The Smell of Telescopes (5 page)

The Purloined Liver

“Purloin My Liver,” said Edgar. 

“I beg your pardon?” Annabel frowned and steered around the carcass of a sheep. Flies rose in a dark cloud.

“The village.” Edgar folded the map and gestured at the collection of thatched cottages. “Purloin My Liver. An old market town. Stop in that pub and I’ll buy you a drink.”

Annabel assented and parked off the road. As she stepped out into bright sunshine, she gazed at the signpost that hung from the side of the building. “Odd name for a pub!”

Edgar shook his head. “We’re in the sticks now. This is rural heritage.” He followed her gaze upwards. “The Plucked Eyeball? Sounds rather quaint to me. I like it.”

Annabel shrugged and followed him inside. The bar was deserted and gloomy. The warped beams of the low ceiling forced them to crouch down to avoid striking their heads. “Anyone home?” Edgar cried.

The barman appeared from the cellar. “What’ll it be?” He was a grotesque figure, obese and hunched, a meerschaum pipe in the shape of a screaming skull protruding from his mouth. His dirty moustaches drooped like dying vines. A single, bulging, working eye rolled endlessly in its socket; the other dangled loose on his cheek. “What do you have on cask?” Edgar inquired mildly.

The barman rested his gnarled hands on the unlabelled pump-handles. “Leprous Pustule, Purple Haemorrhage, Garrotted Baby, Witch Burn, Eat My Cousin and Twisted Ear.” He turned to another part of the bar. “This is Severed Torso, a sour cider. Bloodless Zombie is a pale ale.”

“A pint of Twisted Ear please,” said Edgar.

“Half a Severed Torso for me,” added Annabel.

The barman drew the pints. “Travellers eh? Off to the Fair at Grind My Bones? Should be good this year. A wicker man stuffed with virgins. Reverend Cleaver grew them himself: real virgins!”

Edgar remained nonchalant. “Sounds fine.” He knocked back his pint. “We’ll give it a try.” He seized Annabel’s glass, drained that one as well and handed money over the counter. “Have one yourself.”

“Very kind of you sir, don’t mind if I do!” The barman poured a foul green mixture. “Crucified Toad. I brew this one myself.” Instead of placing the glass to his lips, he held it under his cheek and lowered his prolapsed orbit into the murky depths. Once immersed, the eyeball took on a life of its own; it rose and fell in slow circles, refracted to hideous dimensions by the viscous fluid.

Outside again, Annabel smirked. “What an odd fellow!”

“Not at all; we’re in Shropshire now,” Edgar reminded her. “Look, sorry for hurrying you on. But I’d hate to miss that wicker man. These are real country ways! Cream teas and brutal prejudices!”

Annabel started the engine and pulled out onto the road. “What’s so special about burning virgins? Why not teetotallers or bank-managers or poets? Why not travellers for that matter?”

Edgar chuckled softly. “It’s just that virgins are flammable. Most people aren’t. It’s like pebbles and coal.” He consulted the map. “Grind My Bones is the next village along. Left at the fork.”

“I see.” Annabel turned a sharp left and followed the road between towering hedge rows. Conditions grew steadily worse; the car began to bounce and shudder. She cleared her throat. “What did your pint taste like? Mine tasted like squeezed abdomen.”

“I know.” Edgar nodded to himself. “Mine was sort of waxy. Real ale, you see. None of that fizzy rubbish we get in the city.” He leaned out of the window. “I can’t see any wicker man. I can’t hear any virgins screaming either. They do scream, don’t they?”

“Perhaps they just whimper.” Annabel cursed as the road became a mud track. They reached a dilapidated farm-house and saw it was a dead-end. “We must have come the wrong way.”

“That’s impossible. Stop the car and I’ll ask directions.” Edgar waited for Annabel to pull up and then jumped out of his seat. The front door of the farmhouse was covered in human hands nailed to the rotting wood. Edgar prised one of these hands loose and rapped on the door with it. Bolts slid back and a thin man peered out.

“Yes?” The man blinked at Edgar. His eyelids worked upwards; his eyes had obviously been put on upside-down.

“Is this Grind My Bones, or anywhere near it?” Edgar asked. “We’re off to see the virgins burn.”

The man sighed sympathetically. “This is Applaud My Death. You must have taken a wrong turning.” He squinted at the map Edgar offered him. “Oh no, you don’t want to be trusting them old things. The men who draw them are liars.”

