Crybbe aka Curfew

by Phil Rickman

  'You going to stay at Jean's for awhile, Dad?'

  'I'll probably drift back in the course of the day. Don't want to lose touch with old Doc Chi at this stage.'

  'Dad's shed a quarter of a century overnight,' Fay told Powys. 'No woman is safe.'

  'Well, keep him away from the Cock.'

  'Why?'

  'It seems to have aphrodisiac properties. It turns people on.'

  'I don't follow you.'

  He told her, at last, about getting beaten up by Humble, and Rachel taking him to hers and Goff's room. What had happened then, the sudden inevitability of it. It was the right time, coming up to curfew time. I mean, Rachel was not… promiscuous. Nor me, come to that. I mean, lonely, sex-starved, but not… Anyway, I just don't think we'd ever have

  got together… if it hadn't been for the time. And the place.'

  'I don't understand.'

  'All right, think about the condoms. All those used condoms in the alley, up by the studio. In a town surrounded by open fields, doesn't it strike you as odd that so many couples should want to do it standing up in an alley?'

  'I never really thought about it. Not that way.'

  'And last night again at the Cock, again in the hour before the curfew, your ex-husband was suddenly overwhelmed with, lust for his production assistant and whisked her upstairs.'

  'Catrin? Guy and Catrin?'

  Powys nodded. 'Why do they call it the Cock?' He was buttering more toast; it was, she reckoned, his fifth slice. How long since he last ate? 'Is that what it's really called?'

  'It certainly hasn't got a sign to that effect,' Fay said.

  'What do you know about Denzil the landlord? Got many kids, for instance?'

  'I don't know. He isn't married, I don't think. Somebody once told me he put it about a bit, but I mean… You're getting carried away, Joe.'

  'I'm a loony. I'm allowed.' He spread the toast with about half a pot of thick-cut marmalade. 'Sorry, look, I haven't got this worked out yet. Whatever I say's going to make you think I'm even more of a loony.'

  'No – hang on – Joe, I…' Fay clasped her hands together tightly, squeezing them. 'I'm sorry about yesterday. I had no right to dispute your story. Town full of ghosts, no dogs… I mean, Christ… I'm sorry.'

  He put a hand over both of hers. Sighed.

  Tell me,' Fay said.

  So he told her. He told her about the cottage and the magical Filofax and the art studio.

  'Blood?' Fay touched her temple, winced. 'Urine? What does it mean?'

  'I don't really know. But I wouldn't have one of those paintings on my wall.'

  And then he told her about the girl at the stone, and the apparition.

  'You saw it? You saw Black Michael's Hound?'

  'I don't know what it was. Maybe the hound is something it suggests. Whatever it is, it's feeding off the energy which starts to build up in this town, probably at dusk. And it comes in a straight line, from the Tump, through the Court and on towards the church. It's evil, it's… cold as the grave.'

  Fay shivered inside her robe. 'And this girl was… getting off on it?'

  'Something like that. When the curfew began, she'd gone. She'd done this before, knew the score.'

  'What does that tell us about the curfew?'

  'That the curfew was established to ward something off. I think we're talking about Black Michael. Look…' He took from his jacket a slim black paperback, Elizabethan Magic by

  Robert Turner. 'I found this in the bread-oven with the Filofax and I nicked it. There's a couple of chapters on Dee, but what I was really interested in was this. The page was marked.'

  He opened the book at a chapter headed 'Simon Foreman, Physician, Astrologer and Necromancer (1552-1611)'. There was a picture of Foreman, who had a dense beard and piercing eyes.

  'The book talks of a manuscript in Foreman's handwriting, evidently something he copied out, much as Andy did in his Filofax. It's the record of an attempt to summon a spirit, and…look… this bit.'

  He cast out much fire and kept up a wonderful ado; but we

  could not bring him to human form; he was seen like a great

  black dog and troubled the folk in the house much and feared

  them.

  'So what it's suggesting,' Powys said, 'is that the black dog image is some kind of intermediary state in the manifestation of an evil spirit. In this case, the spirit's furious at not being able to get any further, so he's coming on with the whole poltergeist bit. There's a famous legend in Herefordshire where a dozen vicars get together to bind this spirit and all that's appeared since is a big black dog.'

