Necrophenia (25 page)

‘Well, pardon me for saying so,’ said Fangio, ‘but you have only yourself to blame. Women and cheese don’t mix. They are an unhealthy combination.’

‘What did you say?’ I asked him. Coming to, as it were, in Fangio’s Bar.

‘Your wife,’ said the barlord. ‘That’s what.’

‘My wife?’ And I did many double takes. I felt as if I had awoken suddenly from a dream. Or been brought to the surface of some murky-watered lake with a great big rush and a good gulp of air. And I said, ‘What is this?’

‘What is what?’ asked Fangio. ‘There’s a whole lot of whating going on.’

‘This,’ I said. And I pointed to the back of my left hand. ‘I’ve got a tattoo. When did I get a tattoo?’

‘Oh, you’re not going to start all that again, are you?’ said Fangio. ‘Because you’ll only go getting yourself banged up in the booby hatch again. And although I know that “being in therapy” is oh-so-very-nineties, it does keep you away from this bar. And I do remain quietly confident that one day I will win it back from you.’

‘Slow down. Slow down. Slow down,’ I said. ‘I am in some confusion here. But not mad, understand me? I haven’t gone mad. Say it, if you please.’

‘You haven’t gone mad,’ said Fangio. And I’m sure he tried to put some conviction into his voice.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I’m having a bit of a moment here. I’m a little confused. And you did say wife to me a moment ago, didn’t you?’

‘Hatchet-faced harridan,’ said Fangio.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Heaven-faced honey-bunch?’ Fangio suggested. And then he looked me squarely in the eyes. And I could see that he’d aged. He’d aged again. By at least another ten years. Perhaps nearer twenty.

And I said, ‘Oh no, not again.’

‘You’ve lost your memory again, haven’t you?’ asked Fangio. ‘I bet you don’t even know what day of the week it is, do you?’

And I shook my head, rather sadly.

‘Or what year?’ asked the barlord.

And I shook my head once more.

And Fangio now shook his head. ‘So go on,’ he said, ‘what is your last memory? What is the last date you remember?’

I must have got a fearful look on then, because Fangio told me not to worry and that he wouldn’t turn me in to the men in white coats again. And I told him that the last date I could remember was 16th August 1977.

‘Ah, that terrible day,’ said Fangio. ‘And today is the twentieth anniversary.’

‘Terrible day.’ And I said those words very slowly. ‘Twentieth anniversary. ’

‘The death of the King,’ said Fangio. ‘The death of Elvis Presley.’

‘Ah,’ I said. And, ‘Yes. But that was all for the best, you know.’

‘For the best? But I’d hoped to get free tickets, for when he was going to play Carnegie Hall.’

‘As the new Messiah?’ I said.

‘As the King of rock ’n’ roll. What a tragedy that was. And he was in this very bar, that very day. Did you know that?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘because I was here, too.’

‘You?’ said Fangio. ‘You were never here that day. You left here the day before that, said you had some pressing business down South. But twenty years, though. You suddenly can’t remember the last twenty years of your life?’

And I clutched at my aching head. Because my head, which hadn’t been aching, was certainly aching now.

‘I remember that day well enough,’ I told Fangio. ‘That terrible day. With the teleportation booths and the flying saucer landing on the White House lawn and everything. And the Pope confirming that Elvis was the Second Come and-’

And I looked at Fangio. And he had a certain look upon his face. A look that said so much without there being a need for words. So to speak.

‘No teleportation booths?’ I said. ‘No flying saucers? No Elvis being made the Second Come?’

‘Only Elvis dying on his toilet,’ said Fangio. ‘A tragic way to go. A heart attack, they say it was.’

‘It was a heart attack,’ I said. ‘And I should know because-’ But then I said no more. And hunched somewhat over my drink.

‘What is this I’m drinking?’ I asked the not-quite-so-much-of-a-fat-boy-as-he-used-to-be-but-twenty-years-older barlord.

‘Spritzer,’ said Fangio. ‘Welcome to the nineteen-nineties.’

I did burying of head in hands and lots of groaning, too.

And Fangio brought me another spritzer and patted me on the shoulder. ‘So you really can’t remember anything about the last twenty years?’ he asked. ‘Nothing at all? You’re kidding me, right?’

‘No jet-packs?’ I asked.

‘No jet-packs.’

‘I think things might be coming back just a little,’ I said. Because odd things were beginning to stir in my head. Memories, perhaps? Returning, perhaps? I took a peep into the mirror behind the bar. And this time I had aged. But not in a way that I found too terrible to behold. I looked pretty trim, somewhat greying at the temples, but it was a dignified look. But if twenty years of my life were missing-‘You did say wife to me, didn’t you, Fangio?’ I said.

