by Phil Rickman
The more Powys thought about it, the less difficult it became to fault.
'You can't leave him near the entrance.'
I shall drag 'im in just as far as 'e'll go, then I'll fill this 'ole up and pack 'im tight, see, and pile up them stones, so it looks like the wall collapsed on it, like.'
'I can't stop to help you, Gomer, I'm sorry. I've got to go somewhere and I don't think there's much time.'
'No problem. I'll take Minnie 'ome.'
'And could you do me another favour – take Arnold, too.'
'I'll take him,' Mrs Seagrove said.
'I'll come back for him.'
I hope.
Or Fay will.
'Thanks, Arnie,' said Powys, pulling the box down and sinking his hands into Arnold's fur, rubbing his face at the dog's encouragingly cold nose.
Arnold licked him once.
'And thank Henry for me,' Powys said, 'if you see him around.'
He picked up the box. It was quite heavy but not too unwieldy. He balanced the lamp on top. 'You're sure this is going to be all right? I have the awful feeling it'll look like a excavation site.'
'Joe,' said Gomer patiently, 'this yere is Gomer Parry Plant Hire you're dealin' with. I already got the reputation of havin' fucked up once on this site – sorry, Minnie – and I'm not gonner risk 'avin' myself pulled in by that Wiley if I can 'elp it, am I?'
Gomer lit another cigarette, lowered his voice. 'Wynford Wiley,' he said. 'Wouldn't give 'im the satisfaction. Fat bastard.'
Powys nodded. 'Minnie. I…'
'She never did nothin',' Gomer Parry said gruffly. 'So you got nothin' to thank 'er for, is it? Bugger off. Good luck.'
CHAPTER XVIII
If anything, it was stronger now. She thought she'd get used to it, like when you were staying on a farm during the manure-spreading season, but this wasn't manure and it was getting stronger.
In it there was human waste and animal waste, raw meat, blood perhaps, body odours, rancid fats… and now smoke.
Woodsmoke? Maybe.
Or was it the church? Could she smell the fire in the church because the church was on the line linking the centre of the square with the Court and the Tump?
Joe Powys would know. Or he wouldn't. Either way, it would be good to have him here. Not such a world-class crank after all, not when you listened to this bunch.
Fay walked among them, the night still alive with natural radio.
'He'll come back.' Graham Jarrett.
'What if he doesn't?' Hilary Ivory.
'I tried walking.' One of the lawyers, in tones of defeat. 'I kept on walking, looking for a light. I kept walking, and I just felt like I was fading out… fading away. Losing my physical resistance to the air, becoming absorbed in the atmosphere. I mean, it was very soporific, in a way. I think it'd be good to die like that. But not yet. I got scared. I thought, I've got to go back. And when I thought that, I was back. Like I hadn't been anywhere.'
'There's nowhere to go.' Oona Jopson. 'Accept it. Relish it. It's not likely to happen to you again.'
'Good.'
'Or maybe it will. Maybe we're being opened up to a permanent kind of cosmic consciousness, you know?'
She wondered what was happening outside the square. Was the church alight? Was Jimmy Preece alive? And what about Warren? Were the Crybbe people attending the meeting still inside the town hall? And what of their relatives in the town – had they any idea what was happening? Perhaps it had happened before, the town square sealing itself off in the past – a past which was always close to the surface of this town.
Not for the first time tonight, Fay genuinely wondered if this was some long and tortured dream. And, if it was not a dream, whether, when (if) it was over, it would have no more significance than if it had been.
Somebody was coughing very weakly, a thin scraping sound.
'Where's Colonel Croston?'
'I'm here. Who's that.'
'It's Dan Osborne, Colonel, I'm a homeopathic practitioner, but I have a medical qualification. There's a woman here in a bad way. Over here, just come towards my voice. I'm bending across her, you won't walk into her.'
'OK, I'm on my way. Do you know who she is?'
'She's wearing what feels like a silk blouse and… a fairly light skirt. She's got… thick hair, quite long I suppose.'
