The Wanderer (4 page)

The hangman threw his hands up in frustration.

‘Not so, fool.’

‘Mind who you is calling fool. It’s tricksome. See if you can do it yourself. Only show me how and I’ll do it directly.’

‘Very well, I will.’ The hangman poked his head through the hempen collar.
‘There
. You see, it’s easy.’

‘And then pull on it,
so!’
yelled Punch, with glee, grabbing the free end of the rope and hauling the hangman into the air, kicking and howling. He threshed a while, then hung lifeless, swinging to and fro.

‘Huzza, huzza!’ Punch crowed.

He cut the body down, laid it in a coffin dragged from the wings. Before nailing the lid shut, he took the hangman’s hood, put it on. Two pallbearers entered, picked up the box, and toted it off on their shoulders, performing an antic jig as they did so.

‘There they go. They think they have got Mister Punch safe enough.’

The hook-nose took off the hood, threw it into the crowd, then whirled about like a dervish, trolling in a cracked and strident tone.

The curtain fell. When it rose again the backdrop had changed to a moonlit London street, St Paul’s looming behind. Punch stood
singing and beating time on the setts with his stick.

A head peered around the drapes at the edge of the proscenium then. I glimpsed bloated features, malevolent eyes, a forked tongue, crooked ram’s horns, stifled a gasp; the other puppets’ faces were fixed, this one was hideously expressive. Gripped by convulsive shivers, Punch retreated.

‘Oh dear!’ he quavered. ‘Talk of the Devil and he pops up his horns. That is the old gentleman, sure enough.’

The dread thing emerged from behind the curtains, approached Punch, walking with a strange scuttering gait. It was arrayed in a gore-daubed suit of plate, cuirass chased with fine renderings of vile deeds, and held, two-handed, a broadsword. Its torso and arms were human, legs, a goat’s, and it had a lizard’s tail. I could have held it in the palm of my hand, but was stricken with terror, for it seemed alive.

‘Good, kind Mister Satan,’ Punch wheedled, bowing low. ‘Lord and master, most remorseless and most cruel, I never did you any harm, but all the good in my power.’

The fiend stopped, darted out its serpent’s tongue to taste the air, then started towards Punch again.

‘There, there, don’t come any nearer. How are you, good sir? I trust you and your respectable family are well. Much obliged for this visit, but I’d be sorry to keep you, I know you must have much pressing business in London town this night.’

The thing snickered, continued to cross the stage.

‘Oh, what
will
become of me!’ wailed Punch.

Closing with Punch, the thing swung its sword; the
crookback, leaping aside, narrowly avoided having his head cleaved from his body. Once he’d recovered his balance, he lashed out with his stick, but failed to land the blow. The thing backed away, and Punch followed, flailing wildly. But the fiend was the fleeter and more agile of the two, and, after a bit of business in which it laid its head down on the boards, and moved it rapidly from side to side to dodge Punch’s swipes, it darted into the wings.

‘Hee, hee, hee,’ laughed Punch. ‘That’s the way to do it!’

‘Oh no, it isn’t,’ the audience intoned.

‘Oh yes, it is,’ Punch retorted. ‘He’s off. He knew what was good for him, what side his bread was buttered. He knew not to fool with Mister Punch.’

A heartsnatching yawp followed. Punch flung himself to his knees, whimpering.

‘Oh, forgive my arrogance, Mister Devil, sir. I won’t ever be bad again.’

The thing came back out from behind the drapery and stalked towards the pitiful, cowering Punch. It beat the air with its tail and breathed fire; I was no longer in any doubt the miniature demon was quickened by some malignant occult force. Standing facing the audience, it unbuckled and removed its breastplate, then plunged its sword into its scabrous bulging belly, gouging a long rent. Ichor spurted. It drew out its blade, leant on it as a weary greybeard leans on a cane. Then there was a movement within the wound, and some gore-slick thing slopped forth. The demon lifted this spawn to one swaying pocked dug. It suckled, swelled, then dropped from the teat. Its rough form was that of a mastiff, but it was a dread chimera, a freakish hash, with a tapir’s snout, a hagfish’s grisly gape, a fox’s mealy muzzle, a goat’s grizzled beard, a sea devil’s lure, a vulture’s ruff and tonsure, a platypus’s venomous spur, a lobster’s claw, a toad’s throat sac, an armadillo’s plated back, the mandibles of a stag beetle, a turkey’s snood, carbuncle, and wattle, a hog’s bristles
and wild eye, a warthog’s tusks, a narwhal’s braided horn, a rat’s tail, a man o’ war’s scourges, a weasel’s sneer, an echidna’s spines. It was covered with sores. Slaver dripped from its maw. It was fetid; I gagged on its stench, far off though I was.

