The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends Read online

  I glanced down at the book. ‘It is a children's book,’ I said. ‘A work of fiction. It is about us, but we are foolish.’

  ‘Foolish and fictional,’ said Mr Bell.

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘I only had time for a quick perusal of the history books the Atlantis held upon its shelves. What I found within them was nothing less than alarming. You and I, my little friend, came to this benighted time from one of Victorian wonder, where the British Empire owned spaceships, where electric vehicles moved through the streets of London, their power drawn from the Tesla towers which offered the wireless transmission of electrical energy to an age of Babbage computers and great things yet to be.’

  ‘I recall it all,’ said I. ‘In fact, it would appear that we were more advanced in the sciences back then than those folk here and now.’

  ‘So it might appear,’ said Mr Bell. ‘But you see, Darwin, in this here and now, none of those things ever happened. Mr Babbage did not exhibit his difference engine at the Great Exhibition and find royal patronage. Mr Tesla did not effect the wireless transmission of electricity. And in eighteen eighty-five, the Martians did not attack England.’

  ‘They did not?’ I said. ‘So where did they attack? Surely not America?’

  ‘Not anywhere,’ said Mr Bell, ‘because there never were any Martians. Martians do not exist. They never did.’

  ‘Of course they existed,’ I said in protest. ‘If they never existed, how could we have travelled through time in a Martian spaceship?’

  ‘Mr Ernest Rutherford did win a Nobel Prize,’ said Cameron Bell, ‘but not for mastering time travel. There never ever was any such thing as a time machine, except in the fictional work of H. G. Wells.’

  ‘But we are here,’ I said. ‘We are alive and real. You are Mr Bell, the greatest detective of our age, and I am Darwin, the educated ape.’

  ‘Characters in a children's book and nothing more, it so appears.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. We are real, I know we are real.’

  ‘Are we?’ asked Mr Bell.

  ‘Yes, we are. Of course we are.’

  Mr Bell sighed terribly and I felt the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

  We sat in silence and gazed into the distance.

  An aeroplane passed overhead, its engine coughing fearfully. A steam train poop-pooped in the distance.

  The smell of smoke was on the wind.

  And all, it appeared, was lost.

  My friend sat and thoughtfully nodded his head. His face expressed great inner turmoil, as might reasonably have been expected. I offered him my opinion that all was well and truly lost.

  Mr Bell cocked his head on one side. ‘Not all,’ he said to me.

  ‘You have arrived at a plan that will lead to a satisfactory conclusion?’

  ‘Not as such.’

  ‘But you remain quietly confident?’

  Mr Bell bobbed his head from side to side.

  ‘We are doomed,’ I said in a voice of gloom. ‘We are done for, are we not?’

  ‘We are not!’ said Mr Bell, and with that he jumped to his feet. ‘Do you fancy a day at the seaside, Darwin?’ he asked.

  ‘Not particularly,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we are going to Hastings.’

  I shook my head and asked why once more.

  ‘To see an old friend,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘To see a very old friend.’

  14

  etherwood was a run-down boarding house. It was a very long walk from the station. There had been a taxi available, but Mr Bell decided to keep his watch chain.

  We trudged up a gravelly drive to the late-Victorian eyesore that was Netherwood. Paint peeled from crumbling timberwork and brown-paper tape had been pasted in crosses over the windowpanes.

  Mr Bell had decided not to tell me who we were visiting so that it would be a nice surprise. He tugged upon a bell-pull which came away in his hand, but a distant bell succeeded in drawing the attention of a ragged-looking fellow who smelled very strongly of cheese.

  ‘A toff and a monkey,’ this fellow said, looking us up and down. ‘It takes all sorts, I suppose.’

  Mr Bell presented his card. ‘My name is Cameron Bell,’ said he, ‘and I have come to visit one of your lodgers – Mr Aleister Crowley.’

  The ragged individual took my friend's card and slammed the front door shut upon us. I gaped up in horror at Cameron Bell. In horror, because I knew of Aleister Crowley.

  ‘That man is a monster,’ I said. ‘A black magician. The papers were full of his magical shenanigans. He styled himself the Beast, six-six-six. They say that he sacrificed children.’

  Mr Bell laughed somewhat at this. ‘His reputation for wickedness far surpasses the facts in his case. But he was a wicked fellow.’

