Apocalypso (8 page)

‘Indeed?
Well, in all truth I don’t know his original name. He had it changed by deed
poll when he first went on the stage. All I know is his professional name.’

Which
was?’

‘Apocalypso
The Miraculous.’

Porrig
choked. ‘The Miraculous?’

With a
capital
T
in the
The.
He was very famous in his day. You can look
him up in books.’

‘Not in
this shop,’ said Porrig bitterly.

Well,
in the one next door then.’ Mr Phart-Ebum made throat-clearing noises. ‘And
so, I must be off about my business and leave you to yours.’ He took Porrig’s
dangling hand between his own and shook it. And then, chuckling like a bad’n,
he went on his way.

Porrig
gave a deep and heart-felt sigh. He should never have got his hopes up really.
Good things never came in his direction. He was just one of life’s losers,
doomed ever to disappointment and blows to the skull.

Porrig
squinted in through the half-open door. It looked pretty grim in there. Dark
and dank and quite without a welcome.

Was it
worth a look inside, or should he just get back on the train and go home?

‘Home,’
said Porrig. ‘I don’t think I can take any more.’ He turned the old key on the
palm of his hand. He would lock the place up and go home. He could call Mr
Phart-Ebum later. Tell him to put the building on the market. Property was
always worth something, even if you just knocked it down and levelled the
ground for a car-park.’

Porrig
stepped nimbly over the mattress and tugged at the ancient door. It was all
jammed up with rubbish now and Porrig fought to close it. The door seemed
disinclined to close. ‘I am an open door now,’ it seemed to say, ‘and I will
stay that way.’

‘Oh no
you bloody won’t.’ Porrig struggled and strained and sweated and swore. And
then he slipped upon something unspeakable and plunged headlong through the
doorway.

Porrig
now found himself lying face down on the floor. A sad and sorry sight was he. A
glum and gloomy grizzler. Porrig thrashed his legs about and drummed his fists
on the floor. Only the previous night his mother had behaved in this same
fashion. She, however, had been all convulsed with laughter. Porrig now knew
why that was. Porrig thrashed and Porrig drummed, but laughter wasn’t in it.

‘Aaaaaaaaaagh!’
went Porrig, wishing not only that he was dead, but indeed that he never had
been born. Although not a one for religion, he now prayed hard that the angel
the old bloke on the train had told him of might fly down from heaven this very
instant and carry him off to a far better place.

‘Aaaaaaaaaagh!’
he went once more.

Passers-by
in the street made the sign of the cross and hurried on by with their shopping.

‘God’s
bollocks!’ Porrig kicked about and tried to gain his feet. He stumbled up, put
out his hand to support himself on the wall and in doing so pressed down the
light switch.

Lightning
flashed and tore about the shop and Porrig ducked his head. ‘I’m sorry, God,’
he mumbled. The lightning stopped and Porrig blinked his eyes.

Not
lightning.

Neon
ceiling lights.

The
lights had come on to illuminate…

A
stunningly beautiful bookshop interior, all polished ebony bookshelves and Victorian
leather-bound books.

Sadly,
no.

The
lights had come on to illuminate a long, low-ceilinged room, furnished all
about with shelves. But not one book upon them.

‘Not a
single sodding book,’ said Porrig. ‘Not a single one.’

But
plenty of cardboard boxes.

Porrig
managed one more sigh, straightened himself up as best he could and peered at
the boxes. There were dozens of them on the shelves. All open-topped and packed
with something or other. Porrig dug into the nearest one and pulled out…

‘A
comic book,’ said Porrig. He moved along the shelves, peeping into the boxes. ‘They’re
all packed with comic books. And they’re…’ Porrig examined the one in his
hand. It was Marvel Comics’ issue number one of
The Silver Surfer.

Porrig
gaped at it, then gaped at it again. ‘Issue number one,’ he gasped in a very
choked kind of a whisper. ‘Issue number one.’

