Necrophenia (9 page)

Now, you know that feeling you get when you awaken in a bed that is not your own, with absolutely no recollection of how you came to be in it?

No?

Well, how about that one when you awaken to find yourself in a secret underground research establishment that the British Government denies all knowledge of?

No?

Well, I must confess that this one came as a shock to me. Not that my surroundings weren’t plush – comfortable, they were. Plush and comfortable and elegant too, and very ‘with it’ when it came to the furnishings, which were rendered in the style known as contemporary.

The bed I awoke upon was circular. Circular? I ask you. Where would you buy circular sheets? But this bed did have circular sheets and they appeared to be of silk. Not that I was a connoisseur of silk; I wasn’t. We had sheets at home, and our sheets were cotton, but these sheets were silk. And I knew this because I had beheld silk, for Toby had brought into school a pair of pink silk French knickers that his father had won in the war. And we’d all had a good feel of those!

Beyond the parameters of the circular bed was a similarly circular room, its walls painted orange, this orangyness relieved at intervals by wall lights of the semicircular persuasion, which cast a soft ambient light in an ever upwards direction.

There was a rug, which was circular, and a chair, which was a sphere with a cut-out section for you to plonk almost all of yourself into.

And there was a door that was not circular. And there were no windows at all to speak of. Or even to whisper about.

And it was the lack of windows that upset me. The room I was happy enough with – the room was, in itself, quite splendid. Because it was plush and comfortable and elegant.

But the lack of windows was worrying. That lack of windows signalled that there was a certain untowardness about this room. That this was an outré and anomalous room.

And one that I probably should not be in.

And so I sought to escape.

And as there were no windows to climb out of, I made a stab at leaving by the doorway, but sadly to no avail as the door, it transpired, was locked.

I would have given that door a kicking if it hadn’t been for the fact that my feet were bare. As, in fact, was all of the rest of me. Bare-naked-lady, I was, apart from the bit about being a lady. So I retreated to the circular bed, wrapped a circular sheet about my nakedness, stuck a thumb into my mouth and gave that thumb a good old sulky suck.

And I had a fair old grump going and quite a bit of rising fear also when the door opened to admit a beefy-looking fellow bearing a cloth-covered tray.

And at the sight of this tray I panicked.

Because it looked to be one of those trays that they have in psychiatric hospitals. The ones that always have a hypodermic upon them, covered by a cloth.

And when they stick you with that hypo, you’re in trouble.

And so I panicked. And I did a little bit of rueing-the-day also. I rued the day that I had sent off my money to America in the hope of receiving the course in Dimac, the deadliest martial art known to man. And had not received it by return of post. It was quite a complex piece of rueing-the-day, but it served me well enough at the time.

The beefy-looking fellow placed the tray upon a cylindrical bedside table that had somehow escaped my notice, whipped away the cloth and said, ‘Your breakfast, sir.’

‘Phew,’ I said, ‘breakfast.’

‘Breakfast indeed, sir,’ said he. ‘Were you expecting something else?’

I shook my head and said, ‘No, nothing else.’

‘Well, that’s just sweet, isn’t it?’ said the beefy-looking fellow. ‘So eat up your breakfast like a nice gentleman, or I will be forced to stick you with my hypodermic.’

And with that said, he left the room.

And I tucked into my breakfast.

It was a ‘Full Welsh’, which was new to me but didn’t make it any the less delicious. And by the time I was done with it and was wiping my mouth on the cloth provided, the door opened once more and this time in walked Elvis.

Elvis?

I looked up with surprise at Elvis.

And Elvis smiled down at me.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘Elvis. It’s you.’

‘It is not me,’ said Elvis. ‘It’s me.’

‘Can I go home, please?’ I said and got all upset.

Elvis sat down upon the circular bed and he smiled some more at me. And it really was Elvis. That was a stone-cold certain, the quiff and the sideburns, the killer cheekbones, the lip curl and that something. That something Elvis had.

‘I am not Elvis,’ said Elvis, kindly. ‘My name is Doctor Darren McMahon. I’m Irish/Liverpudlian.’

‘Scouse Elvis?’ said I.

And the doctor nodded. ‘If you like.’

‘But you are Elvis,’ I said. ‘No one looks like Elvis. Elvis is a one-off. There is only one King of rock ’n’ roll.’

