The Witches of Chiswick

by Robert Rankin

  “Evil,” whispered Will.

  “Chief, I can feel them,” Barry said. “Evil is right. Let’s get out the back way and let’s make it snappy.”

  “Back.” Will prodded the prisoner once more. “Back through that door there.”

  “Leave me alone,” the prisoner howled.

  “I’m sorry,” said Will, and he poked him even harder. “But we are in big trouble here. Just go, if you know what’s good for us.”

  Into a rear office they went and Will slammed the door shut upon them. The key was in the lock and he turned it.

  The office room was gas-lit. Filing cabinets of a doleful disposition lined the cheerless walls and at a disconsolate table sat a young policewoman.

  Will stared at the young policewoman.

  She was not a young policewoman.

  She was a young man dressed as a young policewoman.

  This young man looked up at Will.

  “I know,” he said. “Don’t tell me. What gave it away? The wig, wasn’t it? If I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a thousand times. If you want someone to play the role of token woman, give them the tools for the job. But do they listen? No. These high heels are crippling my feet, and as to the corset—”

  “What is your name?” Will asked. He asked the question in a slow and deliberate voice. He had a feeling that he already knew the answer.

  “Policewoman John Higgins,” Policewoman John Higgins replied. “Who are you and—” He/she glanced from the face of Will to the face of the prisoner and back again.

  “No time at all to explain,” said Will, “even if I could. Undo the prisoner’s straitjacket, if you will.”

  “I certainly will not.” The cross-dressing officer of the law rose from his/her seat and reached for his/her truncheon.

  “I don’t have time for this,” said Will.

  “Stick your hand in your pocket, chief.”

  “What?”

  “What?” said Policewoman Higgins.

  “Just do it, chief, tell he/she that you have a gun in your pocket. Make him or her, or whatever it is, unstrap the other you and open the back door.”

  “Good idea.” Will did as he was bid.

  “I’ve a gun in my pocket,” said Will. “Do what I say, or I’ll shoot you.”

  And now there came sounds of a handle being turned and then fists being banged on the door that Will had locked, just two “trices” and three “half-a-mo’s”[18] before.

  The token policewoman raised his/her truncheon and peered at the bulge in Will’s pocket. And, as it was impossible at such a moment to resist uttering the now legendary line, uttered it.

  “Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just—”

  And Will’s finger squeezed upon a trigger and shot the end off the token policewoman’s truncheon.

  “Gun, then.” Higgins dropped the truncheon and set about releasing the straps which held the other Will’s straitjacket.

  Fists now rained upon the locked office door and there was a great deal of angry shouting.

  “The back door,” Will said, when his other self was unbuckled. “Unlock it quickly, now.”

  “It’s not locked,” said token Policewoman Higgins.

  “Then come over here.”

  “What is it?” The token policewoman teetered in Will’s direction.

  “Only this, and I’m sorry.” And Will brought him/her down with a Dimac moved called The Lunge of the Lion’s Lingum, which this time involved Will’s elbow, as his fist was growing sore.

  Will’s other self stood unsteadily rubbing at his wrists and shaking fearfully.

  “Out of the door,” Will told him. “Don’t make me hit you too.”

  The other Will staggered forward and opened the door. Will pushed him forward with the cane, forward and into an alleyway.

  It was an alleyway of heart-breaking dejection.

  “Along the alley. To the front of the building,” Will said.

  “The front of the building, chief?”

  “I’m running this, Barry.”

  “And most violently too. Lots of pent up aggression coming out. I hope you’re not having a psychotic episode.”

  “Go on,” Will told his other self. “Along the alleyway. Quickly.”

  The street truly bustled with people now.

  Many tradesmen hustled as they bustled and called out the Cries of Old London.

  “Bluebottles, bluebottles. Get yer luverly bluebottles.”

  And so on.

  The two hansom cabs still stood before the police station. Will opened the door of the first one and ushered his other self into it. The cabbie looked down through his hatchway at the back.

