Necrophenia

  The breakfast was the Full Welsh, with nothing spared. And, when brought to the perfect conclusion with a buttered bap and a handy shandy, Clara’s husband Keith went off to work with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. And love in his heart for Jesus.

  For good and Godly are the folk of Croydon.

  And Clara peeled off all of her rubber-wear and took herself off for a shower. And here, as she bathed, she sang a hymn to the Lord. For she sang soprano in Croydon Ladies’ Choir and a fine soprano she had.

  And once she had done with the singing and shower, she dried and dressed and left the house to go shopping.

  Those who know Croydon will know of its internationally famed shopping center, a World Trades Fair of fancy goods and eco-kind comestibles. Where there is always ample parking and every shopper wears a sunny smile.

  And Clara steered her Ford Sierra around Croydon’s most southerly road circle and was, of a sudden, the victim of a freak accident involving a kitty hawk, a carrier pigeon called Dennis, a gunman on a grassy knoll, a garden gnome without a home and an off-side-rear-tyre puncture.

  Such freak accidents are not unknown Up North, but in Croydon it was an incident distinctly beyond the norm.

  And matters came to a terrible pass.

  With a swerve and a crash and a bang.

  And Clara awoke, some weeks later, in a room that she did not recognise, looking up at a doctor that she did.

  Clara blinked her eyes and said, ‘Surely you are Elvis?’

  The doctor smiled and stroked her brow. ‘I’m Doctor McMahon,’ he told her.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Where are you, my dear? You are in the special recovery unit of the Ministry of Serendipity, beneath Mornington Crescent Underground Station.’

  ‘W—’

  ‘Why? Because you have been in an accident and your cranial X-rays show that there is extensive damage to your mental-mesh.’

  ‘M—’

  Mental-mesh? A technical term that at the present you need not concern yourself about. We are here to help with your rehabilitation. And to prepare you for what lies ahead.’

  ‘W—’

  ‘What lies ahead?’

  ‘No,’ said Clara. ‘Where’s the toilet? I am in need of a pee.’

  There were no bones broken, and Clara, but for the occasional bit of stiffness, seemed otherwise to be in fine fettle. She was somewhat surprised and disturbed too that her husband Keith hadn’t paid her a visit, and as one day passed into the next, she grew rather anxious withal.

  She saw no one but Dr McMahon, who, although constantly assuring her that she was on the mend and would soon be returned to the bosom of her family, kept finding causes for more tests that resulted in an ever-prolonged stay in what was explained to her as being a subterranean Government facility.

  And Clara did not take to Dr McMahon, who described his resemblance to Elvis as being ‘passing and not noticed by many’.

  And Clara began to fret and soon was fretting continually. And it is not good for someone in recovery to fret. It can have negative consequences and no doctor in the rightness of his mind would prescribe it as a pick-me-up.

  Dr McMahon did, however, prescribe a good many drugs for Clara. Many that she had never heard of and some that she had heard of, but didn’t really believe in the existence of. And time passed very slowly and Clara now plotted escape.

  And although Dr McMahon stood over her and supervised the taking of her medication, she secretly regurgitated same upon his departure from the circular, windowless room in which she now considered herself to be held a prisoner. And plotted her escape.

  And the means of her escape presented itself in an unexpected manner. This being the arrival of a visitor, ushered into her room by the Elvis-like Dr McMahon.

  ‘This,’ said the doctor, ‘is Vincent Trillby, Professor of Advanced Psychiatry at Harvard. He is most interested to study your case, in the hope that it will facilitate the early return of yourself to the bosom of your family. In particular to your husband Keith, who loves and misses you greatly.’

  Clara from Croydon ground her teeth, but disguised this as a sniffly sneeze, said that she hoped she wasn’t coming down with a cold, then put out a slender hand for a shake (for she was indeed a slender lady, as are most in Croydon) and smiled into the face of Vincent Trillby.

