Crybbe

CHAPTER VII

In a helter-skelter hill road, a mile and a half out of Crybbe, there was a spot where you could park near a wicket gate with a public-footpath sign. The path, quite short, linked up with the Offa's Dyke long-distance footpath and was itself a famous viewpoint. From just the other side of the gate, you could look across about half the town. You could see the church tower and the edge of the square, with one corner of the Cock. You could see the slow, silvery river.

From up here, under a sporadic sprinkling of sunlight from a deeply textured sky, Crybbe looked venerable, self-contained and almost dignified.

It was nearly 5 p.m.

They'd come out here because there were secrets to exchange which neither felt could be exchanged in Crybbe; there was always a feeling that the town itself would eavesdrop.

When Powys had returned to Bell Street, Fay had been in her car outside, with Arnold. 'Dad's not back yet. Tried to steel myself to go in. Couldn't do it alone. Feeble woman chickens out.'

'Well, if you've left anything in there that you want me to fetch,' he said, 'forget it.'

'I suspect you're being indirectly patronising there, Powys, but I'll let it go.'

Her eye actually looked worse, the rainbow effect quite spectacular. Part of the healing process, no doubt. He was surprised how glad he was to see her again.

Although there must be no involvement. Not this time.

Up here the air was fresher, and a gust of wind carrying a few drops of rain, hit them like a sneeze. It was unexpected and blew Arnold over; he got up again, looking disgruntled.

'I'm beginning to feel I'm part of Andy's game,' Joe Powys said. 'Suppose he left all that stuff in the bread-oven for me to find, to give me a chance to figure it all out – while knowing there was nothing I could do about it.'

'And have you figured it out?'

'Black Andy,' Powys said, I mean… Black Andy? How can anyone called Andy possibly be evil? Andy Hitler, Andy Capone. Andy the Hun, Andy the Ripper.'

'So you're convinced now. It's Andy Wort?'

'Families often change their name if something's brought it into disrepute. Why shouldn't they simply reverse it?'

'I made some enquiries. That's why I was late. There are no Worts left in Crybbe. What remained of the family seemed to have sold up everything – well, nearly everything, and moved down to the West Country. As for the Bottle Stone…'

'Please,' Powys said. 'Let's not… I think that whole episode was Andy trying out his emergent skills, weaving a fantasy around a stone, creating a black magic ritual, seeing what happened.'

'Yes, but…'

'Look down there,' Pouts said. 'Goff's prehistoric theme park. The old stones back in place.'

They could see a sizeable megalith at a point where the river curved like a sickle.

'On that bit of tape you played me, Henry was puzzled by a standing stone he'd located because it didn't seem to be an old stone. He recorded the same problem in his journal. Experienced dowsers can date a stone with the pendulum, asking it questions – too complicated to explain, but it seems to work. Anyway, Henry noted that he couldn't date this particular stone back beyond 1593… when it was destroyed.'

'After Wort's death. The townsfolk destroyed the stones after his death.'

'Perhaps they were advised to… to stop him coming back along the spirit paths. But the point is… perhaps Henry couldn't date the thing earlier than 1593 because that was also when it was erected'

There was another gust of wind and the blue cagoule Fay carried under her arm billowed behind her like a wind-sock.

'Wort erected the old stones of Crybbe. They weren't prehistoric at all. He was marking out his own spirit paths, along which he believed he could travel outside of his body.'

'Are we saying here that Wort – perhaps in collaboration with John Dee – had created his own ley-lines…?'

'Look,' Powys said. 'There's this growing perception of leys as ghost roads… paths reserved for the spirits… therefore, places where you could contact spirits. Sacred arteries linking two worlds – or two states of consciousness. New Agers say they're energy lines – in their eternal quest for something uplifting, they're discarding the obvious: leys tend to link up a number of burial sites – tumps, barrows, cemeteries, this kind of thing.'

'No healing rays?'

Powys shrugged. 'Whether this rules out the energy-line theory I don't know – we might just be talking about a different kind of energy. There's certainly a lot of evidence of psychic phenomena along leys or at points where they cross. And ghosts need energy to manifest, so we're told.'

'And Crybbe, for some reason, has all these curious pockets of energy, fluctuations causing power cuts, all this…'

I'd be interested to know how many people in Crybbe have seen a ghost or experienced something unnatural. Hundreds I'd guess. Especially along the main line, which comes down from the Tump, through the Court, the church, the square… and along the passage leading to your studio. I'm surprised nothing strange has happened to you in there, with this kind of hermetically sealed broadcasting area.'

'Maybe it has.'

'Oh?'

'I don't think I want to talk about it,' Fay said, tasting the Electrovoice microphone. 'Look…' She spread out the cagoule on the damp grass at the edge of a small escarpment overlooking the town. She patted it. They both sat down.

'Let's not mess about any more,' Fay said. 'We're not kids. We've both had some distinctly unpleasant experiences in this town. Let's not be clever, or pseudo-scientific about this. Let's not talk about light effects or atmospheric anomalies. I've had it with all that bullshit. So. In simple, colloquial English, what's actually happening here?'

She looked down on Crybbe. The sky had run out of sunlight, and it was once again a mean, cramped little town surrounded by pleasant, rolling countryside, to which the inhabitants seemed entirely oblivious. Almost as if they were deliberately turning their backs on it all, living simple, functional lives on the lowest practical level, without joy, without beauty, without humour, without any particular faith, without…

'I've had a thought about the Crybbe mentality,' Fay said. 'But you're the expert, you go first.'

