Crybbe

CHAPTER IV

The square was absolutely empty. Flat, dead quiet under a sky that was too dark, too early.

Powys looked up at the church tower hanging behind the serrated roofs of buildings which included the town hall. Behind him, leaning towards him, was the Cock.

They stood in the centre of the square, which was where the navel would be.

'We're on the solar plexus,' Powys said. 'The solar plexus, I think, is the most significant chakra, more so than the head. It's like the centre of the nervous system – I think – where energy can be stored and transmitted.'

Fay hung on to his arm, wanting warmth, although the night was humid.

'You see, I've never gone into this too deeply. It's just thing you pick up in passing. We may not even be looking at chakra at all.'

Fay began to shiver. She began to see the town as something covered by a huge black shadow, man-shaped. She knew nothing about chakras, almost nothing about ley-lines, energy lines, paths of the dead…

'It's happening tonight,' she said. 'Isn't it? Black Michael is coming back.'

'Yeah.' Powys nodded. 'I think it's possible.'

It was working. From the rear of the hall – packed out, way beyond the limits of the fire regulations – Guy Morrison saw it all as though through the rectangle of a TV screen, and, incredibly, it was working.

In spite of his evangelical white suit, Goff was starting to convey this heavy, sober sincerity, beside which even the authoritative Col Croston looked lightweight. Col in his ornate Gothic chairman's chair, Max Goff standing next to him at the table, having vacated a far humbler seat, but oozing Presence.

Goff standing with his hands loosely clasped below waist level.

Goff, looking down at first, saying, not too loudly, 'I want you to forget everything you ever heard or read about the New Age movement. I'm gonna give you the Crybbe version. I'm gonna tell you how it might relate to this town. I'm gonna make it simple, no bull.'

Then slowly raising his eyes. 'And the moment I cease to make sense to any one of you, I wanna know about it.'

Smiling a little now, an accessible kind of smile, if not exactly warm. 'I want you to stand up and stop me. Say, "Hey, we aren't following this, Max." Or "Max, we don't believe you.

We think you're trying to pull the wool." '

It could have sounded patronizing. It didn't. Guy could see only the backs of the heads of the two distinct factions – New Age, Old Crybbe. No heads moved on either side. They'd been expecting a showman in a white suit, but Goff had changed. Even his small eyes were compelling. Not a showman but a shaman.

'You see, what I don't want is any of you people just sitting there thinking, "Who is this lunatic? Why are we listening to this garbage? Who's he think he's kidding?" because…'

Bringing his gaze down very slowly from the back rows to the front rows, taking in everybody.

'… Because I'm not kidding. I never kid.'

'I look at this town,' Fay said, 'and I don't see streets and buildings any more, I only see shadows.'

Powys didn't say anything. He'd been seeing shadows everywhere, for years.

'When there's a gust of wind,' Fay said, 'I look over my shoulder.'

Maybe it's me, he thought. Maybe I've contaminated her

'And when the lights go out…'

'Look.' Powys said quickly, 'he's always been there. Bits of him.' He kept snatching breath, trying to keep his mind afloat. 'Just like, behind us, along the passage there's a pool of sexual energy that builds up in the hours approaching the curfew. Accumulates in the place where the studio is. No doubt other forms of energy gather elsewhere. But it all dissipates when the curfew bell starts to ring. Each night, the ringing of the curfew frustrates the spirit's attempts to collect enough energy to activate all the power centres simultaneously.'

'All right,' Fay said. 'So, one hundred strong, evenly spaced tolls of the bell sends the black energy back to the Tump with its tail between its legs. Why do real dogs howl?'

She looked down at Arnold, lying on the bottom step front of the Cock, panting slightly.

'I'm guessing,' Powys said. 'OK?'

'It's all guesswork, isn't it? Go on. This is the big one, Joe. Why – precisely – do dogs howl at the curfew?"

'Right.' He sat down on the second step, and Arnold laid his chin on his shoe. 'I've been thinking about this a lot. The curfew's a very powerful thing. It's like – an act of violence, hits the half-formed spirit like a truck. And the spirit wants to scream out in rage and frustration. Now. There are two possibilities. Either, because it's at this black dog stage, it communicates its agony to anything else in the town on the canine wavelength. Or it simply emits some kind of ultrasonic scream, like one of those dog whistles people can't hear. How's that?'

'Well,' Fay conceded, 'it does have a certain arcane logic.'

