Tales of the Talking Picture

by Tom Slemen

  ‘Mister Jode!’ Christopher Glazenby appeared from the smoke, coughing with red-ringed eyes, dressed in his pyjamas.

  ‘Christopher?’ Jode was shocked at the boy’s appearance in such a dangerous battleground, and told him to go home at once. If he refused, Jode had plans to teleport him to another village.

  Myrk spied Jode’s obvious concern for the boy.

  ‘Christopher, please go home at once!’ Jode begged the child. ‘It’s too dangerous for you here!’

  A pall of choking smoke from the mill obscured Christopher and Jode, and when it thinned for a few moments, Christopher stood there, coughing. Jode walked towards him, but Myrk appeared out of the pungent haze and stood behind the boy with his hand around his neck.

  ‘Let him go or – ‘ Jode struggled to finish the sentence. He gazed at Christopher, who was now in tears.

  ‘Or you’ll what?’ said Myrk, with a chilling grin. ‘Believe me, by Loki, unless you transfer your powers to me, I’ll destroy this child. I’ve disposed of children before in sacrificial offerings, as you well know.’

  ‘No,’ was Jode’s reply.

  Christopher Glazenby suddenly produced a large iron spike out of thin air. Myrk looked down, puzzled, and a moment later, the boy drove that iron spike through Myrk’s heart. As the Lord of Darkness fell to his knees, he saw Christopher’s face change to Jode’s, and realised that the wizard had impersonated the child. The fake Jode, who stood motionless thirty yards away, started to slowly melt away into the night air. Jode had created the holographic illusion, known in the Occult world as a tulpa from sheer willpower. That same trained thought-power had created the iron spike, and Jode held it firmly in Myrk’s heart as he recited the spell Merlin had relayed to him from Summerland: ‘Invergus talontus, keleriter jubeo antreo!’

  Myrk’s emaciated face contorted and turned green. His body seemed to deflate and then shrivel, and his darkening eyes met Jode’s. ‘Curse you,’ Myrk’s voice was a ghostly whisper. His eyes closed and his head fell forward, hanging from his torso on a limp reptilian neck. Jode decided it wouldn’t be safe to put Myrk in his old grave and place the standing stone over the corpse, for there was a possibility that soldiers would unearth it again if it got in the way of their vehicles. Jode thought of a place to destroy Myrk’s body – a place from which he could never return. Jode tied the wilted and flaccid limbs of Myrk into knots around the torso until the corpse was a grotesque ball. He flew far above the horizon until the sun was visible. Jode hurled the crumpled tied-up remains of Myrk towards the sun at half the speed of light, and sixteen minutes later, Myrk’s vaporising body was flashing a million miles above a sunspot the size of two Earths. A microsecond later, Myrk no longer existed.

  Back down on the troubled war-torn Earth, Jode landed in the forest on the outskirts of Blackmere village. He sat beneath an ancient oak, slowed his breathing and went into a trance. After a while his astral body visited the glorious sweet-scented meadows of Summerland, where it is always day. He was met by Merlin and a hooded stranger in a white cowl. Jode thanked Merlin for the spell which had incapacitated Myrk, and his mentor smiled, but then he said, ‘Jode, the time is almost upon us when you too shall come to Summerland.’

  ‘Yes master,’ Jode replied. He was not at all afraid to die and move on to the next world.

  ‘This is Luminatis,’ Merlin gestured with his hand to the figure standing besides him in white, and Jode looked into the hood and saw the face of the wizard Myrk had killed. Merlin revealed something which shook Jode to his marrow. ‘Luminatis is your son, Jode. Aislynn gave birth to him when she left you in the year before we lost her.’

  Jode recalled that year, before Aislynn had been entrapped by the witch Gormraith, when she had suddenly left him without a word of explanation. He had believed Aislynn had been untrue and fallen in love with another, but Merlin explained how the sorceress had given birth to Luminatis and left him in the care of a vicar and his wife in Blackmere, in 1909. Aislynn wanted her son to be raised by mortal parents because she had sensed something dreadful was about to happen to her, and she did not want Luminatis raised solely by Jode, but by a loving couple.

