Nostradamus Ate My Hamster (12 page)

“I’m the Johnny G Band, sir,” said Elvis Presley.

“What?” went Russell, as tape number five ran out.

Russell rushed back to the safe and returned with an armful of video cassettes. Out of the monitor came number five and in went number ten.

“It’s the Ark of the Covenant,” said Norman Wisdom. “I dug it up the other week on my allotment.”

“
What?”
Russell put on the freeze-frame. Norman’s now legendary grin lit up the screen. It didn’t light up Russell.

“That’s the story Morgan told me,” he mumbled. “About Pooley and Omally and The Flying Swan. The story that started all this off. But they can’t film
that
. Surely that came out of a book. We don’t hold the copyright; we’ll get sued for it. Oh dear, oh dear.”

Russell ejected tape number ten and slotted in tape number fifteen. An outside shot this time. A little yard.

“Location footage,” said Russell. “I thought they were going to shoot it all here in the hangar.”

Someone crept across the little yard. It was Bobby Boy and it had to be said, Bobby Boy could
not
act. He moved like something out of a Hal Roach silent comedy, knees going high, shoulders hunched. He turned to face the camera and put his finger to his lips.

“Cut,” said Russell, but Mr Fudgepacker didn’t.

Bobby Boy crept across the little yard to a clap-board shed with an open window and ducked down beneath it. Russell looked on, that shed and that window seemed rather familiar.

The camera tracked forward, passed the croaching ham actor and panned up towards the open window. Sounds of ranting came from that window. Ranting in German.

“Oh no!” gasped Russell. But it was “Oh yes!” Through the window moved the camera, like that really clever bit in
Citizen Kane
and there, seated at a table, with two SS types standing before him was –

“Alec bloody Guinness,” whispered Russell. “And he’s playing –”

“Herr Führer,” went Anton Diffring
[23]
, one of the SS types.

“Bloody Hell!” Russell thumbed the fast-forward and sent Bobby Boy scurrying through The Bricklayer’s Arms and off up the Ealing Road “What’s going on here? He’s playing
me
. Why is he playing me? Morgan! Morgan must have told them what I told
him
. But why put it in a movie? This doesn’t make any sense.”

Russell ejected the tape and put it carefully to one side. He would be having stern words to say about this. No-one had asked his permission to do this. It was invasion of privacy, or something. He could sue over this. Sue the producer of the picture.

“Hm,” went Russell, who could see a bit of a flaw in that.

“Right then.” Russell rooted through further cassettes. Two were in black boxes. 23A and 23B. Russell slotted 23A into the monitor.

Black and white this time. A street scene set in the nineteen fifties. It looked very authentic.

“Old stock footage?” Russell asked. “Oh no, here he comes again.”

This time Bobby Boy was dressed as a policeman. He was camping it up with exaggerated knee bends and thumbs in top pockets.

“Well, at least he’s not playing me this time. So what’s all this about?” Russell fast-forwarded, stopping here and there to see what was on the go. Sid James was in this one, and Charles Hawtrey and Kenneth Williams. But this wasn’t a remake of
Carry on Constable
, anything but.

Russell viewed a final scene. It was set in a police station. A man was being held down on a table by a number of soldiers. The cast of
Cockleshell Heroes
, the great David Lodge amongst them.

But what were they doing? They were tearing at the man. They were pulling him to pieces.

Russell slammed the off button and rammed a knuckle into his mouth. “A snuff movie,” he gagged. “They’ve made a snuff movie. Oh dear God, no.”

Russell tore tape 23A from the monitor, held it a moment in his hand and then threw it down in horror and disgust. This was bad. This was very bad. What did they think they were up to? What else had they done? Russell steeled himself with further Scotch and took to pacing up and down. There were loads more tapes. He’d have to view them all. He didn’t want to, but he knew he’d have to.

Russell made fists. “Right,” he said.

In went a tape at random. Russell settled back nervously in Mr Fudgepacker’s chair.

Colour again and more location stuff, filmed this time in one of those super-duper shopping malls. Very flash and ultra modern. Russell didn’t recognize the place, or the extras - handsome young men with blond hair, wearing black uniforms and fabulous women in gold-scaled dresses. They walked about, looking in the windows and talking amongst themselves. They were
not
Cyberstars. But there was something odd about them. The way they moved, very stiff and straight-backed, almost as if they wore suits of armour under their clothes. Strange that.

