December (51 page)

      
'But I think you have to,' Sile said. 'Else why did you come
back? You came back because it fucked you up and you want to get unfucked,
right?'

      
Simon went down one step.

      
'And you figured that now you were a priest of God you might
have the wherewithal to straighten things out.'

      
Simon went down another step. 'How naive we all are,' he said.
The darkness held him like a stiff, black funeral coat.

      
'No, maybe you're right,' Sile said. 'Maybe you could reverse
things. Which is what you're thinking you ought to have done first time round,
am I right?'

      
'We were comparative youngsters.' Simon took another step into
the dark. 'And we didn't know what we were up against. I didn't know until I
left here. I thought I was handling it rather well.'

      
Two more steps and he was at the bottom. Standing where he'd
stood in a thousand dense dreams, carrying on talking, but his nerves were
singing.

      
'We destroyed the tapes, you know. I thought that would be an
end of it. I still don't understand why it ... Realising in a flush of panic
that he was alone in the bottom of the well, stone walls close on either side,
stone underfoot, stone overhead, all
that blood, and ...

      
'Sile? Where are you?'

      
Sile laughed. It came from inside. 'You're doing very well, Simon.'

      
'I can't see you.'

      
'Hold tight to the wall. Follow my voice.'
      
'I don't want to touch the fucking
wall
!'
      
Sound of another door opening.
      
'OK, Simon?'
      
'I want to get out.'

      
Turning to find darkness behind him now.
      
'No, you don't. Not really.' No
echo to Sile Copesake's voice any more. Tight, muted. Inside the derelict
abbey, and no echo.
      
'What are you doing to me?'

      
Sile said, 'I'm trying to help you. Come on. Here we go.'
      
Lights blasted at him, brutal
lights beating down on him from all sides.

      
Simon rolled away, arm across his eyes, blinded, but more
frightened by what he'd seen in the shattering atom of time before he'd shut
out the glare.

      
'Sorry, mate, pressed the wrong switch.' Click, click, click. 'That's
better.'

      
It had been a vision. A memory flash. His mind had done it.
      
But then ... there should not be
electricity in the Abbey. The Abbey was derelict.

      
There should not be electricity. There should not be concealed
lighting in the low, vaulted ceiling.

      
There should not be a low, wide table with about five hundred
switches. There should not be a bank of tape-decks, each with twenty-four
level-meters. There should not be a sheet of industrial glass and beyond it,
under the curved, white stone ceiling of the cellar where the monks had stored
their wine, a piano and a drum kit with tubular bells and four glass booths with
mikes and coils of wire across the floor and ...
      
'Welcome back,' Sile Copesake said.

IX

Like
Chicken Bones

Through the caravan window,
he saw weak moonlight swirling like that Coffee-mate stuff in her thick
glasses.
      
She was different.
      
Again.

      
Something wrong. Well, yeah, her old man still missing. The
way Weasel saw it, this was not necessarily a bad thing. Tom was out there finding
himself.
He
wasn't a kid,
he
wasn't, like, handicapped.

      
Well, this might have been a good thing, Tom experiencing life
in the Big World for the first time in years. Except for the business of Sir
Wilf and Lady Wilf. If Tom, as Weasel strongly figured, had seen it happen, he
might be in a bad way, emotionally. Or however.

      
Weasel had the caravan door open before she could knock.
      
'Princess?'

      
The kid stood there in the cold. Lemon-yellow shell-suit top,
woolly beret.

      
Lights on in the house behind her, a car parked across the big
turning circle - this Broadbank geezer, Shelley's 'customer', the man Weasel had
seen conversing with the late Sir Wilf in his garden that day. Weasel was not
too worried; there was clearly nothing deeper to this guy than wanting to get
his leg over Shelley, which Shelley could handle.

      
Vanessa was saying nothing.

      
What was worrying, she had that same look she'd had last night
standing in the middle of the road like a little rabbit waiting to be
flattened.

      
'Princess, what you ...?'

      
Weasel leapt down the steps, grabbed her by the shoulders.

      
What was this?

      
What it was, what was making her eyes swirl was the fact that
they was pools of tears.

      
'Listen.' Weasel shook her just a little. Kindly. 'He's OK,
your old man. He's having a break, like a holiday. Just a little holiday.'

      
Vanessa said, glasses so full of mist and night and steam and
tears that Weasel couldn't see where her eyes were at, Vanessa said, 'He's
going to die. He's going to die.'

He had insisted they leave
the curtains drawn back, and Meryl caught the reflection of occasional
headlights on the darkened windows of the chalets opposite.
      
Tom slept.

      
Although it was only early yet, exhaustion had claimed him soon
after the gentle, sorrowful therapy
(think
of it as therapy, Tom, you're no use to one another, you and Shelley, the way
you are now. Just think of it as therapy).

      
Even now, after the therapy, even now in sleep, his face was damp
and worried.

      
He was the most awesomely tragic man she'd known. What she'd
come to realise was that he wasn't scared so much for himself, as of what he
might bring down on others. He didn't fear the Man with Two Mouths - his poor,
murdered father - so much as what this gruesome revenant might be heralding.