It whined like a hyena, whooped like a gibbon, yowled like a mandrake, growled like a bear, then loped across the stage, pounced on Punch. The wind was knocked out of him, his stick flew from his grasp. But he quickly got his breath back, fought back. He and the hellhound rolled about the stage, a welter of teeth, fists, tusks, talons. The hellhound got Punch’s nose between its jaws, worried at it. Punch howled, went to his knees, eyes rolled back in his head. But then he sneezed, blasting the hellhound across the stage, stunning it. After snatching up his stick, Punch ran over, pulped its skull. A lurid matter dripped down the front of the fit-up, staining the drapes.

‘Hee, hee,’ he giggled. ‘It’ll take more than
that
to bring me low.’

Then, holding his arms stiffly, as if clasping a partner, he began to waltz, crooning the while.

During the scuffle the demon’s injury had healed and, while Punch cavorted, it donned the cuirass it had removed to birth the hound. Then it spewed flames at the whirling hunchback. Punch’s pointed hat and ruff caught ablaze, and he lurched about, moaning. Then he threw himself down, rolled, and put out the flames. Then leapt to his feet, charged, but the demon whacked him round the head with the flat of its sword, knocking him over. He stood again, this time unsteadily, clutching his skull and whimpering. The demon didn’t press its advantage, but
stood pointing and cackling. Then, once Punch had recovered from his daze, rage seemed to get the better of fear.

‘Why, you must be one very stupid Devil not to know your best friend when you see him. It seems we will have to try who is the best man, Punch or the Devil!’

With that they fell on one another, reeled about the stage, a frenzied gyre. Recalling my mobile’s camera, I got it out of my bag, took some pictures. Of course they didn’t come out, and not because it was too dark; indeed, the crucible had flared up. No, the images were warped, blurred, smeary moils.

Punch had the worst of things; the demon laid him open in several places, and the front row of the watching crowd was spattered with his blood. Eventually he collapsed and lay prone. The demon stood over him, prodded him in the ribs with a cloven hoof. But the trickster was only feigning. He tripped the demon with his stick, got to his feet, and rained down blows – blows so savage his staff shivered. Before the demon had time to recover from this assault, Punch drove the splinter he still held into its chin. It thrashed about. Blood welled from its gaping jaws, and soon the drapes round the fit-up were steeped in it. Finally the diabolic light faded from the demon’s eyes, and it fell still.

‘
That’s
the way to do it!’ cried Punch.

‘Oh yes, it is,’ the crowd responded.

Punch rolled the demon’s body over the front of the stage with his foot, frolicked insanely.

‘Huzza, huzza, the Devil’s dead,’ he screeched.

Then he grew sombre.

‘Friends, we have a problem. Hidden somewhere near at hand, there’s a snoop, a busybody, a meddler, a cheapskate who’s watched the show without paying. He didn’t ought to’ve done that. Oh, no, no, no. What do we do to fuckers like that?’

There was silence.

‘Don’t you know? Tear them limb from limb! Get him!’

The elderly folk began casting about, snuffling, scenting the air. I stayed stock-still. Then one old woman pointed at the stand of stalagmites.

I fled, ran back across the cavern to the mouth of the tunnel, turning my ankle a couple of times on the uneven rocks. Scrabbling up the slope of loose gravel, I looked back, saw the horde scuttling after me in a ruck. They scuffled, each frantic to be the first to lay hold of me.

I did not slacken my pace till I reached outer air. My heart was a flaring coal, I rasped for breath, shuddered. But I’d outpaced the frenzied pack. I gulped air. After climbing over the graveyard fence, I began to walk north on Commercial Street. It was just gone three in the morning. Though the streets were fairly empty, as was to be expected at that hour, it seemed the ordinary night-time round went on. A bus filled with dishevelled revellers went by me, and I passed a young woman smoking out the window of a first-floor flat, sounds of a raucous party behind her. She waved at me. I began to question what I’d undergone. Had it all been a figment? Brought on my stress? Recent pressures at work had strained my nerves, and I’d been sleeping badly for some months. Had I been drugged? But then, looking down, I saw my clothes were smeared with filth from the tunnels, stank.

At that moment, I heard a low moan behind. Turning, I saw the mob of old folk coming down the road after me. They walked with a strange jerky gait. I bolted.