Russell shrugged and looked on.

Out of a shop doorway came Bobby Boy. And Julie was with him. And she was wearing that dress, that golden dress. The one she’d worn when she appeared to Russell in The Ape of Thoth.

Russell sat up and took notice.

“They’ll kill you,” said Julie. “If you stay here in the future, you’ll die.”

“I can’t leave yet,” said Bobby Boy. “Not with
Him
here. Not if there’s a chance to destroy
Him
.”

“I won’t go back alone. I won’t.”

“You must. Take the programmer. Go back to the date I told you and the time. I’ll be in the pub with Morgan. Give me the programmer there. Leave the rest to me.”

“But the you-back-then won’t know what’s going to happen. The you-back-then won’t know how to stop it.”

“I’m not an idiot,” said Bobby Boy. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll make them do the right thing and stop all this from ever happening. Trust me, I can do it.”

“Bloody hell,” said Russell.

“I love you,” said Julie, taking the thin man in her arms and kissing him passionately.

“Tell that to the me-back-then. Now hurry, go on, we don’t have time. There
is
no time.”

Julie kissed him again and then she touched something on her belt and vanished. Terrible clanking sounds echoed in the shopping mall, Bobby Boy turned and stared and then he ran. And then the picture on the screen slewed to one side as the tape got snarled up in the monitor.

“Oh shit! Oh shit!” cried Russell, leaping from the chair. “Don’t do that, I have to see what happens.”

Russell fought the cassette from the monitor. The tape was chewed to pieces, Russell tried to wind it in, but it broke. “Oh no, oh dear.” Russell snatched up another cassette and rammed it into the monitor. “Work,” he pleaded. “Just work.”

The screen lit up to another interior. It was Fudgepacker’s Emporium. Russell recalled Frank’s paperwork for this scene, the hire of half the props in the place, plus the rental for location. It ran to many hundreds of pages. But that really wasn’t important now. It hadn’t been important then, actually, as Russell had binned the lot.

The camera’s eye took in the aisles and iron walkways, moving slowly and lingering here upon a nail-studded Congolese power figure and there upon a mummified mermaid. Then on.

Two figures were approaching. One was the inevitable Bobby Boy. The other was Peter Cushing. Peter wore thick-lensed horn-rimmed glasses. He was evidently playing the part of Mr Fudgepacker.

“Do not look directly upon Him,” said Peter Cushing. “And never, never into His eyes. Just keep your head bowed and kneel when I tell you.”

“How long?” asked Bobby Boy. “How long has He been with you?”

“For many years. I am His guardian. All this, all this in the Emporium is His. Time captured, you see, in the taxidermy, in the religious relics and the pickled parts. That is how He likes it. How it must be.”

“Now what is all
this
about?” Russell asked.

“Will He know me?” asked Bobby Boy. “Will He know why I’m here? What I want?”

“He knows all. He knows that you want more time. More time to correct the mistake you made. The mistake that changed the future.”

Russell put his hands to his face. “What did I do? Or what didn’t I do? This is bad. This is really bad. And who is this
He
?”

The figures on screen approached a small Gothic door at the end of the aisle.

“There’s no door there,” said Russell. “How did they do that?”

Bobby Boy pressed open the door and the two men passed through the narrow opening.

The camera followed them down a flight of steps and into a boiler room.

“And there’s no boiler room,” said Russell. “Or at least I don’t think there’s one.”

“This way,” Peter led Bobby Boy between piles of ancient luggage, old portmanteaus, Gladstone bags, towards a curtained-off corner of the room.

“Part the curtain,” said Peter, “and avert your gaze.”

Bobby Boy drew the curtain aside.

Russell looked on.

Something moved in the semi-darkness, an indistinct form.

Russell squinted at the screen.

Something lifted itself into the light.

Russell gaped in horror.

The terrible thing sat upon a throne-like chair, its grinning insect face a vivid red. A face that moved and swam with many forms. The black maw of a mouth turned upwards in a V-shaped leer. The fathomless eyes blinked open.

“Aaaaaaaaaagh!” screamed Russell, falling backwards off the chair.

The face gazed out from the screen. Tiny naked human figures writhed upon its skin, drifting in and out of focus.

Russell scrambled up and stared. “Holy God,” he whispered.

