by Rhys Hughes
I shivered. “There’s evil in outer space too?”
“Can’t say for sure. Times I think it wasn’t a meteorite, but maybe a chunk cast into the atmosphere by a volcanic eruption. They have bauxite mines in Surinam, don’t they? And I heard tell that bauxite is a raw form of aluminium, same as a cow is a rawer form of steak. What if a hoodoo man capered a spell in his jungle down there and the blast hurled the magically saturated ground up in small crumbs, purified them at that instant, and this large piece came down in Porthcawl? We might speculate all day. What’s the worth of that?”
I realised he was growing angry. So I raised my hands in a gesture of conciliation and asked: “Did Dippy give the trumpet to Mr Bloat? And did the collector employ it to increase his store of spectres? Seems he should be truly happy with that, adding to his hoard of instruments and spooks at the same time. Lucky brute!”
Aluminium Dewi shook his head, and there was sadness in his warped face, which I didn’t care to study, because the tears which rolled down his cheeks acted like tiny lenses, magnifying his facial defects to huge size, and there’s too much ugliness in the world already. I felt like a bone in a maw, and I wanted to cwtch up to someone for reassurance, but I no longer had a cat and my harp is cold when pressed close. But there was always the option of another song:
I love a rum which is in the navy,
Been there now for several seasons,
And if I sail all seven seas alone,
I still won’t dilute it with lime.
My companion uncovered his ears at last and sighed. “Not once did Dippy use rum. He dunked in everything but.”
“It’s just a song,” I responded meekly.
“Well, don’t. I can’t play this abomination of a trumpet. No human could. But I’m still superior to you.”
“Oh, really?” I cried, my ire up. “Says who?”
“All intelligent critics, I bet.”
“Challenging me to a duel, are you? A musical combat?”
“Why not? Just like in olden times, Dylan, with two bards slogging it out. I’m confident I can best you.”
“Arrogant Dewi!” I fumed. “That should be your name!”
“Prove it to me!” he snapped.
I raised my harp to do so, not feeling so confident, but determined not to lose face just yet, because if I did I couldn’t be certain when I might get it back. And my honour is important to me. I have no talent at all, therefore I must hold tight to what I have got. Besides, duels with no audience are what I prefer, if I must fight them, which I don’t much, because the pressure’s so much less. I thought of my repertoire and knew I had no best songs, so I resolved to go for the least worst. Then I readied to pluck the tin strings.
Shaking the spittle out of his trumpet, he muttered: “Before we get going, allow me to finish the rest of my tale. Dippy gave the instrument to Mr Bloat, but the collector saw straight away that it was a substitute. He wasn’t pleased. And when he discovered it didn’t even work, he was livid. But he didn’t arrange the murder of the knife thrower, because at the last moment he realised that Dippy had wanted to make amends for his neglect, which is why he had created the replica. So he spared his life. He donated the trumpet to charity.”
“Good of him,” I acknowledged. “Not all bad.”
Aluminium Dewi laughed bitterly. “A cruel joke, Dylan. As far as he was concerned, it didn’t play. He knew that some poor musician would buy the thing and be frustrated and disappointed when he tried it out. Guess who that musician was? Yes, it was me. I was walking past a charity shop one day when I saw it in the window. Immediately I entered and purchased it with my last remaining coins.”
“Didn’t you practise first in the shop?”
“I wasn’t allowed, on account of all the china ornaments on rickety shelves. I was so ecstatic, I ran all the way home. I dwelled on the top floor of a tall tenement, but I rushed up all the steps, five at a time, to get to my room to start playing. Of the trumpet composers who existed since the instrument was invented, my favourite is Charpentier, a fellow from the early baroque period. He wrote a wondrous ‘Te Deum’. It takes a deep lungful of air and I was out of breath anyway. I inhaled longer and more powerfully than I had ever done but my hands were so impatient they raised the mouthpiece to my lips before I was ready. To my amazement and relief, the trumpet played a note.”
“You sucked it?” I spluttered in alarm.
