The Transfiguration of Mister Punch (25 page)

The theatre shook. Judy would bury them all.

“Gather your things, we’re moving elsewhere. We’ll build a new hell out of vagrant bones and wheelie bins. We’re going home.”

Stijn dropped from the table and began to pack jars into crates.

“Alice, help him.”

Joan would gather parts. She’d gather Sir Neville’s parts. She found him in jars and boxes and packed almost all of him in the crate where she had crouched. Almost all of him with the exception of his mechanical heart. That she kept in her hand.

“Before we go, can we put together a friend of mine?”

Punch tapped his cane against the mechanical heart. “He was never a man.”

“It won’t take long to assemble him.”

“Pfft,” Stijn said, throwing a leg into a crate. “Nothing but trouble. He was an experiment. Only his brain was real. It belonged to a man who collected tickets for a rival theatre. They sacked him for being slow. I employed him for being slow. Can’t be doing with brains that think for themselves.”

The steps cracked.

“We don’t have time,” Punch said.

“Then I’m not coming with you. I’m not leaving.”

“You don’t have a choice, Alice.”

Sir Neville’s heart ticked within her palm. Pushing Stijn aside, Joan began to place Sir Neville’s parts on the worktable. All she needed was his brain. The most important part.

“Please,” she said.

Stijn tutted and then took a jar from the top shelf. Joan cradled it. If only she had Stijn’s touch, that River Styx magic that Judy had mentioned.

“Oh, Sir Neville.”

She reattached limbs to their torso and slid Sir Neville’s brain between metal plates and replaced his pale-blue eyes. Finally, she placed his heart on his chest.

The basement walls bowed with the force of Judy’s scream. The ceiling buckled at the centre. Chains clattered. Footsteps stomped.

“She’s coming,” Joan said.

“Guess my old lady is free. Stand by your beds. Man the alarm. Get ready to tumble to Hell.”

On the table, Sir Neville’s left eyelid twitched. Please, let him be coming back to her. His left arm rose, his hand fumbled for hers. Stijn abandoned the parts and began to clamber up the stairs. The dark at the top of the stairs darkened.

“Going somewhere?” Judy asked.

Punch knew Judy would break free. After all, she was his girl. Of course, he would never allow himself to become trapped but Judy had always been gung-ho. She may not have Alice’s innocence but she had a certain something. A thrill trembled along his spine.

“Darling,” he said. “Want to drag a few willing subjects to our cavern.”

Stijn backed up. Punch grabbed Stijn and slammed Stijn’s head against the wall. His skull cracked. Stijn fell to his knees, gibbering.

“I could rip you all apart,” Judy said.

“Isn’t she marvellous?” Punch said, offering them a grin. He ran his fingers through his hair.

“I am. Now, tell me you weren’t running away from me. You do remember these were our dead, Punch?”

Punch kissed Judy’s hand, and said, “I could rip off your fingers and eat them.”

“I’d rather you pulled off her fingers and ate them.”

“Well I would but they’re such puny things and likely to be riddled with worms. She’s made of dead things. Not my Alice at all. Not the girl I remember.”

Except for her face. Her beautiful face had kept its rosy pallor. Teeth white, teeth sharp. He turned on his heels. Goodness. Why hadn’t he realised? If his heart were mechanical its cogs would spin at warp speed, its battery would pulse, would explode.

“You rode from Hell attached to his leg.”

How had he forgotten her face? He grabbed Alice, clutched her to his chest.
Oh my love
, Judy tapped her foot. His second
oh my love
, Punch directed at his wife.

“I’m trying to suffocate her with the stink of my armpit.” Judy checked behind her. “Oh, there isn’t anyone there. I thought you were talking to the fool behind me.”

Alice freed herself from his grip. On the table, Sir Neville clutched his heart. Its tick filled the leaden silence. Stijn added to the chorus, mumbling something that sounded like an incantation, as if he hoped to banish them with a made-up spell. Stijn’s random nonsense served only to give Punch earache. He should smash Stijn’s skull beneath his boot and be done with him. The little man wasn’t needed now that it seemed Alice also had the capacity to bring mismatched people to life. If a metal man could be referred to as people.

“Let’s take this theatre and all who rot in it back to Hell,” Punch said.

“With any luck, Hell will rip your little friend into several pieces until she’s no one at all.”

