Necrophenia (8 page)

Aliens indeed!

My brother’s madness wasn’t going to help this situation. Not that it ever helped any situation, particularly. In fact, the more I thought about it, perhaps, ultimately, all this mess was not my fault after all. It was my brother’s. If he hadn’t bitten the postman’s ankle, then the postman would not have run away and I would not have been able to take possession of all that musical paraphernalia.

So perhaps I should just blame Andy and have done with it.

But nice as these thoughts were – and they were nice, because I was going through a bit of a mental crisis, particularly as he had got the trench coat – none of this was going to help in retrieving all the aforesaid musical paraphernalia.

‘Still,’ said my brother, ‘aliens or not, they have left a pretty clear trail. Following them to their hideaway shouldn’t present many difficulties.’

And I said, ‘What?’ As well I might.

‘The lorry they used to transport the stolen goods,’ said my brother. ‘It left a trail.’

‘It left tyre marks, perhaps,’ I said. ‘But the snow has covered them, surely.’

‘Don’t call me Shirley
[10]
,’ said my brother.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But the tyre tracks are covered by snow.’

‘I’m not talking about tyre tracks,’ my brother said. ‘I’m talking about oil. There’s oil all over the place – it must have leaked from the lorry. We can follow the trail of the oil.’

And, ‘Ah,’ I said. Because it was clear to me, at least, that the oil in question had probably not leaked from the lorry, but rather from our leaky old Bedford van. But then, if, by some unlikely means, my brother could actually follow the route taken by the Bedford, it would Shirley
[11]
lead to the same place as the lorry.

‘So how do you propose to follow the trail?’ I asked of my brother. ‘Employ the services of a bloodhound, would it be?’

‘Don’t be silly, Tyler.’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But please tell me.’

‘I will take up the scent myself.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘What did you say?’

‘All is clear,’ I suggested.

‘You’ll have to assist me, of course.’

‘But of course.’

I hadn’t noticed that my holdall was in The Divine Trinity, but I noticed it now as my brother reached down, unzipped it, rooted about in it and then brought to light something rather furry-looking.

‘And what is that?’ I asked of Andy.

‘It is my dog suit, of course.’

‘But of course.’

‘Are you being sarcastic?’ Andy asked. ‘Because if you are-’ And he left the sentence unfinished, as the suggestion had sufficient power in itself not to require an explicit description of the potential horrors.

‘No, no, no,’ went I, shaking my head with vigour.

‘I will have to ask you a favour, though.’ And Andy slipped out of the trench coat and doffed away his fedora. ‘Take these, if you will be so kind, and put them on.’

‘Right,’ I said, without the merest hint of a question.

‘I’ll need to tog-up in the dog suit to really do the job properly. That’s where I messed up with my tiger-at-oneness – no suit. I couldn’t get the real feel for being a tiger. So I ran this suit up myself.’

And Andy was now climbing into this suit, which had arms and legs and paws, a tail and a zip up the front. And then he put on the dog’s-head mask, which looked, I must say, very real.

‘That looks most convincing,’ I said to Andy.

‘Well, it should. It is made from real dog.’

‘Right,’ I said, and I tried very hard indeed not to be sick on the floor. But I did have the trench coat and the fedora. And so, without further words being said, I togged-up and felt a very definite detective-at-oneness sweeping over me.

‘Help me on with the collar,’ said Andy, and I did.

‘And take the lead.’ And he nodded at the lead, because he couldn’t lift it up between his paws. ‘And keep a very tight hold on that lead. There’s no telling what might happen if I got loose.’

‘Right,’ I said, hopefully for the last time that day. But probably, I suspected, not.

And then we were off!

Andy dropped to all fours and sprang through the open doorway. He sniffed about at all the oil. And there was a lot visible as the snow, it appeared, didn’t stay upon such oil. And then he was away, with me clinging on to the lead. Away at the hurry-up on four paws went our Andy.

And he was good, for a sniffer-dog.

We reached the allotment gates and Andy leaped into the road. And off we went at considerable speed with Andy now barking enthusiastically.

‘Barking,’ I said to myself. How apt.

At short length we arrived at the derelict building that had posed as The Green Carnation Club.

Andy straightened up and growled at me.

‘What?’ I asked him.

‘You could have told me I was following your van,’ he said.

‘My van?’

‘I picked up your scent at The Divine Trinity. You might have mentioned that this was your band.’

I did chewings on my bottom lip. ‘You really picked up my scent?’ I asked him.

‘Well, I am a dog, aren’t I?’

‘Oh yes, you certainly are.’

