The ancient man inclined his turtle neck. ‘So it’s that day already, is it?’ he asked, his voice a death-rattle cough. ‘I did look at the calendar, but one day is much like another and this year like the last.’
‘Are you well?’ Russell asked.
The magnified eyes stared at Russell. They were the eyes of a corpse.
‘The old place looks the same,’ Russell said and he glanced about the vestibule. But the old place didn’t look the same, the walls were charred, the glossy floor tiles dull and cracked. Above, blackened roof timbers gave access to the sky.
‘No customers now,’ coughed Mr Fudgepacker. ‘No-one. Just me and Him.’
‘You know that I’ve come to see Him?’
‘I don’t allow Him visitors. I’ve never allowed Him visitors. But you are special, Russell, you gave Him to me.’
I’m losing this, thought Russell. But just play along. ‘Is He well?’ Russell asked.
‘He doesn’t change. He can never change.’
‘That’s nice for Him.’
‘What?’ Mr Fudgepacker’s eyes took life. ‘Nothing is nice for Him. I see to that.’
Lost it completely, thought Russell. Him and me both, by the sound of it.
‘Come with me.’ Mr Fudgepacker took Russell by the arm. His fingers were hard, wooden, they dug into Russell’s flesh.
As they walked slowly along the aisle, Russell looked around at the stock. It was all going to pieces. The stuffed beasts worm-eaten and green with growing mould. Precious things that Russell had cared for on lunchtimes long ago were now corroded, worthless junk. It broke Russell’s heart to see them so.
One of the catwalks had collapsed, smashing sarcophagi and ancient urns. A rank smell filled the air. The perfume of decay.
Russell recalled some of the words that Bobby Boy had spoken. ‘How long? How long has He been with you?’
‘For all these years. I am His guardian. All this, all this in the Emporium. His doing. You can’t capture time, Russell. It won’t be caught. Try and hold it in your hands and it runs through your fingers, like sand.’ The old man cackled. ‘Like the sands of time, eh, Russell?’
Russell nodded helplessly. None of that was right, surely? That wasn’t what Peter Cushing had said on the video.
They reached the small Gothic door at the end of the aisle. Russell pressed it open and the two men passed through the narrow opening, down an ill-lit flight of steps and into the boiler room.
‘This way.’ Mr Fudgepacker led Russell between piles of ancient luggage, old portmanteaus, Gladstone bags, towards a curtained-off corner of the room.
Russell knew what lay in wait behind that curtain. He had seen the horror, he knew what to expect. But it didn’t help. It didn’t help to know. Russell hesitated. It was very strong that thing. Could it be reasoned with? Russell felt that it could not. He would have to offer something. The stone that promised magic? The Judas kiss? He would have to lie, he’d come prepared to lie. But how convincing would he be? And how much did it know?
Russell felt afraid. His knees began to sag, yet at the same time prepared themselves to run.
‘Part the curtain,’ said Mr Fudgepacker. ‘But avert your gaze.’
Russell reached out to the curtain. There was still time to run. Still time to escape. He didn’t have to do this.
But he would. He knew that he would.
Russell took the curtain, it was cold and damp, it clung to his fingers. Russell pulled at the curtain and it fell away like shredded sodden tissue.
Russell turned down his eyes. But his hand came up to cover his nose. The smell was appalling. Sickening. Russell gagged into his hand and dared a glance.
And then he started back and stared with eyes quite round.
It sat upon the throne-like chair. All twisted to one side. A leg tucked up beneath itself, the other dangling down, the foot the wrong way round. The hands were shrunken claws with long yellow nails. The face. Russell stared at the face.
The face was that of Adolf Hitler.
Hitler’s head lolled onto his left shoulder. The eyes were open, but unfocused, crossed. Lines of congealed slime ran from the nose and open mouth, caked the chest, hung in stalactites descending to a crust upon the floor.
‘Hitler,’ Russell gasped. ‘He’s dead.’
‘He is not.’ Ernest set up another high cackle. ‘He just smells dead. The filthy fucker, he’s shat himself again.’
