Shakespeare Vs Cthulhu

by Jonathan Green

  Yeah, the one who overdosed after he was caught cheating on his wife. Guess who passed the address of his Camden love nest to the gutter press?

  Anyway, Imogen’s got contacts everywhere in London, from the Palace of Westminster to the smack dens even the music industry guys don’t know about. But even she was stymied. All she could uncover were half-heard fragments, whispered gossip and stories of closed casting calls. Now rumours like this surface every day and mostly they’re complete nonsense. But this one had a whiff of truth to it; just enough details to make it plausible, just enough vagueness to keep people interested and sniffing around.

  Most of what Imogen learned was smoke and mirrors, but one nugget gave a veneer of truth to the mutterings; an original manuscript of some major work had apparently turned up and was being put into production by the Whenschal Sisters. Eventually that rumour became fact when the Whenschal Sisters themselves finally revealed their new acquisition. Somehow, they’d come into possession of the original hand-written manuscript of William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth.

  The foremost Bardic scholars from Oxford, Cambridge and Miskatonic had verified its authenticity with the breathless, manic excitement of lunatics. One even went so far as to claim that it differed so wildly from the versions we’d previously seen on stage and screen that it would change the world as we knew it. Another managed to get onto the BBC and scream that no-one should ever read it, that it was an abomination of perversions and monstrous secrets. He lasted all of six seconds before the producers cut to the weather girl.

  The excitement buzzing around London was palpable, and every actor was crawling out of the woodwork in hopes of securing an audition. Macbeth was a juicy role; show-stopping moments in the spotlight with plenty of lurid murder and sex. I’d played the role twice before, and Imogen assured me I was a natural fit for the part.

  Then the casting call went out and I knew the gods hated me.

  The sisters didn’t want to meet with me. It was that chisel-faced cunt Duncan Pryor they wanted for the lead. The tabloids and the my-ghost-hubby-got-me-pregnant-and-now-he-wants-custody-of-our-baby magazines were full of Duncan telling everyone how his Macbeth was going to blow everyone away. With a total lack of irony, he wittered on about how this production was going to light a fire under ailing British theatres, like he was their personal saviour. I couldn’t pick up a trade paper without seeing his clean cut face and ripped physique staring out at me like some horny peacock. I tore out every page I came across, and even wiped my arse a few times with his smugly handsome face.

  As you might have guessed, Duncan Pryor and I have a history.

  We’d started out as friends, fellow RADA survivors who’d come up the hard way, scraping walk-ons in The Bill and Holby City before earning recurring roles in Eastenders. We both got our breaks at pretty much the same time; him in a Shaftesbury Avenue production of All My Sons, me in a remake of The Singing Detective. Over the years he’d beaten me out to a lead role in half a dozen shows, parts that earned him acclaim and prizes galore. Not that I didn’t do well myself, you understand, Imogen won me some plum parts, but nothing to compare with the accolades Duncan was getting.

  So when I heard that Duncan Pryor had won the role of Macbeth, I gritted my teeth and publicly wished him well, all the while praying for some hideous degenerative cancer of the anus to spread to his face. One by one, every role was filled until the entire play was cast, but there wasn’t a dickie bird left for me. The closest I’d get to the proscenium would be if I could get a seat in the front row. Maybe I could put Duncan off and get him to corpse on opening night.

  III.

  Then the muses smiled upon me.

  Imogen returned to our flat in Mayfair at 4am on a Sunday, waking me from a disturbingly erotic dream of an oil-slick forest where the branches swayed like drifting smoke and the bark split like leering mouths with tongues that drooled a milky sap. I remember waking with my balls throbbing and an almighty erection, which would normally be an occasion to grab Imogen and make the most of it, but she wasn’t beside me. I looked up and saw her leaning against the doorframe of our bedroom, silhouetted in the light from the hallway. There was something wrong with her outline, as though black smoke drifted towards edges that were only just reassembling her form.

  I blinked away the afterimages of the dream and sat upright, fumbling for the lamp. Light filled the room and Imogen was just Imogen again, partially clad in a cocktail dress that left little to the imagination and a good deal more of the goods on show.

