Necrophenia

  ‘The manager of the band,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to clear it with him about you joining, of course, but I’m sure it will be nothing but a formality.’ And I tried to make a convincing face as I said this.

  ‘All right,’ said Andy. ‘You find a phone box and call him. Tell him to bring a lot of villagers, with flaming torches.’

  ‘Villagers with flaming torches are more your Frankenstein’s monster than your zombie,’ I said.

  ‘Well, tell him to get them here before dark.’

  ‘And isn’t “after dark” for vampires and werewolves? Zombies are all-day-rounders, I think.’

  ‘You appear to know an awful lot about this sort of thing,’ said Andy.

  ‘Not really,’ I said and I shrugged. ‘I just go to a lot of horror movies, don’t you—’

  And then I cut that line of conversation short. They probably didn’t get to watch too many horror movies in the lunatic asylum.

  ‘I’ll go and make the phone call,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you should come with me.’

  ‘No way,’ said Andy. ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

  Andy shrugged and replaced his mask. ‘I’m a dog,’ he said. ‘It’s safe for me. And think of this place from a dog’s perspective - all those buried bones.’

  And I took off to find a phone box. Fast.

  I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say to Mr Ishmael. I didn’t think I would broach the subject of zombies. It would be better, I considered, simply to pass on the location of the stolen goods, as he had instructed me to do, and leave the actual recovery of them to him.

  So, case solved, really.

  I walked tall on my way to the phone box. My first case as a private eye and I had breezed through it. I was a natural, there was no mistake about that. I’d rent an office. There was one up for rent above Uncle Ted the greengrocer’s. I could almost visualise the name, engraved into the frosted-glass panel of the door: ‘PRIVATE-TYLER’, like

  ‘Private-Eye-ler’, see? Or ‘PRIVATYLER’ as just one word that sort of rolled off the tongue.

  And I felt rather pleased with myself.

  I had triumphed here.

  I reached the phone box and found to my chagrin that it had been vandalised and was in a non-operative condition. And it was quite a long walk to the next one, which had been similarly disfigured.

  After much walking in the cold, I found myself nearly back at Ealing Broadway, with, as it was late December, night now falling around me. But I did eventually find a working phone box and I did phone the number on Mr Ishmael’s card.

  And it was engaged.

  And I phoned again and I phoned again and eventually after many many such phonings, the phone rang at his end. But no one answered it. And—

  Well, eventually I did get through. And I spoke to Mr Ishmael and I told him that I had located the stolen equipment and where I had located it and I named the mausoleum of Count Otto Black and everything.

  And then there was a bit of a silence at his end of the line and I thought that perhaps I had been cut off.

  But finally he spoke and he said to me, ‘Go home, Tyler. You have done very well and I am proud of you. But you must not, under any circumstance, return to that cemetery. There is great danger there and I do not want you to be put into such danger.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. And then I said, ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘Just go home,’ said Mr Ishmael to me. And he replaced the receiver.

  But of course I didn’t go home. I could hardly do that. If there was great danger in that cemetery, then I had left Andy in that great danger, and by doing so, any harm that came to him would be my fault. And my fault or no, I really did care about my brother and I certainly didn’t want any real harm to come to him. So I jumped onto the next 207 bus that was heading towards Hanwell and took to the chewing of my knuckles on the journey.

  The bus stop was only a hundred yards or so away from the cemetery gates and I ran the rest of the way.

  But it was dark now and once within the gates of the cemetery there was little or no light at all and I almost immediately lost my sense of direction and began to blunder about blindly, tripping over this and that, bumping into this and that and generally making a complete unholy twat of myself.

  But even if I was lost, I was not dumb.

  And so I shouted. Loudly. ‘Andy’ I shouted. As loudly as I could. ‘Andy, where are you? Mr Ishmael is bringing help. We ought to get out of this graveyard. There’s danger. Great danger. Andy, where are you?’