The eyes bulged from the screen. “
I
am your God,” cried the one voice which was many. “Kneel before your God and I will give you more time.”

“No,” went Russell. “No no no.” He snatched up the remote control and pressed the eject button. The cassette slid out from beneath the screen. But the face stared on.

“No,” went Russell, pushing the “off” button.

“Yes,” went the dreadful voice, and the leering face stared on.

“Oh my God.” Russell snatched at the cable, wrapped his fingers around it and tore the plug from the wall socket.

“You have deviated,” boomed the voice, and the eyes that bulged from the screen stared into Russell’s. “You have deviated from the script. You must be rewritten.”

“You can go to Hell.” Russell took the monitor in both hands raised it high above his head and dashed it down to the floor.

Sparks and crackles.

Silence.

Bobby Boy’s voice broke that silence. “You shouldn’t have done that, Russell,” it said.

Russell swung around to gawp at the long thin fellow. He stood beside the sliding door of the hangar. Mr Fudgepacker was with him.

“Very expensive SFX,” said the old boy. “That will have to come out of your wages.”

“What wages? I mean, my God, what have you two done? What was that creature? What is this movie? Why is it about me? Why …?”

Bobby Boy shrugged his high narrow shoulders. “So many questions. And you really shouldn’t be asking them. You’re the star player in all this. You started it. But you have to follow your script. You’ve deviated from the plot. You weren’t supposed to do this.”

“We could write it in,” said Mr Fudgepacker, scratching at his baldy head and sending little flecks of skin about the place. “It might make an interesting sequence.”

“No,” the thin man shook his head. “I think we should just write Russell out. As of now.”

“What?” went Russell. “What are you talking about?”

Bobby Boy sidled over. “You don’t get it anyway,” he sneered. “But then, you were never supposed to.”

Russell had a good old shake on. He reached for the Scotch bottle.

“And drinking my booze.” Mr Fudgepacker threw up his wrinkled hands. “That’s definitely not in the script. I’d never have put
that
in the script.”

“What script?” asked Russell. “The script of this abomination? I don’t want to be in your script.”

“But you’re already in it. You’ve watched the videos. You’ve seen what you do, what you’re going to do.”

“You’re mad,” said Russell. “This is all insane.”

“Sit down,” said Bobby Boy.

“Stuff you.”

“Quite out of character,” said Mr Fudgepacker.

“Sit down, Russell,” said Bobby Boy.

Russell sat down. And then he jumped up again.

“Sit down and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”

Russell sat down again.

Bobby Boy took the Scotch bottle from his hand. He hoisted himself onto a table and dangled his long thin legs
[24]
. “Are you sitting comfortably?” he asked.

“No.”

“Well never mind,” Bobby Boy put the Scotch bottle to his tricky little mouth and took a big swig.

“Oi,” croaked Mr Fudgepacker. “My booze.”

“Shut it old man.”

“Well, really.”

“Tell me, Russell,” said Bobby Boy, wiping his slender chin, “what do you remember?”

“About what?”

“About your childhood, say.”

“Mind your own business.”

“Come on now. What school did you go to?”

“Huh?” said Russell.

“Come on, tell me. I’ll give you a nip of this Scotch if you tell me.”

“I can take the bottle from you whenever I want.”

Bobby Boy produced a gun from his coat pocket. “I’ll bet you can’t,” he said.

“Come off it.” Russell put up his hands.

“Tell me which school you went to.”

“I …” Russell thought about this. “I …”

“Slipped your mind?”

“I …”

“Tell me your earliest memory, then.”

Russell knotted his fists.

“Careful.”

“All right. My earliest memory, all right. It’s … it’s …” Russell screwed up his face. “It’s …”

“Come on, spit it out.”

Russell spat it out. “It’s Morgan,” he said. “Morgan telling me about The Flying Swan.”

“And nothing before that?”

Russell scratched at his head of hair. Before that? There had to have been something before that. But what had it been?

“No?” asked Bobby Boy. “Lost your memory?”

“I’m drunk,” said Russell. “I don’t feel very well.”

“There’s nothing before it, Russell. You didn’t exist before that. You were called into being, Russell. So that you could fulfil a particular role, play a certain part. And you were playing it well, before you started to deviate. Opening the safe? An honest fellow like you, quite out of character.”