Crybbe (AKA Curfew) Read online

  PROLOGUE

  In Crybbe, night did not fall.

  Night rose.

  It welled out of the bitter brown earth caged in brambles in the neglected wood beyond the churchyard, swarming up the trees until they turned black and began to absorb the sky.

  Collecting the shadows of graves, the night seeped out of the churchyard and across the vicarage lawn, where Murray Beech stood, knowing he was the wrong vicar for this parish but not knowing there couldn't be a right one.

  Murray, with a certain distaste, was wondering how you went about an exorcism.

  In the centre of the town, patches of night gathered like damp about the roots of timber-framed buildings. They'd been turned into shops now, and offices and flats, but they still shambled around the square like sad old drunks.

  Puddles of night stained the boots of Jack Preece, plodding across the cobbles to toll the curfew bell from the parish church, as he did every night and would go on doing until - as, being a farmer, he expected - arthritis got him and young Jonathon took over.

  When Jack went to ring the old bell, he walked alone. Nobody else on the streets, the town holding its breath, even the sagging old buildings seeming to tense their timbers.

  Nobody went into the Cock; nobody came out. Same with the Lamb down the street.

  Tradition.

  There was a passageway a few yards from the steps of the Cock, the pub's upper storey bellying out above it. This was another of the places where the night was born, and the only place from which, in the minutes before the curfew, you could sometimes hear distinct sounds: moans and squeals and panting.

  Silly young buggers. To prevent this kind of thing, there used to be an iron gate across the passageway, with a lock. But when they turned the building at the bottom of the passage into a radio studio, they took the gate off.

  This was a matter of some concern to the town council, of which Jack Preece was a member (his father, Jimmy Preece, was the Mayor), and negotiations were in hand with Offa's Dyke Radio and the Marches Development Board to get the gate replaced.

  Why?

  Same reason as old Percy Weale had given, back in the sixteenth century, for the institution of the curfew: to safeguard the moral welfare of the town.

  What other reason could there be?

  Minnie Seagrove, sixty three, a widow, had no doubts at all where the night began.

  It began in that thing they called the Tump.

  She could see it from the big front window of her bungalow on the Ludlow road. Nobody else could see it better.

  Not that she wanted to. Ugly great lumps like this were ten a penny in the North and the Midlands where Mrs. Seagrove had lived. Only, in those areas, they were known as industrial spoil-heaps and were gradually removed in landscaping and reclamation schemes.

  However, this thing, this Tump, wouldn't be going anywhere. It was protected. It was an Ancient Monument - supposed to have been a prehistoric burial mound originally, and then, in the Middle Ages, there might have been a castle on top, although there were no stones there any more.

  Mrs. Seagrove didn't see the point in preserving just a big, unpleasant hump with a few trees on top. It was obviously not natural, and if it was left to her, the council would be hiring Gomer Parry with his bulldozers and his diggers to get rid of it.

  Because that might also get rid of the black thing that ran down from the mound in the twilight and scared the life out of Minnie Seagrove.

  All right, she'd say to herself, I know, I know ... I could simply draw the curtains, switch on the telly and forget all about it. After all, I never noticed it - not once - when Frank was alive. But then, there didn't seem to be so many power cuts when Frank was alive.

  How it came about, she was watching telly one night, coming up to News at Ten, and the power went off, and so she automatically went across to the window to see if the lights were on across the river, in the town.

  And that was when she first saw it.

  Horrible. Really horrible. It was. . . well, it was like the night itself bounding down from the Tump and rushing off, hungry, into the fields.

  But why can't you just stop looking? Why can't you stay well away from that window when it's going dark?

  I don't know.

  That's the really frightening thing. I don't know.

  Yes, I do.

  It's because I can feel when it's there. No matter what I'm doing, what's on telly or the radio or what I'm reading, ever since I first dashed to the window during that power cut, I've always known when it's on its way down from the mound. Without even going to the window, I know when it's there.

  And the reason I look - the reason I have to look, even though it scares me half to death - is that I have to know, I have to be sure that it isn't coming this way.

  Crybbe: a small one-time market town within sight of Offa's Dyke, the earthwork raised in the Dark Ages to separate England from Wales.

  A town like a dozen others on either side of the border; less distinctive than most.

  Except that here, the night rose.

  PART ONE

  Some persons have super-normal powers not of a

  magitien, but of a peculiar and scientific qualitie.

  Dr John Dee,

  Letter to Lord Burghley, 1574

  CHAPTER I

  Sometime - and please, God, make it soon - they were going to have to sell this place. And on evenings like this, when the sky sagged and the bricks of the houses across the street were the colour of dried blood, Fay would consider how they'd have to bait the trap.

  On a fresh page of the spiral-bound notepad, she wrote:

  FOR SALE

  Bijou cottage in small, historic town amid spectacular

  Welsh border scenery. Close to all amenities, yet with

  lovely open views to rear, across pastoral countryside

  towards Offa's Dyke. Reasonably priced at……………….

  . . . what? You couldn't make it too cheap or they'd be suspicious - and with good reason.

