Crybbe (AKA Curfew)

by Unknown

  The dead man was on his knees, the jaws of the vice clamped like the hands of a faith-healer either side of this giant red pepper, his head, once.

  Powys's stomach lurched like a car doing an emergency stop.

  Col Croston emerged expressionless, pulling the door closed behind him. 'Mrs Newsome . . . Let's get some air, shall we?'

  Her face began to warp. Col Croston took her arm and steered her into the square. Powys quickly closed the door behind them and stood with his back to it; he didn't want to hear this.

  'What's in there?' Fay said from far away.

  'A body.'

  'Is it Hereward? Hereward Newsome?'

  'Hard to say, he's been . .. damaged. And I don't know him. And if I did, it wouldn't help. Look, Fay, can we . . . ?'

  'Warren Preece,' Fay said, as if this explained everything. 'I expect Warren Preece did it.'

  She took a last disbelieving look at her dad and watched Powys flick off the lights. She didn't move. He took her hand and towed her into the street. She went with him easily, like one of those toy dogs on wheels. From down the hill, across the river, blue emergency beacons were strobing towards the town with a warble of sirens.

  Powys pulled Fay into a side-street. 'It'd be a bit daft to leave town, but I'd rather not be the first in line to make a police statement, would you?'

  'Where shall we go?'

  'My cottage?' They were in a street of narrow terraces and no lights. 'Or your house?'

  'I suppose it is my house now,' Fay said, still sounding completely disconnected. 'Unless Dad's left it to some mysterious totty. I mean . . . I don't want it. I'll take the cats, but I'm not having Grace. Can you give a house to charity?'

  He took hold of her upper arms, gently. 'Fay, please.'

  She looked at him in mild enquiry, her green eyes calm as rock pools at low tide.

  'I need you,' Powys said, and he hadn't meant to say that.

  Fay said, 'Do vou?' from several miles away.

  He nodded. They seemed to have been through years of experience together in about two days.

  He'd tried to explain briefly what had happened. About the Tump, the head in the box. About Andy. Not about Jean Wendle; it wasn't the time.

  What he wanted to tell her now was that something had been resolved. He wanted to say reassuring things about her dad.

  But as he reached out for her he felt his body breaking up into awful, seismic shivers. It's not over - the words squeezed into his brain like the fragmented skull of the man in the vice - it's not over.

  chapter iv

  Joe had left the candle behind.

  Taken the lamp but brought the candle down from the attic and left it on the floor in the open doorway, well out of the reach of Andy Boulton-Trow.

  The candlelight would guide the paramedics with their stretcher to the room where Andy lay, feeling no pain, only frigid fury which he knew he had to contain if he were to preserve the legacy.

  Andy fancied he could hear distant sirens; didn't have much time. He picked up the head of Michael Wort and held it above him - oh, yes, he could use his arms, he'd lied about that. But not his legs; he couldn't feel his legs or his lower body, only the bubbling acid of rage which he would have to control and channel.

  'Michael,' he hissed, and his lungs fell very small and also oddly detached, as though they were part of some ancillary organism.

  The head of Michael Won had no eyes, his remaining teeth were bare, its skin reduced to pickled brown flakes. But the skull was hard.

  Andy looked deep into the dark sockets and summoned the spirit of the man who, four hundred years ago this night, had dared to seize the Infinite.

  'Dewch,' he whispered, 'Tyrd i lawr, Michael.' He lay back and - balancing the head on his solar plexus - closed his eyes, slowed his breathing, began to visualise with an intensity he'd never known. 'Tyrd I lawr.'

  The first police car arrived as they approached the bridge. Joe didn't want to cross at first, in case they were stopped. Joe was a worrier. Fay didn't see any problem.

  And the car didn't stop.

  As the police car warbled away, she remembered something. 'Where's Arnold?'

  'Mrs Seagrove's looking after him. He's . . . Well, I'll tell you. Some time.'

  Some time? Fay looked at him curiously. Then said to herself, My father's dead. Every time she thought of something else, she was going to make herself repeat this, with emphasis.

  What she wanted was to be suddenly overcome with immeasurable grief, to sob bitterly, throw a wobbly in the street.

