Free The Man in the Moss by Phil Rickman

treacle-black under surface rust, fading to a
mouldering green where it joined the mist. And not a glimmer of anorak-orange.
                As if, somehow, they knew. As if word had been passed
round, silently, like chocolate, before the ramble: avoid the bog, avoid
Bridelow Moss.
                So it was just the three of them, shadows in the filth of
the morning.
                'Go on, then,' Matt was saying, trying to pump humour
into his voice. 'Bugger off, the pair of you.'
                Lottie put out a hand to squeeze his shoulder, then drew
back because it would hurt him. Even a peck on the cheek hurt him these days.
                It had all happened too quickly, a series of savage
punches coming one after the other, faster and faster, until your body was
numbed and your mind was concussed.
                I don't think I
need to tell you, do I, Mrs Castle.
                That he's going to die? No. There
were signs ... Oh, small signs, but ... I wanted him to come and tell you weeks
... months ago. He wouldn't. He has this ... what can I call it ... ? Fanatical
exuberance? If he felt anything himself, he just overrode it. If there's
something he wants to do, get out of his system, everything else becomes
irrelevant. I did try, doctor, but he wouldn't come.
                Please - don't blame yourself. I
doubt if we'd have been able to do much, even if we'd found out two or three
months before we did. However, this business of refusing medication . .       Drugs.
                It's not a dirty word, Mrs Castle.
If you could persuade him, I think ...
                He's angry, doctor. He won't take
anything that he thinks will dull his perceptions. He's ... this is not
anything you'd understand ... he's reaching out for something.
     
    'Go on,' Matt said. 'Get in
the van, in the dry. You'll know when to come back.'
                And what did he mean by that?
                As they walked away, the son and the widow-in-waiting,
she saw him pull something from under the rug and tumble it out into his lap.
It looked, in this light, like a big dead crow enfurled in its own limp wings.
                The rain plummeted into Mart's blue denim cap, the one he
wore on stage.
                Dic said, 'He'll catch his dea—'
                Stared, suddenly stricken, into his mother's eyes.
                'I don't understand any more ,' he said, panicked. 'Where he is ... I've lost him. Is that ... I
mean, is it any place to be? In his state?'
                'Move.' Lottie speaking in harsh monosyllables. 'Go.' The
only way she could speak at all. Turning him round and prodding him towards the
van.
                'Is it the drugs? Mum, is it the drugs responsible for
this?'
                Lottie climbed into the van, behind the wheel. Slammed
the door with both hands. Wound the window down, keeping the rain on her face.
She said nothing.
                Dic clambered in the other side. He looked more like her
than Matt, the way his dark red hair curled, defying the flattening rain. Matt
didn't have hair any more, under his blue denim cap.
                'Mum?'
                'No,' Lottie said. 'There's no drugs. Listen.'
            It was beginning.
                Faint and fractured, remote and eerie as the call of a
marsh bird, familiar but alien - alien, now, to her .
            But not, she was sure, to the
Moss.
            She saw that Dic was crying,
helpless, shoulders quaking.
            An aggressive thing, like
little kids put on: I can't cope with this, I refuse to cope ... take it away, take it off me.
                She couldn't. She turned away, stared hard at the
scratched metal dashboard, blobbed with rain from the open