She smashed her open palm so hard into Jean's face that Jean, caught unawares, was thrown back, off her feet, and Fay heard a small crack and felt wetness in her hand and pain too, as if it had been broken. Heard Joe Powys crying,
For several icy-white, agonizing seconds, Andy Boulton-Trow once again experienced his whole body… a savage, searing sensation, a long, physical scream.
The experience came as the lights exploded and he was tossed contemptuously back into his body like a roll of old carpet.
He was still staring, from a place beyond the boundaries of despair; into the sockets in the head of Michael Wort. The sockets were just as black but no longer empty. The eyes of Michael Wort swirled like oil. The smile made by the exposed, chipped, brown teeth was malign.
The head felt heavy.
Gomer was not proud of what happened. There was no control, no precision… no
With a wild, hydraulic wrench, the cast-iron shovel came
down several feet too quickly and simply smashed in the lop of the stone.
He leaned out of his cab and heard the uppity Scotch woman shrieking.
There was a sudden, unnatural strength in Andy's arms.
He raised the head. He brought it down.
The skull smashed into his own.
Michael.
He felt his nose shatter in a cloud of blood.
Michael.
He felt his teeth splinter into fragments.
He raised the head again, his fingers splayed around shrivelled skin and wisps of hair.
Michael
Michael
The blows continued, with a vengeful intensity, long after Andy was dead.
From the doorway, Warren Preece looked on, fascinated by the head clutched in the two hands, the arms moving ferociously up and down until the other head on the floor was red pulp.
The ole candle was near burnt to nothing when Warren picked it up.
But then, so was Warren. Stripped to the waist, and his chest was black, like charcoal. He could smell his own scorched skin. He figured his lips had been burnt away, too, so that his teeth were stuck in this permanent grin, like the head that was now rolling across the dusty, boarded floor towards him.
'Got to laugh.'
He didn't have to tell the head. The ole head was laughing already at what it'd done.
Warren picked it up and stuck it under his arm, like one of
them ghosts.
Two heads are better than one.
Got to laugh.
With his other hand he picked up the candle, just melted wax now, but he picked it up, squeezed it tight, so the boiling hot wax bubbled up between his fingers, feeling painful as hell.
Feeling good.
He held up his hand, and there was wax dripping down the clenched fist, so it was like the hand had become the candle, the wick sticking up through his knuckles with a little white flame on the end.
Hand of Glory.
He went over to the Teacher, brought his hand down to get some light on the face. The face looked good, all smashed, one eye hanging out. Wished he could take this head too, bung it under his other arm, but cutting off a head with a Stanley knife would take too long. Thought about it with the other feller before deciding on the vice.
Never mind.
Warren walked out of the room, by the light of his own hand. He felt really full of power now, like he'd just done a one-man gig in front of thousands of his fans.
With the head under his arm, he walked down the ole steps in a sprightly kind of way. Felt like he owned the place. Probably did. Least, he owned the farm now, with every bugger else dead or crippled, like.
Strolled through the ole baronial hall-type place straight to the front door, his hand held out before him. He could smell the skin smouldering now. Pretty soon it'd all start frizzling off and there'd be nothing left but wax and bones.
The real thing. The authentic Hand of Glory.
The front door of Crybbe Court was open wide, and Warren Preece walked out into the spotlights.
Just like he'd always known it'd be, one day.
The courtyard was lined with people, silent, awestruck like. Warren recognized a few of them, local farmers and shopkeepers and such. But also there were two ambulances and… FIVE cop cars. All the headlights trained on the door he'd just come out of.
'All right?' Warren yelled.
Didn't seem much point to the candle, with all these spotlights, so he squashed it out between his legs. Then he held up the head with both hands, way up over his own head, like the FA cup.
'Yeah!' Warren screeched.
About half a dozen coppers were coming towards him in a semi-circle. Warren stuck the head under his arm and fished out his Stanley knife.
'Come on, son,' one of the coppers said. 'Let's not do this the hard way.'
Warren flicked out the blade and grinned.
'Ow're you, Wynford,' he said.
CHAPTER VI
'I always imagined,' said Fay, 'leaving Crybbe for the last time and driving off into the sunset.'
There was a peach-coloured glow in the eastern sky, over the English side of Offa's Dyke.
'But it must be better,' she said, 'driving into the dawn.'
Powys drove. They were in his Mini.
All of them. Arnold half-asleep on her knee. Two resentful black cats with Russian names in a laundry basket on the back seat.
Fay would probably have brought her dad as well, if the body would've fitted in the boot. But she'd get him out. He wasn't going to be buried in Crybbe.
Once they'd crossed the town boundary, past the signpost at the top of the hill, Joe stopped the car. He took her hand – the other one, not the one that was nearly broken rupturing Jean Wendle's nose – and led her out to the famous viewpoint, near the stile.
Below them, Crybbe was a sombre, smoky little town which had sometimes been in Wales and sometimes in England but had never belonged to either.
The real owners of Crybbe were hidden in its own shadows
and weren't apparent at dawn, for Crybbe's time, as Fay long ago realized, was dusk.
