The Antipope

by Robert Rankin

  ‘No, not just me.’ Soap laughed disturbingly. ‘My great-grandfather began it shortly after the house was built, the lot fell then to my grandfather and down the line to me, last of the Distants, and guardian of the Great Mystery.’

  ‘It’s madness,’ said Omally, ‘the whole street will collapse.’

  Soap laughed again. ‘No, never, my family have the know as it were, they worked upon the Thames tunnel back in the days of Brunel.’

  ‘But that collapsed.’

  ‘Never, that’s what the authorities said. The truth was that the navigators who dug that ill-fated pit stumbled upon an entrance to the worlds beneath and the tunnel had to be closed hurriedly and an excuse found to please the public.’

  ‘You mean your old ones actually met up with these folk below?’

  ‘Certainly. Shall we go down then?’ said Soap.

  Pooley said, ‘I’ll wait here.’

  ‘I invited you in for a drink and a drink you are going to have.’

  ‘I think that I am no longer thirsty,’ said Jim, ‘and after this, I think that I might take a vow of abstinence.’

  ‘God,’ said Omally, ‘don’t say such a thing even in jest.’

  ‘Come on then,’ said Soap, ‘I will lead the way, it is not far to the first chamber.’

  ‘First chamber?’

  ‘Oh, yes, the caverns lead down into the bowels of the earth and subsidiary tunnels reach out in all directions, some for several miles at a stretch.’ Soap flicked several more switches and led the way down the long flight of steps which reached downward into the darkness. As they descended the way before them sprung into light and the pathway behind fell to darkness.

  ‘Clever that, eh?’ said Soap. ‘An invention of my great-grandfather’s, don’t ask me how it works because I don’t know.’

  ‘Must save some money on the electric bill,’ said Jim.

  ‘Electric bill?’ Soap gave another of his hideous laughs which boomed along the corridors and down into the pit returning in ghostly echoes back to them. ‘I’m tapped directly into the grid. I’ve never paid for gas or electric as long as I’ve lived.’

  Jim shook his head in dismay. ‘This is unreal,’ said he, ‘how can all this exist and nobody know about it? And what did you and your forefathers do with all the earth from these diggings?’

  ‘Aha,’ said Soap having another tap at his nose, ‘aha!’

  At length they reached a vaulted chamber. Pooley later reckoned that it must have been about fifty yards in diameter but it was impossible to tell for certain as the lighting was only evident at whichever spot they stood.

  ‘Now, about this wine,’ Soap said. ‘The temperature here is ideal for hocks, border roses, Rhine wines, sweet sherry and growing mushrooms.’

  From an enormous wine rack Soap withdrew a dusty-looking bottle and having no corkscrew readily at hand punched in the cork with his thumb. ‘Bottoms up,’ he said taking an enormous swig. He passed the bottle to Omally. ‘Try it, it’s a fifty-year-old vintage.’

  Omally took a small indecisive sip, smacked his lips a few times, took a great swig and then one very very large swig. ‘It is indeed good stuff,’ said he, wiping his sleeve across his mouth and passing the bottle to Jim Pooley.

  Jim, who had watched the Irishman’s performance with interest, needed no telling twice. He put the bottle to his lips and drew off a long and satisfying draught.

  ‘Very shortly now,’ said Soap, accepting the bottle from Pooley and finishing it off, ‘very shortly now contact will be made, I may be only inches away.’

  Omally nodded, his eyes wandering over the wine rack. Soap pulled out another bottle and punched in the cork. ‘Feel free,’ he said.

  Omally felt free.

  ‘I have all the ancient maps you see, my forebears knew the locations and they knew it was the work of several generations, but now I am there, the moment is close at hand, mankind stands poised upon the brink of the greatest of all discoveries, the new Golden Age, the dawn of the new tomorrow––’ Soap’s voice was rising in pitch. John Omally took another hasty pull upon the bottle and passed it hurriedly to Jim. ‘We had best get out of here old pal, I have a feeling I know what’s coming,’ he whispered.

  Soap was stalking about the cavern, arms raised, ranting at the top of his voice. Jim and John watched in stunned silence as the haunting light followed him from place to place, eerily illuminating his frantic motions. As he drew further from them his voice faded as if absorbed into the rock; his staccato movements and dramatic gestures lent to him the appearance of some bizarre mime artiste acting out an inexplicable saga beneath a travelling spotlight.

