“Green man”
“What?”
“It’s called a green man. There’s no such thing as a “Berry Man.”
Andy considered the carving on the end of the pew. The oak was so old that it was now the colour of treacle, and the face was more like a gurning pixie than a man, with a sharp little sticky - out tongue and tiny round eyes. It wasn’t green. It vomited and drowned in brambles and berries.
“Looks a bit pagan for a church,” he said.
“Actually it’s a Christian thing,” said Craig. “Apparently it was common in the Middle Ages to draw the cross as a living tree. The green man is most likely Christ himself, being consumed by torment.”
Andy looked at it again. Partly hidden by the tongue and all the leaves, some kind of simple whistle protruded from its mouth. It looked like it was having a great time, to him.
Craig pulled out his laptop and a bundle of cables from his rucksack. “Is your mic on?” He said, “We could do a bit about the font.”
St. Mary’s of Temple Bottom was one of the few churches in Britain with visible Saxon features, including the font, a squat chunk of pale granite that nature had filled with rainwater and leaves because the roof had been fucked for decades. The church itself had been recently sold off to the “Friends of Friendless Churches’ charity, and they had asked Craig and Andy if they’d do an episode about it, but a font and a funny name would barely make a short. St. Mary’s Bottom was one room, half a roof, and a handful of gravestones outside, broken and pulled down by centuries of bindweed. They were going to need something else to talk about.
“Avebury’s not far from here, is it?” Andy said. “We could go and do a bit about the solstice, maybe?”
Craig frowned and scratched his beard. “Solstice is tomorrow though, I’d struggle to have time to edit it and get it out before Christmas. Mr. Banbury should be here in a minute, he might have some local stories or something.”
“He’s the guy that does the ghost walk?”
“Yeah he does the Salisbury one.”
“Must have something fun then.” Andy looked into the puddle in the font, watching his reflection among the leaves turn his red beard and hair into a rusty- brown green man. The hagstone on the leather cord he wore dangled over the water, swaying like a pendulum as the black silhouette of a pigeon fell into the clouds behind him.
There was a boom and a scrape as a very tall man in a neat grey suit fought with the door.
“Are you the podcast people?” he said, still trying to push the door closed behind him. “I’m terribly early I’m afraid. Gosh, they made things properly in the 16th century, didn’t they!”
The door finally shut with a clunk. The man had a neat, goatish grey beard but his white hair was a wild halo of fuzz around his head, and he was, apparently of his own free will, wearing a Christmas tie, the kind that plays a tune when you press the button, which he actually did as he approached them. It played ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High.”
“Seasons greetings!” He said, shaking Craig’s hand and then Andy’s. “Doctor Banbury, It’s me that’s been emailing? I said I’d give you the tour?”
‘Yeah,” said Craig. “Yeah of course, thank you, it’s a lovely place.”
“Isn’t it? It’s wonderful to finally do something about it really. Have you been told about the font? And our green man? He’s quite distinctive in style, might even be early fifteenth, who knows?”
The tune from the tie finished. Outside the pigeons warbled softly.
“How much money do you need to fix everything?” Asked Craig.
“Oh, far more than we have. But it’s done the place some good just to get that awful sixties steel roof off, if you ask me. The plan is to replace the original thatch but we’d have to go on the waiting list, there’s only one company still doing it locally.”
“We were wondering if you knew any good folklore about the place,” said Andy.
“In Temple Bottom?” Andy had to stifle a giggle at the way the doctor’s Wiltshire accent lingered on the word ‘bottom’.
The Dr. paused, and leaned in as if he was worried the birds might overhear. Andy wished they’d had a chance to set up the recording before he’d asked the question. “Well, it’s very interesting that you should ask. Because the truth is…” Dr Banbury stopped, looked at the door, and then pressed his tie button. It played ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’, again. “There’s bugger all, actually.” He chuckled. “A surprising dearth of good folklore, given the age of the church and the surrounding farms, and of course we’re not that far from Avebury. But if you’re interested in folk culture there’s always the Berry Man.”
“Oh?” Said Andy.