‘So let’s get on with this tracking.’ And he growled loudly once more, took to some further barking and set off again at a goodly pace.

We headed towards West Ealing. Then through West Ealing and out to Hanwell. And then, in Hanwell High Street, Andy stopped and scratched at the ground and howled very loudly indeed.

‘Are we there?’ I asked. And then noting where we were, I groaned. We were right outside Jim Marshall’s shop. The shop from which all the equipment had originally come.

‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

‘Oh what?’ said Andy, straightening up.

‘We’re outside Jim Marshall’s. He must have paid those lady-men to retrieve his equipment.’

‘No,’ said Andy. ‘That’s not it at all.’

‘It’s not?’

‘It’s not. I just stopped because I need to take a poo.’

‘Oh no, Andy!’ I said, and I threw up my hands in alarm.

‘In the gents’ toilet over there,’ said Andy, pointing with his paw. ‘You really can be so silly at times.’

I apologised to Andy and he went off to have a poo.

I stood and waited, doing little marchings on the spot to keep the circulation going in my toes whilst admiring my reflection in Jim Marshall’s window. I was clearly born to this profession (as an adjunct to being a world famous rock ’n’ roll star with a sports car and a speedboat, of course).

I looked really good.

At little length Andy returned and I swear he was wagging his tail.

‘That’s a very posh bog,’ he said. ‘They even have a resident bog troll.’

‘You mean a toilet attendant,’ I corrected him.

‘Same thing. He had the nerve to suggest that dogs should do their business in the street-’

And I could feel another ‘oh dear’ coming on.

‘He won’t be doing that again,’ said Andy. ‘And now I think we’d best press on.’

And he was down on all fours once more.

And off and away at a run.

‘Andy,’ I cried as I stumbled after him, hanging on for the dearness of life to the lead. ‘Andy, why are you doing this?’

Andy barked and ran on.

‘I know you must be angry,’ I puffed, ‘about being locked-up in the lunatic asylum and blamed for stealing this equipment. Are you intending to hand it all over to the authorities when you find it and clear your name? Is that it, Andy, is it?’

Andy stopped and turned and sat down in the snow. ‘No,’ said he. ‘It isn’t. I’m not angry and I don’t want to hand the equipment over to any authorities. I want you to have it back.’

‘You do?’ I said. And Andy nodded. And then he scratched at the back of his head. With his foot, as a dog might do, which I found most impressive. If just a tad creepy.

‘On one condition,’ said Andy.

‘Just name it, my brother.’

‘I want to be in your band.’

‘Oh dear.’

‘Oh what?’

‘Oh, dear brother,’ I said. ‘It would be an honour and a pleasure.’

‘You see, I have certain musical ideas of my own that I would like to realise. They’re very meaningful and I think that the pop medium might-’

But he didn’t say any more just then as we both had to leap out of the road to avoid being run down by a 207 bus.

‘I think we’d better press on,’ said Andy, rising from the pavement and shaking the snow from his back in a dog-like fashion. ‘Before the trail grows cold. Well, colder anyway.’

And we were off once more. And thankfully now for the very last time.

I didn’t know Hanwell particularly well. It had a High Street with Jim Marshall’s shop in it. And St Bernard’s Loony Bin, which was opposite the bus station. And there were the three bridges – a train bridge, a road bridge and a bridge with the Grand Union Canal in it, all crossing each other in the same place.

Although perhaps I just dreamed the last bit about the bridges. It does seem rather unlikely.

Andy stopped and sniffed at oil. ‘I’m getting the scent really strongly now,’ he said. ‘From up ahead there, just past the three bridges.’

‘Is there anything beyond Hanwell?’ I asked of Andy. ‘I sort of thought that the world probably ended somewhere about here.’

Andy straightened up and brushed the snow from his paws. ‘Is that true?’ he asked of me.

And I sort of nodded that it was.

‘Silly, silly sod,’ said Andy. ‘Come on, let’s get this finished.’

And he was off once more, but this time at a more sedate pace. A lady in a straw hat watched us mooching by and I could just imagine what she was thinking:

Look at that stylish-looking private eye, taking his pedigree dog for a walk, would be what she was thinking.

So I have no idea why she screamed and ran off the way she did.

Andy stopped and, like a pointer, pointed with a paw. And did a bit of doggy-panting, which more than captured the mood.

‘In there?’ I asked Andy.

And Andy barked in the affirmative.

‘In there? Are you sure?’

Andy’s head bobbed up and down.

‘But that’s a cemetery,’ I said. ‘Dead people live in there.’

