Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘You were drunk. She was drunk. The tattooist was drunk.’

‘And so I got Sergeant Bilko?’

‘I’d never tried tattooing before…’ Fangio’s voice trailed off. ‘You should see what your wife got. Or perhaps you shouldn’t. I think it is what started her hating you, really.’

‘Hating me? I see. Do you think I had any sex at all during my marriage?’

‘You never mentioned to me about having any. And I think you probably would have mentioned it if you had.’

‘And I think I probably would have, too.’ And I gulped down my spritzer. ‘This tastes disgusting,’ I said. ‘What is it?’

‘Would you care to guess? We could have a bet on it. I think I’ve figured out where I’ve been going wrong with my betting, all these years.’

‘All good things must pass,’ I said. Philosophically.

‘So anyway. You split up with her after she stabbed you.’

‘What?’

‘Repeatedly. In the gut area. Lift up your designer T-shirt and have a look.’

And I beheld that I was wearing a designer T-shirt. Not that I had previously known what a designer T-shirt was. Although I suppose I must have, because I probably bought it. Unless I had a lovely girlfriend who had-But probably not. So I upped this designer T-SHIRT and now beheld the multiple scarring and stitching-up marks on my gut area.

‘Oh my God!’ I cried out loud. ‘I’ll bet that hurt. I am so glad I do not remember that.’

‘Your memory will probably return.’

‘I do hope not.’ But it was returning. And fast. And I grabbed at my skull and squeezed it hard between my hands and howled.

And twenty years’ worth of memories returned to me. Twenty dismal years of me trying to scrape a living as a private eye. As if sleepwalking. And I realised that during those twenty years I had not been able to remember what had gone on before. All the horrible stuff involving Elvis’s Homunculus brother, Keith. It was as if I had just returned from a hypnotic trance at the hand-clap of an evil hypnotist.

‘You remember now?’ asked Fange.

‘It’s all coming back,’ I said. ‘But how, I don’t understand.’

‘You’ll figure it out, I’m sure. By the by, now that you’re returning to normal, did you get me those tickets you promised me?’

‘Tickets?’ I said. ‘That I promised?’

‘For The Sumerian Kynges Thirtieth Anniversary Tour. It’s thirty years since they played their first professional gig on Ealing Common with The Flange Collective.’

The Flange Collective? That felt like a lifetime ago. ‘That feels like a lifetime ago,’ I said. ‘They’re all still alive, I suppose.’

‘Depends on what you mean by “alive”,’ said Fangio. And there was a certain something in his voice as he said it. A certain gravitas, perhaps.

‘I know exactly what I mean by “alive”,’ I said. ‘I mean, as opposed to dead.’

‘Ah,’ said Fangio. ‘You certainly haven’t recalled everything yet, then. I know a lot of people think it’s just a lot of talk and conspiracy theory nonsense. And I know that for the last twenty years you have been telling me that it’s all nonsense and that you don’t believe in it and nor should I. But I do believe in it.’

‘Believe in what?’ I asked.

‘The Undead thing,’ said Fangio. ‘The Dead-Walk-Amongst-Us thing.’

‘That,’ I said, in the tone known as leaden. ‘I believe in that.’

‘Sudden change of mind,’ said Fangio. ‘You’ve been making public statements for the last twenty years that the whole thing is a communist hoax.’

‘I have what?’ And more terrible memories returned. I had done that. I really had. I had literally become the spokesman for the There-Are-No-Undead-Amongst-Us lobby.

‘Oh my God,’ I said, and I hung my head once more. ‘Oh my God. I was manipulated. Hypnotised. Drugged. I don’t know what. But somehow I have been controlled for twenty long years. And before that, on the day that Elvis died, I was in some kind of trance. That has to be it – some mind-controlled drug-induced brainwashed trance. Or something.’

‘Or something,’ the barlord agreed. And I am reasonably sure that at this point he would probably have gone off to serve another customer. If there had been another customer. But there were no other customers in Fangio’s Bar. There was just him and me in that bar.

So he stayed.

‘Business not too good?’ I asked.

And Fangio sighed. ‘Not since you closed the bar to everyone except yourself,’ he said.

‘Oh dear,’ said I. ‘And when did I do that?’

‘At the time of your divorce. Which came after just the three weeks of marriage. But let’s not return to that topic of conversation, eh?’

‘Let’s not,’ I said. ‘But I am now awake from that terrible twenty-year walking nightmare of a life. That’s half of my life nearly, all wasted away. I can’t believe it, it’s too terrible. But I do believe in the undead. And I want you to tell me all about what you know of them. And I want you to take the “CLOSED” sign off this door and reopen this bar for business.’

‘Praise the Lord,’ cried Fangio, throwing up his not-quite-so-podgy fingers. ‘Praise the Lord, Lordy Lordy.’

‘And never say “Lordy Lordy” again,’ I told him.

And Fange promised that he never would.

And Fange left the shelter of his bar counter, crossed the floor (rather smart trousers he wore, and the wooden leg was only memory), reached the door, turned the ‘CLOSED’ sign to the ‘OPEN’ side and returned to from whence he had come.

‘A job well done,’ said Fangio. ‘And welcome back, Laz. It has been a very long time.’

‘It has,’ I agreed. ‘And I am very angry about this state of affairs.

Someone has been playing awful games with my life, and I’m damn sure I know who. And I will do something about it and about them. You see if I don’t. Okay?’

‘Okay,’ said Fangio. ‘But you did of course say that the reason for your last twenty years of mostly inactivity was because you were perfecting the Tyler Technique. Does this new-found positivity mean that you have now perfected it? Or is it a by-product of the nineties Zeitgeist? The post-yuppie work ethic?’

‘Tell me about the undead,’ I said to Fangio. ‘And get me a proper drink. And get one for yourself. And we’ll both have doubles. Okay?’

And Fangio did as I bade him to do.

And then he settled himself down upon his side of the bar and he told me things. And these things were terrible things.

But I had to be told them and so I listened.

Quietly, like this.

I listened.

‘There’s a lot of different versions of this story regarding the undead,’ said Fangio. ‘Some say the whole thing started here and others say it started there. No one is exactly sure where and when it all began, but there are a growing number of informed and intelligent folk who do believe it. And folk have been piecing things together. And folk talk in bars. And I listened to these folk. And I have been listening to folk during the last ten years, in this bar, having meetings, while you have been out at your meetings propagandising to the contrary on this matter.’

I made certain groaning sounds. ‘Please continue,’ I told him.

And so Fangio continued.

‘Legends say that it started in Vietnam, but researchers have found anomalies that date back as far as the First World War. There was the case of a man named Billy Balloon, a Punch and Judy man in Edinburgh. He went off to fight for his King and his country, and returned to join the family business and perform as a Punch and Judy man. And he is remembered in the annals of Punch and Judy men as being one of the greatest that ever there was. But the mystery of it is this: he had his arms and his tongue blown off during that dreadful war, so how could he work the puppets and do all the voices as well?’