December (97 page)

      
Eddie says, with a lot of effort, 'Bas ... ard.'
      
'Not really, Eddie. Just part of a
tradition. An old, old tradition that's there for the joining. We don't all
wear robes and goat's head masks. We don't even talk about Satan any more. Who
the fuck's Satan, eh? You've got to believe in
yourself
, that's what it's about. I found meself here fifty years ago.
At the Abbey. On the night me cousin died. Fell through the roof reslating the
barn. I asked for it to happen after the old girl said she was going to leave
us the farm. Just asked. Didn't have to disembowel a white cockerel. Went and
asked.'

      
Eddie's mind churns with a memory of Isabel after the Women's
Institute Cheese and Wine Evening.

      
... just after the war ...
two boys, cousins from Leeds or Sheffield ... evacuated ... Mrs Price, husband
died leaving her with the farm to manage and no sons.

      
'Went to the Abbey and just asked for it to happen,' Sile says.
'Downhill all the way after that.'

      
... do know the other came to inherit the farm and owns it
still ... Copeley ... Copestake...?

      
Eddie doesn't want to know any more. More to the point, he doesn't
want Vanessa to know. Doesn't want the child to die knowing that there are
people this bad in the world.

      
'Wharrayou waiting for?' he almost screams.

      
Sile's shadow shifts on the rock. Eddie still hasn't seen his
face. He imagines it as slablike, featureless, except for the eyes, swirling
like oil in a burner.

      
'It's a two-way street, mind you,' Sile says. 'You've got to do
your bit. And you've got to get it right.'
      
'Wharrayou wait...?'

      
'Don't get impatient!' Sile kicks him playfully in the throat.
      
Eddie retches and retches.

      
Sile explains, 'I'm waiting for your lad, Simon. He's a trier.
He's gone up the north-west tower with a bag of old bones to try and work some
magic of his own.'

      
Eddie can't get his breath.

      
'But he's got a weak spot,' Sile says. 'A soft spot. For a
thing called Richard Walden. Here ...'

      
Hands snatch Eddie up by the lapels. Breath comes in an agonising
gulp, like swallowing a plum.

      
'Don't die yet, Eddie. I'll have nobody to talk to. I was getting
right bored with our little retarded friend.'

      
He lets Eddie's head fall, with a sickening crack, to the stone.
'Aye, an example to us all in his day, was Richard. And tonight's the night
when Simon opens himself to Richard - or maybe Richard opens himself to Simon.
And when it happens, there'll be such a mighty surge of energy between the
Abbey and the Skirrid that you'll feel it yourself, Eddie, even you. Especially
here. Satisfied?'

      
Sile stands up.

      
Vanessa says, in a small voice, 'Leave me not then. I entreat you,
but still comfort me in adversity and obtain for me the great gift of final
perseverance and the grace to die in the friendship of my creator and so enter
into life everlasting.'

      
'Sorry kid,' Sile says. 'No can do.'

      
Eddie hears a click and then the sound of friction, a knife on
rock. An array of small sparks twinkles in the stodgy air.
      
'Amen,' Vanessa says.
      
Eddie could break his heart.

And sleep takes Simon St
John.

      
For a long time, he thinks he's still awake.

      
He thinks the sky has acquired a blush of mauve in the east, harbinger
of dawn. He thinks the air has grown warmer. His face begins to sweat, and he
reaches up and drags away the handkerchief exposing the deep slit Sile has laid
in his cheek and causing the blood to flow again.

      
The opening of the cut opens his mind to mysterious images carried
on silken wisps of night.

      
The first, however, is the least pleasant.
      
It is a picture - a faded, sepia
photo or a gloomy Victorian Gothic painting - of himself all scrunched up in
his pathetic, single bed, a brass-bound tome at each corner. His muscles are twisted
and his throat constricted; he can't take in air, except in thin, straining
breaths, and it hurts when he tries to move.

      
Simon lies on his back, weighed down; he can't turn over. He
can't get out of this on his own. He reaches out with both hands in a mute
plea; his hands pierce the fusty vapours, smelling of mould and mothballs

      
and emerge into an atmosphere soft with musky scents. .
      
He begins to breathe in deep, fulfilling
draughts of air like rough ale.

      
And into his reverie, the knocking comes again.
      
you
ready, pal?

      
Yes. Now it is time, he thinks, to open the guitar case, to release
the spirits like birds.

      
'Be right with you, Dave,' he mumbles.

      
He doesn't even need to get up. The guitar case comes to him.
He sees its black bottle/coffin shape shouldering through the pink mist,
waddling across the white, shining stone to where he lies.

      
The guitar case bows, like a penguin.

      
The click, clack of the fastenings.

      
A shadow over the purpling sky. It opens.

      
It's never really occurred to Simon before how similar a
traditional guitar case is, in silhouette, to a black-cowled monk.

      
Simon laughs in delight. It's been a long, long time.

      
Warm breath on his face. Simon's back arches and luxuriates on
the stone damp with his sweat.

      
A tongue laps at the thickening blood on his check. It occurs
to Simon he must be naked.

