by Brian Hughes
Mrs Prune dug deep into her treasure chest of acceptable alternatives and tried a long shot with some apprehension. “’Ee said ’ee’ll communicate through knockin’ instead”.
“Knockin’?”
“Yes, knockin’!”
The words having been particularly emphasised hung defiantly before her client.
“Why won’t ’ee talk to me direct?”
“ ’Cos ’ee says you’re an interferin’ old bag ’oo’s always findin’ bloody fault!” Then Mrs Prune added as an afterthought, “An’ if y’ don’t shut up you’ll die ’orribly.”
“Oh...” There followed a soul-searching pause. “Well, ask ’im about the will.” Mrs Norton nodded as if that would be satisfactory. “Where’s it ’idden?”
“’Ow’s he supposed t’ knock out the answer t’ that, pray tell? Morse buggering code?”
“Ask ’im if it’s ’idden in the ’ouse?”
Mrs Prune flamboyantly threw her arms above her head. Entering ‘trances’ always involved, for reasons that Mrs Prune never actually divulged, plenty of breast heaving and erotic moans.
Several loud knocks rang through the ornaments and the pepper pot toppled over.
“I saw y’ do that!” exclaimed Edith.
“I think there’s another message comin’ through...”
“Y’ bloody did that wi’ your knee!”
At this point Mrs Prune snapped. Not literally of course. Her more than ample frame put a stop to that. But inwardly she couldn’t stand any more. With a swift movement she blew out the candle, plunging the room into darkness.
There followed an exciting if not brief scuffle that concluded with a heavy thud.
By the time that the flickering match re-ignited the smouldering wick, the clairvoyant had resumed her seat. Edith Norton was nursing a trickle of blood from her nose and Mrs Prune’s fat knuckles had a growing purple bruise on them.
She leaned across the table, her palm open. “’Arry says if y’ don’t cough up t’ the kind lady now, there’ll be more where that came from.”
At which point the telephone rang, quashing any thought of reprisals.
“Excuse me a moment. My spiritual ’Otline. My connection t’ the souls of the deceased,” said Mrs Prune, a grin breaking out across her hoary face.
“Hello? Red Bull? Is that you?” she went on, forcing the side of her head against the receiver. “Oh...no. Thank you. I’ve already got double-glazin’. Yes...yes...no...bugger off!”
She hung up. A chill ran through her old bones. There it was again. That nagging sensation that had bothered her for some time now and was reluctant to go away. The feeling that something dark was coming, thundering through her nerve endings like cyanide. It wasn’t a psychic feeling. Mrs Prune knew that she didn’t possess any supernatural powers whatsoever. It was more of an old woman’s sixth sense, as though somehow being old brought you closer to the truth.
And the truth, from where Mrs Prune was sitting, wasn’t looking good. Not good at all.
7:40 p.m. 113 Applegate. Home of Mr and Mrs Wambach and their young son Joseph.
Currently Joseph is asleep in his cot, his slightly damp nose highlighted in the moonlight. Above him the demented mobile of hideous fish twists in the breeze.
In the few short years of his life so far, Joseph has had a great many terrible nightmares about those gargolic fish. The screaming haddock and the kissing plaice wait until he’s alone, then disturb his innocent thoughts.
They’re watching him now; trying to penetrate his slumber.
The mobile stops. Suddenly! From the corner of the room a haunted laugh crawls across the ceiling.
Joseph’s dreams are being disturbed again. The tiny thumb has tumbled from his mouth. Above his head the wall bulges as though the bricks are made of rubber. They form a pair of hands. The wallpaper splits. The hands reach out, scrabbling dementedly. On the highest shelf a Pierot doll looks round. With painted eyes it studies the little boy.
This time the monster has broken through.
Downstairs Mr Wambach watched the Channel Four news.
He had been bothered of late by a number of things. He was bothered by his hairline that was making an unstoppable retreat across his scalp. He was bothered that his once powerful calves were now adopting the appearance of a croquet hoop. He was bothered by the narrowing of the years themselves, and the fact that 365 days only covered half the time they used to. He was bothered that he found his secretary more attractive than his wife. And more bothered still that it made him feel like an ageing letch.
