And all around and about the kid and myself and the stumpy guy with the seemingly supernatural powers, the clientele of the club just kept on talking with their companions and downing their beers. And the weather girls came and went and Fangio the barman, in his skull make-up, served customers to the right and the left of him, with never a hint of the toot being talked.
And I squared up to the stumpy guy and stared at him eye to eye. ‘Who are you, fella?’ I asked of him.
And the fella laughed. And it was a terrible, terrible laugh and it rolled all about me and all through me and it made me feel sick at heart. ‘I do hate to use such a dreadful cliché,’ said the fella. ‘And as I have already made you aware that you are now a cliché yourself, it does seem such a shame. But as I have no feelings for you, or indeed your race, let it be known to you that I am Papa Crossbar. And I am your worst nightmare.’
‘The Papa Crossbar, High Priest of voodoo?’
‘And so very much more besides. And one by one I take from this world, take life and replace it with death.’
‘It is him,’ cried the kid. ‘Shoot him, Laz. Shoot him now.’
And I reached for my trusty Smith & Wesson. But my trusty Smith & Wesson wasn’t there. The stumpy guy that was Papa Crossbar had it. He had somehow lifted it from my shoulder holster. And he twirled it about him on a stumpy little finger.
‘I can hear you thinking,’ he said, ‘all of you, and the din is deafening. You make so much noise, don’t you? And so much mess, too, and you stink out this part of the universe. But soon I will be done with all of you. With all life on this planet, down to the tiniest noisy little microbe. All will be gone and all that will remain will be a Necrosphere. A planet of the dead - the totally dead. No bacteria rowdily feasting on corpses, no loudly chomping maggots. All will be dead. Each and all. But you will not be here to witness that, I am thinking.’
‘But why?’ I asked. And I took a step back. ‘Why would you want to do such an awful thing?’
‘Awful?’ asked the stumpy Papa Crossbar. ‘Awful in which respect?’
‘To annihilate an entire race. Eradicate life from an entire planet. Why would you want to do such a thing?’
‘Pest control, if you will. Life is not universal. Death is universal. This little pocket of life is an anomaly. It ruins the perfection that the universe would otherwise attain. Nasty, noisy, smelly little planet. All must be expunged. All must die.’
‘You too?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes, but in my way, not yours. While I am here, upon this world, I am as you are. As mortal as you but so much more than you. I am Papa Crossbar. And when my work here is done, I will ascend into the darkness to enjoy eternal peace.’
‘Might I ask a question?’ asked the kid.
‘You might, but I doubt whether I will feel inclined to answer it.’
‘Well,’ said the kid, ‘I will ask it anyway, if you don’t mind. Because I got involved in all this weird stuff a while back. It was your zombies at the cemetery in Hanwell, I suppose.’
‘There have been many and there will be many more.’
‘And—’
‘And so what does Mr Ishmael have to do with this?’
‘Oh,’ said the kid. ‘You really can read my mind. And it really does hurt.’
‘Indeed. And so I know what you are now thinking. You are thinking that you will try to distract me with some toot so that Mr Woodbine here can strike me down and hopefully kill me by so doing.’
‘Hmph,’ went the kid.
‘No go, I’m afraid. Not that you couldn’t possibly pull off such a scheme, but you would have to guard your thinking so well that I could not penetrate your thoughts. And you do not have that skill. And so goodbye.’
‘Are you off?’ said the kid, with some bravado. ‘Please don’t think that you must hurry back.’
‘It is goodbye to Mr Woodbine,’ said Papa Crossbar. ‘This man could pose a genuine threat to me, and so he must depart now from this plane of existence.’
‘Not quite yet,’ I implored. ‘Lazlo Woodbine’s time has not yet come. I have years left in me. And my adventures might well enjoy a renaissance. There might even be a TV series made of them. With, perhaps, Robert Culp playing me.’
‘Yes,’ the kid agreed. ‘You can’t kill Lazlo Woodbine.’
The being that was Papa Crossbar shrugged. And he did this with a wicked smile upon his face. ‘It is goodbye, Lazlo Woodbine,’ he said. And he raised his hands. And then he projected. As I had projected, me, Tyler, on the Banbury Bloater drug at The Stones in the Park gig. I knew what it was to project. And just how much power it had. And one moment there was Lazlo Woodbine. And the next moment, there wasn’t.
