The Toyminator (10 page)

“No, Jack,” said Eddie. “That’s not why and you know it.”

“It is why,” said Jack. “Sort of.”

“Not,” said Eddie. “It’s because you’re a meathead, Jack. Amelie could aspire to nothing better than marrying a meathead.
Any
meathead.”

“That’s rubbish,” said Jack, spitting muffin as he said it. “She loves me for me, not for what I am.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” said Eddie, spitting pancake back at Jack. “You have meathead status. Why do you think she wanted you to take her to Old King Cole’s? What was that fight you got into about?”

“I never mentioned to you that I’d got into a fight.”

“Evidence,” said Eddie, making a breezy paw gesture towards his partner against crime. “You punched someone. And someone else – a lady, I presume – struck you several times with a sequinned handbag.”

“You really are a
very
good detective,” said Jack.

“I’m a
special
detective,” said Eddie. “But believe me, Jack, cruel as it sounds, she loves you for your status.”

“Well, all thanks for
that
,” said Jack.

“
All
thanks? I thought you’d be devastated.”

“Well, I’m not, you cruel little sod.”

“Less of the little.”

“I’m not ready to get involved in another relationship,” said Jack. “I’m still smarting from the last one. I’ll settle for the deeply satisfying shallow sex and have done with it for now.”

“You’re a very bad boy,” said Eddie.

“I’m a teenage boy,” said Jack. “What do you expect from me, sincerity?”

“Stop now,” said Eddie. “It’s too early in the day for such honesty. Tuck into your breakfast, then we’ll get this hypnotism thing done. Then –”

“Then?” said Jack.

“I really don’t have a clue,” said Eddie.

Their breakfasting done and their bellies distended, the two detectives dabbed at their mouths with napkins and grinned at one another.

“It’s not a bad old life,” said Jack.

“It has its moments,” said Eddie.

Jack went up and paid the bill.

And took the waitress’s telephone number.

Jack wound up Bill’s car and he and Eddie entered it.

“So, where to?” Jack asked.

“The circus,” said Eddie, “that’s where.”

“I don’t like the circus,” said Jack. “I’ve never been one for clowns.”

“Odd that, isn’t it?” said Eddie. “Clowns are such a popular thing at the circus, but you’ll never find anyone who actually likes them. Odd that, isn’t it?”

Jack shrugged and said, “I suppose so. So where is this circus?”

“I’ll guide you,” said Eddie. “But please drive slowly or I’ll throw up in your lap.”

Jack drove slowly, with considerable care. He followed Eddie’s guidings and eventually drew up the car before a rather colourful funfair affair in a part of the city that he’d never been to before.

Jack looked up at the colourful banner that hung between colourful posts. “Count Otto Black’s Circus Fantastique,” he read. Aloud.

“You’ll like the count,” said Eddie. “Or at least I hope you will.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” said Eddie, “because then it will sort of balance things out.”

“It will?”

“It will,” said Eddie, “because I can’t stand the sight of him.”

The sight of him was something to behold. At Eddie’s urging, Jack knocked upon the colourful door of a colourful gypsyesque caravan. This door opened and Jack beheld Count Otto Black.

Count Otto Black was tall. He was beyond tall, if such a thing is possible. Beyond tall and well gaunt with it was the count. High above on his facial regions were wonderful cheekbones, just beneath deeply set eyes of the deepest of sets. And just above a great black beard that nearly fell to his waist, the count’s nose was a slender arc; the count’s hair, long and black. Count Otto Black wore wonderful robes of rich purple velvet and plush. Mystical rings adorned his long and slender fingers.

“Count Otto,” called Eddie. “Hello up there.”

Count Otto Black gazed down upon his visitors.

“I must be off now,” said Jack.

“No you mustn’t,” said Eddie.

“Oh yes, I really must.”

“So,” said Count Otto Black. And it was a long and deep “So”. “So, Eddie Bear, you have returned.”

“Like the old bad penny,” said Eddie. “You look well.”

Jack looked down upon Eddie Bear. Eddie looked far from at ease.

“Let’s go,” whispered Jack. “I don’t like this fellow at all.”

Count Otto Black took a step back and the colourful door began closing.

“No, please, your countship,” called Eddie, “this is very important. We’re sorry to bother you, but it
is
important. You are the only one who can help us.”

The colourful door reopened a tad.

“We need you to use your special powers.”

“Ah,” said the voice of the count. “You are hoping once more to become Toy City’s greatest hypnotist.”

“No,” said Eddie. “Not that.”

“I still bear the scars on my ankles,” said the voice of the count.

