Crybbe aka Curfew

by Phil Rickman

  But she suspected that, even if it was three o'clock in the morning when she rang, Wynford would claim a prior appointment.

  The countryside. Where so many pastimes were sour and furtive. And tolerated.

  Arnold trotted in from the garden.

  Fay was very tired. She laid out a thick mat under her editing table and folded an old blanket on top it. 'I don't know what you're used to, Arnold, but the management will listen sympathetically to any complaints in the morning.'

  Arnold sat quietly next to the mat. Apart from the episode in the square, he hadn't seemed a very demonstrative dog.

  Fay brought him a bowl of water. 'I'm going to shut you in, Arnold. Because of the cats. OK?'

  She scribbled a note to pin on the door, telling her father not to go into the office, if, as happened occasionally, he couldn't sleep and came down. And don't let any CATS in there!

  Then she went to bed.

  She never put on the bedroom light; the room looked squalid enough by daylight. It was almost as claustrophobic as the Crybbe Unattended Studio, and its wallpaper had faded to brown. Fay would have redecorated the place, but she wasn't staying, was she?

  They weren't staying.

  The bathroom had been modernized, with characteristic taste. A bath, shower and washbasin in livid pink and black.

  Fay washed.

  She looked in the mirror as she wiped the face people had been amazed at Guy Morrison falling for.

  Guy used to say she should spell her name F-e-y, because she looked like a naughty elf. It had seemed like a kind of compliment at the time – she used to be naive like that. Especially where Guy was concerned.

  And she wasn't going to waste any time speculating about what Guy might want, because the answer was no.

  Snapping off the bathroom light, she found her way back to bed by the diffused rays of the midsummer moon – very nearly full, but trapped like a big silver pickled onion in a cloud

  sandwich.

  She lay awake for a long time in her single divan, thinking about the curfew and the furtive figure in the hedge, about Henry Kettle and Arnold and the wall. Splat.

  Horrible.

  How did it happen? There'd be a post-mortem, forensic tests and an inquest, but only Arnold would ever really know, and he was only a dog.

  '… You'll get that dog out of yere... '

  Very sympathetic people in Crybbe. Very caring. Wonderful, warm-hearted country folk.

  Miserable bastards.

  Eventually, Fay fell asleep with the moon in her eyes – she awoke briefly and saw it, all the clouds gone, and she remembered that sleeping with direct moonlight on your face was supposed to send you mad. She giggled at that and went back to sleep and dreamed a midsummer night's dream in which she was lying in bed and Arnold was howling downstairs.

  Oh no!

  Fay flung the covers aside and sat up in bed.

  Arnold's howling seemed to filter up from below, like slivers of light coming up through the cracks in the floorboards. It probably would be even louder from the Canon's bedroom, which was directly over the office.

  She got out of bed and crept to the top of the stairs, hissing, 'Shut it, Arnold, for God's sake!'

  Bare-footed, Fay moved downstairs. It was bloody chilly for a midsummer's night, especially when you were wearing nothing but a long T-shirt with several holes in it.

  At the bottom of the stairs she stopped and turned back, picking up what she hoped was the sound of her dad's snoring. She ran a hand over the wall in search of the light switch, but when she found it and pressed, nothing happened. Everything Hereward Newsome had ever said about those cretins at the electricity company was dead right.

  When she opened the office door, Arnold shot out and she caught him and he leapt into her arms and licked her face. 'Don't try and get round me,' she whispered. 'You are not

  sleeping on my bed.'

  But when she carried him back into the office, he whimpered and jumped out of her arms and she went back and found him standing by the front door, ears down, tail down, quivering.

  'Oh, Arnold…'

  Did dogs have nightmares? Had he been reliving last night: an almighty crunch, an explosion of glass, his master's head in a shower of blood?

  'I know, Arnold.' Patting him. 'I know.' His coat felt matted, almost damp. Did dogs sweat?

  Christ, he couldn't be bleeding, could he? She picked him up and lugged him back into the office, automatically tipping the light switch by the door.

  Damn! Damn! Damn!

  'Arnold!' He'd squirmed out of her arms again and run away into the hall.

  Fay clutched helplessly at the air. Torch… Candle.. Anything. God, it was cold. Moonlight was sprinkled over the room, like frost. The light twinkled on the twisting testicular mechanism of the clock on the mantelpiece, fingered the mirror's ornate, gilt frame, quietly highlighting everything that was part of then, while the now things, the trestle editing table and the Revox were screened by shadow. As though in another dimension.

  Everything was utterly still.

  Get me, she thought, out of here. Out of this sad, forsaken house, out of this fossilized town.

  Then a sudden, most unearthly sound uncurled from the fireplace. Like a baby's cry of joy, but also, she thought, startled and shivering, also like an owl descending delightedly on its prey.

  It came again and it sang with an unholy pleasure and she saw Rasputin sitting massively in the hearth like an Egyptian temple cat on a sarcophagus.

  Rasputin's emerald eyes suddenly flared, and he sprang.

