'Now then,' Ma said.
On the doorstep was her youngest grandson with that big dog of his. Always went for a walk together before school.
Benjie said nowt, grinned up at her, gap-toothed, something clutched in one hand.
'Well, well,' said Ma, smiling through the agony. 'Where'd you find that?'
'Chief found it,' said Benjie proudly. 'Jus' this mornin', up by t'moor.'
'Ta.' Ma took the bottle and fetched the child in for a chocolate biscuit from the tin. The bottle wasn't broken, but the cork was half out and the glass was misted. The bit of red thread that hung outside for the spirit to grasp was soaked through and stuck to the bottle.
"Ey!' Benjie said suddenly. 'Guess what.'
'I'm too owd for guessin' games, lad.'
'Bogman's bin took!'
'Eh?'
'It were on radio. Bogman's bin stole.'
'Oh,' said Ma, vaguely, 'has he?'
The child looked disappointed. 'Are you not surprised?
'Oh, I am,' Ma said. 'I'm right flabbergasted. Look, just get that stool and climb up theer and fetch us biscuit tin. Me owd back's play in' up a bit.'
Ma held up the bottle to the cruel light. Useless.
'Will it still work?' asked Benjie innocently, arms full of wooden stool. Ma had to smile; what did he know about witch-bottles?
'Would it ever've worked, lad?' She shook her head ruefully, wondering if she'd be able to stand up straight before teatime. 'That's what I keep askin' meself.'
Fine lot of use she was. She ought to be out there, finding out exactly what they were up against - even if it killed her - before two thousand and more years of care and watchfulness came to ruin.
Oh, she could feel it ... mornings like this, everything still and exposed.
She looked down at young Benjie, chomping on his chocolate biscuit. It will kill me, she thought. I'm old and feeble and me back's giving way. I've let things slip all these years, pottered about the place curing sick babbies and cows, and not seeing the danger. And now there's only me with the strength inside. But I'm too old and buggered to go out and find um.
It'll come to me, though, one night. Ma thought, with uncustomary dread. When it's good and ready.
But will I be?
Joel Beard awoke screaming and sweating, coughing and choking on the paraffin air.
He sat on the edge of the camp bed, with the duvet wrapped around him, moaning and rocking backwards and forwards in the darkness for several minutes before his fingers were sufficiently steady to find the candle on its tray and the matches.
He lit the candle and, almost immediately, it went out. He lit it again and it flared briefly, with a curious shower of sparks, before the wick snapped, carrying the flame to the metal tray, where it lasted just long enough for Joel to grab his cross, his clothes and his boots and make it to the door.
On his way through the tunnel to the steps, he knocked over the paraffin heater, with a clatter and crash of tin and glass, and didn't stop to set it upright.
At the top of the steps he was almost dazzled by the white dawn, awakening the kneeling saints and prophets, the angelic hosts and the jewel-coloured Christs in the windows.
Deliverance.
He dressed in the vestry, where he found a mildewed cassock and put that on over his vest and underpants. But he did not feel fully dressed until his cross was heavy against his chest.
The air in the nave felt half-frozen; he could smell upon it the bitter stench of autumn, raw decay. But no paraffin. And the cold was negligible compared with the atmosphere in last night's dungeon.
He unbolted the church door, stood at the entrance to the porch breathing in the early morning air - seven o'clockish, couldn't be certain, left his watch in the dungeon, wasn't going back for it - and he did not look up, as he said, 'You're finished, you bitch.'
And then went quickly down, between the graves, to the gardener's shed, up against the perimeter wall.
The shed was locked, a padlock through the hasp. He had no key. He shook the door irritably and glared in through the shed's cobwebbed window. He could see what he wanted, a gleaming edge of the aluminium window-cleaning ladder, on its side, stretching the length of the shed. He also saw in the window the reflection of a face that was not his own.
Joel was jolted and, for a moment, could not turn round.
The face was a woman's. It had long, dark hair, steady, hard eyes and black whore's lips. The lips were stretched in a tight, shining grin which the eyes did not reflect.
Cold derision.
Remembered pain speared Joel's spine as he turned, half-hypnotized by the horror of it, turning as he would turn to stare full into the face of the Gorgon knowing it would turn him into stone, like the angels frozen to the graves.
He saw the still figure of a woman on the other side of the church wall, the village street below her. Her back was turned to him. Slowly, she began to walk away, and because the wall blocked her lower half she seemed at first to be floating. Her long, black hair swayed as she moved, and in the hair he saw a single thin, ice-white strand.
Joel felt a twisted revulsion. Twisted because there was inside it a slender wafer of cold desire, like the seam of white in the hair of the woman who walked away.
He watched her, not aware of breathing. She was wearing something long and black. He watched her until she was no more, and not once did she turn round.
Joel sobbed once, felt the savage strength of rage. He bunched a fist and drove it through the shed window.
Ernie Dawber had heard about the bogman on the morning news. So he wasn't exactly surprised when,' round about 10.30, he heard a car pulling up irritably in the schoolhouse drive.
Hadn't given much thought to how he was going to handle this one. Too busy making notes for a daft book that would never get published.
The page he was writing, an introduction, began:
Bridelow might be said to operate on two levels. It has what you might call an underlife, sometimes discernible at dusk when all's still and the beacon is about to light up ...
He looked up from the paper and the room went rapidly in and out of focus and swayed. Bugger. Not again. Damn.
He pushed his chair back, swept all the papers from his desk into an open boxfile and went to let the man in.
'A raw day, Dr Hall.'
A word, Mr Dawber, if you're not ... too busy.'
Innuendo. It was going to be all innuendo this time, he could tell.
'I'm a retired man. I'm not supposed to be busy. Come in. Sit down. Cup of tea? Or something a little ...'