      
I killed Debbie,
Tom, lying flat on his back, no pillows, had said to the ceiling.
I killed Debbie in every sense.
See, he
was there that night, the old man. Seen him first as a monk, by the gate at the
Abbey. Frows back his cowl-fing and there's this gaping hole in his mush,
stupid old bleeder.

      
Never speak ill of the dead, Meryl had been told as a child.
      
Come
to warn me
.
Finks if he stands there
and flashes his wound I'll get the message. Bleeding useless. 'Bout as much use
as Hamlet's old feller. We fink the dead's gotta be wise. Big, big mistake. The
dead's as confused - more confused - than what we are. Load of grief is all you
get from the dead. Load of grief.

      
And he'd seen him again, the Man with Two Mouths, at Martin's
dinner party. Come to warn his son of impending tragedy, this had been obvious
to Meryl.

      
Yeah. Sir Wilf. Call
that coincidence, Meryl? Busts frew me bleeding fence and dies? He's there now,
Sir Wilf. Silly old git's polluted me energy field. Won't be long before some
poor sod on his way home from the boozer'll be seeing him, standing at the
roadside wiv his froat ripped out. "Scuse me, my man, but where exactly
ham I?' And his lady wife, head underneath her arm, Anne Boleyn
job.
Soon as somebody sees 'em, it strengthens
'em, they
get their energy from fear.
People need to understand this. Fear feeds the dead.

      
Meryl had listened avidly, curled up against him, surrendering
easily to the palpitating excitement. He was part of her destiny, this man, and
together they were approaching something of universal magnificence. Afraid? Of
course she was afraid. Oh God, she was afraid.

      
And wasn't it wonderful?

      
The Abbey. It all centred upon this Abbey. Earlier, Meryl had
been to the garage shop for crisps and soft drinks. And a book of maps.

      
She'd sat on a bench near the cash-till and pored urgently over
the map, following the road down to Gloucester and then Ross-on-Wye and then
Monmouth. Monmouth to Abergavenny. And then ...

      
A very rural area. Other abbeys were marked. Tintern, Llantony,
Abbey Dore. Two hills outside Abergavenny, the Sugar Loaf and the Skirrid.
Somewhere around there, had to be.

      
Altogether a journey of less than two hours. Perhaps ninety minutes.

      
So close, this place where part of Tom Storey's spirit was trapped.

      
All I
can say
, that man Stephen Case had told them at dinner,
is it's music which seems to enter a different spiritual dimension.

      
Music Tom and his friends had made at the Abbey.

      
What we want is for Tom
and the others to go back into the studio and complete it. Perhaps... to the
Abbey? Don't you think it would be cathartic for Tom to go back?

      
And Shelley had said,
I
think it would be insanity to go back.

      
But what she meant, Meryl was sure, was,
I couldn't go back. I couldn't go with him. It would be too much. I've
had enough. I could not take it.

      
No, Meryl thought, looking down at the troubled face of the sleeping
giant. But
I
could.

'See now, by here. Just
stuck on the altar. Disgusting. Helen Harris it was found them. You want to
speak to her?'

      
The candleholders were empty on the white-draped altar. Lit by
overcoated Eddie's sputtering Tilley lamp, the little church looked more like a
stone cowshed than ever.

      
Except for there being no cows. Cows were something Eddie
could deal with. Policemen, usually, were also something he could handle.

      
Superintendent Gwyn Arthur Jones was something else. But if he
wanted to talk to Helen Harris this would at least give Eddie a bit of a break;
he could nip off to fetch the lady leaving Gwyn Arthur - oh, aye, it was
Gwyn Arthur
now, another dangerous sign
- to sniff around, search for clues, whatever it was they did, these coppers.

      
What they did these days, it seemed, was to turn the spotlight
on you psychologically.

      
'Go and fetch Helen now, shall I?'

      
'Not for the moment, Mr Edwards. It's you I'm more interested
in.'
      
Oh
hell
.

      
'What I'm curious about, Eddie, see, is why you suddenly had
the idea to send this candle away for analysis.'

      
Eddie cast around inside his hopeless old brain for something
convincing. Had it all worked out a couple of hours ago. Now he just gave up.

      
'I'll be honest with you, Gwyn. I don't know. Just a feeling I
had.'

      
Gwyn Arthur suddenly smiled broadly, which made Eddie feel
extremely nervous. Going to pull out his handcuffs in a minute, this bugger.

      
'There you are, see!' The long, thin policeman expansive now,
back to the altar, pipe in hand. 'You
can
do it!'

      
'What? Do what?'

      
'Tell it like it is, as they say in the American films.
"Just a feeling." Magnificent. Why not indeed? Where would any of us be
without these moments of "just a feeling"? Now all I need to know' -
jabbing his pipe stem at Eddie's chest - 'is what lies
behind
this feeling.'

      
Oh bugger. Why do you keep letting yourself in for these
situations? Why can't you
ever
keep
your bloody old retired nose out of it?

      
'Black magic?' Gwyn Arthur sniffed. 'Rubbish, man! Dead
babies? Nonsense! You know what this is all about.'

      
No, I don't, I bloody well don't! But the bloody vicar does. And
where is the bugger now, when I need him?