Crybbe aka Curfew

'Thank you,' said Col. 'I'm very' grateful to you, Bill. Canon?'

'Yes, indeed. I think Mr Davies has put his finger on it. I can understand entirely that there are certain prevailing phenomena in this particular town which the residents have long felt unable to discuss with outsiders. Problems which, I suspect, first, er, materialized during the reign of James I, when anyone found displaying an interest in matters of a… a shall we say, supernormal nature… was in serious danger of being strung up for witchcraft.'

He looked down at the blood-spattered blotter, saw that nothing at all had changed. Outside, the church was burning and a gullible crowd was suspended in the thrall of something even the devil-fearing James I would have been hard-pressed to envisage.

'And one can see,' said Alex, 'how this quite-understandable reticence would, given the comparative remoteness of the town become, in tune, more or less endemic. Yes, I can understand why it's been allowed to fester.

'But, by God,' Alex stood up, his hands either side of the bloodstained blotter, summoning the flames, 'if you don't take some action tonight you'll regret it for the rest of your small little lives.'

CHAPTER XX

The box was making a strange noise, a rolling, creaking sound, suggesting that the item inside had been dislodged from whatever secured it.

OPEN IT!

'Not a chance,' Joe Powys said aloud, attempting to sound confident, in control. But for whose benefit?

The box lay in the centre of the courtyard, the lamp on topo f it, its beam directed at the Court, no more the derelict warehouse, the disused factory without echoes of laughter or the residue of sorrow.

Periodically, Powys would look up towards the eaves, but there were no flickerings any more, no ignition sparks. The Court was fully alive now and crackling and hissing at him.

OPEN IT!

The appalling temptation, of course, was to break open the box to confirm that it did in fact contain what he suspected, which was the mummified head of Sir Michael Wort, or at least a head.

But Powys was scared to look into the eyes of Black Michael, even if only the sockets remained. There was too much heavy magic here; Andy, the shaman, the heir, was projecting himself at will along the spirit path, able to manifest a disembodied presence in the Tump and probably elsewhere, while his physical body was… where?

The old ley-line, which progressed from the Tump to the square and beyond had been reopened, a dark artery to the heart of Crybbe. Reopened for the ancestor, Black Michael.

Whose head now lay in an oak box at Powys's feet. The head was a crucial part of the process and as long as he had the head he was part of it, too, until the pressure

became unbearable.

So what am I going to do with it?

He thought, as he'd thought so many times, I could out of this situation, I could leave the box lying on the ground, leap into the car and accelerate back into what passes for the Real World. I could simply stop believing in all of this. Because if you don't invite it into your life it simply doesn't occur. |

Blessed are the sceptics.

For they shall…

they shall…

die with a broken neck on a convenient rubbish heap.

Powys closed his eyes to ambush renegade tears. You daft bastard, this is Crybbe, where normal rules don't apply. Where once you're in the game, you have to go on playing.

Because Fay is down there in that sick little town with Jean Wendle and probably Andy Trow, and the twisted essence of something four centuries old at the door, and Fay could go

snap! – like Rachel, like Rose. But you wouldn't die, Powys – you'd go on living with the knowledge of what you failed prevent – even though you were fully aware, at last, of what was happening – because you were scared and because you thought it expedient, at this stage of the game, to take the sceptic's way out.

All right, all right. I'll play. Deal me in.

He tried to envisage the layout. The Tump was the head, the church was the centre of the breast, the town square was the solar plexus and the Cock was the genitalia.

He realized he must be standing on Black Michael's throat, (the throat chakra, influencing the nervous system, controlling stress, anxiety).

There came another noise from the box, like the head rolling from side to side, and his eyes were wrenched open, the breath catching in his chest like a stone.

I've got to get rid of it.

He snatched the lamp, bent down and examined the box. It was bound not with iron as he'd imagined but with strips of lead. It occurred to him that it was probably not locked at all and all he had to do was raise the lid and…

No…

He sprang to his feet and backed away.

God help me… I've got the four-hundred-odd-year-old head of Michael Wort in a box, and I don't know what the hell to do with it.

The Court wanted it, he could tell that. The Court squatted in its hollow with the vengeful, violated Tump bunched over it, glowering. The Court throbbed with an ancient need, and Powys knew that it wanted him inside it so that it could digest his spirit and spit him out like poor Rachel, like Tiddles the mummified cat which had been stuck for centuries, a tiny, constricting hairball in its throat.

The throat had been blocked. The Court had coughed and the blockage had come out of the mouth.

The open mouth was the prospect chamber.

What he had to do – the clear, bright certainty of it – went through him like a fork of cold and jagged lightning.

'I can't,' he told the night, 'I don't have the strength. I don't have the courage.'

'I can't.'

It still made no sense, of course, according to what was accepted as normal, but it answered to the logic of the place, it extended the rules of the game to put him in with a chance.

What he had to do was enter the Court and carry the box up the stone stairs to the prospect chamber. And then he had to stand in the opening, lift the box above his head and cast it out into the night so that it fell on to the rubbish heap and smashed, symbolically, to pieces.

A ritualistic, shamanistic act which would sever the connection between Black Michael and the Court, leave a meaningful crater, a great pothole in the middle of the spirit path.

And, well… he knew that the ritual would be more perfect, more complete, if he went out of the prospect chamber, too, his arms wrapped around the box.

Sacrifice. Always more energy with a sacrifice. Perhaps also, because he was hijacking Andy's ritual, he'd be releasing and recycling the energy created by Rose's fall and Rachel's.

He stood with one foot on the box and thought about this.

It was a complete load of New Age crap.

But if he believed in it, it might work. If he was prepared to give up his life he'd be creating so much energy that…

'Christ!'

He kicked the box along the cobbles. God save us New Age philosophy. Energy. The life force. Mother-sodding earth.

Not got the bottle for it, Joe?

Powys gave the Court a baleful glare.