Crybbe

CHAPTER XIII

His body jerked in the grass, a convulsion. The crashing bells he accepted as the death vibrations of a brain cleaved by a steel bolt.

'Mr Powys.'

Oh Christ, he thought at once, it wasn't me, it was Arnold; he wants me to see what he's done to Arnold before he puts one into me.

He'd flung himself at the dog, just as Fay had done in the field by the river when Jonathon Preece had been strolling nonchalantly across with his gun. But Powys had missed and Arnold had kept on running, towards Humble and his crossbow, leaving Powys sprawled helplessly, arms spread, waiting for the end. The way you did.

'Mr Powys.'

He rolled very slowly on to his back, pain prodding whatever was between his shoulder-blades, the place where Humble had hit him with the butt of the crossbow.

'It is you, isn't it? Joe?'

He focused on a face in the middle of a pale-coloured head scarf. He saw a woolly jumper. Below that some kind of kilt. Campbell tartan. Memory told him ridiculously.

'Mmmm…' Couldn't get the name out.

'It's Minnie Seagrove,' she said clearly. 'I want you to speak to me, please. Say something. I'm ever so confused tonight. I've been seeing Frank, and now it's bells. Bells everywhere.'

Powys came slowly to his feet. He didn't know about seeing Frank, but they couldn't both be hallucinating bells.

Mrs Seagrove gazed anxiously up at him, although she looked rather calmer than he felt. Behind her the Tump swelled like a tumour that grew by night. From out of the town can the wild pealing.

Powys was disoriented. He looked rapidly from side to side and then behind him. 'Where's…?'

'That's another thing, I'm afraid,' Minnie Seagrove said. 'I think I've killed the man with the… what do you call it?'

'What…?'

"Thank God. It's your voice. Here…' She pushed something into his hand – his lamp. 'I can't switch it on, it's got a funny switch on it.'

Powys switched it on, and the first thing it showed him on the ground was the crossbow. And then an outstretched, naked arm.

'Now just don't ask me how I got here,' Mrs Seagrove said 'because I don't know. It's been a very funny night, all told. But there you were, on the ground and this man with the thingy – crossbow – pointing it down at you – he had the lamp on – taking aim, like. I thought, Oh God, what can I do? And I came up behind him when the bells started, and it put him off, sort of thing, the bells starting up like that, so sudden. Put him off – just for a second. And I still wasn't sure any of it was really happening, do you understand? I thought, well, if it's a dream, no harm done, sort of thing, so I hit him. Is he dead, Joe? Can you tell?'

'I shouldn't think so, Minnie.' Powys kicked the crossbow out of the way and bent over Humble with the lamp, nervous of getting too close, ready to smash the lamp down in Humble's face if he moved.

He stood up, finally. 'Er… what exactly was it you hit him with?'

'He's dead, isn't he, Joe? Come on now, I don't want any flim-flam.'

'Well, yes. He is actually.'

The back of Humble's head was like soft Turkish Delight.

'Bring the light over here, please, Joe. It was like an iron bar. Only hollow. Like a pipe. I threw it down somewhere… Here. ..'

Powys crouched down. It was indeed a piece of pipe, with jagged rust at one end and blood at the other. He didn't touch it. It seemed likely that Humble, for all his strength and his spectacular night vision, was one of those people with a particularly thin skull.

'It isn't a dream, is it, Joe?'

'Well, not in the accepted sense, no. But really, I mean… don't worry about it.' He put his hands on her shoulders. 'You did save my life. He wasn't exactly what anybody would call a nice man. In fact, offhand, I can only think of one person who's actually nastier. No, maybe two, now.'

He thought of something else and played the beam over the weapon again. Experienced a moment of pure, liquid euphoria; wanted to laugh aloud.

It looked like the tip of Henry Kettle's exhaust pipe.

He kept quiet about it, all the same. Don't tie this thing down too hard to reality. She's keeping herself together because she isn't yet fully convinced it's not part of the dream, like Frank. 'Look, Minnie, you didn't see a dog, did you? He he might have been hit, I don't know.'

'He ran off,' said Mrs Seagrove. 'He was off like the clappers, over that way.'

She pointed at the gap where the stone wall had been broken down.

'The one I mean is a black and white dog,' Powys said gently. 'Escaped from my car. Left the window open too wide. But he couldn't have been going like the clappers, he's only got three legs now. You remember, he was shot.'

'Yes, it was the same dog. Fay Morrison's dog. Joe, what going on? What's up with the bells?'

'God knows. Be nice to think it was a few of the townsfolk up in the tower, ringing every bell they've got as a sign they've finally woken up to something after a few centuries.'

He looked over his shoulder towards Crybbe Court, remembered the sparking under the eaves, like flints. Could see nothing now.

Which didn't mean a thing.

'Joe.'

'Mmm?'

'What's that?'

There was a ray of light playing among the trees on the Tump, flickering erratically.

And then a dog began to bark.

'Stay here,' Powys said.

'With him? Not likely.'

The dog was barking fiercely.

Powys watched the light moving among the trees

'Who is it, Joe?'

'I think it's one of those other people I mentioned who are even nastier than Humble.'

Mrs Seagrove said, 'You're frightened, aren't you, Joe?'

Alex had remembered who Kate Bush was now.

Dark hair and sort of slinky. Seen her on the box once, a few years ago, at young Fay's flat. Made the usual comments – if I was forty years younger, etc. – and the next day Fay had presented him with this T-shirt as a bit of a joke, and he'd become quite attached to the garment, made him feel youthful, having Kate Bush next to the skin.

Even tried to listen to the music..

Going up that hill… make a deal with God.

Alex was going down the hill, towards the river.

