Crybbe (AKA Curfew)

by Unknown

  'And when this fat fellow - what's his name? . . . Goff - when this meddling lunatic arrives with his monumentally crazy scheme to turn the place on its head . . . Well, guess who can't get along with him either. Why, it's Miss Sophisticated Fay Peters, late of Radio Four! And she won't get back to London where she belongs . . .'

  'Dad, you know bloody well . . .'

  '. . . because she has this astonishing notion that her dilapidated old dad won't be able to manage without her! Jesus Christ!'

  Alex slumped into silence.

  Fay couldn't speak either. If this was Jean Wendle's doing, it was remarkable. Lucid, cogent, powerful, clear-eyed. He might have been ten years younger and in total control of himself.

  She was shaken. He was right, of course, even if there was a lot he didn't know.

  Or maybe there were things he did know.

  When she did finally manage to utter something, it wasn't what she'd had it in mind to come out with at all.

  'Dad,' she heard this pathetic little-girl voice saying, close to tears. 'Dad, why is Grace haunting us?'

  Warren never even saw his grandad until the old bugger was upon him.

  He was out by the Tump, thinking how much bigger it looked now from the side where the wall had been ripped out. Old thing could breathe now.

  Big, fat mound. Like a giant tit.

  Gomer'd carted his bulldozer away, moaning it'd cost over two thousand quid to repair it; Warren thought that was a load of old crap, Gomer trying it on. Who gave a shit, anyway? Standing here, Warren felt again the raw, wild power he'd first experienced the night he buried the old box. He would've been in town, up the alley, shagging the arse off Tessa, except she'd wanted to go to this poncy art exhibition, could you believe that?

  He'd left the old man at home, drinking. Never used to drink at home. Gone to pieces since Jonathon drowned, the elder son, the heir.

  Warren was the heir now. They'd have to give the bloody old farm to him. You had to laugh, sometimes.

  Jonathon was being planted on Wednesday. An inquest could be opened tomorrow. Warren had wanted to go along with the old man, who had to give evidence that the stiff really was Jonathon Preece. But they said after he'd done that, it'd be adjourned for a few weeks, so they'd have a long wait before they heard all the interesting stuff from the pathologist who'd cut Jonathon up on the slab.

  After the inquest had been opened, the body'd be released for burial, but the old man said they wouldn't be having it back at the house. Another disappointment for Warren, who'd planned to come down in the night and look under the shroud at all the stitches where the pathologist had put Jonathon's guts back.

  From behind, the hand came down on Warren's shoulder like a bird's claw.

  'What you doin' yere, boy?'

  Warren would've turned round and nutted him, if he hadn't recognized the voice.

  'Ow're you, Grandad?'

  'I said, what you doin' yere?'

  'I come for a walk, like. Free country, innit?'

  'Come with me, boy, I want a word with you.'

  'Sorry, Grandad, got no time, see. Got to meet somebody down the town.'

  The old git looked real weird tonight. Skeletal. Skin hanging loose over his bones. Powerful grip he had, though, and he used it now- on Warren's arm, above the elbow, digging into the muscle.

  'Ow! Bloody gedoff, you old . . . Where we goin'?'

  Jimmy Preece pulled him all the way to the edge of the field, well away from the Tump and the hole where the wall had been - pointing at this gap now, saying in a hard, rough voice,

  'You know anythin' about that, boy?'

  'What you on about?'

  'You know what I'm on about.' The old bugger's eyes were twin glow-worms, burrowed deep in his frazzled face, 'the feller as nicked Gomer's bulldozer and rammed it through the wall. You know him, boy?'

  'I never ... I swear to God!'

  Next thing Warren knew, he was on his back in the grass half-stunned. The old git'd knocked him clean off his feet with one massive swipe across the face.

  'Never use the name of God in sight of that thing again, you understand me, boy?'

  Warren lay there, felt like his face was afire and his brains were loose. 'You mad ole . . . you got no right . . .'

  His grandad put out a hand and helped him to his feet.

