Crybbe aka Curfew

'Let's not mess about any more,' Fay said. 'We're not kids. We've both had some distinctly unpleasant experiences in this town. Let's not be clever, or pseudo-scientific about this. Let's not talk about light effects or atmospheric anomalies. I've had it with all that bullshit. So. In simple, colloquial English, what's actually happening here?'

She looked down on Crybbe. The sky had run out of sunlight, and it was once again a mean, cramped little town surrounded by pleasant, rolling countryside, to which the inhabitants seemed entirely oblivious. Almost as if they were deliberately turning their backs on it all, living simple, functional lives on the lowest practical level, without joy, without beauty, without humour, without any particular faith, without…

'I've had a thought about the Crybbe mentality,' Fay said. 'But you're the expert, you go first.'

'OK,' Powys said. 'This is what I think. I reckon Andy's got hold of a collection of family papers – may have had them years for all I know – relating to Wort's experiments. Some of them seem to have been written by an outsider, perhaps John Dee, relating how Wort came to visit him – in spirit – using what he calls the "olde road".'

'Wort was haunting him?'

'No, I think Wort was alive then. I'd guess he'd found a way… You said you wanted this straight…?'

'Yes, yes, go on.'

'OK. A way to project his spirit – that's his astral body – along the leys, in much the same way as it's suggested the old shamans used to do it, or at least believed they could do it.'

'The psychic departure lounge.' said Fay.

'Glib, but it wasn't far out. And I've seen a transcript of the so-called regression of Catrin Jones. The character assumed by Catrin seems to be suggesting that not only was the sheriff bonking her – and quite a few other women – on a fairly regular basis in his physical body, but that he was also able to observe them while not actually there in the flesh.'

'Quite a bastard.'

Powys nodded. 'And in conclusion she says something on the lines of, "He swears he'll never leave me… never." Which suggests to me that Wort believed he would still be able to use these spirit paths, these astral thoroughfares, after his death. Except there's something stopping him, so he can only actually manifest as a… black dog or whatever.'

'The curfew.'

'Every night at ten o'clock somebody goes up the church tower and rings the curfew bell one hundred times, and when the bell sounds, the energy which has been gathering along the leys is released and dissipated. We know this happens, we've both experienced it.'

Fay stood up, held out a hand. 'Come on. I'll tell you my theory about the Crybbe mentality.'

She led him a few paces along the footpath, Arnold hobbling along between them, until the town square came into view, the buildings so firmly defined under the mouldering sky that she felt she could reach out and pinch slates from the roofs. They stood on the ridge and watched a school bus stop in the square. A Land Rover pulling a trailer carrying two sheep had to wait behind the bus. Traffic chaos hits Crybbe.

Fay extended an arm, like a music-hall compere on the edge of a stage.

'Miserable little closed-in town, right? Sad, decrepit, morose.'

'Right,' said Powys, cautiously.

'The border mentality,' Fay shouted into the wind. 'Play your cards close to your chest. Don't take sides until you know who's going to win. Here in Crybbe the whole attitude intensified, and it operates on every level. Particularly spiritual.'

A big crow landed on the wicket gate and watched them.

Powys said, thoughtfully, 'But there isn't any noticeable spirituality in Crybbe.'

'Precisely. You've seen them in church, sitting there like dummies. Drives Murray mad. But they're just keeping their heads down. Never take sides until you know who's winning. Doesn't matter who the sides are. The Welsh or the English. Good or evil.'

Fay's cagoule rose up from the ground in the wind, and the crow flew off the gate, cawing. Fay went back and scooped up the cagoule.

Powys said, 'Strength in apathy?'

'Joe, look… being a vicar's daughter isn't all about keeping your frock clean and not pinching the cream cakes at the fete. You learn a few things. Confrontation between good and evil is high-octane stuff. The risks are high, so most people stay on the sidelines. Even vicars… What am I saying?… Especially vicars. But maybe it's harder to do that in Crybbe because the psychic pressure is so much greater, so they have to keep their heads even lower down.'

'Neither good nor evil can thrive in a place without a soul. Who was it said that?'

'Probably you. More to the point, "We don't like clever people round yere." Who said that?'

'Wynford Wiley. The copper.'

'Well, there you are. We don't like clever people. Says it all, doesn't it.'

'Does it?'

'Yes… because, for centuries, Crybbe's been avoiding making waves, disturbing the psychic ether or whatever you call it. If anybody happens to see a ghost, they keep very quiet about it until it goes away. Don't do anything to encourage them, don't give them any… energy to play with. If they see the black dog, they try and ignore it, they don't want it to get ideas above its station. How am I doing so far?'

'Go on.'

'Traditionally, dogs react to spirits, don't they? Dogs howl, right? Dogs howl when someone dies because they can see the spirit drifting away. So, in Crybbe, dogs simply get phased out. Maybe they've even forgotten why they don't like them, but traditions soon solidify in a place like this. The dogs, the curfew, there may be others we don't know anything about. But. anyway, suddenly…'

'The town's flooded with clever people. Max Goff and his New Agers.'

'Absolutely the worst kind of clever people,' said Fay. 'Dabblers in this and that.'

The rain came in on the breeze. Pulling on the blue cagoule. Fay looked down into the town and saw that the air appeared motionless down there; it was probably still quite humid in the

shadow of the buildings.

'It's hard to believe,' Powys said, 'that Andy didn't know about all this when he planted on Goff the idea of establishing a New Age centre in Crybbe. Especially if he's a descendant of Michael Wort. He'd know it could generate a psychic explosion down there, and maybe… Christ…'

He took Fay's hand and squeezed it. The hand felt cold.

'… maybe generate enough negative energy to invoke Michael Wort in a more meaningful form. Get him beyond the black dog stage. Of course he bloody knew.'

'In just over three hours' time,' Fay said, 'the public meeting begins. Crybbe versus the New Age. Lots of very negative energy there.'

PART EIGHT

Let us forget about evil. This does not exist. What does

exist is imbalance, and when you are severely

imbalanced, particularly in the negative direction, you

can behave in very' extreme and unpleasant ways.

DAVID ICKE,

Love Changes Everything

CHAPTER I

Even for Crybbe the night was rising early.

It rose from within the shadowed places. In the covered alleyway behind the Cock. Beneath the three arches of the river bridge. In the soured, spiny woodland which skirted where the churchyard ended with a black marble gravestone identifying the place where Grace Legge, beloved wife of Canon A. L. Peters was presumed to rest.

It filtered from the dank cellars of the buildings hunched around the square like old, morose drinking companions.

It was nurtured in the bushes at the base of the Tump.

It began to spread like a slow stain across the limp, white canopy of the sky, tinting it a deep and sorrowful grey.