  And then withdrew her hand at considerable speed and screamed very loudly indeed. And she screamed in that high soprano voice of hers that had brought great joy to numerous Croydon congregations, but which within the limited confines of her circular cell caused considerable distress to Dr McMahon and to Vincent Trillby, both of whom collapsed to their knees, a-covering of their ears.

  And when they both appeared to be in a state of incapacitation, Clara screamed some more, and repeatedly doing so made for the door and from there, by diverse routes, to the surface. Where she stood, shivering somewhat even though it was another sunny day. There in the great booming heart of the metropolis, in her foolish do-up-at-the-back patient’s smock. And had it not been for a passing stockbroker’s clerk who took pity on her plight, escorted her, via taxi, to Selfridges and had her fitted out from head to toe in all the latest groovy gear, bought her a handbag and popped a five-pound note into it, there is no telling what might have happened.

  And the stockbroker’s clerk tipped his bowler to Clara, wished her all the bestest for the balance of the day and returned to his office with a story to tell. (But not of the shag he’d been hoping for.)

  And so it came to pass that Clara, all spiffed-up and trendy-looking, found herself in Trafalgar Square.

  And it was there that she looked all around and saw that things were not right. That something was in fact very wrong indeed, but that, it appeared, she was the only person who could see it.

  Which is where those shadows come in.

  So let us speak of them now.

  36

  Clara saw the shadows and she was afeared.

  At first she thought it was some kind of optical illusion, or delusion, brought on by her sudden transition (via Selfridges) from subterranean prison to sunlit Trafalgar Square. But her head soon cleared itself of this thinking because a revelation was granted to her, through the medium of a voice, which whispered rather closely at her ear that she now had the gift to see them.

  To see the extra shadows that were there.

  The extra shadows of the men and women who passed by in that fine historic square, that was named for that great naval victory. Not all possessed them, but some. Few in fact were they, but Clara saw them. The folk who had an extra shadow. That is what she saw.

  Certainly now many of us are aware of the phenomenon. It seems extraordinary today that anyone, particularly the cinema-goers to whom the phenomenon was ever on view in the movies of the day, failed to see it. Check out any Hollywood cowboy film of the late fifties and early sixties. Anything starring John Wayne, for instance. Check out the outside shots, those sunny-day gunfight scenes. Look at Mr Wayne, then look at his shadow. Or rather shadows! For he casts more than one. It’s there in almost every movie, captured on the celluloid. And Clara saw it there in Trafalgar Square, that certain folk had more than one shadow. And that these folk were wrong from the inside to the out.

  Her mental-mesh was damaged indeed, and she could see more than others.

  But Clara kept her alarm to herself. She did not cause a fuss, because such a fuss might well have landed her in a police cell, then a psychiatric unit, then back at the Ministry of Serendipity.

  No, Clara kept her alarm very much in check. She took herself off to a well-known American-style eatery and ordered a hamburger, French chips and a Brown Derby Ice-Cream Sundae, and a cup of tea, and pondered deeply on her situation.

  And she viewed the waiters and waitresses coming and going in their elegant and distinctive red and white livery. And she noted well that one of them cast more shadows than she felt was strictly necessary and determined on a plan. Because she had no
w become a most determined woman.

  At three in the afternoon there was a change of shifts and the waiter with the surplus shadow clocked off and, like Elvis, left the building. And Clara followed this fellow.

  To the Underground Station she followed him. And there he purchased a ticket and she a Red Rover, as she hadn’t seen which ticket he purchased. From there to a train and on this train, as fate would have it, back to Croydon.

  Breathing God’s good air, Clara emerged from Croydon Station and followed the caster of the double shadow, who, oblivious to the fact that he was being shadowed, strode on with that air of confidence and self-assurance that is the almost exclusive preserve of waiters the whole world over.

  And eventually this waiter reached the ornate gates of the Croydon Municipal Burial Ground, paused for but a moment and then entered there. And though Clara followed him closely, very soon he was gone. To where? And how? Clara did not know. But she was rattled.

