Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

And the lightning flashed and the thunder crashed and I was far from happy.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Say I believe you, that you have kept me alive until this night. Why? What do I matter to you?’

‘You really haven’t figured it out?’ Papa Keith Crossbar stared very hard at me. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you haven’t figured it out. Why you are involved in this. What your part in it is. You really have no idea who you are, do you?’

‘I am Tyler,’ I said. ‘And I will kill you. You will die tonight. I make a promise to you of that.’

‘Sadly no,’ said Papa Keith, rubbing his pudgy hands together and doing a little pace up and down. ‘You will die tonight, Tyler. You are the sacrifice, the magical child who must die if another is to be born. You are the virgin sacrifice.’

‘I’m not a virgin,’ I said.

‘I think you will find that you are. In order to not be a virgin, you do have to have had sex with someone other than yourself.’

‘I’ve had sex with loads of women. I was around in the swinging sixties. I was at The Stones in the Park gig, in the green room with Marianne Faithfull.’

‘Tyler, you have never had sex in all of your life with anything other than Miss Hand and her five lovely daughters.’ And he waggled his fingers once more.

‘How dare you!’ I cried. Most loudly.

And the ninjas sniggered.

‘I’ve had loads of sex,’ I told them. ‘I had sex earlier this evening with Ms Williams, the tall woman from Sales Services.’

And wouldn’t you know it, the other ninja kicked me.

‘Ouch!’ I went. ‘That was hard.’

‘Ms Williams is my girlfriend,’ said this other ninja.

‘Yeah, well, take it up with Trevellian. He was snogging her by the lift on the thirty-seventh floor only a few minutes ago.’

‘He was what?’

‘In front of a load of people. No shame at all.’

‘You’re making it up.’

‘Wake Dave up and ask him.’

‘Cease this nonsense!’ cried Papa Crossbar.

‘I’m not having this!’ cried the ninja.

‘Stay put!’ And Papa Crossbar did foldings of the brow. And the ninja did clutchings of the skull. Which loosened the grip upon me by a factor of one. But didn’t help my situation too much.

‘I’ve had loads of sex,’ I said.

‘You’ve had none,’ said Papa Crossbar. ‘Both Mr Ishmael and myself saw to that. We both needed a virgin. It’s a magical thing. Don’t go bothering yourself about it.’

‘But I was married.’

‘But you never actually did it with your wife.’

‘This is outrageous,’ I said. ‘Let go of me,’ I told the ninja who wasn’t clutching his skull. ‘This thoroughgoing swine has stopped me having sex for nearly all of my life and I’m nearly seventy years of age. At least let me punch him once, really hard, in the face.’

The ninja looked towards Papa Crossbar. ‘What do you think, Boss?’ he asked. ‘One punch in the face seems fair.’

Papa Crossbar did further foldings of his brow. Which had my other captor clutching at his skull. Which at least left me with my hands free.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ said Papa Crossbar.

But I was. And I couldn’t stop.

‘You had to be pure,’ said Papa Crossbar. ‘Kept pure, to fight on one side or the other. The choice of which side was always ultimately yours. Personally I think you chose the wrong side. You should have thrown your lot in with me.’

‘You? ’ I said. ‘YOU? But you are an evil madman who wants to wipe out the entire World. Why in the name of all that’s holy, or otherwise, would I want to throw my lot in with you?’

And Papa Crossbar stared very hard at me.

‘Because you are my brother, you oaf,’ said he.

‘Your brother!’ I shouted. And loudly I did so. ‘You are no brother of mine.’

And I sprang forward to do wringings of the neck.

And he took a smart step backaways.

‘Now, now, now, Tyler,’ he said to me. ‘There is no need for violence.’

‘No need for violence?’ I spat as I shouted. ‘I have come here to kill you. And you want me here so you can kill me. I do believe that there is bound to be some violence involved. But please do correct me if I’m wrong.’

‘Well, in essence you’re right,’ said he. ‘But come, before we engage in any fisticuffs, allow me to explain matters to you. There is a long tradition, both literary and now in the medium of film, that the super-villain explains everything to the hero before he offs him, as it were.’

‘I am aware of this tradition,’ I replied. ‘And also that within its closely prescribed boundaries, the hero always thwarts the super-villain once the super-villain has had his say.’

‘A break with tradition is never a bad thing,’ said Papa Crossbar, producing as he did so what looked for all the world to be my trusty Smith & Wesson and pointing it at me.

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘My pistol.’

‘Correct. So, would you like to hear all the details, or shall we break with tradition completely and I’ll just shoot you and have done?’

‘Let’s stick with the tradition for now,’ I proposed, ‘and we’ll see how things pan out after that.’

‘Right then, where would you like me to start?’

‘Perhaps with the rubbish bit about me being your brother.’

‘Ah, that.’ And Papa Crossbar did evil grinnings of the ear-to-ear persuasion, and the lightning did flash and the thunder did roll. And up in this great conservatory in the sky, there was more than just a little weirdness about the atmosphere.

‘Oh yes indeed,’ said the Evil One. ‘Your not so humble beginnings. You see, Tyler, the trouble is that over the years a number of people have told you a number of things, but they haven’t always told you the truth. They have just told you what they wanted you to hear, in the manner that you wanted to hear it.’

‘So to speak,’ I said.

‘Pardon?’

‘Nothing, please continue.’

‘Captain Lynch – your spiritual advisor, Mr Ishmael – our guardian and trainer, and myself, I confess – we’ve all been a wee bit guilty of not sharing all of the truth with you. But then, in all truth, why would we have? We only wanted you to know the bits that it suited us that you know. But then you are a detective. You really should have figured it out for yourself.’

I had already tired of Papa Crossbar’s conversation and was thinking about what would be the best way to wrest the pistol from his hands.

‘There is no best way,’ said he, interrupting the flow of both his conversation and my thoughts. ‘I can hear you thinking, Tyler. Do you want to listen to what I have to say or not?’ And he cocked the trigger of my trusty Smith & Wesson.

‘I’ll listen,’ I said. And I listened.

‘The Ministry of Serendipity,’ he said, ‘below the other Mornington Crescent. The department of the most potent of secret affairs during the Second World War, where the real business of war was carried out between the white magicians of the West and the black brotherhood of Hitler’s Reich, both sides vying to create yours truly.’ And he bowed, but he didn’t lower the weapon. ‘Had my magical father Adolf Hitler, the nineteenth-century Homunculus, been able to achieve the Great Creation, he would have become all-powerful and Germany would have won the war. But the West won that particular battle, with the help of Mr Aleister Crowley. He was the most skilful wizard of his day, greater even than those of Hitler. And at the behest of the Ministry of Serendipity, and a large quantity of the green and folding stuff, he cast the Spell of the Great Creation, the one in that big gem-encrusted golden book that rests there on the altar.