An Ugly Way To Go - and other Quintessentially Quirky Tales

by Iain Pattison

  * * *

  “I should arrest the whole bunch of you,” Karen Turner told Billy after he’d confessed to the whole caper. “And I will as soon as your time-tripping mates step back through that vortex.”

  “But it’s not illegal,” he said indignantly. “All we’ve done is a bit of trading, a bit of commerce, hopping back a few centuries and swapping some modern toys for antiques and trinkets to sell in the present day. We haven’t broken any laws.”

  Only the laws of physics, Doc Mitchells pointed out. “It’s stupidity beyond words. What if you’d done real damage to the timelines, you could have irreparably changed the course of world history.”

  They’d been very careful, Billy insisted. They hadn’t taken back anything that could be used as a weapon, hadn’t given anyone in the past any idea of what major events or wars were coming.

  It was mind-bogglingly reckless, but I had to admit it was damn impressive too. If activating the machine hadn’t sucked up every ounce of juice on the base they might have got away with it.

  “How’d you come up with the idea for Gandalf?” I asked, genuinely intrigued.

  Billy beamed with pride. “Well, it was an idea from Star Trek…”

  I could hear Frank choke nearby.

  “…you know? The time portal in The City on the Edge of Forever? We just copied it.”

  But it must have taken huge amounts of time and effort, Doc Mitchells argued.

  “It’s surprising what you can achieve when you don’t have any distractions,” Billy confided glumly. “Like a social life… or girlfriends.”

  I spun round to Karen Turner. “Your shout,” I told her. “What do you intend to do?”

  But she already had the handcuffs out.

  “I’m arresting the entire Dark Matter Project team,” she announced. “For the theft of three hundred sacks of cement mix.”

  The cement! How could I have forgotten that?

  “And think yourself lucky,” she told Billy, “that I can’t do you for criminal negligence and knowingly selling substandard building materials.”

  I was baffled. What was she wittering on about?

  The police chief tutted at me. “Do keep up, Jack. It’s obvious where your duff cement has gone.” She pointed to the powder trail that led towards the towering temporal transporter.

  “It’s gone back in time. Back into antiquity. I’m only guessing, and it wouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but I reckon even now an army of cowboy builders are slaving away with it to construct the walls of Jericho!”

  Medium Rare

  “Is there anyone there,” the old woman moaned. “Spirits are you with us tonight?”

  Across the oak table, Teresa Williams struggled to suppress a giggle. She risked a glance at her companion. Gary held a hand in front of his face, hiding a snigger.

  The woman’s moan became louder. “Oh spirits, come to me. Don’t be afraid, my children. Come to the light. Speak to me… speak to me.”

  Rolling her head, she flickered her eyes madly.

  Teresa wriggled, worried that the medium would spot her amusement and end the séance.

  It had taken three long weeks of pleading to convince Madam Luzardi to agree to put them in touch with the other side and Teresa didn’t want to blow it now. Yet the whole performance was so hammy that she couldn’t help herself.

  How, she thought, could anyone take this farce seriously? How could they pay to sit through this old biddy’s terrible amateur dramatics?

  The set-up was straight out of some creaking low-budget 1950s movie – the dusty room with the faded velvet curtains, the grey-haired eccentric with gypsy scarf and the obligatory black cat asleep on a cushion embroidered with the stars of the zodiac.

  When she’d greeted Teresa and Gary at the doorway, Madam Luzardi (or Gladys Peabody as the local trading standards department knew her) had summoned them into the darkened interior with a beckoning finger.

  “The heavens are charged with electricity tonight,” she announced breathlessly, “the long departed are restless to make contact. I think we’ll have an illuminating session.”

  “I do hope so,” Teresa whispered to Gary as they were led through the creepy looking hallway, “otherwise we don’t have any evidence.”

  Gary tapped the small concealed video camera. “Don’t worry. We’ll get every word.”

  Teresa had her fingers crossed. Exposing fake clairvoyants was her first assignment for Ghost Watch and she dearly wanted it to work. She just hoped she could keep up the pretence long enough to trap Madam Luzardi. Teresa had told the medium she desperately wanted to contact a fictitious relative – her Uncle George, who’d been run over by a bus.

  A cold, icy breeze blew across Teresa’s face, snapping her to attention. She looked across at the window where the curtain was billowing.

  Music – strange, unworldly music – drifted through the air. Immediately the table rose on its own and thumped up and down several times in quick succession.

  Although Teresa wanted to yell out, a hiss stopped her. It came from Madam Luzardi’s lips. Leaning forward Teresa could hear the words: “My fellow braves, gather round the campfire and we shall tell stories of the days when the buffalo roamed free.”

  “You what?” she exclaimed.

