Today’s author interview rings the changes yet again, for we’re very pleased to be welcoming back that fine chap Brian Barr – and getting his thoughts on writing, marginalisation and all sorts of interesting stuff. Brian is a young black American writer who seems to be hyperactive – every time we plan to have him on here, we find that he’s written something new, and we’re behind again. We first looked at his Empress comic back in 2016, and have mentioned his Carolina Daemonic series a few times, but it’s good to get to grips with him at more length.
Scott J Couturier – On Sacred Hills
Welcome, most beloved listener. Following our launch interview with Catherine Lundoff at the beginning of the week, today we hold a neat session with a gay male writer, Scott J Couturier, for our January LGBTQ+ series of features. Knowing us, we’ll probably post about dogs and Victorian detective fiction in between these themed slots, but we want to keep the ball rolling.
NOTE: One aspect of these features is that we offered interviewees a range of questions which they could pick from, or even add their own. We’re not even sure we like some of our own questions – you inevitably ask yourself (or should), would you put this question to a straight author? No one asks a straight white male author to be representative of their ‘kind’, for example. So these are at best conversation starters for individuals to play off – the answers are the important bit.
Let us dive into the meat – or tofu – of the subject…
SCOTT J COUTURIER
“There should always be a safe place for queerness to flourish, with its own sacred hill & bonfire.”
Scott J. Couturier works with both prose and poetry, and has written three novels (starting with The Mask of Tamrel) as part of a projected five-part dark fantasy series titled The Magistricide. His work focuses on blurring the conceptual walls dividing the fantastic, the cosmic, and the literary; currently he lives in his home town of Traverse City Michigan.
greydog: Hi, Scott, and welcome to greydogtales. Obviously we’re here to talk about LGBTQ+ writers and characters in strange fiction, but maybe you could tell the readers a bit about yourself and your work first, to set the scene. If you wanted to share your personal identity in the context of this feature, how would you do so?
Scott: Hi! My work & my personal identity are, for the most part, one & the same. Even before I could spell, I was dictating little stories (that I would later illustrate crudely) to my mom. Growing up, I felt a compulsive desire to work with words. Having such a feverish & single-minded drive set me apart – specifically, I have always felt the primal compulsion of the fantastic, beginning with Madeleine L’Engle & Ursula K. LeGuin, moving on to Tolkien & Moorcock & the myriad glories of Weird fiction (Lovecraft, W.H. Hodgson & Clark Ashton Smith being primary influences). So, I think of myself first & foremost as a fantasist: but, I’ve always been lured by the darker & more charnel side of things, & of late much of my writing has become expressly horror-based. In recent years my work has increasingly reflected pagan & nature-veneration aspects, as well.
It’s all syncretism. My novel ‘The Mask of Tamrel’ (self-published 2014, pending re-release on Mission Point Press 2019) can nominally be shoved into the following pigeonholes: High fantasy, dark fantasy, flintlock fantasy, steampunk, Weird fiction, dystopia, horror fantasy, ‘literary’ fiction, Folk Horror, GrimDark, decadent fiction, & gnomic fiction (I like this one best). I draw from a pretty broad swathe of influences in my work: I do not at all find horror an uncomfortable or inappropriate label, & in fact am getting more comfortable with it by the day. My recent writing has largely focused on the production of Weird/horror poetry of a quasi-formal bent… really, ‘Weird’ is such a marvelous genre definition. It acknowledges its own syncretism & indeterminacy. I work in wonder, that’s really what it boils down to.
greydog: What’s your preferred format and length as a writer – flash fiction, short story, novella, novel, book series, poetry?
Scott: Egads. I roam all over! From 2012-2017 I worked almost exclusively in novel/series format – then, due to my ever-increasing fascination with Weird fiction (both the historical & present burgeoning scene) I started to focus more on poetry & short story pieces in 2017. 2018 was the first year since 2011 that I didn’t work on a new novel (beyond a couple dozen pages & some outline work). In all, poetry has become an incredibly rewarding outlet. Short fiction can be more troublesome, & I have an unfortunate habit of half-to-3/4 finishing tales & then leaving them by the wayside to rot. Hoping to salvage some of these homunculi in 2019, & refine the tendency in general. That said, I have four or five pieces of short fiction out for consideration right now that I have pretty high hopes for.
greydog: Were there any key books or films that helped you realize and accept your own sexual identity?
Scott: The very first time I remember bumping into explicitly gay characters was in Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman’s ‘The Will of the Wanderer,’ first volume in their Rose of the Prophet series. At the time, I was young & having some very troubling worries about my own sexual identity – I put the book aside, & to this day have never finished it! Later on, other books, films, & music would help me adjust to my queerness: art helps me to orient & self-identify, always has. The music of Rufus Wainwright & Queen (my very first rock band at 13), & rock-&-roll in general, the films ‘Velvet Goldmine,’ ‘Beautiful Thing,’ ‘Kinsey’ & ‘Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ Andy Warhol & John Waters’ oeuvre, the writings of Oscar Wilde & Rimbaud, Poppy Z. Brite & Anne Rice… ‘Ethan of Athos’ by Lois McMaster Bujold was a big one. So much of my ‘coming out’ has only occurred in the last ten years or so!
greydog: Be honest: Have you ever dialed down the queer aspects of a piece to try and draw in a wider audience? Or: dialed them up on purpose, to hammer a point home?
Scott: Honestly, at this juncture I’m still exploring exactly how to incorporate queerness into my work, & what that means. Because so much of what I write is concertedly abstracted, otherworldly & fantastical, the sexual preferences of my characters often don’t come into the scope of the narrative! The last ‘sex’ scene I wrote was an orgy of distinctly non-human, non-binary gendered aliens.
I will say that, more than once, I’ve contemplated whether to make my book series (The Magistricide) more explicitly queer, & that may still be coming in future volumes. At present, the protagonist (one Kelrob Kael-Pellin, a young mage) is asexual, driven by atavistic yearnings for truth, knowledge, & beauty rather than physical consummation. His companion Jacobson (a sell-sword) is bisexual: I’m interested myself to see where that goes. As for recent work…I’ve started experimenting with some queer/homoerotic sentiment in certain pieces, & have been very pleased with the results. I can say that my hesitancy to explore these themes is less based on a fear of losing a ‘wider audience’ & more rooted in my own relatively private nature. I write fantasy: I don’t really write about myself (at least, not directly or consciously).
greydog: We were at a panel during the 2018 UK Fantasycon, which included discussion of asexuality in fiction as part of the diversity spectrum. You mentioned writing an asexual character in your books… can you talk about that?
