NTB: The Barnstable Incident Part Four
Paul Richard Hardy
Part Four
Featuring Several Obscure Trenchcoaters
At last! The end! And it only took a year...
The only other question is: Will anyone actually read this?
And do I care? BWAH HA HA HA HA! I might just go mad for a month.
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Look out of the window. Go on; just do it. Twitch the curtain
aside, or poke your fingers through the venetian blind, or just take a
quick look over the windowsill. There. Over the road there, by that
alleyway. Cigarettes, burnt out stubs, lying on the ground, soaking up
the rainfall of half an hour ago. Which doesn`t seem to have affected
the patch of earth immediately behind that. As though someone were
standing there.
Feeling paranoid yet?
Malcolm Barnstable sat upon a sofa owned by the redoubtable
Ramaj Singh, and held in his hand a glass of fragrantly swirling
wine. The expatriate Indian knew well the meaing of hospitality, and
had not been remiss in applying it to Malcolm, who looked rather
ragged as he sat and waited. The hospital pyjamas were a touch rent
and torn by recent experiences, and several bruises were beginning to
make their presence known. Ramaj sat in an armchair, plush and
delicate, looking at Malcolm over a tasteful coffee table that sported
copies of the Fortean Times, Weekly World News and Intelligence
Insider. Deft, he of the skating gear and slightly bemused expression,
was sprawled in another armchair, legs trailing over the side,
continually twitching his eyes over to a television in the far corner
of the room, which showed, at as low a volume as possible, a
particularly puerile form of televised wrestling. Withnail leaned
against the wall by a door, smoking a cigarette with a sneer. Ramaj
poured himself a cup of carefully filtered coffee, and sipped, smiling
at it`s taste. He began his explanation.
"The plain facts of the matter are this: perhaps six months
ago, I and my associates- who are, from time to time, known as the
Net.Trenchcoat.Brigade- found ourselves, and indeed, the world,
threatened by a dangerous incursion into our reality by the Universal
Office. Naturally, we acted as best we could to end this threat, and
the crisis ended with the apparent destruction of the Universal
Office."
"Yeah, bloody likely," remarked Withnail in his usual
sarcastic manner. Malcolm noted that Ramaj looked instantly irritated,
a feeling that he shared. Firmly, Ramaj pressed on.
"You were a part of the Office`s assault on the world. It
needed human bureaucrats, and you were one of seven that it chose to
instigate it`s plans. The secret of good management is, after all,
delegation." Ramaj smiled wryly, and sipped his obviously expensive
coffee. "You were, of course, loaned a certain amount of... shall we
say, power. It was, originally, meant to help you in warping reality
into a nightmare of red tape, but, as I`m sure you remember, that
never came about." Malcolm had to shudder at the memory. He sipped
wine, full and red, that tasted wonderful as it slipped down his
throat. His eyes brightened; surely he recognised this?
"Ah," said Ramaj, smiling again. "Some of your memory of your
previous life is returning. The files we swiped indicated that wine
was something of a hobby of yours, once."
"Yes..." said Malcolm. "French, isn`t it? Loire Valley,
somewhere, somewhere..." He couldn`t remember.
"Give it time. It`ll come back. You`ll remember everything,
soon." He drank of coffee again. "Your personality, though, was wiped,
almost completely."
"Bloody good thing, too," interrupted Withnail. "Another
bloody administrator`d be all we need."
"Withnail," said Ramaj, an edge in his voice, "shut it. I can
do without you being a pain in the neck right now. Remember whose
house this is." Withnail snarled and sucked at his cigarette, looked
away and became quiet. "Right. Well, essentially, the Office came back
on line recently. We ignored it because it was a supervillain
orchestrating the rebirth, and they aren`t our business. Some bunch of
heroes have already finished the stupid bugger off. Thoroughly
predictable." Another sip. "But the office wanted it`s power back. And
so another group was forced to act." Deft`s eyes widened, and his legs
slid from the arm of the chair to take a more normal position, as he
leaned forward and became intent upon the screen. Ramaj was
immediately concerned.
"What is it?"
"The Jewel Thieves..." said Deft in a voice full of awe and
surprise. "They`ve been beaten by the Siamese Twins in only four
rounds of a WWF tag-team special, and now they`ve lost half the
gauntlets they gained from the Leather Punks in the Battle to End All
Battles last week... we`re in trouble."
"What is it...?" hissed Ramaj. Deft looked at Ramaj, fear in
his eyes.