  Fay gasped and went backwards, clutching at the wall involuntarily closing her eyes against imagined flashing claws.

  But the huge cat was not coming at her.

  When she looked again, he'd landed solidly in a beam of pallid moonlight on the varnished mahogany arm of the fireside chair, and he was purring.

  In the chair Grace Legge sat rigidly, her brittle teeth bared in a dead smile and eyes as white and cold as the moon.

  PART THREE

  A car's steering wheel, like a dowsing rod, is designed to

  amplify small movements of the driver's hands; so a reflex

  twitch in someone who slips unconsciously into a dowsing

  mode would be enough to send a car travelling at a fair

  speed into an uncontrollable spin.

  Tom Graves,

  Needles of Stone

  CHAPTER I

  Memory is circling like a silent helicopter over these soft, green fields, strung together with laces of bright river. It's a warm day in June or July, a Friday – the day you heard they'd sold the paperback rights to The Old Golden Land.

  Directly below, throwing a shadow like a giant sundial at three clock, is the Bottle Stone.

  It's about five feet tall and four thousand years old. Nobody seems to know whether erosion or some damage long ago left it shaped like a beer-bottle, or whether it was always like that.

  It seems now – looking down, looking back – to be as black as its shadow. But there's an amber haze – Memory may have created this, or maybe not – around the stone. Also around the people.

  Six of them, mostly young, early twenties. They're sharing a very expensive picnic. You paid for it. You led them on a raid to a posh high-street deli, then the wine-shop. And then you all piled into a couple of cars – old Henry Kettle too, although he says he'd rather have a cheese sandwich than all these fancy bits and pieces and you came out here because it was the nearest known ancient site, an obvious place to celebrate.

  Memory hovers. It's trying to filter the conversation to find out who started it, who raised the question of the Bottle Stone Legend.

  No good. The voices slip and fade like a radio between nations, and it's all too long ago. The first part you really remember is when Andy says… that there's a special chant, known to all the local children.

  Johnny goes round the Bottle Stone.

  The Bottle Stone, the Bottle Stone,

&nbs
p; Johnny goes round the Bottle Stone,

  And he goes round ONCE.

  And the Big Mac went round and round the toilet bowl, and Joe Powys watched it and felt queasy.

  He'd walked back to the Centre in a hurry and picked up the mail box. He hadn't looked at the mail, even though it seemed unusually profuse. Just ran into the shop and dumped it on the counter. Then he'd gone into the lavatory and thrown up.

  The Big Mac had been everything they'd promised it would be. Well, big, anyway. Never having eaten – or even seen at close hand – a Big Mac before, he'd decided on impulse this morning that he should go out and grab one for breakfast. It would be one more meaningful gesture that said. Listen, I am an 'ordinary' guy, OK?

  Not a crank. Not a prophet. Not a hippy. No closer to this earth than any of you. See – I can actually eat bits of dead cow minced up and glued together.

  But his stomach wasn't ready to process the message.

  He washed his hands, stared gloomily at himself in the mirror. He actually looked quite cheerful, despite the prematurely grey hair. He had a vision of himself in this same mirror in ten years' time, when the grey would no longer be so premature. In fact, did it look so obviously premature now?

  He flushed the lavatory again. Felt better. Went through to the kitchen and made himself a couple of slices of thick toast.

  Fifteen minutes before he had to open the shop. He put the plate on the counter and ate, examining the mail.

  There was a turquoise letter from America. It might have been his US agent announcing proposals for a new paperback reprint of The Old Golden Land.

  It wasn't; maybe he was glad.

  'Dear J.M.,' the letter began.

  Laurel, from Connecticut, where she was newly married to this bloke who ran a chain of roadside wholefood diners. Laurel: his latest – and probably his last – earth-mysteries groupie, once lured spellbound to The Old Golden Land. Writing to ask for J.M. for a copy of his latest book,

  What latest book?

  Then there was an unsolicited shrink-wrapped catalogue from a business-equipment firm. It dealt in computers, copiers, fax machines. The catalogue was addressed to,

  The Managing Director,

  J. M Powys Ltd.,

  Watkins Street, Hereford.

  In the head office of J. M. Powys Ltd., the managing director choked on a toast crumb. The head office was a three-room flat in an eighteenth-century former-brewery, now shared by an alternative health clinic and Trackways – the Alfred Watkins Centre. The business equipment amounted to a twenty-five year-old Olivetti portable, with a backspace that didn't.

  Powys didn't even open three catalogues from firms with names like Crucible Crafts and Saturnalia Supplies, no doubt offering special deals on bulk orders of joss-sticks, talismans, tarot packs and cassette tapes of boring New Age music simulating the birth of the universe on two synthesizers and a drum machine.

  The New Age at the door again. Once, he'd had a letter duplicated, a copy sent off to every loony New Age rip-off supplier soliciting Trackways' patronage.

  It said,

  This centre is dedicated to the memory and ideas of Alfred

  Watkins, of Hereford, who discovered the ley system -

  the way ancient people in Britain aligned their sacred

  places to fit into the landscape.

