Phil Rickman - The Chalice

What happens now?

Part of her wanted to take her van and leave quietly. Drive to Juanita's. She'd really missed Juanita, the older sister she'd never had. She really ought to explain. But what on earth could she say? Juanita might run a New Age bookshop, but she could be rather disparaging about people's visions..

I was dreaming every night about the Tor. Vivid colours.

Common homesickness. You'll get over it.

Kept seeing things sort of metamorphose into the Tor. Salt and vinegar shakers in cafes. Plastic bottles of toilet cleaner. And flashing images of it when I closed my eyes.

Hyper-active imagination. Next.

Stopping at traffic lights behind lorries owned by Glastonbury firms. Or houses called Avalon.

Oh, really…

And sometimes I'd wake up in the middle of the night sensing her near me, in the room.

Oh God, not…

The third Nanny.

You're nuts, Diane.

She began to rock backwards and forwards, holding herself tight in the shawl. Oh God, Oh God, what am I doing here?

Two weeks ago, Patrick had shown her pictures of his family's villa in Chianti country. Wonderful place for a honeymoon. Lovely place, decent man. Oh God.

A shadow passed the window. Then another. She sat very still for a moment. They'd all gone, she'd watched them. Mort and Viper the last to go. She heard a giggle and a hiss.

Kids. There were three or four children in a converted ambulance at the other end of the field, in the care of a sullen teenager called Hecate, a large girl who claimed to be sixteen but was probably younger.

There'd been quite a few babies in the convoy when it first set off, but by the time they reached the beginning of the St Michael Line at Bury St Edmunds, they all seemed to have gone, along with their parents. And the dogs. None of the remaining travellers seemed to have dogs with them. She was sure there'd been a few before, when they were on their way down from Yorkshire.

And musicians. Two guitarists and a flute player. Now there was only Bran, the dour shamanic drummer.

And there used to be lots of ghetto blasters. Endless rock music. Old Rolling Stones albums and Oasis and The Lemonheads. Deep into the night, and the children were used to it and slept through it all.

The hiss came again. Diane got up and went out to the platform. 'What's going on?'

It didn't stop. She stepped off the platform and found herself looking into the shadowed face of the girl called Hecate.

'What's your problem?' Hecate said.

'What are you doing?'

There were four small shadows moving about. Children who were surely old enough to be at school. They were hovering around the bus, making hissing sounds.

'Hey!' Diane realised what was happening. They all had big aerosol sprays. It was almost dark, but she could see that several of the yellow stripes on the bus's bee-panelled panels had already vanished. 'Stop that, you little horrors. Headlice'll go mad!'

The children carried on spraying the bus black, didn't even look round. In the near-dark there was something unearthly about them. They were like silent gnomes.

Diane turned back to the older girl. 'Can't you stop them?'

'Why don't you mind your own bleeding business?' Hecate said. 'You nosy fat slag.'

'How dare…?' Diane calmed down, remembered to put on the Somerset. 'That's jolly nice, I must say.'

'Look,' Hecate said. 'Headlice told us to do it, right? Good enough?'

'I don't believe you.'

'I don't give a fart what you believe.' Hecate put her face very close to Diane's. Her teeth were thick and yellow and her breath smelled putrid. 'Now get back on the bus, crawl into a corner and mind your own. Else when they've finished I'm gonna hold you down while they spray your fanny black. That good enough?'

No getting round it; Jim was shaken.

'I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I didn't see her, although…'

Juanita said, 'Jim, is there something wrong with this line?'

Jim coughed, realising he'd been almost whispering down the phone. Whispering. In his own buggering house! And with the lights out, so no one could see him standing by the window.

'Thing is…' He drank some whisky and then put the glass on the windowsill, pushing it behind the curtain as though she could see how full it was. '… it was very nearly dark when the last ones went past, but I'd gone down to the end of the garden by then to get as close as possible to the path.'

Standing behind a sycamore tree with plenty of leaves still on it. Holding his breath as they went past. Hiding in his own buggering garden!

'I mean, they tend to be pretty skeletal, don't they, these travelling types? So unless she's lost a few stone…'

Bloody angry with himself for feeling threatened. But it was the first time in seventeen years of living here that his sacred space had been penetrated so blatantly by so many people. And such bloody purposeful people.

'You could have asked one of them where she was,' Juanita said.

'I suppose I could. But I… it's strange, but I didn't like to speak to them. You know what these characters are normally like, either drugged up to the eyeballs or laughing and swigging cider and what have you, like day trippers.'

'Yes, I know.'

'Not these buggers. Could've been the SAS on night manoeuvres or something. Quite… well, unearthly I suppose. In fact if it hadn't been for the way they were dressed and the glint of the rings in the ears, I'd've… I don't know. They were just so quiet. Not a buggering word between them. And you're looking at – what? – over a hundred of them. Yes. I suppose I could quite easily have missed Diane.'

There was a moment's silence.

'I don't like the sound of this, Jim.'

That's why I called you. Do you think I should phone the police in Street?'

'What, and have the camp raided and Diane herded into a Black Maria? No, let's play it by ear. I'll get the car. Pick you up at the bottom of your track in about ten minutes?'

'Right ho,' Jim said, relieved. 'Just… just be careful. Don't stop for anybody.'

'Jim.'

'Yes?'

'You sound scared.'

'Oh. No, no. Just out of breath.'

Diane stood on the deck of the bus, nervously nibbling another carob bar. It was quiet again now. The strange children had finished spraying the bus and gone. Was it supposed to be a joke? She was ashamed at having let the girl menace her like that.

The air was cooling. She drew her woollen shawl across her lower arms, dragged it tight around her, arms folded in the wool. She sat down in one of the slimy vinyl seats. She'd wait about an hour and then creep quietly away to the van, drive up to Don Moulder's farm and then down Wellhouse Lane into the town.

All the buses and vans were still as wooden huts and drained of their colours. It could have been a scene from centuries ago. The circle of vehicles, which might just as well be carts, looked almost romantically tribal when their squalid aspects were submerged in shadows.

When she'd joined the convoy it was all so noisy and jolly, with a real sense of community. It was a kind of fun paganism more concerned with stone circles and earth forces and ley-lines and spreading good vibes. They were like a travelling circus. And yes, you really could imagine a new spirit of freedom being born and nurtured in an encampment of latterday gypsies dismissed by just about everybody as a bunch of dirty scavengers. There really had been a glimmer of ancient light here.

The smell on the bus was of sweat, grease and oil with an underlying cannabis sweetness. A misty wafer of moon rose in the grimy glass. This was the only ancient light now.

And yet, as the thought passed through her mind, there was another glimmer, some yards away. Diane froze and then, very quietly, stood up and peered through the window into Don Moulder's field.