  'So when we talk about Black Michael's Hound…'

  'We're probably talking about the ghost of Michael himself. We know from these notes of Andy's – which I'm attributing to John Dee, for want of a more suitable candidate – that Michael Wort, while alive, appeared to have taught himself to leave his body and manifest elsewhere… travelling on the "olde road", which is presumably a reference to ley-lines. Spirit paths. And then there's this legend about him escaping by some secret passage when the peasantry arrived to lynch him. Dee, or whoever, records that Wort's body was brought out after he hanged himself, to prove he was indeed dead. So maybe he escaped out of his body… along the "olde road", maybe his ghost was seen – bringing a lot of black energy with it – and they managed to contain it… to reduce it to the black dog stage… by some ritual which has at its heart the curfew.'

  'How does that stop it?'

  'Well, making a lot of noise – banging things, bells, tin-cans, whatever – was popularly supposed to be a way of frightening spirits off. Maybe by altering the vibration rate; I'm not really qualified to say.'

  'This is…' Fay held on to his hand, 'seriously eerie. I mean, you're the expert, you've been here before, but Christ, it scares the hell out of me.'

  'No, I'm not,' he said. 'I'm not any kind of expert. I wrote a daft, speculative book. I'm not as qualified as most of these New Age luminaries. All I know is that Andy Boulton-Trow, with or without Goff's knowledge, is experimenting with what we have to call dark forces. He's probably been doing it for years… since… Well, never mind. Now we know why Henry Kettle was getting the bad vibes.'

  'Boulton-Trow put Goff on to this place?'

  'Probably. Something else occurred to me, too. I don't know how much to make of it, but… try spelling Trow backwards.'

  'Tr…?' Her eyes widened. 'Jesus.'

  'I mean, it could be pure coincidence.'

  'There are too many coincidences in Crybbe, Fay said. She stood up. 'OK, what are we going to do about this?'

  'I think… we need to get everything we can, and quickly, on Michael Wort. Any local historians you know?'

  Fay smiled, in Crybbe, Joe, an historian is somebody who can remember what it said in last week's paper.'

  'What about the local-authority archives? Where, for instance, would we find the transactions of the Radnorshire Society?'

  'County Library, I suppose. But that's in Llandrindod Wells.'

  'How far?'

  'Twenty-five, thirty miles.'

  'Let's get over there.' He started to get up. 'Oh God.' Sat down again. 'I can't. I have to go to Hereford Crematorium. It's Henry Kettle's funeral.'

  'You can't not go to Henry's funeral,' Fay said. 'Look, I'll go to the library. Tell me what we're looking for.'

  'You can't drive with that eye.'

  'Of course I can. And they're only country roads. What am I looking for?'

  'Anything about Wort – his experiments, his hangings, his death. And the Wort family. If they're still around, if we can get hold of any of them. And John Dee. Can we establish a connection? But, I mean, don't make a big deal of it. If we meet back here at… what? Four o'clock?'

  'OK, Joe, look… is there nobody we can go to for help?'

  'What about Jean Wendle?'

  'Ha.' Fay put a hand up to her rainbow eye. 'Her assessment of Grace wasn't up to much, was it? Harmless, eh?
'

  'We're on our own, then,' Powys said.

  CHAPTER IV

  Crybbe town hall was in a short street of its own, behind the square. An absurdly grandiose relic of better days, Colonel Colin 'Col' Croston thought, strolling around the back to the small door through which members of the town council sneaked, as though ashamed of their democratic role.

  Tonight, the huge Gothic double doors at the front would be thrown open for the first time in twenty years. Suspecting problems, Col Croston had brought with him this morning a small can of Three-in-One Penetrating Oil to apply to the lock and the hinges.

  Col Croston let himself in and strode directly into the council chamber. The cleaner would not be here until this afternoon, and so Col made his way to the top of the room where the high-backed chairman's chair stood on its platform.

  He sat down in the chair. There was a pristine green blotter on the table in front of him, and on the blotter lay a wooden gavel, unused – like the chair – since local government reorganisation in 1974.