“Well obviously there is no such thing-“
“right-“
“-really, It’s likely a misspelling of burry man, after the festival in Queensferry. All we really know is that Cecil Sharp came here in 1910, and recorded a tune he was told was a morris dance, named the ‘Berry Man, but the timing’s all wrong for morris. Nevertheless, we’ve found a side from Dorset that are willing to have a go tomorrow evening, in return for free mulled wine and hotdogs, and the ‘friends’ will be there of course, shaking the old tin for the roof repair. You’d be welcome to film.”
“That sounds interesting,” said Craig. “That’s here?”
“Up on the hill.” Dr Banbury waved his hand in the direction of the eastern wall, as if they should be able to see the chalk ridge of Faulkner’s hill through two feet of stone. “That way people can park at the “Pipe and Fiddle’, just down the road.”
Craig nodded, and clipped his mic to his shirt collar, handing another to the doctor. “It’s an Iron Age hill fort up there, is that right?”
“They used to think so. Disappointingly it turns out that an aristocrat from Marlborough planted the ring of beech trees in the nineteen hundreds, and there’s no sign of earlier earthworks. The Salisbury Young Archaeologists did a dig a while back, found nothing of interest at all.” He clipped the mic to his shirt collar. “The council have let us borrow some fairy lights for the trees, so it should be lovely and festive.”
A shot of cold drizzle hit them from the hole in the roof. It’ll take more than some twinkly lights to make the barrow-downs in midwinter feel like a party, Andy thought, putting his jacket hood up.
Dr Banbury pressed his tie button. It was ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High,’ again. “Let’s do the tour, shall we?”
“So the tie was weird, right?”
On the other side of the zoom call Craig laughed over his glass of beer. “Holy shit. I mean I like Christmas but that’s commitment.”
“Do you really want to go? It’s going to be bloody freezing, and you’re going to want to edit the whole thing before next week.”
Craig swivelled his office chair so that he could pick a book out from the shelf behind him. A vintage doll with black painted eyes, a small deer skull, a plush red demon and a goatskin drum, all perched on top of the row of books, all leaned over slightly as he pulled the book out. “Ah, but would you be more interested if you knew it was haunted?”
“The church?”
Craig sipped his beer again as he shook his head, opening the book. “The hill, Faulkner’s hill. It’s funny, I found a few references to Temple Bottom being called that because of a Roman temple on the site, but if you actually look at the earliest maps of the area it’s listed as Templeton hill- they were the family from London that owned the estate, the Victorian guy who planted the trees was Augustus Templeton. According to Kathleen Wiltshire, he called it a ‘druids circle.’”
“He was a strange-rites-in-the-woods kind of guy then.”
“Not for long. He walked into the pub one night, naked and covered in mud, raving about all kinds of things, only a month after the beeches were planted. Ended up in bedlam. Since then, locals have claimed to have heard weird voices, singing and laughing. There’s a post on facebook from a dog walker who says she saw faces in the trees. There’s even been a TV crew up there, a group of film students recorded this-.”
Craig clicked a couple of times on his side of the screen.
“Listen to this.”
Andy turned his headphones up and leaned over his desk on his elbows.
For a moment there was nothing. Andy looked back up at the screen, about to tell Craig his audio wasn’t working, when it started, faintly at first, small sounds. A bell. Distant singing, like someone drunk in the corner of a pub, mumbling an old folk song into a glass of whiskey. Laughter, like a bunch of students scaring the crap out of themselves in a dark wood.
“It’s…interesting, I guess. Dr Christmas said there weren’t any good stories.”
“Most of it seems to be online stuff, the Wiltshire book is the only one that even mentions the place, by either name. I don’t think Mr Christmas is using much social media.”
“And you do think he’d mind if we stayed late, tried to catch some recordings of our own?”
Craig shrugged. “He asked us to bring the equipment, they want publicity for the ‘friends’.”
Andy didn’t have an office chair to swivel on, only an old wooden school chair that creaked as he leaned back, stretching his arms up over his head until he could tap the Lord of The Rings poster on the wall behind him. “Do they know no-one actually listens to us, though?”
