Tales of the Talking Picture

by Tom Slemen

  Violet told Scot and Charlie all about the mysterious disappearance of Annie Corrigan, and suggested another rendezvous at the town library tomorrow at noon. 'Should we synchronise our watches and that?' Charlie asked in all seriousness.

  'Don't be daft,' Scot told him, and playfully slapped the top of his head.

  'Why do we have to meet at the library?' Charlie asked.

  'We could research stuff about Silbury Hill and perhaps we could even find some more information about Annie Corrigan,' Violet suggested.

  Rebel threw his head back and let out a succession of loud barks, startling the teenagers. The clandestine meeting came to an end immediately because of the approach of a brazen pan-faced tabby cat. It ignored Rebel and rubbed its head on Violet's shin.

  'Violet?' Aunt Ivy appeared at the door of the cottage. 'Are you talking to someone?'

  Scot ducked and crept away, but Charlie performed a dramatic dive onto the floor and crawled away like a commando, with Rebel spoiling the effect by rolling on top of him and licking his face.

  Charlie and Scot arrived at the library first, and Violet turned up just after noon. The place was as quiet as the grave, almost empty and a sweet scent of beeswax wood polish hung in the air. Charlie asked the beautiful young librarian, Miss Falkner, if there were any books on Silbury Hill, and she adjusted her horn-rimmed glasses and ran her forefinger over a long box file of Manila-coloured index cards. Without a word she walked to a dark corner of the library, her high heels clicking on the L-shaped interlocking tiles of polished wood. Miss Falkner halted before the local history section and singled out a wine-purple book with a faded title on its spine. She opened the book and checked the title on the first page. 'The Secret Lore of Silbury Hill. That's all we have I'm afraid.' The librarian handed the old book to Charlie, and when she returned to her counter, Scot asked her if the library had any books or any newspaper clippings about Annie Corrigan.

  'Annie who?' Miss Falkner asked, and her green eyes thinned.

  'Corrigan,' Scot told her, 'Annie Corrigan. I think she was kidnapped on Silbury Hill in 1913.'

  A scruffily-dressed man who had been sitting at a table hunched over a morning newspaper, suddenly looked up at Scot with a startled expression. The vagrant swivelled his head slightly, presenting his good ear to the conversation between Scot and the librarian.

  'I'm sorry, but we don't keep a newspaper archive here,' Miss Falkner told Scot with a sympathetic smile.

  The eavesdropping vagrant stood up and walked straight out of the library.

  Twenty minutes later, the three teenagers sat in a secluded section of the library that was hidden from Miss Falkner's gaze by two pillars. 'We should stay away from the hill really,' Charlie opined, 'or we might end up like Annie Corrigan.'

  'Are you scared?' Scot asked Charlie with a slight grin.

  'No, I'm not' Charlie grimaced, 'I just don't want anything happening to Violet, that's all.'

  'That's sweet of you,' Violet told Charlie, 'but I really want to get to the bottom of all this. Perhaps we could get a gun.'

  'A gun?' Scot was alarmed at the suggestion.

  'My dad has a shotgun,' said Charlie, in an over-enthusiastic voice, 'I can get it, and the cartridges!'

  'Keep your voice down!' Scot whispered and shook his head.

  'Yes, that'll do Charlie,' Violet said, and seemed as excited as Charlie, but Scot thought it'd be a big mistake bringing a shotgun to Silbury Hill.

  All of a sudden, Violet inhaled sharply with shock as she looked in horror at the bookcase behind Scot's back. The face of a familiar man with a grey beard and moustache was gazing at Violet and her friends through the gap on the top shelf where several books were missing. It was him – the Sunday King.

  He came around the bookshelf with six other men who, like himself, were currently vagrants. One of them was the tramp who had overheard Scot asking the librarian about Annie Corrigan. Violet recognised the others as the jester and the soldiers.

  'Oh! It's him Scot!' Violet warned Scot, who turned in his chair, but felt a huge hairy-fingered fist thump down on his shoulder. It was one of the soldiers from the hill, but he was in shabby clothes and his face was covered in grey stubble.

  'Yes, it is me Violet,' said the Sunday King. 'and as you can see, I have come down in the world since our last encounter.'

  Charlie tried to make a run for it but one of the vagrants, a giant of a man who was transformed into a knight each Sunday, grabbed the boy by his hair, then clamped a massive hand around his mouth when the lad tried to cry out. Charlie was thrown backwards towards the chair he had vacated.