The floor rocked beneath them. Punch steadied himself against the table. Sir Neville gripped his wrist, as if he hoped to tether him there.

“I’ll melt you and make teaspoons of you,” Punch said. “You won’t,” Alice said, picking up an arm that wore a sailor’s tattoo.

Alice swung the arm. It hit Punch in the eye. Judy laughed. Ha-de-ha. Alice swung again and this time the theatre swung with her. The arm hit him between the eyes; the ceiling fell and slammed into the back of his head to cut through scalp and skull to the brain. The world faded to black.

Sir Neville’s heart broke.

Punch’s head slammed onto Sir Neville’s chest, shattering His heart. Its cogs caught against bent metal, whirred and offered a final half-beat. Joan’s cry at his end equalled Judy’s theatre-dismantling wail.

In the melee, Stijn took the opportunity to escape.

The only thing he carried with him from the workshop was Punch and Judy’s idea of building an army. He’d dismantle and reassemble the entire human race if he could and leave plenty of spare parts for himself. Or he could live a quiet life, bumping off the odd passer-by to ensure he never fell apart, never rotted.

Three steps up and a beam dropped from the ceiling, knocking him back into the workshop. The floor began to crack, fissure running the length of the room.

He couldn’t go back to Hell. He just couldn’t.

Joan’s knees kissed concrete. The ceiling dropped, knocking out Punch, murdering Sir Neville. The ground beneath Stijn cracked, threatened to swallow him. Judy’s scream intensified, further demolishing the theatre.

The theatre would bury them.

A groan filled the room. The fissure in the floor widened. More of the ceiling fell, knocking into Judy, sending her slipping towards the hole in the floor. Instinct caused Joan to reach out and she grabbed Judy’s hand—as if she could stop a monster twice her size from falling into a cavern. Into Hell.

With her free hand, Joan grasped the table leg, but all that achieved was to drag the table with them, including Sir Neville and Punch. Stijn disappeared into the fissure with an echoing cry. The mouth in the theatre floor swallowed Judy next, and as Joan couldn’t free her hand from Judy’s, Joan began to fall. The drop was at least a hundred feet. They’d be smashed to nothing. Joan’s face hit the side of the cavity, scraping skin. Sir Neville tumbled beside her. He grabbed her hand. Their descent increased its speed.

“This is how it ends,” she said, and knew it had ended this way once before. Her cheek smarted. She’d break into a dozen pieces.

The thing with Hell is things don’t stay dead. Joan knew she’d been here before. Images came in snatches. If only she could recall her life in such Technicolor. Punch and Judy landed first, perhaps due to their monstrous weight. Joan met the ground with a thump and only had a moment to roll aside before a cascade of limbs, heads, eyes and torsos began to rain into the cavern, along with jars and shelves and dismantled walls. Oh yes, she remembered the stink of this place. Now that she’d returned, Joan wondered how she could have forgotten the place.

She wondered how she could have forgotten that her real name was Alice Knill.

The mud bank beneath her subsided. Sir Neville dug his metal fingers into the ground trying to find purchase. They began to slip towards the stream that fed the River Styx. Shadows loomed against the cavern walls. Punch and Judy picking their way through the body parts. She couldn’t stay here.

“This way,” Joan said, helping Sir Neville up.

They had to climb out before Hell closed. Even now, the world seemed an impossible way up. Joan dug her fingers into the mud wall.

From the other side of the cavern, Punch shouted, “Alice.”

Joan turned towards him. A crack ran down Punch’s face from where it had slammed into Sir Neville’s heart. He looked like a broken toy. Beside her, Sir Neville’s said heart hung a twisted mess of metal.

“Climb,” Joan said to Sir Neville.

A beam dropped from the theatre roof, rebounding against the cavern walls and splashing into the stream. Punch and Judy bounded towards the river, which for the moment divided them from Joan and Sir Neville. A disembodied hand grabbed Joan’s ankle. She tried to shake it off. The mud bank began to collapse. Joan slipped away from the wall towards the tumbling river. She’d be minced if caught in the grate. Water splashed. Punch had entered the stream. He wouldn’t let her leave him again. She wouldn’t let Judy murder her again.

Joan remembered when she was Alice. She recalled Judy’s clammy hand and the knife at her throat. Happiness had ended that day. All this time later and it was yet to return; although she may now hold its hand.