“Hey!” Craig replied. “We got over a hundred views on the slenderman one. We could do with getting there early, if we’re doing it. I want to interview the morris dancers, ask if they’re modifying an old dance or just making something up.” Craig swivelled again to put the book back, knocking something off his desk as he turned. Andy heard the knock, but for a second it sounded like it was coming from his side, from the front bay window of the flat. There was muffled laughter. The curtains were closed, and he didn’t bother getting up to check.
“Was that you or me?” Craig was peering off to the side of the screen, trying to see out of his studio window into the garden.
“My end.” Said Andy. “Students probably.”
Craig picked up the object from the floor and dangled it in front of the screen. “Look, Ocean found this from the antique place last weekend, it’s a new tradition apparently, you’re supposed to buy kids baubles for Christmas.”
Andy leaned in towards his computer to see. It was a bauble, a hand made pottery ball covered in thick ceramic leaves with a crude face on one side, with two garnets, as dark as elderberries, set where its eyes should be. It shook its head at him as it bobbed from its string. The laughter outside changed to a quiet snigger.
“It’s a Berry Man!” Said Craig.
“Now, now,” replied Andy, in his thickest West Country Dr Banbury impression, “There’s no such thing as the burry man!”
“Berry Man,” laughed Craig.
“What?”
“There’s no such thing as the Berry man. The burry man’s a real thing, it’s a parade thing in Scotland.”
“Oh yeah, it’s a folk thing.”
“It’s in the documentary I told you to watch, they cover a man in burdock burs and he goes round the town collecting whiskey as a tribute. He’s wankered by the end of it, they have to have a couple of volunteers to hold him upright.”
“Well,” said Andy. “That sounds weirdly terrifying. Must be some kind of pagan hang over, surely? If they’re making offerings to it?”
“No, it’s not even that old. Some guy hid in a ditch from the police once and covered himself in the burs as a camouflage. Now they do it every year.”
Craig frowned and looked off towards the garden again. “Are you sure that noise is your end?”
Andy listened. The sounds of a distant party, a faint drumbeat, could only just be heard over the whirr of his computer. “Sounds like it. Maybe Ocean is playing a prank on you.”
“I hope not, it’s half midnight.”
“Shit, is it? Are you still ok to pick me up tomorrow?”
“Yeah,’ Craig reached for his phone. “If you message me when you get to the- oh fuck-“
He sent the bauble rolling off the edge of the table again, only this time it landed on the floor and smashed into bits.
“Hello and Welcome to Wyrd Wessex, my name’s Andy, and today I’m here at Faulkner’s hill in Wiltshire, talking to the landlady from the ‘Pipe and Fiddle’, Mrs Bridges. Mrs Bridges, do you have any good ghost stories in your pub?”
Mrs Bridges gave him a look as if she might beat him with her walking stick at any moment. He stepped back a little as she brandished it.
“I don’t hold with none of that,” she said. “See this? This is Irish blackthorn, given to me by my great aunt who told fortunes. I put it up over the door, stops bad spirits getting in.”
Probably a pretty good burglary deterrent too, he thought. The stick was almost twice as tall as the little old lady, who was wearing a full length Barbour walking coat and a huge white hat covered in nylon pansies.
“Oh,” he said. “Good? Um. How about the dance then? This is the first time this event’s been held here, but it’s a revival of an older festival, is that right?”
Mrs Bridges fiddled with the mic clipped to her knitted scarf, and inclined her neck towards it as she spoke.
“I think it’s a load of old bollocks.”
Several bystanders giggled behind him and Andy could only nod in encouragement, not trusting himself to laugh.
“There’s no such thing as the burry man,” she continued, “that man Sharp came to the pub back when it was my Grampy’s place, offering all the old folk a dram of whiskey in exchange for a song they remembered from the old days, so farmer Johnson just made up any old shite. Any case, Everyone round here knows you weren’t allowed dances in the Bottom, not in his day nor after.”
“Oh?”
Mrs Bridges whacked at the grass with her stick.
“Old Cromwell's rules, some say,” she said, “My old dad said it was because of the Romans. It was the Britons here before them, weren’t it?”
