by Brian Hughes
One of the illustrations had the caption, ‘The Effects Of Over-winding!’ It had been lavishly worked upon, all of Andrew’s teeth being individually illustrated as the frightened hamster screamed.
There are more relevant documents inside our trunk than these paltry offerings of course. Documents that might help us understand what brought about the horrendous events soon to be related. A substantial number, however, consist of other inventions from the warped imagination of Josephine Lowry.
For now though, enough is enough. Sufficient insights into the workings of her feeble brain have been allowed us. Time to close the battered lid and return once more to the important matter of our adventure.
Chapter Seven: The Pig and the Poker
Spike stood abjectly in the corridor, blinking up at the cages. A length of gnawed rope hung flaccidly between his fingers, a mountain of dung on the top of his head in the shape of a cob. One hefty boulder that resembled an armadillo with corn stalk antennae dislodged itself from the fibrous pyramid and rolled indifferently across his shoulder. It tumbled gracelessly to the floor with a thud.
“Not exactly up on anatomical facts, are y’ Missus?” The rope dropped to the ground apathetically. “I mean an ‘O’ level in biology wouldn’t ’ave done you any ’arm before y’ started this ’obby!”
Nancy Skunk slammed the rear door of the caravan. She had just watched the last diplodocus in history thundering off towards annihilation in the nearby woods with an empty bowel. “How the ’Ell was I supposed to know it was another female? Have you ever seen the size of a diplodocus’ kn…”
“No, but I’ve felt the weight of it’s bleedin’ dumps!” Spike narrowed his slightly crossed eyes, the lids weighted down by stiffening pat. “What are all these bloody boxes for any’ow? It’s a waste of time roundin’ up these worthless animals.”
“Some of us, Mister, happen t’ care about our fellow creatures.” The floorboards creaked as Nancy stomped towards the broom leaning against the oat sacks. “And be careful! There’s a Gremlin in there.”
The obnoxious animal staring back at Spike bore an uncanny resemblance to the punk rocker himself. Its piggy eyeballs squinted myopically, its spread-eagled nose and warty gums pressed up against the bars. Spike thrust one finger gingerly beneath its chin and started to scratch.
“Used to ’ibernate inside Spitfires,” Nancy explained. “Not many survived the war. Those that did set up ’ome inside video recorders, but it wasn’t as comfortable some’ow.”
“Cute little fella, in ’ee?”
SNAP! The fangs dug deep into Spike’s flesh. Suddenly it wasn’t quite so cute anymore. Spike flinched but the jaw was locked. With another yank its head became wedged between the bars, the warty skin squeaking against the rust. Tears of pain ran down Spike’s cheeks. Moments later the Gremlin found itself being battered against the wall.
“Bloody marvellous!” Nancy thrust her fists against her hips. “I’ll ’ave to go back to the War now an’ look for another one. You’re a useless pillock!”
Spike screwed up his face in a cauliflower of torment.
“No-one’s gonna lose much sleep the day you get destroyed Gypsy. Watch what you’re doin’!”
The desperate pounding of the Gremlin’s head had started the crates on the next pile along tottering dangerously. Nancy pushed the smallest cage back into position.
“That crate contains the second most deadly creature ever known. That’s a Dancing Black Pudding of Penzance that is.”
“What the ’Ell do you wanna go round collectin’ these things for any’ow?” Spike nursed his bloodied fingertip. “I take it you’ve got a zoo or somethin’. Bet you charge people a bomb to see this poxy, flea-bitten rubbish”
“Actually I’m a non-profit making organisation, if y’ must know.” Nancy set about brushing the larger turds into what resembled a potato mound. “In the future people don’t ’ave much time for wild animals. They’d just rather forget what they did to ’em. ’Elps ’em come to terms with their guilt.”
She paused for a moment, several prehistoric flies the size of sycamore seeds buzzing frantically around her head. “Truth is, Mr Gypsy, I’m a conservationist. Where I come from its very dark an’ extremely nasty ’cos the Multi-National Conglomerates ’ave taken over.”
“Multi-Rational Clonglonerwhat?”