  'Sorry, boy. Nerves is all shot, see, what with Jonathon and now this.'

  Warren backed off. Stood with a hand over his blazing cheek.

  'Warren, you and me got to talk.'

  'That's what you calls it, is it?'

  His grandad look his cap off, scratched his head, replaced the cap.

  'Jonathon dyin', see, that changes things. With Jonathon around, didn't matter if you went through your life without knowin' nothin'. Your dad, 'e's the first Preece 'ad less than three children. Weren't 'is fault your mam left 'im, but that's besides the point. I only 'ad two sisters, but if anythin'd 'appened to me, they'd have done it, no arguments.'

  'What you on about?'

  'The bell, Warren.'

  'Oh, that ole thing. Stuff that.'

  'You what, boy?'

  'Stuff it. I done some thinkin' about that. You can all get bloody stuffed, you think I'm ever gonna take over that bell from Dad. Jonathon might've been mug enough, but I couldn't give a fucking shit, you wanna know the truth, Grandad. My future's not round yere, see. I'm a musician.'

  'Music?' The old feller spat hard, once. Gobbed right there on the grass. 'Music? Pah!'

  Warren backed off, fell his face contorting. His finger was out and pointing at the old bastard's sucked-in face.

  'You know nothin',' Warren snarled. 'You wanner know about my music, you ask Max Goff. 'E's gonner sign me, see. 'E's gonner sign the band. So you can do what you like. You can fuckin' disinherit me . . . you can keep your run-down farm. And you can take your bell and you can shove it, grandad. I couldn't care less.'

  His grandad went quiet, standing there, face as grey as the stone.

  'I shouldn't worry,' Warren sneered. 'One o' them newcomers'll take it on. That Colonel Croston, 'e's keen on bells.'

  'No! The Preeces done it through plague and droughts and wartime when ringing bells was an offence. But we done it, boy, 'cause it's got to be done, see. Got to be.'

  The old feller near desperation. Touch of the pleading there now. Stuff him.

  'I don't wanner talk to you no more. Grandad. You're not all bloody there, you ask me.'

  'Warren, there's things . . .'

  'Oh yeah, there's things I don't know! Always, ever since I was so 'igh, people been tellin' me there's things I don't know, maybe I don't wanner know, maybe . . . What's up with you now?'

  His grandad was looking past him at something that caused his mouth to open a crack, bit of dribble out the side, false teeth jiggling about. Disgusting.

  He turned and began to walk back towards the road, towards the town. Warren slinking half a dozen paces behind. When the gap between them was wide enough, Warren turned and saw what looked like the sunset reflected in one of the top windows of the old house, just below the roof-line.

  Except there wasn't any sun, so it couldn't be a sunset.

  Warren shrugged.

  CHAPTER X

  The smell happened first.

  It happened quite suddenly, as if in the cracking of a rotten egg. The smell and with it the light. Elements of the same change.

  The smell was filthy. Sulphur, and something cess-pit putrid.

  The light came in oily yellows, the yellow of candles made of animal fat and the yellow of pus from a wound gone bad. The light came from no particular direction but glistened on the stone walls like lard.

  Rachel shrank from the walls, but she couldn't get away from the stairs. Where she crouched, it was no longer dry and dusty but wet, warm and slick, like phlegm. She touched a stone step just once, and something unpleasant came off on her fingers. She tried to wipe them on the oak door, but that also was coated with a thick, chee
sy grease, gritty here and there with what felt like fly corpses.

  Rachel pulled the hand away in disgust, wiped it on her Barbour, knowing she could no longer bring herself to beat on this door. Her fists were sore and peeling, anyway, and if there was anyone out there they weren't going to help her. Perhaps they were waiting for the cool, superior, professional woman to break down, to shriek and sob and plead.

  'I can't stand this,' she said aloud. 'I shall be sick.'

  Which couldn't make the atmosphere any more foetid.

  But if I was a woman with any imagination, she thought, I would be very, very frightened.

  For the Court, always so drab and dusty and derelict - gloomy, but no more menacing than an empty warehouse - had swollen into a basic sort of life.

