Hungry Moon (29 page)

^{They were dogs - mad dogs, to judge by the sounds of snarling and cloth tearing. The flashlight beam swung toward them, and Nick saw them bring the policeman down, one slavering red mouth burying its teeth deep in his thigh, another ripping at his fist as he tried to defend himself. The man screamed once, and then there was only an agonized gurgling. The next swing of the flashlight showed the third dog on top of him, paws on his chest, worrying his throat like a rat. He must have been as good as dead when his free leg kicked out, his boot smashing the flashlight against the wall. Then there was darkness in the main room, and the sounds of panting and snarling and teeth ripping flesh.}

^{FORTY EIGHT}

^{The Scraggs' cottage was huddled at the foot of the moor, in sight of the school. Diana had often thought that it looked like a guardhouse, the curtains always open on the windows that faced the school, and now she was inside she found that it felt as it looked. Though it was too cluttered for its size - a coat stand took up half the width of the narrow hall, which meant she was crushed between the two men who'd marched her crab-wise into the house - it felt like the annexe to an institution, cold and unwelcoming. Ronnie's father dug his fist into the small of her back and shoved her into the living room.}

^{It was full of furniture and stank of stale tobacco. Diana thought the smoke had blackened the pictures on the walls until she realized that must be shadows the moonlight was casting. The paintings and the wooden fireplace were too large for the room, as if they'd been brought in from another house to make this seem more like a home, and so was Mrs Scragg. 'Put her there,' Mrs Scragg ordered, snapping her fingers at an armchair near the window.}

^{They slung Diana into the moonlit chair, which creaked and wobbled and exhaled the stench of stale tobacco. 'You treat my furniture with respect,' Mrs Scragg snarled at her. 'That was my grandmother's chair, I'll have you know. So now I suppose I've got to stay here and miss all the hymns. I've a good mind to have you put on your knees and made to join us in offering up our thanks.'}

^{'We'll make her show a bit of respect if that's what you want, Mrs Scragg,' Ronnie's father vowed. 'About time someone taught her how to behave after the way she let our lads run wild.'}

^{'The way I heard it, she was letting my Thomas waste all day telling jokes that weren't fit to hear. Maybe they call that education where she comes from. I taught him a lesson he won't forget, but it should have been her, not him. She's not too old for it either, if you ask me.'}

^{'I'm grateful to you both,' Mrs Scragg said. 'It does me good to know you parents support our methods. You go now and pray with your families. I'm more than a match for Miss Permissive Ungodliness.'}

^{'Happen you are at that,' Ronnie's father said, laughing. 'And if we should hear her wailing, we won't be coming back to see why.'}

^{Diana sat and let them rant. Thomas's father shook his fist at her, his shirt pulling out of his trousers and exposing his navel. She could just see it in the gloom, a blind wrinkled socket in the midst of a mat of hair. It seemed distant and meaningless; everything did. She felt as if being talked about in the third person had absented her, removed her so far that the threats couldn't bring her back. She seemed to have left her emotions behind, and she felt she could go further if she could just think how.}

^{Thomas's father made a disgusted sound and flung himself away from her. Moonlight flooded over her again. She felt almost resigned to it: what could she or anyone else do to put out the moon? The men went out, the front door slammed, and she was alone with Mrs Scragg.}

^{The woman closed the door of the room and pushed an armchair against it, then she stuck a cigarette in her mouth and dropped herself in a chair opposite Diana, one hand straying negligently toward the heavy poker to make sure it was within reach. When she'd spent half a dozen matches in trying to light the cigarette, she glared at Diana. 'Not a word out of you, miss, or I'll give you something to shut you up. We'll just sit quiet until my hubby brings Delbert home and then Mr S and I'll decide what's to be done about you.'}

^{Quiet was all Diana wanted. She felt more than ever as if she weren't there or soon wouldn't be. The moon shone in her face, the tilted slice of moon hovering above the roof of the school that looked tipped with ice. If she gazed at it, there seemed to be nothing but her and the moon, no window framing it, no town. She didn't feel quite ready for that; when she began to shiver, she glanced away. Mrs Scragg twisted round to look out of the window, and presumably saw only the lane, resounding with the singing in the square. 'Not your kind of music, isn't it? You'd better get used to it for as long as you're here, miss. It won't be going away.'}