Jack looked at Eddie. “I thought you said –”

“I did apologise for that,” said Eddie, ignoring Jack.

“Only after I kicked you over the big top,” said the voice of the count.

“I think we’re on a loser here,” said Jack. “And I hate to say this, Eddie, but have you ever considered anger-management counselling?”

The colourful door of the count’s caravan slammed shut.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Jack.

“No,” said Eddie. “We have to know what happened. The count is the only man who can help us.”

“
Man
?” said Jack. “Not
meathead
?”

“He’s a bit special, the count.”

Jack raised eyebrows. Two of them. Both at the same time. And both high.

“Stop doing that,” said Eddie. “You’re only doing it because I can’t.”

“I’m impressed,” said Jack, “you showing respect for a meathead.”

“I’m not prejudiced,” said Eddie.

“Well, we’re stuffed here,” said Jack. “Let’s get back in the car.”

“No,” said Eddie. “We must do this.
You
must do this. Leave this to me.”

Jack dusted imaginary dirt from his trenchcoat shoulders. “Go on, then,” he said.

Eddie called out to Count Otto Black. “Count Otto,” called Eddie, “this is very important. You are the one man who can help us.”

The colourful door of the colourful caravan remained colourfully shut.

“The fate of Toy City depends on you,” called Eddie.

The door, colourful as it was, did not at all colourfully budge.

“It’s about your monkeys,” called Eddie.

A moment passed and then the door opened a smidgen.

“Your clockwork cymbal-playing monkeys,” called Eddie. “Jack and I are on the case. Jack is a special investigator. I’m …” Eddie paused.

The door didn’t move.

Eddie took a deep breath. “I’m his comedy sidekick,” called Eddie.

The door opened wide.

“Say that again,” said Count Otto Black.

“Jack is a special investigator,” said Eddie, “investigating the monkey case. He needs your help.”

“No,” said Count Otto. “Say the last bit again.”

“I’m …” said Eddie.

“Again,” said the Count. “And loudly.”

“I’m his comedy sidekick,” said Eddie.

The colourful interior of Count Otto Black’s colourful carnival caravan was very much the way that such interiors are in movies. Although not those of the Toy City P.P.P.s persuasion. Those circus movies, with handsome juvenile leads who are trapeze artistes and up-and-coming starlets who ride white horses side-saddle around the circus ring, but seem to do little else. And there are elephants, of course, and a bloke who gets shot out of a cannon. And those clowns that no one actually really likes. And a fat lady and a stilt-walker, and high-wire walkers and even fire-walkers sometimes. And a head without a body that was dug from the bowels of the Earth. But none of these are particularly relevant to the appearance of the interior of the count’s colourful carnival caravan. The relevant point about the interior that gave verisimilitude to those featured in movies was that it was so much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.

Phew.

“Why are they bigger on the inside than the outside?” Jack asked Eddie.

“That’s obvious,” said Eddie. “So you can get a camera crew in, of course.”

“Be seated,” said Count Otto Black, taking to a big old colourful chair of his own and indicating a lesser. Jack sat down on this lesser chair. Eddie sat down on the floor.

“I feel that you could have seated yourself in a somewhat more comical manner than
that
,” said Count Otto Black.

Eddie sighed. Rose. Toppled backwards. Lay with his legs in the air.

Jack winced and chewed upon his bottom lip.

“Funny enough for you?” Eddie asked.

“I’d like to see it again,” said the count.

Eddie obliged. “Are you satisfied now?”

“Very much so,” said Count Otto Black. And he extended a long hand to Jack. “So you are a special investigator,” he said.

Jack took the count’s hand and shook it. It was a very cold hand indeed. Very cold and clammy.

The count took back his hand and Jack said, “Yes, I am a special investigator and I believe that you can help me in my investigations.”

“Into the death of my monkeys.”

“They were all
your
monkeys?”

“Each and every one worked for me. There are not too many openings for cymbal-playing monkeys nowadays.”

“No,” said Jack, “I suppose not. I never really thought about it.”

“They are a great loss to my circus.”

“I suppose they would be.”

“In what way?” asked the count.

“Eh?” said Jack.

“Shouldn’t that be ‘pardon’?” asked the count.

“Pardon?” said Jack.

“In what way do you suppose they would be a great loss to my circus?”

Jack glanced at Eddie. It was a “hopeless” glance. Sometimes a single glance can say so very much. Without actually saying anything at all. So to speak.

“Please don’t do it to him, Count,” said Eddie, making a rather pathetic face towards Count Otto Black. “Jack, my … employer,
is
a very special investigator, very good at his job, but he’s not up to matching wits with you.”

