14

 

MORE RADICAL THAN VOODOO

 

I AWOKE FROM A DREAM ABOUT TRAVELLING IN DISTANT LANDS, TO the sound of a knocking at my chamber door. I yawned and stretched, and farted too, I must confess, and called out, ‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Paper, sir, and breakfast,’ called back a voice I did not recognize.

I rose and stretched again and rubbed my arms, for it was pretty cold, and, opening the door, took in a tray of tea and toast and a rolled-up copy of the Daily Sketch.

As there was no table in my little room I set the tray down on the floor, poured lukewarm tea into the chipped enamel mug, added milk and, finding no spoon available, stirred this with a soldier of toast.

And then I unrolled the newspaper.

TRAGIC DEATH OF A ROCKSTAR

Ran the head line and beneath this—

PANAY CLOUDRUNNER DIES AGED 23

I read the news and then— Oh boy!

He’d blown his mind out in a car. He hadn’t noticed that the lights had changed.

A terrible chill ran through me as I read the time of the fatal accident. Not a half-hour after I’d spoken to the waiter with the bloody nose. Dear God, what had I done?

Well, it was all too clear just what I’d done. I’d killed him as surely as if I’d put a gun to his head and squeezed upon the trigger.

I had killed a perfect stranger. This was terrible. Terrible. Beyond terrible. This was— ‘Oh my God!’ I wailed. Most terribly I wailed. Beyond terribly, in fact. I wailed and gnashed my teeth and beat my forehead with my fists. And then I stumbled from my room. Along the corridor, down the stairs, into the lift, out into the foyer. And into chaos.

The foyer was packed with people. News teams with cameras and boom mics like furry blimps. Others. Many others, shouting to be heard.

A woman in a Salvation Army uniform thrust a collecting tin into my face. ‘Are you one of the blessed?’ she asked. ‘Would you care to make a contribution?’

‘I don’t give to paramilitary organizations,’ I told her. ‘Get out of my way.

‘Help save the whales,’ called somebody else.

‘Stuff Prince Charles,’ I replied.

I fought my way through the crowd and out into the street. Here I passed more newsmen speaking into cameras.

‘I’m standing here,’ said one. ‘In what must be England’s luckiest town. Yesterday nearly one hundred homeless and destitute people became the unlikely recipients of huge sums of money. Bizarre coincidence? Act of God? Who can say. I have with me a close friend of one of the lucky ones that local folk are now calling, the blessed. Mr Colon, would you care to say a few words?’

I turned at the name and Colon flashed me a winning smile. ‘Nice one, man,’ he said.

I waved at him feebly, turned away, tripped on the kerb and fell directly into the path of an oncoming Blue Bird Cleaners’ truck.

And black went the world about me.

 

I awoke with a start to a terrible shock.

‘Stand clear,’ said a voice and then THWUNKQ, which was just how it felt. My chest heaved and then I felt my eyelids being tampered with. A very bright light shone into one eye, then the other.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the voice and I could see its owner now, a doctor in a white coat. ‘There is nothing more I can do for this man.’

Nothing more? I tried to cry out but my mouth wouldn’t move. Nothing would move, not a finger not a toe.

‘Time of death, two-thirty p.m. Have an orderly move him to the morgue please.’

The morgue! An awful fear ran through me. This fool thinks I’m dead, which is surely not the case.

‘Are you certain?’ asked a pretty nurse, gazing down at me. A voice of reason. Yes!

The doctor felt my pulse, put a stethoscope upon my heart, put a finger to my neck, shone his damn torch in my eyes again. ‘Absolutely certain, nurse. This man is dead.’

What? The awful fear became an awful terror. Well beyond an awful terror. Dead? I’m not dead. I’m not dead!

‘He’s dead,’ said the doctor.

‘Dead,’ said the nurse.

And ‘dead’, said the lady with the alligator purse (who just happened to be passing the door on her way to a nursery rhyme).

I’m not dead, you fools, I’m not dead.

And then someone pulled the sheet up over my head and I couldn’t see any more. I could still hear though.

‘Do we have a name for him?’ asked the doctor.

‘No,’ said the nurse. ‘There was no identification on the body. We must assume he was one of the homeless people who were accidentally allocated the grants for the secret government germ warfare project yesterday.’

