The Witches of Chiswick

by Robert Rankin

  “Fair enough,” said Will.

  And so Tim got in the beers.

  And so Will told the tale.

  Will told Tim about what was going to happen next week. About The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke and the digital watch on the Tinker’s wrist. And the witch women who had come to the Tate to destroy the painting and about how he had hidden it from them and substituted a Rothko.

  And then Will told Tim about the foul-smelling Victorian robot with the horrible black eyes that had killed the other William Starlings and had tried to kill the one who was presently sitting talking to Tim, who was a different Will to the Will that had gone into the toilet on the tram, but was really the same one.

  Which confused Tim somewhat. Although Tim did say that he was reminded of a certain classic twentieth-century Hollywood movie, where the robot was from the future.

  “But this one came from the past,” Will explained. “To stop me from altering the future, which would have, in turn, altered the past. Which, in fact, it did.”

  Which got Tim confused once again.

  And then Will told him about exactly what had happened after Tim had given him the Retro on the Friday of the following week. Which really got Tim confused.

  But the beer was so good.

  And Will told his tale well.

  And as with all well-told tales, this one was not told in the first person.

  And it went something, in fact altogether, like this.

  9

  The plastic phial lay on the tabletop, empty.

  Will sat rigidly, staring into space. His eyes were glazed, the pupils dilated. His face was an eerie grey and his lips an unnatural blue.

  Tim reached cautiously forward and touched his hand to Will’s neck, feeling for the pulse of the jugular.

  There was no pulse.

  Will Starling was dead.

  Will’s eyes suddenly opened and so too did his mouth.

  “Through a veil of cucumber I viewed the errant bicycle,” said Will.

  “Pardon me?” said Tim, in some surprise.

  “The spotty youth of time dwells upon the doorknob of pasta,” said Will.

  “Again I confess to bafflement,” said Tim. “But rejoice, nevertheless, that you have not popped your clogs.”

  Will said nothing more for a moment, but then his opened eyes grew wide.

  And then Will said, “Run for your life.”

  “My what?” asked Tim. “My life?”

  “Run,” cried Will and he leapt from his seat, overturning the table and wastefully spilling the drinks that Tim had purchased.

  “You have spilled the drinks,” said Tim, stepping back to avoid the falling table and the glasses. “By Our Lady of the Flatpack, you have taken the Retro, haven’t you, Will?”

  “I know all.” Will was up and about and now on the move. “I know the past and the near future too. We must run quickly, and now.”

  A crowd was beginning to form. Detached from the general crowd, it encircled Will and Tim and the now fallen table. It was a crowd of onlookers, as crowds so often are, a crowd which had “become interested”.

  “Everybody run!” bawled Will. “Big trouble coming. Everybody run.” And he made to push into the crowd, to reinforce his words, as it were, with appropriate and demonstrative actions.

  The crowd, however, yielded not.

  A lady in a straw hat said. “There you have it, the youth of today, brains broiled on seedy substances. It was never so in my day.”

  “Yes it was, too,” said a chap in a J-cloth bandana. “In your day it was all eating frogs up flagpoles and savouring the smells of Sarah.”

  “Let me through,” cried Will, buffeting against the burly belly of an interested onlooker. “It’s on its way. It will kill you all.”

  “Please make way,” said Tim. “My friend is somewhat drunk; he’s liable to project his supper onto a number of you, simultaneously.”

  At this, the owner of the burly belly that Will was presently drumming upon made an attempt to step back, but this attempt was without success as further ranks of interested onlookers now penned him in.

  “Run!” shouted Will. “And those who can’t run, waddle.”

  “And there,” declared the lady straw hat, “you bear witness to the perils of under-eating. Delirium. Under-eaters are so ungross, aren’t they?”

  “I’ll agree with that,” said the chap in the J-cloth bandana, a chap of considerable girth. “You may be a dotty old loon, but your finger is on the return key of truth upon this occasion.”

  “That’s no way to speak to your mother.”

  “You’re not my mother.”

