Crybbe

CHAPTER V

Mr. Kettle raised a hand to Goff as he drove away. He was thinking, well, somebody had to buy the place. Better this rich, flash bugger – surely – than a family man with a cosy wife and perhaps a daughter or two, with horses for the stables and things to lose. Good things. Peace of mind. Balance of mind.

He left the town on the Ludlow road which would take him past the Court. It wouldn't be Goff's only home. Well, he'd move in and stride around for a while, barking orders to battalions of workmen, changing this and restoring that in the hope it would give the house some personality, a bit of atmosphere. And then he'd get tired of the struggle and go back to London, and the Court would become a weekend home, then an every-other-weekend home, then a holiday home, then just an investment.

Then he'd sell it.

And the process would begin all over again.

Dead ahead of him at this point, the Court crouched like an animal behind the Tump. The Tump was a mound which at some stage may or may not have had a castle on top. Trees sprouted from it now and brambles choked the slopes. The Tump was a field away from the road, about two hundred yards, and there was a wall around it.

Arnold whined once and crept into the back seat where he lay down.

Behind the wall, the Tump loomed black against the dull, smoky dregs of the dusk. All the more visible because there were no lights anywhere. Nothing. Had there been a power cut?

It had always been obvious to Mr. Kettle that whether or not the Tump had once had a castle on it, before that – long, long before that – it had been a burial place of some importance. He'd been up there but found no sign of it having been excavated. Which was not that unusual; mounds like this were ten a penny in the Marches.

The business of the stones. That was unusual.

What would happen if he put them back, the same stones where you could find them, substitutes where they'd vanished entirely? Well, probably nothing. Nothing would happen. That was what Mr. Kettle told himself as he drove in the direction of the Tump along a road which vaguely followed the ley he'd marked on the Ordnance Survey map as 'line B'. The mound, of course, was on the line.

He was relieved when the road swung away from the ley and the shadow of the Tump moved over from the windscreen to the side window. Now, why was that? Why was he relieved?

He slowed for the final bend before the town sign and glanced in the mirror, seeing in the dimness the dog's intelligent eyes, wide, bright and anxious.

'He don't know really what he's takin' on, Arn,' Mr. Kettle said, his voice softening as it always did when he and the dog were alone.

He put out his left hand to switch on the headlights. Towns ended very abruptly in these parts. Full street lighting and then, in the blink of an eye, you were into the countryside, where different rules applied. But tonight there were no lights; it was all one.

People said sometimes that the Court must be haunted, whatever that meant. Atmospherics, usually. The couple of times he'd been in there it had been cold and gloomy and had this miserable, uncared for kind of feeling. In Mr. Kettle's experience, so-called haunted houses were not normally like that – they could be quite bright and cheerful in the daytime, except for those cold bits. There were always cold bits.

But what was wrong with the Court was more fundamental. It was a dead spot. Nothing psychic, though, you understand? Just nothing thrived there. Indeed, he couldn't figure out why it hadn't been abandoned and left to rot centuries ago, long before it had become a 'listed' building, deemed to be of historic interest.

Arnold sprang up on the back seat and growled.

'And what's up with you now?'

The dog had his front paws on the back of Mr. Kettle's seat, his furry head against- his master's cheek, lips curled back, showing his teeth, white and feral in the gloom.

Mr. Kettle tried to follow Arnie's gaze, thinking maybe the dog had caught sight of a badger ambling out of the hedge. But all he could see was the yellow of the headlights thrown back at him.

He rubbed at the windscreen. 'Bugger me, Arn, that mist's come down quick tonight, boy.'

But there was nothing moving in the mist. No noise, no lights, no badgers, not even tree shapes.

Only the Tump.

He was up in the highest field now, but at the bottom end by the wood, the lambing light at his feet, the grass wet and cold, the sweat on him mingling with the mist, the spade handle clammy with it. He didn't care; he'd never felt like this before.

Warren scraped the earth into the hole and pulled the turf back over it, slamming it down with the spade, jumping on it, getting it tight so nobody would know. Not that anybody came here; only the sheep, and the old man once or twice a year.

Beneath the turf and the soil and the clay was the old box, buried good and deep, with the Stanley knife still inside it. It seemed right, somehow, to leave the knife in the box.

Or it seemed not right to put his hand in the box and take the knife out.

Not with the other hand in there.

'Where did that come from?'

The dog snarled.

The Tump was off-centre in the mist. But it shouldn't have been there at all because he'd passed it, he must have, couple of minutes ago at least.

'Now just you sit down, you daft dog.' And then he looked up at the Tump and said suddenly, softly, 'You're not right, are you?'

At that moment Arnold was thrown to the floor, as, without warning, the car lurched off to the right, the steering wheel spinning away so fiercely it burned the palms of Mr. Kettle's hands when he tried to hold it.

'Oh no you don't, you bugger.' Addressing, through his teeth, neither the dog, nor the car, for he should have been half-expecting this, bloody old fool. Wrenching at the wheel, as the black mound rose up full in the windscreen.

From behind his seat, the dog's growl built to a yelp of terror.

