Orpheus on the Underground and Other Stories, page 10
He was stunned and bleeding and I dragged him into a cupboard and shut the door. I then turned to address the next task, that of sabotaging his machine—
He was standing there, my guest from long ago.
In the act of securing the apparatus to his hip, he had taken off my chronometer and cast it casually aside.
It lay on the floor, cogs and springs erupting from its sundered frame.
He looked up and his sockets flashed fire.
‘Hello, Mr Hanwell. How pleasant to see you again. Everything has come together very nicely.’
‘That is not your property,’ I spluttered.
‘Really?’ he answered with a wry bony grin, as he finished clasping the chain around his waist.
‘It belongs to the National Physical Laboratory.’
‘Business is business, Mr Hanwell, and I have just agreed a deal with its inventor. Your vicious assault did more than injure him; he has expired in the cupboard. I visited him a blink ago. Time moves faster when you cross the threshold of death; all is relative.’
I shuddered. ‘What were the terms of the deal?’
‘They will be very familiar to you. In exchange for this magnificent and extremely accurate timepiece, I have declined to claim his soul and will allow him to persist on the planet.’
The cupboard door rattled. It swung open and the fellow known as Louis staggered out.
I saw he was heading in my direction with malicious intent, so I retreated at maximum velocity out of the room and rushed up the stairs to ground level, but it seemed I was running through treacle. Time in my immediate vicinity was slowing down, possibly in order to counterbalance its acceleration when I clubbed the inventor.
The books of the universe must always be balanced. I had lectured on this topic myself.
I was aware that of my two persecutors it was the supernatural one who was behind me, at the foot of the stairs. I did not look back because I feared I would be paralysed by his gaze.
He said, ‘Damn the weight of this contrivance! I refuse to run after you like a swain after a damsel, Mr Hanwell!’
‘Go to Hell then!’ I called back, hysterically.
He laughed and made a straining noise. I knew what was happening but still I did not dare look back.
His horns were growing, extending from his skull.
He had cast off the hood of his cloak to give them the room they needed to elongate ludicrously and dreadfully.
I felt them slide under my armpits, scooping me up in the same manner that a fork with two prongs might elevate a morsel to the mouth of a feaster. I kicked my legs in thin air; and as he lifted his head and increased the angle, I slid backwards down them, faster and faster, my legs still twitching, my entire body writhing, until I collided with his skull.
He must have looked a comical sight at that moment, with a mummified man draped over his face, and two horns more than seven times his own height scraping the plaster from the ceiling, and an enormous atomic clock anchored to his hip like an overgrown metallic child.
‘It is time, Mr Hanwell.’
‘Yes, you are right.’
And he was . . . It was time; it was my time.
So it is also time to put an end to this narrative, because the things that follow the belated claiming of my soul are not really suitable for still living minds such as your own.
You will find out for yourself one day.
And, without wishing to sound mean about it, that day will arrive sooner than you think. It always does.
THE BICYCLE-CENTAUR
I AM A BICYCLE-CENTAUR. My name is Sadulsor Raleigh, but I’m not a descendant of the famous pirate and explorer, Sir Walter. (Too bad!) It seems most likely, and plausible, that I wasn’t born at all, but was created by some mad inventor in his cluttered and crepuscular garage.
I have met several similar beings on my travels, including a man-clock and a lady-waterwheel. They may have been designed by the same boffin. I have heard a man proposed as a candidate for this honour, a certain Dr Mondaugen. Naturally I’m curious about him.
My tyres are large and wide enough to propel me across the most rugged terrain. I am fit and healthy, a fine figure of a hybrid. I still recall with joy the commotion I caused near Aberystwyth as I raced down the beach at dusk with a flaming pine torch, honking my horn and scattering lovers and other night-strollers. It was fun. I’m a creature of fun, make no mistake. Dark and nasty fun.
