Crybbe aka Curfew

'Leave it!' Larry screamed, 'I don't wanna see the bleed'n' tape, all right? I wan' it destroyed…'

Two of the farmers on the doors were struggling to close them again, but now there was a wild crush of people fighting to get out. Larry and Guy were pushed out into the square. 'Let them go!' Col shouted. 'Or somebody's going to get hurt.'

There was hysterical laughter from behind him. 'They'll be hurt, all right, Colonel,' shrilled Mrs Byford.

And Col Croston heard what seemed at first to be a very encouraging noise; the curfew bell was ringing, the familiar, steady clangs.

'It's the Mayor!' he called back into the room. 'Panic over. He said it'd be OK to leave when the curfew began. Everybody just sit down for a moment and we'll file out in an orderly fashion.'

'You fool,' somebody said quietly.

Few among the Crybbe people had even moved.

And he knew why, quite soon, as a second bell began a hollow, discordant counterpoint, and then a third came in, and a fourth, and then they were all going.

Col stood and looked at the rows of stricken, frightened faces.

'What's going on?'

Never, in this town, had he seen such obvious reaction on so many faces.

He wanted to cover his eyes, his ears. It was like being violently awoken in the dead of night by the sudden, shattering clamour of a roomful of alarm-clocks.

Only louder. The loudest noise there'd ever been in Crybbe, a blitz of bells, hard and blindingly bright, bells to break windows, and loosen teeth and the foundations of ancient buildings – bells to burst the sky and burn up the air.

For the first time in his life, Col Croston, the only qualified bell-ringer in the town, was stilled by a most basic primitive terror, like a cold, thin wire winding around his spinal cord.

Because there was no way it could be happening. With one single exception, all the bell-ropes had been taken down years and years ago.

Tonight, in some unholy celebration, the bells of Crybbe were ringing themselves.

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