Scott: Ah, Kelrob! In Thevin, Kelrob’s world, there is a pretty easy-going sense of sexual leniency. However, there isn’t a defined ‘asexual’ identity, per se…Kelrob’s asexuality is something that emerged organically over the course of writing the books. He doesn’t think of/contextualize himself as asexual, but: he has little-to-no interest in pursuing sexual matters, & his intimate/romantic experience is practically nil. He’s spent his entire life with his face in some book or other, blissfully abstracted & driven by a love (perhaps even a lust?) for knowledge & esoteric illumination. His passions lie mostly outside the flesh – Tesla would be a good analogous ‘real-world’ historical figure.
greydog: Which piece of your own work are you most proud of, and why?
Scott: I have a poem coming out in Weirdbook #41 that I’m immensely fond of. It’s called ‘Twin Hungers,’ & it depicts frank homoerotic yearning between a half-changed vampire & his thwarted sire…. It’s subtle & bleak, but it was a conscious choice to write something queer. I’m sure 2019 will see further experiments. Also, 2018 saw me share three anthology ToC with my husband Shayne K. Keen – Trumpland: An Alternative History of the Future, Caravans Awry, & 32 White Horses on a Vermilion Hill (the latter two from Planet X Publications). His first professional publications – I’m proud of him!
LGBTQ+ AND THE FIELD
greydog: The most common phrase you hear when people object to active movements encouraging diversity in fiction is “I don’t care about the sexuality, gender, colour, etc. of the writer. I only care about good stories”. How would you respond to that?
Scott: ‘I don’t want to know’ so often translates to ‘I am afraid…’ at least, that’s what I hear in it.
greydog: Are many readers basically scared of queer fiction (which would be ironic in the horror field especially)? Or, do you thing that they just don’t come across enough good examples to get into it?
Scott: I think reading queer fiction in particular causes people to reflect on themselves. It’s inevitable – who am I attracted to, what do I like? Do I feel like/identify as a woman, a man, neither, both? Queer fiction forces people to confront these questions head-on – both in the context of characters & in context of themselves. “Uh oh – was I just turned on?” Personally, I feel that the scope of human sexuality is infinitely variable, & that any hidebound conception of ‘straight’ or ‘gay’ rings as a hollow absolutism. Since this absolutism/dichotomy is backed up by all kinds of cultural ‘norms,’ conditioning, & expectation, the very hint of queerness in oneself can be felt as a monstrous, terrible thing – at first, & forever if the person never chooses to look into themselves frankly. Thus, it can be infinitely more terrifying for an unexamined person to read a queer story than the blackest horror tale…at least the threat of gibbering cosmic oblivion won’t make your parents disown you!
greydog: Is LGBTQ+ fiction more acceptable to the broader public when it comes from ‘nice middle-class white people’ as opposed to additionally marginalised groups, such as queer black writers?
Scott: Grotesquely, anything is more acceptable to the broader public when it comes from ‘nice, middle-class white people,’ at least in Western European & North American culture. The marginalized always have to speak louder & with more power & force, specifically because they are marginalized.
greydog: True, except when it becomes a media fad, in vogue for a short time, as Catherine Lundoff pointed out a couple of days ago. Getting work noticed at all is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve. Do you think there are more barriers for LGBTQ+ writers in general?
Scott: I can unequivocally say ‘yes,’ insofar as there are simply more barriers for LGBTQ+ people in general. That affirmed, in regards to writing & publishing I thankfully haven’t faced any active discrimination. It’s (of course) interesting to imagine a reality where all marginalization ceases, where new standards of cultural empathy result in gay/queer people just being characters in a story, without their sexual identities as the lynch-pin of the narrative…. I feel humans get too reductive about labels. But then, labels allow the like-minded to find each other, help foster identities & movements. Safety in numbers…a complicated question, clearly! Ironically, this is my first major interview as a writer, & it’s due to my queerness.
greydog: There’s probably some strange irony in that somewhere! So, there are a number of presses dedicated to LGBTQ+ fiction. Do you view these as a good thing, or do you think they risk perpetuating exclusion from mainstream presses?
Scott: I think it is important that queerness maintain its own identity, separate always & ever from the mainstream. That’s been a major job of queerness throughout the ages… to upset convention, foster debate, scandalize, innovate, create art, mysticism, & beauty. As such, these presses have my full support – right now there is a lot of confusion as to what ‘normalizing’ means. For so long gay culture was the subculture, hidden & forbidden, feeding the mainstream… now, LGBTQ+ people are being accepted into consensus reality, & new norms are evolving (which is obviously a good thing). Still, there should always be a safe place for queerness to flourish, with its own sacred hill & bonfire.
greydog: What have you planned in the way of work for 2019?
Scott: 2019 is going to be a busy year. The first three volumes of The Magistricide (my dark/gnomic/etc fantasy series) are going to be re-edited & re-released on Mission Point Press – I’m hoping this gives me the impetus to jump-start the fourth volume. I’m also determined to pull together enough material for a poetry collection in 2019 – a dream of mine when I was younger, long-abandoned, now rekindled. I’m hoping to spend more of this year exploring the work of my contemporaries, too – I work as an editor, & finding the time to read for pleasure is sometimes a challenge. Finally, expect more short stories covering a bewildering array of terrain. Hopefully someone will want them!
greydog: We send our best wishes for those endeavours from across the Pond. Many thanks for taking part.
Anthologies including Scott J Couturier, such as Caravan Awry and 32 White Horses on a Vermillion Hill mentioned above, are available now:
FOR A WHOLE RAFT OF LGBTQ+ ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS ALL MONTH, HEAD OVER TO GINGER NUTS OF HORROR, AT:
Catherine Lundoff – Under a Silver Moon
Welcome to 2019, dear listener, and the first of the fascinating weird/horror fiction and LGBTQ+ interviews we’ll be running this month, along with our usual fare. Today, we’re delighted to make the acquaintance of author/publisher Catherine Lundoff.
And why are we doing this, you ask? Well, we’ve always been about finding and exploring the different, and seeking out new creative thrills. Which means we have already covered a number of LGBTQ+ creators anyway, as a matter of routine. We thrive on inclusive inventiveness.
So when the properly organised review site Ginger Nuts of Horror came up with the idea of highlighting LGBTQ+ authors in horror, and their writing, throughout January, it seemed jolly appropriate for the shambolic greydogtales to join in. Most of the events are at Ginger Nuts, but we have some great pieces coming – thought-provoking, exciting, critical and just useful if you want to try out some new authors. And if you’re a writer or publisher, there’s some interesting stuff to consider as well.
As usual, most of what you need to know is in the interview, so here we go…
NOTE: See also end of post for a forthcoming special offer on one of Catherine’s books
CATHERINE LUNDOFF
Catherine Lundoff is an award-winning writer, editor and publisher from Minneapolis where she lives with her wife, bookbinder Jana Pullman, and the cats who own them. She is the author of over 100 published short stories and essays, which have appeared in such venues as The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast, Tales of the Unanticipated Magazine, My Wandering Uterus: Tales of Traveling While Female, Respectable Horror, Renewal, Callisto, The Mammoth Book of the Adventures of Professor Moriarty, The Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper Stories, The Cainite Conspiracies: A Vampire the Masquerade V20 Anthology and Nightmare Magazine.