"The conspiracy. They`re here. Outside. Surrounding us." Ramaj
burst from his seat, coffee cup splashing to the floor. Withnail ran
to the nearest window. "Damn!" went Ramaj. "Keep an eye on it. See
what they`re up to. Find out what they know!" Deft nodded, dumbly, and
looked back at the TV. Withnail approached the window carefully, and
grasped the curtain by it`s seam. He twitched it aside, just for a
moment, and turned back to the group.
"It`s them," he confirmed, and bravery was not a constituent
in his voice. Malcolm was confused once more.
"What...?" He asked. Ramaj walked briskly to a sideboard,
wrenched it open, and began to take strange objects from shelves
within. "The other ones who wanted your power! The Incorporate
Conspiracy!"
"Bastards. They`re onto the usual scheme," muttered
Withnail. "They`ll wait, and wait until someone`s alone. Then that`s
it for some poor git." Ramaj emerged from his sideboard carrying an
armful of occult gear; ancient candles, blooded chalk, a dusty tome, a
few jars of liquids that it would be safer not to name, and other
objects that Malcolm didn`t understand.
"Deft. Get `Ol Bart. We`re going to the void floor. It`ll be
safe for a while."
"Right." Deft arose from his chair, and crossed the room to
pick up a chunky but portable TV set from the corner. He carried this
out the door, and was followed by Withnail in a hurried manner;
Withnail was nervously looking over his shoulder, constantly glancing
everywhere.
"I don`t think they`re inside yet..." he muttered.
"It won`t be long," said Ramaj. "Malcolm, come with us."
Malcolm rose, still carrying his wine.
"But who are they?"
"I`ll explain on the void floor. This way." Ramaj hurried
after Deft and Withnail, and Malcolm, bemused and a little tired,
followed after.
"It`s paranoia that`s the problem," said Ramaj. He was down on
his knees, tracing a pentangle in chalk across the floor. The room
they were in was empty, and it`s walls were deep in shadow. Or were
they? Were they really there? Malcolm wasn`t sure. He reached with his
new senses, and felt nothing he recognised about the place. He looked
further, to the rest of the house, to see if he could find whatever it
was that Ramaj and Withnail had been going on about. No, nothing. But-
there, could that have been? Had somebody been there? Malcolm grew a
little worried.
"Paranoids," continued Ramaj as he drew an intricate pattern,
"have been believing in conspiracies for a long time." He paused to
remove his jacket and roll up his sleeves. "And not just out-and-out
mental patients, either. Everyone wonders whether or not they`re being
followed at some time or other."
"It`s belief," added Withnail, himself working on the design
at it`s opposite end. "You believe in something and it`s real. Like
money." He consulted a diagram upon a flaking page in the book which
lay open on the floor between the two artists. "If everyone tried to
take all their money out of the bank at the same time, the bank
wouldn`t be able to do it, because the money doesn`t exist."
"But," said Ramaj, completing his end, "as long as only a
small amount of people ask for their cash at any one time, the bank
has enough to deal with it, the illusion is maintained, and everyone
believes that that much money exists." Finishing, he leaned back,
dropped the chalk, and reached for candles.
"The conspiracy is a bit like that," continued Withnail,
himself finished with scrawling and now arranging candles about the
pentangle. "As long as enough people believe that there`s somebody out
to get them, then there will be. All of that belief gets merged
together. And you get the conspiracy." The candles were laid out now.
"But what do they want?" Asked Malcolm from where he
sat. Withnail and Ramaj stood and looked at the design whilst Deft
continued to study the smaller picture on Ol` Bart.
"That`s the point." said Ramaj. "No one knows. Nor can ever
know. The strength of the conspiracy lies in never being seen, never
being understood."
"But they`re there all right. They keep busy. And if anyone
does see them, they don`t stay alive for long." Added Withnail. "So
where shall we send him?"
"Not just him. You`re going as well."
"What?!?!"
"You started this mess by dragging him out of Bedlam. You can
finish it. I want nothing else to do with it."
"Oh great. Oh, bloody great."
"Blame yourself. Did you really need to ask them for help,
five years ago or whatever it was?"
"I didn`t have any choice! They could get in there and no one
else could. What the hell would you have done?"
"There are other people you could have contacted."
"People who would`ve told me to piss off. The world would be a
cinder if I hadn`t done it."