Andy’s head went bob-bob-bob some more. And I peeped through the cemetery gates. They were big gates, of iron, all gothic traceries and curlicues with much in the way of funerary embellishment. Skulls and crossed bones, angels in flight. And things of that nature, generally. And beyond these a most picturesque-looking graveyard. The snow took the edge off its grimness and painted it up to a nicety.

‘In there and you’re absolutely sure?’

But Andy was off once more. Not through one of the big iron gates – those were for the hearses to drive through – but through the pedestrians’ entrance to the left-hand side (looking from the road, of course). And we were soon into the snow-covered land of the dead.

And Andy padded along, moving this way and that, following the avenues that led between the tombstones before finally stopping at an impressive-looking marble mausoleum. It was one of those grand Victorian affairs, all fluted columns and angelic ornamentation.

‘Here?’ I said.

And Andy barked that we were.

I looked up at the marvellous structure, then stepped forward and dusted snow from the engraved brass plaque upon it.

I read from this, aloud to my brother.

Here Lies Count Otto Black

Bavarian Nobleman and Philanthropist

Moved On From this Plane of Existence

31.12.1899

‘The stolen equipment is in here?’ I said to Andy. ‘Are you absolutely certain?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Andy, and he removed his dog-mask. ‘And it all falls rather neatly into place, as it happens.’

‘Does it?’ I asked. ‘How so?’

‘Because, as I told you, those who stole the equipment were dressed as women. But they weren’t women. But neither were they men. That’s why I couldn’t identify the smell, and pondered, in all foolish frivolousness, the possibility that space aliens might be involved. Nothing of the sort, it appears.’ And Andy sniffed again and said, ‘It’s clear as clear and my nose doesn’t lie. The gear wasn’t stolen by living beings. The gear was stolen by the dead.’

Well, all right and fair enough, I wasn’t expecting that!

‘Dead people?’ I said to Andy. ‘Dead men stole my Strat?’

Andy did some further sniffings. ‘That’s how it’s smelling,’ said he.

‘You mean zombies,’ I said to Andy. ‘The living dead. Slaves to their voodoo master.’

‘That is the popular consensus opinion,’ agreed Andy. ‘Reanimated corpses controlled by evil puppet-master magicians.’

‘But here? In Hanwell?’

‘Zombism was bound to reach here eventually,’ reasoned Andy. ‘I read recently the term “global village” being used to describe the world.’

‘Did you read it in Teenage She-Male Today?’ I asked.

But Andy said no, he had not.

‘So what do we do?’ I now asked. ‘Get shovels and dig? Fetch a priest? Employ an exorcist? I am a little out of my depth here. And, if I am altogether honest, rather frightened also.’

‘Have no fear,’ said Andy. ‘Your big brother is with you.’

‘I’ll go to a phone box and call Mr Ishmael,’ I said.

‘Mr Ishmael?’ said Andy. ‘Who he?’

‘The manager of the band,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to clear it with him about you joining, of course, but I’m sure it will be nothing but a formality.’ And I tried to make a convincing face as I said this.

‘All right,’ said Andy. ‘You find a phone box and call him. Tell him to bring a lot of villagers, with flaming torches.’

‘Villagers with flaming torches are more your Frankenstein’s monster than your zombie,’ I said.

‘Well, tell him to get them here before dark.’

‘And isn’t “after dark” for vampires and werewolves? Zombies are all-day-rounders, I think.’

‘You appear to know an awful lot about this sort of thing,’ said Andy.

‘Not really,’ I said and I shrugged. ‘I just go to a lot of horror movies, don’t you-’

And then I cut that line of conversation short. They probably didn’t get to watch too many horror movies in the lunatic asylum.

‘I’ll go and make the phone call,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you should come with me.’

‘No way,’ said Andy. ‘I’m staying here.’

‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

Andy shrugged and replaced his mask. ‘I’m a dog,’ he said. ‘It’s safe for me. And think of this place from a dog’s perspective – all those buried bones.’

And I took off to find a phone box. Fast.

I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say to Mr Ishmael. I didn’t think I would broach the subject of zombies. It would be better, I considered, simply to pass on the location of the stolen goods, as he had instructed me to do, and leave the actual recovery of them to him.

So, case solved, really.

I walked tall on my way to the phone box. My first case as a private eye and I had breezed through it. I was a natural, there was no mistake about that. I’d rent an office. There was one up for rent above Uncle Ted the greengrocer’s. I could almost visualise the name, engraved into the frosted-glass panel of the door: ‘PRIVATE-TYLER’, like

‘Private-Eye-ler’, see? Or ‘PRIVATYLER’ as just one word that sort of rolled off the tongue.

