Especially not Area Fifty-One.
The fact that I now found myself in hospital was somewhat alarming, because I had not been aware that I was ill. So why had I woken up in hospital?
‘Doctor Proctor.’ I heard the voice of a nurse – Nurse Hearse, I would later discover. ‘Doctor Proctor, this is the patient.’
‘Patient X,’ said Doctor Proctor and suddenly he loomed over me and did pullings about with my eyelids. ‘Looks like a hopeless case.’
Well, I was certainly not having that.
I sought to protest.
And to my absolute horror found that I could not.
I was paralysed.
‘Apparently he started a fight in The Rampant Squire and a female student knocked him out,’ I heard the nurse say. ‘He’s in a coma.’
‘No, I certainly am not,’ I sought to say, but also could not.
‘And he has no identification,’ said Doctor Proctor. ‘Another one of the same, I suppose.’
‘The same, Doctor?’ queried Nurse Hearse.
‘They keep turning up,’ said Doctor Proctor. ‘Brighton is full of them – the down-and-outs and Big Issue-sellers with their big dirty boots and spaniels on strings. They have no identities. They do not remember their names. There’s no doubt in my mind, of course, as to who they really are.’
‘Who?’ asked Nurse Hearse.
‘Do you believe in fairies?’ asked the doctor, shining a torch into my eyes.
‘I’ve never really thought about it.’
‘Well, you should. I am presently writing a treatise on the subject, a medical treatise in which I explain my theory that all these folk who wander the streets of Brighton were bewitched by the fairies, that they stumbled into a fairy mound, partook of fairy food and became bewitched. Time, you see, is different in fairyland. This fellow here, for example, he probably wandered into a fairy mound several centuries ago and left again what he thought to be several hours later. But it was in fact several centuries later. And here he lies before us now, another helpless, lost soul, with no identity.’
I took to a certain inward shuddering and wondered if the doctor’s words might in fact be true. After all, I really did not remember who I was or where I had come from.
But.
I was pretty damn sure I had never met any fairies.
‘So what should we do for the best?’ asked Nurse Hearse.
‘What we always do in cases like this. You know the drill, Nurse. This is Brighton. This fellow should be good for numerous donor transplants – heart, lungs, liver, retinas. Have you checked out his old chap?’
‘His father?’
‘His … you know.’ I saw Doctor Proctor pointing to the area slightly below his waistline.
‘Ah,’ said Nurse Hearse. ‘His plonker.’
‘There’s always a need for plonkers in the Third World, Nurse. And this hospital could never survive financially if it wasn’t for the trade we do in transplant organs.’
Something clicked when I heard this, as if I had heard it all before – read it in fact, in some book. Although I felt certain that it had been a work of fiction.*
‘Help!’ I cried silently and unheard by anyone but myself. ‘Help, Mister Rune, get me out of here!’
‘And there’re no signs at all of brain activity?’ asked Doctor Proctor.
Nurse Hearse shrugged (I assume, because I could not actually see her then). ‘I’ve no idea, Doctor,’ she said. ‘We haven’t bothered to connect the encephalograph.’
‘You’re a credit to your calling,’ said the doctor. ‘A regular Mother Teresa.’
‘Isn’t she a nun?’
‘She’s a kind of nursing nun. Dresses in tea towels, a bit like Yasser Arafat.’
‘Is he a nun?’
‘Don’t try to confuse me, Nurse. Others have tried – and succeeded, let me tell you – but it doesn’t inspire confidence in the patients.’
‘I’m sorry, Doctor.’
Doctor Proctor was now fiddling with my chest. My eyes were still open and I could see him at it. He had his stethoscope on me. It was cold, of course.
‘Heart seems sound,’ he said. ‘Pulse a bit rapid, though. What do you make of this?’
‘The mark on his chest? It looks like a hoof print, doesn’t it? But burned in, somehow.’
‘By a fairy horseman, probably. Bit of a shame, really – we generally use the chest skin to make lampshades.’
‘Help!’ I screamed silently. ‘Mister Rune! Help!’