  No parents at all any more. No barrier. In the firing line now. Stand up, Fay Morrison. Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang!

  Fay stopped. MY DAD'S DEAD.

  Yes. But that wasn't the whole point. This was Crybbe. In Crybbe, death wasn't necessarily the worst thing that could happen to you. He'd looked peaceful under the gallery spotlights, with the paintings. But was he at peace, or was he going to bang around, like Grace, as some kind of psychic detritus?

  Was this the destiny of the dead of Crybbe, to moulder on, like the town?

  'Psychic pollution,' she said suddenly. 'What can you do about psychic pollution?'

  She peered over the bridge parapet, down to where the dark water loitered indolently around the stone buttresses.

  'Nuclear waste you can just about bury,' she said. 'Hundreds of feet underground in immovable granite. And, maybe, after four hundred years . . .'She straightened up. 'You know, I really underestimated the ... the toxicity of this town.'

  Joe was staring at her. I need you, he'd said, the words sounding strange. Probably because nobody had actually said that to her before. Not her dad, not Offa's Dyke Radio, not even her old boss at Radio Four. Certainly not Guy. (We could be good for each other, Fay.) No. Nobody.

  She looked at Joe in the light of the streetlamp at the end of the bridge. She thought he was a nice guy. She could, in better circumstances, be quite seriously attracted to him.

  He still looked sort of wary, though.

  'Maybe they were right,' he was saying, 'with their curfew and their Crybbe mentality. Maybe it was the best they could do. Maybe they just hadn't got the knowledge or the resources to handle it.'

  'Handle what exactly, Joe?'

  'I don't know. I don't suppose we'll ever know. Whatever . . . properties it has. To amplify things. The Old Golden Land. Where psychic doorways are easy to open.'

  'And pretty near impossible to close.'

  'John Dee knew it,' Joe said. 'Wort knew it. Just goes a lot deeper than either of them probably imagined. When you think about it, the great Michael Wort was probably just another loony. Like Andy. He didn't know what the fuck he was doing either.'

  They were approaching the cottage which overlooked the river.

  Fay said, without thinking about it, 'Is that the Bottle Stone I can hear?'

  'What?'

  'Thin drone, like the hum from a pylon.'

  'I can't hear anything.'

  'Probably nothing.'

  'Probably,' he said uncertainly. 'Funny, isn't it? We build up this big theory about Black Michael, and because he was four hundred years ago we think he's some kind of god. But he was just another . . . just another pollutant.'

  Out of the night came a slow clapping of hands. Ironic, essentially mocking applause.

  'Persuasively argued, Joe,' Jean Wendle said.

  Joe Powys froze.

  Jean Wendle was leaning against the cottage wall. She was wearing a pink velour tracksuit, She looked elegant and relaxed.

  Two police cars went rapidly past, followed by a fire-engine.

  Joe froze, and Fay sensed it wasn't because of the police cars, not this time.

  'But quite wrong,' said Jean. 'And you know it.'

  He didn't say anything.

  'Michael Wort,' said Jean, 'had one of the finest of the Renaissance minds. Scientist, philosopher . . . these terms simply cannot encompass Michael's abilities. We no longer like to
use words like magus, but that's what he was, and the reason he isn't as famous as Francis Bacon and Giordano Bruno and even - God forbid - John Dee . . . is that he realized the futility of books and so never wrote any. And also, of course, he lived not in Florence or Rome, or even London. But in Crybbe.'

  Fay could see Joe trying to say something, trying to frame words.

  'If he never wrote anything,' he said, 'how do you know he was so great?'

  'Because,' said Jean, 'like all great teachers, he passed on his knowledge through training and through experience.'

  Another police car went past, followed by another fire-engine.

  'There's a Michael Wort tradition,' Jean said. 'It began with his own family, and then was passed to selected scholars.'

  'What kind of tradition?'

  'Fascinating stuff,' Jean said. 'All to do with the spirit landscape, and the interpenetration of planes. Knowledge we are only now beginning to approach.'

  'They called him Black Michael,' Fay said.

  'As they would. In Crybbe.'

  'He hanged people.'

  'He studied death, and he utilized his period as high sheriff to pursue that study. That was all.'

