'Everyone in the village is trying to cling to the past. But it's not working. We all feel it. Something is happening, something new and terrible. ' "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold", as Yeats put it.'
'Jack?' queried Steven.
Baber nodded. 'Jack has always been here. But he's waking up, and it's terrifying me.'
'But Jack's just a legend,' said Steven.
'No,' said Baber. 'My father realised that Jack exists. It's possible his father knew before him. That dark patch in the photographs - you only really notice it from the top of the church tower.'
'Yeah,' said Ace. 'We know.'
'He started taking the photographs. I suppose you could call it a cry for help. He couldn't just go around talking openly about Jack. Not in Hexen Bridge.'
'Why not?' queried Ace.
'The register you saw,' said Baber. 'The traditions that surround it, the monitoring of the populace. It's inextricably linked to Jack.' He gulped down some coffee, seeming not to notice its temperature. 'The vicar of Hexen Bridge is one of Jack's children, you see. Perhaps more so than most.'
'So that lad who you said has gone to London...' began Ace, remembering the register in the church.
'He's still here,' said Baber. He turned to Steven Chen. 'But you wouldn't recognise him.'
'So Jack sits under the green and turns people into... Into the living dead?' asked Ace.
Baber dodged the question. 'I've said as much as I know.'
'How do we stop him?'
'Jack? You can't stop Jack!' exclaimed Baber, with unexpected vehemence. 'We're all all his children. He could kill us all, just like that.' He snapped his fingers. 'You and the boy might be safe. You don't belong here.' his children. He could kill us all, just like that.' He snapped his fingers. 'You and the boy might be safe. You don't belong here.'
'I didn't feel particularly safe last night,' admitted Steven.
'I've said too much already,' added Baber hurriedly.
'You've told us nothing nothing that we didn't already know,' said Ace, anger rising in her voice. that we didn't already know,' said Ace, anger rising in her voice.
'Then condemn me as a coward if you wish,' said Baber.
'But that's better than being damned by Jack.'
Ace got to her feet. 'Come on, Steven. It's time we paid our respects to this Jack.'
'And how do we do that?' asked Steven. 'Get a shovel and start digging up the green?'
Ace turned to Baber. 'Well?'
Baber, still slumped in his chair, glanced up, but did not reply.
'Look,' said Ace, 'if we see Jack, we'll tell him you had nothing to do with it.'
'You seem to be treating this very casually,' observed Baber.
'That's because I know we're going to nail the scumbag.'
'Really?' His voice betrayed amusement.
'Yeah. I've done this sort of thing before.'
Baber shook his head. 'You haven't. The only thing we can do is pray that Jack sleeps again.'
'But Jack's this big black stain, right? He's growing all the time. That's what those photographs show.' Ace paused in the doorway. 'Get real, mate. He's not about to have another kip.'
'Then the fate of Jack's children is in your hands,'
announced Baber sadly.
It was closing time at the Green Man. With both of the Matsons nowhere to be seen, Don Tyley had struggled on his own behind the bar. It had been an awful night, the clammy air thick with tension. There had been three or four messy brawls within the pub as people pushed and jostled around the bar to get served, and the police had been called. Not that Stu Minton, returning from the fire-damaged Chinese restaurant, had done much other than tell his second cousin Dave to leave his third cousin Jimmy alone. Then he'd stayed for a pint himself and had ended up in the middle of yet another pushing-and-shoving match over who was the better pop group, Fractured Spirit or the Unlicensed Virgins.
Now, finally, Don had been able to close the door on the last customer. Little Josie Luston had hung around the bar until everyone else had gone, flirting with him. Time was when Don would have taken her around the back and given her a good seeing to. But then he thought about his son, only a couple of years her junior, and what had happened to him, him, and had ushered the girl out of the pub with little ceremony. and had ushered the girl out of the pub with little ceremony.
He pulled the heavy bolt at the top of the door into place and breathed a deep sigh of relief. Tomorrow, he thought, he'd have a few words with Bob and Joanna about leaving him alone, at the mercy of the regulars.
Thump.
Don turned suddenly, startled by the loud noise behind him. His heart thudded in his chest, but there was nothing there. He took a pace or two closer to the back door, but that was closed, as it should be. 'Anyone there?' called Don, his voice trembling slightly.
Idiot, he thought. If there is anybody there, they aren't going to answer, are they?
The thump came again, less heart-stopping this time as Don was facing in the direction of the sound. A few feet away he could see that the trapdoor hadn't been shut properly, the wind causing it to flap upward. 'Daft thing,' he said with a sigh of relief. 'Fancy scaring me half witless like that.' He moved towards the hatch, but found himself wondering what had caused it to move in the first place. Don scratched his head.
