Hungry Moon by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online

wasn't prepared for what he saw as he reached the top.
    The barren land sloped down to a large pothole surrounded by a drystone wall. The stony bowl outside the wall was full of hundreds of people and the sound of a hymn. Opposite Nick, by the wall where the lip of the pothole was highest, a man was kneeling by himself.
    Dozens of people had turned to stare at Nick. He stepped down into the crowd so as to be less conspicuous. Not everyone was singing; some people looked bewildered, even suspicious. Nick had almost reached the front of the crowd when, with a shout that echoed from the slopes and startled birds out of the heather, the singing ended.
    Nick halted between a plump woman with a cheerful, delicate face and a couple with a restless child. The kneeling man had closed his eyes and raised his face to the sky, lips moving silently. He gazed at the crowd then, his keen blue eyes searching out face after face. 'I am Godwin Mann,' he said in a light yet penetrating voice, 'and that's why I'm here.'
    The plump woman snorted, whether derisively or not Nick couldn't tell. 'He means he's here to win people for God, Andrew,' the woman on his other side murmured to her son.
    'Please don't kneel unless you want to,' Godwin Mann said, 'but I'd like you to be seated until I ask you to stand up for God.' When people stared at him or at the bare rock they were being asked to sit on, he added, 'If anyone would like a chair or a cushion, just raise your hand.'
    Many hands went up, rather tentatively. In response to that, a large wedge of the crowd behind Mann headed for a nearby line of tents, came back with armfuls of cushions or folding chairs. Some of the crowd spread coats to sit on, though they still looked dubious. Nick suspected that some of them were sitting down because they resented having to stand, perhaps resented having been brought here at all. He was beginning to wonder what precisely he'd stumbled onto, all the more so when the Californian said, 'I guess some of you may think I was discourteous because I didn't tell you I was coming, but I didn't know how long it would take me to walk.'
    'From America?' a man wearing a butcher's apron muttered.
    Mann gazed at him. 'No, from Heathrow Airport. I wanted to be sure I was worthy to speak for God.'
    Nick sensed how those who'd grumbled about sitting on the ground felt ashamed of having complained. Score one for the evangelist, Nick thought as Mann went on. 'Don't think I'm saying I'm better than any one of you. Listen and I'll tell you how I was until I asked God into my life.'
    He took a deep breath and glanced at the sunless sky. 'I was brought up in Hollywood. My father was a British movie actor, Gavin Mann.' When a murmur of recognition went through the crowd he said a shade more loudly, 'I'm not here to speak ill of my father, but I was brought up in the worst ways of Hollywood. At five years old I was drinking alcohol, at ten I was smoking marijuana, at twelve I was snorting cocaine. Fifteen years old and I visited a prostitute. And one year later a man came into my bedroom who used to swim naked with my father. I'm afraid my father only remarried after he divorced my mother because his fans would have expected him to. Well, I found out that night what my father did with his men friends, and the next morning I cut my wrists, as you can see.'
    He held up his arms, displaying the pinkish scars like stigmata, to the audible dismay of the crowd. 'My father got me to the hospital, but I wouldn't tell anyone why I'd done that to myself. All I wanted was to be left alone to get well so I could go someplace by myself and finish myself off.'
    The woman beside Nick was dabbing at her eyes and jerking her son's hand when he asked her what was wrong. Nick felt uncomfortable, and suspicious of Mann's weepy technique, especially when Mann said, 'The morning of the day before I would have left the hospital to kill myself, God saved me.'
    He gave a wide self-deprecating smile. 'Maybe