  “If I was your mother, I’d give you poison.”

  “If you were my mother, I’d take it.”

  There was some applause at this, for even in the future, the old ones are still the best.

  “Prepare to receive vomit,” Will opened his mouth and began to push a finger down his throat.

  “Back up!” cried he of the burly belly.

  “Don’t push me,” said a burlier-bellied fellow behind him.

  “But this chap’s about to hurl spew.”

  “That’s no excuse for rudeness.” The burlier-bellied fellow smote the burly-bellied fellow on the back of his broad-necked bonce.

  “Fight!” shouted Tim. “In that direction. Relocate yourselves, or you’ll miss it.”

  “You can see a fight any day,” said the lady in the straw hat. “You can even order one via your home screen. Have a professional pugilist come round and give you a sound thrashing.”

  “Can you?” asked J-cloth man.

  “Indeed,” said the lady. “Give me your mail code and I’ll have one sent around to you later.”

  “Well … I …”

  “My point is this,” said the lady, standing her ground, although others were now giving theirs. “You can always see a fight, but vomiting is another matter altogether. It’s years since I’ve seen anyone actually vomit. Oi! Careful there.” And the lady swung her handbag to smite a relocating crowd member who was brushing up against her. “My point,” she continued, to the J-cloth wearer who was now being similarly jostled, “is that vomiting is a rarity nowadays. Like, say, a one-legged fish, or a very small pony that you might carry in your pocket rather than ride upon, or perhaps—”

  “A chocolate chair,” said J-cloth.

  “Don’t be absurd,” said the lady and she swung her handbag once more, bringing down her jostler, who collapsed onto the fallen table, breaking two of its legs and one of his own.

  As fists began to fly, or at least to swing in heavy arcs, Tim pulled Will through a gap in the crowd.

  “Run?” he asked.

  “Believe me,” said Will. “I do mean ‘run’.”

  And then, amidst the to-ing and fro-ing and the barging and the fists that swung in heavy arcs and the grunts from those whom these fists struck, and the oaths that were sworn and the insults exchanged, came a voice, louder than the rest, the voice of one who had now entered the Shrunken Head.

  It was a voice of deep timbre and rich Germanic accent.

  It cried, “William Starling. Where is William Starling?”

  “Baal and Sons, Inc,” swore Tim, sighting a head that was higher than the rest, with a face upon it that Tim knew and feared. “It’s the robot thing again.”

  “It’s another one.” Will was now making speed towards the rear of the bar where stood the stage and the fire exit. “I really do mean ‘run’.”

  “I’m running,” said Tim. “I’m running.”

  And he was.

  The terrific black-eyed and foully-smelling figure, alike unto the previous terrific black-eyed and foully-smelling figure, to a point which argued in favour of cloning, but in fact was mass production, would have stormed through the bar to fall upon his prey, had his way not been barred by the mêlée, which now appeared to involve all those present, with the notable exception of Tim and Will.

  And the Slaughter
house Five, who lounged upon the stage, sipping virus cocktails and offering verbal encouragement to the struggling crowd.

  Will climbed onto the stage. Tim struggled to follow him.

  “Hoopla,” cried Dantalion’s Chariot. “You can’t come up here, you’re not an entertainer.”

  Will threw a fist, a lean fist albeit, in consideration of its prospective target, but a hard fist none the less and one thrown with considerable force, and accuracy.

  It caught Dantalion’s Chariot on the highest of his many chins.

  “Outrage!” cried the Soldier of Misfortune, as the Chariot toppled and fell to the stage. “Breach of contract. We will sue the management of this establishment.”

  “Out of the way,” shouted Will, shaking his fist at the Soldier. “In fact, run too, if you have it in you.”

  “Actually I’m a bit puffed,” said the Soldier, raising calming palms. “Impersonating weather can really take it out of you.”

  “There’s a big storm coming,” said Will. “Through the fire exit, Tim.”

  “I’d be ahead of you,” said Tim, “if I wasn’t following.”

  And almost together they reached the fire exit – which was locked.