  And in that state of rattledness she returned home. And at the corner of the street that was her own she paused, because there ahead of her was a long black car with blackly mirrored windows. And it was parked right outside her house. And there were men dressed in black standing around in her front garden.

  And one of these was talking to her husband Keith (who should surely have been at work) and Keith was wringing his hands and looked a little weepy overall.

  And Clara flattened herself into a hedge of a privetty nature and realised that she was indeed in very big trouble. And was somewhat stuck as to just what to do about this.

  And so she hid and she waited. And eventually the men in black returned to their black limousine and this drove away at some speed. And Clara crept down a side alleyway and along to the rear of her house, and from there into her back garden where she sneaked to the living-room window and peeped in.

  And there was her husband, wringing his hands and pacing up and down. And Clara was overcome by his obvious emotions and she tapped upon the window. And her husband Keith saw her and broke into a smile and they were reunited there and then.

  And Neil concluded the story there, as we sat in Club 27.

  ‘Hold on,’ I said to Neil. ‘That can’t be the end of the story. What else happened?’

  But Neil was now dipping strawberries into a bowl of cocaine.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, reaching for a strawberry and giving it a dip. ‘That can’t be the end of the story. What has it got to do with Shadow Night at Club Twenty-Seven?’

  Neil chucked a strawberry down his throat. ‘Oh, all right,’ said he. And carried on.

  Clara’s husband Keith made a pot of tea for his wife, and at length he joined her in the lounge room. Clara was a bit sobby and sniffy now, what with the emotional reunion and all that had gone before it, and her husband poured her tea and asked her to tell him everything. Because, as he told her, the men in black who had visited had told him she had died.

  And so Clara told him everything.

  And Keith listened to this everything with a perplexed expression on his normally cheery chops. And when Clara had done with the telling of everything, he reclined back in the Parker Knoll Recliner19 and said, ‘By golly, by gosh.’

  ‘By what?’

  ‘By golly?’

  ‘Golly, where?’

  ‘Not here.’ And husband Keith patted the wrist of his wife and told her that this was a right old pickle, as well as being a fine kettle of fish and a rum one, to be sure. And then he took to thinking. And then he said, ‘Wait here.’

  And he went upstairs and rummaged about. And then he returned, bearing in his hands his old service revolver, which he had been allowed to keep at the end of the Second World War, as a gift from a grateful officer-in-command for the many valorous deeds that the then Private Keith had performed that were above and beyond the call of duty. And he showed this service revolver to his wife.

  And his wife was further alarmed by this display of hand armament. Although also strangely comforted. And she asked her husband Keith what his intentions were concerning the deployment of this weapon.

  And husband Keith twirled it upon his finger, as John Wayne was wont to do in the movies. And he told his wife that it would put an end to their particular problems.

  And then he aimed it at Clara’s head and pulled the trigger.

  And the last thing that she noticed, before all-encompassing blackness closed in about her, was that the raised arm of her husband cast two shadows.

  And Neil dipped once more into the strawberry bowl.

  ‘No, no, no,’ I said to Neil. ‘Although very good in an Outer Limits kind of a way, that still doesn’t explain Club Twenty-Seven’s Shadow Night. Or much else when it comes right down to it.’

  ‘Well, there is another version,’ said Neil, who now seemed to be growing rather animated.

  Clara noticed that double shadow as her husband raised that gun. And she screamed once more in that high soprano, which had her husband flinching. And Clara wrestled away that gun and ran in fear of her life, far away from Croydon, and was never seen again.

  And Neil had one more strawberry and great big dippings did.

  ‘I will punch you, Neil,’ I told him. ‘And if not me, then Andy will.’

  ‘I’ll punch him anyway, if you want,’ said Andy. Who, I noticed, was dressed in the police uniform of one of New York’s Finest.

  ‘I’ll have him killed,’ said Toby.

  And Neil continued with haste.

