Edgar Ragged - King Dong

‘That ain’t fair! I had elly-cue-shun lessons …”

‘… till your voice coach threw himself out the window. Get this, doll-face – I hired you because no other producer would touch you with a camera crane.’

‘Yeah? Well, no other goil would agree to come on a crazy trip like this.’

‘That too,’ agreed Deadman. Ann, not sure whether she’d just scored a point or conceded one, gave an injured huff and turned her back on the men.

‘While we’re on the shubject,’ said Captain Rumbuggery, taking yet another liver-dissolving pull at his glass, ‘just where the hell are we going?’

Deadman rolled his eyes. ‘I told you. I’ll spill the beans when we reach the coordinates I gave.’

‘No!’ Captain Rumbuggery slammed his glass down. Liquid slopped from it and began to eat through the table. ‘That’sh not good enough! You exscpect me to take you into uncharted seas and unknown dangersh with a contraband cargo and a woman on board? I won’t do it, I tell you!’

‘All right, already!’ Deadman gave an exasperated sigh. ‘I can’t tell you everything – there may be spies aboard. But, just to satisfy your curiosity, I’ll give you a few hints.’

He bit the end off another cigar. Ann leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with calculation. The Captain tried to focus, and not fall off his chair.

Deadman lit the cigar puffing hard and rolling it around in the match flame to ensure that the tobacco burnt evenly. He stuck one hand in a waistcoat pocket, took a deep draught of the pungent smoke, and blew three rings which sailed up to join the clouds roiling around beneath the flyspecked ceiling.

Lowering the cigar, he carefully removed a flake of tobacco from his bottom lip. Only then did he turn to face the Captain and Ann.

‘Tell me,’ he said slowly, ‘did you ever hear of … Dong?’

Dong … Dong … Dong … Dong

The sound reverberated around the cabin.

Dong … Dong … Dong … Dong

Deadman stared through the porthole. ‘Who is ringing that goddamn bell?’

‘Eight bells!’ intoned a salt-roughened voice from the deck.

‘Twenty hundred hours, ship’s time,’ explained the Skipper. He staggered to the cabin door, flung it open and bellowed, ‘Will you shut up out there! How’sh an old seadog to think with that noise going on?’

‘Sorry, Skipper.’

Rumbuggery weaved his way back to his seat. ‘Did you jusht shay what I thought you said, Mr Deadman?’

‘I did,’ nodded the producer.

Rumbuggery’s eyes flared with shock and fear. Then they flared again as the light from Deadman’s smouldering cigar spontaneously combusted with the alcoholic fumes surrounding the Captain. The smell of singed hair joined the cabin’s rich mixture of odours, but the Skipper seemed barely to notice it. ‘Dong!’ he repeated in a quaking voice.

Ann shrugged. ‘Is that the name of the island we’re goin’ to?’

Deadman shook his head and tapped the side of his nose significantly.

Ann let out an impatient sigh. ‘Well, if this “Dong” is a poyson, why don’t you stop fooling around and tell us who the hell he is?’

The producer shook his head. ‘Dong isn’t a “who”, he’s more of a “what”.’

‘What?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Exactly what?’

‘Exactly. “What”.’

Ann’s eyes narrowed. ‘Deadman, I swear you’ll be soon livin’ up to your name, if you don’t give us some answers right now !’

Deadman took a long pull on his cigar. ‘I’m talking about the legend of Dong.’

Before Ann could explode, Rumbuggery shook his head decisively. ‘Dong! Ha! Dong is a will o the wisp, an old seafarersh’ yarn, a tittle-tattle tall tale told by tellers of tittle-tattle tall tales.’ There was a pause. ‘Er – I jusht shpat my denturesh out – could you passh them back, pleashe? They’re jusht there beshide my shcale model of the U Essh Essh Missbbhhisshhipp …’

‘A legend?’ Using his handkerchief, Deadman did as requested. ‘That’s what I thought too, Skipper.’ He stubbed out his cigar on the ship’s cat, which yowled and hid under the Skipper’s bunk. Deadman leaned forward conspiratorially. ‘A couple of years ago I was in China, filming A Nice Movie About a Cute Panda – a guaranteed blockbuster how the distributors passed on it I’ll never know. When I’d finished shooting, I headed south to Hong Kong to board a steamer for home. My boat wasn’t due to leave for a couple of days and I had some time to kill. Wandering the gloomy back streets of Kowloon I accidentally by sheer coincidence chanced upon an opium den.’

Ann’s eyes widened. ‘You stumbled into a real opium den?’

‘Stumbled, hell, it took me hours to find … er, yeah, sure, that’s right.’

‘Opium!’ muttered Rumbuggery. ‘The power of the dreaded poppy!’

Deadman frowned at the interruption. ‘The dreaded poppy?’

‘Aye. Dreaded Poppy O’Shea. Two jam jars high, breastsh like Zeppelins and fishts like a longshoreman. She ran the Dragon’s Den House of Forbidden Delights and Hand-Wash Laundry in old Singapore. Hell of a woman.’

Deadman sighed. ‘Be that as it may …’

‘Oh, believe me, son,’ rambled the Skipper, ‘I know what the dreaded poppy can do to a man. Fall into her armsh and you’re seduced – a shlave to her wilful charmsh. Oh, I know, I know, the dreaded poppy can help you to escape from the depressing reality of thish world, but she’ll set you on the road to oblivion. Every minute you spend with the dreaded poppy, you flirt with fear and the danger of helplessh addiction leading to rack and ruin and eventually a horrible tortuous death. Aye, many are the helplessh victims of the dreaded poppy. We used to hold a minute’sh silence to remember them on Dreaded Poppy Day.’

Deadman gave the snootered sailor a quelling glance. ‘Have you quite finished?’

‘Aye.’ A smile spread across Rumbuggery’s grizzled face. ‘Happy daysh, happy daysh.’

Deadman pointedly turned his back on the Skipper. ‘I entered the dismal pit,’ he continued. ‘The only light came from the glowing charcoal braziers that were heating up metal bowls and filling the room with choking brown smoke. I could just make out shadows and silhouettes of wizened creatures lying on cane beds: Malays, Chinamen, Lascars and Westerners – a motley assortment of the dregs of humanity coming together in a haze of drug-induced dreams.’

Ann nodded. ‘Yeah, I been to parties like that – back in Hollywood.’

‘In the midst of this hell hole I happened to meet an old sea captain who’d also wandered into this den of lost souls. Although, looking at him, he’d obviously wandered into it dozens of times. As we shared a nocturnal pipe or two, he told me a tale that had happened to him some years previously.’ Deadman looked around the room before beckoning Ann and Rumbuggery closer. ‘One winter’s day, this captain set sail from port with his usual load of passengers when a storm sprang up and before he knew it the ship was off course, lost somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean.’

Rumbuggery raised a caterpillar of an eyebrow. ‘What ship wash thish?’

‘The Staten Island Ferry – it was a hell of a storm.’

‘It happensh, it happensh,’ muttered Rumbuggery.

‘When the storm finally blew itself out, they came across a crudely made inflatable rubber dinosaur drifting on the ocean.’

Ann stared. ‘An inflatable …?’

‘Don’t interrupt! On it lay fourteen bodies. All were dead except for one. The captain hauled the unfortunate creature aboard. He, too, was not long for this world and died soon after. But before the end, he told the captain a blood-chilling story – the legend of Dong.’