Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘Speak to me of the George,’ said I, ‘and of how the word of the George came unto your kingdom. Ee-oop, Mother.’ And I did a Formby giggle.

‘Ah,’ said the high priest, speaking with his mouth half-filled with bread, which frankly I could have done without. ‘In ancient of times, there was a former priest of Begrem, one who held to the old wicked ways of necromancy and the breeding of the Homunculus. He claimed that he had received a divine revelation that there was a world above this one. That we inhabit an underworld, this dull, monochrome, worthless world, but high above there is a beautiful world where there are more colours. And you are here, from this world, which proves it. Although we did get it wrong initially when we thought that you were an evil demon sent down to destroy us all. But I have apologised for that.’

And I nodded and I smiled and said, ‘Go on.’

‘The priest had a mighty tower constructed that reached up to the rocky sky. And he set his underlings to cut into the rocky sky and tunnel upwards. And this they did for a considerable length of time, but as we have no concept of night and day, it is difficult to say quite how long.’

And I made a certain face to this, but bid him continue anyway.

‘They tunnelled up and finally broke through into a tiled tunnel above. And it was not all mono-coloured. It was of many colours. And then they saw the folk above, gathered in congregation before the George.’

And I did noddings of the head to this, recalling the George Formby movie posters I’d seen in the station above. The tunnellers had clearly broken through during one of the nightly showings.

‘And the priest passed down word of what he had seen, many words, the holy hymns – “The Lancashire Torreador”, “Limehouse Laundry Blues” and all the rest. Because he saw the George as a great vision upon the wall, far bigger than any man.’

The movies for sure, I thought.

‘And he passed on all of these wonders to our people, who turned then from their old evil ways to embrace the hymns and sayings of the George, that all might be happy and go to the foot of their stairs in a state of grace and abiding joy.’

‘That’s a lovely story,’ I said.

‘Story?’ said the high priest.

‘Well, I know it’s all true, obviously.’

‘And so our people prepared to go above, to join the worshippers in the Tunnel of the George. But as the priest climbed up there, the terrible Wheelie Monster mashed him all to pieces.’

‘He was run over by a train,’ I said, with some degree of sadness. And some degree of a smirk, which I hid. But I could see the funny side.

‘A train?’

‘It’s a Wheelie Monster, like you said.’

‘And so we knew that we were not yet worthy, that we had not yet earned the right to go above. And so the tunnel was filled in and the great tower demolished. But our prophets claimed that some time in the future, someone would descend to deliver us from this terrible place and take us above into the Tunnel of the George.’

‘Yep,’ I said, raising my glass. ‘That’s me. But why did you think I was some horrid monster and want to stab me up with your big knife?’

‘It would appear that an underling turned over two pages at once of The Great Book of All Knowledge (and Selected Lyrics). For it is written that two shall come down from above, The first being the Deliverer, the second being the pinky-pink monster that must be all cut to pieces at the hurry-up.’

‘Well, that explains everything,’ I said. And I smiled. ‘Things are always so simple once they’re explained, aren’t they?’ And then I whispered an enquiry as to whether I could do anything I wanted to do with the golden girlies.

And the High Priest said that yes, I could, but not at the dining table as it would upset his mum, who was sitting down at the end. And I waved to his mum, a lady in a golden straw hat, and she waved back to me.

‘Well, isn’t this all very nice,’ I said to the high priest. ‘But I seem to be all filled up now, so I think that perhaps I will skip pudding and take myself off to my sleeping accommodation with a couple of golden girlies.’

But the high priest said that although he was happy enough with that, his mum, who was now very old, and who had always been a devoted follower of the George and had only clung on to life this far in the hope that she would live to see the Deliverer, would be sorely miserable if she was not able to bathe in my glorious presence for just a bit longer.

So I said, ‘Okay, just a bit.’ And the high priest offered me more wine, and I most gratefully drank it.

And although there were one or two things right in the forefront of my mind, these being scantily clad and golden, other thoughts came crowding in upon me. And these thoughts were all concerned with the Homunculus.

And I did think a great deal about the nature of coincidence. Because there seemed to be a lot of it about. Because if these people hadn’t converted to Formbyanity, they would still be evil Homunculus fans, and I would surely have been sacrificed simply for the fun of it. But they were now goodies, all told, and they were anxious that the Deliverer deliver them from this place and lead them above.

Although I did wonder whether they were going to be very disappointed when they finally arrived topside. They’d probably be impressed with the sky and the sun and the moon and all that kind of cosmic caper, but all the walking dead and the horrible pongs? They probably were not going to be altogether taken with that.

But we’d just have to see.

And then a thought struck me. And it was a wondrous thought. I had come here hoping for gold, and I had found plenty of that. I had also come here in the hope that there would be something that could aid me in destroying the Homunculus. And I had found that also.

Because it wasn’t a something that I needed.

And here, I suppose, I had a bit of a revelation.

It was a somebody. And not just one somebody. I needed a lot of somebodys. An army of somebodys, to be precise.

Because if I was to go against an Army of the Dead, then I would need an army of my own. And what better army to take on an Army of the Dead than an Army of the Underworld?

And, satisfied that this was the solution, the answer to all my problems, I had another glass of wine.

And then another.

And then another one, too.

And then I awoke.

Of a sudden, and quite painfully and not upon a golden bed, flanked by golden girlies. But still in my seat at the banqueting table, face down in a bowl of cockroach.

And I went, ‘Whoa!’ And then I went, ‘Sorry, all, too much wine there, must have dozed off for a moment.’

But I found, to my surprise, that I was addressing these words to no one in particular. In fact to no one at all. For all around me were empty chairs and dirty pudding dishes.

‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘They’ve all gone off to bed without me. What a bummer. I wonder where the golden girlies went?’

‘Up the cord,’ I heard someone think. And then I heard them say it. And it was the high priest’s mum, the lady in the golden straw hat. And she sat where she had been sitting, spooning spoons of pudding into her gob.

‘Up the cord?’ I asked her. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Up your cord, to the Tunnel of the George, as it is foretold in The Great Book of All Knowledge (and Selected Lyrics).’

‘What?’ I shouted. Loudly.

‘There’s no need to shout,’ said the lady. ‘Although it says that you do, in the Book. When you have awoken after drinking the wine with the sleeping draft in it.’

‘What?’ I went, even louder.

‘You have to hand it to those ancients, don’t you?’ said the lady. ‘When it comes to prophecy they were pretty hot stuff. You wouldn’t get that kind of accuracy nowadays. If we had days to nowa, as it were. But as we don’t understand the concept, we don’t, so to speak.’