Necrophenia by Robert Rankin
Which, I agree, was a pretty dumb thing to say, because if I was going to be any kind of superhero, then that superhero would have to have been Doctor Strange. For he was the Master of the Mystic Arts. And probably a chum of Count Dante, the Master of Dimac, the Most Brutal and Disfiguring of the Martial Arts. Of whom I was a great fan. Although my Dimac manual had still failed to turn up. Even though I’d left a forwarding address for The Flange Collective.
And then suddenly The Rolling Stones issued from somewhere and made for the stage. The band with the black afro-hairstyled electric organ player (what was his name?)16 were leaving the stage. But the two bands passed each other in complete harmony, which I felt very deeply (and was glad).
‘Oi, boy,’ called Mick Jagger. And I suddenly became aware that he was addressing me. ‘Boy, bring on the butterflies when Charlie gives you the nod.’
And Charlie Watts, who was passing by, mimed this nod to me. The miming of the nod and the nod itself were indeed very similar. In fact it would have been, and indeed was, impossible to tell one from the other. Except for the fact that the miming of the nod occurred earlier.
I glared somewhat at Charlie. But I did not project. Because, in all truth, I had become something of a fan of The Stones, and of Charlie in particular. And was hoping to get his autograph later.
Charlie scuttled up the steps. And I bethought me of those other steps, the ones that led up to the school stage (from the left-hand side of the stage when viewed by the audience) on that night that seemed now so long ago.
‘And don’t muff it up,’ said Mick.
And to some extent the rest is history. The Stones went on stage, Mick read a bit of poetry ‘for Brian’ - Shelley, I think it was, or perhaps Byron, or perhaps the Great McGonagall - and then Charlie gave me the nod and I lugged the boxes of butterflies onto the stage. Although hardly lugged, as they didn’t weigh very much. And then Mick opened the boxes and shook out the butterflies, many of which were dead, as you’re not really supposed to box up butterflies. And I looked up into the wonderful skies, and saw the wonderful butterflies and I knew, just knew. I just knew.
What?
Well, that would be hard to explain.
And then I looked out at the audience, the two hundred and fifty thousand beautiful people. And my, they were beautiful, in their beautiful clothes, with their beautiful hair and their beautiful beads and bells. Just beautiful.
But then I saw it.
It, as in something I hadn’t expected to see. Could never have expected to see. And certainly wasn’t supposed to see.
I saw them.
In my heightened condition I saw them. Was enabled to see them. Saw those who were real and those who were not. Saw indeed the living and the dead and could discern the difference between the one and the other.
Because out there, in that crowd, all that were out there were not living. They were there, too. And there were hundreds of them. The animated dead that I had encountered before (although even now, as it were, I do not have complete recollection). But the dead that Mr Ishmael had spoken of - and I knew that I remembered that, indeed now it seemed that I could remember everything - they were out there in the crowd.
And they were in their hundreds.
And they were dead.
And I could see them clearly.
34
And I got rather upset. Because there and then I had a revelation, within my soul-space, and I remembered everything. All the missing bits of what had happened in that cemetery in Hanwell. With our stolen equipment and the mausoleum of Count Otto Black. And the zombies rising in the glowing mist. And the helicopters and gunfire. And the Ministry of Serendipity beneath Mornington Crescent Underground Station. And Darren McMahon the mysterious doctor and Elvis lookalike. And all that was said and all that was done to me and how I suddenly woke up once more back at my luncheon table.
All as if it had happened only yesterday. And all in perfect clarity.
And I looked out across that vista in the park, at all those beautiful people. And I could see the others, lurking amongst them, looking on the outside to be as them, but on the inside, where I could see, not as the living. These were indeed the dead.
And I think, in all of my upsetness, that I must have projected once more, because suddenly now The Rolling Stones were finishing their set, to great applause, from both the living and the dead. And after their encores they were making their way off the stage. And the mighty crowd was stirring, making as to leave, for the show was all over.
But I projected.
And we, The Sumerian Kynges, came on stage.
They looked a bit rattled, the others. They were clearly stoned and Toby was still pulling up his trousers. And Andy was now wearing one of Mick Jagger’s spare stage costumes, which he had apparently availed himself of from the boot of The Stones’ limo. And he looked rather well in it, too, I thought.
And The Stones’ instruments were still on stage. And we took them up. And we played. How we played.
You will note, with grateful thanks I am sure, how I have been sharing with you the original lyrics of The Sumerian Kynges’ songs.
And so now I give you one more. The song that closed our performance at The Stones in the Park gig. When we topped the bill. Although no one remembers it now.
The name of the composition is—
THE BLACK PROJECTIONS
He cursed the black projections as they grew
Though he knew it wasn’t quite the thing to do
But the natives from the town
Turned their backs upon his gown
That he’d won from some old Hindustan gu-ru.
He cursed the black projections that he found.
He tore them off and flung them to the ground.
But the natives played at jacks
With their hands behind their backs
And sold little bags of white stuff by the pound.
