'My G.o.d,' she said, accepting it, 'civilization has come to Redstone.'

'Don't slag off the place,' Terry said.

'I think if I had to live here all my life,' she said breezily, 'I'd get a gun and blow my head off.'

Everyone tried to avoid looking at Terry, whose eyelashes fluttered madly. He was struggling to control the tic that had been with him since he was seven years old. Sam heard the shotgun blasts somewhere far off, and he looked desperately at Linda.

'I can't believe I said that,' Linda said. 'After all this time of not . . . I can't believe I said that.' She tried to recover the situation with a mirthless laugh and, almost by way of apology, fished a small, golden snuffbox from her handbag, flipped it open and placed it on the table. It contained a dozen or so pink pills. 'Be my guest, everyone.'

They gazed at the pills but didn't avail themselves.

'No?' said Linda, taking one for herself and snapping the box shut. 'Hey, let's go to a nightclub. Come on, I'm paying.'

In the nightclub Linda was in a dancing mood. She danced frenetically with Sam, with Clive, with Terry and with Alice. They couldn't keep up with her. She bought rounds of Buck's Fizz. Her mood was as buoyant under the pink and ultraviolet lights of the nightclub as it was flat in her parents' house. She repeatedly kissed them all and told them, individually and collectively, how much she loved and missed them. She disappeared into the toilets with Alice and the two came out giggling hysterically. She fell into conversation easily with anyone and everyone but used the group expertly to fend off the fascinated attentions of other men.

Sam wanted to slow-dance with Alice, but Terry grabbed her first. Instead Linda grasped his hand and led him on to the dance floor. She smelled of some wildly expensive perfume.

'What about Alice?' she asked, laughing.

'What about her?'

'Who is she with? You, Terry or Clive?'

'It's a moot point. She keeps us all at arm's length.'

'She's too fast for all of you.'

'Do you dislike her?'

'Dislike her? I love her! I love all of you! You're wonderful young people! I wish, I really wish, you would all come to live in London with me.'

The thought seemed to make her sad. Then she cheered up suddenly, skipped to the bar and returned with yet another round of Buck's Fizz. At the death of the evening she danced a final slow dance with Sam, almost falling asleep in his arms. Suddenly she stopped dancing and looked at him through half-closed eyes. 'There are demons,' she said.

'What?'

'In the woods, in the trees. At night. I've seen them in the bushes. In Redstone. In London too, probably.'

'I don't follow.'

'Who are we anyway?' she asked dozily.

'Eh? I'm Sam. You're Linda.'

The music stopped, the disc jockey wished everyone a safe journey home. 'No. I mean, who are we?'

Sam shrugged. 'We're the Redstone Moodies.'

She looked at him as if this remark were profound, philosophical and apposite to everything in her experience up to that point in time. Grabbing his collar, she threw her head back and cackled loudly. 'That's right!' she screamed. 'We're THE REDSTONE MOODIES!' Then she laughed again, leaning back on her heels and dragging on Sam's lapels. 'THE REDSTONE MOODIES!'

An irritated bouncer in an evening suit and bow-tie marched across the dance floor. 'Haven't you got homes to go to?' he bellowed.

While they waited in the taxi rank, Alice admired Linda's Afghan coat. 'It's gorgeous!'

Linda took the coat off. 'Have it. It's yours.'

'I can't take your coat!'

She draped it over Alice's shoulders and kissed her pa.s.sionately on the lips. 'I want you to have it. I love you. I love all of you.'

The taxi dropped Linda and Terry first. Linda paid, tipping over-generously. As the cab moved on, Clive said, 'Anyone know what was in those pink pills?'

39.

Ghosts Sam made three feeble efforts to fix an appointment with Skelton, as the voice whispering in the dark appeared with greater frequency. He couldn't speak about his feelings to anyone else. Certainly not to his mother or father: he didn't want them burdened with any new anxieties about their daughter, and yet he was terrified by the idea that he had blighted his tiny sister's life. And not to Alice, who distanced herself from him when he was subject to morose moods. With her he struggled to keep things light, bidding all the time for an easy humour he didn't feel. Clive and Terry, as potential sympathetic listeners, were beyond the pale.

'What's the matter with you lately, Sam? Get a grip.'

'Yeah, get sorted out, for chrissakes.'