  Soap lurched over to the wine rack and popped the cork from another bottle of wine. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘here I’ll show you, the legacy of the Distants, I’ll show you.’

  ‘We’ll take your word for it,’ said Omally.

  ‘We really must be making a move now,’ Jim added in a convincing tone which concealed the fact that he was having great difficulty in controlling his bladder.

  ‘No, no! You are here, the only ones, you must be present when the Portals are unlocked, you cannot be allowed to leave!’

  ‘That is what I thought was coming,’ muttered Omally.

  ‘This way, this way!’ With the wine bottle bobbing in his hand and the eerie light shining about him Soap made his way rapidly down a side corridor leaving Pooley and Omally in the darkness.

  ‘I cannot remember by which entrance we came into this place,’ said John.

  ‘I have no idea as to that myself,’ Jim replied, ‘and I am beginning to feel very poorly, vintage wine and Neville’s Large making a poor cocktail.’

  ‘I fear we must follow him or stand alone in the darkness,’ said John, ‘for the trick of light apparently works only to his account.’ Jim wondered if magnetism might play some part in the situation. But now seemed a bad time for idle speculation, so he shrugged his shoulders in the darkness and the two set off to follow the glow worm figure of Soap Distant as it moved away in front of them.

  ‘I estimate, although it is impossible to be certain, that we must be somewhere beneath the London Road,’ said John.

  ‘I had the same feeling myself,’ Jim replied. ‘But I hope you realize and will record upon some tablet or graven plaque even though it be in my own memoriam that this whole thing is utterly fantastic and totally impossible.’

  ‘Certainly these caverns appear to be the work of no earthly spade. I think that somewhere back along the bloodline of the Distants someone must have discovered this place by chance, although as to its original purpose and its manner of excavation, that is unimaginable.’

  ‘Come quickly now!’ screamed Soap, shining up ahead. ‘We are nearly there!’

  Of a sudden they came to a halt, the tunnel terminating unexpectedly in what appeared to be a pair of massive iron doors.

  ‘You see!’ screamed Soap. Omally noted that beads of perspiration were rolling down his forehead and that evil lines of white foam extended from the corners of his mouth and vanished beneath his chin. ‘You see, you see, the holy Portal!’

  Omally approached the gigantic doors. They were obviously of great age and looked capable of holding back the force of several armies. In the ghost light he could make out the heads of enormous rivets running in columns from top to bottom, and what appeared to be a large yet intricately constructed mechanism leading from two wheels that looked like the stopcocks on some titanic plumbing system. Central to each door was a brass plaque bearing upon it a heraldic device of uncertain origin.

  It was the wheels that drew Omally’s attention. There was something hauntingly familiar about them, and he tried to recall where he had seen them before. As he stepped forward Soap Distant barred his way. ‘No, no!’ he screamed. ‘You may not touch, it is for me, I the last in the line, I who must fulfil the prophecies, I who must open the Portal.’

  ‘Soap,’ said John seriously, ‘Soap, I do not feel that you should open these door
s, something tells me that it would be a grave mistake.’

  Pooley nodded wildly. ‘Best leave them eh, Soap? Can’t just go unlocking every door you come to.’

  Soap turned and ran his hands over the pitted surface of the iron doors. ‘I think,’ said John who was fast realizing the gravity of this particular situation, ‘I think Soap, that if you are adamant about this door opening business, then it would be better for you to be alone at the moment of opening. It would be wrong of us to stand around looking on. If the prophecies say that you are to open the Portal then open it you should. Alone!’ Soap looked somewhat dubious but Omally continued unabashed, ‘The honour must be yours, we have no right to share it, show us back to the foot of the staircase where we will await your glorious return.’

  ‘Glorious return, yes.’ Soap’s voice was suddenly pensive. Pooley’s head nodded enthusiastically while at the same time his legs crossed and recrossed themselves.

  ‘So be it then!’ Soap strode between the two men and as the light moved with him.

  Omally took one last look at the gigantic doors, chewed upon his bottom lip a moment, then followed the receding Soap back along the death-black corridor.

