A Handicap for the Devil?
By Allen Lyne.
SMASHWORDS EDITION
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PUBLISHED BY:
Allen Lyne on Smashwords
Copyright © 2011 by Allen Lyne
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Smashwords Edition License Notes:
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealings for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the copyright act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. The right of Allen Lyne to be identified as the moral rights author has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Right) Act 2000. (Commonwealth)
Allen Lyne
8 Redgate
Court
Moana Heights
South Australia 5169
Ph. +61 8 8327
4142
http://www.bearly.net
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and occurrences are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and not the goal of the author.
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To Sandie my lovely, bubbly, sister
&
To my good friends Bob & Cynthea for that all-important first read
Also
The Thursday Breakfast of
Gentlemen Writers
****
A Handicap for the Devil?
(One day God looked down upon the world and saw that Jonathan was meek, and at least He thought it was good.)
Chapter 1: Jones P. & Son
Jonathan worked in the city at the office of Jones P. and Son, Lawyers. He toiled there as a junior accountant thirty-eight and a half hours per week for little more than the minimum wage.
Every day at precisely 5 03 pm he finished work and left the office building by the stairs. The elevator was always out of order, and Jonathan had once worked out that he could have saved about a minute and a half if the elevator worked. This would have allowed him to catch a slightly earlier train. The lift worked so rarely that Jonathan couldn't remember the last time he had used it instead of the stairs. He always missed the 5 19 by a whisker when he ran for it, so he was condemned to catch the 5 31.
Rain bucketed down from a grey and unforgiving sky as Jonathan moved as quickly as his 64-year-old legs would move him towards the railway station. Ten-tenths cloud cover, and as gloomy a day as he could remember. Jonathan was not happy. His newspaper was wet and he had been forced to put it over his head to keep off the rain. He thought bitterly of his domineering housekeeper's words that morning as she snatched the umbrella from his grasp. "You'll not be needin' that, now. There's no rain forecast." Why do I let her bully me like that? Why do I let everyone tell me what I should and shouldn't do?
A truck splashed water all over him as he ran in the vain hope that the 5 19 might leave a minute or two late. It was smack on time. He missed it and had to stand shivering and wet in the cold wind that whipped through the grey edifice of the railway station. He had neglected to take his overcoat to work, believing Mrs. O'Reilly that the day would be sunny and bright.
****
Jonathan thought back to the beginning of the day and remembered the feel of the winter sunshine on his back. The sky had scarcely a cloud in its vast blueness that morning. He was eating his usual breakfast of a slightly burnt vegemite toast sandwich as he trotted towards the railway station, late as usual.
Vegemite. Why is it that Australians love it, and no one else can stand the stuff? He remembered the two Americans who had stayed briefly at the boarding house. Both had gagged and run to the sink to wash their mouths out after one taste of the bitter, thick, black substance. Then again, they ate jam with fried eggs for breakfast.
Apart from eating burnt toast and drinking lukewarm tea in the morning, other things had gone wrong on this particular day. The elevator was always stuck on the ground floor, you could press buttons for whatever floor you wished. The elevator would not move. It sat there, on the ground floor and simply vegetated. Many were the complaints from staff members. Jones P. senior simply grunted and shook his head and said that it was impossible to repair the thing.
Long ago, when Jonathan was much younger, it had moved. After it stopped working Jonathan and some of his fellow workers had developed a ritual. On arrival, they would resolutely press the button for the elevator and the door would hiss open. Once inside, they pressed the button for the top floor. Nothing happened. They pressed and pressed and eventually gave up and climbed the stairs to the office.
This was very hard on the receptionist, Miss Bloomingdale, a hefty lady who complained bitterly every morning about the climb up the stairs. Some people in the office reckoned that Miss Bloomingdale might well have a heart attack brought on by the stress of the climb.
On this particular day, when Jonathon punched the elevator button on the ground floor for the 10,850th working day in a row, nothing happened. It seems that Miss Bloomingdale had actually coaxed the elevator into moving, and she was complaining loudly and bitterly. It was stuck between floors two and three and she was screeching shrilly for someone to get her out. As far as Jonathan was concerned Miss Bloomingdale could remain trapped in the elevator until she expired or he retired, whichever came first.
Miss Bloomingdale ate fruit. Her dietician had told her that eating nothing but fruit until noon was the way to a lean and trim figure. So she ate it relentlessly all through the morning's work. She shovelled it in by the bucket load--apples, oranges, pears, bananas, peaches, plums, and nectarines in season. Strange and exotic fruits that Jonathan failed to identify also disappeared into that ugly maw, to be chewed, slurped and noisily swallowed. This drove Jonathan--normally the quietest, meekest and mildest man alive--to the point where he had visions and fantasies of tying Miss Bloomingdale to her desk, setting fire to the building, and leaving for the day.
Jonathan's fantasies were all consuming. Much bubbled away below the surface of this shy man. Dark thoughts of assassinating Miss Bloomingdale intruded upon Jonathan's consciousness each morning as he attempted to concentrate on the figures he had to prepare for Jones P. junior. Junior was the 23-year-old senior accountant who had finished accountancy school some two and a half years before. He spent the next eighteen months touring the world on an extended holiday granted by his doting father, the formidable Jones P. senior.
Senior was bitterly disappointed that his son and heir had failed to achieve high enough marks to qualify for law school and became an accountant instead. His son had been a hell raiser all through his student days. Junior's marks never reached the level required for law school because he was too busy imbibing alcoholic fluids, getting off his face on various recreational drugs and chasing members of the opposite sex.
So, instead of making him a partner, senior was forced to employ junior as the senior accountant, supervising the five middle-aged and elderly accountants who had worked for the firm for varying lengths of time--anywhere from twenty-five to forty-three years.
