He cried, despising himself for being a pussy even as the tears fell.
When he heard someone moving through the bushes outside, he picked up half a brick and got ready to go down fighting – but at the sight of the thing that appeared in the doorway he dropped it and stared, slack-mouthed.
It looked like the result of someone trying to do a jigsaw puzzle of a naked man, but with some of the parts jammed in upside down or back to front or missing, replaced by crude home-made pieces, or even pieces from a different puzzle altogether – one of an animal, perhaps, with coarse hair and tusks. It looked like a child had tried to make a man out of Play-Doh while blindfolded. It looked like the stone carving of a giant lost in the desert for a thousand years, sandblasted by storms until parts of it were blurred smooth or destroyed. It looked like all of these to some degree, except that none of them fixed him with its eyes like this, or spoke.
‘I smelled you,’ it said, and its voice too was only a rough approximation of human words. There were fragments of squeals and echoes of howls in it. ‘You have my flesh.’
‘Who… what the fuck are you?’
‘I am…’ It paused, as if the question had never occurred to it before. ‘Unfinished. She brought me back too soon. You’re going to finish the job properly.’
It came fully inside and slumped down to sit against the wall opposite him. It – he – looked exhausted, and no wonder if he’d travelled from Dodbury in that state. There was something porcine about the shape of his face that reminded Matt of Gar, and of the skull in the abattoir shrine.
‘Are you… are you Moccus?’ he whispered.
The figure considered this. ‘I would have been, once,’ he decided. ‘Once I was also a man who was murdered just for trying to keep his wife in line. When I’ve reclaimed all that belongs to me, I’ll know. What’s your name?’
‘Matt. Matthew. Hewitson. Sir. My lord, I mean.’
‘Well, which is it?’
‘Er, Matt, I suppose.’
Moccus tipped his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and sighed. ‘Matt, you are the Farrow now. Serve me and you will be rewarded.’ He cracked an eyelid and glared, and even that much was enough to make Matt squirm. ‘Betray me and I’ll take what I need from you instead. You may be the Farrow, but you could very easily become the Herd. Don’t forget that.’
‘I won’t. Sir.’
‘Good.’ The eye closed, and Matt was released. ‘And now you’re thinking, what kind of a threat is that?’ Moccus murmured. ‘Look at how sick and frail he is. He can barely stand.’
‘No, honestly, I’m not.’
‘Then you’re either an idiot or a liar, because you should be. Give me your hand.’
Matt hesitated.
‘I’m not asking you to cut the damned thing off!’ Moccus snapped. ‘Give me your hand!’
Matt complied. The unfinished man’s flesh felt cold and clammy, and his fingers gripped Matt’s hand weakly, but then Matt was running through a forest of trees the size of cathedral columns, sprinting at breakneck speed on legs that were like tree trunks themselves, his bare feet sending clods of earth and leaf mould flying, his lungs pumping like forge bellows, and his tusks were like sabres in his mouth. The small creatures of the forest fled before him, but one especially trailed a scent-ribbon of terror that maddened him with the desire to see it split open and bleeding at his feet, and he laughed at the joy of it, and his laughter was a boar’s holler that shook the earth. Then it was gone and he was just Matt again, shivering and gasping like a junkie. It was like what Everett had given him, but the difference was like the difference between Red Bull and cocaine.
‘Do you want that?’ asked Moccus.
‘Yes! Oh, fuck yes!’
Moccus grunted with satisfaction. ‘Then you know what to do,’ he replied. ‘Protect me. Serve me.’ He looked around at the derelict pump house. ‘This is a good place,’ he said. ‘It will do for the moment, but we can’t stay here. I can’t wait weeks for the next tusk moon here. The police will find us long before that.’
‘I don’t know where else to go,’ Matt admitted.
‘I do,’ said Moccus. ‘Swinley. The Place of the Swine. Where they murdered me, over and over again. Where my children languish, hiding in the woods like vermin instead of the hunters that their blood demands they be. My blood. Matthew, take me to my children. I will place you at their head, and I will set you to eat the world.’
PART FIVE
HARVEST THE CROP
1
INTERVIEW
TRANSCRIPT OF VIDEO INTERVIEW WITH SUSPECT
identified as Ardwyn Hughes.
Date: 23/06/2020
Duration: 5:41
Location: Rugeley Police Station, Anson St, Rugeley, Staffs.
Conducted by Police Sergeant Praveen Kaur.
* * *
In the video, Ardwyn Hughes sits at a police interview table on her own, having declined the services of a barrister. She is wearing jeans and a violet blouse with a lace-up neck, from which the laces have been removed, so that it opens quite a way down her chest, a fact which does not go unremarked by the tens of thousands of male viewers who will subsequently comment on it when the video is eventually leaked. Across from her are two police officers – one male, one female. The female officer who conducts the interview has two small strips of wound tape above