  Soap’s will-o-the-wisp figure danced along ahead of them like a marsh phantom, weaving through the labyrinth of tunnels and finally into the huge central chamber.

  Peering up Omally could make out the lights of 15 Sprite Street, a reassuring glow high above. Soap stood breathing heavily through his nose, his fists clenched and his face a wax mask of sweat. Pooley was clutching desperately at his groin. Omally shifted nervously from one foot to the other.

  ‘You wait then!’ said Soap suddenly. ‘Tonight is the night towards which the entire course of mankind’s history has inevitably run. Tonight the ultimate mysteries will be known! Tonight the Portal will be opened!’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Omally, ‘we’ll wait here then.’

  Soap’s eyes had glazed. It was clear that he no longer saw Pooley or Omally; he had become focused both mentally and physically upon some distant point. His voice boomed on, filling the caverns, washing over the black rocks like some evil sonic wave. ‘Blessed be the Gods of Ancient Earth. The dark ones and dwellers of the deep places. Great Rigdenjyepo, King of the World, Lord of the Nether Regions, Guardian of the Inner Secrets!’

  Omally cupped his hands about his ears and muttered the rosary beneath his breath. Pooley, whose bladder was on the point of giving up the unequal struggle, rolled his eyes desperately.

  Without warning Soap suddenly jerked forward. The two friends watched his glittering form flickering away into the darkness, his voice bouncing to and fro about the vaulted corridors, until finally the light died away and the ghastly echoing cries became only a memory.

  Omally and Pooley stood a moment faintly outlined by the light above. Slowly they turned to face one another, came to a joint decision which argued strongly for the authenticity of mental telepathy, and with one movement made for the stairs.

  Minutes later on the corner of Sprite Street Omally crouched, bent double, hands upon knees, gasping for breath. Pooley did little other than sigh deeply as he relieved himself through the railings into the Memorial Park. Between the gasps, gulps and Woodbine coughs,

  Omally uttered various curses, veiled blasphemies and vows of impending violence directed solely and unswervingly towards Soap Distant.

  Pooley finished his ablutions to the accompaniment of one last all-embracing sigh. Having zipped himself into respectability he withdrew from his inner pocket a bottle of Soap’s fifty-year-old wine. ‘Shame to leave empty-handed,’ he said. ‘One for the road John?’

  ‘One indeed,’ the Irishman replied. He took a great pull and swallowed deeply.

  Pooley said ‘What should we do? Soap is clearly mad!’

  Omally wiped his mouth and passed the bottle across. The full moon shone down upon them, in the distance cars rolled over the flyover and a late-night dog returning from some canine revelry loped across the road. All seemed so normal, so mundane, that their experience within the caverns was already taking on the nature of a bad dream. The clock on the Memorial Library struck two.

  ‘If all that we saw was real and not some shared vision, I am truly at a loss to know what action we should take. Soap is not harming anybody, although I am certain that such an enormous maze of tunnels should be reported to the authorities, if only that they might be certified as safe. While I was down there I had the feeling that most of Brentford could have sunk easily into them, still leaving room for half of the Chiswick High Road.’

  ‘But what about the doors?’ said Jim. ‘Surely one man could not open them alone, they looked pretty hefty. You don’t really believe that they lead into the inner Earth do you?’

  Omally shook his head. ‘I haven’t a clue, although those crests, I’ve seen them before somewhere.’

  All further conversation was however stifled by a low and ghastly rumble which came apparently from the lower end of Albany Road. Like a hideous subterranean clap of thunder it rolled forward. From far along the street, lights began to blink on in upstairs windows. Cats began to whine and dogs to bark.

  Pooley said, ‘It’s an earthquake!’

  Omally crossed himself.

  Somewhere deep within the earth a monstrous force was stirring; great ripples ran up the paving stones of Sprite Street. A shock wave spread across the grass of the Memorial Park, stiffening the coarse blades into regimented rows. A great gasp which issued from no human throat shuddered up from the very bowels of the earth, building to an enormous crescendo.

