Necrophenia

  And I just shook my head.

  So this was how the world would end. With Dave and Barry discussing what Trevellian in Corporate Holdings had been doing with the tall woman from Sales Services. Although, I supposed, it had probably involved a bang and a whimper.

  ‘Oh, Barry,’ continued Dave, ‘before I forget, the old man wants the golden tart all loved-up and compliant. So can you ask Kevin in Pharmaceuticals to load her up with some happy juice? What? Oh, you’ll need a green chitty for that? I thought green chitties were strictly interdepartmental. This is Top Priority for the eyes of Mr Crossbar only, surely? Blue chitty? Now don’t be silly, blue chitty is Recreational Services. Well, yes, you’re right, it might come under Recreational Services. I wouldn’t mind servicing that gold tart in a recreational manner myself, would you? What? Yellow chittie? I’ve never even heard of a yellow chitty.’

  And I took my leave.

  And I drifted down and all around and about. And I sought out the golden girlie and eventually I found her, locked in a broom cupboard on the third floor. And she was sitting there, all huddled up and sobbing, and I tried like damn to communicate with her but it was impossible, and so I drifted down some more and returned to the floatation tank.

  And how was I going to get myself out of that? I drifted low and examined myself and the way I was fixed in. And I appeared to be most securely fixed in with many straps all soft, but very strong.

  And I hovered about above myself and I fretted. How was I going to get free? There had to be some way. I counted off on my astral fingers my magical capabilities. I could smell people coming from a distance. I could hear what they were thinking. I could see with my eyes closed. And I could leave my body and travel about in the spirit. And that was it, really. Which was a shame, because if I’d just been able to move solid objects around with the power of my mind alone, I could have had myself out of that floatation tank in next to no time at all.

  But there had to be a way.

  And then it came to me, as if by divine inspiration. I would employ the positive neutral powers of the Tyler Technique. It had never really had a chance to prove its worth. And this was, I felt, because I had never really been able to give it its head. So to speak. Which is to say that, in order to make something happen by doing nothing at all, you really do have to do nothing at all.

  And how few are the times when we are consciously doing absolutely nothing? I had always been doing something. Thinking something. Planning something. Getting involved in something. The entire point of the Tyler Technique was that it functioned on the principle of total non-involvement on the part of the person who sought to employ it. By doing absolutely nothing, the required something would come into being.

  And there was I, down below in that tank, doing completely and utterly absolutely nothing. And here was I, up here, observing this and willing the Tyler Technique to function as I had never willed anything so strongly before.

  And below me a door opened, gushing light into the room and onto the floatation tank. And two individuals entered. Two individuals who did not look particularly individual. Both wore thickly lensed spectacles, sported white coats and carried clipboards.

  ‘Did you hear about Trevellian in Corporate Holdings?’ said one to another as they both approached the floatation tank.

  ‘About him and the tall woman from Sales Services?’ said the other to the one.

  ‘Ms Williams? Not her. He’s getting engaged to Ms Haywood in Musical Therapy. The dark one with the sweet nose.’

  ‘I didn’t know we had a Musical Therapy department.’ The other fellow in the thickly lensed spectacles and the white coat tapped at a gauge on the side of the floatation tank and made notes on his clipboard with an official CIA biro.

  ‘It’s not a very big Musical Therapy department. There’s just Ms Haywood with her steel pan and her sweet nose.’ The first fellow in the thickly lensed glasses and the white coat consulted an instrumentation board upon a wall, tapped at a gauge upon that and made notes on his clip board with an all-but-identical biro. (His had green ink, rather than the other’s red. Because he did like to think of himself as an individual.)

  ‘Hold on,’ said the other fellow. ‘Her steel pan and her sweet nose? Do you mean that she plays her sweet nose as an instrument?’

  ‘She probably would if you asked her. She’s very amenable.’

  ‘Should this valve be in the on position, or the off ?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Do you think it matters?’

  ‘Probably not. I’ll switch it to the off position to be on the safe side. Tell me more about what she might do amenably, possibly even with the involvement of her sweet nose.’

  ‘Why is this bod in this tank in the first place?’

  ‘So he can’t interfere. He’s very important to the success of the old man’s project. But he doesn’t know that he is important.’

  ‘Wasn’t he once in The Sumerian Kynges? I had a flick through his file, to check out whether psychologically he could survive this treatment.’

  ‘And could he?’

  ‘Absolutely not. He’ll be a vegetable by midnight. But that’s the old man’s intention. He needs him for the ceremony. But he doesn’t need him to do any thinking, or cause any trouble, so he’s having him bobbing about in here so he’ll lose the last of his marbles.’

  The other fellow peered in at my naked person through his thickly lensed specs. ‘I don’t think he was really in The Sumerian Kynges. I had a flick through his file too and it’s pretty grim reading, isn’t it? He comes off as a fantasist who always believes that he’s something special. Funny thing is that he is important, but he doesn’t know about that. Ironic, eh? Should this lever be in the up position, or the down? I’ve never worked with this particular instrument before.’