"You could have gone somewhere else. I refuse to believe that
a man with your contacts would have to fall back on people as
dangerous as them." Ramaj took up the book and began to leaf through
it. "How did you contact them, anyway?"
"Long story. Look, okay, it was a bad idea. But it got the job
done. I didn`t know the return favour would be something like this."
"Good thing Deft found out about it. Or we`d all have been
screwed."
"Yeah. So anyway. Where are we going?"
"Somewhere simpler. I think that if I send you to somewhere
that`s less realistic, you`ll be able to spot the conspiracy more
easily and be able to deal with it."
"Where exactly?"
"You`ll find out when you get there. I don`t want any lurking
conspirators to know about it."
Withnail sighed. "If I must," he said.
The ceremony was brief. Malcolm and Withnail stood within the
pentangle whilst Ramaj intoned the words of the spell that was to
remove them from this time and place; Deft kept an eye on the TV, but
noticed nothing new. Ancient words bent to new purpose emerged into
the air from Ramaj`s throat and scalded the atmosphere around the
lines of the pentangle; the chalk lines began to throb, the candles to
glow brighter. A few more syllables, that Malcolm could barely even
make out as being language, and Ramaj was done.
"That`s it," he said, and stepped back, closing the
book. "Good luck."
"Easy for you to say," muttered Withnail. The air began to
burn in the thin spaces above the lines; burn, and glow. Soon, nothing
could be seen of the void floor basement of Ramaj`s house; Malcolm
felt their position relative to everything being wrenched away, and
collapsed to his knees, sick to his stomach. And then they were
somewhere else.
Withnail and Malcolm appeared in a flash of light. Blinded by
it, they collapsed to the hard, linoleum floor and struggled with
nausea for a few seconds. They were distracted from this by a voice
from slightly above. "Oi! Who the bloody hell are you?" Eyes clearing,
they looked up to see that they were beside a bed, a hospital bed, in
which lay a man who was very clearly ill; the disease that kept him
here was apparent on his face, which was raw with it, peeling and
terrible, the hair above greasy and unwashed; his hands, poking out
from pyjama sleeves, were locked into fists and as diseased as the
face. "What are you doing here? Who sent you? Was it that tart? Eh?"
Withnail staggered to his feet. "No. This is wrong. We aren`t
meant to be here..." He looked around, and found that he wasn`t in a
hospital ward as he had expected. It was a dance hall, empty, and the
bed was improbably standing in the middle of the dance floor.
"Where are we?" Gasped Malcolm.
"Why do you think I`m going to know?" Barked Withnail.
Another voice started up, a voice that didn`t have any
source. "The more this game went on, the stranger it was to
play. Nobody was handing out any rule sheets, but that`s the way the
world works. You work out the rules and run the game your own way. Am
I right, or am I right? These two strangers were a puzzle that didn`t
fit into the rules I knew, but I`d work it out soon enough, as sure as
a dog follows a bitch." As the voiceover came to an end, music faded
up; dance hall music, clarinets and double bass and light
percussion. A man in the shadows, who looked like the man on the bed,
but was healthy and wearing a trenchcoat, watched them silently,
suspiciously. The music continued it`s instrumental path as Malcolm
implored Withnail for an explanation, and Withnail just shrugged.
And then Withnail stepped back into the dance floor, and took
on the posture of a crooner. He began to mime the words of the
song. "You. You`re driving me crazy..." Withnail, utterly taken over,
implored to an imaginary audience. The man on the bed smiled with
recognition. "Oh, what shall I do..." Malcolm stared blankly, at a
loss to comprehend any of it. Withnail smiled at his audience and
simply sang. "What shall I do... with you?" And then he was left free,
though the music continued.
"Ramaj, you BASTARD!" He screamed. And the two of them
disappeared.
The letters on my door say Woodbine. Lazlo Woodbine. That`s my
name and I`m sticking to it. The door leads to my office, and that`s
where I keep the whisky. I`m a private eye. I work for anyone as long
as they pay me. A straight daily fee plus expenses, and I`m all yours
for as long as the story lasts. With me you get dames, gunsels, and a
thrilling finish on a rooftop. Guaranteed. And I always work in the
first person, no matter what the rest of the narrative thinks it`s
doing. Plus I only work from the three sets: the office, the rooftop,
and the back alley. Any more and it`s none of my business. Sounds
stupid? Try someone else. But I get the job done. Oh, yeah. I get the
job done.