“Why yes, and it made a horrible noise. It went pfffffwwarppp! Just like the sound I was making now over the lake. And the phantom which was latent in my room was pulled into the flared end, and down the narrowing tube into my mouth and into my body. And it possessed me. A very tedious ghost, to be sure, and one not at all interested in music. It threw down the trumpet and started doing all the things it had done in life, mostly aimless tasks, like redecorating the apartment. It painted the walls and ceiling and moved the furniture around.”
“How did you exorcise such a dreadful spirit?”
“I didn’t. It faded on its own after a few hours. That’s the way it seems to work. The trumpet sucks whatever spectre happens to be haunting the location into the player, and uses his mortal body until the effects wear off. It’s a temporary arrangement. Always they seem forced by habit to do what they did when they lived.”
I picked my nose uneasily. “So what happened?”
“After it dispersed? I rashly decided to take advantage of my weird discovery. I proclaimed myself a secular exorcist and paraded around the town, clearing away the ghosts from houses, hotels and public parks. Not at all scary, Dylan, for most of them were benign spooks, but also there was a positive social aspect to my work, for which I was well paid. Many people had loved ones whom they wished to contact. Professional mediums and clairvoyants could only mimic the voices, but I genuinely became the required person, with all the motions and quirks. I toured the cemeteries of Porthcawl, sucking the dead into me.”
“Coming or going, wouldn’t know if you were!”
Aluminium Dewi winked. “A surprisingly apt phrase. Every possession only lasted about three hours, but in that time I brought a vast deal of comfort, and dare I say it, pleasure, to many people, especially widows, who became my speciality. Great fun.”
“Disgusting!” I hissed. “Call yourself a bard?”
“Compared with you, yes, I am. Anyway, one night I was with a lady, not too old either, whose husband had recently been chewed by a mongoose until he died. He had been wearing a snakeskin jacket at the time, which was while he was visiting the zoo, a minor attraction. Buried like that, he was, and not in a sheet. Anyway, his widow wanted me to suck his soul into me for a final romp, and I was leaning over his grave, and dusk was all around, when I heard a noise. I looked up. Mr Bloat stood there, all furious and with a musket, borrowed from his collection of ancient arms, loaded with shot melted down from a lead shoe taken from his collection of artificial feet. He levelled the gun at the widow, who simpered away, and then aimed it directly at my chest, though because of his skewed eye he believed it pointed at my skull, but what’s the difference between bullets in the brain or in the heart? Both can slaughter. Both are undesirable.”
“He had come to curtail your activities?”
“Exactly that! He explained to me that I was using up all the spare ghosts in the town. Because after they faded away from possessing me, it seemed they were gone for good. And he had just started collecting them, and he didn’t take kindly to my interference. So he ordered me to leave, not just the graveyard but the town and its environs. I became an exile, forbidden to return on pain of death, and he could organise that without too much trouble from the authorities. I wasn’t allowed to pack anything or pocket any cash from my room. I had to depart immediately. Foolishly, he forgot to confiscate the trumpet.”
“Maybe he hadn’t linked it with your powers to summon ghosts? After all, rather unlikely, it does sound.”
“Yes, that must be right. Probably he only heard stories about what
I was doing and came to see for himself. I guess it’s possible he didn’t notice the instrument in my hands, he was that angry. And his skewed eye was in the side of his face he turned to me. I left clutching my trumpet and wondering if it would be the means of my eventual return. I hastened out of Porthcawl, all through the night, until now. Kenfig Pool is quite the best place for me to remain at.”
“But why are you playing to its waters?”
“The sunken village, Dylan! There must be hundreds of phantoms down there! If I can drag them all up, there might be at least one which will be powerful and strong and maybe mad. It will possess me and give me the courage to turn back and wring Mr Bloat’s neck. That’s what I lack! I am too shy to get vengeance on my own.”
“Dangerous game, sucking a malign spirit.”
“True, but however foul it is, it’ll wear off after a few hours. So I am flirting with evil, not selling myself to it. I had just begun this project when you intruded on me.”
“Where do the spirits fade away to, after they stop possessing you? Maybe they stay inside, lurking?”