Her books include Silver Moon, Out of This World: Queer Speculative Fiction Stories and as editor, the fantastical pirate fiction anthology, Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space). In addition, she is the publisher at Queen of Swords Press, a genre fiction publisher specializing in fiction from out of this world.
greydog: Hi, Catherine, and welcome to greydogtales. Obviously we’re going to ask about LGBTQ+ writers and characters in strange fiction, but maybe first you could tell the readers a bit about yourself, to set the scene. And if you wanted to share your personal identity in the context of this feature, how would you do so?
Catherine: Thanks for hosting this! I’m an author and editor, and more recently, a small press publisher at Queen of Swords Press. I identify as queer or bisexual and have been out for over thirty years. I primarily write fantasy, historicals, horror and other things under my own name, with a few other genres thrown in, and erotica and erotic romance as Emily L. Byrne. From the standpoint of what readers of this site might be interested in, my work has included werewolves, vampires, ghosts, madness and several short fiction tie-ins for World of Darkness games like Vampire the Masquerade. Oh, and a queer retelling of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado.”
greydog: How do you describe the bulk of your own work – horror, weird fiction, magical realism, speculative, or what? Would you find ‘horror’ an uncomfortable or inappropriate label?
Catherine: My horror tales tend toward the Gothic style of writing and that is also most of the horror fiction that I read. I would probably describe my relevant work this way but then, I also have a hyper-realistic novel about menopausal werewolves and coming out at midlife (Silver Moon) and a lot of published short fiction that runs the gamut of themes from Jack the Ripper to the aforementioned Poe retelling to vampire erotica. I also write a bunch of non-horrific fantasy and science fiction, some literary fiction and the occasional romance, so I’d probably have to go with “eclectic.”
greydog: How did you discover authors who wrote about characters whose identities/positions you could relate to? By accident, word of mouth, or actively hunting their work down on your own?
Catherine: I came out in my early twenties, shortly after graduating from college. I cannot truly say that I suspected that I was bisexual before then, though I possibly should have. At any rate, I came out in the late 1980s when a number of science fiction, fantasy and horror authors were writing about LGBT or Q characters for big publishers, which made their work easier to find. I was active in fandom and I had friends who identified as being on the queer spectrum so I had people recommending books to me, pros I met at conventions and so forth. I was also a collective member at a lesbian feminist bookstore so I got to discover what there was to find of early feminist and lesbian science fiction and fantasy novels too. Some of my favourite queer science fiction from that time period included the Silverglass novels by J.F. Rivkin, The Cage by S.M. Stirling and Shirley Meier and Armor of Light by Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett.
greydog: This is a bit direct, but do you feel you’ve ever had work rejected because of your own sexual identity, or that of the characters portrayed?
Catherine: I have not had any obvious negative reactions to queer content in my work from editors or publishers to the best of my knowledge. But then, that’s becoming rarer these days because it’s easier to find a public forum to push back against it. I do know authors who were to told to “straighten” characters out, particularly in YA, and others who got no recognition until they wrote a book about straight characters and I have seen “no gays wanted” calls for fiction within recent memory so I don’t want to downplay those experiences for other authors either or suggest that the playing field is somehow level for everyone. I’m pretty selective about where I sent my work so there’s every chance I’ve just screened those markets out beforehand.
That said, while not intending to be ill-intentioned, there tend to be industry “fads” that sweep through the larger markets and the stories that fit into whatever that category is at the time get more notice and are more likely to be accepted and reviewed. It varies every couple of years (more quickly in the short fiction markets) but the effect is that the same names show up on TOCs with great regularity. Then they often vanish, particularly if the authors belong to sexual, gender or cultural minorities writing about protagonists like themselves, and the markets go on to new things. Many of the queer authors whose work I devoured back in the 1980s and early 1990s are now relegated to the small press or are indie publishing, if they still write for publication at all, for example. That cycle seems to be speeding up as large publishers consolidate and more careers are impacted by midlisting, failing to impress the Amazon algorithms and so forth, which is part of we need a healthier publishing ecosystem with more platforms, options, indie bookstores, publishers and reviewers.
greydog: And have you ever had negative reader reactions because of those factors, to your knowledge?
Catherine: Yep. Generally, it’s coded to some degree, but it shows up in reviews, and more rarely, at readings, book tables and panels. I do a fair number of ‘in person’ events so I get to see a range of audience reactions. Getting one that is clearly homophobic is not a lot of fun, to put it mildly.
greydog: What’s the most heartening response you’ve ever had to portraying/including LGBTQ+ characters?
Catherine: Twice this year I’ve had readers tell me that my novel Silver Moon was their “coming out” novel and helped them get through some rough spots when they were discovering things about themselves. Honestly, this is the most incredible honor I can imagine as a queer writer. I’m so incredibly pleased that my work touched someone and helped them navigate a time in their lives that can be very challenging. Second only to this is having a reader tell me that I’m one of their favourite writers; that never grows stale either.
LGBTQ+ AND THE FIELD
greydog: Are such niche fields as gay and lesbian dark erotica, and the more explicit side of paranormal romance, useful for advancing the presence of LGBTQ+ writers and characters, or detrimental to a balanced portrayal?
Catherine: Well, considering that I got my start in erotica, it would be a tad hypocritical for me to look down on it now. I didn’t write any fiction at all until I was in my thirties so I got a late start on things. One of the first short stories I wrote was a vampire erotica story that appeared in an early Circlet Press anthology. I skipped fan fiction entirely in my writing development, but for a lot of LGBTQ+ writers, this is the first place they discover themselves as writers. Fan fiction tends to have a lot of erotic and romantic storylines and I think that, by and large, this often makes it a safer place to grow as a writer of queer fiction. I also think that writing about sex and doing a good job with it is one of many good ways to hone your writing skills. From a historical perspective, erotica was one of the few genres that was friendlier to positive LGBTQ portrayals when these were hard to find elsewhere. In short, I weigh in heavily on “useful.”
That said, I don’t think these need to be the only kind of LGBTQ+ portrayals available to readers. I find it pretty frustrating when queer writers who don’t write romance, or sexy times stories or sad literary work about broken queer folks, have a hard time placing their stories or finding an audience. More genre diversity is a fabulous thing on every level and I think that applies to the horror field as well.
greydog: We remember that one of our earliest exposures to unabashed gay speculative fiction was through Star Trek fan fiction – Kirkspockiana, with the obvious protagonists. That was fun. Now, getting work noticed at all is one of the hardest things for a writer to achieve. Do you think there are more barriers for LGBTQ+ writers in general?
