The Smell of Telescopes (19 page)

As soon as they were inside, Lilith took the cleaver from the chain around her neck and struck Artery a mighty blow. His wing tore along the edge. He gasped and choked in amazement.

“What was that for? Didn’t you like my landing?”

He struggled into the air, spiralling around the room and crashing onto the bed, his face and voice contorted.

Lilith glowered. “You’ve finished me at this college. I can’t take a job in America, because my contact was a fraud. Arkham isn’t aware of my existence! My only option is to join my husband in Yemen. But Woody needs some new exhibits to stay there. Your tendons have been toughened by singing. Ghouls won’t find you appetising.”

The blade slashed down again. Garfunkle screamed.

Lilith chortled. “This is the sound of violence.”

It was really his age. These warped relationships were doomed right from the outset. There were historic examples: Actaeon had peeped at the goddess Diana as she bathed naked and she was several million years his senior. The affair ended in disaster. Lilith knew the source of Artery’s irritating innocence: too much maturity.

Perhaps he had been so sensible he’d gone round in a circle. Which, she supposed, was the only way to go with a damaged wing. As she allowed her gaze to linger on his torn membrane, she raised the cleaver for what lay ahead. Each time it descended, she counted on his appendages and her numbers soon exhausted fingers and toes.

There must be fifty ways to cleave a lover.

Burke And Rabbit

It’s bad enough pulling back the bedsheets to find a severed head gazing up at you. It’s even worse when it starts to accuse you of all sorts of misdemeanours. I’d had problems of this kind ever since I decided to run for mayor. The position was officially vacant now we’d finished toasting the last one, grinding his bones to make muffins. The one before that, I seem to remember, withered away to nothing. Shortly after I announced my intention, a thunderstorm drenched my house. It had not rained in Lladloh for thirteen years. A rival village had been stealing our weather. But news of my decision so startled one of their magicians that he left his cellar door open and the captive clouds escaped up the chimney. Where the heavy droplets fell, monstrous orchids sprang up, smothering the valley in decadent scents. For the sake of my buttonhole, I pounced on one with a scythe. 

In the local pub, a nameless horror, I drank a glass of whisky and defended my actions. “As mayor of this miserable hole,” I said, “I shall be able to carry out reforms that should have been implemented centuries ago. Lladloh is still in the Dark Ages. It is my intention to strike the match of reason on the sandpaper of progress.” I knitted my brows. “Or is it simply to strike?”

Emyr, the landlord, was not helpful. “In this village, only a fool would willingly become mayor. I lie awake at night praying I won’t be chosen. There’ll be no turning back once you’re elected. Do you realise what you’re letting yourself in for?” He jabbed a finger at my chest. “A fate much worse than the millstone and grill!”

In Lladloh, the function of mayor is not quite the same as in other places. Here, a mayor holds power for a relatively short length of time, and is then sacrificed in a number of horrible ways. It is an old, corrupted tradition—the next unlucky soul would be hurled down the opening of a disused gold-mine to placate the god of yellow beer. “I’m not afraid,” I replied.

“It is said the mine shaft is bottomless,” added Emyr. “You’ll die of thirst before hitting anything. If you take enough supplies, you may even die of old age!”

Although he has little love for me, Emyr is always loathe to lose a good customer. “Why throw your life away for the sake of a superstition? It’s all nonsense, after all. Nobody believes in the beer god anymore. Fie! What rubbish!” He kept his voice down and glanced around, to make sure no beer barrels were listening.

I paid for my drink and returned to my garret. Dark rain was still pounding the streets; in my pocket, the manuscript of my latest poetic folly rustled. I took it out and used it as an umbrella. My work often serves a prosaic function. This latest effort was an epic entitled
Harping The Wormy
. It told the story, in blank verse, of a harp strung with carnivorous worms which turned on its owner during a recital and tried to eat him. The audience gave both a standing ovation. My greatest failing, as an artist, is lack of imagination.

The sordid chamber where I live and compose is right at the top of the mortuary chapel. Although in a picturesque state of semi-dilapidation, the building is still used as a meeting place for various local societies. Squeezing through one of the broken windows (the front door is guarded by a garrulous gargoyle) I was much astonished to find myself dropping into the midst of a candle-lit banquet. I picked myself out of the tureen of semolina and made my apologies.

It was the annual dinner of the Eldritch Explorers Club. The dozen members regarded my intrusion with a weary cynicism. They were a jaded mob, senses dulled by a lifetime’s pursuit of the strange and unnatural. The society’s founder, Caradoc Weasel, was in the middle of a speech. He turned his doleful eyes upon me and frowned. “As I was saying, I found Noah’s Ark exactly where I calculated—in Snowdonia. It was far larger than I’d been led to believe. Its dimensions bespoke of a technology superior to our own. On the side was some writing, which took me a while to translate. A single word—Lifeboat.”