She looked up at the church tower.

Powys pushed at his forehead with the tips of his fingers 'Somebody – let's continue to call him John Dee – saw what was happening, what Michael Wort had left behind – in essence an opening for him to return to… possess Crybbe, literally, from beyond the grave. And he recommended certain steps -get rid of the stones, build a wall around the Tump, ring the curfew every night, one hundred times. Avoid any kind of psychic or spiritual activity which will be amplified in an area like this anyway and could open up another doorway. And so the rituals are absorbed into the fabric of local life and Crybbe becomes what it is today.'

'Morose,' Fay said. 'Apathetic. Resistant to any kind of change. Every night the curfew leaves the place literally limp.'

Guy Morrison was clenching his fists in frustration. This would have been terrific television. He looked around for the Mayor of Crybbe – the man who, more than anybody else in the entire world, he now wanted to strangle.

Jimmy Preece was, in fact, not six yards away, on the end of a row close to the back – presumably so that he could slip, away to ring his precious curfew. Guy moved forward a little to see how the Mayor was taking this and discovered that, for a change, Mr Preece's face was not without expression.

He looked very nervous. His Adam's apple bobbed in his chicken's neck and his eyes kept blinking as though the lids were attached by strings to his forehead, where new wrinkles were forming like worm-casts in sand.

The poor old reactionary's worried Max is going to win them over, Guy thought. He's afraid that, by the end of the night, this will be Max Goff's town and not his any more.

And why not?

For Goff, indirectly, was promising them the earth. But somebody had told him about the way business was done in this locality and about the border mentality, and he was handling it accordingly. What he was telling them, in an oblique kind of way, was, I can help you – I can recreate this town, make it soar – if you co-operate with me. But I don't need you. I don't need anybody.

Goff was talking now about his dreams of expanding the sum of human knowledge and enlightenment. Speaking of the great shrines of the world, subtly mentioning Lourdes and all the thousands of good, hopeful, faithful people it attracted all year round.

Mentioning – in passing – the amount: of money it made out of the good, hopeful, faithful thousands.

'But tourism's not what I'm about,' Goff said. 'What I'm concerned with is promoting serious research into subjects rejected by universities in Britain as… well, let's say as… insufficiently intellectual. The growth of basic human happiness, for instance, has never been something which has tended to absorb our more distinguished scholars. Far too simple. Life and death? The afterlife? The beforelife The human soul? Why should university scientists and philosophers waste time pondering the imponderable? Why not simply study the psychology of the foolish people who believe in all this nonsense?

Goff paused, with another disarming smile. 'You shoulda stopped me. Tourism is an option this town can explore at its leisure. You want tourists, they can be here – tens of thousands of them. You don't want tourists, you say to me, "Max, this is a quiet town and that's the way we like it." And I retire behind the walls of Crybbe Court and I become so low profile everyone soon forgets I was ever here.'

Guy conceded to himself that, had he been the kind of person who admired others, he might at this moment have admired Goff. This was very smart – Goff saying. Of course nobody's forcing this town to be exceedingly wealthy.

Laying it on the line for them: I have nothing to lose, you have everything to gain.

Not even the faintest hint of threat.

How could they resist him?

They'll listen very patiently to what Goff has to say, then they'll ask one or two very polite questions before drifting quietly away into the night. And then, just as quietly, they'll do their best to shaft the blighter…'

But why should Col Croston think they'd want to? The man was offering them the earth.

'Limp. Stagnant.' Powys lowered his voice, although they were alone in the square. Afraid perhaps, Fay thought, that the town itself would take offence, as if that mattered now.

Over the roofs of shops, she could see the Victorian-Italianate pinnacle of the town-hall roof, the stonework blooming for the first time in the glow from its windows. There were probably more people in there tonight than at any other time since it was built. All the people who might be on the streets, in the pub, scattered around town.

'And then Goff arrives,' Powys said. 'Unwitting front man for Andy Trow, last of the Worts, a practising magician. The heir. Crybbe is his legacy from Michael.'

Fay sat next to him on the step, Arnold between them. Apart from them, the town might have been evacuated. Nobody emerged from the street leading to the town hall, nobody went in.

'OK,' she said. 'He's put the stones back – as many as he can. He's knocked a hole in the wall around the Tump, so that whatever it is can get into the Court – the next point on the line, right?'