‘If you can’t remember her, then perhaps it’s all for the best,’ said the barman. ‘She cost you plenty in the divorce.’

‘Divorce?’ I said. ‘Oh no. I actually get a wife. Which must mean that I finally got some sex. But I can’t remember her or the sex and I’ve got a divorce. That is so unfair.’

‘Be grateful,’ said Fangio. ‘I remember her and she was a stinker.’

‘Not nice?’

‘Dog rough.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And when did I marry her?’

‘You really can’t remember, can you?’

‘I’m not doing this for effect. When did I marry her, Fange?’

‘Thirtieth of August, nineteen seventy-seven. You met her here in the bar. The two of you were drunk, both being so upset about the death of Elvis. And you both had the tattoos done.’

I examined the tattoo on the back of my left hand. ‘It’s Phil Silvers as Sergeant Bilko,’ I said.

‘You asked for Elvis.’

‘But it doesn’t look anything like Elvis. It’s Phil Silvers as Sergeant Bilko.’

‘You were drunk. She was drunk. The tattooist was drunk.’

‘And so I got Sergeant Bilko?’

‘I’d never tried tattooing before…’ Fangio’s voice trailed off. ‘You should see what your wife got. Or perhaps you shouldn’t. I think it is what started her hating you, really.’

‘Hating me? I see. Do you think I had any sex at all during my marriage?’

‘You never mentioned to me about having any. And I think you probably would have mentioned it if you had.’

‘And I think I probably would have, too.’ And I gulped down my spritzer. ‘This tastes disgusting,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘Would you care to guess? We could have a bet on it. I think I’ve figured out where I’ve been going wrong with my betting, all these years.’

‘All good things must pass,’ I said. Philosophically.

‘So anyway. You split up with her after she stabbed you.’

‘What?’

‘Repeatedly. In the gut area. Lift up your designer T-shirt and have a look.’

And I beheld that I was wearing a designer T-shirt. Not that I had previously known what a designer T-shirt was. Although I suppose I must have, because I probably bought it. Unless I had a lovely girlfriend who had-But probably not. So I upped this designer T-SHIRT and now beheld the multiple scarring and stitching-up marks on my gut area.

‘Oh my God!’ I cried out loud. ‘I’ll bet that hurt. I am so glad I do not remember that.’

‘Your memory will probably return.’

‘I do hope not.’ But it was returning. And fast. And I grabbed at my skull and squeezed it hard between my hands and howled.

And twenty years’ worth of memories returned to me. Twenty dismal years of me trying to scrape a living as a private eye. As if sleepwalking. And I realised that during those twenty years I had not been able to remember what had gone on before. All the horrible stuff involving Elvis’s Homunculus brother, Keith. It was as if I had just returned from a hypnotic trance at the hand-clap of an evil hypnotist.

‘You remember now?’ asked Fange.

‘It’s all coming back,’ I said. ‘But how, I don’t understand.’

‘You’ll figure it out, I’m sure. By the by, now that you’re returning to normal, did you get me those tickets you promised me?’

‘Tickets?’ I said. ‘That I promised?’

‘For The Sumerian Kynges Thirtieth Anniversary Tour. It’s thirty years since they played their first professional gig on Ealing Common with The Flange Collective.’

The Flange Collective? That felt like a lifetime ago. ‘That feels like a lifetime ago,’ I said. ‘They’re all still alive, I suppose.’

‘Depends on what you mean by “alive”,’ said Fangio. And there was a certain something in his voice as he said it. A certain gravitas, perhaps.

‘I know exactly what I mean by “alive”,’ I said. ‘I mean, as opposed to dead.’

‘Ah,’ said Fangio. ‘You certainly haven’t recalled everything yet, then. I know a lot of people think it’s just a lot of talk and conspiracy theory nonsense. And I know that for the last twenty years you have been telling me that it’s all nonsense and that you don’t believe in it and nor should I. But I do believe in it.’

‘Believe in what?’ I asked.

‘The Undead thing,’ said Fangio. ‘The Dead-Walk-Amongst-Us thing.’

‘That,’ I said, in the tone known as leaden. ‘I believe in that.’

‘Sudden change of mind,’ said Fangio. ‘You’ve been making public statements for the last twenty years that the whole thing is a communist hoax.’

‘I have what?’ And more terrible memories returned. I had done that. I really had. I had literally become the spokesman for the There-Are-No-Undead-Amongst-Us lobby.

