit, it's the end of the goddamn world.
Mushroom was wrong. More like a dense bunch of flowers. Or a cauliflower. A gigantic, obscene black cauliflower burgeoning monstrously from the bog.
The silent air was dank with a smell like the grave.
And, up close, the sour smell of primitive, bowel-melting fear.
'What is it?' Milly screeched. 'What is it, Mr Dawber?'
'It can't be ...'
'What? What?'
People clutching at one another.
Ernie Dawber said hollowly, 'It's burst."
Macbeth just stood there watching the liquid vegetable form in a kind of slow motion.
'The bog's burst,' Ernie Dawber cried out, aghast. 'It's bloody burst! Everybody ... into the church! Fast!'
'Where's Cathy?' Milly shrieked above the tumult of rising panic. 'She went down to take the last stone.'
'Where? Where to?'
'To the pub. The back wall. Under the old foundation stone. It's the last one'
As the air suited to thicken, Macbeth began to run, down through the graveyard towards the street, and by the time his feet hit the cobbles, a wall of cold, black, liquid peat was thundering into the village like volcanic lava.
'What have you done?'
'I obviously have an affinity ...' John Peveril Stanage grinned, '... with the Moss.'
'You are a fucking insane man.'
'What is sanity?' Stanage said, as the high windows blew out and the whole roof of the barn was smashed down by the blackest of nights.
From Dawber's Book of Bridelow.
THE BOG BURST
The scale and severity of the Bridelow Bog Burst has caused widespread shock and disbelief, although it was not without precedent.