Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (77 page)

   
'Well, there you are. We don't
like clever people. Says it all, doesn't it.'
   
'Does it?'

   
'Yes . . . because, for centuries,
Crybbe's been avoiding making waves, disturbing the psychic ether or whatever
you call it. If anybody happens to see a ghost, they keep very quiet about it
until it goes away. Don't do anything to encourage them, don't give them any .
. . energy to play with. If they see the black dog, they try and ignore it,
they don't want it to get ideas above its station. How am I doing so far?'

   
'Go on.'

   
'Traditionally, dogs react to
spirits, don't they? Dogs howl, right? Dogs howl when someone dies because they
can see the spirit drifting away. So, in Crybbe, dogs simply get phased out.
Maybe they've even forgotten
why
they
don't like them, but traditions soon solidify in a place like this. The dogs,
the curfew, there may be others we don't know anything about. But. anyway,
suddenly . . .'

   
'The town's flooded with clever
people. Max Goff and his New Agers.'

   
'Absolutely the worst kind of
clever people,' said Fay. 'Dabblers in this and that.'

   
The rain came in on the breeze.
Pulling on the blue cagoule. Fay looked down into the town and saw that the air
appeared motionless down there; it was probably still quite humid in the
shadow of the buildings.

   
'It's hard to believe,' Powys
said, 'that Andy didn't know about all this when he planted on Goff the idea of
establishing a New Age centre in Crybbe. Especially if he's a descendant of
Michael Wort. He'd know it could generate a psychic explosion down there, and
maybe . . . Christ . . .'

   
He took Fay's hand and squeezed
it. The hand felt cold.

   
'. . . maybe generate enough
negative energy to invoke Michael Wort in a more meaningful form. Get him
beyond the black dog stage. Of course he bloody knew.'

   
'In just over three hours'
time,' Fay said, 'the public meeting begins. Crybbe versus the New Age. Lots of
very
negative energy there.'

PART EIGHT

Let us forget about evil. This does not
exist. What does
exist is imbalance, and when you are severely
imbalanced, particularly in the negative direction, you
can behave in very' extreme and unpleasant ways.

DAVID ICKE,
Love Changes Everything

CHAPTER I

Even for Crybbe the night was rising early.
   
It rose from within the shadowed
places. In the covered alleyway behind the Cock. Beneath the three arches of
the river bridge. In the soured, spiny woodland which skirted where the churchyard
ended with a black marble gravestone identifying the place where Grace Legge,
beloved wife of Canon A. L. Peters was presumed to rest.
   
It filtered from the dank cellars of
the buildings hunched around the square like old, morose drinking companions.
   
It was nurtured in the bushes at the
base of the Tump.
   
It began to spread like a slow stain
across the limp, white canopy of the sky, tinting it a deep and sorrowful grey.
   
And not yet seven-thirty.

'Give us a white-balance,' Larry Ember said, and Catrin Jones stood in
the middle of the street and held up her clipboard for him to focus on.

   
Guy Morrison looked at the sky.
'Shoot everything you can get. I can't see it brightening up again. I think
this is it.'

   
'Wasn't forecast,' Larry said.
'No thunderstorms.'

   
'And I can't see there being
one in there,' Guy said, glancing at the town hall. 'This is probably a wasted
exercise.'

   
'What you want me to do then,
boss?'

   
'We've got permission to go in
and grab some shots of the assembly before it starts, so shoot absolutely
everything you can, plenty of tight shots of faces, expressions - I'll point
out a few. Then just hang on in there till they actually ask you to leave, and
then . . . well, stay outside, close to the door, and Catrin and I will try and
haul out a few punters with opinions, though I'll be very surprised if these
yokels manage to muster a single opinion between them.'

   
The Victorian facade of the
town hall reared over the shallow street like a gloomy Gothic temple, its
double doors spread wide to expose a great cave-mouth, through which the
younger townsfolk wandered like tourists. Many had probably never been inside
before; there weren't many public gatherings Crybbe.

   
Guy ordered shots of their
faces, shots of their feet. The feet are probably saying more than the faces,
he thought with frustration. At least they're moving.

   
For the first time he began to
wonder how he was going to avoid making a stupefyingly boring documentary. He'd
been determined to keep the voice-over down to a minimum, let the events tell
their own story. But to get away with that, he needed a pithy commentary on
these events from a collection of outspoken locals. So far, the only outspoken
local he'd encountered had been Gomer Parry, who lived at least three miles
outside the town.

   
'What are we going to do?' he
whispered despairingly to Catrin - showing weakness to an assistant, he never
did that.

   
Catrin gave his thigh a
reassuring squeeze. 'It'll be fine.'

   
'. . . God's sake, Catrin, not
in public!'

   
Catrin. How
could
he have?

   
This place was destroying him.

Parking his Escort XR3 in the old cattle market behind the square, Gavin
Ashpole had no fears at all about
his
story being boring.

   
This was the beauty of radio.
The place might
look
like a disused
cemetery, but you could make it
sound
like
bloody Beirut. Whatever happened here tonight, Gavin was going to put down a
hard-hitting voice-piece for the ten o'clock news describing the uproar, as beleaguered
billionaire Max Goff faced a verbal onslaught by hundreds of angry townsfolk
fearing an invasion by hippy convoys lured to the New Age Mecca.

