Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

12 More of That Box 23 Business

And so it came to pass that Russell’s mother didn’t get her stair lift. She didn’t get it, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind because she had no idea that Russell intended to buy her one and even if she had known, she still wouldn’t have minded.

She was dead nice, was Russell’s mum. Much of Russell’s niceness came from her side of the family. So she wouldn’t have minded. And not only because she was nice, but also because she lived in a bungalow.

Of course Russell’s one thousand, one hundred and one pounds and fifty pence (no longer such a memorable sum as it had earned a bit of interest) was not going to finance the making of an entire movie. Russell would have to come up with a lot more than that. But being Russell and being nice and being a hard worker (and everything), he would come up with it. But not at this precise moment.

At this precise moment I would like to relate to you a tale told to me by a close friend of mine. He told me this tale in response to me telling him the one my Uncle John told to me, about the man who wasn’t really a man at all.

The reason for the telling of this tale is that it plays a large part in what will shortly occur to Russell. And even if it didn’t, it’s a real raging stonker of a story.

My close friend’s name is Mr Sean O’Reilly and I know what you’re going to say, “Oh yeah right, Bob. Sean O’Reilly!” But he is a real person and it is his real name and being a Sean O’Reilly is not without its problems.

For instance, a couple of weeks back he was having a night out in Brighton. The final bell had gone and no more orders were being taken at the bar. Sean, for whom the night was yet young, set off in search of a club with more civilized licensing hours, where music played and ladies of negotiable affections might be found. And he came across the Shamrock Club.

Now being of Irish descent, and being a Mr Sean O’Reilly, he reasoned that a welcome would lie within for him and proceeded to engage in friendly chit chat with the bouncer (or “door-supervisor” as he preferred to be called). This able-bodied fellow agreed to waive the usual formalities, accept a five pound gratuity for so doing and sign Sean in as a member.

“Phwat is yer nam?” enquired the door-supervisor.

“My name is Sean O’Reilly,” said Sean O’Reilly, and was promptly booted from the premises on the grounds that he was “taking the piss”.

It’s not much of a story, I know. But it’s a true one and the trouble with true ones is that they never usually amount to very much. The one Sean told me, however, in response to the one I told him, is a different kettle of carp altogether. It is a strange and sinister story and again the warning is issued to those of a nervous disposition, those wimpy individuals who get squeamish about watching a snuff movie or a live execution (hard to believe, I know), that now would be the time to flick on forward to the next chapter.

Right, well now we’ve got rid of that lot, on with the gory stuff.

At the time Sean heard all the gory stuff of which this tale is composed, he was sitting in the casualty department at Brighton General. Sean had been working as a roofer, and, as anyone who has ever worked as a roofer will tell you, roofers periodically fall off roofs. It’s a sort of perk of the job. Sean had been working on a garage roof and Sean had fallen off and sprained his ankle.

Now, as those who have never worked on, or fallen off roofs, but have sat waiting in a casualty department will tell you, about fifty per cent of the other folk sitting there have got sprained ankles. This is not because they are all roofers, you understand, it is because most injuries occur to your extremities. Your hands and feet. A nurse once told this to me, as I sat waiting to have my sprained ankle looked at. (I hadn’t fallen off a roof, but I’d tripped up in one of the potholes that no-one wants to take responsibility for, in the-lane-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, where I live.)

“It’s hands and feet mostly,” she told me. “And hands and feet are low priority, so you’ll just have to wait.” Adding, “Would you care for a copy of Hello! magazine to read? It’s the one with James Herbert in it.”

Sean did not have to wait to have his sprained ankle looked at. Because Sean had been tipped off by a friend of his who was a male nurse about how to get seen at once in a casualty department, even if you only have a sprained ankle. Sean passed this tip on to me, and I, in turn, pass it on to you.

The tip is SCREAM!

Scream as loudly as you can and scream continuously. Doctors and nurses can’t abide screaming in their waiting-rooms, it upsets them and it makes the other patients uneasy. That’s the tip, but keep it to yourself.

So Sean had screamed like a maniac and Sean had been wheeled away to a cubicle and given an injection of something quite nice. And while he lay there, awaiting the results of the X-rays, he overheard a conversation going on in the next cubicle between an old man and a priest. And the substance of this conversation is the substance of Sean’s tale, which has a later bearing on Russell.

And what Sean overheard was this.

The old man was groaning a lot and Sean recognized The Last Rites being read. Then the old man spoke.

