He ushered her inside. 'Be very quiet,' he said sternly, and closed the doors silently behind her.

Suddenly she was in darkness.

She waited, close to the place where she'd stood at Menna's funeral service, until her eyes adjusted enough to reassure her there was little chance of being spotted. Here, at the end of the hall, she stood alone.

All the window blinds had been pulled down tight, and it seemed to have a different layout, no longer a theatre-in-the-round. Whatever was happening was happening in a far corner, and all she could see of it was a white-gold aura, like over a Nativity scene, a distant holy grotto.

And all she could hear was a sobbing hollow, slow and even.

Merrily slipped off her shoes, carried them to the shelter of a brick pillar about halfway down the hall. It was cold; no heating on.

She waited for about half a minute before peering carefully around the pillar.

The glow had resolved into two tiers of candles. The sobbing had softened into a whispery panting. Merrily could make out several people seemed like women some sitting or kneeling in a circle, the others standing behind them, all holding candles on small tin or pewter trays, like the ones in the windows of the village.

Women only? This was why the guy on the door had let her in without too much dispute.

The scene, with its unsteady glow and its umber shadows, had a dreamlike, period ambience: seventeenth or eighteenth century. You expected the women to be wearing starched Puritan collars.

'In the name of the Father... and of the Son... and of the Holy Ghost...'

Ellis's voice was low-level, with that transatlantic lubrication. User-friendly and surprisingly warm.

But only momentarily, for then he paused. Merrily saw him rise up, in his white monk's robe, in the centre of the circle, the only man here. Next to him stood a slender table with a candle on it and a chalice and something else in shadow, probably a Bible.

His voice rose, too, became more distinct, the American element now clipped out.

'O God, the Creator and Protector of the human race, Who hast formed man in Thine own image, look upon this Thy handmaiden who is grievously vexed with the wiles of an unclean spirit... whom the old adversary, the ancient enemy of the earth, encompasses with a horrible dread... and blinds the senses of her human understanding with stupor, confounds her with terror... and harasses her with trembling and fear.'

Merrily's feet were cold; she bent and slipped on her shoes. She wouldn't be getting any closer; from here she could see and hear all she needed. And she was fairly sure this was a modified version of the Roman Catholic ritual.

Ellis's voice gathered a rolling energy. 'Drive away, O Lord, the power of the Devil, take away his deceitful snares.'

At some signal, the women held their candles high, wafting out the rich and ancient aroma of melted wax.

With a glittering flourish, Ellis's arm was thrust up amid the lights.

'Behold the Cross of the Lord! Behold the Cross and flee, thou obscene spirits of the night!'

His voice dropped, became intense, sneering.

'Most cunning serpent, you shall never again dare to deceive the human race and persecute the Holy Church. Cursed dragon, we give thee warning in the names of Jesus Christ and Michael, in the names of Jehovah, Adonai, Tetragrammaton...'

Merrily stiffened. What?

She leaned further out to watch Nick Ellis standing amongst all the women, brandishing his cross like a sword in the light, brandishing words which surely belonged originally to the Roman Church, to Jewish mysticism, to...

The candles lowered again, to reveal a single woman crouching.

More like cringing?

Ellis laid the cross on the tall table and bent down to the woman.

'Do you embrace God?' His voice had softened.

The woman looked up at him, like a pet dog.

'You must embrace God,' he explained, gently at first. 'You must embrace God, embrace Him, embrace Him...' His right arm was extended, palm raised, the loose sleeve of his robe falling back. 'Embrace Him!'

Shadows leaping. A short expulsion of breath 'Hoh!' and a sound of stumbling.

Merrily saw he'd pushed the woman away; she lay half on her back, panting.

'Say it!' Ellis roared.

'I... embrace Him.'

'And do you renounce the evil elements of this world which corrupt those things God has created?'

'Yes.' She came awkwardly to her feet. She was wearing a white shift of some kind, possibly a nightdress. She must feel very cold.

'Do you renounce all sick and sinful desires which draw you away from the love of God?'

She began to cry again. Her London accent said this had to be Greg Starkey's wife, Marianne, the sometime sufferer from clinical depression, not a nympho in the normal sense, but tempted by the dark glamour of the witch Robin Thorogood. Was that it? Was that really the extent of her possession?

And, oh God, even if there was a whole lot more, this was not right, not by any stretch.

'Say it!'

Her head went back. She started to sniff.

'Say, "I so renounce them"!'

'I s... so... renounce them.'

'And do you, therefore, wish with all your heart to expel the lewd and maleficent spirit coiling like a foul serpent within you?'

Her head was thrown right back, as if she expected to be slapped, again and again.

'I ask you once more...' Softly. 'Do you wish, with all your heart...?'

'Yes!'

'Then lie down,' Father Ellis said.

What? Merrily moved away from the pillar. She could see now that Ellis was pointing at a hessian rug laid out on the boarded floor. Marianne drew an unsteady breath and went to stand on the rug. The watching women kept still. But she caught a movement from a darkened doorway, with a 'Toilets' sign over the top, and moved back behind her pillar.

There was a man in that doorway, she'd swear it.

Ellis said, 'Don't be afraid.'

He turned to the table and took up another cross from a white cloth. Merrily saw it clearly. About nine inches long, probably gold-plated. He held it up to the candlelight, then lowered it again. One of the women leaned forward, handed him something.