This
shop was full of thirty-year-old comic books. And if they were all like this
one, all in mint condition …untouched and unread, pristine, perfect…

Porrig
stared at the treasure in his hands. He didn’t need to strain his brain to know
what this was worth. If there was one thing he did know about, it was comic
books. He had the price guide at home, but this was easy stuff. Your starter
for ten.

Magnus Magnusson:
The price please of Marvel Comics’ issue number one of
The Silver Surfer?

Padraig
Arthur Naseby: One thousand, four hundred and fifty quid!

‘Oh,
dear God,’ prayed Porrig. ‘Please let it be true. Please don’t let me be lying
unconscious on the floor dreaming this.’

Porrig
dared another look at the comic. If he were dreaming it would probably change
into a pork sausage. Things often did in his dreams, although he had never been
able to find out why. The comic book was not a sausage. It was still
The
Silver Surfer.

Porrig’s
hands began to tremble; he glanced about in sudden fear. Fear that someone
might burst in and steal it all away.

Porrig
rammed shut the door and locked it from the inside. Then he took a great
breath. Turned slowly to survey the room. And then went just a little mad.

He
rushed along the shelves, going from box to box to box, pulling out comics
(though with great care) and letting free cries of delight.

The
Mighty Thor, Dr Strange, The Fantastic Four, Spiderman,
the entire early Marvel back catalogue. All new. All unread. All in
mint condition.

‘I’m
rich!’ Porrig danced a silly jig. ‘I’m rich. I’ve done it. I’ve hit the mother
lode.’ He found himself now at the rear of the shop and here he came upon a big
plan chest.

Porrig
eased out a drawer, bringing to light something beautiful. Porrig stared down
at it. A poster. A 1960s poster. A Martin Sharp poster. The famous Bob Dylan ‘Blowing
in the Mind’ poster, printed in black and red on gold card. Porrig dug into the
drawer. There were five copies. And beneath this, five copies of the ‘Putting
together of the Heads’ 1%7 legalize cannabis classic.

‘Jesus’
Jumpsuit!’ Porrig had seen photos of these in an auction catalogue. How much
had they gone for?

‘Lots,’
said Porrig. ‘Lots and lots.’

And the
ones in the auction had been second-hand, and these were perfect. Perfect.
Porrig opened further drawers and revealed further wonders. Mike English
posters. The Hapshash and the Coloured Coat ones of Hendrix and the Floyd and
The Incredible String band. Porrig pushed in the bottom drawer and sat down on
the floor.

This
was it. The collector’s dream come true. The place that every collector
fantasizes about. The warehouse no-one has opened for a century. Great
granddaddy’s attic. Aunty Nora’s cellar.

Uncle
Apocalypso’s shop!

And
this
was it.
He’d found it. He, Porrig the no-mark. He’d hit the
jackpot. And why? Why him?

‘Because
I deserve it,’ said Porrig. ‘Because I am the only person in the whole wide
world who really truly deserves it. I have been sorely tried and cruelly tested
and I have been found not wanting. It is my destiny to be wealthy and
successful. It is my fate.’

And
satisfied with this load of old tosh, Porrig actually offered up a prayer of
thanks. A real one. ‘Thank you, God,’ prayed Porrig. ‘And thank you too, Uncle
Apocalypso The Miraculous, with the capital T.’

Porrig
wept a little tear for his defunct uncle and also for himself, because he was
now a man of possessions and a man of possessions can be a worried man. Porrig’s
first reaction upon seeing his treasure had been to slam and lock the door,
which had worried him at the time. The sheer instinctive-ness of the act.
Instant covetousness and instant paranoia. All of this was all too much. Half
of it would have done. A quarter. But all? What was he to do with it? How could
he sell it? Whom could he trust? One of the big auction houses? Anyone?

Porrig
now felt a wee bit wobbly. He climbed slowly to his feet and took another look
around. ‘Pull yourself together,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t go to pieces.

