by Steve Aylett
‘You think Fred had left a message.’
‘He was the sort of amateur to do that wasn’t he? Conspiring among eternity. No size in confusion.’
‘I’ve seen this happen before. The creaks and clicks of a growing face give way to bangs and a kind of thundering grind. Primal machinery of horror. Associates get shit-scared. Fred becomes a marked man without understanding.’
‘I wasn’t scared.’
‘Oh your secret’s safe with me brother.’
‘So I went to the pond. Fish-shaped animals were swimming in the water.’
‘I think you’ll find those were fish Eddie.’
‘That’s your opinion is it. Were they now. Well you can keep your opinions in a cool dry place brother. Because these were speaking to me with their mouths.’
‘You’re sure they weren’t carp Eddie.’
‘Not carp brother. And they said I was the Chosen One and had to go down unto the Hound and thereby meet an Emissary of some kind.’
‘Greyhound in Bromley?’
‘That’s how I understood it.’
‘And you did this?’
‘Of course not, are you mad? Wouldn’t be caught dead in Bromley.’
‘Well that’s a story and a half there Eddie, I feel better—enlightened you might say.’
‘That was the hope brother.’
So the old hoofer had taken Empty Fred for me sins—uncalled for or what. I couldn’t understand why John Satan had such a downer on me anyway—could have sworn I hadn’t used the mirror from Eddie’s gallery again. Of course I later realised Eddie sold it to Minotaur, who put it in the Shop o’ Fury, from which I purchased it for the purpose of taking Eddie to see the Reaper. There’s one to tell the grandchildren. What’s more it turned out Eddie was blandly aware of it all but didn’t understand the significance of this or anything.
Thought I’d consult Minotaur. ‘Don’t interrupt when I’m drilling,’ he said, aghast as I entered. He was holding down a struggling hen.
‘I suppose you call this a service to mankind.’
‘So what do you call it?’
‘Cowardice—that mammal can’t fight.’
’Mammal? Are you mad?’
‘Lizard then—anyway it’s just a small bastard you’ve probably taken by surprise is what I mean.’
‘I’ve been talking about it to this little beauty for weeks—haven’t I love?’
The hen looked up mournfully.
‘There—are you reassured now brother?’
‘Yes—of your madness.’
‘Ha ha—nice one.’
‘Anyway the reason I’m here is old Fred—been assaulted by his own structure.’
‘Core creatures eh? Can’t say I’m altogether surprised. That bastard’s been flirting with danger for months.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘I’ll show you.’
Dropping the hen into a steel barrel, he slammed the lid and went over to the furnace. The heat when the hatch swung open was unbelievable. Plunging a pair of industrial tongs into the blaze, he carefully retrieved a cinder the size of a hubcap and perched it on an anvil. As the smoke cleared, I detected in the charred surface the embossed face of Fred’s mother. ‘What’s this got to do with anything?’
‘It’s a cake,’ said Minotaur, offended. ‘For Fred’s birthday.’
‘When?’
‘Last year some time.’
‘Last year? What are you on about? Why are you wasting my time? What the bloody hell’s been going on in here with that hen, where is it?’ I grabbed the hen out of the barrel. ‘Look at the poor bastard.’
‘I know. Beautiful isn’t she.’
‘You sick fuck,’ I said. ‘Mind you she’s not bad.’
In truth, she was adorable. Why hadn’t I seen it before? I had to get her out of here—be alone with her.
‘Er listen brother—I know you’ll be straining at the leash to rescue Fred from the clutches of the devil and so on—I’ll take care of the hen for you, er…my pleasure honestly.’
‘I’ll wager it would be,’ he replied, fixing me with a caustic stare. ‘Killjar brothers date their dreams, the horizon wounds like a knife, pebbles surge in roil-whispers—and other calculated marvels. Don’t try bullshitting me, brother.’
So I went through again, compounding everything with another use of the flux glass.