  “How much do you love me?” she asked.

  I whipped back the sheets to expose my engorged member.

  “This much.”

  She cocked an eyebrow and said, “Impressive.”

  “Thanks. Hop on. Take it for a spin.”

  “In a minute,” she said, waggling a finger. “I’ve got something to show you that’s going to make you happy.”

  “Happier than this? What is it? Cate Blanchett’s sex tape?”

  “Better,” she said and sat on the edge of the bed.

  She handed me an iPhone I didn’t recognise.

  “What’s the code?” I asked when I saw it was locked.

  “4820. Go to the Photos App.”

  I unlocked the phone and did as she instructed.

  At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Then I thought it couldn’t possibly be real. It had to be a fake, didn’t it? I looked up and Imogen arched an eyebrow in a, yeah, I know fashion. I looked at the pictures again.

  “Jesus Christ! How did you get these?”

  “One of the Twins,” she said, meaning either Nathan or Sebastian Chamberlain, the identical twins Duncan employed as his PAs. “The one with the goatee.”

  “That’s Nathan.”

  “Nathan, yeah. Must have been Sebastian’s night off. Anyway, I ran into him at a wine bar in Kensington and he was acting all weird, like he had a secret, but didn’t dare tell it. So I slipped a little something into his champagne to loosen his tongue. A quick snog in the gents and he told me Duncan was at a Hush Party in the penthouse upstairs. Invite only, of course, but it didn’t take much more than a quick fumble down his Calvin Klein’s to get the flat number and the entry password out of him before he passed out.”

  Imogen’s breaches of the bounds of our marriage never bothered me. It would have been massively hypocritical, given my well-hidden addiction to prostitutes.

  “You went upstairs, of course?”

  She nodded and now that I’d adjusted to the light, I saw the gleam in her eyes from too much coke and booze.

  “It was amazing,” she said with a cat’s grin, breathless at the memory. “There were things going on I didn’t even know were possible. People intertwined in knots of flesh. Impossible to tell where one person ended and another began. There was some strong weed being passed around and a weird piping music that seemed like it was coming all the way from the sky, but was being played by a drunken Peruvian llama herder.”

  “Sounds… wonderful.”

  “It was,” she said, flopping back on the bed, arms over her head.

  “Where was Duncan?” I asked.

  “In one of the bedrooms.”

  “Did he see you?”

  “No, I think it’s fair to say he was a bit preoccupied.”

  “I’ll say,” I said, swiping through the pictures once again.

  A dozen images of Duncan Pryor getting spit-roasted by a pair of greased-up, musclebound gym-rats in zippered gimp masks. Men and women in outlandish costumes that made them look like freak show abominations surrounded him. Grotesqueries filled the background, but the unmistakable face of Duncan Pryor filled every shot. Actually, the pictures were quite arty; nicely framed (appropriate, I know) and vividly coloured. Had the subject not been a famous actor, I could imagine them on the wall of some swanky Knightsbridge gallery.

  “What do we do with these?”

  “What do you think we do with them?” she said, sliding her
hand onto my groin. “You e-mail them from that little shit’s phone to every newspaper on Earth.”

  “I love you,” I said.

  “Yes, you do,” she answered.

  IV.

  Of course, the tabloids murdered Duncan.

  He sacrificed the Chamberlain twins on the altar of public opinion, and for a few days at least, it looked like he thought he might get away with it. After all, everyone in the biz indulges in a bit of slap and tickle on the side. He did the obligatory doorstep confession and apology to his fans and wife, looking gloomily contrite with his uncomprehending children propped up beside him. I could read his thoughts like subtitles:

  Eventually I’ll be forgiven and this will all be forgotten. I’m a movie star, for God’s sake. The rules don’t apply to people like me.

  Except this time, they did.