Polite applause echoed faintly throughout the nave. Caradoc Weasel was held in high esteem for mounting three audacious expeditions. Apart from his discovery of Noah’s Ark, he was the first man to reach the West Pole (which unlike its chilly counterparts is almost impossible to run a flag up.) Even more incredible, in therapy, he once discovered himself. These achievements formed the basis of much of his conversation. He was forever declaring that there were no regions left to explore.

“Balloons! Hydrogen balloons!” My intrusion gave Icarus Evans, the club’s treasurer, a chance to air his own obsessions. He was Caradoc’s biggest rival and always keen to denigrate the older man. “Balloons are the answer! My latest model is big enough to carry a cat. Soon I shall have enough material to construct a device capable of lifting a human being into the stratosphere!” It was suspected he made his balloons from handkerchiefs, the only suitable fabric in the village, filched from our very pockets. “New regions aplenty!”

“Foul liar!” stormed Caradoc, jumping up onto the table and waving his fists. Icarus rose to the challenge and followed his example. Black jellies were trodden underfoot. Aware that I was partly responsible for the fracas, I sought to make amends. “Gentlemen!” I pleaded. “When I’m mayor, I’ll throw a banquet every week! You’ll have semolina of every conceivable shade, from midnight blue to lopped arm red!” This had the desired effect and they calmed down. I was extremely grateful. I did not wish to be kept awake by an esoteric squabble.

I left them to their meal and ascended a spiral staircase to my garret. Here, I resided among my unpublished poems. Lighting a candle, I took out the one in my pocket and held it up to the flame. The ink had run in the storm, improving the piece considerably. I called out for my cat, Pushkin, but he was nowhere to be seen. I threw myself onto the bed and laughed aloud. I was standing on the threshold of a new life, a doorstep beyond which lay the gratification of my desires. Once elected, a mayor is allowed to take into his bed the entire female population of Lladloh, witches and gorgons excepted.

Although a poet, I am also a man, with the natural urges common to my kind. The girls of the village tended to ignore me, hardly surprising considering my lack of redeeming features. While racking my brains over how to improve my amorous fortunes, an ingenious idea came to me. As I have already stated, a mayor only holds power for a brief period before being sacrificed to some dubious deity. The period in question concerns the number of nights it takes him to exhaust all his lustful privileges. Depending on the vigour and age of the candidate, it can range from a single weekend to several years.

My ingenious idea, as lustrous as a toadstone, was the discovery of a loophole in this curious custom. I had seen a way in which, as mayor, I could enjoy my dues without having to forfeit my life. I’ll say more about this later. For the rest of that evening, I lay between my sheets, writing erotic verses with a pair of scissors. This compositional method requires explanation. My blank notebooks had long since been filled up. In a corner of my chamber, left over from happier mortuary days, a stack of Bibles awaited my lyrical alchemy. I worked my way through the tomes, cutting out words that had no place in my poems.

That night, my dreams were full of soft female bodies and groaning bedsprings. I woke in the early hours to a horrible mewling. Something brushed against the skylight. Pressing my face to the glass, I thought I saw the silhouette of a balloon drifting off into the clouds. It was too dark to be certain. At the same time, I called Pushkin again, but he did not answer. Obviously he’d wandered off, which was unusual, consider- ing I always kept my garret door locked.

The next day, I was the talk of Lladloh. My application for mayor had been accepted by the village elders (a band of lawmakers so secret nobody can name them—I might even be one.) In the nameless pub, Emyr commiserated with me. As the only candidate, it was highly probable I would win the election. “Idiot!” he kept crying. “Daft hap’orth!” But I smiled smugly, drank the whisky he offered and even had the audacity to toast the god of golden beer. “Heretic!” was his main comment now. In my wallet, generally empty, I kept the words I’d removed from the Bibles. I tipped them into my full glass and watched the new poems wriggle in the alcohol like Silurian worms.

I will skip over the details of the actual election. I was far too excited to pay much attention to them. Suffice to say, I became mayor, carried out some nominal duties (such as changing Emyr’s licensing hours and keeping my promise to the Eldritch Explorers Club) and then set to task on the village maidens. I’ll also say little about this, save that my eyebrows—already so high they tickled my crown—were raised still further. “So that’s what it’s like!” I said to myself, in stupefaction. “More fun to read about than try!” But as my technique began to match my enthusiasm, this opinion was slowly reversed (when the former exceeded the latter, I was utterly bewildered).

Finally, one evening, as I staggered into the pub, Emyr took hold of my arm and helped me to a stool. “Slow down, friend,” he cautioned. “There’s only Bigamy Bertha left. After her it’s the mine shaft.” Too exhausted to speak, I shook my head. “You can’t escape,” he reminded me. “The mayor can change any law he pleases, except that one. Tomorrow, at sunrise, if you entertain tonight, down the shaft you’ll go. There’s no appeal.” He didn’t guess I had a trump card, held up my sleeve with the aid of a sophistic bicycle-clip.