‘I’ve a lovely collection of them in my study,’ continued Doctor Proctor. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come up later and see them, Nurse Hearse?’
‘I’d love to,’ said Nurse Hearse.
And I screamed ‘Help!’ once again. Silently, of course.
After a while, the two of them left. It had been an unpleasant while for me, what with Doctor Proctor measuring my old chap, because apparently they are sold by the inch, and Nurse Hearse asking the doctor whether she could have my finger bones, because apparently she made contemporary jewellery out of them that sold well at the Brighton Festival.
Once they had gone, I lay and stewed in my own juices. Actually, I was rather hungry. They could at least have hooked me up to a drip or something. But beyond being hungry, I was very scared. It had been no female student that had knocked me unconscious; it had been some mad mythical beast. And what had happened to Mr Rune? Had the monster killed him? If it had not and he had escaped unscathed, surely he would be looking for me. Surely he would know that I was here?
I tried to cry out once again, but failed miserably.
And then, I suppose, I must have lost consciousness again.
Because the next thing I knew, there was a lot of bumping and banging about, which I assume must have woken me up. And there was that damned doctor shining his damned light into my eyes once again. And I did view a drip this time and a corridor ceiling and some doors and some more ceiling and then some more doors.
And then sky. An early-morning sky. And I heard the sound of the dawn chorus and smelled the fresh new air.
‘Across the car park,’ called Doctor Proctor, ‘and into the Royal Mail van.’
‘Are we going to post him, Doctor?’ I heard Nurse Hearse ask. And it was chilly out, I noticed that, too.
‘Not immediately, Nurse; we are, however, going to dispatch him, if I might put it that way. We use a lot of Royal Mail vans for this sort of thing, which explains why the post is so unreliable in Brighton. But that’s by the by. The vans are mobile euthanasia units. We dispatch the … er … donor, then do the dissections and parcel up the pieces, and then it’s on with the address labels and off to the sorting office. It’s all quite official – it has the Royal Seal of Approval. This is the Royal Mail, after all. The Queen Mother approved the scheme for the National Health Service shortly after the Second World War. The country’s economy couldn’t possibly have supported all the war wounded flowing back from all around the world, but by selling off the organs of these otherwise hopeless individuals, the books were made to balance. There wouldn’t be the swinging sixties, with full employment and everybody happy, if it wasn’t for schemes like this.’
‘It’s all so simple once it’s explained,’ said Nurse Hearse.
My, it was really chilly out.
And my, did I try my damnedest to scream for help.
And my, did I get nowhere at all.
Except to the doors of the Royal Mail van.
And then through them and into the van.
And once the doors were closed, and the van was in motion, it was, well, at least a bit warmer. Although it really smelled in that van.
It smelled like a slaughterhouse.
And I could see Doctor Proctor looming above me. And I watched as he took big, deep breaths.
‘I love the smell of cadavers in the morning,’ said Doctor Proctor. ‘Smells like victory for the NHS.’
‘Should I give the poor soul a lethal injection?’ asked Nurse Hear
se. ‘Put him out of his misery?’
‘Heavens, no, Nurse – lethal injections cost money. They generally die of blood loss, anyway, and the organs are fresher when taken from a living donor. So where should I start?’
‘Could I cut his old chap off? It’s always been an ambition of mine.’
‘Certainly, Nurse. Use one of the big scalpels – see if you can take it off with one swift—’
Now, I know what they say about people being talked out of comas, or sung out of them by pop-star types who are in need of a bit of good publicity to cover up some shame or other that is due to come out in the press. And like everyone, I suppose, I have always wondered whether it was actually true, or whether the coma case just happened to wake up at that moment. Or whether in fact there really were any coma cases who ever woke up, or whether the entire thing was made up by the newspapers.
Most likely the Weekly World News:
RIP VAN WINKLE:
Coma Patient Wakes Up After Two Hundred
Years When Sung To By Elvis.
But believe me, or believe me not, if you really want to raise a male patient from a coma, just try threatening his old chap with a scalpel.
