Crybbe

J.M.'

They did go back to bed. But she told him anyway.

'The nearest thing to a Stone Age shaman. I mentioned that.'

She lay in the crook of his arm, his hand cupped under her breast.

Powys said. 'Nobody knows a thing about Stone Age shamans or what they did.'

'Maybe it was Bronze Age.'

'Know bugger all about them either.'

'Max said they would sometimes sacrifice themselves or allow themselves to be sacrificed to honour the Earth Spirit or some such nonsense.'

'Theory,' Powys said.

'He said it must have been like that with Henry Kettle. Getting old. Knew he was on borrowed time. So he… consciously or subconsciously, he decided to end it all and put his life energy into Max's project. Max was standing there looking at the wreckage of Kettle's car. "Whoomp!" he kept saying. "Whoomp!" And clapping his hands.'

'OK, you've convinced me,' Powys said. 'This guy's wanking in the dark, and he has to be stopped before it goes all over everybody. ..'

Arnold whimpered. Fay awoke, feeling the dog trembling against her leg.

Although the bedroom light was out, she knew somehow that all the lights were out.

Knew also that in the office below, the little front room that had been Grace Legge's sitting-room, she was in residence. Pottering about, dusting the china and the clock. The empty grin, eye-sockets of pale light.

And would she see, through those resentful, dead sockets, the hulk of the wrecked Revox and the fragments of its innards sprayed across the room?

Or was that not a part of her twilit existence?

Oh, please… Fay clutched Arnold.

Probably there was nothing down there.

Nothing.

Probably.