‘Oh my God,’ I said, and I hung my head once more. ‘Oh my God. I was manipulated. Hypnotised. Drugged. I don’t know what. But somehow I have been controlled for twenty long years. And before that, on the day that Elvis died, I was in some kind of trance. That has to be it – some mind-controlled drug-induced brainwashed trance. Or something.’

‘Or something,’ the barlord agreed. And I am reasonably sure that at this point he would probably have gone off to serve another customer. If there had been another customer. But there were no other customers in Fangio’s Bar. There was just him and me in that bar.

So he stayed.

‘Business not too good?’ I asked.

And Fangio sighed. ‘Not since you closed the bar to everyone except yourself,’ he said.

‘Oh dear,’ said I. ‘And when did I do that?’

‘At the time of your divorce. Which came after just the three weeks of marriage. But let’s not return to that topic of conversation, eh?’

‘Let’s not,’ I said. ‘But I am now awake from that terrible twenty-year walking nightmare of a life. That’s half of my life nearly, all wasted away. I can’t believe it, it’s too terrible. But I do believe in the undead. And I want you to tell me all about what you know of them. And I want you to take the “CLOSED” sign off this door and reopen this bar for business.’

‘Praise the Lord,’ cried Fangio, throwing up his not-quite-so-podgy fingers. ‘Praise the Lord, Lordy Lordy.’

‘And never say “Lordy Lordy” again,’ I told him.

And Fange promised that he never would.

And Fange left the shelter of his bar counter, crossed the floor (rather smart trousers he wore, and the wooden leg was only memory), reached the door, turned the ‘CLOSED’ sign to the ‘OPEN’ side and returned to from whence he had come.

‘A job well done,’ said Fangio. ‘And welcome back, Laz. It has been a very long time.’

‘It has,’ I agreed. ‘And I am very angry about this state of affairs.

Someone has been playing awful games with my life, and I’m damn sure I know who. And I will do something about it and about them. You see if I don’t. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Fangio. ‘But you did of course say that the reason for your last twenty years of mostly inactivity was because you were perfecting the Tyler Technique. Does this new-found positivity mean that you have now perfected it? Or is it a by-product of the nineties Zeitgeist? The post-yuppie work ethic?’

‘Tell me about the undead,’ I said to Fangio. ‘And get me a proper drink. And get one for yourself. And we’ll both have doubles. Okay?’

And Fangio did as I bade him to do.

And then he settled himself down upon his side of the bar and he told me things. And these things were terrible things.

But I had to be told them and so I listened.

Quietly, like this.

I listened.

‘There’s a lot of different versions of this story regarding the undead,’ said Fangio. ‘Some say the whole thing started here and others say it started there. No one is exactly sure where and when it all began, but there are a growing number of informed and intelligent folk who do believe it. And folk have been piecing things together. And folk talk in bars. And I listened to these folk. And I have been listening to folk during the last ten years, in this bar, having meetings, while you have been out at your meetings propagandising to the contrary on this matter.’

I made certain groaning sounds. ‘Please continue,’ I told him.

And so Fangio continued.

‘Legends say that it started in Vietnam, but researchers have found anomalies that date back as far as the First World War. There was the case of a man named Billy Balloon, a Punch and Judy man in Edinburgh. He went off to fight for his King and his country, and returned to join the family business and perform as a Punch and Judy man. And he is remembered in the annals of Punch and Judy men as being one of the greatest that ever there was. But the mystery of it is this: he had his arms and his tongue blown off during that dreadful war, so how could he work the puppets and do all the voices as well?’

‘My father told me this story,’ I said to Fangio. ‘He told me that as a child he’d been taken to see Billy Balloon’s Punch and Judy show. And later, when Billy died, my granddaddy told him the story. But he didn’t know the truth. Do you?’

‘He was dead,’ said Fangio. ‘He died at the Somme. But his comrades didn’t know that he had died. They thought he had been terribly wounded, but had survived his injuries.’

‘But he was dead? Was it a dead man that my father saw perform the Punch and Judy show?’

‘A dead man,’ said Fangio. ‘By force of will, by utter determination, he refused to let go of his physical body. He clung on to it. He urged it back into animation. But he had no arms. And he could not speak.’

‘So how did he work the puppets? And do the voices?’

‘He didn’t. Not physically, anyway. He didn’t touch the puppets. Those puppets climbed up onto the little stage of the Punch and Judy show tent booth and performed and spoke by themselves.’

‘He brought the puppets to life?’

‘He was undead. His soul had left his body back in the Somme. What remained was the force of his will. Witches have their familiars, animals with the souls of demons that do the witches’ bidding. In the same way, he had his puppets. He conjured into those puppets the souls of departed comrades. How many millions died in the First World War? How many lost souls wandered those battlefields?’

