Crybbe (AKA Curfew)

by Unknown

  'I'm guessing,' Powys said. 'OK?'

  'It's all guesswork, isn't it? Go on. This is the big one, Joe. Why - precisely - do dogs howl at the curfew?"

  'Right.' He sat down on the second step, and Arnold laid his chin on his shoe. 'I've been thinking about this a lot. The curfew's a very powerful thing. It's like - an act of violence, hits the half-formed spirit like a truck. And the spirit wants to scream out in rage and frustration. Now. There are two possibilities. Either, because it's at this black dog stage, it communicates its agony to anything else in the town on the canine wavelength. Or it simply emits some kind of ultrasonic scream, like one of those dog whistles people can't hear. How's that?'

  'Well,' Fay conceded, 'it does have a certain arcane logic.'

  She looked up at the church tower.

  Powys pushed at his forehead with the tips of his fingers 'Somebody - let's continue to call him John Dee - saw what was happening, what Michael Wort had left behind - in essence an opening for him to return to . . . possess Crybbe, literally, from beyond the grave. And he recommended certain steps -get rid of the stones, build a wall around the Tump, ring the curfew every night, one hundred times. Avoid any kind of psychic or spiritual activity which will be amplified in an area like this anyway and could open up another doorway. And so the rituals are absorbed into the fabric of local life and Crybbe becomes what it is today.'

  'Morose,' Fay said. 'Apathetic. Resistant to any kind of change. Every night the curfew leaves the place literally limp.'

  Guy Morrison was clenching his fists in frustration. This would have been terrific television. He looked around for the Mayor of Crybbe - the man who, more than anybody else in the entire world, he now wanted to strangle.

  Jimmy Preece was, in fact, not six yards away, on the end of a row close to the back - presumably so that he could slip, away to ring his precious curfew. Guy moved forward a little to see how the Mayor was taking this and discovered that, for a change, Mr Preece's face was not without expression.

  He looked very nervous. His Adam's apple bobbed in his chicken's neck and his eyes kept blinking as though the lids were attached by strings to his forehead, where new wrinkles were forming like worm-casts in sand.

  The poor old reactionary's worried Max is going to win them over, Guy thought. He's afraid that, by the end of the night, this will be Max Goff's town and not his any more.

  And why not?

  For Goff, indirectly, was promising them the earth. But somebody had told him about the way business was done in this locality and about the border mentality, and he was handling it accordingly. What he was telling them, in an oblique kind of way, was, I can help you - I can recreate this town, make it soar - if you co-operate with me. But I don't need you. I don't need anybody.

  Goff was talking now about his dreams of expanding the sum of human knowledge and enlightenment. Speaking of the great shrines of the world, subtly mentioning Lourdes and all the thousands of good, hopeful, faithful people it attracted all year round.

  Mentioning - in passing - the amount: of money it made out of the good, hopeful, faithful thousands.

  'But tourism's not what I'm about,' Goff said. 'What I'm concerned with is promoting serious research into subjects rejected by universities in Britain as . . . well, let's say as . . . insufficiently intellectual. The growth of basic human happiness, for instance, has never been something which has tended to absorb our more distinguished scholars. Far too simple. Life and death? The afterlife? The beforelife The human soul? Why should university scientists and philosophers waste time pondering the imponderable? Why not simply study the psychology of the foolish people who believe in all this nonsense?

  Goff paused, with another disarming smile. 'You shoulda stopped me. Tourism is an option this town can explore at its leisure. You want tourists, they can be here - tens of thousands of them. You don't want tourists, you say to me, "Max, this is a quiet town and that's the way we like it." And I retire behind the walls of Crybbe Court and I become so low profile everyone soon forgets I was ever here.'

  Guy conceded to himself that, had he been the kind of person who admired others, he might at this moment have admired Goff. This was very smart - Goff saying. Of course nobody's forcing this town to be exceedingly wealthy.

  Laying it on the line for them: I have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain.

  Not even the faintest hint of threat.

  How could they resist him?

  They'll listen very patiently to what Goff has to say, then they'll ask one or two very polite questions before drifting quietly away into the night. And then, just as quietly, they'll do their best to shaft the blighter . . .'