When Jonathan had arrived at his office, Johnson and Eastman were already at their desks. He slammed the door shut to try to drown out Miss Bloomingdale's mournful cries to be released from her elevator tomb. Her shrill cries and the insistent sound of the elevator alarm still penetrated the closed door. Jonathan looked at his fellow workers and they shrugged. As he sat at his desk and switched on his computer terminal, the phone began to ring. Jonathan looked up at the others; their eyes briefly strayed from their own terminals and met his. Everyone looked back to their screen. The phone continued to ring in chorus with the fat lady's aria for help.
"What the bloody hell is going on?" Jones P. senior's red face appeared redder than usual as he burst through the door, closely followed by his smirking son and heir Jones P. junior. He moved swiftly to the desk and picked up the phone just as it stopped ringing. "Blast." He hurled the phone back into its cradle and quickly looked at the three accountants. "Will one of you morons kindly explain to me why I come into the office to find phones ringing and Bloomingdale screaming her fat tits off in the elevator?" The three accountants looked back at their boss. "Well, come on." Still no one spoke. "You… Goodfellow. You're the senior man here. Why didn't you sort it out?"
"Well, Mister Jones P. senior, sir, I was here last, and I assumed that one of the others had...."
"You assumed?" Jones P. senior's face became so red his cowed staff expected the top of his head to burst at any second--just to relieve the pressure. "You assumed, but you didn't check. That's the trouble...." The phone once again began to ring. Jones P. senior picked it up. "Yes...? No, I don't want a time-share apartment, now sod off." He slammed down the phone and glared at Jonathan. "That's the trouble with you, Goodfellow. No bloody initiative. That's why you're still a junior accountant after forty-three years with this firm. You're such a bloody loser. …Get on the phone, call the elevator company and tell them to send someone to get that fat bitch out of the lift."
Jones P. senior stormed from the room into his inner sanctum, shouting for his secretary to make the damn coffee and to hurry up about it. Junior winked and grinned at the three accountants as he followed his father.
They did not wink or grin back.
****
The elevator man came and did what elevator men are supposed to do. He got the lift working, and it duly arrived at the top floor. The repairman fainted backwards into the arms of Eastman as Miss Bloomingdale and her farts were released. They brought him around by gently slapping his face, and he left via the stairs, still looking extremely pale.
Miss Bloomingdale was highly offended that it had taken them so long to release her. She staggered to her desk under the weight of eighteen kilograms of fruit and sat, mournfully tucking into half a dozen pears. The accountants went back to their screens and tried to pretend that the fat receptionist was not sitting at her desk eating fruit and farting as she had done on every day of every week they'd worked in that smelly office.
Miss Bloomingdale had another habit that drove Jonathan to desperation. She sneezed a lot, and every time she sneezed she broke wind. Foully, noisily. Her farts were audible even over the top of her most violent sneeze--and many were violent indeed.
Even worse, she suffered from chronic hay fever and influenza. Indeed, her constant colds and influenza were so bad that they would have been fatal to any other member of the human race. It followed that Miss Bloomingdale's sneezes and farts were frequent.
Very frequent.
****
Jonathan glanced at his watch and peered down the tracks. No train in sight. He had time to ponder the vagaries of his life while he waited miserably for the 5: 31 to arrive. Why is it that trains are never on time when you want them to be and are always on time when you want them to be late? He wondered if perhaps Murphy's Law really did exist. Mrs. O'Reilly could possibly answer that one.
The railway station was a bleak and horrible place that afternoon as Jonathan contemplated his existence and morosely waited for the 5: 31 to appear. He thought bitterly about the similarity between Miss Bloomingdale and his housekeeper. There was not much to compare physically, as Mrs. O'Reilly was slim to the point of anorexia. There was just something similar in the attitudes of the two women. Jonathan thought it was the air of long-suffering martyrdom that they both evinced. In the still blackness of many an insomniac night, he pondered this similarity. On the rare mornings when he sat in the dining room for breakfast--instead of eating on the run--he looked at Mrs. O'Reilly and wondered if she might not be Miss. Bloomingdale's slender sister.
Whether breakfast was consumed sitting or running, it was always the same fare--slightly burnt vegemite toast and lukewarm tea. For years he had fought for the right to prepare his own breakfast, but Mrs. O'Reilly simply wouldn't hear of it. The 'getting of breakfast for him' before he went off to work was her job. It was the sort of thing housekeepers did. Weekend mornings, when Jonathan rose in the early hours to beat Mrs. O'Reilly to it, were blissful. He could indulge himself in two of his chief loves, well-made toast and hot tea. On Saturday and Sunday mornings he went to the kitchen at 4 am so he could indulge himself in several slices of toast and at least three cups of tea.
At first Jonathan had risen at 6, but on the second weekend when he came down at that hour he found Mrs. O'Reilly in the kitchen preparing his toast and tea. She was grumbling about a boarder who insisted on getting up early at the weekends. The following weekend he had risen at 5 45. The weekend after that there she was in the kitchen once again. And so it had gone in quarter hour stages thereafter, until Mrs. O'Reilly reluctantly admitted defeat when it got to 4 am. After that she had remained in bed as he indulged himself. Often, while he blissfully sipped his tea, he could hear snores from her bedroom along the hall.
He was glad he lived on the upper floor.
****
Jonathan yawned as he looked down the empty train track, willing the 5 31 to appear. It was late as it so often was. His insomnia had become so bad that he averaged only a few hours' sleep a week. He was tired all the time he was out of bed. Jonathan fell asleep on the train going to work. He slept on the train going home. He fell asleep in the locker room at lunchtime and nodded off in the staff cafeteria at morning tea. He even fell asleep at his desk with a regularity that would have surprised Jones P. senior or Jones P. junior, if indeed either of those gentlemen had known the truth. Had the Jones P.'s realised that the thirty-eight and a half hours for which they were paying were being reduced by about 15 hours per week, Jonathan's employment would certainly have been terminated.