Catherine: I think it depends on the writer and the specific genre or subgenre they’re writing in. Many out LGBTQ+ writers writing queer work tend to end up self-publishing or writing for smaller presses. This cuts across genres for the most part, though certainly romance in all its flavors has a particularly large cluster of queer writers. Romance also has the largest readership so that’s not terribly surprising, but it’s also very competitive and that makes it harder for new writers or writers who don’t have much of a network to get discovered.
One of the things that a lot of us talk about that is germane to horror readers and editors is a storyline that relies heavily on “Kill Your Gays.” There are variations on this, but basically, this is a story where the out queer character exists solely to die. There’s generally only one and they may be bumped off because they are monstrous and expendable or for reader sympathy or to motivate the other characters. There are whole generations of LGBTQ+ and straight readers who have grown up with this as the main story line where they see any queer characters at all. It remains an on-going problem, particularly when writers get pushed into this trope by publishers who think this is only “real” story for queer characters or when that’s the only kind of tale that attracts critical notice and acclaim.
Add to all of that the social forces of homophobia and other issues and it can be difficult to impossible for an out writer to get their work out in the world and read, particularly if they are also a “minority within a minority,” such as being a person of color, a non-English-speaking immigrant, a queer person with disabilities, etc., especially if their work is deemed “unmarketable.” The barriers are very real and I don’t have any brilliant solutions other than to encourage readers to look for work outside the mainstream and the best sellers list. Try new books and authors, check out some indie published work and small press books. You can find some amazing things out there.
greydog: It’s the ethos of our entire site – explore, with an open mind and a generous heart. Finally, on the field, we hesitated over this last question, as we’re strong supporters of indie and specialist publishers, but we have heard the occasional discussion over this one, so we might as well settle it. There are a number of presses dedicated to LGBTQ+ fiction. Do you view these as a good thing, or do you think they risk perpetuating exclusion from mainstream presses?
Catherine: Since I run a small press, I am completely biased. Small presses are in a position to take bigger risks and publish different voices and different kinds of work than larger houses. For the first decade and a half that I was out, small presses were often the only place to find good representation of LGBTQ characters and stories. And I think that for some kinds of stories, they still are, along with indie published-authors. As mainstream publishers consolidate and are taken over by larger media companies, the emphasis shifts from good storytelling and risk taking to marketability. Not that you can’t have both, but often genre fiction books with queer protagonists, particularly if they are by queer authors, are viewed as “less marketable.” Lesbians are “less marketable” than cis gay men, bisexuals and transgender characters are “less marketable” than lesbians and so forth on down the line. This happens more often if a character is, for example, a person of color as well as being queer or has a disability and is out and queer (or heaven forfend, all of the above). Small presses can provide representation and stories that are either not available or are much harder to find in the mainstream.
greydog: A good argument. And what have you planned in the way of work for 2019?
Catherine: I’m currently working on Blood Moon, the sequel to my novel, Silver Moon, and I hope to put that out through Queen of Swords Press in 2019. I’m also working on a new gaming tie-in story to one of the World of Darkness games and on a proposal for a new game that blends elements of Lovecraftian mythos with the fight for women’s suffrage. We’ll see if I can pull that off. I’m also working on a couple of new short stories in different genres, and of course, publishing new books.
greydog: Cool. Many thanks for taking part!
Catherine Lundoff can be found at: www.catherinelundoff.net
And: www.queenofswordspress.com
As part of this feature month, Catherine has kindly agreed that her short fiction collection, Out of This World, which includes a couple of her horror/dark fantasy tales as well as a mix of her other fiction, will be on sale for the 21-27th January, so do check it out.
FOR A WHOLE RAFT OF LGBTQ+ ARTICLES AND INTERVIEWS ALL MONTH, HEAD OVER TO GINGER NUTS OF HORROR AT:
THE WRECK OF THE NATIVIDAD
Season’s greetings, dear listener, for once again we present your annual story of St Botolph-in-the-Wolds at Christmas. As usual, it is a tale of horror – and humble village folk – which will bring a tear to your eye, but not your wallet, for though it has been crafted especially for your rapid dismissal, it is absolutely free.
We will, of course, be taking retinal scans as you read it, so don’t think you’re entirely off the hook…
Much to their surprise, the inhabitants of that benighted East Yorkshire village, St Botolph-in-the-Wolds, have made it through to yet another Christmas. Most of them, anyway. Despite plague, marauding monstrosities, feral Girl Guides, religious feuds and their own naturally contentious nature, the villagers have endured, and it is time to celebrate…
THE WRECK OF THE NATIVIDAD
A chilling event of spectral outrage
by J Linseed Grant
As a seasonal icy rain lashed St Botolph’s, the streets thronged with busy folk. Outside the village store, Sandra, her cousin Mary, and Mary’s fearless lurcher, Bottles, stood under the tattered shop awning and watched the merry throng.
Huzzah! cried the children as they hurtled cheerily through the narrow lanes, trying to pick the pockets of the older villagers as they went – and tread on as many bunions as possible.
Huzzah! cried the more aged residents, lashing out with their canes and hoping to cripple at least one passing urchin to add to their score.
Huzzah! cried the Girl Guides, who believed in ill will to all men – and women. Liberally fuelled by lemonade and Brasso, they were trying to take down both babes and pensioners with equal enthusiasm.
“The authorities tried to have the entire village sectioned last month,” said Sandra, wringing out one of her long blonde plaits. “But they couldn’t get the police or the doctors to come near enough. Even the Army medics refused to turn out.”
“Not surprised.” Mary coughed into his handkerchief, and examined the result. A number of rare diseases were endemic to St Botolph’s, and it was always worth checking. “At least there’s no panto this year.”
Sandra stared at the sad sight of her cousin, whose usually neat outfit of silk blouse, pleated skirt and ribbed tights was in some disarray. Mrs Gribble, ninety three years old and sprightly, had tried to mug them outside the Mold Street charity shop. It was fortunate that Sandra had her Remington with her – a warning shot had driven the old lady back into the shop.
“We are still going to the church’s Nativity Play, aren’t we?” asked Sandra. “I have to take some of Mother’s sheep down for the procession.”
“S’ppose so. But you know it’ll be a disaster, don’t you?”
Bottles looked up, catching the tone in his master’s voice, and leapt into action with his usual bold response to any sort of danger.
“You’ll have to change your tights again, Mary,” said Sandra. “That’ll stain.”
***
The little church of St Botolph, proud centre of St.Botolph-in-the-Wolds, is described in Edith Hollinghurts’s monumental, twenty five volume work ‘The Least Pleasant Parish Churches of England’ (1936) as:
“A warped and completely appalling excrescence, combining the worst features of seven architectural periods at once. The entire edifice, an offence to the Anglican community, should be burned down at once, and I will pay for the petrol.”