‘Gone into the ether,’ said Papa Crossbar. ‘Will you be next, or will you choose to run?’
And I chose to run and so I ran.
And I ran and I ran and I ran.
43
And I ran back through the streets of New York, to the Pentecost Hotel.
And I felt sick to my very soul and took myself off to the bar therein.
Now, a hotel bar is a hotel bar and they all have points for them and points against. This one had mostly points for. It was not Papa Crossbar’s Voodoo Pushbike Scullery and it did not have Fangio for a barman.
I ordered a Kentucky bourbon, double, on the rocks. And I sat at the bar and I hung my head, feeling very bad indeed.
It occurred to me that it would probably be for the best if I didn’t mention to Andy that I had met Lazlo Woodbine, what with Andy being such a big fan of the great detective and everything. He might just be a bit jealous and perhaps ask me why I hadn’t taken him with me when I went to visit Laz. And then the conversation might turn to what exactly went on when I did meet Laz. And then I might have to explain, just in passing, that Lazlo Woodbine had passed, so to speak. And that, perhaps, I was partially to blame for this passing. And it might all get rather messy and embarrassing and there might be some unpleasantness. And Andy might point accusing fingers at me and maybe knot these into fists and throw them likewise in my direction.
So it would probably be better just to say nothing.
But I still felt sick at heart.
It was my fault. I had got Laz into that fatal situation. I was to blame.
And as to Papa Crossbar! Well! So he was the super-villain. A black-magic voodoo evildoer. And it was he, Papa Crossbar, whose intention it was to destroy every vestige of life on this planet and reduce the Earth to a Necrosphere.
Scary stuff indeed it all was and I knew it all to be true.
And Papa Crossbar knew that I knew and so it was odds-on favourite that he would be sending some of his awful minions to butcher me horribly before I passed my information on.
I did nervous lookings around to the right and the left of me. Were any of his awful minions already here? He could read my mind, which was probably why he had let me run - for a bit of sport, because he knew where I was staying. The clientele looked normal enough. But, as I have already mentioned, I have never been able to define exactly what normal might be. And so the apparent normality of these folk, these chaps in their business suits and ladies in sweatsuits and pearls, might well belie the awfulness of what they really were.
I became now not only sick to my soul but frightened.
I would have to tell someone. Mr Ishmael, that was who I must tell. And he must help me. It was his duty to help me. After all, it was he who had got me into this mess in the first place. In fact, it was all his fault that I was involved in it. And so it followed that it was really his fault that Lazlo Woodbine had come to such a terrible end. But this was really absolutely no consolation whatsoever, so I sat and sulked and fretted and feared and gulped away at my bourbon.
And then the barman sauntered along to me and pushed the bar bill that I had signed for my double Kentucky bourbon on ice (although the ice was complimentary) under my drooping nose. ‘This is no good,’ he told me. ‘You’ll have to pay with cash.’
/> ‘Of course it’s good,’ I told him in reply. ‘That’s my room number. Stick it on my bill.’
‘Sir does not have a bill to stick it on, sir. Because sir is not a resident at this hotel.’
‘Don’t be foolish,’ I said. ‘I’m booked in with the rest of The Sumerian Kynges. We’re a really famous rock ’n’ roll band. You must have heard of us.’
‘Indeed I have, sir,’ said the barman, adopting that obsequious tone that oh-so-easily becomes sarcasm. ‘In fact, I have two of The Sumerian Kynges’ albums, one of them signed by Andy, the lead singer.’
‘You what?’ I asked. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I am talking about The Sumerian Kynges, sir. I am a big fan. But they are not staying at this hotel and neither it seems are you. Now, do you wish to pay for your drink, or should I call for the services of the doorman? He is a master of Dimac, I understand, and although he only uses his vicious martial skills in self-defence, it is remarkable how much damage he does to folk whom he clearly believes, although perhaps misguidedly, are trying to attack him.’