“I must tell you, father,” said the old man. “Tell it all to you.”

“As you wish, my son.”

“It all began for me some years ago. I was living up North at the time, in the town of H –”

“The town of H –?”

“As in Hamster.”

“Oh, that one, go on then.”

“I was chief wick-dipper at the candle works, a position of considerable responsibility and prestige. Many doors were open to me then, even some with the closed-sign up. But fate being fickle and man ever weak to desires of the flesh, I fell in with a bad crowd and engaged in acts of drunkenness and debauchery.”

“Would you care to enlarge upon these, my son?”

“No, father, I would not”

“A pity, but go on.”

“My employer was a goodly man who greatly feared God and was rarely to be seen without his hat on. He was the very soul of forgiveness, but even he, for all his God-fearing ways and the wearing of his hat, could not find it in his Christian heart to pardon my wickedness.”

“Was this fellow a Protestant?”

“That he was, father.”

“Shameful, go on with your story.”

“After the episode with the pig he –”

“A pig, did you say?”

“And a modified power tool.”

“Was that a Black and Decker?”

“No, just a pig on this occasion.”

“Sure it happens to the best of us, go on.”

“I was stripped of my trappings, my badge of office torn from my bosom, my woggle trampled underfoot.”

“And all for a pig and a modified power tool?”

“Father, would you let me just tell my story? I’m dying here.”

“Go on then, I won’t interrupt.”

“Thank you. I was cast out, expelled from The Guild of Candlemakers, a social pariah. Ostracized, a proscribed person. Boycotted, blackballed –”

“Blackballed? But I thought you said –”

“Father, will you shut the fuck up?”

“I’m sorry, my son. Go on now, just tell me what happened.”

“I was an outcast, all doors that had previously been open to me were now closed. Even the closed ones were closed. I walked the streets as a man alone, none would offer me ingress.”

“Not even the pig?”

“Father!”

“Sorry, go on.”

“I was alone. Alone and unwanted. I would sit for days at a time in the library, poring over the papers in the hope that I might find some gainful employment, no matter how humble. But so foul was the stigma attached to my person that all turned their backs upon me. I was low, father, so low that I even considered returning to the occupation I’d had before I entered candlemaking.”

“And what occupation was that? If you’ll forgive me asking.”

“Priest,” said the old man.

“Right,” said the priest.

“But it never came to that, although now I wish that it had. Rather would I have thrown away the last vestiges of my dignity and rejoined the priesthood than –”

“Don’t lay it on too thick,” said the priest. “You might be a dying man, but you’ll still get a smack in the gob.”

“I saw this advert, father. In the paper. It said, SELL YOUR SPINE AND LIVE FOR EVER.”

“Would that not be a misprint? Would it not be sell your soul?”

“It was SELL YOUR SPINE. There was a telephone number, I rang that number and there was a recorded message. It said that a seminar was to be held that very evening at a particular address and to be there by eight o’clock.”

“And so you went along?”

“Yes, I went along. I don’t know why I went along, but I did. Madness. Sell your spine? How could such a thing be? But I went along, oh fool that I was.”

“Should I just be quiet now and let you do all the telling?” asked the priest. “Build up the atmosphere, and everything.”

“That would be for the best. As I said, I went along. The seminar was being held in this little chapel affair that was once an Anabaptist hall. It was very run down and all boarded up. The door looked as if it had been forced open and a generator was running the lights. Old school chairs stood in bleak rows, there was a small dais where the altar had been. On the chairs sat a dozen or so folk who were strangers to me, upon the dais stood a tall man dressed in black. He welcomed me upon my entrance and bade me sit down near to the front. And then he spoke. Of many things he spoke, of the wonders of modern medicine and great leaps forward made in the fields of science. He was an evangelist, he said, come to spread the word of a new beginning, that each of us could have a new beginning, cast away our old selves and begin again.

“He had been sent among us, he said, by an American foundation that had made a major breakthrough. It was now possible to extend a person’s lifespan. Not for ever, he did admit that, because, as he said, there is no telling exactly how long for ever might be. But he could guarantee at least five hundred years. And how could he guarantee this? Because the special units, constructed to replace the spines that were to be removed, were built to last at least this long.

“He explained that the ageing process was all to do with the spine. Certain genes and proteins manufactured within the spinal column, certain natural poisons, made you grow old. Total spine replacement freed you from ever growing old.

