Phyllis Wong and the Waking of the Wizard

by Geoffrey McSkimming

  ‘Crorark,’ Corvus croaked.

  ‘C’mon, Mr Myrddin,’ said Clement. ‘I’ll help you out. I have a bit of a flair for disguise, if I do say so myself.’

  As he and Myrddin went through the racks of costumes, Phyllis rang Police Headquarters. When she got through to the Chief Inspector, he asked straightaway: ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m swell. We’ve got him.’

  There was a pause—Phyllis thought she could hear a slight whistling, like an exhaling of breath, come down the line. Then Barry said, ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In my basement. Myrddin’s getting sorted into some different clothes. He looks a little standout-ish in his cloak and stockings.’

  ‘As he would, Miss Wong. Good thinking. I’ll come and meet you there, twenty minutes. The basement is the best place to gather—we won’t be seen there and we can plan the next stage in Operation Vent.’

  ‘Operation Vent?’

  ‘That’s what the Force is calling this. I’ll fill you in more when I see you. Will I be able to get down there okay?’

  ‘I’ll meet you by the elevator in twenty minutes,’ Phyllis told him.

  ‘Good. And good work, Miss Wong.’

  ‘Save it, Chief Inspector. We still have Operation Vent to complete.’

  They rang off and, as Chief Inspector Inglis started the all-too-familiar search for his car keys amid the piles of papers on his desk, he couldn’t help thinking how Phyllis had just sounded like a detective of many years’ experience.

  While Barry drove the sixteen blocks from headquarters to the Wallace Wong Building, he was filled with many feelings. Above all, he felt the utter amazement that always came to him when he reflected on the way that Phyllis was able to find things—things, and people, that he, with all his professional contacts and methods, could never hope to locate.

  He thought again how he’d never met anyone like her. And nor was he likely to. Transiting, he thought. Good lord, I still can’t get used to it . . . and now I’m about to meet this legendary character, this . . . He shook his head, trying to let the realisation sink in.

  I am about to meet a wizard. As I live and breathe, I am going to meet the greatest wizard this world has seen. The man actually lives . . . He took a deep, steadying breath. You live in a world of surprises, Barry Inglis, he told himself. ‘And there’s the wonder of the thing,’ he murmured. He turned his car into the street where the Wallace Wong Building—his home—was located. ‘And it’s a fine thing that some wonders will never cease to exist.’

  ‘Chief Inspector, I’d like you to meet Wizard Myrddin.’ Phyllis gestured towards the old, white-bearded man, and Barry came down off the last step of the basement staircase, his hand extended.

  ‘Myrddin Ambrosius,’ said Myrddin, taking Barry’s hand and clasping it firmly. ‘Your acquaintance is my pleasure.’

  Barry shook Myrddin’s hand, trying to find words to express his amazement. He opened his mouth and then, realising it was as dry as sandpaper, he closed it again and swallowed. ‘Uh,’ he muttered.

  ‘What’s up, Ba—er, Inspector?’ asked Clement. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  Barry ignored him. He swallowed again and beheld the ancient man with the rook upon his shoulder.

  Myrddin was wearing a flowing robe, not all that different to the cloak he had taken off. This new garment was of a deep green, and edged with a rich golden brocaded hem. (Wallace Wong had worn it, with a matching turban, when he’d presented his ‘PrestoMANIA from Persia!’ act in the 1920s.) Despite Phyllis’s suggestions that maybe something a bit more now-looking might be better, Myrddin had insisted on this as his new outfit—he felt that it flattered his hips, he had explained to her.

  ‘Crorark,’ croaked Corvus.

  ‘You are a man of few words?’ enquired Myrddin, as Barry kept swallowing, and opening and closing his mouth like a goldfish.

  Then the reality sank in, and Barry found his voice. ‘Pardon me, sir, it’s just that . . . well, it’s not every afternoon one gets to meet someone such as yourself.’

  Myrddin’s eyes twinkled. ‘And it is not every afternoon one gets to meet a Chief Inspector of the Fine Arts and Antiques Squad of the Metropolitan Police Force.’

  Phyllis smiled.

  Barry let go of Myrddin’s hand and got down to business. ‘Right. Let’s get moving. If you’ll all go and sit on the sofas, I’ll outline where we are with Operation Vent.’

  ‘Operation Vent?’ said Clement, going to sit with Phyllis, Myrddin and Daisy.

