Crybbe

CHAPTER XII

The first bell had begun at the moment Warren Preece cut his grandfather.

'You,' Mr Preece had said, dead-voiced, as the Bible burned. No surprise there. Fay noticed. No horror at the reptilian thing prancing, white-eyed in the firelight – the thing for which Fay had at first felt only revulsion, becoming aware soon afterwards that revulsion was actually one of the lower forms of fear.

Mr Preece said, 'I 'oped to 'eaven it wouldn't be, but at the heart of me I always knew it was.'

Tipped up his brother in the coffin, slashed the shroud. Not much left in Warren Preece, Fay concluded numbly, that you could call human.

'You don't even know it all yet. Grandad.' Warren grinned meaningfully. 'Got a bit to learn yet, see.'

' 'Ow long you been in yere, Warren?'

'Long time, Grandad.' Warren put on a whining, old-man voice.' "Oh, 'e was a strong boy, Jonathon. Good swimmer." '

Shadows leapt with the flames from the blazing Bible. Scorched scraps of pages flew into the air; billowing, black snowflakes.

'Smart boy, Jonathon,' Warren said. 'Bit o' sense. Not like that brother of 'is, see.'

'Oh, Warren,' the old man said sorrowfully. 'You never once tried to…'

Warren smiled slyly. "E wasn't that good a swimmer, though, Grandad.'

The Bible began to crackle.

'Not with somebody sittin' on 'is head, anyway.'

Fay wanted to reach out to Mr Preece and hold him back, but she couldn't get her body to shift, and, God knew, the poor old bloke was moving slowly enough, fragmented motion, like battered clockwork toy winding down.

'Mr Preece… don't do anything…' The old man was advertising his uncontainable anger as clearly as if it were written on sandwich-boards and lunging for his grandson as awkwardly as he would if he were wearing them.

'Come on then. Grandad.' Warren lounged against the carved wooden side of a back pew. 'Let's get this over. Owed you one for a couple o' days. Since you knocked me down, like. Shouldn't 'ave done that, Grandad. Bad move… see.'

Mr Preece lurched ineffectually forward as Warren's right hand described a lazy arc. And then he stopped, unsure what had happened.

Fay's hand went to her mouth. There was another fine line on the contour map of the Mayor's face, five inches long, neatly dividing the withered left cheek into two.

Then Warren was jumping back, the silver skull bouncing from his ear, the hand which held the knife leaping and twirling as though given life by the touch of fresh blood.

Oh Christ… Fay was barely aware of backing off. Her mind was distancing itself too, not wanting to cope with this.

'Heeee!'

You wouldn't expect, Fay thought remotely, almost callously, as the curfew bell began to toll, that Mr Preece would bleed so normally, in such quantity, through skin like worn-out, dried-up leather.

As she watched him bleed, a question rolled into her head and lay there innocuously for a few seconds before starting to sizzle like a hot coal.

'Listen…' Warren Preece hissed in excitement.

Who was ringing the curfew?

'Yeah!' Warren leapt on to a pew, looking up to the rafters, both fists clenched, one around the knife, and shaking.

A droplet of Jimmy Preece's blood fell from the blade and landed on a prayer book.

And then the other bells began, and Fay clapped her hands to her ears, although it was not so loud in here – nothing to what it would be in the streets.

It just… could not be happening.

The Mayor of Crybbe stood very still. He did not raise a hand to his cheek and the blood poured down his face, copious as bitter tears.

By his feet, the lambing light expired.

But the fire from the Bible was enough to show her the crazed Warren dancing on a pew to the discordance of bells, blood glistening on the knuckles of the fist that held the knife.

The smoke made her cough, and Warren seemed to notice for the first time that he and his grandfather were not alone. He leapt – seemed to float in the smoky air – over the back the pew, and put himself between Fay and the porch, bouncing on the balls of his feet, grinning at her, slack-jawed, vacant.

Jimmy Preece sagged against the font, unmoving. She couldn't even hear his breathing any more.

'Who… who's ringing the bells?' That could not be her speaking. Nobody sounding like that could ever have passed BBC voice-test.

'Well, can't be me,' Warren said conversationally. 'An' it can't be Grandad, can it, Grandad?'

Mr Preece, Fay thought bleakly, might have died. Heart failure. Blood pressure – a stroke. Respiratory congestion.

"E sez, no,' Warren said. 'Sez it's not 'im neither. An' I've been in yere ages, an' nobody come in with me, see. Wonder what that means?'

Is that what Crybbe does? Is this the kind of 'rebel' produced by a sick old town from which all unfurtive, abandoned pleasure has been bled?

