Rise Read Free Page B

heron rising from the loch. Its empty beak was open, glistening, and it seemed as if all the world might fall into it. On the way back from visiting Ailsa Grey he was; well it was no wonder, because those are the times, the dark long times when sin sneaks in and bites you. You have to be on your guard. A grey afternoon spent praying with a grey, dissolving woman, who is tired, so tired and sore, getting deeper locked in herself, and you, praying with her, through the pain, and telling her how God loves her. That her illness is part of a plan. So it’s no wonder at all, when you are wondering, when you’re wondering about ‘wonder’, and you see another dimension in a simple bird.
    No wonder at all.
    But it’s not an isolated incident. Four times now Michael’s seen it since last summer. Kidding himself, the first time, that it was a trick of the light. His overworked, furious mind. And that seeing it was actually better than the perpetual plunging rush he fell into whenever he wasn’t looking. It was a thing, a thing he deserved, perhaps. But frightening, all the same. Second time, he was drunk and lonely, and it was a graveyard and it was five a.m., so that’s fine. Completely understandable. You can wake up from that one, and he did; he had many energies, bristling, rounded things into which he could pour his focus: his work, his constituents, his family; this momentum lasted several months. He became more settled. As well as work, he risked a hobby; fishing, which brought him to the third time, and the loch. That was horrific. Broad bright day, Michael’s fishing rod swinging, a whoosh. He turned. Saw it smiling. Blatant. Bang. Bang. And then again yesterday. Twice in two days – that is not coincidence.
    He’s been smelling it too. Not sulphur – that would be ridiculous – but in the desolate clean grey that passes here for sky. Occasionally he’ll see a hint of it in the standing stones, how they hunched and waited, and then he’d blink, and they’d be stones. Yesterday, there was no duplicity. It was sitting in a tree; the Ghost, not Michael: a man of middle years, easing into thinning hair and with a nagging, deepening pain in his right knee that precluded any sports. Still daylight, and he was sitting in an oak tree, one with a parasitical birch growing right through the centre of its trunk. No amount of blinking would make this less so.
    ‘Evening,’ said the Ghost.
    ‘Evening,’ said Michael.
    He – it? He was leather-coloured, small, with feathery tips to his ears. Huge, swivelling head and swivelling eyes. Could have been an owl, Michael supposed.
    ‘That you been out fishing?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Used to love fishing. Staring down into the water; seeing your own face glimmer. Helped me think better.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You working on your speech or your sermon?’
    ‘Both.’
    ‘Think they’ll listen?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘We’ll see.’ The Ghost had blinked, once, and flown away. All the leaves on the tree shook, and with them, a bird’s nest, a clutch of blue eggs sclattering to the ground, and Michael trampling over them in his haste to get away. Damp trousers clinging, his heart doing an SOS.
    It might have been an angel; God knows, he’d been praying for that at least. A guiding light. A torch would do him. Of course, Satan had been an angel. That had fully terrified him as a wee boy; that this beautiful, terrible creature was the product of good gone bad.
    The gentle click of the manse door, smooth wood behind him. Shutting it all out. The manse was chilly. His wife was chilly. His nose was chilly. Michael ran a bath, took some whisky, then went to bed.
    Today, when he woke, the Ghost was squatting on his head.
    ‘Morning,’ said the Ghost.
    ‘Morning,’ whispered Michael, going cold.
    ‘Morning,’ said his wife, slow with sleep and all the lovelier for it. ‘You mind if I don’t come to church?’
    That’s the first thing she said to him.
    ‘But I’m . . .’
    ‘I’ve