  ‘What we’re calling the Sturdy business,’ Phyllis informed him.

  ‘Ah.’ Clem rubbed his handlebar moustache and nodded.

  Barry stood before them, unbuttoning his blue jacket and adopting his I’ll be brief and to the point stance. ‘Since you left to get Myrddin, we’ve had some developments. We think we may have pinpointed Sturdy’s whereabouts. We’re not a hundred per cent certain, but I’m fairly confident that we’re in the ball park.’

  ‘He’s in a ball park?’ said Myrddin.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Barry, ‘its just a figure of speech. I mean that we think we’re closing in on him.’

  ‘How did you find him?’ asked Phyllis.

  ‘Some CCTV footage, yesterday. He shoved a woman with a pram into a power pole as he was rushing down the sidewalk. Luckily the woman and the infant are all right, just shaken by the incident. We were fortunate that Sturdy happened to pick that particular street to perpetrate his thuggishness; it’s a dangerous part of town. There was not one, but a whole series of CCTV cameras, positioned on the next corner and on all the streets that he took, and the corners he turned, to get to his place of residence.’

  ‘So you’ve found where he lives?’ Phyllis asked, sitting alert.

  ‘We think so. At least, we know he’s been lurking there. We couldn’t catch him. He was filmed entering an apartment building, but we haven’t got any footage of him leaving it. When the police searched all the apartments in the building, they couldn’t find any trace of him. But we know he’d been there—they found this.’

  He reached into his coat pocket and took out a leather foldover wallet. From this he slipped out a photo and handed it to Phyllis. Myrddin, Clement and Daisy all leant closer to see it.

  Phyllis’s face screwed up at the photo. ‘Yergh, it’s Narky Norman. But what’s happened to him?’

  ‘He’s had his head smashed in,’ replied Barry, scowling. ‘They found him on the floor. Splinters everywhere, the boys told me. It wasn’t pretty.’

  A chill ran through Phyllis—the photo of Narky Norman showed a scene of angry violence perpetrated on a helpless object.

  Myrddin stood, anger and fear filling his eyes. ‘Was there another dummy there also?’ he asked urgently. ‘Did they find Jasper?’

  Barry shook his head. ‘No, sir. I have a feeling that we’re not going to get him until we find Sturdy. And we don’t have much time. The Mantle is going to start being unveiled tomorrow morning. Sturdy wants to attract you to destroy it and, knowing the way his diseased mind works, he’ll want to destroy it as soon as he can—before it even starts up, if he has his way.’

  ‘The dirty lousy stinking mongrel!’ seethed Clement. ‘He’s going to bring the Great Whimpering, he’s going to ruin it for every—’

  ‘Hush, Master Whiskers,’ said Myrddin gently. He then addressed Barry, his voice low and commanding. ‘Let me see if I can . . . how did you put it . . . ball park him more accurately.’ He took his twig-wand from his new robe and waved it slowly across the basement.

  There was a soft smell of sage and lavender. Everything rippled, as though all the props and magic paraphernalia had suddenly been thrust behind a curtain of wobbling, see-through jelly.

  ‘If there is a vestige of this vile ventriloquist available for me to find, then find it I shall.’

  The wizard’s voice grew lower, deeper. He spoke his invocation, sounding as if he were speaking from across hills and valleys and towering mountains
far, far away: ‘Ostendohaperio seall divulgino! Ostendohaperio seall revelatino! Ostendohaperio seall edgarbergenio!’

  Phyllis, Daisy, Clement and Barry watched as Myrddin closed his eyes and repeated the words, over and over, walking in slow, wide circles around the rug. He held his twig-wand straight out from the centre of his chest, like an extension of his arm.

  After several circles, Myrddin stopped. He opened his eyes, and his wand began to quiver. As they watched, all the rippling of their surroundings seemed to gather; in a few seconds, instead of the whole basement appearing behind a wobbly curtain, the rippling effect now speared into a single place: a large bubble, a sphere of semi-transparent fluid, that hovered between Myrddin and the others.

  ‘Behold . . .’ the wizard said softly. ‘I have found him! Whatever shields he may have put in place in past Times to hide from me, he has taken down.’

  He wants you to find him, Phyllis thought, as she stared at the bubble.

  Inside the bubble’s shifting quaveringness, an image was emerging. Slowly, like the edges of a TimePocket appearing, the outline of a man was forming.