  They crucified him, made him the laughing stock of the nation. A hundred memes were spawned every day, a great many created by Imogen, who had a real knack for twisting the knife in someone’s back. Then it came out that Nathan Chamberlain had taken a razor to his wrists, unable to cope with the guilt of having apparently betrayed his beloved employer in a drunken haze. His brother had a very public kiss-and-tell at Duncan’s expense, swiftly followed by a complete psychotic breakdown. The grief of being fired and then losing his brother was too much, and he was locked up in one of the cheaper Priory facilities and no-one could get access to him for love nor money. Then the papers got hold of Sebastian’s financial records, which detailed Duncan’s escort habit in meticulous detail and made my addiction to working girls look like harmless flirting.

  Duncan denied everything, but it was already too late. Nothing could save him. He was a dead man and everyone knew it.

  Just as I knew there was only one actor who could replace him.

  The show, as they say, must go on.

  Act II: Fair Is Foul And Foul Is Fair

  I.

  I suppose I should explain a bit about the play then, yes?

  But first let me tell you what I know about the Whenschal Sisters.

  Bugger all.

  Actually, that’s not quite true. Everyone knows of the Whenschal Sisters, they’re a production company in London. But that’s about it. No-one knows where their offices are or when they started up. Or even who they have on their books. Their Wikipedia page is useless and they’ve kind of, well, always been part of the fabric of London as far as I can tell. Some folk say they have an office somewhere near Hampstead Heath, others that they weave their magic from some anonymous tower in Canary Wharf. I’ve never met anyone who’s been to their offices — wherever they are — because they only ever come to see you. And when they set a time to meet, it’s always with something juicy, something star-making. The kind of once-in-a-lifetime script that’ll set an actor on the road to stardom. If they want to meet and offer you a part, you don’t refuse, no matter what. You’re getting married that day? Cancel it. It’s the birth of your first child? Get your wife to close her legs and keep the brat inside a few more hours.

  And no matter how much the scandal rags offer, so far no-one who’s ever sat around a table with them has said so much as a single word about what happened. So this’ll be an exclusive for you, right here, the first recounting of a meeting with the Whenschal Sisters.

  II.

  Imogen took the call on a Friday morning, and from her expression, I knew our fortunes had changed. I went into the kitchen and called Carl Banks, my pet writer. I keep him on speed-dial for when I need a script punched up with extra zingers or to make sure all the juiciest lines go to me. He’s a hack, but he’s my hack.

  “Banky! How the devil are you, you old scrote?” I said when he eventually answered.

  “What do you want, Mackenzie?”

  “Lovely to speak to you too, Carl.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m too busy.”

  “What? Got another bunch of ad-libs to script for Wags to Bitches, have we?”

  “No, I’ll have you know it’s a –”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I need you.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “It’s the new Macbeth film from the Whenschal Sisters.”

  The line went quiet and I knew he was hooked. Of course he was. He’d be mad to pass this up and we both knew it.

  “Where and when?” he said with the usual wheedling need and self-loathing I’d come to expect from the miserable old fart.

  “Get your scrawny arse to Dunsinane House Hotel.”

  “Is that north or south of the river?”

  “It’s in fucking Scotland, you thick twat,” I told him and hung up.

  III.

  We flew to Aberdeen just after lunch the next day, landing in the Highlands in glorious sunshine, which made a pleasant change from London rain. A car was waiting for us, a swish, gloss-black Jag with a slender driver who moved with feline grace and whose eyes were entirely hidden behind impenetrably dark sunglasses. We made no attempt at conversation and he returned the favour, which was just as well, as I was tired and cranky from being delayed in the fourth circle of Hell that is Terminal Five of Heathrow Airport.

  We climbed into the back seat and the driver pulled out with all the elan of a professional who knows exactly how to use his vehicle. Once the airport was lost to sight, the scenery was magnificent and far less urban than I’d been expecting; all soaring mountains, rolling forests and swathes of rugged moorland. I hardly spotted any signs of habitation at all, just a few whitewashed cottages halfway up the hills and some quaint looking farms. It was like we’d travelled back in time. I grew drowsy as the rolling motion of the car lulled me towards sleep. Imogen was peering out the window at the scenery, her brow tensed in a little furrow just over the bridge of her nose.

  “Everything alright?” I asked.