He stood on the bridge and stared down at the dark water.

'Rather funny, really,' he mused aloud to the river. 'Thought I was dead. Can you believe that?'

Always been able to talk to rivers. Sometimes they even burbled back. Not this one, this being a Crybbe river.

'Must have gone out for a breath of air, wound up in the sodding boneyard, mooning over old Grace's plot. Went for a Jimmy in the woods, came back and could've sworn I found my own body. No – honest to God -I remember tripping over something, about to fall flat on my face and it broke the fall. It wore a dog-collar. And there was blood. Got it on my hands. Fell awfully sticky

'Jolly convincing, really.'

Alex rubbed his hands together and they felt strangely stiff. He held them out and couldn't see them at all.

You're an old humbug, Alex, who was it said that? Not Grace, not Fay, not…

Wendy!

How could he have forgotten Wendy so soon. Only left her house

… when? Was it tonight? Or was it last night? Or was it last week?

She said something like, Go back out there and you might start losing your marbles again. But you've got to do it, Alex. Got to go back.

Why? Why had he got to go back?

Because Wendy knows best, Wendy has cool hands.

Actually, he thought suddenly, for the first time, they're quite cold hands. And they all think they know best, don't they? The doctors, your relatives.

Suddenly Alex felt quite angry.

You start to lose your mind and everybody wants a bit. Even if you could get it back, it wouldn't be worth having. Shop-soiled. Messed about.

He said a civil goodnight to the river and began to walk back up the hill towards the square.

Deal with God. Why, after sixty years looking after His best interests, doesn't the bugger ever want to talk business with me?

The street had been quiet when he was walking down to the river; now he could hear people moving about, up over the brow of the hill, around the square.

Alex came to a house with a paraffin lamp burning in the window. He stopped and held up his hands.

They were covered with dried blood.

'Oh Lord,' Alex said, and it didn't start out as a prayer.

Frightened?

Well, how could you not be? But it was no bad thing, most of the time. The worst thing was a belief that you were in some way protected if you did what somebody else said was right. Like walking into the Humble situation because Jean Wendle had told him he needed to go back to the source.

But he always did what he was told. Max Goff: There's a place for you here – think about it.

Andy Boulton-Trow: I think Joe ought to present himself to the Earth Spirit in the time-honoured fashion.

I mean go round the Bottle Stone. Thirteen times.

Even dear old Henry Kettle: My house is to be left to you. Consider it as a token of my confidence.

Sod them all. But then he thought about Fay, with her rainbow eye.

'No,' he told Minnie Seagrove. 'I'm not frightened.'

And it's too dark to see me shaking.

He was scared, for instance, to set foot on the Tump; even Humble had said you couldn't always trust your reactions up there.

So they'd stay on the ground and, where possible, outside the wall.

He'd briefly considered taking Humble's crossbow. But he didn't know how to work it, and this was no time to learn.

That was another problem: what was he going to do about Humble? There was no way this one could be suicide or an accident. And while the police would never suspect Minnie Seagrove, they'd be hauling Joe Powys in within half an hour of the body being found. Minnie would, of course, explain the circumstances, but circumstances like these would sound more than a little suspect in court.

They began to walk around the perimeter of the Tump towards the light.

'Quietly,' Powys said. 'And slowly.'

The dog wasn't barking any more. If Andy had done anything to Arnold, he'd kill him.

OK, I'm full of shit, but I'm not going to obey instructions any more, not from you, not from Goff. And especially not from Jean.

Jean, of course – it made appalling sense – was not protecting him, she was protecting Andy, and Andy, typically, had wanted him to know that before he died.

Humble had said, I'm empowered to answer just one of your questions… I'll tell you the answer, shall I? Then you can work out the question at your leisure. The answer is – you ready? – the answer is… HIS MOTHER.

He would trace the Wort family tree later, if he ever got out of this. Meanwhile, it had a dispiriting logic, and it cleared up a few questions about Jean that he'd never even thought to ask. The idea of an experienced barrister giving it all up to act as the unpaid, earthly intermediary for Dr Chi had never sounded too likely. Jean's professional life had been built on ambition, power and manipulation: dark magic.

But she's cured people. That can't be dark magic. What about Fay's dad?

Oh, Jesus.

'What's wrong?' Mrs Seagrove whispered.

Fay had started pulling at Jimmy Preece's clothing and slapping at his face and screaming at him through the smoke. 'Please, Mr Preece, please, you can't be…'

Just a sign of life, anything, a blink, a twitch. Where do you keep a pulse in a neck like an old, worn-out concertina?

'Mr Preece!'

She pulled him down from the font and he collapsed onto her, dead-weight, and she had to let him slide to the floor, managing to get both hands under his head before it hit the stone. But she could do no more because the appallingly blackened, smoke-shrouded scarecrow thing was dancing down the aisle, its clothes smouldering and its eyes, all too alight. Her own eyes weeping with the smoke, with pity for Jimmy Preece and with fear for herself, she ran through the porch and began now to wrestle with the bolts, throwing herself, coughing and sobbing against the doors.

When she was out, she didn't look back, but she carried inside her head the image of the blackened monster and the scorched smell of him, knowing that if she stopped to breathe, he would be on her.

She ran gasping through the churchyard and out of the lychgate, her lungs feeling like burst balloons, the bells crashing around her like bombs. She could hear voices in the square and she ran towards them, eyes straining, looking for lights.

But the nearer she got to the square and the louder the voices became, the darker it got, as if there was not only night to contend with, but fog. She thought at first it was her eyes, damaged by the smoke, but quite soon the bells stopped and Fay began to realize there was something about the square that was unaccountably wrong.