A stout man in a cap and tweed jacket next to her nodded severely, as if she were recounting some personal family tragedy.
“Well. One time the Roman army was marching the old road along the edge, and they saw Britons dancing in the bottom. But it was different to how they did things. The general thought it so queer that he had the lot of them butchered down on the spot, and a temple raised, so the Britons could only worship how they were told, from then onwards. Course then the Christian’s came, and did the same to them.”
She leaned back against the keg of beer behind her, and swung the stick in the direction of the edge of the hill, where the chalk downs ended in a steep ridge high above the vale of Pewsey.
“Mind, the nearest clergyman here now is over in Marlborough, so I expect these folk’s’ll do as they please.” She swung the stick back to point at the morris dancers, who were milling about in the clearing, fussing with their costumes. It was busier than they’d expected. The circle of trees, almost half a mile wide, was poorly lit by globe shaped lights on long strings, run by a very loud generator that sputtered as if it was falling every few minutes, making the lights dim and twinkle. The dance group was in the middle, and around the rim, chatting over paper cups of steaming mulled wine, a small crowd of locals, mostly middle aged women in wellies, waited. Andy thanked the landlady, and went to find the other half of Wyrd Wessex..
Craig was interviewing a morris dancer on the quiet side of the trees, close enough to the edge of the hill to make Andy feel dizzy. Over the valley, the fog was seeping into all the little woods and hollows, and about a quarter of the way up the bank, in a fold in the hill that formed a natural platform, was the church, a dark square in the failing light, far enough below them that he could see a glimmer of candlelight right through the hole in the roof.
“There’s someone down there,” he said, half to himself.
The curly-haired morris dancer, a big man with a friendly smile, nodded as he tried to quickly eat a mince pie, hold his pipe and tabor still, and speak to them all at the same time. “Dr Banbury said he was going to check it was all locked up.” He turned back to Craig. “It’s definitely a sixteenth century tune, in fact it’s really just a variation on what we now know as ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High,”
“Isn’t that-“ Andy interrupted. “Isn’t that odd?”
The morris dancer shook his head, jingling the bells that hung from his hat. “Not at all, melodies were often re-used for different folk songs throughout history, especially dances.”
“Oh. Right.”
Craig stopped the receiver on his phone. “Jim was telling me about the cheese rolling, in Gloucester.”
“I thought that was banned.”
“The council tried, but the locals went ahead anyway. We were there to dance at the after party, but of course by then most of the competitors were in the back of an ambulance. Bloody nuts. All in good fun though, once you’ve got the blood of your shoes.”
“We’ll have to go next year,” said Craig, “for the podcast.”
Jim pointed towards the clearing with his pipe. “Have you got a picture of our green man, for your podcast?”
Andy frowned, confused. “The one in the church?”
“No, the big man,” said Jim, “The Berry Man.”
“The Berry Man,” Andy replied, slowly, the words leaving an odd taste in his mouth, like overspiced mulled wine.
Jim shook his head again, gleefully enjoying the way it made the bells tinkle. From the clearing, behind the trees, a drum sounded. “Yeah that’s just a nickname really, technically he’s the holly king. We made him for a wassail event last year. It takes three people to operate.”
“It’s a symbol of fertility,” said Craig. “Evergreen life, in the face of winter.”
Jim shook his head again. “No, no, he’s supposed to defeat the oak king at Samhain, but we haven’t got round to making one yet.”
“Actually,” replied Craig, “the oak and holly king are supposed to fight at Beltane, to herald the return of spring.”
“No, see that’s a miscon-“
“Aren’t you supposed to be starting?” Said Andy. The drum was beating, and the clearing in the trees had gone quiet.
“Oh crap,” said Jim. “I’m supposed to be over there.” He ran back into the clearing, and Craig and Andy followed. The cry of ‘Ding Dong Merrilye on High’ could be heard on a tin whistle. The Berry Man had begun.