  ‘It’s Sturdy, all right,’ said Barry, as the features of the ventriloquist took shape. Sturdy’s wide jaw, auburn beard and hard eyes were now recognisable through the fluctuations of the wobbles. There was something more, too; something that was even crueller-looking than before in the man’s expression. It was as if a desperate madness had taken hold of his gaze and was ready to burst through his eyeballs.

  Clement shuddered at the sight of him. It was not the first time that Clem had come across a visage of real evil, and he knew it when he saw it. This sort of evil, laced with hatred and greed and diabolical intent, was something altogether different—far more frightening and insidious—than the evil zombies and other malevolent creatures he encountered when he was gaming.

  ‘Where is he?’ Phyllis asked, intertwining her thumb and pinkie finger.

  Myrddin drew his twig-wand higher, holding it above his white head and slowly stirring it in the direction of the bubble. The scene inside the wobbling sphere changed, as if a movie camera had been filming the scene and had now pulled out to a longer, wider shot.

  Now they could see Sturdy, wearing his coat with the astrakhan collar, striding briskly along a sidewalk in a precinct of the city where there were fewer buildings.

  The Chief Inspector craned his neck as he tried to get a hold on the location. ‘I know that place,’ he muttered. ‘It’s . . . somewhere down near the river. Lower East Side, I think . . .’

  As Sturdy pounded the pavement, the light around him was growing dimmer.

  Phyllis asked Myrddin, ‘Is this happening right now? Is that present Time?’

  ‘Aye,’ Myrddin told her. ‘What we see is Time that be.’

  ‘That wall,’ Barry commented, peering closer into the bubble’s view. ‘Those gates . . . That’s the sports stadium, down on Blartis Street!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Clement, also recognising details. ‘Mum drives me past there every Thursday on the way to xylophone lessons!’

  Barry nodded slowly. ‘So that’s what he’s up to.’

  ‘What, Chief Inspector?’ Phyllis asked.

  ‘The Mantle, Miss Wong. We got classified information that tomorrow morning the Mantle will be activated simultaneously from five thousand major locations around the world. Or I should say, above the world. Here in the city, they’ll be activating three of those satellites. And the biggest one will be above the Blartis Street Stadium.’

  ‘This is where he wants me,’ said Myrddin, his voice rising. Then his eyes went wide, and he exclaimed, ‘Look! See what he carries!’

  ‘That bag.’ Phyllis squinted at the crocodile-skin bag covered with the old shipping and hotel labels.

  ‘In there is my Jasper,’ Myrddin said, his voice like faraway thunder.

  They all watched as Sturdy flashed his fist at the entrance gates to the stadium. There was a burst of light—eye-squintingly bright light—and the gates crashed open, one of them hanging limply from its hinges.

  ‘He means business,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘Man.’ Clement shuddered, pushing his glasses further up his nose.

  Myrddin whipped the wand through the air, and the bubble evaporated.

  ‘Time to get going,’ announced Barry, pulling out his cell phone and auto-dialling a number. ‘Chatterton? Get the detail together. All of you go straight to the Blartis Street Stadium. Pronto. Meet us outside the main entrance—what’s left of it—in ten. No sirens.’ He rang off.

  Then he looked at Phyllis. ‘We’ll handle this, Miss Wong. You stay here. The stadium will be no place for—’

  Phyllis erupted like a volcano. ‘What? Are you serious? After all we’ve brought you, after all we’ve found, now you’re saying that this is no place for kids?’

  Barry had regretted his words as soon as he’d said them; now he felt like crawling under one of the sofas and wished he’d never raised the topic. ‘Oh, good lord, I merely meant—’

  ‘We’ve been through this before,’ Phyllis said, annoyed. ‘This isn’t the first time we’ve—’

  ‘But—’ Barry stammered.

  ‘We’ve gotta come,’ said Clement. ‘Without us Transiters, you wouldn’t be where you are right now, Chief Inspec—’

  ‘Clem,’ Phyllis said through gritted teeth, ‘you’re not a Transiter. I’m the Transiter.’

  ‘Whatever,’ he grumbled.

  ‘I was just thinking of your safety,’ Barry told Phyllis. ‘Why, if anything happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.’

