Necrophenia (26 page)

Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick.

My life all ticked away.

And had it been worth it? Something to remember? Something to be proud of? Would I have made my mother proud? Or my father? Had I achieved anything? Anything?

I looked deeply into that woman’s eyes and felt a sense of ultimate betrayal. The Homunculus had governed my life for the last twenty years. I had been his puppet. My life had ticked and tocked away and I had walked through it as a somnambulist. And I looked into her eyes.

And in slow motion, as it always is, that car ploughed into me, breaking first my ankles, then one hip bone as I struck the bonnet, then several ribs and a right arm bone or several. And then my nose as my head passed through that windscreen. And much glass dug in well and deep, into my forehead and cheeks.

And then, as the car swerved and slammed to a halt, momentum shot my body forward, into that lamp post, shattering further ribs and doing all manner of horrible damagings deep internally.

This was not one of those accidents where someone was going to walk away with a bit of minor chafing and a good-luck tale to tell. No, this was one of those statistic jobbies, another one chalked up dead.

And then I watched it all happening. The crowd that formed, the eager helpers who knew nothing of first aid and caused more damage through their helpfulness. The arrival of the emergency services. Those flashing beacon lights and banshee-wailing sirens. And the policemen, stringing up that ‘DO NOT CROSS’ tape. Asking questions, taking notes.

The woman in the car did not walk away with a bit of minor chafing and a good-luck tale to tell. She was decapitated. Her head rolled across 27th Street and came to rest in the doorway of Fangio’s Bar.

Fangio had watched the whole thing happen. He stood gnawing a bar cloth.

‘That is very sad,’ he told another eyewitness. ‘But on the bright side, the bar will no doubt revert to me.’ And then he went back into his bar, carefully stepping over the fallen head.

They had to use the jaws of life to free the rest of the driver’s body. Jaws of life? That was a bit of a joke. And no one really troubled much to rush over and gather up my Earthly remains. What with me being twisted up into such a dire-looking Gordian knot and everything.

And if it hadn’t been for a lady in a straw hat who drew the attention of one of New York’s Finest to the fact that I was still breathing, they would probably have just tossed a tarpaulin over me and carted me off to the morgue.

The fact that I was still breathing caused much excitement amongst the paramedics, who had been standing around, sniffing the oxygen and smoking cigarettes, and they fell upon my helpless body with great enthusiasm. They were clearly delighted at having an opportunity to use all of the equipment. All the different Band-Aids and braces. All the splints and pads and drips and dual monitors, LIH vascular packages, en-mode image intensifiers and portable nebulisers. Not to mention the hydro-colloid dressings, wound-closure strips, tubular bandages, Hemcom haemostatic bandages and chest-seal tapes.

Which I, in my present state, was quite unable to do.

And once they had transformed me into a passable facsimile of King Tut’s mummy, they loaded me onto a gurney, pushed this into the back of an ambulance, hooked me up to all manner of tubes, wires, chest-drains and whatnots, and then got the driver to drive away fast with flashings and hootings and wailings. And I watched all this happening. All of it. Even though my eyes were bandaged over. I watched it from outside my body, kind of hovering above it, free of gravity, as if in a dream and unable to feel the pain that the mash-up me below was clearly suffering.

And then we hit the ER. And my gurney was rushed along corridors and bumped through double doors and then surrounded by shouting surgeons, all of them shouting at once.

And they shouted all those things that they shout in movies.

‘Give me one hundred ccs of sodium bi-pli-nick-nack, hook up the defibrillator, bring a line in on the pulse oximetrical poliscope.’

‘Hand me a phase-nine sphygmomanometer and chips.’

‘We’re losing him. We’re losing him.’

‘Charge up the defibrillator. Full power. Stand back. Stand back.’

And then wallop went that electrical shock right on through my body.

And wallop I was no longer out of my body. I was back. But then I was out again.

‘No response. Stand back, I am going to shock him again.’