Then he
spied the staircase. More upstairs? More stock? The stair light also worked and
Porrig peered up the narrow stairway. ‘Easy now,’ he told himself. ‘Don’t rush
it. One rotten stair and you’ll be joining your uncle.’ But the stairs looked
safe and Porrig took a step or two before he paused and looked back into the
shop.

Something
wasn’t right about that shop.

Something
that should be there, wasn’t.

And
Porrig now knew what that something was.

‘Dust,’
said Porrig. ‘There’s no dust.’

He examined
his hands.

They
were clean.

Porrig
returned to the shop. He ran his finger along the nearest shelf. Dust free. Not
a speck.

Now
that did not make any sense at all. A shop locked up for thirty years and not a
trace of dust?

‘Let’s
check upstairs.’

Porrig
checked upstairs He did tread with considerable care, but the stairs held. The
stairs, with their nicely well-swept carpet, held. On the first floor he was
met by another surprise. Another working light displayed a room full of
machinery. It was all most impressive. All buffed up brass and steel. It was…

‘A
printing press.’ Porrig whistled. ‘It’s a printing press.’

He
circled the machine, admiring all its polished bits and bobs. This was a real
deluxe jobbie. Ideal for…

‘Printing
comics.’ Porrig whistled once again. Why, with a rig-out like this I could
print my own comic books. No more rejection slips from publishers.’

This
was bliss. Oh perfect day. And Porrig engaged in another foolish jig.

Then he
explored a bit more. He came upon a small bathroom and a tiny kitchenette. They
were nothing special. But they were both impeccably clean.

‘Still
no dust.’ Porrig shook his head. So what about the front room with the broken
windows and the roosting pigeons? Porrig opened the door and switched on the light.

The
curtains were drawn. The room was pristine. A bed of burnished brass, covered
by a colourful quilt. A pitch pine wardrobe and a matching dresser. Landscapes
in gilded frames and a very nice rug indeed.

Porrig
crossed the room and flung aside the curtains. Pigeons fluttered up in a panic,
but didn’t fly into the room. A sheet of glass barred their way.

It was
sealed to the bedroom wall a foot inside the outer broken panes.

‘Clever,’
said Porrig, nodding his head. ‘A clever deception to make it seem from the
outside that…’ He paused and a little chill ran down his spine. ‘That this
is a derelict building, which clearly it is not. Someone’s living here.’

Porrig
returned to the kitchenette and opened the fridge. It was packed with food. He
took out a carton of organic milk and sniffed at the top. It was fresh.

‘Oh
shit!’ said Porrig. ‘I’ve got a squatter.’

And
then he heard a sound downstairs.

Porrig
froze.

Someone
was entering the shop, and not by the front door. This someone was whistling in
that carefree ‘this is my house and I’ll whistle in it if I want to’ kind of
way.

‘Oh
shit,’ said Porrig. ‘Shit shit shit.’

So what
to do? Confront the squatter? Order him off the premises? Use force if
necessary? How much force? And how big the squatter? The
one
squatter,
was it? Or maybe there was more than one…

Porrig
sought a weapon: a rolling pin or a big kitchen cleaver. Porrig found a
diminutive pink plastic dish-washing brush. He took it up and held it in a
menacing fashion. No dirty squatter was going to deprive him of his
inheritance. He would fight to the death to protect what was his.

Well,
maybe not to the death, but he’d give the bastard a sound brushing up for his
trouble.

‘Try
and steal from me, will you?’ whispered Porrig.

But
then a thought struck him. It was a thought so terrible that Porrig tried at
once to force it from his mind. But the thought wouldn’t budge. It stayed and
it grew. And it grew.

‘Now
what,’ said this thought, ‘if all that stuff downstairs doesn’t actually belong
to you at all? What if it actually belongs to the confident whistler who’s just
walked in? He could well have come across this empty untenanted building years
ago and taken up residence here. Which would mean that none of it’s yours,
Porrig.

‘None
of it, you useless no-mark loser!’

‘Oh no.’
Porrig’s knees became weak and he sank onto the kitchen chair. It couldn’t be
true. It just couldn’t.