^{Her voice and the sight of her face thrusting forward, unlit cigarette poking from one corner of her mouth, seemed less menacing to Diana than absurd, a nuisance that she wanted to flick away, an interruption to whatever she could do if she relaxed enough. The moonlight crept up the wall above the hearth and began to unveil the painting over the mantelpiece, a dark, bleak view of the empty moor with a mound of clouds overhead. 'Meets with your approval, does it, miss?' Mrs Scragg said furiously. Diana wondered why she should be so resentful, until she noticed the Scragg signature in one corner of the painting. Neither that nor the woman's fury could distract her now; she couldn't look away from the view of the moor, she could hardly breathe. The moonlight spread over it and filled the frame, and at the precise moment when the entire painting was moonlit, Diana saw that it was no longer a view of the moor, nor even a painting. It was a window giving onto where she had to go.}

^{FORTY NINE}

^{Craig and Vera were in their hotel room when the lights of Moonwell began to fail. Hazel had insisted she would have to ask the people who were lodging with her if they'd mind moving to the hotel, and Vera had turned huffy, as if she was using this as an excuse not to invite her parents, or Benedict was. All this picking at motives, family life at its pettiest and most neurotic, made Craig feel more trapped than ever; he'd never been able to cope with it, and now, isolated at the top of the indifferent hotel by the dark, he liked it even less. How much more time were they going to waste here, when they should be back at their office dealing with legal matters which, however complex, they knew how to disentangle? This frustration was one more reason why Vera had grown so touchy and looked suddenly years older. 'Never mind, love,' he said inadequately, and sat by her on the bed, where she was gazing from the cramped window. He'd begun to massage her shoulders when the square went dark.}

^{'Good God,' he said in empty disgust, and was standing up to see what had happened when the room went dark too. For a moment he was back in the abandoned mineshaft, falling into blindness. He stumbled against the bed and found Vera again, held onto her. "What's happening now?' she cried querulously.}

^{'Just the electricity, love. Best to wait until someone fixes it. We're safest where we are,' he said, feeling as if the dark were robbing them of all their capabilities, their}

^{lifetimes of experience blotted out in a few moments. She sat forward abruptly, as if she'd grown impatient with his hand on her shoulders, and then he realized what had changed. 'There, you see,' he said, wondering why he felt the need to tell her, an old man's redundant description of the obvious. 'They've already fixed the lights.'}

^{'What is it? Where's it coming from?'}

^{'We'll take a look, shall we?' It must be* moonlight, streaming from above and behind the hotel, turning the streets that led to the fields below Moonwell into an amphitheatre of shadow, though shouldn't moonlight be able to reach the fields too instead of leaving everything outside Moonwell in pitch darkness? Craig pushed up the sash and leaned out while Vera clung to him. The light was streaming from the hotel itself.}

^{He was still trying to make out the source when the townsfolk began flocking into the square as Mann's followers crowded out of the hotel singing hymns. Hundreds of people fell to their knees and gazed up. Absurdly, Craig thought they were gazing at him until he realized that they couldn't even see him. 'Why, it's the evangelist. He's fixed it up somehow. Look at them, the fools, just because he's got the only light in town.'}

^{'Moths,' Vera murmured.}

^{'Sheep, more like. Maybe you can't blame them with all this dark, but even so. . . .'He drew in his head to peer at her face, pale in the indirect glow. 'Who made the lights go out, I wonder? How come he's managed to get one working there and nowhere else? By God, I think he's rigged all this to get them where he wants them. Just look at them, they think he's a saint now, they'd do anything for him. I've a damn good mind to go along to his room and have it out with him right now.'}

^{'Don't, Craig, please.' She clutched at his arm. "They might turn on you, the whole town. For heaven's sake don't interrupt them while they're praying.'}

^{'I'm going to take a walk down the corridor and see if I can get a glimpse of what he's up to, at any rate.'}

^{'I won't come with you,' Vera said desperately.}

^{'That's right, love, you stay here. I shouldn't be long.'}

^{He stepped out of the room before she could say anything else. Since the corridor wasn't entirely dark, he closed the door. A glow was seeping out of Mann's room, frosting the carpet on the sill, glinting faintly in the wall lamps. It made him oddly nervous, but he was damned if he'd let himself be daunted by any of Mann's tricks. He tiptoed along the corridor, his fingers groping over the stubbly pattern of the wallpaper. He was halfway to Mann's room when a door opened behind him, making his heart jerk painfully. 'Craig, come quickly,' Vera hissed. 'It's the teacher who wanted us to stay with her. She's telling them not to listen to him.'}