‘That was a right royal cock-up,’ said the doctor. ‘Are the police hunting those transients to recover the money?’

‘No luck apparently. Word must have leaked out last night. The homeless people all left the hotel before dawn, there’s no trace of them.’

‘Was there any money on this chap?’

‘No money, but his pockets were full of rubbish. Filter tips, lolly sticks, biro caps, bottle tops, bits of coloured wool.’

‘Just another loser, eh? Well, usual procedure, morgue then the crem.’

The crem? The CREMATORIUM! I tried hard to scream, I really did. But there was nothing. Nothing. And then I knew it. Knew it because I knew I wasn’t breathing, that my heart wasn’t beating, that my blood no longer flowed.

I knew that I was really dead.

Then I heard the door open, sensed others in the room. Something bumped up against my bed, hands were laid upon me and I was roughly manhandled onto, what? A trolley.

Then movement, momentum, I was being pushed out of the room, along corridors. I heard people speaking. Live people. People who weren’t dead like me. People who weren’t destined for the crem.

The morgue was very cold and dull, but at least they turned down the sheet from my face so I could see. I couldn’t see much though, but for the ceiling.

I lay there. A body on the slab. A corpse.

So this was it. And the unspeakable fear that all men fear unspeakably was founded. The mind survives the body after death. The senses still function. I could feel the cold, smell the antiseptic reek, see through my dead eyes and hear through my dead ears. I would suffer it all in silent agony. An autopsy perhaps, but then the crem.

And then what?

I heard the morgue door open and the sounds of approaching footsteps. Two young men loomed above me.

‘What happened to this bloke?’ said one.

‘Road accident,’ said the other. ‘Stepped out in front of a truck.!

‘Silly bastard. Next of kin paying a visit?’

‘John Doe, identity unknown.’

‘So they won’t be bothering with an autopsy or anything.’

‘No, bung him in the freezer, we’ll fire him up this evening.’

I felt a tugging at my hand. ‘He won’t be needing this ring then,’ said one of the young men.

‘Nor this leather jacket,’ said the other.

And then I was lifted onto this big long filing drawer sort of thing and slammed away into freezing darkness.

I was left in absolute silence and absolute black, utterly utterly alone.

As the temperature dropped I thought of my friend and his experience at the war games on Salisbury Plain. How his past life hadn’t flashed before his eyes, only a wish to make up for all the sex he’d missed out on. But I wasn’t thinking of sex. All I felt was envy. Envy of the living. All I wanted was life, more life.

‘And if you had it, what would you do with it?’

I groaned inwardly. That was all I needed now. A voice in my head. Not only dead, but mad with it. Perfect.

‘Actually you’re taking it quite well,’ said the voice. ‘Your average dead person is usually reduced to an incoherent mental babbler. Apart from the Christians, of course. It’s all, “Praise the Lord, I’m coming to glory” with those lads. You’d still be an atheist, I suppose.’

I tried to ignore the voice and set my mind to desperate practical thinking. There had to be some way out of this.

My thoughts turned to the island of Haiti, over there voodoo priestesses were said to be able to reanimate the dead as zombies. I had all my sensory faculties about me, I could hear and see and feel. If there was some way I could send out a telepathic message to any voodoo priestess that happened to be in the area and get her to hurry on over before I went into the oven— ‘That’s a new one,’ said the voice in my head. ‘Usually it’s just a futile struggle to get the personality out of the body and float off somewhere. The Buddhists have that off to a fine art. Did you know that the Dalai Lama practises dying four times a day? So he’ll be prepared, you see. Whip straight off to his next incarnation.’

‘I read somewhere that monks make amulets out of his poo,’ I said, without moving my lips or making a single sound. ‘But I’m not talking to you, you’re just a figment of my imagination.’

‘You’ve got spirit,’ said the voice. ‘I’ll give you that.’

‘Bugger off!’

‘Now that’s no way to speak to God, is it?’

‘You’re not God. I don’t believe in God.’

‘Rubbish, everyone believes in God. Some just pretend they don’t.’

‘Well, I don’t.’

‘Fair enough, you’ll be wanting to stay in your body then. For the crem.’

‘I’m expecting the imminent arrival of a voodoo high priestess, as it happens.’