“Really?” Edgar rubbed his jaw.

“Besides,” the thin man continued, “you’ll be lucky to see anything roast today. The wicker man’s been cancelled. Reverend Cleaver’s virgins all caught the pox and died. He hasn’t been able to rustle up any more. Why do you think I’m at home?”

A sudden idea struck Edgar. He whispered something to the thin man. The emaciated fellow chuckled and rubbed his palms together. “In that case you’d better come in and have a bite to eat. I’ve got some Minced Grandmother in the pantry, or you can have Basted Forehead.”

“What’s the traditional local dish?” Edgar asked.

“Shepherd’s Pie with vegetables. Real shepherds: crook, smock and dog. Watch the splinters. The vegetables are brain-dead poachers. Or you can have Poacher’s Pie with brain-dead shepherds.”

Edgar walked to the car and returned with Annabel. They followed the thin man into the interior of the farmhouse. They sat down at a table in the kitchen while their host rattled pots and pans over the stove. “This is real living!” Edgar enthused. “Honest food and honest folk. They really know how to force agricultural labourers between pastry here! No corners cut; the whole labourer, with a cheese topping!”

“Sounds grand.” Annabel licked her lips. She picked up the knife and fork before her. The knife was fully twelve inches long, a vicious blade encrusted with blood. The fork had a tongue impaled on each of its cruel tines. She tentatively licked one; it was a male tongue. Edgar glared at her and she blushed bright red.

“Hussy!”

The meal was astonishingly filling. It was washed down with glasses of Adam’s Apple Cider. While they were eating it, the thin man disappeared for some minutes to make a phone call. Edgar and Annabel could hear him mumbling something in the hallway. Edgar covered his smile with a grimace picked from the pie. Annabel shook hands with her meal. “Stop playing with your food!” Edgar roared. He belched a red belch. “Yum!”

Eventually, the fellow rejoined them. “Well that’s settled then. Are you ready for dessert?”

Annabel shook her head. “We’d better be off, really. We’re just passing through, you see; on our way to Stafford to visit relatives. We thought it would be nice to make a detour through Shropshire, rather than taking the motorway.”

“Nice?” The thin man seemed confused. He pulled at his forelock, the one strand of hair that remained on his head. “Is that a foreign word?” He brightened. “The road between Impale My Dog and Heretic On Pyre is blocked. You won’t reach the border by nightfall.”

Edgar reached out and placed a hand on her arm. “We don’t want to cause offence. Let’s just stay a little longer.”

Annabel shrugged and assented to dessert. It turned out to be a type of Spotted Dick—though the thin man insisted it was called Diseased Tom. As she ate, she could not fail to notice the way Edgar and her host kept glancing anxiously at the clock on the mantelpiece.

Edgar made a small cough. “Have some more, my dear.”

“No thank you,” she replied, but the thin man had already ladled more of the crusty pudding onto her plate. He held up a jug within which something quite foul stirred sluggishly.

“Clotted?” he inquired.

She shook her head. After she had devoured this second helping, they sat in silence for a while. She rapped her fingers impatiently on the table. Edgar and her host cleared their throats and kept looking at the time. The thin man stood over by the window and peered through the grimy glass. “He should be here by now.”

“Who?” Annabel demanded. She frowned at Edgar, who affected not to notice and pretended to be suddenly interested in the condition of his fingernails. “What’s going on?”

“Perhaps he’s had an accident. Reverend Cleaver is a poor driver at the best of times. I told him not to fit those scythes on the wheels of his tractor. Won’t fit down the lanes, I said. Would he listen? Not on your life! I bet he’s mangled a cow.”

“What’s going on?” Annabel repeated in a firm voice. She rose from her chair and moved towards the door. Without thinking, she kept the long, blood-encrusted knife in her hand.

“Sit down.” There was desperation in Edgar’s voice. “Please don’t spoil things! We may never get another chance like this one. This sort of life is dying out. Heritage!”

Annabel snorted. “Well you can stay if you want. I’m off.” She reached into her pocket for her car-keys and dangled them in front of him. His eyes grew wide with a sudden panic.

“Wait for me!” he cried.

As they left, the thin man turned his face towards them and nodded courteously. But there was bitter disappointment in his strange eyes. “Pleased to meet you. Come again some time. Visitors are always welcome at Applaud My Death. Well, farewell! Unsafe journey!”