‘I hate to disillusion you,’ said Scouse Elvis. Because it did have to be said that he did have a Liverpool accent. ‘But Elvis is not a one-off. Elvis was, in fact, part of a six-off. But only the two of us survived.’

‘You are the twin brother of Elvis?’ I asked. ‘But I thought he died at birth.’

‘You are not listening quite as carefully as you should be,’ said Scouse Elvis. ‘But we will speak of such matters at length. How are you feeling? How is your head?’

And then I recalled how I had been bonked on the head.

‘My head’s fine, as it happens,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t ache at all.’

‘Excellent,’ said the Scouse One. ‘I had the beefy-looking fellow give you a shot of painkiller with his hypo before you woke up.’

‘Urgh!’ said I. And I felt all violated. As I probably should have done anyway, waking up in a strange bed, naked and everything.

‘We’re all professionals here,’ said Dr McMahon (?). ‘You have nothing to worry about.’

‘I suspect I have a great deal to worry about,’ I said. And then another thought struck me. One that really should have struck me earlier. ‘Andy?’ I said. ‘What happened to my brother, Andy?’

‘There was only you,’ said Dr Elvis (I felt happier with this). ‘When we purged the area, you were the only resident.’

‘Purged?’ I said. ‘Resident?’ I said. ‘And where is here?’ I also said. Also.

‘One thing at a time,’ said Dr Elvis (yes, I was very happy with this description because, looking him up and down, although he was Elvis, he was dressed as a doctor – white coat, stethoscope in top pocket, that sort of thing).

‘As to where you are, you are in the Ministry of Serendipity, which is a secret underground research establishment beneath Mornington Crescent Underground Station.’

‘Right,’ I said. Very slowly, I said it.

‘There was an incident last night – an outbreak of the Taint. We isolated it, purged the area and uplifted the only original resident amongst the reoccupied within the violated zone.’

‘Right,’ I said once more. Adding, ‘Really?’ this time.

‘You’d best have a little sleep now,’ said Dr Elvis.

‘I’m not tired,’ I told him.

‘You will be,’ he said, and he took out a pocket watch and perused its face. ‘When you awake you will remember nothing of this.’

‘What?’ I said. Adding, ‘How?’ this time.

‘Hypnogenic narcotiser, in the Welsh breakfast.’ And he counted down upon his watch, starting from ten.

And I have no idea how many were the seconds.

That tick-ticked and tick-tocked away.

But-

‘And that’s how I solved it,’ said Andy. ‘Although Tyler will probably try to take all the credit for himself.’

‘What?’ I said, awakening as if from a dream – a daydream, it must have been – to find myself at the lunching table.

And my mother was dishing out the parsnips and my brother was boasting about something.

‘Are you all right there?’ my brother said to me, breaking off with the boasting for a moment. ‘You look a tad queer. You seemed to be off somewhere else then. Away with the fairies, perhaps.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I was-’ But I couldn’t recall where I’d been. I was at my lunching table, with my brother and my mother, but before that-

‘Well, do try and pay attention,’ said my brother. ‘I am expecting to get an award.’

‘For what, exactly?’ I asked.

‘For the recovery of all that gear. And there was so much of it, all loaded into that mausoleum vault. It was huge in there, like a storehouse. ’

‘Last night?’ I said, and I got all confused.

‘Wakey-wakey,’ said Andy. ‘The night before last. And where did you take off to? Going to find a phone box and not coming back until yesterday evening.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Where was I?’

‘Where indeed?’ Andy looked at me. ‘What’s up with you?’ he asked.

‘I’m confused,’ I said. ‘The last thing I remember is going off to find a phone box. Then, well, now, really.’

‘Have you been taking drugs?’ my mother asked. ‘Have you been smoking reefers?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Pussy,’ said my mother. ‘Captain Lynch and I shared a pipe of kiff the other day that nearly took off the top of my head.’

‘I am confused,’ I said to Andy. ‘Tell me what happened. All of it in detail. Tell me, if you will.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Andy. ‘You went off to find a telephone box, you remember that?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘Completely. And I remember it took me ages to find one and call Mr Ishmael.’

‘Well, I assumed that you must have found one almost at once because you hadn’t been gone five minutes before this huge furniture van arrives. And this gent calling himself Mr Ishmael gives me the big hello, says he knows that I’m your brother and tells me well done and says that he’ll handle things from then on.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ I said. ‘The timing’s all wrong. How could that be?’ And I shook my head. ‘But go on, please,’ I said.