No one was paying me on this particular day, so I was loafing
in the office and making friends with Jack Daniels. Jack`s a good
buddy of mine; we go way back. I was just starting to get real
comfortable when the air was rent asunder and two strange looking
characters plopped out of nowhere like the IRS on a rainy Monday. They
lay gasping for a minute and I pulled the Special on them, just to be
careful. Dimensional travel I ain`t got time for. Not my genre.
One of them had a trenchcoat, and the other was dressed for
bed. The kind of bed with straps on. The one with the trenchcoat
picked himself up from the floor whilst the looney tune threw up on
it. The one with the trenchcoat noticed me, and then the gun. He spoke
like an actor who`s done one Hamlet too few.
"Where the bloody hell is this?" he asked, not exactly
politely. I replied in the same way.
"Who the hell are you?" I pointed the gun at his genitals and
hoped he`d feel like answering my question first.
"Shit. I`ll kill that bloody Indian."
"You got a quarrel with the curry house, take it to the
cops. You got a case, bring it to me. What`ll it be?" And then they
started to shimmer like a cheap TV.
"Get it bloody right this time!" Shouted the one in the
trenchcoat as they faded out of my office and into someone else`s
problem. Shit, I thought, as the paragraph came to an end. I hate
cameos.
Again, they flashed into existence. When they opened their
eyes and tried to stand up, they found that they were somewhere that
looked far more sensible. For a little while, anyway. It was a
corridor; shaped and arranged like the corridor of a forties American
building, the kind where they rent out small offices to small firms. A
door was just along the corridor; upon it were clearly stencilled the
words SPADE & ARCHER PRIVATE DETECTIVE AGENCY. Another interesting
thing to note was that everything they could see, including
themselves, was represented in shades of grey.
"Where now?" Asked Malcolm wearily, though somewhat happy that
his vomit had remained at the last place.
"Christ!" exclaimed Withnail. "Now it`s a bloody film! And
sodding film noir, at that. How`s that supposed to help, for christ`s
sake? It`ll make it easier for them!"
"I wish I knew what you were going on about," sighed
Malcolm. Sure, things made more sense now, but the story kept
advancing way too fast for him to keep up.
"Stop whining and start using some of that power you`re
supposed to have!" snapped Withnail. "For christ`s sake, you`re one of
the most powerful people on the planet and you`re standing there
whinging like a complete prannet!"
"I... I don`t know..." said Malcolm.
"Oh yes you bloody do. It`s in there, all right. I`ll bet you
can already use some of it. So what`s keeping you from using
the rest, eh?"
"It`s not... I can`t..."
"Bloody pathetic whinging layabout! You expect me to save your
arse whilst you sit there moaning in the back watching me gettimg
chewed to bits, eh?"
"No... I..."
"Bloody office must`ve taken half your common sense out as
well as your sanity! If you can`t save yourself what bloody use are
you? Eh? Tell me that!"
"..."
"Go on, keep sponging off me! Absolute arsehole! You think
I`ll be sorry when they tear that power out of your brain and spend a
week afterwards killing you?"
"I... I... PISS OFF!!!" Thunderclap! The wall cracked, and
Withnail was thrown back at it, cracking hi head and leaving him
dribbling on the floor. The door flew open, and a short man with a
brylcreem hairstyle poked his head out.
"What the hell`s going on out there, mac?"
"Nothing."
"Sounded like a lot of something to me. You trying to knock
the building down?"
"Just an accident. I`ll put it back." Malcolm extended the
part of his mind that had made the thunderclap, and pulled the wall
back together. It worked! It actually worked! The short man went back
inside, shaken. Malcolm didn`t care. He wasn`t real. Except if people
believed in him. And there it was: there was the point, the way out of
all this shit. Belief.
He felt someone lurking around the corner. Someone who had to
be wearing a trenchcoat and fedora, smoking Camels and keeping
tabs. Someone who didn`t want to be seen. Rushing around the corner to
find whoever it was, he tripped over Withnail and landed on his
face. Which was around about the moment that the headache began.
When the headache ended and things grew a little less fuzzy,
Malcolm found himself to be lying on a hard, wooden surface,
immobile. Really immobile. Someone had gone to extreme lengths. Straps
held his body in place, heavy iron gloves and boots attached his hands
and feet to the surface, and some apparatus kept his head firmly in
place. All he could see was straight ahead; up to the ceiling, which
was blank plaster, and dangling in front of his eyes was a lightbulb,
bright enough to be almost impossible to avoid, even with screwed up
eyes.