But most of all he was bothered by the odd goings on around the old house of late. Shadows where they shouldn’t have been. Bumps in the dark.
An odd sensation crept up his collar, forcing him to seek psychological refuge by sinking into the safety of his armchair. It prickled at the back of his neck.
A vacuous laugh rumbled across the ceiling. It rattled the chandelier and vibrated Mary’s collection of trinkets along the daido.
Jacob Wambach looked up at the ornamental lamp fitting. And heard the tears of glass starting to split.
Upstairs Joseph awoke, the corners of his tiny mouth bubbling.
The ceramic denizens of the deep swung to and fro as though caught in a draught. Their teeth snapped and dribbled as they tried to break free from their cotton restraints.
Across the cupboard tops toys were moving. Tin soldiers marched with distressing clanks. Grotesque Victorian dolls tugged out their own stuffing and examined it with soulless eyes. The felt helicopter that had looked so friendly in the toy shop window tried to rotate its pink blades. Confronted with all of this Joseph’s initial reaction was to gurgle with delight. The gurgle was quickly replaced by fear.
And now the furniture itself began to move and the bubbling lips became a gaping red gash. A scream ripped from his throat, charging through the infrastructure of the building.
At which point the wardrobe toppled forwards with a crash.
The lounge, where the chandelier has just exploded on the back of Jacob’s chair.
“Mary!” Jacob leapt towards the door. “It’s started again!”
Moments later Jacob reached the landing. With trembling fingers he grabbed the doorknob. There was a deafening roar of wind, accompanied by that same demented laugh.
“Joseph!” Every thought was now focused on the vulnerable child. Summoning up his last ounce of courage Jacob Wambach placed his shoulder against the bulging door and heaved.
The door creaked damatically, then shot back into position with the buoyancy of a jelly. With a concentration of effort not witnessed since the aftermath of his mother-in-law’s Christmas pudding, Jacob attacked the door again.
This time it screamed. The door burst open, Jacob stumbling into the bedroom.
He picked himself up off the carpet and looked around at the unexpected emptiness. A clammy sensation ran up his spine.
Jacob stared at the cot where, only five minutes before, Joseph had been lost amongst the folds of sleep.
The empty cot that now contained only Joseph’s favourite bear. The one with its left ear missing and its stitches coming loose.
“Joseph! What’s happened?” Mary Wambach skidded to a halt in the doorway, wringing her red hands together in disbelief.
From behind the cupboards, from within the walls, from somewhere altogether unearthly and blasphemous, a rumble started. It juddered through the false oak rafters and rattled through the house creating whirlwinds of dust.
Downstairs the goldfish bowl ground in circles towards the edge of the Welsh dresser so that Simon the goldfish got his first ever glimpse of the floor.
The rumbling grew until it reached an almost eardrum bursting strength.
Then it stopped with a stomach-churning belch.
And a small pair of slippers were spewed from the wallpaper just above the cot. They were coated in sticky green ectoplasm.
“Right!” Jacob fumbled for the telephone. “I said th
at priest wasn’t taking it seriously!”
He stumbled with the dial in his anger. “Y’ can’t trust a bloke ’oo wears a dress! Time for some proper action!”
Chapter Three: The Introduction of the Box
Beneath the mattress of a baggy old bed there lay a box. It was hidden amongst mounds of foetid socks and ancient cups with feral mould around their rims. A battered, rather sorry affair with one of its corners lost in some long forgotten accident, its lid looking as though ink-bombs had been dropped on it from a great height.
It was the sort of box that one might find in a clerk’s office brimming with documents. It had been tied up with shoelaces in a complicated knot.
Nobody was meant to open this box in a hurry. Inside was a collection of secrets. A personal ensemble of private artefacts. There follows a list. Pay attention because this is important. These are the most significant items in the history of the World.
Item One: A small tortoise in hibernation. It had the name Rupert painted across its shell.
