by Phil Rickman
'We're not in a different time zone,' Graham Jarrett was saying. 'It's not as simplistic as that. We're in what you might call a timeless zone. A place where the past and present exist in the same continuum.'
'What he was saying, about the town centre,' Adam Ivory said. 'I think that's literally central to this experience. The town centre's this kind of energy vortex…'
Fay moved on. They were creating a dream within a dream, the way New Age people tended to do, moving around scattering meaningless jargon, making themselves comfortable inside the experience.
But Jean Wendle, the most experienced of them all, was not here.
Or was she?
Fay moved around in the darkness, almost floating, coming to sense the nearness of other bodies and the emotions emanating from them: fear and exhilaration in equal quantities now. But she doubled there was one of them who would not prefer this experience in retrospect, returning to the square by daylight:
Yes, this was where it happened, just about here, yes, you can still feel the essence of it, yes, it'll never be the same again for me, this place, always be special, yes, it was like an initiation, becoming a part of this town. And now I feel I can tap into it whenever I want to, and I can really work here effectively now because I belong, because I've felt the Spirit of Crybbe.
Fay moved on. Through the radio world.
And now he was inside the Tump.
He'd been inside them before – burial chambers, passage graves. It was suggested that many of the stone dolmens cromlechs around the country had once been covered over, like
this, with earth.
The passageway was perhaps three and a half feet wide, and was low, and he had to walk painfully bent over. He directed the beam at the walls and the ceiling; the structure appeared to be a series of cromlechs joined up, like vertebrae, wide slabs of grey-brown stone overhead, a floor of close-packed earth.
He turned around, with difficulty, and he couldn't see the entrance any more. He wasn't naturally claustrophobic, but he shuddered briefly at the thought of the opening being sealed behind him, great bucket-loads of earth dumped back and rubble from the wall heaped across so that nobody would ever know there was a passageway, so that he slowly suffocated in here and became one more well-preserved pile of bones in forgotten Bronze Age burial chamber.
He stopped.
His chest tightened.
Gomer. Could he really trust Gomer Parry?
So many old allegiances, never spoken of, in Crybbe. And new ones, too. Could you ever know exactly who belonged to whom?
Maybe he should have asked Gomer to come with him, but he couldn't leave Mrs Seagrove outside on her own.
Look, don't think about it, OK. Too much at stake to go back now. Concentrate on where you are, what it can tell you.
Keep going…
It would probably be an actual Bronze Age grave, although he doubted he was the first person since then to enter this mound. You couldn't excavate a prehistoric burial chamber in under an hour.
But was he the first to get inside since Michael Wort?
Abruptly it ended.
Out of the passage and into the chamber itself, wider, maybe eight feet in diameter, but not quite circular any more. It was cold in here; the air smelled old and rank.
In the centre of the chamber was a single flat stone.
On the stone was a wooden box.
Powys stopped at the entrance to the chamber, put the lamp on the ground, stood blocking the entrance, head bowed.
They didn't have boxes in the Bronze Age, not carved oak boxes anyway, with iron bands and locks.
He stood staring at the box in the lamp's beam, and his breathing tightened. The box was about twelve inches deep and eighteen inches square. It sang to him, and it sang of ancient evil.
Oh, come on…
He walked across the chamber to the box, and found he couldn't touch it.
There is no evil, only degrees of negativity.
Powys started to laugh, and then, quite deliberately, he bent down and switched off the lamp.
What is this about?
Well, he couldn't see the box any more, or the inside of the stone chamber; he could be anywhere, no visual images, no impressions coming in now.
Just me. And it. This is a real fairy hill, and I'm in the middle of it, and I've come here of my own free will and there's no Andy and no Jean and I'm scared. I've put out the light to induce a state of fear, and the nerve-ends are bristling with it and I'm ready.
I'm ready.
'Hereward?'
'Yes.'
'Thank God.'
'Why? Why are you thanking God?'
'Because I thought… I thought you weren't going to come back. Hereward, I'm so desperately sorry. I was only trying to get away. All I've ever wanted is to get away from here.'