‘Well, I hope she knows which bus to catch, I think those sods who nicked your ring and jacket are coming back. They probably want to knock off early. I think they’ve got tickets for the Sonic Energy Authority gig at Wembley tonight. There’s a new bass player, you know.’

I managed another inward silent groan. And another, ‘Bugger off.’

‘Oh well, please yourself. I’ll pop back later, after the inferno, try to catch you before they grind your bones up. That’s quite an unpleasant experience I hear, even worse than the burning.’

‘Hold on, wait, don’t go.’

‘Hah. Decided to change your mind, eh? Decided to believe in me after all?’

‘I don’t believe you’re God.’

‘Oh go on, you do really.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You’re one stubborn bugger for a dead bloke. But you’re quite right, I’m not really God.’

‘So what are you?’

‘I’m your Holy Guardian.’

‘My what?’

‘Your Holy Guardian, assigned to watch over you throughout your life.’

‘Well a shit job you’ve made of it. I walked under a truck.’

‘Sorry about that. I wasn’t concentrating. Nobody’s perfect, you know. Except for God, of course.

‘Look,’ I said, still without actually speaking, ‘if this is the case, do you think it would be all right if I had a quick word with God? I’m sure if you were to explain what happened—’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in God.’

‘I’m coming around to the idea. Go on, a quick word, what harm could it do?’

‘It could do me a lot of harm. I was supposed to be on the job. Your Holy Guardian.’

‘He’ll forgive you, you’re one of his angels, after all.’

‘Well.’

‘Well what?’

‘Well, I never said anything about being an angel.’

‘You said you’re my Holy Guardian. That’s an angel, isn’t it?’

‘Well, it can be. For some people. But there’s an awful lot of people on Earth. More people than there are angels, in fact. Look upon me as your little gift from God’s garden.’

‘What?’

‘I’m your Holy Guardian Sprout.’

I groaned another inward groan. A great big one this time.

‘Look, don’t take it so badly. Think of me as a family retainer. I’ve been with your lot for generations. Not that I ever get taken any notice of. What did I say to your great³ granddaddy? “Don’t go bothering the people in the field next-door.” I said, but did he listen? No, he didn’t. And your great² granddaddy. What did I say to him? “Don’t go on the Titanic,” I said, “that bugger Crombie’s going to be on board.” Same business.’

‘You’ve never said a word to me,’ I said (silently as ever).

‘I bloody have.’

‘You bloody haven’t.’

‘I have you know, I said, “Turn on your private eye tape recorder.” Back in the Gents at Fangio’s Bar when you first met Colon the super-dense proto-hippy.’

‘You made me do that?’

‘I put the idea into your head. I thought you could help mankind if you knew about your gift. I thought it might earn me some big kudos with God, keep me off his Sunday dinner plate.’

‘Well, it’s all screwed now, I’m dead.’

‘No hard feelings,’ said the Holy Guardian Sprout.

‘Oh, none at all. But I do hope—’

‘What?’

‘I hope he boils you for hours and eats you really slowly!’

‘All right, I deserved that. But listen, we have to get you out of here.’

‘You know any voodoo high priestesses?’

‘Not as such. I don’t think that voodoo stuff really works. What we need is something more radical.’

‘More radical than voodoo?’

‘There is one way we might do it, but it is very radical and I don’t think it’s ever been done before.’

‘Go on.’

‘OK. Well, everything so far has been seen from your point of view. You’re in the first person, right? It’s your autobiography.’

‘It is,’ I said, and it was.

‘Well, what if it ceased to be? What if you moved into the third person, became part of someone else’s story for a while?’

‘I don’t think that makes any sense.’

‘Oh it does, you know. After all, you are dead. You can’t write any more about yourself, can you? But someone could write about you.

‘Who?’

‘I don’t know. A biographer, perhaps.’

‘This all sounds very iffy.’

‘More iffy than being dead and heading for the furnace?’

‘I take your point.’

‘Look, just trust me on this. You have nothing to lose after all and if I can pull it off, we’ll both be out of the hot water. Well, I’ll be out of the hot water and you’ll be out of—’

‘All right, don’t keep on about that.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So what do we do?’

‘Well, the first thing we have to do is to get out of this chapter.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it. But just one thing before we do.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t know your name. What is it?’

‘It’s Bartemus,’ said the Holy Guardian Sprout. ‘But don’t be formal, chief, call me Barry.’