The Chalice

ELEVEN

Powys went quietly.

Rankin held open the double-glazed door of the porch for him. Not good form to soil your master's premises.

Powys noticed that it was cheap, aluminium double-glazing. The economic way to cut heating bills.

He felt almost light-headed as he turned to Rankin and said, 'You don't really have to do this, do you' You don't have to kill me?'

Wanting to sound at least frightened but aware that it only came out puzzled. Faintly incredulous that there could still be men like Rankin who would murder without compunction if it was a matter of supporting the system which supported them.

Wondering distantly, as if he was watching from above or on a closed circuit TV, how exactly it would be done. One of those SAS blows that drove your nose bones into your brain, perhaps. Or a slim knife to the heart. He wondered if his body would end up drawn and quartered like Abbot Whiting's and buried under what would become the Central Somerset (Bath-Taunton) Relief Road.

'It's the way things are,' Rankin said apologetically. Immediately outside the door he put on his leather cap. 'Preserving what has to be preserved, So much of it's gone, you see.'

'Yes.' Arnold was gone. We've killed your dog, sorry about that.

Well, that wouldn't be hard, a three legged dog, recovering from shock. While Rankin was neatly closing the porch door, he thought about Arnold, the night the vet had taken his leg off. Everything they'd been through since, the long walks along Offa's Dyke after which he'd sometimes have to carry Arnold home.

'Please,' he said, knowing this time that there were real tears in his eyes. 'Can't you…?'

And seeing a definite naked contempt in Rankin's eyes in the half second before he felt his face contort in blind fury as he sank his left fist into the man's gut.

Distantly aware, as Rankin doubled up, of all his rediscovered New Age credentials floating away into the ether. Surprised at the surge of maddened strength, which hurled Rankin back into the porch, snarling,

'… fucking scumbag cunt…' A face smashing again and again into the double-glazed door, which did not break.

Aware with a sense of dismay that it was his voice and Rankin's face. Fully aware that all this would have been entirely beyond him if Rankin had not blithely mentioned having killed his dog.

'Hey, shit, come on…' Pulling on Powys's shoulder. 'Stop it. You don't wanner go to gaol for shit like this.'

Powys's hands were covered in blood. He got back to his feet. Rankin sat up on the top step and spat out blood. His eyes were moving, coldly weighing up the situation, working out his best move.

Powys kicked him in the throat.

'Bugger me,' Sam Daniel said, as Rankin went down gagging. 'I thought this was the Age of Aquarius. Just let's get the hell out, eh?'

Powys remembered now. How he'd called up Woolly on the off chance he was still around, needing someone to be at Meadwell if Verity got the call from Wanda. And Woolly had turned up with Sam who'd offered to go with Powys to Bowermead Hall. Slipped out of the car at the bottom of the drive to find his own discreet way in, keep an eye out.

'He killed Arnold,' Powys said. Rankin didn't move, lay wheezing quietly to himself.

'He what?'

'Where's the car?'

'It's down there, by those bushes,' Sam said. 'You left it unlocked, remember? I let the handbrake off and rolled it a few yards to the bushes, out of the light. To give me some cover, as we eco-guerrillas say.'

'Arnold?'

'He's lying on his rug. What did you think?'

'Why would this guy say he'd killed him?'

'It's the kind of guy he is, Powys. Or maybe he was going to. Or maybe somebody else… Shit.'

Powys turned and saw a mirror image of Rankin at the foot of the steps.

'Dad?'

'This is Wayne Rankin,' Sam said. 'He's training to be as big a psycho as his old man.'

Wayne Rankin was looking at Powys's hands. 'What you done to my dad?'

'Your dad,' Sam said, 'made a slight miscalculation about the aggression quotient of New Age Man. Now just back off, son, it's two against one and neither of us is in the best of moods.'

Rankin moaned.

'You can get him to hospital when we've gone, look.'

Sam walked slowly down the steps. Wayne Rankin moved away, but he didn't take his eyes from Sam.