Russell took a step forward, but the stench forced him back. The once proud Reich Führer was now a shrivelled mummy, festering in his own filth. Paralyzed and helpless.
‘What happened to him?’ Russell asked. ‘How did he get this way?’
‘Your doing, Russell. All your doing.’
‘My doing? No.’
‘It’s better than he deserves. The irony of it, Russell. The man who wanted the whole world for his own, now has this for his whole world. I must get a new curtain, it’s months since I’ve been down here, the old one’s all rotted away.’
‘Months?’ Russell asked. ‘Don’t you feed him? Wash him?’
‘He doesn’t need feeding. I spray him with insecticide once in a while. Bluebottles lay their eggs in him. The maggots eat out through the skin. See, his left ear’s gone and some of the back of his head.’
Russell felt vomit rising in his throat. ‘This is inhuman,’ he gasped. ‘Why? Tell me why?’
‘You know why. He took my wife, my beautiful wife. Left me to grow old alone. But I’m converted now. Good for another four hundred years at least. And I’ll spend them with him. He’ll have time to muse upon his evil.’
Russell turned his face away. No man deserved such a terrible fate, not even one so vile as Hitler.
‘Go upstairs,’ said Russell. ‘Go upstairs now.’
‘You can poke him with my pointy stick if you want. But don’t trouble yourself to have a go at his ball. I had that off years ago. I’ve got it upstairs in a jar.’
‘Go,’ said Russell. ‘As quick as you can now.’
Mr Fudgepacker spat towards the wretched creature in the chair, then slowly turned and hobbled from the room.
Russell listened to the shuffling footsteps on the stairs and then the creaking of the floorboards overhead.
With a pounding heart and popping ears, Russell sought a means towards an end. He selected a length of iron pipe that lay against the wall and tested its weight on his palm. And then he walked back over to the figure in the chair.
Russell looked into the unfocused eyes. He saw there the flicker of life. He saw the slime-caked lips begin to part and the dry tongue move within. And Russell knew the words that would come.
‘Help me. Help me.’
Russell spoke a prayer and asked forgiveness. Then he swung the heavy pipe and put Adolf Hitler out of his misery.
Upstairs in the vestibule, Ernest Fudgepacker stood, nodding his head stiffly to a rhythm only he heard. Russell’s knees were almost giving out, but he forced himself to walk as naturally as he could.
‘Did you give him a bit of a poke?’ asked Ernest.
‘A bit of a poke. Yes.’
‘Will you come back again?’
‘I don’t think so. Goodbye.’
‘Not so fast,’ said the ancient. ‘I haven’t given you what you came for.’
Russell’s brain was all fogged up. All he wanted was to get out. To get away from this place. ‘What I came for?’ he asked.
‘You came for these, didn’t you?’ Mr Fudgepacker produced two black leather belts with complicated dials set into the buckles.
‘What are those?’
‘For your journey home. To get you back safely.
‘The time devices.’
‘Modern technology,’ said Mr Fudgepacker. ‘An improvement on the old Flügelrad. I designed them myself.’
With whose, or what’s, help? thought Russell. As if I didn’t know.
‘Just set the time and press the button,’ said Mr Fudgepacker. ‘But t
hey’ll only work the one way and that’s backwards. Time isn’t for fooling about with, Russell. It’s best left alone.’
‘Goodbye then, Mr Fudgepacker.’
‘Goodbye, Russell.’
It is often the case that after experiencing unspeakable horror, people unaccountably burst into laughter. It happens in wartime and my father told me that when he served as a fireman during the blitz, he often came upon people sitting beside the burned-out shells of their houses, laughing hysterically. He said that he was never certain whether it was simply through shock, or something more. A burst of awareness, perhaps, that they were alive. That they had survived and were aware of their survival, probably aware of their own existence for the first time ever.
As Russell left the Emporium and walked back along the track that had once been the Kew Road, he began to laugh. It started as small coughs that he tried to keep back but it broke from him again and again until tears ran down his face and his belly ached.
