Crybbe aka Curfew

Powys thought, sinister bloody thing that must once have appeared as alien as a gasworks or a nuclear reactor. He looked down at the wall, realizing that the section he'd climbed over was just a few yards from the part where the stonework was so obviously scraped, but hadn't collapsed because it was too hard for that. Harder than the rusting heap of twenty-year-old tin Henry Kettle drove.

From the foot of the wall, shards of broken glass glimmered like dew in the trodden-down grass.

Christ, Henry, how could this happen?

Henry, can you hear me?

Although perhaps 'natural' is not the word I want… But I am sure there is a good scientific explanation.

You misled us, Henry- nothing psychic, you kept saying. We should have realized it was just a dirty word to you, a word for phoney mediums and fortune-tellers at the end of the pier. Ancient science was your term, because it didn't sound cranky.

He could see the tracks now, grass flattened, lumps of turf wrenched out. The field was unfenced and the car must have cut across it diagonally, ploughing straight on instead of following a sharpish left-hand bend in the road.

Powys left the metal disc on the hummock and scrambled up to the road, collecting a hard look from a man driving a Land Rover pulling a trailer.

Now, if Henry was driving out of town, he'd be pointing straight at the Tump, then the road curved away, then it was directed towards the Tump again, very briefly, then came the left-hand bend and you were away into the hills.

But Henry never made the left-hand bend. The car left the road, taking him into the field. He might not have noticed what he'd done at first, if it was dark. And then the field went quite suddenly into this slope, and… crunch.

Not so far-fetched at alt, really. There'd be an accidental death verdict and nobody would delve any deeper. All the rest was folklore.

He went back into the field, walked down towards the Tump, skirting its walled-in base, not knowing what he was hoping for any more.

Come on, Henry. Give us a sign.

It began to rain. He ran to a clump of trees to shelter and to watch the Tump, massive, ancient, glowering through the downpour, as magnificently mysterious as the Great Pyramid.

Powys turned away and wandered among the trees, emerging on the other side into a clearing beside a building of grey-brown stone.

Crybbe Court?

No, not the Court itself, the stable-block – now seriously renovated, he saw. There was an enormous oblong of glass set in the wall – a huge picture-window, facing the Tump.

Behind the building he could see the corner of a forecourt, where two men stood in the rain looking down on four long, grey, jagged stones.

Powys stiffened.

One of the men was dark and thin and was talking to the other man in a voice which, had he been able to hear it, would probably have reminded him of a stroked cello.

'Least you can do, mate,' Andy tells you. 'Look at all the money the book's going to make. Think of it as a kind of appeasement of the Earth Spirit.'

Fiona claps her hands. 'Oh, go on, Joe. We'll all sit here and chant and clap.'

'Bastards.' You look at Rose, who smiles sympathetically. Reluctantly you stand up, and everybody cheers.

Well, everybody except Henry. 'Don't wanna play about with these old things.' Quaint old Herefordshire countryman.

Andy leaning on an elbow. I thought you weren't superstitious, Henry. Ancient science and all that. Nothing psychic.

'Aye, well, electricity's science too, but you wouldn't wanna go sticking your fingers up a plug socket.'

Thankful for his advice, you make as if to sit down.

'Not got the bottle for it, Joe?'

Ben starts clapping very slowly, and the others – except Henry – pick up the rhythm. 'Joey goes round the Bottle Stone, the Bottle Stone, the Bottle Stone…'

Crybbe was forty-five minutes away. Minor roads all the once they'd left the A49. Neither of them spoke; Fay thinking; hard, bringing something into focus. Something utterly repellent that she hadn't, up to now, allowed herself to contemplate for longer than a few seconds.

A woman in a cold miasma, frigid, rigid, utterly still. Not breathing. Past breathing… long past.

She looked in the driving mirror, and there was Arnold, the dog, sitting upright on the back seat; their eyes met in the mirror.

You saw her, Arnold. You saw something. But did I?

Did I see the ghost of Grace Legge?

Ghost. Spirit of the dead. And yet that image, the Grace thing, surely was without spirit. Static. Frozen. And the white eyes and that horrible smile with those little, thin fish-teeth.

That was her. Her teeth. Tiny little teeth, and lots of them, discoloured, brittle. The memory you always carried away, of Grace's fixed smile, with all those little teeth.

She'd been nothing to Fay, just Dad's Other Woman. No, not exactly nothing. Twenty years ago, she'd been something on the negative side of nothing. Somebody Fay had blamed – to herself, for she'd never spoken of it, not to anyone – for her mother's death. And she'd blamed her father, too. Perhaps this was why, even now, she could not quite love him – terrible admission.

She had, naturally, tried hard for both of them when she came down for the wedding. Water under the bridge. An old man's fumbling attempts to make amends and a very sick woman who deserved what bit of happiness remained for her.

Perhaps her dad thought he'd killed them both. Both his wives.

Compassion rising, Fay glanced sideways at Alex, sitting there with his old green cardigan unbuttoned and ATE USH in fading lettering across his chest.

What this was about – had to be – was that he, too, had seen something in the night.

And what must that be like for an old man who could no longer trust his own mind or even his memories? If she wasn't sure what she'd seen – or even if she'd seen anything – what must it be like for him?

Fay clinched the steering wheel lightly, and goose pimples rippled up both arms.

That's why you can't leave, Dad. You've seen something that none of your clerical experience could ever prepare you for. You're afraid that somehow she's still there, in the house you shared.

And you're not going to walk out on her again.

Henry Kettle had written.

It is very peculiar that there should have been so many big stones in such a small area.

Long after Andy and the other man had walked away Powys still stood silently under the dripping trees, staring in fascination at the recumbent stones in the corner of the courtyard.

Megaliths.

And Andy Boulton-Trow, whom Powys hadn't seen for twelve years. Designer of the cover of The Old Golden Land. Painter of stones, sculptor of stones, collector of stone-lore.

The stones lay there, gleaming with fresh rain. Old stones,' or new stones? Did it matter; one stone was as old