Filed under B was a second and longer key for the double lock to the inner room, the specimen room, the bogman's bedroom.
She just rather wished, as she pushed in the first key, that she hadn't acquiesced so readily to Alice's 'request' to leave early.
Chrissie slipped on her cardigan. It would be cold in there, wouldn't it? Mustn't get the shivers, that would never do.
The metal door opened with a soft vacuum belch.
'Sorry to intrude,' Chrissie said softly.
Behind the door was a small hallway where two new Portacabins had been pushed together. This was where the white coats were kept, and there were a couple of lavatory cubicles and a washbasin. Then there was another, unlocked door leading to an anteroom with a desk. And then the innermost metal door- with a double lock through which minions like her and Alice were not supposed to venture.
So there couldn't possibly be anybody in there.
Anybody else.
She'd been in there a couple of times, but only with Roger and not for very long. So she knew what he looked like, no problem about that.
The second key turned easily, twice, and Chrissie walked into an almost complete but alarmingly pleasant darkness which hummed faintly.
She didn't move. Apart from the hum, it was very, very quiet. Nothing scurried away. She'd left the door open behind her to allow a little light in there, but the velvety darkness absorbed it all within a yard or two of the opening and she had to fumble about for switches.
It was not cold. This was it. Well, of course, this was why it seemed so pleasant. The temperature was controlled to body heat. Bog body heat. He'd apparently been freeze-dried and then maintained in a controlled environment. She rather hoped he was packed away or at least covered up with something.
... do you touch him much?
Chrissie's hand found a switch, and the lights came on, flickering blue laboratory light, white on white tiles.
Mortuary light. Chrissie tensed, breathed in sharply.
But, of course, she was right. There was absolutely nobody here.
Nobody else.
... of course I touch him. He feels like a big leather cricket bag. You should pop in sometime, be an experience for you.
Actually he was rather smaller than the cricket bags Chrissie had seen when her ex-husband used to play.
He was lying on his table in his heat-regulated bubble, looking like somebody who'd spent far too long in a solarium.
Yes, he had a lovely tan.
Still hard to think of him as an actual corpse. He was too old. But still, ancient as he was, when you thought about it, he was probably in a better state of preservation than Chrissie's late grandad was by now.
Chrissie laughed at her stupid self.
She leaned over the bogman, curled up under his plastic bubble.
'All right then, chuck?'
She wondered what he'd sound like if he could reply, what language he spoke. Welsh, probably. She looked around. There were a couple of wires, naked rubber, emerging from the bottom of the container. Pretty primitive. The British Museum boffins would probably have a fit.
But nothing seemed amiss.
'I'll leave you, then,' Chrissie said. She tried to see his face. His nose was squashed, like a boxer's. There were whiskers around his contorted lips, which were half open, revealing the brown stumps of his teeth.
There was a fold in the side of his neck, a flap, like another lip. She thought, God, that's where they cut his throat, poor little devil.
Beaten over the head, garrotted, throat cut and then they chopped his dick off.
Oh, yuck.
Automatically, she glanced down to where his groin ought to be, where the body was bent.
And then Chrissie made a little involuntary noise at the back of her throat.
She glanced back at his face.
His twisted lips ... leering at her now.
Her eyes flicked rapidly back to his groin, back to his face, back to his groin. She felt her own lips contorting, and she made the little noise again, a high-pitched strangled yelp, and she began to back off towards the door.
But she couldn't stop looking at him.
... what, no ...
... penis ... must have chopped it off. Part of the ritual.
Chrissie's hands began to tingle as they scrabbled frantically behind her back for the door-handle.
Get me out of here.
Far from being emasculated, the bogman, under his bubble, had the most enormous erection she had ever seen.
From Dawber's Book of Bridelow:
NATURAL HISTORY
Bridelow Moss is believed to be over four thousand years old, but there has been considerable erosion over the past two centuries and the bog appears to have been affected by pollution from industry twenty or more miles away, with much of the vegetation being destroyed and the surface becoming even darker due to soot-deposits.
Erosion is gradually exposing the hills and valleys submerged under the blanket bog, and many fragments of long-dead trees, commonly known as 'bog oak', have been discovered.
Because of the preservative qualities of peat, wood recovered from the Moss is usually immensely strong and was once considered virtually indestructible ...
CHAPTER IX
There was frost on the morning of the day Matt Castle was to be buried, and the heaped soil beside the prepared grave looked like rock.
The grave was in the highest corner of the churchyard, and the Rector could see it from the window of his study. A shovel was set in the soil, a stiff, scarecrow shape against the white morning.
Hans turned back to the room and to the kind of problem he didn't need, today of all days.
'I didn't know who else to come to,' the young farmer said, the empty teacup like a thimble in his massive hands. 'I've got kids.'
'Have you told the police?'
'What's the point?' The fanner wore black jeans and a tan leather jacket. He wasn't a churchgoer but Hans had christened his second child.
'If you've been losing stock ...'
'Aye, one ram. But that were months ago. I told t'coppers about that. What could they do? Couldn't stake out the whole moor, could they? Anyway, like they said, it's not a crime any more, witchcraft.'
'Devil worship,' Hans said gently. 'There's a difference. Usually.'