The Antipope

by Robert Rankin

  ‘It is all sheer fantasy,’ said Jim, pinching himself. ‘Shortly I shall awake in my bed remembering nothing of this.’

  ‘The clock has stopped,’ said Omally pointing to the silent timepiece upon the mantelshelf.

  The Professor took out his pocket watch and held it to his ear. ‘Bother,’ he said, giving it a shake, ‘I must have mispronounced several of the minor convolutions. Give the pendulum a swing, will you John?’

  Omally rose unsteadily from his chair and reached towards the mantelshelf. The alcohol, however, caused him to misjudge his distance and he toppled forward head first into the fireplace. Turning on to his back in an effort to remove himself from the ashes Omally suddenly let out a terrified scream which echoed about the room rattling the ornaments and restarting the mantel clock.

  Not three feet above, and apparently wedged into the chimney, a hideous, inhuman face snarled down at him. It was twisted and contorted into an expression of diabolical hatred. A toothless mouth like that of some vastly magnified insect opened and closed, dripping foul green saliva upon him; eyes, two flickering pinpoints of white light; and the entire horrific visage framed in a confusion of crimson cloth. The sobering effect upon Omally was instantaneous. Tearing himself from his ashy repose he leapt to his feet and fell backwards against the Professor’s desk, spilling books and screaming, ‘Up the chimney, up the chimney.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s Santa,’ said Pooley.

  Omally was pointing desperately and yelling, ‘Light a fire, light a fire!’

  Pooley cast about for tinder. ‘Where are the logs, Professor? You always have logs.’

  The Professor chewed upon his knuckle. ‘The shed,’ he whispered in a trembling voice.

  ‘We’ll have to burn the books then.’ Omally turned to the desk and snatched up an armful.

  ‘No, no, not the books.’ Professor Slocombe flung himself upon Omally, clawing at his precious tomes. The broad-shouldered Irishman thrust him aside, and Pooley pleaded with the old man. ‘There’s nothing we can do, we have to stop them.’

  Professor Slocombe fell back into his chair and watched in horror as the two men loaded the priceless volumes into the grate and struck fire to them. The ancient books blazed in a crackle of blue flame and from above them in the chimney there came a frantic scratching and clawing. Strangled cries rent the air and thick black smoke began to fill the room. Now the French windows burst asunder with a splintering of glass and the great curtains billowed in to a blast of icy air. The burning creature’s hooded companions beat upon the shuttered metal screen, screeching vile blasphemies in their rasping inhuman voices. There was a crash and the creature descended into the flames, clawing and writhing in a frenzy of searing agony.

  Pooley snatched up his poker and lashed out at it viciously. Omally heaped more books on to the fire. The Professor stepped forward, knowing what had to be done.

  Slowly raising his hand in benediction he spoke the magical words of the Holy Exorcism. The creature groaned and twisted in the flames, its arms flailing at its tormentors. Pooley held it at bay and as the Professor spoke and Omally applied more fuel to the fire, its movements began to slow and presently it crumpled in upon itself to be cremated by the all-consuming flames.

  The curtains ceased their billowing and from the garden there came a great wailing and moaning. Pooley cupped his hands over his ears and the Professor stood, book in hand, frozen and corpse-like. Omally was beating away at the burning books which had fallen from the fireplace on to the carpet. His face was set into a manic grin and he prodded at the remains of the fallen creature with undisguised venom.

  The wailing from the garden became fainter and as it passed into silence the Professor breathed a great sigh and said, ‘All the ashes must be gathered and tomorrow cast into the Thames; by fire and by water and the holy writ shall they be destroyed.’

  Omally plucked a half-charred volume from the grate. ‘I am sorry about the books,’ he said, ‘but what else could we do?’

  ‘It is no matter, you acted wisely and no doubt saved our lives.’ The Professor fingered the ruined binding of the ancient book. ‘A pity though, irreplaceable.’

  Pooley had unfastened his hands from about his head. ‘Are they gone?’ he asked inanely.

  ‘Unless they are regrouping for another assault.’