Its unique bell tower never seemed to be at the same angle twice, and most of the gargoyles had abandoned their posts centuries ago, too frightened to stay. The extensive crypt was known for its collection of unassigned femurs; the font was either Anglo-Saxon or IKEA, and the benefice of St Botolph’s was traditionally given to those clergy who were too insensitive to notice what was happening around them.
The Reverend Denholm Whitehead was such a man. He was Anglican in the way that cardboard is a foodstuff – it neither offends nor provides anything of value – and left most things to his energetic wife. Thus it was that while he sat at home and watched the Christmas Day racing at Wetwang, Mrs Whitehead strode around the church organising anyone who didn’t move fast enough to escape her.
“Not there, Marjorie, dear,” she admonished an old woman who was stuffing plastic lilies into the carved mouth of St Carapace, an early Christian martyr to haemorrhoids. Tall and grey-haired, Mrs Whitehead had views on everything, from transubstantiation (too many vowels) to the cooking of sprouts (at a rolling boil for three hours).
The nave of the church would host this year’s Nativity Play. There was to be a short performance that evening – as short as possible – from the children of St Botolph’s Mixed Infants School, followed by a procession of local animals to adore the newly- born Messiah, and a hasty exit to the Flayed Bull for mulled gin and aspirin. Most church events resulted in elevated consumption of aspirin, except for those inter-faith sessions led by the local imam, whose astonishing displays of Muslim origami always put people at ease.
Much of the touching tableau was already in place in front of the altar. Something vaguely resembling a manger had been erected from old planks by the Women’s Institute, and a large artificial palm tree (kindly stolen from a York nightclub by the Girl Guides) nodded over the scene, evoking a fine sense of the Middle East. That was if you ignored the cigarette ends, the smell of badly-mixed cocktails, and the pair of pink lace panties lodged firmly in the upper fronds. Which Mrs Whitehead did.
Feeling obligated, she walked over to where a small, dirty figure in a frayed potato sack loitered by the crib – a damaged crate marked ‘Luncheon Meat – Condemned’.
“Hello, little boy, and what–”
“I is a girl.”
“Ah. Well, little girl, what a lovely crib.” She peered inside the crib, where lay a large off-white turnip with a false beard stuck to it. “The Baby Jesus… appears to be a turnip.”
“It am. Dolly’s head fell off.”
“But why is it wearing a beard?”
The girl gave her a look of utter scorn. “You wouldn’t know it were Jesus if it didn’t have no beard, would you?”
Beaten by such logic, the vicar’s wife retreated. She was sure, however, that the evening would go splendidly…
***
At the farm, the sheep had at last been brushed and put the right way up. Sandra’s mother had recently given refuge to a small herd of Ousewater Blackfloods, an ancient Yorkshire breed with varying numbers of legs and a tendency towards amphibious outings, which meant they had to be dried in front of the kitchen range on an almost daily basis.
“Yan, Tan, Tether, Mether, Pip…” intoned Sandra as the animals stumbled out into the yard.
“That’s the traditional Yorkshire way of counting sheep, isn’t it? I read about it at college.”
“Is it?” Sandra looked puzzled. “Mother told me it was their names. Look, Mether’s the large one with the squinty eye, the one trying to hide in the horse-trough.”
“Oh.” Mary hauled the sheep out and gave it a kick up the backside to send it on its way. He glanced towards the barn where Sandra’s pony lived. “Speaking of horse-troughs, where is Mr Bubbles?”
“He went out onto the moors to stand on things,” said Sandra, putting Tether back onto his feet again. “Said he might drop in later.”
“Come-bye, come-bye, away!” yelled the two chums as they urged the sheep down the lane towards the church. It would have helped to have sheepdogs – Bottles was no use, as he had hidden amongst the sheep at the first mention of Mr Bubbles. Anything to do with that slightly psychotic pony involved a level of clear and present danger that Bottles preferred to avoid.
As they neared the village, they met with other columns of animals. Farmer Turvey was there with the more dissident of his cows, which had now abandoned their theories of a dictatorship of the proletariat, and begun to espouse anarcho-syndicalism; Mrs Pettifer, reputedly the oldest person in the village, had a box of convalescent tortoises, whilst Ignatius Pottle had brought his eleven children, a brood of dubious provenance. Sundry geese, rabbits and goats made up the numbers as the crowd entered the churchyard.
“Oh dear,” said Sandra, seeing Miss Hildagram, the local coven leader, cycling up the street. “I see she’s brought it.”
‘It’ was Miss Hildagram’s pet badger, Fluffy, perched in the bicycle basket. Everyone agreed that Fluffy probably was a badger – or had been once – but it was certainly not a pet by anyone’s standards except Miss Hildagram’s. It could be better described as thirty five pounds of striped, clawed irritation, bound to its loving owner by an accidental spell-casting. The pink ribbon around Fluffy’s neck did not disguise the badger’s general dislike of its situation.
“Who’s a good boy, yes um is, isn’t um?” doted the aged witch, her affection rewarded by a throaty scream of annoyance from inside the basket.
With the various beasts penned or parked outside the church, awaiting the procession proper, Sandra, Mary and Bottles joined the throng of villagers heading into the building.
“This place makes my sinuses hurt,” said Mary.
“It’s the dust. Probably.” Sandra drew in the unique churchy smell of mouldy hymn books, pigeon droppings and wood polish, along with a miasma of dubious sanctity created by centuries of people sitting there every week and wondering if they’d left the iron on. “Don’t do that, Bottles.”
The lurcher lowered his back leg, edging away from a stone column that had been particularly tempting, and settled in the pew next to Mary. Already the main lights were being dimmed, leaving the forty or fifty people present unable to find where they’d put their mints or crossword puzzles.
It was a good turnout, and there were many looks of appreciation as the church organist, high on cold remedies, began a random medley of ‘Zadok the Priest’ and ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’, throwing in the odd passage from ‘Oklahoma!’ now and then.
“You don’t hear that very often,” said Sandra. “When does the–”
The main lights dimmed suddenly, leaving only a single spotlight focussed on the nave.
“It is not far now, my dear,” said a jam-covered mixed infant, revealed in the circle of light. Just identifiable as Blessed Smothers, the son of the local cess-pit cleaner, he was arrayed in a magnificent selection of tea towels depicting British defeats at sea. Wobbling behind him on a tandem sat Emily Pethwick in an old sheet, a red velour cushion tied around her waist.
“An’ my bum hurts,” said the Virgin Mary.