Found my way to a sort of whirlpool of red guts, ectoplasmic though so it didn’t stain my shirt or anything. The devil was there, face like a bag of spanners, gills venting red. And the Reaper—there grinned its head, spokes for teeth, all that. They were playing cards on the floor, absorbed. Fred looked round, blistered in egg machinery. ‘Ceremony—don’t look.’
‘Seen it all before brother. What happened to you?’
‘Core bastards. Fangs vivid with innocence rent and whatnot. Carpeted room with rubber, carved grid on heart, savoured screams then off. And look at me in my new permutation of agony brother.’
Fred’s bone career was reaching a crescendo—he was so convolute he looked like a sea-drenched ammonite.
‘Yeah. Local morality’s bifocal.’
‘Tell me about it—really crude.’
‘Always has been. Fixed menu.’
‘Even here.’
‘Yeah, disappointing isn’t it?’
‘Well. It’s been real fine talking to you brother,’ he said, ‘but a new skull’s peering over the side here—’ And he showed me the crest of his back and a jawlump like a ripple on chrome. ‘Consider me gone from now on I think, okay?’
‘You got it.’
The forehead dashboard topped everything.
‘Like this we become men against nature,’ he said, signing off.
Skillful, I thought, instead of wise.
‘What d’you think?’ asked John Satan, looking up from the card game. ‘Empty Fred paid dear for your sins eh?’
‘Maybe it’s appropriate, I dunno.’
‘What, think you’re above it all?’
‘No, no. I’m just not dark door material.’
‘Deeper and deeper the hunger pleases,’ clanged the Reaper, looking up.
‘Indeed,’ I said, itching to go. ‘Yes it does. Well, I have to—’
‘Tell me the story of wonder,’ it continued. ‘Of enchantments nabbed, balloon-trousered princes, convict voyages, expensive wounds, dogs wearing lipstick, sacrifice.’
‘Ay? Oh the thing I told old fish-chops here? Oh that was ages ago.’ But they insisted, and I strained to remember what the hell I’d said before. ‘Well it all started,’ I said, ‘when.’
‘Yes?’ asked the devil pointedly.
And I was running, oh my brothers. Erupted out of the mirror into a restaurant and proceeded to fry and frighten the life out of everyone—hot sparks sputtered out of blackened remains indistinct at corner tables, screams, cordite and a general sense of event—police and ambulance, trouble. It’s all vague in my mind.
Eddie had sold the mirror to this establishment for a fiver and was chuffed until I turned up at his place in burnt rags.
‘Had a late night have we.’
‘I suggest you raise your guard Eddie.’
‘Oh we are delirious aren’t we.’
And I thought to myself wily like, you’re roaring off in a fuckin ambulance.
The car I torched did result in a trial, by the way. Carnival it was, almost exactly like the nightmare I used to have. Judge seeking to overwhelm me with whoever he thought he was. I was so bored I started chiming like a clock—a big grandfather one in the dim light of a rarely dusted ancestral hallway. That started to put the frighteners on them. But the master stroke, as they say, was when I pounced on the jury and started raking my nails through their eyes. I was the life of the show. You should have been there. They didn’t see it that way of course—many never saw again.
Trouble with the interviewer
‘Then what did you do?’
‘Put on my armour and
went on holiday.’
‘And that’s as near to a conclusion as I’ll be getting is it you time-wasting bastard? I’ve had vital things to do for the past four hours.’
‘You never told me.’
‘Oh god I know I never did. Oh god.’
‘You’re not very well are you? And you’ll be a grey and gawping corpse before I desire a job here.’
‘What?’
‘Oh have we been talking at cross-purposes?’
‘Oh my god.’
‘There, there.’
‘I’m just a small man.’
‘I know, it’s difficult. Well, I have to go now.’
‘But…but—’
‘You have a question?’
‘You’re mad.’
‘A question?’
‘D’you consider it normal—I said normal—to have these monsters, these core creatures as you call them, roaring out of the wall and dragging your colleagues off to some convolute hell?’
‘I consider it a blessing,’ I said and walked out, laughing till my gums bled.