Jonathan had taken to wearing extremely dark sunglasses to work under the guise of suffering from conjunctivitis--"I keep picking it up from the rabbits"--and had become expert at sleeping while sitting bolt upright at his computer terminal. He did this while feigning an attitude of the utmost endeavour while his face was frozen into a mask expressing a fixed and intense interest.
****
Jonathan was jolted out of his reverie as the train came hurtling into the station, streaming water as it came. The train was travelling far too fast and the first two carriages overshot the station. On his way home, Jonathan always travelled in the third carriage from the front. The overshoot meant that all of the people who usually travelled in the first two carriages crowded into the third. Although he was standing nearest to the tracks when the train arrived, Jonathan's meek nature asserted itself and he deferred to everyone else. He was last to board the very crowded third carriage and had to strap hang.
The train was four minutes and eighteen seconds into its journey when Jonathan fell fast asleep standing up. Not even the jolts and bumps as the train went around bends or pulled up and pulled away from stations woke him. The upshot of this was that he did not wake up until someone trod on his foot as they prepared to get off at Blofield station. This was the stop after Blofield West, where Jonathan should have demounted.
Jonathan shook himself half awake. He left the train and began the mile-and-a-quarter walk from Blofield station to Mrs O'Reilly's boarding house. Jonathan was so tired he was more or less walking in his sleep as he plodded along the footpath of the main road alongside the railway line. The glare of headlights from the never-ending stream of cars going past reflected brilliantly from the wet macadam.
At least the rain had eased off and was only falling lightly. He trudged on, shoulders bowed and head down, trying to keep the rain out of his face and off his glasses. It was no use; his glasses gradually became so bespattered that he could no longer see through them. Jonathan had cleaned them at least a dozen times before the sodden state of his handkerchief meant that he could wipe the moisture from them no more. What a quandary. He couldn't see through them with that much water on them, and yet to take them off was equally impossible. He was so short sighted he could see nothing at all without the glasses.
He paused under a lamppost as the steady stream of traffic passed him. What to do? Call a taxi? But how? There was no phone box in sight. Even if he did find one, the chances of it being vandalised were around ninety-eight to one. Jonathan hunched his shoulders, drove his hands deeper into his pockets and walked on.
A house loomed large on the left. Jonathan plucked up his courage and went up the driveway. He found a verandah and pulled his shirttail out from his pants to wipe his glasses clean.
He rang the bell.
Chapter 2: The Golfing Dwarf
The door opened a crack and Jonathan was aware of being observed from within by one unblinking eye that peered out at him from about the level of his hips. He heard scuttling footsteps within and a door slammed.
"Yo?" The voice seemed to belong to the eye, because it came from approximately the same level.
"Excuse me, could I possibly...?"
"We don't got any, man, so blow."
"Blow?"
"Scoot, vamoose, get lost, vanish.... Like, go away!"
"I'm sorry. All I want to do is use your phone."
"Use the phone?"
"Thank you, yes, to call a taxi. You see I got off at the wrong station and...."
A chain rattled and the door swung open to reveal a one-eyed dwarf.
"Come in, man." The good eye swept over Jonathan. "We thought you was busting us. You don't look like a cop."
"Thank you very much." Jonathon stepped inside. "No, I just want to use the phone, if that's alright, thank you."
Jonathan followed the limping, one-eyed dwarf down the hallway toward the living room. "You're limping."
"It's my wooden leg."
"You've got a wooden leg as well as one eye, and you're...?"
"A dwarf.... Yeah."
****
The dwarf did not have a name as other people have names. His mother was a drug-affected, wandering vagrant. Shortly after his birth she wrapped him in an old towel and dropped him in a dumpster expecting him to be compacted by the next rubbish truck that came along and dumped on the city tip. The dwarf's mother had not even known he was a dwarf. She simply didn't think a baby would fit in any way into her lifestyle, so she did what she thought was best for her. She was off her face on a cocktail of illegal and legal substances at the time, and afterwards she could never remember what she had done with the fruit of her loins.
The dwarf was saved because of an alert woman who was riding her pushbike to market--a bag slung over her shoulder to carry the apples and onions she needed. As she passed the dumpster, she heard what she thought was a baby's cry. This was in an alleyway behind the building where the dwarf's mother had given birth on the parquetry floor of the seventh floor toilet. The seventh floor of the building was unoccupied, which meant that nobody used those particular lavatories-- except the dwarf's mother, of course, who used those loos for reasons other than what they had been designed for.
The woman who needed apples and onions found herself carrying a much more precious bundle in her shopping bag. She put the shopping bag, now containing the dwarf in his bloodied towel, onto the handlebars of her bike and, making soothing noises as she went, rode the half a block to the police station.
It proved impossible to find the dwarf's mother, and he was placed in an orphanage. The staff named him Earnest Jamieson. This was a name he angrily rejected when he was old enough to realise the staff had conferred it upon him. The dwarf insisted on being called just that--the dwarf. Later in life, when he had to sign papers or fill in forms, he found that most people--and all courts--only accepted names bestowed by others. He was forced to resort to the proper name, Earnest Jamieson, and not the sobriquet he had given himself.
The dwarf grew to adulthood with a fairly large chip on his shoulder and a feeling that he wanted to get back at the world. The orphanage was next to a golf course, and the dwarf, along with several other boys, found ways to get over the wall and onto the course. They started a lucrative business selling lost golf balls they 'found' in the rough. Some were more 'lost' than others.
In all weather, the boys would take off their shoes and socks and wade into the creek, which meandered around the course, feeling for golf balls with their feet in the ooze and slime on the creek bed. The leeches that gathered on their legs as far up as their thighs were burned off with contraband cigarettes. They bought them with money they earned from their trade... or traded directly with golfers--cigarettes for balls.