  ‘Nor me. Push it down - it looks tidier. Let’s talk some more about Ms Haywood and her sweet nose. Actually, do you think she’ll still be on duty?’

  ‘Bound to be. Musical Therapy is an evening thing, isn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think I’d heard of Musical Therapy until you mentioned it. Or did I mention it to you?’

  ‘Who can say? But let’s go and see her, shall we?’

  ‘Let’s do.’

  And so, making a note or two more upon their clipboards, they left to seek out Ms Haywood and fawn about her sweet nose. But, and I had a little laugh about this, they would be thwarted in their plans because I had drifted through the Musical Therapy office on my way down from above. And it was empty, as Ms Haywood had already gone home.

  Ha ha.

  And so I hovered and I waited and I chewed upon my astral fingernails. Was the Tyler Technique going to come up cosmic trumps? Would what I hoped for occur because I had done absolutely nothing whatever to make it occur, but even less to stop it? So to speak.

  And I hovered and I waited.

  And then I heard a little sound.

  It was a little hissing sound. As of pressurised steam backing up. And I drifted low and spied that a little needle on a little dial, one that had been most recently tapped, was moving into the red. And smoke was beginning to rise from the vicinity of the valve, which had been switched to the off position, rather than having been left on the on. And a lever that had been pushed down rather than having been left pushed up was starting to vibrate.

  And the hissing and the smoking and the vibrating grew and grew and grew. And instrumentation boards began to pop and fizz and then to burst into flame.

  And many red lights began to flash.

  And panels lit up with the words—

  EMERGENCY PROCEDURE SUBJECT RELEASE

  And the fixings that fixed me clicked and released and the fluid drained from the tank.

  And I returned with haste to my body, now sprawled on the floor of the tank. And I stretched my limbs and climbed to my feet. And I praised the Tyler Technique.

  68

  Tick tock went the clock, counting down to midnight.

 
Did you know that the average human life lasts less than one thousand months? It doesn’t sound like much when you put it like that. And it isn’t very much really. And like anything that matters, the less you have of it, the more precious it becomes.

  As I rose all wet and bare-bottom-naked from the floor of that floatation tank and gave out with another of those great atavistic howls that were finding so much favour with me of late, I really felt the preciousness of life.

  That and the need for underpants.

  You just can’t go into battle in nowt but your bare skuddies. It’s not a good look and they’ll never put it in the movie version, the one where Ray Harryhausen is doing the animated monsters.

  I was in definite need of underpants and I knew just where to find them.

  It was going to be tricky getting from the floatation-tank room all the way up to the God-knows-how-many-floors-above top-most lair and loveless office of Papa Keith Crossbar, necromancer, murderer and head of the CIA. I was going to have to make my way up carefully.

  And so I got down to a bit of the old Doctor Strange magic mambo. I crept to the door of the room, pressed my ear to it, nipped outside in my spirit-self and had a good look-see. All clear, so back into my body and out into the corridor and so on. It was a damn fine system, and it occurred to me that should I be able to best the horrible Homunculus and save the World in general, a legitimate job might be found for me in the CIA, as a spy or an undercover agent. Now that I was not only a skilled detective, but also a Master of the Mystic Arts.

  I upped to the changing rooms above that smelled of plimsolls and man-bits and sought out one of those smart black suits whose style never dates as long as they’re not made of polyester. And I eventually found one that fitted rather well, and I decided that in keeping with the mission I was presently engaged upon, I would go ‘commando’ while wearing this suit. I did put on a white shirt, though, and a black tie. And a pair of socks and shoes. And, probably best of all, a really spiffing pair of Ray-Bans. And I examined my reflection in a changing-room mirror. And as God had done when finished with His big six days of labour, I looked upon all that I had made and beheld it was very good. And very cool.

  And then I heard voices and I did slippings away.

  I noticed that there was no shortage of wall clocks in this building, and that the nearest one that I noticed displayed its hands in the twenty-to-midnight position.

  Which meant a number of things to me.

  That Kevin in Pharmaceuticals would probably by now have loaded the golden girlie up with happy juice.

  That a couple of burly ninja types would probably be heading to the floatation tank to hoik me out to face whatever horrors the Homunculus intended for me.

  And that the quicker I could get up to the office of the thoroughgoing swine and put paid to his eldritch schemes, then probably the better.

  Outside the thunder crashed and bashed and the lightning did all that could reasonably be expected of it.

  This final showdown should, at least, not lack for suitable SFX and noises-off, I thought.

  I wondered, perhaps, if I should take the lift.

  Lift or stairs?

  Stairs or lift?

  It would be a lot of floors and a lot of stairs—

  And Hell, I looked the part. I could blend in here. Dressed like this I could pass for a CIA man-in-black spook any day of the week.

  With the possible exception of Tuesday.

  But then today wasn’t Tuesday.

  I took the lift.

  I pressed ‘Penthouse Office’.

  And then I did something rather clever.

  I left my body standing in the lift and put my astral mind once more to the application of the Tyler Technique.

  I concentrated really hard and then did nothing at all.

