Phil Rickman - Crybbe

He got paid very well.

'Andy pays you,' Powys realised.

Humble said, 'I'm in the employ of the Epidemic Group – a security consultant.'

'And Andy's been paying you as well.'

Humble lifted his crossbow. 'Let's go.'

'Where's Andy?'

'I said, let's move!'

'No.'

'Fair enough,' Humble said. 'Fair enough.' He moved backwards a few paces into the field until he was almost invisible against the night.

'OK, you made your decision. I got to get this over wiv in a couple of minutes, so you got a choice. You can run. Or you can turn around and walk away. Just keep walking, fast or slow as you like, and you'll never know. Some people like to run.'

Oh Jesus, Powys thought. For the past twelve years he hadn't really cared too much about life and how long it would last.

'I thought you'd never shot anybody.'

'Not wiv a crossbow. On the two other occasions,' said Humble, 'I used a gun.'

Fay, he thought obliquely. Caught an image of the elf with the rainbow eye. I'm going to lose Fay.

'Or, of course,' said Humble reasonably, 'you can just stand there and watch.'

He brought up the crossbow. Powys instinctively ducked and went down on his knees, his arms around his head.

Through his arms, he heard a familiar lop-sided semi-scampering.

'No!' he screamed. 'No, Arnold! Get back! Get away!'

He saw the black and white dog limping towards him from the darkness and, out of the corner of his eye, watched the crossbow swivel a couple of inches to the right.

'Beautiful,' Humble said, and fired.

She ran at the door and snatched at the bolts, throwing one of them back before Mr Preece grabbed her from behind and pulled her away.

She struggled frantically and vainly. He might look like a stretcher case, but his arms were like bands of iron.

She felt her feet leave the floor, and he hauled her back from the porch and set her down under the stone font. The lambing light was in her eyes, but it didn't blind her because it was losing strength, going dimmer.

'What the fuck are you doing, Mr Preece? What bloody use is this place as protection?'

All she could hear from behind the dying light was his dreadful breathing, something out of intensive care at the chest clinic.

There's no spirituality here any more. All there was was the bell and now you can't reach that, there's no way you can resist… him… in this place. A church is only a church because the stones are steeped in centuries of worship… human hopes and dreams, all that stuff. All you've got here is a bloody warehouse'

'Stay quiet,' Jimmy Preece hissed. 'Keep calm. Keep…'

'Oh, sure, keep your head down! It's what this piss-poor place is all about. Don't make waves, don't take sides, we don't want no clever people. Oh!' She beat her head into her arms and sobbed with anger and frustration.

Needing the rage and the bitterness, because, if you could keep them stoked, keep the heat high, it would burn out the fear.

She looked into the light – not white any more, but yellow, her least-favourite colour, the yellow of disease, of embalming fluid. The yellow of Grace Legge.

How would he come?

Would he come like Grace, flailing and writhing with white-eyed malevolence?

How would he come?

'What's going to happen, Mr Preece?' she said. It was the small voice, and she was ashamed.

'I don't know, girl.' There was a wheezing under it that she hadn't heard before. 'God help me, I don't know.'

She thought about her dad. At least he'd be safe. He was with Jean, and Jean was smart. Jean knew about these things.

'She can't talk to you, she can't see you, there's no brain activity there… Entirely harmless.'

No she doesn't. She isn't smart at all. A little knowledge and a little intuition – nothing more dangerous. Jean only thinks she's smart.

And now Powys had gone to Jean, saying, help us, 0 Wise One, get us out of this, save Crybbe, save us all.

Oh, Powys, whatever happened to the Old Golden Land?

It began with a rustling up at the front of the church near the coffin, and then the sound of something rolling on stone.

'What's that?'

But Mr Preece just breathed at her.

She clutched at the side of the font, all the hot, healthy anger and the frustration and bitterness drenched in cold, stagnant fear. She couldn't move. She imagined Jonathon Preece stirring in his coffin, cracking his knuckles as his hands opened out.

Washerwoman's hands.

Fay felt a pain in her chest.

'Oh, God.' The nearest she could produce to a prayer. Not too wonderful, for a clergyman's daughter.

And then came the smell of burning and little flames, a row of little, yellow, smoky flames, burning in the air, four or five feet from the floor.

Fay watched, transfixed, still sitting under the font, as though both her legs were broken.

'Heeeeeeee!' she heard. High-pitched – a yellow noise flecked with insanity.

Jimmy Preece moved. He picked up the light and walked into the nave and shone what remained of the light up the aisle.

'Aye,' he said, and his breathing was so loud and his voice so hoarse that they were inseparable now.

Down the aisle, into the lambing light, a feeble beam, a figure walked.

Fay saw cadaverous arms hanging from sawn-off sleeves, eyes that were as yellow-white as the eyes of a ghost, but still – just – human eyes.

The arms hanging loosely. Something in one hand, something stubby, blue-white metal still gleaming through the red-brown stains.

Behind him the yellow flames rose higher.

A foot kicked idly at something on the stone floor and it rolled towards Fay. It was a small tin tube with a red nozzle, lighter fuel.

Warren had opened up the Bible on its lectern and set light to the pages.

'Ow're you, Grandad,' Warren said.

There were too many people in here.

'Don't touch him, please,' Col said. There was quite a wide semi-circle around Goff's body into which nobody, apart from this girl, had been inclined to intrude, there'd be sufficient explanations to make after tonight as it was, and Col was determined nobody was going to disturb or cover up the evidence, however unpleasant it became, whatever obnoxious substances it happened to discharge.

The girl peered down, trying to see Goff's face.

'I paint,' she explained casually, 'I like to remember these things.'

'Oh. It's Tessa, isn't it. Tessa Byford.'

Col watched her with a kind of appalled admiration. So cool, so controlled. How young women had changed. He couldn't remember seeing her earlier. But then there were a few hundred people here tonight – and right now, he rather wished there hadn't been such a commendable turn-out.

He was angry with himself. That he should allow someone to creep in under cover of darkness and slash the throat of the guest of honour. Obviously – OK – the last thing one would expect in a place like Crybbe. And yet rural areas were no longer immune from sudden explosions of savage violence – think of the Hungerford massacre. He should – knowing of underlying trepidation about Goff's plans – have been ready to react to the kind of situation for which he'd been training half his life. He remembered, not too happily, telling Guy Morrison how the Crybbe audience would ask Goff a couple of polite questions before drifting quietly away.

And then, just as quietly, they'll shaft the blighter.

Shafted him all right.

Whoever it was had come and gone through the small, back door, the one the town councillors used. It had been unlocked throughout. That had been a mistake, too.

Couldn't get away from it – he'd been bloody lax. And now he was blindly following the orders of a possibly crazy old man who'd decreed that nobody was permitted to depart – which, if the police were on their way, would have been perfectly sensible, but under the circumstances…