Read Online The Man in the Moss by Phil Rickman - Free Book Online Page B

Bisected by two small rivers, The Moss slopes
down, more steeply than is apparent, from the foothills of the northern Peak
District almost to the edge of the village of Bridelow.
                            In places, the peat reaches a depth of three
metres, and although there are several drainage gullies, conditions can be treacherous,
and walkers unfamiliar with the Moss are not recommended to venture upon it in
severe weather.
                            But then, on dull wet, days in Autumn and
Winter, the gloomy and desolate appearance of the Moss would deter all but the
hardiest rambler ...
     
     
     
    CHAPTER
I
     
    OCTOBER
     
    With the rain hissing
venomously in their faces, they pushed the wheelchair across the cindered track
to the peat's edge, and then Dic lost his nerve and stopped.
                'Further,' Matt insisted.
            'It'll sink, Dad. Look.'
            Matt laughed, a cawing.
                Dic looked at his mother for back-up. Lottie looked away,
through her dripping hair and the swirling grey morning, to where the houses of
Bridelow clung to the shivering horizon like bedraggled birds to a telephone
wire.
                'Mum ... ?'
                In the pockets of her sodden raincoat, Lottie made claws
out of her fingers. She wouldn't look at Matt, even though she was sure - the
reason she'd left her head bare - that you couldn't distinguish tears from
rain.
                'Right.' Abruptly, Matt pushed the tartan rug aside.
'Looks like I'll have to walk, then.'
                'Oh, Christ, Dad . .
                Still Lottie didn't look at the lad or the withered man
in the wheelchair. Just went on glaring at the village, at the fuzzy outline of
the church, coming to a decision. Then she said tonelessly, 'Do as he says, Dic.'
            'Mum . .
                Lottie whirled at him, water spinning from her hair.
'Will you just bloody well do it ?'
                She stood panting for a moment, then her lips set hard.
She thought she heard Dic sob as he heaved the chair into the mire and the dark
water bubbled up around the wheels.
                The chair didn't sink. It wouldn't sink. It wouldn't be
easy to get out, even with only poor, wasted Matt in there, but it wouldn't
sink.
                Maybe Matt was hoping they wouldn't have to get it out.
That he'd be carried away, leaving the chair behind, suspended skeletally in
the Moss, slowly corroding into the peat or maybe preserved there for thousands
of years, like the Bogman.
            'Fine,' Matt said. 'That's ...
fine. Thanks.'
            The chair was only a foot or
so from the path, embedded up to its footplate in Bridelow Moss. Dic stood
there, tense, arms spread, ready to snatch at the chair if it moved.
                'Go away, lad,' Matt said quietly. He always spoke
quietly now. So calm . Never lost
his   temper, never - as Lottie would have
done - railed at the heavens, screaming at the blinding injustice of it.
                Stoical Matt. Dying so well.
                Sometimes she wished she could hate him.
     
    It was Sunday morning.
                As they'd lifted Matt's chair from the van, a scrap of a
hymn from the church had been washed up by the wind-powered rain, tossed at
them like an empty crisp-packet then blown away again.
                They'd moved well out of earshot, Lottie looking around.
            Thinking that on a Sunday
there were always ramblers, up from Macclesfield and Glossop, Manchester and
Sheffield, relishing the dirty weather, the way ramblers did. If it belonged to
anybody, Bridelow Moss belonged to the ramblers, and they made sure everybody
knew it.
                But this morning there were none.
                The bog,