  “The spirits of the Prairie cry out, my brothers. They demand vengeance against the marauding paleface devils who defile our scared burial grounds and slaughter our children.”

  Gary leant forward and clicked his fingers in front of Madam Luzardi’s face. There was no response. She was in a trance.

  “Who are you?” Teresa asked, wondering how the sherry-sodden old dear had managed to put on such a deep, booming male voice.

  “I am Flaming Arrow,” the woman replied, “chief of the Chiciwatta. Guardian of the ancient land of the netherworld. I am your spirit guide.”

  Gary tapped the side of his head to signal that the medium was either mad or putting it on.

  “A spirit guide? That’s handy,” he said. “It’ll save having to use the sat-nav.”

  Kicking him sharply under the table, Teresa took a deep breath. “Flaming Arrow,” she said, “I need to speak to my uncle, my late Uncle George. Can you see him?”

  The Red Indian hissed slowly. “He is here, on the cusp between this world and that spectral land beyond. He wishes to speak to you.”

  Teresa relaxed. The old girl had taken the bait! All they had to do now was reel her in.

  “Hello, my child,” the woman said, changing her voice to that of a kindly old man. “I’ve been lonely up here. I wondered when you’d get in touch.”

  “Is that really you?” Teresa asked, feigning amazement. “Really Uncle George?”

  “Of course,” the medium replied. “Don’t you recognise me?”

  “Yes, yes,” Teresa said, “I’m just surprised. I thought when the bus ran over your throat that your vocal chords would have been damaged. But you sound fine.”

  Gary suddenly choked, tears of mirth rolling down his cheek.

  “I’m in Heaven now, dearest Teresa. In Heaven all our pains and injuries are taken away.”

  “And can you still speak fluent Mandarin? Has the accident damaged your memory?”

  Teresa could have sworn that Madam Luzardi opened one eye and glared at her.

  “Please,” Teresa urged, “give me a verse of that Chinese song you always sang to me when I was little.”

  Madam Luzardi began to shake as though an earthquake was erupting under her seat. The old man’s voice said: “I’m sorry, my dear, but everything is growing dark. I can’t stay. I must return.”

  “But surely you’ve time to sing a line or two,” Teresa pleaded. “Please, Uncle George, you can’t go now. Not when–”

  “Quiet, paleface,” the word hissed at her from the medium’s lips. “A growing storm sweeps towards us. I must return to the campfire. Leave me now. Leave!”

  With that Madam Luzardi woke up and smiled sweetly at them. “Hav
e I been under? I never know. When I’m in touch with the spirit world, it’s like I’m in a dream, completely cut off from reality.”

  “You can say that again, Gladys,” Teresa replied, nodding for Gary to bring out his hidden camera. “The game’s up. You’ve been rumbled.”

  Madam Luzardi’s expression was a mixture of shock and outrage. “I don’t know what you mean,” she spluttered, but Teresa held up her hand.

  “You’re a fraud,” she told the medium, “a swindler. You don’t have a link to the spirit world. It’s all an elaborate con designed to part poor deluded fools from their cash.”

  She pointed to the underside of the table where the wiring for the hydraulic lift now clearly showed. Gary pulled back the curtain to reveal the wind-machine.

  Gladys Peabody slumped, defeated. “How did you know?”

  Teresa shrugged expansively. “Lots of things gave you away,” she said, “but there was one thing that clinched it.”

  “Let me guess. You don’t have an Uncle George?”

  “Worse than that,” Teresa replied as she and Gary produced their death certificates and began to turn an unearthly white.

  “We’re from Ghost Watch and believe us, no self-respecting spook we know would be seen dead talking to you!”

  Once Upon a Crime

  Cursing, Gretchen tugged the hood free as the overhanging branches snatched greedily at her. Stumbling back to the uneven bramble-lined path, she pushed on deeper between the menacing, gnarled oaks – a freshening wind hissing through the leaves.

  She hated the forest. It had always terrified her. And if her dark mission today hadn’t been so important she’d never have dared venture into its foreboding interior.

  Trembling, she forced herself to concentrate on the watery sun settling low over her grandmother’s cottage.

  “Not long now,” she muttered softly. “Soon it will all be over.”

  The words didn’t calm her. Instead they made her focus on the enormity of what she had to do. Even the thought of the woodman, waiting nearby with his specially sharpened axe, did little for her confidence.

  There was a distant figure framed in the doorway. Her grandmother had obviously heard her crashing through the malicious undergrowth. For an older person, her hearing was remarkably keen.

