Alan Moore - Jerusalem

That had been right when the most welcome sight that Bill had ever seen came billowing out of the underpass’s mouth which opened from the Mayorhold’s bounding wall some distance to their left. The massive figure — it had been a man — had clearly been deceased like they were, judging from the burly medicine-ball after-images that had rolled after it out of the tunnel entrance and onto the lamp-lit walkway.

Even though the large ghost was in monochrome like his surroundings, there’d been no denying that he looked innately colourful. A floppy and vaguely Parisian beret slept like a minimalist cartoon cat atop his shoulder-brushing mullet, or “the hairstyle of the gods” as Bill remembered the voluminous spook once describing it, back when he’d been alive. The hair, in its then-current circumstances, had been smoky grey like the neatly Mephistophelean beard, or the moustache with its ends curling up in two waxed points. Round as the moon, the spirit’s awe-inspiring girth was draped in clothing that could only have been manufactured for that very purpose. Sewn-on teddy bears gaily arranged a tablecloth to have their picnic on the slopes of the impressive stomach, under the white fluffy clouds and cheerful sun that had been carefully stitched across the noble bosom of his dungarees. Worn over these was a capacious summer jacket sporting bold vertical stripes, giving the wearer the appearance of an ambulatory deckchair, or at least of something that suggested summer and the seaside. In one hand, the welcome apparition had been carrying a sturdy walking stick, while in the other hand he’d held a leather instrument case like a giant black teardrop, the unusual shape suggesting that it contained a pot-bellied mandolin.

Tom Hall. The glorious spectre rumbling towards them had been Tom Hall (1944 to 2003): Northampton’s minstrel, bard and one-man Bicycle Parade — a memorable show each time he’d set foot outside his front door. He’d been the wildly Dionysian and tireless founder of numerous brilliant groups from the mid-’60s onwards, like the Dubious Blues Band, Flying Garrick, Ratliffe Stout Band, Phippsville Comets and a dozen more that Bill remembered seeing play in the back room of the Black Lion. This had been the Black Lion in St. Giles Street, and not the older pub of the same name down there by Castle Station. The St. Giles Street Black Lion, hailed as the most haunted spot in England by ghost-hunters such as Eliot O’Donnell, had been sanctuary to the town’s drugged-up bohemians and drunken artists from the 1920s to its sorry end during the 1990s when it had been ruinously improved, converted to a tavern meant for an expected passing trade of lawyers and renamed the Wig & Pen. For all those decades, though, the Black Lion had provided a fixed point about which a great deal of the town’s lunacy could orbit, and of all the many legendary titans that had at one time presided over the cacophony of its front bar, Tom Hall was without doubt the very greatest.

The respected revenant, in sandals and carefully clashing socks, had sloshed and sauntered down the walkway with a gait that Bill found reminiscent of a berthing tugboat, stopping in his tracks on sighting the Dead Dead Gang, at which point his trailing look-alikes had piled into the back of him and melted. His calm gaze, continually unsurprised and unshakeably confident, had fallen on the huddle of ghost-children standing there outside the entrance to the Jolly Smokers, hanging in the air before them. Bristling brows had knitted to a frown and for a moment the benign but very tough musician had looked stern and frightening, a bit like Zeus or one of them. And then Tom Hall had laughed, like a delinquent cavalier.

“Haharr. What’s this, then? Have they finally found out where all the Bisto Kids were buried?”

Bill had eagerly stepped forward, dragging Michael Warren with him. He’d known that Tom wouldn’t recognise him in his current form, nor by his current name. William or Bill, although it was what he’d been christened, was a name only his family had called him during life. He’d thought he better introduced himself to Tom using the nickname that had been bestowed upon him in his youth by a forgetful P.E. teacher in the course of a particularly energetic game of football: “Come on! Pass the ball to … Bert.”

Michael and Bill had stood there looking up at Tom from what would have been the site of a full eclipse if the enormous poet, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist had still possessed a shadow. Bill had grinned.

“ ’Ello, Tom. ’Ow yer gettin’ on, mate? It’s me, Bert, from Lindsay Avenue.”

The brows had risen in a querying expression, with a slightly mocking undertone to it that Bill remembered from their earthly conversations.

“My dear boy! Not Bert the Stab?”

This winning soubriquet, bestowed after the unfortunate teenage incident that night in the back room of the Black Lion — there’d been extenuating circumstances, Bill was reasonably certain — had been Tom’s at once affectionate and ridiculing nickname for the young and almost beardless Bill. Acknowledging that he was indeed Bert the Stab, Bill had explained to the deceased performer how this part of him, the part that had loved being eight and playing in the streets, was currently involved in quite a serious adventure with his mates, the Dead Dead Gang. The immense apparition had thrown back his head, somehow without dislodging the beret, and had let laughter like an earthquake ripple through his ectoplasmic bulk so that the stitched-on teddies shimmied on his paunch.

“HaHAAAR! Har HA har! The Dead Dead Gang. I like it.”

The compulsive versifier had begun extemporising on the spot.

“The Dead Dead Gang, the Dead Dead Gang, so bad they killed them twice! The Dead Dead Gang were born to hang for paediatric vice! HaHAAAR! How about that? That could be your theme tune, couldn’t it? Whaddaya think? Ha HAARR!”

Phyllis had scowled at the lyric leviathan with genuine menace, toying meaningfully with her ribbon of dead rabbits.

“We’ve already got a theme tune.”

Stepping in, Bill had attempted to stop Phyllis alienating yet another otherwise-accommodating spirit by steering the conversation back from theme tunes onto the more pressing matters that were currently at hand.

“Tom, what it wiz, I’ve got to pay a visit to this place ’ere, to the Jolly Smokers. There’s somebody what I’m searchin’ for who might be up there, but quite frankly I’m not lookin’ forward to it, not at this size, and not with the nutters that you get up there. You couldn’t chaperone us, could you, mate? Me and the nipper ’ere?”

The genial colossus had beamed radiantly.

“Your want to go up to the Smokers? Well, you should have said. That’s where I’m off to now. I’ve got a gig up there with me new band, Holes In Black T-Shirts. It wiz Tom Hall’s Deadtime Showstoppers for a few years, but then I got fed up and changed it. ’Course I’ll take you up there, little Bert the Stab. HaHARRR! I wouldn’t leave you sitting out here on the front step with a bottle of Corona and a bag of crisps while I went in like a neglectful dad and had a drink, now, would I? Har har har. Come on.”

With that, Tom had placed one palm flat against the hanging 2D tissue of the door, and pushed. The portal had swung inwards and away from them, seeming to gain a third dimension as it did so. It had opened onto a drab, narrow hallway with depressingly dark wallpaper, a space apparently carved into empty air which, when Bill had leaned out round the door’s edge to check, had turned out to be utterly invisible if looked at from the side. Tom had already entered and was rumbling away down the grim corridor that wasn’t there. With a last anxious glance at Phyllis, and still dragging Michael Warren by one hand, Bill had stepped through the door, pushing it shut behind him. Him and his bewildered infant charge had followed the beloved entertainer into the notorious wraith-pub, listening to the pandemonium above increase in volume as they neared the rotting staircase at the hall’s far end.