“I’m up to matching wits with anyone,” said Jack. “Show me a wit and I’ll match it.”

“Time
is
of the essence,” said Eddie. “Please, Count.”

“Quite so,” said Count Otto Black. “So I suppose you have come here to examine the murder scene. Five of my monkeys gone to dust in their dressing room.”

“Well, not exactly,” said Jack. “I assume that the laughing policemen have already visited the crime scene.”

“And stomped it into oblivion. What, then?”

“Well,” said Jack, “it’s like this.”

And Jack explained to Count Otto Black exactly what it was like. He spoke at length and in detail.

The count listened and then the count nodded. And then the count finally said, “And so you wish me to hypnotise you, regress you to the point when you were engulfed by the very bright light and draw out your repressed memory of what happened next.”

“Exactly,” said Jack.

Count Otto Black nodded thoughtfully.

“No, I won’t do it,” he said.

“No?” said Jack. “No?”

“No,” said Count Otto Black. And he said it firmly. Definitely. Without reservation or regret.

“No?” said Jack once more.

“Absolutely no.” The count stretched out his great long arms, brushing his fingertips against the opposite walls of the caravan. “And I will tell you for why: because it would be dangerous, very dangerous, to you, to your mental health. You have to understand this. Your memory was not artificially erased by some piece of advanced space-alien technology. You did it yourself. Your own brain did it.” And Count Otto stretched out a hand to Jack and tapped him lightly on the forehead. “Whatever happened to you was so appalling, so utterly terrifying, that it was too much for you to take in and retain. Your mind rejected it, spat it out, closed itself to these horrors. The door within closed. It would be folly to reopen it.”

“No,” said Jack, and he shook his head. “I don’t believe that. I’ve seen horrors enough. Nothing could be
that
bad.”

“Really?” said the count. “And yet I feel that I could whisper words into your ear that you would wish until the end of your days that you had never heard me utter.”

“That I consider most unlikely,” said Jack.

“Really?” said the count, and he leaned in Jack’s direction.

“Don’t let him do it, Jack,” cried Eddie, leaping up. “I saw him do it once to a clown. It wiped the smile right off his face.”

“Big deal,” said Jack.

“A smile painted on a tin-plate head,” said Eddie. “Wiped it right off. The smile fell to the ground and a crow swooped down and carried it off to his nest.”

“Eh?” said Jack.

“Trust me,” said Eddie. “Don’t let him do it.”

“All right, all right, but we have to know what happened, Eddie, and if hypnosis is the only way, then hypnosis it has to be.”

“I won’t be persuaded,” said Count Otto Black.

“We’ll give you money,” said Eddie.

“How much money?” asked the count.

And now a period of negotiation began, of bargaining and bartering and wrangling. It was a protracted period and resting times were taken at intervals, whilst negotiators sat and smoked cigarettes, or paced up and down, or worked out calculations on small bits of paper.

It was coming on towards teatime before all was said and done.

“And that’s my final offer,” said Eddie.

“I’ll take it,” said the count. Palms were spat upon, or in Eddie’s case, a paw, then spitty palm and spitty paw were clapped together.

“Now just hold on,” said Jack. “I want to get this straight. Count Otto will hypnotically regress me –”

“Taking no responsibility for the potential damage to your mental health,” said the count.

“Yes, I understand that. But you will regress me in exchange for
what
, exactly?”

Eddie read out the list of the count’s demands.

“Bill’s car,” he read, and Jack groaned.

“And your trenchcoat.” Further groanings.

“And your hat and your watch.” Eddie paused. Jack groaned doubly.

“Fifty per cent of the reward money.”

“
What
reward money?” Jack asked.

“Oh, there
will
be reward money,” said Count Otto Black. “When all else fails.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” said Jack. “That means when Eddie and I fail.”

“You’re right,” said the count. “I want sixty per cent.”

Eddie sighed. “We agreed on fifty. And forty on the film rights.”

“Film rights?” said Jack.

“There’s a movie in this.” The count mimed camera crankings. “I would want to play myself, of course, although perhaps it might be better if I were to play the juvenile lead.”

Eddie shook his head and sighed once more.

“I’ll have my solicitor go into all the details of the subsidiary rights, marketing offshoots, merchandising deals and suchlike.”

“How long will
that
take?” asked Jack, whose patience had worn beyond thin.

“No time at all,” said Count Otto. “I keep him in that box over there.”

“He does,” came a muffled voice from that box.

“Fine,” said Jack. “Fine – take everything we’ve got. The car, my coat, my watch. Do you want my shoes, too?”