  She left England (Neil continued, with haste). Jumped a liner to New York. Submerged herself into the New York scene and wrote about her experiences in the Underground Press. You’ll find a lot of her stuff if you flick through back issues of Flaky Fruitcake Today magazine. She played the part of the mad old bag lady.

  ‘Hold on there,’ I said to Neil. ‘Mad old bag lady?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Neil. ‘This all happened back in the nineteen-thirties. ’

  ‘They didn’t have Ford Sierras in the nineteen-thirties,’ said Toby, who already had several cars of his own.

  ‘They did in Croydon,’ said Neil.

  ‘And what about the doctor who looked like Elvis?’ said Andy.

  ‘I think she added that into the story later,’ said Neil. ‘She met the real Elvis, you see, and realised that he was the dead spit of the doctor that she had met twenty years before. Which is kind of weird, isn’t it?’

  Andy grunted that it was and had another strawberry.

  And Neil continued, ‘So Clara became an outsider, an eccentric, a bogus bag lady, to avoid the attentions of the Men from the Ministry. But she could see who was who. And she published her findings in all kinds of off-the-wall publications. And some folk took her seriously, these folk being those whose own mental-meshes were either damaged, or missing.’

  ‘And Shadow Night at Club Twenty-Seven?’ I asked.

  ‘She founded Club Twenty-Seven,’ said Neil, ‘as a means of Purging the Taint.’

  And I knew that expression. I had heard it used to describe what went on when the helicopter gunships strafed that Hanwell cemetery.

  ‘How does this work?’ I asked Neil.

  ‘They are lured into the club,’ said Neil, ‘the others, those casters of the double shadow. They are reanimated corpses, you see. Clara eventually figured it all out. They have their own shadow, but also another - the shadow of the ungodly thing that has been inflicted into them. Shadow Night sorts them out.’

  ‘How?’ I enquired. Although, in truth, I wasn’t particularly caring too much by then, because I had by that point eaten my way through about half a pound of snowily dusted strawberries.

  ‘Well, you didn’t know what Shadow Night meant until I explained it to you,’ said Neil. ‘So neither do they, and no one explains it to them. They come into the club, looking for a good time, but they never leave. There’s a hotel over on the West Coast, also founded by Clara, where the same thing goes on.’

  ‘The Hotel California?’ I said.

&nb
sp; ‘You know of it?’

  ‘Only a lucky guess.’

  ‘So they get exterminated. And it’s really entertaining to watch, apparently.’

  I registered the looks upon the faces of the other guys in the band. Apart from Toby, who appeared altogether keen, the other guys, even though now buoyed-up considerably by copious quantities of coke, didn’t look altogether enthusiastic.

  ‘It’s one of those rich people things,’ Neil explained. ‘Those exclusive things that only the rich are privy to. We can watch because we are rock musicians. I’m up for it - what about the rest of you?’

  ‘How do they do the actual butchering?’ Andy asked.

  ‘I think you can have your choice of weapons.’

  ‘What? ’ I said to Neil. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Oh, I forgot to mention that. If you bung a contribution into the Extermination of the Undead Fund, you can butcher one of the blighters yourself. With your choice of weapons.’

  I did shakings of my head. This was all a bit sudden. And a bit unexpected.

  ‘Well, I’m up for it,’ said Toby. ‘Can I choose one of those General Electric miniguns? They look like a lot of fun.’

  ‘Well, I’m not up for it,’ said Rob. ‘It all sounds most dubious to me. What if they’re not undead? And frankly I don’t think I believe in the concept of the undead. It sounds rather cheesy to me. You might kill some innocent party instead.’

  And so we did not attend Shadow Night. It was a group decision. A band decision. And I for one am glad that we took it. It wouldn’t have been right if we’d got involved in something like that and butchered an innocent party.

  So we all went back to the hotel and to our original plan for the evening: to live the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle and set the standard by which other rock bands would be judged in years to come.

  Yes, follow our original plan.

  And eat one of the groupies.

  37

  We didn’t eat all of the groupie.