The congregation watched with moderate interest as the two children cycled up the nave, followed by the glare of the spotlight, to where a plywood door had been hung between two pillars. Joseph and the Virgin Mary dismounted, letting the tandem crash to the floor. Through the cunning artifice of amateur carpenters, the door opened, to reveal a portly infant wearing a false moustache. His overall appearance – disconcertingly – was of a very young Hercules Poirot, blinking in the harsh light.
“Yes? Are you robbers?”
“No,” said Joseph. “My wife is with child.”
“She aren’t with anyone ‘cept you,” said the Innkeeper, poking his nose as he regarded the Virgin Mary.
“It’s a baby, you thicko. It’s inside her.”
The Innkeeper stepped back. “Urgh! She’s etten a baby?”
“Get on with it,” hissed Mrs Whitehead from the shadows. The three players hesitated, then recovered.
“She is with child,” repeated Joseph, “And needs somewhere to do the thing what women does. Is there room at your inn?”
“Course there is. Loads of room.” The Innkeeper, also known as Our Brian, was the only son of the landlord at the Flayed Bull, and a keen advocate of the publican’s trade. “What sort of inn would this be if there wasn’t no room? We got a nice double, wiv a toilet.”
“Manger!” came the hiss from the wings.
The Innkeeper frowned. “Er… but the toilet is broke. We can do you the manger, what is next door. Straw extra.” He shuffled out from the doorway and pushed the two towards the crib and the palm tree. “Breakfast is sausages.”
The small girl in the potato sack came forward to stand by the crib. “I is a shepherd. I is here to adore somethink. Is your wife fat, or is she making babies?”
Emily Pethwick, never one to avoid a challenge, ran forward and punched the small girl in the stomach. “An’ I is not fat, Jennie Bullfish! An’ it is a BABY, what will be the Messy-thing. An’ it will make loads of people fight for, like, ages an’ ages, even though it is nice. An’ it gives them sandwiches with fishes in. An’ so they are stupid!”
“Oh.” The small girl gave the Virgin Mary a vindictive look. “You is late. There is Three Kings what have been waiting ages.”
Three more mixed infants, clad in Christmas wrapping paper and Sellotape, came out from behind the altar. Each wore a turban fashioned by the imam, who had gracefully accepted his role as period advisor, despite the fact that he had been born in Bradford and knew little of hat fashions in early Palestine. It showed.
The tallest King came to the crib, one pudgy hand to his head as he tried to stop his turban unravelling. “We brings you gifts, what we wrapped ourselves.”
“An’ I has not had the Messy-thing yet,” said the Virgin Mary.
“Tough,” said the King. “We are very busy at this time of year, ‘cos it is Christmas. If you don’t want our pressies–”
A hasty struggle ensued, in which a carton of cheap cigarette lighters, a plastic dinosaur and a Terry’s chocolate orange found their way to the foot of the crib.
“An’ now I must go to the hospittle for tummy ache,” announced the Virgin Mary loudly.
The spotlight clunked off, leaving the church in almost complete darkness. The gathered folk of St Botolph’s applauded, mostly in the hope that this would speed up the affair.
Sandra nudged her cousin. “You see, it’s all going jolly well. And nobody’s been hurt at all.”
“Give it time,” said Mary. “I expect that–”
He was interrupted by an almost blinding light from around the altar, but it was only the vicar’s wife turning all the fittings on at once from the pulpit. Mrs Whitehead beamed down on the congregation.
“Behold, our lovely Christmas scene!”
And there it was – the Nativity.
As Joseph, the Virgin Mary and the Innkeeper jostled and poked each other, the Three Kings gave muted adoration of the ‘new-born’, trying to ignore the fact that the Baby Jesus was still a large turnip in a beard. The palm tree swayed above all, and the wise shepherd, aka Jennie Bullfish, ushered various other vaguely shepherd-like mixed infants into the spotlight.
Despite the organiser’s best efforts, there had been the usual parental indifference to making new `costumes. One child had a horse’s skull strapped over his face; another was dressed as a dalek, and several wore other variants on outfits from various village pantomimes. It wasn’t quite Bethlehem, let’s put it that way. The vicar’s wife had reflected more than once that keeping the older children, such as most of the Girl Guides, out of the affair had its downside. Although a law unto themselves, the Guides were at least highly organised.
“I is an Angle of the Lord!” announced a waif-like girl in white robes, a gold-painted frisbee taped to her head. “I denunciated this, I did too.”
“You stinks of vinegar, Clemency May Pottle,” said the Innkeeper, throwing a stained tea-towel over the waif. “’Cos you is a fish-face!”
Violence was avoided by Mrs Whitehead’s yelled instructions, upon which the infants burst into a spirited rendition of ‘Away in a Manger’, bolstered every so often by the organist waking up and leaning on an organ key. The congregation duly joined in, and up the central aisle came the animals, prodded along by the churchwardens and members of the Women’s Institute.
The Ousewater Blackfloods were surprisingly well-behaved as they neared the manger to do some adoring – excepting for Mether, who tried to make a run for the font. Sandra leapt up and steered the sheep back into the flock, returning to her seat again as the rest of the Pottle children, a Marxist-Leninist cow and a fluster of goats entered the church. Geese honked and released their droppings liberally, while a selection of pet rabbits demonstrated their intelligence and simply ran straight back out of the open doors.
Up rose the heavenly sound of more than fifty adults and infants mangling Christmas carols, mingled with the bleats of goats and sheep, the angry complaints of Fluffy, still in its basket, and the keening cry of Bottles, who felt that he’d been rather forgotten in this story.
In the bell tower, the vicar’s team lifted up wooden mallets and announced the birth of the Baby Jesus by hitting the church bells as hard as they could. Once upon a time the team had been proper bell-ringers, but Old Taunt, Jack-the-Grand, Saint Cecilia and most of the other bells had crashed through the joists many years ago, and though intact, lay in a metallic jumble on the tower floor.
Each massive chunk of bronze gave a dull boom as the mallets hit home – Old Taunt was balanced on scavenged train rails, and retained some of his sonorous nature. The bell-tower shook to his call, originally reserved as a solo performance for the more interesting funerals.
BOOM.
A cloud of pigeon-droppings and woodworm dust flew into the body of the church, inducing violent coughing, but the congregation responded with typical Yorkshire stubbornness by singing louder.
BOOM.
Hands clapped to their ears, Sandra and Mary edged towards the doors.
“I can’t take much more of this!” yelled Mary. “Let’s go outside.”
His cousin nodded. “Half past nine, I think.”
BOOM.
Old Taunt shifted on his rails and sounded again, shaking the church spire, and the Ousewater Blackfloods took alarmed baaing to a new level. The organist, shaken out of her medical stupor by the sheer noise, began to play the Wedding March with all the stops out. Encouraged by the vicar’s wife pointing at the hymn board on the wall, the congregation burst into ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’, increasing the racket another notch. Many miles away in York and Scarborough, amateur seismologists watched quivering needles with interest.