  The tramp who became Mugwort the Jester each week laughed in a musical voice as Charlie landed in the chair. King Gardyloo sat at the table while his entourage stood behind the teenagers. 'Come Sunday, I shall have you for my queen,' Gardyloo said in a low, gravely serious voice to Violet, 'and you should feel honoured.'

  'I won't ever be your queen, you stupid, smelly old man!' Violet snarled at the vagrant.

  'Steady on Violet,' Scot mumbled.

  'Quiet there please!' Miss Falkner's voice floated over the bookshelves.

  Gardyloo looked over his shoulder, and satisfied that the librarian was still at the counter, he turned back to make a promise to Violet. 'By hook or by crook you'll come to the hill on Sunday – I know where you live, and my men will drag you up that hill if they have to. You will marry me as sure as night follows day.'

  'Tell that to the police,' Charlie suddenly said.

  Gardyloo gritted yellowed teeth at the youth and gave a chilling reply. 'Don't underestimate my men; they will slaughter anyone for me. What's the village bobby with his little truncheon and whistle going to do when a broadsword cleaves his watermelon head in two?'

  Mugwort the Jester's shabby alter ego laughed like a manic hyena at the thought of a policeman's head being split in two, but his high-pitched laughter brought the librarian striding over to the table, and Gardyloo grunted at his giggling lackey for attracting Miss Falkner's attention.

  When Miss Falkner came around the bookcase she saw the tramp Gardyloo and his mendicant associates, she asked them to leave the library, and the librarian could sense that the teens were afraid of the tramps. When Gardyloo and his men left, Miss Falkner asked the three young friends if the vagrants had intimidated them in any way, her query was met with three shaking heads, for Scot, Charlie and Violet knew the librarian would never believe the truth of the matter.

  'What are we going to do?' a worried-looking Charlie asked Violet and Scot as they descended the steps outside the library. Violet's eyes were darting left and right, because she expected Gardyloo and his men to laying in wait behind every tree and lamp post, but Scot pointed to the tramps in the distance, heading down Marlborough's High Street in the direction of St Peter's Church.

  'We need back up,' said Violet, 'but we don't know anyone who can fight knights and soldiers.'

  'Perhaps you should just tell your auntie and then leave the village and go to London or something,' Scot suggested, but the proposition only served to enrage the girl.

  'I am not running away from this!' Violet shouted, and clenched her little fists. 'This is my village, and I am not leaving it for anyone,' Violet's face became rather florid, and she clenched her teeth. 'Charlie, you said you can get hold of a shotgun – so go and get it and come Sunday I'll blow his head off!'

  Charlie gazed in silence beyond Violet, at someone standing behind her. Violet turned to see who or what her friend was looking at – and there stood a smiling Simon Lee, the Teddy Boy she was infatuated with.

  'I like a bird who loves a bit of lumber,' he said, his hands in his jeans pockets. He looked Violet up and down and walked up to her and stood beside the girl. 'Yeah I love a bird who spouts fighting talk. I've noticed you knocking about girl. Vera isn't it?' he said.

  Violet was so enamoured with the Teddy Boy she couldn't recall her own name for a few seconds. 'Violet,' she said to Simon.

 
; 'What's your beef anyway?' he asked Violet, 'Someone aggravating you?'

  'Yes, you could say that,' Violet replied, her face burnt with embarrassment.

  'Well. aggravation is my middle name sister,' Simon told her, and he took an object that looked like the black handle of a flick-knife and held it next to his face. He pressed a button, and the resultant click made Scot and Charlie jump, but instead of a blade swinging out of the handle, a steel comb shot out. Simon back-combed his shiny quiff.

  'Will you help us Simon?' Scot asked, and the words could hardly leave his nervous dry throat.

  'You'll have to fill me in first,' Simon replied, and folded the steel comb back into the handle.

  'Well it'll seem a bit far-fetched but -' Scot began.

  'Not here lad,' Simon interrupted, 'tell me in the milk bar.'

