expanse of white forehead marked with greyish freckles, and the white hair ripples back from the forehead; not receding, it has always been that way. She ought to know him; he knows her.
And where she keeps the comb.
This person, unnoticed in the hubbub by everyone but her, is lifting the black guitar case from the steps of the dais and examining it to see how it opens. He looks at her, furiously impatient, and the air between them splinters like ice and when she tries to see into his eyes, and they are not there, only the black sockets in a face as white as any of the skulls.
Their eyes meet at last. His have projected into the sockets from somewhere. They are light grey eyes. And there's a whiteness around him, growing into arms like tree-branches above his head. No, not arms, not branches.
Antlers.
Moira shrieked, flinging the guitar away from her. It made a mangled minor chord as it rolled down the steps of the dais.
She threw herself after it, headlong into the glass-spattered Guinness-sodden tartan carpet, clawing at the pair of shiny, elegant evening shoes, the air at first full of swirling, unfocused energy.
And then, for a moment, everything was still.
Most of those in the room were still seated at their tables, with drinks in front of them, the men and women in their evening wear, white shirts and black bow-ties, jewellery and silk and satin. The American half out of his seat, dark Irish hair tumbling on to his forehead. The Earl on his feet; his expression… dismay turning to disgust; was this woman having a fit? In his castle?
Everybody shimmering with movement, but nobody going anywhere.
Projector-jam. Until the first skull fell. It was possibly the smallest of them, so comparatively insignificant that Moira wondered briefly why anyone would have admitted to having shot it, let alone wanted to display it. She watched it happen, saw the antlers just lean forward, as if it was bowing its head, and then the wooden shield it was mounted on splintered and the poor bleached exhibit crashed seven or eight feet on to a table, crystal glasses flying into the air around it.
'God almighty!' a man blurted.
The white, eyeless head toppled neatly from the table into the lap of a woman in a wine-coloured evening dress, the antlers suddenly seeming to be sprouting from her ample Celtic cleavage.
For a whole second, the woman just looked at it, as though it was some kind of novelty, like a big, fluffy bunny popped onto her knees by an admirer at a party. Her glossy red lips split apart into what appeared for an instant to be an expression of pure delight.
It was this older woman next to her, whose ornate, red-brown coiffure had been speared by an antler, she was the one who screamed first.
More of an escalating gurgle actually. Both women jerking to their feet in quaking revulsion, clutching at one another, chairs flying…
… as, with a series of sickening ripping sounds, several other skulls cracked themselves from the walls, all at once…
(Look!' Some guy grabbing the Earl by the shoulders, shaking him.)
… and began to descend in, like, slow motion, some so old they fell apart in the air and came down in pieces.
Moira's audience in cowering disarray. 'Stop this!' the Earl commanding irrationally, limbs jerking in spasms, semaphoring incomprehensible fear, like a spider caught in its own web.
'Stop it! Stop it at once!'
This tumultuous tending and creaking from all the walls. Even the great fire looking cowed, burning, back, low and smoky as though someone had thrown muffling peat at it.
Next to the fireplace, this severe and heavy lady – a matriarch of Welsh-language television, it was said – just sitting there blinking, confused because her spectacles had been torn off and then trodden on by a flailing bearded man, some distinguished professor of Celtic Studies, eyes full of broken glass, one cheek gashed by a blade of bone.
And, pulling her gaze away from this carnage, in the choking maw of the great fireplace Moira thought she saw a face… so grey it could only have been formed from smoke. The face swirled; two thrashing arms of smoke came out into the room, as if reaching for her.
Moira whispered faintly, 'Matt?' But it was smoke, only smoke.
The butler guy weaving about helplessly in the great doorway as the stag skulls fell and fell, this roaring, spitting avalanche of white bone and splattering glass, battered heads and scored skin, people yelping, moaning, hurling themselves under collapsing tables, craving shelter from the storm. She caught the black guitar case as it fell towards her. Caught it in her arms.
Come to mammy.
She sat bewildered on the bottom step of the dais, in the refrigerated air, in the absurdly shocking mess of glass and antlers.
I have to be leaving, she thought.
Hands on her shoulders. 'You OK? Moira, for Chrissake…?'
'Get the fuck off me!'
But it was only the American, Mr Semtex.
'Please… You OK? Here, let me take that…'
'No! Let it alone, will you?'
She saw the white-faced man on his knees, not six feet away. He was holding one of the skulls, a big skull, one antler snapped off halfway, ending in a savage point, a dagger of bone. There was blood on the point.
And blood welling slowly out of his left eye, blood and mucus, a black pool around the eye.
The other eye was very pale, grey going on pink. He was staring at her out of it.
Moira clutched the guitar case defiantly to her throbbing breast.
'Just hang on in there, pal,' the American said to the white-faced man. 'We're gonna get you a doctor.'
Ignoring the American, the man with the injured eye said (and later the American would swear to her that he hadn't heard this, that the guy was too messed up to speak at all)…
The man said, very calm, very urbane, 'Don't think, Miss Cairns, that this is anything but the beginning.'
CHAPTER VI
In Matt Castle's band, Willie Wagstaff had played various hand-drums – bongo-type things and what the Irish called the bodhran, although Matt would never call it that; to him it was all Pennine percussion.
This morning, without some kind of drum under his hands, Willie looked vaguely disabled, both sets of fingers tapping nervously at his knees, creating complex, silent rhythms.
Lottie smiled wanly down at him. They were sitting on wooden stools at either end of the kitchen stove, for warmth
'Can you finish it, Willie? Can it be done?'
Willie looked up at her through his lank, brown fringe, like a mouse emerging from a hole in the wall. Lukewarm autumn sunbeams danced with the dust in the big kitchen behind the public bar. Such a lot of dust. She'd been neglecting the cleaning, like everything else, since Matt had been bad. Now it was over. Dust to dust.
Willie said, 'We got two or three instrumental tracks down, y'know. The lament. It all got a bit, like… half- hearted, as you can imagine. Me and Eric, we could see it weren't going to get finished. Not wi' Matt, anyroad.'
'I want it finished,' Lottie said crisply. 'It was his last… I'm not going to use the word obsession, I've said it too much.' She hesitated. '… I'm not religious, Willie, you know that, not in any… any respect.'
Willie gave three or four nods, his chin keeping time with the fingers on his knees.
'But I just feel that he won't be at peace… that it won't be over… until that music's finished.'
'Aye.' Willie's fingers didn't stop. Nerves.