Annabel climbed into her car, watched in mordant amusement as Edgar scurried in beside her, and roared off. She placed the long knife on the dashboard. They bounced back down the lanes they had driven up. “What’s going on?” she demanded.

“Nothing!” Edgar squirmed uneasily on the seat. Before long, they came across a tractor lying on its side in a ditch. A broad man dressed in a black cassock, with a dog-collar, was kicking the exposed engine. Blades and bovine flesh lay tangled together.

Annabel slowed the car and wound the window down. “Can we help you Reverend?” She was astonished when the huge figure turned round with a mouth full of highly imaginative oaths.

“I was off to Applaud My Death,” he said, when he had recovered his composure, “but ran into this ridiculous creature. Harry Spleen rang me earlier to tell me that a travelling couple were sitting in his kitchen. The woman is a virgin, apparently.”

“I see. Well we can’t help you there, I’m afraid. We don’t know any virgins.” She stepped on the accelerator and screeched away. Back on the main road, she pulled into a lay by and turned to face Edgar. “You told that thin man I was a virgin! How could you?”

Edgar was apologetic. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve never seen a wicker man before. The chance was too good to miss.”

“But I’m not a virgin!” Annabel shook her fist at him. “I might not even have burned properly. What would you have done then? Siphoned some petrol from my car?”

Edgar laughed. “They wouldn’t really have set you on fire. All that is just a metaphor. Country-speak. You don’t really believe that they burn virgins round here? You’ll be telling me next that you think all these place names actually mean what they say.”

“Don’t they?”

“Of course not!” Edgar wiped tears of mirth from his cheeks. “What? Purloin My Liver and Grind My Bones and Applaud My Death? They’re just colourful similes. Like the names of the drinks and the food. It’s all an elaborate act. Tradition, you see.”

“Well the landlord of the Plucked Eyeball had obviously had his eyeball plucked. And that Shepherd’s Pie really did taste of smock and crook. How do you account for that?”

“Coincidence. Anyway, what about Purloin My Liver and Applaud My Death? Nothing happened in any of those places that could possibly be linked to their names.”

“Well your liver was stolen for a start.” Annabel blinked and clucked her tongue. “I saw it happen.”

“What?” The shadow of a doubt crossed Edgar’s face. His fingers prodded his side. A sudden horror enveloped his features. He gazed at Annabel with terrified eyes. “Where?”

“In the pub. A dwarf stole it. I thought you knew.” She picked up the knife from the dashboard, held it up to the sunlight for a moment, and then thrust it deep into Edgar’s side. She worked it backwards and forwards and then pulled it out. No blood followed. She pointed at the gaping wound and the empty space beyond. “See?”

“It’s true!” Edgar was incredulous. He pulled the wound open and thrust his fingers in. After some minutes of groping around within, he gulped and clutched at Annabel. “But without a liver I’ll die!”

“Of course.” Annabel returned the knife to the dashboard and once again started the ignition. “Perhaps I can sell your body to a local brewery.” This time she made no attempt to avoid the carcass of a sheep that lay in the path of her car.

Edgar began moaning. A little while later he fell silent. Reaching over, Annabel checked his pulse and smiled. Then she took both hands off the steering-wheel for an instant and burst into spontaneous applause.

The Squonk Laughed

The title of this story should also be its final sentence. Let me set the scene and tell you how it happened. 

A blunderbuss above an unlit hearth; a stack of pterosaur bones within it. And I, glass of sherry in hand, ragged slippers on a low stool, reclining at my unease in starched shirt and ruff.

The turrets were crumbling. A slate slid into the gulf below.

“Alack,” mused I, shifting my weight on the antique cushions, each stuffed with a thousand rare moths. “Heavy is my lymph, for I am alone. There is nobody to share my gloomy abode, or help me repair the leaking roof. Solitude and hollowness are my lot.”

A rattling at the window; a feeble pressure on the pane which had naught to do with wind or rain. I adjusted my green cap, set down my drink and stood with a nervous jerk. The bare boards supported me from chair to latch, though they had been carved by my traditional enemy.

“What is this? A visitor? Enter, I beg you! There are soft furnishings inside, an iron chandelier and the memory of warmth.”

