Midwinter of the Spirit (2 page)

‘I mean, don’t get me wrong…’ Huw was hunched up on a corner of his desk by the bare-stone inglenook. ‘All I’m saying is’ – he looked suddenly starved – ‘that we must strive to know the
true
God. Evil
lies
to you. Evil is plausible. Evil butters you up, tells you what you want to hear. We need to beware of what you might call disinformation.’

‘Hell’s bells.’ Charlie chuckled, trying to diffuse the atmosphere. ‘Times like this you begin to wonder if you haven’t walked into the wrong course. More like MI5 –
imprints
and
visitors
,
weepers
,
breathers
,
hitchhikers
, indeed.’

‘Important to keep them in their place, lad. If we overdramatize, if we wave our arms and rail against the Powers of Darkness and all this heavy-metal crap, if we inflate it… then we glorify it. We bloat what might simply be a nasty little virus.’

‘When all it requires is a mild antibiotic, I suppose,’ said Barry Ambrose, a worried-looking vicar from Wiltshire.

‘If you like. Take a break, shall we?’ Huw slid from the desk.

Cue for Merrily to stand up and announce that she was going to brave the ladies’ loo.

Deliverance?

It meant exorcism.

When, back in 1987, the Christian Exorcism Study Group had voted to change its name to the Christian Deliverance Study Group, it was presumably an attempt to desensationalize the job. ‘Deliverance’ sounded less medieval, less sinister. Less plain weird.

But it changed nothing. Your job was to protect people from the invasion of their lives by entities which even half the professed Christians in this country didn’t believe in. You had the option these days to consider them psychological forces, but after a couple of days here you tended not to. The journey each morning, just before first light, from the hotel in Brecon to this stark chapel in the wild and lonely uplands, was itself coming to represent the idea of entering another dimension.

Merrily would be glad to leave.

Yesterday, they’d been addressed by their second psychiatrist, on the problem of confusing demonic possession with forms of schizophrenia. They’d have to work closely with psychiatrists – part of the local support-mechanism they would each need to assemble.

Best to choose your shrink with care, Huw had said after the doctor had gone, because you’d almost certainly, at some time, need to consult him or her on a personal level.

And then, noticing Clive Wells failing to smother his scorn, he’d spent just over an hour relating case histories of ministers who had gone mad or become alcoholic or disappeared for long periods, or battered their wives or mutilated themselves. When a Deliverance priest in Middlesbrough was eventually taken into hospital, they’d found forty-seven crosses razored into his arms.

An extreme case, mind. Mostly the Deliverance ministry was consultative: local clergy with problems of a psychic nature on their patch would phone you for advice on how best to handle it. Only in severe or persistent cases were you obliged to go in personally. Also, genuine demonic possession was very rare. And although most of the work would involve hauntings, real ghosts – unquiet spirits or
insomniacs
– were also relatively infrequent. Ninety per cent were basic
volatiles
or
imprints
.

Like the monk.

Ah, yes… monks. What you needed to understand about these ubiquitous spectral clerics, Huw said, was that they were a very convenient shape. Robed and cowled and faceless, a monk lacked definition. In fact, anyone’s aura – the electromagnetic haze around a lifeform – might look vaguely like a monk’s cowl. So could an
imprint
, a residue. So that was why there were so many ghostly monks around, see?

‘Oh, just bugger…
off
!’ Merrily crumpled the paper towel, tossed it at the wall where the smudge had been and went over to investigate.

The smudge turned out to be not something in the air but in the wall itself: an imprint of an old doorway. The
ghost
of a doorway.

Three days of this and you were seeing them everywhere.

Merrily sighed, retrieved the towel, binned it. Picked up her cigarette from the edge of the washbasin. There you go… it was probably the combination of poor light and the smoke in the mirror which had made the outline appear to move.

It was rare, apparently, for Deliverance ministers or counsellors actually to experience the phenomena they were trying to
divert
. And anyway, as Huw had just pointed out, a perceived experience should not be trusted.

Trust nothing, least of all your own senses.

Merrily took a last look at herself in the mirror: a small darkhaired person in a sloppy sweater. The only woman among nine ministers on this course.