  But why should Col Croston think they'd want to? The man was offering them the earth.

  'Limp. Stagnant.' Powys lowered his voice, although they were alone in the square. Afraid perhaps, Fay thought, that the town itself would take offence, as if that mattered now.

  Over the roofs of shops, she could see the Victorian-Italianate pinnacle of the town-hall roof, the stonework blooming for the first time in the glow from its windows. There were probably more people in there tonight than at any other time since it was built. All the people who might be on the streets, in the pub, scattered around town.

  'And then Goff arrives,' Powys said. 'Unwitting front man for Andy Trow, last of the Worts, a practising magician. The heir. Crybbe is his legacy from Michael.'

  Fay sat next to him on the step, Arnold between them. Apart from them, the town might have been evacuated. Nobody emerged from the street leading to the town hall, nobody went in.

  'OK,' she said. 'He's put the stones back - as many as he can. He's knocked a hole in the wall around the Tump, so that whatever it is can get into the Court - the next point on the line, right?'

  'I saw its light in the eaves. I watched it spit . . . Rachel out. Along with the cat. Not much of a guardian any more, but it was there, it had to go. The next point on the line is the church, supposedly the spiritual and emotional heart of the town, from where the curfew's rung. Jack Preece rings the curfew, Jonathon, his son, was to inherit the job. Something's weeding out Preeces.'

  'No wonder old Jimmy was so desperate to get to the church after Jack had his accident.'

  'He's a bit doddery, isn't he, the old chap?'

  'Stronger than he looks, I'd guess. But, sure, at that age he could go anytime. Joe, can nobody else ring it? What about you? What about me? What about - what's his name - Warren?'

  'I don't see why not. But it was a task allotted to the Preeces and perhaps only they know how vital it is. The big family secret. The Mayor's probably training this Warren to take over. He's got to, hasn't he?'

  Fay was still trying to imagine taciturn, wizened old Jimmy Preece in the role of Guardian of the Gate to Hell. No more bizarre, she supposed, than the idea of Crybbe Court being looked after by a mummified cat.

  'What happens,' she said, 'if the curfew doesn't get rung?'

  Powys stood up. 'Then it comes roaring and spitting out of the Tump, through the Court, through the new stone in the wood and straight into the church - through the church, gathering enormous energy . . . until it reaches . . .'

  He began to walk across the cobbles, his footsteps hollow in the dark and the silence. '. . . here.'

  He stood in the centre of the square. The centre of Crybbe.

  'My guess is there used to be a stone or a cross on this spot, but it was taken down with all the stones. I bet if you examine Goff's plans, you'll find proposals for some kind of monument. Wouldn't matter what it was. Could be a statue of Jimmy Preece.'

  'The Preece Memorial,' Fay said.

  'Wouldn't that be appropriate?'

  Fay was silent, aware of the seconds ticking away towards ten o'clock. Sure she could feel something swelling in the air and a rumbling in the cobbles where Arnold lay quietly, no panting now.

  'So what do we do?'

  'If we've got any sense,' Powys said, 'we pile into one of the cars and driv
e like hell across the border to the nearest place with lots of lights. Then we get drunk.'

  'And forget.'

  'Yeah. Forget.'

  Fay said, 'My father's here. And Jean.'

  'And Mrs Seagrove. And a few hundred other innocent people.'

  The rumbling grew louder. Fay was sure she could feel the cobbles quaking.

  'We can't leave.'

  Powys said, 'And Andy's here somewhere, Andy Wort. I don't even like to imagine what he's doing.'

  'It's too quiet.'

  'Much too quiet.'

  Except for the rumbling, and two big, white, blazing eyes on the edge of the square.

  Powys said, 'What the hell's that?'

  The eyes went out, and now the thing was almost luminous in the dimness. A large yellow tractor with a mechanical digger on the front.

  'I'm gonner park 'im yere.' They saw the glow of a cigarette and two tiny points of light from small, round spectacles. 'Nobody gonner mind for a few minutes.'

  'It's Gomer Parry,' Fay said.

  'Ah . . . Miss Morris, is it?'

