The Smell of Telescopes (20 page)

This was the first encounter of many. In the nights that followed, a whole host of dead females came to offer their insubstantial bodies, or lack of them, to my carnal designs. I can’t honestly say I welcomed their attentions. The formless shapes were cold to the touch, and the shapeless forms took up most of the bed. Combined with the fact I had been ostracised by the living villagers, my nerves started to fray at the edges. I developed a twitch in my left eye and a compulsion to jerk my shoulders at odd intervals (some of the older ghosts liked to perch on my back.) At least my poetry began to improve, steadily reaching its previous level of utter banality.

Emyr alone continued to treat me as if nothing had happened. When I entered his pub, the other drinkers would all fall silent. Many of them would even snort in derision and leave the premises. But Emyr continued to serve me whisky, making small-talk about the weather, and how he had preferred it when we hadn’t any. I responded by telling him all about my unearthly girl-friends. He was always keen to ascertain my progress with each. “The god of golden beer seems determined to have me,” I explained. He laughed at this and called it pagan nonsense.

My third failing as a writer is my poor sense of pace and rhythm. I shall now demonstrate this weakness by wrapping up my tale just as it is about to settle into the main plot. I couldn’t bear these ghostly lovers any more, so I decided to drink myself into oblivion. One dusk, after a thoroughly terrifying encounter with a lamia called Bronwen, I pulled on my tweed jacket (with its drooping monstrous orchid) and made my way to the pub. But as I approached the building, I saw Emyr conversing with a stranger at the base of the gibbet-tree (which serves in lieu of a signpost.) Dressed in druidic garb, the fellow owned a smile no less lunar than the crescents that spattered his robe.

“This is for services rendered,” Emyr said, handing the stranger a full beer barrel. “The god of yellow beer rewards his servants. We’re halfway through the graveyard already. Only a hundred more phantoms to go and then he’s mine!” He chuckled, closed one eye and made the sign of a pyramid in front of the other. “I thought he was going to escape me. But the amber deity will not be denied!”

The stranger hoisted the barrel onto his shoulders and grunted with approval. “It was an easy spell. A favour for a favour. This lot should win me admittance back into my village. They exiled me after I let those clouds escape.” He turned and staggered into the undergrowth. There was a violent shaking among some shrubs and then a giant rabbit (there are no magic carpets west of Monmouth) bounded into the sky, the stranger holding tightly onto its ears, clutching the barrel between his knees. Emyr waved them away. “Farewell, Mr Burke!”

I collapsed to my knees and burst into tears. I instantly decided to throw myself down the mine shaft of my own volition. At least this way I would be spared the rest of the preternatural amoretti. But I also vowed some good would come of the sacrifice. I returned to my garret and lay on the bed, wondering what useful purpose such a leap could provide. As I pondered, the skylight burst open. I shivered, thinking it was yet another spooky paramour, and pulled the sheets over my head. Something landed on the bed and addressed me in sibilant tones.

It was Pushkin, my cat, in a balloon stitched from handkerchiefs. He was fresh from adventures in distant parts. He’d been to a land where the inhabitants were so happy they couldn’t bear it any longer and drowned themselves. I’d heard this tale before, but never with such poignancy. Talking cats had overrun the place and had taught him to speak. If you do not believe this, come and question him yourself. (To find Lladloh, set out on the longest road from Carmarthen and turn right at the tallest tree).

Anyway, this gave me an idea. Taking hold of the balloon, I rushed downstairs, where the Eldritch Explorers Club were holding their latest dinner, told them of my suicidal intention and offered to write a report on what I found at the bottom of the mine shaft. If I took the balloon with me, I could send the report back up to them. They agreed it was an excellent idea, but Caradoc Weasel and Icarus Evans fell into another argument. If the shaft was truly bottomless, there were only two places it could lead. Caradoc thought I would end up in Hell. Icarus had his money on Llanelli. There was one way to find out.

I jumped down in full regalia. And I’m still falling. The walls of the shaft are lined with shelves containing marmalade jars. Of all those I’ve tasted, the best is cranberry and nightshade. I carry two letters of introduction, one to the Devil and one to the mayor of Llanelli. They make the same request: “Can we have the Necronomicon back?” Despite what others might say, the book was penned in our village and stolen by one of those fiends. It’s getting hot down here now, so I shan’t delay any longer. I’ll secure this report to the balloon and let it go. If you’re reading it, and you’re not a member of the Eldritch Explorers Club, it means Caradoc Weasel wasn’t quick enough with his net.