“He talked and he talked and although I did not understand all that he said, there was something in the way he talked, something compelling that made me trust him. And when he had finished I found myself clapping. But I was clapping all alone. The other folk had gone, I’d never heard them go, but they were gone, there was only myself and the man in black.

“He asked me whether I would like to live for another five hundred years and I said yes. I said yes and praise the lord. Yes, father, you may well cross yourself. I said yes and praise the lord and I said, show me, show me.”

“And he showed you?” The priest spoke slowly.

“He led me into a little back room, sat me down upon a chair and then he took off his clothes. In front of me, right there. He removed his jacket and his shirt and then he turned around. And I saw the buttons, father. I saw them.”

“The buttons?”

“On his skin. On his back. The skin, you see, had been cut, from his wrists to the nape of his neck and from there right down the middle of his back. And the skin was turned back and hemmed, as would be the material of a garment and there were buttonholes with buttons through them.”

The priest caught his breath. “You saw this?”

“I saw it. He was inside a suit of his own skin. Do you see?”

“I see.”

“Do you want to see?”

“Want to see?”

“See them, father. See those buttons. See them on my back?”

“No … I … my son, no.”

The old man coughed and the priest mumbled words of Latin.

“I saw his back, father. He explained to me how it was done. How they made a cast of you, of your body and they constructed this perfect replica of you which you climbed into through the back. I don’t know, father. Is it my skin on the outside? How much of me is still me? But I saw it and he told me how it was done, how you climbed inside yourself and they removed your spine and buttoned you up and you would live for five hundred years.” The old man coughed hideously. “You make decisions, father. All through your life, you make decisions, wrong decisions. You can’t rewind to the past and remake those decisions, set your life off in a new direction. No-one can do that. I made the wrong decision and now I must die for it.”

The priest spoke prayers as the old man rambled on.

“Why would I have wanted to live for five hundred years? I was out of work. Did I want five hundred years of unemployment? But I was greedy for life. For more life. I said yes, do it to me, give me more life.

“I stayed all night with him. I let him make casts of my body. I stood naked before this man whom I’d never seen before. He took photographs of me and samples of my hair and when it was all done, he told me to come back the next evening, that all would be ready then.

“I didn’t sleep that day, I was sleeping rough anyway. I just walked around the town, this town that hated me so much. And I thought, Look at these people, they may have jobs, they may be rich, but they will all die, die soon. Not me. I’ll outlive the lot of them. I will cheat death. I’ll go on into the future. Dance on their graves.”

The priest let out a small sigh.

“And so I went back the next night. The man in black, I didn’t even know his name, he took me again into that room and he showed me. He showed me the new me. It was a perfect me, taller, better built, younger-looking, more handsome. It stood there and it was an empty shell. I hadn’t eaten, I felt sick and light-headed and he showed me the back, my back. And there, at the back, were these little doors, hinged doors, of polished wood. On the arms and the legs, like a suit of armour, but of polished wood, beautifully made, brass hinges and little catches, the skin closed over these, you see, once you were inside. But I don’t know how that worked, I didn’t understand. And they’d built it so fast. It was a work of art. Sort of like ship-building, polished wood, little bits of rigging –”

The old man broke down once more into a fit of coughing.

The priest wanted to call for a nurse, but the old man stopped him.

“He said it was built to last. Built to out-last. To continue. Then he told me to take off my clothes and climb in. Step into the future.

“I knew this was wrong, father. I knew it. You can’t cheat death. You have only your own time. But I made that wrong decision, I tore off my clothes and climbed into the back of this new self. I put my head up inside its head, like a mask, you see, put my arms inside the arms, my hands into the hands, like gloves, legs inside the legs. And then he shut the little doors at the back, snapped them shut and clicked the catches. And there was this terrible pulling, this shrinking as that new skin shrank around me, embracing me, clinging to me.

“My neck tightened, this awful compression and he said, ‘I must take your spine now. The exchange must be made.’ I struggled, but he took hold of me and he had this instrument, like a pump, polished brass, very old-looking and he put it against the small of my back and he –”

“Nurse!” called the priest.

