Phil Rickman: Crybbe aka Curfew

'What did it really mean, though?' Powys said. 'Was it simply a quest for eternal power? Some kind of semi-physical immortally?'

You have to fracture the cool, he remembered telling himself. To damage this guy, you have to tip his balance, dislodge him from his mental lotus position. Even lying there, with unknown injuries, he can, maybe, still take you unawares.

'Or is it,' Powys said casually, 'just the ultimate ego-trip? Getting your end away from beyond the grave?'

He had to look away. The blackness from Andy's eyes came out like iron spikes.

Iron spikes. Images of Rose cruelly speared his own cool and he stared back into the eyes of the thing that had dispassionately manipulated their fate.

'I can't move,' Andy said suddenly, the first sign of human panic, 'I can't fucking move, Joe. I can't move my arms or legs. I'm fucking paralysed.'

'What I think…' Powys remembered conversations with Barry the osteopath, his neighbour in the Trackways building '… is your back was broken in the fall. You can obviously move your neck. What about your shoulders? Try shrugging your shoulders.'

Andy's shoulders convulsed. There was a sudden sheen of sweat on his body.

'How's your breathing?'

'I can breathe.'

'In that case,' Powys said slowly and callously, 'you'll probably be what's known as a tetraplegic. It won't be much fun, but no doubt a lot of innocent people'll be saved a lot of grief by your confinement in Stoke Mandeville or wherever you wind up.'

'You're a worthless piece of shit, Joe.'

'Me? I'm shit?'

'You couldn't even kill me.'

'You're safer like this. Dead, you could be a problem.'

Andy turned his head and looked into the eye-sockets of Black Michael. As an exercise in mummification, Powys thought, Michael had turned out to be rather less impressive than Tiddles.

He said, 'Where are the other bits buried?'

'Why should I tell you that?'

'The head, naturally, was in the Tump. Did you ever go into the Tump? Physically, I mean.'

'No.'

'And the genitals are under the Cock. Walled up somewhere in the cellars, I'd guess, somewhere directly beneath that passageway leading to the studio. The heart under the church – is there a crypt?'

Andy didn't reply.

'And who would have buried your bits, Andy, after the hanging? Humble?'

'Where is Humble? Occurring to Andy, perhaps, that there might be more wrong than he knew.

Powys said, 'What's happening down in the town? What's on fire?'

'Not my problem,' Andy said.

'You're beyond me.' He was getting impatient. And nervous. He was face to face with the man who'd smashed his life and all he wanted to do was get out of here. Call an ambulance, anonymously. Man with a broken back. Tried to hang himself. Take him away.

Yet there were things he had to know.

'Look… I mean… For Christ's sake, why? Is your mother behind this?'

'What?'

'Jean Wendle.'

Andy laughed. It wasn't a very strong laugh, suggesting his breathing was not, after all, unaffected. 'There's no blood link between Jean and me. She's my spiritual mother, if you like. It's a concept you wouldn't understand.'

'Which of you is the descendant, then?'

'Listen… Jean had been studying Wort for years, right? There's almost… this kind of Michael Wort Society. Very exclusive, Joe. Not for the New Age morons. Not for the wankers. Not for the… authors of popular trash books. Not for the… the fucking popularisers. For the Few. And now…'

Andy began to cough.

'I can't feel that,' he said. 'I can't feel it in my guts, you know?'

'And now… what?'

'The New Age.' He gave a short, wheeze of a laugh. 'Suddenly this… worldwide movement dedicated to throwing esoteric knowledge at the masses. Max Goff – millions of pounds to…'

'So you hijacked Goff?'

'Well put. Yeah, I hijacked Goff. He loved me. In all kinds of ways.'

'To provide the money and the psychic energy you needed to condition Crybbe for the Second Coming of Black Michael.'

Andy grimaced. 'Let's get this right, there was no Second Coming. We were just completing Michael's plan. I've had access to all his papers since I was sixteen, and to the people who could explain what it all meant. And then it got to the stage where I knew more than any of them. We were completing the plan. Patching up the damage John Dee did. Also, removing the Preece problem and altering the psychic climate.'

'Stirring things up. Emotional conflict. Anger, bitterness and confusion.'

'We awoke the place,' Andy said, 'from centuries of sleep. An unhealthy, drugged sort of sleep. Psychic Mogadon, self administered. I've been planting little time bombs, like… OK, I took a job for a few months, teaching art at the local high school. I wanted a girl. I wanted to take a girl living in Crybbe and turn her. There was a perfect one – I mean, this happens, Joe, there's always somebody there who fits, and she was entirely perfect. I worked with this kid over a year. I taught her to paint, I mean really paint…'

'In your studio. In the wood.'

'Sure. I taught her the arts. The real arts. You give them a little at that age, they become quite insatiable. She was a natural. She can make paintings that become doorways… But that's something else. Also, I used her… to penetrate the Preece clan. And in the heart of the Crybbe household, I – well, Michael and I – we created the most wonderful little monster, a creature entirely without heart, dedicated to destruction. In the heart of the Preece household. Again, ripe for it. Warren Preece. Maybe you'll meet him. Everybody ought to meet Warren.'

'You're a scumbag, Andy,' Powys said.

'So kill me,' Andy said quietly.

There was silence in the little well-like cell, its ceiling jaggedly open to the attic.

'You still got that bread knife? Kill me. Cut my throat. It's that easy. Even Warren managed to cut Max Goff's throat tonight, with a Stanley knife.'

'What?'

'You didn't know about Max? He was killed in the public meeting during a power cut. It was quite beautiful. And perhaps the most beautiful thing of all is that when this is all over, who's going to get the blame for this orgy of destruction? The New Age movement. You've got to laugh. Warren says that. Got to laugh.'

Powys said coldly, 'You're insane. Your brains have turned to shit. I'll get you an ambulance.'

'No, you'll kill me, Joe.'

'Like I said, I wouldn't trust you dead.'

'You'll kill me. Look, you're squeamish about knives, use the rope. Strangle me. No hassle. I'm weak, I'll go easy. It'll just look like I hanged myself and the rope broke.'

He'd almost forgotten the noose still hanging loosely around Andy's neck. Hesitantly, he walked across, began to remove the rope, trying not to touch Andy's skin. 'Just in case you're lying about not being able to move your arms. Hate you to try and do it yourself.'

Andy grinned, white teeth exploding through the beard.

'Do it!'

'No.'

'OK, something you didn't know. Rose, right? Poor spiked little Rosie. And the baby was spiked too, yeah? Your baby, Joe?'

Powys shook his head. 'I've got past that. I don't want to kill you for that. I'm happy you're going to be a paraplegic or a tetraplegic. I hope your breathing degenerates, you'll be even safer in an iron lung.'

'It wasn't your baby, Joe.'

His hands froze on the rope.

'I'd been fucking Rose quite intensively for several months. I've always found I can get any woman, any man… I want. Part of the Wort legacy, if you will. Also, it was my understanding that, come bedtime, the great visionary writer's creative imagination would tend to go into abeyance, and so…'

Powys wrenched down the noose, jerked Andy's head back, slammed the knot tight into the back of the neck. Andy grinned up at him; even the whites of his eyes were almost black.