Crybbe (AKA Curfew) (57 page)

   
Jean Wendle turned serious,
quizzical eyes on Fay.

   
'Tell me about yesterday. In
the church. Tell me what that was all about.'

   
Fay sighed. It seemed so long
ago. And, in retrospect, so foolish. Also, it said too much about her state of
mind that even when Jean had turned in the pew to look at her, she was still seeing
somebody else.

   
'It's very silly,' she said. 'I
thought you were Grace Legge - that's my father's late wife.'

   
Jean Wendle nodded, showed no
surprise at all. 'You've been seeing this woman?'

   
'Once. I think. I mean, how can
anyone say for sure? They don't really exist do they, only in our minds.'

   
'That depends.'
   
'On what we mean by existing, I
suppose. Well, all I can say is that, whatever it was, I'm not anxious to see
it again.'
   
Jean smiled. She was, Fay thought, the
sort of woman - sharp, poised - you wouldn't mind being like when you were older.
That is, you wouldn't mind so much being older if you were this relaxed.

   
'I don't quite know what came
over me. You were just so completely still that the thought occurred to me that
there was nobody at all sitting next to Dad, but
I
was seeing Grace.'

   
Jean said, 'The time you really
did see her - when you saw - whatever it was you saw - where was this?'

   
'In the house. In the office,
which used to be her "best" room. The room that, when she was alive, I
suppose she thought of as her sacred place - so neat and perfect because nobody
really used it. Maybe she thought this room had been violated by my desk and
the equipment and everything. Or maybe I
thought
she'd be angry and so I conjured up this fantasy . . .'
   
'You don't think that for one minute,'
Jean said.
   
'No,' Fay admitted. 'All right, I
don't think that.'
   
'Then please, only tell me what you
do
think. And stop looking at me as
though you're wondering what I might change you into.'

   
'Miss Wendle . . .'
   
'Jean.'

   
'Jean. Look, I'm sorry, but it
gets you like this after a while, Crybbe. I've been here nearly a year, and it
gets to you.'

   
'You mean you can't relate to
the people here. You don't understand what makes them tick.'

   
'Do you?'

   
'Well, I think . . .' Jean lit
the cigar at last. 'People talk a lot about energy. Energy lines, ley-lines.
Trying to explain it scientifically. Makes them seem less like cranks if
they're talking about earth energies and life forces.'

   
She inhaled deeply, blew out a
lot of blue smoke.

   
'The pronouncements of New Age
folk are wrapped up in too much glossy jargon. Concealing massive ignorance.'

   
'What are you doing in Crybbe,
then, if you think it's all bullshit?'

   
'Oh, it isn't
all
bullshit, not by any means. And at
least they're searching. Trying to reach out, as it were. Which itself generates
energy. In fascinating contrast to the natives, who appear to be consciously
trying not to expend any at all. And perhaps to the electricity company, who
can't seem to summon sufficient to see us through an entire day.'

   
'I'm sorry. What are you
saying?'

   
'I'm saying that perhaps the
people of this town are as they are because they've known for generations what
a psychically unstable area this is, and most people - sadly, in my view - are afraid
to confront the supernatural and all it implies. For instance, I should be very
surprised if you were the only person who was seeing the shades of the dead in
this town.'

   
Fay shivered slightly at that.
The shades of the dead
. . . sounded
almost beautiful. But Grace wasn't.

   
'I try to avoid letting
anything get touched by the dead hand of science or indeed pseudo-science,'
Jean said. 'But let's suppose that in certain places certain forms of energy collect.
Our friend Joe Powys says in his book that the border country is . . . Have you
read it?'

   
'The psychic departure lounge.'

   
'Yes, and poor Henry Kettle,
the dowser, couldn't abide such terminology because he was really awfully
superstitious and terrified of admitting it."

   
'Nothing psychic.'

   
Jean waved her cigar. 'A terrible
old humbug, may he rest in light. Henry, of course, was just about as psychic
as anyone can get. Anyway, your ghost. Grace. Did she speak?'

   
'Not a word.'

   
'And she didn't move?'

   
'No.'

   
'Harmless, then.'

   
'I'm so glad,' Fay said
sceptically.

   
'Can I explain?'

   
'Please do.'

   
'OK, if we stick to our scientific
terminology, then pockets of energy can accumulate in certain volatile areas,
and in such areas, the spirits of the dead, usually in a most rudimentary form,
may appear. Like a flash of static electricity. And they go out just as
quickly. Or you'll get sounds. Or smells.'

   
'The scent of fresh-cut lilies
or something.'

   
'Or fresh shit,' Jean said
harshly. 'It depends.'

   
'I'm sorry. I wasn't flippant
when it was happening to me.'

   
'I doubt you were,' Jean said. 'All
right, sights or sounds or smells - or tastes even. Rarely anything
simultaneous, because there's rarely sufficient energy to support it. If there
was a massive accumulation of it then one might have a complete sensory
experience.'

   
'I only saw her. And it was
cold. It went cold.'

   
'Energy loss,' Jean said. 'Quite
normal. So, if I may give you some advice, if you should see your Grace again,
blink a couple of times. . . and she'll be gone. She can't talk to you, she
can't see you; there's no brain activity there. Entirely harmless.'

