by Rhys Hughes
“I am unaware of such a coast,” said Castor.
Pepys rasped, “There are old legends about those cliffs. The ancient geographer Ptolemy believed they fringed certain islands beyond India. The explorer Gil Eannes thought that Cape Bojador in Africa was where they might be found. Nobody knows for certain. We noted that birds had made their nests on ledges along the cliffs and because we were hungry we decided that some of us should climb up and raid the eggs. The most agile members of our crew jumped from our masts and caught hold of the cliff wall by precarious handholds. They skilfully threw the nests into the sea, where they floated near our ships.”
“And you were able to fish them out?” asked Castor.
“Yes, with nets! Then the climbers jumped into the sea and we pulled them up too. We planned to sail away from that place as fast as possible, but the birds returned and went wild. At that very moment, our second ship was pulled apart by the magnetic attraction of the lodestone. It was less well made than our own ship. As the nails oozed out of the planks, the birds swooped and snatched them up. Then they flapped after us and prepared to drop them on our heads. But a sudden fog rolled across the scene and they weren’t able to pinpoint us.”
“That fog saved your lives!” commented Castor.
“Indeed so. Our ship managed to escape and it has been fleeing those birds ever since. They are the same species that attacked our camp just now. Blue sentinel birds, you called them. I wish to stress that neither the crew killed today, nor the birds that killed them, are the same as those present during the raiding of the nests. We are descendants of the original participants. Generations have passed on both sides. The birds never gave up the quest for vengeance and they passed it down to their subsequent hatchlings. We thought that by coming here we would finally evade them, but clearly they were already waiting for us.”
Castor listened to this story with appropriate sympathy. He made soothing noises and nodded his head, but he was slightly embarrassed and felt that something else was required of him, some further response. But what? Pepys gripped his arm and opened his mouth, but no more words were audible. The telling of the story had exhausted him. Guessing only that he was supposed to reciprocate, Castor screwed up his face and searched his mind for a story of his own.
He soon found one no less remarkable than the tale of the birds, and he began telling it in the following manner:
* * * *
I watch birds on these dunes now (said Castor) but I used to watch them on Kenfig Dunes too, on the other side of the town of Porthcawl. In my mind I now divide the two different sets of dunes into ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Kenfig Dunes are the bad ones. I knew they were supposed to be haunted even when I went there regularly. There was a village there long ago that was buried by the shifting sands. It has been said that on stormy nights the bells of the old church can be heard ringing at the bottom of a lake. I never heard them, so I can’t confirm that.
There’s also an isolated house there called Sker House. It’s an accurate name, for it’s rife with phantoms, the most famous being a forlorn maiden who was locked in her bedroom when her father disapproved of her lover, a wandering poet. She died of grief or malnutrition, I don’t recall which, and her ghost can sometimes be seen in an upper window. There’s another phantom in the shape of a monk who lives in the cellar, though I have my doubts about whether someone who has been dead for many centuries can be accurately said to ‘live’ anywhere at all.
Sker House doesn’t play a part in what happened to me, but I thought I should mention it for the sake of local colour. Anyway, I was out late one night, kneeling on the top of a dune and watching a rare species of beach owl, when I saw a man walking near the tide line. He was coming along the beach from the direction of Porthcawl, throwing a stick for his pet as he went. His pet bounded after it each time and brought it back. Once he threw the stick into the sea and his pet splashed into the waves to retrieve it and the water at that spot turned purple.
I mean that the surf actually glowed with horrid phosphorescence as if the pet had somehow turned the waves radioactive. I adjusted the focus of my binoculars and studied the pet in more detail. I noted the long twisted horns, the forked tongue, the tail. Then I turned my binoculars on the man who was its master. He was dressed like a priest. I watched them walk all the way around the curve of the beach but I don’t know if they came back the same way; I vacated that area as fast as my legs would take me! Back at home, I trembled under my bedsheets…
The following day I decided that I must have been imagining things. I couldn’t miss the chance of observing a beach owl in its native habitat, so I went back to Kenfig Dunes after sunset. Sure enough, the owl was there, and it seemed happy to surf the waves all night on a surfboard of woven twigs, which is standard beach owl behaviour but is rarely seen in Wales. The suddenly it took fright and flapped away. The priest was back and he had a new pet with him! This pet resembled a cross between a spider and a wolf and it chased the stick thrown for it.