Turning on to Shoreditch High Street, I saw a gap beneath a hoarding put up to hide an empty plot – a derelict warehouse had been torn down in preparation for the redevelopment of the land. I lay on my belly, wriggled under before any of the horde rounded the corner. Hunkering down, a bit back from the boards, I watched my pursuers’ feet pass. I thought myself safe, they kept on by, but then there was a howl; I believe one of them got wind of me. They began pounding on the hoarding. I turned and ran, stumbling on the uneven, rubble-strewn ground.

Reaching the wall on the other side, I looked back, saw one of the chipboard panels splinter, give way. The pack swarmed through the breach. Frantic to rend me in sunder, they jostled each other, brawled. I gawped, aghast, as one man, neat, lank moustache, hobbling with the aid of a stick, punched a woman, grey hair scraped back into a bun, to the ground. She rose again, grappled with her assailant, bit into his upper arm. He clubbed her with his cane, splitting her skull, and she crumpled, was trampled. Though his arm bled heavily, the man came on, not even pausing to pluck out the woman’s false teeth, still fixed in his stringy muscle.

Turning away, I clambered over the wall and found myself on Boundary Street. I ran north. I’d not got far, just crossed the junction with Calvert Avenue, when I heard the rumbling plaint of a worn engine and that wonted call of the night-time city, ‘Minicab?’ Turning, I saw a battered saloon had drawn up alongside me. The driver, an aging Rastafarian, with a heavily lined faced, grinned at me across the passenger seat. His teeth were overlarge, stained, carious. A sour haze of smoke roiled inside the car. Stuffed with the wound locks of his dreaded hair, the traditional red, green, and yellow tam he wore, girded his head like a motley halo.

He looked me over, took in the state of my clothes, my face, drawn and wan, the jittery looks I darted over my shoulder, and his grin waned.

‘Wh’appen? Mon, you look like you seen obeah badness.’

‘What?’

Very slowly, enunciating, he said, ‘Evil science. Devilry. You shaking like a leaf.’

Not knowing what to say, I began to stammer something about knife-wielding youths, after my wallet.

The driver cut in.

‘Rass. Dem rude bwoy teifs is choble. Dey vex me up. No worries tho, we step.’

‘Sorry?’

With great patience, ‘I can get you out of here. Fast. Jump in.’

I wavered a moment, but only a moment, opened the door, got in.

‘Where you wanna go?’ the driver asked.

‘Highgate?’

‘Sure ting.’

As we pulled away from the kerb, I caught a glimpse, through the rear window, of a liver-spotted claw seizing the top of the wall behind. I paled, shuddered.

The Rastafarian turned to look at me.

‘Wha’ dat? Everyting fine, no?’

‘Sure, I’m fine, really.’

After we had driven a little way, he lit up a large joint, which he toked on furiously. He offered it, but I shook my head: it was fogged enough with fear.

‘Mon, you still look scared,’ he said. ‘You sure you is alright?’

‘Oh, I’m just tired, that’s all.’

‘Sure.’

He shifted gear then, and, glancing down at his left hand on the stick, I saw it was missing the ring finger. Catching my look, he turned to me again; I feigned interest in the buildings we passed by. He grinned.

‘You wanna know about my hand? Nuh true?’

I frowned, shook my head. He chuckled.

‘Don’t be ’shamed. I tell you, pass de time.’

And so the Rastafarian, whose name, it emerged, was Clifton, told me his strange tale. He kept glancing asquint – whenever I was bewildered by his Rasta patois he’d offer a gloss. He’d come to London as a young man in the mid ’70s fleeing the gang violence sweeping Kingston. But low kinsmen had, by threatening family in Jamaica, dragged him back into the turmoil. At first his part was minor; he held down a regular job as a doorman at a central London hotel and was only occasionally called on for
intimidation or debt collection. He kept trying to get out, but, as he explained with a wry smile, his reliability, diligence, and honesty were like balloons and stones in his pockets: the top-ranking badmen trusted him more than his Yardie brethren, who were, for the most part, grasping, crooked, so he rose in the order, even as he sank in crime. So when a boss known to all as the Count needed muscle for a big cocaine deal, he asked Clifton. Planning had been painstaking, and the first part of the undertaking, gone without a hitch. The coke had been flown into Heathrow from Jamaica, hidden in guitar cases, delivered to the Count. He’d had it cooked up and was ready to sell it on to the dealers. A night-time meet, at an isolated, abandoned church in rural North Bedfordshire, was set up.