  She nodded, but didn’t answer, which was usually a sign of trouble ahead. Imogen almost never passed up the chance to make some observation about hating being away from London. Instead she stared at some ruins on a wooded hilltop as if she half-expected a blue-faced Mel Gibson to charge out in his kilt, waving a sword.

  I slept until the driver finally pulled into the gravelled driveway of Dunsinane House Hotel. The name was misleading, as it was more of a castle than a stately home. Its walls were grey granite, moss-covered and thick, the windows tall and slim and paned with leaded glass. A piper was waiting for us by the door, which the owners probably thought was a nice, welcoming touch, but which only made me want to put my fingers in my ears. I’m no expert on what bagpipes are supposed to sound like, but this monotonous piping was like fingernails down a blackboard.

  Inside were more trappings of a forgotten yesteryear. Suits of armour, swords on the wall and huge, cowhide rugs spread over marble flagstones veined with a queerish green. A bottle of what looked like very pricy whisky sat invitingly on a small table next to the roaring fire burning in an enormous hearth. The cat-like driver brought our bags in and departed without a word. I wondered if he ever spoke.

  “It’s a scene straight off a shortbread tin,” said Imogen.

  I wanted to echo her caustic assessment, as I have a famously low tolerance for all things rustic, twee and regional, but I felt strangely at home here. Oddly, it felt as though I’d seen this place before.

  “It looks expensive,” I said, taking a few steps around the room.

  Paintings of strange landscapes were framed on the stone walls, like windows to other worlds. They made me faintly queasy to look at them, and I couldn’t decide if it was because they were bad prints or just bad paintings. They were stupidly hard to see properly, the colours twisting and blending in chaotic patterns like they’d been smudged in the printing process. Or maybe it was just shit modern art.

  I don’t know, but with the strange sensation that the places in the paintings were somehow... Waiting. I turned my attention to the bottle by the fire. I’m more of a vodka man, but I’ve never been known to refuse booze when it’s expe
nsive and free. I poured a couple of generous drams, handing one to Imogen and clinking glasses with her.

  “Help yourself, Son of Coinneach,” said a rasping voice behind me.

  I jumped and almost dropped the bottle. Three women dressed head to foot in black had entered the room without a sound. All three were clearly related, but differed wildly in age. One was a fall in a nursing home away from the grave, another looked barely old enough to be out of her school uniform. The third was a matronly woman, with the most enormous breasts I’d ever seen. She had a motherly bearing that made me feel more at ease than I’d been in weeks.

  They couldn’t possibly be sisters, could they? There had to be at least seventy years between the eldest and youngest. Maybe the Sisters part of their agency’s name was just an affectation and they were actually grandmother, mother and daughter. I took a sip of the whisky to gather my thoughts. I grimaced at the taste. Whatever this was, it wasn’t whisky, but as its amber warmth spread through me, I felt my reservations about coming here ease.

  “My father was Robert,” I said. “I don’t know anyone called Coinneach.”

  The oldest of the women laughed, a croaky, rasping sound that spoke of a lifetime of filterless Capstans. Her teeth were black like the homeless hags you see cackling under Waterloo Bridge. She shook her head and indicated I should pour her a drink. I did and held it out to her. She took it from me with icy fingers and I almost gagged on the mulchy smell emanating from her, like wet earth after the rain. She winked and downed the not-whisky in one swig.

  “The man who sired you, aye,” she said, wiping a hand with skin like corrugated card over her lips. “But he’s not your true faither.”

  “Forgive my sister,” said the youngest of the three, and I felt the absurd need to keep her safe from harm, like she was an innocent wildflower in danger of being plucked. “She has the an da shealladh and sometimes says things she shouldn’t.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but said, “I know the feeling.”

  Imogen and I took a seat on worn, but comfortable couch before the fire. The middle sister sat across from us and it was all I could do to keep myself from staring at her pendulous breasts. I just wanted to bury my head between them. The youngest sister knelt on the floor beside me and rested her head on my knee like a loving daughter. The eldest poured herself another drink and paced the carpet behind me.