Crybbe

CHAPTER 1

THE digger was crunching through the wood like a rhino on heat, Gomer Parry at the wheel, grinning like a maniac, dead cigarette, burned to the filter, clenched between his teeth. Minnie Seagrove holding on to the makeshift passenger seat, which didn't have a working safety-belt, a three-legged black and white dog balancing, just about, on her knee and glaring out of the window, barking away.

This had all come about after they arrived back at Minnie's bungalow and Gomer, spotting the flames coming out of the town, reckoning it had to be the church, raced to Minnie's phone to summon the fire brigade and found the bloody old phone lines were down or something.

Anyway, the phone was off and so was the one in the kiosk by the layby.

'Something bloody funny yere.'

They'd climbed back into the digger, Gomer heading back towards the town, foot down, headlight blasting at the night and then – 'Oh my God, Gomer, look out!'

Bloody great wall of metal, Minnie's hands over her eyes, the dog going berserk and Gomer flattening the brakes and damn near wrenching the ole wheel out of its socket.

Flaming great articulated lorry had jack-knifed across the road at – precisely – the spot Gomer himself went adrift earlier on. Was this a coincidence? Like hell it was.

No sign of the driver, no blood in the cab, couldn't have been hurt, must've buggered off for help. So Gomer did this dynamite three-point turn and they were thundering off again.

'Gonna find out what the bloody 'ell's afoot, 'ang on to your knickers – sorry, Minnie, but I've 'ad enough o' this mystery. You can push Gomer Parry just so far, see.'

'Where are we going, Gomer?'

'Back way into Crybbe. Tradesman's entrance. Never done it all the way on four wheels before.'

And Gomer lit up a ciggy one-handed and spun the digger off the road and into the field, keeping well away from the Tump this lime, although he could tell it'd taken a hammering tonight, that ole thing, not got the power it had, see, just massive great lump of ole horseshit now, sorry Minnie.

So it was round the back of the Tump, back to the Court and into the wood.

'Ole bridle path, see.'

'But we can't get through here, Gomer.' Minnie no doubt wondering, by this time, why he didn't drop her off home. But it wasn't safe for a woman alone tonight. Besides, he liked an audience, did Gomer Parry. Not been the same since the wife snuffed it.

'If a 'orse can make it up here,' he told Minnie, 'Gomer Parry can do it in the best one-off, customized digger ever built.'

So now the digger was flattening bushes either side and ripping off branches. 'Five minutes gets us out the back, bottom end of the churchyard, and we can see what the score is…'

'Fuckin' Nora, what the 'ell's this?'

For the second time in ten minutes, Gomer was on top of the brakes and Minnie was pulling her nails off on the lumpy vinyl passenger seat.

The headlight'd found a bloody great stone right in the middle of the flaming road.

'Who the… put that thing there?' Gomer was out of his cab sizing up the stone, seven or eight feet tall but not too thick. Arnold, out of the cab, too, standing next to Gomer barking at the stone, looking up at Gomer, barking at the stone again.

'What you reckon to this then, boy?'

Woof, Arnold went. Smart dog.

'Dead right, boy,' said Gomer, looking up at the bright orange sky, like an early dawn 'cept for the sparks. 'Dead right.'

Back in the cab, Gomer lit up another ciggy, grinned like a potentially violent mental patient, and started to lower the big shovel.

And Fay, soaring above the town, far above the opalescent stones and the soft, pastel ribbons, felt a momentary lurch of nausea as the tallest, the brightest of the stones shivered, its radiance shaken, its magnesium-white core dying back to a feebly palpitating yellow.

The yellow of…

'… Fay…'

The yellow of…

'Please, F…'

The yellow of disease.

The yellow of embalming fluid.

The yellow of pus from an infected wound.

The yellow of Grace Legge.

'… Fay?'

'Dad?'

She turned and saw his face, and his skin looked as white as his hair and his beard. She saw him against what looked like the flames of hell, and his old blue eyes were full of so much mute pleading that they were almost shouting down this sick, dreadful chant.

Michael…

Michael…