thee to appear before me and to answer my questions…'
Air farting through the Pennine Pipes until they squeaked and heaved, In their wrapping of black hair with a single white streak.
'I conjure thee, Matthew, by the power of thine own base desires, to appear before me in a pleasant and human form and to present to me the spirit of thy father of the Moss…'
Slipping in and out of dream. Samhain, and they said the walls were thin as paper. He thought he saw a quiver on the yellow, peeling lips of his father's corpse.
'… I conjure thee.'
A man with a knife.
Nothing ornate or ceremonial. Just a cheap craft worker's knife with a red plastic handle.
One of the untouchables bending over Dic and huffing and panting.
'By the Highest Power and by the Angels of the Firmament…'
The numbing power of the drug fell away from Dic like an old raincoat, leaving him naked, all his nerves singing, his cheeks bulging like a trumpeter's with a vast scream taped into his face for ever.
'Mmmmmmm!' he screamed into the adhesive tape.
'… and by the Angels of the Deep and with the blood that was thy blood and shall be again, Matthew…'
The knife cut through the tourniquets at his wrists and Dic closed his eyes, feeling nothing in his numb, etiolated arms, and yet feeling the blood rise in fountains.
'I CONJURE THEE!'
CHAPTER II
'Hey… stop this bloody car… come on.'
Big, shambling guy Macbeth recognized as Stan, the bartender. But Stan wasn't interested in Macbeth.
'You're the copper, aren't you?'
'Happen,' Ashton said warily.
There was Stan and some of the other guys who'd been in the bar when Macbeth arrived, but not the kid who'd figured to punch him out. Also, there was Willie Wagstaff.. Macbeth leapt out, grabbed the little guy by the arm.
'Willie, hey, listen up. The body in the car… this was not Moira.'
'Oh,' said Willie; his mind was clearly elsewhere; he kept glancing over his shoulder towards the church and around the street. Stan was bawling into the car window at Ashton.
'Bloody hooligans. Fanatics. You're the police, get um out!'
'Willie, that means she's not dead, you hear me?'
'I'm only one policeman, sir, and I'm off duty.'
'You knew, Willie. You knew, goddamn it.'
'They don't know you're on your own,' Stan said. 'Supposed to be flaming Christians, should've heard the language. Just knock on t'door and tell um t'sling their hooks. What's the problem? We're getting wet.'
Macbeth said, 'Goddamn it, you know… Willie, where is she?
Gary Ashton, annoyed, was out of the car, slamming the door, holding both hands up. 'All right! Quieten down. What's so important?'
Macbeth backed out, looked around the small assembly. 'Cathy know about this?' Willie nodded urgently.
Eight or nine of them now, almost a mob. Macbeth said, 'Gary, there's a bunch of well-meaning but seriously misguided people in there. Take it from me, these guys aren't shitting they need to be got out.'
'And we need to get in,' Stan said soberly. 'Just don't want more trouble than we can handle.'
Ashton stood in the rain pulling on his jaw. 'OK,' he said eventually. 'If I can clear this church out for you, maybe you can do something for me afterwards, all right?'
Stan shrugged, causing his old-fashioned plastic raincoat to crackle. Willie said something about Mr Dawber, looking upset, his fingers compulsively chinking the coins in his pocket.
'And another thing,' Ashton said. 'I'm not a policeman. You've never seen a policeman here tonight. You got that?' Moira pulled on the navy blue duffle coat. 'Jesus, haven't worn one of these in years. This makes me a Mother?'
'Mother, maiden, hag,' Cathy said. 'It's all the same in Bridelow.'
'Just as well,' Moira said. 'I don't qualify as any of the above. Where are we going?'
Milly led her out into the street. 'Not far. Mind you don't drown in the gutter.'
Not far turned out to be Ma Wagstaff's little stone terraced cottage, its step awash but still gleaming white in the beam of the lamp Dic had given to Moira.
'Listen, I'm getting worried about Dic,' she'd said a few minutes earlier to Cathy.
'Me too,' Cathy said. 'But they couldn't kill him, could they? For the same reason they couldn't kill you. Surely?'
'No,' Moira had said dubiously. 'But sometimes you can do more harm to someone than killing them'd be, you know?'
Milly unlocked the front door and put on lights. Moira took in a tiny and ancient parlour with more bottles than a pharmacy. Or maybe this was a pharmacy. There was a light of sadness over the room.
'I don't know where to start,' Milly said.
'Well, we don't have much time. Where'd she keep her… you know, recipes and stuff?'
Milly smiled wryly. 'In her head.'
'Oh, shit.' Moira began to open cupboards in the side and found more bottles. There were a few dozen books; maybe there'd be papers stuffed inside one of them. 'What's upstairs?'
'Her bathroom. Her sewing room. Her bed.'
'Are we sure she copied it down?'
'I remember seeing a map, a plan, kind of. I know I did. Keeping Jack out, it wasn't something you went into lightly, you know.'
Moira felt a light breeze on one side of her face. It smelt vaguely of sage.
'Something that hadn't been done for centuries,' Milly said. 'And it had to be exact. I don't know what to say, maybe if…'
Moira turned very casually around and looked back through the doorway into the hall.
Where she saw a little woman in misty shades of grey and sepia, a little woman who might have been formed – had it been daylight, had there been sun – by the coalescence of dustmotes.
The little woman slowly shook her head.
And disappeared.
Moira turned back into the room. 'It's not here,' she said softly. 'Ma Wagstaff had no map.' Chris picked up the pink T-shirt and held it up in front of him and started to laugh.
Across the front of the T-shirt was inscribed, THANK GOD FOR JESUS.
He looked at it for long seconds. It made no sense to him. No sense at all any more. It was gaudy. It was trite. It was meaningless. The girl, who was called Claudette, looked a whole lot better without it, curled up asleep under the pulpit draped in velvet curtains torn down from the vestry.
Nice tits, Chris remembered. Paused. Wasn't that a pretty bloody sinful thing to contemplate in the House of God?
Yeah, well…
She'd be pretty cold, though, Claudette, when she awoke. It was getting bitter in here. Those amber-tinted lights created a completely false impression of warmth, making the pillars seem mellow.
The communion wine had helped a bit. Gerry, the solicitor from Rotherham, had found two bottles in the vestry. Well, why not? It was a so-called pagan place, wasn't it? It wasn't a sin to drink heathen wine.
Sin. Chris shook his head. So trite.
Only problem was, after that wine, he wanted a pee.