Throwing open the casement to admit my guest, I was astonished by his melancholy expression. There was more woe contained in the circumference of his visage than in all the dungeons of Asturias. A constant stream of tears from two enormous eyes had worn deep furrows in his cheeks; his lower lip curled down to his feet, which protruded directly from his neck, as if the rest of his body had fled this source of misery. His spherical form did not suggest harmony—he was studded with warts which seemed not to belong to him.

“I believe I know what manner of being you are,” quothed I, in a suitably formal tone. “You, sir, are a squonk. There is no sadder entity in the whole mistaken cosmos. But the natural habitat of your species,
Lacrimacorpus dissolvens
, is deep in the hemlock forests of Pennsylvania. How came you to my mountainous retreat?”

It was unfair to delay the creature on the sill. I bowed and beckoned and it hopped across the chamber to the grate. While it shivered and sneezed over the cold ashes, I retrieved the cushions, which had taken flight, attracted by the guttering tallows in the iron chandelier.

“Sit here, Señor Squonk, and render yourself comfortable. That is a curious medallion you have slung around your ears. I am Humberto von Gibbon, an exiled poet, formerly of Mogrovejo, now of the doldrums, in both senses of the word, for my island has been set adrift on that briny latitude, and my soul vainly drops like an anchor to lodge a halt, a sinking which entails it dragging along the bed of despair.”

My guest rolled its eyes at me, sneezed again and proceeded to lick its patchy fur, spattering raindrops, tears and dribble in all directions.

“Ah, so you misunderstand my motives? No matter, weepy one, I shall reassure you with a glass of
Oloroso.
There is comfort in wine, is there not? Observe the décor of my apartments. This castle on its giddy perch, to whose stone portals you have wandered, is the only habitation on this dramatic island. It was built by my worst foe, Ugolino Cadiz, for my unbearable confinement.

“Yet I am free to stroll the balconies and scheme a method of climbing into yonder gulf. Then I might construct a raft from trees and sail off to the horizon. Whether I perished or no, it would be of little matter. A gesture of resistance, at the very least. Here, I am marooned in a sequence of dismal chambers, each a slightly different shade of grey. Bells connected to pressure points on the floor chime whenever I walk through the labyrinth, seeking an exit.”

I poured a large measure for my new friend, but he seemed overawed by the vintage, easing his nose delicately into the bouquet and then recoiling.

“A little early for the fire of the grape, perhaps?” I queried. “That is understandable, though here the conventional hours are no longer observed. There is only one route through the interlocking cells of my dwelling, and the varying degrees of steely colour which greet my eye as I pace the route are cleverly arranged to form a distinct monochrome impression of my tormentor’s face, as if he designed the order and contents of the rooms on a grid-plan of his sneering countenance.

“So too the bells, when activated, sound a lilting syllable identical to the intolerably dulcet tones of his own throat. Thus I am condemned to be always haunted by his presence, indeed to live within an abstraction of his likeness, his mocking voice calling out to me, ‘Humberto, you are an oaf’, in a constant cycle of trudging through nested grief. But I persist because Ugolino hinted that a secret door might lead to freedom. I search in vain; a cruel jest.”

The visitor puffed his cheeks at the hearth, frowning as the dead embers refused to burst into new life. I stooped to pat his misshapen head and he shivered at my touch. Stroking a squonk is an action not so very far removed from brushing the cheek of a distraught cloud.

“You wonder why there are no flames in my grate? Another prank! He has stacked firewood in the cellar, but the moment I drag it up here, I see it is merely painted pterosaur bones. Only the food retains its character; indeed it improves with conveyance, possibly to accord with the law of cosmic balance. For every disappointment there is a small joy. But how callous of me to speak of joy in your presence! Also too many joys combine into one irregular lump which has much in common with wretchedness. I despise such joys!

“My wife does little to comfort me. Ugolino turned her into a blunderbuss and mounted her on the mantle, in both senses of the verb. She may be discharged once, and after that her life is gone. By blowing out my brains with her, I also commit murder and doom myself to Hell. I have had enough of earthly torments and care not to substitute them for those of a supernatural character. Now allow me to show you my extensive library; it is my major ease. Here is a bestiary bound in the sloughed skin of a tazelwurm. It contains a chapter on your kind. Permit me to read aloud its fustian descriptions.

