Faust Among Equals (30 page)

‘That was thoughtful of you, Smiler.'

‘Before they're stretched for you, of course.'

‘Of course.' George grinned. ‘There you go again, Smiler, pulling my leg as usual. Nice sunny day, isn't it?'

‘You like it?'

‘Yes.'

‘That's just as well, isn't it?'

‘You know me, Kurt, never one to complain.' George yawned. ‘Yes, like I was saying, that was good thinking on your part, getting to me through my friends. My Achilles heel, you thought to yourself, or rather, my fatal flaw, because I expect you get Achilles heel and Achilles tendon muddled up. Sneaky, of course, and despicable, putting everybody to all that trouble, but there we are. All's fair in love and law enforcement.'

‘They made me give it back.'

George looked at him. ‘Sorry?'

‘America,' Lundqvist said, with as much bitterness in his voice as there is vermouth in the driest of dry martinis. ‘They made me give it back. Not,' he added, ‘as if I really wanted it for anything. In fact they're welcome to it.'

‘That's all right, then,' George said. ‘Fun's fun, and nobody enjoys a good stunt better than I do, but it'd have spoilt it a little bit to think of the entire USA being carbonised just because of me. I was a little bit worried about that, actually, though I don't know why. It's not as if it was me that started all this.'

Lundqvist gave the chain another vicious tug, so that George staggered and nearly ended up on the ground. But he found his feet again and started to whistle.

‘Been missing the old place?'

George looked up. ‘Well, to be honest with you, no. Still, there are worse places.'

Lundqvist pulled hard on the reins and stopped his horse. ‘There are?' he asked.

‘Sure.' George stood on one leg and rubbed his left ankle with his right heel. ‘Millions of 'em. All over the place. Honestly, Smiler, your mob have about as much idea of how to go about torturing souls as my aunt's cat. Less,' he added on reflection, and accurately. ‘It was on my mind for a long time to mention it to somebody, because I'm a helpful sort of chap by nature, but then I thought, nah, why bother, nobody'll thank you for it. So . . .'

Lundqvist's skin prickled as he sensed a verbal trap, but his curiosity got the better of him. ‘Go on, then,' he said.

George smiled. ‘One of these days,' he said, ‘do yourself a favour and get a job in an office somewhere. Any office, anyplace. The term soul-destroying's a bit of a cliché, but it's damned accurate. Two years in Accounts has the same effect on your average soul as two teaspoons of salt on a garden slug. Whoomph!'

Lundqvist frowned. ‘You're winding me up,' he said.

‘No I'm not,' George replied. ‘You don't know because you've never tried it. Nice outdoor life, travel, killing interesting people, you don't know you're born. And as for all those so-called torments they've got down in the Basement there, we're talking summer holidays compared to being stuck on the end of a telephone all day being shouted at because the green forms at Central don't tally with the pink paying-in slips.'

‘No.' Lundqvist shook his head slowly. ‘You wait and see what we've got in store for you, and then tell me all about it.'

George mustered an expression of polite interest. ‘Something fun?' he asked.

Lundqvist told him.

 

EuroBosch: a visitor's guide.

Enter through the Burning Cities at the northern end of the Park, buying your ticket from the four-legged owl-headed egg (who also retails a wide range of souvenir goods, postcards, plenary indulgences and Masses for the Dead). Each visitor or party is then assigned a personal fiend to act as escort and guide for your tour. It's very helpful if visitors can specify any preference for a particular fiend type well in advance; the spoon-headed monks in particular are in great demand, and are allocated on a first-come first-damned basis.

As you pass over the bridge embattled by armies, the first exciting and enjoyable activity you will come to will be the Ferris Ears. All you have to do is climb up the scaffolding to the gallows on the left of the Ears to get to your seat; you're then churned round and round inside the Ears, being narrowly missed by the huge pendant knife-blade, until you're hurled out, dizzy and terrified, through the slot at the front.

Next on the programme is the amazing free-to-enter Satanic Bagpipe Karaoke, situated on the flat circular platform on top of the severed head. Look closely at the illustration in the brochure and you'll see a delighted visitor being led to the microphone by a bird-headed fiend with a burning torch.

Just down from the Karaoke is the popular Refreshment Area, conveniently situated in the shattered eggshell.The Refreshment Area offers a wide range of traditional infernal hot and cold dishes, light snacks and bird-headed fiends. Patrons are requested to refrain from smoking in the Refreshment Area, although residents may of course smoulder unobtrusively.

Across the boating lake from the Refreshment Area is the family favourite Lost Souls Tortured On Musical Instruments game. For a moderate admission charge, you can be crushed in a viol, rolled in a drum, strung on a harp or crucified on a lute, and the attendant dog-, rabbit- and amphibian-headed demons will be pleased to assist you in any way they can.

You may then wish to cross back over the boating lake to enjoy the unique sensation of participating in the rollicking Knight Eaten By Dogs stall; or perhaps you will prefer to spend a quarter of an hour or so simply walking about the grounds marvelling at the many varied and different species of wild fiend to be found there before embarking on a helter-skelter dash through the Horse's Skull assault course, followed by a thrilling twenty minutes with the Manta Ray Paintball Team.

Whichever of the many colon-twistingly enjoyable activities you choose to take part in on your way round EuroBosch, you should on no account miss the high spot of any visit, the all-action non-stop Captain Beaky Extravaganza, guaranteed to haunt your nightmares with feverish intensity for whatever remains of your life.

Finally, a few Dos and Don'ts to make your visit more enjoyable:

‘. . . And after that,' Lundqvist was saying, ‘they stuff you straight back into your skin and round you go again, over and over and over, for the rest of—'

‘Sounds all right to me.'