  And I accompanied the rising lift all the way up in the astral, as it were. And I observed all those folk who were about to push the lift button on various floors. I watched them as they missed the button, changed their minds, tripped over, bumped into one another. And on floor thirty-seven, the tall woman from Sales Services, Ms Williams, fell suddenly into a passionate embrace with Trevellian from Corporate Holdings. Much to the shock of his fiancée Ms Hayward of Musical Therapy (the one with the sweet nose who played the steel pan), who had not in fact gone home early, but simply popped out to purchase a new pair of pan sticks. Because she was having a secret affair with Jonny, the manager of the pan-stick shop. Who was the half-brother of Dave, the evil cat’s paw of the Homunculus. Who really quite fancied Ms Williams.

  Office life, eh?

  So, basically I got all the way up to the top floor unmolested, whipped back inside my body and stepped from that lift looking like a million dollars and cool as a mountain stream.

  Just in time to hear all the alarms going off.

  ‘That would be them finding me missing from the floatation tank,’ I told myself. On the off-chance that I hadn’t already figured it out. ‘So best get a bit of a move on, eh?’

  And then I did one of those duckings aside and divings for cover, which, as I previously mentioned, you have to know how to do rather than try and learn. Because the lift beside mine made that dinging noise that lifts do to signify their arrival and my extrasensory nose told me that there were two men in that lift and one golden girlie. So I ducked behind one of those corporate potted plants, the likes of which you can never grow in your own home, which are watered regularly by strange little Japanese men in overalls. Who always whistle old Go West numbers and smell rather strongly of bicycles.

  Or was that a dream I once had?

  ‘Hold on there,’ I told myself. Quietly and behind the cover of the corporate potted plant. A Ficus elasticus decora, I think. ‘Keep your mind together. Don’t go wandering off on any tangents. This is neither the time nor the place.’ And I tried very very hard to stay focused, which wasn’t too easy, I can tell you, because the temptation to go off on one about potted plants and how Captain Lynch had once told me all about a man-eating variety that lived in the Amazon Basin was tempting.

  Oh, so tempting.

  But I stayed focused.

  And the two men, young men, Dave being the one and the other, I assumed (for no reason other than convenience), to be Barry, to whom Dave had recently spoken upon the internal telephone about oh so many things, escorted between them a scantily clad golden girlie who had about her now a rolly-eyed-staggery-stumblyness of a kind that is so much favoured by a certain type of young female as a late-night-Saturday-town-centre look.

  And as I have stated that I would make no further mention of my anger, I will make no mention of it now.

  But I wondered, perhaps should I take my chances and have a pop at Dave and Barry? Perhaps I could take them down, as it were, and rescue the golden lovely. But, of course, there was always the chance that Dave and Barry worked out in the gym with the ninja types and were well heeled in the martial skills department. Which meant that they would beat me up and I’d never get a chance to take my shot at the Homunculus. So to speak. Et cetera.

  So I let them pass by and then I followed them.

  Discreetly.

  And they were not, it appeared, heading to the office of the Awful One. They passed by this office and went up a staircase. Towards the roof.

  The roof! I thought and I smiled a little, recalling a certain idea that had come to me in the Awful One’s office. The idea that I had considered a long shot, but one that was still in the running.

  And so I followed these fellows as they hustled the golden girlie ahead of them up the staircase. And I heard them make lewd remarks regarding her bottom, which were going to cost them dearly when they got theirs. Which they would, I felt confident. Somehow.

  At the top of the stairs was a door. And here they knocked and entered. And then I heard a voice cry, ‘Don’t bother to lock it.’ And then some mumbled words.

  And I parked my physical self on the stairway, vacated it in my astral and poked my head
through the door to see what was what.

  And wouldn’t you just know it? Dave was crouched on one side of the doorway and Barry on the other. And they had electric truncheons in their hands. And were obviously lying in wait for me.

  Damned cheek!

  ‘Well, let ’em crouch there till they get the cramps,’ I told myself. ‘I will find another way in.’

  But where was in?

  What was all this up here?

  And so I had a little drift about to see what was what and why.

  This was not the open roof. It was a great high-domed conservatory kind of a jobbie, in the grand Victorian style, glorifying in each twiddly bit and the unnecessary fussiness of its design. It was lit by flaming torches held within cast-iron embrasures at regular intervals about the single circular and all-encompassing wall of glass and iron-work - rather out of place upon the peak of this bland tower block of a building, but evidently constructed to serve a particular purpose.

  And the purpose it was constructed to serve was all too horribly evident. The circular floor was of marble, inlaid with many precious and semi-precious stones: aquamarine, beryl, chrysoberyl, emerald, sarkstone, heliotrope and tourmaline and lapis lazuli. And wrought into it was the infamous pentagram, enclosed within the double circles, which themselves enclosed the words of power too terrible to be named.

  And there were many other symbols and sigils wrought into this floor, symbols and sigils from many cultures, ancient and modern - all points covered, as it were. And at the heart of the pentagram, enclosed within another circle, this one composed of amethyst and sapphire, was the circular altar.