Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (94 page)

   
'You can certainly count on my
support. For as long as I'm here, anyway. Look, I'm sorry about what happened
in there, I overreacted, I suppose.'

   
'Wouldn't any of us, old chap?
Some of these TV types do tend to think they have a kind of
droit de seigneur
wherever they happen
to be hanging up their ... Is it far, Hereward?'

   
'No, that is . . . I'm sorry,
one gets disoriented in the dark, especially as dark as this. I've never known
it this dark, I. . . it really should be about here, Colin. Can you feel the
wall?'

   
'I can feel some kind of surface.
Is there a timber-framed bit next to your place?'

   
'Actually, there is, and it
goes straight from that to the large window, but . . .'

   
'Maybe we're on the wrong side
of the square. Pretty easy to do, even when you're on what you think of as
familiar ground.'

   
'No, I don't think ... Oh hell,
I seem to be way out.'

   
'Isn't there a pavement in
front of your gallery? Because we're still on the cobbles, you know.'

   
'I thought there was a pavement
all around the square, actually. Shows how you . . .'

   
A few yards away Col heard a
woman scream. 'It's gone. It's gone, I tell you, Hilary', the whole bloody
front . . . All I can feel is this . . . urrrgh, it's filthy.'

   
'Colonel Croston, can you help
us, please. It sounds terribly stupid, but Celia's lost her Pottery.'

   
'Look.' Col took a step back.
'Let's calm down and get this in proportion. Funny, how you live in a place for
years but never quite notice what order the shops are in. Right. Between the
Crybbe Pottery and The Gallery we've got the Lamb, OK, and that . . . what's it
called?'

   
'Middle Marches Crafts,'
Hereward said.

   
'Right. And then, after the
Pottery, the road starts sloping down to the bridge and across from there,
we've got the Cock. Hereward . . .' He paused, confused. 'The Cock's got its generator,
hasn't it?'

   
'Yes, it has.'

   
'So why isn't it on?'

   
'Colin . . .' A brittle panic
crumbling from Hereward's voice. 'Something's horribly wrong, don't you feel
that?'

   
'It's
all
wrong . . .' Hilary's companion wailed. 'Nothing is the same.'

   
'If we only had light,' Col
said. 'I know - cars. If someone has a car parked on the square, they can open
it up and switch on the headlights, then we can see where we're at.'

   
'Look . . .' Hereward breathing
rapidly. 'I don't want to start a panic, but there were cars parked on three
sides of the square when I went into the meeting. We haven't bumped into a
single one, have we?'

   
'Well, they can't all have been
nicked. Just spread the word. We're looking for anybody with a car parked on
the square. Just . . . do it, Hereward, please.'

   
Col walked to the side of the
building, felt wood and some type of chalky plaster. And the cobbles, under his
feet.

   
Knowing full well that the
pavement around the square had been replaced two years ago, and there'd already
been one there for years before that. And now there were cobbles. Again.

   
He steadied his breathing.

   
Face facts. It was true;
everything was different. Road surface, buildings . . . even the atmosphere
itself. What would it look like . . .
What
would it look like if they could actually see any of it?

   
Mass hallucination. Col decided
logically. Some kind of gas, perhaps. Why had the townsfolk refused to come out
of the town hall and, indeed, locked themselves in? Because they knew what was
happening, they knew it was too dangerous to go into the square.

   
Were the bells some form of
alarm? Had somebody actually hung all the ropes for this occasion?

   
And why didn't the locals warn
everybody else? Because they only suspected what it might be and were afraid of
being laughed at?

   
Or because they
wanted
the newcomers to be exposed to
it? It was insane. Any way you looked at it, it was all utterly insane.

   
Concentrate
. Col dug the nails of his
left hand into the back of his right. Just for a few moments there, completely
forgot this was not, so far, the night's most appalling
 
development, Max Goff savagely killed in front
of all of them, and
that
was no hallucination.

   
Something touched his arm and,
such was the state of his nerves, he almost swung round and struck out with the
side of his hand.

   
'Colonel Croston.'
   
'Who's that?'

   
'It's Fay Morrison. Keep your
voice down.'
   
'Mrs Morrison!'
   
'Christ, Colonel . . .'

   
'I'm sorry,' he whispered. 'Where
the hell's Jim? You left with him, the Mayor . . .'

   
'He's . . . he's in the church.
Listen . . . I've been following you around for the last ten minutes. I
couldn't approach you until you knew. At least . . .'

   
'I don't know anything, Mrs
Morrison. I've never been more in the dark. Excuse the humour. It isn't felt.'

   
'But you know everything's changed.
I heard you talking to Hereward. You realize this is not, in any sense, the
Crybbe we know and love.'

   
'Oh, now, look . . . !'
   
'I'm trying to keep calm, Colonel.'
   
'I'm sorry. This is beyond me. Some
kind of gas, I suspect.'
   
'Colonel. . .'

   
'Col.'

   
'Col. Forget about gas. Please
listen. First of all, I think Preece is dead. Stroke, heart attack maybe, I
don't know about these things. But I do know Max Goff was killed by
Warren
Preece, you know who I mean?'

   
'The grandson. Punkish type.
Where is he?'

   
'He's hurt. He's badly burned.
There was a fire. In the church.'

   
'Are you serious?'