The dwarf's love affair with golf came about completely by accident. There was a great deal of banter between the orphan boys and the golfers. Most of it was good-natured, but occasionally there was an edge from some of the nastier members of the golfing fraternity. Much of the nastiness concerned the size and lack of development of the dwarf. Since he already had a set against the world because of the circumstances he found himself in, he tended to bite back.
One fine summer's afternoon, there was a bit of by-play on the second green, a par four with a slight dogleg to the left. The four golfers concerned had played their first shots conservatively and were all placed fairly well where the course diverged to the left. The boys came up from the creek with balls for sale and the banter began.
"Look at the size of this little runt." The portly, red-faced man sniggered. "Reckon he'd make a decent golf tee."
The dwarf had heard that one so many times he couldn't count them. "Yeah, and you make a pretty good dipstick."
"Sharp little bugger, eh?"
"Sharper than you, dipstick."
"Pity you'll never amount to anything much because of your size."
"I can do anything I put my mind to."
"Yeah, right. Bet you're a champion golfer, too?"
"I can play golf."
The other boys looked sharply at the dwarf. They knew this was a lie.
"Yeah, well I bet you couldn't hit a ball onto the green from here, could you?"
"I could so."
"Wanna bet?"
The dwarf, who was the treasurer, counted up the day's takings. "Seven dollars fifty says I can."
"A whole seven fifty? Whooeeee, the stakes are high. Let's see you put your great talent where your mouth is, runt."
The other golfers tried to dissuade their golf partner from taking advantage of the dwarf in this way.
The dwarf's friends also tried to dissuade him. After all, it was their money too. The dwarf promised to reimburse the other boys if he lost. He took the club offered by his antagonist.
The red-faced man dropped a ball onto the fairway. "There you go." He had a nasty grin. "Do your worst."
The club was far too big. The dwarf took some time to get the feel of it and find where he could grip it to get a decent swing at the ball. He heard the golfer and his friends begin to chuckle as they watched his efforts. Finally, the dwarf was satisfied that he had done as much as he could to master a decent grip. He addressed the ball and adjusted his stance the way he had seen golfers do a million times. Then he hit a beautiful, soaring shot that lobbed on the green and rolled and rolled and rolled--into the hole.
"Aw, no!" The golfer shook his head. "No, that was a fluke."
"No fluke, mister. Pay up."
"You could never do that again in a million years."
"I could get on the green from here every time."
"Bullshit." The golfer was really annoyed now, and his face was getting redder.
"I could."
"Prove it."
"Double or nothing?"
"You're on."
The dwarf took another ball, adjusted his grip and stance once more and hit a second shot exactly the same as the first. The only difference was that the ball rebounded from the staff of the marker in the hole and finished up less than a foot from it. "Blast. They usually go in from here."
The man's face was by now scarlet. He looked likely to explode, and the dwarf--sensing great violence in the red-faced man--dropped the club and stepped back away from him.
"Fifteen bucks, mate." The dwarf's voice betrayed no nervousness.
One of the red-faced man's golfing partners smirked at him. "You lost fair and square, pay up." His other partners were also grinning. Golf is a competitive game.
"Oh, I'll pay alright. Never welched on a bet in my life." He pulled a twenty from his wallet and dropped it at the dwarf's feet. "Keep the change, Shorty. Anyone who plays those sorts of shots under pressure deserves a reward."
Jones P. senior and his three golfing partners played on, although Jones P. was rattled and played poorly for the rest of the round. He never forgot his encounter with the dwarf, for Jones P. senior was not a man who liked to be bested.
After their return over the wall into the orphanage, the boys counted and divided their spoils. Summer was always their busiest time, for in this season the course was always heavily booked. On that particular day, they made a record haul because the dwarf included his winnings in the take, even though the other boys had risked nothing.
That was the start of the dwarf's love affair with the great and ancient game of golf. He saved his money and convinced a member of the orphanage staff to buy him a second-hand driver, a putter, a five iron and a wedge. He practiced constantly on the course when he thought nobody was looking. He got caught and warned off several times, but the staff members at the golf club were intrigued with this little chap who played with such determination--and who played so well.
Later, in adulthood, the dwarf was to become a member of another golf club where he won the club championship several times. He had to play with specially made cut-down clubs. The dwarf did extraordinarily well at golf and at a number of other things until the drugs finally got hold of him. As he became more and more under the influence of the green weed his game suffered... until he finally gave it up altogether. Like many other things in his weed-induced torpor, it was all too much trouble.
He drifted in and out of jobs for a while and then onto the dole permanently as he became so hooked on marijuana he became unemployable. It was a pity. Despite the handicap of his size, and the fact that he lost an eye and a leg in an accident involving an exploding illegal whisky still before he left the orphanage, he had shown tremendous potential in many things.
Perhaps he had been doomed from the very start. When the baby dwarf was rescued by the good onion and apple-needing Samaritan, the children's hospital whence he was immediately transferred became aware of something more serious than his stature. The baby was addicted to heroin. Nurses everywhere who come into contact with drug-addicted babies will tell you that there is nothing more pathetic in this world. They weaned the dwarf off his addiction to heroin, but who can say whether this earliest of experiences was responsible for his own later craving for marijuana, or whether it was not?
Whatever the cause, eventually the dwarf was rolling his first joint before breakfast, if he had any food for breakfast, and that is never good news for anyone long or short.
****
Jonathan and the dwarf reached the living room door and paused while the dwarf negotiated with the people inside. They had barricaded themselves in by placing items of furniture against the door. After much shuffling, pushing and grunting, the door swung open to reveal three people. The dwarf introduced them. "This is Cowley." He indicated a young woman with no ears and a hump on her back. "And this is Sampson."
A huge, muscular, black youth with his nose missing--and a misshapen hole where the mouth should have been--waved a hand at Jonathan.
