Phil Rickman - Crybbe

… when – to a shattering chorus of harsh clangs and grinding, strangled creaks, a malfunctioning clock-mechanism amplified a thousand times – the greasy darkness shredded before her like a rotting curtain, revealing the attic all lit up in bilious yellow, except for the quivering shadow of the rope hanging from the apex of the roof, turning slowly, stretched taut.

By something palely shining, the source of all the light, noosed and squirming.

It was not far off 10 p.m., the night sidling in, when Powys drove the Mini between the gateposts of the Court and became instantly aware of the Tump behind the house.

He could not see the Tump, but he saw for the first time that the trees towering over the Court from behind were the trees growing out of its summit.

Once you knew this you could almost see the shadow of the great mound outlined in the Elizabethan stonework of the Court itself; the Tump and house fused into a single…

… entity.

Even as he had that thought, something flared in the house and then went out, like a light-bulb which explodes the second it's switched on. He saw a momentary afterglow in one of the small windows immediately below the eaves.

Maybe Andy's in there. Maybe I can wait behind the door until he comes out. And then I'll start hitting him.

Powys accelerated, drove around the house to the courtyard, parked in front of the stable-block, next to the Range Rover – felt a pang of gratitude when he spotted that, longing to see Rachel again.

The stable door was unlocked; he went in.

'Rachel?'

The place was dim; although it probably faced west, there was little light left in the sky. From here, at the top of the long room, now sectionalized, you looked down towards the big picture-window and the grey and smoky Tump.

'Rachel, luv, you in there?'

Maybe the light, way up in the house, had been her, with a torch. I don't like that. It may not frighten her up there, but it scares the crap out of me.

And why had the torch gone out?

'Rachel!'

He looked around for light switches, found a panel of them behind the door, pressed everything. Concealed lighting came on everywhere without a blink.

On the kitchen table was a scattering of magazines. New Age stuff. And a black leather bag, open. Rachel's bag.

He went outside again, anxiety setting in with the dusk. He looked across at the Court. Soon the sky and the stone would meld and the house would be an amorphous thing balanced on the edge of the night.

Powys moved to the rear entrance, trying not to crunch gravel. He pushed the door, but it didn't give. Locked.

He didn't waste time with it, but followed the walls of the house around to the front and almost cried out when something big and black reared up in his path.

It didn't move. It was a massive rubbish pile, except many of the items on it didn't look like rubbish to Powys, even in his light. Near the top of the heap was an enormous double wardrobe, Victorian Gothic, its top corner projecting sharply out of the pile, as if in protest.

This time Powys tried the front door, and found that it too was locked.

He looked back along the dead straight drive into the wood, straining to the silence. No birds left to sing.

Directly above him, he knew, would be the prospect chamber, set into the highest eaves, the house's only orifice when the doors were locked and barred.

Powys stepped back from the door and shouted as loud as he could up in the direction of the chamber's hidden maw.

'Rachel!'

A moment in a void.

Then he saw a glowing filament of sporadic pale-yellow zig-zagging the length of the eaves, like very feeble lightning.

He heard a scream so high and wild it might have been an animal on the brink of violent death in the woods.

And then a chasm opened under all his senses.

You land with a breathtaking thump on the fairy mound, not hearing the laughter, only aware of the pit beneath you, an endless lift shaft. You're falling, down and down and down, faster and faster, a tiny point of white light far below you… a point of light, which gets no larger the further you fall because what it is… is the light reflecting from a spearhead, dirty and speckled with rust, as you can see quite clearly in the long moments before you feel the tearing agony, watching the spear's shaft disappearing into your stomach in in explosion of blood.

Noooooooooo!'

He staggered frantically but uselessly about, trying to position himself below her, as she plummeted from the prospect chamber like a shot bird, the Barbour billowing out, waxy wings against the leaden sky.

But she crashed down in the only place he could not hope to throw himself in her path, and he actually heard her neck break as it connected with the projecting corner of a Victorian Gothic wardrobe of old, dark wood.

Something came after her – a small, grey-brown wisp of a thing.

… In many such cases it has been suspected that there was an unconscious human medium, commonly an emotionally disturbed adolescent, at the root of the manifestations. If these effects can be produced unconsciously, it is reasonable to suppose that people can learn to produce them by will. Indeed, in traditional societies young people who have evident talents for promoting outbreaks of psychical phenomena are marked out as future shamans…

Monday morning and, over the dregs of an early breakfast, Fay finally found out the truth about her father, Grace and the house. And wound up wishing, in a way, that she'd remained ignorant, for in ignorance there was always hope.

It was not unknown for Alex to be up for an early breakfast – on one best-forgotten occasion five or six weeks ago he'd been clanking around in the kitchen at 5 a.m. and, when his swollen-eyed daughter had appeared in the doorway, had admonished her for going out and not leaving him any supper.

No, it hadn't made any sense, except in terms of the quantity of blood reaching her dad's brain, and Fay was resigned to it. With a cold, damp apprehension, she'd accepted there would come a time when it might be necessary to change the locks on the front door and deprive him of a key so he wouldn't go out wandering the streets in the early hours in search of a chip shop or a woman or something.

However, there were still times – like last night – when it might almost be in remission.

But last night – Dad, why is Grace haunting us? – they'd parted uncomfortably, Alex mumbling. 'Talk about it in the morning.' The prospect of him remembering had seemed so remote that even Fay had expunged it from her memory.

Then this morning, she'd come down just before eight, and there was her dad fishing a slice of bread out of the toaster with a bent fork and making unflattering observations about the quality of Taiwanese workmanship.

'Been remiss,' he'd mumbled 'Shouldn't have tried to cover up.'

'So you burnt the toast again,' Fay said. 'No big deal, Dad.'

'No – Grace, you stupid child. I'm trying to say I should have told you about Grace.'

'Oh.'

And out it all came, for the first time, as if the blood supply to his brain had suddenly tripled, making him more cogent, more aware of his own defects than she could ever remember. This Wendle woman… was it conceivable she'd pulled off some astonishing medical coup here?

'Grace…' Alex said. 'This lady with whom I'd had a small dalliance over twenty years earlier, she rather more serious about it than I. I mean, she really wasn't my type at all, not like your mother. Grace was a very proper sort of woman, prissy some might say.'

'I never liked to say it myself, Dad.'