Russell had this image in his mind. An image both farcical and absurd. But he couldn’t shake it free. It was a newspaper headline, splashed across a Sunday tabloid.
It read:
ASSASSIN CONFESSES:
‘I SHAGGED HITLER’S GIRLFRIEND’
20
ARYAN 3
Russell returned to the Schauberger Memorial Mall, but he did so via a different entrance, purchased several items from one of the gift shops and slipped these into an inner pocket of his sharp black jacket. Then he strode at a brisk pace towards the electrical store and Julie.
Julie wasn’t there.
Russell checked his watch, he was rather late. But she’d have waited, surely? She’d have had to wait. Russell looked up and down the shopping mall, no sign of her.
What to do? Go back to The Flying Swan? See if he could tease where to go next from Jim Pooley? Stay here? Wait outside?
Wait outside, Russell decided. This place depressed him anyway. Wait outside it was. Russell walked down the arcade, under the big golden arch and out through the glass revolving doors.
‘Russell!’ A harsh stage whisper.
‘Julie?’
‘Over here.’
Russell turned, Julie’s hand beckoned to him from behind one of the chromium portico columns that flanked the entrance.
Russell wandered over. ‘Why are you hiding?’ he asked.
‘Why are you late?’ was Julie’s reply. ‘I’ve been waiting for an hour.’
Russell began with the first in a series of carefully rehearsed lies. ‘I was held up,’ he said. ‘I was only able to acquire one time belt.’
Julie didn’t seem unduly miffed by this. ‘Only one? Well, give it to me, give it to me.’
Altogether far too eager.
Her glance met Russell’s. ‘I mean, well done, Russell. I knew you could do it.’
‘It wasn’t easy. There’s all the big celebrations going on.’
‘Celebrations? What celebrations?’
‘For the return of Hitler. He must have come in the Flügelrad. He materialized in Berlin an hour ago. There’s huge rallies and firework displays. I saw it on a TV in one of the shops.’
Julie looked as bewildered as Russell had hoped she would.
‘That isn’t right,’ she whispered. ‘He’s not due until tomorrow.’
‘Sorry?’ said Russell. ‘I didn’t catch that.’
‘Nothing. Nothing. Give me the programmer.’
‘We’re supposed to do this outside the electrical store, that’s the way it was done in the movie.’
‘Well, this isn‘t a movie. Give me the programmer.’
Russell took the programmer from his pocket.
Julie dug into a carrier bag and brought out the gift box.
‘Here, let me put it in,’ said Russell, taking the box from her hands. ‘I can pack it in the way I remember it being packed when I unwrapped it. If you know what I mean.’
‘I do, but just hurry.’
Russell turned away and fiddled about.
‘Are you done? Come on, give it to me.’
Russell turned back and presented Julie with a neatly wrapped parcel. ‘There,’ said he. ‘Done.’
‘And the time belt?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Russell took one of the time belts from his jacket pocket. Julie strapped the belt around her slender waist. ‘How does it work?’ she asked.
‘I’ve set the time and the co-ordinates. You know what to do, go back to the date and the time. I will be in The Ape of Thoth with Morgan. Give the programmer to me and let me do the rest.’ Julie looked up at Russell and for one terrible moment Russell thought she was going to ask the obvious question: why are you doing this? Russell did have an ingenious answer worked out. But he was not called upon to use it.
‘What are you going to do?’ Julie asked.
‘I can’t leave,’ said Russell. ‘I’m trapped here. But He is here, Hitler. Maybe I can raise an under-ground resistance movement, or something.’
‘Fat chance,’ whispered Julie.
‘Sorry, I didn’t catch that.’
‘I said, I hope you get that chance.’
‘Thank you.’ Russell recalled in the movie there being a bit of passionate kissing and the words ‘I love you’ being bandied about. Russell stuck his lips out for a snog.
But he didn’t get one. ‘Right,’ said Julie. ‘I’ll be off.’
And pressing the button on the buckle of her belt.
She was.