I was terrified. But the following night I went back and yet again the priest showed up with a new pet. In all the nights that followed he had a different monster. Always he threw sticks for them and they ran after and brought them back. Finally I couldn’t bear the tension and I hurried down the dunes onto the beach after him. A current was carrying far out a stick thrown into the sea; his pet was swimming after it. I had enough time to approach him and demand an explanation. So intent was he on the game with the stick that he didn’t hear me come up.
I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned calmly to regard me. Then I pointed at the monster and said, “What?”
“It’s a demon,” he answered.
“And the others?” I gasped.
“They are all demons,” he replied casually.
I boggled. “You mean—?”
He nodded. “I am the Reverend Richards. My church in Porthcawl is overrun with demons. They are real demons from Hell. My congregation stopped coming to listen to my sermons and the bishop even threatened to expel me if I didn’t do something about the problem. So I consulted some old books and learned that the best way to get rid of demons is to exercise them. That’s what I’m doing now.”
I absorbed this information, then I said as gently as I could, “I admire your initiative, but you’ve made a small mistake. The word isn’t ‘exercise’ but exorcise. A slight difference.”
He stroked his beard and frowned. “Oh dear! So that’s why the demons keep returning to my church! I did wonder! Thanks for letting me know. I was never much good at spelling.”
I wished him the best of luck and then I retreated before his pet caught the stick and brought it back to shore. As I hurried over the beach I noted that the pawprints of the demon glowed purple. I can accept that creatures glow in the dark, and in fact there are plenty of glow-worms in the dunes, but the idea that their tracks can also glow is one of the strangest aspects of this case, as far as I’m concerned. Anyway, I have never returned to the dunes on that side of the town and I have no intention of ever going back. I prefer these dunes, which are safer.
* * * *
Castor finished his story and waited for Pepys to give a reaction. But the Brazilian said nothing. So he leaned forward to check if the fellow had died. As he did so, something brushed the crown of his scalp. Blood trickled down his face and at the same instant he heard an explosion. He jerked up straight again and clutched the top of his head with his hands, but the wound was only a scratch, nothing serious. Then he blinked and looked out to sea and understood.
The azure sentinel birds had taken over the barquentine. Hundreds of them were perched on all the yardarms of the masts, holding binoculars to their eyes and watching Castor. Others crowded the decks and three or four of them were clustered around a smoking cannon. They had fired a cannon at him! But it soon emerged they didn’t really desire to kill him, for they never bothered reloading the antique weapon. Instead they pulled up the anchor and set sail westwards.
They were steering
a course for Porthcawl. Perhaps it was high time a Welsh coastal town was invaded and taken over by birds! Or perhaps they would simply sail around rather than attacking it. Castor wondered if the ship would be intercepted by a flotilla of swimming demons coming the other way, once it rounded the cape. He sat on the sand and reached into his small knapsack for his vacuum flask. After such an eventful night he deserved a nice drink of cold beer.
Hangfire Bubbler
Because he couldn’t sleep, Castor got out of bed and drank a bottle of beer, but it didn’t make him drowsy, so he decided to go for a midnight walk to the bottle bank and condemn his empty bottle to the recycling process. The bottle bank was a large steel container with rubber inlets and it was always fun to push bottles through the holes and listen to them smashing deep inside the metal belly. On this occasion, however, the bottle bank was full and the top had been removed, so the empty bottles tottered high above him like the bricks of an unstable glass ziggurat. He shrugged his shoulders and threw his bottle onto the pile.
