MrDoveston was appalled. ‘You went to a pub? Why did you go to a pub?’
‘I dunno,’ said Danny. ‘I just sort of felt like it.’
‘Felt like it?’ Mr Doveston threw his hands in the air and paced up and down the shop in the fashion of Inspector Westlake (who had recently paced up and down a hall and whom Mr Doveston knew socially). ‘It was just on a whim, was it?’
‘I suppose so,’ said Danny, wondering where he might sit down.
‘On a whim you go to the pub and get rat-arsed?’
‘Oh hang about. I’m not rat-arsed.’
‘You’re all over the place, lad. Pale in the face. Bags under your eyes.’
‘I don’t have any bags under my eyes.’ Danny examined his face in an advertising mirror by the door. He still looked peachy. To him.
‘I’m perturbed,’ said Mr Doveston. ‘I feel you have betrayed my trust.’
‘Tell him to fuck off:
‘Don’t be silly.’
‘I’m not being silly, young man.’
‘I wasn’t talking to you.’ Danny leaned himself upon the counter. And he swayed a bit as he did so.
‘It just won’t do.’ Mr Doveston had his arms folded now. He was making tsk-tsk sounds with his tongue. He was quite getting into this really. He liked telling people off. In fact, what he liked most was dressing up in uniform and telling people off. And hitting them with sticks, of course. He liked that very much. ‘Won’t do.’ He shook his head and tsked some more. ‘I was going to recommend you for promotion, what with me being offered the post of area manager and you being my star pupil. I feel very let down.’
‘You should be let down the toilet on a length of rope.’
‘Stop it,’ said Danny.
‘What?’ asked Mr Doveston.
‘Nothing. Look, I’m sorry. It won’t happen again, I promise.’
‘Four weeks, Orion.’ Mr Doveston held up four fingers, then waved them in time with his words. ‘Four weeks to redeem yourself. Four weeks to prove to me you’re worth it. Four weeks in which to repay my trust. Four weeks—’
Danny collapsed on the floor in a heap.
‘Are you listening to me, Orion?’
‘I’m listening. I’m listening.’ Danny floundered about.
‘It’s the only chance you’re going to get.’
‘Bite his ankle. Sink your teeth in.’
‘No!’
‘No? You don’t want a chance?’
‘I’m not well,’ mumbled Danny. ‘I don’t feel too good. It’s not the beer, it’s something else.’
‘Get up, boy, there’ll be customers. You can’t lie there.’ Mr Doveston tugged at Danny’s arm. ‘Come on now.’
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Come on now, get up.’
‘Sink your teeth in, Danny. Sink your teeth in deep.’
‘Shut up, will you?’
‘I’m not having this.’ Mr Doveston refolded his arms. ‘Get up and go home at once. Come in tomorrow at nine sharp, and we’ll discuss your future with this company, should you actually have one.’
‘Spit in his eye, Danny boy.’
‘Stop it, please.’
‘Get up, Orion.’
Danny tried to get up, but he couldn’t. He felt absolutely wretched. And it wasn’t just the beer. He felt weird. Dislocated.
‘Time to go, Danny boy. Time to go home to bed.’
Danny wrenched himself to his feet, his head swimming. ‘I’m going,’ said he. ‘And I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.’
‘We’ll see about that and you won’t be paid for today.’
‘Okay. I’m going. I’m sorry.’
MrDoveston held open the door and Danny stumbled out into the street. ‘I feel very let down indeed,’ said Mr D.
Danny half turned and opened his mouth, but he didn’t speak, he turned back and lumbered away.
Across the street a white van was parked on the double yellow lines. Several parking tickets were taped to the windscreen, which was tinted a smoky grey. In the driving seat sat a young man who wasn’t a man at all. He keyed the ignition, put the van into gear and followed Danny along.
‘So,’ said Inspector Westlake. ‘What are your conclusions?’
Fridge-Magnet Gould peeled off his surgical gloves and dropped them into a bucket. ‘Murder,’ said he. ‘Plain and simple.’
‘You call this plain and simple?’
