My Hero (28 page)

‘Hello,' he called out. ‘Are you all right?'

Silence. Having allowed himself the luxury of catching his breath, he picked up the length of banister rail, trotted downstairs and peered down into the cellar. Now then, he told himself, this is a case in point. I could so easily assume he's out for the count and get on with my work, only to have him jump me again just as I'm priming the bomb. No fear. I'd better just totter down into the cellar and kick the blighter's lights out.

It was dark in the cellar - the light didn't work; how
many villains does it take to remove a light bulb? - and sure enough, there was a conspicuous shortage of unconscious seven-foot-long bodies at the foot of the cellar steps. Not that that was a problem. Any second now (ah, splendid - marvellously punctual chaps, villains; you could set your watch by them) he'll come leaping out of the darkness brandishing a broken bottle and then it'll be steely-fingers-round-my-windpipe time again. Then another judo throw (crash, tinkle; spare a thought for poor Mr Skinner's claret, too late, oh well, no use crying over it), more lashing and dodging (swish! thunk! swish!), groin-kicking (gawd, bet that hurt!) and coup-de-grace administering (hell, I think I've pulled a muscle) and I think we can just about call that done. Now, I don't for one moment suppose there'd be such a thing as ten foot of stout chain anywhere about the place? Well, fancy that.

A moment later, Regalian stood up, brushed himself off and admired his handiwork.

‘Get out of that one, Smiler,' he said chirpily, ‘and I'll buy you a drink. So long.'

One good thing. All that chasing about had given the tape time to rewind. There's nothing so boring as just standing about waiting.

To business. The tape he'd so painstakingly prepared consisted of ten extracts from cosy English whodunnits, interleaved with ten of the purplest bits of American hard-boiled pulp crime he could find. A little careful editing and mixing, so that the two tracks ran simultaneously. Play back the tape, and if he'd got it right there'd be a reaction similar in nature (and violence) to the meeting of matter and anti-matter. Hey presto, one character bomb, which (with any luck) would tear great big ragged holes in the fabric of crime writing, through which he could sneak. Although it's virtually impossible to guarantee where you'll end up, he had a rough idea of the
likeliest place. Once there, of course, he'd be on his own and quite probably facing overwhelming odds and certain death, but so be it. He was used to that. He'd faced certain death so many times in his career that he knew every last pimple on its nose.

Before that, though, he'd be really wickedly irresponsible and selfish, and make himself a sandwich. No point in visiting Reality and going home without having first sampled the local cuisine.

No sandwich, because no bread. After some soul-searching and cupboard-searching he found an old tin of corned beef, a jar of pickled cabbage, a can opener and a bottle of Schlitz beer. Scarcely a heroic banquet; but after a few mouthfuls he'd had enough, and enough is reckoned to be equivalent, all things being equal, to a feast. Anyway, he drank the beer. It was flat, and there were small white bits in it. Then he washed the plate and glass (please leave Reality as you would wish to find it), combed his hair and had a pee—

Always wanted to do that; but in Fiction, you don't, somehow . . .

—And wandered back into the kitchen. Zero hour. Time to set off the bomb.

This time, the bounty hunter hit him between the shoulder blades with a brass candlestick.

H
amlet was bored.

True, Mr Holmes had plenty of books; but they were all called things like
A Manual Of Forensic Toxicology
and
Wilkinson On Rigor Mortis
, whereas what Hamlet could have done with was a nice, easy-paced whodunnit. Aside from reading, there was nothing much else to do except hammer fruitlessly on the door (locked on the outside), carve his initials on the furniture and make peculiar noises with the violin.

And to think, he reflected bitterly, I chucked in my nice cushy job with Bill Shakespeare because I felt I was getting into a rut and wanted a bit of adventure. More fool me. All right, so it was a bit monotonous saying
exactly
the same words over and over again, but at least there was running about and swordfighting and stabbing people through soft furnishings, followed by a few drinks with the guys after the show. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Right now, back at the ranch, he'd be getting ready for the big duel scene. His favourite bit.

He stood up, walked round the edge of the Persian
rug three times without stepping on the tassels, pulled a handful of leaves off the aspidistra, found a small screwdriver in a drawer and started taking the handles off the writing desk.

There was a loud bang.

Well yes, you could call it that, just as you could describe the eruption of Krakatoa as a bit of a hiccup, or the San Francisco Earthquake as a traffic hazard. Accept that bang is an understatement, and leave it at that. Blame adjective rationing.

As the windows blew in and the broken glass rained round his head like windblown snow (better? Thank you) Hamlet felt a welcome surge of adrenalin, a pleasing quickening in his pulse rate. Ah, he said to himself, this is a bit more like it.

Like what?

Well, extreme danger, for starters; quite possibly sudden death. He rolled under the desk and put his head between his knees. A bolt of lightning seared across the room and blasted a hole in the far wall.

Me and my big mouth, huh?

The door flew open, and a body flew across the room. Hamlet recognised it as Mr Holmes. As it hit the wall with a horrible thump, he half expected to see a man-shaped hole in the brickwork, cartoon-style. Then the chandelier fell on top of the desk, and he ducked back down again, making
eeeek
noises.

Silence. Very tentatively, he poked his head out, satisfied himself that the fixtures and fittings weren't flying about any more and looked at the spot where Mr Holmes had landed.

‘Hamlet?'

Hamlet frowned. ‘Skinner?'

‘Yeah. Over here.'

‘Skinner?'

‘Regalian?'

‘Jane?'

‘Titania?'

‘All right, what is this, a ruddy prizegiving? Everybody come out, and let's see what goes on.'

Hamlet extricated himself, scrambling through trashed desk and over chandelier debris like a claustrophobic tortoise, to find that there was quite a crowd scene among the wreckage. There was:

Skinner.