"I'm old Crone, old Crone." The speaker, an older woman, stood off to the side. She had two wooden legs, and supported herself on crutches.
"Hello." Jonathan was abashed. Never before in his sheltered life had he encountered people with handicaps of any kind. He had always lived in a cloistered, comfortable world where everyone had legs and ears and noses and mouths, and where no one only came up to your waist. "Do you mind terribly if I use your phone?"
"Haven't got one. Haven't got one." Old Crone stumped over on her crutches and tried to push him back into the hallway. "Haven't got one. Haven't got one." She bullied Jonathan against the wall. The ringing of the telephone stopped her. Cowley went over to a desk against the wall, opened a drawer and answered it.
"That's what you get for telling lies," snapped the dwarf.
"Lies, pies. We don't want him in here. He's a cop, he's a cop."
"I'm not a cop. I fell asleep on the train and had to walk home. It's raining, and I want a taxi."
"He's a cop or a private D, and he's here either to do a bust or evict us, evict us."
"He just wants the phone, Crone. Get off his back."
"Back, Shmack. He smells of cop, smells of cop."
"Someone's been reading you detective stories again, haven't they?"
"Shut up, Shorty. What would you know, you know?"
"Don't call me Shorty, Stumpy."
"Hey, ease off... both of you." Sampson manoeuvred between the increasingly agitated dwarf and Old Crone.
While Crone was distracted, Jonathon slid away and escaped the crutches pinning him against the wall. "I'll just go at this stage." The rain seemed preferable to remaining in this lunatic asylum.
"No, don't go." Jonathan looked over to the desk where Cowley had finished her phone call. She held a large handgun. Cowley's finger curled around the trigger and she aimed the gun at Jonathan's stomach. "That was another call for a drug deal, and we need to know if it's just coincidence he turns up at the same time. Move away from the others into the centre of the room, hands up and stand with your legs wide apart.... Frisk him Sampson."
"Aw, come off it." Sampson blushed.
"Just do it."
"You reckon I've been reading detective stories, stories," muttered Old Crone.
Sampson ran his hands quickly over Jonathan's body. "Nothing."
Cowley relaxed slightly. "Okay... name, address and occupation?"
"Jonathan Goodfellow, 16 Schmidt Street, Blofield West. I'm an accountant."
"Empty out your pockets."
Jonathan took out his keys, handkerchief and wallet.
"Is that all?"
He nodded as the dwarf examined the contents of the wallet.
"What's in the briefcase?"
"Nothing." Jonathan opened his briefcase
Sampson extracted the paper bag that lay inside. He opened it. "A sandwich?"
"Cheese and pickle actually. Mrs. O'Reilly insists on making me two for lunch, and I only ever eat one."
"Do you mind...?" Jonathan shrugged. Sampson and the dwarf each began to eat half of the sandwich.
"I still say he's a cop, cop."
"His driver's licence says he's who he says he is." The dwarf's words were muffled by a mouthful of cheese and pickle.
"Could be his cover." Cowley sounded less certain.
"What if it is? What are you planning to do? Shoot him and bury him in the yard?" Sampson looked in the briefcase again, hoping for more food.
The gun in Cowley's hand still pointed at Jonathan. For one of the few times in his life, he began to get angry. "Look, I don't know what any of this is about. I'm just an ordinary man on my way home from work. I fell asleep on the train and went past my station. I started to walk home in the rain and decided to catch a cab. I came in here hoping to borrow a telephone, and I get mixed up in I don't know what. I know nothing about the police, detectives, drugs... or any of the rest of it. So if you don't mind, I'll pocket my possessions, pick up my brief case and make myself scarce. If you want to shoot me on the way out, go ahead." He turned to Sampson. "And I trust you enjoyed my sandwich, thank you." Jonathan snapped his briefcase closed. He snatched his wallet, handkerchief and keys from the dwarf. "Thank you. Thank you very much." He stormed from the room.
He re-entered the room at approximately sixty miles an hour--head first and horizontal--as a large explosion blew in the door of the house. Jonathan picked himself up and looked around in a daze. The telephone was ringing. Everyone was in a state of shock. He heard footsteps running down the hallway towards the sitting room and shook his head to clear the ringing from his ears. Sampson slammed the door shut and he and the dwarf piled furniture against it.
The phone rang on.
A sledgehammer slammed against the door, and there was a curse from outside. A voice called urgently. "Open the door, you turds, or I'll smash it down." Several heavy blows rained on the door. The five people in the sitting room cowered against the walls and watched as the wooden door began to splinter and give way.
"Piss off, or I'll shoot you." Cowley cocked the hand gun.
"You ain't got no gun, lady."
"I'm no lady." Cowley fired through the door, and the gun leapt from her hand.
Jonathan deftly caught it and fired two more shots through the door before he even thought about what he was doing. Jonathan had never handled a gun before--let alone fired one.
There were more curses from outside the door before a fusillade of return fire smashed through it, narrowly missing Jonathan and Cowley. They both dived to the floor. The sound of sirens began in the distance, and the people in the hallway beat a hasty retreat. There was sudden silence inside the house.
As they listened, the sirens outside became progressively louder. They heard a high-powered car start and roar away.
Jonathan stood up. "What was that all about?"
The dwarf leapt up behind him and delivered a knockout blow with a shortened number five iron, exploding Jonathan's world into a billion bright stars.
They spun around then faded into a void as Jonathan was embraced by darkness.
Chapter 3: Jonathan goes to Heaven
Jonathan awoke in heaven. Or at least he assumed it was heaven. A bearded gentleman in psychedelic, multi-coloured, long flowing robes--wearing cool-looking curved shades and several rows of beads--sat looking at him. Another man with short hair, wearing a smart grey suit with an old-school striped tie, was also staring with fixed intent at his person.
