Juanita heard none of this. She was listening to only one voice and that voice came from far inside her and it was saying. Just get her out of here. Get her away.
Diane was wrapped in Juanita's coat – so much weight gone now that it almost fitted. Her feet sliding about in the clumping shoes Juanita had snatched from Ceridwen's corpse. Diane seemed completely fogged, walking, head bowed, between Juanita and Powys, Arnold hopping ahead of them, Juanita wondering if anyone else had seen the ball of light in the dog's mouth or heard that headmistressy voice: Fetch!
Occasionally, without looking up, Diane giggled. Sister Dunn and her drugs. Drugs that might keep you permanently at that stage between waking and sleeping when, as DF put it, the etheric so easily extrudes. Drugs which might make it difficult to absorb the full emotional impact of your father discharging his shotgun into the admittedly unloved face of your only brother.
Juanita had seen this happen from behind, feeling a light splash of something like lukewarm soup on her forehead, refusing to give in to the nausea, concentrating on Diane.
Who, as they were approaching Wellhouse Lane across the field, stopped at a stile.
Juanita followed her eyes. They were just a hedge and a gate away from Don Moulder's infamous bottom field, Juanita caught her breath. In one corner was parked a black bus. She turned away at once and, for the first time, Diane's eyes met hers and an odd, mute plea passed between them, the struggle of something attempting to surface.
Juanita glanced quickly at Powys.
The glance said, Leave us.
Be careful,' Powys said.
There was a wintry silence around Meadwell.
The gate seemed to click against it when Powys lifted the latch. He saw the house door hanging open, but he didn't go in.
Verity was standing on the path, a rigid porcelain doll in a body-warmer.
She saw him, bit her lip. And then beckoned, turning away to walk across the lawn to the wilderness part, and Arnold set off after her, which was curious.
The air was icy-still and the tower on the Tor seemed suspended in milky light. Verity led Powys to the concrete plinth, a perfectly circular black hole in it now. A rusting cast-iron lid lay amid the rubble.
So Oliver Pixhill had done it. Feeling so tired he could hardly stand, Powys contemplated the final irony of a Dark Chalice liberated into a world where the only remaining Ffitch had tripped over from airy-fairy to obscenely possessed.
Verity said nothing. From the wet grass to one side, she produced a big, red, rubber-covered flashlight and handed it to Powys.
He knelt above the hole and shone it down, recoiling at once, looking up at Verity.
'Oliver Pixhill,' she said.
'Dead?'
'He… he was down there when the tremor came. That is, I suppose… Perhaps he lost his balance.'
He glanced back down the well, without the light. All you could see was a white hand, fingers bent.
What did it mean?
'Most likely he was waiting for the dawn, Verity. He had to bring the Chalice out at dawn. At that moment. It was as if they knew about the earth tremor. Or that something would happen.'
He was thinking of the alignment of the Tor, Meadwell, Bowermead. The reservoir precisely on it. The way the road had been dug out. The way the trees had been taken out. A build-up of violence.
'Maybe they needed to unblock the well in advance, like you let old wine breathe for a while.'
But what they really needed was for Verity to lay down her defences and invite Grainger in to do it. The little woman was as much a part of the defence system as the binding ritual itself. She had to be gently defused, like a bomb.
'Getting you out of the house was a last resort,' he said.
'But if you hadn't responded to Wanda's invitation, they'd have had to use a blunter instrument.'
Verity winced. But he knew that Oliver Pixhill could never have killed Verity. Such a forcefield surrounding her, the little woman who could not See.
'Have you called the police?'
'Oh. No. I've been praying. With Mr Woolaston.'
'Woolly…?'
She let him in through the back door so he wouldn't have to see Woolly, whose battered body she'd sat beside for perhaps two hours. Unconcerned about the smells, the atmosphere of brutal violence. She'd lived in the ever-darkening Meadwell; she did not See. Powys couldn't believe how strong she was.
Surprisingly, Arnold followed him in.
A plastic bag stood upside down, covering something on the table. On the hag, it said, SAFEWAY.
He swallowed. He was very scared. Rose light dribbled in from the high window, tinting the bulging white walls with the effect of watered blood.
'Don't you go near it, Mr Powys,' Verity said.
He stared at it, bitter and sickened Whatever it was.
Woolly had died for it. Beaten to death with a brick. The bag went in and out of focus. He wanted to find that same brick and hammer the Chalice flat.
'We should never have left him,' he said. 'We should've called the police.'
'No. It was my fault, if anyone's. I should have stayed. It was my duty.'
'And then you'd have been…' He shook his head. 'We were expecting Grainger. We didn't know what we were dealing with.'
'I must have arrived quite soon after… That is, I didn't know he was still here. There was just the hole. I thought he'd gone. I thought it was too late. I went back to the house and sat with Mr Woolaston. Praying.'
How could she explain any of this to the police? Still, someone would have to try.
'Do you wish to see it, Mr Powys?'
'Why not?' he said wearily.
Verity grasped the ears of the plastic bag and tugged.
Arnold sat at the foot of the table and growled, but didn't move, as Powys looked, with revulsion, at the Dark Chalice.
Don Moulder unlocked the bus, pulled back the rusted sliding door.
When Juanita tried to follow Diane, she shook her head.
She took off Juanita's coat, handed it to her.
Moulder's eyes widened at the long, black nightdress.
'What's she gonner do?' He watched Diane as she stepped from the platform into the body of the bus. 'Because that buzz, look, that buzz is full of evil, Mrs Carey, I don't care what anybody says.'
'In that case come away, Don. We'll wait over by the gate. Whatever happens you don't want to see it, do you?'
'I don't understand none o' this no more.' He was wheezing a bit, looking starved. 'Tis a black day, Mrs Carey. You coulder sworn that ole tower, he were gonner go, look. Swayed, like in a gale. Some masonry come down, they d' say. The Bishop, his face was as white as his collar, look. You had the feeling we was barely… barely a breath away from… I dunno… the end of it. The ole sky changin' colour, night a-changin' back to day and day to night. I never, all my years at this farm, never seen nothin' like it.'
Diane appeared at the bus door. She sat on the platform and took off Ceridwen's shoes, tossed them on to the grass.
Then she went back.
It happened very quickly. Almost as soon as she entered the bus, she knew it was waiting for her.
It was just as she'd last seen it. The seat and the couch bolted to the floor, the cast-iron stove, the filthy windows you could hardly see out of. This was where something began.
'Oh!' A sudden stomach cramp made her double up and then fall to her knees. The pain was briefly horrible and when it ebbed she found she had both arms curled around the bus pole. She felt like Ulysses, when he lashed himself to the ship's mast to prevent him responding to the call of the Sirens.
When the sob came, it seemed to have travelled a long way. All the way from North Yorkshire. In a white delivery van with pink spots.
Diane hugged herself to the pole. The sob seemed to make the pole quiver and the whole bus tremble. At some point, it had begun to creak, its chassis groaning as if in some frightful arthritic pain. Diane clung to the pole, she and the bus bound together in the longing for release. The dark air seemed to be rushing past as she and the old bus strained to shed their burdensome bulk, to soar serenely towards…