Robert Rankin - Retromancer

‘Then put your ear against the door of your cubicle and let me whisper to you.’

And so I did and he whispered to me and I was thankful for that.

I never heard him leave the Gents. I left the cubicle, washed and dried my hands and returned to the saloon bar, where the horrible clown still hovered up near the ceiling and Mr Rune greeted my reappearance with words to the effect that I had taken far too long and that he dreaded to think what I had been getting up to in there.

Which I did not think was funny.

But then he addressed the assembled throng, so what I thought was neither here, nor there.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Hugo Rune addressed this throng. ‘We are gathered today to drive from our midst an evil presence.’ And he looked up at the hovering clown and the hovering clown dropped floorwards. ‘Can any but myself and my highly trained second in command see this vision of nastiness?’

‘Second in command’ and ‘highly trained’ – I almost buffed my fingernails, while all about the bar there were shakings of heads.

‘I haven’t actually seen him,’ called Fangio, ‘but he’s been playing havoc with my crisps and cellar stock. And I can’t have that. He’s not what I ordered, I want him removed.’

Hugo Rune did clearings of his throat. ‘Not what you ordered?’ he queried. ‘Speak to me of this.’

‘Ah,’ went Fangio. ‘Well, it’s a private matter really. Walls have ears and all that. And there is a war on.’

The clown began to do a foolish dance. And Hugo Rune rose slightly on his toes. ‘Spit it out now, Fangio,’ he demanded. ‘The more information I have at this time, the more effective will be my dispelling of this entity.’

The entity in question seemed to be squaring up. But just for what I had no way of knowing.

‘I bought him,’ said Fangio.

The crowd went, ‘Oooooooh.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said the barlord, ‘but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Haunted inns draw in punters. And you lot-’ he gestured around and about at his patrons ‘-tend to be somewhat fickle. You all slunk off to The Four Horsemen not so long ago, when the new guv’nor undercut me with his beer prices.’

Which was true, but the patrons shrugged it off.

‘And then this travelling mendicant turned up last week. An evil-looking beggar he was. And I told him how trade was coming and going and how it was ever the lot of the poor barlord that he should go without while others prospered.’

The patrons now did mumblings at this. And some of these mumblings concerned finding a beam to throw a hangman’s rope over.

‘Give me a break,’ cried Fangio. ‘I’m only trying to make a living here.’

‘Continue with your tale,’ said Hugo Rune.

The clown now took a step in his direction.

‘This travelling mendicant told me that he was a dealer in ghosts. That he travelled the country, removing ghosts from premises where they were unwanted, then relocating them to places where other people wished for their installation. Places such as inns. Where having a ghost draws in the punters. Like I said, okay?’

‘And so you purchased a ghost from this mendicant?’ asked Mr Rune.

‘We bartered,’ said Fangio. ‘And fair exchange is no robbery.’

‘And now you are saddled with Gusset?’

Hugo Rune eyed Gusset the Clown.

Gusset the Clown eyed the Magus.

‘I was done,’ said Fangio. ‘I asked for a nice grey lady who would waft about in a see-through nightgown. But instead I got an annoying invisible pain-in-the-bottom that troubles my beer and my crisps.’

‘Then I must deal with it,’ said Hugo Rune.

The ghost clown glared him daggers.

And then something happened. Something so unexpected and so utterly terrible that all those who witnessed it happen now speak of it only in whispers and cross themselves when they do.

A custard pie materialised in the right hand of the ghostly clown. A custard pie that materialised so all might behold it. And this custard pie was hurled with a horrible force.

And struck home in the face of Hugo Rune.

I had never seen such outrage on the face of Hugo Rune.

What face that could be seen beneath the pie.

He rose to an improbable height and as the crowd pressed back and collectively ducked, all painfully aware of the atrocity that had just been committed and fearing to be caught in the crossfire from the retribution that must surely follow, he threw his great arms wide then clapped his hands together.

A bolt of blue fire blazed out from these hands towards the grinning clown. And surely this bolt would have hit its mark, had it not been for the clown’s inhuman reactions.

The phantom flan-flinger (for such was this pie) stepped nimbly aside. Big shoes and all, but light on his feet, he neatly dodged that bolt.

Not so, however, the lady in the straw hat, who had been playing the steel pan as we entered the bar. She dissolved, along with her pan, and vanished into the ether.

‘Ooooh!’ went the crowd and cowered even lower and some now sought likewise to vanish.

Hugo Rune spoke secret words and the flung flan vanished away.

‘So,’ said he to the nimble clown, ‘a fight is what you want.’

The ethereal funster cocked his painted head upon one side, reached to his left ear and seemingly removed from it a tiny megaphone. This he put to his smiley mouth and whispered through the small end.

The words he whispered appeared through the big end of this tiny megaphone. They literally appeared in the air before him, there to be read by all. Except perhaps those who were cowering behind the otherwise invisible clown, for to them the words would have been back to front and therefore somewhat difficult to read. So to speak.

Or to explain. Clearly.

I read the words as they duly appeared and these were the words that I read:

Mr Hugo Rune, Magus, Grand Wazoo of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Sprout, Twelfth Dan Master in the Deadly Art of Dim Mak, reinventor of the ocarina, Best-Dressed Man of Nineteen Thirty-Three, explorer, swords-man, big-game hunter, this year’s winner of the Brentford Inter-Pub Jumping-Out Competition, guru unto gurus, Lord of the Dance and King of the Wild Frontier. I salute you. I apologise and worship you as the God-like being you are.

‘How exactly did he do that?’ I asked Hugo Rune.

‘The megaphone did it, not he,’ replied the mage, ‘and not as he might have wished it.’

For the ghost clown was now beating at his megaphone and shaking it all about.

‘I felt he must make some verbal amends for the outrage he visited upon my person,’ Mr Rune continued. ‘Verbal for now, physical for the future.’

The ghost clown now shouted into the megaphone. He was definitely shouting, although his words could not be heard. But only seen, as they appeared in written form.

I didn’t say those things, you knave, you pompous ape.

‘Enough,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Will you depart these premises of your own accord? Or must I be forced to punish you horribly before I hoik you out upon your greasy ear?’

You sham mountebank. I’ll have your liver and lights.

‘The hoiking it is, then. Hand me the Zo Zo gun, Rizla.’

Hold hard there, came forth the words and hovered in the air. Hold hard there and parley a while.

‘What have we to speak of?’ asked the Magus.

You clearly possess some small skills in the Magickal Artes. Perhaps you might wish to become my acolyte that I might train you further.

I flinched at this, but Mr Rune remained calm. So cool indeed was he that had he been a fridge, he would surely have been in need of defrosting, because the icebox unit at the top would have got all frozen up with great big lumps and-