He puckered his lips. “I hadn’t thought of that!” But then he shook his head and added: “Because it’s nonsense! Yes, it must be. Gibberish and superstition, pure and simple.”
“Do you know that for sure?” I baited him.
“Yes, because I don’t feel anything within myself. Thus they aren’t there. Only my anatomy under my skin now.”
“Dormant perhaps? All compressed tight together, but still there in layers. Layer upon layer of spectres. Imagine that! Like sheets of choux pastry, or blankets on a mattress!”
I was pushing my luck. He glowered at me, and then a thin smile and bright eyes calmed his features, but I won’t say they were kinder. “What about our duel, Dylan? Are you ready?”
I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to let him know that, so I sang him one of my least worst ditties. I lisped:
Cut me up, my darling!
Gouge out my eyes and spleen.
Stamp on my ears and mash my nose,
Grate my kidneys and pulp my toes!
You know I love it when you hack me up.
You know I love it when you kill ducks.
So wring my neck, pretty,
Bite off my thumbs and tongue.
And let’s have calluses for breakfast!
Slice my chin, my love!
Castrate me with a blunt spoon.
Whip out my mind and wrap it tight,
Post it to a Dutch anthropophagite!
What use are lips and digestive tracts,
Except as pillows for your lovely head?
So chop my lungs, lovely,
Knock out my teeth with a broom.
And let’s strangle my dog with a snake!
How he grinned and bore it, I’ll never know. I didn’t ask. Not what you might call a usual love song, though it was traditional enough. Have an idea it was meant to be sardonic, maybe because the girl in the words had treated the singer bad. On the other hand, perhaps he truly did want her to mangle him. Takes all kinds.
Aluminium Dewi remarked slowly: “That was very poor, Dylan. And now it’s my turn. So listen carefully.”
He lifted the trumpet to his mouth. It was still pointed out across the lake. Now comes a rapid sequence of events which I shiver to recall, but I’ll state them as best I can. First he sucked and an appalling note warbled around his head. Just as he’d promised, it went pfffffwwarppp! I backed off a few paces and stumbled. Then something faint and wispy rose out of the foam. I couldn’t focus on it properly. It wasn’t blurred, but coloured in a way outside the experience of my eyes. I learned afterward from a book of sorcery that some phantoms are patterned in colours which no longer exist in the physical universe, such as onk and sprug. I guess the worst aspect of it was the way it fought to remain under the surface of the water. It writhed and squirmed. But suddenly it lost its grip and flew up and along into the trumpet.
It narrowed as it entered the flared end, and spiralled down inside the tube. Then it must have passed Aluminium Dewi’s lips, for his cheeks flushed and his eyes bulged and a dreadful change came over him. All the same, he kept playing, and the grotesque note boomed and burped. If this was Charpentier’s ‘Te Deum’, it was well named, for I was bored, despite my horrified fascination, and that’s a contradiction you don’t ever want to try yourself. I couldn’t decide whether I was appalled or frustrated. And still he sucked, and now another shape emerged from the lake, pulled out from its drowned village and absorbed into the lungs and body of the most damnfool bard ever to breathe.
Instead of going on for hours, each possession lasted just as long as the next one. Every ghost displaced the other inside him. Previously, he had only focussed his trumpet at a specific location where he knew a soul to be residing, so they had come to him singly. But with the source of the phantoms under these waters, it was impossible to aim accurately and he was sucking them all in. The sound was so bad, I wondered why he had been confident of victory in our duel. Then I guessed he was relying on the fact that in the sunken settlement there had probably dwelled at least one proper bard. That was the ghost he was hoping to conjure up, a real bard from those days when they could play anything, even monotonous notes, some ancient bard whose skill might be able to modulate the gross pfffffwwarppp into a proper melody. But if he summoned up the nasty soul first, the one to get revenge on Mr Bloat, he would cancel the duel, for it was only a game to him. Maybe the bard and the nasty were the same spirit?