  Myrddin stepped forward and gazed into Barry’s eyes. ‘I think,’ he said calmly, ‘that Phyllis Wong should be there. And Master Whiskers. And Daisy. They have brought me back, in more ways than you know, Chief Inspector.’

  Barry pulled the sort of face he would have pulled if he had just got onto a bus and realised he’d put his underwear on the wrong way around. There was nothing he could do. ‘Oh, all right,’ he said, giving up. ‘But, Miss Wong, Clement, stay with my officers. As soon as we get there, you two and Daisy are to remain close to us at all times, unless I tell you otherwise. Understood?’

  ‘Understood,’ said Phyllis, still miffed, but pleased that she’d won.

  ‘Now,’ said Barry, patting his pistol beneath his coat, ‘let’s go. This is not a night for dilly-dallying.’ He started up the stairs, Clement close by his heels.

  Phyllis scooped up Daisy, popped her into her bag, slung the bag over her shoulder and hurried after them.

  The great wizard seemed to glide towards the stairs in their wake.

  ‘Boy, Chief Inspector,’ said Clement, ‘you sure got it right when you said the ball park!’

  ‘Let’s hope we do get it right,’ said Barry Inglis, more to himself than to Clement. ‘Otherwise we’re in bigger trouble than I’ve ever dared imagine.’

  Throwing another voice

  Blartis Street was cold, dark and almost deserted as Barry Inglis turned his squad car into it.

  The slowly flashing light on the police car threw swivelling shafts of red and blue onto the high wall surrounding the stadium. Barry pulled up outside the main gates. There were two other unmarked vehicles a little way up the street.

  ‘Good,’ said the Chief Inspector. ‘Chatterton’s brought the back-up.’

  Clement, in the back seat with Phyllis and Daisy, said to Myrddin in the front, ‘I don’t know why you didn’t just whisk us here with your wand. Why did we have to come in the car?’

  Myrddin’s eyes, with the lightning smouldering in them, glinted as he looked at Clement in the rear-vision mirror. ‘Because I like flashing lights,’ he answered. ‘I have always liked flashing lights. Lights in the nights take my fancies’ delights.’ He’d left Corvus back in Phyllis’s basement, sending the bird into a slumber so he wouldn’t wreak any damage there.

  ‘Come on,’ said Barry, ‘this is no time for poetry. Everyone out.’

  Phyllis thre
w open her door and scrambled out, keeping her shoulder bag with Daisy inside it close to her hip. Clement bundled himself out the other side, and slung his backpack on.

  The entrance gates were as Sturdy had left them: one wide open, the other half-hanging off its hinges. Both gates were scorched.

  Detective Pinkie Chatterton approached Barry. ‘Evening, Chief,’ he said in his squeaky voice. He had a small group of plain-clothes officers with him, men and women, all holding portable spotlights that hadn’t yet been switched on.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Barry asked Chatterton.

  ‘Five minutes. No one’s gone in or out.’ The toenail-resembling detective gave Phyllis a nod. ‘Evening,’ he said, curiously.

  ‘Hi,’ said Phyllis.

  ‘What’s with the kids?’ Chatterton asked Barry.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ Barry said curtly. He quickly introduced Clement and Myrddin, whom he called Mr Ambrosius.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Ambrosius,’ said Pinkie Chatterton, shaking Myrddin’s hand and admiring his green robe.

  ‘Have you got a gun?’ Clement asked one of the officers.

  ‘Shh!’ said Phyllis.

  The officer opened her blazer and showed Clement the pistol in her shoulder holster.

  Clement gave an I knew you wouldn’t be taking any chances sort of nod, and the police officer nodded back.

  ‘Let’s cut to the chase,’ Barry said to the group. He explained that Mr Ambrosius was here because he’d be able to ‘negotiate’ with Sturdy. ‘He’s got intelligence about Sturdy that we haven’t,’ Barry said, in the sort of voice that clearly meant his officers didn’t need to ask what kind of intelligence that was. They got the hint.

  ‘Okay,’ said Barry, ‘in we go. Chatterton, you and Rowley go and cover the western perimeter, at the edges of the field. The rest of you cover the eastern side. I, with Mr Ambrosius and my friends here, will move in from the entrance, once you’re all in place. If you see Sturdy in your area, give the whistle. Three blasts from your contingent, Chatterton, four blasts from you lot at the eastern side.’

  ‘Got it, Chief,’ said Chatterton. The other officers nodded.