December (96 page)

      
Which means the mist is thinning. Maybe.
      
Or maybe that his eyes have
adjusted.
      
But this isn't the main subject for
debate right now.
      
The knocking is.

      
The bumping, a throbbing from somewhere. It goes on, it gets
louder. It's inside his head, but it's also ... out there. Out here. Within the
boundaries of his world.

      
Simon stands up.

      
The whispers and the sniggers, from earlier, were in the air; they
had no substance, aural will-o'-the-wisps. But this is a sound he hears. He
feels
it, like the beating of his own heart.

      
The stone floor is maybe twenty-five feet across, the spiral
stairs emerging about fifteen feet from where Simon was sitting, his back to
the highest part of the wall, the part least likely to collapse and leave him

      
flying

      
like Isabel and her lover.

      
The mist winds around him, like a gauze bandage. The noise
comes out of the mist, and Simon takes a couple of steps forward. And stops.

      
A black figure wobbles in front of him. Not a shadow. Quite
solid. A small, dumpy figure, pear-shaped, throbbing and oscillating.

      
It's the guitar case.
      
Standing on end.

      
Like a small sarcophagus, a child's coffin, wobbling in the grey
vapour. Was this how he left it? A black moulding of fleecy-lined reinforced
leather-effect plastic, perhaps four feet tall, standing on end?

      
No, he laid it flat. It was not on end. And there was no noise
inside it. No rapping. No rattling. No insistent
let-me-out
clamour.

      
He wants to reach out and simply push the case over. But guesses
that if he does this, it will burst open with an awful gasping, farting sound,
and the contents - the grit and the dirt, the pieces of Aelwyn's skull smudged
with his brains - will be exposed to the mist and whatever wants to come and
pick at them.

      
Leave it. That's what it wants. It wants him to push it over.

      
It's a trick.
      
Simon?

      
I can't hear anything.
      
Come
on, pal.

      
The guitar case sways. Its front swells and bulges out and
then contracts. He can almost see the indented maker's name, C. F. Martin,
warped and distended. Hears the plastic cracking.

      
The case is trying to breathe.

      
Come on, pal, it's hot
in here.

      
'I can't hear you.'

      
Damn, he said that aloud. Never let them know. Never speak to
them.

      
He puts a hand up to the handkerchief he's tied around his
face to staunch the blood, where Sile slashed him. Still there.

      
A peal of convulsive, cackling laughter is funnelled through
the tower, whorls of mist shivering like huge shoulders heaving with shared
merriment, while the black guitar case rocks and wobbles in giddy glee.

      
You want to. You want to
let me out.
      
He shakes his head, so weary.
      
You
want to let it all out.
      
'Leave me alone. Piss off.'
      
Shit!

      
hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
      
He covers his ears with both hands,
rocking his head.
      
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
      
Simon cowers back into his corner
of the tower. Never react, never scream at it, never curse ... never leave
yourself open to negative emotions.

      
Think beautiful thoughts.

      
Oh, don't be so f—

      
No!

      
No impurity. You did it once.

      
Just don't fall asleep. Stay cool. Stay cold.

      
Simon lies on his back, a finger jammed in each ear, staring
up into where the sky used to be. It is getting lighter, surely, the mist above
him no longer pea-soup thick, more like mushroom soup. It won't be long, it can't
be long now, and when the morning comes he'll open the case and give up the
spirits of Aelwyn and Dave to the light.

      
Please, God.

Eddie takes out his
handkerchief, shakes it and wraps the glasses in it, placing the bundle in the inside
pocket of his overcoat.

      
He knows whose glasses they are. But they can't be. Unless
Meryl lost all sense of direction in the mist and ended up here.

      
This is his last hope, that theirs was the travelling light

      
He wonders whether he should call out.
Meryl.
      
But if it isn't her, if it's
somebody else he'll feel ... well, stupid.

      
Stupid. A better word, this is, than bloody terrified. Eddie shields
his Maglite with a hand, pointing the beam down at the narrowing path from which
stones bulge like sores and blisters.

      
The path does not curve into the great rock, but slightly above
it. To get to the rock, you have to leave the path, which is risky enough by
day, risky enough on a
nice
day.

      
Too risky for an old, retired man.

      
He takes the path curving around and above the cleft. Got to
watch it here; there's no fence; one slip and you're down twenty feet to the
rock; come off the rock and it's a hundred feet into the churchyard. The cleft.
He's often wondered how it was created. An entirely natural feature, obviously;
would take two hundred men with stone chisels about fifty years to carve it out.
No, volcanic activity, this is.

      
And yet it's known - not far and wide, exactly, but certainly
hereabouts - as an observation point for the Skirrid, perfectly aligned with
the cleft. Take half a dozen steps either way and the holy mountain disappears.
      
Not a problem on a misty night.

      
This, however, this steep, curving footpath, is the most perfect
observation point for the cleft itself. Eddie directs his Maglite to the start
of the channel, on the edge of the coniferous woods and follows it as it widens
and deepens into an enormous V.

      
Wherein lies ...
      
