Snuff Fiction (4 page)

I wiped at the sweat that was dripping in my eyes. I was seriously leaking here. My vital fluids were oozing out all over the place. I’d been thirsty when I’d arrived, but now I was coming dangerously close to dehydration.

‘The Angel’s Footstep,’ the uncle repeated. ‘So named because it is said of angels that, like Christ, they can walk upon water. But only when the moon is full and only upon its reflection.’

‘And the leaves are poisonous,’ said the Doveston.

‘Extremely,’ the uncle agreed. ‘Eat one of those and you’ll join the angels. Oh my, yes indeed.’

‘I think I might join the angels any minute if I don’t have something to drink,’ I said.

The uncle’s eyes fficked over me. ‘Put the bucket down,’ he said kindly. ‘There’s a water tap over in the corner there and a metal cup on a chain. Don’t touch anything else, or smell anything, all right?’

‘All right, sir,’ I said.

Being a resilient lad, who had already survived diphtheria and whooping cough and phossy jaw and Bengal rot, I wasn’t going to let a bit of dehydration get me down too much. And so, having revived myself with a pint or two of Adam’s ale, I was once more fit as a fiddle and fresh as a furtler’s flute.

‘All right now?’ asked the uncle.

‘Yes, thank you,’ said I.

‘Then let me show you these.’

The uncle drew my attention to a tub of plants. Deep green leaves they had, which spread in a flat rosette, interlaced with violet—tinged flowers.
‘Mandragora officinarum,’
he said. ‘The now legendary mandrake. Beneath the surface of the soil its root is the shape of a man. This is
the
witch plant, used in many magical ceremonies. It is said that when pulled from the ground it screams and that the scream will drive the hearer mad. Should we give it a little tug, do you think?’

I shook my head with vigour.

‘No.’ The uncle nodded. ‘Best not, eh? The roots in fact contain a tropane alkaloid which taken in small doses can induce hallucinations and visions of paradise. In large doses however, they induce—’

‘Death,’ said the Doveston.

‘Death,’ said the uncle. ‘It was very popular with Lucrezia Borgia. But three hundred years ago the Persians used it as a surgical anaesthetic.’

‘They dried the root,’ said the Doveston, ‘ground it and mixed it with camphor, then boiled it in water. You sniffed the steam. The Romans originally brought it to England.’

‘Your brother knows his stuff,’ said the uncle, patting his prodigy’s head and then examining his fingers for cooties.

I was given the full guided tour. Uncle Jon Peru Joans showed me his poppies. ‘From which opium is distilled.’ His
Cannabis sativa.
‘Indian hemp, beloved of beatniks.’ His Menispermaceae. ‘A member of the South American moonseed family, from which the arrow-head toxin, curare, is obtained.’ And his
Lophophora williamsii.
‘Peyote. O wondrous peyote.’

We took in the monkshood and mugwort, the henbane and hellebores, samphire and the scurvy grass, toadflax and toxibelle. I didn’t touch or smell anything.

It seemed clear to me that the uncle’s collection consisted entirely of plants which either got you high or put you under. Or were capable of doing both, depending on the dose.

As I watched the weedy man with the weirdy eyes, I wondered just how many of these narcotics he had personally sampled.

‘And that’s the lot,’ he said finally. ‘Except for the beautiful boys you’ve come to see and I’ll show you those in a minute.’

I plucked distractedly at my shorts. My Y-fronts, ever crusty, were filling up with sweat and swelling to embarrassing proportions. ‘It’s all incredible, sir,’ I said. ‘But might I ask you a question?’

Uncle Jon Peru Joans inclined his pigeon-eggy head.

‘Why exactly have you chosen to cultivate these particular varieties of plants?’

‘For the Great Work,’ said the Doveston.

‘For the Great Work,’ the uncle agreed.

I made the face that says ‘eh?’

The uncle tapped his slender nose with a long and slender finger. ‘Come’, said he, ‘and meet my boys, and I’ll tell you all about it.’

A corner of the conservatory had been curtained off from the rest by a greasy damask tablecloth. The uncle stepped to this and flung it aside with a theatrical flourish.

‘Wallah!’ went he.

‘Stone me,’ said I, in the manner of Tony Hancock.

On a cast-iron pedestal stood an ancient aquarium and in this some of the queerest plants that I had ever seen.