‘Aaaaaaagh!’ I went, very loudly, with all my limbs once more on the go.
‘It’s a miracle!’ cried Nurse Hearse.
‘It’s an economic disaster!’ cried Doctor Proctor. ‘Prime up the lethal injection, Nurse.’
I struggled to rise, but found that I was strapped down to the hospital trolley (or gurney, as I believe they are called by our Stateside cousins).
‘You b*st*rd!’ I shouted. ‘You bl**dy b*st*rd!’
‘The fairy tongue,’ said Doctor Proctor, holding down my head. ‘I’ll put that in my treatise.’
‘You murdering maniac!’ I shouted. ‘Let me out of here!’
The van went over a speed bump or something and the doctor and nurse were thrown all about. I was not thrown about too much myself, because I was strapped down to the trolley (or gurney, or ‘big-push-along-blong-him-all-ouch’ in the pidgin English of the Melanesian Cargo Cults).
‘Careful up front, driver,’ called Doctor Proctor. ‘Nurse Hearse here nearly stuck a hypodermic needle in my nose.’
‘Sorry, Doctor,’ called the driver, whose name was Dominic Diver. ‘Just ran over a Big Issue-seller – do you want me to reverse and bring him on board?’
‘We have a bit of a situation back here at present,’ Doctor Proctor replied. ‘Best drive on, but carefully, now.’
I had been effing and blinding throughout all this, but as Doctor Proctor had his hand across my mouth, it was difficult to make my feelings fully felt.
‘Nurse,’ said the doctor, ‘please stick this troublesome individual with your needle.’
‘Oh no you don’t!’ I yelled. And I was finally able to get my teeth into the doctor’s hand. Which caused him to howl in considerable pain.
And he dragged away his gory mitt and in doing so clouted the nurse.
She tumbled back and I managed to get a hand free.
‘Stick him!’ shouted Doctor Proctor, spraying blood all over the place.
‘You hit me!’ cried Nurse Hearse. ‘I’m not having that.’
‘It was an accident, you stupid woman.’
‘Oh, stupid woman, is it? You sexist pig.’
I was struggling with my straps. ‘Stick him with your needle, Nurse,’ was my suggestion.
‘Stick him!’ shouted the doctor.
And then the van took a sudden swerve and the two of them took another tumble.
‘Careful, damn you!’ the doctor screamed. ‘I’m all in a heap here, you fool.’
‘Sorry!’ Driver Diver called back, ‘but some loony on a horse came out of nowhere.’
‘Have you been drinking?’ The doctor clawed himself to his feet, with Nurse Hearse clinging to his leg.
‘I never drink on duty,’ Driver Diver called back, ‘although I did have some magic mushrooms for breakfast – these are the nineteen sixties, you know.’
‘Just drive the van, or—’
I managed to get a decent punch in and the doctor went down once again. And I then took to struggling with the buckles on my leg straps.
And then, ‘He’s behind us!’ bawled the driver. ‘The loony on the horse, he’s galloping after us.’
‘I’m taking control here.’ Nurse Hearse pulled herself to her feet. ‘I’m a member of the Feminist Movement.’
‘Bunch of lezzers,’ mumbled the doctor. And Nurse Hearse kicked him, which I quite enjoyed.
‘Faster!’ Nurse Hearse told the driver. ‘We can’t be stopped by some mounted policeman.’
‘He doesn’t look like a policeman and … oh my God!’ And Driver Diver put his foot down hard and the van gained considerable speed.
Doctor Proctor was back on his feet and now had me by the throat. I put up a spirited defence and punched him right in the nose. I had been hoping that the nurse would side with me, what with the doctor being such an odious dyed-in-the-wool misogynist and everything. But I suppose she was a dedicated nurse and she was evidently all for putting the interests of the NHS above any personal or political differences or disputes that she might have had with the doctor.
‘Hold him still,’ she told that man. ‘I’ll administer the injection.’
‘You will get yours,’ I told her, ‘feminist or no feminist.’
Something struck the side of the van and it took to swerving once more.
