The doorway of Meadwell was like a fissure in an ancient tree. She vanished into it like an elf. He followed her.
Arnold didn't. Arnold shuffled around on the path, looking uncomfortable.
'OK,' Powys said. 'What's wrong?'
Arnold's first peculiar reaction had been when they turned into the Meadwell drive. Two yew trees meeting overhead, gnarled, full-bellied trees knotted with parasites.
And Arnold had started to pant. When the house came into view, with its weathered stone, mullioned windows and leafless creepers like torn fishing nets on the rocks, the dog had begun to whine. He'd been OK once they got into the field, but he wouldn't go near the well.
Dowser's dog. Arnold used to go out with Henry. Dogs like to please. Sniff out drugs or dead bodies. Arnold was attuned to less physical items. Well, all dogs were psychic to an extent; just that Arnold had learned to tell you what most dogs would be surprised you didn't already know about.
'We'll discuss this later,' Powys told him, then picked him up, and carried him into the house. 'You don't mind dogs, Miss Endicott?'
'I love all animals.' A note of sadness there.
They entered the darkest room you could imagine in daylight. Stone walls like a castle. Corners which disappeared into black shadow. He made out a huge inglenook like the maw of hell. A long, oak table. He stopped. This would just have to be the table where they'd laid out Colonel Pixhill.
'Please sit down,' Miss Endicott said. 'I'm sorry, I don't even know your name.'
'Powys.' He put Arnold down on the flagstones, 'Joe M. Powys.'
At that, Miss Endicott seemed to freeze. Her woodland mammal's eyes were startled and then confused. He saw that the skin around the eyes was doughy, suggesting exhaustion. Her dry, puckered lips formed the word Powys.
But only a thin ribbon of breath emerged. At that moment, Powys could almost swear the shadows in the room were moving. How could shadows move without light? He could never live here; he'd be constantly walking into the darkest comers just to reassure himself there was nothing there that really moved, always scared that there would be something – grisly shadow-teeth closing on his fingers.
'Powys?' said Miss Endicott. Her small eyes coming slowly to life, like the valves in an old radio.
As Arnold screamed.
It was a sound Powys had never heard from Arnold, nor from any dog. 'Hey.' He bent down and grabbed at him. Arnold's head came up, his ears flat, his eyes bulging with fear and a kind of fever; when Powys reached for him he lunged and snapped, his teeth clicking together in the air, once, like a mousetrap.
And then skittered away, his three sets of claws scraping frantically at the flags until he reached the oak door and began to hurl himself at it, as if he wanted to smash his own skull, break his own neck.
FIVE
'Don't do this. Woolly,' Sam said. Whatever you got in mind, don't do it.'
At Woolly's shop, he'd found Hughie Painter and his brother Gav helping to board up the broken window.
Woolly was loading stuff into his Renault, Looking uncharacteristically dowdy in dark jeans, a green waterproof jacket. He'd cut off his pony-tail, shaved his head at the front. He looked older and unhappy.
'Where you gonner go?' Sam planting himself' between Woolly and the Renault's raised back door.
'Well, first off,' Woolly said, 'I'm going to the cops. To confess.'
'To what?'
'To whatever they wanner charge me with, man. Get it over, that's the main thing. Then I'm off to walk the line. Park the car some place, take my bags and my tent. Walk the line and think. Maybe when I get back, somebody'll've nicked the car, save me some hassle, 'cause I don't really wanner see that car again.'
Sam shook his head, mystified. 'Sorry, Woolly. Slight generation gap problem here. Walk the Line – is this some old Johnny Cash reference I wouldn't understand?'
Woolly smiled. 'Sam, man… the St Michael line. I need to think. I need to walk until I'm shagged out, camp out by the line and pray something sorts itself out. People don't wanner see me. I'm bad news, no getting round that.'
'No,' Sam said. 'You're wrong. Completely. You're the best councillor we ever had. 'Sides which, you'll die of exposure out there. Look… Here's Hughie – he's got kids. Mr Fertile. Yet, here he is, nailing boards across your window. Hughie, come on, is Woolly gonner weather this one or isn't he?'
'Ain't that simple, Sammy,' said Big Hughie. 'My first reaction, I'm angry. I think why'd he do that? Is his brain even working? Then I think, well, he's a friend, he's a good guy. Best councillor, as you said, we ever had. Besides which, it could've been any one of us.'
Hughie brushed sawdust from his beard.
'What other people're gonner think, though, in the final analysis, I can't say. There's a lot of shit going round right now, Sammy, lot of extremism. So, well… maybe Woolly does need to get away for a while.'
Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. Not what he wanted to hear. He stared at his trainers for a couple of seconds.
'OK. Spare me two minutes Woolly. Over there. Excuse us lads.'
He led Woolly out of the square, away from Hughie and Gav, over towards St Benedict's, where it was quiet.
'I've been at a bit of a loose end this morning,' Sam said. 'I just walked round, looking for Diane, asking if anyone's seen her.'
'Diane's still missing?'
'Since last night.'
'Shit,' said Woolly. 'Like I know she's done this before, but…'
'I don't care if she's done it before or not. Things are different now.'
'Sheesh,' Woolly said, looking hard at Sam. 'I can see they are.'
'Yeah. Ain't life runny? Let me get this other thing out. I've been talking to people. In and out of the shops. People I haven't talked to in years. Both sides of the fence – what we thought was a fence. There's two topics on everybody's lips. The crash, obviously. But the other one's Bowkett and his Tor Bill. Most people, they just didn't realise. They just never thought it could happen.'
'Most people want it to happen,' Woolly said. 'They've had it with the New Age.'
'I reckon most people don't want it to happen. OK, maybe a lot do, but still less than half. Lot of folk out there got no big feelings about magic and earth-forces and all this crap, but they do care about freedom. And they don't want bloody Griff Daniel back.'
'So you stand against him. Take on your old man.'
'Aw, Woolly, some of these people like to go into the countryside and shoot rabbits, watch the hunt and that. They don't want me neither. But I reckon you'll see the size of the opposition, look, at dawn tomorrow, when the Bishop goes up the Tor. This Christian pagan common ground stuff, it might be crap, but if the Bishop comes out against Archer and Bowkett…'
'Better I'm not there, Sam. I got a bad feeling about that. Better I'm miles away.'
Sam had a major struggle with himself, at this point, not to tell Woolly about the evil road burrowing through Bowermead, leaving the ashes of slaughtered trees.
'Also,' Woolly said, 'on a personal level, this may be the last chance I get to walk the line before it's sliced up.' He put out his hand. 'You're a good boy, Sam. I always said that. Diane could do worse.'
He shook Sam's hand solemnly and walked towards the church.
And Sam thought, with a horrible jolt. He's not going to come back. Not ever. He's going to be found dead in his little tent near some forgotten standing stone.
'Woolly!' His sense of loss compounded. 'Woolly, listen, you gotter help us. We're all shit scared here. About Diane. About the way this town's cracking up before our eyes. You can't just walk out on us. You can't!'
Verity unscrewed the top of the brown phial. 'Dr Bach's Rescue Remedy. If you can hold his mouth open, I shall put three drops on his tongue.'