  Jode felt so sad when he learned this, and no longer wished to live. He had lost Aislynn, and now he had lost his son. Jode bade goodbye to that son, and also to Merlin. He opened his eyes to find himself sitting in a fine drizzle. Trevalyon Jode left the wood, and recited complex spells on a hill overlooking Blackmere. The people Myrk had turned into rats were turned back into people, and not one of them was able to describe the horrific time they had spent as rodents, because the consciousness of a rat is not translatable into human thoughts. For Charlie Bowen, Jode’s spell-reversal had come too late. Bowen, you may recall, had been one of the two poachers – the other being Bob Jenkins – who had been metamorphosised into rabbits by Myrk. Bowen had run home in the form of a rabbit, and his old mother had seized him and killed him with a knife to make rabbit stew.

  Later that morning as most of the people in the village managed to sleep, Jode recited a repetitive incantation intended to erase the memories of the last four hours. The spell was not that successful, but many who woke later that day believed they had experienced nothing more than a lucid nightmare.

  A week later, Jode took Christopher Glazenby fishing, and as the old man and the boy sat on the sleepy summer riverbank, the wizard raised the eternal subject of good and evil in the world, and they talked about conscience, and how it told you, even when you were a little child, what was right and what was wrong. At some point in this discourse, Jode told stories of Merlin and his battles with the Lords of Darkness in days of yore, and how six of them now lay imprisoned in their ancient graves beneath Stonehenge. He admitted to the boy that he was a wizard, and Christopher’s eyes shone with wonder. ‘I knew you were somehow Mr Jode,’ he told his pensive old friend, and Jode said he would soon be retiring, for he was very old, and he would have to go away.

  Christopher was so sad when Jode told him this, and he asked why he had to go away and where he was going to.

  ‘I have to go, Christopher, my work is done here.’ Jode was tearful, but looked away to the river to hide his sorrow, although the child could still sense it hanging heavy in the air between them.

  ‘But I don’t want you to go, you’re my best friend Mr Jode,’ Christopher sounded so choked up as he said the words.

  ‘The best of friends must part,’ Jode told the twelve-year-old. ‘You’ll still see me in your dreams sometimes, and Merlin will take you under his wing in your dreams each night.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Christopher admitted, his melancholic expression turning to a perplexed look

  Jode coughed to clear his throat and made an announcement. ‘Christopher Glazenby, I pass the torch to you. You are to become the next wizard who will guard this land from the Lord of Darkness and other evils.’

  ‘Me?’ Christopher recoiled. His mouth was o-shaped and his eyes were filled with utter surprise.

  And on the following morning, Christopher called at Jode’s cottage and there was no answer. He knocked on the door but there was no reply. The boy had a bad feeling about this, and he went to tell the local policeman PC Wodehouse, who made inquiries about Jode’s whereabouts around the village. It transpired that no one had set eyes on the old man since the night before. The door of the cottage was forced, and PC Wodehouse entered Mr Jode’s home, followed by Christopher, even though the policeman had told the boy to stay outside. Christopher and the constable found Jode in his bed. He had passed away, but wore a contented smile upon his face. The policeman tried to drag the sobbing boy from the bedroom, but Christopher slipped from the lawman’s grip and hurled himself onto Jode’s bed. ‘Wake up Mr Jode!’ Christopher shouted, shaking the lifeless body of the old man. He burst into tears and resumed his vain efforts to rouse his friend from death, but PC Wodehouse seized the hysterical child by his collar and this time he managed to haul him away from the bed and out of the room. />
  Christopher spent the whole of that terrible day in his bedroom. He had a few friends his own age, but none of them had been as close or as fascinating as Mr Jode, and no one would ever be able to replace him. Mrs Glazenby told her son that the old man had had a ‘good innings’ and had passed away peacefully in his sleep, but that didn’t make Christopher’s loss any easier – he still wanted his old companion back.

  That night Christopher had a strange dream. He was in a cemetery, with gravestones all around, when a luminous figure appeared before him. It was Mr Jode! He smiled and told Christopher that he was not dead, but in a place called Summerland, where it was always daytime. ‘I have sent a parcel to you,’ Jode told him. ‘Make sure you are up early before your mother and wait for the postman at the gate.’