Jesus
God!

      
Eddie rocks on the path, has to clutch at the bushes to prevent
himself losing his footing.

      
About fifteen feet below him, in the deepest part of the
cleft, lies a small body.

      
Eddie panics. He pockets his torch and comes down the path
backwards, on all fours, his feet scrabbling for purchase on the path, sending
small rocks and pebbles skittering into space, hearing them bounce from the
great clefted rock of Ystrad Ddu.
      
Not standing up until he reaches
the wider area from which the rock can be reached.

      
Leaving the path behind, he hurries across the scrub with its
spiky tufts of moorgrass hard with frost and hauls himself onto the rock, a
bare and icy moonscape in the torch beam. Not much breath left, but he must reach
her before he stops because if he stops, if he allows himself even four seconds
to fill and empty his lungs, it's going to take him
forever
to get moving again.

      
An old man, he is. Too old for this. He feels his face
suffused with blood but his actual head light as mist as he scrambles down into
the cleft and slips, and his torch rolls out of his hand.

      
And someone else picks it up.

      
'Providence, eh?' A man says, in a friendly Northern voice.
      
He stands in Eddie's path, astride
the cleft, and kicks him in the face when he tries to get up.

Simon's eyes jerk open.
      
Mustn't sleep!

      
How could he possibly have almost fallen asleep, with bare
stone beneath his head? And the only softness his hair and the handkerchief
around his cheek - not stupid enough to lie down with an open, bloodied face
exposed.

      
Simon prays.

      
Oh God,
protect me from sleep. Keep me cold. Protect me from impure thoughts. Protect
me from evil.

'Do you know what this is,
Eddie?'

      
Eddie tries to reply. 'Urrr' is the best he can manage.

      
'Sacrificial rock,' Sile says. 'Goes back donkeys' years.
Before the Abbey, oh aye, long before that. What they used to do is lie the
sacrificial offering - animal, man or woman - in the bottom of the cleft, 'bout
where we are now ... where the little lass is lying, to be more exact ... and then
they'd cut its throat, and the blood'd run down the channel and drip off the
edge
      
Anybody at the bottom who caught it
in a bowl, it'd be considered lucky, I presume. I don't know really. But guess where
the blood lands now.'
      
Sile laughs.

      
'Church roof,' he says. 'Now that's what you call subjugation.
Bit like pissing on them, only more so. Church warden, aren't you, Eddie?'

      
'Urrr.'

      
'Thought you were. You'll have seen the candles, then Anything
can happen, in that church.'

      
Eddie can't move. After introducing himself, Sile Cope has
given Eddie what he calls 'a bit of a working over' to be sure he isn't
overtaken by any latent pluck. This has involved stamping on Eddie's face until
it feels like a punctured melon, and administering further sharp, disabling
prods to his stomach and, with a leathery boot heel, to the area immediately
below each of Eddie's knees. Sile and Eddie agree that Eddie's chances of
rising unassisted are severely limited.

      
'The Skirrid, of course,' Sile says, 'all this "holy
mountain" shit. Bit of a myth. Mind you, depends what they mean by "holy".
They tried. But where is it now, the famous Chapel of St Michael the
Archangel?'

      
Eddie retches. Bile bubbles from his lips and lies freezing on
his chin. He's too old to withstand a beating.
      
'Oops,' Sile says.

      
Eddie is lying almost flat in the cleft. Looking out, he can see
a couple of lights in the village, fuzzed by mist. His feet are pointed towards
the opening, almost touching Vanessa's feet.
      
She's lying the other way, still on
her back, her head almost at the opening. If she could turn her head - which she
probably can't - she would be able to look down on to the church roof a hundred
feet below.

      
Or she'd be able to do that if she had her glasses.
      
A dark blotch above the bridge of
her nose may account for the blood on the glasses. Eddie tried to speak to her
before Sile beat him up; she didn't answer but tried - incredibly - to smile.
      
He wonders how much she
understands.
      
Not too much, he hopes.

      
'She'll not move,' Sile tells him. 'She's too cold and she
can't see a foot in front of her without her glasses. Shame, really. Nice kid.
What d'you say?'
      
'Wharreryergon' do?'
      
'Think about it,' Sile says.

      
Eddie won't let himself think too hard about it. He reckons
it's going to be Vanessa, poor little kid, and then him.
You can be the lookout, Eddie, nothing ever happens to the lookout
.
He wonders what Sile is waiting for.

      
Or perhaps the Seventh Cavalry will come charging out of the
forestry, where no one goes from one month's end to another, even in the
summer.

      
Eddie wheezes. He thinks several of his ribs are broken. He closes
his eyes.

      
There's a couple of minutes of dead, frozen silence. And then
a small voice, a voice that is, somehow, not quite right, as if the tongue is
the wrong shape.

      
'Oh, most faithful companion, appointed by God to be my guide
and protector and who is ever at my side, what thanks can I offer you for your
faithfulness and love ...?'

      
Sile says, isn't that sweet? Isn't that just the sweetest
thing you ever heard?'