  'Hello, Gomer. Where are you off to?'

  'Gonner grab me a swift pint, Miss. Just finished off down the Colonel's, got a throat like a clogged-up toilet. Flush 'im out, see?'

  They watched Gomer ascending the steps to the Cock, a jaunty figure, entirely oblivious of whatever was accumulating.

  The commotion of the digger's arrival had, for just a short time, pushed back the dark.

  Powys said, 'Fay, look, we've got to start making our own waves. It'll be feeble, it probably won't do anything, but we can't drive away and we can't just stand here and watch.'

  'Sure,' Fay said, more calmly than she felt.

  'We need to try and break up that meeting well before ten. Because if they all start pouring out of the town hall and there's something . . . I don't know, something in the square, I don't know what might happen. We're going to have to break it up, set off the fire alarm or something.'

  'I doubt if they've got one, but I'll think of something.'

  'I didn't necessarily mean you.'

  'I'm the best person to do it. I've got nothing to lose. I have no credibility left. What you need to do - because you know all the fancy terminology - is go and see Jean, see if she's got any ideas. And make sure Dad lies low. Can you take Arnold?'

  'Sure.'

  He looked down at her. He couldn't see her very well. She looked like an elf, if paler than the archetype. A plaster elf that fell off the production line at the painting stage, so all the colours had run into one corner of its face.

  He put his arms around her and lightly kissed her lips. The lips were very dry, but they yielded. He felt her fear and hugged her.

  Fay smiled up at him, or tried to. 'Watch it, Joe,' she said. 'Remember where you are.'

  CHAPTER V

  Have you ever performed an exorcism?

  Sitting in the near-dark in Grace's parlour. Sitting awkwardly, with his elbows on the table where Fay used to keep her editing machine until . . . until somebody broke it.

  And the only voices he could hear were Jean's and Murray's alternately repeating the same strange question.

  Exorcism.

  Well, have I?

  Canon Alex Peters remembered the sunny afternoon when Murray was here - only about a week ago - the very last sunny afternoon he could remember.

  Remembered exploring his memory with all the expectation of a truffle-hunter in Milton Keynes . . . finally dredging up the Suffolk business. 'Wasn't the full bell, book and candle routine . . . more of a quickie, bless-this-house operation.

  'Actually I think I made it up as I went along.'

  Grace's chair waited in front of Grace's fireplace. The brass balls twisted in the see-through base of Grace's clock, catching the last of the light, pulsing with the final death-throes of the day.

  And now, when you really need the full bell, book and candle routine, you haven't got the right book and the only bell in town is the bloody curfew which we don't talk about.

  Candles, though. Oh yes, plenty of bloody candles. Everybody in power-starved Crybbe has a houseful of bloody candles.

  Alex dipped his head into his hands and moaned.

  What are you doing to me, Wendy? I can't handle this, you know I can't.

  He looked at the clock. He could see the twisting balls but not the time. But it must be getting on for nine.

  Nine o'clock and Alex sitting waiting for his dead wife, and frightened.

  Oh yes. Coming closer to the end didn't take away the fear.

  'Dear Lord,' said Alex hopelessly. 'Take unto Thee Thy servant, Grace. Make her welcome in Thine Heavenly Kingdom, that she should no longer dwell in the half-light of limbo. Let her not remain in this place of suffering but ascend for ever into Thy holy light.'

  Alex paused and looked across at the mantelpiece as though it were an altar.

  'Amen,' he said, and lowered his chin to his chest.

  He had no holy water, no vestments, no Bible, no prayer book.

  An old man in faded Kate Bush T-shirt, tracksuit trousers and an ancient, peeling pair of gymshoes, standing, head bowed in the centre of the room, making it up as he went along.

  What else could he do?

  Certainly not this strident stuff about commanding unquiet spirits to begone. Not to Grace, a prim little lady who never even went to the newsagent's without a hat and gloves.

  'Forgive me, Grace,' Alex said.

  He sat down in the fireside chair, which had been hers, on those special occasions when the sitting-room was in use.

  'Forgive me,' he said.

  And fell asleep.