  The woman’s body language immediately told Gretchen she wasn’t welcome; the folded arms and fierce animal stare uncompromising. This was going to be much more difficult than she’d imagined.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t my favourite grand-daughter.” The voice was sharp-edged, flinty. “Finally decided to pay me a visit… after all this time. That’s heart-warming. So very caring of you. What’s wrong, come to see if I’ve been behaving myself?”

  Gretchen took a deep breath, glanced again anxiously at the setting sun. “It wasn’t my idea. Father sent me. He thinks we need to talk.”

  A sly smile crept across her nan’s lips. “Do we have anything to talk about?”

  God, why was she making this so awkward! Gretchen felt anger displacing her fears.

  “Your health… your condition.”

  She held up the wicker basket, its contents covered with a green gingham cloth. “Please, Gran. Can I come in? I’ve got something for you.”

  Shrugging, the woman moved to one side, the movement surprisingly fast and supple.

  “Might as well hear what you’ve got to say,” she muttered. “But you’re going to need a whole lot more than a basket of goodies if you and your scheming father are going to get your way.”

  The interior of the cottage was sparsely furnished. Gretchen remembered it being more ordered, cosier, cleaner. But that, she told herself sadly, was only one of the many things that had inevitably changed.

  A stew bubbled in a cauldron suspended over an open fire. It smelt enticing, meaty but unfamiliar. Her stomach rumbled.

  “Have some,” Grandmother offered and, seeing her hesitate, added tauntingly: “Don’t worry. You won’t catch anything.”

  Gretchen shook her head. No matter how hungry she might be, she couldn’t afford to stay a second longer than necessary.

  “You don’t need to be so on edge, you know.”

  “I’m not,” the girl insisted. Despite that, she could see the old woman’s nose twitch, smelling the fear.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Grandmother commanded. “Give me the message. Make your pitch.”

  Pulling back the cloth, Gretchen slid the basket across the table. The coins clinked enticingly. She blinked in surprise. There were so many – nearly the family’s entire fortune.

  The crone started to reach into the treasure then abruptly stopped, suddenly wary.

  “It’s gold,” Gretchen promised. “Just gold. Nothing else… no silver.”

  Reassured, the woman began kneading the coins, making them run through her fingers like water.

  Oh what big eyes you’ve got, Gretchen thought with loathing as the woman’s predatory pupils dilated with delight. And what a big mouth you’ve got… to need such a huge bribe to keep silent.

  Slowing turning a coin in her claw-like fingers, the woman asked: “What’s the deal?”

  “You leave the forest, leave the territory, leave the country and never return. You sever all links with us. And you never say a word to anyone about what happened, about how you ended up like this.”

  “To protect the family name?”

  “To protect you from fear and prejudice,” Gretchen corrected. “From hotheads who’d view you as a dangerous abomination that must be chased out at the point of a pitchfork.”

  Yellowy eyes burning with suspicion, the older woman thought about that possibility for a moment. She rubbed a hand slowly over her neck, over the traces of healing scratches and bites.

  The girl swallowed hard under her gran’s hot, unrelenting, hypnotic gaze.

  “Okay,” Gretchen admitted, dry mouthed, “Father is concerned about it harming the business. There’ll be repercussions. A backlash. When people find out about you – what you’re capable of – they won’t understand. We’ll all suffer.”

  “So I just disappear?” The bitterness in the statement hit Gretchen like a slap.

  “Yes,” she replied. “There are already rumours. People have started noticing the way your body is altering…”

  And that senseless incident with the shepherd boy didn’t help. It was lucky no-one believed him… that he’d made accusations before…

  …but what about next time? If Gran got her teeth into him he’d lose more than his innocence.

  “And what if I refuse to go?” Grandmother asked, padding over to the window to watch the night creep in. “What if I simply take the bribe and stay? Has your father thought about that?”

  Shining through the glass, the menacing moon rose high – big and round and urgent.

  “Then Father says I’ll have to take direct action,” Gretchen whispered, feeling her nerves tingle, her heart squeezing tightly. “A more permanent solution.”

  Grandmother considered the homicidal threat. If it worried her, she gave no sign.

  “I’m growing bigger by the minute,” she growled. “And it’ll take more than just you to get rid of me. You don’t have a moment to lose.”

  “I know,” Gretchen agreed. “That’s why I’ve arranged some help.”

  Although the whistle was low, it did the job. The door smashed open, flying off its hinges, the woodman rushing in, silvery axe raised.

  Her nan laughed savagely; a roaring, guttural, chortle. “Ah, my darling girl, how treacherous you truly are. Now I understand why you wore that…” She gestured to Gretchen’s cape.

  “I always said dressing in red made you look like a cheap tramp. I suppose it’s a very practical colour… for hiding bloodstains.”