      
Desire rolls over him like coils of smoke. His arms reach out
and he clasps the black thing and pulls it on top of him, his loins arching
upwards.

Prof Levin is the first to see
the glow in the sky.

      
He doesn't know this country, it could be anywhere.
      
'Time is it?'

      
'Ten past two,' says one of the coppers. There are at least
twenty of them here now, headed by a uniformed chief inspector, a veteran, it's
been said, of hunts for missing children across the countryside.

      
Shelley watches them, she and Tom almost holding each other
up. Since hearing about Weasel, Tom has said very little.
      
'Can't be dawn then,' Prof says.
'Tom, here, take a look at this.'

      
One of the policemen says, 'That's a bloody fire, mate,
      
'That's a forest fire, that is, and
if we can see it as clear as this in these conditions, it's going some. Gerry,
better get on to the brigade.'

      
Prof says, 'A forest fire? In
December
?'

      
'Well if it's not a forest fire, I'm buggered if
I
know what it is.'

      
Moira clutches a policeman's arm. 'Where? Where do you reckon?'

      
'No more than a couple of miles, love.'

      
'Tom,' Moira shouts. 'Shelley. My car. Come on.'

      
She feels sick to her stomach; she's seen it before. Once.

      
Tom and Shelley don't move, grey-faced and terminally weary,
like two people in a bus queue who can't understand that the service has been discontinued.

      
'I'm not leaving you,' Moira says.

      
She's got the engine going, full choke, before Tom and Shelley
reach the car. If the gate's closed she's going to smash through it.

      
'What's happening?' Shelley says, sounding vaguely glad that
something is.

      
'I don't know.' Once through the gates, Moira switches the headlights
off. 'Just keep your eyes on that fire.'

      
In her head, the awful aroma of flaking flesh, the crumbling silhouette.
Debs, Debsie, Debs ...

      
Tom is in the passenger seat, Shelley in the back. She wants
them where she can see them. Doesn't want them going with anyone else - two
other cars are already following her. A fire in the hills, in December, too
much of a coincidence.

      
'Whatever happens,' Moira instructs them, 'you must stay together.'

      
'I don't know what you mean,' Shelley says. 'Moira ...'
      
The glow in the sky is orange and
white; to Moira, on first sight, the gases seemed, just for a moment, to form
the shape a giant harp.

      
Tom says gruffly, 'Keep me away from the fire.'

In December?

      
Not even on a balmy August evening, it's being said, have so
many people left their homes and crowded into the single street of Ystrad Ddu.
Overcoats over pyjamas. People pointing, children squealing. Behind it all, a
coarse roaring, like a giant blow-heater.

      
The Dragon has thrown open its doors again; the police clearly
don't care. Cars clog the street; nobody gets out the other side. Moira stops
the old BMW in the middle of the road and stands, bewildered, in the V of the
open driver's door.

      
Lights in every house, curtains thrown back, people hanging
out of windows. Water drips from roofs and guttering; the accumulation of
humanity has raised the temperature - or, most likely, it's the heat from
above.

      
A woman is to be seen roaming the crowds with a dog on a lead
shouting, 'Eddie? Has anybody seen Eddie?'

      
Confusingly, the scene recalls for Moira images from the fax
Davey sent about the chaos in Liverpool when the power failed last December.

      
But there's power here. A terrible, savage, relentless energy.
      
Above the village, a hissing wall of
flame, the forest alight from end to end.

      
Voices floating in the mingled mist and smoke.
      
'... about evacuation? If it...'

      
'No way. 'Won't spread down yere. Nothing to catch light on
the rock, see. Go straight down the hill, it will, and the river'll keep it on ...'

      
'... far's the Abbey, maybe.'

      
'... fireball. Honest to God. Ball of lightning. Freak thing, got
to be.'

      
'... No, I didn't see it, but the wife's mother said it come rolling
down off the Skirrid, so bright you couldn't look at it, see. Had to turn
away.'

      
'How come
she
seen it,
then, you had to turn away?'
      
'Fuck knows. Eyes in the back of
her head, the wife's mother.'

      
A man in a Barbour jacket detaches himself from a knot of spectators,
walks into the road and peers into Moira's BMW through a side window almost
opaque with condensation. Shelley opens the car door. She can barely find the energy
to shake her head in answer to the question swimming in Martin's eyes,
      
She gets out. 'How were the
police?'

      
'Put it this way, if it wasn't for our friend Jones, I think
I'd be spending the night in a cell.' Martin doesn't sound as if he cares one
way or the other. 'When they learned that Meryl and I were ... linked, it
became quite difficult.'
      
'How did they learn?'
      
'I told them.'
      
'As you would.'

      
'Don't make me out to be honest, Shelley. If I'd been totally
honest, none of this would have ...'
      
'Yes it would.' Shelley presses his
arm. 'Nothing could stop it.'

      
Above the village, the fire rushes through the forest as if powered
by giant bellows.

'Tom?'

      
Moira gets back into the car with Tom. He is staring straight
ahead through the windscreen. He shows no interest in what's happening outside,
might as well be stuck in a traffic jam on the M4.

      
'Anything?'