  The Professor shook his head. ‘I think not, they will be none too eager to return now, but what will happen when they report the loss of their comrade I shudder to think.’

  Omally whistled. ‘Our man is not going to be very pleased.’

  ‘We are doomed,’ said Pooley once more, ‘all doomed.’

  ‘Jim,’ said Omally wearily, ‘if you say “we are doomed” one more time I am going to set aside the long years of our noble friendship and remodel your beak with the business end of my knuckles.’

  ‘Come now gentlemen,’ said the Professor, ‘I have a bottle of port which I suggest we now consume before taking a well-earned rest.’

  Omally rubbed his hands together. ‘That would be excellent.’

  Pooley shrugged his shoulders. ‘What else can happen?’ he asked.

  A pink dawn came to Brentford, gilding the rooftops with its sickly hue. Birds that should have by now flown south to winter it in tropical climes sat in silent rows musing upon the oddness of the season. As the old sun dragged itself into the sky there was all the promise of another fine and cloudless day ahead.

  Pooley was the first to awake. He heard the milk float clattering over the cobblestones of the Butts, and, rising stiffly, he stumbled to the French windows and drew back the heavy curtains. The sunlight beamed down through the metal screen, laying golden diamonds upon the Professor’s carpet and causing Jim to blink wildly whilst performing the ritualistic movements of finding the first fag of the day. Like all first fags it was a killer. Jim did his best to draw some breath from the fragrant garden between coughs while he surveyed the damage the night had brought. The French windows had been torn from their hinges once more and their splintered remains littered the small lawn and surrounding flowerbeds. Shards of glass twinkled bright in the morning sunlight.

  Pooley’s vile coughing awoke Omally who, scratching his nether regions, shambled over to join him. ‘A rare mess,’ said the Irishman, ‘the glaziers will think the Professor a fine man for the wild parties and no mistake.’

  Pooley gripped the metal framework of the screen. ‘What time does this open?’ he asked.

  ‘Nine o’clock, wasn’t it?’

  The Memorial Library clock struck eight.

  ‘An hour yet then.’

  Omally shook the Professor gently awake. The old man stretched his slender limbs to the accompaniment of ghastly bone-cracking sounds. He yawned deeply. ‘So we are still alive then, that is a blessing.’

  ‘Not much left of your windows,’ said Jim. ‘Might be more economical to wall up the opening.’

  The Professor looked at his watch and checked it with the mantel clock. ‘Time for breakfast I think.’ He rang the Indian brass bell upon his desk and presently there came a knocking upon the study door, followed by the sound of a key turning in the lock. The door swung open and the decrepit figure of Gammon appeared. ‘Breakfast for three, sir,’ he said, hefting an oversized butler’s tray into view.

  ‘I gave him the night off,’ the Professor explained as the three men sat about the Moorish coffee table ravenously devouring the mountainous piles of toast, sausages, eggs and bacon loaded upon the tray. ‘I told him to return at seven and if he found the house intact, to arrange breakfast for three.’

  ‘And what if the house had not been intact?’ Omally asked between mouthfuls.

  ‘If the doors were broken in and it was obvious that an entry had been made I ordered him to set the house ablaze and leave immediately, never to return.’

  ‘And he would have done that?’

  ‘Unquestioningly.’

  Omally whistled. ‘He is a loyal servant indeed. It would have been
my first thought to remove several of the more choice objects in order to spare them from the blaze, as it were.’

  ‘Gammon has no need for that, I have seen to it that his long years of service will not go unrewarded.’

  ‘You are a strange man, Professor.’

  The Professor shook his head. ‘On the contrary, my motives are most simple, to advance science and to combat evil.’

  ‘You make it sound simple.’

  The Professor munched upon a piece of toast. ‘I believe in destiny,’ he said, ‘I believe in the existence of the cosmic master plan. No man is without a purpose, but few if any find theirs before it is too late. Perhaps I am lucky to believe that I have found mine, possibly not. Possibly ignorance as they say is bliss. It is written that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a great deal of knowledge is a disaster”.’

  ‘Probably written by Norman,’ said Pooley, pushing another sausage into his mouth.

