A Blink of the Screen (12 page)

He avers now that it was the gateway to Hell, and while it was not the Hell that Dante visited there is to my mind some internal evidence to suggest that his ignorant guess might be the truth. There was something a-glitter at the edge of the world and, when he examined the drifted snow, he found the same curious substance strewn haphazardly on the crest of each hummock. It appeared to be thin plates of silver, scattered so as to reflect the light in what would have been, in better circumstances, a pleasing manner.

The coachman and several of the male passengers considered the situation. The sun was sinking fast into a western sky that was now a mess of livid red and purple tones, and to the east more snow threatened. Besides, it appeared to those who ventured a little way back along the coach tracks, which were already being erased by the blowing snow, that the road had been well lost and a white wildness stretched all around.

At length, there appearing to be no alternative, several of the party resolved to venture closer to the rectangle that obliterated the sky a score of yards away.

It was then that they saw for the first time the monster that appeared to be the guardian of the gateway, perched on a snow-covered log.

It was a giant Robin, several times larger than a Turkey. It watched them with malevolence in its beady eyes, and they feared greatly that it would attack; but it remained unmoving as they reached the rim, and peered out on a blur of colour. Warm air, tinged with tobacco smoke, was blowing into the world, and according to the coachman they could hear strange sounds, distorted and distant …

One of the party was a scholar from Oxford who, having in the coachman’s opinion refreshed himself mightily during the journey, suggested that some of the party climb through the opening, beyond which lay, at a depth of perhaps three feet, a wide expanse of brown plain, because, uncertain though this course might be, it offered a more certain chance of survival than a night in hills which seemed increasingly alien.

‘
Season’s Greetings! From all at the office!
’

Several bold spirits in the party, with whom the scholar had been sharing his brandy, resolved to do this. The coachman was not among them, he told me, yet eventually decided to accompany them
out
of a sense of duty. They were still his passengers, he said, and he felt it incumbent upon him to bring them safely to Bath.

It was the view of the scholar that Bath might be found across the plain, for, he held, if this was a window out of the world then it followed that there might be a window back into it …

Strange though it may seem, this appeared to be the case. They had not gone above a hundred yards before they saw, looming out of the mists in front of them, another rectangle very similar in appearance to the one they had vacated.

Imagine their joy to see that it opened on to a friendly street lined with yellow-lit windows. One of the party declared that it was in fact a street very close to his own home in London, and while many of the travellers had left London some time before, the prospect of a return now caused them the greatest joy; the traveller promised to open up his house for them, and one of the men volunteered to go back alone to the coach to fetch the rest of the party. For it seemed to all, in those last few moments of hope, that Almighty Providence had foreseen their fate upon the bitter road and had opened a gateway into the warm heart of the greatest city in the world …

It was then that they noticed a party of anxious people clustered near the rectangle, and the coachman saw with a falling heart that it too was rim’d with the glittering plates. This party was composed both of men and women, bearing lanterns, and, after some hesitation, one member approached the coachman.

The man who had a house nearby gave a cry of recognition and embraced the stranger, claiming to know him as a neighbour, and then recoiled at the dreadful expression on his face. It was clear that here was another victim of a similar fate.

After some refreshment from the Oxford scholar the newcomer explained that he had, with a party of friends, gone out carol singing. All had been well until, an hour before, there had been an eerie
creaking
and shifting of shadows, and now they were somehow in a world that was not of the world.

‘But – there is a street, and lighted windows,’ said the London man. ‘Is that not the Old Curiosity Shop, so ably run by Mrs Nugent?’

‘Then it is more than decently curious, because the doors do not open, and there is nothing beyond the windows but dull yellow light,’ said the carol singer. ‘What were houses, my friend, are now nothing but a flat lifelessness.’

‘But there are other streets – my home, not a hundred yards away …’

The carol singer’s face was pale. ‘At the end of the street,’ he said, ‘is nothing but white cardboard.’

Their companion gave a terrified scream, climbed into the frame, and was soon lost to view. After a few seconds they heard his shout, which the coachman screamed to me, also:

‘
May This Day Bring You, Every Year,/Joy And Warmth And All Good Cheer!
’

Several of the ladies in the carol singers’ party were quite hysterical at this point and insisted on joining the company. Thus, after much heated debate, it was resolved to return to the mail coach and, with considerable difficulty, snow and luggage and the glitter were piled against the frame sufficient to allow it to be manhandled down on to the plain.

At this point the coachman’s tale becomes quite incoherent. It would seem that they set out to seek yet another entrance to the real world, and found for the first time that the strange windows had an obverse side. If I can understand his ravings, they seemed to be vast white squares in the sky on which some agency had written lengthy slogans of incredible yet menacing banality, whose discovery had so unhinged the London gentleman.

I can hear the coachman’s mad giggling even now: ‘
I have come a long, long way,/To bring you Joy this Christmas Day!
’ and he would bang his head on the wall again, in time to what I may, in the loosest sense, call the rhythm of the phrase.

Then he would drum his heels on the floor.