“Ah, you are too modest to entertain such a notion. That is why you are so reticent. Very well! I shall satisfy myself with a single observation:
the squonk may never be caught, for the moment it is bagged it dissolves entirely into a puddle of tears
. If this be true, Señor, then we are polar opposites, for here I am always snared, but my endless lamentations do not result in such a reprieve. Indeed they seem to leave a desiccated wedge of indestructible dejection behind, totally arid and dry, who yet manages to drip another tear down his overlong nose.”

A shadow passed across the window, a large globe which dropped out of a cloud and began to drift toward my castle. I saw a rudder and propeller, eager faces peering over the side of a basket. My guest rubbed his hands and nodded to himself. Then he reached for his curious medallion and lifted it to his eye. I now saw that it was a miniature form of
camera obscura
, such as are employed by certain painters in the Spanish Netherlands.

Before I could inspect this marvellous apparatus—which is what I assumed was expected of me—a blinding flash disordered my vision and I fell back, clutching my head. The squonk lowered the machine, cast a glance at the sky and hopped back across the boards. In a moment he had turned the latch and was standing on the sill, waving to the aerial sphere, whose occupants duplicated his communication with considerable vigour.

“Have I offended you, Señor?” I cried, aghast. Another slate fell into the void. It occurred to me that I had been a complete boor, offering
Oloroso
instead of
Rias Baixas
. I turned to dash the despicable bottle on the stones of the hearth, but a harrowing absence grated on my consciousness. The blunderbuss was gone! Then I understood the nature of the trick that had been played on me.

My wife had been abducted for a souvenir!

I rushed to the window, but it was too late. The flying orb had drawn level with the chamber and the squonk jumped into space to meet it. My outstretched fingers brushed the warts on the back of his head, and then he had landed in the basket, the blunderbuss tucked under one arm. Ballast was discarded; the globe rose above the turret. The men who steered the device were Pennsylvanian farmers—I noted the missing teeth, the straw hats. But they also had something of the dastardly Iberian about them—the pointed beards, the golden earrings. I surmised that they were emigrant Cadizites, cousins and agents of Ugolino.

Tottering on the sill, I called up: “Please kill me! Without my wife I am nothing!”

The squonk rested the gun on the tiller of the rudder and aimed at my chest. I opened my arms to receive the shot. To be released from my desolation and fly with my wife to paradise! I was ecstatic. But the explosion never came: a spot of turbulence rocked the craft—there are pterosaurs on the island, though I never see them—and by the time it had settled, I was out of range. The chance was gone.

As a believer, I am not permitted to finish myself. I must escape or die of old age. Ugolino is not a simple monster: before he uprooted the whole
Picos de Europa
, he took care to evacuate or metamorphose all the inhabitants of the range, except me. It does not serve his purpose to tyrannise everybody. I was a poet; I wrote a song for him. He did not like it. This is my punishment. And now the original mountains are regrowing, or so I speculate—the bears,
Ursus ibericus
, and the goats,
Capra hircus
, are returning.

There was a single consolation in this latest sleight: my mistress could now come out of hiding. She had been locked in a wardrobe with my waistcoats ever since my wife returned home early from her flamenco class. I strode to the piece of furniture in question, unbolted the door and helped her out—a duelling pistol. Then I hung her in my wife’s place, on a hook above the hearth. A poor substitute really; a flintlock floosie, always powdering her pan.

If I do not leave before the castle falls down, I will be turned into a pair of shears. That is the prophecy.

I wonder if there is a parallel between the visit of this squonk and the other two who came last month. They also arrived in balloons and stole a teak hatstand and grandfather clock—my valet and cook respectively. One might almost suspect that package holidays are being arranged by the Pennsylvanians. But why?

The hemlock forests are jealously guarded by the squonks. Is Ugolino trying to win them over to his side for commercial purposes? But why does he need so much of the plant? The last I heard, he was assembling a college of philosophers in Valencia. What use have they for hemlock? And does he really think a vacation on my unlikely isle can cheer up a squonk, the saddest of all beasts?

The answer is obviously that he does. For when I set up a tripod by the window and fixed my younger brother to the screws, placing my eye to the lens and adjusting the focus, I was able to study the balloon from afar. I saw the passengers in great detail, and they were fighting over my wife. Then a peculiar expression came over the spherical face of my visitor, and something happened which had never previously been deemed possible in the history of cryptozoology.