his life, is also reaching out for you. Those arms of sick smoke coiling out of the baronial fireplace.
If Stanage gets access to your soul, to the core of Matt's craving…
… then Stanage will have a link with Matt that extends beyond death.
Stanage will have a hold on Matt's spirit.
With the comb and the cloak and the…
'Long-haired girls. Always The long, dark hair.'
Dic.
'After a charity gig. She was waiting for him in the car park. About twenty-one, twenty-two. About my age. Long, dark hair.'
The craving kept alive in the darkness of shop-doorways and the backs of vans.
And manipulated. And moulded and twisted.
Stanage has recreated me as spirit-bait for Matt. He's taken my soul and thrown away the husk.
But why, Moira wondered, so physically, achingly tired now, enclosed in the roots of a malformed oak tree, an electric lamp on her lap, why can I think so well? Why can I see all this so clearly, unless that's to be my final torture?
That and a dawning, unquenchable hatred for Matt Castle. Frank made his way, quietly as his shoes would allow, up the narrow iron stairs, past the deep fermenting-tanks. Up another flight, past the coppers. It were bloody dark, but Frank had been up here that many thousand times it didn't matter. And the smell, the lovely, familiar smell. Better than sight, that smell. Better than women.
Halfway up the third flight leading to the mash tuns, Frank choked back what he thought was going to be a hiccup but turned out to be a sob. He stopped in a moment of despair. How was he going to live the rest of his life without this wondrous rich, stale, sour, soggy aroma? How was he going to survive?
He clambered to the top, staggered out on to the deck clutching for support at the thick copper pipe connecting the malt mill to the mash, the big Luna around him, his old mates. Get um out, a voice was rasping in his gut. Gannons. Get the bastards out. Get the brewery back for Bridelow.
He leaned, panting, over the side of one of the tuns and his breath echoed in its empty vastness.
One more flight. He went three-quarters way up to a door that'd always been kept locked for safety's sake for as long as he'd worked there.
Voices behind it.
'… not terribly subtle. What time is it?'
'Coming up to eleven-fifteen.'
'No time for that, then. Really, I' – a light laugh, half-exasperated – 'just can't get over what you've done. I really didn't think you were that clever. Now, look. You know, presumably, that we mustn't actually kill you. Not yet, anyway.'
'Don't care. Do what you want. You're just a slag. Couldn't have a…'
A crash. A moan. A rolling on floorboards.
All right, come on, pick him up. Sit him next to his dear daddy. Let him have a good whiff. Bind his arms very firmly, palms up, OK? And at approximately ten minutes to twelve… are you listening? At ten minutes to twelve, you can open his wrists.'
Frank was in a fog. He heard it all but couldn't make sense of the words and some kept repeating on him.
Kill… whiff… palms up… open his wrists.
It was a woman's voice, not a local accent. More words rambled down the steps, Frank's brain tripping over them, sometimes he seemed to hear the key words before they joined actual sentences.
Trickle.
'Don't go mad. Just want a trickle at first. Steady plop, plop, plop. We'll be well into it by then. Once you get the trickle going, you come back and join us. Very quietly. You say nothing.'
Blood to blood.
'What if he screams?'
'He won't. If he does, you can cut another vein. Slow release is best. I mean, I was going to do this anyway; this way we get an instant connection, blood to blood.' blood to…
'Oh, yeah? And who would it have been if this one hadn't suddenly become available?'
… blood?
'Oh. Right.'
Frank's hands were sticky on the iron stair-rail. Brain couldn't handle it. Past his bedtime. Turn back, go home, sleep it off, eh? But there was a voice he recognized, the voice that said it didn't care, the voice that called the female voice a slag. The voice of the owner of the wrists which would be opened at precisely ten to twelve, but just a trickle unless it screamed.
Frank screamed. Frank was screaming now.
As all the lights went on, Frank screamed, 'Dic!' as a figure shimmered in the doorway at the top of the steps and a new smell mingled with the malted air, a smell just as warm, just as rich, just as moist, but…
The new smell went up Young Frank's nose and forced his mouth wide open like a bucket. He belched up half a gallon of beer and bile, which spouted up in a great brown arc and then slapped down on the metal steps.
'Manifold. You dirty, uncouth lout. Should have guessed.'
Frank looked up into supercilious, wrinkling nostrils.
He began dumbly to move up the steps, his shoes skidding on his own vomit, his hands trying to make fists, his chest locked tight with hatred, his drink-rubbery lips trying to shape a word which eventually came out like another gob of harsh sick.
'…Horridge…'
Gonna have you, said the rough voice in Frank's gut. This time gonna take you apart, you smarmy twat.
He slipped, and his hands splashed on the steps.
Shaw Horridge stood quite relaxed in the doorway, a shred of a smile on his lips. 'You are an absolute oaf, Manifold.'
Frank's fists turned into claws and he took what he imagined to be a great leap up the final three iron steps towards Horridge's throat.
Horridge didn't move at all until Frank's head was on a level with the top of the stairs, at which stage a foot went almost idly back. And then – momentarily – on top of mellow aroma of malt, the sour stench of vomit and the sweet-rancid essence of rotting flesh, Frank experienced the absurdly pure tang of boot-polish as Shaw's shoe smashed through his teeth and was wedged for a second in his gullet.
Choked, retching, he threw up his arms to grab the foot, but the foot was… receding, just like the rest of Shaw Horridge.
Young Frank realized he was flying slowly and almost blissfully backwards.
It seemed a long time until he thought he heard a metallic ching as his head connected with something solid (metal everywhere in a brewery) and a dull, fractured crump somewhere inside his brains, wherever they might be splattered.
CHAPTER V
There was a rustling over the tumbling water noise; this was what awoke her (how could she have slept, how could she?) And half a second later there was a light in her eyes and people moving behind it.
Two of them.
Moira reared up, back to the tree, a spitting cat. 'Come on. Come on, then…'
Hands curling into claws. Pray that one is Stanage.
Because she would die before they'd take her back. She'd die raking his face.
One of them gasped.
The other said, 'By 'eck.' He'd heard it before, so it was no big surprise. The hackneyed country and western, with chorus.
