Phil Rickman - Crybbe aka Curfew

'Oh, now, look…!'

'I'm trying to keep calm, Colonel.'

'I'm sorry. This is beyond me. Some kind of gas, I suspect.'

'Colonel…'

'Col.'

'Col. Forget about gas. Please listen. First of all, I think Preece is dead. Stroke, heart attack maybe, I don't know about these things. But I do know Max Goff was killed by Warren Preece, you know who I mean?'

'The grandson. Punkish type. Where is he?'

'He's hurt. He's badly burned. There was a fire. In the church.'

'Are you serious?'

'Yes, I know, you can't see any flames. But you can't see anything else either, can you?'

Col gripped her arm. He wanted to feel she was real.

'Please don't,' she said. 'I've got a burn.'

'I'm sorry, but this… Jesus.'

'Just listen. If you think this is mad, don't say anything. Just walk away and keep it to yourself.'

He tried to see her eyes, but all he could make out was the white of her face. 'OK,' he said.

'On this night,' Fay Morrison said. 'And I mean this night, this actual night, exactly four hundred years ago, a large number of people gathered in the square, where we are now, trying to decide what to do about the High Sheriff, who'd taken to hanging men and compelling their wives to have sex with him. And there were various other alleged examples of antisocial behaviour even by sixteenth-century standards that I won't go into now. But the bottom line is the people of this town decided they'd taken enough.'

He would have stopped her, he was in no mood for a long history lecture, but he supposed he'd given his word he'd listen to what she had to say.

'You can imagine the scene,' she said. 'A bit of a rabble, not exactly organized. Not much imagination, but angry and scared, too. Only finding courage in numbers, you know the kind of thing. So they march on Crybbe Court, flaming torches, the full bit. And there are a lot of them, and it really wasn't something this Sheriff would have expected. Not the border way. Keep your heads down, right? Don't make waves. But they did – for once. They made waves. They surrounded the Court and they said to the servants, men-at-arms, whatever,

"You send this bastard out or we're going to burn this place down." Maybe they set light to a barn or something to reinforce the threat, but, anyway, it was pretty clear to the Sheriff by now that he was in deep shit.'

From somewhere close to what he imagined was the centre of the square, Col could hear Graham Jarrett, the hypnotist guy, shouting, 'You're taking absolutely the wrong attitude, you know.'

'He seems to have gone into the attic,' Fay said, 'and topped himself.'

'Hear him out, will you?' a woman bawled. Sounded like that astrologer Oona Jopson, shorn head, ring through nose, who'd threatened to emasculate the doormen.

Fay said, 'What you have to remember about this particular Sheriff is that he was skilled in what I'm afraid we have to call the Black Arts. Except he thought it was science.' She paused. 'Do you want me to stop?'

'I'm not laughing,' Col said. 'Am I?'

'I'll carry on then. Before he hanged himself. Or while he was hanging himself – I mean, don't think I'm an expert on this stuff, I'm not – but, anyway, he left something of himself behind. It's called a haunting, Col. Still with me?'

'Open mind,' Col said. 'Go on.'

'It wasn't a spur-of-the-moment job. He'd been planning this for a long time. Dropped hints to his women. Expect more of the same when I'm gone.'

'Look,' Graham Jarrett was shouting, 'if you'll all just quieten down a minute, we'll do a bit of reasoning out. But I think we've been selected as participants in a wonderful, shared experience that's really at the core of what most of us have been striving for over many years.'

'And here we are… panicking!' the Jopson woman piped up. 'Well, I'm not panicking, I've never been so excited.'

Guy Morrison shouted, 'What about poor bloody Goff? He didn't look too excited. He looked a bit bloody dead to me.'

'Yeah, but was he?' Jopson. 'Is he? I mean, how much of that was for real? How much of what we perceive is actual reality?'

Col Croston said, 'Jesus Christ.'

'It smells so awful,' the woman from the crafts shop, which now sold mainly greetings cards, said.

'It smells awful to us, that's all. Or only to you, maybe. To me, it's a wonderful smell. It smells of reality, not as it is to us these days, with our dull senses and our tired taste-buds and our generally limited perception of everything. What we're feeling right now is the essence of this place. I mean, shit, it is… this is higher consciousness.'

'And is she right?' Col asked Fay Morrison in a low voice.

'What do you think?'

'I think she's nuts.'

Guy said, 'Has anybody tried just walking away from here in any direction, just carrying on walking until they find an open door or somebody with a torch or a lamp?'

'My…' There was the sound of some struggling. 'Give me some space.' It was Jocasta Newsome. 'My husband… he said he was going to get help. He's… I can't find him.'

'Don't worry,' Graham Jarrett said. 'He'll be around. I don't think he can go anywhere, you see, I don't think anyone can. I don't think there's any light to be found.'

'I think there is, Graham,' a new voice said. A cool, dark voice. Lazy.

'Who's that? Is that Andy?'

Col Croston heard Fay Morrison inhale very sharply through her mouth.

'I think,' the dark voice said, 'that we should consider how we can find our own light.'

'Who's that?' Col whispered.

'Boulton-Trow.'

'I don't think I know him.'

'I mentioned him during the meeting. You haven't forgotten that, have you?'

'Oh,' said Col. 'That.'

Her outburst. It occurred lo Col that there was something personal at the back of this. That Fay Morrison had some old probably sexual score to settle with Boulton-Trow. Anyway, it was all rather too much for a practical man to take. He had to reassemble his wits and get to a phone.

'Well, thank you, Mrs Morrison,' Col said. 'You've given me a lot of food for thought.'

'Col, it has to be food for action, or something unbelievably awful's going to happen.'

'Look,' Col said 'I'll come back to you, OK?'

'No, don't go…'

But he'd gone

'Oh, please. Fay Morrison breathed into the foul-smelling dark. 'Please…'

The dog was in a pool of light on the side of the Tump where the grass looked almost white, and the dog was barking nonstop.

'Wait,' Joe Powys whispered to Minnie Seagrove. 'Don't go any closer. Stay out of the light.'

He moved quietly around the base of the Tump to see what was happening, who it was. Don't look at me, Arnold. I'm not here. Ignore me.

There was a single spotlight directed at the mound from the field, on the side facing the road, the side from which Henry Kettle had come on his last ride in his clapped-out old Volkswagen Variant.

The light went out. The dog stopped barking.

Powys waited.

He heard a vehicle door slam. Moved closer. Saw a match flare and then the red glow on the end of a cigarette.

'Well,' a voice said, 'you buggered yourself yere all right, boy.'

'Gomer! Mrs Seagrove had appeared at Powys's side. 'It's Gomer Parry!'

'Oh Christ,' they heard, and an orange firefly crash-landed in the field.

'Gomer. It's Minnie Seagrove. You replaced my drains.'

'Flaming hell, woman, what you tryin' to do, scare the life out of me? Ruddy dog was bad enough. Hang on a second.'

Two small lights appeared in the front of what proved to be a tractor with an unwieldy digger contraption overhanging the cab. Powys had last seen it parked in the square.

He whispered, 'Ask him if he's alone.'