'You're a friend of Lady Loony, yeah?'

Sam stopped.

'We banged her last night,' Wayne said.

Sam froze.

Wayne kept on backing off. 'Gave her a good seeing to.'

'Don't react,' Powys said in a low voice. 'If his dad lied about the dog…'

'Come here, Wayne,' Sam said. 'Tell me all about it.'

'Three of us.' Wayne had vanished beyond the feeble house lights. 'One after the other.'

Sam charged out. Powys grabbed his arm. 'Don't go out there. He'll be waiting.'

Wayne Rankin's voice came out of the darkness.

'Squealed like a stuck pig, she did.'

Woolly told himself he and Meadwell deserved each other. Sitting in the dark here was probably as close as you could get on this earth to authentic purgatory.

Sitting waiting for Pel Grainger.

He'd actually been at that lecture of Grainger's at the Assembly Rooms. Been unimpressed. Superficial bullshit. Even if you could welcome the night like you did daylight, how was that really going to expand your life?'

The exercise, when Grainger had all the lights put out, that felt good. On the surface, it was the harmless kind of meditation exercise Woolly'd done a thousand times. But that night it produced a serious buzz.

But that was a weird night anyway. Woolly had had to leave before the end after getting a message that somebody had been smashing windows out on the street. Whatever you were doing that night, it was going to be intense, off the wall. Something had been happening. Somebody doing something. He should have seen it then.

Dark Chalice rising.

He wondered what he'd really do when they came for the well.

Simple, JM Powys had said. You just call the police. Report intruders. Let them handle it. Nobody knows you're there; don't enlighten them Don't even think of going out there after them.

But he might. The fuzz might not make it in time. And he didn't have a lot to lose. He might well go out there. Needing to do something.

Dark Chalice rising. Corrupting everyone in its path.

Like Grainger. Grainger had been corrupted.

He could stop Grainger, if he was on his own. Pompous, fat git. Woolly felt he really needed to stop somebody. He was feeling totally useless. A whole pile of bad shit coming down and nothing that soon-to-be former councillor Woolaston could do about it.

Right now, he didn't want to leave this kitchen. Wasn't that wimpy? He didn't want to go anywhere in this spooky old house. Just to sit right by the Aga, listen for a car, the sound of the gate opening, and then maybe…

Face it, any kind of action outside was better than being in here. Little Verity had to be a really strong person to have survived this. A really good person. Mother Teresa class.

Even on top of the Aga, he was still cold. Moonlight fluttered in through the high window like the ribbons on a shroud.

This was an evil house. As black as the black bus.

He kept thinking about that bus. Was it his own private demon? Was it a representation of everything he most feared: the fast-breeding traffic monster which fed on the English countryside? Had that bus come out of his own head, bred from his own paranoia?

Woolly projected himself back… back into the car, coming down along Magdalene Street, seeing the tree lights. He remembered thinking how nice that was, what a really good vibe Christmas put into the town. Trying to see those lights in his mind before they all went up in the air and he saw the other lights, the wishy-washy yellow either side of a peeling grille.

Was there a driver? He peered harder down his dope-scarred memory.

Focusing on the headlights, on that grille that was like a lopsided, evil grin full of rusty teeth. Into the window. This really old-fashioned window, with a divider strip of rusting chrome.

His hands groping up the side of the Aga in the dark, the warm shiny metal, like he was climbing up on to the bonnet of the bus, peering in through that window. If he could only see the driver's face, he'd know.

He could feel the engine throbbing now under his feet.

Could see the street. Hang on, this was wrong, had to get down High Street from the top. Coming down from Chilkwell Street, left into High Street, down towards the Post Office and the zebra crossing, under the wash of amber streetlight, the big steering wheel vibrating under his hands, that loose spring irritating his bum, gotta patch that seat, glaring through the muck on the windscreen.

Driving the bus. Driving the black bus.

'I never wanted children,' Juanita said hoarsely.