I was now hovering well above my body. I was drifting, in free fall, but falling nowhere. And I could see what was going on outside the Emergency Room. I could see folk in the corridor. I could see Fangio. He had come along. Which was decent of him. Although he did keep going on to passing medics that he had something really important that he needed me to sign before I snuffed it.

And there was someone else I knew. Although now this someone was truly a face from the past. It was Mr Ishmael. And he was remonstrating with medics, demanding that they save my life. That was nice of him.

Then wallop again.

And again I was back in my body.

‘We’re getting something,’ I heard someone say, not too far from my ear. ‘I’ve got a heartbeat, or something.’

And I was back in my body and I stayed.

And they said it was a miracle. But also that I’d never walk again. Nor speak, nor do anything much, really, other than impersonate a vegetable. And I lay there, saying nothing, doing nothing, but hearing everything.

And feeling it, too.

All those operations they did with the minimum or no anaesthetic, because, after all, I was in a coma, so what was I likely to feel?

Well, everything, really!

The cuttings, the probings, the sewings-up. The knittings together of bones. But I lay there saying nothing, doing nothing, unable to move, or to speak, just being.

As tick tock tick tock, my life went ticking by. And then all feeling left me.

One day the members of The Sumerian Kynges came to pay me a visit and sing me a song. The only member from the days when I’d had some involvement was Andy. And I could see him, even though my eyes were closed, as I seemed to be developing some very strange abilities within my vegetative state. Andy looked well; he looked older, of course, but he still had his hair and he still wore that hair in the ever-stylish mullet.

I tried like damn to communicate with Andy, to force my thoughts into his head, to persuade him to take me home with him, but it didn’t work. And presently he, and the three Chinese girls who now composed the other members of The Sumerian Royalty as they were now apparently renamed (a gender-neutral thing. Apparently), cleared off and left me all alone.

They came back once or twice, but as the media showed no particular interest after the second time, there were few other visits and I was left truly alone.

Apart from Fangio visiting me. He came every week. He brought me fresh flowers to put in my vase. And a box of chocolates, which he proceeded to eat, assuring me that ‘the nurses would only eat them otherwise’. And he never mentioned that piece of paper that he wanted signing. Which did make me wonder whether, perhaps, he had simply forged my signature onto it. But he did come. And it’s odd when you are really ill, isn’t it? Who does come and visit you and who does not. Who your real friends turn out to be. And all that kind of caper.

And what was really really strange was that I found, as time passed, as time all ticked and tocked away, that I was able to do all sorts of things that years and years ago I had read about in comic books.

In Doctor Strange comics.

I could see with my eyes closed.

Leave my body in my astral form and travel around and about.

Smell people coming from quite a considerable distance.

And, though it was faltering and not altogether reliable, read people’s minds. Hear their thoughts.

I was becoming a regular Master of the Mystic Arts. Which was all very well and quite wonderful really. But lying on my back in a coma was really doing my brain in.

The big change came one Tuesday morning, early in May in the year 2007. Because yes, I had lain in that bed being poked and bed-bathed and massaged and messed with for ten more years of my wasted, useless ticked-and-tocked-away life.

But a big change came one Tuesday morning, beginning with the arrival of a very old man. He looked to be a veritable ancient and he wore an old-fashioned uniform that perhaps once fitted him, but was now several sizes too big. And he took off the cap that was also too big and placed it upon my bedside table. And he took my left hand between his crinkly paws and stroked at my foolish tattoo.

‘Hello there, young Tyler,’ he said, in a wheezy, creaky old voice. ‘I’ll bet you won’t remember me. But I knew you when you were very young.’

And I looked hard at this venerable elder, hard through my closed eyelids.

And I said, ‘Captain Lynch,’ to myself. For none but me could hear it.

‘I’m Captain Lynch,’ said Captain Lynch. ‘Well, Major Lynch now, but long retired. Your mother told me you were here. It’s taken me a few years to save up the money to fly over from England, but I have and now I’m with you.’

And I looked on at Major Lynch, Captain Lynch as was.