‘Well, the back door of the van swings down and out leap all these blokes in full camo, like commandos, and they blast their way into the mausoleum and go herding in. And Mr Ishmael had sent me off on my way, but I sneaked back because I wanted to look inside, see if there were any dead people looning about in there.’

‘Dead people,’ I said. And I had a vague recollection of a coloured mist and of rotten corpses.

‘But no zombies,’ said Andy, ‘just all this gear. Tons of the stuff. Not just the gear you had stolen from you – tons of other stuff. Mr Ishmael looked very pleased and ordered it all into the furniture van at the hurry-up. Then he noticed me sneaking a look in and he told me that I would be amply rewarded but that I really must go now because they had to get all this done quickly before the light went.’

‘The light,’ I said.

‘But he said that I would be amply rewarded. And I trusted him. So I just pushed off home. I did wonder what had happened to you, though, but it was cold and growing dark, so I caught a bus and that was that. And this arrived today.’ And Andy now waved something at me. And this something was a cheque.

‘A cheque,’ I said. ‘How much?’

‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Andy. ‘And it’s made out to me.’

‘Five hundred pounds.’ I sat back in my chair and let my spoon go slack. And, as I must have been ladling parsnip with it, I ended up with no little parsnip all down my front.

‘I think I might buy a speedboat and a sports car,’ said Andy. ‘And if I have any money left over, I’ll show it to you. Oh, and see what’s written on the back.’ And Andy handed me the cheque and I read what was written on the back: ‘If you ever want to be in a band, don’t hesitate to ask me,’ and it was signed ‘Mr Ishmael’.

And I groaned softly and did shakings of my head. This was all so wrong. All of it, the timings of things, the way Mr Ishmael knew who my brother was.

There was something missing here. Something big. An entire day of my life, for one thing, it appeared. Where had I been? What had happened to me? How had I got home? How had I just ‘come to’ at the luncheon table? And what was this all about?

I recalled my brother’s talk of zombies.

And the mausoleum that had been packed with other gear. Stolen from other bands? I was going to have a lot of questions to put to Mr Ishmael the next time I saw him.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said to Andy, and I handed him back the cheque. ‘I am in a state of considerable confusion.’

‘So where did you go and what did you get up to yesterday?’

I just shrugged and shook my head.

And Andy shook his, too. ‘Memory lapses,’ said he, and he tut-tut-tutted. ‘First sign of going stone-bonkers. And trust me, I know these things. Perhaps you should check yourself into Saint Bernard’s for a couple of weeks.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not mad. But something happened to me.’

‘I lost my memory once,’ said my mother. ‘Or at least I think I did – I can’t remember.’

I opened my mouth to say something, although now I can’t remember what. But I didn’t get to say it because there was a sudden urgent knocking at our front door and my mother went off to answer it.

And when she returned, she said, ‘Tyler, it’s for you.’

And when I asked her who it was, she replied that it was, ‘Two enormous women who look like Les Dawson will in a few years time.’

And I weighed up the pros and cons and left the house by a window.

Sometimes you have to wait a really really long time for an explanation for something that is confusing you. Something that you don’t understand. Like the Big Question, I suppose. You know the one – it goes, ‘What is it all about?’ And you have to wait a really really long time to get that one answered. In fact, you have to wait until all of your life is finished and you are dead to get that explanation. Obviously the fact that you are now reading this book means that you personally are not going to have to wait that long in order to get an answer to that particular question. Because I personally know the answer. And I will be divulging it to you when the time is right.

Which will be a bit later in the narrative. But I will let you know. And it is worth waiting for.

Regarding the questions that were troubling me as I sat at the lunching table listening to my brother, I worried that it might be a really really long time before these questions were answered. But, in fact, it wasn’t.

They got answered very soon.

Which was most convenient.

I ran, you see, upped the sash window and leaped into the garden. It was the back garden. And its normal back-garden dullness was presently enlivened by the addition of a snowman of prodigious proportions, which, I reasoned, was probably the work of my brother.

It was a snowman that resembled a zombie playing a guitar. And that is not a thing that is as easy as it might seem to fashion.

I passed the snowman by at the move-along.

I cleared the garden fence and headed off down the alley.

