by Brian Hughes
“Shutta Your Gob, Maria!” Mario dragged his finger across his throat, bringing Maria’s complaints to a halt.
Listen carefully.
Beyond the tramp of feet, beyond the bleating of sheep, beyond the glug of the outflow pipe from Farmer Barley’s pigsty. That’s the sound of a forklift truck.
Are you as curious as I am about what’s making that noise? Let’s take a look.
Ah, there it is. At the base of the cliff, beside Nancy’s caravan. Nancy is shunting the remains of Goliath through the back door as it opens and closes in the wind.
That’s enough distraction.
Let’s get back to Mario, whose suspicious eyes have just spotted a polished toecap.
“Mario Wilberforce?” Jack Partridge removed the notepad from his pocket and wrinkled his nostrils.
“’Oo wantsa t’ know?”
Jack blinked. Mario actually thought he could bluff his way out of this one. Jack cast a brief frown at the balking Maria before returning to the oversized toad with the huge moustache. “Actually mate, I wantsa t’ know. An’ I’m your worst flamin’ nightmare!”
The stubby pencil performed a quick fox trot over the page.
The rotund form of Mayor Thompson pulled up alongside, hoisting his trousers up by their belt.
“’Ave you found ’im, Jack?”
“Either that or a whale’s given birth in the dyke.” Jack scratched one temple with his pencil. “Mario Wilberforce, I’m arresting you for manslaughter. Anything you say might be taken…”
“Wadda y’ mean, manslaughter?” A wave of relief spread across Mario’s face. At least the charges weren’t related to his business activities. “I ’aven’t killed nobody! That leetle fool in the waltzer last summer was suicide. I told ’im to sitta down! De fact that there was no straps was…”
“Councillor Ordenshaw, dead! Dennis Lowry, dead! Constable Parkins, missing apart from his scarf. Presumed crushed! Deirdre Barker…”
The crack of a time travelling Caravan backfiring echoed across the fellside. The splutter of narrow, ancient conduits resounded through the early evening mist. Several crows scattered from the trees around the base of the cliff.
A distant flash indicated that Nancy and Spike had finished clearing up and had disappeared to find Goliath a final resting place.
Jack continued. “Mrs Victoria Prune. Last seen attemptin’ to batter the creature with her walkin’ stick. Presumed to be the body stuffed ’eadfirst down the chimney at Ulverstone Terrace.”
“Dese are trumped up charges! I demanda to speak to my lawyer.”
Mario sat back and folded his arms across his chest. He blew a ganglion of rain from his Brussels sprout nose. “I’ll have a slander case brought against yoo in court, my friend.”
Mario always referred to people he considered a threat as some sort of close associate. ‘Mate,’ ‘Pal,’ ‘Chum’. Basically anything with the general theme of a tin of dog food.
“Don’t mess witha de Gypsies. We’re exceptionally good at winning de law suits.”
“Well, firstly Mr Wilberforce, you’re not a gypsy. I’ve ’eard all about you and the Romany Council.” Gordon Thompson hitched his subsiding trousers up another inch. “’Owever, I do know that accordin’ to ’Ealth and Safety that monstrosity you were ’arbouring fell well below…”
His words trailed off.
A buckled grin spread across Mario’s face. Obviously he’d still got the hypnotic touch. The one he’d used to such advantage on pretty girls in his tearaway youth.
“…Recommended…EEC…”
Mario’s toothy smile began to flounder.
Gordon Thompson wasn’t even staring at him. He was watching something on the horizon.
“Directives…w’at the buggerin’ Nora’s that?”
Here is the rear of the Barley Farm.
In decades to come it will be red with dancing poppys.
Right now it’s red with cadavers. Bloodied bodies lie face down in the mud, some crushed into stars. Toffee apples poke their twisted sticks from the carnage.
One mangled stalk of machinery that was once the central pole for the merry-go-round, sticks up at an angle of sixty degrees. The fallen standard for a battle nobody could win.
Ah, what’s this? Something’s approaching. Something larger, swifter and more threatening than before.
A mighty thud rumbles out from the earth. The kind of wallop that dislodges speakers from cinema walls. That makes puddles ripple apocalyptically.
The creature responsible is moving as slowly as a mountain.