   
'Not pleasant, though,' Fay said,
reluctant to admit feeling better about the idea of Grace as a mindless
hologram.

   
'No,' Jean said, 'the image of
a dead person is rarely pleasant, but it's not as much of a problem as these
damned power cuts.'

   
'You really think that's
connected?'

   
'Oh, it has to be. Psychic
activity causes all kinds of electrical anomalies. Voltage overloads, or
whatever they call them. Sometimes people will find they have terrific
electricity bills they can't explain, and the electricity people will come
along and check the meters and the feeds, and they'll say, "We're really sorry,
madam, but you must have consumed it, our equipment cannot lie." The truth
is the householders may not have used it. but something has.'

   
Fay remembered poor Hereward
Newsome and his astronomical bills.

   
'But your wee ghost,' Jean
said, 'is the least of your problems here. Sporadic psychic activity on that level
isn't enough to cause power fluctuations on the Crybbe scale. Whatever's happening,
there's much more that needs to be explained before you can get close to it.'

   
'You've been very reassuring,'
Fay said. 'Thank you. I'm also very impressed with what you're doing for Dad.
He's almost his old self again. I mean, do you really think there any hope of .
. . ?'

   
'I never discuss my patients,'
Jean said severely.

   
By the time Fay left Jean
Wendle's house, the sun had vanished behind an enormous black raincloud and she
hurried down the street to make it home before the rain began again.

   
She saw Guy across the square,
followed by his cameraman with the camera clamped to his shoulder and a tripod
under his arm. Guy made as if to cross the road towards her, but Fay raised a
hand in passing greeting and hurried on. She couldn't face Guy this morning.

   
'Fay,' someone said quietly.
   
She turned her head and then stopped.
   
Blink a couple of times, Jean Wendle
had advised, but this apparition didn't disappear.
   
'Joe,' she said.

   
He looked terrible, bags under
hopeless eyes, hair like cigarette ash.

   
They had to let me go,' he
said, insufficient evidence.'
   
Fay said nothing.
   
'Can we talk?'

   
'Maybe it's not a good time,'
Fay heard herself say. 'I don't think you killed Rachel, let's just leave it at
that for now.'

   
Which was the last thing she
wanted to do. She bit her upper lip.

   
'They had you in, presumably,'
he said.
   
'Yes.'

   
'And they told you about Rose.'
   
'Yes.'

   
'And that's why you don't want
to talk about it.'
   
'Look,' Fay said. 'I've lost the only
real friend I had in this town, I
desperately
want to talk about it, I just. . .'
   
'It wasn't an accident,' Powys said.
   
'What?'

   
'It wasn't an accident. After
she fell, something else came out.'

   
'What are you saving?
   
'A cat.'

   
Fay looked at him. There was
something seriously abnormal about all this. About Joe Powys, too.

   
'I don't mean a live cat. This
one's been dead for centuries.'
   
'Tiddles,' Fay said faintly, getting a
picture of black eye-sockets and long sabre-teeth

   
And her.
She
was becoming abnormal. She had to get out of here.

   
'Cats that've been dead for
hundreds of years don't hurl themselves three storeys to the ground while
somebody puts on a light-show under the eaves.'

   
'Hallucination,' Fay said.

   
'No.'

   
Fay thought about Jean Wendle
and the energy anomalies, about Grace, about the curfew and the howling and the
town with no dogs.

   
Joe said, 'Can you spare the
rest of the day?'

   
No! she wanted to shriek and
then to push past him and run away down the street and keep running.

   
'I might have a job. I have to
go home and talk to my father and check the answering machine.'

   
'If it turns out you're free,
can I pick you up? Say, twenty minutes?'

   
Would that be entirely safe?
she wanted to ask. Am I going to be all right as long as I stay away from open
windows?
   
'All right, 'she said.

CHAPTER V

They said, Don't, leave town. Or words to that effect.'
   
Joe Powys floored the accelerator.
   
'Fuck them,' he said.
   
Fay tried to smile.

   
They'd left Crybbe on a road
she wasn't too familiar with, the road into Wales by way of Radnor Forest,
which didn't seem to be a forest at all but a range of hills.

   
He hadn't said where they were
going.

   
She didn't care. She felt apart
from it all, in a listless kind of dream state. She was watching a movie about
a woman who was out for a drive with a murderer. But in films like this, the woman
had no reason to suspect the man was a murderer, only the viewers knew that;
they'd seen him kill, she hadn't. The woman in this particular movie had a
black and white three-legged dog on her knee. Must be one of those
experimental, surrealist epics.

   
The car moved out of an avenue
of trees into a spread of open, sheep-strewn hills with steep, wooded sides and
hardly any houses.

   
Before they left she'd written
a note for her dad, fed the cats and listened to the answering machine, which
said
, 'Hi, Fay, this is James Barlow from
Offa's Dyke. Just to say we understand Max Goff's coming back to Crybbe and
he'll probably be holding a press conference around four this afternoon,
following this Rachel Wade business. But don't worry about it, Gavin says to
tell you he'll be going over there himself. . .'