The Transfiguration of Mister Punch (17 page)

Ipsy-pipsy, palsy and the gout,

The plague within and the plague without.

If there’s nineteen devils in that man.

I’m sure to drive one-and-twenty out.

Charles Shepherd let out a pathetic shriek and ran.

He fell into the building that should have been The Green Dragon. Its perished wooden door swung open easily and he threw himself against it to bar the freakish Mummers entry. He had expected it to be dark inside but the bright moon shone into the building from above. The roof, and the first floor, must have collapsed years before and now formed a heap of rubble in the middle of the room, upon which a light dusting of snow had settled. It had definitely been a pub once, its bar now partially obscured by the collapse. What remained was rotten and ruined. It must have been decades since anyone had even been in the place, let alone have a drink here. Perhaps the whole peculiar village was deserted, and if so, where, or even
when
, was he.

However there were more pressing matters. He heard a gaggle of excited voices beyond the door.

A distorted, shrill voice called out, “Open the Door and let us in, / We’re set, at last, to begin. / We’ll do our best to entertain, / Friends, or enemies, we must detain, / On this foul evening our song shall stir / the heart and hand of every cur. / So give us leave, and open up, / or from your skull I’ll drink a cup.” There was a chorus of strange laughter, more like a pack of odd animals than people, followed by three slow, but forceful raps upon the door.

Charles Shepherd scrambled up the heap of rubble and attempted, with violently shaking hands, to get the club and dripping pan out of his satchel to defend himself with.

In they came, one by one. First was the hunched figure, also strangely tall. His spindly legs seemed incapable of supporting his great belly and curving hunchback, and his monstrous head lolled and rocked upon his neck as though on a spring. The head resembled Mr Punch, with his great hooked nose and protruding chin. The skin had a bubbling surface, as though boils and pustules suppurated beneath it. Surely the thing must be constructed from papier-mâché, Charles thought. But how
real
it looked—how
frightfully
real! The cheeks had a rosy glow to them, not from a great daub of paint, but from a series of spidery, broken blood vessels that reminded him of Sergeant Billings’ ruined, alcoholic face. The overall effect was horrific, but more from a childish, clown-like quality than anything tangibly malevolent. He wore a great yellow and red striped tunic made of some thick hide. A row of large silver buttons held the thing together across his bulbous belly, heaving against the constricting material. Tufts of brown fur poked through from his chest and as Charles Shepherd was attempting to piece together all of the odd mixtures of costume style he noticed something rather more troubling. The character did not walk on stilts, as he had first presumed, but rather on two thin, hairy legs, each terminating in a bright black hoof. They were beautiful yet powerful, fragile yet threatening, like the quivering hind legs of a stag, poised to kick or bolt.

The knight, the tall bird-faced figure and the old woman came in in solemn procession and formed a line on the opposite side to ‘Punch’. There was something judicial about their manner that heightened Charles’ terror.

The ‘horse’ shuffled in finally, and as he had first thought it had many legs. In his panic Charles thought he saw seven. What he had assumed, from his earlier glimpse through the snows, was a thick pole protruding from the front appeared instead to be a rotten horse’s leg. The other legs were also animal-like, one quite elephantine, with its grey flesh falling away in dry strips. He did not have time to discern the others, for the beast leaned its grim skull forwards and seemed to
peer
at him.

He stared back. The skull was grotesquely disproportionate. Certainly a horse’s skull is big; it had taken Terry Darley a week to get the Alderley’s one down to the bone when he’d made their hobby horse over ten years ago. But this thing was huge. And what the hell were those long teeth, or tusks, on the thing—great curved incisors. It reminded him of a prehistoric creature he’d seen in the Natural History museum in London once. And somewhere deep inside the skull a blue light glowed, casting beams of brightness through the dark night, illuminating the relentless snowflakes with another twinkle of coldness.

The grotesque Punch figure edged forward, teetering on the rubble strewn across the floor. And as his fixed jaw clacked back and forth a squeaky voice emerged, one so alien to his appearance that if Charles had been at the pictures he would have laughed out loud. But here in this unreal, ruined village, with this gathering of menacing monstrosities, there was little to laugh about.

“Now acting time is come and we do here appear. / Goodbye to mirth and merriment, although it’s dear, / A room, a room, a room! You’ve let us in! / We’re not your ragged sort, but of more ancient kin.”

And here ‘Punch’ gestured towards his other players who took a bow in turn. Charles Shepherd knew he was in for a beating, but the aberrant nature of these Mummers really was terrifying. Whichever troupe it was they must have spent a tidy packet getting all fitted up like this.

“I dunno where you lads got those costumes this year. You must have been making them for months,” he said, as they advanced towards him. “Too much fuckin’ time on your hands I reckon!” Despite his outward aggression he was in turmoil within, unsure really who these mummers were, and where they might be from.

“It’s bloody bad sport to go for me when the other boys aren’t around. Are you down from Wilmslow, or over from Ollerton, or Monks’ Heath?” he demanded with evident desperation and fear. “Yeah, you’re the Monks’ Heath lot. Well, if you’re gonna be bloody cowards then let’s have a punch up and get it over with. So who’s first then?”

The knight figure moved towards him, although he didn’t make a sound. A red glow could be seen through his visor and again Charles Shepherd couldn’t resist one final attempt at resistance.

“Come on then, you bloody oddballs,” he shouted, brandishing his pan and club. “Have you been down the joke shop and got your ghosts and goblins costumes? I’ll teach you a thing or two. You’ll wish you’d never started your stupid games.”