‘Hold on, hold on,’ I said. ‘I don’t want any trouble. I am booked into this hotel. And I am one of The Sumerian Kynges. And all of us are booked in here. But we haven’t any albums out yet.’
‘Sir would appear to be wrong on all counts there,’ said the barman. And he reached down beneath the counter top.
Fearing the arrival of a knobkerrie, I took a cautionary step back. But no such cudgel was brought to light, rather a long-playing record in a glossy twelve-inch sleeve. ‘Wallah,’ went the barman. ‘Doubt this if you will.’ He held out this album to me and I stepped up and took it from his hands.
The Sumerian Kynges ~ CHEESEMANIA ~
That’s what it said on the album cover, all in psychedelic writing in the style of Rick Griffin. And there was a picture of The Sumerian Kynges, wearing kaftans and looking suitably trippy. There was Andy and there was Rob and there was Neil and there was Toby.
I flipped the album over. It was a Greatest Hits album.
‘The Smell in the Gents’. ‘The Land of the Western God’. ‘The ‘Two By One Song’, not to mention ‘Your Soul Will Burn’.
Which I did not.
But I gawped at that album cover. Gawped at it and felt a tad more sick. Well, more than a tad, an avalanche of pukiness. It had to be a hoax of some kind, surely. We hadn’t even had a single single out. How could there be Greatest Hits album? It was a trick, wasn’t it?
I pulled out the vinyl record inside. It certainly looked real enough, though.
‘Careful with your fingers on that,’ said the barman. ‘I know there’s millions of them about, but that one is mine.’
‘Millions?’ I said, in a breathless, whispery voice. And I peered closely at that record. And I read the date upon it: 1973.
‘It’s a fake,’ I cried. ‘Nineteen seventy-three! It’s a fake.’
‘No, it’s not,’ said the barman. ‘It came out in nineteen seventy-three. I know it’s four years old, but it’s mine and it’s signed, so hand it back here.’
‘Four years old?’ I said. ‘Nineteen seventy-seven?’ I said.
‘Do you know what?’ said the barman. ‘The Sumerian Kynges did stay in this hotel. Way back in nineteen sixty-nine, it was, before my time. That must have been about the time New York was going for the Jewish look and folk were dressing the way you’re dressed now.’
I sank down onto my bar stool. But missed my bar stool and fell down onto the floor.
‘You’re drunk,’ cried the barman. ‘I’m calling the doorman. He’ll make it look like self-defence.’
‘No,’ I blubbered and I got to my knees. ‘Something is very wrong. It can’t be nineteen seventy-seven. It was only nineteen sixty-nine this very morning. The Sumerian Kynges were leaving tomorrow to play Woodstock.’
‘I understand they were brilliant at Woodstock,’ said the barman, leaning over the bar counter to further enjoy, it appeared, the spectacle of me on my knees on the floor. ‘I wasn’t there myself. Too young. And The Kynges don’t appear in the movie of the festival. Contractual differences, apparently. Which is why The Beatles and Bob Dylan, who also played there, aren’t in the movie.’
‘What?’ I went. ‘What? What? What?’ It couldn’t be true, could it? Nearly nine years had passed. The Sumerian Kynges had become world famous without me and had a Greatest Hits album out. Was I dreaming this? And if not, how could it have happened?
I climbed giddily to my feet. ‘I need another drink,’ I told the barman. ‘And I will pay in cash.’
‘Happy to serve you, sir.’
I paid in cash and happily I had enough. I quite expected the barman to tell me that my money was out of date and thus no good, but he didn’t. Apparently American dollars have remained the same for the last one hundred years. Apparently so that if you do commit a bank robbery and get caught and sent to jail, but manage to avoid giving back any of the money, it will be waiting for you wherever you buried it, ready for use when you get out of prison. And not be out of date. It is something to do with the American Dream, Democracy and Freemasons running the world. Or something.
So the barman accepted my money.
And I tucked into my bourbon.
‘Has the mobile phone been invented yet?’ I asked the barman. ‘Or the jet-pack?’
The barman shook his head sadly. ‘Shall I call for the doorman?’ he asked.
And I shook my head. Sadly. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I will be all right. I won’t cause any trouble. Something very weird has happened to me. I must have lost my memory or something. Perhaps I had an accident.’
