by Brian Hughes
“’Ow do I know? But none of this adds up. So go and do a decent day’s labour for once.”
With his head hung down, Jess snatched the cards from the telephone table. He shouldered self-righteously past Jannice, flung himself out of the door and headed towards the slush-covered street beyond.
Benjamin tried to follow his partner to their first destination but Mrs Prune grabbed his arm. “I’ve booked us into a room at the Waldorf ’Otel,” she said, checking that Jannice and Jess were out of earshot. “No point in stayin’ ’ere tonight. Gets a bit chilly sleepin’ rough in December. Even for a ghost.”
“The Waldorf?” Benjamin’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s dead expensive.”
“Well, I has the odd favour owin’.” Mrs Prune tapped her nose. The action signified that now was the time to put a clamp on his enquiries. There were still certain dignitaries in Greyminster who required their histories to remain a secret. From time to time Mrs Prune called the odd favour back in.
“Rooms 8 to 14,” she went on. “Just ’til the insurance pays up and the ’ouse is rebuilt. You’d better warn Jess.”
Ah, now that was going to be the problem. Having 114 Applegate rebuilt. There wasn’t any insurance. Mrs Prune had never bothered with it. So now it looked as if the boarding house would end up totally demolished. Of course, she’d known that already. But she hadn’t wanted to cause alarm.
The truth was, deep in her heart Mrs Prune knew she’d never set eyes on the old house again. Her bones were warning her not to expect another Christmas. Or another morning. Or another sunset. Not a sausage.
Because the ‘End of the World’ was rounding the corner and thundering up the drive with its horns aimed straight ahead.
Chapter Nineteen: A Collection of Sinister Characters
12:45 p.m. Blackberry Row. Jess prodded the doorbell with such determination his solid finger almost bent double. The Westminster Chimes sounded down the hallway.
Jannice studied her feet. Now was the opportunity to broach a troublesome subject. One that had been screaming at her since leaving Applegate.
“Jess...” She took a deep breath and tried again. “Jess...I’ve got something I have to tell you.”
Unfortunately Jess hadn’t heard her. He was squinting through the window at the top of the door.
“It’s about the real reason I called,” Jannice continued. “Quite a difficult subject to talk about actually.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll finish this job, then, if you’re lucky, things might get a bit raunchy.”
“What?” Disdain drifted across Jannice’s face. “You’ve got a hope, haven’t you? Mel Gibson coming round or something?”
“I don’t remember you complainin’ on the 19a that night.” Jess grinned smugly.
God! He still remembered that? “That was four years ago and I was drunk Jess.” She relaxed and stared at her frozen toes. “Actually, that’s what I wanted to talk about...”
“Bet you ’aven’t forgotten me fourteen incher.” For crying out loud! “Eh? Babies’ arm holdin’ an apple ring any bells?”
“This ‘New Man’ thing just passed you by, didn’t it, Jess?”
There was no response. Jannice carried on. “I bet you don’t even know what a clitoris is?”
“It’s a swimmin’ costume,” Jess replied with conviction. “You know? Peaches by the Stranglers. ‘Is she trying to get out of that clitoris?’”
“Have you any idea what turns a woman on, Jess?”
“Yeah. A great big knob and a big pile of dosh.”
“You sad deluded bollock.”
At which point the door opened and the argument stopped. A head emerged, shaped like a turnip tied up in a bun.
“Mrs Forest?” Jess double-checked the conker of a face.
“Mrs Forsyth,” corrected the head.
“Yeah...whatever...just show us the problem. I’m a very busy man.” He pushed the door open and muscled inside.
“Very busy,” added Jannice. “Spelt: ‘B, I, Double Z, Y.’”
Mrs Forsyth’s front room was a twee affair. A museum of chintz and antimacassars.
Oddly enough Beethoven didn’t exactly look out of place in it. He sat at the piano scribbling across a large wedge of paper. Every so often he’d throw a sheet of notes above his head. Jannice watched him in personal awe.
“Is that Beethoven?”
“He’s got the fore’ead for it.”
