Crybbe aka Curfew

'Traditionally, dogs react to spirits, don't they? Dogs howl, right? Dogs howl when someone dies because they can see the spirit drifting away. So, in Crybbe, dogs simply get phased out. Maybe they've even forgotten why they don't like them, but traditions soon solidify in a place like this. The dogs, the curfew, there may be others we don't know anything about. But. anyway, suddenly…'

'The town's flooded with clever people. Max Goff and his New Agers.'

'Absolutely the worst kind of clever people,' said Fay. 'Dabblers in this and that.'

The rain came in on the breeze. Pulling on the blue cagoule. Fay looked down into the town and saw that the air appeared motionless down there; it was probably still quite humid in the

shadow of the buildings.

'It's hard to believe,' Powys said, 'that Andy didn't know about all this when he planted on Goff the idea of establishing a New Age centre in Crybbe. Especially if he's a descendant of Michael Wort. He'd know it could generate a psychic explosion down there, and maybe… Christ…'

He took Fay's hand and squeezed it. The hand felt cold.

'… maybe generate enough negative energy to invoke Michael Wort in a more meaningful form. Get him beyond the black dog stage. Of course he bloody knew.'

'In just over three hours' time,' Fay said, 'the public meeting begins. Crybbe versus the New Age. Lots of very negative energy there.'

PART EIGHT

Let us forget about evil. This does not exist. What does

exist is imbalance, and when you are severely

imbalanced, particularly in the negative direction, you

can behave in very' extreme and unpleasant ways.

DAVID ICKE,

Love Changes Everything

CHAPTER I

Even for Crybbe the night was rising early.

It rose from within the shadowed places. In the covered alleyway behind the Cock. Beneath the three arches of the river bridge. In the soured, spiny woodland which skirted where the churchyard ended with a black marble gravestone identifying the place where Grace Legge, beloved wife of Canon A. L. Peters was presumed to rest.

It filtered from the dank cellars of the buildings hunched around the square like old, morose drinking companions.

It was nurtured in the bushes at the base of the Tump.

It began to spread like a slow stain across the limp, white canopy of the sky, tinting it a deep and sorrowful grey.

And not yet seven-thirty.

'Give us a white-balance,' Larry Ember said, and Catrin Jones stood in the middle of the street and held up her clipboard for him to focus on.

Guy Morrison looked at the sky. 'Shoot everything you can get. I can't see it brightening up again. I think this is it.'

'Wasn't forecast,' Larry said. 'No thunderstorms.'

'And I can't see there being one in there,' Guy said, glancing at the town hall. 'This is probably a wasted exercise.'

'What you want me to do then, boss?'

'We've got permission to go in and grab some shots of the assembly before it starts, so shoot absolutely everything you can, plenty of tight shots of faces, expressions – I'll point out a few. Then just hang on in there till they actually ask you to leave, and then… well, stay outside, close to the door, and Catrin and I will try and haul out a few punters with opinions, though I'll be very surprised if these yokels manage to muster a single opinion between them.'

The Victorian facade of the town hall reared over the shallow street like a gloomy Gothic temple, its double doors spread wide to expose a great cave-mouth, through which the younger townsfolk wandered like tourists. Many had probably never been inside before; there weren't many public gatherings Crybbe.

Guy ordered shots of their faces, shots of their feet. The feet are probably saying more than the faces, he thought with frustration. At least they're moving.

For the first time he began to wonder how he was going to avoid making a stupefyingly boring documentary. He'd been determined to keep the voice-over down to a minimum, let the events tell their own story. But to get away with that, he needed a pithy commentary on these events from a collection of outspoken locals. So far, the only outspoken local he'd encountered had been Gomer Parry, who lived at least three miles outside the town.

'What are we going to do?' he whispered despairingly to Catrin – showing weakness to an assistant, he never did that.

Catrin gave his thigh a reassuring squeeze. 'It'll be fine.'

'… God's sake, Catrin, not in public!'

Catrin. How could he have?

This place was destroying him.

Parking his Escort XR3 in the old cattle market behind the square, Gavin Ashpole had no fears at all about his story being boring.

This was the beauty of radio. The place might look like a disused cemetery, but you could make it sound like bloody Beirut. Whatever happened here tonight, Gavin was going to put down a hard-hitting voice-piece for the ten o'clock news describing the uproar, as beleaguered billionaire Max Goff faced a verbal onslaught by hundreds of angry townsfolk fearing an invasion by hippy convoys lured to the New Age Mecca.

Somebody had suggested to Gavin that perhaps he could try out the new radio-car on this one. Park right outside the meeting, send in some live on-the-spot stuff for the nine-thirty news.

Gavin thought not; the station's only unattended studio was not three minutes walk from the town hall. And he hadn't been able to drag his mind away from last night's interrupted fantasy in that same studio. Somehow, he had to get little Ms Morrison in there.

Ms Morrison who'd really screwed any chance she had of holding down the Offa's Dyke contract. Who'd failed to provide a report on last night's tractor accident. Who hadn't even been reachable on the phone all day.

'I'll go in live at nine-thirty,' he'd told the night-shift sub, James Barlow. 'And I want a full two minutes. I don't care what else happens.'

He was thinking about this as he parked his car in the old livestock market. Unusually dark this evening; even the sky looked in the mood for a set-to.

Humid, though. Gavin took off his jacket, locked it in the boot and slung his Uher over his shoulder.

Two cars and a Land Rover followed him into the market, half a dozen men got out. Tweed suits, caps, no chat, no smiles. Farmers, in town for the meeting, meaning business.