Even had I wished to spend a quiet evening alone, it would have availed me naught. Bigamy Bertha, the long-distance adulteress, has no need to enter a man’s garret to envelop him in her unique charms. Her peculiar talent has been sought by arcane pleasure-houses as far afield as Anglesey. To put a finer point on it, she came to me in succubus form while I was looking for Pushkin, who still hadn’t turned up. On my hands and knees under the sink, I was in no position to resist. Her passion is like a doughnut caught in a mousetrap: sickly-sweet, contrived, wholly inappropriate. It was my turn to mewl.

There are a couple of things I’ve forgotten to mention. Because of my liberal administration, with regard to semolina consumption within village limits, the Eldritch Explorers Club made me an honorary member. I kept finding promotional leaflets under my door, offering cut-price boots, knives and beards. Also, my poetry suffered. Lacking the spark of inspiration provided by my failure with women, it reached new depths of bathos. Considering it was of zero merit to begin with, this was no mean achievement. I was now possessed of negative talent, a curious (and not entirely unwelcome) development. This expressed itself in my poems as an aesthetic vacuum, which sucked a reader’s own literary abilities out of his brain and onto the page. I had invented a genre.

Anyway, the morning after, I dressed in my ermine robes, hung the heavy gold chain around my neck, adjusted my fur-trimmed tricorne hat and made my way down the spiral stairs. Outside, in the graveyard, a procession awaited. Hoisting me onto their shoulders and banging on iron gongs they paraded me through the streets, making three circuits of the village square before veering off towards the disused mine shaft. Emyr was there, looking embarrassed, hair stiffened with lime and dressed in animal skins. Hywel the Baker, completely naked, led the way, elongated loaves (representing antlers) tied to his head.

I said little until we reached our destination. Then, just as they were about to hurl me down the opening, I raised a hand for silence and cleared my throat. “What are you doing? My term is not yet over.” They chuckled at this, suspecting a joke. But I was serious. “I haven’t had all my privileges,” I continued. I reminded them that I was entitled to enjoy every women in the village. “But I’ve only just finished the live ones,” I said. Gasps of outrage went up from the crowd. I had escaped on a technicality—there was nothing in the terms of the custom to exclude those females who lay rotting in the graveyard.

“But there’s generations of ’em!” protested Hywel the Baker. “And they won’t be available till the Last Trump! This is a mean trick! What will the Elders say?” After a little thought, he ordered the procession to retrace its steps. The Elders, he insisted, wouldn’t want to decide the issue until after dinner. (I suspect Hywel to be Chief Elder, fond as he is of making cakes in the shape of single-eyed pyramids—though he insists this is to stop them going stale.) I was more than happy to let him return me to the chapel.

To colour the event more effectively on the way back, I’ll mention others in the procession. There was Phil the Liver, a nun’s priest with a horror of sugar; Neifion Napcyn, the spotted fishmonger; Catrin Mucus, high on peyote, playing a flute hollowed from a cucumber; Iolo Machen, a panophobic shepherd. Apart from lack of imagination, my other failing as a poet is an inability to flesh out a scene, to make it jump alive from the page. Please do it for me: images, noises, odours.

When they set me down, I managed to have a quick word with Emyr. “I am saved,” I told him. “Doesn’t that make you happy?” He nodded, but the spark of pain in his eyes flashed across to burn my own. I rushed up to my room, removed my stifling robes and placed a record on my gramophone. I spent the next few hours dancing to crackling tunes, until an envoy came to tell me I’d been reprieved. No other judgment was possible, but I celebrated the news by setting my gramophone in reverse and singing along to the occult chants thus evoked.

My plan had worked perfectly. I had tasted the forbidden fruit with impunity. Cheating tradition, I had severed the bootlace binding my fate to the mine shaft. Until the god of golden beer persuaded the spirits of all dead maidens in Lladloh to visit me, I was safe. The fact that he didn’t exist was to my advantage. I challenged him to summon up their phantoms, to direct them into my abode. I dared them to rise up from their tombs, to entwine their chilly limbs around mine. “Come, decaying temptresses!” I bawled. I blew kisses in the aether.

That night, I found the severed head at the bottom of my bed. This was, to say the least, a surprise. It was a ghostly head—no need to wash my sheets. That was one consolation. “What are you doing?” I cried. The head belonged to Rhowen Clot, who had been decapitated by a sickle during an unlucky harvest thirty years ago. She began to berate me for disturbing her peace. “What has the village come to when mayors demand their conjugal rights of the dead?” she wanted to know. She refused to leave when I asked her, so we had to share a pillow. In the morning, she was nowhere to be seen. She had rolled under the bed. “You kicked me out in your sleep!” she complained.