But as he turned to go, two other bottles fell off and landed on the grass. He was a responsible citizen, Castor, and couldn’t just leave them there, so he picked them up and threw them back. They landed in the right place but each bottle knocked off two others, so he sighed as he bent over and retrieved the four bottles, lobbing them with great accuracy onto the summit of the mound. Once again each bottle dislodged two more so that eight bottles now lay at his feet. He had no choice but to continue throwing them back, for to walk away would be to demonstrate a shocking disregard for the integrity of the environment.
This absurd charade continued and Castor felt powerless to prevent the eventual humiliation of dislodging every single bottle until the bottle bank was completely empty and he was stranded in a lake of glass vessels that would roll under his feet and send him sprawling if he attempted to escape. At this point the moon rose over the eastern hills and he was able to see that none of the bottles around him were quite empty. He reached for the nearest and held it up to the light. A blue mist swirled at the bottom, forming patterns that seemed unnatural. On impulse, Castor pulled out the cork.
The thick mist gushed from the neck and made a bulbous outline that suddenly solidified into a rotund figure with an enormous turban and eyes like miniature whirlpools. It floated above the ground unsteadily at first, then gained a sense of balance and pursed its indigo lips at Castor before speaking in a voice that resembled very distant thunder. “You’re not supposed to let us out!”
“Why not?” blinked Castor.
“What’s the point of depositing one genie here if you’re going to set free another? Defeats the object of recycling us, I should think. You look confused. You did bring a genie to be recycled?”
Castor paled. “My bottle had nothing in it.”
The genie sighed. “Clearly you’ve come to the wrong place. The ordinary bottle bank is over there. This one is reserved for bottles containing genies. An easy mistake to make, I suppose, not that anyone has made it before now, but there’s a first time for everything. And so…”
Castor put his hands over his ears and shut his eyes tight, needing to disengage from reality for a few moments to regain his composure. When it was back he lowered his arms and snapped open his eyelids and met the gaze of the genie without flinching. Then he studied his surroundings more carefully. It was true that he had come to the wrong bottle bank. The correct one was beyond the bushes where the moonlight didn’t reach yet, but he could just make out its dark profile among the somewhat lighter shadows.
“I didn’t know that genies could be recycled,” he said at last.
“It recently became possible,” answered the genie.
“And all these bottles around me contain a genie, every single one?”
“With the exception of yours, obviously.”
“What do you do for a living?” abruptly asked Castor.
“That’s an odd question!” cried the genie.
“Is it really? I’m just curious. By the way, you smell like some sort of fruit juice. I never expected that, to be honest. Do you work in an orchard or a canning factory by any chance?”
“I’m a genie, I don’t really work,” pointed out the genie.
“You’re broken?” gasped Castor.
“No, I mean that I don’t have a profession or a career…”
“What I’m getting at,” continued Castor, “is whether you grant wishes or not. I was being oblique when I asked about your job. Are you able to give me any wishes?”
The genie smirked. “I was wondering when that would come up. Of course I can. I have no choice, in fact. I suppose you want to wish for better health? You’re looking a bit poorly, if you don’t object to that observation.”
“True,” agreed Castor. “It’s the frustration of my own job. I’m rather depressed at the moment, to be perfectly frank.”
“What is your job,” asked the genie politely.
“I’m a clown,” answered Castor. “Let me tell you about it.”
“Please don’t!” begged the genie.
But that’s what he did.
* * * *
From a young age (began Castor) I always wanted to be a clown. I loved the circus and desired nothing greater than to be one of those comical fellows with elongated shoes, false red noses, huge painted smiles and fake carnations that squirt water into unsuspecting faces. Unlike most normal adults, who inevitably grow out of their childhood obsessions, I never abandoned my original dream. Eventually I really did become an authentic clown.
I chose the name Hangfire Bubbler and that’s how the ringmaster, Xelucha Laocoön, introduced me every night. My name had come to me in a dream and was more idiosyncratic than Coco, Mimsy, Bobo, Pogo, Sharps, Zubba, Dumpmungle or other traditional pseudonyms of that ilk. Mr Laocoön loved my act and always announced me with an especially perilous crack of his long bullwhip.
