Robert Rankin - East of Ealing

“No way.” Soap tore himself from Omally’s hold. “No way.”

Shivers of woodwork flew from the bottom of the door as the evil barbs, now showing porcupine quills and scorpion tails thrashing about them, stripped the Ronseal finish clear down to the filled knot-holes. Omally stumbled to his feet. Sherlock Holmes was standing alone in the whirlwind, a speckled band tied bandana-fashion across his face. A finger in the air. The doyen of dicks was definitely off his trolley, thought John. As if reading his thoughts, Holmes suddenly struck him a weltering blow to the skull. Caught in surprise John hit the deck. Holmes leapt down upon him and pointed frantically through the swirling, cascading stench. “Fireplace,” he shouted, his voice all but lost amidst the screaming, the hurricane, and the splintering woodwork. “Up the chimney, get going, quick.”

It took very little time for Omally to cop on. Grabbing the huddled Pooley firmly by the collar, he dragged him towards what was surely the only hope of escape. Holmes stepped over to Soap and booted him in the ribcage. Soap peered up bitterly towards his tormentor, a dizzy blur, lost for the most part in the maelstrom of tearing elements. Holmes stretched deftly forward and hooked a pair of fingers into the sub-Earther’s nostrils. “Lead us out!” he cried, bearing him aloft. Whimpering and howling, but somehow happy for the nose-plugs, Soap staggered forward. Holmes thrust his head first into the fireplace and then, suddenly enlightened, Soap turned towards his persecutor with a nodding, smiling head and gestured upwards. Within a moment he was scrabbling into the darkness above. Omally pressed Jim onwards and followed hard upon his heels. Holmes spun about, revolver in hand, as the door burst from its hinges to spin a million whirling fragments about him. The icy gale tore his tweedy jacket from his shoulders as the thing rolled into the room, a tangle of barbs, quills and spikes, whipping and lashing and screaming, screaming. The great detective held his ground and fired off his revolver again and again into the spinning ball of death as it charged towards him.

The wind and the terror coming from below spurred on the three-man escape committee as it crept higher and higher up the narrow black chimney. Soap’s voice called down from above, “Come on, lads, shouldn’t be more than a mile at most.” Pooley mumbled and complained, but Omally, who was tail-end Charlie and in the most vulnerable position, bit him in the ankle. A howl of pain and a sudden acceleration from Jim assured the struggling Irishman that the message was well-received.

The going was far from certain and made ever more perilous by the cramped space and the complete and utter darkness. Stones and grit tumbled down into the climbers’ faces. Soap trod upon Jim’s hands and Jim out of fairness trod upon John’s. Higher and higher up the slim shaft of hope they clambered until at last they could no longer feel the icy wind rushing from below or the awful stench souring their nostrils. They paused a moment, clinging to what they could for dear life, to catch their breath, and cough up what was left of their lungs.

“How much farther, Soap?” Omally wiped at his streaming eyes and strained to support himself whilst delving in his pockets for a fag.

“A goodly way and all of it straight up.”

“There is actually an opening at the top?” Jim ventured. “I mean I’d just hate to climb all this way and find myself peering out of a ventilation duct in Lateinos and Romiith’s basement.”

“Hm. To be quite candid, this digging is one of the great grandaddy’s. We shall have to trust to the luck of the Distants.”

“Oh, very comforting. Ooh, ow, ouch!”

“Sorry, Jim. Did I singe your bum?”

“Pass me up that fag, you clumsy oaf.”

“Smoking cigarettes can harm your health,” said Soap. “Ooh, ow, ouch!”

“Onward, Christian Soldier,” said Jim, withdrawing the lighted fag from Soap’s trouser seat.

The three continued their bleak and harrowing journey, now illuminated by the firefly-glow of three burning cigarettes. The first hour was really quite uneventful, other than for the occasional minor avalanche which threatened to plunge them to a most uninviting oblivion. It was several minutes into the second that things took a most depressing turn for the worst.

“I hate to tell you this,” said Soap Distant, “but I’ve run out of passage.”

“You’ve bloody what? Careful there, that’s my damn hand you’re treading on.”

“Get a move on, Pooley.”

“Shut up, John.”

“Stop the two of you, for God’s sake. I can’t climb any higher.”

“Then get to one side and let us pass.”

“He means the passage has come to an end, John.”

“Then stand aside and let me kill him.”

“Shut up, I can see daylight.”

“What?”

The three men strained their eyes into the darkness above. In the far distance a dim light showed. A mere pinprick, yet it was some kind of hope, although not a lot.

“Get a move on,” yelled Omally.

“I’ve told you, something’s blocking my way.”

“I just knew it,” said Jim, with the voice of one who just knew it. “No way up, no way down. Doomed to starve here until we drop away one by one like little shrivelled up…”

“Give it a rest, Jim. What’s in the way, Soap?”

Soap prodded above. “Some old grill or grating, rusty as hell.”

“Easy on the descriptions.”

“Solid as a rock also.”

“Doom and desolation oh misery, misery.”

“I have plenty of fuel in my lighter, Jim.”

“Sorry, John. Can’t you wiggle it loose, Soap?”

“It’s bloody rusted in. Can’t you hear what I’m saying?”

“Let me get up there then.”

“There’s no room, John.”

“Then we’ll all just have to push, that’s all. Brace yourself, lads, after three. Three!”

Soap wedged his shoulders beneath the obstruction, Jim got a purchase under his bum, with Omally straining from below.

“Heave.”

“AAAGH!”

“OOOOW.”

“Get off there.”

“My God.”

“Again, it’s giving.”

“It’s not giving, I am.”

“I felt it give.”

“That was my shoulder.”

“Put your back into it.”

“Mind where you’re holding.”

“We’re there, we’re there.”

“Who said that?”

“One more time…”

“It’s giving… It’s giving… It’s gone.”

Soap’s head and shoulders battered up through the obstruction, a thin and crumbling iron grid cemented solidly into place through the application of fifty-years pigeon guano. “You bastards!” Soap’s arms were pinned at his sides, his feet lashed out furiously. “You bastards!”

“Watch where you’re kicking,” Pooley complained.

Soap’s muffled voice screamed down at them from above. “You bloody lunatics, I’m stuck in here.”

Now, as you might reasonably expect, a heated debate occurred beneath the struggling Soap, as to what might be the best means of adding the necessary irresistible force to the currently immovable object.

“We must pull him down and give him another charge,” Jim declared.

“Down on top of us so we all fall down the hole?”

“Grease him with goose fat.”

“You wally.”

“Tickle his feet then.”

“And you a millionaire, Jim. I thought you blokes had it all sussed.”

“A hoist, a hoist, my kingdom for a hoist.”

“I’m starting to suffocate, lads,” called Soap distantly.

Pooley weighed up the situation. “Doom and desperation,” he concluded.

“Stop everything,” Omally demanded. “Enough is enough. It is a well-attested fact that the man who can get his head and shoulders through a gap can get the rest of him through also.”