  ‘I do not wish him to put a curse upon me,’ I said.

  ‘He will not curse you, Darwin,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Just pay attention to what is said and act accordingly.’

  I shrugged my shoulders and shook my head. ‘I am not happy,’ said I.

  ‘Nor me. But we must learn what we can. I trust it will all make sense when it is explained. Crowley and I were students together at Oxford, you know.’

  ‘I did not,’ I said. ‘And I care not for it.’ And with that I folded my arms.

  The ragged man once more swung wide the door. ‘The master will see you now,’ he said.

  He led us along a grimy hall and up a bare-boarded staircase. An unpleasing miasma stifled the air and Mr Bell made coughings.

  ‘His brand of tobacco remains the same,’ he muttered as he coughed. ‘Perique soaked in rum with a sprinkling of black Moroccan.’

  A grubby door was knocked upon, was softly answered, and we were ushered into the bedroom of the Beast himself.

  It looked to me the very place for an ancient magician to lurk. An alchemist's den, piled high with books, strange paintings upon its walls. The smell was rank, the air befogged, and a frail figure sat in a candle's gleam.

  He was wrapped in an antique dressing gown, a frayed velvet smoking cap perched on his old yellow head. I recalled the press photographs of the sprightly, athletic young Crowley, a scaler of mountains, a man about town, a rubber of shoulders with the upper-class set. Here was a frail and broken parody. I almost felt sympathy.

  ‘Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,’ quoth the elderly mage, in a wheezing tone that spoke of damaged lungs. ‘Is that my old chum Bell I see before me?’

  Mr Bell approached the shrunken figure. He extended his hand and a significant handshake was exchanged.

  ‘Crowley,’ said my friend. ‘The Logos of the Aeon. You would appear to have fallen upon hard times. Have you so far failed to change base metal to gold?’

  Aleister Crowley gave a hideous cough, then dabbed at his mouth with a most unsavoury hankie. ‘I am expecting a cheque from America. L. Ron Hubbard, my magical son, will shortly be making a very big name for himself.’

  ‘Always tomorrow.’ Mr Bell seated himself on a Persian pouffe.

  ‘And who is this?’ asked Crowley, spying me. ‘Your familiar, is it, Bell?’

  ‘His name is Darwin,’ said my friend. ‘My travelling companion.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed.’ The magician's face was lined with age. A few sprouting hairs formed a half-hearted goatee and his fingertips were nicotine-hued. All in all, he was most unsavoury.

  ‘Tell me,’ whispered Crowley. ‘Tell me how it is done.’

  Mr Bell shook hard his head. ‘Whatever can you mean?’

  A withered hand stretched out to the great detective. ‘You found it,’ said the ancient. ‘The Aqua Vitae – the Elixir of Life. You found it. How did you find it?’

  Mr Bell shook his head once more. ‘It is not what you think,’ said he.

  ‘But we were at Oxford together. I recall it well.’

  ‘As do I,’ said Mr Bell, ‘and more besides. Recall our bootboy, Crowley?’

  ‘Arthur Knapton,’ said Alei
ster Crowley. ‘What a young scamp was he.’

  Arthur Knapton! I gazed from Mr Bell to Aleister Crowley.

  ‘What became of Knapton?’ asked Mr Bell.

  ‘Gone to Hell, I hope!’ cried the Logos of the Aeon, then sank back in his chair in a fit of coughing.

  ‘Some bad blood between you, then?’ Mr Bell discovered what appeared to be a glass half-filled with water upon a nearby Turkish table. He offered this to our raddled host who tossed it back with some vigour.

  ‘Just tell me,’ he croaked. ‘What have you to lose? Just tell me how it is done.’

  ‘If you answer my questions,’ said Mr Bell, ‘I will answer yours. Is that a fair exchange, in your opinion?’

  Aleister Crowley made grumbling sounds but nodded his old yellow head.

  ‘I would ask you a question,’ said Mr Bell, ‘because I believe that you might know the answer.’

  ‘I know the answers to most, if not all, of the questions.’

  ‘Quite so. Then tell me, Crowley – what became of the past?’

  Aleister Crowley cackled somewhat. ‘That is a very strange question.’

  ‘But you have been asked far stranger.’