  “Sorry gents,” he said. “These cabs is taken. Hired by Very Important Folk. Hail another, if you please.”

  Will closed the hansom cab’s door. His other self sat within, hunched up and cowering. Will stepped around to the rear of the cab. “Cabbie,” he called up. “Could you step down here for a moment.”

  “How long a moment would that be, sir? More than a ‘tick’, would it be, or less than a ‘twinkling’ or a ‘flash’?”

  “Do I spy a duff running gag?” Will asked. “Just step down here for a ‘jiffy’, if you will.”

  “Oh, I can certainly spare a ‘jiffy’.”

  The cabbie climbed down and a Dimac move called The Wave of the Wombat’s Winkie laid the cabbie low.

  “Chief,” said Barry. “You’re not going to—”

  “Yes I am.” Will leapt up onto the cabbie’s mount and took up the horse’s reins.

  And then folk issued from the police station: important-looking men in high top hats, and curious pinch-faced women. These wore the most ferocious expressions.

  And Will, with a surprising degree of dexterity, which involved holding the horse’s reins in one hand, taking up the cabbie’s whip in the other, and somehow still managing to keep a hold upon Rune’s silver-topped cane, slapped the reins and cracked the whip and shouted, “Giddy up.”

  And the cabbie’s horse just stood there, refusing to be moved.

  And now the important-looking men and the ferocious-faced females were at the hansom cab and climbing onto it.

  “Giddy up!” shouted Will, cracking the whip once more and employing Rune’s cane to strike the top hat from the head of an important-looker. “Get a move on. Hutt! Hutt!”

  “Hutt, chief?”

  “It’s what you say to camels,” Will kicked away the important-looker who was clawing at his leg.

  “Try ‘Hi Ho Silver’, chief.”

  “And why?” The Poke of the Porcupine’s Pecker, a shin-move deeply applied, sent another important-looker toppling.

  “No harm in trying, chief.”

  “Hi Ho Silver!” shouted Will and he cracked the whip once more.

  And the cabbie’s horse took off in a manner that was not unlike the wind.

  “You can’t beat a farting horse,” said Barry.

  “So not funny.” Will clung to the reins and Hi-Ho-Silvered some more.

  And important-lookers and ferocious-faced-females fell away as the horse leapt forward, scattering bluebottle-sellers and costermongers and rag men and rabbit-skin hawkers.

  The horse traffic was, of course, heavy. There were many carts and carriers and trucks and cabs too.

  A prediction was made in the year eighteen ninety, which seemed a most logical prediction at the time, and this prediction was, that with the ever-growing volume of horse drawn traffic in London, by the year nineteen twenty, every street, road and lane in England would be nose to tail in horse-drawn vehicles, and London would be thirty-five feet deep in horse manure. And it was a prediction based upon logic.

  Will steered the cabbie horse (Silver?) with remarkable skill, about this obstruction and the next, and the next, and the next as well.

  “Very impressive, chief,” said Barry.

  “Rune taught me to ride in Russia,” said Will. “We rode with the Cossacks. Visited th
e Tsar. Had to make an early departure though. Rune behaved in a somewhat inappropriate manner with the Tsarina.”

  “There was never a dull moment with that fellow, was there?”

  Will now yelled at a pure-gatherer who blocked his passage. “Out of the way!” he yelled. The pure-gatherer dropped his bucket, but dodged the wheels of the speeding hansom.

  “Have we lost them?” Will asked, as the hansom thundered over Westminster Bridge.

  “Look over your shoulder and check, chief.”

  “No, Barry. I’m asking you. Can you feel big trouble still following us?”

  “I can feel big trouble all around, chief. But specifically following us? No, chief, you’ve escaped.”

  “Good.” Will slowed the cabbie’s horse and once across the river, brought it to a halt and allowed it to refresh itself at a public trough.

  “Interesting,” said Will, as the horse gulped down its water.