The barman eyed me, queerly. ‘Are you telling me,’ he asked, ‘that the last memory you have is of nineteen sixty-nine?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It seems so. One minute it’s nineteen sixty-nine and I am over on Twenty-Seventh Street. Then I run back here and it’s nineteen seventy-seven. How weird is that?’
‘Most weird,’ and the barman nodded. ‘Twenty-Seventh Street. That used to be the Detective Quarter, didn’t it?’
‘Used to be?’ I shrugged.
‘Nice shrugging,’ the barman observed. ‘Did you know that the Shrugger once got drunk in this bar?’
‘I just bet he did,’ I said. ‘I was with The Sumerian Kynges, you know, really I was. And we were in New York with The Flange Collective.’
‘I’ve read about that - a sort of freak show, wasn’t it?’
‘Something like that, yes. I wonder whatever became of it.’
‘It closed this very year. The Flange, that was the guy who ran it, retired to Brentford in England to pursue a sacred quest of his - to create The Lounge Room of Christ, to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus.’
‘That is, perhaps, a little bit more than I can take in at the moment. Although I do think he might have talked about that. Although it’s getting a bit hazy now. But then, I suppose it was over eight years ago.’
The barman went off to serve some normal people. I picked up a copy of American Hero Today magazine from the bar top and gave its cover a good looking over. It was the March edition for nineteen seventy-seven. I gulped down some more Kentucky bourbon and made a mournful face. What was I going to do now? Where was I going to go? I supposed I could assume that Papa Crossbar wasn’t going to have me killed. But, I supposed also, that it was he who had done this to me somehow. Through voodoo? I didn’t know, but somehow. But perhaps I was free of him. Because what was I going to do, expose him? Tell everyone what I knew about him?
What, a mad boy with a defective memory? The more I thought about this, the more it all fell into place. In a weird and twisted fashion.
And I wondered, and I feared, too, just what had been happening during these missing years. Was most of the world now dead? How far had the bad things gone? I rubbed my hands at my temples. If I wasn’t careful, I might soon become a truly mad boy.
And mad boy? Had I aged? That was an interesting one. I took myself off
to the toilet, which hadn’t really changed much. But for the bowl of flowers and the nail brushes. I examined myself in the mirror. I hadn’t changed at all. Which meant that although nearly nine years had passed for the rest of the world, they had not done so for me.
So what did that make me? Something special? Someone special? I liked the idea of that. Although I suppose I had always considered myself to be someone special. So this was confirmation, really, wasn’t it? In fact, perhaps God had done this, and not Papa Crossbar. I liked the idea of that.
And I gazed at my reflection in the mirror. ‘I am really, truly messed up here,’ I told it. ‘My thinking is all out of kilter. I’m lost and alone and falling to pieces.’ And I gazed some more at my reflection. But my reflection did not have anything to say on the matter, so I returned to the bar.
The barman was awaiting my return.
‘That’s him,’ he said to the fellow standing beside him. A burly, useful-looking fellow dressed in a doorman’s livery.
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ I said. ‘If you want me to go, I’ll go.’
‘I don’t want you to go,’ said the useful-looking one. ‘I have a message for you.’
‘You do?’ I said, reseating myself. ‘Do you think you might pass it to me, along with the double bourbon on the rocks that you have most generously purchased for me?’
‘That, I think, can be done.’ The useful one nodded to the barman, who returned to his place behind the bar and did the necessary business.
‘I’ll have the same,’ said the useful one. And the same was also dispensed.
My drink was pushed in my direction and I gratefully accepted it.
‘Drink up,’ said the fellow, and I did so. ‘Now then,’ said the fellow. ‘The message.’
And I said, ‘Yes, go on please, the message?’
‘Your name is?’ asked the fellow.
‘Tyler,’ I told him, and he nodded.
‘Tyler, yes, it is you. He said that one day you would return here and that you would probably be rather confused. And that I was to give you this.’ And he withdrew from an inner jacket pocket a very dog-eared envelope. ‘I’ve carried it with me since nineteen sixty-nine. He said you’d come back sooner or later and now you have.’