The country of Wales is my territory; the entire land with its mountains, valleys and forests, lakes, marshes and rain. I have explored nearly every nook and cranny. I have threaded my way down every obscure road and lane, crossed crumbling stone bridges, coasted the banks of forgotten canals and parked in the ruins of castles buried by shifting dunes. It has been an education; the only one that an entity in my condition can ever really hope for, although I did, once, formally apply to become a student at Lampeter University.
I was rejected, of course. They had already filled their quota of monsters and other anomalies. I wasn’t too disappointed as I had no real desire to waste years of my life reading books and revising for exams. And anyway, I would have had to spend a great deal of my time indoors. The Dean offered his condolences, and I think he must have been embarrassed and anxious not to be branded a grotesqueophobe.
‘The failure of your application has nothing to do with any tactical or political decision on the part of our august institution. It is simply the fact that we don’t have the facilities to give a bicycle access to the full range of undergraduate services. And, anyway, monsters are rarely happy in academic circles.’
‘You accepted a werewolf last year.’
‘I’m glad you’ve read our prospectus. But with lycanthropes it is different; there’s a tradition. Perhaps in years to come we’ll be able to accept a wider range of mutants and abominations. Please do not take any of this personally, dear chap.’
‘Are you going to pull your long nose at this point?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘In stories, when two characters in a polite but tense conversation reach an impasse, one of them generally tugs his nose. I could tug my own, but feel no desire to. So it’s your call.’
‘I won’t,’ he said, suddenly defiant.
‘Farewell,’ I said simply.
‘Will you come back one day?’ he asked.
I honked twice and accelerated away from the college. I had no intention of ever returning to Lampeter and would avoid it if my wanderings ever brought me back me to the area. This resolution was the cause of the bizarre adventure which befell me a few months later, as I will recount in the following pages. Why don’t you brew yourself a cup of tea while I oil my bearings and chain?
I had stopped at a lonely crossroads for a rest, and to exchange news with any other wayfarers who might be about, as is one of our customs. The view was bracing but bleak; moorland with mountains in the distance shrouded in thick fog (like warts and bunions looming out of the foam of a hag’s bubble bath). A small fire was lit on the verge and tea was being brewed. Some vile wanderers were waiting patiently for a cuppa. I joined them.
Damon Nomad, king of the travelling palindromes, was there, but I found it difficult to decipher what he told me. It was clever, doubtless, but too strained and contrived for my taste. I prefer one-directional talk. All the same, I was pleasant enough to him because it never pays to be rude to a monster. They know how to bear a grudge for a lifetime, or longer, depending on whose life it is.
More comprehensible and forthcoming was Cassius Befuddle, a close pal of mine. We had knocked around together in our youth, whenever that had been, for neither of us could be sure. Possibly the most unique entity in the known world, Cassius was an apricorn, in other words, half apricot, half leprecorn. And a leprecorn, as you probably know, is already half leprechaun, half unicorn, so his genetic mix was both profound and unusual.
Cassius informed me that eldritch lights had been seen over a narrow valley not too far from Lampeter. He hadn’t seen them himself, nor did he know anyone who had, but at night the lights were meant to dance unlike anything seen before, natural or artificial. Cassius had no agenda in telling me this; I don’t think he was expecting me to investigate them myself.
‘Ignis fatuus,’ he declared.
I turned my head, misunderstanding, thinking he was calling out the name of another monster that had just arrived.
‘There’s no one there,’ I said.
‘Sadulsor, my gullible and charming chum, I was referring to the official name of those mysterious lights seen above marshes and graveyards by lost or unlucky travellers: Ignis fatuus. I was about to explain that the lights spotted over that valley aren’t like those. They are utterly different and therefore doubly peculiar.’
‘Forgive me.’ The truth is that I didn’t really care about the lights. They were just an unresolved anecdote exchanged at a crossroads while tea leaves were flavouring water in a gigantic teapot nestled among the daisies. I would forget about the story within minutes of leaving the little gathering. I am much more interested in my own lights, my twin headlamps, which are like extra eyes that work in reverse, throwing beams outwards.