  “Not particularly,” said Barry. “All God’s creatures like a drink. Man, especially.”

  “Not that,” said Will. “You know what I mean.”

  “Actually, I don’t, chief.”

  “They were right behind us,” said Will. “In the second cab. Very close. I thought they were going to catch up with us.”

  “You didn’t mention it, chief, although I could certainly feel them.”

  “But then they stopped, when we reached the bridge. Why did they do that?”

  “Because witches cannot pass over running water, chief. It’s a tradition, or an old charter, or certain death if you’ve sold your soul to Satan.”

  Will said nothing more and when the horse had drunk its fill he Hi-Ho-Silvered it gently and it trotted on.

  “Chiswick, then is it, chief?” asked Barry, at a length that was neither a “jiffy” nor a “tick”, nor a “twinkling”, nor even a “mo” and a third.

  “Get real, Barry,” said Will.

  “They don’t come any realer than me, chief.”

  “Chap down below.” Will pointed to his passenger. “Me down below. Another me. Rather a lot of questions to be asked and answered, I would have thought.”

  “So not Chiswick, just yet, chief?”

  “No,” said Will. “But somewhere quite close to Chiswick. I’m going home, Barry. Home to Brentford.”

  23

  Where Kew Bridge meets the Brentford High Road, Will brought the hansom to a halt once more and climbed down from it.

  He opened the passenger door and beckoned to his other self.

  “Would you please come out?” he asked him.

  Will’s other self seemed in a state of shock. His face was deathly white and his eyes had the thousand-yard stare.

  “Please,” said Will. “There’s another horse trough here. You must clean yourself up, wash away that blood, make yourself look halfway respectable.”

  His other self said, “What?”

  “It’s definitely you, chief. Same stupid ‘what’.”

  “Shut it, Barry.”

  Will’s other self flinched.

  “Please,” said Will. “I mean you no harm. I’m trying to help you.”

  His other self stepped down like a sleepwalker, took himself over to the horse trough and proceeded to splash himself with water.

  “He’s well out of it, chief,” said Barry. “Perhaps you should just leave him here.”

  “To fend for himself? I think not.”

  “Only trying to think about what’s best for you.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Will. “But he is me. Look at him. Look at his clothes. Those aren’t the clothes of this day and age. He’s from the future.”

  “I’m trying to figure out how this happened,” said Barry. “And I hate like damn to admit it, but I’m baffled.”

  At a length, which will remain forever unquantified, Will’s other self completed his ablutions and returned to the cab. Will ushered him gently inside at stick’s length and then drove on.

  There was no denying the beauty of the Borough of Brentford. But then, until the twenty-second century, there never had been. Brentford, the jewel in London’s crown, slumbered in the early winter sunlight.

  The hansom passed the gasworks and Will turned right into the Ealing road. Will let the horse wander where it wished. And soon it wished to stop. So Will let it.

  The hansom drew up outside a hostelry, a public drinking house built of London Stock, with hanging baskets of Babylon, which flowered unseasonably and perfumed the air all around.

  The public house was named The Flying Swan.

  “Ideal,” said Will. “A drink would not be out of the question.”

  And thus, having said this, he leapt down from the cab and secured the horse’s reins to an iron bollard.

  “Come,” he told his other self. “If anyone needs a drink, that anyone is you.”

  The other Will looked upon The Flying Swan. “Here,” he said. “It would have to be here.”

  “What?” asked Will.

  The other Will hung his head and said nothing more.

  The saloon bar of The Flying Swan looked exactly as it had when Will had taken Tim into it many chapters before and some three hundred years into the future. But, of course, as this was the first time that Will had entered the bar, he was not aware that it was exactly the same. But it was.

  Well, not exactly, perhaps. The decor was the same, the fixtures and fitting were the same, but they were newer, because this was three hundred years before. The carpet, for instance, that was brand spanking new, although no spanking had actually been performed upon it as yet. And the dartboard was new and the etched glass of the windows was still relatively unstained by tobacco smoke. The Britannia pub tables looked exactly the same though, as did the eight beer-pulls upon the bar counter, and the jukebox in the corner, and the part-time barman, called Neville.

