Necrophenia

But lights were there none. Which we hoped meant that all within had gone to bed. In separate beds, of course.

  We entered the front garden with stealth and crept towards the house. Once there, we flattened ourselves against the front door and I instructed my brother as to what should happen next.

  ‘You swarm up the wall and enter by an attic window,’ I whispered to him. Then creep down through the house, open this door and let me in.’

  ‘Swarm?’ my brother whispered back.

  ‘Swarm,’ I agreed and mimed, with my fingers, swarming motions.

  ‘No.’ And Andy shook his head. ‘We’ll both go in by the front door.’ And with no further words spoken, he took out a roll of tools and applied himself to the front door’s lock. And presently we were inside.

  I offered no comment on this. And my brother tucked away his tools and offered, in return, no explanation.

  Now, houses look all different in the darkness, don’t they? They lose all their colour, of course, and the everyday becomes untoward and the mundane outré and suchlike. I had to take off my sunglasses because I couldn’t really see very much.

  I had brought a torch (or flashlight, as our colonial cousins like to call it) and I now switched this on and flashed its beam all about. ‘Weren’t there portraits on these walls?’ I whispered to Andy.

  ‘All down the hall,’ he replied. ‘We are in the right house, aren’t we?’

  I tippy-toed along the tiled floor. I felt certain that it had been carpeted earlier.

  I flashed the torch up stairs.

  ‘Those stairs look different, too,’ said Andy. ‘We are in the wrong house.’

  ‘We’re not. It’s the same. But it’s changed, somehow, that’s all.’

  ‘Changed its staircase?’

  I shrugged and followed Andy, who was now heading upstairs.

  The stairs didn’t creak, which surprised me, and no lights flashed on to reveal some fellow in a nightshirt with a blunderbuss in his hands. But then, perhaps the nightshirt-wearing blunderbuss-toter was now a thing of the past.

  I followed Andy along a pleasantly furnished hallway and up another flight of steps. And so we eventually found ourselves on the top floor in a corridor of fair-to-middling widthness, before a door marked Pongo’s Lab. Keep Out.

  ‘Do your stuff,’ I whispered to Andy. And he took out his tool roll.

  And after some minutes of twiddling about, he sprang the door’s lock and together we entered Pongo’s Lab. And with the door closed behind us I switched on the light and we, together, beheld.

  And Andy whistled. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting that.’

  The room, though still circular, was otherwise thoroughly unlike the one we had entered but a few short hours before. There was no evidence at all of any alchemical involvement. No cross-threaded nurdlers or electric toggle-flangers or even a bit of litmus paper. Here was only a comfy bedsitting room kind of affair, with a bed and a chair to sit upon, and a table to sit at it with, and a sink to wash your hands in when you’d tired of sitting.

  Andy raised his palms and said, ‘Where did everything go?’

  ‘I don’t believe it was ever here,’ I said. ‘I believe that we saw what we were intended to see, but not what was really there to be seen.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Andy. ‘Really?’ said Andy. ‘So what does that mean?’ said Andy. ‘And why?’

  ‘All a charade,’ I said, ‘designed for one purpose.’

  ‘And that purpose might be . . . ?’

  ‘I intend to find out,’ I said. And I sat myself down on the bed. ‘I suggest we switch off the light and settle ourselves down to await the return of the room’s occupant.’

  ‘And why would we want to do that?’

  ‘Well, it might be instructive to find out who he really is.’

  Andy gave me the queerest of looks. ‘You think you know what’s going on here, don’t you, Tyler?’

  ‘I do, Andy. I do.’

  ‘And would you care to share this with me?’

  ‘What, and ruin the surprise?’

  And then we both heard sounds from outside the door.

  And Andy switched off the light.

  And we waited there, crouched in the darkness.

  Waiting for something to happen.

  And suddenly something did.

  But, I have to confess, it wasn’t quite the something I had been expecting.