  ‘A man without talent or ambition is a man most easily pleased. He lives his life with no delusions, other men set his purpose and he is content.’

  ‘That is a depressing thought,’ said Omally, ‘as that particular definition covers most individuals in this present society.’

  ‘The balance must always be maintained. All have a purpose, be he pauper or king, such it has always been. There could be no giants if there were no dwarves.’

  Pooley thought that there probably could be, but he held his counsel as he had no wish to be drawn into an arduous discussion at this time of the day. ‘Here,’ he said suddenly, ‘how did Gammon get in if all the doors were on time-locks?’

  Omally raised his eyes suspiciously towards the Professor, but the old man merely chuckled and continued with his breakfasting. Black coffees were drunk and at length Gammon returned to dispose of the tray. At nine o’clock the time-lock upon the metal shuttering snapped open and the Professor raised it. Gammon had swept the ash from the fireplace into a sack and this the Professor handed to Omally with explicit instructions.

  ‘You must sprinkle it over at least half a mile,’ he explained, ‘there must be no chance of the particles regrouping. And now I must say farewell to you gentlemen. It is no longer safe for me to remain here. I have other apartments not far from here and I will lodge there. When the moment comes that I need you I will be in contact. Go now and await my call, speak of these matters to no-one and be constantly on your guard. You should be safe during the hours of daylight, but at night go nowhere alone, do not allow yourselves to become separated.’

  The two men stepped through the French windows, over the mess of shattered glass, and out towards the Professor’s gate. They turned to wave him a cheery farewell but the old man had gone.

  21

  The people of Brentford had taken to calling them the Siamese Twins. From the moment they had despatched the sinister contents of the sack along the river John Vincent Omally and James Arbuthnot Pooley were never to be seen apart. The days passed wearily with no call from the Professor. Pooley wondered if the old man might possibly have lost his nerve and decided to do a runner, but Omally, whose faith in the Professor bordered upon the absolute, would have none of that. ‘He has seen too much,’ he assured Pooley, ‘he will not rest till that Pope Alex is driven back into the dark oblivion from whence he came.’

  ‘There is a definite sword of Damocles air to all this,’ said Jim. ‘I feel that around every corner something is lurking, every time a telephone rings or a postman appears I have to make a dash for the gents.’

  ‘My own bladder has not been altogether reliable of late,’ said John dismally.

  ‘Talking of bladders, it would appear to be opening time.’

  John nodded. He owned no timepiece but his biological clock told him to the minute the licensing hours of the county. ‘A pint of Large would be favourable.’

  Outside the Swan a builder’s lorry was parked and two swarthy individuals of tropical extraction laboured away at the damaged brickwork with mortar and trowel. Neville, his hand still bandaged from his recent encounter with the Professor’s impenetrable parcel, put down the glass he was polishing and addressed them with a surly ‘What’ll it be?’

  Omally raised an eyebrow. ‘Not still sulking over the hole in the wall, surely, Neville?’ he said.

  ‘I am a patient man,’ said the part-time barman, ‘but I have stood for a lot this year, what with the perils of Cowboy Night and the like. Every time I sit down and catalogue the disasters which have befallen this establishment over recent months, Omally, your name keeps cropping up, regular as the proverbial clockwork.’

  ‘He is a man more sinned against than sinning,’ Pooley interjected helpfully.

  ‘Your name comes a close second, Pooley.’

  ‘They’re doing a nice job on the front wall,’ said Pooley, smiling painfully. ‘What did the brewery say?’

  ‘As it happens,’ said Neville, ‘things didn’t work out too badly there, I told them that it was a thunderbolt.’

  ‘A thunderbolt? And they believed it?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, and not only that, they said that due to the evident danger they would give me an increase in salary, but did not think it wise to install the new computerized cash register in case its electronic workings attracted further cosmic assault upon the premises.’

  ‘Bravo,’ said Jim, ‘so all is well that ends well.’ He rubbed his hands together and made a motion towards the beer pulls as if to say ‘Merits a couple of free ones then.’