“No!” cried the old man. “No, let me speak, let me finish. What he did to me. The pain. I woke up in a doss house and when I woke up I screamed. And I looked around and I laughed then, and I thought, oh no, it was a dream. A nightmare, drunk probably, oh how I laughed. But then, but then, as I sat up on that wretched bed, I knew it had all been true and I felt at my neck and I could feel the flap and the button and I knew that that other self was now inside me, I wasn’t inside it. The backs of my arms, hard under the skin, like wood and my legs, my back, rigid and I was numb. I couldn’t smell anything, even there in that stinking doss house, not a thing and I no longer had a sense of taste. I got up and I was like a robot, an automaton, I was not a person any more, like a doll, not a person.

“I walked about and I looked at people, but they weren’t like people any more, they seemed like animals, or some remote species. But it wasn’t them, it was me. I wasn’t one of them. I was something different. And now they meant nothing to me. I was remote from them, aloof. I couldn’t feel them any more. Emotionally, I couldn’t feel them emotionally. I had no feelings. No love, no hate. Nothing, just a great emptiness inside.”

There was a moment of silence and then the priest said, “I am afraid, my son. You have made me afraid.”

“I am afraid, father. Afraid of what I have done.”

“Will you tell me more?”

“I will tell you all. I knew that I was afraid then. But I could not feel it. I knew that I was angry, very angry, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t remember how those things felt. But I knew one thing and that was that I could not go through five hundred years of this. Of this emptiness and solitude. This apart-ness. I wanted my self back, wretched thing that it was, but it was me.

“I returned to that chapel to seek out the man who had taken my spine. But he was gone, the chapel was all boarded over, the door chained shut. I did not know where he might have gone to, I couldn’t know where. But I knew I had to find him, to reclaim my self. And so I searched. I walked, father. I walked across England. And I didn’t need to eat - I felt no hunger - or sleep - I never felt tired. I walked and walked from town to town until the shoes wore off my feet and then I begged for more. I searched through the pages of every local newspaper.

“I walked, father, for fifty years I walked.”

The priest caught his breath. “For fifty years?” he whispered.

“For fifty years. But I found him. I finally found him, right here, right here in Brighton. Another small advert in the local paper, another chapel just like the first. And there he was, up upon the dais. Same man, same suit, exactly the same. He hadn’t aged by a day. I kept to the rear of the hall, in the shadows and I watched and I listened. It was all the very same. And I watched his audience. The same audience, father, the same people, even after fifty years I recognized them all, sitting there, straight-backed.

“He spoke, a newer speech now, of micro-technology and silicone chips, but he was selling the same thing. The five hundred years. And as he spoke the other folk drifted out, leaving only me, hiding at the back and one lone downtrodden-looking man at the front, and after he had spoken he led this man away.

“I crept after them. I had a gun and I could feel no fear. I stood at the door of another little back room, listening. I knew he would be removing his shirt. I had waited so long for this, but I was like a sleepwalker, so distant. I turned the handle and pushed open the door. He stood there, half naked. I shouted at him, raised my gun, the young man saw the gun and he ran away. He was safe, he would be spared my torment.

“The man in black slipped on his shirt, he was cool, I knew that he could feel nothing. Or what did I know? He did this to other people, yet he knew what it was like. I had many questions. Fifty years of questions.

“‘So, said he. ‘This is most unexpected.’

“‘Give me back my spine,’ I told him. ‘Give me back my self.’

“And he laughed. Laughed in my face. ‘After fifty years?’ he said. ‘It is gone. It is dust.’

“My hand that held the gun now shook. Of course it was dust. Of course after all this time. After all these years.

“‘But you go on,’ he said. ‘You go on into the future. Look at you, still young, still fit.’

“‘No!’ I cried. ‘No. I will not be like this. Not what you have made me. I will kill myself, but first I will kill you. You will do to no more folk what you have done to me.’

“He shook his head. He smiled. ‘You fail to grasp any of this,’ he said. ‘I am just one, there are many like me. Like us. Our number grows daily. Soon, soon now, all will be as we are. You will achieve nothing by killing me.’

“‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Why do you do this?’

“‘A new order of life,’ he said. ‘A new stage in development. A world freed of emotion, without sickness or hatred.’

“‘Without love,’ I said and he laughed again.

“‘Put aside your gun,’ he said, ‘and I will show you why this must be and then you will understand.’

“I put aside my gun. I would kill him, I knew this. And I would kill myself. But I had to know, to understand.

“‘Follow me,’ he waved his hand and led me from the room. Along a dirty corridor we went and down a flight of steps towards the boiler house below. Here he switched on a light and I saw heaps of ancient baggage, old portmanteaus, Gladstone bags. ‘All mine,’ he said, and opening a musty case he took out an ancient daguerreotype in a silver frame. He held it up to me and I looked at the portraiture. A gaunt young man in early Victorian garb.

