'Aye, I can!' Benjie shouted, bursting into the kitchen, already half-dressed, dragging on his wellies. 'I can, Uncle Willie, honest.'
'Get back to bed, you little monkey, if I've told you once tonight, I've…'
'Lay off, eh, Sal. We need everybody we can get.'
'Is this serious, Willie? I mean, really?'
Willie said nothing.
'What's in that briefcase?'
'This and that.'
'Uncle Willie,' said Benjie, 'T'Chief's been howling.'
'They're all howling tonight, Benj.'
'And t'dragon. T'dragon growed, Uncle Willie. T'dragon's growed.' When Milly caught Cathy's eye over the heads of the assembled Mothers they exchanged a look which said, this is hopeless.
Altogether there were seven of them squeezed into Ma's parlour, standing room only – although at least a couple were not too good on their pins and needed chairs.
'Susan!' Milly cried. 'Where's Susan?'
'Staying in with the little lad,' Ethel, Susan's mum, told her. 'Frank's not back. Likely on a bender. She won't leave the little lad on his own on a night like this.'
'Wonderful!' Cathy moaned. 'Hang on, what about Dee from the chippy? Needs must, Ethel.'
'She's had a shock, what with Maurice, she won't even answer the door.'
'Well, get somebody to bloody break it down. And if Susan's got to bring the kid along, do it, though I'd rather not. That'll be nine. Willie! How's it going? Any luck?'
'We found it, I think.' Willie came in clutching Mr Dawber's old briefcase. 'Here, make a bit of space on t'table.'
'How is he?'
'He's resting. Had a bit of a do wi' Shaw Horridge.' Willie was spreading out sheets of foolscap paper. 'Thank God for Mr Dawber, I say. Anything to do with Bridelow he collects. Whipped it off Ma 'fore she could put it back of t'fire.'
'Looks complicated.'
'It's not as bad as it looks. They're all numbered, see, and they join up, so we've got a complete map of t'village wi' all the key boundary points marked. Ma did um all barefoot. But that were summer. What you want is one woman at each, and each to take a new stone. Alf's got um ready for consecration, like, end of his yard.'
'How big are they, these stones?'
'Size of a brick, maybe half a brick. Some of um are bricks, come to think of it. Ma used a wheelbarrow.'
'We'll never do it,' Milly said in despair. 'Are you proposing to send old Sarah out to the top of Church Field with half a brick?'
'She could do one of the closer ones,' said Cathy. 'If you or I take the Holy Well…'
'We still haven't got enough.' Milly lowered her voice. 'And what kind of commitment we'll get out of half this lot I don't know. Ma was right. We've been hopelessly complacent. We let things slide. We haven't got a chance.'
'There's always a chance,' Cathy said, and even Willie thought her voice was starting to sound a bit frail. She was overtired, lumpy bags under her eyes, thin hair in rat's tails.
'What?' said Milly, approaching hysteria – and Willie had never seen that before. 'Against a feller who's spent half a lifetime stoking up his evil? Against that hideous girl? Against all them practising satanists?'
'They're idiots,' Cathy said. 'Any idiot can be a satanist.'
'Aye,' said Milly, 'and any idiot can make it work if they've got nowt to lose.'
'All right.' Cathy turned to Willie. 'How's Alf getting on?'
'Moaning,' Willie said. 'Reckons cement won't hang together wi' all the rain. Stan Burrows and them've fixed up a sort of a shelter for him. I told him, I says, you can do it again proper sometime, Alf, just make sure it sticks up tonight. I called in at Sal's, too, and young Benjie'll be along wi' a pile of stuff for a new cross. Reckon you can fettle it?'
'Aye,' said Milly. 'I suppose I can.'
'Don't you start losing heart, lass. Hey, our Sal's on her way too, what about that?'
'Never!' said Cathy. 'Ceramic hob on the blink, is it?'
'I'm persuasive, me, when I put me mind to it.'
'That'll make it ten, then,' Cathy said. 'Still, not enough. But we're getting there. Please, Milly, please don't go negative on me now.' Macbeth closed the door behind him, as if to prove he wasn't really a wimp and could handle this alone, and he didn't come out for a long time, maybe half a minute, and there was no sound from him either. And Moira panicked. I was wrong. They're all there. They're waiting for us.
'Moira,' he called out, more than a wee bit hoarse, just at the point when she was about to start screaming. 'I think I need some help.'
At the foot of the final stairway, the air was really sour, full of beer and vomit, blood and death. She took a breath of it, anyway. She was – face it – more scared than he was, and whenever she was really scared, she went brittle and hard, surface-cynical. A shell no thicker than a ladybird's.
She wanted a cigarette. She wanted a drink.
She wanted out of here.
'Hold your nose,' Macbeth advised, opening the door. He sounded calm. Too calm. He was going to pass out on her any second.
And of course she didn't hold her damn nose, did she, and the stench of corrupted flesh nearly drove her back down the steps.
'I covered that one over,' Macbeth said. 'Couldn't face it.'
A circle within a circle. Candles burned down to stubs, not much more than the flames left, and all the rearing shadows they were throwing.
'Watch where you're walking,' Macbeth said.
The attic light was brown and bleary with sweat, grease, blood. Several chairs inside the circle. Two of them occupied.
One was a muffled hump beneath old sacking. 'All I could find,' Macbeth said. 'I don't think you should uncover it. I don't think anybody should. Not ever.'
A yellow hand poked out of the sacking.
She stared at it, trying to imagine the yellow fingers stopping up the airholes on the Pennine Pipes.
'It's this one,' Macbeth said behind her. 'Moira? Please?'
Moira turned and took a step forward and her foot squelched in it.
Congealing blood. Bucketsful. You don't have to do anything like that,' Cathy said. 'It's not as if I'm asking you to bare your breasts or have sex with anyone under a full moon or swear eternal allegiance to the Goddess.'
'Pity,' said the blonde one, trying, and failing, to hold her cigarette steady.
'All you have to do,' Cathy said, 'is believe in it. Just for as long as you're taking part.'
'I don't, though, luv,' Lottie Castle said. 'And I can't start now.'
However, Cathy noticed, she couldn't stop herself looking over their shoulders towards what was probably the gas-mantle protruding from the side of the bar.
Cathy had heard all about the gas-mantle, from the policeman, Ashton, who was standing by the door at this moment, Observing but keeping out of it because – as he'd pointed out, there was no evidence of the breaking of laws, except for natural ones.
'Yes, you do,' Chrissie said. 'You've always believed in it. That's been half the problem.'
'And how the hell would you know that?'
'Oh, come on. The last couple of hours I've probably learned more about you than anybody in this village. And you know more about me than I'd like to have spread around.'
'Yes,' said Lottie. 'I suppose so. And how do you come into this, luv? Always struck me as an intelligent sort of girl, university education. Oxford, isn't it?'
'That's right, Mrs Castle, Oxford.'
'No polite names tonight. It's Lottie.'