I was not at first sure that they were plants. They had much of the reptile and some of the fish. They were scaly and shiny and all over odd and they made me feel most ill at ease.

As with all normal children, I harboured a healthy fear of vegetables. Cabbage put the wind up me and I lived in terror of sprouts. Parental assurances that they were full of iron had been tested with a magnet and found to be naught but lies. Exactly why parents insisted upon piling vegetables onto their children’s plates had been explained to me by Billy. Vegetables were cheaper than meat and times were ever hard. When, later in life, I briefly rubbed shoulders with folk of a higher social bracket, I was amazed to discover adults who ate nothing but vegetables. These folk, I learned, were called vegetarians and although they had enough money to buy meat, they actually
chose
not to do so.

As one known for his compassion, I naturally felt great pity for these sorry individuals, who clearly suffered some mental aberration that was beyond my power to cure. But ever philosophical, I looked upon the bright side. After all, the more vegetarians there are in the world, the more meat there is left to go round amongst us normal folk.

‘My beautiful boys,’ cried the uncle, startling me from my musings. ‘Bring the bucket over here and we’ll serve them up their supper.

I hefted the bucket and cautiously approached. Scaly, shiny, reptile and fish and with more than a hint of the sprout: whatever they were, they were clearly alive, for they quivered and shivered and shook.

‘Are they vegetables, sir?’ was my question.

‘Mostly,’ said the uncle, peering in at his ‘beautiful boys’. ‘Mostly sprout, but partly basilisk.’

‘Chimeras,’ said the Doveston.

‘Chimeras,’ the uncle agreed.

‘And they’ll eat this meat in the bucket?’

Uncle Jon Peru Joans dug into his jacket and brought out a pair of long-handled tweezers. Passing these to me he said, ‘Why don’t you see for yourself?’

The Doveston nodded encouragingly. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘it’s a big honour. Bung them a gobbet or two.’

I clicked the tweezers between my fingers. Sweat drip-dropped from my eyebrows and I felt far from well. But I
had
paid my shilling and this
was
what I’d come for, so I plucked some meat from the bucket.

‘Arm’s length,’ the uncle advised, ‘and don’t get your fingers too near.

I did as I was told and lowered a chunk of tweezered meat into the aquarium. It was as if I had dropped a dead sheep into a pool of piranhas. Nasty little hungry mouths all lined with pointy teeth came snap-snap-snapping. I fell back with big round eyes and a very wide mouth of my own.

‘What do you think?’ the Doveston asked.

‘Brilliant!’ said I and I meant it.

We took it in turns to feed the plants and we emptied the whole of the bucket. The uncle looked on, nodding his head and smiling, while his crazy eyes went every-which-way and his fingers danced with delight.

When we were done he said, ‘There now then,’ and closed the tablecloth curtain.

I handed the uncle his tweezers. ‘Thank you very much, sir,’ I said to him. ‘That was jolly good fun.’

‘Work can also be fun,’ said the uncle. ‘Even Great Work.’

‘You were going to tell me all about that.’

‘Maybe next time,’ said the Doveston. ‘We have to be off now, or we’ll be late for Cubs.’

‘Cubs?’ I said.

‘Yes,
Cubs.’
The Doveston gave me a meaningful look. Its meaning was lost upon me.

‘I’m in no hurry,’ I said. ‘Good,’ said the uncle. The Doveston groaned.

‘Are you all right, Charlie?’

‘I am, Uncle, yes. Just a touch of King’s Evil, that’s all.’ ‘I’ve a root that will cure that.’

‘I’m sure that you have.’

‘Am I missing something?’ I asked.

The uncle shook his little bald head. ‘I think Charlie has a girlfriend,’ he said. ‘And is eager to practise upon her the skills he has learned from the lady librarian.’

The Doveston sniffed and shuffled his feet.

I made the ‘eli?’ face again.

‘The Great Work,’ said the uncle, striking a dignified pose. ‘The work that will earn for me a place in the history books. But
they
know that I stand poised upon the threshold and that is why they watch my every move.

‘The secret policemen?’

‘The secret police. They have powerful telescopes trained upon us even now. Which is why I keep my boys behind the curtain. The secret police want to know about my work and steal it for their masters at Mornington Crescent. But they won’t, oh my word no.

‘I’m very pleased to hear that.’