  Christopher woke from the pleasant dream, believing Mr Jode was still alive for a moment, and then, realising it had all been a cruel dream, he sighed. He remembered what Jode had told him about being up early to receive a parcel, and so the boy decided to get up and get dressed, even though it was half-past six in the morning. A curious thought arose in Christopher’s mind: perhaps Jode really had talked to him in his sleep. He went outside in the cool summer morning air and waited at the gate, and sure enough, the postman approached with a brown-paper parcel. It was addressed to Christopher. The boy tiptoed up the stairs to his room with the package, then impatiently tore it open on his bed. The first item his hands uncovered was a pointed silky dark blue hat embellished with silver crescents, stars, Runic glyphs, and symbols of the Zodiac. Christopher put it on – a perfect fit. What else was in the parcel? There was a dark-blue ankle-length robe with the very same magical symbols found on the cone-shaped hat, and a pair of black pointed-toe boots. As Christopher tried the magician’s vestments on, he wondered if Mr Jode had sent the outfit to him just before his death. He checked the franking mark on the torn scrap of parcel paper and saw that it bore yesterday’s date. Mr Jode had indeed posted it just before he had passed away.

  A strange sensation rippled through Christopher’s body as he gazed at himself in the full-length wardrobe mirror. His reflection faded away into a green haze for a few moments, and a tall man stood there in magician’s garments similar to his own, only in metallic purple. At his feet sat a huge black terrifying dog with glowing eyes. It was obvious that the reflected man was his future self, for he had the same eyes as Christopher, and bore a slight resemblance to the boy’s father, who was now fighting for his country, somewhere in Germany. As Christopher stood there, face to face with the adult version of himself, the bedroom door behind him closed gently of its own accord, and then the man in the mirror spoke. ‘I am you, many years from now. You will become a great magician. Your name shall be Majister, one of the Magi of Merlin.’

  And then he was gone, and Christopher found himself staring at his own normal reflection again.

  On the following night the boy dreamed he was in the company of an old man with a beard as white as snow, in an idyllic sunlit valley peppered with flowers. The elderly man told Christopher he was Merlin, and taught the boy the first rudimentary lessons of High Magic. Each night these dreams became more vivid, and when Christopher had these lucid dreams he would be aware that his physical body was asleep and that he was in another reality – Summerland. During one excursion to Summerland, Merlin told Christopher that a protector would be sent into his world to act as a supernatural guardian, and in the morning, when Christopher awoke, he felt a strong urge to look out of his bedroom window. Sitting in the street below, just outside the gate sat a huge coal-black hound, similar in build to the Great Dane. Its eyes seemed luminous, and Christopher instantly recognised it as the animal he had seen, magically reflected in the wardrobe mirror, sitting at the feet of the reflection of his future self. Christopher went downstairs, and in the hallway, he lifted the letterbox flap and looked at the strange dog. It was looking directly at him, and at this closer range he saw that the eerie luminosity of its eyes had a pink tint. He was scared, and yet he felt he should have nothing to fear, for he began to slowly realise that this dog was the supernatural protector Merlin had promised. He opened the door, stood on the doorstep, barefoot in his pyjamas, and said a meek ‘Hello’ to the hound. Its eyes blazed with an orange light, and it bared its fangs. Its low growl resonated through the boy’s body, and when it leapt over the fence towards him, Christopher almost fainted with fear. The black dog knocked him sideways and he landed in one of his mother’s well-kept flower boxes. When Christopher looked up, he saw that the dog had seized a massive semi-transparent snake of some sort, and was shaking its writhing body in its jaws. The ghastly head of the glass-like reptilian hissed and then screeched as the dog’s fangs crushed its neck, and green fluid sprayed from its beady red eyes. The tail of this bizarre snake was wrapped around one of the wooden laths that supported the little arched porch over the front door. It had obviously been lying in wait for Christopher.