BOOM.
The cousins had barely reached the main entrance when they sensed a change in the atmosphere – a thin, cold sort of sensation. Lost in their fervour to out-sing various neighbours, everyone else seemed oblivious to the dense grey mist which was rising through cracks in the church floor.
It rose like smoke at first, tendrils interweaving and shifting in the draughty church, but soon began to take on a more worrying identity of its own – a bank of rolling grey which lapped around the edges of the congregation. Faces were forming inside it, cadaverous faces which reminded Sandra and Mary of the long-dead. Shrivelled eyes turned under ruined brows; rotting lips opened to reveal jagged teeth…
“Uh-oh.” Mary reached into his handbag to see if he had remembered the collection of silver bullets, cold iron, and religious artefacts that he habitually carried when he visited St Botolph’s. “Cripes – I brought the other bag. I knew it!”
Sandra made frantic signals to Mrs Whitehead, who only leaned forward in the pulpit and smiled back, not noticing the new presences at her successful Nativity Play. Down in the main aisles, people were now less certain. The singing faltered. Old Taunt had fallen silent for a moment, and hungrier voices could be heard above the bleating of the sheep and goats. The voices of the grave.
<What’s this? What’s this? There’s something very wrong. What’s this? There are idiots singing songs…>
Mary was trying to make the sign of the cross with two different shades of lipstick. “Blimey, isn’t that a line from a film, the one about scary pumpkins, with–”
“Shh!” said Sandra. “There might be lawyers reading.”
Cavernous eye sockets gleamed in the pallid mist, which rolled around the parishioners and mixed infants with palpable malevolence.
<We slept,> hissed the voices. <For decades, for centuries, we slept in the cool Beneath. And now this! You drag us from our quiet deaths; you send your shrieking nonsense into our very bones.>
“Awfully sorry,” said Sandra. “Slight mistake, that’s all.”
Dead faces turned to her, features swirling, changing and reforming – the mist grew thicker, bringing the smell of rotting coffins and the charnel house. Or what Sandra imagined a charnel house would smell of, whatever one of them was.
<Mistakes.> A grey face hovered in the mist before the teenager. <We know of those. And we know of regrets and lost hopes, of punishment and torment.>
A vaporous hand, more a claw, lashed out and clutched Mrs Peaslee, the Chair of the Women’s Institute. Although it only managed to lift her a few inches, when she fell back into her pew she was shaking, and had crystals of ice in her eyebrows and her perm. Other limbs formed in the mist, reaching into the congregation – each touch of a phantom finger or talon brought with it the cold of the grave. People cried out, but when the back row scrambled out of their pews and staggered towards the church doors, pale hands slammed the doors shut.
<We shall tell you about the Beneath, and the peace of Death. We shall teach you how to be quiet. Very quiet…”>
“Oh, knickers,” said Mary, clutching Bottles to him. “Sandra, we’re in trouble.”
But then, at that very moment (as storytellers like to say), the great oak doors of the church boomed with a powerful impact. An impact from… outside! The cousins looked at each other. Could it be?
Despite the thick, grasping mist around the doors, the hinges rattled. Then they groaned, bent… and both doors burst open. Outlined against a feeble moon stood a vision of Horse. This was Ur-Horse, the primal essence made flesh, as if everything equine which had ever existed had been distilled into one black, muscular form…
“Mr Bubbles!” Sandra and Mary cried out in unison.
“What?” The pony looked around the church. “Messy in here. Why the fog?”
“It’s not fog, boy” said Sandra, pressing herself gratefully against the pony’s warm shoulder. “I’m awfully afraid that we’ve woken the spirits of the angry dead, and now they want revenge for being disturbed.”
“Fair enough.” He twitched his ears. “Thought there was a racket. Anyway, seen my turnip?”
Mary slid as close as she dared to the slightly psychotic pony. “Er, did you not come to rescue us?”
“Not really.” Mr Bubbles looked irritated. “Some kid nicked my best turnip. Big white one, sort of purple bit near the top. I was saving it.” A swirling face, the colour of wet linen, passed near him, and he bit out, but his huge teeth met nothing. “Can’t do much, anyway. Not to these things. So, about that turnip–”
The youngsters’ hearts sank – or at least moved marginally further down in their chests, trying to find a way out. If their indomitable beast couldn’t affect these spectres, then what was going to happen to them?
“There must be something you can do, boy?” pleaded Sandra.
“Doubt it.” The pony trod experimentally on a misty claw which was trying to catch hold of Sandra’s left leg. His iron-shod hoof had no effect, so he grabbed her coat collar in his teeth and put her down on the other side of him. “See? I should leg it if I were you.”
“We can’t leave the rest of them behind.” She pointed to where villagers and animals filled the nave, surrounded by the chill grey mist and a sea of clutching talons. The crib had fallen over, and the goats were eating a selection of Hymns Ancient and Modern. Miss Hildegram appeared to be attempting a spell of some sort, but as an irate badger was chewing on her ankle, her concentration was not at its best.
“It is all about belief,” shouted the coven leader, trying to kick Fluffy away without hurting it (no one had ever determined Fluffy’s gender, though a few had lost fingers trying). “You must show them your faith, whatever it is!”
Heeding her wise words, two or three villagers held up lottery tickets, waving them at the gaseous spectres. To Sandra’s surprise, this seemed to be effective, at least for a moment or two.
As for the mixed infants, they seemed oblivious to the threat. The Virgin Mary and Jennie Bullfish were locked in a fairly epic fist-fight, egged on by the Innkeeper and the Three Kings, whilst Joseph was kicking the artificial palm tree and trying to catch falling cigarette ends. Phrases such as ‘Think of the children,’ would clearly be lost on Mr Bubbles. But… the crib!
“I know where your turnip is,” she said, tugging on his mane. Mr Bubbles, who had turned to leave, twisted his head round. “And if you help save this lot, I’ll tell you,” she added.
He snorted. “Still can’t do much.” He lashed out again, but the mist merely parted and reformed into an annoyed face.
<You will not find us, horse-monster,> said the face, and then its expression changed to a weak smile. <Oops. Ignore me.>
“What does it mean, ‘find us’?” Mary put Bottles down behind him. The shivering lurcher was getting very damp, and Mary didn’t want to think about that too much. “Sandra, there’s something to find!”
“Ghosts, spectres, dead people, crypt, revenants…” Sandra employed every trick in the book. In the cheaper books, anyway. She narrowed her eyes, furrowed her brow, chewed at the insides of her cheeks, racked her brains and tried a few more classic moves, all at the same time. And whilst it gave her a bit of a headache, she had a spark of inspiration.
“Bodies,” she said. “Or bones, anyway. They must have mortal remains somewhere. Maybe that’s their weakness.”
