Роберт Грант - The Quanderhorn Xperimentations

From the journal of Brian Nylon, 1st January, 1952 – Iteration 66

I thanked her. I looked at it. It was indeed a bazooka. ‘Just a minute!’ I called.

But she was already fighting her way through the human tide. ‘Don’t fire unless it comes towards you,’ she yelled helpfully over her shoulder.

‘Unless what comes towards me?’ I shouted after her, but the crowd had folded in behind her.

So I was standing in Parliament Square at five minutes to midnight, wearing what I now realised were my winter long johns and a novelty Christmas sweater, holding a bazooka, with a valve still protruding from my nostril and a head full of unanswered questions.

Before I could even move, there was a sudden burst from a very loud loudhailer.

‘Keep back!’ rapped an echoing stentorian voice. ‘Keep back from the Giant Broccoli Woman!’

It struck me that the crowd would hardly need this instruction, but a woman near me seemed reassured. ‘Thank Gaawd! That’s that Professor Quanderhorn,’ she grinned, proudly showing off her single tooth. ‘He’ll save us from the vegetable monster, and no mistake.’ Her wizened hand scooped a fistful from a bag of whelks and she sucked on them excitedly.

‘Do you reckon,’ her mousey friend trilled, ‘this is one of them alien invasions, or just another of the Professor’s ‘perimentations what has gone horribly wrong?’

‘Now then, you ugly old termagants,’ a cheerful bobby herded them away, ‘move back for your own good. It’s already eaten three people’s faces.’

‘Oooooh! We’ve never had a face-eater before,’ the whelk woman cooed. ‘I wish I’d known – I’d ’ave brought Bert’s pigeon-racing binoculars.’

The loudhailer burst into life again. ‘This is Quanderhorn himself speaking! Behind the railings, everyone! My team need room to operate!’

The sound of his voice again seemed to calm the crowd momentarily. Who the dickens was this Quanderhorn fellow?

I was about to ask the policeman, when a new chorus of piercing screams erupted all around, and the multitude parted before me.

And I saw it.

I can’t swear it was the most spine-chilling, horrifying thing I’d ever laid eyes on, since I had no memory, but I did at that moment recall exactly what I’d had for breakfast, by virtue of its unexpectedly reappearing on the pavement beneath me. (For the record: spam and toast.)

I was most certainly looking at a monster. At least twelve feet tall, vaguely female in shape, it was green and knobbly, like… well, like a giant human broccoli. It was entirely covered over by a thick viscous mucus, as if a circus giant had been painted with glue and then sheep-dipped in an enormous St Patrick’s Day spittoon.

It threw back its cabbage-like head and let out the most unearthly wail. The crowd drew back further, leaving me standing alone to face it.

It caught me in its monstrous gaze. Was it my imagination, or was there, for a fraction of a second, a spark of recognition in those hideous simulacra of human eyes? Frozen for one moment, I was almost tempted to step towards the wretched beast, when Dr. Janussen grabbed my arm again.

‘Stop dawdling, Brian – the Professor needs us.’

She pulled me quickly away from the clock tower into New Palace Yard, where Troy was waiting. For some reason he had neglected to put on a suitable winter coat. Or, for that matter, a shirt. And I swear he’d slipped and fallen in some engine oil somewhere, because his rather muscular chest glistened unnervingly in the street lamplight. For reasons that eluded me, a gaggle of teenaged girls who had pushed themselves to the front of the crowd shrieked inanely at his every move.

Dr. Janussen narrowed her eyes at the vehicle door under his arm.

‘Troy, why have you still got that?’

‘In case we need to lock up the van when we’re not there.’

With remarkable patience, Dr. Janussen smiled. ‘Get rid of it.’

‘Righty-ho!’ He promptly folded the van door several times, like he was making an origami swan, and leant it against the fence. Clearly, the lad was possessed of an exceptional strength.

She continued briskly: ‘The Professor needs us to wheel out Gargantua, the Toposonic Cannon.’

Troy struck a casual pose reminiscent of bodybuilding contests, to the sound of more pubescent squeals. ‘Consider it done.’ He bounded off into the shadows, muscles a-rippling.

There was a strange whinnying sound, and he re-emerged clutching the forelegs of a rather disgruntled police horse over his shoulders, dragging the struggling beast behind him.

The loudhailer barked: ‘No, Troy, the one with the wheels.’

‘Right you are, Pops!’ Troy grinned amiably. Whirling the angry horse somewhat carelessly into a hedge, he spat on his hands and missed, then raced back into the shadows.

I looked over to the source of the rebuke. Some way in the distance, atop a hydraulic platform looming high above the crowd, was a tall, imposing figure, shrouded in a British Warm overcoat, his features shadowed beneath the brim of a brown slouch hat. He raised his loudhailer once more and pointed it directly towards us.

‘Not to panic unnecessarily, Troy,’ he barked, ‘but the very fabric of existence is at stake.’

This sent a rustle of worried murmuring through the crowd.

Across the yard, Troy emerged again with a thick rope around his waist, towing an entire London bus.

‘Not the red one,’ Dr. Janussen smiled patiently. ‘The one that looks like a cannon.’

‘Are you sure a bus won’t do?’ Troy offered a winning grin. ‘It’s the 43 to Highgate Woods.’

‘Get the cannon, Troy.’ Dr. Janussen glanced towards the clock face. Three minutes before midnight. ‘Now!’

Just then, an agitated murmuring swept across the crowd. I heard a man in pinstriped trousers and bowler hat shout: ‘By ginger! The beastly article is starting to scale Big Ben!’

At first, I couldn’t spot the creature, but suddenly, with a loud electric rasp, a powerful beam, brighter than a magnesium flare, blasted from Quanderhorn’s platform, stabbing through the gloom, starkly illuminating the foul travesty of a humanoid as it clung to the masonry. Temporarily blinded, it slipped slightly, to a communal gasp from the throng, then recovered and began once more hauling itself up the tower. It moved with astonishing agility, considering its clumsy, cumbersome frame.

In a voice that chilled me to my combinations, Dr. Janussen hissed: ‘Brian, it’s imperative she doesn’t reach the clock.’

‘Why?’

‘She may prevent it striking twelve—’

‘Why must it strike twelve?’

‘There’s no time to explain right now. We need to warm up the cannon. Get out there and delay her.’

‘What? Wi-with my bazooka?’ I looked down at the infernal tube. I had no idea which way round it went or how to fire it without being catapulted backwards into the Thames.

‘No! Of course not with the bazooka. Distract her.’

‘What do you mean “distract her”?’

‘Flirt with her!’

‘ Flirt?’

I looked over at the unspeakable monstrosity, oozing a trail of vile green slime up Sir Charles Barry’s exquisite Gothic revival stonework.

‘In front of all these people?’

‘You are such a Boy Scout.’

‘Why me?’

‘That thing – it’s Virginia.’

‘Virginia?’ I shook my head. The name meant nothing to me.

‘She used to be part of the team.’

I looked around again at the suppurating behemoth. I was suddenly gripped by a very disturbing thought.

‘Was she my wife?’

‘Not everybody’s your wife. What’s wrong with you, for heaven’s sake?’