There was a rustling in the room. On the left. Or was it the
right? No, the left. Someone was moving around. There was a slight
clank. Some sort of metal object against another metal object- keys,
dangling from a belt? Or other devices? Other, unspeakable devices?
The rustling moved to behind him. The voice began.
"Welcome, Malcolm Barnstable." It couldn`t be placed. He
couldn`t say for certainty thyat it even came from the presence that
was behind him; he could feel it there with his mind, feel it`s
malevolence and scheming, feel the way it cherished being always just
out of sight; but the source of the voice could not be found.
"Soon, we shall have your power added to our own. This will
take... some time." The voice chuckled, dry and slow. "Our methods are
not so subtle as the office`s."
"Why? Why do you want my power?"
Another, longer chuckle. "That... I cannot reveal. Let us
say... that it shall prove to be useful."
They hadn`t started yet, thankfully. Malcolm could still feel
the power at the back of his mind. And, probably for the first time
since he had last strode to work past the statue of Godiva, he knew
exactly what to do.
"I don`t believe in you."
"We are always there."
"I don`t believe." he insisted.
"Waiting around the corner."
"I don`t believe,"
"Watching." And was there a tightness in that voice?
"I. Don`t. Believe."
"Planning..." The voice was growing thinner.
"I. Don`t. Believe. In. You."
"Plot- kk- plotting..."
"You don`t exist. You aren`t there."
"No......." it trailed away, and was silent. Malcolm kept the
application of the power firm and bent reality away from itself. They
didn`t exist. That was the truth. Just paranoia. Just fear. There was
nothing there.
And then there wasn`t. Malcolm was standing in an empty
dimension, where once the Conspiracy had plotted. Where they still
plotted, he realised. As long as anyone believed. Even just a little
bit. But they couldn`t touch him any more.
Beside him lay Withnail, who was still unconscious. With a
thought, Malcolm sent Withnail back to reality. Somewhere. To be
honest, Malcolm wasn`t very certain about where he sent Withnail, and
wasn`t too worried about it. The bastard would probably get along
okay. Malcolm turned to leave himself.
"MALCOLM BARNSTABLE!" rumbled a deep and terrible
voice. Malcolm turned to see that a sun had risen. And spoken to
him. "SURRENDER TO THE SHINING SONS!"
"No! He is OURS!" Screamed another voice from another side. A
small army of repugnant creatures had formed to his left.
"Giiivvee yoouuurrsseellff tooo ussss, Maaalcooolm..."
sussurated another voice to the right.
"You cannot escape," came a voice from behind. "Surrender to
us and we promise a painless death." Malcolm looked around and found
that he was surrounded. He sighed. He felt tired, and now here he was,
encircled by demonic and mystical agencies of all kinds, every single
one after the same thing. All he wanted now was a cup of tea and a few
days to get his head sorted out. But obviously, there was business to
attend to first.
Unsworth noted with distaste the state of the man`s ragged and
destroyed pyjamas. Yuck. This had to be the messiest eater alive, or
something else Unsworth didn`t want to think about. He dumped them in
the bin and looked back at the man who now stood before him, rather
more respectfully attired than before in a dark double breasted suit
and trenchcoat; still there was that wild look in his eyes, and still
he needed a bath, but he was at least human. Almost. Unsworth ignored
carefully the indentations the man had made in the glass desk, and
summoned the courage to ask, "...And how will sir be paying?"
The man looked back at Unsworth. Too closely. "Payment." he
said, as though it had slipped his mind. "Wait." The man disappeared,
and returned a moment later carrying a priceless gold sculpture of a
beast that Unsworth didn`t recognise. "Will this do? It was left upon
the battlefield."
"Ah... That`ll do nicely, sir..." Unsworth bit the ear. It was
gold, alright. He began considering the possibility of quietly taking
the thing to a jeweller and then handing his notice in. "Will there be
anything else...?"
"No," said Malcolm Barnstable. "But thank you." He left.
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Ramaj and Deft were created by Scott Emery
Lazlo Woodbine was nabbed from Robert Rankin
The Singing Detective was inscribed by Dennis Potter
(who died a couple of months ago. RIP)
Sam Spade was a Dashiell Hammett original and a Humphrey Bogart presentation
Everything else was mine. Honest.
--
And these are the words of a supposedly literate student of
English Literature at the University of Warwick...
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Paul Hardy - en...@csv.warwick.ac.uk - BFFS Student Group Secretary