  Omally felt inclined to run but his knees had turned to jelly. Pooley had assumed the foetal position. By now Sprite Street was a blaze of light, windows had been thrown up, front doors flung open, people issued into the street clad in ludicrous pyjamas and absurd carpet slippers. Then as rapidly as it had begun, the ominous rumbling ceased, seemed to pass away beneath them and fade away. The denizens of Sprite Street suddenly found themselves standing foolishly about the road in the middle of the night. Shuffling their carpet slippers and feigning indifference to conceal their acute embarrassment they backed into their respective abodes and quietly closed their front doors.

  The night was still again, the lights of Sprite Street dimmed away and Pooley rose to his feet patting dirt from his tweeds. ‘John,’ said he, ‘if you will excuse me I am now going home to my bed where I intend to remain for an indefinite period. I fear that the doings of this evening have forever destroyed my vitality and that I am a broken man.’

  ‘Certainly this has been an evening I should prefer to forget,’ said Omally. With that he put his arm about his companion’s shoulder and the two friends wandered

  away into the night.

  9

  It was indeed a mystery. The pressmen thrust their way through the crowds of baffled onlookers and peered disbelievingly down from the bridge to the muddied track of twisted bicycle frames, old tin cans and discarded pram wheels which spread away into the distance. How an entire one-mile stretch of canal from the river lock to that of the windscreen-wiper factory could simply have vanished overnight seemed beyond anybody’s conjecture.

  ‘It couldn’t have gone out through the river lock,’ an old bargee explained, ‘it is high water on the Thames and the river is six foot up the lock gates on that side.’

  ‘And at the other end?’

  The bargee gave his inquisitor a look of contempt. ‘What, travel uphill into the next lock do you mean?’ The interviewer coloured up and sought business elsewhere.

  Archroy, who was a great follower of Charles Fort, explained what had happened. ‘Teleportation,’ said the lad. ‘The water has been teleported away by those in sore need of it, possibly inhabitants of a nearby sphere, most likely the moon.’

  The pressmen, although ever-anxious to accept any solution as long as it was logical, newsworthy or simply sensational, seemed strangely diffident towards his claims for the existence of telekinetic lunar beams. It wa
s certainly a most extraordinary event however and one which would no doubt catapult Brentford once more into the national headlines, and at least bring good trade to the Flying Swan. Neville was going great guns behind the bar. The cash register rang musically and the no-sale sign bobbed up and down like a demented jack-in-the-box.

  ‘And don’t forget,’ said the part-time barman above the din, ‘Thursday night is Cowboy Night.’

  Jammed into an obscure corner and huddled over his pint, Jim Pooley watched with loathing the fat backside of an alien pressman which filled his favourite bar stool. Omally edged through the crush with two pints of Large.

  ‘It was only after I got home that I remembered where I’d seen those crests before,’ he explained as he wedged himself in beside Pooley. ‘They were the coat of arms of the Grand Junction Water Works, those doors must have been part of the floodgate system from old Brentford dock.’

  Pooley sucked upon his pint, his face a sullen mask of displeasure. ‘Then what of old Soap?’

  A devilish smile crossed Omally’s face. ‘Gone, washed away.’ His fingers made the appropriate motions. ‘So much for old Rigdenjyepo and the burrowers beneath, eh?’

  Pooley hunched closer to his pint. ‘A pox on it all,’ said he. ‘The Swan packed full of these idiots, old Soap flushed away round the proverbial S-bend and Cowboy Night looming up before us with about as much promise as the coming of Ragnorok!’

  Omally grinned anew. ‘There are many pennies to be made from an event such as this; I myself have organized several tours of the vicinity for this afternoon at a pound a throw.’

  Pooley shook his head in wonder. ‘You don’t waste a lot of time, do you?’

  ‘Mustn’t let the grass grow under the old size nines.’

  ‘Tell me, John,’ said Jim, ‘how is it now that a man such as yourself who possesses such an amazing gift for the making of the well-known “fast buck” has not set himself up in business long ago and since retired upon the proceeds?’

  ‘I fear,’ said John, ‘that it is the regularity of “the work” which depresses me, the daily routine which saps the vital fluids and destroys a man’s brain. I prefer greatly to live upon wits I have and should they ever desert me then, maybe then, I shall take to “the work” as a full-time occupation.’ Omally took from his pocket a ‘Book Here for Canal Tours’ sign and began a ‘roll up, roll up’ routine.