‘I had to speak to you before it is too late for me to do so. I have to give you something. It’s an important something that we spoke of many years ago. More important than ever now, what with the way things are. I’ve talked with others and I know that you know all about them. And you know who it is – the Homunculus that I spoke to you of, all those years ago. It wasn’t Elvis, was it? Elvis is gone, but the Evil goes on and grows daily. You must stop it, Tyler. You will need this.’

And he produced from the pocket of his superannuated uniform a crumpled, dog-eared piece of paper.

‘I have carried this with me for sixty years,’ he continued. ‘It is the map. The location of Begrem, the Lost City of Gold. I never got to Africa. The Church Army said that I was not missionary material. There had been some trouble, you see. Certain Indiscretions. Certain scandals. But I kept your mother’s name out of it. But I never went. And I never married or had children. Well, only you. Well, oh never mind, forget I said that. But I was supposed to train you from when you were young, so that you would know what to do when the time came. So that you would have sufficient power to kill him.’

‘What?’ I went. But only to myself.

‘The map,’ said Major Lynch. ‘It’s there on the map. The location of the lost city. You must lead an expedition, Tyler. Find the city. There are secrets to be found in that lost city, secrets that could help you to destroy the Homunculus, before he destroys us all.’

And then the major patted my head, stroked my brow and, rising, kissed me on the forehead. Which was somewhat unlovely, as he lacked for several teeth and was a bit drippy in the mouth regions.

But I didn’t mind. Because his heart was in the right place. Although this business about him training me when I was young – what was that all about? And I tried to read his thoughts, but could not, because they were old and confused and chaotic.

And then he upped and put on his cap. And he saluted me, as the old soldier of the Lord that he was, and he said, ‘You will rise again, Tyler, as our Good Lord rose again. And you will slay the Evil One, as our Good Lord should, but can’t, because it is not in His remit. Good luck, my boy.’ And he saluted again. And about-turned and marched as best he could from my room.

And I lay there, saying nothing at all.

But thinking an awful lot.

And then, about an hour after the good major had departed, two fellows entered my room and stood at the foot of my bed, a-chatting.

‘Ten years?’ said one.

‘All but,’ said the other.

‘And who is paying for this?’

‘His brother made a donation, but that ran out some time ago and he is not on any Medicare programme.’

‘So why is he still alive?’

‘I don’t quite understand the question, sir. He lives because his body is healthy enough and one day he might awaken from his coma.’

‘But that is not altogether likely, is it? After three months in a coma, the chances fall and fall away. After two years the chances are almost zero.’

Nobody had told me that!

‘New advances are being made in the fields of neurosurgery all the time, sir. This man may be revived and go on to live a useful life.’

‘We do have a very thick CIA file on this individual. He did not have a useful life before his accident.’

‘No, sir, he didn’t.’

‘He’s too expensive. We need his room. We are going to extend the children’s ward. Children’s wards get funding. Vegetables taking up valuable bed space do not.’

‘I can’t just pull the plug on him, sir. That would be unethical.’

‘There will be a power cut at three p.m. Essential maintenance work outside. All staff have been notified of this, yes?’

‘Yes, sir, because the equipment that maintains the life-functions of patients such as this must be reset immediately after the power cut or they will not restart.’

‘And you are responsible for restarting this patient’s equipment?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then I am ordering you to take the afternoon off. Go home, watch the Lakers game on TV. Here, take these.’

‘And these are, sir?’

‘Tickets to Carnegie Hall. The Fortieth Anniversary tour of The Sumerian Royalty. Have a good time. Take your wife.’

‘Well, thank you, sir. But the patient-’

‘I don’t think you need to worry yourself over this patient. I will take responsibility for him.’

And the fellow who said this smiled a cruel smile and drew a finger across his throat. And then the two of them left my room.

Giving me plenty more things to ponder upon.

Tick tock tick tock, time all passing by.

And me on my bed, all alone in my room, with plenty of things to ponder. And a certain rage growing within me that it would be very hard to describe to anyone who has never been in a similar situation.

They call it an impotent rage. And there is no rage worse than that.