^{'Good for her.'}

^{'We ought to do something, Craig. It's just her against them.'}

^{He went reluctantly back to the room. The teacher had left the square, but soon she came back. She hadn't spoken when a large red-haired woman stepped into her path. Two men stood up from kneeling and grabbed the teacher's arms. 'Leave her alone, you brutes,' Vera cried, beating her fists on the window ledge.}

^{'My God,' the teacher protested in a voice the Wildes could barely hear, 'can't you see anything wrong with what's happening here?'}

^{'Yes,' Craig said loudly but unheard, and the red-haired woman slapped the teacher's face. Vera raised her fists shakily. 'I'm going down. Let's see if they dare treat me like that too, at my age.'}

^{'They might, Vera. Remember we're outsiders.'}

^{'We're Hazel's parents, aren't we? Though you wouldn't know it, the way we're put up here in the attic as if we're no more use. Where is Hazel, anyway? Is she down there in that mob? Why isn't she doing anything?'}

^{She was ranging back and forth across the room, her helpless fury growing. She'd opened the door, but now she stormed back to the window. The teacher and her captors had gone. Vera was craning out, trying to see them or Hazel, when Mann spoke. 'Now there are no unbelievers here, let's make an act of faith that the dark will become light.'}

^{Vera pressed her knuckles into her mouth. The soft voice seemed to be in the room with them, to be addressing them directly, warning them not to intervene. It was all rot, Craig told himself, more of Mann's oratorical technique, yet he couldn't help feeling as if the voice had found them in the dark.}

^{'God of our ancestors, lighten our darkness,' the crowd began to chant. 'We offer ourselves to you.' Staring down at the mass of tiny white mouthing faces, Craig felt dizzy and nauseated, as if he were about to fall into their midst, their chant dragging him down, blotting out his senses. When Vera wouldn't come away from the window with him, he had to close his eyes. He thought he'd kept them closed for some time before Vera demanded, 'What's happening now?'}

^{The crowd had fallen silent. The mass of faces seemed to be gazing up beyond the hotel. Their anticipation unnerved him. 'Show us your light, O God of our fathers and our forefathers,' they chanted, and Craig wanted to yell at them not to be superstitious fools, to get rid of the apprehension that was building up in his throat. Then light flooded over the town, and he felt as if he'd lost the power to speak.}

^{It was the light from Mann's room, he told himself, appalled by the jubilation that swept through the crowd, people cheering, waving, leaping. He craned out of the window, Vera clinging to his waist. When he realized it was moonlight, he had a moment of befuddled panic before disgust overtook him. How could he have allowed the notion that Mann was somehow responsible for the moonlight even to suggest itself to him? He wasn't that old, by God, or that gullible. He was breathless with rage, at himself for having been vulnerable and at Mann for taking advantage of the moonlight and the crowd. Hardly knowing what he meant to do, he squeezed Vera's hand and left her in the growing moonlight as he stalked out of the room.}

^{His eyes were dazzled as he stepped into the dimness. It didn't matter, he knew his way along the corridor by now. He wished his tread could make more noise on the carpet, to let Mann know that someone was approaching who wasn't in awe of him. The cavernous stillness made him feel hardly there at all, but Mann would soon know that he was, by God. He'd see through Mann's mumbo jumbo if he could, and maybe bring a few people to look behind the stage show to see where the light that had lured them all was coming from. Either it or moonlight still outlined Mann's door. Craig put one hand on either side of the doorframe and stooped painfully to the keyhole to peer in.}

^{At first he could see nothing but a white glow. He couldn't make out what the glow was showing. He glimpsed movement before his neck twinged and he had to straighten up, but whatever he'd seen, it wasn't Mann; in fact, his brain couldn't grasp it at all. Was it an animal, a guard dog? Didn't that prove Mann had secrets that he didn't want made public? Certainly there was a smell that reminded Craig of a zoo. The crowd was cheering and shouting for Mann to come back to the window, and Craig wondered if the evangelist might not even be in the room. The quicker he looked, the better. He lowered himself groaning to his knees and closed his left eye as he pressed the right against the keyhole. It took him a few moments to focus, and then he felt as if a grip as cold and unyielding as metal had seized the scruff of his neck. Something was squatting on Mann's bed.}