So I juggled balls and eggs, performed cartwheels and somersaults, landed flat on my face in mysterious plates of jelly, climbed rope-ladders to nowhere, was struck repeatedly on the skull by malevolent saucepans, rode on the back of a gigantic rabbit that was actually two other clowns inside a costume. I was funny and audiences always called for more and the fame went to my head or whatever other part of the anatomy is a willing host for it.
But the extreme contentment that filled me wasn’t destined to last long, and maybe the name of the troupe I was with should have given me a clue, but at the time I found nothing sinister in the words LAOCOÖN’S CATASTROPHE CIRCUS and deemed my position and growing fame secure, if not inviolable. Then a new clown joined us. I saw him coming out of the ringmaster’s caravan early one morning, looking very pleased with himself and exceptionally malign at the same time.
I later learned he had applied for a position, been granted an interview and so impressed Mr Laocoön that he was offered the job of warm-up clown on the spot. I was fascinated by his hideous makeup. A broad yellow smear ran from the crown of his head to his chin, overlapping the more conventional white and red paint. It turned out he wasn’t a normal clown at all but one of those incredibly rare were-clowns. In other words, he was a human being or possibly a wolf by the light of day, but under the influence of the full moon he magically transformed into a clown. His name was Guttersnipe Chutney.
Alas, I soon had cause to regret setting eyes on this fellow. To maintain the form of a clown he wore a lamp strapped to his body with a stand that paralleled his spine and arched over his head, the bulb specially modified to radiate a glow identical to full moonlight. As our official warm-up clown his act consisted of bounding on before me and going through a routine that was supposed to make my own entrance easier. In fact, he achieved the opposite effect.
That vile Guttersnipe Chutney deliberately instilled a virulent strain of coulrophobia into my audience. Coulrophobia, in case you don’t know, is a morbid fear of clowns and a natural development in the psychology of anyone compelled to watch his evil antics. By the time I
entered the ring, the audience had mostly fled the environs of the circus and those few hardy souls who remained usually screamed at me or even offered threats of violence. And this went on night after night.
I complained to Guttersnipe but he merely sneered in reply, so I took my unhappiness to Xelucha Laocoön himself, but the ringmaster was equally dismissive of my grumbles and refused to take action. Then I realised they were in league against me. But why? What had poor Hangfire Bubbler done to merit such ignominious treatment? At night my dreams were full of Guttersnipe’s menacing face with its weird yellow stripe. I slowly became a nervous wreck, a quivering fool.
The sabotage had its desired effect. Unable to entertain my audiences in the way I wished, prevented from being a true clown and living my dream, I had no option but to resign and leave the circus. I went without saying goodbye to anyone, in the cold hour before dawn, with my clown outfit strewn in the bushes and normal shoes on my feet. As I quietly passed the outer circle of caravans and crossed a wooden bridge over a stream into a forest, a voice called out:
“Hangfire Bubbler!”
He was lurking in the shadows and his yellow stained face gleamed softly. I stopped and waited for him to speak again. I wasn’t afraid, though I couldn’t guess his intentions. Did he plan to take his sabotage of my career to its ultimate limit by murdering me in cold blood? I no longer cared, to be completely truthful. The day a Bubbler is upstaged by a Chutney is the same day that everything ceases to matter very much.
At last he said, “Aren’t you curious?”
“About what?” I spat.
“About why I have destroyed your life. I sought you out deliberately and applied for the job with Xelucha Laocoön simply for the chance to ruin you. I specialise in generating coulrophobia. I regard you as a stain worse than the one that covers my face and I wanted to wipe you out.”
“Very well,” I responded calmly. “Tell me everything.”
His painted lips crinkled into a serrated smile that was surely capable of sawing through the remaining fibres of my dignity, but then he adopted a more sober expression and replied, “We are both professional clowns and thus aware of the Clown Museum in Haggerston Road, London. In fact we are required to be aware of it, because that’s where our faces are registered.”