Mind you, it has a good excuse. It’s absolutely bloody massive.
Over the top of South Ringing Fell a colossal ape raised its head plunging the town into a darkness. Moments later a wind charged along in its wake. Such a huge emotionless face. So cold and empty. As ancient as the fells themselves. Its glowing eyes searched for movement. Above its head hovered strange metal blimps. SPODs leaned from the windows holding megaphones. Shouting orders to the growing war.
Then there were others. Unfeasibly large creatures. Far more powerful than before. Nancy Skunk had been right. Never count your chickens before they’re hatched. They might just turn out to be alligators.
And as far as the ‘End Of Civilisation’ was concerned the day was a long way from over yet.
Chapter Eighteen: The Abomination of Recursive Circumstance
“Where are we exactly?” Spike wrapped the thick woollen scarf round his neck and yawned. The sort of yawn in which the eyes and nose disappear. It was an unusual pattern for a scarf. All red and blotchy with Constable Parkins’ name tag stitched onto one end. Filling his hands with a billow of hot breath Spike snuffled the contents of his nostrils back into their pens. “This don’t look much like Greyminster, no more.”
It was quite a good view from where he was sitting on the roof of the digger. The circle of firtrees wasn’t the most exciting of backdrops perhaps. But it was certainly very Christmassy.
“To be ’onest, I’ve no idea where we are. Some place called Wiltshire.” Nancy aimed her elephant gun at one sugarcoated pine tree. “I’m not sure we want to know where we are, any’ow. If anyone tortures us about Goliath’s whereabouts, that way we can’t tell ’em.”
“Tortures us?” The words emerged from Spike’s blue lips in the form of an air bag. “What would anybody want to torture us for?”
“The Dark Lord might…”
“I thought you said if we buried Goliath where no-one could find ’im, then the Dark Lord wouldn’t come into existence?” Spike kicked his boots against the frosted windscreen.
The sights of the elephant gun moved slowly round, following two furrows of slush from the caravan’s rear door. It’d never cease to amaze Spike that! How Nancy could fit a fifteen-ton tractor through an opening designed for a Tonka toy.
“The truth is Gypsy, you can’t take anything for granted with temporal mechanics.” Nancy lowered the weapon and frowned. “Burying this damn thing might have been responsible for starting the Dark Lord off in the first place. P’raps I should’ve studied history more.”
“So why are we buryin’ it?” Spike stuffed his fists into his pocket. “And what exactly are you expectin’ to happen that requires you to swing that cannon round?”
“It’s an ‘Elephant Gun!’”
Nancy turned the firearm in her hands, her knuckles turning white. Peculiar that! Spike had expected holograms to be impervious to the cold. Suddenly he had an urge to wrap his arm round her, seeing as she was doing so much to secure the future of the human race.
He resisted. She’d probably tear his head off and stuff it down his neck.
“And I said ‘Might’,” Nancy continued. “It’s a very important word is ‘Might’! With a bit of luck, it ‘Might’ also be responsible for the Dark Lord’s destruction.”
“Doesn’t that mean, if the Dark Lord gets destroyed, you won’t have existed in the first place?”
Temporal Mechani
cs and the ‘Where’s’ and the ‘Why-fors’ were difficult at the best of times. And that was without a wind-chill factor of minus nineteen.
“And if you were never created you couldn’t have come here to put an end to it.”
“Probably not!” Nancy buffed the gun with her shirtcuff. “As far as I can see, what’s ’appened has happened. Regardless of how you might want change it later!”
Spike turned the puzzle over in his mind. “So…w’at’s the Rhinoceros Gun for?”
“If you really want to know, Gypsy, look!” Nancy pointed towards the copse. “Those are Yeti’s footprints. I noticed ’em earlier when I was getting the bulldozer out! See this?”
She held up a crumbling rock in the shape of a Danish.
“That’s an Abominable Snowman droppin’!”
“’How do you know? S’posing it’s just wild boar shit?”
“’I know, ’cos I saw him doin’ it!” Nancy raised the gun and closed one eye. “You should have sin the look on the rabbit’s face when he used it for toilet paper. Thought I’d bag myself one, to mate with the female.”
Spike pulled a puzzled expression. “I thought Abominable Snowmen were s’pose to come from North America?”