Cassius knew this. ‘You are always forgiven.
Something else that Cassius Befuddle told me before I departed was that he too had recently sought admission to Lampeter as an undergraduate, and had also been politely but firmly repelled. The Dean had told the apricorn that the university had exceeded its quota of monsters not only for the coming academic year, or even for the foreseeable future, but for all time.
I found this to be extraordinary news and my suspicion was aroused. Yet stronger than my suspicion was my distaste, and for a second time I silently pledged never to pass through Lampeter. In my mind the little town had become a symbol of bigotry.
Do monsters need a formal education anyway?
Then, one evening, I happened to be on the road to Lampeter once more. When I saw the sign announcing that the town lay only a short distance ahead, I remembered my vow. Stale anger welled up in me and turned fresh in a curious reversal of the usual process of decay, but I did not want to turn back. I hate retracing my steps. Not that I have feet, but you know what I mean.
So I took a detour down the first side road I encountered.
It wasn’t really a road, but a rough track, and as the sun began to set the path faded away and I found myself entering a forest of stunted oaks and elms. I said to myself, ‘I may have to camp here.’
There was no moon and the sky was overcast. My headlamps did a rather poor job at showing me the way, partly because of the mist that swirled around the twisted roots, and because there was no longer any path to follow. It seemed to be a peaceful forest, a place of minimal evil, until a distant and guttural roar shattered my complacency. It may seem laughable that a monster could be scared, but that’s how it was.
My terror encouraged me to move at greater speed.
I broke out of cover and skidded to a halt on the edge of a cliff, a precipice that overhung a narrow valley intermittently bathed in flickers and bubbles of pale light.
I say ‘pale’, but, in fact, the hue was indescribable.
The colours of the flashes were somehow simultaneously within and outside the spectrum of visible light. It was like a rainbow experimenting with meditation, psychedelic drugs and cranial electrotherapy. I was acutely aware, even then, that words are inadequate. So why do I persist in attempting to describe this light? Because you expect me to try.
I had accidentally stumbled on the location of Cassius Befuddle’s anecdote; the valley of weird lights. The roar had propelled me towards it. (I later learned that the sound had issued from a saurian, a beast this region was still infested with.) But at that instant I had only a perverse urge to learn the secret of these lights, and to report back to Cassius, thereby earning his admiration.
The admiration of an apricorn is not easily acquired.
I discovered a path that had been cut into the sheer stone wall of the cliff. My balance is good and I had few problems making my way to the bottom of the gorge. All the time the eerie flickering washed my face in photons as decadent as any emitted by the most satanic star. In less than half an hour I reached the bottom.
Or maybe the bottom reached me first.
I’m not trying to be clever; I’m not noted for an aptitude for word games. It just seemed to me that I was on the valley floor long before I should have been, as if the ground below had risen up to meet me coming down. If so, it was a gesture of geological courtesy disturbing in its seismic implications. I rested for a moment before proceeding. And then—
The figure that greeted me was half statue, half slime mould.
‘You may not pass,’ it said.
‘That is true, but on the other hand I might,’ I answered.
‘On the other hand?’ A sneer.
‘The other handle.’ I corrected myself.
‘No, I will prevent you.’
‘You might prevent me, and then again you might not.’
‘I’m sure I will. Very sure.’
And it opened its jaws extremely wide like a snake trying to eat a rugby ball. It shouted the following irrelevant words, ‘I had a really good wash, followed by a thorough scrub, but my nose still smells.’
These words were not only irrelevant, they were also harmless. Yet I found myself recoiling in alarm as every separate syllable burst into fire while my ears were digesting them. The sound waves became visible, sheets of peculiar flame that alternately contracted and expanded in mid air and rushed up the valley and took off into the sky. The afterglow lingered like some sort of evil aurora borealis.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said.
