Crybbe

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.

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?'

'Madam, I got special authorization yere from the Town Mayor 'isself.'

'Oh, Gomer,' Fay blurted out. 'The Mayor's dead.'

'Miss Morris?'

'Isn't it sad?' said Jean, isn't it primitive? There was once a notorious farmer, you know, in Wiltshire, known as Stonebreaker Robinson, who devoted his energies to eradicating megalithic remains from the face of the countryside. It's been popularly thought that such Philistine ignorance was dead.'

She turned to Gomer Parry. 'Do yourself a big favour, little man. Go home to bed.'

'Do me a favour.' Joe Powys scrambled down from the perimeter wall. 'Flatten the bloody thing.' He stood next to Gomer.

Jean switched off her torch. Now both Gomer and Powys existed only as wavy silhouettes in the headlight's blast.

But the stone was fully illuminated.

'What are you afraid of, Joe? Afraid of what you'll do to Fay?'

He didn't say anything. He seemed to be shaking his head.

'I shouldn't worry, my dear,' Jean said to Fay. 'You can stay at my house tonight.'

'Flatten it,' Powys said.

'Lay one finger on that stone, little man,' said Jean, 'and, I promise you, you'll regret it for what passes for the rest of your life.'

'It's not an old stone, Gomer," Powys said, 'if it was a genuine prehistoric monument, I wouldn't let you touch it.'

There was a flurrying then in the track of the headlight. It was so fast that Fay thought at first it was an owl until it veered out of the light. At which point it ought to have disappeared, but it didn't. It carried its own luminescence, something of the will-o'-the-wisp.

'Oh my G…' Fay gasped as, with a small, delighted whimper, it landed on her feet. 'Arnold!'

The dog jumped up at her; she felt his tongue on her legs.

'Oh God, Arnold.' She pushed her hands deep into his fur.

Felt him stiffen.

The air above the standing stone seemed to contract, and to draw into it the headlight beam. The headlamp itself grew dim, fading to a bleary yellow.

The yellow of…

Fay felt Arnold's hackles rise under her hands. He growled from so far back in his throat that it seemed to come not from him at all but from somewhere behind him.

'Bloody battery!" Gomer Parry ran for his cab.

… of disease embalming fluid

Grace Legge.

The stone glowed feebly at its base, rising in intensity until its tip was hit with a magnesium radiance, and Fay felt an intense cold emanating from it, a cold that you could almost see, like steam from a deep-freeze.

The yellow, and the cold. And the aura of steam around the stone formed into an unmistakable shape of a beer-bottle.

But it was the one word that did it.

'Yesssss.' Drawn from Jean Wendle's throat like a pale ribbon of gauze.

And Fay flew at her.

She smashed her open palm so hard into Jean's face that Jean, caught unawares, was thrown back, off her feet, and Fay heard a small crack and felt wetness in her hand and pain too, as if it had been broken. Heard Joe Powys crying, 'Gomer… Go for it… Now

… ' Saw the lights in the stone shiver and shrink and the digger's lone headlight brighten and the metal beast heaving about, its shovel raised high like a wrecking hammer.

For several icy-white, agonizing seconds, Andy Boulton-Trow once again experienced his whole body… a savage, searing sensation, a long, physical scream.

The experience came as the lights exploded and he was tossed contemptuously back into his body like a roll of old carpet.

He was still staring, from a place beyond the boundaries of despair; into the sockets in the head of Michael Wort. The sockets were just as black but no longer empty. The eyes of Michael Wort swirled like oil. The smile made by the exposed, chipped, brown teeth was malign.

The head felt heavy.

Gomer was not proud of what happened. There was no control, no precision… no finesse.

With a wild, hydraulic wrench, the cast-iron shovel came down several feet too quickly and simply smashed in the lop of the stone.

He leaned out of his cab and heard the uppity Scotch woman shrieking.

There was a sudden, unnatural strength in Andy's arms.

He raised the head. He brought it down.

The skull smashed into his own.

Michael.

He felt his nose shatter in a cloud of blood.

Michael.

He felt his teeth splinter into fragments.

He raised the head again, his fingers splayed around shrivelled skin and wisps of hair.

Michael

Michael

Michael…

The blows continued, with a vengeful intensity, long after Andy was dead.

From the doorway, Warren Preece looked on, fascinated by the head clutched in the two hands, the arms moving ferociously up and down until the other head on the floor was red pulp.

The ole candle was near burnt to nothing when Warren picked it up.

But then, so was Warren. Stripped to the waist, and his chest was black, like charcoal. He could smell his own scorched skin. He figured his lips had been burnt away, too, so that his teeth were stuck in this permanent grin, like the head that was now rolling across the dusty, boarded floor towards him.

'Got to laugh.'

He didn't have to tell the head. The ole head was laughing already at what it'd done.

Warren picked it up and stuck it under his arm, like one of them ghosts.

Two heads are better than one.

Got to laugh.

With his other hand he picked up the candle, just melted wax now, but he picked it up, squeezed it tight, so the boiling hot wax bubbled up between his fingers, feeling painful as hell.

Feeling good.

He held up his hand, and there was wax dripping down the clenched fist, so it was like the hand had become the candle, the wick sticking up through his knuckles with a little white flame on the end.

Hand of Glory.

He went over to the Teacher, brought his hand down to get some light on the face. The face looked good, all smashed, one eye hanging out. Wished he could take this head too, bung it under his other arm, but cutting off a head with a Stanley knife would take too long. Thought about it with the other feller before deciding on the vice.

Never mind.

Warren walked out of the room, by the light of his own hand. He felt really full of power now, like he'd just done a one-man gig in front of thousands of his fans.

With the head under his arm, he walked down the ole steps in a sprightly kind of way. Felt like he owned the place. Probably did. Least, he owned the farm now, with every bugger else dead or crippled, like.

Strolled through the ole baronial hall-type place straight to the front door, his hand held out before him. He could smell the skin smouldering now. Pretty soon it'd all start frizzling off and there'd be nothing left but wax and bones.

The real thing. The authentic Hand of Glory.

The front door of Crybbe Court was open wide, and Warren Preece walked out into the spotlights.

Just like he'd always known it'd be, one day.

The courtyard was lined with people, silent, awestruck like. Warren recognized a few of them, local farmers and shopkeepers and such. But also there were two ambulances and… FIVE cop cars. All the headlights trained on the door he'd just come out of.

'All right?' Warren yelled.

Didn't seem much point to the candle, with all these spotlights, so he squashed it out between his legs. Then he held up the head with both hands, way up over his own head, like the FA cup.

'Yeah!' Warren screeched.

About half a dozen coppers were coming towards him in a semi-circle. Warren stuck the head under his arm and fished out his Stanley knife.

'Come on, son,' one of the coppers said. 'Let's not do this the hard way.'

Warren flicked out the blade and grinned.

"Ow're you, Wynford,' he said.