“‘It is you,’ I said.

“He inclined his head. ‘I was the first. I opened up the way for Him and He gave this life to me.’

“‘For Him?’ I asked.

“‘I am His guardian, until all are converted. It is conversion, you see, real conversion.’

“‘Who is this person?’

“‘Oh, He’s not a person.’ The man in black stepped back from me. There was a old red velvet curtain strung across a corner of the room, he took hold of it and flung it aside. And I saw Him. I saw the thing. It sat there on a sort of throne, hideously grinning. It was like a monstrous insect. Bright red, a complicated face with a black V for a mouth and glossy slanting eyes. And this face, it seemed to be composed of other things, of people and moving images, moving, everything moving. Shifting from one form to another. I cannot explain exactly what I saw, but I knew that it was wrong. That it was wrong and it was evil. That it shouldn’t be here. That it was not allowed to be here. He had brought it here, this tall gaunt man, he was its guardian. All he was and all he did was for the service of this creature.

“‘Meet your maker,’ said the man in black. ‘Meet your God.’

“‘No!’ I fumbled for my gun, but I no longer had it, the man in black had somehow stolen it from me. I wanted to attack this thing. I felt no fear, you see. I couldn’t fear. But the sight of this thing was such that I knew, simply knew, that I must destroy it. I raised my hands to strike it down, but the gaunt man held me back.

“‘You must kneel,’ he cried, ‘kneel before your God.’

“I fought, but he forced me before it. It glared down at me and it spoke. The voice was like a thousand voices. Like a stadium chant. ‘You wanted more time,’ it said.

“‘But I have your time, your real time. The time you had to come. And now I will have all your time. You have seen me and so I must have all of your time.’

“And it opened its horrible mouth. Wide, huge and it sucked in. And I knew it was sucking me in. Sucking in my time. All the time I’d already had, all my life. That’s what it did, you see, father. From the spines. It had my real future time and now it was sucking in my past. It was taking all the time I’d had before. The time of my childhood, my youth. It was taking all that. And it wasn’t fair, father. It wasn’t fair.”

“It wasn’t fair, my son.” The priest was weeping now. “It isn’t fair.”

“It took my time, it took all my time.”

The pub had gone rather quiet. As Sean had been telling this tale to me more and more folk had been gathering around to listen. And they were listening intently, as if somehow they knew the truth of this tale. Or had heard something similar. Or knew of someone who had told such a tale to someone else.

“Is that it?” I asked Sean, when finally I found my voice.

“Not quite,” Sean took a pull upon the pint of beer that had grown quite warm, while the listeners’ hearts had chilled. “The priest was weeping, crying like a child and he ran out of the cubicle. He ran right past me, he looked terrified. And I sat there, I could hear the old man wheezing, he was dying. He had told his awful tale and now he was dying. He had lost all his time and now he was going to die alone. Utterly alone.

“I sat there and I thought, I can’t let this old man die like that, it’s so wrong. Someone should be there with him, to hold his hand. I should be there with him. I heard his tale too.

“So I got down from my bed and I limped around to his cubicle. My ankle didn’t hurt because of the injection, but even if it had hurt, I wouldn’t have cared. I pushed back the curtain and I went inside. He was lying there on the bed and he smelled really bad. The smell of death. I smelled that on my Gran when I was a child. The man was about to die.

“He was all covered up, except for his head and his face looked old. Like really old. Like a hundred years old. It made me afraid just to look at him. I pulled down the cover so I could get at his hand, he was pretty much out of it by then, he probably didn’t even know I was there. But I pulled down the blanket and I took hold of his hand.

“But it wasn’t a man’s hand. It was a child’s hand. A little child and when I pulled the blanket right back I could see his body. It was a baby’s body. This old man’s head on top of a baby’s body. And as I took hold of the hand, this little hand, it was shrinking. Shrinking and shrinking. His time had been stolen, you see, his previous time, his past time. The thing had stolen it all from him and he was going back and back until he wouldn’t exist at all, would never exist at all. I tried to hold the hand, but I couldn’t. It just got smaller and smaller. All of him, smaller and smaller, his head was the size of a grape and I saw the eyes look up at me and the mouth move. And he spoke.”

“And what did he say?” I asked Sean.

“He said, ‘help me, help me,’ and then he just vanished.”