  ‘Ha!’ cried Crowley. ‘Aha!’ And his eyes grew wide as he stared at Mr Bell. ‘You wore that very suit the last time I saw you – at the Electric Alhambra in the summer of eighteen ninety-nine. You have not aged a day, it would appear, but neither has your suit.’

  ‘It is said,’ said Mr Bell, ‘that a well-tailored suit will see out its wearer.’

  ‘No! No! No! He did it!’ There was a look of enlightenment now on the face of the elderly fellow. ‘That little swine did it. He stole my papers. He worked the spell. So you and he were in it together – it all makes sense to me now.’

  Mr Bell looked long and hard at Aleister Crowley. ‘Knapton,’ he said. ‘You speak of Arthur Knapton.’

  ‘Of course, Knapton – don't pretend you are ignorant of this matter. He stole my magical stele. The engraved tablet of Akhenaten. The Stele of Revealing.’

  ‘That one might travel—’

  ‘Through time! You know this because you have done it.’ Aleister Crowley clutched at his heart, and his breath came with terrible sounds.

  Mr Bell did not appear too concerned regarding the old man's state. He cupped his chin in the palm of his hand and made a thoughtful face. ‘So it is magic,’ said he. ‘Magic is the motive force for Mr Knapton's travellings.’

  At length, Mr Crowley gathered his breath and his wits. ‘Teach me the words, my old friend,’ he said in a greasy tone. ‘Let me hear the incantation. I am old and all but gone – what possible harm could it do?’

  ‘All in good time,’ said my friend. ‘But first I need answers to my questions. What became of the past? What became of our past? What of Tesla towers, of ray guns and of spaceships?’

  ‘Ray guns?’ Aleister Crowley laughed.

  Mr Bell patted his pockets in search of his.

  But he did not have it and so he ceased his pattings. ‘You remember well enough,’ said he. ‘I once shot you in the foot with mine at the Crystal Palace.’

  This was news to me, but as I had taken an instant dislike to the repugnant Mr Crowley, I was quite tickled to think that Mr Bell had once shot him in the foot.

  ‘Such a long time ago,’ said Crowley. ‘Such a long time ago.’

  ‘And time has addled your brain,’ said Cameron Bell.

  The old man's evil eyes were once more fixed upon my friend. ‘Aha!’ he cried. ‘I see more. He has tricked you, too, and you are trapped here. Now, tell me I am wrong.’

  ‘You are not altogether wrong,’ Mr Bell confessed. ‘It is because of Knapton that I am here. I sought to bring him to justice. I traced him to this time and intended to lie in wait and take him, one way or another.’

  ‘To the sound of exploding dynamite!’ crowed Crowley. ‘I know your methods well enough. But if not through magic, how came you to this time?’

  ‘It is my turn to ask the questions,’ said Mr Bell. ‘And do not give me any folderol about fading memories – I see the scar of my ray gun's burn upon your veiny ankle.’

  ‘Plah!’ said Aleister Crowley, and he indicated his humidor. ‘Let us smoke cigars and speak of the old days.’

  ‘Of spaceships and ray guns?’ asked Cameron Bell, drawing out cigars.

  ‘Of those and the stele, too.’

  Cigars were lit and smoke exhaled and I took to coughing with vigour.

  ‘Darwin,’ said Mr Bell, ‘the atmosphere is somewhat noxious here. Why not go down to the garden for some fresh air? I will join you soon.’ And Mr Bell gave me a certain look.

  I left the room and he closed the door behind me, but I did not go down to the garden. I pressed my ear to the door and peeped at times through the keyhole.

  ‘The Ape of Thoth,’ said Aleister Crowley. ‘How came you by that?’

  ‘It is still my turn for questions. I felt, however, that you might care to yield more knowledge when free of his presence.’

  I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. What was the Ape of Thoth?

  ‘In truth,’ said Crowley, ‘I am very glad that you came. I do not face death with a light heart. Sometimes I hate myself.’

  ‘You have not exactly been a model citizen.’

  ‘How did you find me?’ Crowley asked. ‘How did you know I was here?’

  ‘Happy happenstance, as it happens. I visited the Atlantis Bookshop, where they pin upon their noticeboards certain cheques that clients have made out to them. Cheques that the banks have failed to honour. Bouncing cheques, as it were. There are several of yours on display. They told me the address and asked me to give you this.’ Mr Bell pulled something from his pocket. I assumed it was Mr Crowley's account, drawn up by the Atlantis Bookshop.

