Crybbe

CHAPTER X

Beloved wife of

Canon A. L. Peters

White letters.

Cold, black marble.

Pressing his forehead against it, he thought, A. L. Peters. That's me, isn't it? But it isn't my grave. Not yet, anyway. Only one of us is dead, Grace.

What am I doing here?

He remembered now, walking in a dignified fashion through the darkened streets, arm in a crook parallel to his chest. In his best suit, of course, with his dog-collar; she would not be seen out with him if he were attired in anything less.

Certainly not a faded T-shirt with the flaking remains of Kate Bush across his chest.

Peered down at it. Too dark to read the words, not white and gleaming like the letters on the grave. But he remembered the name, Kate Bush. Who the hell was Kate Bush, anyway?

Ought to know that.

Or maybe not. He could hear somebody, a woman, saying:

'There's a chance you'll lapse quite soon into the old confusion and you'll have that to contend with, too. I'm sorry.'

Sorry. Well, aren't we all? Hmmph.

Cold black marble.

Cool hands.

What was all that about?

Alex shook his head.

Well, here I am, sitting on Grace's grave at the less-fashionable end of Crybbe churchyard at God knows what time of night. Haven't the faintest idea how the bloody hell I got here. Not exactly a cold night, but this is no place to spend it.

Wonder if I simply got pissed? And a bit maudlin, the way I do. Stagger along to pay your respects to the little woman. Sorry if I dislodged some of these dinky chippings that your will was so insistent we should use to make this end of the churchyard look like a bloody crazy-golf course. No wonder Murray had you shoved out here – probably hoping the wood would overgrow the thing. And the sooner the better, stupid cow, no taste at all, God knows how I ever got entangled with you.

Guilty? Me? Bloody hell, you ensnared me, you conniving creature.

Alex clambered to his feet. Chuckled. Don't take any notice of me, old girl, I'm rambling again. Must have been on the sauce, I could certainly do with a pee.

He stumbled into the wood and relieved himself with much enjoyment. There were times, he thought, when a good pee could be more satisfying than sex.

Consideration for the finer feelings of his late wife, who – let's get this in proportion once and for all – did not deserve it, had taken him deeper into the wood than he'd intended, and it took him a while to find his way back to the blasted churchyard.

Emerging, in fact, several yards away from Grace's grave, catching a foot on something, stumbling, feeling himself going into a nosedive.

'Damn.' Alex threw out both hands to break his fall. Bad news at his age, a fall, brittle bones, etc. – and, worst of all, a geriatric ward.

Something unexpectedly soft broke his fall. One hand felt cloth, a jacket perhaps.

'Oh gosh, terribly sorry.' Thinking at first he must have tripped over some old tramp trying to get an early night. This was before he felt all the wet patches.

'Oh dear. Oh hell.' It was all very sticky indeed, and his hands felt as if they were covered in it already. Tweedy sort of jacket. Shirt. And blood; no question of what the sticky stuff was.

'Hello. Are you all right?'

Bloody fool. Of course the chap wasn't all right. Wished he had a flashlight; couldn't see a damn thing.

Tentatively, he put out a hand and found a face. It, was very wet, horribly sticky and unpleasantly cold, poor beggar must be slashed to ribbons. He lowered his head, listening for breathing. None at all.

There wasn't a clergyman in the world who didn't recognise the presence of death.

'Oh hell.'

Alex's sticky fingers moved shakily down over the blood caked lips, over the chin, down to the neck where he felt…

Oh God. Oh Jesus.

I've…

I've stumbled over my own body!

I was wrong. I am dead. I think I've been murdered. Grace, you stupid bitch, why didn't you tell me? Is this how it is? Is this what happens? Oh Lord, somebody get me away from here. Beam me up God, for Christ's sake.

For the body wore a stiff, clerical collar.

Crybbe Court in view again.

'Uh!'

Humble had prodded him in the small of the back, presumably with the butt of the crossbow.

They were on the edge of the Tump field, facing the courtyard. As Powys looked up at the black house, its ancient frame seemed to tense against the pressure of the night. There was a small sparkling under the eaves, like the friction of flints, and the air was faintly tainted with sulphur.

Powys felt his anger rekindle.

In the moment of the sparks, he'd seen the hole in the eaves that was the prospect chamber. Below it, slivers of light had figured the edge of a piece of furniture halfway up the pile of rubbish which had broken Rachel Wade's fall and her neck.

'We're going in,' Humble said, picking up the lamp from the grass.

'You might be going in,' said Powys, 'it's too spooky for me, quite honestly.'

Humble laughed.

'You must think I'm fucking stupid,' Powys said. 'You want me to go up to the prospect chamber and kind of lose my balance, right?'

It would, he knew, make perfect sense to the police.

'Since you ask,' Humble said, 'that would be quite tidy, yeah, and it would save me a bit of trouble. But if you say no, I get to use this thing on you, which'll be a giggle anyway, so you can please yourself, mate, I ain't fussy.'

'How would you get rid of the body?'

'Not a problem. Really. Trust me.'

'None of this scares you?'

'None of what?'

'Like, we just saw a light flaring under the roof. It wasn't what you'd call natural…'

'Did we? I didn't.'

Humble stood with his back to the broken wall around the Tump, a hard, skinny, sinewy, ageless man. Powys could run away and Humble would run faster. He could go for Humble, maybe try and kick him in the balls, and Humble would damage him quickly and efficiently before his shoe could connect. He could sit down and refuse to move and Humble would put a crossbow bolt into his brain.

Powys said, 'You don't feel a tension in the air? A gathering in the atmosphere? I thought you were supposed to be a countryman.'

Humble snorted, leaning on the butt of his crossbow.