  “Gentlemen,” the part-time barman smiled across his polished bar counter. “Mercy me, two identical gentlemen. Well, gentlemen both, how might I serve you?”

  Will glanced along the row of beer-pump handles. Their buffed enamel shone, their silver tips twinkled.

  “We have eight hand-drawn ales on tap,” said the part-time barman, proudly. “More than any other alehouse in the district. Our selection, which exceeds the Wart and Canker by two, the Bleeding Stump by three, the Weeping Gusset by five, the Suppurating—”

  “That one,” said Will, pointing. “Two pints of that one, please.”

  “Large,” said the part-time barman. “A fine choice. None finer in fact.”

  And then, with a keen and practised hand, the barlord drew off two pints of the very very best.

  “Four pence,” said he and was paid four pence.

  Will urged his other self towards the seat in a cosy corner, motioned to him to sit, placed the two pints upon the table and sat himself down.

  “Drink,” he told his other self.

  And his other self took up his pint glass and supped upon its contents.

  “You are safe now,” Will told him. And Will sipped the pint that was his own. “This is extremely good ale,” he said.

  Will’s other self said nothing, but he did drink further ale.

  “Listen,” said Will. “I know you’re confused. Very confused. But I’m not going to hurt you. You’re me, I know that. And I’m you. I came here from the future. You did that too, didn’t you? This place, Brentford. This is your home in the future, isn’t it?”

  “You’re not me.” The other Will fairly spat the words out. “You’re one of them. Possessed by demons.”

  “Nothing possesses me,” said Will. “I can assure you of that.”

  “Damn right, chief,” said Barry. “You tell him.”

  “And yet you dress as they do. And you speak to the demon that you alone can hear.”

  “Ah,” said Will. “That’s not what you think. That’s Barry.”

  “Balbereth, more like.”

  “Barry for short,” said Barry.

  “Ba
lbereth!” said the other Will. “You think to taunt me by assuming my form.”

  “He’s a nutter, chief. You’ll get nothing here. It’s a waste of time.”

  “Deja vu?” said Will. “I recall you saying the same about Mr Wells.”

  “There,” said the other Will. “Converse with your demon. I am weak now, but if I had my strength I’d—” And the other Will raised a fist, rose feebly, then sank back into his chair.

  “Feisty, ain’t he, chief?”

  Will did not reply.

  “I’ll kill you too,” said the other Will. “You’ll die. You’ll all die. I’ll kill you all.”

  “You really don’t want to kill me.” Will drank further Large.

  “I really do.” His other self did likewise.

  “Ask me anything,” said Will. “Anything that only you know. That I couldn’t possibly know if I wasn’t you.”

  “I won’t play your evil games.”

  Will shook his head. “I don’t know what to say to convince you. But you and I are the same person. We’re both here from the future. How did you get here; will you tell me that?”

  “I need to go to the toilet.”

  “All right,” said Will. And, “Barlord,” he called to the part-time barman, “where is your gentlemen’s toilet?”

  “Door to the left there,” the part-time barman pointed.

  “Go on, then,” said Will.

  “Chief, he’ll be out of a window in a shot. It’s what you’d do, isn’t it?”

  “I thought you wanted to be rid of him.”

  “Again.” The other Will pointed a feeble hand. “Again you converse with your familiar.”

  “It isn’t what you think. I’ll accompany you to the toilet.”

  “I’ll stay here then. I was only hoping to escape through a window.”

  “You’re me,” said Will. “And I’m you, somehow, and I don’t understand how. Please tell me. I’ll let you go if you do. I promise.”

  “And why should I believe your promises?”

  “What have you got to lose? If I’d wanted to kill you, I could have done it by now. And if I’d wanted to torture some information out of you, I would have hardly brought you into a public bar.”