  I shouted this and permutations of this. Numerous permutations of this, in fact. And I blundered on and I wished, really wished, that Andy and I were not in this god-forsaken boneyard, but back at home, sitting at the dining table, eating parsnips and chatting away with our mum and our dad. But not talking with our mouths full, obviously.

  ‘Andy,’ I shouted. ‘Where are you?’

  And then things got a little complicated.

  I had been blundering and shouting in the darkness for a while, when I suddenly saw the light. This wasn’t the Light that was seen by New Testament prophets. At least, I didn’t think it was. No, it definitely was not that Light. This was another light entirely. This was a sinister light, a crepuscular glow of a light, a Jack-o’-Lantern unearthly shimmer of a light, and it wafted up from the ground in all directions around me. It was a very queer light, for it rose a foot or two from the ground and then no further, as if it were contained, had its specific parameters illumination-wise, as it were. It fair put the willies up me, I can tell you. I didn’t like that light one bit.

  But if the light had qualities about it that were outré and unquantifiable, then this light and its qualities were as nought (very nought) when put in comparison to what occurred next. For what occurred next was most horrid.

  They rose, they did, from the ground. Before me and to either side, and, turning to run, behind me, too, I noticed. They rose from the ground as in climbed from it. Mouldy fingers clawed out from the frozen ground. Hands thrashed up from the snow, fought for release, and then up they came, the terrible ones, the ungodly ones, the walking dead, the hideous crew. The zombies.

  And I tried to run. But where could I run, for they were all about me? And I cried out for help and I cried out for Andy and I all but poo-pooed myself.

  And then the blighters came at me. From all directions, horrible monsters, decaying and rotten. And I could smell them, that stench of the grave, that evil foetor of death.

  And my cries turned to screaming and I sought to peace-make with my maker.

  And as the monstrous foetid fingers clawed all about me, I saw the light. Another light and a bright one, too. And I heard the noise that came with it.

  I was aware of sweeping arcs of light, swishing down from the sky. And that noise, that deafening noise - not the wingbeats of angels, as I had reasonably supposed, but the thrashing of helicopter blades.

  And then there were men - living men, I supposed - in black uniforms that had that Special Ops look about them, as if they must surely be the SAS, or the Firearms Response Team. And down they came upon lines from the helicopters, and they had guns and they fired these guns.

  And there was the light and the copter sounds and the noises of gunfire and hideous things and I sank down and cowered on my knees.

  And then someone thrust some kind of hood over my head and things went rather dark.

  And then someone hit me hard on the head.

  And things went utterly black.

  19

  Now, you know that feeling you get when you awaken in a bed that is not your own, with absolutely no recollection of how you came to be in it?

  No?

  Well, how about that one when you awaken to find yourself in a secret underground research establishment that the British Government denies all knowledge of?

  No?

  Well, I must confess that this one came as a shock to me. Not that my surroundings weren’t plush - comfo
rtable, they were. Plush and comfortable and elegant too, and very ‘with it’ when it came to the furnishings, which were rendered in the style known as contemporary.

  The bed I awoke upon was circular. Circular? I ask you. Where would you buy circular sheets? But this bed did have circular sheets and they appeared to be of silk. Not that I was a connoisseur of silk; I wasn’t. We had sheets at home, and our sheets were cotton, but these sheets were silk. And I knew this because I had beheld silk, for Toby had brought into school a pair of pink silk French knickers that his father had won in the war. And we’d all had a good feel of those!

  Beyond the parameters of the circular bed was a similarly circular room, its walls painted orange, this orangyness relieved at intervals by wall lights of the semicircular persuasion, which cast a soft ambient light in an ever upwards direction.

  There was a rug, which was circular, and a chair, which was a sphere with a cut-out section for you to plonk almost all of yourself into.

  And there was a door that was not circular. And there were no windows at all to speak of. Or even to whisper about.

  And it was the lack of windows that upset me. The room I was happy enough with - the room was, in itself, quite splendid. Because it was plush and comfortable and elegant.

  But the lack of windows was worrying. That lack of windows signalled that there was a certain untowardness about this room. That this was an outré and anomalous room.