'And you thought Guy Morrison would take you away?'
'No… yes… Oh God, I don't know what I thought, I was just so lonely and messed up. He – Guy – was passing through, he wasn't part of Crybbe, he was going somewhere and I was stuck fast. I was like someone just dashing outside and thumbing a lift. And he stopped. I'm sorry, that's all mixed up, I'm not very clear tonight, not very articulate.'
'Don't cry.'
'I'm sorry. I'm sorry about the picture, too, but you don't know what pictures can do.'
'Oh, I do.'
'I'm not talking about aesthetics.'
'I know.'
'Do you?'
'Pictures are doorways.'
'Yes.'
'Artists put elements of themselves into pictures, and also elements of other things. The man in that picture of Tessa's, he's her teacher, you know. He has a studio in the woods, and she's been going down there and he's been teaching her how to paint. And what to paint. How to make a picture into doorway.'
'How do you know that?'
'Because, in the picture, he's standing in a doorway, like The Light of the World, in reverse, because he's so dark. But darkness and light, it's all the same when you can't see, isn't it?'
'I don't…'
'I'm going through the doorway, Jocasta.'
'Hereward?'
'It really is the only way out of here, through the doorway. The only way out for me, anyway.'
'Hereward, I'm getting very scared.'
'There's no need to be scared. Come here, darling. There.'
'No. No, please.'
'There… there…'
'Aaaugh.'
'There.'
Hereward felt the woman go limp, and his hands fell away from her throat. He felt himself smiling into the dark as he walked away.
The lamp was alight, and the door was ajar. When he pushed, it swung open at once, and Hereward found himself in the comfortingly familiar setting of his own workshop next
to The Gallery.
A candle glowed on the workbench, where he'd made frames. Do you know, in the early days, we used actually to make our own frames…
Fragments of frames were scattered over the bench and the floor; a corner section was still wedged in the wood-vice. He wouldn't need to make frames any more; that phase was over. Perhaps he'd employ someone to do it.
'Don't suppose you'd be interested in a job, would you?' he said to the shadow sitting on the bench, next to the candle.
The shadow stopped whittling at a piece of framing-wood with its Stanley knife and slipped to the floor.
Hereward saw it wasn't really a shadow; it was just black.
CHAPTER XVII
Laughter in the dark.
Laughter like ice-crystals forming in the air.
'Andy.'
Who did you think it was going to be, Joe? Did you think you were finally about to meet Sir Michael himself?
Andy, but he wasn't here.
He was mainly grey, shimmering to nearly white at his fingertips, the extremities of him.
Andy, but he wasn't there.
Powys heard the voice in his head. He spoke aloud, but heard the r
eplies in his head.
He wasn't thinking about this too hard, analysis was useless. Couldn't play new games by old rules.
Don't touch him. He can't harm you.
BUT DON'T TOUCH HIM.
'The box. What's in the box, Andy?'
Why don't you open it, Joe? The lock's no big deal. Ornament as much as anything. Also it's very old. Pick up a stone. Break the lock.
'I don't think so.'
No? You're still very much full of shit, Joe, you know that? You go to all this trouble to get into here, and you won't face up to the final challenge. What's the problem? Not got the guts, Joe? Not got the bottle? Think about this… think hard… what's it been worth, if you don't open it?
'Maybe I will,' Powys said.
You'll find a couple of stones behind you, near where you left your lamp. One's narrow and thin, it used to be a spearhead. The other's chunky, like a hammer. You can slide the spearhead into the crack below the lid.
'But not here.'
The eyes were white, though. The eyes were alight, incandescent.
Andy, but he wasn't here.
'I'm not going to open it here. You can piss off, mate. I'm going to pick up the box, and I'm going to take it away.'
You don't want to do that, Joe. You might awaken the Guardian. You don't want that.
'No. You don't want that. But you can piss off.'