They were in a strange gazebo-like structure with a pointed, thatched roof. There were walls with a door, but the windows--which took up roughly half of the surface area of the walls--were without glass. It was odd, because the gazebo was fully furnished and had a carpeted floor.
I guess they don't get much rain here.
Jonathan looked through one of the glass-less windows. Woolly white clouds drifted past. He saw people and animals on the clouds, singly and in groups. Some were playing harps, and others were singing hymns. A few were chanting and intoning. A bevy of brothers and nuns drifted past and called out 'hallelujah' when they saw the man in the psychedelic robes. While they were distracted, they almost collided with some Buddhist monks who laughed as they pushed the Catholic cloud away.
The man in the suit looked away from Jonathan and waved to them as they passed.
The other man continued to stare at him with fixed concentration.
It was pleasantly warm, and Jonathan could hear the gentle drone of bees over the other sounds. A fluffy cloud with several rabbits and a pair of kangaroos floated past quite close to the gazebo. They were not playing harps. A lion and a sheep floated by, licking one another. Jonathan was aware of a feeling of wellbeing, of peace and harmony.
The man in the caftan and beads coughed in that special way people cough when they want your attention. "Well, hey now, here you be."
"Uh, yes, thank you. I guess you must be God, and I must be dead."
"Sort of." God sounded testy. "Like, you ain't necessarily dead, man. It could be just another trip… you dig?"
"No. Not really." Jonathan had no idea what this strange hippie character was talking about.
"Whether you be dead or not depends on the result of this interview."
"You mean I might get to go back?"
God made a sign and a large screen in the corner lit up.
Jonathan could see himself on the screen. He was lying on a battered, old couch in the room he had just left. A burly policewoman was performing external heart massage while a policeman gave him mouth to mouth.
"See what those cats down there are doing? It's a happening thang, man. I got the option of letting them succeed or not succeed--depending upon what you decide. You're the man. You dig?"
"Decide about what?" Jonathan looked around him. The room was tidy and had the look of a third-rate hotel about it.
The impeccably dressed man in the suit spoke. "We were going to clean up, but we weren't exactly sure when you were coming." He began to dust.
Jonathan was confused. The room looked perfectly tidy to him.
"Peter, be cool, man. Let it all hang out. I mean, what is buggin' ya." God looked even more annoyed.
"Well, it's not nice. I didn't vacuum or anything."
God was becoming more irritated by the moment. He turned back to Jonathan. "Pay no attention to him. That's one heavy dude. He's always fussing around."
Peter became petulant. "Well, how would you feel if you were just dead and arrived to find a mess like this?" He was using a cleaning cloth on a table.
"Mellow out. This Goodfellow cat did not come here to check on the state of your housekeeping." He turned and stared intently at Jonathan. "Did you?"
"Well, no, but I know what he means. I always feel terrible when people turn up unannounced and my room is a mess."
"You need to chill out too, man. Otherwise, I'm not sure I'll have ya here if you do decide to stay dead. Hey, it's bad enough living with one neurotic compulsive housekeeper without allowing another one in. Have you any idea what it's like to spend eternity with a nitpicker who has to vacuum the carpets three times a day? ...And who whips the saucer out from under your cup to wash it while you are still having a cup of tea?"
Jonathan thought of his occasionally untidy room. "I'm sure I'm not that bad...."
"Bad? Who said it's bad," snapped Peter, as he ran a carpet sweeper over the floor. "Just because he doesn't care if the place looks like hell.... If it weren't for me, nothing would ever get cleaned up around here. His Majesty is always so busy--off onto deep philosophical trains of thought--that he hasn't got time to do the dishes, vacuum, make the beds or anything else. Everyone up here is so lazy--floating around on clouds all day, playing those damned harps--they just leave it all to me."
God snorted. "Man, I could have chosen the bagpipes."
"You were in your pre-hippie days when you made the choice. Now you'd no doubt choose the electric guitar."
"You can dress like this and still love classical music, man. You know I do." God's tone was testy. "We haven't time for these eternal arguments. We only have a few minutes to decide whether or not we send this cat back, or whether we send him elsewhere."
Peter sulkily washed the dishes.
"You mean if you do decide not to send me back, I'm not certain to stay here?"
"Hey, I haven't let any cats come up here to groove for a couple of centuries."
"Everyone goes to hell?"
"Some do. Some we send elsewhere."
"Where is 'elsewhere'?"
"That's not for you to know, man." God sighed and looked tired, which was understandable since He was as old as time. "I gave the human race a miss yonks ago. All that strife! Wars, induced famines... bloodshed everywhere."
"Isn't that down to you?"
God's roar echoed throughout the room, deafening Jonathan. He lost the jive talk when he was angry. "What do you think I am, omnipotent or something?" He ignored Peter sniggering in the background.
Peter was so highly amused he dropped one of the plates he was washing. Fortunately it didn't break.
God glared at Jonathan. "Do you think I'm responsible for everything that goes wrong down there in your petty little world? Most of it has nothing to do with me."
Jonathan desperately tried to remember what little theology he had learned as a young man. It was a long time since he had been inside a church. "I thought you were...."
"Forget what you thought. Nothing is as it seems, and the teaching down there is a load of horse manure. I'm different things to different people. Call me what you will. I'm one and the same. Jehovah, God, Allah... you name it. I'm the One. The Godhead. The supposedly all-powerful One. But I gave the lot of you a miss centuries ago. You could twist anything to suit your stupid worldly political ends. You all act like a bunch of lawyers. And the stories you tell, and the rewritings of the great books? No, don't get me started. I haven't got time right now."
"He could go on for eons." Peter was serious.
God walked to a cupboard, opened the door, and with his back to Jonathan, took something out. When He turned, He held a large, heavy, black key in both hands. "Do you know what this is?"
"A key."
