Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

31.12.1899

‘The stolen equipment is in here?’ I said to Andy. ‘Are you absolutely certain?’

‘Absolutely,’ said Andy, and he removed his dog-mask. ‘And it all falls rather neatly into place, as it happens.’

‘Does it?’ I asked. ‘How so?’

‘Because, as I told you, those who stole the equipment were dressed as women. But they weren’t women. But neither were they men. That’s why I couldn’t identify the smell, and pondered, in all foolish frivolousness, the possibility that space aliens might be involved. Nothing of the sort, it appears.’ And Andy sniffed again and said, ‘It’s clear as clear and my nose doesn’t lie. The gear wasn’t stolen by living beings. The gear was stolen by the dead.’

Well, all right and fair enough, I wasn’t expecting that!

‘Dead people?’ I said to Andy. ‘Dead men stole my Strat?’

Andy did some further sniffings. ‘That’s how it’s smelling,’ said he.

‘You mean zombies,’ I said to Andy. ‘The living dead. Slaves to their voodoo master.’

‘That is the popular consensus opinion,’ agreed Andy. ‘Reanimated corpses controlled by evil puppet-master magicians.’

‘But here? In Hanwell?’

‘Zombism was bound to reach here eventually,’ reasoned Andy. ‘I read recently the term “global village” being used to describe the world.’

‘Did you read it in Teenage She-Male Today?’ I asked.

But Andy said no, he had not.

‘So what do we do?’ I now asked. ‘Get shovels and dig? Fetch a priest? Employ an exorcist? I am a little out of my depth here. And, if I am altogether honest, rather frightened also.’

‘Have no fear,’ said Andy. ‘Your big brother is with you.’

‘I’ll go to a phone box and call Mr Ishmael,’ I said.

‘Mr Ishmael?’ said Andy. ‘Who he?’

‘The manager of the band,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to clear it with him about you joining, of course, but I’m sure it will be nothing but a formality.’ And I tried to make a convincing face as I said this.

‘All right,’ said Andy. ‘You find a phone box and call him. Tell him to bring a lot of villagers, with flaming torches.’

‘Villagers with flaming torches are more your Frankenstein’s monster than your zombie,’ I said.

‘Well, tell him to get them here before dark.’

‘And isn’t “after dark” for vampires and werewolves? Zombies are all-day-rounders, I think.’

‘You appear to know an awful lot about this sort of thing,’ said Andy.

‘Not really,’ I said and I shrugged. ‘I just go to a lot of horror movies, don’t you-’

And then I cut that line of conversation short. They probably didn’t get to watch too many horror movies in the lunatic asylum.

‘I’ll go and make the phone call,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you should come with me.’

‘No way,’ said Andy. ‘I’m staying here.’

‘Are you sure it’s safe?’

Andy shrugged and replaced his mask. ‘I’m a dog,’ he said. ‘It’s safe for me. And think of this place from a dog’s perspective – all those buried bones.’

And I took off to find a phone box. Fast.

I didn’t know exactly what I was going to say to Mr Ishmael. I didn’t think I would broach the subject of zombies. It would be better, I considered, simply to pass on the location of the stolen goods, as he had instructed me to do, and leave the actual recovery of them to him.

So, case solved, really.

I walked tall on my way to the phone box. My first case as a private eye and I had breezed through it. I was a natural, there was no mistake about that. I’d rent an office. There was one up for rent above Uncle Ted the greengrocer’s. I could almost visualise the name, engraved into the frosted-glass panel of the door: ‘PRIVATE-TYLER’, like

‘Private-Eye-ler’, see? Or ‘PRIVATYLER’ as just one word that sort of rolled off the tongue.

And I felt rather pleased with myself.

I had triumphed here.

I reached the phone box and found to my chagrin that it had been vandalised and was in a non-operative condition. And it was quite a long walk to the next one, which had been similarly disfigured.

After much walking in the cold, I found myself nearly back at Ealing Broadway, with, as it was late December, night now falling around me. But I did eventually find a working phone box and I did phone the number on Mr Ishmael’s card.

And it was engaged.

And I phoned again and I phoned again and eventually after many many such phonings, the phone rang at his end. But no one answered it. And-

Well, eventually I did get through. And I spoke to Mr Ishmael and I told him that I had located the stolen equipment and where I had located it and I named the mausoleum of Count Otto Black and everything.

And then there was a bit of a silence at his end of the line and I thought that perhaps I had been cut off.

But finally he spoke and he said to me, ‘Go home, Tyler. You have done very well and I am proud of you. But you must not, under any circumstance, return to that cemetery. There is great danger there and I do not want you to be put into such danger.’

‘Oh,’ I said. And then I said, ‘Oh dear.’

‘Just go home,’ said Mr Ishmael to me. And he replaced the receiver.

But of course I didn’t go home. I could hardly do that. If there was great danger in that cemetery, then I had left Andy in that great danger, and by doing so, any harm that came to him would be my fault. And my fault or no, I really did care about my brother and I certainly didn’t want any real harm to come to him. So I jumped onto the next 207 bus that was heading towards Hanwell and took to the chewing of my knuckles on the journey.

The bus stop was only a hundred yards or so away from the cemetery gates and I ran the rest of the way.

But it was dark now and once within the gates of the cemetery there was little or no light at all and I almost immediately lost my sense of direction and began to blunder about blindly, tripping over this and that, bumping into this and that and generally making a complete unholy twat of myself.

But even if I was lost, I was not dumb.

And so I shouted. Loudly. ‘Andy’ I shouted. As loudly as I could. ‘Andy, where are you? Mr Ishmael is bringing help. We ought to get out of this graveyard. There’s danger. Great danger. Andy, where are you?’

I shouted this and permutations of this. Numerous permutations of this, in fact. And I blundered on and I wished, really wished, that Andy and I were not in this god-forsaken boneyard, but back at home, sitting at the dining table, eating parsnips and chatting away with our mum and our dad. But not talking with our mouths full, obviously.

‘Andy,’ I shouted. ‘Where are you?’

And then things got a little complicated.

I had been blundering and shouting in the darkness for a while, when I suddenly saw the light. This wasn’t the Light that was seen by New Testament prophets. At least, I didn’t think it was. No, it definitely was not that Light. This was another light entirely. This was a sinister light, a crepuscular glow of a light, a Jack-o’-Lantern unearthly shimmer of a light, and it wafted up from the ground in all directions around me. It was a very queer light, for it rose a foot or two from the ground and then no further, as if it were contained, had its specific parameters illumination-wise, as it were. It fair put the willies up me, I can tell you. I didn’t like that light one bit.

But if the light had qualities about it that were outré and unquantifiable, then this light and its qualities were as nought (very nought) when put in comparison to what occurred next. For what occurred next was most horrid.

They rose, they did, from the ground. Before me and to either side, and, turning to run, behind me, too, I noticed. They rose from the ground as in climbed from it. Mouldy fingers clawed out from the frozen ground. Hands thrashed up from the snow, fought for release, and then up they came, the terrible ones, the ungodly ones, the walking dead, the hideous crew. The zombies.