‘What I’m doing here’, said the uncle, ‘is for all mankind. Not just a favoured few. What I am doing here will bring about world peace. You asked why I chose to cultivate these particular varieties of plant, didn’t you?’

I nodded that I did.

‘It is because of the drugs that can be distilled from them. Powerful hallucinogens, which, when blended correctly and taken in careful doses, allow me to enter an altered state of consciousness. Whilst in this state it is possible for me to communicate directly with the vegetable kingdom. As Dr Doolittle talked to the animals, so I can talk to the trees.’

I glanced across at the Doveston, who made a pained expression.

‘What do the trees have to say?’ I asked.

‘Too much,’ said the uncle, ‘too much. They witter like dowagers. Moaning about the squirrels and the sparrows, the traffic and the noise. If I hear that old oak by the Seamen’s Mission go on one more time about how civilized the world used to be, I’m sure I’ll lose my mind.’

I ignored the Doveston’s rolling eyes. ‘Do all trees talk?’ I asked.

‘As far as I know,’ said the uncle. ‘Although of course I can only understand the English ones. I’ve no idea what the Dutch elms and Spanish firs are saying.’

‘Perhaps you could take a language course.

‘I’ve no time for that, I’m afraid.’

I nodded moistly and plucked once more at my groin. ‘So the secret police want to talk to trees too, do they?’ I asked.

‘Their masters do. You can imagine the potential for espionage.’

I couldn’t really, so I said as much.

The uncle waved his hands about. ‘For spying. You wouldn’t need to risk human spies, if plants could do it for you. Just think what the potted plants in the Russian embassy have overheard. They’d be prepared to tell you, if you asked them nicely.’

‘I see,’ I said, and I did. ‘But you’d have to learn how to speak Russian.’

‘Yes, yes, but you get the point?’

‘I
do
get the point,’ I said. ‘So
that
is the Great Work.’

‘It’s a part of it.’

‘You mean there’s more?’

‘Much more.’ The uncle preened at his lapels. ‘Communicating with plants was only the first part. You see I wanted to know just what it was that plants wanted out of life and so I asked them. The ones in this conservatory grow so well because they tell me what they want and I give it to them. How much heat, how much light and so on. But there’s one thing that all plants really want, and do you know what that is?’

‘Love?’ I said.

‘Love?’
said the Doveston.

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Not love then?’

‘They want to get about,’ said the uncle. ‘Move about like people do. They get really fed up spending all their lives stuck in one place in the ground. They want to uproot and get on the move.

‘And that’s why you’ve bred the chimeras.’

‘Exactly. They are the first of a new species. The plant/animal hybrid. My beautiful boys are a different order of being.’

‘They’re rather fierce,’ said I.

‘Well, you need to be fierce when you go into battle.’

‘Cubs,’ said the Doveston. ‘Time for the Cubs.’

‘No,’ I said. ‘What battle, sir?’

‘The final conflict,’ said the uncle, rising on his toes. ‘The battle of good against evil, as foretold in the Book of Revelation. This will come in the year two thousand and I shall be ready for it.’

‘Are you digging a fallout shelter then?’

‘No fallout shelter for me, lad. I shall be leading the charge. I intend to seed the entire globe with my chimeras. They will grow in any climate. They will grow big and fierce and when the call to arms comes, I shall give the signal and they will rise up in their millions, their hundreds of millions, and slay the oppressors. They will march across the lands, a mighty mutant army, destroying all before them, answering to only me. Only
me,
do you hear,
only me!’

That was the last time I saw the uncle. I didn’t go calling on him again. About a month after that some other folk came knocking at his door. Policemen they were, accompanied by others in white coats. There had been some complaints about missing cats and dogs and apparently a number of blood-stained collars were found in a bag beneath his sink.

My friend Billy, who was leading a party of American tourists around the Butts, said that he saw the uncle being hauled away, dressed in a long-sleeved jacket that buckled down the back. There was foam coming out of his mouth and the tourists stopped to take pictures.

On the following day a fire broke out. The house itself was hardly touched, but the beautiful conservatory burned to the ground.

Nobody knew how the fire had started.

Nobody seemed to care.

Nobody but for the Doveston. And he was clearly upset. He had been very fond of his ‘adopted’ uncle and was greatly miffed at his hauling away. I did what I could to console him, of course, such as buying him sweeties and sharing my fags. I think that we must have grown rather close, because he began to call me Edwin and I began to understand that he had ‘adopted’ me also.