  ‘All is not well,’ said Neville coldly, waggling his still bandaged thumb at them. ‘Someone could have been killed, I will have no more of it. This is a public house, not a bloody missile proving station.’

  Neville counted the exact number of pennies and halfpennies into the till and rang up ‘No Sale’. The Siamese Twins took themselves and their pints off to a side table. They had little to offer each other by the way of conversation; they had exhausted most subjects and their enforced closeness had of late caused them generally to witness and experience the same events. Thus they sat, for the most part speechless, oppressed by fears of unexpected telegrams or fluttering pigeon post.

  The bar was far from crowded. Old Pete sat in his regular seat, Chips spread out before him shamming indifference to the unwelcome attention being paid to his hind quarters by a blue-bottle. Norman sat at the bar, wearing an extraordinary water-cooled hat of his own design, and a couple of stalwarts braved the heat for a half-hearted game of darts. An electronic Punkah-fan installed by the brewery turned upon the ceiling at a dozen revolutions an hour gently stirring the superheated air. Brentford had fallen once more into apathy. The sun streamed in through the upper windows and flies buzzed in eccentric spirals above the bar.

  Pooley gulped his pint. ‘Look at them,’ he said. ‘The town has come to a standstill, we spend the night matching wits with the forces of darkness while Brentford sleeps on. Seems daft, doesn’t it?’

  Omally sighed. ‘But perhaps this is what we are doing it for, just so we can sit about in the Swan while the world goes on outside.’

  ‘Possibly,’ said Pooley finishing his pint. ‘Another of similar?’

  ‘Ideal.’

  Pooley carried the empty glasses to the bar and as Neville refilled them he did his best to strike up some kind of conversation with the part-time barman. ‘So what is new, Neville?’ he asked. ‘How spins the world in general?’

  ‘Once every twenty-four hours,’ came the reply.

  ‘But surely something must be happening?’

  ‘The boating lake at Gunnersbury is dry,’ said the part-time barman.

  ‘Fascinating,’ said Pooley.

  ‘The temperature is up by another two degrees.’

  ‘Oh good, I am pleased to hear that we can expect some fine weather.’

  ‘They pulled two corpses out of the river at Chiswick, stuck in the mud they were when the water went down.’

  ‘Really?’ said Jim. ‘Anybody we know?’

 
; ‘I expect not. Only person to go missing from Brentford in the last six months is Soap Distant, but there was only one of him.’

  Pooley’s face twitched involuntarily, it was certain that sooner or later someone would miss old Soap. ‘No-one ever did find out what happened to him then?’ he asked casually.

  ‘The word goes that he emigrated to Australia to be nearer to his holes in the poles.’

  ‘And nobody has identified the corpses at Chiswick?’

  ‘No,’ said Neville pushing the two pints across the bar top. The fish had done a pretty good job on them but, they reckon they must have been a pair of drunken gardeners, they found a wheelbarrow stuck in the mud with them.’

  Pooley, who had raised his pint to his lips, spluttered wildly, sending beer up his nose.

  ‘Something wrong, Jim?’

  ‘Just went down the wrong way, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, before you choke to death, perhaps you wouldn’t mind paying for the drinks?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jim, wiping a shirtsleeve across his face, ‘sorry about that.’ Omally had overheard every word of the conversation and when the pale-faced Pooley returned with the pints he put a finger to his lips and shook his head. ‘Who do you think they were?’ Jim whispered.

  ‘I haven’t a clue, and there’s no way that the Captain is going to tell us. But it’s the wheelbarrow I worry about, what if somebody identifies it?’ Omally chewed upon his fingers. ‘I should have reported it stolen,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit late now.’

  ‘Even if they identify it as yours, there is nothing to tie you into the corpses. We don’t know who they were; it is unlikely that you would have killed two complete strangers and then disposed of them in your own wheelbarrow.’

  ‘The English Garda have no love for me,’ said John, ‘they would at least enjoy the interrogation.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said Jim, ‘whoever the victims were, they must have been killed sometime before being wheeled across the allotment by the Captain and dumped in the river, and we have perfect alibis, we were here at Cowboy Night, everybody saw us.’