It started very quietly, as if nobody was sure what to expect, and the dance was danced very slow, as if nobody was quite sure what to do. A circle of morris men, in black tattered costumes dripping with bells and dark ribbons, moved in awkward steps, from side to side, around the central figure of the Berry Man; a mask on a pole, and two hands on a further pair of poles, all held aloft and swung by three people, their bodies only half hidden by a length of fabric that connected the sections of the puppet together. Plastic ivy leaves were stuck to it. Green ribbons streamed out from its gaping, grinning mouth onto the grass.
“It’s based on Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.”
A lady whose nose was red from the cold, pointed to the head of the thing, where plastic grapes formed a kind of hair.
She was corrected by another woman in the crowd behind her. “Well, of course Dionysus was really the god of ecstatic dance, the wine thing was just a metaphor.”
“I thought it was Bacchus who did wine,” said another.
Andy turned to Craig, but he was already gone, crouching near the circle with his phone to try and get a good shot of the morris group, which still looked as if they hadn’t quite worked things out yet. Andy decided to try his luck, and turned to the bystanders instead. “We’re here to record local ghost stories about the hill,” he said. “are you guys local?”
It turned out the two women were from Pewsey, members of the ‘Friends of Friendless Churches,’ and were full of good ghost stories, along with a several people that he managed to speak to while waiting in the line for the beer keg, but none of them knew anything he hadn’t heard before. Even Mrs Bridges had nothing more to say about the hill, or its bottom.
Andy wandered around the outskirts of the circle, closer to the trees. The dance had warmed up a bit, the puppet in the middle starting to look more and more like one thing and not three parts. The guy with the whistle was still playing ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High,’ and the one with the drum, a big bass that weighed him down with a strap around his shoulders, was beating it so erratically Andy wondered if it was his first time playing it. He spotted Jim with his pipe and tabor on the other side, wandering in and out of the beeches as if he had got bored of the main dance and decided to do his own thing. The rest of the morris men, interchangeable under their green face paint and black hats, were still dancing in a ring around the Berry Man but gaps were appearing, as members went missing, or left to get wine, or tripped over, and Andy could hear them, and the bells on their costumes, messing around and giggling in the trees behind him.
He found Craig trying to get an arty photo of the largest tree, but the lights flickered and went out just as he took it. The morris men carried on as if they hadn’t noticed.
“I got a couple of good stories out of the landlady earlier,” said Andy.
“Yeah?”
“Well, maybe. She reckons that it’s called Faulkner’s hill after a seventeenth century highwayman who was hanged and left in a gibbet here, right in the circle, but that can’t be right can it? Because the trees weren’t even planted then.”
Andy looked at Craig. He had dropped his phone on the ground and was staring at the dance.
“Hmmm.” Craig spoke without looking away. “Faulkner was the name of an ancient Druid king, who was a priest of the Berry Man. Augustus Templeton named the hill after him.” He was tapping his foot, and swaying slightly, as if he was listening to actual music and not a single shrill tin whistle and one bad drummer playing a christmas carol.
There’s no such thing as the berry man, thought Andy. It’s a Church thing, medieval, you said so just yesterday.
“We should join in,” said Craig.
“What? With what?”
“The dance.”
Andy couldn’t think of anything to say. Christ, he must be pissed. I thought never drinks if he’s driving?.
“Mrs Bridges said we’re not supposed to dance in the bottom,” he said, feeling stupid.
Craig smiled, slowly. “The bottom’s down there. We can do what we like, up here,”
“You’ve never danced in your life, not even goth dancing. You didn’t even dance at the Heilung gig. And dance to what? Ding Dong merrily on high? They won’t even get to the good bit!”
“What good bit?”
“You know, the ‘gllooorry- er, bit, it’s just the same bit, over and over!”
“So? Everyone else is having a great time.”
It was true. The crowd were joining in. One man was doing a jolly little jig with his snarling little dog held under his arm. The ladies from Pewsey were spinning each other around. Someone with a collection bucket and a shiny orange hi- visibility vest used their free hand to grab Craig’s arm, and pull him into the circle, where the morris dancers shouted and waved as if they’d been waiting for him the whole time.
Only Mrs Bridges, who seemed to struggle to walk even with the help of her stick, was still sitting out, leaning on her keg, alone.
Andy was making his way over to her when it got him, too.
