Phil Rickman - Crybbe

Alex shook his head.

'You'd had it. You were finished. You were going very rapidly into the final decline. A bed in the bottom comer of the geriatric ward, to where the naughty boys are consigned, the nurses treating you like a difficult child when you try to pinch their bottoms. Poor old man, he used to be a priest.'

'Nothing more welcome in hell than an unfrocked priest,' Alex mused. 'Except perhaps a priest who ought to have been unfrocked but never was, because he was too damned plausible – all his life, so plausible, right up to the end, shafting ladies.'

'I brought you back,' Jean said, I fed you energy.'

'But what kind of energy?'

'Och.' Jean turned away with a dismissive wave of the hand. 'You blew it.'

'I don't think so,' Alex said. 'I made a deal. I went up the hill and I made a deal.'

He smiled. His heart was strong and his eyes still twinkled.

Jean Wendle turned her head and peered at him, curious. He saw in her face a pinched look, ravaged, and not the ravage of years.

'Made a deal,' Alex said. 'After a period of protracted and considered negotiation, the Management and I formulated the basis of an agreement, nothing binding, either, party retaining the right to pull out at any given time if the Second Party should happen to lose his bottle.'

Alex walked out of the room. 'Good night, Wendy.'

Bloody waste, he thought sadly.

Joe Powys came out of the passage into the night, into a blinding light and the face of Edgar Humble.

He didn't have to force the fear.

'Hold it. Don't move.'

Powys half out of the hole in the side of the Tump, the wooden box in his arms, Arnold at his ankles.

Humble's eyes were fully open, his lips apart.

'You're dead,' Powys said from a throat full of hairline cracks.

'Course he's fucking dead,' Gomer Parry said, leaning out of his cab. 'Sorry, Minnie.'

Humble lay across the jaw of the digger, quite stiff now, one arm still flung out and his crossbow on his chest. The big shovel was almost blocking the entrance to the passage.

Minnie Seagrove wasn't looking.

Gomer said, 'What you got there, then, Joe?'

'Buried Treasure,' said Powys. is that thing safe?'

'Gimme a second.' Gomer raised the shovel so Powys could climb out from underneath it.

'Right, then.' The little man climbed out of his cab, rubbing his hands on his overalls. 'We got a bit o' talkin' to do yere, Joe. First off, you finished in there? Got what you want?'

'I think so.'

'Safe to block 'im up again, then.'

'Don't see why not.'

'Good. Mind out, then.'

He climbed back into his cab, cigarette end waggling, lowered the shovel, started to tip Humble's body over the entrance of the hole.

'What the hell are you doing, Gomer?'

Minnie Seagrove turned away as Humble's remains tumbled into the soil and rock.

'Nicked that box, did you?' Gomer shouted.

'What?'

'Treasure trove, that, boy. I won't say nothin' if you don't.'

'I had to tell him, Joe,' Minnie Seagrove said. 'I said, I'll go to the police and admit everything. And you'll speak up for me, won't you, Joe? You're a famous writer, that'll count for quite a lot. But he wouldn't hear of it.'

'Bollocks,' said Gomer. 'Could be centuries before they finds 'im, if ever. And if they does turn 'im up, 'ow could it possibly have anythin' at all to do with a sweet little old lady? Sorry, Minnie, I didn't mean old…'

The more Powys thought about it, the less difficult it became to fault.

'You can't leave him near the entrance.'

I shall drag 'im in just as far as 'e'll go, then I'll fill this 'ole up and pack 'im tight, see, and pile up them stones, so it looks like the wall collapsed on it, like.'

'I can't stop to help you, Gomer, I'm sorry. I've got to go somewhere and I don't think there's much time.'

'No problem. I'll take Minnie 'ome.'

'And could you do me another favour – take Arnold, too.'

'I'll take him,' Mrs Seagrove said.

'I'll come back for him.'

I hope.

Or Fay will.

'Thanks, Arnie,' said Powys, pulling the box down and sinking his hands into Arnold's fur, rubbing his face at the dog's encouragingly cold nose.

Arnold licked him once.

'And thank Henry for me,' Powys said, 'if you see him around.'

He picked up the box. It was quite heavy but not too unwieldy. He balanced the lamp on top. 'You're sure this is going to be all right? I have the awful feeling it'll look like a excavation site.'

'Joe,' said Gomer patiently, 'this yere is Gomer Parry Plant Hire you're dealin' with. I already got the reputation of havin' fucked up once on this site – sorry, Minnie – and I'm not gonner risk 'avin' myself pulled in by that Wiley if I can 'elp it, am I?'

Gomer lit another cigarette, lowered his voice. 'Wynford Wiley,' he said. 'Wouldn't give 'im the satisfaction. Fat bastard.'

Powys nodded. 'Minnie. I…'

'She never did nothin',' Gomer Parry said gruffly. 'So you got nothin' to thank 'er for, is it? Bugger off. Good luck.'

If anything, it was stronger now. She thought she'd get used to it, like when you were staying on a farm during the manure-spreading season, but this wasn't manure and it was getting stronger.

In it there was human waste and animal waste, raw meat, blood perhaps, body odours, rancid fats… and now smoke.

Woodsmoke? Maybe.

Or was it the church? Could she smell the fire in the church because the church was on the line linking the centre of the square with the Court and the Tump?

Joe Powys would know. Or he wouldn't. Either way, it would be good to have him here. Not such a world-class crank after all, not when you listened to this bunch.

Fay walked among them, the night still alive with natural radio.

'He'll come back.' Graham Jarrett.

'What if he doesn't?' Hilary Ivory.

'I tried walking.' One of the lawyers, in tones of defeat. 'I kept on walking, looking for a light. I kept walking, and I just felt like I was fading out… fading away. Losing my physical resistance to the air, becoming absorbed in the atmosphere. I mean, it was very soporific, in a way. I think it'd be good to die like that. But not yet. I got scared. I thought, I've got to go back. And when I thought that, I was back. Like I hadn't been anywhere.'

'There's nowhere to go.' Oona Jopson. 'Accept it. Relish it. It's not likely to happen to you again.'

'Good.'

'Or maybe it will. Maybe we're being opened up to a permanent kind of cosmic consciousness, you know?'

She wondered what was happening outside the square. Was the church alight? Was Jimmy Preece alive? And what about Warren? Were the Crybbe people attending the meeting still inside the town hall? And what of their relatives in the town – had they any idea what was happening? Perhaps it had happened before, the town square sealing itself off in the past – a past which was always close to the surface of this town.

Not for the first time tonight, Fay genuinely wondered if this was some long and tortured dream. And, if it was not a dream, whether, when (if) it was over, it would have no more significance than if it had been.

Somebody was coughing very weakly, a thin scraping sound.

'Where's Colonel Croston?'

'I'm here. Who's that.'

'It's Dan Osborne, Colonel, I'm a homeopathic practitioner, but I have a medical qualification. There's a woman here in a bad way. Over here, just come towards my voice. I'm bending across her, you won't walk into her.'

'OK, I'm on my way. Do you know who she is?'

'She's wearing what feels like a silk blouse and… a fairly light skirt. She's got… thick hair, quite long I suppose.'

Guy said, 'is she wearing a thickish sort of necklace thing?'

'A torque, I think. Dear God, what's this…?'