Phil Rickman - Crybbe

'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.