Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘As to where you are, you are in the Ministry of Serendipity, which is a secret underground research establishment beneath Mornington Crescent Underground Station.’

‘Right,’ I said. Very slowly, I said it.

‘There was an incident last night – an outbreak of the Taint. We isolated it, purged the area and uplifted the only original resident amongst the reoccupied within the violated zone.’

‘Right,’ I said once more. Adding, ‘Really?’ this time.

‘You’d best have a little sleep now,’ said Dr Elvis.

‘I’m not tired,’ I told him.

‘You will be,’ he said, and he took out a pocket watch and perused its face. ‘When you awake you will remember nothing of this.’

‘What?’ I said. Adding, ‘How?’ this time.

‘Hypnogenic narcotiser, in the Welsh breakfast.’ And he counted down upon his watch, starting from ten.

And I have no idea how many were the seconds.

That tick-ticked and tick-tocked away.

But-

‘And that’s how I solved it,’ said Andy. ‘Although Tyler will probably try to take all the credit for himself.’

‘What?’ I said, awakening as if from a dream – a daydream, it must have been – to find myself at the lunching table.

And my mother was dishing out the parsnips and my brother was boasting about something.

‘Are you all right there?’ my brother said to me, breaking off with the boasting for a moment. ‘You look a tad queer. You seemed to be off somewhere else then. Away with the fairies, perhaps.’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I was-’ But I couldn’t recall where I’d been. I was at my lunching table, with my brother and my mother, but before that-

‘Well, do try and pay attention,’ said my brother. ‘I am expecting to get an award.’

‘For what, exactly?’ I asked.

‘For the recovery of all that gear. And there was so much of it, all loaded into that mausoleum vault. It was huge in there, like a storehouse. ’

‘Last night?’ I said, and I got all confused.

‘Wakey-wakey,’ said Andy. ‘The night before last. And where did you take off to? Going to find a phone box and not coming back until yesterday evening.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘Where was I?’

‘Where indeed?’ Andy looked at me. ‘What’s up with you?’ he asked.

‘I’m confused,’ I said. ‘The last thing I remember is going off to find a phone box. Then, well, now, really.’

‘Have you been taking drugs?’ my mother asked. ‘Have you been smoking reefers?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Pussy,’ said my mother. ‘Captain Lynch and I shared a pipe of kiff the other day that nearly took off the top of my head.’

‘I am confused,’ I said to Andy. ‘Tell me what happened. All of it in detail. Tell me, if you will.’

‘Oh, all right,’ said Andy. ‘You went off to find a telephone box, you remember that?’

‘I do,’ I said. ‘Completely. And I remember it took me ages to find one and call Mr Ishmael.’

‘Well, I assumed that you must have found one almost at once because you hadn’t been gone five minutes before this huge furniture van arrives. And this gent calling himself Mr Ishmael gives me the big hello, says he knows that I’m your brother and tells me well done and says that he’ll handle things from then on.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ I said. ‘The timing’s all wrong. How could that be?’ And I shook my head. ‘But go on, please,’ I said.

‘Well, the back door of the van swings down and out leap all these blokes in full camo, like commandos, and they blast their way into the mausoleum and go herding in. And Mr Ishmael had sent me off on my way, but I sneaked back because I wanted to look inside, see if there were any dead people looning about in there.’

‘Dead people,’ I said. And I had a vague recollection of a coloured mist and of rotten corpses.

‘But no zombies,’ said Andy, ‘just all this gear. Tons of the stuff. Not just the gear you had stolen from you – tons of other stuff. Mr Ishmael looked very pleased and ordered it all into the furniture van at the hurry-up. Then he noticed me sneaking a look in and he told me that I would be amply rewarded but that I really must go now because they had to get all this done quickly before the light went.’

‘The light,’ I said.

‘But he said that I would be amply rewarded. And I trusted him. So I just pushed off home. I did wonder what had happened to you, though, but it was cold and growing dark, so I caught a bus and that was that. And this arrived today.’ And Andy now waved something at me. And this something was a cheque.

‘A cheque,’ I said. ‘How much?’

‘Five hundred pounds,’ said Andy. ‘And it’s made out to me.’

‘Five hundred pounds.’ I sat back in my chair and let my spoon go slack. And, as I must have been ladling parsnip with it, I ended up with no little parsnip all down my front.

‘I think I might buy a speedboat and a sports car,’ said Andy. ‘And if I have any money left over, I’ll show it to you. Oh, and see what’s written on the back.’ And Andy handed me the cheque and I read what was written on the back: ‘If you ever want to be in a band, don’t hesitate to ask me,’ and it was signed ‘Mr Ishmael’.

And I groaned softly and did shakings of my head. This was all so wrong. All of it, the timings of things, the way Mr Ishmael knew who my brother was.

There was something missing here. Something big. An entire day of my life, for one thing, it appeared. Where had I been? What had happened to me? How had I got home? How had I just ‘come to’ at the luncheon table? And what was this all about?

I recalled my brother’s talk of zombies.

And the mausoleum that had been packed with other gear. Stolen from other bands? I was going to have a lot of questions to put to Mr Ishmael the next time I saw him.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ I said to Andy, and I handed him back the cheque. ‘I am in a state of considerable confusion.’

‘So where did you go and what did you get up to yesterday?’

I just shrugged and shook my head.

And Andy shook his, too. ‘Memory lapses,’ said he, and he tut-tut-tutted. ‘First sign of going stone-bonkers. And trust me, I know these things. Perhaps you should check yourself into Saint Bernard’s for a couple of weeks.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not mad. But something happened to me.’

‘I lost my memory once,’ said my mother. ‘Or at least I think I did – I can’t remember.’

I opened my mouth to say something, although now I can’t remember what. But I didn’t get to say it because there was a sudden urgent knocking at our front door and my mother went off to answer it.

And when she returned, she said, ‘Tyler, it’s for you.’

And when I asked her who it was, she replied that it was, ‘Two enormous women who look like Les Dawson will in a few years time.’

And I weighed up the pros and cons and left the house by a window.

Sometimes you have to wait a really really long time for an explanation for something that is confusing you. Something that you don’t understand. Like the Big Question, I suppose. You know the one – it goes, ‘What is it all about?’ And you have to wait a really really long time to get that one answered. In fact, you have to wait until all of your life is finished and you are dead to get that explanation. Obviously the fact that you are now reading this book means that you personally are not going to have to wait that long in order to get an answer to that particular question. Because I personally know the answer. And I will be divulging it to you when the time is right.

Which will be a bit later in the narrative. But I will let you know. And it is worth waiting for.