  She'd suggest to her dad that they place the ad in the Sunday Times or the Observer, under 'rural property'. These were the columns guaranteed to penetrate the London suburbs, where the dreamers lived.

  They probably wouldn't have heard of Crybbe. But it did sound appealing, didn't it? Cosy and tucked away. Or, alternatively, rather mysterious, if that was what you were looking for.

  Fay found herself glancing at the bookshelves. Full of illusions. She saw the misty green spine of Walking the Welsh Marches. The enigmatic Old Straight Track by Alfred Watkins. And the worst offender: J. M. Powys's The Old Golden Land, which suggested that the border country was full of 'secret doorways', through which you could penetrate 'ancient mysteries'. And lots of pictures taken through lenses coated with Vaseline and wishful thinking.

  She would really hate doing this to somebody, selling the house and perpetuating the myth. But not as much as she'd hate having to stay here. And you couldn't let your conscience run away with your life, could you?

  Anyway, there were some people - like, say, the Newsomes - who rather deserved what this town was doing to them.

  'Off to the pub,' the Canon called merrily from the hall. 'Fay, can you hear me? I said, I'm off to the boozer.'

  'OK, Dad.'

  'Spot of social intercourse.'

  'You'll be lucky.' Fay watched him stride past the window towards the town square. The old devil still looked deceptively fit for someone who, ever so slowly, was going mad.

  He would put on a wonderful performance for the prospective purchasers, always assuming they caught him on one of his better days. That Santa Claus beard and the matching twinkle. They'd love him. More importantly, they'd trust him, the poor sods.

  But before she cou
ld unleash this ample bundle of ecclesiastical charm on the punters, there was just one minor difficulty to overcome.

  The Canon didn't appear to want to leave Crybbe. Ever.

  This was the central problem in Fay's life. This was what kept her awake at night.

  Christ, how could he? He didn't tramp the hills, wasn't much interested in peregrine falcons or otters or bog-orchids. How, for God's sake, could he bear to go on living in this no-hope town now that the woman who'd brought him here had been dead for nearly a year?

  Other recent settlers kept saying what a little haven it was. Convincing themselves. A handful of retired people - most of them rather younger than the Canon - drifted into the town every year. The kind who told themselves they needed to be closer to nature. But nature, for them, amounted to a nice view. They came here not to die, but to fade out. To sit amid soft greenery until they grew frail and lighter than air and the wind blew them away like dandelion seeds.

  What happened in reality was that an ambulance eventually took them off, rattling along the narrow lanes to Hereford General, twenty-five miles away. Taking too long to get there because all the roads were B roads, clogged with tractors and trailer-loads of sheep, whose milky eyes showed that they had no illusions at all about fading into a green heaven.

  'Don't do it, Dad,' Fay said, just to create a new sound - three minutes' walk from the so-called town centre and all you could hear was the clock on the mantelpiece and the wheezing of the fridge. 'Don't leave your mind in bloody Crybbe.'

  The Canon seemed, perversely, to revel in the misery of the town, to relish the shifty, suspicious stares he encountered in the post office and all the drinks the locals didn't buy him in the pub.

  His mind was congealing, like a fried egg on a cold morning. The specialists had confirmed it, and at first Fay had refused to believe them. Although once you knew, the signs were pretty obvious.

  Decay was infectious. It spread like yellow fungus in a tree stump. Fay realized she herself had somehow passed that age when you could no longer fool yourself that you were looking younger than you felt.

  Especially here. The city - well, that was like part of your make-up, it hid all the signs. Whereas the country spelled it out for you. Every year it withered. Only the country came up green again, and you didn't.

  Fay took a deep breath. This was not like her at all.

  On the table in front of her lay a small, flat, square box containing fifteen minutes' worth of tape she'd recorded that morning. On the box was written in pencil:

  Henry Kettle, dowser.

  Later, Fay would create from the tape about six minutes of radio. To do this she would draw the curtains, switch on the Anglepoise lamp and the Revox editing machine and forget she was in Crybbe.

  It was what kept her sane.

  She wondered what kind of reaction she'd get if she told it like it was to the perusers of the property columns.

  Fay picked up the pencil and wrote on the pad:

  FOR SALE

  Faded terraced house in godforsaken backwater,

  somewhere in damp no man's land long disowned

  by both Wales and England.

  Fully modernized - in 1960.

  Depressingly close to bunch of run-down shops,

  selling nothing in particular.

  Backing on to infertile hill country, full of dour farming

  types and pompous retired bank managers from Luton.

  No serious offer ignored.

  In fact, she added, we'd tear your bloody hand off. . .

  Chapter II

  Close up, she was like a dark, crooked finger pushing out of the earth, beckoning him into the brambles.

  When he looked back from the entrance to the field, she'd shrivelled into something more sinister: a bent and twisted old woman. A crippled crone.

  Or maybe just the broken stump of a fence post. Maybe only that.

  She hadn't been visible from here at all until, earlier that day, Mr. Kettle had put on his thick gloves and pulled away the brambles, then pruned the hedge around her so that she stood naked, not even a covering of moss.