For the true connoisseurs of Cryptozoology, ‘The Yeti,’ ‘The Abominable Snowman’ and ‘The Big Foot’ are all different species. For Spike, however, they all came under the heading of Cavus Bulshitius.
Nancy shrugged her shoulders. “Wiltshire is in North America, isn’t it?”
Spike wasn’t going to argue. He tucked the scarf into the top of his sweater instead.
“Nancy…?” A shudder ran up her spine. She wasn’t used to being called by name. “Tell me more about this Dark Lord.”
“What do you want to know?” There was a little more acerbity in her voice now. A bit more concentration in its hostility. “’Ee’s just a git who rules the world, that’s all!”
“How come he lives in Greyminster?”
“Dunno.” The shoulders came up protectively around her ears. “’Ee just does. Made ’is money from diggin’ up natural resources in different time periods. Then ’ee covered the world with industrial complexes. P’raps he thought that Greyminster was cultured.”
The snap of brittle bracken.
The crunch of huge leathery soles across a thin crust of snow.
The barrel jerked to one side, concentrating on a stumpy gorse bush that appeared to be breathing.
“So if there was no ’umans in the future…” Spike fluffed up the scarf which was now partially frozen. “Who was ’ee selling his products to?”
“Shut your gob, Gypsy, before I stuff that scarf so far down your throat you’ll ’ave a built in bog roll dispenser!”
Thrashing its limbs the Yeti emerged from the wintry undergrowth. It was a moth-eaten affair. Seven feet tall and wearing what resembled an inside out Parker. Only its palms and orang-utan face were approaching flesh coloured.
It also had a huge purple backside in the shape of a jelly mould.
“Is that a Big Foot?”
Nancy felt her companion nudge her elbow. The gun barrel jerked upwards.
“Keep still, Gypsy! That’s not the only thing that’s big about it, look!”
She felt a warm gasp move the hairs in her ear. It was accompanied by, “Buggerin’ Nora!”
With a roar the Yeti stood upright on its stumpy legs, pounding its muscular chest with its fists.
“Very impressive!” Nancy studied the massive middle wicket half obscured by a thicket of brambles. “That’d make Mata Hari blush that ’un would.”
“He must be fairly intelligent.” Ignoring Spike’s comment she trained the sights on its grizzled forehead. “’Ee’s written his name in the snow, look! My God, ’ee’s smudged the full stop! I don’t remember Fortean Times running photographs in which Big Foot left three sets o’ footprints!”
The rustle of leaves. The howl of a Neanderthal declaring itself to an unconcerned world.
And suddenly the gorse bush was hovering two feet above the ground.
“Eh up, Missus! I think ’ee’s spotted you!” A gloating grin peeled Spike’s lips back.
“Don’t be so sure about that, Gypsy.” Nancy lowered the elephant gun cautiously. “’Ee’s lookin’ directly at you! And ’ee’s just spent the past fifteen minutes spreadin’ Holly Rouge on his little dimpled cheeks.”
“Buggerin’ ’Ell!” The scuffle of Doc Martens across the digger roof. Pearls of sweat forced themselves through Spike’s forehead. “No wonder the buggers became extinct. Shoot it quickly!”
“How could I possibly shoot such a noble creature, Gypsy?” Nancy watched as fear spread across Spike’s face. “I hope you’ve brought a bin bag with y’? Wouldn’t want you gettin’ pregnant…”
CRUNCH! ThuD! THUD!
“ROARrRR!”
CraSH! ManGLE! JOLT!
Without warning the world turned upside-down.
Nancy watched as her slush covered boots passed by overhead, their laces trailing out like party streamers.
A confusion of images swamped her vision. The hoary instep of a leathery foot. The torn away steering wheel slicing into the snow. A huge, purple volcano, puckering violently in front of her.
Spike’s flailing legs, denims coiled about the knees, stuck up towards the clouds from the snow.
“Shoot the bugger! Quick, for God’s sake! Before ’ee has me grundies off!”
With fumbling fingers Nancy tugged the gun from where it had landed. She squeezed the trigger, not bothering to aim.
With a ripping scream the feathered dart flew from the barrel and hurtled upwards.
By purest chance it hit the yeti’s rump. A piercing shriek rang into the copse.