^{It was naked. That shocked him so badly that at first it was all he could comprehend, and then he tried to deny what he was seeing. It couldn't really look like a gigantic spider crouching in the nest of the bed, thin limbs drawn up around a swollen body that was patchy as the moon.}

^{The patches resembled decay, but they were crawling over the bulbous body, over it or under the skin. He wasn't seeing this, Craig's mind screamed, if he just shoved himself back from the door he would stop. Then the hands and feet of the shape on the bed gripped the sheets, wrinkling them in the light that shone brighter than the moonlight streaming through the window, and the limbs raised the body unevenly, the long neck stretched toward the window. The smallness of the hairless gibbous head in proportion to the body made the shape look even more like a spider. The head turned as if drinking in the jubilation of the crowd, and Craig glimpsed its face, not smiling now but sneering with a mouth that widened hungrily. It was still just recognizable as Mann's face.}

^{In that moment Craig felt his mind begin to close down, everything that was bright and alive in his skull going dark, everything he thought of as himself. One thin white arm came groping negligently off Mann's bed as though Craig had been sensed beyond the door. Perhaps it was growing, for it looked capable of reaching the door, so that the long hand could snatch it open and drag Craig into the room. He fell backward choking and sprawled on the floor of the corridor, out of reach of the glow that seeped around the door.}

^{As the dark filled his eyes, he felt as if his mind had gone out. He scrabbled backward, away from the glowing outline of the door that might burst open; then he heaved himself to his feet, his fingernails scraping the pattern off the wallpaper. He didn't know where he was stumbling, except away from the room that was the lair of the shape with Mann's face. When a door swung open, dashing moonlight over him, he flinched wildly before he realized Vera had opened the door.}

^{She ran to him and seized his arms as if to support him. 'Craig, what happened? What's wrong?'}

^{'I'll tell you later,' he said in a voice that kept sticking in his throat. 'Let's get out first, now, quickly.'}

^{'Thank God we're doing that, anyway. Just let me throw our things into the cases.'}

^{'No, no, no time. We'll come back when it's lighter. Let's just find Hazel now.'}

^{'What about the stairs?' she complained, peering toward the dark by the lift. 'There aren't any windows. We'll fall.'}

^{'We can keep hold of the banisters and each other. Come on, I thought you wanted to see Hazel. She'll be down there now.'}

^{His lips were stiffening, trembling, not least because Vera looked capable of waiting for Hazel to approach her. Then she shook herself and grimaced ruefully. 'All right, let's see what they have to say for themselves,' she growled, and closed the bedroom door.}

^{He felt her shiver at the dark. 'Leave the door open if you like,' he murmured.}

^{'Perhaps we should. Oh, God, the damn key's in my handbag, in the room. That's what comes of your hurrying me. I wouldn't want to leave our things not locked up, anyway,' she said with what sounded like bravado, and turned toward the stairs.}

^{In a way the darkness there was reassuring, if anything could be. It meant that the door of Mann's room hadn't opened, that the shape with the distorted grinning face wasn't scuttling out of the room. He couldn't have seen anything like that, Craig told himself wildly, though the door was bursting open again and again in his mind, brightness and a swollen object spilling forth. He groped desperately toward the staircase, his fingertips stubbing themselves on doorframes, his nails aching as they dragged him along the wall. When his fingers touched the lift doors, he almost cried out, the metal was so cold. At least that meant he and Vera had reached the stairs, which were beside the lift shaft. She led him then, and he felt her groping in the total darkness for the banister. 'There it is,' she muttered, and stepped down, pulling him with her. He lurched into bottomless dark.}

^{He grabbed the wall, dragging Vera away from the banister. 'What's wrong now?' she cried. 'What are you trying to do?'}

^{'I'd like to keep hold of the wall,' he murmured, willing her to keep her voice as low as his without having to be told why, dreading her asking on the way down what he'd seen in the room at the end of the corridor, in case even mentioning it made it aware of them. 'I don't feel safe the other way.'}