They must have slipped something into the beer, he remembered thinking. Into the wine. Into the mince pies. In the ground, In the grass.
There weren’t any steps, or moves, or anything, it was just something he knew how to do, like breathing, like clothes. No one tells anyone what to wear, do they? We all just wear whatever we like.
He heard himself singing. Ding Dong merrily on high, the singers are all siiingiiing- they were all doing it, and nobody really knew what the words should be, because it didn’t matter. He weaved in and out of the crowd, and it weaved in and out of him, and the more he moved towards the Berry Man, the closer he wanted to be, closer to the taste of ripe plums and the smell of bonfires and treacle and sloe gin and wet leaves. It had six feet, and stamped on everyone’s toes and hands, and screamed when they screamed. It was chasing people with its paper mache fingers, and they were laughing, running through the trees, rolling off the edge, laughing as they tumbled down. Andy was having a great time, showering in the ribbons that dribbled from its mouth, scrabbling on the ground away from its clumsy reach, until he, too, was close to the edge, and could hear, even from way up here, the sound of bells, as fallen morris men jingled their broken limbs and sang.
“Ding Dong Merr-“
Mrs Bridges, stabilising herself against a tree, threw a pint of beer over him and then hit him very hard with her stick.
“I don’t know what the bloody hell you’re all playing at,” said Mrs Bridges, adjusting her hat. “But someone’s going to have to call an ambulance for those people and I knows you’ve got your phone on you because you were fiddling with it earlier.”
She stood ready with the stick, waiting for him to give her another reason to swing it. Andy rubbed the wet hair out of his eyes and blinked. It was very dark under the tree, and the screams and laughter from the clearing sounded strained, like overtired kids trying to pretend they were still having fun.
“What? What people?”
“Them down there, playing silly buggers on a steep hill like bloody idiots.”
Andy looked down. There were people down there, piled up against the churchyard fence, giggling and singing. One or two looked passed out.
“Looks like they’re ok.”
“Yeah? Who’s blood’s that then?”
She pointed a slightly shaky, frail little finger at the Berry Man. The thing was walking between the trees, followed by a small gang of morris dancers, the fabric that held it together in tatters, and there was blood smeared on its pale hands.
“Oh god. They must have slipped something in the drinks, in the food-“
“Not while I was in charge. Besides, your mate didn’t have any of either, and look at the state of him.”
Craig was dancing in the middle of the clearing, alone, launching his arms into the air, enjoying a rave no one else could see.
“Should I hit him too, do you think?”
“Probably best,” said Andy. “Gently though.”
“Oh god.”
Once Andy and Craig had scrambled as carefully as they could down the slope, they could see that Mrs Bridges had been right about the ambulance. Jim was there, trying to play ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ on his pipe and tabor, but the skin of the drum had been ripped, and the pipe dangled from his clearly very broken left wrist. One man was laughing because he couldn’t stay upright, and it was only when they looked closer at his leg that they realised why; he was soaked with blood, and a jagged white splinter of bone had torn a hole in his jeans. He kept trying to pull himself up, as if he couldn’t figure out why his foot wasn’t working.
“Oh god.” Andy said again as Craig tried took his phone out.
“What?” Craig had the phone to his ear, asking for the ambulance service.
Andy pointed back to the top of the hill. “There’s another one.”
As he spoke, the man in the tweed cap and jacket came sliding over the edge towards them, hit a bump in the grass, and was flung violently into the old wooden fence, scaring the crap out of a flock of pigeons as he hit it. The man tried to stand, toppled backwards, and cheered.
Andy peered up at the ridge, trying to see through the soft drizzle how many more people might be coming down. He saw The Berry Man step out from under the trees into the light of the half moon and raise its hands in triumph. The streamers had been torn from its mouth, and a branch seemed to be stuck in its eye. Andy, wet with beer, covered in mud, grass stains and grey chalk marks, suddenly felt lighter, younger, and there was that taste on his tongue again, woodsmoke and cloves. He checked his body to make sure bits of it weren’t dancing without him knowing.
It’s just people in there, he thought, I can see their legs. No. There’s something else here, something old and new at the same time, something that doesn’t care if it’s invented or remembered, so long as it gets to dance.