  25

  It is a fact well known to those who know it well that very bright lights presage trouble. The arrival of aliens and booger men and bogey-beasts from the bottomless pit. Those ghostly things that come out of the television set. And dawn raids by the police.

  Bright lights mean trouble, they do. Very bright lights, much trouble.

  And this light was a bright’n. It wasn’t helicopters, although it came from above, and it wasn’t flying saucers either. Although it might well have been, because it did come to the accompaniment of some stonking great chords of the Albert Hall organ persuasion.

  Which might have had this bright light down as a celestial light, a Holy Light, a light sent by God and delivered by favourite angels. And this, I suppose, was the effect it was intended to create here.

  Big bright light and stonking great chords.

  Andy and I took to shielding our eyes and our ears as well as we could.

  I sank down to my knees and assumed the foetal position. Andy, I think, just rocked backwards and forwards on the bed, but as I was now in no shape to either hear or see things clearly, I couldn’t say for sure.

  And then the light went super-flash and died away and the stonking chords crashed to an end in the Key of La.

  And I did blinkings and peered up from beneath the shelter of my fedora’s brim. And there was a beautiful lady.

  She wore a long twinkly robe that reached right down to her naked feet. Pre-Raphaelite hair tumbled over her shoulders and a silver headband encircled this hair, and this had a crescent moon on the front that glittered prettily. As for her features, they were soft and delicate, her eyes large, nose small and mouth very wide indeed. And she held in her right hand a great big flower. And nothing at all in her left.

  I peeped up at this beautiful vision, for vision indeed was she. She had materialised, it appeared, right out of the empty air and there she stood, her feet touching the floor, but touching only, not supporting her, for she was hovering just a little. Wafting gently.

  Captain Lynch had told me all about angels and how they used to come and visit a lot, back in the good old biblical days, but how eventually they lost patience with Man and so didn’t come to visit any more. Which was one of the reasons why the New Testament just suddenly ends and there were no further New Testaments, such as New Testament Two: The Sequel.

  I climbed slowly to my feet, dusted myself down, took off my fedora and bowed my head. My brother, I noticed, was sitting and staring, which I thought rather rude.

  ‘Why are you here?’ asked the vision, her voice as sweet as a cuddly kitten peering out of a handbag. ‘Why have you violated the sanctum?’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. And, ‘Um.’

  ‘ “Ah” and “um”,’ said the vision. ‘Most articulate.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know how to address you. What is the correct form? Should I call you madam, or holy one, or Angel of the Lord, or should I just shut up?’

  ‘Just shut up,’ counselled the vision, and she waved her flower about and little flecks of fairy-dust shimmered in the air.

  So I stood with my hat in my hands and said nothing.

  The vision drifted towards the bed and then sat down upon it next to my brother. Who shifted along rather rapidly.

  ‘Don’t fuss yourself, dear,’ said the vision. And then to me she said, ‘You have an oily about yourself, do you?’

  ‘An oily?’ I queried. ‘A what?’

  ‘An oily-rag - a fag.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t. I never really got around to smoking. I had a c
igar once, but I wasn’t very impressed.’

  ‘So,’ said the vision. And she plucked a petal or two from her flower and let them flutter to the floor. ‘This is a ripe old kettle of fish, this, ain’t it? A right how-d’ya-do and no mistake.’

  ‘Are you a cockney?’ I asked the vision. ‘Only I’ve read about cockneys, but I’ve never actually met one. I thought they were extinct.’

  ‘They are, luvvy. They’ve all rolled out the barrel and gorn up the apples to the big Pearly Kingdom in the sky, where every boy’s a barrow boy and joins in a knees-up at the drop of a second-hand top hat, as worn by the Artful Dodger. Gawd stripe me pink if I’m telling you a porkie, guv’nor.’

  And I came so close to saying, ‘Right.’

  ‘You have a very posh voice for a cockney,’ I did say. ‘I thought cockneys dropped their H’s and slurred their vowels.’

  ‘Well, did you now, did you? And you never having met a cockney in your life.’