  And one that I probably should not be in.

  And so I sought to escape.

  And as there were no windows to climb out of, I made a stab at leaving by the doorway, but sadly to no avail as the door, it transpired, was locked.

  I would have given that door a kicking if it hadn’t been for the fact that my feet were bare. As, in fact, was all of the rest of me. Bare-naked-lady, I was, apart from the bit about being a lady. So I retreated to the circular bed, wrapped a circular sheet about my nakedness, stuck a thumb into my mouth and gave that thumb a good old sulky suck.

  And I had a fair old grump going and quite a bit of rising fear also when the door opened to admit a beefy-looking fellow bearing a cloth-covered tray.

  And at the sight of this tray I panicked.

  Because it looked to be one of those trays that they have in psychiatric hospitals. The ones that always have a hypodermic upon them, covered by a cloth.

  And when they stick you with that hypo, you’re in trouble.

  And so I panicked. And I did a little bit of rueing-the-day also. I rued the day that I had sent off my money to America in the hope of receiving the course in Dimac, the deadliest martial art known to man. And had not received it by return of post. It was quite a complex piece of rueing-the-day, but it served me well enough at the time.

  The beefy-looking fellow placed the tray upon a cylindrical bedside table that had somehow escaped my notice, whipped away the cloth and said, ‘Your breakfast, sir.’

  ‘Phew,’ I said, ‘breakfast.’

  ‘Breakfast indeed, sir,’ said he. ‘Were you expecting something else?’

  I shook my head and said, ‘No, nothing else.’

  ‘Well, that’s just sweet, isn’t it?’ said the beefy-looking fellow. ‘So eat up your breakfast like a nice gentleman, or I will be forced to stick you with my hypodermic.’

  And with that said, he left the room.

  And I tucked into my breakfast.

  It was a ‘Full Welsh’, which was new to me but didn’t make it any the less delicious. And by the time I was done with it and was wiping my mouth on the cloth provided, the door opened once more and this time in walked Elvis.

  Elvis?

  I looked up with surprise at Elvis.

  And Elvis smiled down at me.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Elvis. It’s you.’

  ‘It is not me,’ said Elvis. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Can I go home, please?’ I said and got all upset.

  Elvis sat down upon the circular bed and he smiled some more at me. And it really was Elvis. That was a stone-cold certain, the quiff and the sideburns, the killer cheekbones, the lip curl and that something. That something Elvis had.

  ‘I am not Elvis,’ said Elvis, kindly. ‘My name is Doctor Darren McMahon. I’m Irish/Liverpudlian.’

  ‘Scouse Elvis?’ said I.

  And the doctor nodded. ‘If you like.’

  ‘But you are Elvis,’ I said. ‘No one looks like Elvis. Elvis is a one-off. There is only one King of rock ’n’ roll.’

  ‘I hate to disillusion you,’ said Scouse Elvis. Because it did have to be said that he did have a Liverpool accent. ‘But Elvis is not a one-off. Elvis was, in fact, part of a six-off. But only the two of us survived.’

  ‘You are the twin brother of Elvis?’ I asked. ‘But I thought he died at birth.’

  ‘You are not listening quite as carefully as you should be,’ said Scouse Elvis. ‘But we will speak of such matters at length. How are you feeling? How is your head?’

  And then I recalled how I had been bonked on the head.

  ‘My head’s fine, as it happens,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t ache at all.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said the Scouse One. ‘I had the beefy-looking fellow give you a shot of painkiller with his hypo before you woke up.’

  ‘Urgh!’ said I. And I felt all violated. As I probably should have done anyway, waking up in a strange bed, naked and everything.

  ‘We’re all professionals here,’ said Dr McMahon (?). ‘You have nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I suspect I have a great deal to worry about,’ I said. And then another thought struck me. One that really should have struck me earlier. ‘Andy?’ I said. ‘What happened to my brother, Andy?’

  ‘There was only you,’ said Dr Elvis (I felt happier with this). ‘When we purged the area, you were the only resident.’