A feeble glimpse at an incredibly sore rear.
The crossing of eyeballs.
And the beast toppled over.
Headfirst onto Spike. The thud that followed was very impressive.
A moment passed. Just time enough for what had happened to sink in.
“Er, Missus? Are you up there?”
“Don’t worry, Gypsy. I’ll get the shovel and dig you out.”
Nancy brushed the snow from her cardigan. An apathetic voice stopped her in her tracks.
“And when you’ve done that, Missus, could we bury that bloomin’ robot? Then go ’ome? I’ve ’ad as much of Cryptozoophonics as I can take.”
“And that, Mrs Lowry, was how we found ‘The Overlords.’ Or at least Goliath. Machines so powerful that only a handful took on the World’s United Forces and won.”
Grandma Jo was sitting in a small room. Her knees were tucked up beneath her chin, the armchair too small to accommodate her bloated old frame.
High above her ancient pipes blew whistles of steam. Beneath them two gigantic monitors moved to an accompaniment of noisy pivots.
On a small stage in front of her sat the Dark Lord himself. A silhouette on his throne.
“It was an unforgiving skirmish, Mrs Lowry. Millions lost their worthless lives attempting to defend what they had. Would you care for another custard cream?”
“No thanks, I ain’t finished me ’Obnob yet.”
Grandma Jo was unimpressed. Perhaps too unimpressed to pass for comfort. He had a commanding voice did this Dark Lord bloke. Full of deliberation. If only he’d move from the shadows she could take a closer look at him.
Instead she lifted the bone-china teacup and slurped noisily.
“So, what you’re tellin’ me is that your SPODs found Goliath all mangled up beneath ‘Stone ’Enge’?”
Another slurp, this time so violent that it sounded similar to linoleum being torn from a floor.
“They found it when they were digging a bore ’ole to extract some mineral? And now, to fulfil your destiny, I’ve got to put Goliath back together? Then you can stow it away on a time travellin’ caravan, which gets stolen and the ’ole lot goes round in circles? Then I’ve got to build another machine to reproduce ’u
ndreds of the buggers?”
“In a nut shell, Mrs Lowry.”
“Case more like…” She lowered the cup with a rattle consistent with her years. “But you’ve already got loads of ’em anyhow?”
“It’s a matter of ‘Temporal Recursion’.” The eyes on the monitors narrowed. Grandma Jo assumed that the Dark Lord’s had just done the same.
The monitors flickered and displayed a computer-generated war. All wire-framed tornadoes being bitten in half by monsters.
“‘A self-fulfilling prophecy’, if you like.”
Grandma Jo dunked the Hobnob into her cocoa. She shook the droplets from its edge and watched a chunk fall off. “Go on, I’m listenin’…”
“When I was young, I wondered how I’d inherited this empire.” Various images flashed up on the monitors, tracing the history of the Dark Lord’s rise to power. “All the survivors were now my slaves. Workers chaperoned by the Overlords and SPODs. When I first arrived there was a note. Would you like me to read it, Mrs Lowry?”
“Couldn’t give a cuss either way to be ’onest.” A wrinkled fingertip was dipped into the cup. Moments later it re-emerged, dredging a sludge bank along with it. Grandma Jo stuck the claw into her mouth.
“It read, ‘You Are Now The Dark Lord, Master Of This Domain. History Must Repeat Itself. You Must Complete The Great Circle.’”
There followed a pause full of pregnant expectation.
The grunt of the contents of Grandma Jo’s nose being driven towards her gullet brought it to a sudden end.
“I s’pose you want me to go, ‘Ooooh, Mr Dark Lord. How enigmatic’ or somethin’?” Another slurp was closely followed by the clink of fragile pottery. “Are you goin’ to tell me what I’m doin’ ’ere, or can I go ’ome? The elastic’s perished in me knickers and I’ve left me spare drawers back in me cabinet.”
“For years I puzzled about this note. Worried about my inheritance. About my fortune.” The Dark Lord’s voice had risen in pitch.
Grandma Jo brushed the crumbs off her lap.
“As my Business Empire continued to expand I hired the treacherous Damien Roach. The most putrid discharge of pus ever to call himself a human. It was his job to uncover the truth about the mysterious letter! Who had sent it? What was it asking me to do?”