Mary grinned. “Gosh, you might have something there. Where’s the entrance to the crypt? Bottles, go find them, boy. Good dog, find the bones. Big bones for my best boy.”
Bottles was not the wisest of dogs, nor was he the most stupid. He considered the possibility that there really were nice bones – or that he might be catapulted into more terrifying danger than even his capacious bladder could express. Still, he was quite fond of Mary…
“Woof,” he replied, and shot off down the side of the church, ducking under the foul mist and keeping away from the general melee in the nave. The lurcher could smell bones, though the scent he caught didn’t seem very fresh. Maybe there were better ones down there as well. There was a lot of dust in the air.
“Come on,” urged Sandra, and Mr Bubbles trotted reluctantly after them, snapping now and then at a protruding face. Bottles was panting in front of a door near the vestry, a thick, studded door with an iron ring riveted to it.
“It’s probably–”
The pony’s hooves shattered the door, and some of the surrounding masonry.
“–locked,” finished Mary, feeling a bit unnecessary.
Astonished at himself, the lurcher led the way down a flight of broad steps and into the dim space below. Arched ceilings gathered the gloom about them, and the pony’s iron horseshoes raised sparks from the stone-flagged floor. Sandra pulled a torch from her back-pack, and in its clear beam, they saw the carved tombs, and the niches stacked with the coffins of former generations. The posher members of said generations, that is.
“No turnip.” Mr Bubbles looked around, his eyes betraying a spark of red in their black depths.
“There will be.” Sandra stroked his long neck. “Do what I ask, darling Mr Bubbles, and you’ll have your turnip back, I promise.”
The red faded. In Sandra he trusted. Anyone else who called him ‘darling’ would have had their face kicked in. She whispered something else in his ear, and pushing the torch into her cousin’s hand, she ran back up the steps.
“Hey, you lot! Ghost-pests!” The mists swirled, and narrow faces formed in it, looking in her direction. “Yeah, that’s right, you. You need to jolly well listen to me.”
<Ice for the maiden, ice and dust to clog her little throat…> whispered the nearest face.
“Right, then.” Sandra thrust two fingers into her mouth and let out a sharp whistle. There was a thump and crunch down in the crypt. The eyes of the next face along opened wide, and it folded, dissipating into the general mist with a faint cry of <Oh, bugger!>
A pneumatic hiss of snarls and imprecations came from the mist, which crept towards her. She whistled again. Another crunch from below, and a grasping hand fell apart, inches from her arm. The spectral cloud hesitated.
“I know where you live,” said Sandra. “My pony is ready to crush every single casket and tomb down there; your bones will be broken open and thrown to the dogs to gnaw. Well, a dog, anyway. Same thing.”
Bottles gave a Yip! from the crypt, one which managed to convey both threat and the urgent need to relieve himself. He didn’t think much of the bones he’d found so far, but he was a Good Dog.
<You cannot destroy us all in the time we need to–>
A crunching, rending sound beneath them announced that Mr Bubbles was taking out his annoyance on one of the larger family tombs. Three faces disappeared at once this time.
<All right, all right.> The mist, smaller now and pulsating slightly, eased away from the villagers and their animals.
Sandra put her hands on her hips, facing the core of the spectres with determination. “Go back to sleep, and we won’t do in any more of you. And we’ll stop singing for a while. Agreed?”
The response was sullen but definite.
<Agreed.>
The mist slid away, insinuating itself between flagstones, disappearing wisp by wisp until there was no trace that it had ever been there apart from some very cold villagers and some confused animals.
Satisfied, Sandra gave two short, sharp whistles, and her companions padded, clattered and staggered up from the crypt. Bottles was looking particularly pleased with himself, dragging a large leg bone along as he emerged.
“Is it… er… wrong to eat people?” asked Mary, glancing at his dog.
“He was very useful.” Sandra patted Bottles on the head. “And, I suppose–”
“Turnip,” said Mr Bubbles, his dark eyes fixed on her.
She sighed, and pushed her way through the confused parishioners to get to the crib, where the Virgin Mary and Jennie Bullfish had made up their differences. They were playing with Mr Clemp’s wooden leg, which had fallen off in the general chaos.
“An’ it does bend, in the middul, see?” Emily demonstrated to Jennie.
Sandra retrieved the leg, passing it back to its owner. “I could do with that turnip, girls.”
“It are the Baby Jesus,” said the erstwhile shepherd. “That is why it do have a beard.”
“Mine.” Mr Bubbles loomed over the crib, and as usual, people edged away. When it came to getting close to the great black beast of the moors, you were either Sandra, or you were tomorrow’s obituary notice.
“An’ it am the horsey!” said Emily, who had been enamoured of Mr Bubbles since the night-jack and combine harvester incident a year or so before. “Here, horsey.” She held up the turnip, which Mr Bubbles took gently in his teeth, spitting out the false beard as he did so.
They watched the pony as he trotted through the confused throng and exited the church. The Ousewater Blackfloods had held up remarkably well, thought Sandra, though Mether was predictably wedged in the font and would have to be hauled out.
“Are we dead?” asked Mrs Gribble, who had a dessicated pigeon corpse tangled in her hair and a lot of pale dust on her face, giving her the appearance of a deranged geriatric geisha.
“No, we’re just in St Botolph’s,” said Sandra. The old woman wandered off, looking content with that answer. Miss Hildegram was unconscious, but Fluffy was crouched on top of her body, and by all reports had driven away any misty, predatory talons. Love is a funny thing.
Mary tapped his cousin on the shoulder, and pointed to the pulpit. The vicar’s wife appeared to be paralysed in a posture of forced enthusiasm, a rictus of a smile upon her face. How much of the nightmare she had taken in, it was hard to tell.
“Are you all right up there, Mrs Whitehead?” called out Sandra.
“Gladioli on Tuesdays, chrysanthemums on Fridays,” said Mrs Whitehead. “And I must tell Denholm that the churchyard grass needs cutting.”
“She’s fine. It’s just shock.”
Bottles urinated against the pulpit, and then dragged his bone out into the night, leaving Sandra and Mary to re-establish some vague sense of normality inside the church. Mary was in a particularly good mood.
“No one’s dead,” he said with a grin. “That’s probably a first for Christmas Day up here, isn’t it?”
Sandra shoved the torch back into her pack. “You should see what they do tomorrow, on the twenty sixth. ‘The Hunting of the Wren’ – using the school howitzer.”
“Well, I think we’ve done OK, anway.” Mary smoothed out his pleated skirt. “What I say is, goodwill to all folk, and God bless us, every–”
Behind him, Fluffy the badger was violently – and noisily – sick into the empty crib.
THE END
And greydog hopes to sneak back at least once more before the end of the calendrical year…