  ‘Purged?’ I said. ‘Resident?’ I said. ‘And where is here?’ I also said. Also.

  ‘One thing at a time,’ said Dr Elvis (yes, I was very happy with this description because, looking him up and down, although he was Elvis, he was dressed as a doctor - white coat, stethoscope in top pocket, that sort of thing).

  ‘As to where you are, you are in the Ministry of Serendipity, which is a secret underground research establishment beneath Mornington Crescent Underground Station.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. Very slowly, I said it.

  ‘There was an incident last night - an outbreak of the Taint. We isolated it, purged the area and uplifted the only original resident amongst the reoccupied within the violated zone.’

  ‘Right,’ I said once more. Adding, ‘Really?’ this time.

  ‘You’d best have a little sleep now,’ said Dr Elvis.

  ‘I’m not tired,’ I told him.

  ‘You will be,’ he said, and he took out a pocket watch and perused its face. ‘When you awake you will remember nothing of this.’

  ‘What?’ I said. Adding, ‘How?’ this time.

  ‘Hypnogenic narcotiser, in the Welsh breakfast.’ And he counted down upon his watch, starting from ten.

  And I have no idea how many were the seconds.

  That tick-ticked and tick-tocked away.

  But—

  ‘And that’s how I solved it,’ said Andy. ‘Although Tyler will probably try to take all the credit for himself.’

  ‘What?’ I said, awakening as if from a dream - a daydream, it must have been - to find myself at the lunching table.

  And my mother was dishing out the parsnips and my brother was boasting about something.

  ‘Are you all right there?’ my brother said to me, breaking off with the boasting for a moment. ‘You look a tad queer. You seemed to be off somewhere else then. Away with the fairies, perhaps.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I was—’ But I couldn’t recall where I’d been. I was at my lunching table, with my brother and my mother, but before that—

  ‘Well, do try and pay attention,’ said my brother. ‘I am expecting to get an award.’

  ‘
For what, exactly?’ I asked.

  ‘For the recovery of all that gear. And there was so much of it, all loaded into that mausoleum vault. It was huge in there, like a storehouse. ’

  ‘Last night?’ I said, and I got all confused.

  ‘Wakey-wakey,’ said Andy. ‘The night before last. And where did you take off to? Going to find a phone box and not coming back until yesterday evening.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Where indeed?’ Andy looked at me. ‘What’s up with you?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m confused,’ I said. ‘The last thing I remember is going off to find a phone box. Then, well, now, really.’

  ‘Have you been taking drugs?’ my mother asked. ‘Have you been smoking reefers?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Pussy,’ said my mother. ‘Captain Lynch and I shared a pipe of kiff the other day that nearly took off the top of my head.’

  ‘I am confused,’ I said to Andy. ‘Tell me what happened. All of it in detail. Tell me, if you will.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Andy. ‘You went off to find a telephone box, you remember that?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘Completely. And I remember it took me ages to find one and call Mr Ishmael.’

  ‘Well, I assumed that you must have found one almost at once because you hadn’t been gone five minutes before this huge furniture van arrives. And this gent calling himself Mr Ishmael gives me the big hello, says he knows that I’m your brother and tells me well done and says that he’ll handle things from then on.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ I said. ‘The timing’s all wrong. How could that be?’ And I shook my head. ‘But go on, please,’ I said.

  ‘Well, the back door of the van swings down and out leap all these blokes in full camo, like commandos, and they blast their way into the mausoleum and go herding in. And Mr Ishmael had sent me off on my way, but I sneaked back because I wanted to look inside, see if there were any dead people looning about in there.’

  ‘Dead people,’ I said. And I had a vague recollection of a coloured mist and of rotten corpses.

  ‘But no zombies,’ said Andy, ‘just all this gear. Tons of the stuff. Not just the gear you had stolen from you - tons of other stuff. Mr Ishmael looked very pleased and ordered it all into the furniture van at the hurry-up. Then he noticed me sneaking a look in and he told me that I would be amply rewarded but that I really must go now because they had to get all this done quickly before the light went.’