The Yellow Imp

The tavern into which my verger had ventured to make an unseen entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately penurious condition, to pay for a drink and meal, was one of those hovels of commingled turf and granite which so quaintly obstruct the vales of Shropshire, no less in fact than in the fancy of Professor Housman. To all appearances it had modified its management very lately, for the name of the landlord on a plank over the door was daubed in still wet paint. Slipping into the shadows, we established ourselves in one of the narrowest and least cosy corners, away from the barrels and the fire, where we might sit for free, resting our weary limbs and increasing our smugness by observing the denizens of the realm. The fittings, however, proved even more absurd than the faces and it was with maximum difficulty that I convinced myself they were not products of walrus artifice. Each wall was hung with canoes, snow shoes, bagpipes and other adjuncts of the polar regions. In addition, a harpoon protruded from a beam above the bar, fastened to a string which vanished through an open window and continued south as far as the horizon, like a communal washing line for dirty tricks. 

While I was engaged in reluctant contemplation of these foul items, my verger busied himself with requisitioning pints of beer and plates of cakes from unsuspecting patrons. Whenever one rose to relieve himself in the privy, my furtive assistant crept forward to gather up the abandoned fare in his two billowing sleeves. Wrapped in murk, we were beyond suspicion and it was amusing to compare the barbarous oaths when the simple beings returned to empty tables. Yet there was something about the tavern, apart from disfigured décor and clientele, which niggled me: a memory adrift in the pond of my subconscious. The familiarity of a poor (rather than bad) dream (for there is sensation in panic and this was purely mundane) with lids wide open; one of those hypnagogic visits to tedium’s own aunt. In other words, I felt that I had been here before, but the place disagreed, and without such endorsement my senses doubted themselves, as they ought to, for they were up to mischief in other areas. My reveries were constantly disrupted by the floor, which seemed to vibrate under me, and the mutant brambles and other feeble flora of the whereabouts slid past the window. The local beer was clearly very potent.

I confided in my verger, who inquired, “Ever been to Shropshire before?” I was forced to admit I’d passed through, on my way to Hyperborea, but did not tarry in any inn, preferring to be out. At this he pouted his bottom lip. “Then the county has been to you.”

I sighed. “Anything is likely in my horrid life.”

“Except happiness and ease, Gruffydd.”

Truth had been uttered. A domain as glum as this might well seek me out. As my readers are already aware, unless they have treated my former adventures like reversed eyeballs, to be discarded without insight, I am an exile from my own home. When Owain ap Iorwerth and Ochre Fingers (now known as Tangerine Pan) fooled me into giving up my house to them, after evicting various pastors from the premises, I decided to depart Monmouth and return with a besieging army to secure a fierce revenge. The problem was that few armies would ever care to follow me; I could not pay brutal soldiers or fit them with exciting uniforms. The remaining option was to make an alliance with my former rivals, enlisting the aid of the fleeing pastors. They would be eager to return to my comfortable abode, with its mantelpiece and divan, and I would rather share my space with hypocrites than allow Owain and his accomplice to act the goat all over my shelves. So I took theology lessons and became a man of the cloth. Then, packing a blueberry pie (one of my own defective models) and borrowing a verger, I set off into the secular yonder, singing praises and selling indulgences to the sinners of the Marches for my meals, and praying for one of those coincidences which have largely replaced miracles. The chance of meeting any pastor was slim, but fuller than I.

Without parting from a shilling, I had soon eaten and sipped so much, by way of my canny verger, that I needed to spend a penny of a metaphorical character. Keeping hard to the penumbral walls, brushing cobwebs from my surplice, I made for the privy, which a sign claimed was located through a rear exit. More euphemism, I presume!