‘When I was at school I was a milk monitor. A milk monitor lizard,’ said the figure, and these words turned into pale flames that crackled and hissed around me.
‘Your joke caught fire,’ I announced lamely.
‘I was told to “show my feelings” so my anger did a tap-dance.’ More flames.
‘You are roasting the entire valley,’ I rebuked him.
‘During a recent insurrection I was condemned to be “shot on the spot”, but I had unblemished skin that day, and survived . . .’
‘Please stop it!’
Whatever the melting point of my chassis, I knew that of my mind was lower. Already my thoughts were becoming sticky; soon they would turn to liquid and trickle down inside each other to blend into a chaotic mess that would be the end of my very soul. I lowered my head in a gesture of submission and shut my eyes tight. The figure seemed to accept this as the signal to cease weirdly combusting the night.
‘I am the new guardian of Lladloh,’ he explained.
‘I’ve no idea what that means.’
‘The village of Lladloh lies at the far end of this valley and my job is to stop strangers entering. I have been posted here as a sentry, deterring intruders with flaming quips.’
So that is what they are.’
The figure nodded and sighed.
‘To be perfectly frank, I think my creator made a mistake. I believe he intended to arm me with flaming whips, but the specification was written down wrong. When the time came to put me together, he didn’t correct the error. It’s not the first time he’s done something like this. That’s the kind of man he is.’
‘The quips are effective deterrents. May I have the pleasure of knowing your name?’
‘I have already told you. It is Perfectly Frank. My inventor is none other than the great Dr Karl Mondaugen, the finest non-biological father a monster could ever hope to have! He is in the middle of conducting an abstruse ritual in the village, and outsiders would disrupt the procedure. I must repel all attempts to enter Lladloh by any creature. I urge you to turn around and go back the way you came.’
‘Mondaugen, you say? Dr Mondaugen! He is my father, too!’
I honked my horn twice.
Perfectly Frank regarded me with the cold granite stare of a statue that knows how wicked are the ways of all sentient entities, how treacherous and deceitful. ‘Truly?’
‘It’s a possibility! Let me through, please, so that I may ask him the question directly. It would put my mind at rest, for I am but a poor velocipede-human hybrid. I am an orphan with twelve gears and no prospects who wants only to establish his origins so that when he finally dies, weary and rusty, he can at least say, “I was the son of a mighty man! I was the brainchild of Mondaugen”.’
Perfectly Frank rubbed his flinty chin in thought.
‘I don’t know,’ he said at last.
There was an uncomfortable silence that needed to be broken.
‘What is the ritual he is engaged upon?’ I asked.
‘He hopes to summon OOTOO.’
‘I have not heard of him. Is he a celebrity?’
‘OOTOO is an acronym. It stands for One of the Old Ones. You know what the Old Ones are, I take it? There are very many of them. I won’t try to list all their names or we will be here for many weeks.’
‘Which of the Old Ones does he plan to raise?’
‘I would prefer not to say.’
‘Is it Cthulhu himself? Is it Azathoth, Nyarlathotep, Yog-Sothoth, Ithaqua, Aphoom-Zhar, Dagon, Zoth-Ommog, Tsathoggua, Yig, Shub-Niggurath, Ghatanothoa, Hastur the Unspeakable . . . ?’
Perfectly Frank actually shuddered!
‘Well, coincidentally, the name of the one he has chosen is Ootoo. I think he is tired of the duplicity of men and women and wants to teach them a lesson, to punish them, humiliate them. The arrival of Ootoo will achieve that aim.’
I was compelled to agree that it would.
Somehow, I persuaded Perfectly Frank to let me pass. I think he must have recognised that we were brothers. He was taking a big risk, certainly, for it was a dereliction of duty and there was no judging how the inventor might decide to punish a slime mould statue.
I trundled on towards the village. I’ll always remember Perfectly Frank as a good sort.
