Moby Jack & Other Tall Tales (11 page)

‘You’re supposed to say, “Another fine mess you’ve gotten me into, Stanley,” and play with your tie.’

Hollywood, damn them.

Hollywood covered every contingency except one. In
all the
alien invasion movies they ever made the attacking monsters are always as grim as Michigan in January. As I lay here dying, the joke is on you and me, colonel. There ’s one type of extraterrestrial they
didn’t
plan on coming—an offworlder soldier just like our own soldiers—

—
an
alien with a sense of humour.

There are two kinds of cherub. One is the medieval cherub: the naked chubby infant with wings. The other is your actual biblical cherub: a terrifying monster. The following story makes only passing reference to the first kind.

Harry Meeker stood shivering in the cold
wind which
swept around the corner of the Royal Festival Hall. His raincoat sagged deeply on one side. In the left pocket was the gun, which he had hardly touched since it had been given to him by John-the-Butcher. Harry didn’t want to touch the gun. He hated the feel of the weight and the way it knocked against his thigh every time he moved.

Harry stared out moodily over the River Thames, watching the occasional boat drift up or down, sometimes studded with coloured lights, sometimes blacked out except for the mandatory port and starboard lamps. The first were usually full of noisy people, the second silent and mysterious. Harry wished he were on any one of them, heading for an unknown destination, somewhere where he couldn’t be found.

Suddenly, doors flew open and the building began to disgorge its patrons. People came out, some in evening dress, some not, to fill the precinct outside the hall. Harry went rigid with tension and peered into the chattering crowds as they swept past him, looking for Chas McFey. Harry hoped he wouldn’t see him, though he knew the consequences of failure. It didn’t bear thinking about: someone waiting in the shadows to blow
his
brains all over his coat collar.

At that moment he caught sight of Chas, all spruced up in black tie gear, walking with his wife on his arm. Harry’s cold but sweaty hand closed around the butt of the gun in his pocket. His legs started shaking. He couldn’t do it here, of course, in front of all these witnesses. It would be necessary to follow Chas and do it in some quiet street. Chas lived only walking distance from the South Bank: there would be no car or cab.

Somehow, Harry got his legs to move, and he followed the couple down a series of steps, to the streets below. Chas and his wife turned into York Road at the bottom, and along, and then finally into Leake Street, a small quiet area. Harry tried to pull out the gun, but it caught on the lining of his pocket, and it took him at least a minute to untangle it. When he managed to free it, Chas was almost at his house. Harry ran forward, his hand trembling violently, and pointed the gun.

‘Chas!’ he croaked.

Both Chas and his wife turned and stared, wide-eyed, into Harry’s face.
For some reason they didn’t look at the gun and he wondered if they had even seen it.
Harry knew that he would have to kill both of them. He tried to pull the trigger, but his finger was somehow locked. His heart was pounding so fast he wondered if he were going to have a heart attack. He felt sick and faint, wanting to vomit.

‘Harry?’ Chas said, finally looking down at the gun.

Harry’s arm hurt where the muscles were cramping with the tension. There was no way he could pull that trigger. Wincing with the pain, he gradually lowered the weapon.

‘I can’t do it,’ he moaned. ‘I just can’t do it.’

And still Chas and his wife were no help. They stood there, looking shocked. Then suddenly Chas’s wife started screaming—screams that would have penetrated Hitler’s bunker—and Harry started running.

He ran all the way back down to the river, stood for a moment on the walk, then threw the gun into the water.

Then he started walking, his hands buried deep in his pockets, towards Blackfriars Bridge.

‘I’ve bloody had it now,’ he kept telling himself. ‘I’m in the shit right up to my neck now.’

John-the-Butcher had ordered Harry to top Chas McFey, had thrust the gun into his hand and said, ‘Get rid of the bastard, Harry, and we’ll forget what you owe.’ Harry did indeed owe the Butcher a substantial amount, for Harry was a gambler with an extraordinary talent for losing. Harry could bet on a fixed race and the horse would fall over and break its neck right before the finish line. That was how good Harry was at losing.

But Harry was
just
a gambler. He didn’t steal, commit violent acts, or kill people. The Butcher did all those things. All Harry ever did was lose on the races and borrow more money. That wasn’t an offence against anyone, not society, not even Butcher John. What
was
a crime was not paying his debts on time and though the law of the land was fairly lenient in such cases, the Butcher saw it as a crime of the most heinous nature. Raping the Butcher’s grandmother was not as serious as failing to pay him what you owed.

So John-the-Butcher wasn’t
asking
Harry to kill Chas McFey. He was
telling
him. Now Harry would be lucky if the Butcher didn’t top
him
, for not doing what he was told. At the very least the Butcher’s boys Dave and Phil would put Harry’s legs over a kerb and jump on them, several times, until the bones were in splinters. Harry’s stomach churned at the thought. Harry sweated. Harry’s brain buzzed with fear.

As he walked through Blackfriars, after crossing the bridge, Harry came across a small chapel. The doors were open. On impulse he went inside and sat down in a pew. Not being a religious man he didn’t know what to do at first, but gradually he managed to start praying. He prayed for all sorts of things, from John-the-Butcher getting a cardiac arrest, to God providing him, Harry, with a guardian angel.