The alley debouched (a good word, that) into Rose Gardens. Which weren’t really gardens, and didn’t have any roses. It was the road that ran at right angles to the one I lived in. The name of which I withhold for obvious reasons.

And I would have run right across the road and down the alleyway opposite had I not run straight into the side of a long black limousine that was pulling to a halt in Rose Gardens.

And as I fell back, rubbing at my bruised upper parts, which had taken most of the impact, a rear door opened and Mr Ishmael bade me enter in.

‘There’s trannies after me,’ I explained as I clambered inside. ‘And I have every reason to believe that they are of the undead brotherhood.’

Mr Ishmael waved at his chauffeur and off we went in the limo.

Mr Ishmael offered me the comfort of a scotch on the rocks. And I took consolation in this comfort.

‘Are you feeling yourself?’ asked Mr Ishmael.

And although I confess that I was, and still am, a great fan of a Carry On movie, I answered Mr Ishmael that although sound in mind and limb, I was somewhat troubled of spirit and had many questions I thought he might care to answer.

Mr Ishmael nodded and raised a glass of his own.

‘To the success of your mission. Your first case,’ he said, and he toasted me.

I sampled further scotch and found some joy in this sampling.

‘You did very well,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘Employing the curious talents of your brother was an inspired idea.’

And I nodded. In agreement. That it would have been if I had indeed thought of it. But I was prepared to take the credit, if it was being offered.

‘Inspired,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘I knew I wasn’t wrong about you. And I will be faithful to my promise. You recovered the stolen goods and I will now share with you the Big Secret.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And I hope that details of the Big Secret will include exactly what happened to me yesterday, because I appear to have at least twenty-four hours missing out of my life.’

Mr Ishmael nodded. ‘Would you care for a cigar?’ he asked.

And I said, ‘A cigar?’

‘To puff upon. You might need it, to stiffen your nerves. Folk generally have a cup of strong sweet tea to administer at moments like this, but I do not. But I do have cigars. You can take one, or leave it, as you please.’

‘I’ll take one,’ I said, for I had never before smoked a cigar. And what better place to begin the smoking of one than the inside of a stretch limousine?

Mr Ishmael went through all the preparations then stuck the cigar into my mouth, asked me to suck hard and administered the flame of a match to it.

And I didn’t cough. I puffed.

‘Nice,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘And now to business that I regret is far from nice. But where to start? Where indeed to start?’

‘At the beginning?’ I suggested, still not coughing at all.

‘No,’ said Mr Ishmael, going through further preparatory operations prior to lighting a cigar of his own. ‘This story is best told and explained beginning with the end. What would you say that the very end of everything would be, young Tyler?’

‘A big explosion, probably,’ I said. ‘The entire universe blowing up. Something like that.’

Mr Ishmael shook his head. ‘Care to have another go?’ he asked.

‘Not an explosion?’ I said. ‘Nothing, then. I suppose the end of everything would be nothing.’

‘Very close,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘Death would be the beginning.’

‘I thought you said that it was the end.’

‘The end of life. All life. The creation of the Necrosphere.’

And I asked what this was.

‘The world of the dead. A spherical universe of the dead.’

‘I think I would like you to explain,’ I said.

‘The name of your band,’ said Mr Ishmael, ‘The Sumerian Kynges – you had heard the tales of Captain Lynch regarding the creation of the Homunculus, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but how did you know that?’

‘It is my business to know. And I know all about Captain Lynch.’

‘I think he’s carrying on with my mum,’ I said. ‘And if my dad finds out, he will probably beat Captain Lynch to an ungodly pulp.’

‘I consider this altogether probable. But Captain Lynch told you of the theory that the soul does not enter a person until the third month of gestation, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Carry on.’

‘Well, something similar occurs at the point of death, but in reverse – the soul of the deceased remains within the body for a period of three months.’

‘Oh no,’ I said, and I coughed (just a little) upon my cigar. ‘You are not saying that you remain aware after death? That you know what’s happening to you while you rot away in the grave?’

Mr Ishmael shook his head. ‘You are not aware,’ he said. ‘You sleep, as it were. Your soul sleeps, but it remains within the body; then after three months the soul awakens, in paradise, or otherwise.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘But why? Why the three-month wait? Is that like the Catholic belief of Purgatory?’