  Before reorganisation, the rural district authority had been based here. But 'progress' had removed the seat of power to a new headquarters in a town thirty miles away. Now there was only Crybbe town council, a cursory nod to local democracy, with ten members and no staff apart from its part-time clerk, Mrs Byford, who dealt with the correspondence and took down the minutes of its brief and largely inconsequential meetings.

  The council chamber itself had even been considered too big for the old RDC, and meetings of the town council were self-conscious affairs, with eleven people hunched in a corner of the room trying to be inconspicuous. Although their meetings were public, few townsfolk were ever moved to attend.

  Tonight, however, it seemed likely the chamber would actually be too small for the numbers in attendance, and the chairman would be occupying, for the first time in nearly twenty years, the official chairman's chair.

  The chairman tonight would be Col Croston.

  Mrs Byford, the clerk, had telephoned him at home to pass on the Mayor's apologies and request that he steer the public meeting.

  'Why, surely,' Col said briskly. 'Can hardly expect old Jim to be there after what's happened.'

  'Oh, he'll be there, Colonel,' Mrs Byford said, 'but he'll have to leave soon after nine-thirty to see to the bell, isn't it.'

  'Shouldn't have to mess about with that either at his age. All he's got to do is say the word and I'll organize a bunch of chaps and we'll have that curfew handled on a rota system, makes a lot of sense, Mrs Byford.'

  The clerk's tone cooled at once. 'That bell is a Preece function, Colonel.'

  Oh dear, foot in it again, never mind. 'All got to rally round at a time like this, Mrs Byford. Besides, it could be the first step to getting a proper team of bell-ringers on the job. Crying shame, the way those bells are neglected.'

  'It's a Preece function,' Mrs Byford said from somewhere well within the Arctic Circle. 'The meeting starts at eight o'clock.'

  Minefield of ancient protocol, this town. Col Croston often thought Goose Green had been somewhat safer.

  Col was deputy mayor this year. Long army career (never mentioned the SAS but everybody seemed to know). Recommended for a VC after the Falklands (respectfully suggested it be redirected). But still regarded becoming deputy mayor of Crybbe as his most significant single coup, on the grounds of being the only incomer to serve on the town council long enough to achieve the honour – which virtually guaranteed that next year he'd become the first outsider to wear the chain of office.

  His wife considered he was out of his mind snuggling deep into this hotbed of small-minded prejudice and bigotry. But Col thought he was more than halfway to being accepted. And when he made mayor he was going to effect a few tiny but democratically meaningful changes to the wav the little council operated – as well as altering the rather furtive atmosphere with which it conducted its affairs.

  He often felt that, although it gave a half-hearted welcome to new industry, anything providing local jobs, this council appeared to consider its foremost role was to protect the town against happiness.

  Indeed, until being asked to chair it, he'd been rather worried about how tonight's meeting would be handled. He been finding out as much as he could about Max Goff's plans and had to say that the New Age people he'd met so far hadn't invariably been the sort of head-in-the-clouds wallies one had feared. If it pulled in a few tourists at last, it could be a real economic shot in the arm for this town.

  So Col Croston was delighted to be directing operations.

  With a mischievous little smile he lifted the gavel and gave it a smart double rap.

  'Silence! Silence at the back there!'

  Whereupon, to his horror, Mrs Byford materialised in doorway with a face like a starched pinny.

  'I hope, Colonel, that you're banging that thing on the blotter and not on the table.'

  'Oh, yes, of course, Mrs Byford. See…' He gave it another rap, this time on the blotter. It sounded about half as loud. 'Yes…ha. Well, ah… your morning for the correspondence, is it?

  Mrs Byford stalked pointedly to the corner table used for town council meetings and placed upon it the official town council attache case.

  'Glad you came in, actually,' Col Croston said, 'I think we ought to send an official letter of condolence to the relatives I that poor girl who had the accident at the Court.'

  'I see no necessity for that.' Mrs Byford began to unpack her case.

  'There's no necessity, Mrs B. Just think it'd be a sympathetic thing to do, don't you?'

  'Not my place to give an opinion, Colonel. I should think twice, though, if I were you, about making unauthorised use of council notepaper.'