'There are countrymen,' he said, 'and there are hippies. I'm fit, I've got good hearing and ace eyesight. I'm not a bad shot. I can snare rabbits and skin 'em, and I can work at night and ain't scared. Ghosts, evil spirits, magic stones, it's all shit. If the people who employ me wanna believe in it, that's fine, no skin off my nose."

Blessed are the sceptics, Powys thought.

Rachel was a sceptic.

'And I get paid very well. See, I can go in that house any time of the day or night, I don't give a shit. I can piss up the side of a standing stone in the full moon. So what? Countrymen aren't hippies, Mr Powys.'

He was telling Powys indirectly who it was who'd locked the door when Rachel was in the Court. And, maybe, who had pushed her out.

He got paid very well.

'Andy pays you,' Powys realised.

Humble said, 'I'm in the employ of the Epidemic Group – a security consultant.'

'And Andy's been paying you as well.'

Humble lifted his crossbow. 'Let's go.'

'Where's Andy?'

'I said, let's move!'

'No.'

'Fair enough,' Humble said. 'Fair enough.' He moved backwards a few paces into the field until he was almost invisible against the night.

'OK, you made your decision. I got to get this over wiv in a couple of minutes, so you got a choice. You can run. Or you can turn around and walk away. Just keep walking, fast or slow as you like, and you'll never know. Some people like to run.'

Oh Jesus, Powys thought. For the past twelve years he hadn't really cared too much about life and how long it would last.

'I thought you'd never shot anybody.'

'Not wiv a crossbow. On the two other occasions,' said Humble, 'I used a gun.'

Fay, he thought obliquely. Caught an image of the elf with the rainbow eye. I'm going to lose Fay.

'Or, of course,' said Humble reasonably, 'you can just stand there and watch.'

He brought up the crossbow. Powys instinctively ducked and went down on his knees, his arms around his head.

Through his arms, he heard a familiar lop-sided semi-scampering.

'No!' he screamed. 'No, Arnold! Get back! Get away!'

He saw the black and white dog limping towards him from the darkness and, out of the corner of his eye, watched the crossbow swivel a couple of inches to the right.

'Beautiful,' Humble said, and fired.

She ran at the door and snatched at the bolts, throwing one of them back before Mr Preece grabbed her from behind and pulled her away.

She struggled frantically and vainly. He might look like a stretcher case, but his arms were like bands of iron.

She felt her feet leave the floor, and he hauled her back from the porch and set her down under the stone font. The lambing light was in her eyes, but it didn't blind her because it was losing strength, going dimmer.

'What the fuck are you doing, Mr Preece? What bloody use is this place as protection?'

All she could hear from behind the dying light was his dreadful breathing, something out of intensive care at the chest clinic.

There's no spirituality here any more. All there was was the bell and now you can't reach that, there's no way you can resist… him… in this place. A church is only a church because the stones are steeped in centuries of worship… human hopes and dreams, all that stuff. All you've got here is a bloody warehouse'

'Stay quiet,' Jimmy Preece hissed. 'Keep calm. Keep…'

'Oh, sure, keep your head down! It's what this piss-poor place is all about. Don't make waves, don't take sides, we don't want no clever people. Oh!' She beat her head into her arms and sobbed with anger and frustration.

Needing the rage and the bitterness, because, if you could keep them stoked, keep the heat high, it would burn out the fear.

She looked into the light – not white any more, but yellow, her least-favourite colour, the yellow of disease, of embalming fluid. The yellow of Grace Legge.

How would he come?

Would he come like Grace, flailing and writhing with white-eyed malevolence?

How would he come?

'What's going to happen, Mr Preece?' she said. It was the small voice, and she was ashamed.

'I don't know, girl.' There was a wheezing under it that she hadn't heard before. 'God help me, I don't know.'

She thought about her dad. At least he'd be safe. He was with Jean, and Jean was smart. Jean knew about these things.

'She can't talk to you, she can't see you, there's no brain activity there… Entirely harmless.'

No she doesn't. She isn't smart at all. A little knowledge and a little intuition – nothing more dangerous. Jean only thinks she's smart.

And now Powys had gone to Jean, saying, help us, 0 Wise One, get us out of this, save Crybbe, save us all.

Oh, Powys, whatever happened to the Old Golden Land?

It began with a rustling up at the front of the church near the coffin, and then the sound of something rolling on stone.

'What's that?'

But Mr Preece just breathed at her.

She clutched at the side of the font, all the hot, healthy anger and the frustration and bitterness drenched in cold, stagnant fear. She couldn't move. She imagined Jonathon Preece stirring in his coffin, cracking his knuckles as his hands opened out.

Washerwoman's hands.

Fay felt a pain in her chest.

'Oh, God.' The nearest she could produce to a prayer. Not too wonderful, for a clergyman's daughter.

And then came the smell of burning and little flames, a row of little, yellow, smoky flames, burning in the air, four or five feet from the floor.

Fay watched, transfixed, still sitting under the font, as though both her legs were broken.

'Heeeeeeee!' she heard. High-pitched – a yellow noise flecked with insanity.

Jimmy Preece moved. He picked up the light and walked into the nave and shone what remained of the light up the aisle.

'Aye,' he said, and his breathing was so loud and his voice so hoarse that they were inseparable now.

Down the aisle, into the lambing light, a feeble beam, a figure walked.

Fay saw cadaverous arms hanging from sawn-off sleeves, eyes that were as yellow-white as the eyes of a ghost, but still – just – human eyes.

The arms hanging loosely. Something in one hand, something stubby, blue-white metal still gleaming through the red-brown stains.

Behind him the yellow flames rose higher.

A foot kicked idly at something on the stone floor and it rolled towards Fay. It was a small tin tube with a red nozzle, lighter fuel.

Warren had opened up the Bible on its lectern and set light to the pages.

'Ow're you, Grandad,' Warren said.