  And the three 13-year-olds followed their new guerilla leader, 16-year-old Simon Lee, across the road to the Dandelion Milk Bar, or the Dandy, as Simon nicknamed it. In the Dandy Simon paid for a black coffee for himself and three colas with red and white barber-pole straws for his guests. They all sat at the window table, and Marlborough's answer to James Dean listened to Violet's very strange story. At first Simon laughed, and looked out the window, trying desperately to think of some witty wisecrack he could make about the so-called Sunday King, but then recalled the weird tales he himself had heard about Silbury Hill when he was a child: the mysterious disappearance of Annie Corrigan on its slopes, and that Halloween night, three years ago, when Simon had been kissing a girl in the woods overlooking the hill; he had seen an eerie torchlight procession which began at the top of Silbury and came down the slopes, in his direction. He wanted to see who the torch-bearers were, but the girl he was with became hysterical and ran off.

  Simon asked Violet to go over the story once more, and she did, word for word, with a few interruptions from Charlie. Then Simon made his decision. He said he could bring five friends with him to Silbury Hill; 'All good lads who love a bit of bother,' as Simon described them.

  'Will they be armed?' Violet asked.

  'Course they'll be armed,' Simon said with a bitter-looking grin.

  'With guns and that?' Violet asked.

  Simon seemed shocked. 'Guns? Are you trying to start a war or something? Frankie Yates will probably have a chain, and Eddie will probably bring his air-rifle. Some of them might bring a gun, I don't know.'

  'A chain?' Violet said, and the corner of her lip went up in a sort of sneer which Simon didn't like.

  'Violet, I'm doing you a big big favour here out the goodness of my heart.' Simon seemed deeply hurt by Violet's curled-up lip gesture, but then the girl suddenly realised something that made her heart flutter – Simon Lee had a thing for her. From that moment on she saw the fearsome Teddy Boy in quite a different light, and she reflected on how strange the situation was. Gardyloo wanted Violet to become his queen, and now a Teddy Boy wanted her to become his girl. As Violet admired Simon's Brylcreemed dark-brown quiff, his sky-blue eyes and cupid-bow mouth, the rest of the world seemed to go mute and out of focus.

  'Are you listening?' Simon broke Violet's romantic daydream, and repeated what he'd just told Scot and Charlie. He and his lads would meet up at the old derelict barn half a mile south of Silbury Hill on Saturday night, around ten.

  For three days, Violet could think of virtually nothing but Simon Lee, and then Saturday arrived. Twilight finally started to fall on Marlborough at 9pm, and that was the time when Violet managed to slip out of Aunt Ivy's house. If Ivy discovered that Violet was absent from her bed, the girl would have hell to pay when she returned – if she ever did return, for the girl wondered what the night would bring. Violet wondered if Simon Lee had just spouted nothing but hot hair at the milk bar. What if he and the promised hard knocks failed to turn up? What then? These worrying thoughts soon evaporated when the girl sighted the old abandoned barn. Already, from a mile off, she could see a distant fire as a faint orange gleam, and as she neared the barn, she could see a group of about seven silhouettes. By now, the sky was turning from a deep purple to a dark slate grey spangled with the summer stars. One of the August Perseid meteors suddenly streaked down from the zenith, leaving a trail of fading silver in the sky. In ancient times, such a stellar spectacle was always interpreted as an omen of a forthcoming tragedy. When Violet arrived at the rendezvous, she was shocked to see Scot drinking a bottle of cider with a ginger-haired teddy boy. 'Violet's here Simon!' Scot announced, and it was obvious that he was a little drunk. Simon Lee was sitting in front of the camp fire next to his best friend Frankie Yates, another “Ted” who was sitting crossed legged on the floor, strumming an acoustic guitar. His four-foot length of chain lay beside him.

  Another of Simon's friends handed him a bottle of cider which Simon passed in turn to Violet, but she refused it with a gentle shake of her head. 'It'll calm your nerves,' Simon told her, but Violet said, 'No thanks, I'm not nervous anyway,' and she looked around for Charlie. She asked Scot where he was, and the latter shrugged with a silly grin of intoxication on his face. 'He'll turn up soon,' Scot tried to assure her, then went to sit down by the fire to listen to Frankie's guitar.

  'Have you done something to your hair?' Simon asked Violet, eyeing her auburn locks from rather close quarters.

  'No, just washed it, that's all.' Violet walked past the leader of the gang and sat by Scot. She surveyed the eerie silhouette of Silbury Hill as it shimmered in the heat of the fire, and wondered if Gardyloo would come for her. All the way to the barn she'd had the unsettling feeling she was being watched by the spies of the Sunday King.