Lundqvist lost his temper. ‘No it
doesn't
,' he shouted, ‘it's
horrible
, and you'll scream and howl and beg for mercy, but nobody will hear, and it'll be the same, every day for ever, and—'

‘Except Thursdays.'

Lundqvist's head snapped round. ‘What do you mean, Thursdays?' he spat.

‘The park's shut Thursdays,' George said, ‘for cleaning and maintenance. And I don't imagine your bosses will want to pay for the electricity if there's nobody there, do you? I expect the whole thing'll grind to a halt until opening time on Friday.'

‘Look . . .'

‘By the same token,' George went on implacably, ‘I very much doubt whether the machines will be running every evening after all the visitors have gone, because that's when the little men with the oil-cans come round and do all the bearings. Mind you,' he added, ‘if it's like any fun-fair I've ever been to, at least a third of the time the place is open the machines will have broken down or overheated or something, so the actual net being-chewed time is reduced by - what, something like . . .'

‘All right,' Lundqvist thundered, ‘it won't be absolutely incessant. It'll still hurt like buggery when it
is
working.'

‘It would hurt,' George replied calmly, ‘if I hadn't learnt advanced tantric yoga as a young man at college. Marvellous stuff, you know, means you can lie on beds of nails and prance about on red-hot coals for hours on end and not feel a thing. You should try it some time.'

Lundqvist was pulling handfuls of hair out of his horse's mane by now. ‘Okay,' he said, ‘so maybe it's not incessant and maybe it won't hurt as much as it should, but it'll be very, very boring. Or hadn't you considered that?'

George smiled beatifically. ‘I come from a large family,' he replied, ‘and we were for ever being visited by some cousin or other; usually middle-aged, with photographs. And you presume to talk to me about being bored.'

‘Look . . .'

‘Plus the tantric yoga helps with that, too. It's extremely hard to be bored when you're contemplating the vastness of Being through the sharp focus of Experience while standing aside from your Persona.' George grinned like a mantrap. ‘It's a bit like twiddling your thumbs, only less exhausting physically.'

Lundqvist glanced down at his bald horse and got a grip on himself. ‘You'll see,' he said, ‘who has the last laugh.'

‘Oh, I expect you will,' said George, ‘Smiler.'

 

Although there was still a full week to go before the scheduled Grand Opening, the management had reckoned that it would be good business to have a few sneak previews. Potential advertisers, reps from the main holiday companies and other major clients in the making were therefore cringing and lurking their way round the Park when Lundqvist trotted through the main gate, remembering to duck so as to avoid leaving his head behind as he passed under the fish-headed monster perched over the lintel. It had been put there as a hat-check fiend, but old habits die hard.

A wave of his .40 Glock was enough to persuade the Egg that Lundqvist didn't need a ticket and didn't want any handmade demonic fudge, and after Lundqvist had parked his horse in the horse park they passed through into the Burning Cities area. Once or twice Lundqvist nearly jumped out of his skin as they turned a corner to be confronted by a flute-headed badger or a nine-foot-high cowled lizard; George simply smiled and occasionally nodded in tacit salutation.

‘Scared?'

‘Shut up.' Lundqvist yanked hard on the chain, and George reeled heavily against a four-legged, Alsatian-sized wine jar, which staggered, slipped in a pool of its own spillage, and crashed to the ground, shattering into hundreds of razor-edged splinters. There was a howl of fury from a scaffolding tower overhead, followed by a forceful request that the two of them should look where they were going.

‘Smiler.'

‘Now what?'

‘If I were you, I'd let me go now.'

Amazing, the way that Life can still find things to take our breath away, even when we think we've seen and heard it all. ‘Are you out of your skull?' Lundqvist demanded. ‘I wouldn't let you go now for all the napalm in Iraq.'

‘Sure?'

Lundqvist grinned nastily. ‘Absolutely positive.'

‘Okay,' George said, and shrugged. ‘On your head be it, then.' And a few seconds later, it was.

It was a truck-sized expanded polystyrene turbot, dressed in a cardinal's hat and playing a harp, and it hit Lundqvist in the back of the head before landing directly on top of him. All that was visible of him was his hands and one toe.

‘Told you,' said George.

Furtively, and with a face like thunder, Hieronymus Bosch climbed down from the crane and looked round.

‘Right,' he hissed, ‘that's it, that's the very last time I help you out of a jam. Understood?'

‘Afternoon, Ron.'

‘We are now,' Bosch went on, fumbling in his pocket for the diamond-edged hacksaw, ‘finally and definitively quits. Got that?'

George nodded. ‘Very good of you to help me out here, Ron,' he said. ‘Always could rely on you in a crisis.'

‘Well,' Bosch snapped back as the severed halves of the first handcuff hit the ground, ‘in future you can rely on me not being here, understood?'

‘You always were a pal, Ron,' said Lucky George, smiling. ‘Well, I mustn't keep you. How are you getting on with those chains and things?'

‘Huh!' Bosch winced sharply as he touched the blade of the hacksaw with the tip of his finger. It was hot, very hot indeed. ‘Bloody things, they've gone and used carbon steel for these damned manacles. Don't they have any idea whatsoever of how much things cost?'

‘Never mind.' George swung his arms and rolled his neck to suggest that it would be nice to move, if only eventually. ‘Can't expect this lot to know things, Ron. Be seeing you.'

 

Once he was clear of the chains and the collar, George made for the giant lantern. He needed food, and a drink, and quite possibly a new pair of feet.

Well, he said to himself as he looked round. If I did want some new feet, this would be the place to come. Hundreds of them, and some with nothing attached at either end.

After the drink and the sandwich, of course, there would be the problem of getting out of the Park. As priorities go, however, it wasn't exactly holding pole position. He walked up the back of the oversize carving knife and swung open the door.

Then he remembered. No money. Damn.