'I saw its light in the eaves. I watched it spit… Rachel out. Along with the cat. Not much of a guardian any more, but it was there, it had to go. The next point on the line is the church, supposedly the spiritual and emotional heart of the town, from where the curfew's rung. Jack Preece rings the curfew, Jonathon, his son, was to inherit the job. Something's weeding out Preeces.'

'No wonder old Jimmy was so desperate to get to the church after Jack had his accident.'

'He's a bit doddery, isn't he, the old chap?'

'Stronger than he looks, I'd guess. But, sure, at that age he could go anytime. Joe, can nobody else ring it? What about you? What about me? What about – what's his name – Warren?'

'I don't see why not. But it was a task allotted to the Preeces and perhaps only they know how vital it is. The big family secret. The Mayor's probably training this Warren to take over. He's got to, hasn't he?'

Fay was still trying to imagine taciturn, wizened old Jimmy Preece in the role of Guardian of the Gate to Hell. No more bizarre, she supposed, than the idea of Crybbe Court being looked after by a mummified cat.

'What happens,' she said, 'if the curfew doesn't get rung?'

Powys stood up. 'Then it comes roaring and spitting out of the Tump, through the Court, through the new stone in the wood and straight into the church – through the church, gathering enormous energy… until it reaches…'

He began to walk across the cobbles, his footsteps hollow in the dark and the silence. '… here.'

He stood in the centre of the square. The centre of Crybbe.

'My guess is there used to be a stone or a cross on this spot, but it was taken down with all the stones. I bet if you examine Goff's plans, you'll find proposals for some kind of monument. Wouldn't matter what it was. Could be a statue of Jimmy Preece.'

'The Preece Memorial,' Fay said.

'Wouldn't that be appropriate?'

Fay was silent, aware of the seconds ticking away towards ten o'clock. Sure she could feel something swelling in the air and a rumbling in the cobbles where Arnold lay quietly, no panting now.

'So what do we do?'

'If we've got any sense,' Powys said, 'we pile into one of the cars and drive like hell across the border to the nearest place with lots of lights. Then we get drunk.'

'And forget.'

'Yeah. Forget.'

Fay said, 'My father's here. And Jean.'

'And Mrs Seagrove. And a few hundred other innocent people.'

The rumbling grew louder. Fay was sure she could feel the cobbles quaking.

'We can't leave.'

Powys said, 'And Andy's here somewhere, Andy Wort. I don't even like to imagine what he's doing.'

'It's too quiet.'

'Much too quiet.'

Except for the rumbling, and two big, white, blazing eyes on the edge of the square.

Powys said, 'What the hell's that?'

The eyes went out, and now the thing was almost luminous in the dimness. A large yellow tractor with a mechanical digger on the front.

'I'm gonner park 'im yere.' They saw the glow of a cigarette and two tiny points of light from small, round spectacles. 'Nobody gonner mind for a few minutes.'

'It's Gomer Parry,' Fay said.

'Ah… Miss Morris, is it?'

'Hello, Gomer. Where are you off to?'

'Gonner grab me a swift pint, Miss. Just finished off down the Colonel's, got a throat like a clogged-up toilet. Flush 'im out, see?'

They watched Gomer ascending the steps to the Cock, a jaunty figure, entirely oblivious of whatever was accumulating.

The commotion of the digger's arrival had, for just a short time, pushed back the dark.

Powys said, 'Fay, look, we've got to start making our own waves. It'll be feeble, it probably won't do anything, but we can't drive away and we can't just stand here and watch.'

'Sure,' Fay said, more calmly than she felt.

'We need to try and break up that meeting well before ten. Because if they all start pouring out of the town hall and there's something… I don't know, something in the square, I don't know what might happen. We're going to have to break it up, set off the fire alarm or something.'

'I doubt if they've got one, but I'll think of something.'

'I didn't necessarily mean you.'

'I'm the best person to do it. I've got nothing to lose. I have no credibility left. What you need to do – because you know all the fancy terminology – is go and see Jean, see if she's got any ideas. And make sure Dad lies low. Can you take Arnold?'

'Sure.'

He looked down at her. He couldn't see her very well. She looked like an elf, if paler than the archetype. A plaster elf that fell off the production line at the painting stage, so all the colours had run into one corner of its face.

He put his arms around her and lightly kissed her lips. The lips were very dry, but they yielded. He felt her fear and hugged her.

Fay smiled up at him, or tried to. 'Watch it, Joe,' she said. 'Remember where you are.'