  Fay slipped into the hall unprepared for the density of the crowd.

  How could so many be so silent?

  Every seat was taken and there were even more people standing, lining every spare foot of wall, two or three deep in some places.

  Wynford Wiley, guardian of the main portal, turned his sweating cheese of a head as she came in, rasping at her. 'Not got that tape recorder, 'ave you?'

  Fay held up both hands to show she hadn't, and Wynford still looked suspicious, as if he thought she might be wired up, with a hidden microphone in her hair. For Christ's sake, what did it matter?

  She stood just inside the doors and saw the impossibility of her task. There must be over three hundred people in here. Joe Powys hadn't been entirely serious, but he'd been right: the best thing they could have done was pile into the car and make a dash for civilization. And she'd been so glib: I'll think of something.

  Fay looked among the multitude, at individual faces, each one set as firm as a cardboard mask. Except in the New Age ghetto, towards the front of the hall, to her left, where there was a variety of expressions. A permanent half-smile on the nodding features of a smart man in a safari suit. A woman with an explosion of white hair wearing a beatific expression, face upturned to the great god Goff.

  Max was being politely cross-examined on behalf of the townsfolk by the chairman, craggy Colonel Croston, who Fay knew from council meetings - the only councillor who'd ever spoken to her before the meetings.

  'I think one thing that many people would like me to ask you, Mr Goff, is about the stones. Why is it necessary to erect what I suppose many people would regard as crude symbols of pagan worship?'

  Goff seemed entirely at ease with the question.

  'Well, you know . . .' Leaning back confidently in his chair 'I think all that pagan stuff is a concept which would raise many an eyebrow in most parts of Wales, where nearly every year a new stone circle is erected as part of the national eisteddfod. I realize the eisteddfodic tradition is not so strong here on the border any more - if it ever was - but if you were to place these stones in the ground in Aberystwyth, or Caernarfon, or Fishguard, I doubt anyone would even notice. The point is, Mr Chairman . . . all this is largely symbolic. It symbolises a realisation that this town was once important enough to be a place of pilgrimage - like Lourdes, perhaps. And
that it can be again.'

  Spontaneous sycophantic applause burst from the New Age quarter.

  Is he blatantly lying, Fay wondered. Or does he seriously believe this bullshit?

  Or are we, Joe Powys and I, grossly, insultingly, libelously wrong about everything?

  But almost as soon as she thought this, she began to feel very strongly that they were not wrong.

  It was ten minutes past nine, the chamber lit by wrought-iron electric chandeliers, and she just knew there was going to be a power cut within the next half hour.

  'Come in, Joe,' Jean Wendle said. 'I fear we shall be losing our electricity supply before too long.'

  How do you know that?'

  Carrying Arnold, he followed her down the hall and into her living-room, where a pleasant Victorian lamp with a pale-blue shade burned expensive aromatic oil.

  'There's a sequence,' Jean said, perching birdlike on a chair-arm. Tea?'

  'No time, thanks. What's the sequence?'

  'Well, temperature fluctuation, to begin with. Either a drop or a raising of the temperature. Coupled with a kind of tightening of the air pressure that you come to recognize. Y'see, these new trip mechanisms or whatever they use do seem to be rather more vulnerable to it than the old system. Or so it seems to me.'

  Jean crossed her legs neatly. She was wearing purple velour trousers and white moccasins. 'No time, eh? My.'

  He put Arnold down. 'When you say "it" . . . ?'

  'It? Oh, we could be talking about anything, from the geological formation - did you know there's a fault line running through mid Wales and right along the border here, there've been several minor but significant earthquakes in recent years, there's the geology, to start with . . .'

  'Jean,' Powys said, 'we're in a lot of trouble.'

  'Aye,' Jean Wendle said, 'I know.'

  'So let's not talk about temperature fluctuations or rock strata, let's talk about Michael Wort.'

  'What about him?'

  Powys sat down, gathered his thoughts and then spent three minutes telling her, in as flat and factual a way as he could manage, his and Fay's conclusions. Ending with the shadow of Black Michael falling over Crybbe, whatever remained of his earthly power centres fused with the town's, the exchange of dark energy.