"Did you practice to become stupid, or did it come naturally? Of course it's a key, but what do you suppose the key does…? Not a clue, eh? It's the key with which I wound up the world all those centuries ago to start it. The world is winding down and will stop if I don't insert this key and wind it up again very soon." God glared at Jonathan. "I won't, unless things change radically down there. Do you understand?"
Jonathan shifted uncomfortably on his chair under the intensity of God's brown-eyed gaze. "Yes, I understand."
"If it were up to you, would you insert the key and wind it…? Or would you let it stop?"
"Well, gosh, I don't know. I mean there are some very lovely things about the world."
"Name three."
"Well there's the... err... the...."
"Hard, isn't it?"
"Well, there's hot tea and well made toast. There are my bunnies, who are beautiful, gentle, little creatures. I wouldn't want to see them die because you didn't rewind the world."
"That's pretty weak, and it's only two."
Jonathan thought hard. "There's all the lovely children in the world. I wouldn't want to see them get hurt."
"Have you ever had children?"
"No."
"Do you know any teenagers?"
"No."
"You're grasping at straws. But anyway, you do seem to think your world is worth saving--for whatever reasons. Is that a fair summary of your position?"
"Well, yes."
God fixed Jonathan with his penetrating stare and flicked his hair back out of his eyes. "Do you want to go back?"
"Well, I don't know. I wasn't having much of a time of it, and if I'm dead, I might as well remain dead. I mean, if I go back, I've only got to go and die all over again sometime, and the next one might be painful."
"Ah ha! The world isn't so great that you particularly want to go back there. What about your Leporidae, hey?"
Jonathan was God's equal when it came to rabbit terminology. "Mrs. O'Reilly will look after them. She's a hard woman, and although she pretends not to, she really likes the bunnies."
God frowned. "In a nutshell, you'd rather not go back because your next death might be painful?"
"That's it."
"Don't be such a wimp. You only get one life... and anyway, who says it's going to be such a bed of roses up here?"
"What will it be like? Can I see the alternative place you might send me to?"
"No you can't.... Here's the deal. I've decided to give the human race one more chance, and I need a messenger to try to straighten things out down there." God looked down at his beads as he fiddled with them, then looked back to Jonathan. "Want the job?"
"I don't know. What do I have to do?"
"Go back down to Earth and carry my message. I'll give you all the help I can, and so will Pete. You will go down and become a... a.... What's the word Peter?"
"A Messiah." Peter began to clean out the fridge.
"That's it. A Messiah."
"Gee, I don't know. How do you be a Messiah?"
"Hey, it's a snap, man. You just need to pick up a few disciples, and the rest takes care of itself. Mass hysteria is a wonderful thing."
"I think maybe you've picked the wrong man. I don't have the charisma."
"I picked you for the very good reason that you're a meek and mild individual. Heck, you're one of the few who would've inherited the Earth if I hadn't decided to give the lot of you a miss."
"I don't know. What a responsibility!"
"Take the job or go to hell."
"If you put it that way, I'll take the job. What do I have to...?"
The scene quickly dissolved to blackness in front of Jonathan's eyes. He came to on Earth in darkness--with something coarse pressing against his face. He listened as voices gradually seeped into his consciousness.
"Pity we couldn't save him. He might have been able to tell us what was going on around here." It was a man's voice, and he sounded tired and irritable.
A female answered. "There were other people here, but where did they go?"
"They got out before we arrived.... Where the blazes is that ambulance to take away the stiff."
Cautiously, Jonathan lifted the blanket from his face and peered out. The policeman and woman stood in the doorway to the kitchen. Jonathan slowly stood up. Neither of them noticed him, so he walked out of the lounge and up the hallway. Outside, an ambulance with its lights flashing was pulling to a stop. He saw a number of policemen, detectives and reporters standing in front of the house. All were looking at the ambulance as Jonathan came through the smashed door, and no one paid any attention to him.
He bumped into a female reporter in the half darkness. He saw her stumble and caught her before she fell. "Oh, sorry... sorry. Thank you." She did not reply. He walked swiftly down the street and around the corner.
Miraculously, a cab appeared. Jonathan hailed it and went home.
It had been a big evening.
Chapter 4: The Devil Makes Contact
Slowly, he folded the magazine and placed it carefully on his clean and clear desk. A slight breeze brought the scent of freshly cut grass through the window. Outside the window was a lush and beautiful golf course. The verdant green of the fairways shimmered in the sunlight, and the sky above was eggshell blue. His whole body twitched as he longed for the feel of a number one wood between his hands. In his imagination, he was on the first tee hitting a soaring drive straight down the fairway.
Soon, very soon. There is work to do first. I must be disciplined.
He pursed his lips and steepled his hands with the fingertips just under his nose. A smell of brimstone and rotten meat permeated the air around him. He came to a decision, picked up the red scrambler phone and punched a nine-digit number. Idly, he flipped over the pages of a magazine. It was the previous month's World Bar Association Newsletter.
When a familiar voice answered, he uttered five words. "It's starting. Goodfellow. Plan A." And he hung up.
In Adelaide, Jones P. Senior put down the phone. He stood by the desk in his study, thinking deeply. Slowly, smoke began to pour from his nostrils. His small, well-shaped ears grew and became pointed. A long tail with a spike on it grew through his suit and swished around. Black fur sprouted all over his body and his eyes became red coals. He laughed an unearthly, eerie, horrible laugh.
"Not Goodfellow of all people!"
Senior turned on his computer and connected to the Internet, entered his e-mail address book and brought up the list marked 'lawyers'.
****
"He is an evil little boy."
That's how Jones P. senior's headmaster described him the day his parents came to remove him from his exclusive boarding school. He had only lasted nine months before being expelled as undesirable. Some people are born bad, and others have badness thrust upon them. Jones P. senior was born that way.
