Crybbe aka Curfew

Standing, appalled, behind the curtain separating the side entrance from the nave, he heard everything.

The astounding confession, and then the bumps and crashes.

It was not long after eight, although dark enough to be close to ten, the churchyard outside reduced to neutral shades, the birdsong stilled, the small, swift bats gliding through the insect layer.

When Murray had first picked up the noises he'd been on his way to the public meeting at which, he rather hoped, he would be able to assume the role of mediator, while at the same time putting a few pertinent theological questions to the self-styled heralds of the New Age.

He was wearing a new sports jacket over his black shirt and clerical collar. He'd felt more relaxed than for quite some time. Had, in fact, been looking forward to tonight; it would be his opportunity to articulate the fears of townsfolk who were… well, unpractised, let us say, in the finer techniques of oratory.

At least, he had been relaxed until he'd heard from within the church what sounded like a wild whoop of joy. In this situation it might, in fact, be wise to summon the police.

Or it might not. He'd look rather foolish if it turned out to be a cry of pain from someone quite legitimately in the church who'd, say, tripped over a hassock.

Also he hadn't reported the minor (by lay standards) acts of vandalism of the past two nights. And if this intruder did turn out to be the perpetrator of those sordid expressions of contempt, a quiet chat would be more in order. This was a person with serious emotional problems.

So Murray had hesitated before going in quietly by the side door, noting that its latch had been torn away and was hanging loose, which rather ruled out the well-meaning but clumsy parishioner theory.

No, sadly, this was the sick person.

'Well, well,' he heard now. 'Don't you look cheesed- off?'

As, behind the floor-length curtain, he could not be seen from anywhere in the church, the remark could not have been aimed at him.

Which meant Warren Preece was addressing his dead brother. His – if this crazed boy was to be believed – murdered brother.

The confession had emerged in a strange intermittent fashion, incomplete sentences punctuated by laughter, as if it was a continuous monologue but some of it was being spoken only in Warren's head.

It was deranged and eerie, and Murray remembered the malevolence of Warren's face in the congregation on Sunday, the way the hate had spurted out in shocking contrast to the unchanging stoical expressions of his father and his grandparents.

Murray was in no doubt that this boy at least believed he'd drowned Jonathon. The hard-working, conscientious, older brother slain by the youthful wastrel. Almost like Cain and Abel in reverse.

He ought, he supposed, to make a quiet exit, summon the police and let them deal with it. And yet there was, in this situation, a certain social challenge of a kind not hitherto apparent in Crybbe. The inner cities were full of disturbed youth like Warren Preece – always a valid project for the Church although some ministers shied away.

If Warren Preece was a murderer, Murray could hardly protect him. But if there was an element of self-delusion brought about by guilt, causing a strange inversion of grief, he could perhaps help the boy reason it out.

He heard footsteps but could not be sure from which direction they came or in which direction they were moving, for these acclaimed acoustics could, he'd found, sometimes be confusing.

With three sharp clicks, the lights came on, and Murray clutched at the curtain in alarm.

'Very nice' he heard. 'Very nice indeed.'

And the perverse laughter again, invoking an image in his head of the communion chalice on the altar and what it had contained.

A sudden, white-hot sense of outrage overrode his principles, his need to understand the social and psychological background to this, and he swept the curtain angrily aside.

'All right!'

Murray entered the nave in a single great stride, surprised at his own courage but aware also of the danger of bravado, his eyes sweeping over the body of the church, the stonework lamplit pale amber and sepia, the stained- glass windows rendered blind and opaque.

And in the space between the front pews and the altar rail, the aluminium bier empty and askew like an abandoned supermarket trolley.

'Stay where you are!' Murray roared.

And then realized, in a crystal moment of shimmering horror, how inappropriate this sounded. Because the only Preece in view had no choice.

The vicar wanted to be sick, and the bile was behind his voice as it rose, choking, to the rafters lost in their shadows.

'Come out! Come out at once, you… you filthy…!'

Another slack, liquid chuckle… 'eeeheheh…' trailing like spittle.

Murray could not move, stood there staring compulsively into the closed, yellowed eyes of Jonathan Preece.

The open coffin propped up against the pulpit like a showcase, the body sunk back like a drunk asleep in the bath, the shroud now slashed up the middle to reveal the livid line of the post-mortem scar, where the organs had been put back and the torso sewn up like a potato sack.

Jonathon's corpse splayed in its coffin like a pig in the back of a butcher's van, and Murray Beech could not move.

His nose twitched in acute, involuntary distaste as the smell reached him. Otherwise, he was so stiff with shock that he didn't react at first to the swift movement, as a shadow fell across him and he heard a very small, neat, crisp sound, like a paper bag being torn along a crease.

When he looked down and saw that his clerical shirt had come apart – a deep, vertical split down the chest and upper abdomen, so that he could see his white vest underneath turning pink then bright red – he couldn't at first work out precisely what this meant.

CHAPTER IV

The square was absolutely empty. Flat, dead quiet under a sky that was too dark, too early.

Powys looked up at the church tower hanging behind the serrated roofs of buildings which included the town hall. Behind him, leaning towards him, was the Cock.

They stood in the centre of the square, which was where the navel would be.

'We're on the solar plexus,' Powys said. 'The solar plexus, I think, is the most significant chakra, more so than the head. It's like the centre of the nervous system – I think – where energy can be stored and transmitted.'

Fay hung on to his arm, wanting warmth, although the night was humid.

'You see, I've never gone into this too deeply. It's just thing you pick up in passing. We may not even be looking at chakra at all.'

Fay began to shiver. She began to see the town as something covered by a huge black shadow, man-shaped. She knew nothing about chakras, almost nothing about ley-lines, energy lines, paths of the dead…

'It's happening tonight,' she said. 'Isn't it? Black Michael is coming back.'

'Yeah.' Powys nodded. 'I think it's possible.'

It was working. From the rear of the hall – packed out, way beyond the limits of the fire regulations – Guy Morrison saw it all as though through the rectangle of a TV screen, and, incredibly, it was working.

In spite of his evangelical white suit, Goff was starting to convey this heavy, sober sincerity, beside which even the authoritative Col Croston looked lightweight. Col in his ornate Gothic chairman's chair, Max Goff standing next to him at the table, having vacated a far humbler seat, but oozing Presence.

Goff standing with his hands loosely clasped below waist level.