  The dog backed up, wrenching the savaged snake from the porch, and as it shook the translucent serpent about in a frenzy, the icy reptilian tail slapped against Christopher’s face. With both gigantic paws pressed on the body of the snake, the dog finally ripped off its head and flung it amongst a clump of rhododendrons, where its fanged jaws twitched for a few moments and its forked tongue straightened out and flickered. The dog then lunged at Christopher again and he let out a yelp and closed his eyes, but when he opened them he saw that the canine guardian had seized another snake, but this viper was more mundane than the giant see-through serpent – it was an olive-grey adder. The snake managed to inflict a bite to the dog’s face, but the hound didn’t even flinch. It seized the adder in its gargantuan jaws and crushed it, then threw it over the edge onto the street. The carcass of the serpent melted away like ice in the desert as Christopher looked on.

  The dog spoke in a deep rich voice, startling the boy. ‘Go inside, and stay there.’

  ‘I shall,’ Christopher said, backing towards the doorway of his home. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, and stumbled backwards over the doorstep.

  ‘The Straker,’ the dog replied, and then twitched as another adder bit its left rear paw. The Straker turned clumsily and gave an angry snarl as it seized the scaly attacker and tore off its head.

  ‘Are you the protector Merlin told me about?’ Christopher asked, and watched the adder’s headless body flying upwards on a curved trajectory, hurled by Straker.

  ‘Yes!’ roared the hound impatiently, its Hell-eyes flashed blood red. ‘Now get inside and stay inside!’

  From Straker’s mouth, a stomach-churning aroma like brimstone belted Christopher’s nostrils. The boy felt quite ill, and he slammed the front door, and stood there, wondering if he was in fact, still asleep and in the midst of some nightmare. He pinched his own arm and discovered it was no dream. He went into the front room and looked at the surreal scene beyond the lace curtains. Straker was still fending off the weird attacks by the adders. Who was behind these attacks? Christopher wondered, and it dawned on him that perhaps, as an apprentice wizard, he would now be subjected to continual assaults by the powers of darkness. Why else would he need a protector? He heard a shriek somewhere – and it seemed as if the cry, which sounded decidedly female was coming from the back garden, so Christopher left the front room and hurried through the hallway into the kitchen. He was just about to unbolt the door and go into the rear garden when he recalled the Straker’s instructions for him to stay indoors. He looked through the window and saw a girl he knew named Cheryl standing in his garden with her hands to her mouth and a look of terror in her large eyes. The pretty golden-haired nine-year-old was gazing down at her beloved tabby cat Widdershins as he faced one of those sinister adders with an arched back and chattering teeth. Christopher disregarded Straker’s commandment and seized a large carving knife from the cutlery drawer. He hurriedly unbolted the door and dashed to Cheryl’s rescue, but as he did, the adder slid away and the tabby cat grew and changed before his very eyes int
o a terrifying creature which resembled a panther, but it now had a hairless hide of thick skin that was the texture and colour of lead. Christopher stopped dead in his tracks as the metallic monster opened its jaws to reveal two curved rows of dagger-sharp teeth. Its eyes thinned and its face bore an evil expression. Little Cheryl had been transformed as well into a girl with long straight black hair, penetrating dark eyes and a chalk-white face. She stood there grinning, dressed in black and dark-green robes. Christopher immediately sensed that Cheryl was a witch radiating pure evil. Just as Christopher’s secret wizard name was Majister, Cheryl’s witch-name was Araminta. He lifted his arm and threw the carving knife across the garden at the creepy cat, and quick as a flash, Araminta reached out and seized the handle of the knife. The metal-skinned panther sprang forward, and as Christopher turned to run back into the house, he thought he saw a dark blur flit past him on his right side. He heard a tremendous, deafening clash, and looked back from the kitchen doorway to see Straker battling with the giant feline. Their teeth bit deep into each other as they rolled about, oversize paw against razor-sharp claw, bladed teeth against demonic fangs, and as the two beasts fought, Araminta tried to stab at Straker with the knife. Christopher closed the kitchen door, bolted it, and ran upstairs to his room, intending to hide, but when he reached his bedroom, he was confronted with the reflection of his future self in the wardrobe mirror again, and the mirror-image looked angry. He shouted at the boy. ‘Majister! Face your fear! Go back and help the Straker! Use the techniques Merlin taught you!’

  ‘I don’t know any techniques!’ cried Christopher, ‘I can’t remember the dream!’