Nancy couldn’t help noticing Spike struggle with any word containing more syllables than, for example, ‘git.’ She rested her chin on the broom handle and her pigtails sagged.
“Industrialists! Mammoth Entrepreneurs ’oo raped the world and never put owt back.”
Spike thought this over, his mental processes operating along the lines of:
1) Suck finger contemplatively.
2) Check to make sure that finger’s still there.
3) Suck finger again, even more contemplatively.
4) Check knuckle still works by bending it.
“All right…so where you come from there’s hardly owt left and all the mythological creatures ’aven’t got anywhere nice to play.” He sneered. “But so what? These things you’ve got stashed ’ere never existed in the first place, so why bother saving ’em?”
“Actually Gypsy, they did exist once.” Nancy pondered deeply on what little natural history she could remember. “Trouble was that when the Earth had been stripped of all its useful resources the conglomerates found ’emselves struggling to survive. So the Dark Lord got ’is boffins to invent a time machine. Well, not so much a single time machine, more like an ’ole blasted fleet of ’em. And now they travel back in time, rapin’ and pillagin’ the Earth throughout different periods of history. The trouble with time travel is you’ve got to be careful. Otherwise y’ go upsettin’ things. That’s why all of this lot are extinct.”
For a moment they exchanged mutually suspicious glances. Spike wasn’t sure what Nancy was attempting to get at, but it had sounded sincere. She’s a sort of evil pixie with an ’eart of gold, he thought cruelly to himself.
“So you’re a hero? ’Eroine’ sorry,” he added by way of bitter political correctness. “So ’ow come you don’t just go back in time an’ stop this Dark Lord bloke from pillagin’ the planet?”
“Yeah, right on Gypsy. Like one little girl could take on an army of SPODs single handedly.”
Scrub, scrub, scrub went the bristled head of the brush. Rumble, rumble, squelch went the growing volcano of dinosaur droppings. Spike scratched his head, pleating the Mohican.
“Let me get this straight? What you do instead is y’ find out where the Dark Lord’s goin next and get there before ’im, right? And rescue the animals that’ll be wiped out?”
“Somethin’ like that. I don’t always get the timing right. Just before the fairies got destroyed me alarm clock buggered up an’ that was that. Very elusive creatures now, fairies. Especially the wild ones.”
“You wanna try One-Eyed Dick’s down by the dock front.”
Spike scrambled to his boots, lifting one foot as a very large and very unwholesome medicine ball of fertiliser rolled beneath it.
“The odd thing about the fairy folk was, you could only see them from the front. Apparently they were ’ollow. Made of the stuff of nightmares.”
“That’s what I’ve ’eard as well,” said Spike facetiously.
“Then of course there was the Poisonous Tree Frog. Now that was the most deadly animal on Earth. Never could quite work out what ’appened there.”
Nancy propped the broom against a crate containing a unicorn.
She brought her heel down smartly, dislodging some of the gunk still clinging to the tread.
“Without warnin’ every Tree Frog in existence suddenly started to sing. Sommet they’d never done before. A really weird and ’auntin’ song from all accounts.”
There was a dramatic pause, which Spike completely failed to notice. A gentle sobbing from the cage marked ‘SquOnK’ was distracting him.
“Then they all dropped dead. Just bef
ore the total destruction of…the…” Nancy’s words trailed away as she noticed something terrible. “’Old on a minute! What’s that bloody big space?”
Her trembling finger pointed at the enormous gap between two columns of teetering caskets. An ominous hole that had the feeling of being occupied until comparatively recently.
“Oh my God, somebody’s stolen ‘Goliath’”
Allotment Street was a monument to the council’s lack of planning. A terrace built on the slopes of South Ringing Fell like a row of rotten teeth. Presumably the architects were expecting a town to grow up on the doorstep. Unfortunately, they’d forgotten to tell everyone else.
Deirdre Barker, a pensioner with a spine in the shape of a comma, peered angrily over her Zimmer frame at the defoliated cabbages. Behind her a series of squeals and admonitions turned the atmosphere blue.
“You’ve made a mess of me King Edwards, Josephine, that’s for sure. They look like a whoop of ’Arry-Krishna’s now.”