  How bizarre. Fay thought. All hell breaking loose up in the town and here we are, three uncommitted observers from Off, calmly discussing the background as if it's a piece of theatre.

  'Knowledge,' said Jean, 'isn't evil.'

  'And what about what happened on the square? What about the killing of Max Goff? What about . . . ?'

  'You know, as I do, my dear, that there are some very misguided and unbalanced people in Crybbe, and there always have been. People Michael was trying to help.'

  'I didn't know,' Fay said, 'that you knew so much about Michael Wort.'

  'You didn't ask,' said Jean. Her short grey hair shone like a helmet in the street light.

  'Fay . . .' Joe said.

  'Joe's trying to tell you to come away,' Jean said. 'He doesn't want to end what he began.'

  'Which is?'

  'The Bottle Stone,' Jean said gently. 'Come and see the Bottle Stone.'

  'No!' Joe backed away.

  'He blames it for everything,' Jean said. 'For all his problems, all his failed relationships. The deaths of his women.'

  'Fay.' Joe sounded suddenly alarmed. 'I don't know what she's doing, but don't fall for it. I meant to tell you. Jean and Andy are in this together. She sent me up to the Tump tonight, she set me up for Humble . . .'

  'Did he tell you,' said Jean, 'how the Bottle Stone followed him here?'

  'Yes,' Fay said, her throat suddenly quite dry. 'He told me that.'

  'Come and see the Bottle Stone, Fay. Come on.'

  'Fay.'

  'Come along,' said Jean.

  She rose from the wall and picked her way carefully to the gate of the cottage. 'Come on.'

  Fay glanced at Joe. 'Don't,' he said quietly. 'Please.'

  I meant to tell you.

  She turned and followed Jean Wendle.

  They went around the side of the cottage and across the damp lawn to the piece of land at the rear. Jean had produced a small torch and they followed its thin beam. Fay could hear the river idly fumbling at its banks. Jean stopped. She directed the beam a short way across the grass until it found the thick, grey base of a standing stone. Then Jean casually flipped the torch up so that they could see the top of the stone.

  'It doesnae look awfully like a bottle, does it?' Jean said.

  The stone appeared no more than three and half feet tall. It was fairly wide, but slim, like a blade.

  Fay said, 'It doesn't look anything like a bottle.'

  Andy Boulton-Trow lay on his back, holding the head above him with both hands. The hands didn't ache now.

  'Michael,' he said, 'forgive me. It was a shambles. I was using weak, stupid people. I failed you.'

  In the doorway, the candle was burning very low. He'd thought he could hear sirens a while back. He couldn't hear anything now.

  Joe Powys hadn't rung for an ambulance.

  Joe Powys had lied.

  CHAPTER V

  'One more, I make it,' Gomer said, a short trail of recumbent stones in his destructive wake. 'Then that's the lot.'

  'You know, Gomer,' Minnie Seagrove said, sitting quite placidly next to him in the cab, the three-legged dog on her lap. 'You've surprised me tonight.'

  'Surprised myself,' Gomer said gruffly. 'I'll be very surprised if I collect a penny for all this.'

  'No, what I mean is . . . Well, I'd come to the conclusion - and I'm sorry if this sounds insulting - I'd come to the conclusion that there weren't any really decent men in Crybbe. Like, men we used to say would do anything for you. Nothing too much trouble, sort of thing . . . if it was the right thing.'

  'Done a few bloody wrong things tonight, Minnie, my love,'

  Gomer said, plunging the digger halfway down the riverbank. 'That's for certain.'

  'No they weren't. They weren't wrong things at all. You've saved me from being arrested for murder, you're working overtime at a minute's notice to help that poor old chap who looks like he's on his last legs. And you've been no end of help to

  young Joe . . .'

  Gomer ploughed through an unstable-looking fence and up into the field that served as a narrow flood-plain for the river.

  'I got no regrets about gettin' you out of a bit o' bother,' he said. 'An' I'd stand up in court an' say so. But that Joe - well, I'd like to think that young feller'll keep 'is mouth shut, see, that's all. You know much about 'im?'

  'Not a lot,' said Minnie. 'But I'm sure he's all right.'