Little dolly of a clergyperson… nice legs, dinky titties
.

Dermot, her church organist, had said that the day he exposed to her his own organ. She shuddered. Dermot had worn a monkish robe that morning, and no underpants. So naturally she no longer trusted monks. Or, for that matter, priests like Charlie Headland who looked as if they wouldn’t mind spanking you. But she
was
inclined to trust the Reverend Huw Owen, faded and weary on the outside but tough and flexible as old leather. Something of the monk about Huw, also – the Celtic hermit-monk in his lonely cell.

She dropped her cigarette down the loo.

Oh well, back into the twilight zone.

The passage still had lockers and iron hooks on the wall, from when the chapel had been an Outward Bound centre owned by some Midland education authority. It had changed hands discreetly a couple of years ago, was now jointly owned by the Church of England and the Church in Wales, although it seemed few people, even inside the Church, knew it was currently used as a training centre for exorcists.

The door to the big stone room was open; she heard muted discussion from inside, a shrill, affected laugh. Charlie Headland was wedged against the jamb, crunching crisps. He shook the packet at Merrily.

‘Prawn mayonnaise flavour.’

Merrily helped herself to a crisp. Charlie looked down at her with affection.

‘You’ve got a lot of bottle, Mrs Watkins.’

‘What? Just for going for a wee in a haunted loo?’

Charlie chuckled. On occasion, he would fling an arm around Merrily and squeeze her. Twice he’d patted her bottom.

‘You wouldn’t be laughing,’ Merrily said, ‘if that thing was in the Gents’ instead.’

Charlie grimaced and nodded, munched meditatively for a while, then patted her arm lightly. ‘Got a little girl, I hear.’

‘Not any more. A woman, she tells me. She’s sixteen – just.’

‘Oh, blimey. Where’d you leave her? Suitably caged, one hopes.’

‘She’s staying with friends in the village. Not this village – back home.’

Charlie balled his crisp packet, tossed it in the air and caught it. ‘I reckon he made that up, you know.’

‘Who?’

‘Huw. That story about the hellfire preacher-man who died in the ladies’ bogs. It’s too pat.’

Merrily pulled the door to, cutting off the voices from the stone room. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘Giving us all little tests, isn’t he? You particularly. You’re the only woman amongst us, so there’s one place you need to visit
alone
. If you’d suddenly started crossing your legs and holding it till you got back to the hotel, he’d know you were a little timid. Or if you came back rubbing your hands and saying you’d detected a cold patch, you’d be revealing how impressionable you were.’

‘Be difficult to
spot
a cold patch in this place.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ said Charlie. ‘Talk about Spartan. Not what most of them were expecting. Neither’s Huw. Awfully downmarket, isn’t he? Clive’s quite insulted – expected someone solemn and erudite like his old classics master at Eton.’

‘What about you?’

‘After fifteen years with the military? No problem at all for me. Funny chap, though, old Huw. Been through the mill, you can tell that. Wears the scar tissue like a badge.’ Charlie dug his hands into his jacket pockets. ‘I think Huw’s here to show us where we stand as of now.’

‘Which is?’

He nodded at the closed door. ‘Out in the cold – lunatic fringe. Half the clergy quite openly don’t believe in God as we know Him any more, and here we all are, spooking each other with talk of
breathers
and
hitchhikers
and
insomniacs
.’

Not for the first time since her arrival, Merrily shivered. ‘What exactly
is
a
hitchhiker
, Charlie?’

‘What’s it sound like to you?’

‘Something that wants a free ride?’

‘All the way to hell, presumably,’ said Charlie.

‘Mustn’t overdramatize,’ Merrily reminded him as the door opened and Huw stood there, unkempt, his dog-collar yellowing at the rim.

‘Putting the telly on now,’ Huw said hesitantly. ‘If that’s all right?’

Merrily said cheerfully, ‘I didn’t notice anything at all in the lavatory, Huw.’

Huw nodded.

There was a clear dent in the woman’s forehead. Also a halfknitted V-shaped scab over her left eye, the bruised one.

Merrily had seen several women in this condition before, although not recently. And not under these circumstances, obviously. Mostly in the hostel in Liverpool, when she was a curate.