  ‘I’ve seen Mary Poppins,’ I said, ‘so I’ve seen and heard Dick Van Dyke.’

  ‘The King of all the cockneys.’ And the vision made a respectful genuflective wiggle about with her flower. ‘But this won’t get the baby bathed. How do you want to go?’

  ‘Go where?’ I asked. Which was a reasonable question.

  ‘To wherever you’re bound - Heaven, or Hell, or nowhere at all if you’re an atheist. Which wouldn’t be too much fun, in my opinion. Although it might be better than Hell. Which I’m told is a really bad place, although I’ve never been there myself.’

  ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘What are you saying to me?’

  ‘I’m offering you the choice of how you want to die. I’d go for a quick and certain one, if I was you. Explosions are always very final. And if you are an atheist, well, at least you’ve got out and about.’ And the vision laughed. In cockney, I supposed.

  But I didn’t laugh. Not at all. ‘You are going to kill me?’ I said. ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘Because you have violated the sanctuary. I offered you an opportunity to make a case for yourself, but the best you could come up with was “Ah” and “Um”. Which, unless they are part of some advanced form of Esperanto, fail to convince on so many levels. Knees up, Mother Brown, me old cock-sparra.’

  I did a nervous foot-to-foot dance.

  ‘Do you need the bog?’ asked the vision.

  ‘Very shortly, I think. But please don’t kill us, please.’

  ‘Us?’ said the vision. ‘It’s only you I’m intending to kill. Get off me barrow and things of that nature generally.’

  ‘But . . .’ and I pointed to my brother.

  ‘One thing at a time,’ said the vision. ‘So how do you want to go? Explosion, or grand piano falling from an impossible height? I really love that one.’

  ‘No, please no,’ I wailed and I fell to my knees as I did so.

  ‘What a wuss,’ roared the vision, laughing near to burst.

  ‘Just tell me why,’ I wailed some more. ‘Tell me why, I beg you.’

  ‘Tell you why?’ The vision drifted up from the bed and hovered in the air. There was a corona of light about her head and I wondered perhaps whether this was in fact none other than the Virgin Mary herself. There were always reports in the papers of her manifesting here and there about the world, usually to not particularly bright people, to whom she would pass on not particularly bright messages. And I had always wondered about that. But then it occurred to me that although she might have been the Mother of Christ, that didn’t necessarily mean that she was the brightest candle in the Communion candle box.

  You don’t have to be clever to be a mum, you just have to be loving and kind.

  ‘Your son won’t like this,’ I said, suddenly emboldened, although not altogether certain from where this sudden emboldenment had sprung. ‘He’s the big cheese in Heaven now, and he won’t take kindly to you killing off one of his flock. My mum’s an Evangelical - she talks to Jesus all the time. She’ll tell him what you’ve done, if you do anything to me.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said the vision. ‘You think I’m Jesus’s mum?’

  ‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said the vision. ‘I’m not. I am something entirely different. In fact quite unrelated to Christianity. Three-bob-a-pound-tomatoes, get ’em while they’re ’ot.’

  ‘Then please tell me,’ I begged. ‘It’s only fair. If you’re going to kill me and everything.’

  ‘Oh, all right. Sit down on the floor there and I will tell you a little story. It is a true story and it has a moral, and if you listen very carefully you will understand. Do I make myself understood?’

  I sat down on the floor before her and nodded that she did.

  ‘Right then. I will drop the cockney patois, as frankly it does not enhance the telling of the tale. The tale goes this-aways. There once and still is a family called Perbright. Every generation gave birth to a noble Perbright who fought for King and country or Queen and country, and always for God and country.’

  I was about to open my mouth and say that I’d already heard this story and so could the vision tell me another one. A really really long one (in the hope that help in one form or another might arrive in the meantime). But I thought better of it and kept my mouth tight shut.

  ‘You see,’ the vision continued, ‘there is more to this than simply men dying for their monarch and country. These men, these heroes whose names appear upon the war memorials - these men are magical sacrifices made to appease the Gods of War and return peace to our land.