  Now he'd brought Goff to see his discovery, and he should have felt a bit proud, but he didn't. All the time he'd been cutting away the undergrowth something had been pulling at him, saying. Leave it be, Henry, you're doing no good here.

  But this was his job, and this stone was what showed he'd earned his money. It made a nonsense of the whole business if he didn't reveal the only real evidence that proved the line was there, falling sure as a shadow across the field, dead straight, between two youngish oak trees and . . .

  'See that gate?'

  'The metal gate?'

  'Aye, but he's likely replaced generations of wooden ones, Mr. Kettle said, his voice rolling easy now, like the hills around them. Even without the final proof he'd have been confident of this one. Wonderful feeling it was, when you looked up and everything in the landscape - every hill and every tree, every hedge, every gateway - suddenly smiled at you and nodded and said you were right, you done it again, boy.

  Like shaking hands with God.

  Happening again, so suddenly like this, everything dovetailing, it had taken his mind off the doubts, and he'd been asking himself: how can there be anything wrong, when it all falls together so neatly.

  He indicated the gate again. 'Prob'ly the cattle chose the spot, you following me?'

  'Because they'd always go out that way! Out of the field, right?'

  'You're learning.' Though it was still warmish, Mr. Kettle wore a heavy tweed suit. He carried what once had been a medical bag of scuffed black leather, softened with age. The tools of the trade in there, the forked twigs and the wire rods and the pendulums. But the tools weren't important; they just made the clients feel better about paying good money to a walking old wives' tale like him.

  Max Goff had a white suit, a Panama hat and the remains of an Aussie accent. For a long time Mr. Kettle had found it hard to take him seriously, all the daft stuff he came out with about wells of sacred power and arteries of healing energy and such.

  The New Age - he kept on about that. Mr. Kettle had heard it all before. Twenty years ago they were knocking on his door in their Indian kaftans and head-bands, following him out to stone circles, like Mitchell's Fold up in Shropshire, where they'd sit smoking long, bendy cigarettes and having visions, in between pawing each other. Now it was a man in a white suit with a big, powerful motor car, but it was the same old thing.

  Many, many times he'd explained to people that what he did was basically about science. Wonderful, yes - even after all these years the thrill was there all right. But it was a natural thing. Nothing psychic about dowsing.

  What sun there'd been had all but gone now, leaving a mournful old sky with clouds like a battle-flag torn into muddy, blood-stiffened strips. It hadn't been a good spring and it wouldn't be a good summer.

  'Now look up from the gate,' said Mr. Kettle.

  'Yeah, that . . . church steeple, you mean?'

  'No, no, before that. Side of that bit of a hedge.'

  'Oh . . . that thing.'

  The old girl was about a hundred yards down the field, separated from the hedge now, blackened against the light, no more than three feet tall. But she was there, that was the point. In the right place.

  'Yes,' Mr. Kettle said. 'That thing.'

  It was no good, he didn't like her. Even if she'd proved him right he didn't like the feeling coming off her, the smell that you could smell from a good distance, although not really.

  'Is it a tree stump?' And then, 'Hey, you're kidding, it can't be!' The little eyes suddenly sparking. He'd be ruthless and probably devious in his business, this feller, but he had this enthusiastic innocence about him that you couldn't altogether dislike.

  'Jeez,' Goff said. 'I thought they'd all gone!'

  'Why don't you go over and have a look at 'er?' Mr. Kettle put down his bag and sat on it under the hedge and patted the grass so that Arnold, his dog,
would sit down, too. And they both sat and watched this bulky, bearded bloke making his ungainly way across the tufted meadow. Impatient, stumbling, because he'd thought they'd all gone, the old stones of Crybbe. . .

  Mr. Kettle, too, had believed they'd all gone, until this morning when they'd finally let him into the field for the first time and he'd located the line and walked slowly along it, letting it talk to him, a low murmur.

  And then the tone had altered, strengthened, calling out to him, the way they did. 'I'm here, Henry, the only standing stone left standing within a mile of Crybbe.'

  Or vibrations to that effect. As megaliths went, she wasn't impressive, but she hadn't lost her voice. Not a voice he liked, though; he felt it was high and keening and travelled on a thin, dry wind.

  But it proved he hadn't lost his capacity to receive. The faculty.

  'Still there, then, Arnold. Every time I goes out I reckon it isn't bound to work any more,' He scratched the dog's head. 'But it's still there, boy.'

  The only conclusion Mr. Kettle could reach about why this stone had survived was that there must've been a wood here and the thing had been buried in brambles. And if they'd noticed her at all, they, like Goff, might have thought it was just an old tree stump.

  He could see the figure in the white suit bending over the stone and then walking all around, contemplating the thing from different angles, as if hoping she'd speak to him. Which, of course, she wouldn't because if Goff had possessed the faculty there'd have been no reason to send for Henry Kettle.

  An odd customer, this Goff, and no mistake. Most of the people who consulted dowsers - that is, actually paid them - had good practical reasons. Usually farmers looking for a water supply for their stock. Or occasionally people who'd lost something. And now and then those afflicted by rheumatics, or worse, because they'd got a bad spring under the house.

  'Why am I still thinking he's trouble then, Arnie?'