Of course since Fred’s damnation I’d done a deal with the devil whereby he’d pop up for an occasional cameo in the nightmares I was organising for various troubled and conscience-stricken bastards. No money in it but a lotta laughs.
And also there was the Mayor’s terrifying campaign—my involvement had begun when a dead wound folded my home, swallowing sofas and snapping chairs with bangs which sounded louder than they were. I was outside in a minute, watching the small contortions from the yard. The Mayor came by and said I looked angry. ‘No,’ I said, ‘just chewing some trash and had the procedure interrupted by some grim miracle. Look.’
And I pointed at the chimney, which was developing a chin.
‘It lacks grace,’ he said, distracted, and moved on to the business at hand. ‘I can’t stand you and I’m here because I need your help in understanding why there is a law against my killing you for that reason alone.’
‘Can’t help you,’ I said, and ran. He caught up with me, belted me a few times and then asked my advice re the media. I was happy to tell him, at first. But now, what with this and the devil I felt I needed some sort of guidance as to the next big thing in my disastrous life.
‘Fry that and sell it over the counter brother. Do that and I’ll grant you respect. Respect and more. But at this moment—’
‘Now hold on a minute—’
‘Oh hold on a minute he says with his fine fainting-dead-away charm. Your crouched-to-spring intellect’ll have your potentially sweet and rosy life on the ropes brother and I’ll be there putting money on the other side so I will. Damn you, damn you, damn you to hell!’
‘Well thank you padre I’ve—I’ve enjoyed this little…this talk.’
And I stumbled out of the confessional like a blinded man.
Sky the colour of beer, my past muffled in my coatpockets. Storm scaffolds in volcanic wind. What could I do but frighten a night with goat angels and apparatus? How did others make a living? Filling out the beliefs of patients. Appearing fat as usual on the gangplank, dummies in the front row to make up the numbers. Scarring the lectern with dances.
Travel agent—hammer flat the idea that adventures are accompanied by vomiting and you’re on to something.
Chef? ‘We found a great number of serpents in the cake.’ And that’s the end of that.
Dread’s the same uniformed.
And I thought about my aunt and her malevolent art. ‘The twelve eyes are merely decorative,’ she said. This was years after her ash-head obsession, or fever. She was now making multi-generational flesh sculptures from dead wrens and lampreys. The whole thing was so unsuccessful I almost had to tell her—pieces fell off as I watched. No I thought, an artist’s life is not for me. Change horses or get carried away to these extremes? Look where ash-heads got me. This was the last thing I needed in m’darkness.
‘It’s good auntie.’
‘That’s eight quid.’
‘For looking.’
‘Correct.’
‘Well.’
So was that the way?
Snow crumping underfoot. And I saw to my right that Carver was sat on a park bench—rare to see him at large. Live-wire once. Go about clubbing people and was very influential. No one could believe it when he changed. ‘There’s old Carver who rode cattle,’ they’d say with a sadness which was understood. And he was waving me over.
‘Oho Carver,’ I said.
‘Oho.’
Dispossessed zoo cranes eyed us, scrawny and ricketted.
‘Gutted I am, about Fred.’
‘Yes,’ I said, surprised at his coherence. ‘Er, saw him below though, forging on.’
‘How much do you know about ancient history?’
‘The sky was not a spud.’
‘And that’s it, is it. All right. I’ll cut right down to the bone and tell you something. The past becomes holy. You could troll a snowplough through the paperwork regarding my crimes. But extortion was so traditional at that time it became boring and was done grudgingly like hymns. Obscene dissipations and accomplished fencing were considered a virtue but I questioned that wisdom. Thought I of all people would find the sly way. Duck a handshake and black eye to the bodyguard.
‘Innocent expectations. Leave my dent in the confidence of dominators. Ah subterfuge—only a fool would try to live without it. Many ghosts have to take the bones of idiots in order to move around, expressing themselves from behind a mask of bone and shrieking their demands, which are usually quite boring—particular kinds of biscuits and so on—jokes and biscuits are all the rage in the underworld, as you know.