  ‘And this is not a metaphor. This is a fact. The War Memorials, you will notice, are nearly always in the form of obelisks. Magico-phallic megaliths erected at key points across the country, inscribed with the magical names of the sacrificial ones. These magico-phallic megaliths channel natural energy through the landscape, fertilising the soil, bringing joy. And bringing forth the next generation of heroes who must do the same. Such is the way it is and such has it been for thousands of years.

  ‘But since the end of the Second World War, when many heroic sacrifices were made and many magico-phallic obelisks raised, there have been ripples in the ether. Signs and portents in the heavens. Omens of the coming of Ragnarok.

  ‘All over the world, the magicians who advise our world leaders are doing what they can to deal with the situation. A dark force is moving over the face of the Earth and many sacrifices must be made to assuage it. In America the Grand Magus has advised the President to purchase the rights to a war in Vietnam to help take care of the problem. But over here we have no such war to engage in. The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury have been holding meetings and they hope to get a civil/religious war going in Belfast. Let us hope that they are successful. But on mainland Britain—’

  ‘No, hold on there,’ I said. Well, I couldn’t help myself. ‘Are you telling me that wars are started for magical reasons? Because in order to protect the planet from some immense overwhelming evil force, it is necessary to sacrifice heroic noble victims, so that their names become ritual words upon magico-phallic obelisks, which channel natural energies throughout Great Britain and keep everything hunky-dory?’

  The vision nodded. ‘You have a better explanation?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all.’

  ‘So, do you want to hear the story?’

  ‘Do you mean it hasn’t begun yet?’

  ‘Hardly at all. Do you want to hear it, before I destroy you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘I’d love to hear it. And take your time with the telling.’

  26

  I watched the vision as she spoke and tried to get some measure of her. If she was not the Mother of God - and it seemed a fair bet that she was not - then what? A demon, perhaps, clothed in false beauty? That sounded reasonable, considering that she promised death. Alien? No, I wasn’t going for alien. Nor fairy, although there was much of the fairy about her. I noted that I had not noted any evidence of wings, fairy-like, angeli
c or demonic. This lack of wings might have been significant. But then again—

  ‘Are you falling asleep?’ the vision asked of me. ‘Because if I’m keeping you up, as it were, it might be better if I just put you down, as it were, and have done with it.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ I said to the vision. ‘I’m all ears, me.’

  ‘Then I will continue. As I have said, a dark cloud of something has settled upon the Earth. A choking lifeless cloud. And those who can sense its presence are doing all they can to engage it in battle and defeat it.’

  Mr Ishmael, I thought. But I didn’t speak his name.

  ‘Pongo Perbright,’ said the vision. ‘A hero, a noble man, a magical sacrifice. A man torn, for, as one who knew and understood what was expected of him and what his fate should have been, he became a tortured soul. He roared and raged and would have done harm to himself and others had he not been visited by a powerful magician who offered him a proposition. This powerful magician was an alchemist, and he possessed the method of transforming base metal into gold. And he offered this formula - for it is a formula - to Pongo.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘If you possess the secret of transforming base metal into gold, why would you share that secret with anyone else?’

  ‘Only because they might possess something even more valuable that they would be willing to exchange.’

  ‘And what would that be?’ I asked.

  ‘A soul,’ said the vision. ‘A warrior soul, a noble soul - the soul of a magical sacrifice.’

  ‘But surely Pongo wouldn’t have traded. He knew what he was and how important his sacrifice was.’

  ‘Indeed, but this alchemist was a most persuasive talker. He spoke in honeyed words to the poor, tortured soul that was Pongo Perbright. He convinced Pongo that he had been forgotten, cast aside, that he was no longer needed.’

  ‘I don’t think Pongo would have believed that if he was really noble,’ I said.

  ‘Well spoken,’ said the vision. ‘And indeed he would not. So the alchemist persuaded him that he could do so much good with the gold that he could create that God would take him directly into the Kingdom of Heaven as a reward.’