‘It’s ’orrible!’ shouted the driver. ‘Or maybe it’s the mushrooms.’
‘All men are b*st*rds!’ the nurse declared.
‘She speaks the fairy tongue, too,’ I said, hoping to inject a little humour into the situation.
But failing miserably.
Hey, a little sympathy, please – my life was at stake here.
And so I fought, and struggled and fought and the trolley (or gurney, or big-push-along-blong-him-all-ouch, or the chromium-plated chariot of Ra, to those who have really given the magic mushrooms a hammering) fell over on to the doctor and the nurse, which at least let me get my legs free.
And Crash! went something into the side of the van.
And, ‘It’s a Horseman of the Apocalypse!’ went the driver, who really had given the mushrooms a hammering, and they were kicking in.
It was all rough and tumble in that van. I punched at the doctor and at the nurse. The doctor punched me and the nurse still had that hypo.
I was impressed by the way she had managed to hang on to it throughout all the to-ing and fro-ing. But not happy that she had.
And there she was again, trying to stick me with it.
I kicked her right in the ear.
But the doctor was up again and sitting on my chest, and the nurse was coming at me with the hypo again and—
‘Aaagh!’ screamed Driver Diver. ‘The Horseman is upon us. The Seventh Seal is open. The beast riseth up from the bottomless pit. It is Armageddon. We’re all gonna die. I’m swearing off drugs in the future.’
And the van overturned.
And me and the driver, the doctor and nurse went around and around and around. And of course it all seemed to happen in slow motion, just like it would in a film.
The rear doors burst open and into the sunlight myself and the doctor, the nurse, and the trolley (or gurney or it-is-too-hard-to-come-up-with-any-more-trolley-jokes-now) spewed forth in a great churning mass of much chaos.
And yes, yes, I saw it. I know that I did: Mr Hugo Rune, riding on the back of a centaur.
All in slow motion.
Just like in a film.
And then fade out.
And cut.
And print.
And fade up.
And—
‘I told you that Danbury’s talks were always a riot,’ said Mr Rune, ‘but I do think he surpassed himself this time.’
I was alive! I felt at myself.
‘Please don’t feel at yourself in my presence,’ said Mr
Rune. ‘I hope Danbury’s habits aren’t rubbing off on you.’
‘The centaur,’ I managed to utter. ‘And, oh, we are back in our rooms.’
‘An exciting night for both of us, wasn’t it? I thoroughly enjoyed the chase, reminded me of the time I rode with the Light Brigade at Sebastopol.’ Mr Rune offered me alcohol. I took him up on the offer.
‘A centaur,’ I managed to utter once again.
‘So you said. My hat, if I wore one – which I do upon certain occasions, although not state ones, as the Runes by Royal charter are granted the right to remain hatless in the presence of royalty – my hat, as I said, if I wore one, would be off to Mister Collins at this moment. You don’t see a centaur every day of the week. This is the first that I have seen for more than three hundred years. It is coming together, young Rizla. We are upon the cusp here. Time, it seems, is presently in a malleable state.’
‘I am confused,’ I said to Mr Rune. ‘I am very confused.’
‘You must learn to expect the unexpected, young Rizla. We have added one more piece to the puzzle. One more badge sits upon your breast. Each episode brings us closer to our goal – to whit, the recovery of the Chronovision before Count Otto Black can lay his grimly nailed claws upon it. Much was learned by you last night, although you might not be aware of it. But it will all fit together for you in time. The manifestation of the centaur is only the beginning of what is to come. We can expect a lot more of such anomalous phenomena.’
‘Where is the centaur now?’ I asked.
‘It depends on exactly what you mean by “now”.’
‘I know exactly what I mean by “now”,’ I said.
‘Then it is no longer in this now. It is back in its own time, which although being the same “now” as this, is profoundly different, whilst being exactly the same. Did you not pay any attention at all to Danbury’s lecture? I personally found it most instructive. As well as being a riot.’
‘That doctor,’ I said, with terrible recollection, ‘he harvests the homeless for spare parts. We must do something about this. We must go to the police.’
The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) Page 8