Item Two: Two VHS video-cassettes. One titled, ‘Revenge of the Chainsaw Prostitutes 5’, the other with various hand written epithets, all of which had been scribbled out.
Item Three: An audio-cassette. A piece of chewed paper had been forced into the recording slot.
Item Four: A torn page from a diary. It was stained with beetroot. This might not be significant.
Item Five: Several scrawled sheets of notepaper containing drawings and text in a number of hands.
Item Six: One glass paperweight with a dead crab in it. On the base were the words, ‘A Present From Scarborough. Made in Hong Kong.’
Item Seven: A dog-eared photograph of a four-year-old boy. One could hardly call the child ‘cute’ because of its cruel little eyes.
Item Eight: One calling card printed in black ink. The gothic lettering read, ‘Hobson & Co. Paranormal Headquarters.’
Item Nine: A copy of Old Kent Road; the Magazine for Men. Well thumbed to the point of falling apart.
Item Ten: An extremely old book, its spine torn loose so that it resembled a tongue. It was about quantum mechanics.
Item Eleven: One bus ticket purchased on the 19a. This particular item was neatly folded.
All of the above minutiae might appear to be items of junk. And in many respects, I suppose they are. But try to remember these belongings if you could, because they might yet prove important. All of them happened to matter to one man at least, because these were the only objects that managed to survive.
The only scraps left in existence at ‘The End of the World’.
Chapter Four: How not to conduct a Private Investigation
When the downstairs telephone rang Mrs Prune happened to be close at hand.
She did have her own phone in her own ‘Private Quarters’ of course. However, she always recited the downstairs number to her potential clients on the off chance that she might be in the entrance hall when the bugger rang. That was Mrs Prune’s logic. A logic which might appear odd at first glance, but, along with her innate sense of ‘Feelin’ the future,’ Mrs Prune did possess an unnerving ability to be in the right place at the right time.
Or the ‘wrong’ time, depending on how you looked at it.
Jehovah’s Witnesses often reached for the doorbell only to have the front door swing open on them, followed by a bucket of mop-water being thrown across their heads.
On this occasion, when the telephone rang Mrs Prune was ‘happening’ alongside it with her customary coincidence, and the bell had hardly tinkled before the receiver was up against her ear.
She adopted a posture worthy of her most sophisticated telephone voice.
“’Ello. Madame Victoria, Spiritual Bon-Vi-Vaunt and Raconteur. Children’s parties a speciality.” Her patter was by now well rehearsed. “Ah, Mr Wambach...”
She made a mental note to polish the skull on the sideboard.
“’Ow’s Mary’s little problem? Y’ know I’ve bin ’avin’ a little trouble meself of late. I could send ’er a couple of jars of me special ‘Madame Victoria’s Essence O’ Nettle’. That should soon clear it up. Nothin’ worse than bloody great grapes, I always say. Exceptional value too at only £4.56 a bottle...”
A worried screech buzzed from the earpiece with such enthusiasm that she was forced to hold the receiver from her head.
“Oh dear...that does sound serious. Hold on. I’ll get the boys down.”
Laying the receiver down she crossed to the broom cupboard under the stairs.
Mrs Prune’s Broom Cupboard. It was locked from force of habit. The simple knowledge that it belonged to Mrs Prune and was one of those ‘private’ matters that nobody enquired further about, was usually enough.
The triangular door opened and Mrs Prune dug deep into the rubbish inside, her doughy arms visible beneath her rolled up sleeves. Deep into the tins of polish and sooted dusters that should have long since been put out to stud.
After a great deal of crashing and banging she re-emerged triumphantly, holding a long wooden pole by one end. In a previous incarnation it had probably been a broom handle.
She crossed to centre of the hall and proceeded to batter the ceiling. Several new cracks appeared in the plaster.
The room directly above belonged to Jess Hobson who was currently asleep in his armchair resembling a string-bag filled with tripe.
The room also belonged to Benjamin Foster. Having double-crossed the ledgers until his eyes felt like hot fat, Benjamin had settled down on the couch. He was now watching the black and white television set.