‘This was what done it.’ The woman was holding out a green pottery ashtray. An old-fashioned pub ashtray like a dog bowl. ‘See? Chipped all down the side. Not from when it hit me, like. When it fell on the floor afterwards.’

‘I see.’ The man’s voice was calm and gentle and unsurprised. Not Huw – too deep, too posh. ‘So it came flying—’

‘I should’ve saved the other pieces, shouldn’t I? I didn’t think.’

‘That’s quite all right, Mrs…
bleep
… We’re not the police. Now, the ashtray was where?’

‘On the sideboard. Always kept on the sideboard.’

You could see the sideboard behind her. Looked like early sixties. Teak, with big gilt knobs on the drawers. On the oncewhite wall above it was a half-scrubbed stain. As though she’d started to wipe it off and then thought:
What’s the bloody point?

‘So you actually
saw
it rising up?’

‘Yeah, I… It come… It just come through the air, straight at me. Like whizzing, you know?’

This was a very unhappy woman. Early thirties and losing it all fast. Eyes downcast, except once when she’d glanced up in desperation –
You’ve got to believe me!
– and Merrily could see a corona of blood around the pupil of the damaged eye.

‘Couldn’t you get out of the way? Couldn’t you duck?’

‘No, I never…’ The woman backing off, as though the thing was flying straight at her again. ‘Like, it was too quick. I couldn’t move. I mean, you don’t expect… you can’t believe what’s happening, can you?’

‘Did you experience anything else?’

‘What?’

‘Was there any kind of change in the atmosphere of this room? The temperature, was it warmer… or colder?’

‘It’s always cold in here. Can’t afford the gas, can I?’ Her eyes filling up.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. Tell me, where was your husband when this was happening?’

‘What?’

‘Your husband, did
he
see anything?’

‘Nah, he… he wasn’t here, was he?’ Plucking at the sleeve of her purple blouse.

Merrily wrote down
husband
on her pad.

‘He was out,’ the woman said.

‘Has he had any experiences himself? In this house?’

‘He ain’t seen nothing. Nothing come flying at
him
. I reckon he’s heard, like, banging noises and stuff, though.’

‘Stuff?’

‘You better ask him.’

‘Have you discussed it much between yourselves?’

Minimal shake of the head.

‘Why not?’

‘
I
dunno, do I?’ A flicker of exasperation, then her body went slack again. ‘What you supposed to say about it? It’s the kids, innit? I don’t want nothing to happen to the ki—’

The woman’s face froze, one eye closed.

‘All right.’ Huw walked back to his desk pocketing the remote control, turning to face the students. ‘We’ll hold it there. Any thoughts?’

Merrily found she’d underlined
husband
twice.

They looked at one another, nobody wanting to speak first. Someone yawned: Nick Cowan, the former social worker from Coventry.

Huw said, ‘Nick, not impressed?’

Nick Cowan slid down in his canvas-backed chair. ‘Council house, is this, Huw? I don’t think you told us.’

‘Would that make a difference?’

‘It’s an old trick, that’s all. It’s a cliché. They want rehousing.’

‘So she’s faking it, is she?’

‘Well, obviously I can’t… I mean you asked for initial impressions, and that’s mine, based on twenty-five years’ experience and about a thousand reports from local authorities after that rubbishy film came out…
Amityville
whatever. It’s an old scam, but they keep on trying it because they know you can’t prove it one way or the other. And if you don’t rehouse them they’ll go to the press, and then the house’ll get a reputation, and so…’

Nick felt for his dog-collar, as if to make sure it was still there. He was the only one of the group who wore his to these sessions every day. He seemed grateful for the dog-collar: it represented some kind of immunity. Perhaps he thought he no longer had to justify his opinions, submit reports, get his decisions rubberstamped and ratified by the elected representatives; just the one big boss now.

‘All right, then.’ Huw went to sit on his desk, next to the TV, and leaned forward, hands clasped. ‘Merrily?’

He was bound to ask her, the only female in the group. On the TV screen the woman with one closed eye looked blurred and stupid.

‘Well,’ Merrily said, ‘she isn’t faking that injury, is she?’

‘How do you think she got the injury, Merrily?’

‘Do we get to see the husband?’