Gavin Corbett - Green Glowing Skull

And then it stiffened to an upright stance, causing all to gasp, and many men to faint. ‘Gentlemen!’ it called out. ‘Or should I say, after a fashion, fellow Kunians! For it is I, Denny Logan!’

The assembled swayed as one organ, rippling inwards and outwards like the walls of an upset stomach. Mob sounds began to swell. President Paulus, on the next balcony down from Rickard, spoke for everyone: ‘How could it be? Denny Kennedy-Logan was buried in a Long Island cemetery last week!’

The figure swiped the air with a flattened hand and brought immediate silence and order.

‘I was not buried in Long Island, or anywhere. What was put in the ground last week was a bag of mince and tallow. A substitute for a dead man. What you see now before you standing is that dead man. I have been brought back to some kind of, what you might understand as, life. Not the life that you all know, ratcheted to rhythms regular and irregular, limited by the outlines of your physical beings, and the rest of it only guessed at. I am boundless and I am free. But I am certain. I am at one with the universal quiddity, I am at one with the truthful immanence. What it is I am.’

The voice of Lancelot boomed up from the floor: ‘Are you speaking in tongues? Do you channel the dead?’

‘No, Lancelot. What I channel is the truth. The truth is what I have come to tell you about. I have come to put you on that white and lighted path. I have come to show you what might be found beyond the slough of dither and quandary. The truth is in reach of us all.’

A man leaned forward in his Zimmer frame and shouted: ‘Are you the New Bab?’ A man with a chicken-skin neck cried out: ‘Are you The Christ? Or a Christ-like saviour?’

Denny shook with what might have been laughter. ‘No, Freddy; no, Solomon. I am not the New Bab, or The Christ, or a Christ-like saviour. But I know of a saviour. He has gifted me the truth.’

‘Are you the ghost of Charles Taze Russell,’ someone called out, ‘finally delivered on that train?’

‘No! It’s me — Denny! Denny Logan. Look, will you just hear me out for two seconds while I talk to you about the truth?’

A feeling of dread flushed through every cell in Rickard’s body. He could not resist:

‘How can you know the truth when you do not have a head?’

Without turning to Rickard, Denny replied:

‘Because, Rickard, I still have a heart.’

Somebody else shouted: ‘If you know the truth, can you tell me what my first wife’s maiden name was?’

‘No, Benny,’ said Denny. ‘Because your first wife’s maiden name is a fact, it is not the truth. But if I had to guess, I would guess “Otway” or “Attleway”.’

‘You’re right, thereabouts!’ the man shouted back.

Another man shouted: ‘Can you tell me what the lucky playing card is that I always carry in my inside pocket?’

‘Again,’ said Denny, ‘I think you’re somewhat failing to grasp the meaning of “truth”.’

Somebody else called up: ‘I’ve just been up to the Whitney. Can you tell me what this whole “modern art” is about?’

‘Ah,’ said Denny, ‘now I’m on firmer ground. It’s about materials, it’s about context, it’s about subjectivity, and it’s about the nature of existence.’

The crowd swooned: faces turned to faces, nodding.

‘Does a pendulum swing always forward or always backward?’ somebody asked.

‘Always backwards, Mitchell,’ said Denny.

Rickard leaned forwards over the stone balustrade. ‘I have a question,’ he said, but was drowned out by the shouting of others.

‘Shush, men, for one moment,’ said Denny. ‘Rickard, I think you were fractionally first.’

‘Yes,’ said Rickard. He felt sure now that, with his question, he would call out the ‘truth seer’ for what he was: a puppet and proponent of Townsend Thoresen. ‘I have a question,’ he repeated.

Denny this time turned to face his questioner, and by doing so invited everyone else to look in Rickard’s direction.

Rickard, with his hands curling into paws on the stone sill, felt like a man in the dock. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Can you tell all assembled here whether they should sell out to Puffball’s new CEO, with his offer of a crisp one billion dollars, or whether they should refuse him, and thus clear the way for Townsend Thoresen’s innovations to dominate the world?’

Slowly and stiffly Denny turned away from Rickard. The featureless face seemed solemn in its blankness.

‘I’m glad you’ve asked that question, Rickard,’ Denny began. ‘Because I was going to pronounce on that matter. I understand that the sale has already been agreed on, but the money and deeds have not changed hands. So there is still the possibility that you might be persuaded not to sell. How and ever, in truth — and the truth is all I can give — you would, as a collective, be crazy not to take the money. But, I suppose, you knew that already. I mean — one billion dollars! Take it and enjoy the rest of your lives, gentlemen!’

In astonishment Rickard ejaculated: ‘But what would your master say?’

‘My “master”, if you mean my spirit guide, my dictator of truth, is my equal,’ said Denny. ‘He can only be truthful too, so he would tell you the same as I have just told you. But in the earth-bound phase of his being he was a man who lived life to its lushest extent, so he would, in any case, say to you all: “Abú! Abú! We’re smelling of roses now, me garsoons!”’

‘That renowned ascetic Townsend Thoresen?!’ said Rickard. ‘It doesn’t sound like him. Come, come, now. Come out with it! What underhand business is afoot here?’

‘Townsend Thoresen?’ said Denny. ‘Do you think I’d heed a word from that entity? Only the one spirit brings the truth to me — the great John McCormack! It is him and I that are in communion. Now, men. As the man himself, while he was on this earth, might have proposed, what say that we dredge the cellars of all of their wines, before the new owners get their hands on them, and we’ll carouse for the rest of the day and into the next?’

***

By nightfall, the rooms and corridors of the clubhouse resembled scenes from Hogarth: ruddy-faced men, with their shirt collars loosened and shirt ends loose, and many with their ties tied around their heads, guzzling wine from goblets or straight from the bottle, and sliding down polished walls and slung like saddles across delicate items of furniture. Rickard skulked outside the saloon, sipping a port, absently nodding along to the man who had him buttonholed.

‘… no, never been to Ireland. Loch Ness, yes; London, yes; Paris, yes; Scotland, yes; Germany, yes — this all on the one tour thirty years ago — Belgium, yes; the Rhine, yes … But, yes, been at it secretly for this last year, apparently, this new chief, John Thomas. Laying down this cable. Gives him a trillionth-of-a-second advantage. Gives us a billion-dollar advantage! He talks about a universal brotherhood. You’ve got to wonder what the sisters will have to say about it …!’

From inside the saloon came the muffled sounds of revelry: laughter, the din of loud chatter, singing — singing ; snatches of ‘Cogitations of My Fancy’ and ‘Bring the Boy Home’ and ‘Come Off It, Eileen’.

The door to the saloon opened a mite, and then wider. A man sidled out, tapping his pipe. Lifting his head, and adjusting his crossed eyes to Rickard and Rickard’s hostage-taker, he said, ‘Come on inside, for godsakes. There’s room for two more.’

Rickard entered to a happy hurly-burly. Denny was holding court at the bar, miming enthusiastic shapes to illustrate the words that his deadened face could not emphasise. His audience loved it — they were beetroot with giddiness, and falling about the place.