Powys felt a trickle of euphoria, bright and slippery as mercury and, very quickly, he covered it up. Smothered it with fear. Stay frightened. At all costs, stay frightened.
A rapid pattering on the close-packed earthern floor, and something warm against his leg.
'Arnie.'
Stay frightened. It might not be.
He bent down.
And the growling began.
He felt Arnold's fur stiffen and harden under his hand, and the growling went on, a hollow and penetrating sound that came from far back in the dog's throat, maybe further back than that. Maybe much further back. The growl was continuous and seemed to alter the vibration of the night.
'You're not growling at me, are you, Arnie?'
The grey thing hung in the air like an old raincoat, but he was fairly sure that Andy was not there any more.
Powys switched on the lamp and the grey thing vanished.
He walked over to the stone in the centre of the chamber and he picked up the wooden box.
Warm. Cosy. Just as before. The deep, Georgian windows, the Chinese firescreen, the Victorian lamp with the pale-blue shade burning perfumed oil.
'I wondered,' she said, 'if you would come back.'
'Hullo, Wendy,' Alex said.
She was dressed for bed.
And how.
Black nightdress, sort of shift-thing, filigree type of pattern, so you could see through it in all the right places. Alex couldn't take his eyes off her.
'Sit down,' Jean said.
'Wendy, there's something awfully funny happening out there, did you know?'
'Funny?'
'Well, I'd been down to the river and came back up the hill and when I got to near the top, just at the entrance to the square, it all went very dark. I mean, I know it's obviously dark without the electricity supply, but this really was extra dark, as if there was a thick fog. Lots of people about the square, I could hear them talking, but I couldn't see any of them.'
'Oh my.'
'And… hard to explain this, but it was as if there was a sort of screen between all these people and me. Now, I know what you're going to say – the only reason there's a screen between me and the rest of the world is because I've erected it myself – but it wasn't like that. Not at all. This was really well, physical, but not… How do you explain it?
'I think you should come and sit down Alex and not get yourself get too worked up about this.'
'That's what you think, is it?'
'I think you need to calm down.'
Alex slumped into the sofa and she came down next to him as light as a bird, perching on the edge of the cushion, and the shift-thing riding up her legs. Pretty remarkable legs, had to admit that.
'And I heard Fay,' Alex said. 'I'd walked back – couldn't seem to make progress, you see, kept on walking and wasn't getting anywhere. You know that feeling? Happens in dreams, sometimes. Anyway, I'm coming up the hill again, and this time it's Fay I can hear, talking to some chap. Telling him about how all the people had gathered in this very square exactly four hundred years ago to the night, to get up a posse to go along and lynch old whatsisname… Sheriff Wort.'
'I see,' Jean said. She leaned over and picked up his left hand. One of her nipples was poking through the black filigree shift.
Alex swallowed. 'Then this chap she was talking to, he must have drifted away. I said, "Listen, Fay," I said, "why don't you tell me – tell me - what all this is about…?" But she couldn't hear me. Why couldn't she hear me, Wendy?'
Jean said, 'What's this on your hands?'
'Blood,' he said quickly, it's Murray Beech. He's been stabbed to death. Only realized as I was walking up the hill.'
'Stabbed to death,' Jean said neutrally. 'I see.'
'Don't you believe me?'
'Alex, I believe you believe that Murray Beech has been stabbed to death. And what about Grace?'
'She took me to her grave. We walked together. I think we came to an agreement.'
'I see.'
'But you don't really believe any of this, do you, Wendy?'
Jean smiled.
'Or do you?'
'Alex,' said Jean, 'would you like to sleep with me?'
Alex's throat went dry.
'Well?' she said gently.
'Oh gosh,' Alex said. 'Do you think I could manage it?'
Jean smiled. 'Perhaps we should find out.'
'That's what you think, is it?'
The answer burned quietly, like a kind of incense, in her eyes.
Alex stood up. He felt very calm. Calmer than ever he could remember feeling before. He did not know the meaning of the word 'dementia'. His heart was strong. His eyes, he knew, were twinkling quite dramatically.