I felt little shivers run through me. This was sinister stuff.

‘Oh,’ said Fangio. ‘A customer. And my first, other than yourself, in twenty years. Please pardon me while I serve him.’

And off he went to do that very thing.

And I did some thinking on what he had said. It was that thing about souls again. That thing upon which the creation of the Homunculus was based. The Punch and Judy man had somehow cheated Death, in that although he had died and his soul had left his body, the being that was him had somehow remained there, by sheer force of will. And this will-being had reanimated his own body. A dead body. But what about those Punch and Judy puppets? The souls of fellow soldiers animating the bodies of puppets? That sounded rather horrid. But then perhaps it was better than being in your own rotting corpse lying unrecovered on some foreign battlefield, awaiting your call to salvation or otherwise. As an option, perhaps it wasn’t too bad a one. Although how had Billy Balloon managed to achieve it?

‘He was outside this world,’ said Fangio, as if reading my thoughts. ‘Sorry if I startled you there, but you were probably going to ask me how Billy Balloon managed to instill the souls of his war buddies into puppets. Yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘So how did he do it?’

‘He was outside this world. The world that we understand. The world of the living. That is the only world that we, the living, understand, insofar as we do understand it. But it’s all that we know anything about. Beyond that? The Great Mystery. Our rules no longer apply. What the dead are capable of, we the living do not know. What really goes on in Heaven or Hell we only can speculate on.’

‘This is rather deep stuff for you,’ I said to Fangio.

‘Sir,’ said Fangio, ‘I am a barlord. We can do deep and we can do shallow. We do what we are called upon to do. That is our skill. That is our gift. That is why we became barmen.’

‘Good grief,’ I said. ‘Then it is a vocation? Like joining the priesthood?’

‘Precisely. Though somewhat deeper and more mystical than being in the priesthood.’

‘I will never look at you in the same light again,’ I said.

‘It would be oh-so-simple to stick in a little bit of shallow here,’ said Fangio, ‘but I will resist the temptation and carry on with the deep stuff.’

And that was what he did.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘a dead man walking and orchestrating the movements of puppets imbued with the souls of his dead companions. He achieved his goal. He wanted to make his family proud of him, maintain the family traditions. And he did. And when he had done so, he gave up the ghost, if you like. He let his long-dead body finally find peace in the ground.’

‘It’s a sad story,’ I said. ‘But uplifting, in a curious manner.’

‘Quite so. But what comes later is not quite so uplifting. We have the Second World War. Which, I am assured, was not just fought with conventional weapons, but also with magic. A great battle of Good against Evil. And this led to the creation of the Homunculus. Do you know what that is?’

‘Actually I do,’ I said. ‘I know all about the Homunculus.’

‘There is much rumour,’ said Fangio. ‘Some even claim that he is the brother of Elvis, who was one of six children, the magical sons of the English magician Aleister Crowley.’

‘And how do you feel about this idea?’ I asked Fangio. As it now appeared certain that Fangio had no recollection of the conversation that he had overhead two decades before, in this very bar, between myself and Elvis Presley.

‘I poo-poo this idea,’ said the barlord. ‘How about you?’

‘If you poo-poo it, that is good enough for me,’ I said. Because I did want to learn more. ‘Please continue with your most interesting narrative.’

‘The Homunculus,’ said Fangio. ‘As with the reanimated corpse of Billy Balloon, the Homunculus is outside of our world. He exists in a manner that we do not understand. Cannot understand. His motives are inexplicable to us, as inexplicable as our motives must be to him.’

I gave this some thought. Some very hard thought. And Fangio continued.

‘Where he goes, Death follows. Death. For he is an aspect of Death. He would destroy all life. All of us. We cannot understand why because we cannot understand him. But death is what he wills upon us.’

‘Death,’ I said. And slowly.

‘Death,’ said Fangio. ‘And so, this much I understand, and others all over the world understand – a secret department here in the States, a secret ministry over in England. We understand that the Homunculus is raising an army of the dead. Here. All over the world. A growing army. This has been going on since the nineteen-fifties, when he escaped from the custody of those who controlled his actions.’

I did some more hard thinking.

Fangio clearly had part of the story. And I had part of the story. And all over the world other concerned parties had other parts of the story. It was a very big story. And it came in many parts.

‘An army of the dead,’ I said to Fangio. ‘Why?’

‘To do what armies do, of course. This is all about war, isn’t it? Everything is ultimately about war. The war between Good and Evil. This war becomes the war between the dead and the living. When the reanimated dead are of sufficient number, when they outnumber the living, then they will rise. The war will be swift, the outcome inevitable.’