Mrs Forsyth bustled in, patting her bun. “There’s another four of them in the kitchen.”
She marked them off on her fingers one by one. “Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Mary Shelly and Mathew Corbette.”
“Mathew Corbette? The children’s entertainer?”
“Yes...” The old woman frowned. “I thought that was a bit odd myself. I don’t actually remember him dying.”
Jess lumbered across the room, accidentally uprooting a cat from the sofa. A flea-bitten animal that had been minding its own business.
“Mr Beethoven. Oy! Lug-wig!”
“He’s deaf,” said Jannice.
“Yes,” added Mrs Forsyth knowledgably. “That’s why he’s a ghost.”
“No…no, he’s deaf, Mrs Forsyth. Not dead.”
“Yes, I know. That’s why he’s a ghost.”
Jess was growing annoyed. “GO AND PUT THE KETTLE ON Y’ SENILE OLD BAG.”
He leaned into the words as if shouting against the wind.
“What?”
“THE KETTLE!” He’d had enough. “GO ON! OUT!”
Mrs Forsyth was hoisted through the door like a sack of coal. Jannice watched as Jess dusted his palms.
“What was all that about?” Pushing her fists into her hips, she glowered. “You can’t treat old women like that?”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re old, that’s why not! What harm was she doing?”
Jess screwed up his face as though he was evacuating his bowels. “I’m sick of listenin’ to ’er! This town’s swarmin’ with aggravatin’ old swines like that.”
“You agist git!”
Actually Jess was well aware that Jannice was right. But the words kept coming into his head. For a moment he wasn’t sure whose opinion it was.
“If you took the time to hear their stories you might learn something.” Jannice stamped her foot. “You’re gonna be old one day, you know?”
“I ’ope not. I don’t wanna end up dribblin’ and talkin’ crap.”
“That’s just a stereotypical bigoted point of view.”
“‘There was none of this violence on the street when I was young.’” (Jess’ impersonation of the elderly was surprisingly accurate.) “Well, that’s true. All the blokes were off shootin’ Harry Hun. ‘The streets were a safe place to walk back then.’ Not with a bloody Mesherschmidt dropping bombs on ’em it wasn’t!”
“Those old people,” shouted Jannice. “Fought that war so you could live free from fascist oppression!”
Jess pushed his face up against hers. “What gives with the attitude, ‘We fought the war to keep the blacks out’ then? I’ve got news for the old sods. There weren’t any black people in the Third Riech!”
Jannice had now become so infuriated a bubble of spit hit Jess in the eye. “You’ve just got no tolerance for anyone! You disgust me, Jess Hobson. You ought to be grateful for what these people did.”
“I never asked THEM, DID I!?”
The dainty pot tea service rattled. Beethoven threw down his quill, covered his ears and cried, “SHUDDDUP!!!!!”
1:07 p.m. December 6th. The narrow streets were rapidly filling with a dense grey fog. An impenetrable murk that came from the cracks between the flagstones in twisted stalks and convoluted spires.
People hurried home and pressed their noses against their front room windows, unable to see any farther than just a few feet down their colour-drained paths. Lampposts had turned into sketches as everywhere slowly became a ghostly watercolour.
The buildings themselves were app
eared to be eaten alive by the hungry creature that the fog had evolved into as it rose from the river like the wraith of an elephant.
Then they came. Out of the grids and from under the flagstones. Dancing, and screaming. Scratching the fog with their cruel little talons.
Mrs Prune happened upon them as she was hobbling down Arcadia Rd. The fog was so thick now that it was weighing down her clothes. She fumbled along with her umberella, her sturdy boots clattering through the stillness.
Why was the Waldorf so far across town? Bloody inconvenient that!
Something tore at her stockings. “W’at the ’Ell?”
She looked down, only to be confronted by a small repulsive creature. Despite the draining light its teeth glinted demonically. It was roughly one foot high and vaguely human in shape, but with a nose that resembled the bill of a drug-abusing heron. And it was desperately thin.
For a second Mrs Prune felt sorry for it. Then it bit her. With a whack she dislodged it from her knee like an old scab. Moments later it was devoured by the fog.