  Ludicrous. A grotesque self-delusion. But that was what it felt like. Flickerings of things. Presences in the shadows. The smell itself was like the house's own foul breath.

  She began to breathe hard herself. Broke out in a coughing fit. Then tried to breathe slowly and selectively, keeping her mouth closed, because the air was so rancid that when she took it in, there gathered at the back of her throat a richly cloying, raw-meat taste like sweating, sweet salami. Rachel - suffocating, closing her mouth, closing her eyes, trying to close down all her senses; trying, above all, not to hear - thought, I need air. I need light. I need to walk up these few steps.

  I need the prospect chamber.

  Soft, fresh evening air. Gentle evening light.

  The prospect chamber. Eight, ten steps away.

  But I can't move from here. I can't move because of . . .

  . . . those taunting sounds from the darkness above.

  Sometimes soft, rustling like satin. Sometimes loud as a foundry overhead. And then stopping for a period of tense, luminous quiet - until it begins again, louder and closer. Then distant again. I am here. I am there, I can be anywhere I choose in an instant because I'm not hu . . .

  Shut up! Shut up!

  It's what he wants you to think.

  Creaks. Thrustings. What might have been hollow footsteps on wood, flat footsteps on stone. On stone steps.

  He's coming down!

  Stopping just before the bend, not six feet away from where he crouched, holding her arms around herself, beginning to shiver.

  Pull yourself together Someone is trying to terrify you. It's only another person. You can handle people; you always could, you are cool and controlled; you can be remote, haughty, offhand, intimidating. You are flexible. You can be dominant, or compliant, at will.

  All you have to do is stride up there and face whoever it is.

  Yes, but that's what he wants.

  And what if you go up there and there's . . .

  Nothing.

  Nothing but the dark.

  'Help me!' Rachel was screaming out seconds later, her voice, always so calm and deep, now parched and bitter with anger and despair. 'Hum . . . ble! Andy! Anybody! Please!'

  Then, in a soft and aching whisper, she said, 'J.M.?'

  And her eyes filled uncontrollably with tears. When I get out of here, I'm going to get us both away. Tonight. That's a promise.

  If I get out of here. If I ever get to breathe the sweet night air.

  God help me, Rachel thought, but I'm not going to scream any more. When she'd screamed, the scream had come up from her stomach, like bile.

  When she looked down at herself she saw that her Barbour's waxy surface gleamed sickly yellow like the walls. She wanted to take it off, but she didn't like the cold. She'd never liked the cold.

  She wanted to remove her shoes, so as to move more quietly up the stairs towards the prospect chamber, but the thought of that ooze between her toes.

  She closed her eyes. Closed her eyes and opened them, and rose, picking up the cardboard box containing the dead cat guardian.

  'Come on, Tiddles,' Rachel said, wiping the tears away.

  She wished the appalling sounds would begin again, if only to muffle her footsteps.

  They did not. Silence woven as thick as a tapestry hung over the stairs, which were visible only because of the phosphorescence which seemed to move with her, not so much lighting the way as holding her close, in a thick and stifling miasma.

  When she looked back there was merely an oily blackness behind her, in the place near the door where she had crouched.

  Rachel couldn't remember a nightmare this bad. She was sweating in the clammy Barbour which seemed to have become part of this place, as if the yellow light steaming from the walls was re-vaporizing on the wax of the coat in clusters of tiny bubbles.

  She came to the bend in the stairs.

  All she had to do was follow the spiral.

  To her left would be the alcove concealing the door to the prospect chamber. Above her - how far above her she couldn't tell because there was no light and she could not remember - would be the attic.

  Better not to think about the attic. Shut it out.

  I don't go into the attics. I'm not superstitious, I just don't go into the attics . . .

  Two steps.

  Two steps to the alcove and the prospect chamber and light and air. She could stand in the opening and shout and scream and somebody would have to hear her.

  Oh, please. Please don't let the door be locked.

