Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (80 page)

   
She looked at him uncertainly,
his face soft focus in the diffused studio lighting. 'I don't understand.'

   
The Cock, which used to be called
the Bull, occurs precisely on the genitalia. If we want to get down to details,
this studio would cover the testicles, and the erect . . . er, organ would
project into the square very much as the pub itself leans. I remember when I
spent the night there with Rachel I was thinking the upper storey hung over the
square like a beer gut. Close, but. . . Anyway, we were in the room which is
directly over the passage, the alley, and we're on that same line now.'

   
'Joe, this is ridiculous.'

   
'Not really. You ever do yoga,
anything like that?'
   
'I never had the time.'

   
'OK, well, Eastern mysticism -
and Western magic - suggests there are various points in the human body where
physical and spiritual energy gathers, and from where it can be transmitted.
The chakras.'

   
'I've heard of them. I think.'

   
'So what we
could
be looking at here are some of the key chakras - the centre
of the forehead - mental power; the throat, controlling nervous impulses; the
centre of the breast, affecting emotions. And the sex glands, responding more
or less to what you'd expect.'

   
Fay leaned back against the
tape-machine. 'I'm still not getting this, Joe, you're going to have to spell it
out. Like simply.'

   
'The town ... is the man. Is
the town.'
   
'Oh shit . . .
What
man?'

   
'Wort. Black Michael. In
essence he's never gone away. He's fused his energy system, his spirit, with
the town. I'm not putting this very well.'

   
'No, you're not.'

   
'This girl Jane - the character
assumed by Catrin Jones - speaks of the sheriff promising he'll never leave
her. He hasn't. He's left the sexual part of him here. His cock.'

   
Fay looked down at the
Electrovoice microphone, eight inches long with a bulb-like head. 'Jesus . . .'

   
'It might even be - I don't
know
- buried
somewhere . . .'

   
'Powys, I don't want to hear
this. This is very seriously creepy.'

   
'So anybody making love -
having sex, love doesn't come into it - is getting some added . . . impetus,
buzz, whatever, from a four-hundred-year-old . . .'

   
Fay never wanted to do another
voice-piece with that microphone. 'Come on,' she said, between her teeth,
'let's get out of here before - if what you say is correct - we start ripping
each other's clothes off.'

Ironically - given the ragged quality of local communal singing, the
absence of a trained choir or the will to form one - the church was widely known
for its excellent acoustics.

   
And so the Revd Murray Beech
heard it all.

   
Standing, appalled, behind the
curtain separating the side entrance from the nave, he heard everything.

   
The astounding confession, and
then the bumps and crashes.

   
It was not long after eight, although
dark enough to be close to ten, the churchyard outside reduced to neutral shades,
the birdsong stilled, the small, swift bats gliding through the insect layer.

   
When Murray had first picked up
the noises he'd been on his way to the public meeting at which, he rather
hoped, he would be able to assume the role of mediator, while at the same time
putting a few pertinent theological questions to the self-styled heralds of the
New Age.

   
He was wearing a new sports jacket
over his black shirt and clerical collar. He'd felt more relaxed than for quite
some time. Had, in fact, been looking forward to tonight; it would be his opportunity
to articulate the fears of townsfolk who were . . . well, unpractised, let us say,
in the finer techniques of oratory.

   
At least, he
had
been relaxed until he'd heard from
within the church what sounded like a wild whoop of joy. In this situation it
might, in fact, be wise to summon the police.

   
Or it might not. He'd look
rather foolish if it turned out to be a cry of pain from someone quite
legitimately in the church who'd, say, tripped over a hassock.

   
Also he hadn't reported the
minor (by lay standards) acts of vandalism of the past two nights. And if this
intruder did turn out to be the perpetrator of those sordid expressions of contempt,
a quiet chat would be more in order. This was a person with serious emotional problems.

   
So Murray had hesitated before
going in quietly by the side door, noting that its latch had been torn away and
was hanging loose, which rather ruled out the well-meaning but clumsy parishioner
theory.

   
No, sadly, this was the sick
person.

   
'Well, well,
' he heard now.
'Don't
you look cheesed-off
?'

   
As, behind the floor-length
curtain, he could not be seen from anywhere in the church, the remark could not
have been aimed at him.

   
Which meant Warren Preece was
addressing his dead brother. His - if this crazed boy was to be believed -
murdered brother.

   
The confession had emerged in a
strange intermittent fashion, incomplete sentences punctuated by laughter, as
if it was a continuous monologue but some of it was being spoken only in
Warren's head.

   
It was deranged and eerie, and
Murray remembered the malevolence of Warren's face in the congregation on
Sunday, the way the hate had spurted out in shocking contrast to the unchanging
stoical expressions of his father and his grandparents.

   
Murray was in no doubt that
this boy at least
believed
he'd
drowned Jonathon. The hard-working, conscientious, older brother slain by the youthful
wastrel. Almost like Cain and Abel in reverse.

   
He ought, he supposed, to make
a quiet exit, summon the police and let them deal with it. And yet there was,
in this situation, a certain social challenge of a kind not hitherto apparent
in Crybbe. The inner cities were full of disturbed youth like Warren Preece - always
a valid project for the Church although some ministers shied away.