“I am Moloch, the loveless, judger of old,” a metallic voice echoed from the knight’s helmet. “I come for your children, I lust for your gold. / Your sons I destroy, your daughters I rape, / On the ruin I reap, I leave you to gape. / Those who do not before me kneel, / I’ll hop and chop with sturdy steel.”

The thing seemed to glide across the ruined heap towards Charles, readying its sword.

Charles jumped forward to get the first strike in. It might be his only one. He thumped the thing soundly on the top of its helmet with a swing of the dripping pan. A resounding gong rang out. It sounded to Charles like one of those slapstick sound effects from the flicks and he half expected at any moment to wake from the whole ludicrous nightmare, laughing.

The armoured warrior collapsed into a pile of greaves, plates and buckles, no more than rusty theatrical props. And thus the scene played on, Charles’ mind either still slumbering or trapped in this grotesque reality.

“Oh, woe, my son is wounded sore, / What world is this, bereft of law, / Where the bold, the bright, the brave, / are slaughtered by such a knave?” the woman with the long black veil cried out, dashing to the heap of armour and cradling the helmet as though it were a real head.

“Are you mad, it’s just a pile of metal,” Charles yelled. “Look, I don’t know who you lot are but I’ve had about enough of this nonsense.”

“Oh, fool, can I believe, / You do not know, surely you deceive? / For I am Everywoman and you are Everyman,” she said, rising slowly. “No, my dark and fated lover, / Do not let your soul regret / It is you who must repay this Mother / With the child we are destined to beget.”

As she drew her veil aside Charles Shepherd looked upon something hellish. He dropped his pan and club, and stared in helpless, horrid fascination. Her face was that of a contorted hag, her skin wrinkled and sagging. However this was not merely your average vicious crone. Her features were a gruesome mask awkwardly stretched over another misshapen skull that seemed too wide for a human’s. Most of that ‘face’ hung in limp folds from two nails driven into the forehead. A filthy stench wafted from her rotten maw that gaped in mocking glee at him. Her teeth were rough wooden stumps covered in a blackish tar; her tongue a plump, cavorting maggot that reached eagerly for his trembling lips as she took him in her beastly arms for the first of many savage kisses.

As the blasphemous coupling frolicked through its painful hour the other dreadful Mummers sang a lullaby.

O, there isn’t a family

To compare to mine,

My father he was hanged

For stealing three swine.

My brother he was hanged,

For stealing only bread.

We’re nearly all gone,

Our story almost done.

My sister died of fever,

When her man did up ’n leave her.

Poor mother drowned i’ the well.

O, but, we’ll meet one day in hell.

Though isn’t I a lucky buck

To be living by mesel’?

What was left of Charles Shepherd stumbled into Lord and Lady Stanley’s drawing room at Alderley Park, right on cue. John Davies, as Prince Paradise, had just broken up the second battle between St George (Alan Wright, the Baker’s son) and Slasher (Brian Bright, the butcher). The Stanley’s and their posh guests looked aghast. PC Shepherd was naked, save for his tattered cape that was covered in blood and mud. His bowler hat had been thrust over his head and the rim now hung about his bruised neck. The horns had been mounted upon his forehead, secured with two stout nails. His face was caked with dried blood and his eyes implored madly to the assembled party. The broken fingers of his left hand were strapped around his dripping pan with the strap of his leather satchel and his right hand had been nailed to his wooden club. Both arms hung uselessly by his sides.

Charles Shepherd’s splintered teeth were chattering and his split lips broke the dark congealed blood that caked them long enough to splutter out his lines in an other-worldly voice, “In comes I, owd Beelzebub, / In my hand I carry my club; / In my hand my dripping pan, / Don’t you think I’m a jolly young man?” And with that the ‘jolly young man’ breathed his last as his ruined body crumpled onto the magnificent Turkish rug the Stanley’s had purchased a few weeks earlier from a charming gypsy family that were heading South to warmer counties.

So there you go, Charles Shepherd—what a nasty chap. But he got his comeuppance didn’t he?... What do you think of that, eh?... Oh, you do look sleepy, and that bottom lip of yours has gone all quivery... Were you trying to say something? I’m sorry, I didn’t catch it. Let me lean closer... Oh, yes, it can have that effect on those unused to the rare roots and wonderful berries I use in my concoctions. Don’t worry, it’ll wear off in a few hours. I’ll leave you here to dream your fond dreams of our special evening together. I do suggest that you have a think about what you are going to say about poor Henry Hawling though... Why, yes, he’s still here... He’s at his desk upstairs. I’m surprised you didn’t get a whiff when you came in, he’s starting to get a little high. I’d bring him down to meet you but I doubt his little limbs will be up to the job now. They’ll be a bit stiff—might need a little oiling with our special drink! I don’t reckon his head got on too well with the crack of my stick I’m afraid... All those juices everywhere. You’re so funny, you fleshy folk, with all your precious fluids. It’s like splitting a wineskin. Pop!... I think it may be time for me to go now... What’s that?... Oh, now don’t be silly. You won’t get in any trouble. Tell them it was me. They know my mischievous antics all too well by now. Everyone does. Everyone knows my little stories aren’t real—they’re all just make believe; make believe is such fun my serious friend, it’s such a lot of jolly fun!

I don’t really need this money, it’s just you lot love it so much, I always like to cause a bit of mischief; so I’ll take your case along with me, if you don’t mind... Oh, now don’t pull that sad face. You’ve got such funny, pudgy faces. I could just squeeze and squeeze, and squeeze—you’re so adorable. But I know how easily you break.