  “Locked!” Tim rattled at the door. “That’s illegal. I may well sue the management also.”

  “Only if you live to do so.” Will now too took to rattling the door.

  And then the shooting started.

  Exactly where this latest terrific blackly-eyed and fetid figure had acquired its firepower was a matter that Chief Inspector Sam Maggott, who would later arrive at the crime scene to view the carnage and count the dead, would muse ruefully upon, before concluding that he just didn’t know, the firepower in question being of a type that he had only viewed in a certain classic twentieth-century Hollywood movie, the now legendary 7.62 M134 General Electric Minigun which, as we all know by now, or at least should, is armed with six rotating barrels capable of despatching six thousand rounds per minute.

  The six rotating barrels span and the rounds left these at the rate of precisely six thousand per minute.

  And through the cacophony and chaos, the blood and the gore, the dead and the dying, and the protests of a lady whose straw hat had been shot to smithereens, the figure of terror, the Mechanical Murderer, the Automated Assassin, the Clockwork Cain, the Synthetic Sanguinarian, the alliterative emptier of the thesaurus, marched forward.

  “Duck!” cried Will.

  But Tim was ahead of him.

  And now somewhat below.

  Gunfire strafed the stage, bringing an end, not only to the career of the Soldier of Misfortune, who would never again impersonate weather, but also Musgrave Ritual, who had brought joy to literally dozens with his strumming on the old banjo.

  “We’re all going to die.” Tim cowered in the foetal position.

  Will had nothing to add to this statement, possibly because he didn’t hear it, what with his hands being clapped over his ears and his face pressed as close to the floor as it might be humanly pressed without actually passing through, and the noise of all that gunfire. “Think,” Will told himself. “What happens next? You know what happens next. You know. I’m not sure how you know, but I know that you do.”

  Which no doubt made some kind of sense to himself at least.

  “I do know,” said Will. And he leapt up. “I’m here,” he shouted, and the brutal weapon turned in his direction.

  “Here!” shouted Will. “I’m here. It’s me. Come on, I’m here, shoot me.”

  The Engineered Exterminator pressed once more upon the blood-red fire button.

  Will dropped to his knees.

  Two hundred and fifty-seven rounds shot the fire exit door from its hinges.

  Will tugged at Tim.

  “It’s ‘run’ again,” he told him.

  “An alleyway is an alleyway,” as the twentieth century’s greatest living fictional detective, Lazlo Woodbine, once said. “But a broad with a moustache is an abomination unto the Lord.” And added, “But what the hell, if you’re desperate and your wife’s on vacation in Penge.”

  The now legendary Laz knew his stuff when it came to alleyways, although his taste in women was at times somewhat questionable. But be that as it may, and well may it be, an alleyway is an alleyway and an ideal escape route too when it becomes available.

  “Run,” bawled Will once more.

  But Tim was already running.

  They ran down the alleyway with a will, or in Will’s case with a Tim.[5] Will’s long lean legs carried him at considerable speed, and Tim’s legs, although shorter and somewhat stockier, managed, (through the adrenaline rush that fear for one’s life inevitably brings), to keep pace.

  They ran up another alleyway. Along another. Across a junction between alleyways, ran further to be on the safe side. And then just a bit more to be absolutely sure that they had outrun their erstwhile Ersatz Executioner.

  Then a tad more for safety’s sake.

  And then …

  “Enough,” gasped Tim, face all red and glazed with sweat. “We’ve lost him. I can’t run any more.”

  “Perhaps just a bit further.” Will still had much running left in him.

  “Not one step.” And Tim collapsed onto his bottom, breathing heavily.

  Will sank down beside him. “Do you know where we are?” he asked.

  “You blackguard,” croaked Tim. “You’re not even puffed.”

  “I think my heart rate’s up a bit,” said Will. “But I do a lot of running. I’ve got an antique home jogging machine in my bedroom.”

  “A what?” Tim felt his own heart. It appeared to be reaching critical mass.