'I know, I'm sorry!' Cursing the part of him which responded to nonsense like this; mad as hell at his bloody old, slowing body which no longer seemed to have the strength to loose it out.

Arnold cringed on the floor next to the back seat, shivering and panting. Then Mr. Kettle felt the bumps and heard the clumps under the car, and knew what must have happened.

'We're in the bloody field!'

Common land. Unfenced. Flat and well-drained enough where it met the road to offer no obstacles to car wheels.

No obstacles at all, until you got to the humps and ridges.

And then the wall.

They said the wall, which almost encircled the mound, had been built centuries ago of stones taken from the old castle foundations. It was not high – maybe five feet – but it was a very' thick wall, and as strong and resistant as ever it'd been. He'd never thought about this before, but why would they build a wall around it?

Behind the wall, the Tump bulged and glowered and Mr. Kettle's faculty started leaping and bounding the way his body hadn't managed to in thirty years.

The wild senses were rising up, leaving the body hobbling behind and the old car trundling across the field, going its own sweet way.

And something in Henry' Kettle, something he used to be able to control, locking into the Tump's wavelength with a long, almost grateful shudder. As if it was going home.

Going back, rolling down.

'Silly young devil.' Mr. Watkins chiding him when he rolled over and over, down from Clifford Castle, coming to rest at the feet of the stern old man. 'One day you'll learn respect for these places, boy.'

Mr. Watkins, face in shadow under his hat.

One day you'll learn.

But he hadn't.

Hadn't been able to connect with it at all when he was up there with Goff, looking round, seeing where the Tump stood in relation to the stones.

Had it now, though, too bloody much of it, filling him up, like when they'd sent him to the hospital for the enema, colonic clean-out, whatever they'd called it, pumping this fluid through his backside and he could feel it going right up into his insides, terrible cold.

Something here that was cold and old and dark and…

… was no home to be going to.

'Oh Christ, Arnold,' said Mr. Kettle. 'Oh Christ.'

Knowing it for the first time. Why they must have built a wall around it. Knowing a lot of things about the stones and the leys and why Mr. Watkins had not…

Knowing all this as the car went over a ridge in the field – maybe one of the old ramparts when it had been a castle – and began to go downhill, and faster.

'I can deal with this, don't you worry!' 'Course he could.

Nothing psychic here. Understand that.

Stamping down on the brake – frantic now – but the car going even faster, ripping through the field like a tank. A muffled bump-clank, bump-clank, then the rending of metal and the car ploughing on like a wounded animal, roaring and farting.

In the windscreen, the trees on the Tump were crowding out of the mist, a tangle of black and writhing branches, spewing like entrails from a slashed gut, the centremost trees suddenly flung apart as if blown by a sudden gale, as if the wind was bursting out and over the mound like a fountain of air.

And he could see it. He could see the wind…

And as it rushed down, it took the form… nothing psychic, nothing psychic, nothing… of a huge black thing, a dog… hound… bounding down the mound and leaping at the car, an amber hunger smoking in eyes that outshone the headlights because…

'… you're bloody evil…'

Arnold screaming from behind. Not barking, not whimpering, but making the most piteously distressed and upsetting noise he'd ever been forced to hear.

All the time thinking – the words themselves forming in his head and echoing there – I've seen it. It was there. I've seen Black Michael's Hound.

And when the illusion of the wind and the thing it carried had gone he saw the headlight beams were full of stone.

Nothing to be done. Bloody old fool, be thought sadly, and suddenly it seemed he had all the time there was to ponder the situation and realize he hadn't touched the brake pedal, not once. The car having automatic transmission – only two pedals – what had happened was his foot had plunged down hard, time and time again, on the other one.

The accelerator.

Well he did try to pull the stupid foot off, but his knee had locked and he saw through the windscreen that the thick, solid stoic wall was being hurled at him by the night, and the night would not miss.

There was a hollow silence in the car and that seemed to last a very long time, and Mr. Kettle could feel Arnold, his faithful dog somewhere close to him, quiet now. But his eyes'd be resigned, no light in them any more.

Mr. Kettle put out a hand to pat Arnold but probably did not reach him before the impact killed both headlamps and there was no light anywhere and no sound except, from afar, the keening song of the old stone.

A few minutes later the electricity was restored. Bulbs flared briefly, sputtered, died and then came back to what passed, in Crybbe, for life.

Business had not been interrupted in either of the two bars at the Cock, where, through past experience, a generator was always on hand. When the lights revived, closing-time had come and gone, and so had most of the customers.

Few people in the houses around the town realized the power was back, and the wavering ambience of oil lamps, Tilley lamps and candles could be seen behind curtained windows.

One electric light blinked back on and would remain needlessly on until morning.

This was the Anglepoise lamp on Fay Morrison's editing table. She'd unplugged the tape-machine before going to bed but forgotten about the lamp. All through the night it craned its neck over her desk-diary and a spiral-bound notepad, the one which often served, unintentionally, as a personal diary, especially when she was feeling angry and hopeless.

Across the page, in deeply indented frustration, the pencil lettering said,

… we'd tear your bloody hand off…