Titania.

Jane.

Regalian—

‘Look out!' he yelled, as the bounty hunter rose up from behind a splintered book-case and took a swipe at Regalian's head with the mashed-up residue of a violin. Regalian turned, saw him, clicked his tongue impatiently and threw him out through the open window.

‘Christ,' said Skinner, dusting plaster out of his hair. ‘How in God's name did we get here?'

‘Coincidence,' Regalian answered. ‘Time-honoured literary device. Everybody all right? Good. Nice to see you all again.'

‘
Coincidence?
' Jane shrieked. ‘Come off it, there's got to be more to it than that. Last thing I knew, I was in this Raymond Chandler book, and Philip Marlowe'd just shot me.'

‘I was being poisoned to death in an Agatha Christie.'

‘Were you really?' Regalian looked at them both. ‘How did you come to be there?'

‘Well—'

‘Because,' said Claudia, entering melodramatically through the lightning hole in the wall, ‘I sent you there. Hello, everyone.'

For every exit, an entrance.

 

It was a pool, and he was floating.

Or it was a sky, and he was a hawk with its wings spread, hovering motionless in the warm wind, a still point in an infinity of movement. Or it was the vast firmament itself, and he was a lone star surrounded by infinite blackness. That was nearer the mark, he reflected bitterly. Certainly, there was nobody to share his solitude. He had outlived them all, presumably. He invariably did.

As the focus sharpened, he became aware of the wood and satin around him, the sides of the box pressing his arms on both sides, the lid inches from his face. The confinement irritated him. He sniffed like a dog, but couldn't smell light. It was time to wake up.

Count Dracula, dead and alive, began to move in his coffin. Slowly, to begin with; even after all this time, he still savoured the first pleasure of movement after sleep with the intensity of a gourmet. He allowed his fingers to flex and stretch, like the claws of a cat extending. He tasted the sensation as his fingernails pressed into the satin lining. Touch is the first of the five senses to go, and the last to return. Of the five, it had always been his favourite.

He could feel the blood begin to move again inside his veins. Ah, the wonder of it! The sheer sensual pleasure of life, his great weakness, his addiction. It was at times like this that he almost believed it was all worth it. That was an illusion which rarely lasted for long, but he liked to make the most of it.

Time to leave this little cosy cell. He concentrated his mind, visualised the screws turning unassisted in the wood until the lid was unsecured. He could hear them dropping to the stone floor. He smiled; then he lifted his hands until he could feel the lid, and pushed up.

Funny . . .

Unseen hands grabbed the lid and pulled it out of his grasp. Perplexed, he opened his eyes, and found that he was staring up at a face.

Urgently he tried to sit upright, but the effort was too great and he sank back, snarling noiselessly like a dying fox. The face . . .

There were two of them now; one round, moon-shaped, with a squat snub nose and enormous thick-lensed spectacles, all under an ancient, oil-stained flat cloth cap; the other thin, lined, ancient, a cigarette stub apparently glued to the bottom lip. Their eyes seemed to bore into him, like a wooden stake.

‘Igor.'

‘Yes, young Norman?'

‘Tha knows what's happened.'

‘What?'

‘Dozy boogers've delivered t'wrong bloody crate, that's what.'

‘Tha reckons?'

‘Look at it, will tha? Does that look like a bloody flatpack wardrobe to thee?'

Count Dracula cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me,' he said. The faces glowered at him.

‘Bloody 'ell,' growled the old one. ‘Another flamin' southerner.'

‘Excuse me,' Dracula insisted. ‘This isn't Transylvania, is it?'

‘Tha what?'

‘Transylvania,' the Count repeated helplessly. ‘You know, down from Hungary and across a bit.'

The younger face scowled at him. ‘Nay, lad, this is Dewsbury.'

‘Yorkshire.'

‘Yorkshire?' Dracula mouthed the unfamiliar syllables as if carefully spitting out a gnat. ‘England?'

‘We've got a right one 'ere, Norman lad. Tha's right, choom. Yorkshire, England. Where was it tha said tha was from?'

‘Trans—' Dracula gave it up. ‘Europe,' he said.

‘Figures.'

‘Look at 'is clothes, for pity's sake.'

For the first time in several centuries, Dracula became suddenly aware of his black, silk-lined cape and shiny black shoes, and wished his working clothes were - well, a trifle less flashy. A nice, comfy old raincoat, perhaps, or a properly broken-in tweed jacket, with leather patches on the elbows. And a flat cap too, of course.

‘If tha's coom to t'wrong address, tha can bloody well pay thy own return postage,' said the round face. ‘Ah've only got me pension, tha knows.'

Dracula licked his lips, which were as dry as paper. Suddenly he felt horribly thirsty. ‘Excuse me.'

‘Now what?'

‘Could I trouble you gentlemen for, um, something to drink?'

‘Huh? Such as?'

‘Bl—' Dracula clamped his mouth shut on the word, biting it in two. ‘A glass of milk would be fine,' he said meekly.

‘There's tea in t'pot,' grunted the old one. ‘'Tis cold, mind.'

‘That'll be fine, really,' Dracula whimpered. ‘I'd be ever so grateful.'

He lay back in the coffin and wished he was dead.

 

A brief note, in passing, about the Scholfield.

Developed in 1875 as Smith & Wesson's answer to Colt's classic Peacemaker series, the Scholfield model was a heavy-calibre, top-break high-quality service-type revolver, featuring double as well as single action lock
operation, an improved cylinder latch and simultaneous ejection of the spent cases. Although less powerful than the Colt, it probably deserved a better reception than it in fact received. However, with the military content to perservere with the single-action-only Colt, and the civilian market dominated by the Hartford marketing machine . . .