With Sir Neville, Joan scrambled back to the wall. She would climb it. She would escape. The sounds of Punch’s pursuit grew closer, joined by Judy’s rage. With each advance up the wall, fingers digging into soft clay, Joan expected to fall back to Hell. Trick was to not look down or up. If she looked towards the gap in the cavern roof, it would seem an impossible feat.

Punch cried her true name. He seemed far away now. Joan and Sir Neville continued to climb. Then, her fingers found empty air and she realised, they’d reached the top. Above them, the theatre creaked and groaned its last. They clambered over the top. Dust filled her lungs. Joan coughed. A dust cloud bloomed from her lips. She couldn’t choke. She coughed again. Her lungs didn’t seem convinced. They clambered over bits of masonry and wood, torn pieces of scenery. The chains glinted beneath a beam.

They passed through a symbolic doorway, when they could have exited the rubble in any direction. A crowd stood behind police tape on the far side of the road. An ambulance and fire engine waited a short distance away. Paramedics rushed towards them. Joan was less worried about what they’d think of her than what they would make of Sir Neville. Despite their appearance, no one would believe they’d climbed from Hell.

Sir Neville took her hand. “Sorry.”

He kissed her forehead. She kissed his hand.

“Safe,” he said.

“Safe.” Joan hoped.

The last thing Stijn recalled was his head slamming against a wall and Punch threatening to dismember him. He checked his body. His heart thumped as he pulled away a leg, but it calmed when Stijn realised the leg wasn’t and had never been attached to his body. He’d survived intact. Once Stijn looked about him, he saw that he was at the bottom of a cavern. A familiar cavern. For a moment, he saw a pinprick of blue sky, then a dust cloud blotted it out and when the cloud moved on, Stijn saw that the way back to the world had closed. Again.

Stijn thumped his fists against a nearby arm; its fist raised and punched Stijn in the belly. Teeth bit into his ankle. He shook the head off, sent it catapulting towards the stream. At the far side of the cavern, Punch attempted to climb the wall. Judy reached up, dragged him down. It proved a constant, futile battle until the stream enveloped them both, dragging them towards the grate where things disappeared forever.

Good riddance to them.

Another set of teeth bit into his thigh. Something moved within the carpet of body parts. A head popped up, two arms, another head, a foot. The pieces began to form into people, attaching themselves until they stood whole. Mismatched people just like Stijn. They advanced on him. Standing and growing in their hundreds.

In the end, it didn’t matter how many of them there were.

It only took one of them to tear him apart. All but Stijn’s head floated down the stream, then shredded when they met the grate. There went his left leg, his right arm, a thumb. His bits following Punch and Judy’s demise. His head remained amidst the reanimated dead. They used it as a football, they threw him in the air and juggled his eyeballs, but they never spoke to him.

That was the worst part of it.

They never spoke to him.

Then, one day a month or so later, they placed Stijn in a corner of the cavern and forgot about him. He had no audience at all.

With hideous surprise, Punch discovered that the other side of the grate didn’t find him floating in a million pieces along the River Styx. Rather, he floated from painful nothingness into something else. Into becoming someone else. He woke in a room that had candy-striped curtains and not much else. Well, not much else except for Judy.

A hideously deformed Judy. Her head weighed and looked several times too large for her cloth body, chin pointed and nose curved. Whatever hideous accident had occurred, all of Judy’s bones had liquidized to leave her body formless. Punch suspected his body was in a similar condition. He couldn’t manoeuvre his head to check. He couldn’t move anything. At times, he saw his fingertips and they looked flat and appeared made of cotton. Pathetic things of no use to anyone.

Laughter filled the room. Giggling. If only he could move. The curtain trembled. A cold draft floated up Punch’s insides and then, Judy’s body plumped out and she sat up. Her wooden eyes stared at Punch.

Judy.

Her blank gaze offered no emotion and her words belonged to a ventriloquist. A hand filled Punch’s insides, then he sat up. The striped curtain opened. A group of gap-toothed children with sticky fingers, and with snot dribbling from their noses stood in a town square. They pointed at and mocked Punch.

“That’s the way to do it,” the ventriloquist forced Punch to say.

Punch wanted to bite the hand that worked him. He wanted to do something anything, but couldn’t. He’d never be able to do anything for himself again. Neither would Judy. Punch tried to blink but the ventriloquist decided that Punch would rather knock his forehead against the side of the theatre booth. That he felt.