   
Somebody had suggested to Gavin
that perhaps he could try out the new radio-car on this one. Park right outside
the meeting, send in some live on-the-spot stuff for the nine-thirty news.

   
Gavin thought not; the
station's only unattended studio was not three minutes walk from the town hall.
And he hadn't been able to drag his mind away from last night's interrupted
fantasy in that same studio. Somehow, he had to get little Ms Morrison in
there.

   
Ms Morrison who'd really
screwed any chance she had of holding down the Offa's Dyke contract. Who'd
failed to provide a report on last night's tractor accident. Who hadn't even
been reachable on the phone all day.

   
'I'll go in live at
nine-thirty,' he'd told the night-shift sub, James Barlow. 'And I want a full
two minutes. I don't care what else happens.'

   
He was thinking about this as
he parked his car in the old livestock market. Unusually dark this evening;
even the sky looked in the mood for a set-to.

   
Humid, though. Gavin took off
his jacket, locked it in the boot and slung his Uher over his shoulder.

   
Two cars and a Land Rover
followed him into the market, half a dozen men got out. Tweed suits, caps, no
chat, no smiles. Farmers, in town for the meeting, meaning business.

   
I like it, Gavin told himself.
Everybody who was anybody in the district was going to be here tonight to
listen, with varying degrees of enthusiasm or hostility to Goff's crazy, hippy themes.
There was a small danger that if the opposition was too heavy, Goff might have second
thoughts and decide to take his New Age centre somewhere else - like out of
Offa's Dyke's watch, which would be no use at all. But this was highly
unlikely; Goff wasn't a quitter and he'd probably already invested more than
Gavin could expect to earn in the next ten years, even if he did become
managing editor. No, Goff had gone too far to pull out. Too many people relying
on him. Danger of too much bad publicity on a national scale if he let them
down.

   
He crossed the square and
followed everybody else into the side-street leading to the town hall.

   
Gavin quickened his pace and
walked up between a couple - skinny guy with a ratty beard and a rather sultry
wife. Gavin
had
to walk between the
man and woman because they were so far apart, not talking to each other.
Obviously had a row.

   
That was what he liked to see.
Acrimony and tension were the core of all the best news stories. It was
building in the air.
   
Gavin mentally rubbed his hands.

Alex and Jean were taking tea in the drawing-room.

   
The Canon, wearing his faded
Kate Bush T-shirt, was standing in front of the Chinese fire screen, legs
comfortably apart, cup and saucer effortlessly balanced in hands perfectly steady.

   
Earlier, he'd spotted himself
in a mirror and it had been like looking at an old photograph. Hair all fluffed
up, the famous twinkle terrifyingly potent again. Old boy's a walking advert
for the Dr Chi New Age Clinic.

   
He was aware that Jean Wendle
had been looking at him too, with a certain pride, and several times today they
had exchanged little smiles.

   
'So,' Jean was on the sofa, hands
linked behind her head. Jolly pert little body for her age. 'Shall we go? Or
shall we stay in?'

   
Several times today she'd looked
at him like that. Just a quick glance. One really was rather too old to jump to
conclusions; however . . .

   
'Which do you think would be
most, er, stimulating?'

   
'Och, that depends,' Jean said,
'on what turns you on. Perhaps your poor old brain is ready at last for the
intellectual stimulus of public debate, as Max strives to present himself
gift-wrapped, to the stoical burgers of Crybbe.'

   
'Give me strength,' said Alex.

   
'Fay'll be there, no doubt.'

   
'Won't want
me
in her hair.'

   
'Or there's Grace. All alone in
Bell Street. Will she be worried, perhaps, that you haven't been home for a
couple of nights?'

   
'I thought you said she didn't
exist as anything more than a light form.'

   
'She didn't. Unfortunately,
she's become a monster.'
   
'Uh?' Alex lost his twinkle.

   
'Tell me,' Jean said. 'Have you
ever performed an exorcism?'

The Cock was no brighter than a Victorian funeral parlour, Denzil, the
licensee, no more expressive than a resident corpse. Half past eight and only
two customers - all his regulars over the town hall.

   
J.M. Powys stared despairingly
into his orange juice, back to his habitual state of confusion. Everything had
seemed so clear on the hillside overlooking the town, when Fay was aglow with
insight.

   
Arnold lay silently under the
table. Possibly the first dog in several centuries to set foot - all three of them
- in the public bar of the Cock. 'We can't,' Fay had warned. 'Sod it,' Powys had
replied, following the dog up the steps. 'I've had enough of this. Who's going
to notice? Who's going to care?'

   
And, indeed, now they were inside
there was nobody except Denzil to care, and Denzil didn't notice, not for a
while.

   
Powys glanced up at Fay across
the table, it could all be crap,' he said.

   
'There.' Fay was drinking tomato
juice; it was a night for clear heads. 'You see . . .'
   
'What?'

   
'You're back in Crybbe. You're
doubting yourself. You're thinking, what the hell, why bother? It's easy to
see, isn't it, why, after four centuries, the apathy's become so ingrained.'