  Aleister Crowley cackled at this and said, ‘Throw it into the bin.’

  ‘Quite so. But the day wears on and I must have answers to my questions. What became of the past we grew up in? How could it simply vanish as if it never existed?’

  The wrinkled fellow sucked deeply on his cigar. ‘How so indeed?’ said he. ‘I was possessed of magic, you know. I could have become the greatest magician of this or any other age.’

  ‘And naturally you would have used your powers for good.’

  ‘Are you having a gi-raffe? I would have indulged myself in every vice and every pleasure known to Man.’

  ‘But you did not.’

  ‘Not for the want of trying.’ Aleister Crowley tapped ash onto the carpet. ‘But it went. All magic went at the turn of the twentieth century, as if a tap had been turned off, and with it the past as we recall it. The wonders of Tesla and Babbage. The matter of the Martian invasion. Damn it, Bell, the Martians blew up my aunty's house in Surbiton.’

  ‘But history cannot be unmade, surely?’

  Aleister Crowley laughed once more, a most depressing sound. ‘The arrow of time is supposed to point in a single direction,’ said he, ‘but this can only be if it is not deflected, if time runs its course as it would do. Untampered with. Don't you see it, Bell? You travelled through time as did Knapton, and between the two of you, you have altered the past. All that has happened since the dawn of the twentieth century has happened because time was tampered with. This war now, this World War, is not the first of this century. It is the second, and you must take your share of the blame for it.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Bell. ‘I have done nothing to bring about these horrors. I have only pursued a criminal. And I will bring him to justice and I will set history to right.’

  ‘Only if you can hunt him down and return with him to our past.’

  ‘And that I will do,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘That I will certainly do.’

  ‘Without a time conveyance of your own?’

  Mr Bell did puff-puffings.

  Aleister Crowley shook his ancient head. ‘I could have been the greatest magician of this century,’ he said, ‘but it was not to be and now I am old a
nd broken. But history will remember me, Mr Bell, and I will enjoy celebrity in the future. As for you, you are not even a footnote. You are a bumbling character in a children's book. You have brought this curse upon yourself. There is no future for you.’

  Mr Bell rose to take his leave.

  ‘You have cursed yourself,’ said Mr Aleister Crowley.

  15

  e took a late lunch in an alehouse on the seafront. Hastings appeared to have escaped the cruel attentions of enemy aircraft so far. Which seemed a little unfair to me, as it is an unlovely seaside resort and might well have been improved by selective bombings.

  That is a rather cruel thing to say, but my mood was none too jolly.

  Before we had journeyed to Hastings, Mr Bell had been forced to pawn his remaining valuables to raise money for the fare. He pulled from his pocket a couple of pound notes and a tinkling of change.

  ‘You overhead everything that was said, I suppose,’ said he.

  ‘I assumed that you wanted me to. What is the Ape of Thoth?’ I asked.

  Mr Bell shook hard his head. ‘That hardly matters now.’

  We sat in a window seat that afforded a view of the sea-front. It was all very peaceful in Hastings, but patrons of the alehouse were looking hard at Mr Bell and me.

  ‘You will have to avail yourself of more suitable apparel,’ I whispered. ‘You do look very out of place indeed.’

  ‘And I feel the same,’ said my friend, in such a plaintive manner as to raise once more those hairs on the back of my neck.

  ‘Must we remain for ever in this dreadful time?’ I spoke behind my hand. ‘I really do not think that I could bear it.’

  Mr Bell shrugged sadly and consulted the menu.

  ‘Corned beef and reconstructed egg and a single choice of bottled beer,’ said he with sadness. ‘And we who have dined at the Savoy Grill and washed down our feasts with the finest Château Doveston.’

  ‘We did really do that?’ I whispered in reply. ‘And we did go to Venus and Mars?’

  ‘We did.’ Mr Bell hailed what passed for a waiter. ‘Two of today's “specials”,’ he said, ‘and two of your finest ales.’

  What passed for a waiter looked long and hard at me.

  ‘If you say “we don't serve monkeys in here”,’ said Mr Bell, ‘I shall rise from my seat and pitch you into the sea.’