Involuntarily, Merrily moved closer. The woman held up her candle for Ellis. Merrily saw a yellow tube, then an inch of pale jelly was transferred to Ellis's forefinger. She saw him smearing the jelly along the stem of the crucifix.

What?

Ellis nodded once. Marianne Starkey crumpled to her knees then went into an ungainly squat, holding the nightdress up around her thighs.

'Be calm now,' Ellis said. 'Sit. Relax.'

The woman sat still. Ellis raised his eyes from her. 'O God of martyrs, God of confessors, we lay ourselves before Thee...' He glanced at Marianne, whispered, 'Lie back.'

Merrily watched Marianne's body subside onto the rough matting, her knees up, the nightdress slipping back. Ellis knelt in front of her.

'I ask you again,' he whispered. 'Is it your heart's wish that the unclean spirit might be expelled for ever?'

'Yes.'

'And do you understand that a foul spirit of this nature may effectively be purged only through the portal of its entry?'

'Yes...' Marianne hesitated then let her head fall back over the edge of the mat and onto the boarded floor with a dull thump. She closed her eyes. 'Yes.'

Ellis began to pray, a long, rolling mumble, slowly becoming intelligible.

'Let the impious tempter fly far hence! Let thy servant be defended by the sign...' Ellis rose and put the cross swiftly on Marianne's forehead. '... of Thy Name.' He placed the cross against her breast. 'Do Thou guard her inmost soul...'

Merrily thought, He won't. He can't. It isn't possible, not with all these women here.

Ellis reared over Marianne. 'Do Thou rule...' Then he bent suddenly. '... her inmost parts.'

Marianne gave a low and throaty cry, then Ellis sprang up, kissing the cross, tossing it to the table, and it was over. And women were hugging Marianne.

And Merrily was frozen in horror and could no longer see a man in the doorway.

31.

Jewel THE CONVERGING LANES were filling up with vehicles like last Saturday. When Ellis and the women but not Marianne came down the steps, they were joined by more people. By the time they all reached the road there were about thirty of them, with Ellis seeming to float in their midst, glowingly messianic in his white monk's habit.

The sick bastard.

Merrily turned away, found her hands were clenched together. Shame. Fury. When she could stand to look again, she saw that someone was bearing a white wooden crucifix aloft, in front of Ellis. At the apex of the village hall roof, the neon cross became a beacon in the rain. Like it was all a crusade.

She didn't recognize anyone in Ellis's group, but why should she? She guessed they were not locals anyway. A couple of the men wore suits but most others were casually but warmly dressed, like members of a serious hiking club. Nobody was speaking. Shouldn't they be singing some charismatic anthem, swaying, clapping?

Killing the shakes, Merrily walked erratically along the lane to the corner where a bunch of reporters stood under umbrellas and Gomer was waiting for her in the rain, an unlit ciggy drooping from his mouth.

'Vicar... you all right, girl?' Following her behind a Range Rover parked under some fir trees, he regarded her gravely. 'You looks a bit pale.'

'Don't fuss, Gomer.' Merrily dropped a cigarette in the process of trying to light it.

Gomer straightened his glasses.

'Sorry.' She touched his arm. 'It's me. I'm furious with me, that's all.'

'Happened in there, vicar?'

'Exorcism of sorts. I ought to have stopped it. I just' she thumped her thigh with a fist 'stood there... let it happen.'

'Hexorcism?' Gomer said, bewildered. 'This'd be Greg's missus?'

'Must've been.'

'The bugger hexorcized Greg's missus for fancyin' a feller?'

'For embracing the dark,' Merrily said, with unsuppressible venom. 'For letting herself become possessed by most unholy and blasphemous lust.'

'Load of ole wallop. You gonner tell Greg?'

'Perhaps not.'

'Boy oughter know,' said Gomer, 'whatever it was.' He nodded towards a man getting into the Range Rover. 'Dr Coll,' he observed.

The cameramen were backing away down the street ahead of Ellis and his entourage. Dr Coll drove away in his Range Rover, leaving Merrily and Gomer exposed.

'I can't believe I let it happen,' she said. 'I couldn't believe it was happening. I can't tell Greg. You saw the state he was in. He'd go after Ellis with a baseball bat. That... bastard.'

Ellis walked without looking to either side. When a couple of the reporters tried to get a word with him, his anoraked minders pressed closer around him the holy man. Merrily and Gomer walked well behind, Merrily turning things over and over.

Internal ministry, it had been called when the phenomenon had first been noted in the North of England. Mostly it was for supposed incidents of satanic child abuse a number of allegations, but not much proven. It was a charismatic extreme, an evangelical madness: the warped and primitive conviction that demonic forces entered through bodily orifices and could only be expelled the same way.

It had all happened too quickly, clinically, like a doctor taking a cervical smear. The fact that it was also degrading, humiliating and, as it happened, amounted to sexual assault would not be an issue for someone who had convinced himself of it being a legitimate weapon in the war against Satan. Someone invoking the power of the Archangel Michael against a manufactured dragon.

When, in fact, he was the monster.

Got to stop him.

But if she spoke out there would be a dozen respectable women ready to say she was a liar with a chip on her shoulder; about a dozen women who had watched the ritual in silence. Then, afterwards, tears and hugs and 'Praise God!'

'Gomer... those women over there, who are they?'