'OK,' Powys said. 'This is what I think. I reckon Andy's got hold of a collection of family papers – may have had them years for all I know – relating to Wort's experiments. Some of them seem to have been written by an outsider, perhaps John Dee, relating how Wort came to visit him – in spirit – using what he calls the "olde road".'

'Wort was haunting him?'

'No, I think Wort was alive then. I'd guess he'd found a way. .. You said you wanted this straight…?'

'Yes, yes, go on.'

'OK. A way to project his spirit – that's his astral body – along the leys, in much the same way as it's suggested the old shamans used to do it, or at least believed they could do it.'

'The psychic departure lounge.' said Fay.

'Glib, but it wasn't far out. And I've seen a transcript of the so-called regression of Catrin Jones. The character assumed by Catrin seems to be suggesting that not only was the sheriff bonking her – and quite a few other women – on a fairly regular basis in his physical body, but that he was also able to observe them while not actually there in the flesh.'

'Quite a bastard.'

Powys nodded. 'And in conclusion she says something on the lines of, "He swears he'll never leave me… never." Which suggests to me that Wort believed he would still be able to use these spirit paths, these astral thoroughfares, after his death. Except there's something stopping him, so he can only actually manifest as a… black dog or whatever.'

'The curfew.'

'Every night at ten o'clock somebody goes up the church tower and rings the curfew bell one hundred times, and when the bell sounds, the energy which has been gathering along the leys is released and dissipated. We know this happens, we've both experienced it.'

Fay stood up, held out a hand. 'Come on. I'll tell you my theory about the Crybbe mentality.'

She led him a few paces along the footpath, Arnold hobbling along between them, until the town square came into view, the buildings so firmly defined under the mouldering sky that she felt she could reach out and pinch slates from the roofs. They stood on the ridge and watched a school bus stop in the square. A Land Rover pulling a trailer carrying two sheep had to wait behind the bus. Traffic chaos hits Crybbe.

Fay extended an arm, like a music-hall compere on the edge of a stage.

'Miserable little closed-in town, right? Sad, decrepit, morose.'

'Right,' said Powys, cautiously.

'The border mentality,' Fay shouted into the wind. 'Play your cards close to your chest. Don't take sides until you know who's going to win. Here in Crybbe the whole attitude intensified, and it operates on every level. Particularly spiritual.'

A big crow landed on the wicket gate and watched them.

Powys said, thoughtfully, 'But there isn't any noticeable spirituality in Crybbe.'

'Precisely. You've seen them in church, sitting there like dummies. Drives Murray mad. But they're just keeping their heads down. Never take sides until you know who's winning. Doesn't matter who the sides are. The Welsh or the English. Good or evil.'

Fay's cagoule rose up from the ground in the wind, and the crow flew off the gate, cawing. Fay went back and scooped up the cagoule.

Powys said, 'Strength in apathy?'

'Joe, look… being a vicar's daughter isn't all about keeping your frock clean and not pinching the cream cakes at the fete. You learn a few things. Confrontation between good and evil is high-octane stuff. The risks are high, so most people stay on the sidelines. Even vicars… What am I saying?… Especially vicars. But maybe it's harder to do that in Crybbe because the psychic pressure is so much greater, so they have to keep their heads even lower down.'

'Neither good nor evil can thrive in a place without a soul. Who was it said that?'

'Probably you. More to the point, "We don't like clever people round yere." Who said that?'

'Wynford Wiley. The copper.'

'Well, there you are. We don't like clever people. Says it all, doesn't it.'

'Does it?'

'Yes… because, for centuries, Crybbe's been avoiding making waves, disturbing the psychic ether or whatever you call it. If anybody happens to see a ghost, they keep very quiet about it until it goes away. Don't do anything to encourage them, don't give them any. .. energy to play with. If they see the black dog, they try and ignore it, they don't want it to get ideas above its station. How am I doing so far?'

'Go on.'

'Traditionally, dogs react to spirits, don't they? Dogs howl, right? Dogs howl when someone dies because they can see the spirit drifting away. So, in Crybbe, dogs simply get phased out. Maybe they've even forgotten why they don't like them, but traditions soon solidify in a place like this. The dogs, the curfew, there may be others we don't know anything about. But. anyway, suddenly…'

'The town's flooded with clever people. Max Goff and his New Agers.'

'Absolutely the worst kind of clever people,' said Fay. 'Dabblers in this and that.'

The rain came in on the breeze. Pulling on the blue cagoule. Fay looked down into the town and saw that the air appeared motionless down there; it was probably still quite humid in the shadow of the buildings.

'It's hard to believe,' Powys said, 'that Andy didn't know about all this when he planted on Goff the idea of establishing a New Age centre in Crybbe. Especially if he's a descendant of Michael Wort. He'd know it could generate a psychic explosion down there, and maybe

… Christ…'

He took Fay's hand and squeezed it. The hand felt cold.

'… maybe generate enough negative energy to invoke Michael Wort in a more meaningful form. Get him beyond the black dog stage. Of course he bloody knew.'

'In just over three hours' time,' Fay said, 'the public meeting begins. Crybbe versus the New Age. Lots of very negative energy there.'