  Col Croston, who'd once made a disastrous attempt to form a Crybbe cricket club, estimated that if he bowled the gavel at the back of Mrs Byford's head, there'd be a fair chance of laying the old boot out.

  Just a thought.

  It was Bill Davies, the butcher, who rang Jimmy Preece to complain about the picture. 'I'm sorry to 'ave to bother you at time like this, Jim, but I think you should go and see it for yourself. I know you know more about these things than any of us, but I don't like the look of it. Several customers mentioned it, see. How is Jack now?'

  'Jack's not good,' Jimmy Preece said, and put the phone down.

  He could see trouble coming, been seeing it all the morning, in the calm of the fields and the weight of the clouds.

  In the cold, gleeful eyes of his surviving grandson.

  Ten minutes after talking to Bill Davies, the Mayor was walking across the square towards The Gallery, traders and passers-by nodding to him sorrowfully. Nobody said, 'Ow're you'. They all knew where he was going.

  Even in today's profoundly pessimistic mood, he was not prepared for the picture in the window of The Gallery. He had to turn away and get some control of himself.

  Then, face like parchment, he pushed through the pine-panelled door with its panes of bull's-eye glass.

  The woman with too much make-up and a too-tight blouse opened her red lips at him. 'Oh. Mr Preece, isn't it? I'm so terribly, terribly…'

  'Madam!' Mr Preece, his heart wrapped in ice, had seen in the gloating eyes of the yellow-haloed man in the picture that the accident to Jack and the drowning of Jonathon were only the start of it. This was what they'd done with their meddling and their New Age rubbish.

  'That picture in the window. Where'd 'e come from?'

  'My husband brought it back from Devon. Why, is there…?'

  'Did 'e,' Mr Preece said heavily. 'Brought it back from Devon, is it?'

  Couldn't stop himself.

  'Devon…? Devon…?'

  Saw the woman's lips make a colossal great 'O' as he raised a hand and brought it down with an almighty bang on the thick smoked-glass counter.

  The cremation was at twelve, and Powys was late. He felt bad about this because there was barely a dozen people there. He spotted Henry's neighbour, Mrs Whitney. He noted the slight un
assuming figure of another distinguished elder statesman of dowsing. And there was his old mate Ben Corby, now publishing director of Dolmen, newly acquired by Max Goff.

  'Bloody minister never even mentioned dowsing,' Ben said.

  It had been a swift, efficient service. No sermon. Nothing too religious, nothing psychic.

  Powys said, 'I don't think Henry would have wanted to be wheeled in under an arch of hazel twigs, do you?'

  'Too modest, Joe. All the bloody same, these dowsers. Look at old Bill over there – he wouldn't do me a book either.'

  Powys smiled. 'Henry left me his papers.'

  'In that case, you can do the book. The Strange Life of Henry Kettle, an official biography by his literary executor. How's that? Come and have a drink, my train back to Paddington's at ten past two.'

  Ben Corby. Plump and balding Yorkshireman, the original New Age hustler. They went to a pub called the Restoration and sat at a window-table overlooking a traffic island with old stone cross on it.

  'Golden Land Two,' said Ben. 'How long? A year?'

  Not the time, Powys thought, to tell him there wasn't going to be a book.

  'Seen Andy lately?' he asked.

  'Great guy, Max,' Ben said. 'Best thing that could've happened to Dolmen. Been burdened for years with the wispy beard brigade, wimps who reckon you can't be enlightened and make money. Give me the white suit and the chequebook any day. The New Age movement's got to seize the world by the balls.'

  'Andy,' Powys said patiently. 'You seen him recently?'

  'Andy? Pain in the arse. He wouldn't write me a book either. He's always been an Elitist twat. Hates the New Age movement, thinks earth mysteries are not for the masses… but, there you go, he knows his stuff; I gather he's giving Max good advice.'

  'Maybe he's just using Max.'

  'Everybody uses everybody, Joe. It's a holistic society.'

  'How did Andy get involved?'

  Ben shrugged. I know he was teaching art at one of the local secondary schools. Had a house in the area for years, apparently.'

  That made sense. Had he really thought Andy was living in a run-down woodland cottage with no sanitation?