   
'Yes, I know, you can't see any
flames. But you can't see anything else either, can you?'

   
Col gripped her arm. He wanted
to feel she was real.
   
'Please don't,' she said. 'I've got a
burn.'
   
'I'm sorry, but this . . . Jesus.'

   
'Just listen. If you think this
is mad, don't say anything. Just walk away and keep it to yourself.'

   
He tried to see her eyes, but
all he could make out was the white of her face. 'OK,' he said.

   
'On this night,' Fay Morrison
said. 'And I mean this night, this actual night, exactly four hundred years
ago, a large number of people gathered in the square, where we are now, trying
to decide what to do about the High Sheriff, who'd taken to hanging men and compelling
their wives to have sex with him. And there were various other alleged examples
of antisocial behaviour even by sixteenth-century standards that I won't go into
now. But the bottom line is the people of this town decided they'd taken
enough.'

   
He would have stopped her, he
was in no mood for a long history lecture, but he supposed he'd given his word
he'd listen to what she had to say.

   
'You can imagine the scene,'
she said. 'A bit of a rabble, not exactly organized. Not much imagination, but
angry and scared, too. Only finding courage in numbers, you know the kind of
thing. So they march on Crybbe Court, flaming torches, the full bit. And there
are a lot of them, and it really wasn't something this Sheriff would have
expected. Not the border way. Keep your heads down, right? Don't make waves.
But they did - for once. They made waves. They surrounded the Court and they
said to the servants, men-at-arms, whatever,

"You send this bastard out or we're going to burn this place down."
Maybe they set light to a barn or something to reinforce the threat, but,
anyway, it was pretty clear to the Sheriff by now that he was in deep shit.'

   
From somewhere close to what he
imagined was the centre of the square, Col could hear Graham Jarrett, the
hypnotist guy, shouting, 'You're taking absolutely the wrong attitude, you
know.'

   
'He seems to have gone into the
attic,' Fay said, 'and topped himself.'

   
'Hear him out, will you?' a woman
bawled. Sounded like that astrologer Oona Jopson, shorn head, ring through
nose, who'd threatened to emasculate the doormen.

   
Fay said, 'What you have to
remember about this particular Sheriff is that he was skilled in what I'm
afraid we have to call the Black Arts. Except he thought it was science.' She
paused. 'Do you want me to stop?'

   
'I'm not laughing,' Col said.
'Am I?'

   
'I'll carry on then. Before he
hanged himself. Or while he was hanging himself - I mean, don't think I'm an
expert on this stuff, I'm not - but, anyway, he left something of himself behind.
It's called a haunting, Col. Still with me?'
   
'Open mind,' Col said. 'Go on.'

   
'It wasn't a spur-of-the-moment
job. He'd been planning this for a long time. Dropped hints to his women. Expect
more of the same when I'm gone.'

   
'Look,' Graham Jarrett was
shouting, 'if you'll all just quieten down a minute, we'll do a bit of
reasoning out. But I think we've been selected as participants in a wonderful,
shared experience that's really at the core of what most of us have been striving
for over many years.'

   
'And here we are . . . panicking!'
the Jopson woman piped up. 'Well, I'm not panicking, I've never been so
excited.'

   
Guy Morrison shouted, 'What
about poor bloody Goff? He didn't look too excited. He looked a bit bloody dead
to me.'

   
'Yeah, but
was
he?' Jopson.
'Is
he?
I mean, how much of that was for real? How much of what we perceive is actual reality?'

   
Col Croston said, 'Jesus
Christ.'

   
'It smells so awful,' the woman
from the crafts shop, which now sold mainly greetings cards, said.

   
'It smells awful to us, that's
all. Or only to you, maybe. To me, it's a wonderful smell. It smells of
reality, not as it is to us these days, with our dull senses and our tired
taste-buds and our generally limited perception of everything. What we're
feeling right now is the
essence
of
this place. I mean, shit, it is . . . this is
higher consciousness.'

   
'And is she right?' Col asked
Fay Morrison in a low voice.

   
'What do you think?'

   
'I think she's nuts.'

   
Guy said, 'Has anybody tried
just walking away from here in any direction, just carrying on walking until
they find an open door or somebody with a torch or a lamp?'

   
'My . . .' There was the sound
of some struggling. 'Give me some
space.'
It was Jocasta Newsome. 'My husband . . . he said he was going to get help.
He's ... I can't find him.'

   
'Don't worry,' Graham Jarrett
said. 'He'll be around. I don't think he can go anywhere, you see, I don't
think anyone can. I don't think there's any light to be found.'

   
'I think there is, Graham,' a
new voice said. A cool, dark voice. Lazy.

   
'Who's that? Is that Andy?'

   
Col Croston heard Fay Morrison
inhale very sharply through her mouth.

   
'I think,' the dark voice said,
'that we should consider how we can find our own light.'
   
'Who's that?' Col whispered.
   
'Boulton-Trow.'

   
'I don't think I know him.'

   
'I mentioned him during the
meeting. You haven't forgotten that, have you?'

   
'Oh,' said Col. 'That.'

   
Her outburst. It occurred lo
Col that there was something personal at the back of this. That Fay Morrison
had some old probably sexual score to settle with Boulton-Trow. Anyway, it was
all rather too much for a practical man to take. He had to reassemble his wits
and get to a phone.