Sighing, he threw open the heavy oak trapdoor, and stepped down on to the wooden rungs.
On the third step, Don reached out and flicked on the light.
Bob had never bothered to have anything stronger than a sixty-watt bulb in the cellar, but even this dim light brought a sigh of relief from Don. There was no one skulking about in the cellar, lying in wait to steal the takings or murder Bob and Joanna in their beds.
At the foot of the stairs Don took a long look around the beer kegs and stacked crates of bottles. The cellar was filthy and smelled of damp. Bob really should get something done about it.
Something moved.
Don snapped his head to one side, but felt only a gentle breeze on his face. He walked forward and found himself looking at a sheet of green tarpaulin that covered most of one wall of the cellar. Don had been down here many times and this bit of the cellar had always been stacked with crates.
Now they had been moved, recently, too, by the look of the drag marks in the dust on the floor.
Don walked to the tarpaulin, which was rippling slightly from the breeze behind it.
Behind it?
Don pulled back the sheeting, and found an opening carved into the cellar wall, and a tunnel beyond.
'Funny place for a hole in the wall,' he said to no one in particular. His voice echoed off into the distance of the concealed passageway. There was a light flickering somewhere in the distance. Now more curious than frightened, Don took a few tentative steps into the opening, stooping slightly as his head scraped along the curved roof of the tunnel. After fifty feet the passage widened into a chamber. A breeze scurried down from another tunnel, at the far side of the cave.
Mounted on one wall was a rusted oil lamp, its flame fading as the wick was almost burnt away. Don picked up the lamp and shook it. Immediately it glowed brighter as some of the oil came into contact with the flame. The orange glow from the lamp reminded Don of his childhood, and winter evenings in front of the fire. Don and his brothers and sisters, watching television while their parents screamed at each other in the scullery. Happy days.
His attention was caught by something wholly unexpected.
A mirror, set into the rock about twenty feet away. Don stepped closer, wondering what on Earth this place was. He estimated that he was right under the village green.
He looked into the mirror.
And screamed in terror.
Standing before him was not his own reflection, but a large man with mad eyes, anachronistic clothing, and bloodied hands. His expansive face bore a quizzical expression. 'The demon Hatch is known to us,' said the apparition. 'And Robert Matson visits when is weak spirit is fortified by drink.
But, stranger, what dost thou want with Jack i' the Green?'
Up on the village green, covered by the dark blanket of night Josie Luston had found what she was looking for in the drunken shape of Martin Price. As Josie lay back on the bone-hard mattress of grass and wriggled her arms from her leather jacket, Martin was trying to tug his T-shirt over his head.
'Gimme a hand then, Josie, I'm too bladdered,' he said with a mixture of anger and frustration.
'Do it yourself, boy,' she said with a giggle that sent a spasm of rigid anger up and down him.
'What are you laughing at?' he asked furiously, pinning the still-chuckling girl to the grass as he knelt astride her.
The scream that emerged from the Green Man caused both of them to sit up in embarrassment.
They both looked towards the pub. Its lights still blazed like a beacon in the night, and the door flapped open in the gentle breeze as Don Tyley sprinted away from the building, shrieking in terror.
'I don't get it,' said Steven. 'Baber didn't tell us how to find Jack.'
'You weren't listening,' said Ace. 'All that stuff about Jack's children. He must have meant the school.'
'But the legends say that Jack's under the green.'
'Yeah, but he's growing, right? And anyway, like you said, we can hardly start digging for him. I think the Matsons would have something to say about that.'
They trudged the lane towards the school in silence for some time, Steven jumping at every rustle from the hedgerows.
They heard the sound of a car engine just as the school came into view. 'Someone's coming,' said Steven.
'And fast, too,' said Ace. 'Better get off the road.'
They stood on the verge, the arms of the hedge prickling their backs. Two huge globes of light turned the corner, the headlights of the car dazzlingly bright.
'Who the hell is that?' asked Steven. They're driving like a lunatic.'
'They should have seen us by now,' said Ace, moving even further away from the road.
Instead of following the curve of the corner, the car's nose nose pointed in their direction. The engine screamed still more loudly as the accelerator was stamped to the floor. pointed in their direction. The engine screamed still more loudly as the accelerator was stamped to the floor.
'Christ,' said Ace. 'They're going to hit us!'
CHAPTER 12.
UNFINISHED SYMPATHY.
St James the Less was silent. Whatever voices Baber had once heard here - whatever answered prayers he had witnessed, or revelations he had received - had long since passed into memory. Now there was just the hard stool under his bent legs, and a church full of emptiness.