Instead of opening into a white chamber with the standard porcelain adjuncts, the door led outside. I stood and blinked at Shropshire hills. At least Wales gets them up high; these were timid and the resident cows were ashamed to be slanting on them. But the air was clean enough, and I felt tolerant of primitive customs; I dare say a similar urge to conjoin with the chthonal served Professor Housman during his bucolic sojourn in these very wilds. Dropping my trousers, I bared teeth to wind and cheeks to nettles, a temporary peasant. Above me the twine of the harpoon fixed window to distance. And behind there was a monumental rumbling which I mistook at first for my bowels but which persisted after my business was concluded. Frowning, I loped back to the interior.

To be accosted at the door by the barman! Disgust prettied his face and his thumb indicated the real privy, which lay down a flight of steps I had not seen. We glanced each other over: his torso was homely, and he clearly thought as much of mine, for his anger melted away, like clotted cream on a flaming pie. Then he roared:

“No trousers? You must be a Welsh preacher!”

I bowed with ecclesiastic cynicism. “The Reverend Gruffydd ap Slack at your service. Weddings and funerals conducted at the drop of a niece. My fates and prejudices are very reasonable. And my Masses have enormous Inertia. Do you require a benediction?”

Although my voice was calm, I was acutely aware of my bare legs and exposed ineffable. How had I managed to forget my trousers? That happens only when you’re unsure if they are really your own. It’s rather easy to leave someone else’s trousers outside. But now I had to continue without them, as if pockets were redundant. I said to the barman, “You are Welsh too. What are you doing in Shropshire?”

“It’s a tragic story, Gruffyd. My name is Emyr James and I am from the village of Lladloh. I owned a pub there, but got into a spot of dark bother, so I left for the snowy north, where trouble has to wear mittens if it wants to pursue. Arriving in Whitby, I discovered this tavern, all deserted and going to waste. I resolved to take it over. After all, it’s the job I do best. But no sooner was I open for business than I began to feel myself being drawn back to Wales.”

Now I recalled this tavern, but my amazement was hardly diminish- ed, for Whitby, the town whose vowels were still on his teeth, was a port on the shore of the Northern Sea, built to ship goods to the brumal folk of the Magnetic Cosine. No sun shone there, not even in the day, and ladies were made from bears. The final stop on my aborted voyage to Hyperborea, my chosen corner of the scalene world, it had given me a bitter taste of the chills waiting higher up: I quickly developed an aversion to icecaps and turned back. But before I went, I groped about in the darkness for a drink, a mug of hot rum to give me the strength to bend my knees for the regressive hike. It was difficult to find doors in the ambient nigritude and I was compelled to climb through a window. My unorthodox method of ingress must have frightened the barman, who loosed a howl (the notes of which froze in midair and shattered on my brow) and ran off. I helped myself to a drink and followed his example. Emyr James must have come in shortly after. And here I was again: same environment, different location. Tipsy happenstance.

He noted my bewilderment. “Come, Gruffydd. I’ll show you the reason why this tavern is drifting south.” He led me to the bar and the harpoon in the beam above. He gestured at the barbed implement. “This is pulling us over the landscape. The building is being reeled in, to where I can’t be sure, but I dread it might be home.” Stretching up, I touched the cord. It was vibrating with incredible energy and was more tense than anything I’d witnessed since fair Myfanwy had salted her suspender-belt. This was the source of the rumbling which pervaded every stone of the structure, so integral to the milieu that it was completely in place and thus unnoticeable. I lunged at the aluminium blade, and vainly tried to ease it out.

Emyr was close to tears. “I’ve already tried that. It’s stuck deep. Across the glaciers of Yorkshire it has hoisted me, and over the steppes of Derby and Stafford. I feel like a fish.” The simile was inappropriate and he bartered it. “No, like a squid.”

“You have the sense of one. Why stay in the tavern? Jump out of the door now and you’ll be perfectly safe.”

“It’s my constitution, Gruffydd. I simply can’t exist without pints to pour. My brain is evenly distributed between the heads of every stout which gushes from a barrel. Without a pub to run I’ll be the dregs of my usual self. I know it from experience.”

I mulled. It was possible we were heading to Lladloh, which sounded frightful, but I doubted it. The direction of the harpoon’s rope was due south and that was also the bearing for Monmouth. Before I could resolve the ideas which were brewing in my subconscious on this point, the whole building suddenly lurched and we were pitched against the bar. The sound of silence was appalling: the absence of the rumbling hurt my ears. Emyr regained his balance and felt a stone wall. Then a broad smile split his cheeks into a pair of bad moons rising. “We’ve stopped moving! This must be our destination!”