   
If Warren Preece was a
murderer, Murray could hardly protect him. But if there was an element of
self-delusion brought about by guilt, causing a strange inversion of grief, he could
perhaps help the boy reason it out.

   
He heard footsteps but could
not be sure from which direction they came or in which direction they were
moving, for these acclaimed acoustics could, he'd found, sometimes be confusing.

   
With three sharp clicks, the
lights came on, and Murray clutched at the curtain in alarm.

   
'Very nice'
he heard.
'Very
nice indeed.'

   
And the perverse laughter again,
invoking an image in his head of the communion chalice on the altar and what it
had contained.

   
A sudden, white-hot sense of
outrage overrode his principles, his need to understand the social and
psychological background to this, and he swept the curtain angrily aside.

   
'All right!'

   
Murray entered the nave in a
single great stride, surprised at his own courage but aware also of the danger
of bravado, his eyes sweeping over the body of the church, the stonework lamplit
pale amber and sepia, the stained-glass windows rendered blind and opaque.

   
And in the space between the
front pews and the altar rail, the aluminium bier empty and askew like an
abandoned supermarket trolley.

   
'Stay where you are!' Murray
roared.

   
And then realized, in a crystal
moment of shimmering horror, how inappropriate this sounded. Because the only Preece
in view had no choice.

   
The vicar wanted to be sick,
and the bile was behind his voice as it rose, choking, to the rafters lost in
their shadows.

   
'Come out! Come out at once,
you . . . you filthy . . . !'

   
Another slack, liquid chuckle .
. . 'eeeheheh . . .' trailing like spittle.

   
Murray could not move, stood
there staring compulsively into the closed, yellowed eyes of Jonathan Preece.

   
The open coffin propped up against
the pulpit like a showcase, the body sunk back like a drunk asleep in the bath,
the shroud now slashed up the middle to reveal the livid line of the post-mortem
scar, where the organs had been put back and the torso sewn up like a potato
sack.

   
Jonathon's corpse splayed in its
coffin like a pig in the back of a butcher's van, and Murray Beech could not
move.

   
His nose twitched in acute, involuntary
distaste as the smell reached him. Otherwise, he was so stiff with shock that
he didn't react at first to the swift movement, as a shadow fell across him and
he heard a very small, neat, crisp sound, like a paper bag being torn along a
crease.

   
When he looked down and saw
that his clerical shirt had come apart - a deep, vertical split down the chest
and upper abdomen, so that he could see his white vest underneath turning pink then
bright red - he couldn't at first work out precisely what this meant.

CHAPTER IV

The square was absolutely empty. Flat, dead quiet under a sky that was
too dark, too early.
   
Powys looked up at the church tower
hanging behind the serrated roofs of buildings which included the town hall. Behind
him, leaning towards him, was the Cock.

   
They stood in the centre of the
square, which was where the navel would be.

   
'We're on the solar plexus,'
Powys said. 'The solar plexus, I
think
,
is the most significant chakra, more so than the head. It's like the centre of
the nervous system - I
think
- where energy
can be stored and transmitted.'

   
Fay hung on to his arm, wanting
warmth, although the night was humid.

   
'You see, I've never gone into
this too deeply. It's just thing you pick up in passing. We may not even be
looking at chakra at all.'

   
Fay began to shiver. She began
to see the town as something covered by a huge black shadow, man-shaped. She
knew nothing about chakras, almost nothing about ley-lines, energy lines, paths
of the dead . . .

   
'It's happening tonight,' she
said. 'Isn't it? Black Michael is coming back.'

   
'Yeah.' Powys nodded. 'I think
it's possible.'

It was working. From the rear of the hall - packed out, way beyond the
limits of the fire regulations - Guy Morrison saw it all as though through the
rectangle of a TV screen, and, incredibly, it was working.

   
In spite of his evangelical
white suit, Goff was starting to convey this heavy, sober sincerity, beside which
even the authoritative Col Croston looked lightweight. Col in his ornate Gothic
chairman's chair, Max Goff standing next to him at the table, having vacated a
far humbler seat, but oozing Presence.

   
Goff standing with his hands
loosely clasped below waist level.

   
Goff, looking down at first,
saying, not too loudly, 'I want you to forget everything you ever heard or read
about the New Age movement. I'm gonna give you the Crybbe version. I'm gonna
tell you how it might relate to this town. I'm gonna make it simple, no bull.'

   
Then slowly raising his eyes.
'And the moment I cease to make sense to any one of you, I wanna know about
it.'

   
Smiling a little now, an
accessible kind of smile, if not exactly warm. 'I want you to stand up and stop
me. Say, "Hey, we aren't following this, Max." Or "Max, we don't
believe you.
We think you're trying to pull the wool." '

   
It could have sounded patronizing.
It didn't. Guy could see only the backs of the heads of the two distinct
factions - New Age, Old Crybbe. No heads moved on either side. They'd been expecting
a showman in a white suit, but Goff had changed. Even his small eyes were compelling.
Not a showman but a shaman.