Read From Aberystwyth with Love for Free Online Page B

came to set a cross up outside his caravan and set it alight.’
    ‘That would certainly get his attention. Tell me what you want to tell him and I’ll see he gets the message.’
    ‘They told me you were an entertainer, but I’m not in the mood, I’ve got a bad stomach, so maybe you’d like to get in the van.’
    ‘Where is the van going?’
    ‘To see some of Mr Mooncalf’s friends.’
    ‘Stamp collectors, huh? That explains why they sent a tough guy.’
    ‘Don’t waste your time trying to pump me. I’m just here to take you. You need to put this on.’
    He handed me a blindfold.
    ‘Is it all right if I get in the van first?’
    ‘That would be the smart way to do it, but no one’s insisting.’
    I climbed in and put on the blindfold. The driver checked to make sure it was placed properly, started up the engine and drove off.
    All things have their polar opposites: hot, cold; day, night; love, hate; the Roman Catholic mass is sometimes refracted through a dark lens of wickedness into the black magic rite, the cross inverted and the ritual debased. So it is with stamp collecting. Generations of schoolboys sifting through the little squares of coloured paper have given this pastime a reputation for dullness. The snuff philatelist however is a different beast. He lives in the shadows and meets under the arch of the railway bridge, out of the penumbra of the streetlamp, his collar raised to the level of his eyes, the brim of his hat pulled down low. His trade is one that must hide its face from the light of day. He delights in murder and mayhem, but only at the arm’s length of correspondence that passed through the hands of the crook. Letters that are decorated with the fingerprints of the criminally insane, letters postmarked Sing Sing or San Quentin, Holloway or, better still, because insanity adds an extra frisson of terror, Broadmoor. He takes the necromancer’s delight in the bizarre, perverse and crepuscular ravings of man, in the freak shows that are played out after hours in the hinterlands of the human heart. The snuff philatelist is not concerned about the lives of the various heads of state, the profiles of Victoria or George, but lives only for the tongue of the serial killer who licked the back of the stamp, or failing that the tongue of his mum or someone who knew him. Except when writing deliberately badly spelled letters to the press to taunt the cops for their lack of success the serial killer seldom writes letters. And this makes his stamps all the more rare. For the collector, the thought that within those molecules of glue on the stamp’s back can be found the saliva and DNA of a monster, who once made the front page and caused a whole town to avoid the streets at night, makes his viscera quiver with pleasure.
    I listened intently. When we reached the main Borth Road we turned right and continued for about two minutes and then left the road and drove on to a car park of rough stones from the beach. We drove around this a bit, doing some reversing and three-point turns, clearly intended to disorientate me, but when we returned to the main road we turned left so we were going back the way we came. We kept to the main road and omitted the turning to the caravan park, not long after that we went over the railway tracks. A couple of minutes after that, I got lost.
    A while later, we drove over a cattle grid and then the world became muffled and my nostrils filled with the smoky, woody smell of old forest and dry pine-needles. We stopped and the driver helped me climb out. We began to walk through the forest, somewhere to my left a stream babbled. We walked for a while and then emerged into a clearing, the smell of pine needles was replaced by cooking smells and woodsmoke. A dog barked and a voice cried out, ‘Gelert! Here boy!’ The sounds took on a modulated quality that suggested there was a body of water nearby. There was also the crackle of fire burning bone-dry twigs and a wooden pole