‘
Merry Xmas to All at No. 27!
’ he would scream, ‘
From Tony, Pat, and the kids. Remember Majorca?
’

And, ‘
Get lots of crackling this Christmas!
’ This last one seemed particularly to affect his brain, and I cannot but wonder what the poor man must have seen. ‘
Merry X-mas from Your Little Willy!!!
’ and it was at this point that I had to get the gardener to come in and help me restrain him, in the apprehension that he would otherwise manage to do himself an injury.

How long were they on that fateful plain? For it appears that they were in a world outside Time as we know it, and sought for days an entrance into a world that was more than a flatness.

And they were not alone.

There were other people on the same dreadful journey. And Monsters also.

I fear that his mind is quite gone. No sane man could have seen such things. There was a window, if such I may call it, into a world of desert sands under a night sky, wherein three men of African or Asian appearance had made their camp. One of them spoke passable Latin, which the Oxford scholar was still just able to understand, despite his state of near inebriation. They too had found their world running out into a cardboard waste, and after considerable study had put it down to some event, possibly astronomical, which had severely distorted Space and, who knows, perhaps even Time itself.

They made common cause with the coachman’s party, much to the chagrin of the ladies present, but it would seem that they were well educated by heathen standards and indeed kept up the spirits of
the
company with their tales and outlandish songs. They were also men of considerable wealth, a fact of some importance when the swollen caravan of benighted travellers met a party of Shepherds, orphans of their world, and were able to purchase several Sheep which the coachman, who had been raised on a farm, was able to slaughter and dress.

The Shepherds, being nomads by persuasion, had been wandering for some time from their Window, and told of many fearful wonders.

‘
Happy Christmas!/It’s Your First One!/Wishing You Joy/And a Lifetime of Fun!
Sweet Jesus! The dreadful Beagle!’

What more dare I write? He babbled of four giant kittens with blue bows around their necks; and a rectangle within which was a vast Pie of mincemeat, which they carried for their continued provisions. There were also several glasses, taller than a house, which – after considerable effort with ropes and the utilization of a giant sprig of Holly – were found to contain a sweet Sherry, in which the Oxford scholar unfortunately drowned.

And there was the bellowing red giant, bearded and mad, sitting on a rooftop. And other things, too dreadful to recount: men who were merely coloured shapes, and the enormous black and white Caricature of a Dog watching them balefully from the top of its Kennel, and things which even as a man of Science I would blush to record.

It seems that at the last he resolved to quit the company, and came back alone across the plain, believing that to die in the bitter hills of Wiltshire in mid-winter was a better fate for a Christian man than life in that abominable world.

No sooner had he reached it, and was crawling in extremis across the strange glittering snow, than behind him he heard once again the eldritch creaking and, upon looking around, saw the dreadful
oblong
slot disappear. Cold winds and snow immediately forced themselves upon it, but he felt it to be a benediction after that dreadful warm world of the brown plain. And thus, staggering in the fresh blizzard, he was found … It is now fully dark. The carol singers have gone, and I trust it is to their homes.

And now my housekeeper departs, having brought me the strange news of the day. A blackamoor on a Camel has been arrested near Avebury. In Swindon a man has been savagely pecked to death in his own garden, and all there are to be seen in the snow are the footprints of an enormous Bird. Here in Chippenham itself a traveller has reported seeing, before it leapt a tall hedge and ran across the fields, a cat larger than an Elephant. It had a blue bow about its neck. What monsters have been let into the world?

And on my desk I see my reflection in the shining, tinselly shard that the coachman had clutched in his hands. Who would cover the snow with this to make it glitter, and what fearful reason could there be?

I open the curtains, and look out upon the busy street. The local coach has come up from Bath and is outside the inn, and all is bustle and Christmas cheer, a world away from the sad ravings and pleadings of the man downstairs. It is a picture of hope, a reminder of reality, and perhaps he is, after all, no more than a man mazed by exposure, and the tales of giant Beagles and flying sledges are no more than strange jests. Except for the shard of tinsel …

‘
The tinsel on the straw! Amen! Wishing you all the best, Mum and Dad!
’

And I see the falling snow, how it glitters … And I hear the creaking. God help us, every one.

INCUBUST

T
HE
D
RABBLE
P
ROJECT
,
ED
.
R
OB
M
EADES AND
D
AVID
B.
W
AKE
,
B
ECCON
P
UBLICATIONS, 1988

This appeared in 1988 in the first of what turned out to be three books in
The Drabble Project,
produced by Birmingham fans to raise money for charity and add to the gaiety of nations
.

A drabble is that once popular SF format, the short, short, short – one hundred words, not a word more or less. Every word counts. Oddly enough, I really enjoyed doing it, and even managed to fit in a footnote
.

The physics of magic is this: no magician, disguise it as he might, can achieve a result beyond his own physical powers.
¹

And, spurned, he performed the Rite of Tumescence and called up a fiend from the depths of the Pit to teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget, the witch.

The phone rang.

‘Nice try,’ she said. ‘It’s sitting on the bedhead now.’

His breath quickened. ‘And?’

‘Listen,’ she said.

And he heard the voice of the fiend, distant and wretched:

‘… frightfully sorry … normally, no problem … oh god, this has never happened to me before …’

¹
See the
Necrotelecomnicon
, p. 38.

FINAL REWARD