  'It's rather sad, really,' Jean said. 'They're all bottle stones to Joe.'

  Fay started to feel faint. To pull herself together, she said - screamed it out inside her head, like biting on something hard, to fight extreme pain,

  MY FATHER IS DEAD.

  And wondered if Jean knew about that yet. Jean who'd given him a new lease of life. Which he'd expended in whst appeared at this moment to be a distressingly futile way.

  Fay felt sick.

  'I don't know precisely what happened,' Jean was saying. 'Over this girl of Joe's, Rose, I mean. Whether it was an accident or suicide or . . .'

  'Murder,' Fay said.

  Jean put a hand on Fay's arm. Look, my dear, it's over. It's all in the past. Whatever happened, there's nothing we can change now. Nobody we can bring back to life.'

  'No,' Fay said numbly.

  Something white in places caught her eye, over to the right of the Bottle Stone. Joe Powys's muddy T-shirt. He was standing on the other side if the perimeter wall, watching them silently, like an abandoned scarecrow.

  'About Andy,' Jean said. 'Andy's not a bad boy. A little wild, perhaps, in his younger days, a little headstrong. His lineage is not a direct one to Michael, but he developed a very strong interest in the Tradition from his early teens. And, give him his due. he didn't deviate in his resolve to discover things for himself.'

  'And the Bottle Stone ritual?'

  'Exists not at all,' said Jean sadly, 'outside the head of J. M. Powys."

  'He showed me the field," Fay said. 'Where it happened.'

  'And was there a Bottle Stone there? And a fairy mound? With a fairy on it?'

  'What about Henry Kettle? He was there too. There was nothing wrong with Henry Kettle.'

  'Oh? Henry told you, did he? He said he was there?'

  A police car howled a long way away.

  'No,' Fay said bleakly.

  'Oh, my dear . . .'

  Fay was bent over, gripping her thighs with both hands. She felt a stabbing stomach-cramp coming on.

  'Oh God,' she breathed. 'Oh God.'

  And as Andy's breathing, shallow as it was, began to regulate, he looked into the dark sockets and saw within them pinpricks of distant light.

  He watched the lights as they came closer - or, rather, as he moved closer to them, his consciousness was focused and drawn into the sockets, now as wide as caverns.
<
br />   He felt the familiar tug at the base of his spine, and never before had it felt so good, so strong, so positive, so indicative of freedom. For, while imprisoned within his twisted body, Andy could no longer feel anything at all at the base of his spine.

  When it happened - and he'd been far from certain that it would under such conditions - there was an enormous burst of raw energy (O Michael! O Mother!) and he was out of his body and soaring towards the lights.

  'It's a shame about Crybbe,' Jean said. 'But it's no different in any of these places. You ask the ordinary man in the street in Glastonbury how he feels about the Holy Grail. How many miracles he's seen. They're not the least bit interested and indeed often quite antagonistic'

  Looking beyond the stone. Fay could no longer see Joe. Perhaps he'd crept away.

  'So you can imagine how they reacted in Crybbe,' Jean went on. 'A place so remote and yet so conducive to psychic activity. Can one blame the peasantry? I don't know. The knowledge has always been for the Few. Not everyone has the spiritual metabolism to absorb it. Not everyone has the will to see through the dark barriers to the light.'

  All at once, as if to illustrate Jean's point, the stone which bore no resemblance at all to a bottle was lit up from its grassy base to its sharp, fanglike tip.

  'Goodness,' Jean said. 'Whatever's that?'

  Beyond the stone, there was a kind of parapet overlooking the river and to one side, dropping down to the flood-plain, a narrow, muddy track, its entire width now taken up by a crawling, grunting monster with it single bright eye focused on the stone.

  Fay saw a wiry figure leap from the creature and advance upon the stone. Jean flashed her torch at it and the light was reflected in a pair of old-fashioned wire-rimmed National Health glasses.

  'Evening, ladies. Gomer Parry Plant Hire. I realize it's a bit late, like, but I got official instructions to remove that stone, see.'

  Jean stiffened. 'I do beg your pardon.'

  'Official council operation.'

  'Now why is it,' Jean asked smoothly, 'that I rather doubt that?'