‘The actual murder side of it was plain and simple. Somebody reached down this woman’s throat and pulled out her—’
‘That’s hardly plain and far from simple.’
‘You’d need a good strong arm,’ said F. M. Gould. ‘And a firm grip, but it can be done. Would you care for me to demonstrate? On this constable here, for instance?’
‘No way,’ said Constable Dreadlock, who was nosing about with evident relish.
‘Any weapons involved?’ the inspector asked. ‘Knives? Cutting implements? Bone saws? Hairdriers? Fork-lift trucks? Parquet flooring?’
Mr Gould cut the inspector’s wandering stream of consciousness mercifully short. ‘Bare hands,’ said he.
‘Bare hands?’
‘Bare hands.’
‘Cor,’ said the constable, ‘bare hands.’
‘And time of death?’
‘Between two and three a.m. and, Inspector—’
‘Yes?’
‘The body is incomplete. The hands and feet are missing.’
‘Cor,’ said the constable once again.
Inspector Westlake turned to the young ghoul. ‘What about the neighbours?’ he asked.
Constable Dreadlock scratched his helmet. ‘I think they’ve still got their hands and feet. I’m sure I would have noticed. Or they would have mentioned it.’
Inspector Westlake made a scowling face. ‘What about the neighbours, did they see or hear anything?’
The constable fiddled with his regulation notebook. ‘No-one saw anything. But…the neighbours on both sides were awoken at around two-thirty a.m. by the noise.’
‘The noise of the struggle?’
‘The noise of a dog,’ said the constable. ‘Coming from in here. It was very loud. Barking and howling. Both sides say they banged on the walls.’
‘A dog?’ Inspector Westlake shrugged. Mr Fridge-Magnet Gould also shrugged. ‘A dog?’
‘That’s what they say, sir, a dog.’
Inspector Westlake shook his head and gazed about at the human debris littering the room. ‘Tell me, Constable,’ said he, ‘does this look like a dog’s doing to you?’
Constable Dreadlock joined in the gazing. ‘That bit over there does, sir,’ he said.
15
No comment.
JEFFREY ARCHER (1940-)
THE NEW STORY SO FAR
Old Sam Sprout has discovered a great and terrible secret. That mankind is plagued by a race of invisible parasites, The Riders, beings that exist within a spectrum which cannot be viewed by man. The negative spectrum of Black Light.
Old Sam has made this momentous discovery through an accident which occurred to his left foot, but dies alone in mysterious circumstances before he is able to communicate what he has found to others.
Unknown to old Sam, others have already made this discovery and are determined to wage war upon The Riders and free mankind (The Riders apparently being able to control the thoughts of those they ride upon). At a secret American airbase in the middle of a desert, special agent Parton Vrane, a genetically engineered half-man, half-cockroach, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the now legendary Gary Busey, is put on the case and dispatched to Great Britain.
His mission: seek and contain a particularly nasty specimen of the invisible parasitic race, one that identifies itself as A DOG CALLED DEMOLITION and which has driven its unwilling human hosts to kill, time and again.
Now, although an epic borrower, old Sam Sprout has died apparently penniless, prompting one of his many creditors, a certain Danny Orion (young ne’er-do-well and pro
fessional ordinary bloke), to enter his house in search of hidden booty.
Here Danny becomes possessed by DEMOLITION, which settles upon him, invading and controlling his thoughts. DEMOLITION informs Danny that it is his holy guardian angel and that it will steer him on a course to financial success and give him what he has always wanted: a dog of his very own. In fact, it will actually help him to build one.
Danny considers himself a young man blessed of the gods.
He will shortly discover that he is anything but.
We join Danny, at midnight, in his allotment shed where, after a lunch-time drinking spree and an afternoon sleeping it off, which has probably cost him his job and was no doubt prompted by DEMOLITION, who does not have Danny’s best interests at heart but now almost totally controls his mind, Danny’s dog Princey is about to be taken for walkies.
WAKIN’ THE DOG
Danny lit the hurricane lamp and looked all around the shed. There he was, on the bench, all draped over with the pink nylon sheet.
Good old Princey. Good boy there.
