Alan Moore - Jerusalem

The various ghosts about the Mansoul Mayorhold on that radiant blue afternoon had mostly stopped what they were doing to admire the mastodon, this grand, ten-foot high specimen with its sixteen-foot tusks that had so unexpectedly arrived there in their midst. Even the gold-prospectors, who were still trying hard to chisel up a precious fragment of coagulated angle-blood from the flat puddles that were everywhere, paused in their labour to inspect this latest novelty. What an extraordinary day, they must have all been thinking, even by the extraordinary standards that applied Upstairs. First two colossal Master Builders smack each other silly, there in the unfolded town square, and now this turns up! Whatever next?

Cosy against the prehistoric plush, Michael was thinking about Mighty Mike, his namesake with the even paler hair, who even at this moment would be pacing on the twenty-five foot margins of the trilliard table, studying the angles and deliberating while the grey mob of rough sleepers looking on all held their breath forever. A nerve ticking at one corner of his damaged eye, he’d grind the cube of chalk with too much force against his cue, gaze fixed unwaveringly on the off-white globe that hung in peril at the death’s-head corner, teetering upon the black brink of the pocket’s drop. This, of course, was the off-white globe which represented Michael’s soul.

There was a sudden lurch that interrupted Michael’s reverie, almost dislodging him from his perch on the creature’s back and causing him to clutch tight at the rusty fur. Bill clapped his feet against the matted flanks and swung his pole so that the string of Puck’s Hats hung a tempting inch or two ahead of Mammy’s uncurled woolly caterpillar trunk. The ginger mammoth-jockey called out into the stupendous echo-chamber of Mansoul.

“Hiyo Mammy! Awaaaaaay!”

And they were off. Braying magnificently through her swaying, raised proboscis, the apparently sweet-natured Palaeolithic throwback broke into a trot, and then a canter, then a gallop. Its hairy umbrella-stand feet pounded on the sacred paving, crunching through the gold scabs still remaining from the builders’ fracas, fracturing the hardened puddles’ bullion sheen into a fine web of ceramic cracks in passing. All the coloured-costume phantoms and the semi-naked sleepers gathered in the astral Mayorhold cheered and waved their caps or bonnets. From the tiered verandas up above a multitude of dreams and ghosts yelled their encouragement. The shaven-headed giant in Roundhead uniform that Michael had been told was called Thompson the Leveller thumped rhythmically and jubilantly on the handrail as he watched, and the ethereally handsome black-skinned cowboy they’d seen earlier fired his six-guns in the air in celebration.

The gang and their wondrous mount rumbled up an unfolded higher surrogate of Silver Street, one of the eight archaic lanes converging there in the original town square. Since Mansoul was built out of nothing more than dreams and poetry and stray associations, the considerably widened street was made wholly from silver. What was no more than a narrow lane down in the mortal realm was here a polished swathe of silver cobbles, with a fish-eye miniature of Mammy and her ghost-child cargo swimming in the bulge of every argent stone as they stampeded by, splashing through pools of super-rain left by the recent downpour, sending sprays of complicated droplets bouncing in the hallmarked gutters. From moon-metal landings overlooking the exalted thoroughfare, Silver Street’s ghostly occupants of several different centuries were whooping and applauding as the famous Dead Dead Gang rode past on their pet mammoth.

There were beautifully painted nancy boys from the public convenience at the lane’s bottom end, a magnified Mansoul enhancement with its fifty-foot-long trough and endless row of cubicles all fashioned from white marble. Dressed in flouncy, near-fluorescent outfits that they would have never dared to wear while they were still alive, the pretty sissies cooed and shrilled like birds of paradise, and one called out “We love you, Marjorie”, brandishing a green-and-gold jacketed book as Mammy passed beneath them. There were Rabbis from the vanished synagogue up at the top end of the passage, where the lofty-windowed cube of brick that was the Fish Market stood, down in the material world. The Hebrew clerics clapped politely and seemed to be nodding in agreement, although Michael didn’t know what with. Balcony after balcony of ghostly silversmiths, streetwalkers, publicans, judo instructors, pawnbrokers, resplendent paupers and antique policemen had turned out, it seemed, to watch the temporarily dead infant taken back to life. Michael clung tight to Mammy’s fine, luxuriant pelt and felt a bit intimidated by all the attention. He’d had no idea he was so famous. He tried to shrink further down into the musty fur, but found that as upon those bitter winter nights when he’d tried sleeping right down underneath the bedclothes, it was hard to breathe.

“… this lady’s little boy. ’E’s got a sweet lodged in ’is throat …”

“ ’E ent breathed. ’E ent breathed all this time!”

“Oh, my goodness. Give him here, dear. Nurse, can you fetch Dr. Forbes, please, and tell him to hurry?”

Out from the old metalworker’s lane their Pleistocene Express banked to the right, into a yawning plaza that was very like the lower end of Sheep Street, only massively inflated. Mammy blasted out a nasal fanfare as she stormed past the old, stately-looking building that was opposite the mouth of Silver Street, which, although much expanded, Michael recognised as the academy he’d seen in Mr. Doddridge’s Delft tiles. Upon its soaring terraces the young and fiery scholars were applauding, shouting their approval in Greek, Latin, French and Hebrew as they celebrated and lit bottle-rockets. On the lower levels of the glorious edifice a hundred thousand candles had been patiently arranged to spell out KING GEORGE — NO PRETENDER in massed choirs of primrose flame. The sky above was grading into violet where the students’ fireworks banged or twittered and strewed coloured sparks in great hot handfuls down upon the Dead Dead Gang’s parade.

Perched behind Michael as they avalanched down the titanic phantasm of Sheep Street, Phyllis shouted in his ear over the racket of the pyrotechnics and the constant drum-roll of their charger’s footfalls.

“ ’Ere, I just thought. Ask ayr Bill ’ow ’im and Reggie got this bloody great thing up ’ere to Mansoul. I mean, it’s ’ard enough for people to climb up a Jacob Flight, so ’ow did they get Mammy to goo up a ladder?”

Michael dutifully passed this on to Marjorie, in front of him, who conveyed it to Reggie sitting just in front of her. Reggie said something back to Marjorie and they both snickered before Marjorie turned round and hissed conspiratorially at Michael.

“They pushed Mammy upstairs through the bottom of our hideout up near Lower Harding Street. Apparently it wrecked the den, so there’s only a mammoth-sized hole where it used to be. If you tell Phyllis, she’ll go spare. Just say that Reggie can’t shout loud enough for Bill to hear him over all this noise. Tell her she’ll have to ask him later.”

Michael haltingly repeated this white lie to Phyllis, who narrowed her eyes suspiciously but seemed prepared to let the matter rest there for the moment. On they went down Sheep Street, heading for the Market Square and Drapery. Around their pet giant’s tree-trunk legs, the toddler noticed that there slopped a white tide made of sheep, all clattering and bleating idiotically as they tried to get out of the rampaging brute’s way. He assumed that these must just be part of Sheep Street’s poetry, like all the silver lampposts, drains and paving stones that Mammy had just passed in Silver Street. He hoped that they would not be going anywhere near Ambush Street, or Gas Street for that matter.