Of course he wasn't called 'senior' in those days--there being no junior on the horizon for a number of years. Most of the boys at school called him 'Percival', which was a good idea because that was his name. His circle of intimates--some of whom were expelled the same day as Jones P.--called him 'Perce'. After Jones P. junior was born, he insisted on being addressed as Jones P. senior, and that his son should be called Jones P. junior.
Jones P. senior was born into a long line of lawyers, some more successful than others. His father had been a contracts lawyer and made his pile in the nineteen forties and fifties in the lush economic conditions of the 'long boom', the lengthy period of fantastic economic growth that followed World War II. He had conveniently died in the early 1960s--shortly before the boom ended--leaving his fortune to his only son.
The will contained a proviso that Jones P. look after his mother for the rest of her life. Jones P. promptly swindled the old lady's house out from under her and put her in a nursing home to get rid of her. She was nowhere near old or infirm enough to be in a nursing home--being a hale and hearty sixty when she went in. She was so healthy the home balked, but Jones P. greased a few palms and had her admitted--whereupon she promptly lived to the ripe old age of ninety-four, just to spite him.
She knew that as long as she lived, he would have to pay for her upkeep.
Jones P. could have been a force for good, and that is what he should have been. From the very beginning, he had every advantage. Born into a wealthy family, he had the best of everything. The best schools and tutors for his weak spots. A well-stocked library at home. Parents who cared about his school grades. A family that moved in the best circles. They counted prime ministers, premiers, sports stars and artists as their friends.
Jones P. found the occult when he first went to boarding school. The Black Circle Club was the most secret society in the school, and he was initiated into it very soon after he arrived.
This came about after the president of the club observed him pulling the wings off flies and drowning them in his ink well--while stabbing them with the nib of his pen. "A very likely candidate," the president told the other members of the society at their next meeting. They sounded out Jones P. and quickly made him a member.
It was all fairly innocent stuff. At the end of the school property--which included many acres of virgin bush--there was a large cave hidden in underbrush. This was the Black Circle Club's headquarters where initiation rites were carried out--all of which were nasty and carnal and shall not be mentioned here.
One of the main functions of the club was to hold séances. The Ouija board was constantly in use in the dark and spooky candlelit cave. Before Jones P. came along, it was mostly fun. People pushed the glass around the board with their fingers while pretending not to. Once Jones P. arrived, the glass took off, and a number of incidents took place in the cave that frightened many years' growth out of several of the participants.
Apparitions appeared. People and objects levitated. Weird, hollow laughter echoed throughout the cave. The glass moved across the board with a manic will of its own, and many times it leapt from the board and either smashed against a wall or gave one of the participants a nasty bruise. The glass began to direct their activities. Although Jones P. was a first-year, his influence was so strong that he was quickly made leader of the society. He got much better results than anyone else, and very soon the entire club went from being boys experimenting with something dark to dedicated Satanists practicing the black arts.
Several times each month, all members of the society went into a trance-like state from which they did not emerge for several hours.
None of them ever remembered what they experienced while in the trance. They did not know that the Devil, being the master hypnotist he is, was busily instructing their subconscious minds. One of the things they were to reflect on often in later years, was that the boys in the cave who belonged to the Black Circle Club all went on to study law. They also formed the nucleus of The Legal Rulers Society. All believed passionately in the forces of darkness and the inevitability of those forces conquering the world and ruling in its name. Every one of them intended to be there when the conquest took place and to be in a position of power after it had been completed.
The end for the club came suddenly on one summer's Sunday, when the boys were all under the spell of the longest trance of all. On that fateful Sunday afternoon, they were unconscious for so long none of them returned to the school in time for prayers before dinner. They were discovered missing at four forty-five pm when the roll was called at church parade. A wimpy little boy named Slattery gave the game away by having a quiet word in the sports' master's ear straight after the parade. Slattery knew the whereabouts of the cave, because he had been there once to be initiated into the secret society. He had fled rather than face the bestial initiation rites.
Slattery had been bullied unmercifully from then on and threatened with death if he ever divulged the location of the cave. Although he lacked courage, Slattery overcame his fear in the belief that the circumstances were so serious that all members of the Black Circle Club would be expelled. After all, he reasoned, a church school would want to get a bunch of practicing Satanists from its midst as quickly as possible.
The sports master led a raid on the cave and took with him several of the house masters and three of the senior prefects. What they found in the cave both disgusted and frightened them, and after the finish of the inquiry none of them ever spoke of it again.
All members of the society were expelled, and the school managed to hush the matter up. In Australia, all boys coming from the best private schools are destined to be leaders of commerce, industry and politics.
The preparatory and junior school tie is far more important than the democratised university tie. What one wears around one's neck can determine one's future.
None of the parents of the boys wanted adverse publicity for their sons.
His parents sent Jones P. to another private school--a non-boarding school this time, as they had decided they needed to keep an eye on him after his brush with the forces of darkness. Not that they took the matter seriously, considering it to have been mere schoolboy pranks. It would have shattered their complacency if they had seen what the sports master and the rest of his raiding party saw. As they did not, they couldn't bear too much blame for how Jones P. turned out. Boys will be boys, and they will get into scrapes, they reasoned.
Jones P. and his expelled friends still kept in contact because they lived in the same city. They managed to form a new Black Circle Club--unknown to their parents or friends. This they kept as a very exclusive organisation. New members were thoroughly vetted before being allowed to join. As many of them were now at different schools, they met chiefly on weekends and during the school holidays. They refined and perfected their craft, and many were the weird and wonderful experiences they shared as a coven.
Jones P.'s most significant satanic experience came about on his own, and not with any member of the Black Circle Club. He was alone in the house, his parents being overseas on a brief holiday, and the housekeeper having been given the night off. Jones P. went to bed early on this particular night after consuming three quarters of a flagon of his father's best wine. He awoke in the early hours of the morning with an incredibly bright apparition sitting on his bed--shrieking at him.