Danny clapped his hands together. ‘Is he finished?’ he asked.
‘Absolutely. The final vital components were added last night.’
‘Jolly good,’ said Danny and he whipped away the sheet.
Good Boy Princey looked pretty damn good. He looked even bigger than the night before and somehow better formed, more firm and round and huggable. Good haunches he had, if dogs have haunches. Yes, of course they do, everything has haunches. Except for fish. Fish have fins, everybody knows that! Great floppy ears and a tail just ready to wag.
Danny gave him a pat on the head. And then Danny yawned.
‘Not tired?’ asked the voice in his head. ‘You’ve been kipping half the afternoon.’
‘I know, but I’ve felt tired since this morning and I woke up with a sore throat. If I didn’t know better I’d be tempted to think that I hadn’t slept at all last night.’
‘Really?’ said the voice.
‘Really, if I didn’t know better I’d be tempted to think that I was awake all night howling like a dog and doing something really energetic.’
‘Like what?’ asked the voice.
‘I don’t know, like ripping someone limb from limb with my bare hands.’
‘What an absurd thought.’
‘Isn’t it? But then everybody’s been telling me how dreadful I look and each time I look in a mirror I see a really healthy face looking back.’
‘Do you?’
‘I do. And if I didn’t know better I’d be tempted to think that you are somehow making me see what you wanted me to see. Silly, isn’t it?’
‘Very.’
‘Because if you were doing that,’ said Danny, ‘it would mean that you weren’t my holy guardian angel at all, but some kind of demon that had entered my head.’
‘Well, that really is silly,’ said the voice.
‘I know. Because if that was the case you would never have built me this lovely dog. I mean, if that was the case, then this lovely dog wouldn’t actually be a lovely dog at all. I’d just be thinking it was a lovely dog and seeing it as a lovely dog when it was really something absolutely hideous, like some monster constructed from human body parts.’
‘Ludicrous, eh?’ said the voice.
‘Ludicrous,’ agreed Danny. ‘So how do I get Princey started then? Do I press a button or something?’
‘No, you just open the artery of your left wrist and let him drink your blood.’
‘Oh very good.’ Danny laughed. ‘Most amusing, oh yes.’
‘I’m not kidding,’ said the voice.
Danny laughed again. ‘Very droll. So I should just take this Stanley knife,’ he took up the knife in question, which he didn’t recall bringing to the hut, ‘and open my wrist?’
‘Yep, that’s what you do.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Imean it, Danny. Don’t cut too deep, he only needs a couple of pints.’
‘A couple of pints?’ Danny said, in his finest Tony Hancock. ‘That’s nearly an armful.’
‘Get on with it,’ said the voice.
Danny put down the knife in a hurry. ‘You’re not kidding, are you?’ he said.
‘Inever kid, Danny. I don’t have time to kid.’
‘Yeah, well you can forget it. If it needs a bit of blood to get it started, I’ll get some from the butcher’s.’
‘You already did. It didn’t work.’
‘What do you mean, I already did?’
‘Cut, Danny. Feed the dog. It’s a nice woofy friendly dog. It’s your dog. I made it all for you. You don’t mind chipping in with a paltry pint or two of blood, surely?’
‘I don’t like this,’ said Danny. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d be tempted to think—’
‘Shut up!’ said the voice. ‘I’m fed up with your thinking. All you ever do is think. And a load of old rubbish you think too.’
‘You don’t know what I think.’
‘Of course I know what you think. I do most of your thinking for you now anyway.’
‘Listen,’ said Danny, ‘I don’t like this. I do want the dog. But I don’t like this. Would you kindly leave my head for a moment? I have to think.’
‘Pick up the knife, Danny. Pick up the knife.’
‘I certainly will not.’
‘You certainly will too.’
And outside was quiet on the allotment. Midnight quiet. Nice full moon up on high, whitening the highlights and blackening the shadows. A skulking cat that might have been the giant feral Tom of legend. An earwig in a flowerpot. Pupating larvae of the order Dictyoptera. A sleeping drunk called Hermogonies K. Thukrutes from another book entirely (but a great one).