In the distance Mrs Prune heard a scream. Footsteps ran wildly, echoing off the walls. There was the sound of teeth entering flesh.
She waited, scattered volleys of sound rushing up to accost her. Greyminster was under some sort of siege from an army of goblins.
She struck out again, thrashing stubbornly through the fog to reach safety. After several wrong turnings, she realised that she was well and truly lost. Bugger it!
Then something unexpected happened.
All right, something else unexpected.
Her umbrella suddenly fizzled. And detonated in a shower of black moths. She turned the brolly in her hands. It had never done that before.
Experimentally she poked it forwards. Just to test if there was something in front of her that had been responsible for the blast.
As it happened, there was. The fog bit back. The brolly vanished right up to clasp. Mrs Prune sprang backwards in surprise, then stood still, waiting to see what would happen next.
What happened was this...high up above her the fog started to fold over into the udders of a storm. With the noise of two steam-trains colliding, it thundered dramatically across the heavens.
That was when Mrs Prune realised she was on Jack’s Ladder, the rocky ledge overlooking Greyminster. Horrible events were taking place down below. A blood-soaked battle was raging.
Goblins! Millions of them! Pulling old ladies’ hair out and nailing up cats.
And heading down the main street was a group of old men on Zimmer frames, in armour that shone in the pale sunlight.
Mrs Prune turned and stared out across the craggy fells. Somehow she knew that the answer to all of this lay out there somewhere, amongst the black rocks and the lonely sheep.
What she saw made her feel nauseous.
Instead of the bleak crags, there was nothing. Just an expanding void. An endless wall of space that appeared to retreat indefinitely.
The ‘End of the World’ had finally arrived.
Jess stared at the four grotesque characters torturing Mrs Forsyth on the kitchen table. He’d never had much regard for literary types. All limp wrists and floppy hats. And as for Mathew Corbette. Well, anybody who had made millions out of sticking his hand up a bear’s bottom was either a genius or the luckiest bastard on Earth!
Even Jess knew however, that Mathew Corbette wasn’t dead. And he couldn’t recall Smutty Bear ever jamming pencils up an old woman’s nose.
Jannice angrilly moved towards them. Jess blocked her path with his arm.
“Don’t interfere. Not even you could take on that lot. However...” He grinned. “I’ve got a cunning plan.”
There followed an expectant lull, no sign of his plan rearing its cunning head.
At length Jess turned. “That Dickens bloke’s not much of a humanitarian, is he?”
“He was when he was alive. Dickens was a great altruist.”
“No he wasn’t.” Jess had no idea what an ‘altruist’ was, but he could guess. “Have you ever read any of ’is books?”
Dickens was applying a pair of pliers to Mrs Forsyth’s teeth. But principles were principles and this wasn’t the Dickens Jannice recalled from her literature classes.
“I have actually. He was a brilliant philanthropist. A champion of the poor.”
“Rubbish! ’Ee was a millionaire who exploited the working class.”
“What?”
“It’s true! All the villains in his books are workin’ class, whereas his heroes are members of the ’ierarchy fallen on ’ard times.”
“What about Oliver Twist?”
“My point exactly! The Artful Dodger and ’is mates are criminals from the underclass. But Oliver’s descended from the landed gentry. Champion of the proletariat, my arse!”
“How would you know, anyhow?” Jannice swelled affronted. “You’ve never read a book that doesn’t contain speech bubbles.”
Oscar Wilde belted Mrs Forsyth with his brass-topped walking cane. “There is only one thing in the world worse than being ignored,” he said in a melancholic manner. “And that is being an old battle-axe.”
Jannice gritted her teeth and struggled against Jess’ arm. “I don’t remember Oscar Wilde being malicious!”
“Can’t say as I’d know meself. ’Ee looks like a puff though.”
“You what!?”
It wasn’t so much Jess’ attitude towards the literary greats, as the word puff being used in the same context.
“He looks like a charmer of the pink snake,” Jess added, on the off chance she hadn’t understood.
“That’s a grossly unfair thing to say. You always were a homophobe!”
