Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

And all of these were of gold.

And there were tapestries and tabards and tablecloths and toiletries and tambourines and tricycles and tubas and trumpets, too.

And these too all of gold.

And I sat down upon the King’s throne. And I felt suddenly sick. Because it was too much. It was all too much. It was too much gold. More gold than the human mind was ever intended to see. Gold is precious because it is pure and because it is not commonplace. But a golden city, where everything is gold, was simply too much. And frankly it made me feel rather poorly. And so I sat in a slump on the King’s golden throne and buried my face in my hands.

And then I heard the voices.

And that did make me worried. Because, let’s face it, when you start to hear the voices, you know you’re in really big trouble, mentally.

But hear the voices I did. And I heard the voices chanting. It sounded to me like a Latin chant, which would probably be about right for a place like this. But as I listened more carefully to these chanting voices, I came to realise almost immediately that they were not the product of madness. They were the product of real people chanting. Real people? Or the ghosts of real people?

I huddled on that throne and I listened. It really did sound like Latin.

Wennem clennum wendos.

Wennem clennum wendos.

Ukenem siewott iken sennun.

Wennem clennum wendos.

Well, that’s what it sounded like to me. It was definitely Latin, and once more I fretted that I’d never been taught Latin. At a time like this, a working knowledge of Latin would have come in very handy.

And the chanting voices drew closer.

And everywhere I could hear the sounds of marching, charging feet (boy!).

And something told me that these sounds were not the sounds of ghosts, but indeed the sounds of men. But men? And here? Here in this sunken world? My sunken world?

‘Oh dear me,’ I said to myself. ‘It’s their sunken world I’m in.’

And that really upset me.

And it worried me also, because the chanting was becoming ever louder and the marching, charging feeters were growing closer and closer. And it seemed very likely that they were marching and charging to this very throne room. And that if they were and if they found me here, trespassing, as it were, they might not take to me altogether kindly.

Of course, there was always the chance that they might. That they might welcome me eagerly and ask me to marry the present King’s daughter, if there was one. But this thought did not cross my mind. Because sometimes, when I’m really up against it, I can be just plain pessimistic.

But whatever the case might turn out to be, I shinnied right out of that big throne and scuttled around behind it and hid myself from view.

But peeped out a little from the side, to see what was going on. And presently people entered the throne room, marching, charging and chanting.

Wennem clennum wendos (they went).

Wennem clennum wendos.

And I beheld these underground folk and they were, frankly, gorgeous.

Their complexions, their clothing and their hair colour shouldn’t have surprised me. It was all-over gold. And I could see that their eyes were golden, too. As were their tongues. And although they presented by this colouring a most alien appearance, it was one of such striking beauty that I found my eyes popping wide and my lower jaw dangling down.

And they marched and charged and chanted. And then they stopped. And I beheld, in the midst of them, that they carried aloft a saintly statue of a grinning man of benign appearance. And although the golden folk who carried this statue wore the robes of olden days, this statue appeared to be attired in twentieth-century clothing. Or indeed an impression of it, as a child might draw a house from memory. But the face of the statue was well crafted. The grin was a big one, which exposed a goodly array of teeth, and the eyes were crinkled and friendly.

And there was something familiar about that face. It was as if I had seen it before somewhere. Knew the owner of that face.

But then a fellow gold all over and slightly taller than the rest approached the golden throne, bowed before it and then turned to face the congregation before him.

‘Ettas ternowt nysee gen. Ettas ternowt nysee gen,’ he intoned, most solemnly. And the golden folk did bowings of the heads and mumbled the same in reply.

And I looked very hard at that statue. Stared very hard indeed. And as the congregation took up their former chant once more, I heard it. Heard it for what it really was. Saw him for who he truly was.

Wennem clennum wendos.

Wennum clennum wendos.

You can see what I can see

When I’m cleaning windows.

And yes, it was him. It was him.

That statue, carried aloft, was him.

George Formby.

Ettas ternowt nysee gen.

It has turned out nice again.

And I began to laugh.

And that, it turned out, was a bad thing. And it did not turn out nice again at all.

Because I was overheard in this laughter and I was set upon and I was battered a good many times until I fell once more, and almost willingly, considering all the pain, down and down into that whirling black pit of oblivion.

You know that dream you have, where you’re on your holidays and you’re on a coach going off for a day trip to see some well-known tourist thing, like the Grand Canyon or the Taj Mahal, but the driver takes a wrong turn (and you never know whether he did this on purpose) and you end up in the square of an ancient Aztec city, one of the ones with the big stepped pyramids with the sacrificial altar on the top. And the next thing you know, you are being hustled out of the bus by all these natives with exotic jewellery and up to the top of that pyramid and onto that altar. And a high priest sort of chappie has you all held down and then bares your chest and brings out this razor-sharp dagger and raises it high-

And then the alarm goes off, so you miss the exciting bit.

Well, I was having one of those dreams and it was just getting to that exciting bit when, wouldn’t you know it, I was woken up, and so I missed the exciting bit once more.

Woken up by a splash of cold water right across the gob. To find that I was strapped, all spreadeagled and half-naked, across what, from my limited field of vision, appeared to be a sacrificial altar.

Is that ironic, or what?

And I was about to remark upon its irony, or what, when a certain cold, hard hit of reality informed me that I might well be in a bit of a fix here. Because the high priest chappie, who had been intoning the ‘it’s turned out nice again’ line, was looming over me, holding in his golden mit a whopping great golden dagger.

And I spoke out regarding my disinclination towards him bringing that item of weaponry into close proximity with my person, or indeed to a proximity that was well within it. But found that I could not. As someone had stuffed up my mouth. Which caused a real speech impediment.

And I recalled the fear I’d felt when I’d been made the target of an auto-da-fé in the garden at Graceland. And I felt a similar fear right now. Although at least this death would probably be a quick one. Although I did recall that Captain Lynch had once told me how the priests were so skilled with their knives that they could plunge in, slice away arteries and withdraw the heart, still beating, to display before the victim’s still-living eyes.

And I didn’t fancy that one bit.

And so I tried, with renewed vigour, to give voice to my misgivings. But again without success.

And the priest began a new chant, which again sounded like Latin but was more like pidgin English when I listened carefully. And he chanted the first verse of… ‘Mr Woo’s a Window Cleaner Now’.