And I felt rather pleased with myself.

I had triumphed here.

I reached the phone box and found to my chagrin that it had been vandalised and was in a non-operative condition. And it was quite a long walk to the next one, which had been similarly disfigured.

After much walking in the cold, I found myself nearly back at Ealing Broadway, with, as it was late December, night now falling around me. But I did eventually find a working phone box and I did phone the number on Mr Ishmael’s card.

And it was engaged.

And I phoned again and I phoned again and eventually after many many such phonings, the phone rang at his end. But no one answered it. And-

Well, eventually I did get through. And I spoke to Mr Ishmael and I told him that I had located the stolen equipment and where I had located it and I named the mausoleum of Count Otto Black and everything.

And then there was a bit of a silence at his end of the line and I thought that perhaps I had been cut off.

But finally he spoke and he said to me, ‘Go home, Tyler. You have done very well and I am proud of you. But you must not, under any circumstance, return to that cemetery. There is great danger there and I do not want you to be put into such danger.’

‘Oh,’ I said. And then I said, ‘Oh dear.’

‘Just go home,’ said Mr Ishmael to me. And he replaced the receiver.

But of course I didn’t go home. I could hardly do that. If there was great danger in that cemetery, then I had left Andy in that great danger, and by doing so, any harm that came to him would be my fault. And my fault or no, I really did care about my brother and I certainly didn’t want any real harm to come to him. So I jumped onto the next 207 bus that was heading towards Hanwell and took to the chewing of my knuckles on the journey.

The bus stop was only a hundred yards or so away from the cemetery gates and I ran the rest of the way.

But it was dark now and once within the gates of the cemetery there was little or no light at all and I almost immediately lost my sense of direction and began to blunder about blindly, tripping over this and that, bumping into this and that and generally making a complete unholy twat of myself.

But even if I was lost, I was not dumb.

And so I shouted. Loudly. ‘Andy’ I shouted. As loudly as I could. ‘Andy, where are you? Mr Ishmael is bringing help. We ought to get out of this graveyard. There’s danger. Great danger. Andy, where are you?’

I shouted this and permutations of this. Numerous permutations of this, in fact. And I blundered on and I wished, really wished, that Andy and I were not in this god-forsaken boneyard, but back at home, sitting at the dining table, eating parsnips and chatting away with our mum and our dad. But not talking with our mouths full, obviously.

‘Andy,’ I shouted. ‘Where are you?’

And then things got a little complicated.

I had been blundering and shouting in the darkness for a while, when I suddenly saw the light. This wasn’t the Light that was seen by New Testament prophets. At least, I didn’t think it was. No, it definitely was not that Light. This was another light entirely. This was a sinister light, a crepuscular glow of a light, a Jack-o’-Lantern unearthly shimmer of a light, and it wafted up from the ground in all directions around me. It was a very queer light, for it rose a foot or two from the ground and then no further, as if it were contained, had its specific parameters illumination-wise, as it were. It fair put the willies up me, I can tell you. I didn’t like that light one bit.

But if the light had qualities about it that were outré and unquantifiable, then this light and its qualities were as nought (very nought) when put in comparison to what occurred next. For what occurred next was most horrid.

They rose, they did, from the ground. Before me and to either side, and, turning to run, behind me, too, I noticed. They rose from the ground as in climbed from it. Mouldy fingers clawed out from the frozen ground. Hands thrashed up from the snow, fought for release, and then up they came, the terrible ones, the ungodly ones, the walking dead, the hideous crew. The zombies.

And I tried to run. But where could I run, for they were all about me? And I cried out for help and I cried out for Andy and I all but poo-pooed myself.

And then the blighters came at me. From all directions, horrible monsters, decaying and rotten. And I could smell them, that stench of the grave, that evil foetor of death.

And my cries turned to screaming and I sought to peace-make with my maker.

And as the monstrous foetid fingers clawed all about me, I saw the light. Another light and a bright one, too. And I heard the noise that came with it.

I was aware of sweeping arcs of light, swishing down from the sky. And that noise, that deafening noise – not the wingbeats of angels, as I had reasonably supposed, but the thrashing of helicopter blades.

And then there were men – living men, I supposed – in black uniforms that had that Special Ops look about them, as if they must surely be the SAS, or the Firearms Response Team. And down they came upon lines from the helicopters, and they had guns and they fired these guns.

And there was the light and the copter sounds and the noises of gunfire and hideous things and I sank down and cowered on my knees.

And then someone thrust some kind of hood over my head and things went rather dark.

And then someone hit me hard on the head.

And things went utterly black.