And this rage roared through my body, boiling and foaming.

And the time on the clock ticked by.

So this was to be it, was it, then? Had some mighty cosmic force that wasn’t God (because God didn’t intervene) finally decided that enough was enough? That I had suffered enough? That now would be the time to put me out of my misery? That now I was just a waste of space?

I wasn’t having that.

I was not going to be switched off. Have my plug pulled good and proper. Be dispatched upon my way. No. And so I raged and boiled and foamed. And then I felt it twitch. It was a finger. The little finger on my left hand twitched and I could feel it doing so. And then I got the thumb going and another finger. And then I could feel my wrist. And my toes tingled and my nose ran. And I rose up from my bed.

Rose, as a titan from the depths.

As one born again. Although not that one, obviously.

Rose and tore out the tubes and the wires and set my feet on the floor.

And collapsed in a most untidy heap. A groaning, moaning heap.

Because feeling had now returned to my body and I hurt everywhere. My eyeballs hurt, and how can your eyeballs hurt? Even my hair hurt. And my toenails. But I climbed up to my feet, swayed gently, clutched the bed for support. And I savoured that pain, every red-hot-firey needle of it. Because I could feel again and even pain felt good. And I breathed great drafts of air unaided and I opened my eyes and I stared at the world. And the world didn’t look too good.

My room was shabby. In fact it was more than just shabby, it was filthy. It hadn’t looked like that through my astral eyes. It had just looked like a room. But with my normal eyesight, shabby grim. And with my nasal passages working once more, it smelled dreadful. As if some blighter had pooed in the corner and no one had cleared it up.

I steadied myself against the bed, sat myself down on it and pulled out the last of the bits and bobs that connected me to this and that.

‘Well, you can have your room back,’ I said. ‘I hope the dear children like the smell.’

My clothes hung in a cupboard in the corner of the room. I patted at the trench coat. They had taken my trusty Smith & Wesson, but the rest of my stuff was there, though smelly. All musty and fusty and greatly in need of dry-cleaning.

I tore off the horrid surgical gown that unflatteringly adorned me and it came away in pieces, it was so rotten. ‘No expense spent,’ I concluded as I togged up in my Lazlo Woodbine gear. And I took up that map that the major had left and stuffed it into a pocket.

The Woodbine gear didn’t fit me too well. It was, I confess, a bit big. I had clearly lost weight. The belt did up by another three holes. I was virtually skeletal.

There was a mirror over the sink by the window and I limped over to it and peered therein. And I didn’t like what I saw.

I looked awful. Sunken, drawn, my skin like yellow parchment, stretched across my cheekbones. Killer cheekbones, though. Like Elvis used to have, when he was young and really the king of rock ’n’ roll.

But I was a mess. My eyes were bloodshot and sunk deep in dark sockets. I opened my mouth. Had nobody cleaned my teeth? They were as yellow as my skin, with nasty black lines between.

‘Look at me,’ I howled. And I did. ‘I’m a wreck. I look like a plague victim. How did they let me get in this condition?’

And I felt that rage all boiling once again.

And very energising that rage was. And I splashed some water on my face, used my finger as a toothbrush, was disgusted by the blackness of my tongue. Pulled my fedora way down low and stormed from my hospital room.

And nobody stopped me. Nobody spoke to me. Nobody even seemed to notice me. The medics just went about their business. Gurneys were pushed, some folk shouted, other folk wept. Nurses came and went.

And presently I was outside in the street.

And I took great breaths of New York air and those great breaths were not rewarding or beneficial to the good health of my person. New York stank. It reeked. It was horrible.

It was a nice day, though. Bright sunlight.

Although-

There was bright sunlight, but there was a certain dark quality to this bright sunlight. It was difficult to quantify, really, but things weren’t right. Things were, shall we say, out of kilter.

Somehow.

And then I saw the policeman. He was just a policeman. He stood on the corner, twirling his nightstick as old-fashioned policemen used to do. And the sun, the dark sun, shone down upon this policeman and cast his shadows before him.