He felt his feet shuffling, as if the chalk under the grass was nudging them, guiding them into the steps. He stamped his boots and knocked them against each other, wiped the hair from his forehead, and saw then, behind the thing, the tiny shape of Mrs Bridges. She was sat on the ground, without her stick, but her head was swaying under the giant hat, her shoulders jerking like a puppet.
“Oh god.”
He waved at Craig, who was trying to explain to the ambulance service how to get to the church from Pewsey.
“We can’t go back up,” shouted Craig, it’ll take us forever. It’s going to be at least twenty minutes to wait as it is, we’ll have to try and get them in the church before the rain gets worse.”
They managed to carry most of the injured and sit them down. They put the guy with the broken leg on the floor, with his foot elevated on a pew. The church had a smell to it, a fume of rotting apples and fireworks, and though half of the gathering were still up on the hill the party sounded far closer than it should. Andy half expected the dancers to come leaping out of the shadows to tap on the windows and laugh. The room was well lit by pillar candles but they were all over the floor, and Andy had to tiptoe around them to get to the front of the church, to investigate an odd little sound he’d heard, like a mouse crawling about on its claws and squeaking. He nearly squeaked himself, when he saw what it was.
Dr Banbury was crouched naked behind the font, sniggering to himself like a toddler playing hide and seek.
The pew with the carving of the green man had been dragged up onto the sanctuary platform, and the altar table knocked away. Before it had been laid a headless pigeon and Dr Banbury’s musical tie, which was still playing, and bloody footprints were all around it, as if he’d been dancing. He looked up at Andy and smiled, reached up into the font, pulled out a slimy black leaf and ate it. Andy took his phone out of his pocket, found the audio app and pressed record.
“Um. Are you alright, Dr Banbury? There’s an ambulance on the way.”
“Oh quite well, thank you,” he replied. “I made it all up, you know.” He waved his hand towards the carving.
“Yeah?”
“Oh yes, quite made up, I’m afraid. There really is no such thing as a Berry Man. I came here last year, to see the font, and I saw him there and I thought, doesn’t he just look like he’s having a great time?”
Andy looked at it. Anointed with blood and winking in the candlelight, it somehow did look like it was enjoying itself even more than it had before.
Dr Banbury gripped the edge of the font. “Do you know what it’s like, being a historian? Everything has to be right. It all has to be properly verified. I have to write letters to the editor. I do my tax return a year before the deadline.” He let go and slid onto the floor. “I just wanted to have a great time.”
“We need to make it stop,” said Andy, gently. “How do we get it to stop?”
“Well you can’t now of course. Why would you want to? Isn’t this the kind of story you wanted? Isn’t this what your listeners want?” His eyes were wide, and his white hair radiated from his skull as if he’d been electrocuted. “You’re welcome to help with the advertising for next year, if you’d like.”
Andy shrugged, and looked back at Craig, who had finally managed to prise the tabor pipe from Jim, who was still trying to play ‘Ding Dong Merrily on High’ with only two working fingers. The musical tie was still playing the same tune, all by itself. “We’ve only got a hundred listeners,” he said. “And they prefer true crime.”
He saw the Dr’s eyes flicker towards the tie, but because he wasn’t barefoot and covered in pigeon blood, Andy was faster. He grabbed it,, and dangled it over a candle until it caught fire, and then threw it into the font once the flames reached his fingertips. The simple ting-a-ling of the music faded and died. The laughter outside faded and died.
Jim screamed.
“What the fuck happened to my hand?”
“Just try and keep it above your head, mate,” said Craig. There was screaming everywhere now, from Jim, from the hill, from the churchyard, from across the valley. Dr Banbury sniggered and squeaked with glee. Andy took the cloth from underneath the fallen altar table and tried to cover as much of the doctor as he could.
He went across to the back of the church and showed Craig his phone.
“I think Mrs Bridges got beer on my mic,” he said. “Phone still works though, do you want me to get some pictures?”
“Could do,” said Craig. “Though I’m definitely not going to be able to edit all this by Christmas.”