“I’ve nothin’ against ’em. Some of me best ex-friends are shirt lifters.”
“I suppose you’re gonna come out with some bullshit as to why they ought to be exterminated now, are you?”
This caused an inner struggle. Political correctness was never Jess’ forte, but he hated the term bigot because he wasn’t sure quite what it meant.
“On average about four hours of telly a week are devoted to ‘Gay Issues’ right? But only ’alf an hour is donated to disabled issues. Now one in every ten people in Britain is disabled, whereas only one in an ’undred is bent.”
“And how long have you been a supporter for disabled issues?”
“Since it suited me!” He drew his face closer than Jannice would have liked. “Come t’ that matter, when was the last time y’ saw all the queers complainin’ about the lack of disabled facilities? Selfish BASTARDS!”
Jess clutched his head. A speckled mist hung before his eyes. Something was wrong. That hadn’t been his voice. Undeniably, Jess was a bigot. But he made a point not to hold polemical views.
He was becoming a caricature of himself.
“Where’s Benjamin?”
“Who?”
“Benjamin Foster. Me business partner.”
“I thought he was dead.” With uncertainty Jannice continued. “I read in the Chronicle he died in mysterious circumstances.”
“One can ’ope.”
As if waiting for his cue, Benjamin appeared. He shimmered, electrical vines flickering up and down his torso. In one cadaverous hand Benjamin held a supernatural cricket bat. He blinked through the spectacles.
“At last...” Jess broke out into a grin that almost halved his head. “The cunning plan’s arrived.”
Benjamin swung the bat experimentally with a degree of schoolboy expertise. “Right...there’s work to be done.”
Benjamin Foster wasn’t a violent man. Come to that, he wasn’t a violent ghost either. But he didn’t like seeing old ladies being mistreated. With the bat gripped in both hands he dealt the first of several blows.
Dickens’ head crumpled up like an egg-box. A pall of blue smoke gushed from his mouth and disappeared behind the bread-bin. Benjamin reached behind the metal container, his tongue between his grey lips. At length he pulled out a yellow orb and smashed
it beneath his boot.
Right...next!
Oscar Wilde’s screaming came to a halt as a flaming cricket ball made contact with his head. His eyes crossed, his body slumped and Wilde’s cloud disappeared into a pink orb beneath the Kenwood Chef. Benjamin prodded it from its hiding place with his bat and then smashed it.
He turned back to the affray.
Mary Shelly didn’t put up much of a struggle. Following a thunderbolt from Benjamin’s fingers her phantasm scuttled off. Benjamin blew the smoke from his fingertips. Being dead wasn’t so bad after all. He watched as the cloud slipped into the cooker. Then he turned the oven up to gas mark twelve. And he waited for the bang. It came and the oven shook.
Finally, for this room, Benjamin turned to Mathew Corbette. This time he raised a golf club above his head. A tiny twinkle in his eyes said that he was going to enjoy this.
Beethoven played another inharmonious chord. Several figures appeared in the doorway, Mrs Forsyth looking somewhat the worse for wear. Jannice was holding her upright.
Benjamin pounded his ghostly cricket bat against his palm. “Four down, one to go.”
And Beethoven never knew what had hit him, though he might have surmised it was large and made of wood. His bulbous forehead smashed through the music stand.
For a moment the great composer looked bewildered. Then he shrieked.
Another thwack brought the screaming to an end. The cloud left by one ear and hurtled round the room as though on one last waltz. It disappeared into one of Mrs Forsyth’s slippers. Benjamin picked the slipper up. It let out a rasp.
“What’s that noise?” Jess asked.
Benjamin shrugged. “Beethoven’s last movement?”
“What is this, any’ow?” Jess pulled the orb from the slipper and turned it over in his hands.
“Some sort of transportation device, I reckon.” Benjamin slid the glasses down his nose. “They all seem to have one.”
A nagging thought tickled the back of Jess’ head. He scratched it. “What about that Lancaster bomber, then? Where’s the ball that belongs t’ that?”
As the words left his lips Jess regretted them. Never tempt fate, as Mrs Prune always said.