'Maybe ole Jonathon…' Warren suggested. 'Maybe 'e come crawlin' out of 'is coffin. Bleeeaagh!'

He hunched his shoulders. Tossed the knife from the right hand to the left and then back again. 'Tell you what… why'n't you go up an' 'ave a look, lady? Go on…'

When she didn't move he suddenly lurched at her, the knife creating whingeing sounds as he made criss-cross slashes in the yellow, smoky air. 'Hey, it's you…'

Fay began to back away, coughing, in the opposite direction, up the nave until she could feel the heat from the petrol-soaked Bible on her back.

Warren produced a high-pitched trumpeting noise. 'This is Offa's Dyke Radio!'

He slashed the air again, twice.

'Voice of the Marches!' he said. 'Yeah!'

'That's right,' Fay said, cheerfully hysterical. 'Voice of the Marches. That's me.'

Warren stopped. Reflected a moment. 'We done a good job on your ole tape recorder, didn't we?'

Oh my… God.

'Yes,' she said weakly. 'Very impressive.'

His face went cold. Should have kept her mouth shut.

He opened the hand which held the Stanley knife, looked down at it, the hand and the knife's long, metal handle both splattered with criss-cross layers of blood, bright fresh blood on brown dried blood.

'Hand of Glory,' Warren said. And the fingers clenched again.

As he advanced on her, up the aisle, she saw – almost hypnotized – that his eyes were altering.

She'd never seen Warren Preece close-up before (only – Oh my God – his spidery shape scurrying across a field at sunset) and she was sure that she wasn't seeing him now.

Something in the eyes. The eyes were no longer vacant. Someone in residence.

'Aaah.' The heat at her back was acutely painful. She couldn't go any further: fire behind her, the knife coming at her. She went rigid, looked back towards the door, saw Jimmy Preece had slipped to the floor by the font.

'Black Michael,' she said, as the savage heat at her back became too much to bear and she was sure her clothing was about to catch fire. 'You're Black Michael.'

Warren Preece obviously took this as a huge compliment. He grinned lavishly, and the bloodstained Stanley knife trembled in his hand as he closed in.

'Say hello,' he said, 'to the Hand of Glory.' And lunged.

Fay threw herself sideways, landing hard on the stone. Crawled, coughing wretchedly, to the top of the altar step where the firelight was reflected in Jonathon Preece's closed coffin. A storm of shrivelled scraps of burning paper wafted from the Bible; she saw an orange core of fire eating through to the spine and the varnish bubbling on the wooden lectern as she rolled over, drew back her foot and stabbed out once sharply.

The lectern shook. It was made of carved oak, caked in layer upon layer of badly applied varnish, which dripped an blistered and popped. It moved when she hit it with her foot, but not enough, and she fell on her back beside the coffin, her face stinging from the heat and sparks, as Warren Preece sprang up the steps and the short, reddened blade of the Stanley knife came down at her, clasped in a fist gloved in smoke.

She curled up, and the bells clanged like wild, drunken laughter.

The bells, he thought, the bells of hell. Ringing to welcome old Alex.

He stood in the graveyard, looked up at the church tower and saw the window-slits outlined in light, glowing a feeble yellow at first and then intensifying to pure white as the clangour grew louder until it seemed the walls would crumble and there would only be these bright bells hanging in the night.

Welcome to hell.

No one more welcome in hell than a unfrocked priest except.. . except… a priest who ought to have been unfrocked and escaped the dishonour through devious means.

Oh Lord, yes. No one more welcome in hell.

The bells rang randomly, as one might expect, a mocking parody of the joyful Sunday peal.

The bells of hell hurt his ears as they were meant to do and would continue to do, he assumed, forever and ever.

He brushed against the Bible and it set light to the black vest he was wearing; little flames swarmed up his chest.

He seemed absolutely delighted. Looking proudly down at himself, dropping down a couple of steps, grinning hugely, as the petrol-soaked spine of the heavy old Bible collapsed into red-hot ash and the two halves toppled from the lectern.

Fay rammed both feet into the wooden stem.

Very slowly it began to fall towards him, and Warren didn't move.

He opened his arms wide, as the lectern fell like a tree, and he embraced it, hugging the blistering stem to his chest.

'Yeah!'

Roaring and blazing.

Fay didn't move, watched in hypnotized awe until she felt and smelt something burning, very, very close, and found a single charring page wrapped around her arm.

Book of David, she read, the page curling sepia, reminding her of the opening credits of some dreadful old American Civil War movie, and she found that her lungs were full of smoke.