The count made so-so noddings with his head.

Jack threw up his hands and said, “Ludicrous.”

“I think the count has been very reasonable,” said Eddie.

“Yes, well,
you
would. He doesn’t want your hat, your coat and your watch.”

“I can’t wear a watch,” said Eddie. “Watches fall off my paws – I don’t have wrists.” And Eddie made a sorrowful face that almost had Jack sympathising.

“Oh no you
don’t
,” said Jack. “It’s not fair. It’s not.”

“It is most fair,” said Count Otto Black, “because I am taking nothing from you that you will want.”

“Oh, I think you are,” said Jack. “The car. The coat. The watch.”

“No.” Count Otto shook his head. “You will have no need of these things after I have put you through the period of hypnotic regression. All you will have need of is heavy sedation and the immediate use of a straitjacket.”

“Hm,” went Jack, as “Hm” usually served him adequately at such times.

“So let us begin.” Count Otto Black linked his fingers together and did that sickening knuckle-cracking thing that some folk take delight in doing to the distress of those who have to watch them doing it. “To work, to work. And let me ask you this.”

Jack tried to do the knuckle-cracking thing with his own fingers, but failed dismally. “Ouch,” said Jack. “It hurts.”

“I have to ask you,” said the count, wiggling his fingers and, unseen, his toes, “what is the last thing you remember
before
the big white light?”

“Leaving Tinto’s Bar,” said Jack.

“Although we know that we did more,” said Eddie. “Went through a briar patch and along a yellow-brick road.”

Count Otto Black made a thoughtful face, but as most of it was lost beneath his beard, the degree of its thoughtfulness was lost upon Jack and Eddie.

“We will take Tinto’s Bar as a starting point,” said he. “Why did you leave Tinto’s Bar?”

“Because Tinto had given a note from a spaceman to what he thought was Eddie, but wasn’t,” said Jack.

“And what did that note say?”

“It said that the location of a landed spaceship was Toy Town,” said Jack, “so we went to Toy Town in the car.”

“Hold on,” said Eddie. “I don’t remember any of
that
. How come you didn’t mention that you remembered
that
earlier?”

“He couldn’t,” said Count Otto Black.

“Why not?” asked Eddie.

“Because he didn’t remember it.”

“So how come he remembers it now?”

“Because I just hypnotised him.”

“What?” said Eddie. “I never saw you do
that
.”

“You did,” said Count Otto, “but I hypnotised
you
so you won’t remember how I did it.”

“You didn’t,” said Eddie.

“Crow like a rooster,” said Count Otto Black. “You
are
a rooster.”

“Cock-a-doodle-do!” went Eddie.

“And rest,” said the count. And Eddie rested.

“So you left Tinto’s Bar and travelled to Toy Town,” said the count to Jack. “What happened next?”

“We went to Bill Winkie’s house,” said Jack. “Eddie still had the key and we let ourselves in. And Eddie showed me all these weapons hidden beneath the floor. And then we heard someone coming and we hid beneath the trap door.”

“Tell me what you heard then,” said the count.

And Jack spoke of the conversation that he and Eddie had overheard, regarding things in jars and suchlike. And he told the count that the voices they had heard had been their own voices. And then how they’d climbed out of the hideaway and how there had then been a very bright light.

“And what happened
next
?” asked Count Otto Black.

Jack sat in his chair and stared into space. His eyes grew wide and his hands gripped the arms of his chair. His knuckles whitened, as did his face. Eddie looked on and Eddie looked on with a sense of growing fear.

“The light,” went Jack. “The terrible light.”

“Go on,” said the count. “The light can’t hurt you now.”

“Oh,” went Jack. “They’re coming for us. Out of the light, they’re coming.”

“Gently now,” said Count Otto Black. “You’re quite safe here, they can’t hurt you here. Who is coming out of the light?”

“Not
who
,” said Jack, and cold sweat formed upon his brow and trickled down his cheeks. “It’s
what
, not who. They are not men.”

“Are they toys?” asked the count.

“Not toys. Oh, now, they’re taking us. Up into the light. They have us. In that place, that bright place. They’re putting things up our – Ouch! Stop! Ouch!”

“We’ll take a little break there, I think,” said the count.

“No, we can’t,” said Eddie. “Painful as this is, we have to finish.”

“It’s too painful for me,” said the count.

“Too painful for
you
?”

“Indeed,” said Count Otto. “I need to take a wee-wee. I should have taken one earlier. I can’t hold on any longer.”

Count Otto Black went off to the toilet. Presently, he returned.

