Phil Rickman - The Chalice

'I must have arrived quite soon after… That is, I didn't know he was still here. There was just the hole. I thought he'd gone. I thought it was too late. I went back to the house and sat with Mr Woolaston. Praying.'

How could she explain any of this to the police? Still, someone would have to try.

'Do you wish to see it, Mr Powys?'

'Why not?' he said wearily.

Verity grasped the ears of the plastic bag and tugged.

Arnold sat at the foot of the table and growled, but didn't move, as Powys looked, with revulsion, at the Dark Chalice.

Don Moulder unlocked the bus, pulled back the rusted sliding door.

When Juanita tried to follow Diane, she shook her head.

She took off Juanita's coat, handed it to her.

Moulder's eyes widened at the long, black nightdress.

'What's she gonner do?' He watched Diane as she stepped from the platform into the body of the bus. 'Because that buzz, look, that buzz is full of evil, Mrs Carey, I don't care what anybody says.'

'In that case come away, Don. We'll wait over by the gate. Whatever happens you don't want to see it, do you?'

'I don't understand none o' this no more.' He was wheezing a bit, looking starved. 'Tis a black day, Mrs Carey. You coulder sworn that ole tower, he were gonner go, look. Swayed, like in a gale. Some masonry come down, they d' say. The Bishop, his face was as white as his collar, look. You had the feeling we was barely… barely a breath away from… I dunno… the end of it. The ole sky changin' colour, night a-changin' back to day and day to night. I never, all my years at this farm, never seen nothin' like it.'

Diane appeared at the bus door. She sat on the platform and took off Ceridwen's shoes, tossed them on to the grass.

Then she went back.

It happened very quickly. Almost as soon as she entered the bus, she knew it was waiting for her.

It was just as she'd last seen it. The seat and the couch bolted to the floor, the cast-iron stove, the filthy windows you could hardly see out of. This was where something began.

'Oh!' A sudden stomach cramp made her double up and then fall to her knees. The pain was briefly horrible and when it ebbed she found she had both arms curled around the bus pole. She felt like Ulysses, when he lashed himself to the ship's mast to prevent him responding to the call of the Sirens.

When the sob came, it seemed to have travelled a long way. All the way from North Yorkshire. In a white delivery van with pink spots.

Diane hugged herself to the pole. The sob seemed to make the pole quiver and the whole bus tremble. At some point, it had begun to creak, its chassis groaning as if in some frightful arthritic pain. Diane clung to the pole, she and the bus bound together in the longing for release. The dark air seemed to be rushing past as she and the old bus strained to shed their burdensome bulk, to soar serenely towards…

The light?

But just as she was beginning to feel ever so shimmery, as if those excess pounds had begun to float away and she could be as slim as a faun, gossamer-light, as beautiful as a May queen, as pure as a vestal virgin… just as the warmth spread over her tummy and down between her legs and she yearned to touch it… and just as she began to uncurl her arms from the pole…

'Stop!'

A bell rang, quite sharply.

Diane's neck arched, her arms still enfolded around the metal pole, her head thrown back, and, oh lord, the bus begin to move. It had been the bell which told the driver to start and stop. It had rung only once, but it kept on in Diane's head, a tiny, shiny ting.

And then her face was slapped.

Quite lightly, but it was done. A voice, crisp as the snapping of a wafer.

Don't you dare!

The other check was slapped, and this time it was not done lightly, but briskly and efficiently and it stung, spinning Diane around to look up, eyes wide and straining with shock, beyond the platform, along the deck of the bus.

'Who… who are you…?' Her voice faltered and she hugged the pole. It had not been an ordinary slap, and she went clammy with fright at what was beginning to happen.

For, along the deck, all the interior lightbulbs were coming on: small yellow ones in circular holders set into the carved metal ceiling just above the windows. The bulbs were feeble, nicotine-grimed, dust-filmed and fly-spattered.

And they didn't work. They didn't work anymore, those lights.

The lights that didn't work shone bleakly down on two rows of seats. They put a worn sheen on dark red vinyl. They reflected dully from chromed metal corners.

Diane began to blink in terror, wet with live sweat, lights where the lights were broken. Seats, where there weren't any seats. This was a Bolton Corporation bus again, which rattled and hissed down grim, twilit streets.

About halfway down the bus, there was a blur of presence, a haze of movement.

The bell rang again, ting. The scene froze. Clinging to the pole, Diane saw a grey finger curled in the air. There was a red push-button in the curved part of the roof, and a grey finger crooked over it.

The grind and hiss of faraway brakes, a smell of old polish, damp raincoats and perspiration.

The pole was cold in Diane's arms, cold against her cheek.

Come on now… pull… 'self… 'gether… not a baby.

The words happened in the air, like the brake-hiss. Diane saw a grey lady. Severe hair enclosing a face without features, only sternness. A hat. Large beads. The face was a swirling of grey, black and white particles, like blown cigarette ash.

Diane tried to pull herself to her feet, using the pole, but she couldn't feel her feet at all.

And the woman glided towards her along the bus's dusty aisle. Diane began to gasp convulsively with fear; the shiny pole misted from her breath.

None of… 'onsense now…

The voice was thin and fractured like a car-radio on FM during a storm in the hills. Diane sagged against the pole.

Sorrow settled in her chest. Sorrow received from the grey-woman, sorrow shimmering in the vagueness of her, in the half formed face like a scratched old photograph. The scent of old dust and lavender.

'Nanny…'

Essence of long-ago nights, pillows damp with tears, lonely little motherless girl in a house of cold leather, guns and uncompromising maleness.

Diane's arms pulled away from the pole at last and she came to her feet and reached out for the crumbling bundle of dusty, moth-ravaged fragments, as the lights in the bus died, one by one.

'Oh, Nanny…'

And she saw, in a comer, the yellow eyes in the mist. The eyes of her own hatred, the evil in her.

Diane felt her stomach shrivel in disgust. She just wasn't that kind of person. She had no natural aggression. She was the sort who ran away and hid and never wanted to harm anyone or anything.

… allow it, then…

'What?'

… take your… edicine, girl… swallow it'.

Diane closed her eyes.

Do it now! Now!

Diane opened her mouth.

She breathed it in.

And it filled her.

Inflating her checks, swelling her throat and then her breast, bloating her abdomen and finally throwing her to her knees, her arms outstretched like a legless, rocking doll.

So cold… so cold inside her that it froze her eyes wide and stiffened her tongue. She saw then her lower body had become luminous blue, radiating icy light, and she had no control over any of it, was aware of being squeezed out, reduced to a small, helpless fragment of consciousness, a particle of floating fear, only a moment away from ceasing to exist.

She watched her radiant body tossed on to its back on the filthy floor of the bus like an old mattress, was aware of the air corning out like vomit, in a long swooooosh, as if someone was sitting on her stomach.

Diane rolled over. It seemed as if she'd been separated from her body for a long time, but it must have been no more than a couple of seconds. It felt strange to want to move an arm and for that arm to move. She began to crawl, and as the energy returned so did the panic, in a rush.