And yes, I did say shadows. He cast two shadows, that New York cop. And I could see them clearly.

Two shadows! And I thought about that woman in Croydon who had had the crash on the roundabout and woken up in the Ministry of Serendipity. She’d seen the double shadows. And was it her who had ran me down and died in the crash?

Probably yes, I supposed.

And I glanced here and I glanced there. And saw them here and there. Them. The dead, the animated dead. The ones that cast two shadows.

‘And I can see the shadows now,’ I said, in a whispery kind of a voice, ‘because I have been in a coma for so long and developed these weird abilities.’

‘What a wreck!’ A woman walked by me. A good-looking woman. She’d said that I was a wreck. I opened my mouth to answer her back. But then I realised that she hadn’t said it. She’d only thought it. And I had heard her thoughts. I watched her as she walked away. The woman had only one shadow.

I shrank back against a wall and tried to look inconspicuous. It’s a detective thing. And I viewed the people of New York. And I counted them as I viewed them. And wouldn’t you know it, one in three was casting a pair of shadows.

One in three? Did this mean that one in three New Yorkers was dead? The conclusion had to be yes.

I turned up the collar of my trench coat. The dark sun seemed to cast no heat and I felt chilly withal. He was winning. The Homunculus. One in three. All over the world? The army of the dead growing in numbers, awaiting the moment to arise against the living.

I felt chilled to the bone.

And I was starting to shake.

Going into shock? I couldn’t have that. I couldn’t end up back in the hospital again. What I needed now was a big fat drink.

A big fat drink in Fangio’s Bar.

I had no money for cabs, so I walked. And as I walked, I fretted. He was going to win, that Homunculus horror, and I was powerless to stop him. What could I do, a single living man against an army of the dead? And how had all these people come to die anyhow? I didn’t believe that they had died, been buried, then risen from their graves and gone home to their friends and family, saying that it had all been a big mistake and that they were all fit and well again. That didn’t make any sense. They must have been murdered secretly and then zombified, as the voodoo priests did to their victims in Haiti.

So what did that mean? That there were zombie hit-squads roaming around at night, picking folk off at the order of their evil master, the Homunculus?

That, in all its horror, seemed most probable.

I trudged on, in an ill-smelling trench coat and a right old fug.

And Fangio’s Bar hadn’t changed. But had Fangio? The not-so-fat-boy barman hadn’t attended my bedside in a while. Had he succumbed? Did he now cast double shadows and call the Homunculus ‘sir’?

It was with some foreboding, and no small degree of thirst, that I pushed open the now-legendary shatter-glass door and once more entered the bar.

And there was the now elegantly wasted boy behind the bar counter and he looked up from a magazine and copped a glance at me.

‘A bottle of Bud, please, Fange,’ I said. ‘And a hot pastrami on rye.’

And he fainted. Dead away.

And I roused him with the contents of the ice bucket. And he rued the day that he had not worn a wetsuit to work (this day) and arose all dripping to his feet.

‘It is you,’ he said. ‘And you are awake and here.’

‘And looking like dog poo,’ I said. ‘How come nobody gave my teeth a wash?’ And I displayed my teeth to Fangio. Who fell back before the onrushing of my severe halitosis.

‘You’re going to need some alcohol to mask that breath of yours,’ said the barlord. ‘And then we are going to have to talk some very intense toot. If you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do.’

And he popped the top from a bottle of Bud and served up a pastrami on rye.

And I tucked in to all that he served and did so gratefully.

‘I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to see you up and about,’ said Fangio. ‘Even if you do look somewhat dog-pooish. So do you wish to pay in cash, or should I start a tab for you?’

‘I’ll have these on the house,’ I said. ‘As this is my bar.’

‘Ah,’ said Fangio. ‘Was your bar. The court order came through just last week. When you were declared officially braindead.’

‘Which quite clearly I am not!’ I said. In the voice of outrage.

‘Opinions vary,’ said Fangio. ‘You’re entitled to your own, of course. Personally I incline towards the opinion of the magistrate who signed the court order. But that’s me all over, isn’t it? Upholder of the law and friend to one and all.’