Guy said, 'is she wearing a thickish sort of necklace thing?'
'A torque, I think. Dear God, what's this…?'
'Jocasta! What's happened? Where are you?'
'She's… The bloody torque's been twisted into her neck. Please, Christ, just hold still…'
'OK, Mr Osborne, I'm here. Is she OK?'
'I don't know. She didn't bloody well do this to herself, did she? Somebody's tried to garrote her with her own…'
'OH GOD! GET ME OUT OF THIS!' The woman from the crafts shop hurling herself about the Crybbe vacuum bouncing off people. Somebody had to crack up, sooner or later.
Have one for me. Fay thought.
Col Croston sat down on the cobbles, cross-legged, and looked hard at the darkness. Held his own hand up in front of his face from six inches. He could see it. Just. Could tell it was a hand or was that because he knew it was a hand?
The woman would live. Her throat would be a mess, but she'd be OK. She'd tried to speak. 'Who did this?' he asked, but if she'd identified her attacker he hadn't been able to make out the name. Wouldn't be much use anyway; how could you go after anyone without light?
I am here, Col said silently, letting his eyes half-closed. I can sense myself. I can sense my toes (flexing them and then letting them relax), my calves (trying to tighten the muscles in his leg and letting them relax), my thighs… my stomach…
An exercise.
As a soldier (all his family were soldiers), Col had gravitated to the SAS not because of a need for action and physical stress but because he wanted to feel life and for that, he'd decided one needed to be out on the edge of something, always within sight of the abyss.
Rather thought he'd got over that stage now.
… chest (tighten, breath in, hold it… relax…
…shoulders…
Mind control. Expansion of the senses. Spent two weeks with a meditation expert learning techniques for dominating the body in tight spots. Optional course for officers; some of the chaps thought it was all crap. Not Col. He'd actually taken it further, after the course.
… neck… face (tensing the muscles in his cheeks and jaw, letting the tension go)…
At the end of this exercise – he'd done it many times over the past twenty or thirty years – there should be a moment of pure awareness. Awareness of oneself and one's situation. And sometimes…
… back of the head…
… one emerged from it and everything looked clearer.
And one knew precisely what to do next. Probably elements of yoga and meditation in there, so it was never wise to tell some of the chaps one was indulging in this sort of thing, or they'd be putting it round the Colonel talked to plants and things. Not a word to these New Age characters either, or they'd be recruiting him as an emblem.
Gradually, his breathing slowed and the voices around him in the void began to fade.
'Warm night, isn't it?'
'Hmm?'
'Stuffy. Humid.'
'Yes, it is really.'
Old chap in a T-shirt sitting in a doorway a few yards away.
'Colonel Croston, isn't it?'
'Col. Hey, just a minute…'
He could see this chap. It was still dark, but he could see him, could see his white beard and what it said on the front of his T-shirt. Didn't make any sense, half-faded, but he could…
'It's Canon Peters, isn't it? Seen you in the Cock.'
'Alex.'
Col turned around to look at the square. He could see the shapes of buildings, very dimly; he could hear the sound of people talking and possibly screaming although there was nothing immediate about this, no involvement; more like the soun
d of someone's TV set from a distance.
'Heard you talking to my daughter,' the old man said 'Young Fay.'
'Fay Morrison. Yes. I was. But you weren't… with us were you? You weren't in… in… Look, Canon, can you help me to understand this? When you heard us talking, could you, you know, see us?'
'No.'
Col sighed. 'Thought not. Started out thinking it was some sort of gas. Some leakage from somewhere. Or an MOD experiment, just the kind of place they'd choose. And now I'm inclined to think it's something psychological coming out. Some mass-psychosis thing. I can't begin to… I mean, what your daughter had to say was interesting in a purely academic sense but not… Frankly, I'm lost, Canon. Where does one start…?'
'Question I've been asking most of my life. Kept putting off having to answer it.'
Keep cool, Col instructed himself. Keep your head. And for God's sake, don't go back in there. (In where? And how did I get out?)