‘That is horrible,’ I said to Fange. ‘That is absolutely horrible.’

‘It is no laughing matter,’ said the barlord.

‘And when the dead have won and there are no more living, what then?’

‘What indeed?’ said Fangio. ‘I have told you. We, the living, cannot understand the motives of the Homunculus. He is beyond our worldliness, beyond our comprehension.’

‘That is a cop-out,’ I said to Fange. ‘You must have some theory.’

‘I have many,’ said the barlord, ‘but they are only theories, nothing more. I do not understand the motives of the Homunculus. But I and other concerned parties have no wish to understand them. All we want is for him to be destroyed, before all of the Earth and every living thing on it are destroyed.’

And off went Fange to serve another customer. Leaving me all alone.

‘Well,’ I said. To nobody but myself. ‘All this makes a lot of sense. I wonder if, perhaps, I should pass on to Fangio and to his concerned parties the fact that I know the identity of the Homunculus.’

‘Probably not the best idea in the world.’

And I looked all around and about. And, ‘Who said that?’ I asked.

‘Oh, surely you remember me.’

And there he was, as large as life, although not perhaps of it. The short, stumpy man with the odd Pickwickian looks. And that hint of a hairless Shirley Temple. And all that buck-toothed Caligula business also.

‘Mr Woodbine,’ said Papa Keith Crossbar, seating himself upon the next bar stool. And extending a hand.

I did not accept that lumpy paw. In fact I drew back in some alarm and kept my hands out of reach.

‘You,’ was all I managed to say. In a rather breathless voice.

‘And no other,’ said Papa Keith Crossbar. ‘And long time no see. Why, when was the last time I saw you? Oh, I know – at that bonfire party in Graceland’s garden. What a laugh that was, eh?’

‘It was real,’ I said. And I began to shake as I said it. ‘All that was real, wasn’t it? The futuristic stuff. The teleportation. The auto-da-fé?’

‘Real,’ said Papa Crossbar, the Homunculus. ‘But not this reality. Your barman friend is correct. The world I inhabit is not the world you inhabit. Not altogether. Although there are tangents and cross-overs here and there. I allowed you to enter into my world. Into one of my worlds. A parallel world. An alternative reality where Mankind had achieved all the things that it would have achieved if it had not devoted so much of its time to fighting each other. The parallel world that exists in parallel space where the fighting did not occur and Mankind did go forward. I granted you a view of that. A little visit to it.’

‘A world where Elvis was being hailed as the New Messiah?’

‘Yes, wasn’t that hilarious? All that futuristic technology, and Mankind was still ultimately as stupid and gullible as it ever had been. What hope for humanity, eh?’

‘And I killed Elvis,’ I said. ‘Or if not actually killed him, I was responsible for his death.’

‘Where the worlds connect, mine and yours, you killed Elvis. And he died in both worlds, yours, mine. You did what I intended you to do. You killed the man who was employing you to kill me. Job done, eh? Exactly as I planned it. Done.’

And I looked on in horror. ‘You thoroughgoing swine.’

‘And you were sufficiently traumatised by what you had done that you literally sleepwalked though the next twenty years of your life,’ this thoroughgoing swine continued, ‘as my puppet, campaigning against those ludicrous conspiracy theories about a rising army of the dead.’

‘You thoroughgoing-’

‘You said that, yes.’

‘Wife,’ I said. In a hopeless little voice.

‘Yes, wasn’t that a laugh? The memories will all return. You won’t enjoy them. And you didn’t get any sex. Your life has really been a bit of a waste of time, hasn’t it? If you were to go outside now and throw yourself under the first car that came rushing by – an old Ford Sierra, that would be, imported from Croydon – then who would blame you? You would be doing the right thing. And you really should do the right thing, shouldn’t you? After doing so many wrong things for so long, the right thing would make a pleasant change. What do you think?’

And the Homunculus looked at me. Deeply at me. Intensely at me. Completely at me.

‘It would be the right thing to do,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it?’

And I nodded bleakly. It would be the right thing to do. It really would. I had been a total failure in life. Everything I had ever done had come to nothing. Life had failed me and I had failed life. I would be better off out of it. Death would be better than this life.

Anything would be better than this life. Death especially.

And so I got up from my bar stool. And I walked across the bar, opened the shatter-glass door and walked out onto the sidewalk of 27th Street.

And stood there.

And a Ford Sierra came streaking towards me. It ran straight through the lights. An old woman was driving it and I saw her face clearly. And she saw mine also. And we looked into each other’s eyes.

And I flung myself into the path of her on-rushing motor car, which struck me with deadly force.