It was true. The allotments this morning bore some resemblance to Passchendaele, incinerated by the previous night’s detonation.
“All this tinkerin’ with things unknown is gonna be the death of us and no mistake.” Deirdre adjusted her spectacles and peered scaldingly over the rims.
“Progress, Deirdre.” Grandma Jo prodded the few brown weeds infesting the patio with her walking stick, watching as Dennis forced himself through the coalbunker hatch. “You can’t stop it! Some of us ’ud like to, but the rest of us ’as got more sense.”
A few cusses drifted up from the slagheap, accompanied by the occasional scream of an infuriated swine. Dennis was none-too-pleased himself. The fairground had uprooted itself in the night, whilst he had been hunting down the family sow. Pickles had escaped when a low flying chunk of the potting shed had hit her sty.
“Mr Pie at Number Seven was badly injured in the small ’ours, y’ know?” Deirdre straightened herself haughtily. “A cogwheel flew through ’is bedroom window. It hit ’im on the back of his ’ead. Knocked ’is false teeth into the commode.”
“Well, ’ee shouldn’t be such a miserable bugger, should ’ee?” Grandma Jo unturfed a dandelion from its crack and allowed it to swing from the end of her stick. “Fancy goin’ to bed so early? Just ’cos you’re old doesn’t mean to say you’ve got to ’urry your own demise along. ’Ow’s it goin’, Dennis?”
“Almost got ’er, Grandma!” The coal shifted uneasily beneath Dennis’ weight, flowing out from the opening like mercury. “If I can just get ’old of her legs!”
The scrambling of trotters indicated that Dennis had gained purchase.
“Come ’ere you blitherin’ buggerin’ little shi…”
At which point something unusual happened. It was rare that anything more exciting than a starling flying into a television aerial ever happened down Allotment Street. So when another coal bunker appeared behind the potting plants, Mrs Barker coiled over backwards in shock. Another bunker exactly the same as the one that Dennis was clambering out of. Grandma Jo watched as its shutter ground open.
Seconds later a whirring black cylinder on wheels hurtled through it energetically. The telescopic lenses buzzed frantically in and out of its dented lid.
Grandma Jo raised her walking stick in a threatening manner as the sergeant approached. He shuddered to a halt before her.
“You’re an interestin’ little sod, aren’t y’?” Grandma Jo cocked her head on one side in the fashion of a budgerigar studying a mirror. “Let’s ’ave a look at what you’ve got beneath that lid of yours, shall we?”
“Josephine Lowry?” A buzzing high-pitched voice emanated from the speaker on the droid’s chest.
The best that Grandma Jo could manage in response was a simple, “Yes?”
An iron mace was plucked from the quiver on the sergeant’s back. He held it at arm’s length, bringing it into contact with the senior citizen’s bobbing chin. Static shook through the pensioner’s frame, her skeleton clearly visible as though she’d overdosed on Ready-Brek. Then she slumped, her walking stick toppling with a wooden rattle.
Sergeant 89D dragged her corpse back in through the tiny hatch.
Seconds later Dennis emerged from the bunker, coal dust in his eyes. Pickles was tucked beneath his arm, squealing with indignity. According to the Laws of Irony, he was just in time to witness his grandmother’s boots disappearing through the portal. One or two sprigs of chickweed sprang back into position as the shutter ground closed once more behind them.
The bunker spluttered rhuematically, lengthened sideways and with the sort of noise that a backfiring piano would make, it vanished.
Dennis stared at the empty cucumber frame where it had moments before stood. Then he turned and gawked at the prostrate form of Mrs Barker. And finally he took to his heels screaming, “MUM! MUM! Grandma Jo’s bin kidnapped by a Nasal Inhaler!”
Nancy Skunk punched a number of random buttons. Then with her teeth clenched she inspected the results. Static nervously edged along one lever, earthing itself into the stuttering engine. The octagonal console trembled, the hand-carved embellishments of sculpted mice seeming to dance.
Spike watched, his tongue going walkabout around his lips. A rectangular brass plate embossed with the words: ‘Patented Thomas Hobson 2041,’ had caught his eye. It had a button on it. The end of his finger hovered experimentally above it, to see how his companion would react.