He cursed the black projections on his arm.
When he saw them there he cried out in alarm.
But the natives turned away,
They were not inclined to stay
And they went and found new jobs about the farm.
And when the black projections took control
He found it rather difficult to bowl
But the natives in the slips
Stood with hands upon their hips
And dined on cottage tea and Dover sole.
And allow me to say once more that they really and truly do not write songs like that any more.
A standing ovation, I kid you not, from a quarter of a million beautiful people.
And then I felt suddenly exhausted. And I could project no longer. And I sank into a kind of sleep and that was that for me.
I awoke upon the road to Liverpool. Then slept, then awoke once more, on the dock.
‘Where am I?’ I asked. And Andy answered.
‘Liverpool,’ said he.
‘Are we playing Liverpool?’ I asked of Andy.
‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re not.’
‘Then why?’ But Andy shushed me.
And I awoke once more to find—
America.
America!
Blimey. Our ship had docked in New York. I had slept for more than a week. Which had caused Andy some concern. But clearly not too much, because he had, apparently, had an extremely good time on the voyage over. As had the other members of the band.
When I awoke I was anxious to talk about the Hyde Park gig and how we had shamed The Stones with our musical genius.
But none of the other guys wanted to talk about it at all.
In fact they made it quite clear that they had nothing at all to say on the matter. And suggested that I ‘shut the f**k up about that’. And so I said no more. And the subject of what happened that day was never brought up again.
I don’t really understand why they didn’t want to talk about it. Modesty, perhaps.
But I wasn’t going to argue with them. I had h
And all that I had seen in Hyde Park.
The dead people, and everything.
But, I was told, Mr Ishmael was not with us on the ship. He might or might not be coming over to America to join us on our tour.
Mr Ishmael was rather busy at the moment.
So I held my tongue and beheld New York. And I really took to the place.
New York was seedy in a manner of exceeding seediness. London could be seedy, as could any other city in England, but never on the scale of New York. New York had really worked hard on perfecting its seediness and no other city could touch it.
I am told that Shanghai and Singapore tried. But failed.
And Penge put in a bid. Came close, but lost upon population numbers.
The New York club scene was just coming into its own. Club 27, the now infamous den of sin and iniquity, had just opened and it was where the famous went to indulge themselves on all levels. For such is the reward for being famous.
We breezed in on a Thursday night, having first checked in to the Pentecost Hotel. Which was the place to check in to. Thursday nights at Club 27 were Shadow Nights. And so we fell straight into that.
‘What, exactly, are Shadow Nights?’ Andy asked of Neil.
‘Ah,’ said Neil. ‘I’m glad you asked me that question because I know all about Shadow Nights.’
I grinned a bit at Neil and nodded. He did know so much stuff. I wondered whether it would be a good idea to introduce Neil to a Banbury Bloater, so he could know some more.
But Toby had told me that he had no more such Bloaters and suspected that he might not be able to lay his hands on any more Bloaters ever. But then, of course, we were only in New York. We had yet to reach California.
‘So,’ I said to Neil, ‘speak to us of Shadow Nights.’
‘It’s an extra thing,’ said Neil. ‘Like the shrinking buildings.’
‘Not quite following you there,’ I said, ordering, as I did so, a bowl of strawberries from the waitress and a quarter pound of cocaine to sprinkle over them.
‘The woman from Croydon,’ said Neil. ‘You must have heard about the woman from Croydon.’
But strangely no.
And so Neil told us all about the woman from Croydon. And her connection with Shadow Nights at Club 27 in New York. And frankly, I have to admit that I was astounded.
Because I had never heard of her before. But her experiences fitted right in with my experience in Hyde Park and all that went before it.
And indeed was to come afterwards. Although, of course, I wasn’t to know that then. But it put things into place. And exposed a bigger picture and all that kind of business.
And so, I give you another aside, but again a relevant one.
I give you, indeed, the revelations.
Of the woman from Croydon.
35
There was a young lady named Clara
Who crashed in her new Ford Sierra.
The results of collision
Caused hoots of derision
And stays in a home, with a carer.
When Hugo Rune wrote of the soul-space, he also wrote of what he called the mental-mesh. The mental-mesh was a physical thing, in Rune’s opinion, and could be espied under a microscope within a dissected human brain. If you knew just where to look.
The purpose of the mental-mesh is to screen out the bad stuff that would otherwise interfere with the everyday running of human life. A filter, if you will, that prevents the admission of the stuff that would be too much to bear - the interference, cosmic and otherwise. The thickness of the mesh determines the range of the spectrum that our eyes have access to. Also the limitations of sound, both high-pitched and low. That which might be smelled and touched and sensed in all manner of ways. It is an evolutionary development without which humanity could never have raised itself above the animal kingdom. It is well known that birds can see better than Man, and dogs can smell much more and certain creatures sense much more than this. But Man, you will note, is the master of them all. Because by limiting the input, Man can concentrate upon other things, rather than being constantly under a massive sensory assault.