The aromatic oil from the lamp was exquisite.
Jean unwound from the sofa and he took her in his arms, his breathing rate quickened at once. She tilted her face to kiss him, but he ran a hand into her soft, short hair and pressed her face to his chest, bent his head and whispered into her ear.
'You cunning bitch.'
Her body went rigid, and he let her go.
What a waste, he thought. What a tragic bloody waste.
When Jean Wendle faced him from across the room, her eyes were in deep shadow, her lips were drawn back and the inside of her mouth looked so black that she seemed, momentarily, to have no teeth at all.
The aromatic oil from the lamp smelt like the floor of a urinal.
'Oh my. You've blown it, now, Alex,' Jean whispered, voice like tinder.
Alex shook his head.
'You'd had it. You were finished. You were going very rapidly into the final decline. A bed in the bottom comer of the geriatric ward, to where the naughty boys are consigned, the nurses treating you like a difficult child when you try to pinch their bottoms. Poor old man, he used to be a priest.'
'Nothing more welcome in hell than an unfrocked priest,' Alex mused. 'Except perhaps a priest who ought to have been unfrocked but never was, because he was too damned plausible – all his life, so plausible, right up to the end, shafting ladies.'
'I brought you back,' Jean said, I fed you energy.'
'But what kind of energy?'
'Och.' Jean turned away with a dismissive wave of the hand. 'You blew it.'
'I don't think so,' Alex said. 'I made a deal. I went up the hill and I made a deal.'
He smiled. His heart was strong and his eyes still twinkled.
Jean Wendle turned her head and peered at him, curious. He saw in her face a pinched look, ravaged, and not the ravage of years.
'Made a deal,' Alex said. 'After a period of pr
otracted and considered negotiation, the Management and I formulated the basis of an agreement, nothing binding, either, party retaining the right to pull out at any given time if the Second Party should happen to lose his bottle.'
Alex walked out of the room. 'Good night, Wendy.'
Bloody waste, he thought sadly.
Joe Powys came out of the passage into the night, into a blinding light and the face of Edgar Humble.
He didn't have to force the fear.
'Hold it. Don't move.'
Powys half out of the hole in the side of the Tump, the wooden box in his arms, Arnold at his ankles.
Humble's eyes were fully open, his lips apart.
'You're dead,' Powys said from a throat full of hairline cracks.
'Course he's fucking dead,' Gomer Parry said, leaning out of his cab. 'Sorry, Minnie.'
Humble lay across the jaw of the digger, quite stiff now, one arm still flung out and his crossbow on his chest. The big shovel was almost blocking the entrance to the passage.
Minnie Seagrove wasn't looking.
Gomer said, 'What you got there, then, Joe?'
'Buried Treasure,' said Powys. is that thing safe?'
'Gimme a second.' Gomer raised the shovel so Powys could climb out from underneath it.
'Right, then.' The little man climbed out of his cab, rubbing his hands on his overalls. 'We got a bit o' talkin' to do yere, Joe. First off, you finished in there? Got what you want?'
'I think so.'
'Safe to block 'im up again, then.'
'Don't see why not.'
'Good. Mind out, then.'
He climbed back into his cab, cigarette end waggling, lowered the shovel, started to tip Humble's body over the entrance of the hole.
'What the hell are you doing, Gomer?'
Minnie Seagrove turned away as Humble's remains tumbled into the soil and rock.
'Nicked that box, did you?' Gomer shouted.
'What?'
'Treasure trove, that, boy. I won't say nothin' if you don't.'
'I had to tell him, Joe,' Minnie Seagrove said. 'I said, I'll go to the police and admit everything. And you'll speak up for me, won't you, Joe? You're a famous writer, that'll count for quite a lot. But he wouldn't hear of it.'
'Bollocks,' said Gomer. 'Could be centuries before they finds 'im, if ever. And if they does turn 'im up, 'ow could it possibly have anythin' at all to do with a sweet little old lady? Sorry, Minnie, I didn't mean old…'