“Nice car. Wanna show me what it can do?”
Ben hated the superficiality of adverts. He was just glad that he didn’t pay out on a license for this crap. However, when Jess’ drinking destroyed any hopes of conversation, Ben’s dissatisfaction towards the programmes was about the only thing preventing his mouth from healing up.
“I don’t know about you mate, but if I found my Missus hanging around a multi-storey car park dressed as a prostitute I’d think my marriage had problems,” he grumbled.
At which point the square-jawed hero on the screen lifted up his perfect children in his perfect garden and gazed blandly into their middle-class faces. “Hello boys, where’s your mother?”
“Pimping, out on the South Bank no doubt,” muttered Ben.
It had always struck Benjamin that the occupants of Advert Town were all middle-class, Aryan and with immaculate white teeth. And they were all devoted to one particular product around which they constructed their nondescript lives.
Women bounced out of bed first thing in the morning with perfect hairdos and unsmudged makeup. Garage workers who spent their lives under filthy wrecks always wore spotless boiler suits. And babies’ nappies were always full of blue water instead of tons of foul smelling green shit.
Then the unthinkable happened and the wail of the Body-form advert shrieked from the speaker. Ben crumpled up his face in disgust.
At which point Mrs Prune’s furious thumping worked its way through the pipes. Free at last it echoed noisily around the lounge. Benjamin stood up and navigated a series of piza box towers until he reached the window. After a struggle it ground open, ripping several slivers of paint along with it. He stuck his head out into the crisp night.
Mrs Prune’s head was jutting out of the window below and grimacing back.
“Ben?” Mrs Prune squinted, hoping that what she suspected was Benjamin’s shaggy head wasn’t in fact a fern. “Got a job for y’.”
“Bloody Hell. It must be Halloween.”
The window slammed shut again whilst Mrs Prune hobbled back to the phone. She checked for a moment that Mr Wambach was still on the other end. “The boys’ll be round in 15 minutes.”
A pause for the consideration of her business activities and how Mr Wambach was filling the position of a captive audience. “By the by...how’re your bowels ’olding?”
No response, but Mrs Prune bulldozed on. “I’ve got an extra tub o�
�� that special ‘Newts’ Horn & Bran’ laxative.”
The silence was finally broken, somewhat vivaciously.
“Oh...yes…well...under the circumstances...that sort of thing’s enough to loosen anybody’s stools I s’pose.”
Forty-five minutes passed before Hobson & Co. (Paranormal Investigators) found themselves on the Wambachs’ doorstep. Jess had a habit of falling asleep in the armchair with all his limbs akimbo, resembling a starfish attached to its rock. The first twenty minutes after being roused he would dedicate to eking out stubborn twinges as a consequence.
Now Jess was wrapped in his padded ski-coat, balaclava and scarf. His breath hung like a cartoon speech bubble in front of his face. He reached up to knock on the window at the top of the door.
Ben grabbed his arm, preventing any further movement. After a struggle he pulled out a sheet of crumpled paper and started to read. Every so often a movement of his grey lips indicated he was still absorbed.
“Okay...itinerary check,” he said at length.
With a resigned snort Jess opened the plastic bag he’d been carrying and looked at the junk inside. Ben found a pencil and officiously licked the lead so that it left a smear down his tongue.
“Multi-phase Atomic Plasma Gun with Special Cross-Over Beams?”
Jess rummaged amongst the car innards and broken sections of a ZX Spectrum. At last he alighted on the most likely looking candidate.
“It’s a kiddy’s water pistol actually...” He squirted a drop of liquid into Ben’s eye to reaffirm the point. “Filled with holy water nicked from the font at St. Alban’s last Saturday w’en Father Edward was drying his hands after christening Our Doreen’s youngest.”
He sniffed the barrel and screwed up his face. “Might be a bit soiled.”
Ben added a damp tick to his document and hurried on. “High Energy Ectoplasm Collector and Boggart Detection Device.”