“No, the tension in the rope’s increasing.”

He ran outside and returned to crush me in a malodorous embrace. It was a relief when he disengaged to cry:

“Your discarded trousers have jammed under the foundations! You are a hero, Gruffydd! A pocketless wonder.”

Though I did not share his enthusiasm, I partly welcomed this news, for it meant a clue had been granted regarding the ownership of breeches in the material-and-immaterial dispute which had led to my being present in Shropshire in the first place. Only the trousers of Owain ap Iorwerth were tenacious enough to halt the progress of a motive pub. And if I was now certain I’d not been wearing my own, it made it 17% more likely that Myfanwy had, and was (two elements in the equation instead of three), an erotic prospect which excited me to irreligious heights. Imagine how she might be treating them! Drawing them off, putting them on, ironing them! My soul, wherever it was, was thrilled.

“I’ll do anything in return,” blurted Emyr.

Before he could appreciate the idiocy of this remark, I gestured at my verger, beckoning him forward. The patrons frowned as he emerged from the shadows, stupefied as to how a minor divine could generate spontaneously from a void. Then I blared imperiously:

“Free ale and cakes until the end of time.”

“That’s easy. I want to do something difficult for you. Stand on my head for a month or marry a bucket. I can’t say that it’s pleasant to be stranded in Shropshire, which is an attenuated echo of Wales, but rather this than a return to Lladloh nasties.”

My verger and I exchanged glances. I indicated the window. “Here is truly a bleak wasteland, devoid of the appurtenances of civilisation. If you construct a settlement, say a small town, to enclose the pub, I will be duly satisfied. Houses, shops, casinos, saloons, theatres, parks, but don’t build a church. Leave it amoral.”

“Consider it done!” And Emyr reached behind the bar for a whip with which to enrol and organise the labour of his drinkers, whose complaints were drowned by the crack of knucklebone lash. One at a time, they drank up and slowly shuffled out to work. My verger gasped at this development and I bent closer to explain, mumbling:

“Why race around the land looking for pastors when we can lure them here? What better trap than a godless pit? A town without a church! They will come to establish one themselves!”

Under Emyr’s direction, work progressed rapidly. Within a week, we drank no longer in an isolated tavern but in a village pub. The settlement was as nameless as the tavern (in Whitby nothing is named because nobody can read in the dark) and we argued long hours over a suitable title. It was prudent to pacify the former customers, now slaves, and I shared much of my beer and cakes with them, instead of burdening them with wages, which I couldn’t afford anyway. The three managers of the project (which is how I came to think of the barman, verger and myself) based ourselves at the bar, ensuring that all tastes were accounted for. The ale ran out too quickly and we were forced to brew our own from local weeds. In time we adapted to the toxic flavours; at perigee to the tongue they eclipsed moonshine. I should have been content. But the harpoon in the beam still disturbed me. The stress in the cable was monumental and something would soon have to give, other than our host. 

One morning, while we were chatting about cricket (a game which has not yet reached Shropshire in any recognisable form) and how the ancient druids were wont to bat with a hare’s ear, the incident I feared as much as the tickle of a hangman’s noose occurred. The harpoon line snapped. I heard a shrill whistle, like a kettle boiling over a firefly, but it was not immediately obvious what had happened, for the rope didn’t break our end. I touched it and burnt my palm: it was contracting rapidly, and the tension was draining out of it like steam. My verger and I rushed to the window, to observe a pale object approaching from the horizon. I thought it was a toy balloon, knotted to the far tip of the cord, but as it flew closer, I recognised the outline as a callous intrusion from my past. My verger was as shrewd as I, standing aside from the window, but poor Emyr was tardier than a scrapbook, and when the missile crashed into the pub, it landed on him and skittled him awry.

We hurried to his side. “Are you badly injured?”

He was. The collision had prolapsed an eyeball. It hung down on his cheek on the optic nerve, as if to lower tears gently to the cold floor. He sat up, glanced about (by swinging the eye from side to side and over his shoulder) and groaned pathetically:

“What in the name of leprous pustules was that?”

“A yellow imp. He was clutching the other end of the cable and must have been catapulted all the way here.”