And I did grindings of the teeth. And bits of teeth fell off.

‘I need a wash,’ I said to Fangio. ‘I stink and everything I’m wearing stinks and I need to clean my teeth. A lot.’

And Fangio let me use his bathroom. And he said that he would not charge me for the towels. On this occasion. The man was clearly a saint in the making. And, as he cast but a single shadow, still in the land of the living.

I returned to the bar smelling as sweetly as Elvis once had and reasonably shining-white in the railing regions. And I smiled my almost pearly-whites at Fangio and this time he did not fall back clutching at his nose.

‘It really is good to have you back,’ he said. ‘What are your present opinions regarding the undead? Believer, or non-believer?’

‘Believer,’ I said. ‘Firm and fervent believer. And instrument of vengeance upon the Homunculus. If I get half a chance.’

‘Top man,’ said Fangio. ‘Bonnie Tyler was in here the other day and she was holding out for a hero. I don’t suppose you’re related?’

‘I didn’t know that you knew my real name,’ I said.

‘It was on your hospital records. Which came from extensive CIA files on you. Apparently.’

‘So I heard. Perhaps I should go and speak to the CIA, tell them everything I know. And I know a lot.’

‘Best not,’ said Fangio.

‘You think?’

‘I know. Best not.’ And Fangio pushed the magazine he had been reading when I entered across the bar counter to me.

It was a copy of American Alpha Males Today magazine, which incorporated American Jocks Today magazine. And American Teenage Dirtbags Today magazine. And Hard-Core She-Males Monthly, but this last was in very small lettering.

And there he was on the cover.

In big glossy all full colour.

Keith Presley, brother of Elvis.

Otherwise known as Papa Keith Crossbar.

The Homunculus.

And there was a big blurb on that cover. And that blurb said-

LOOK OUT VILLAINS BEWARE AND TERRORISTS FLEE Keith Crossbar Crowned New Head of the CIA

‘Head of the CIA?’ I said. ‘That’s him, you know. That’s the Homunculus.’

‘Of course I know,’ said Fangio. ‘All of us in the Underground know now. But what can we do? Assassinate him?’

I glugged down another bottle of Bud.

And Fangio served me up another. ‘I’ll put it on your tab,’ he said.

‘Head of the CIA,’ I said. ‘How did that happen?’

‘Folk died,’ said Fangio. ‘Anyone who stood in his career path met with an unfortunate accident. Not always fatal, though, because when they had “recuperated”, they no longer stood in his way – they endorsed his rise to power.’

‘And I bet they all cast two shadows?’ I said.

‘I’ve heard that story, too,’ said Fangio. ‘And I’ll just bet that they do.’

‘How much would you be prepared to bet?’ I asked on the off-chance.

Fangio scratched at what he had left of hairs on his head.

‘Surely I would win that bet,’ he said.

‘You might,’ I replied.

‘I think I’ll pass anyway.’

I raised my bottle of Bud to Fange. ‘It is very good to be sitting here in this bar talking to you,’ I said. ‘Even if we are not talking the toot. It’s good. Cheers to you, my friend.’

‘And cheers to you, too,’ said Fangio.

And we shared a moment. A special moment.

And then the shatter-glass door opened and a newsboy entered and hurled the evening paper onto the bar.

Fangio almost caught it, but didn’t. And the newsboy departed, chuckling.

‘The news,’ I said to Fangio. ‘Now, I have not exactly been too privy to the news lately. Let’s have a look at what’s going on in the world.’ And Fangio smiled and pushed the evening paper across the counter top to me.

And I perused the front page.

And guess what. And wouldn’t you just know it.

There was a great big photograph of me on the front page. And below this were printed the words-

PSYCHOTIC TERRORIST SERIAL-KILLER ESCAPES FROM STATE MENTAL INSTITUTION CIA Head Orders Cops to Shoot on Sight

‘Oh sweet,’ I said. ‘Just perfect.’