The question arose in Rune’s mighty mind as to what might happen to a man if the mental-mesh was removed from his brain. Rune experimented upon several of his willing acolytes and although he could not claim a one hundred per cent success rate, he described the results as ‘interesting’. And ‘not without some humour’.
But as Rune was to discover, it was not necessary for him to slice away at his acolytes’ heads in order to observe what happens when the mental-mesh is either partially or totally removed. There are some amongst us who lack for mental meshes, either wholly or in part. Or whose mental-meshes have become damaged or ‘holed’ due to some trauma or accident.
And these folk are to be found inhabiting the in-patients’ wards of mental institutions. Here are those diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic. Those who hear the voices. And as those who know of those who hear the voices know, those who hear the voices do not hear the voices inside their heads, they hear the voices coming from outside. And what they see is not internal, what they see is outside of themselves.
Because these unfortunates have holes in their mental-meshes that allow those things that it is better not to hear, to be heard. And those things that it is better not to see, to be seen.
It is not all bad, however, because there are those who hear and see the good stuff rather than the bad. And we call these people blessed, and holy, and prophets, and saints.
And thus it was that a change came unto the lady from Croydon called Clara, when she crashed her new Ford Sierra.
For those who have an interest in such matters - and let’s face it, who amongst us does not? - it is to be noticed that the street plan of Croydon mirrors precisely that of the lost city of Begrem.
Coincidence? Perhaps. But then—
As those who have an interest in such things will also know, Croydon was originally founded as a fundamentalist Christian community by that famous son of a preacher-man Courage Croydon, Hellfire pulpit-thunderer. His South of England crusades in the eighteenth century were intended to instil the Word of God into the pagan peoples of Sussex. Especially Brighton, although even he was forced to give up on Brighton. Courage Croydon travelled with his entourage, the Ladies of the Lord, and was finally bequeathed ‘the lands to all compass points to a distance of twelve leagues from the church founded upon common land by the Reverand Courage Croydon’ by the reigning monarch.
History records that the reigning monarch did this in the hope of keeping Courage Croydon away from the gates of Hampton Court by giving him a goodly parcel of land on which to build what Courage described as ‘the Earthly Kingdom of God’.17
He chose to model this Earthly Kingdom upon the lost city of Begrem because he believed that the plans for Begrem had been drawn up by God and given to the first King in a vision. When a later King fell from favour with God by creating the Homunculus, the city, all turned to gold, sank beneath the Sumerian sands.
Where it remains to this day.
Courage Croydon saw all this in a vision of his own. And the voice of God spoke at his ear and so he took up vellum and quill and drew up plans for Croydon as they were dictated to him.
In his biography of Courage Croydon, Sir John Rimmer speaks of the city of Croydon’s (now world-famous) roundabouts. Rimmer, something of a visionary himself, eschews the theory that crop circles are nothing more than the aftermaths of travelling fairy circuses and attributes them a more mystical significance. ‘They are where the doo-dads dance,’ claims Rimmer. The doo-dads being those creatures that are defined as ‘halfway between Man and the angels’, the communicators of Angelic Wisdom who speak into the ears of the soon-to-be enlightened when God and the angels are otherwise engaged.
‘Thus,’ claims Rimmer, ‘the roundabouts of Croydon are based on the circular systems of Begrem. As the transportation of that early age was horse-drawn, such roundabouts were unnecessary, but were instead created to allow the unobstructed circular dances of the doo-dads, which in those days were invisible to most if not all of the population.’ Rimmer refers to roundabouts as the tarmac equivalent of corn circles. Road circles are they. For doo-dad dances in the round.
Which brings us, rather neatly, back to the lady named Clara.
And the crash that she had on one of Croydon’s roundabouts.
And the consequences of this crash. Which led to the creation of Shadow Nights at Club 27 in New York.
Matters came to pass in this fashion.
With swerve and with crash and with bang.
The morning was bright enough in its way, as Croydon mornings have the habit of being. Folk rose from their beds, stretched, flung wide their bedroom curtains and rejoiced. Beheld the glory that is Croydon, and rejoiced. Tea was brewed and toast was buttered, daily papers taken from the mat. Rosy-cheeked the children were as they were dressed for school. And the stockbrokers’ clerks and the City professionals sang when they strolled to their trains. For Croydon, the good and the Godly, brought as ever joy to those who live there.
And Clara woke from dreams of whalers, hunting for a whale. Whether this whale was white and Moby-Dickish, none can say, for Clara awoke before they’d found it. She awoke beside her husband Keith, a stockbroker’s clerk in the City. Today was their third wedding anniversary.18 And although Keith had planned a major dinner for two at the local Wimpy Bar, this was a well-kept secret and Clara knew nothing of it.
She had, of course, prepared a present for her spouse and this she gave to him before his breakfast. Which had his knees go somewhat numb and he fairly stumbled downstairs for his breakfast.
‘Love is everywhere,’ the singer sang. And who was to doubt him in Croydon?