‘I think I’ve earned it, Lord,’ whispered Harry. ‘I saved a man’s life tonight...at the expense of my own. I mean, doesn’t it say somewhere, something about it’s the greatest thing you can do, give up your life for your friend? I did that tonight. You owe me, Lord...’ this sounded a little impertinent, so Harry added, ‘in a manner of speaking. In return, I promise to be Good, always.’

After his ‘Amen’ Harry waited around to see if anything was going to happen, then sighed and left. He had never had much faith in mumbo-jumbo but it was worth a try. As a child he had been sent to Sunday
School
to get him out of his mother’s hair for a morning. In those days he had been pretty impressed with things like miracles. Now there was only the reality of the Butcher and Harry’s own vivid imagination.

‘I did let Chas live though,’ he murmured, ‘and I’m glad.’

He saw no point in hiding. The Butcher would eventually find him. So Harry went straight back to his flat in Camden.

As he put the key in the lock, Harry could smell burning.

‘Must have left the gas hob on,’ he muttered.

When he entered the hallway, it felt very warm. He frowned. There was a kind of roaring sound, coming from the
living-room
. Surely the Butcher’s men hadn’t been round already? It was too soon for them to have heard. Yet it seemed that his
living-room
was on fire.

Harry went forward cautiously. The living-room door was partly ajar and he pushed it open and peered inside.
The next second he jumped back, slamming against the hall wall, his eyes starting from his head.

‘JESUS CHRIST!’ he screamed.

His breath came out in quick gasps, robbing him of oxygen. His heart was stuck somewhere in his windpipe, choking him. Fear was like a flood sweeping through him.

There was a monster in the corner of his
living-room
, breathing fire.

Harry stared at the creature, which did not move.

The
thing
was crouched there, but if it had stood up Harry guessed it would be about twelve feet tall. It was indeed monstrous, with a huge body covered in eyes and tiny wings. There was a semblance of human shape about it, though it seemed more head than anything else. Its beak-like mouth was cavernous and its enormous claw-feet spread out across the carpet. The whole creature was grotesque, like something that had stepped out of a nightmare, and it was
alive
.

‘Oh, Jesus...’ groaned Harry.

The creature’s head turned at this word and it seemed to be staring at Harry with quite a few of its eyes.

It was not exactly
breathing
fire, as Harry had first thought, but was flailing the air with a fiery sword. It never stopped. It was like a demonstration by an Oriental juggler spinning flaming brands, very skilfully, in order to create a circle of fire. Harry could feel the heat of the sword and hear the roar of its burning. Yet it seemed not to start any secondary fires in the room.

Even through his terror, it struck Harry that if John-the-Butcher’s men came to the flat, they would have to deal with this monster, as well as Harry himself. Harry was inclined to think that the monster would not be easily subdued. It appeared to be the kind of
creature which
might put up a bit of a fight, get a little angry, if someone annoyed it. This gave Harry a modicum of comfort. Gradually, as it became apparent that the creature was not going to attack him, a calmness of spirit crept over Harry and he began to relax.

Exhausted, both by the night’s events and by the heat, Harry slid down the wall to the hallway floor, where he lay in a pool of sweat and drifted off into a fitful sleep, the Catherine Wheel of fire still flashing and roaring before his eyes.

When he woke, at five in the morning, the monster was still there, still swishing about him with his flaming sword, still creating wonderful fire patterns in the air. Its grotesque crouched form filled a good third of Harry’s small room.

‘‘Mornin’,’ croaked Harry, his throat parched. ‘Haven’t you got the cramps yet?’

When the monster didn’t answer, Harry went to the bathroom, had a drink of water, stripped, took a shower, and came out feeling refreshed. He went to his bedroom and dressed in clean clothes, lit a cigarette, then picked up the phone and dialled.

‘Cynthia? Yes, I know what time it is, but you haven’t seen what I’ve got here...no, I’m not being coarse—I mean in my living-room. It’s a sodding great monster—well, I’m sorry, I know you don’t like swearing but there’s no other way to describe it. It’s—it’s—well, I really
can’t
describe it— alright, I will...’ and he told her what the thing looked like, what it was carrying, and what it was doing with it.

‘You see why I’m ringing you? It seems harmless enough but I need you to find out what it is. Can you come over? Bring a couple of books. We’ll go through them together. Okay, see you in a bit. Sorry about waking you— yeah, okay. Bye.’

Harry put down the phone. Cynthia was his occasional girlfriend and a
school teacher
. If she couldn’t find out what the thing was, nobody could. Cynthia was bright.

Harry went into the
living-room
and sat in a chair and stared at the creature. The creature stood, waved its flaming sword, and stared at Harry. It was a woefully uneven contest.

Cynthia naturally went into hysterics at first, saying she thought Harry had been hallucinating, or had the dee-tees, or something normal, but she never expected to see a definite, real, honest-to-God monster in his living-room. Harry told her he had got used to the creature now and just wanted to know what the hell it was, so he could decide what to do about it.

Cynthia had brought some books with her, thinking she might have to humour him, so when she had calmed down, about an hour later, they went through them together. The books she had brought were full of mythological and fabulous beasts, like the basilisk, the gryphon, the senmurv,
dragons
, Tengu, Garuda...

‘That’s a bit like him, that Garuda thing,’ said Harry.