  Simon sat next to her, and started to swig from the brown-glass cider bottle. 'How many people has this Gardyloo guy got on his side?' he asked.

  'I'm not too sure,' Violet told him, pulling the hem of her skirt down below her bent knee. She felt uncomfortable with so many boys around who were unknown to her.

  Charlie turned up a few minutes later with a bag of sweets, and when he offered one of his pear-drops to Simon, the teddy boy took the whole bag and passed it round to his five friends. Charlie was livid when the empty paper bag was handed back to him, but he was soon in high spirits again when Frankie Yates showed him how to throw a knife into the barn door.

  'Did you bring Rebel?' Violet asked Charlie, noticing the absence of the loyal hound.

  'Nah. Mum gets him a great big bone from the butcher's on Saturday and I couldn't drag him from it,' Charlie explained.

  By Eleven o'clock, Charlie and Scot were uselessly drunk, as was most of Simon's comrades, and Violet was understandably concerned about the proceedings; how could these people protect her against a foe as mysterious and formidable as Gardyloo? Simon asked her if she had a boyfriend, and Violet gave him a reply he was not expecting at all.

  'Look at you all!' she shouted, 'You're all drunk! You're not fighters, you're not anything! This was all a waste of time!'

  'Hey, pack it in, none of us are drunk, we're just taking it easy before the fun starts,' Simon told Violet, and hiccuped.

  'Oh! Why did I come here?' Violet shouted at herself. 'No one is taking this thing serious at all!'

  Simon swore, threw his empty bottle of cider into the fire and told the others to do the same. Reluctantly, each of them did after swigging down the cider. A pack of cards was produced and a fireside game of poker was played. Soon enough, the chiming of the distant church clock announced the arrival of midnight, and the card game was promptly abandoned. Simon took Violet by the arm and walked her to the shell of the old barn. His five mates, with Charlie and Scot, looked towards Silbury Hill, and waited. For about three minutes nothing happened, but then they all noticed a faint green glow like the Northern Lights around the ancient mound. Then the one with the keenest eyesight – Charlie – said he could see faint orange-red lights moving slowly down Silbury Hill.

  'You're seeing things,' Simon squinted, then told Frankie Yates to put out the fire.

  Frankie uprooted sods of grass and
placed them on the flames until the fire was fully extinguished. Then Simon saw the flickering torch-lights Charlie had seen minutes earlier. The pinpoints of light were slowly growing in intensity as they headed towards the old barn.

  Five minutes later, Violet thought she could hear horses galloping, but they were coming from the south, the direction opposite Silbury Hill. 'I can hear them too,' Scott said.

  'Nah, sound plays funny tricks at night; it's echoes,' Simon decided, but then something whizzed past his head from the south and impacted into the rotten woodwork of the barn. It was an arrow.

  'Did you get hold of a gun?' Violet asked Simon, and he shook his head and went to pick something up from the corner of the barn. A pitchfork.

  'Is that all you've got?' Violet said with such a look of bitter disappointment on her face.

  There was a clatter of arrows against the barn from the south side and the thunder of hooves as three of King Gardyloo's knights rode by, and in the north, six blazing torches were now visible. Everyone looked scared, and they all withdrew into the barn.

  'This is just great!' Violet said, shaking her head.

  Mugwort the Jester arrived first, with a flaming torch in his hand and a bottle of some spirit in the other, and when he was about thirty feet from the barn door, he made a yodelling sound, then started to laugh. 'We know you're hiding in there!' he shouted. 'Come on out you lily-livered cowards!'

  Frankie Yates rushed out swinging his chain, and he tried to lash out at Mugwort's legs but the jester shrieked with laughter and with superhuman agility he leaped high into the air. Yates swung at the jester's head as he landed but Mugwort ducked with amazing timing and the chain missed his face by inches. The jester took a swig from his bottle, then spat out the inflammable liquid, which caught fire from his torch. The resulting jet of blue and white fire blasted Yates in the face like a flame-thrower, and the young man dropped the chain and screamed, throwing his hands to his badly-burned face. Mugwort spat another jet at the teddy boy, setting his coiffured quiff alight. Yates turned, and with melted eyeballs, he ran in blind terror towards the barn. When Violet, Simon and the others saw Frankie's red-raw skeletal face, with shreds of skin hanging from it, they backed away, stunned and sickened.