“All better now,” he said. “I took a poo as well, just to be on the safe side.”

“Too much information,” said Eddie. “And you’ve quite spoiled the mood.”

“Well, it’s neither here nor there,” said the count, settling himself down into his chair and wiggling his fingers at Jack. “He’ll be nothing more than a vegetable when all this is done.”

“No, I won’t,” said Jack. “I’ll be fine.”

“See how brave he is?” said Eddie. “He’s as noble as.”

“Please yourselves,” said Count Otto. “Pray continue, Jack. Tell us all about the rectal probings.”

Over in the big top, high-wire walkers paused in their practisings, struck by the screams from Count Otto’s caravan. Pigeons fled their airy perches. Dogs howled in the distance.

“Much too much information,” said Eddie, rubbing at his own bum and feeling rather queasy.

“All right,” said the count, “they did all that to you.”

“They did more,” said Jack. “They did …”

Count Otto Black leaned close as Jack whispered.

“They never did?” he said. The count’s eyes started from their sockets. The count rushed outside and was sick.

“Nice going,” said Eddie to Jack, whilst the count was outside upchucking. “Nice to see the count getting a bit of his own medicine. Because, after all, he is an
evil
hypnotist.”

“And worse is yet to come,” said Jack.

“Oh good,” said Eddie. “I’ll just keep my paws over my ears, then.”

“Best to,” said Jack.

Count Otto returned and Jack continued with his tale.

And eventually he was done.

Count Otto Black sat staring at Jack and Jack sat staring at him.

“Are you all right, Jack?” Eddie asked.

Jack said, “Yes, I’m fine.”

“No feelings of empathy towards members of the vegetable kingdom?”

“Fine,” said Jack. “Now I’ve got it all out of my system, I’m fine.”

“Well, thanks very much, Count Otto,” said Eddie. “Count Otto? Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

Jack drove away from Count Otto Black’s Circus Fantastique. He drove away in Bill’s Anders Faircloud. Jack was wearing his trenchcoat and his fedora and his watch.

“Well, I wasn’t expecting
that
,” said Eddie, who sat once more in the passenger seat. “Who’d have thought it, eh? Your revelations driving Count Otto Black into a vegetative state? Who’d have seen that coming, eh?”

“Anyone with more than sawdust for brains,” said Jack. “It was what is called a telegraphed gag. One that you could
really
see coming.”

“So we really
were
abducted by spacemen.” Eddie whistled and kicked his legs about.

“No, we weren’t,” said Jack.

“We
weren’t
?” said Eddie. “But we were taken up into the light and terrible bottom experiments were performed on us.”

“True,” said Jack. “There’s no denying that.”

“But you’re saying that it
wasn’t
spacemen?”

Jack shook his head.

“Then what?”

“Chickens?” said Tinto. “You were abducted by chickens?”

It was early evening now and they were in Tinto’s Bar.

“He’s winding you up,” said Eddie. “And before you say it,
not
in the nice way.”

“I’m not,” said Jack, counting the drinks that he had ordered and trying to reconcile them with the number that Tinto had delivered. “We were abducted by chickens. Big ones in spacesuits. Horrible, they were, with nasty beaks and evil little eyes.”

“And
you
remember this?” asked Tinto of Eddie.

“No,” said Eddie, tasting beer. “I do not. The count only hypnotised me to prevent me from remembering how he hypnotised Jack.”

“Oh, slow down there,” said Tinto. “Too much information.”

“We’re done with that line now,” said Eddie. “It wasn’t relevant anyway.”

“I just fancied using it,” said Tinto. “I’m a barman. I
do
have rights, you know.”

“You have the right to remain silent,” said Eddie. “Why not use it now?”

“Because I want to hear about the chickens. Could you give me a bit of a wind, please, Jack, I’m running down.”

Jack leaned over the bar counter and turned the key in Tinto’s back.

“Howdy doody,” said Tinto to Jack. “Can I help you, sir?”

“We were talking about the chickens,” said Jack. “The ones that abducted Eddie and me.”

“Well, yes,” said Tinto. “You told me that. But I’m rather confused. These space chickens, was it them that blasted the cymbal-playing monkeys with the deaths rays?”

Jack looked at Eddie.

And Eddie looked at Jack.

“Nice mutual lookings,” said Tinto, plucking spent glasses from the bar and giving them a polish, “but hardly an answer to my question.”

Jack now took to tasting beer. “I’m rather confused myself,” he said. “We
were
abducted by chickens, for reasons unknown.”

“They’d have their reasons,” said Tinto. “They probably stuck implants up your bum.”