Russell stood on his own, cocked his head on one side and listened. According to what he’d seen in the movie and back at The Ape of Thoth, the big metal clanking things with the terror weapons should now be making an appearance to chase Julie through time.
But they weren’t, were they?
‘No,’ said Russell. ‘They are not. Because that was just another trick, probably done with the Cyberstar machine, to make me trust and be protective to Julie from the very first moment. Boy, did I get taken for a sucker. But, however.’ Russell delved into another pocket and brought out a package. It was identical in shape and form to the one Julie had taken back into the past.
Russell had switched them.
Russell grinned and unwrapped the programmer. Julie would be delivering the package to the Russell of the past in The Ape of Thoth, but this time, when the Russell of the past opened it, it would not contain the programmer. It would contain a nice fresh ham roll. After all, Russell had been eating that stale ham sandwich when he opened the package in The Bricklayer’s Arms, hadn’t he?
‘I had,’ Russell grinned. ‘You sly dog, Russell. You have pulled it off. No programmer, no movie, you’ve beaten the blighters.’ Russell dropped the programmer to the marble paving and ground his heel upon it.
That was a job well done.
Russell stood on the steps of the shopping mall, a smug little smile on his face. He had got it done, he really had. He’d stopped the movie getting made and the world getting changed. He looked up at the monolithic building, all this would soon fade away. How long? Russell didn’t have a clue. But it would, he knew that it would.
So what to do now?
Another pint at The Flying Swan? That was tempting.
Return at once to the past? He still had to deal with the ultimate evil. The red insect thing in Fudgepacker’s basement. But he would deal with that. He felt certain he would.
‘No,’ said Russell. ‘One last look around while I’m here. There’s something I’d like to see. Something that would help me out no end.’
Russell walked back into the mall and along the arcade to the electrical store. He looked in at the window, the Cyberstars stood in mock conversation, children played upon the holographic machines.
Russell entered the store.
The chap behind the counter smiled him a welcomer.
Russell smiled back.
‘How can I help you, citizen?’ asked the chap.
‘I’m interested in acquiring a copy of an old movie,’ said Russ
ell. ‘In fact, if you have it in stock, I’d like to view a bit of it. Just a few minutes. The end bit.’
‘I’m sure that can be arranged, sir. What is the name of this movie?’
‘Nostradamus Ate my Hamster,’ said Russell.
‘Oh sir, sir,’ the chap wrung his hands in evident joy.
‘One of your favourites?’ Russell asked.
‘Oh my very favourite. Everyone’s favourite.’
‘Indeed?’ said Russell. Not for much longer, he thought. ‘Then you have a copy in stock?’
‘Probably one hundred copies.’
‘That popular, eh?’
‘Where have you been, sir, on the moon? The biggest box office success in the history of film making. Years before its time, you see. An Ernest Fudgepacker production, starring—’
‘Just about everybody,’ said Russell.
‘But not just anybody, sir.’
‘Go on,’ said Russell.
‘Starring Julie Hitler, sir. The Führer’s wife.’
That did catch Russell a little off guard, but he might have expected it really. ‘Could I have a viewing?’ Russell asked. ‘Just the end bit?’
‘Of course, sir, of course. Oh, I’m so excited.’
‘I thought you’d seen it.’
‘Yes, sir, but seeing her, seeing her.’
‘Seeing her?’ said Russell.
‘Here, sir, here.’
‘What do you mean?’ Russell asked.
‘She was here, sir. In the store, not an hour and a half ago. Large as life and twice as beautiful.’
‘Here?’
‘I got her autograph. Look, I’ll show it to you. But you can’t touch it.’
‘I don’t really want to,’ said Russell.
‘Oh come on, sir. Just to touch her autograph, imagine.’
I’ve touched a lot more than that, Russell thought. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t understand. Why did the lovely Mrs Hitler come in here?’
‘Well, sir. It seems that the Führer and she have one of the Cyberstar systems. I expect they re-enact famous movies in the comfort of their palace. Well, apparently she’d mislaid the programmer and she came in here, in here, sir, into my humble store, for a replacement.’
Nostradamus Ate My Hamster Page 20