‘Seek nothing but yelling jokers and damaged psychology and you shall find brother. Quickly enough I learned the language of hens and began shouting at them about the world and what they could find in it if they only thought beyond grain and the nonsense that seemed to fascinate them. No response. Return to the world, they seemed to be saying, and tell it we are happy here. After all, there aren’t any fierce opponents. Right, I thought, stamping out of the farmyard, wait till you see the axe screaming toward you—and as I completed the thought, I was run over very slowly by a tractor. And the apoplectic farmer gave me one minute to run.
‘That was his word—run. Voice of the community. Believe me I ran when I saw the fire and forks. Hid in a haystack, befriended a blind man who didn’t know my evil, the whole nine yards. Finally got a job as a magistrate as they thought I was too ugly even to pay a whore and might thus be a credit to the legal profession.’
‘I never knew that.’
‘Oh yes. But I made a remark once which was my undoing, during a particularly well-publicised trial.’
‘What did you say?’
‘“My stomach is a large sack for kittens.”’
‘I see.’
‘Opened a nerve store. Bastards would enter and order items I never heard of, breaking wind in time with each syllable. This is the sort of harassment I had to endure till I put my foot down on the head of a dog and said I’d “let him have it” if they didn’t back off. Was there some reason they expected me to laugh at their antics with my own life?
‘Angels fell in a storm of hail, bouncing. Heavy weapons finally. Attempting re-entry, sanity broke its nails on my braincase. Raving—reruns diabolical and thought satellites, you know. Defects pellucid, public head, theoretical families in my flask. Roses in despair stop, memory feeds among rubbish. Sign here say the leaves. A pillar of salt is something to be brother. I eat gods. Gods in batter. I presume you do too?’
I was stuck for an answer.
Another silver chill crept like a ghost and he stood all feathers. ‘We’ll say no more about it. Except this—you, more than any other man, can save western civilisation from yourself.’
‘What? Where you going?’
‘Stuttering break.’
And he was walking away. England a fleeced land under clouds. Bake me that I said, pointing grand at the cliffs
of Dover—and leave it too long in the fucking oven.
A lotta poltergeist activity attended the Mayor’s campaign but when that had settled down we were balmy and swell. ‘This can’t go on forever,’ I said to the Mayor, swigging brandy and counting wads of cash as thick as a dog’s ear.
‘Not with you involved it can’t,’ he replied, puffing on a cigar and, reaching idly to draw on a bell-pull, summoned a squad of bullnecked bastards to throw me out.
‘Not to worry brother,’ Eddie claimed later in the bar. ‘They’re all philanderers and fondlers of cows. Masonic bastards up to their knees in blood and spunk of an evening. You’re best out of it.’
‘I suppose you’re correct in every detail for once Eddie,’ I sighed. ‘After all I’ve my reputation to think of.’
‘That of a fawning accomplice you mean.’
And I punched out so fast he hadn’t time to lower his glass. Shrapnel everywhere. The usual lank and pointless tussle with the man whose anger’s already spent and a crowd around the victim who’s already the victim. But here the problem developed when Eddie began giving birth to something which was tailed and distinctly not human.
Our fear had a primal quality which put us laughing in the gutter.
Visited Eddie in the hospital. ‘Why sit blear and dim indoors brother? There’s a whole world out there with your name on it.’
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘When you know something’s in that crib even now learning to wreck and blame.’
‘That’s not the correct attitude,’ I snorted. Then I took a look at the infant, its fluted nozzle and copper surface pipes. ‘Eddie this isn’t a child—not the way you mean. This is baby corporate, blue-collar cyborg, a core creature.’
‘Look this morning I have a bad arm—the truth?’
‘I’m telling you the truth Eddie—look.’ And I tipped the crib at him. ‘See the pump valves and gouting steam? Wise up will you, surge-gates run the bone. I suspected as much when you gave birth and weren’t a woman. And it’s wearing a wig.’ I snatched the blonde wig from the infant and tossed it to Eddie. ‘How long you been resting here?’
‘Three days.’
‘You’re never paying.’
Eddie’s silence told me he was.