The light?
But just as she was beginning to feel ever so shimmery, as if those excess pounds had begun to float away and she could be as slim as a faun, gossamer-light, as beautiful as a May queen, as pure as a vestal virgin… just as the warmth spread over her tummy and down between her legs and she yearned to touch it… and just as she began to uncurl her arms from the pole…
'Stop!'
A bell rang, quite sharply.
Diane's neck arched, her arms still enfolded around the metal pole, her head thrown back, and, oh lord, the bus begin to move. It had been the bell which told the driver to start and stop. It had rung only once, but it kept on in Diane's head, a tiny, shiny ting.
And then her face was slapped.
Quite lightly, but it was done. A voice, crisp as the snapping of a wafer.
Don't you dare!
The other check was slapped, and this time it was not done lightly, but briskly and efficiently and it stung, spinning Diane around to look up, eyes wide and straining with shock, beyond the platform, along the deck of the bus.
'Who… who are you…?' Her voice faltered and she hugged the pole. It had not been an ordinary slap, and she went clammy with fright at what was beginning to happen.
For, along the deck, all the interior lightbulbs were coming on: small yellow ones in circular holders set into the carved metal ceiling just above the windows. The bulbs were feeble, nicotine-grimed, dust-filmed and fly-spattered.
And they didn't work. They didn't work anymore, those lights.
The lights that didn't work shone bleakly down on two rows of seats. They put a worn sheen on dark red vinyl. They reflected dully from chromed metal corners.
Diane began to blink in terror, wet with live sweat, lights where the lights were broken. Seats, where there weren't any seats. This was a Bolton Corporation bus again, which rattled and hissed down grim, twilit streets.
About halfway down the bus, there was a blur of presence, a haze of movement.
The bell rang again, ting. The scene froze. Clinging to the pole, Diane saw a grey finger curled in the air. There was a red push-button in the curved part of the roof, and a grey finger crooked over it.
The grind and hiss of faraway brakes, a smell of old polish, damp raincoats and perspiration.
The pole was cold in Diane's arms, cold against her cheek.
Come on now… pull… 'self… 'gether… not a baby.
The words happened in the air, like the brake-hiss. Diane saw a grey lady. Severe hair enclosing a face without features, only sternness. A hat. Large beads. The face was a swirling of grey, black and white particles, like blown cigarette ash.
Diane tried to pull herself to her feet, using the pole, but she couldn't feel her feet at all.
And the woman glided towards her along the bus's dusty aisle. Diane began to gasp convulsively with fear; the shiny pole misted from her breath.
None of… 'onsense now…
The voice was thin and fractured like a car-radio on FM during a storm in the hills. Diane sagged against the pole.
Sorrow settled in her chest. Sorrow received from the grey-woman, sorrow shimmering in the vagueness of her, in the half formed face like a scratched old photograph. The scent of old dust and lavender.
'Nanny…'
Essence of long-ago nights, pillows damp with tears, lonely little motherless girl in a house of cold leather, guns and uncompromising maleness.
Diane's arms pulled away from the pole at last and she came to her feet and reached out for the crumbling bundle of dusty, moth-ravaged fragments, as the lights in the bus died, one by one.
'Oh, Nanny…'
And she saw, in a comer, the yellow eyes in the mist. The eyes of her own hatred, the evil in her.
Diane felt her stomach shrivel in disgust. She just wasn't that kind of person. She had no natural aggression. She was the sort who ran away and hid and never wanted to harm anyone or anything.
… allow it, then…
'What?'
… take your… edicine, girl… swallow it'.
Diane closed her eyes.
Do it now! Now!
Diane opened her mouth.
She breathed it in.
And it filled her.
Inflating her checks, swelling her throat and then her breast, bloating her abdomen and finally throwing her to her knees, her arms outstretched like a legless, rocking doll.
So cold… so cold inside her that it froze her eyes wide and stiffened her tongue. She saw then her lower body had become luminous blue, radiating icy light, and she had no control over any of it, was aware of being squeezed out, reduced to a small, helpless fragment of consciousness, a particle of floating fear, only a moment away from ceasing to exist.
She watched her radiant body tossed on to its back on the filthy floor of the bus like an old mattress, was aware of the air corning out like vomit, in a long swooooosh, as if someone was sitting on her stomach.
Diane rolled over. It seemed as if she'd been separated from her body for a long time, but it must have been no more than a couple of seconds. It felt strange to want to move an arm and for that arm to move. She began to crawl, and as the energy returned so did the panic, in a rush.
The Dark Chalice glistened palely on the kitchen table.
'That's disgusting,' Powys said. The words sounding so trite and ludicrous he almost broke out laughing.
'Its base was of old, blackened oak, like the beams of Meadwell.
The wrists emerged from the oak like the stems of yellowing fungi. Whatever kept the bones of the hands and fingers together, it still held strong and the skeletal hands still gripped the bowl of bone, the upturned cranium.
'Who is it, Verity?'
Verity said nothing.
'Is this… I mean, is this the Abbot?'
Verity pulled the Safeway bag back over the horror.
She'd said vaguely that she must have found it by the side of the well. Where he'd placed it so that he would have both hands free to pull himself out.
Powys banished for ever an image that came to him of Verity, fresh from her discovery of murdered Woolly, kicking Oliver Pixhill's groping fingers from the rim of the well, shutting out his scream.
She came down from the bus in floods of tears. She didn't know if it was over. How was she ever going to know?
She saw Juanita and Don Moulder over by the gate. On the other side of it, Joe Powys stood with little Verity and Arnold the dog, who had brought the lightball into the cold heart of it all.
And then came a strange jolt in her breast.
He was shambling slowly across the field towards the bus, his head down as if he was scared to look at her. His buccaneer's hair was matted, he'd lost his famous earring.
Diane, full of tearful longing but still uncertain, looked back along the deck of the bus.
Go, said the Third Nanny.
She had a nice smile.
Epilogue
Prophecy is a dangerous trade, but we may hazard the guess that history will look back to our English Jerusalem as the cradle of many things that have gone on to enrich the spiritual heritage of our race.
Booksellers High Street
Glastonbury Prop. Juanita Carey 24 December Danny, OH GOD, Danny where do I start?
Where's it going to END? You'll have read the papers, seen the TV reports (all concentrating on the Pennard madness, nobody making the right connections) and I know Powys phoned you.
Maybe this is entirely superfluous. As usual, I don't know whether I'm writing to you or to myself. Today, I'm going to try to have a long talk with Diane. I've seen a lot of her, of course, but there's always been someone else there. Policemen. Her solicitor, Quentin Cotton.