  Rachel made it to the second step and was about to fall into the alcove, throw herself at the door to the prospect chamber . . .

  This is the only part of the house I like.

  . . . when - to a shattering chorus of harsh clangs and grinding, strangled creaks, a malfunctioning clock-mechanism amplified a thousand times - the greasy darkness shredded before her like a rotting curtain, revealing the attic all lit up in bilious yellow, except for the quivering shadow of the rope hanging from the apex of the roof, turning slowly, stretched taut.

  By something palely shining, the source of all the light, noosed and squirming.

  It was not far off 10 p.m., the night sidling in, when Powys drove the Mini between the gateposts of the Court and became instantly aware of the Tump behind the house.

  He could not see the Tump, but he saw for the first time that the trees towering over the Court from behind were the trees growing out of its summit.

  Once you knew this you could almost see the shadow of the great mound outlined in the Elizabethan stonework of the Court itself; the Tump and house fused into a single . . .

  . . . entity.

  Even as he had that thought, something flared in the house and then went out, like a light-bulb which explodes the second it's switched on. He saw a momentary afterglow in one of the small windows immediately below the eaves.

  Maybe Andy's in there. Maybe I can wait behind the door until he comes out. And then I'll start hitting him.

  Powys accelerated, drove around the house to the courtyard, parked in front of the stable-block, next to the Range Rover - felt a pang of gratitude when he spotted that, longing to see Rachel again.

  The stable door was unlocked; he went in.

  'Rachel?'

  The place was dim; although it probably faced west, there was little light left in the sky. From here, at the top of the long room, now sectionalized, you looked down towards the big picture-window and the grey and smoky Tump.

  'Rachel, luv, you in there?'

  Maybe the light, way up in the house, had been her, with a torch. I don't like that. It may not frighten her up there, but it scares the crap out of me.

  And why had the torch gone out?

  'Rachel!'

  He looked around for light switches, found a panel of them behind the door, pressed everything. Concealed lighting came on everywhere without a blink.

  On the kitchen table was a scattering of magazines. New Age stuff. And a black leather bag, open. Rachel's bag.

  He went outside again, anxiety setting in with the dusk. He looked across at the Court. Soon the sky and the stone would meld and the house would be an amorphous thing balanced on the edge of the night.
>
  Powys moved to the rear entrance, trying not to crunch gravel. He pushed the door, but it didn't give. Locked.

  He didn't waste time with it, but followed the walls of the house around to the front and almost cried out when something big and black reared up in his path.

  It didn't move. It was a massive rubbish pile, except many of the items on it didn't look like rubbish to Powys, even in his light. Near the top of the heap was an enormous double wardrobe, Victorian Gothic, its top corner projecting sharply out of the pile, as if in protest.

  This time Powys tried the front door, and found that it too was locked.

  He looked back along the dead straight drive into the wood, straining to the silence. No birds left to sing.

  Directly above him, he knew, would be the prospect chamber, set into the highest eaves, the house's only orifice when the doors were locked and barred.

  Powys stepped back from the door and shouted as loud as he could up in the direction of the chamber's hidden maw.

  'Rachel!'

  A moment in a void.

  Then he saw a glowing filament of sporadic pale-yellow zig-zagging the length of the eaves, like very feeble lightning.

  He heard a scream so high and wild it might have been an animal on the brink of violent death in the woods.

  And then a chasm opened under all his senses.

  You land with a breathtaking thump on the fairy mound, not hearing the laughter, only aware of the pit beneath you, an endless lift shaft. You're falling, down and down and down, faster and faster, a tiny point of white light far below you ... a point of light, which gets no larger the further you fall because what it is. . . is the light reflecting from a spearhead, dirty and speckled with rust, as you can see quite clearly in the long moments before you feel the tearing agony, watching the spear's shaft disappearing into your stomach in in explosion of blood.

  Noooooooooo!'

  He staggered frantically but uselessly about, trying to position himself below her, as she plummeted from the prospect chamber like a shot bird, the Barbour billowing out, waxy wings against the leaden sky.