  Alfred Watkins was an archaeologist, antiquarian,

  photographer, inventor, miller and brewer. He doesn't

  appear, however, to have shown any marked interest in

  ritual magic, Zen, yoga, reincarnation, rebirthing, primal

  therapy, Shiatsu or t'ai chi.

  So piss off.

  He'd realized when he sent it that Alfred Watkins's work, had he lived another fifty years, might have touched on several of these subjects. Perhaps the old guy would have been at the heart of the New Age movement and a member of the Green Party.

  The recipients of the circular obviously realized this too and kept on sending catalogues, knowing that sooner or later Joe Powys was going to give in and fill up Trackways with New Age giftware to join the solitary box of 'healing crystals' under the counter.

  Because if he didn't, the way business was going, Trackways would be closing down within the year.

  There were only two envelopes left now. One was made from what looked like high quality vellum which he'd never lave recognized as recycled paper if it hadn't said so on the back, prominently.

  A single word was indented in the top left-hand corner of the envelope.

  EPIDEMIC

  Powys finished his toast, went to wash his hands, came back and turned the envelope over a couple of times before he opened it. It contained a letter which didn't mess around.

  Dear J. M. Powys,

  As you may have learned, Dolmen Books, publishers of

  The Old Golden Land, have now been acquired by the

  Epidemic Group.

  Shit, Powys thought, I didn't know that.

  I am writing to you on behalf of the Group Chairman,

  Max Goff, Powys thought, aghast. I've been acquired by Max bloody Goff.

  Mr Max Goff, who has long been an admirer of your

  work and would like to meet you to discuss a proposition.

  … And from what I've heard of Max Goff s propositions to personable young blokes such as myself…

  We should therefore like to invite you to a small reception at

  the Cock Inn, Crybbe,

  … I may have to invent a prior engagement…

  on Friday, 29 June at 12.30 p.m. I'm sorry it's such short

  notice, but the acquisition of Dolmen was only confirmed this

  week and I obtained your address only this morning.

  Please contact me if you have any queries.

  Please contact me anyway.

  Yours sincerely,

  Rachel Wade,

  PA to Max Goff

  Powys sat and looked around the shop for a while, thinking about this.

  He could see on the shelves, among the dozens of earth-mysteries books by Alfred Watkins and his successors, the spine of the deluxe hardback edition of The Old Golden Land and about half a dozen paperback copies, including the garish American edition with the Day-Glo Stonehenge.

  On the counter in front of Powys was a token display stand: dowsing rods and pendula. Mr Watkins might have been able to dowse, but he didn't have anything to say in his books about 'energy dowsing'. Or indeed about earth energies of any kind.

  But all that was academic; the dowsing kits were selling well. Soon wouldn't be able to visit a stone circle without finding some studious duo slowly circumnavigating the site, dangling their pendulum and saying 'Wow' every so often.

  Under the counter, because Powys hadn't had the nerve to put them on sale, was the box of 'healing' crystals which Annie – his new assistant with the Egyptian amulet – had persuaded him to buy. 'Got to embrace the New Age, Joe, and let the New Age embrace you. Mr Watkins wants you to let the New Age in, I can feel it. Sometimes I even think I can see him standing over there by the door. He's holding his hat and he's smiling.'

  Wow!

  Powys reached into the crystals box and helped himself to a handful of Sodalite (for emotional stability and the treatment of stress-related conditions).

  Max Goff, he thought.

  Max Goff!

  Clutching the crystals, he discovered he was holding in his other hand a small, creased, white envelope, the last item of mail.

  Mr J. Powys,

  The Alfred Watkins Centre,

  Hereford.

  Handwritten, not too steadily. Inside, a single sheet of lined blue notepaper.

  Cwm Draenog,

  Titley,

  Kington

  Dear Mr Powys,

  If you have not already heard I am sorry to have to

  inform you of the death of my neighbour Mr H. Kettle.

  What…?

  He was killed in a road accident in Crybbe where he was


  working and did not suffer.

  Jesus Christ!

  Mr Kettle left an envelope with me to be opened after his

  death in which he stated what he wanted to happen to his

  possessions as he did not trust solicitors. The house and all the

  contents is to be sold and the money sent to his daughter in

  Canada but he wants you to have his papers and his dowsing

  rods. If you would like to come to the house I am in most of

  the time and will let you into Mr Kettle's house.

  Yours faithfully,

  Gwen Whitney (Mrs)

  J. M. Powys put down the letter. He ought to have opened the shop ten minutes ago. The Sodalite crystals (for emotional stability and the treatment stress-related conditions) began to dribble through his fingers and roll across the wooden counter.

  CHAPTER II

  Rachel noticed that Denzil George, licensee of the Cock, had several shaving cuts this morning. He'd obviously overslept, unused, no doubt, to rising early to prepare an 8 a.m. breakfast for his guests. What a torpid town this was.

  'Parcel come for you,' the licensee said, placing a small package by Max's elbow.

  'Thanks.' Max tossed it to Rachel.

  'No stamp,' Rachel noticed. 'Obviously delivered by hand.'