  “A physical training machine,” said Will, glancing warily back along the way they had come. “Keeps me fit and keeps my weight down.”

  “Down?” Tim asked. “Why would anyone want to keep their weight down?”

  “Well …” said Will.

  “No,” Tim flapped an exhausted hand about, “I don’t want to know. I’ve just witnessed slaughter and had to run for my very life. This is hardly the time, or the place.”

  “Right on both counts,” said Will. “Time is all important and this isn’t the place where we should be.”

  “I have an uncle,” puffed Tim. “He lives in Kew Quadrant. We could hide out in his place.”

  “We have to get to Chiswick.”

  “Why? Who do you know in Chiswick?” Tim took to coughing.

  “Not so loud,” said Will. “I don’t know anyone in Chiswick. But that’s where it is, I know it is.”

  “Chiswick’s always where it is,” Tim took deep breaths. “And where it should stay, dull place that it remains.”

  “Not Chiswick. I’m talking about the time machine.”

  Tim managed a “What?”

  “The time machine,” said Will. “The one that brought the first automaton here. It returned on automatic pilot to pick up the second one, when the first one was destroyed.”

  “‘What?” went Tim once again, followed by, “You know where there’s a time machine?”

  “I know it,” said Will. “It’s all in here,” and he tapped at his temple. “The Retro you gave me opened up all those synapses you spoke about, allowed me to access my ancestral memory. All of it, back through generations to Victorian times. I know exactly when the time machine was sent. From which year and from which location. I met the man who built it.”

  Tim couldn’t manage another what? So, open-mouthed, he just shook his head and vanished under his hair.

  “I can remember being there,” said Will, “because it happened in my past. Because I stole the time machine and travelled back in it. Or will steal the time machine, which I intend to do very shortly.” Will checked his watch. It said Friday. “About half an hour from now,” Will said.

  “Stop, stop.” Tim managed that. “‘You travelled back in time. I mean, you’re going to travel back in time? Or—”

  “To the Victorian era,” said Wi
ll. “And it isn’t at all how you’d expect it to be. Although it was exactly how I expected it to be, because I now have all the ancestral memories of what it was really like inside my head. Although, when I got there I lost them. It’s very complicated.”

  “Stop!” Tim waved his hand some more. “Here madness dwells. I want no part of this.”

  “Oh God of Good Housekeeping,” went Will. “I remember that too, what happens to you. You don’t want to come with me, Tim. You mustn’t have any part in this. You go straight to your uncle’s. I’ll go to Chiswick alone.”

  “No no no,” said Tim. “If there’s really a time machine, I want to see it. There, I’ve got most of my breath back.”

  “You don’t want to see it,” said Will.

  “I do. I really do.”

  “Believe me, you don’t.” Will climbed to his feet. “I have to be off. Where are we?”

  “We’re in Chiswick,” said Tim.

  “We never are? We didn’t run that far, surely?”

  “Believe me, we did. I can recall every aching metre of it.”

  “Then this isn’t good. I should have remembered this. I’m not getting all of this right. It’s because I’m trying to change it. Perhaps it can’t be changed.”

  “I have to see it,” said Tim, in a forceful tone. “A real time machine. I have to see it.”

  “You don’t want to see it. Trust me on this.”

  “Trust me on this. I do.”

  “Well, you’re not,” said Will. “And I do remember where I am now. And I’m off. Go to your uncle’s, Tim. Stay there for a couple of days. No, actually, it doesn’t matter, you can go home. I’ll sort this out and I’ll see you again, a week yesterday. I’ll meet you on the tram, a week yesterday.”

  “A week yesterday?”

  “Time travel,” said Will. “You know the old joke.”

  “I don’t,” said Tim.

  “You do. Bloke walks into a newspaper office and says to the editor, ‘I have the scoop of a lifetime for you, I’ve invented a time machine.’ And the editor, a rather jaded fellow says, ‘Well, I’m rather busy today, could you come back and show it to me –’”

  “Yesterday,” said Tim. “Yes, I have heard it and it isn’t very good.”