“Don’t touch that! That powers the kettle.” Nancy’s hand reached over and smacked the reverse of his own. “If that gets broken we’ll be knackered. The idea of spending eternity without a brew just isn’t worth contemplatin’!”
“What exactly is ‘Goliath’ then?”
“Mind your own business. I’m takin’ you back to your own time an’ that’s all you need to know!” Another few levers were pulled, all with varying degrees of effect. “Obviously you’re no threat t’ me, but I’m sure the World would stand more chance of survival if y’ weren’t around t’ destroy it.”
“I thought y’ said the ‘Directional Thingy’ was buggered?”
Pound, mangle, jolt!
“Directional Thingy? Yeah, that’s right. Cheers for pointin’ that out to me, Gypsy.” Her pigtails fizzled as a bolt earthed itself into her elbow. “That probably explains why I’m standing ’ere buggerin’ about like a bloody gym teacher at an advanced mathematics’ lecture.” She leant forwards condescendingly. “Would you mind awfully buggering off for a while. Go and cheer up the squonk or somethin’.”
“’Ave you tried this lever?” asked Spike, still wanting to help.
From the caravan roof a pair of solar wings sprouted, their prism-like edges catching the sunlight in stunning coronas. With an ascending whistle the caravan shook, hovered just above the ground, and then shot upwards, puncturing a hole in the morning clouds.
A passing ball of frozen rock - a meteorite that had it been left to run its 247 year ellipse would have been known as Patrick Moore’s Comet - thundered into view. The collision was stupendous, millions of shards exploding outwards, the comet itself altering course.
Nancy and Spike watched silently through the window as the molten debris skimmed the Earth’s atmosphere, ripped a hole in the ozone layer just above the South Pole and headed on towards Mexico.
About a minute later there was a crunch accompanied by a mushrooming orange ‘Poof.’ It resembled something out of a Road-Runner cartoon.
“Excellent, Gypsy! You’ve just wiped out the dinosaurs! We always wondered ’ow that ’appened!” Nancy drew the tattered gingham curtains closed almost morbidly and snarled. “You’ve just created the biggest puzzle that palaeontologists are ever likely to encounter.”
“I’m not a gypsy!” Spike muttered moodily.
“No…you’re a dick’ead! It wouldn’t surprise me if you were the one responsible for wipin’ out the ’uman race.”
“What?” Spike looked up from his shuffling boots.
“Oh, didn’t I tell y
ou? There are no ’umans left where I come from.” A smug expression wrinkled Nancy’s nose. “We’re all holograms now, made out of energy. Just after the Tree Frogs sung their last little songs it was. The ’ole bloody lot of you became inexplicably extinct.”
Spike’s eyes had grown to the size of lavatory seats. It might not have been much of a life on Crookley’s Estate. But it was all he had and the idea that it might be drawing to an end was too horrific to contemplate.
“When did this ’appen?”
“Well, according to my ’istory books,” Nancy continued, producing a manual from out of the thin air. “October 3rd, 1999. Congratulations, Gypsy. It’s time for you to go ’ome.”
Chapter Eight: A Contract on the Cusp of Destruction
Many children dream about running away to the circus. The lure of greasepaint is extremely powerful, although exactly what greasepaint smells like is anybody’s guess. Irony dictated that the Wilberforce children dreamt about settling down in suburbia with an education and three decent meals every day. A life free from beatings and shabby clothes and threatening shadows made by parents drinking themselves into violent torpors. A small assembly of wan faces now watched from behind the door of the Barley kitchen. Bantams clucked across the peeling floor. Haughty geese waddled between the gimcrack furniture.
In one corner Anne Barley peeled her life away with ruddy cheeks and sallow eyes, the mound of potatoes never seeming to shrink.
“We had a deal, Mr Barley!” Mario Wilberforce threw back his shoulders, expanding his chest confrontationally. “I offer you forty pounds a week anna now you turna me down? W’at sort of business man ’are you?”
“I’m not a business man.” Giles Barley thrust one grubby finger into his ear and gave it a twist. “Oim a farmer. Take it or leave it. No concern o’ mine.”