All was peace. Tranquillity.
But then the midnight quiet imploded. From Danny’s shed there came a scream. An awful scream it was and one torn from a human throat.
A potty-filler of a scream, it rang and echoed, clanged and bashed about the hallowed ground.
And then a choking strangled cry and then a slurping licking sound. And then…And then…
Full moon above. A werewolf’s moon.
A howl. Long drawn, deep-throated howl.
‘Aaaaaooooooooooooooooooooowh!’
It went.
Then silence.
16
‘You get fucked and you learn.’
JOE PERRY, 1990
IT’S THE BLEEDING MEKON
Danny awoke from a dream like the cover of a Carcass album.
He jerked up to flounder around in his bed. But he wasn’t in his bed. He stared up at his ceiling. But it wasn’t his ceiling. It was the roof of his allotment shed. Oh no.
‘Oh no,’ Danny went. ‘Oh God, no!’ and he clutched at his face and felt the sticky pull of his hands. It was blood. His blood. ‘No, no, no.’
It was yes, yes, yes. Yes it was.
‘Oh God, no,’ Danny went and he gaped all around. There was blood all right. Everywhere. He was drenched in it.
Danny felt sick. He struggled up and groaned. His left wrist was bound up with a ripped-off length of – ‘My shirt!’
Danny dragged himself to his feet and swayed back and forwards. Giddy and ill. That hadn’t happened? Had it? Say it hadn’t happened. Not the Stanley knife and his wrist and the dog licking and drinking and howling? That howl, that terrible howl. That hadn’t really happened, had it? No!
‘It’s gone.’ Danny stared at the bench. ‘Princey’s gone. Where is it? What have you made me do?’
There was silence.
Danny shook his head and banged at his temples. ‘What did you make me do? What happened? I’m talking to you. Answer me. Answer me.’
But no answer came.
‘You’re not there.’ Danny shook his head again, rooted a gory finger into his left earhole. ‘You’ve gone. You’ve left me. Where are you? Where are you?’
But it had gone. The thing that had possessed him. And suddenly terrible thoughts came to Dann
y, terrible memories of things he had done. Hideous things. Inhuman things.
Murderous things. And not just to Mrs Roeg, but to others also.
‘No,’ Danny screamed. ‘I didn’t do those things. Those are not my memories. No they’re not. They’re not.’
But somehow they were.
‘I’m ill.’ Danny ran his sticky fingers through his matted hair. ‘I’ve gone mad or something. Something’s happened to me. Oh God. Oh God.’
On the bench lay a broken shard of mirror glass. Danny gazed into it. Then fell back in horror at what he saw.
He was a wreck: great black bags under his eyes, sunken cheeks, chalk-white skin beneath the flecks of blood.
He looked as if he hadn’t slept or eaten for days. And he felt horrendous, hunger-torn, ravaged.
‘This is not happening. This is not happening.’
Danny lurched to the door of his shed and flung it open. Sunlight roared in. It had to be midday.
Danny stumbled outside and collapsed. He raised himself onto his elbows and crawled over to a nearby water-butt.
‘Clean yourself up,’ he told himself. ‘No-one must see you like this.’ And with the kind of Herculean effort that made Monty of Alamein, Roy of the Rovers and Joy of Sex whatever they were, he dragged himself up and plunged his face into the stagnant water.
It felt like champagne.
Danny raised his head with a great gasp, tore off his blood-spattered jacket and flung it to the ground. His shirt wasn’t too bad. The strip had been torn off the tail. Danny tucked his shirt back into his trousers. He was in a pretty terrible state. He needed food.
More than that he needed a drink.
A big stiff one.
Danny took great breaths up his nostrils. Great head-clearing breaths. They never work. If anything they just make you feel worse.
Danny felt worse.
‘I really really need a drink!’ he said and he staggered from the allotment.
As Danny staggered along he became aware that he did feel very strange indeed. He felt somehow empty. Well not empty, but as if some part of him was missing. It was difficult to explain. Impossible to explain. He’d never felt anything like it before. It had to be the loss of blood.