'Canon…'
'Alex.'
'Do you know what's happening?"
'Only the vaguest notion, old chap. But I believe I'm getting there.'
'It is something… psychological, isn't it? Damned if I'm going to use that other word.'
'Good Lord, no, old boy, never say that.'
'Well.' Col levered himself to his feet. He could actually see lamps in some of the houses on this side of the square. 'You know a man's been murdered?'
'Oh yes. Murray Beech, the vicar.'
'The vicar?'
'Stabbed to death. Lying in the churchyard. And the church is on fire. Look…'
Col looked up from the blackness of the square and this vague shapes of roofs, and saw the sky blooming red and orange.
And you know the strangest thing?' said Alex. 'Nobody'd come out to watch.'
'You've rung the fire brigade I take it.'
'No.'
'Good God, man, it might burn down.'
'It might. But if the fire brigade come, they'll have to go in through the square, won't they, and they might just mow down a lot of innocent people who didn't appear to see them coming, or not be able to get through. I don't know. Don't know what could happen. But I think, on balance, that it's safest to let it burn, don't you? Only a bloody church.'
The old chap looked gloomy, but, Col noted, entirely in command of his faculties. The word around town had been that Canon Peters was losing his marbles.
'I think,' the Canon said, 'that we're in the middle of what used to be known technically as A Crybbe Matter. However, on this occasion, there's been outside interference and the locals are seriously out of their depth. That's my feeling.'
'Can we help?'
'That's a very interesting question,' Alex Peters said.
Silly children's game. Fay thought, Hilary Ivory on one side of her, the cameraman, Larry Ember on the other. Or perhaps only their voices. Their voices and their hands.
Silly children's game, New Age nonsense, where's the harm?
No harm.
'We're all going to pool our energy,' Andy's voice making soft chords in the night air. 'We're going to bring down the night.'
Silly children's game. No harm in it. Make a circle, everybody hold hands, dance gaily, stop, hold out hands to the sky as if in welcome. Wasn't there something like this at the end of Close Encounters? And something else. Wasn't it in something else?
Very silly.
'Got him?'
'Just about. Bit stiff. Bit of rigor."
Col heaved the corpse across his shoulder, fireman's lift job.
Behind him, flames were coming through the church roof.
He followed Alex, the body over his shoulder. I am here. I'm walking through a churchyard with a dead vicar over my shoulder and the church is on fire.
This is not like Belfast, after a bomb blast. There are no spectators, no fire brigade, no police, no Army. Only the huge flames chewing up the night.
'I trust,' Alex said, 'that when we get to the town hall, you'll have no difficulty getting us in.'
'Count on it,' Col Croston said through gritted teeth.
The box became unaccountably heavy and Joe Powys had to put it down in the courtyard.
Open it?
The Mini was still parked up by the stable-block. It had been his intention to load the box into the boot and then drive it out of Crybbe, but there was some uncertainty. What did you do with these things?
Open it.
You could take in into a church – a real, functioning church outside of Crybbe, and place it on the altar. But you never knew, with churches in the border country, what other forces might be at work, what damage you might be inflicting on some other quiet and vulnerable community while the people slept.
Or open it.
Or you could throw it into a deep lake. This had been done in numerous legends to calm an excitable spirit, in a ceremony normally involving about twelve priests.
He didn't have twelve priests to hand. Also this was not a whole unquiet spirit.
Not the whole thing. But unquiet, yes. Walking back to the Court, holding the box with both hands, the lamp balanced on top, he'd had the illusion of something moving inside.
Open it,'
Psychological trickery. Mind games. I'm not listening.
OPEN IT!
CHAPTER XIX
Somehow they had formed a circle in the dark. When you moved around in this formation, you couldn't, of course, see the individual people comprising the circle, but soon you began to see the collective thing, the movement, the circle itself.
'A ring of pure golden light,' Hilary- Ivory breathed, isn't it beautiful? And we've made it ourselves. We've made it.'