She found she was talking to the purple-spotlit pot goddesses in the window of the shop belonging to Domini Dorrell-Adams.

'It was always going to be, you know, a wonderful place to bring kids into. Not just Glastonbury – the new world we were going to make. Everybody loving one another. We didn't, of course. We still had our petty jealousies, prejudices, infidelities. But the fact that we felt it was possible for everyone to love each other. That we could aspire to it.'

The pot goddesses leered.

'And when it all started to go down the drain I didn't want to bring kids into it any more. That was why Danny left really. He wanted offspring. He wanted his own little Glastonbury family. But you can't be an ordinary guy in Glastonbury, it's not allowed.'

One of the purple spot bulbs in the Goddess Shop window went out, with a little phut she could hear even through the glass.

Phut. Gone.

Like golden-haired Domini's marriage. Like Jim Battle and his cottage and his paintings, like Headlice.

How swiftly lights were snuffed in this small town. How quickly they were forgotten. All that energy going bad, No place to raise a child. And too late now, anyway.

She heard laughter behind her. Laughter as light as a ball of windblown paper.

She turned slowly.

In the middle of the road stood Ceridwen in darkest robes.

Juanita went very still.

There was a hazy light around Ceridwen. Her hair, like grey snakes, sprayed out into this light, which was purple like the spotlit goddess.

Well, she'd dreamed of this moment, the big confrontation.

But on her terms. By daylight. In Ceridwen's tacky fortune teller's booth. Or Wanda's house, where there were things to smash, candles to knock over. When she wasn't feeling sick and feverish and broken and…

Ceridwen laughed.

… and disillusioned and decaying, constantly chilled by the draught of death.

She began to pant, looking down at the hands she hadn't been able to straighten out since they'd gripped the door handle. An old woman's curling claws -

The goddess comes in three aspects,' Ceridwen said, her voice echoing, as if the whole street, the town, the world was empty, apart from the two of them. She was looking past Juanita at the Goddess Shop.

'Virgin,' she said.

Juanita turned in time to see another purple bulb going pop, putting the smaller goddesses into darkness.

Now there was only one bulb remaining. It lit the largest of Domini's pot goddesses, purpling her pendulous breasts. The obese idol squatted smugly on her swag of white satin and simpered.

While, from the large black hole at the top of her roughglazed thighs, a dark fluid was dripping, making viscous rivulets on the white satin.

Juanita backed away. She could almost smell it. She tasted bile.

She looked up at the tower of St John's, but it looked coldly down, spurning her. And the dark, taunting, menstrual blood of the goddess soaked into the satin.

'Mother,' Ceridwen hissed.

As the last bulb went out.

Phut.

Just like the baby Juanita had had aborted. Secretly. Danny's baby. Danny becoming terrifyingly un-Danny when he heard. Danny throwing every book in the shop to the floor. Pushing over the shelf-units, smashing up the window display and walking out and never returning, never setting foot on the holy Isle of Avalon again.

Juanita turned to face the road and Ceridwen's white, hazy pointing finger.

There was a moment of stillness. A moment of knowing it was not as it seemed. A smell of fumes, souring the apple-scented woodsmoke from the chimneys, bad energy forming a grounded cloud.

And then, with a sensation of pins and needles in both feet, the flush began.

The big one. The flush of flushes. She felt fire in her limbs, a fire that dried her blood and her juices. She felt her skin slacken, her breasts shrivelling into pockets of old leather, her mouth stretching into a scream which she knew would crack her face into a spiderweb of deep, blackening fissures.

'Hag,' Ceridwen said.

Juanita raised her hands like the claws they so much resembled and rushed out at her, shrieking hatred and despair.

But Ceridwen's image went out like another lightbulb and there was nothing in the middle of the road but Juanita.

And the big black bus. Bellowing and farting smoke. With its radiator hanging off.

She felt the buildings tremble and wrapped her arms around her sagging body. As if that would hold her together.