Phil Rickman - Crybbe

Or open it.

Or you could throw it into a deep lake. This had been done in numerous legends to calm an excitable spirit, in a ceremony normally involving about twelve priests.

He didn't have twelve priests to hand. Also this was not a whole unquiet spirit.

Not the whole thing. But unquiet, yes. Walking back to the Court, holding the box with both hands, the lamp balanced on top, he'd had the illusion of something moving inside.

Open it,'

Psychological trickery. Mind games. I'm not listening.

Somehow they had formed a circle in the dark. When you moved around in this formation, you couldn't, of course, see the individual people comprising the circle, but soon you began to see the collective thing, the movement, the circle itself.

'A ring of pure golden light,' Hilary- Ivory breathed, isn't it beautiful? And we've made it ourselves. We've made it.'

Yes, Fay thought remotely, it is rather beautiful. But it's not quite golden. More a darkish yellow. The yellow of… of what?

Hilary held her right hand, Larry Ember her left. Hilary breathed and sighed, as if she was making love, while Larry chuckled to himself, not in a cynical or ironic way, but a chuckle of pleasure. Pleasure in self-discovery.

Round and round they went in a slow circle, mindlessly, innocently round and round, like children in the schoolyard.

The air was still pungent, but the pungency was fortifying and compelling now. Tobacco could seem noxious and nauseous the first time you inhaled it, but when you were accustomed to it, it was deeply satisfying.

So it was with the scent of shit and blood and rotting vegetables, as the human circle revolved, quite slowly at first, anticlockwise, in the opposite direction to the sun, which was

OK, Fay reasoned dreamily, because there was no sun, anyway, at night.

Every face was blue-lit, anxious and staring bleakly at Alex without enmity but without any hope either. A quarantine situation; nobody was to go outside, nobody from outside was to come in because of what else might enter.

But Col Croston had got them into the hall, without too much difficulty. He knew both men on the rear door – Paul Gwatkin, one of the three Gwatkin brothers who, between them, farmed Upper Cwm and Lower Cwm, and Bill Davies, the butcher. Decent chaps, both of them.

'Paul,' Col had said, very reasonably, 'it's essential that my friend the Canon and I come in, and I have to tell you if you don't get out of the way I may hurt you quite badly. Problem is, I was never trained to hurt people only slightly. You see my problem.'

'And I hope, Colonel,' said Bill Davies, standing aside, 'that you might be startin' to see ours.'

Col had laid a sympathetic hand on the butcher's should 'We're here to help, Bill.'

'Wastin' your time, I'm afraid. Colonel, it's…'

'I know,' Col said. 'A Crybbe matter.'

Now, standing on the platform with its table and two empty chairs, Alex addressed the assembly, quite cordially.

'Good evening. Some of you know me, some of you don't, some of you might have seen me around. Peters, my name. For what it's worth, I appear to be the only living priest in town. And you, I take it, are what one might call the backbone of Crybbe.'

He looked carefully at his audience, perhaps three hundred of them, men outnumbering women by about two to one, the majority of them older people, over fifty anyway – such was the age-ratio in Crybbe. The scene reminded him of the works of some painter. Was it Stanley Spencer, those air-raid shelter scenes, people like half-wrapped mummies?

'Strange sort of evening,' Alex said, 'I expect you've noticed that, otherwise what are you all doing penned up like sheep overnight in the market? Hmm?'

No response. Nobody did anything to dispel the general ambience of the stock-room as a mortuary. The blue-faced, refrigerated dead.

What would it take to move these people? And, more to the point, had he got it?

As Alex stood there and watched them, he saw himself as they must be seeing him. Bumbling old cleric. Woolly haired and woolly headed; mind known to be increasingly on the blink.

But he'd made a Deal, if only with his inner self. He thought about the possible implications of the Deal, and a suitably dramatic quote occurred to him, from the Book of Revelations.

His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire.

'Right,' Alex said, stoking the fire, summoning it into his eyes, 'if that's the way you want it. Colonel, would you ask Murray to step inside?'

'Huh?' Col Croston glanced sharply at Alex, who merely nodded. 'Oh,' Col said and walked out.

Alex said bluntly, 'I understand Max Goff was slaughtered like a pig in here tonight.'

Some of the women looked away. Nobody spoke. Alex let the silence simmer for over a minute, observing finally, 'You seem to have thrown the body out. Out of sight out of mind, I suppose. Didn't know the chap myself. However, I did know this poor boy.'

Col Croston had returned with his arms full. Paul Gwatkin and Bill Davies didn't try to stop him, but neither seemed anxious to help him with his bloody burden.

'He's sorry he was late,' Alex said. 'He was obliged to stop on the way, to get murdered.'

Col carried the corpse around the table, where the blotter was brown with dried blood, and curling.

Alex said, 'You remember Murray? Young Murray Beech?'

Col dropped the body like a sack of coal, and it rolled over once, on to its back, a stiff, bloody hand coming to rest against the knee of a woman on the front row, Mrs Byford, clerk to Crybbe town council. She did not move, except to shrink back in her chair, as if retracting the essential Mrs Byford so that the dead hand was only touching her shell.

'That's right,' Alex said. 'Pretend he's not there. But then, you never noticed he was here, did you? He was only another vicar from Off. And now he's dead. But I'll tell you one thing… he isn't as bloody dead as any of you.'

He saw Murray Beech's body, in the light, for the first time. The front of his black clerical shirt had been slashed neatly from neck to navel. The shirt was soaked and stiff.

Mrs Byford delicately removed the hand from her knee, her mouth beginning to quiver. Murray's own mouth was widened from one corner, like a clown's. It continued almost to an ear. Or what remained of an ear.

Alex lowered himself into the chair where another body had slumped. It was sticky. He looked down into a blotter thick with blood and lumps and clots. 'Talk to me,' he said. 'Tell me about what happened four hundred years ago when your ancestors went out to lynch this chap Wort. What had they got in the way of incentive that you haven't, hmm?'

He noticed the Police Sergeant, Wiley, near the back, in full, if disarranged, uniform. Not exactly rushing to open an investigation into the killing of Murray Beech.

Col Croston, back in the chairman's chair, next to Alex, called out. 'No need for inhibition. Consider the issue thrown open to the floor.'

'Well, come on,' said Alex, in exasperation. 'Who's the old bat in the front row trying to avoid Murray, what about you? Mrs Byford, isn't it?'

Mrs Byford spoke with brittle clarity, like an icicle cracking. 'Tell this rude old gentleman, Colonel, that we have no intention of moving from yere nor of entering into any discussion on the subject.'

Alex said, 'Did you have much to do with Murray, Mrs Byford? Your granddaughter did. She sought his assistance. As a priest. She wanted him to exorcise a ghost from your house.

'No!' Mrs Byford pushed her chair back into the pair of knees behind her and stood up. Murray's hand appeared to reach for her ankle and she gave a shrill cry. 'It's lies!'