To Dream of the Dead

‘I’m guessing this isn’t the first time,’ Merrily said. ‘Merrily…’ Stooke didn’t look at her ‘… while you’re not quite the last person I’d want to talk to at the moment…’

‘It’s actually not that uncommon — I mean denial. Even religious people often go that way because they don’t think it’s—’

‘No.’

‘No what?’

‘No basis for discussion here.’

‘You were keen enough to question me the other day.’

‘Because I’m a journalist, and you’re… someone with an axe to grind.’

Merrily peered down Church Street. Couldn’t see the water at the bottom, not from here at night, but you could sense it somehow, and you knew it would be higher again tonight. She tried again.

‘Not Lenni, you said. You didn’t think Lenni had seen it, just you.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. Go back and listen to your boyfriend.’

‘You do, though, Elliot. You do know what I’m talking about.’

‘Look.’ He turned at last to face her, the Devil’s spin doctor haloed in amber. ‘I made it up. My wife wanted you to get that woman off our backs. Didn’t bother me, personally. And you… you have to keep on fooling yourself to justify the absurdity of your job.’

‘The other night, you described a warrior-figure with a short cloak that you’d seen in the field, near the orchard. As if it was somebody from Shirley’s church, but I don’t think anybody from Shirley’s church has been here, ever. I think she’s keeping you for herself. Whether she’s been in contact with Ellis in America and he’s manipulating her, the way he always could with women…’

She thought about it. It was the way Ellis would work, grooming Shirley by email, making her feel important, chosen. Getting inside her mind, the way he used to use a crucifix… and she must keep it to herself.

‘Lucy Devenish,’ Merrily said. ‘When the picture of Lucy faded up on the screen… Lucy, in her poncho, always reminded me of an old Red Indian warrior.’

‘You’re mad, Merrily. You’re as mad as any of them. I find that very disappointing.’

‘Lucy’s face, whether or not it moved, as some people seemed to think… Well, the important thing for me was your face. That look of shocked recognition followed by this… not quite hunted, more something… catching up with you. Again.’

He hissed in contempt and half turned away, a stocky, irritated man in a black fleece. Merrily closed her eyes for a moment.

‘I don’t think that was the first time. Dreams, premonitions, figures in the bedroom when you were a kid? Unpleasant? Scary? And always the fear of madness. Then, when you’re grown up and it’s still happening, you think, sod this, I’m going to turn and fight it, I’m going to kill it. Stamp it into the ground.’

He said nothing, didn’t move.

‘And then, just when you think you’ve kicked it to death, there it is again, right in front of you and you’re out of there. Out… here.’

‘I walked out,’ Stooke said, ‘because I’d had a row with my wife, who’d dragged me here knowing I’m not a particular lover of this kind of music. I walked out because I couldn’t bear to spend any more time in the middle of all those wispy New Age clowns with their oh-so-serious drivel about the female principle in nature. I told my wife I’d walk home and she could come back when she liked. Now go back into the pub, you’ll catch cold.’

‘If you’d come out with the intention of walking over half a mile home, you’d have brought a coat, an umbrella…’

‘I was going back to get them.’

‘Your wife… as good as told me you were a hack, in it for the money. I think it’s much more complex than that. Sure, you were in a business full of cynics, which must’ve helped, not as if you were sailing against a tide…’

‘How can I get rid of you, Merrily?’

‘You can tell me the truth.’

From somewhere came ribbons of laughter. There were lights in most of the houses, a splash of fluorescent white from the glass door of the Eight Till Late.

‘These things,’ Stooke said. ‘Anomalous phenomena. All down to brain-chemicals.’

‘Sure. To an extent.’

‘Let’s say a glimpse of an old woman did cause some aberration. False memory, deja vu. Where part of your brain thinks you’ve seen something before but in fact you haven’t.’

Merrily laughed.

‘But above all…’ Stooke spun at her, throwing out a sudden white smile. ‘Above all, it in no way suggests a god. Above all, it does not imply that’.

Merrily caught a squeal from the bottom of the street.

‘You know that,’ Stooke said. ‘You spend time — waste your life, some of us might say — ministering to people who… their bulbs blow, ornaments fall off their shelves. It doesn’t mean anything. What does that say about divine purpose? It’s random. It’s anomalies… blips. Pointless. It means nothing, Merrily.’

‘You’re right.’ She watched the amber lights bobbing in the waterlogged cobbles below the steps of the market hall. ‘In the end, we all still face the chasm. No matter what we’ve seen or think we’ve seen, that leap of faith is still required. The admission of helplessness which, in the end, makes us all equal… you and me and Einstein and Dawkins. Charles Darwin, Lucy Devenish…’

‘Bullshit.’

Stooke was shaking his head as another cry came echoing up Church Street. A cry conveying outrage, disgust. More lights were coming on in houses on both sides of the street, upstairs and downstairs, outshining the sprinkling of coloured Christmas lights, like they were sending signals to each other. Signals of distress.

‘I think someone’s in trouble, Elliot.’

‘Not me,’ Stooke said.

‘No, I mean—’

‘The flood.’ He sighed. ‘I’m tired of the very word.’

‘Could be into the houses. We’d better get help.’

‘All right,’ Stooke said. ‘You go back to the pub and fetch some people. I’ll go down there and see what I can do.’

‘Be careful, it’s going to be very deep now.’

‘I won’t do anything stupid.’ He walked out of the market hall, turning to face her with another glowing smile. ‘Doesn’t mean we’re selfish, you know. Doesn’t mean we don’t care. All this talk of Christian charity, as if you’ve cornered the market. That really makes me sick.’

‘I’ll catch up with you,’ Merrily said.

Jane burst back into the lounge in the slipstream of her fury. Had to get this out, now: the hypocrisy, the treachery.

She stood in the doorway, laughter blossoming around her in an atmosphere mellow with lamplight and the haze of beer and spirits.

Needed Mum, and there was no sign of her. Lol would know what to do, but Lol was busy. Busy winning. No space any more between him and his audience. No divide either between the locals and the Serpent people who’d come in the coach from Hereford.

Ken Williams, the farmer who’d let Gomer build the new riverbank on his land, stood up in the middle of the floor, pint glass in one hand.

‘Tell you what, boy,’ he said seriously to Lol, ‘you’re wasted on plant hire.’

Even Jane smiled for a moment. Somebody was asking Lol why he hadn’t written a song about the Dinedor Serpent. Jane spotted Eirion, with his sound mixer and his remote control for the video and began to squeeze through the crowd. She saw Lol pausing to think for a moment before pulling the new Boswell on to his knee and