He took to watching over his baby sister for signs of the Tooth Fairy's threatened transfer of attention and became obsessed by the shocking vulnerability of the small child. He scoured the house looking for sharp objects, broken gla.s.s, pins which he might remove from her path; he wedged doors open so that she might not trap her fingers; the sight of boiling water made him feverish with alarm for her. The entire home was a rigged and b.o.o.by-trapped maze of hazards. A stinging lash lurked behind every seemingly innocent chair and cushion.

Each time Sam had tried to telephone Skelton, something in Mrs Marsh's voice on the other end of the line had made him hang up without speaking. Finally, without permission, he took an afternoon off school and went to Skelton's offices.

Mrs Marsh was absent from her usual place at the reception. Her desk was cleared and spotlessly tidy, as if she too had taken the afternoon off. Sam went to Skelton's room and listened outside the door. With no sound of any session in progress, he turned the handle and quietly opened the door.

Skelton was at his seat but slouched with his head on the desk blotter. An empty bottle of scotch and a gla.s.s stood on the table beside his head. Noiselessly closing the door behind him, Sam crossed the room and took his traditional seat opposite Skelton. He gazed at the sleeping figure for some time.

'He's too far gone,' said the Tooth Fairy. 'Do you want me to wake him up?'

'Yes,' said Sam. 'Wake him.'

The Tooth Fairy moved over to Skelton and put her mouth close to his ear. She spoke a single word, unheard by Sam, stepped back and dragged a second chair across the room so that she could sit beside Sam.

Skelton twitched. His eyes opened. Slowly lifting his head from his desk, he smacked his lips and focused his rheumy gaze on Sam. Then he looked at the Tooth Fairy with a quizzical expression, and then beyond her, as if the room was full of strangers or as if he had been shanghaied and brought to this place against his will.

'What?' he said. 'What was that?'

'He's in danger,' said the Tooth Fairy. 'He's in danger of killing himself. He wants you to talk to him.'

'What? What's that, laddie?'

'I didn't say anything,' said Sam.

Peering hard at them, Skelton rubbed the back of his neck. 'Sam? Is it that time of the year already?'

'No. I needed to see you.'

Skelton scowled at his empty whisky bottle. 'Did you see Mrs Marsh? No one gets past Mrs Marsh.'

'She's gone.'

'In disgust, no doubt.' He gestured at the Tooth Fairy. 'Who's this?'

' ''Who's this?'' indeed,' sneered the Tooth Fairy. 'To think I used to be afraid of you.'

Skelton stood up slowly, still ma.s.saging the back of his leathery neck, squinting from one to the other of them. 'I hope this isn't who I think it is.'

'Who?' said the Tooth Fairy. 'Who do you think I am?'

From behind his desk Skelton came prowling with a lion's stealth. His stride was superbly slow. 'Stop this, laddie,' he whispered. 'You'd better stop this now.' He paced warily behind the Tooth Fairy, watching her with a baleful, glittering eye. He swayed dangerously. Then he moved behind Sam's chair. Sam could feel the man's breath on his neck, savour the rot of whisky.

'He's contemplating suicide. He's come to you for help. But you're a drunk. You've lost the faith. You're history.'

'Stand up!' Skelton barked at Sam. 'Stand up, laddie!'

'Don't,' said the Tooth Fairy quietly, as Sam made to move. Sam flinched. 'I said, stay where you are!'

The Tooth Fairy was metamorphosing by the second, from female to male, becoming ugly. At stand-off, Skelton regarded her/him steadily. A blister of sweat appeared on his brow. 'Clever. Very clever. Do you make this come on whenever you want?'

'I don't have any say in it,' Sam said.

'This is a waste of time,' said the Tooth Fairy. 'He's supposed to help you? I warned you a long time ago about these people.'

'I'm ordering you out,' Skelton growled. 'For the last time. Out.'

'Drink your drink,' said the Tooth Fairy bitterly. 'Talk your talk.'

'It gets violent,' Sam warned Skelton. 'Very violent.'

'Not with me it doesn't. Watch this.' Skelton crossed to his desk, opening a drawer and fumbling inside. He returned extending an empty palm. 'Remember this?' He held his fingers like a gun. 'See? I load it with a silver bullet. Like so.' He swung perilously close. 'Here. Take it. Fire it at this abomination before you.'

'I can't,' said Sam. 'I can't do it.'

'Then I will.' Skelton stepped back, levelled careful aim at the Tooth Fairy and fired. There was a blast of white heat and a m.u.f.fled report as the room imploded, shattering like a windscreen, rea.s.sembling itself almost instantaneously. Sam saw that the Tooth Fairy was stunned: wide-eyed with horror. Slowly, a malicious smile curved across its lips. Grinning, it revealed a silver bullet, caught neatly between its teeth.

