Robert Rankin - The Brightonomicon

Mr Rune peered over my shoulder and said, 'Suggestive,' to me. 'Digestive?' I said. 'I would love a chocolate digestive.' 'You're piddled,' said Mr Rune. 'I am not,' I said, 'but I do feel rather odd.'

And I did. I suddenly felt giddy and sick and the room began shifting unsteadily.

'Out!' cried Mr Rune. 'It is all around us and it is affecting you.'

'Or a ginger snap,' I said. 'Or a caramel spaniel. One with a waggily tail.'

'Out, quickly.' And Mr Rune grasped me under the armpits and hauled me bodily from the house.

Outside and in the sunlight, I came to myself once again. 'What happened?' I asked. 'I feel altogether strange. What happened to me in there?'

'We are on to something here,' said Mr Rune. 'Something untoward. Something unique and unsurpassingly queer. We have stepped into a sticky situation.' 'I think I am going to be sick,' said I. 'Better that than to end up dead in a crab suit upon the Sussex Downs.' 'You mean…?' said I.

'I mean,' said Mr Rune, 'that the brother of Bartholomew Moulsecoomb was undoubtedly murdered. This is a very bad thing. A truly bad thing. If I am not very much mistaken, this is a plot not only to bring down the House of Windsor, but also the British government itself.' 'And that is a bad thing?' I asked.

I sat in the front garden next to one of the unmanned gun emplacements whilst Mr Rune returned to the house. I heard sounds issuing from within, hangings and scrapings and other noises that suggested that heavy chains were being hauled to and fro over corrugated iron. And then the distinctive chiming of a Burmese temple bell, the plaintive howl of a spaniel and what appeared to be the roar of a train coming out of a tunnel, a factory chimney being demolished, an owl hooting and finally the sound of silence.

Mr Rune emerged from the house with several LPs under his arm. 'I don't think too much of the sound-effects records,' he said, 'but I'm keeping this Simon and Garfunkel one.'

'That is not even remotely funny,' I told him. 'I saw it coming a mile off.'

'Which is as it should be, young Rizla, but my money, if I carried any, which I do not because I always feel impelled to give it away to the poor, would be placed upon a bet with you that you have not observed the larger picture.'

'You are probably right there,' I said, rising to my feet and dusting grass-cuttings away from my person. 'Did you find any clues in the house, or were you even looking for any?' 'I have already made up my mind regarding this case. It is, in its way, all but solved.' Hugo Rune flicked through the LPs he was carrying. 'This Captain Beefheart, is he any good?'

'Exceedingly so. Do you have any Robert Johnson there?' 'The very question I was hoping you would ask.' 'And the answer?'

'We must proceed at once to the Sussex Downs. You will note that the sun is already beginning to set.' 'I trust you will not be taking any personal credit for that.'

Mr Rune raised a hairless eyebrow. 'We will need torches,' he said.

'Flaming ones?' I asked. 'As are generally carried by villagers when they storm Castle Frankenstein?'

Mr Rune sighed deeply. 'You are still not entirely yourself, young Rizla, so please do this for me.' And he pointed with a podgy digit back towards the house. 'Close your right eye and hold your nose and tell me what you see.' I gave him the blankest of stares. 'Just do it,' said the All-Knowing One. And so I shrugged and did it.

I did not see anything untoward at first, just a rather shabby, dull suburban dwelling, which, but for its rooftop rocket launcher, titanium-alloy window grills and sandbag heapings, looking much the same as any similar house might look in any similar street. Although quite unlike one of a different period in a different country somewhere else – Wales, say, or Greece, or possibly the Solomon Islands. But then, as I breathed in through my unblocked nostril, I saw it: there appeared to be something shrouding the house, like a mist, perhaps, or more like a shimmering film, oily, glistening, but difficult to pin down. It sort of came and went as you looked at it. And the more you did not look, it came, and the more you did, it went. 'Whatever is that? I asked, turning to Mr Rune. The Reinventor of the Ocarina was red in the face and he let out a terrible gasp. 'My apologies,' he said. 'To grant you the ability to see what I see, even for a moment, is an exhausting exercise. But you did see it, didn't you?'

'I did,' I said. But looking back I could no longer see it at all. 'But what is it?'

Mr Rune gave his nose a significant tap. 'All will be revealed, and upon this very night. And you will be offered an opportunity to redress the imbalance that exists between us.'

'The financial imbalance?' I asked. 'Does this mean that you will be sharing fifty-fifty whatever profits you hope to derive from solving this case? Can I have half-shares in the galleon?'

'You certainly can not,' said Mr Rune. 'I speak of a spiritual imbalance – that I have upon two occasions saved your life. Tonight it will be your turn to save mine. Please don't make a fist of it, Rizla. I am not as yet ready to move on to my next incarnation.' 'Bight,' I said. 'Well, you can trust me.'

'So,' said Mr Rune. 'Torches. And armaments, too, I feel. Bring one of the machine-guns from that emplacement there.' 'A machine-gun? I do not know about that.'

'I will teach you. There isn't much to it. I observe that the machine-gun there is none other than a General Electric M13 5 7.62mm minigun, of the variety that they are presently using on the gunships in Vietnam. A war, I hasten to add, that was precipitated by a bet between Aristotle Onassis and Howard Hughes. The General Electric is a sound enough weapon, dispensing, as it does, six thousand rounds per minute from its six rotating barrels. Now let us hasten back to the cab, and be off to the Sussex Downs.' Mr Rune suggested that for his own safety and wellbeing, the unconscious cabbie be placed in the boot of his own taxicab. And this I did unaided, for Mr Rune complained that his shoulder was playing up – 'the one that had been struck by a Jezail bullet during the Afghanistan Campaign, where I was serving as spiritual adviser to General Custer.' I dumped the cabbie in the boot and dropped the lid. And then I drove off towards the Sussex Downs.

Mr Rune had not as yet acquired for me the Bentley he had promised; although he had assured me that it was on order. But my driving skills were improving and I merely glanced against a few parked cars, and sent just a single cleric flying from his pushbike on this occasion.

Oh, and there was some unpleasantness when I nearly ran down a fellow who was filling his Morris Minor with petrol at the garage we stopped off at to purchase a couple of torches. Now, I do have to say that I had taken a shine to the glorious Sussex Downs, their natural glories, flora, fauna and things of that nature generally. I took the occasional stroll upon them when I felt the need for solitude, which was not often, I confess, as I am gregarious by nature. In fact, if the very truth be utterly told, I never took a stroll upon them at all, for I cared as little for nature as I did for Art.

'There are an awful lot of these Downs,' I said to Mr Rune as I drove amongst them on the road that leads towards Henfield. 'Is there any specific part you would like to visit? It all looks much of a muchness to me, although I cannot see much of the muchness at all now, as it is growing somewhat dark.'

'Keep driving,' called Mr Rune from the rear of the taxicab. 'I'll tell you when I wish to stop.'

And presently he did so and I pulled to the side of the road. 'Where exactly are we going?' I asked. 'To the very spot where Bartholomew's brother expired.' 'And you know exactly where this spot is?'