  Gretchen refused to feel guilty. The biddy had brought this upon herself by her wild, reckless, animal behaviour. If only she hadn’t surrendered to her brutish hungers; overwhelmed by her most basic
primeval instincts.

  “Don’t bother telling me we won’t get away with it,” she told the abhorrent unnatural creature. “It’s all worked out. The cover story is foolproof. It was a full moon, I turned up with my usual delivery of provisions for my saintly grey-haired granny but you changed into a werewolf and attacked me.”

  She nodded to the woodman. “Johann was working nearby and burst in to save me. As soon as he cut your head off with his trusty axe your corpse changed back to its human form.”

  Gran’s expression was both mocking and pitying. “And you think people will buy that load of baloney? That ridiculous, hackneyed, lycan myth?”

  “The locals are very superstitious.”

  “But there are no such things as werewolves. Everyone knows that. It’s a metaphor – an allegorical way of explaining why normally passive, respectable people give in to their inner beast, to their wildest temptations and desires.”

  Grandma patted the pronounced four-month pregnant bump in her stomach.

  “Like a pensioner suddenly rediscovering her passion for rampant sex!”

  Gretchen frowned, both angry and unnerved. For a simple murder this was suddenly becoming very complicated, and far too intellectually challenging.

  “Look, the bumpkins round here don’t have doctorates in literary allusion or psychology,” she snapped. “They’re just numbskulls who love all that crap about witches, magic potions, goblins and creatures of the night. They think it’s real. They’ll go mad for any freaky fairytale Father and I feed them.”

  Possibly, Grandmother conceded, however the alibi argument was academic – on a number of levels. Mostly because it was, in fact, Gretchen who was about to die.

  “I’m afraid,” the old woman said, giving the woodcutter a lecherous wink, “that Johann has already used his chopper on me. He’s the daddy of junior here. You picked the wrong accomplice.”

  Mouth falling open, Gretchen spun round just in time to see the deadly blade descend… on her.

  “He’s got a thing for older women. Especially older women with a basket of gold.”

  The pain was so intense Gretchen almost blacked out straight away. She kept conscious just long enough to see the axe man take the promiscuous pensioner in his arms, asking: “Did she bring enough? Do we have enough to live happily ever after?”

  “Who knows, lover,” Grandma replied. “It’s a grim fiscal time to be bringing a nipper into the world.”

  Staring directly into her murderous grand-daughter’s rapidly dimming eyes, she added thoughtfully: “It’s amazing how much you need these days just to keep the wolf from the door…”

  Extended Run

  Joan Prentice couldn’t believe it. “Eight hundred dollars a jar and the goddam stuff doesn’t work!”

  Slamming down the bottle, she peered anxiously in the mirror. The anti-wrinkle cream had been a silly extravagance, a vain attempt to cover up the problem.

  It only took one look at her reflection to make Joan shiver. She was still attractive – alluring enough to guarantee the undivided attention of every man when she walked into a room – but the critics had stopped describing her as devastatingly beautiful. And it was easy to see why.

  Early middle age had arrived uninvited. The laughter lines which had once given her a mischievous, impish appeal were now etching into crow’s feet; her green eyes were losing their twinkle and there was a hint of scrawniness around the neck. Brunette Joan could still set men’s motors revving, but she knew that it would soon be time for the first of many nips and tucks.

  “I know time marches on,” she sighed, “but why does it pick a route right across my face?”

  As a movie star, Joan had always had make-up men, hair stylists, and costumiers to make her look stunning. And Nature had been kind. Even as a teenager, Joan had a unique fresh-faced prettiness.

  “You’ll break a few hearts when you grow up,” her mother had told her, and during the next twenty years, the cinema’s most sought-after leading lady had broken hearts by the million. Now Joan knew all that was going to change.

  At first, she’d been in denial – determinedly refusing to accept that fewer scripts arrived each day, or that she wasn’t being cast so often in romantic roles. What had finally made it impossible to ignore had been the offer of a part in Spielberg’s latest adventure epic.

  The film’s central character was a fiery girl leading an expedition up the Amazon to find a fabled lost city. Joan had been desperate for the role. But when the script arrived from Larry, her agent, she’d been cast as the girl’s mother!

  “Don’t take it to heart,” he’d told her. “The mother’s part is a peach – great lines and some of the film’s best scenes. You’ll steal the show.”

  Joan had argued for the lead, but Larry wouldn’t listen. “It calls for a bimbo to flounce around half naked. I wouldn’t insult you with it. Not an actress of your reputation.”

  Larry was a dear, but what he’d really meant was an actress of her age, Joan told herself. And, as she’d reluctantly signed the contract, she knew she’d reached a watershed in her career.

  “Old actresses never die,” she told the reflection, “they only get more lines.”