I knew the precise moment he was successful in his scheme, for the note did change and became a tune, mournful and old. I studied his face more closely. It wasn’t that of Aluminium Dewi. The music was sweet and I fumed. The duel was almost lost, for even I had to admit the superior nature of this piece over mine. A few more notes and he would be the victor for sure. And I couldn’t wait for the next soul to rise up and dislodge the dead bard. There wasn’t time. So I acted. It was an impulsive moment, but my pride’s like that. I stepped forward and pushed him. Yes, I shoved him in the lake. He collapsed to his knees in the shallows and fell forward. The bell of the trumpet penetrated the water, but he still sucked. The note changed again. The melody was ruined. The pfffffwwarppp became squelchy. Then I saw that I had made matters somewhat worse. The level of the lake was going down!
Aluminium Dewi, or rather the ghost who possessed him, was drinking the entire pond! How his body didn’t burst, I’ll never understand, what with all those thousands and millions of gallons pouring into his lungs and belly, unless the layers of phantoms packed inside him, which still I suspected were there, acted as a sequence of unbreakable linings. The waters vanished fast, and to my gargantuan consternation the spire of a church appeared in the centre of the lake. Kenfig town was returning to the light of day! Disturbed by the currents, the bell swung and blurped and then boomed, once it was clear of the fluid, though without anything else to set it in motion, it soon came to a quiet rest. Nothing restful about my companionable opponent. He didn’t stop sucking, surely because he couldn’t. Another truth emerged. However deep the pond, it certainly wasn’t bottomless, because within several minutes its bed was absolutely dry, and the town stood sagging in its weedy rescue. Then the possessed player fell back on his haunches.
I saw what was going to happen. What went in would have to come out and the lake would be refilled. I decided on a noble act: can’t truly give an explanation why, other than that sometimes I’m a complex fellow, not a caricature. I stood between Aluminium Dewi and Mr Bloat’s mansion in the distance. Then I threw my harp at the bard’s shoulder. He turned to discern the origin of this missile, and because the trumpet was still fixed to his lips, it rotated too. I dived out of the way. Not a moment too soon. The waters of the lake, compressed inside his stomach, burst forth in a jet of such power that a modest volcano, perhaps in Surinam, but probably not, could be doused. The trumpet acted like a hose of amazing force and the liquid was propelled in a tight cylinder. It ar
ced high, far over the dunes, reached a peak and then came down, striking the top window of Sker House. And there were flecks inside it, shapes in colours not seen on this world for aeons.
A crash of breaking glass came to me, but most sound was washed out by the gush of the jet. The constant stream entered the attic of the house and must have poured down through the gaps in its floorboards, to the lower floor, and so on, until the building was filled and bulging. Then the trumpet blew dry, the final hundred gallons topping up the mansion to the ceiling of the attic. You may be astounded by how such a large lake might fit inside one dwelling without any spill, but it occurred to me that there must have been vaults and an extensive network of underground passages. Put that in your pipe of amontillado and smoke it, you reader dabs! And save a decanter for me!
Aluminium Dewi climbed to his feet on the arid lakebed and dropped his trumpet. He stumbled forward.
“What are you doing?” I called to him.
He replied without bothering to turn: “The town is exposed! There’s supposed to be treasure in the catacombs of the church. That’s where I’m going. I’ll be rich! Rich as Mr Bloat. No need for ghosts to get revenge on him. Gold will do that trick!”
I watched him approach the leaning church, enter its shattered door and vanish inside. There was no need to join him, because I had a horrid feeling about it, and I’m allergic to gold, more’s the penury. Folks say it’s the one metal can’t bring out a rash in a man. Try rubbing it on my torso! Or rather, don’t! I walked from the lake to Sker House, keen to witness the disaster at close quarters. My feet still pained me and the left was somewhat worse than the right. I limped along, sort of dragging it behind me, gouging a runnel in the soft sand. Then I reached the front door of the mansion. It strained on its hinges and a few drops seeped. I placed my ear to the wood. I could hear a floaty type of knocking on the other side. Did it belong to Mr Bloat? I had no idea whether he had been at home when the jet filled the building. If he was, he was drowned now. I stepped aside, shaking my head.