Yes, Fay thought remotely, it is rather beautiful. But it's not quite golden. More a darkish yellow. The yellow of… of what?
Hilary held her right hand, Larry Ember her left. Hilary breathed and sighed, as if she was making love, while Larry chuckled to himself, not in a cynical or ironic way, but a chuckle of pleasure. Pleasure in self-discovery.
Round and round they went in a slow circle, mindlessly, innocently round and round, like children in the schoolyard.
The air was still pungent, but the pungency was fortifying and compelling now. Tobacco could seem noxious and nauseous the first time you inhaled it, but when you were accustomed to it, it was deeply satisfying.
So it was with the scent of shit and blood and rotting vegetables, as the human circle revolved, quite slowly at first, anticlockwise, in the opposite direction to the sun, which was
OK, Fay reasoned dreamily, because there was no sun, anyway, at night.
Every face was blue-lit, anxious and staring bleakly at Alex without enmity but without any hope either. A quarantine situation; nobody was to go outside, nobody from outside was to come in because of what else might enter.
But Col Croston had got them into the hall, without too much difficulty. He knew both men on the rear door – Paul Gwatkin, one of the three Gwatkin brothers who, between them, farmed Upper Cwm and Lower Cwm, and Bill Davies, the butcher. Decent chaps, both of them.
'Paul,' Col had said, very reasonably, 'it's essential that my friend the Canon and I come in, and I have to tell you if you don't get out of the way I may hurt you quite badly. Problem is, I was never trained to hurt people only slightly. You see my problem.'
'And I hope, Colonel,' said Bill Davies, standing aside, 'that you might be startin' to see ours.'
Col had laid a sympathetic hand on the butcher's should 'We're here to help, Bill.'
'Wastin' your time, I'm afraid. Colonel, it's…'
'I know,' Col said. 'A Crybbe matter.'
Now, standing on the platform with its table and two empty chairs, Alex addressed the assembly, quite cordially.
'Good evening. Some of you know me, some of you don't, some of you might have seen me around. Peters, my name. For what it's worth, I appear to be the only living priest in town. And you, I take it, are what one might call the backbone of Crybbe.'
He
looked carefully at his audience, perhaps three hundred of them, men outnumbering women by about two to one, the majority of them older people, over fifty anyway – such was the age-ratio in Crybbe. The scene reminded him of the works of some painter. Was it Stanley Spencer, those air-raid shelter scenes, people like half-wrapped mummies?
'Strange sort of evening,' Alex said, 'I expect you've noticed that, otherwise what are you all doing penned up like sheep overnight in the market? Hmm?'
No response. Nobody did anything to dispel the general ambience of the stock-room as a mortuary. The blue-faced, refrigerated dead.
What would it take to move these people? And, more to the point, had he got it?
As Alex stood there and watched them, he saw himself as they must be seeing him. Bumbling old cleric. Woolly haired and woolly headed; mind known to be increasingly on the blink.
But he'd made a Deal, if only with his inner self. He thought about the possible implications of the Deal, and a suitably dramatic quote occurred to him, from the Book of Revelations.
His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire.
'Right,' Alex said, stoking the fire, summoning it into his eyes, 'if that's the way you want it. Colonel, would you ask Murray to step inside?'
'Huh?' Col Croston glanced sharply at Alex, who merely nodded. 'Oh,' Col said and walked out.
Alex said bluntly, 'I understand Max Goff was slaughtered like a pig in here tonight.'
Some of the women looked away. Nobody spoke. Alex let the silence simmer for over a minute, observing finally, 'You seem to have thrown the body out. Out of sight out of mind, I suppose. Didn't know the chap myself. However, I did know this poor boy.'
Col Croston had returned with his arms full. Paul Gwatkin and Bill Davies didn't try to stop him, but neither seemed anxious to help him with his bloody burden.
'He's sorry he was late,' Alex said. 'He was obliged to stop on the way, to get murdered.'
Col carried the corpse around the table, where the blotter was brown with dried blood, and curling.