The Tooth Fairy plucked the silver bullet from its mouth and displayed it in a mallet-sized fist. Then it stood up. The smile evaporated. Two feet taller than the sweating psychiatrist, it towered above him, exuding palpable malice and a stench of venom.

'Now it's my turn,' said the Tooth Fairy. It brought the ma.s.sive hammer of its fist across Skelton's face in a backhand swing. Skelton was thrown off his feet, dashing his skull on the corner of his oak desk. The Tooth Fairy turned to Sam. It raised an imaginary gun to its lips, blew smoke from the barrel and offered Sam a conspiratorial smile.

Terry and Sam were delayed one Friday evening on their way to the Blues and Folk Club at the Gate. Sam had called round for Terry, only to find Charlie and Dot in a state of agitation while Terry was talking to Linda on the telephone. Linda was upset about something, but no one could determine the nature of her problem. Both Charlie and Dot had tried to talk to her, without penetrating the mystery, and now Terry was having a go.

Terry held out the phone for Sam. He'd mentioned to Linda that Sam had arrived and was waiting in the hall, and now Linda wanted to speak to him, urgently it seemed. Linda was obviously in tears on the other end of the line, but she wasn't making any sense. This went on for some time. Eventually Sam handed the phone on to Charlie.

'Look, my darling, you can always come home, any time you like,' Charlie soothed. 'No, my sweetheart, no one's saying you've got to come home. I was just . . . No, my flower . . . No . . . your mother never said that . . . and she never said that you said that . . .'

'Come on,' Terry whispered to Sam, 'let's get out of here.'

The club was already filling up when they arrived. A three-piece electric band of drums, ba.s.s and organ was setting up battered amplifiers on the tiny stage. Alice and Clive were busy taking money on the door.

'Late for cla.s.s,' said Ian Blythe. 'Could you two set up a couple more tables at the back? We might have a crowd in tonight.'

'What's the band called?' Terry wanted to know. Band names had gone crazy back in the late sixties; he was compiling a list of the worst ones who'd appeared at the club, to compete with How in the Blitz and Yampy Cow.

'Spy V Spy. From London.'

Blythe was right. The club filled to capacity again, and it was standing-room only when Spy V Spy broke into their first number. It was standard gut-bucket blues with pitched vocals and some filigree organ effects. Fine, Clive would say, but not worth bringing all the way from London. Sam noticed some people he wanted to talk to in the corner of the room, and ten minutes had gone by before Clive came over to him and yanked his arm.

'Come here,' Clive hissed in his ear.

'What's the rush? I'm talking.'

'Come here!'

Clive had turned very pale. His eyes had a strange cast, and Sam knew he shouldn't argue. Excusing himself from his company, he followed Clive to the door.

A desk and two chairs were set up at the entrance. Terry was waiting for them there. His face was white. 'What is it?' Alice was saying. She appealed to Sam. 'What's the matter?'

Clive ignored her. He grabbed Sam's wrist, hard. 'What do you see?' Sam looked around. Everyone in the club was intent on talking, buying beer or watching the band. It seemed, by all accounts, an average night at the Gate Hangs Well, everyone enjoying themselves.

'Will someone tell me what the h.e.l.l is going on?' Alice protested.

'No,' said Clive. 'The band! Look at the band!'

Sam squinted between the bobbing heads of some youths standing forward of the entrance area. He saw nothing remarkable about the trio on stage. The organist's tight blond perm looked suspiciously like it might have been dyed or highlighted. The ba.s.s player pursed his lips unpleasantly as he worked his fingers up and down the frets. There was little to note.

'The drummer!' Terry shrieked in his ear. 'Look at the f.u.c.king drummer!'

Sam looked but still couldn't see anything remarkable. The drummer was a fat guy with a beard, drumming competently, if a little lazily, relying perhaps too much on the snare. Then he looked up, flashing a gap-toothed smile at the audience, and the light caught a certain degenerate expression in his eyes. No, thought Sam. It can't be.

Clive sidled up. 'Take away the beard.'

Alice had given up and had gone to talk to Blythe.

'It's not possible,' Sam spluttered. 'It can't be him.'

'It's him,' said Terry. 'It's him all right.'

Sam visualized the face without the beard. A sharp smell of the woods in autumn cut through the pub tang of sour ale and dead nicotine. There was no mistake. Now he could see that leering face in a scouting beret and with a neckerchief at the throat. 'This means . . . What this means is . . .'

'Yes,' said Terry.