Phil Rickman - Crybbe

With Arnold tucked, not without some effort, under her arm, Fay went into the house. It was far too late now to send the tape for the morning news. The late-duty engineer at Offa's Dyke would be long gone. She'd have to go into the studio early in the morning again, having rung Hereford General to find out Jack's condition.

She lowered the dog to the doormat.

'I wish I could trust you, Arnold,' Fay said, not quite knowing what she meant. His tail was well down; he looked no happier than she was. Jonathon Preece had set out to kill him and had died in the river. Arnold had lost a leg, so might Jack Preece by now…

If this was the seventeenth century she'd have been hanged as a witch, Arnold stoned to death as her familiar.

Stop it, you stupid bitch.

She clenched her fists and felt her nails piercing the palms of her hands. Everyone around her seemed to be carrying a burden of possibly misplaced guilt. Powys for Rose and Rachel. Her dad for Grace and for her mother. She herself…

Fay went down on her knees in the hall, the front door open to the street behind her. She buried her head in Arnold's fur. Arnold who looked no more evil than… than Joe Powys. As she began quietly to sob, all the lights went out in the neighbouring homes.

Bloody electricity company. How could this keep happening?

Fay choked a sob in bitter anger and punched at the wall until her knuckles hurt. Oh God, God, God, God, God.

She stood up shakily.

'Dad?'

There was no response.

She closed the front door behind her. He'd either gone to bed or he was still over at Jean Wendle's having his treatment. Or his end away if he'd got lucky. Fay sniffed and smiled She'd once asked the local doctor what the Canon's condition meant libido-wise. 'He'll be less inhibited,' the doctor had said, 'By which I mean he'll talk about it more often.'

The Canon wasn't back.

But – Arnold whimpering – somebody was.

As Fay stiffened in the darkness of the hallway, she saw vague yellowish light under the door of the office.

Very slowly the office door began to open.

Fay caught her breath.

It did not creak; she only knew it was opening because the wedge of yellow light was widening, and it was not the soft and welcoming, mellow yellow of a warm parlour at suppertime.

This was the yellow of congealing fat, the yellow of illness.

The hallway was very cold. It was a cold she remembered.

'Grace?' Fay heard herself say in a voice she didn't recognize, a voice that seemed to come from someone else.

She felt her lips stretch tight with fear. She kicked the office door open.

'Did she speak?' Jean Wendle had asked.

'Not a word'

Grace Legge wore a nightdress. Or a shroud. Was this what shrouds looked like?

'And she didn't move?'

'No.'

Grace was standing by the window, very straight, a hand on a hip, half-turned towards Fay. She was haloed in yellow light. The yellow of diseased flesh. The yellow of embalming fluid.

She was hovering six inches off the floor.

'Harmless, then.'

'Grace,' Fay said slowly. 'Go away, Grace.'

But Grace did not go away. She began to move towards Fay, not walking because her feet were bound in the shroud, which faded into vapour.

Fay backed away into the hall.

Dead eyes that were fixed, burning like small, still lamps. Burning like phosphorous.

'She can't talk to you, she can't see you; there's no brain activity there… Blink a couple of times.., and she'll be gone.'

Fay shut her eyes, screwed them tight. Stood frozen in the doorway with her eyes squeezed tight. Stood praying. Praying to her father's God for deliverance. Please make it go away, please, please, please…

She smelled an intimate smell, sickly, soiled perfume, and felt cold breath on her face. She opened her eyes because she was more afraid not to, opened them into a fish-teethed snarl and yellow orbs alight with malice, and spindly, hooked fingers – the whole thing swirling and shimmering and coming for her, rancid and vengeful, filling the room with a rotting, spitting, incandescent yellow haired.

Fay began to scream.

It was fear that drew Minnie Seagrove to the window of her lounge. Fear that if she didn't look for it, it would come looking for her.

For a short while, there was a large, early moon. It wasn't a full moon, not one of those werewolf moons by any stretch, but it was lurid and bright yellow. It appeared from behind the Tump. Before it became visible, rays had projected through the trees on the top of the mound like the beams you saw seconds before the actual headlights of an oncoming car. The trees on the Tump were waving in the breeze even though the air all around Minnie's bungalow was quite still.

She'd come to associate this breeze with an appearance of the Hound.

Afterwards, Mrs Seagrove sat with her back to the window in Frank's old Parker Knoll wing chair, feeling its arms around her and hugging a glass of whisky, the remains of Frank's last bottle of Chivas Regal malt.

Oh Lord, how she wished she hadn't looked tonight.

'I'm that cold, dear,' she said, pretending she was talking to young Joe Powys or anybody who'd believe her. 'I can't keep a limb still. I don't think I'll ever get warm again.'

Powys knew it was on its way when the naked girl at the stone began to moan and shiver.

When the moon rose, he saw that the girl was certainly no more than twenty and might even be significantly younger, which made him uncomfortable. He wondered for a time if she was real and not some kind of vision. What kind of a girl would come alone at night into this appalling place and take off all her clothes?

Powys was not at all turned on by this.

He was afraid. Afraid, he rationalized, not only for her but of her.

Afraid because he suspected she knew what was coming, while he could have no conception, except of ludicrous phosphorous fur, fiery eyes and gnashing fangs, and Basil Rathbone in his deerstalker, with his pistol.

He found his fingers were tightly entwined into some creeper on the trunk of the oak tree. He squeezed it until it hurt.

The silence in the neglected wood was absolute. No night birds, no small mammals scurrying and scrabbling. If there was any sound, any indication of movement, of change, it would be the damp chatter of decay.

Max could not move. His eyes were wide open. He took his breath in savage gulps.

He lay in awe, couldn't even think.

He could smell the candles.

As if in anticipation of a power failure, the room had been ringed with them – Max half-afraid they'd be black. But no, these were ordinary yellow-white candles, of beeswax or tallow, whatever tallow was. They didn't smell too good at first, kind of a rich, fatty smell.

Now the smell was as intoxicating as the sour red wine.

The mattress was laid out on the third level of the stable block, so he could lie in the dusk, and take in the Tump filling the window, stealing the evening light, surrounded with candles, like a great altar.

Max lay under the black duvet, feeling like a virgin, the Great Beast/Scarlet Woman sessions with Rachel a faint and farcical memory.

For the first time in his adult life, Max was terrified.

And then, when the dark figure rose over him in the yellow, waxy glow, even more frightened – and shocked rigid, at first – by the intensity of his longing.

Warren looked up into the sky, at the night billowing in, and he loved the night and the black clouds and the thin wind hissing in the grass, his insides churning, his mind clotted with a rich confusion.

But the curfew was coming and the box was screaming at him to close the lid.

He slammed it down.

Then, bewildered, he started to claw at the earth with his hands, set the box down in the hole.