Phil Rickman - Crybbe aka Curfew

Welcome to hell.

No one more welcome in hell than a unfrocked priest except… except… a priest who ought to have been unfrocked and escaped the dishonour through devious means.

Oh Lord, yes. No one more welcome in hell.

The bells rang randomly, as one might expect, a mocking parody of the joyful Sunday peal.

The bells of hell hurt his ears as they were meant to do and would continue to do, he assumed, forever and ever.

He brushed against the Bible and it set light to the black vest he was wearing; little flames swarmed up his chest.

He seemed absolutely delighted. Looking proudly down at himself, dropping down a couple of steps, grinning hugely, as the petrol-soaked spine of the heavy old Bible collapsed into red-hot ash and the two halves toppled from the lectern.

Fay rammed both feet into the wooden stem.

Very slowly it began to fall towards him, and Warren didn't move.

He opened his arms wide, as the lectern fell like a tree, and he embraced it, hugging the blistering stem to his chest.

'Yeah!'

Roaring and blazing.

Fay didn't move, watched in hypnotized awe until she felt and smelt something burning, very, very close, and found a single charring page wrapped around her arm.

Book of David, she read, the page curling sepia, reminding her of the opening credits of some dreadful old American Civil War movie, and she found that her lungs were full of smoke.

His body jerked in the grass, a convulsion. The crashing bells he accepted as the death vibrations of a brain cleaved by a steel bolt.

'Mr Powys.'

Oh Christ, he thought at once, it wasn't me, it was Arnold; he wants me to see what he's done to Arnold before he puts one into me.

He'd flung himself at the dog, just as Fay had done in the field by the river when Jonathon Preece had been strolling nonchalantly across with his gun. But Powys had missed and Arnold had kept on running, towards Humble and his crossbow, leaving Powys sprawled helplessly, arms spread, waiting for the end. The way you did.

'Mr Powys.'

He rolled very slowly on to his back, pain prodding whatever was between his shoulder-blades, the place where Humble had hit him with the butt of the crossbow.

'It is you, isn't it? Joe?'

He focused on a face in the middle of a pale-coloured head scarf. He saw a woolly jumper. Below that some kind of kilt. Campbell tartan. Memory told him ridiculously.

'Mmmm…' Couldn't get the name out.

'It's Minnie Seagrove,' she said clearly. 'I want you to speak to me, please. Say something. I'm ever so confused tonight. I've been seeing Frank, and now it's bells. Bells everywhere.'

Powys came slowly to his feet. He didn't know about seeing Frank, but they couldn't both be hallucinating bells.

Mrs Seagrove gazed anxiously up at him, although she looked rather calmer than he felt. Behind her the Tump swelled like a tumour that grew by night. From out of the town can the wild pealing.

Powys was disoriented. He looked rapidly from side to side and then behind him. 'Where's…?'

'That's another thing, I'm afraid,' Minnie Seagrove said. 'I think I've killed the man with the… what do you call it?'

'What…?'

"Thank God. It's your voice. Here…' She pushed something into his hand – his lamp. 'I can't switch it on, it's got a funny switch on it.'

Powys switched it on, and the first thing it showed him on the ground was the crossbow. And then an outstretched, naked arm.

'Now just don't ask me how I got here,' Mrs Seagrove said 'because I don't know. It's been a very funny night, all told. But there you were, on the ground and this man with the thingy – crossbow – pointing it down at you – he had the lamp on – taking aim, like. I thought, Oh God, what can I do? And I came up behind him when the bells started, and it put him off, sort of thing, the bells starting up like that, so sudden. Put him off – just for a second. And I still wasn't sure any of it was really happening, do you understand? I thought, well, if it's a dream, no harm done, sort of thing, so I hit him. Is he dead, Joe? Can you tell?'

'I shouldn't think so, Minnie.' Powys kicked the crossbow out of the way and bent over Humble with the lamp, nervous of getting too close, ready to smash the lamp down in Humble's face if he moved.

He stood up, finally. 'Er… what exactly was it you hit him with?'

'He's dead, isn't he, Joe? Come on now, I don't want any flim-flam.'

'Well, yes. He is actually.'

The back of Humble's head was like soft Turkish Delight.

'Bring the light over here, please, Joe. It was like an iron bar. Only hollow. Like a pipe. I threw it down somewhere… Here…'

Powys crouched down. It was indeed a piece of pipe, with jagged rust at one end and blood at the other. He didn't touch it. It seemed likely that Humble, for all his strength and his spectacular night vision, was one of those people with a particularly thin skull.

'It isn't a dream, is it, Joe?'

'Well, not in the accepted sense, no. But really, I mean… don't worry about it.' He put his hands on her shoulders. 'You did save my life. He wasn't exactly what anybody would call a nice man. In fact, offhand, I can only think of one person who's actually nastier. No, maybe two, now.'

He thought of something else and played the beam over the weapon again. Experienced a moment of pure, liquid euphoria; wanted to laugh aloud.

It looked like the tip of Henry Kettle's exhaust pipe.

He kept quiet about it, all the same. Don't tie this thing down too hard to reality. She's keeping herself together because she isn't yet fully convinced it's not part of the dream,

like Frank. 'Look, Minnie, you didn't see a dog, did you? He he might have been hit, I don't know.'

'He ran off,' said Mrs Seagrove. 'He was off like the clappers, over that way.'

She pointed at the gap where the stone wall had been broken down.

'The one I mean is a black and white dog,' Powys said gently. 'Escaped from my car. Left the window open too wide. But he couldn't have been going like the clappers, he's only got three legs now. You remember, he was shot.'

'Yes, it was the same dog. Fay Morrison's dog. Joe, what going on? What's up with the bells?'

'God knows. Be nice to think it was a few of the townsfolk up in the tower, ringing every bell they've got as a sign they've finally woken up to something after a few centuries.'

He looked over his shoulder towards Crybbe Court, remembered the sparking under the eaves, like flints. Could see nothing now.

Which didn't mean a thing.

'Joe.'

'Mmm?'

'What's that?'

There was a ray of light playing among the trees on the Tump, flickering erratically.

And then a dog began to bark.

'Stay here,' Powys said.

'With him? Not likely.'

The dog was barking fiercely.

Powys watched the light moving among the trees

'Who is it, Joe?'

'I think it's one of those other people I mentioned who are even nastier than Humble.'

Mrs Seagrove said, 'You're frightened, aren't you, Joe?'

Alex had remembered who Kate Bush was now.

Dark hair and sort of slinky. Seen her on the box once, a few years ago, at young Fay's flat. Made the usual comments – if I was forty years younger, etc. – and the next day Fay had presented him with this T-shirt as a bit of a joke, and he'd become quite attached to the garment, made him feel youthful, having Kate Bush next to the skin.

Even tried to listen to the music…

Going up that hill… make a deal with God.

Alex was going down the hill, towards the river.

He stood on the bridge and stared down at the dark water.

'Rather funny, really,' he mused aloud to the river. 'Thought I was dead. Can you believe that?'