‘The misconception of Purgatory. The truth is that the body is vulnerable for three months after death as the foetus is vulnerable in the first three months after conception. If the soul left the body at the moment of death, it would leave a nice fresh, although dead, vehicle that a magician of sufficient power could instill something into, to reanimate that corpse.’

‘As a zombie?’

‘We use the term “reoccupied”. A living person is referred to as an original “resident”, because their soul is the original resident, while the dead who have been afflicted with “the Taint” are “reoccupied”.’

These terms rang bells somewhere. As if I had heard them before.

‘A conspiracy exists,’ said Mr Ishmael, ‘to reoccupy the entire planet, to turn this into a planet peopled by the dead – a Necrosphere, do you see?’

‘I see, I suppose. But why? What would anyone have to gain from this?’

‘Not anyone. A powerful magician could create, at most, a single Homunculus in a single century. Whatever this is plans to annihilate the entire population of Earth, drive the resident souls from the bodies of the newly dead and reoccupy them with spirits, if you will, that will reanimate these dead bodies.’

‘It does sound very gruesome,’ I said. ‘But it also sounds rather pointless, or of a limited point, at least. Dead bodies aren’t going to last very long, are they? They will fall to pieces in no time. This Necrosphere of yours is going to smell pretty rank, I’m thinking.’

‘Puppets,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘They will survive long enough to serve the needs of their puppet-master.’

‘And who he? A man, is this, or the Devil?’

‘That I do not know. I have only a piece or two of the jigsaw. With your help I will find further pieces, put them all together, complete the picture. And then.’

‘And then?’ I asked.

‘We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’

‘I think you’ll probably be crossing that bridge on your own,’ said I, ‘because I have had more than enough of this madness.’

‘Really?’ And Mr Ishmael sank some scotch. ‘So you won’t want to know what happened to you yesterday, then.’

‘I would like to know that, as it happens.’

‘Then so be it. After the furniture van had been loaded up at the cemetery, myself and my associates left the violated zone, for such had the cemetery become. Some time later you returned. You were then attacked by reoccupied beings. A task force from the Ministry of Serendipity, tipped off anonymously, by myself, arrived to sanitise the area.

‘The Government has known about this menace for as long as it has existed. They have a special department that deals with such matters – the Ministry of Serendipity. Their crack troops airlifted you out. You would then have been debriefed, reprogrammed and had your memory selectively erased, and then been returned to your family.’

And then I coughed on my cigar. And I said, ‘What, what, what?’ ‘I must say,’ said Mr Ishmael, ‘that the Ministry does not think as I do. I am, how shall I put this, independent. The Ministry has a more corporate mentality. Rather than trying to understand and deal with the cause, they blast in and simply eradicate the effect. They are very efficient at that.’

‘Not that efficient,’ I said. ‘Two of the blighters survived. They arrived on my doorstep. They were going to get me. I fled through the window and bumped into your limo.’

‘Those were not reoccupied beings,’ said Mr Ishmael.

‘Oh?’ said I. ‘They weren’t?’

‘No,’ said he, and he drew further smoke. ‘That was just a pair of cross-dressing Jehovah’s Witnesses. I believe they refer to themselves as, “Jehovah’s Wet-Nurses”.’

‘Most amusing,’ said I. ‘But I am far from happy about any of this. Things don’t add up. There are too many contradictions. Wrong timings. It’s all over the place. And, hang about, reprogramming, did you say? These Ministry men have reprogrammed my brain somehow, is that what you’re saying?’

‘In as many words, yes.’

‘Reprogrammed me to do what?’

‘Who can say?’ And Mr Ishmael shrugged. ‘They do have some very state-of-the-art techniques of mind control. They will probably have brainwashed you so that at a given signal, known only to themselves, you will perform certain actions without being aware that you are doing it.’

‘What?’ I said. And, ‘WHAT?’ I shouted.

‘Calm down, please,’ said Mr I.

‘Calm down? I’ve had my brain tampered with. What might I do? What?’

‘It might be just a surveillance thing. Although it’s more likely to be something more. Assassination, probably.’

‘They want to assassinate me?’

‘Not you. You will be triggered to assassinate someone else.’

‘WHAT?’ I shouted. Most loudly.

‘But don’t worry,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘If it’s me that they are intending you to assassinate, I will deal with it.’

‘How?’

‘I will kill you,’ said Mr Ishmael. ‘Now, what else would you like to know?’