The Mammoth Book of New Comic Fantasy Read online

  “Nevermore,” said the raven. It was the last word the young man ever heard it speak. It hopped from the bust, spread its wings and glided out of the study door into the waiting darkness.

  The young man shivered. He rolled the stock themes of fantasy over in his mind: cars and stockbrokers and commuters, housewives and police, agony columns and commercials for soap, income tax and cheap restaurants, magazines and credit cards and streetlights and computers . . .

  “It is escapism, true,” he said, aloud. “But is not the highest impulse in mankind the urge towards freedom, the drive to escape?”

  The young man returned to his desk, and he gathered together the pages of his unfinished novel, and dropped them, unceremoniously, in the bottom drawer, amongst the yellowing maps and cryptic testaments and the documents signed in blood. The dust, disturbed, made him cough.

  He took up a fresh quill; sliced at its tip with his pen-knife. In five deft strokes and cuts he had a pen. He dipped the tip of it into the glass inkwell. Once more he began to write:

  VIII

  Amelia Earnshawe placed the slices of wholewheat bread into the toaster and pushed it down. She set the timer to dark brown, just as George liked it. Amelia preferred her toast barely singed. She liked white bread, as well, even if it didn’t have the vitamins. She hadn’t eaten white bread for a decade now.

  At the breakfast table, George read his paper. He did not look up. He never looked up.

  I hate him, she thought, and simply putting the emotion into words surprised her. She said it again in her head. I hate him. It was like a song. I hate him for his toast, and for his bald head, and for the way he chases the office crumpet – girls barely out of school who laugh at him behind his back, and for the way he ignores me whenever he doesn’t want to be bothered with me, and for the way he says “What, love?” when I ask him a simple question, as if he’s long ago forgotten my name. As if he’s forgotten that I even have a name.

  “Scrambled or boiled?” she said aloud.

  “What, love?”

  George Earnshawe regarded his wife with fond affection, and would have found her hatred of him astonishing. He thought of her in the same way, and with the same emotions, that he thought of anything which had been in the house for ten years and still worked well. The television, for example. Or the lawnmower. He thought it was love.

  “You know, we ought to go on one of those marches,” he said, tapping the newspaper’s editorial. “Show we’re committed. Eh, love?”

  The toaster made a noise to show that it was done. Only one dark brown slice had popped up. She took a knife and fished out the torn second slice with it. The toaster had been a wedding present from her Uncle John. Soon she’d have to buy another, or start cooking toast under the grill, the way her mother had done.

  “George? Do you want your eggs scrambled or boiled?” she asked, very quietly, and there was something in her voice that made him look up.

  “Any way you like it, love,” he said amiably, and could not for the life of him, as he told everyone in the office later that morning, understand why she simply stood there holding her slice of toast, or why she started to cry.

  IX

  The quill pen went scritch scritch across the paper, and the young man was engrossed in what he was doing. His face was strangely content, and a smile flickered between his eyes and his lips.

  He was rapt.

  Things scratched and scuttled in the wainscot but he hardly heard them.

  High in her attic room Aunt Agatha howled and yowled and rattled her chains. A weird cachinnation came from the ruined abbey: it rent the night air, ascending into a peal of manic glee. In the dark woods beyond the great house, shapeless figures shuffled and loped, and raven-locked young women fled from them in fear.

  “Swear!” said Toombes the butler, down in the butler’s pantry, to the brave girl who was passing herself off as chambermaid. “Swear to me, Ethel, on your life, that you’ll never reveal a word of what I tell you to a living soul . . .”

  There were faces at the windows and words written in blood; deep in the crypt a lonely ghoul crunched on something that might once have been alive; forked lightning slashed the ebony night; the faceless were walking; all was right with the world.

  THE BLUE MAGNOLIA

  Tony Ballantyne

  Bogart stands before the bar, Hepburn is serving drinks. Cary Grant sits in a chair nearby.

  “You’ve got to choose,” says Grant, his eyes hard.

  “I can’t! Not now!” says Hepburn, shaking her head in despair. Bogart lifts the shot glass to his lips and knocks his whisky back in one. You can tell by his stance that he resigned himself to this moment long ago. He pulls back his sleeve as if to look at his watch, but his eyes never leave Hepburn’s. Hepburn’s dark, wide eyes, filling with tears.

  “Hell. Is that the time?” he murmurs. “I’ve got to catch my plane.”

  He turns to leave. Hepburn calls after him.

  “No! Wait! We must . . .”

  Bogart stops at the door, by the hatstand.

  “Damn. Can’t find my hat.”

  We can see it hanging there next to him.

  “We’ll mail it,” says Grant. He’s looking at the floor. Ashamed.

  “Don’t go like this! I . . . I can explain!” says Hepburn.

  “No need. Why explain things to a man who’s not there?” He looks into the distance and speaks reflectively.

  “I guess a man who lives his life alone is never really a part of the world.”

  He closes the door gently as he leaves. Close up on the hat, Hepburn’s gift to him in happier times, from their trip to Majorca. The music swells in the background.

  Recognise it? It’s a scene from The Blue Magnolia. Once upon a time it was a classic film. And I mean a real classic, one of the top ten all-time greatest, not one of these modern hypedriven instant classic features that leave you feeling you’ve spent the last two hours sitting in a bath of electric jelly watching a strobe light in an echo chamber.

  No. A Classic with a capital “C”.

  It can’t be called that now, of course. Now it’s just a cheap piece of tawdry entertainment, something designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator as any modern 3D flick. And whose fault is that?

  I write this as a confession. I must hold up my hand and accept the blame. I destroyed The Blue Magnolia.

  The fault was mine.

  Hepburn is laughing as she hands Bogart the hat.

  “Think of me when you wear it,” she says. He puts it on and adjusts to a slight tilt. For the first time, his face splits into a smile and Hepburn flings her arms around him in delight. Laughing they walk through the hot dusty streets of Majorca.

  Suzie, the salesperson, was wearing a smart red leather suit that creaked and squeaked as the zoom train rocked back and forth in its tube. She was watching The Blue Magnolia with me, an attentive smile on her face as the characters moved through their roles on the carpeted back of the seats before us. I’d called the shop from the office, later that day and they had retroactively arranged for her to board the train with me as I set out for work that morning. Now she turned to face me and pushed a strand of blonde hair away from her face.

  “I’ve never seen this before. It’s a good film.”

  Her leather suit creaked as she spoke.

  “A classic,” I said. “So, can you help me?”

  “No problem. You don’t even need one of the expensive models. An entry-level machine should meet your needs. I’ve got one here.”

  Suzie pulled a blue crackly box from the pocket of her red leather jacket. I looked at it in astonishment.

  “Is that a time machine?” I whispered.

  “After a fashion,” she replied. “You press the button and think about what you want to be until the light comes on.”

  The train jolted and she swayed closer to me for a moment. She smelt of perfume and leather.

  I reached across and took the machine carefully in
my hand. Its touch on my hand was like the feel of a fizzy drink in the mouth. I made to press the button and she held out one hand.

  “Payment first,” she said. “Do you permit withdrawal of the funds from your account?”

  “I do,” I replied, and then pressed the button and thought about what I wanted to be. A red light came on.

  “But nothing’s happened!” I said. All around me was the same soft cream leather of the swaying zoom tube, the same early morning commuters, the same flicker of movement behind the windows. Suzie gave a delightful smile.

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Nobody ever remembers the trip.”

  It worked: I saw the proof on channel 36B that night. I was just having a drink to congratulate myself when the phone went. My stomach sank when I heard the voice at the other end.

  “Oh. Anderson. It’s you,” I said.

  Anderson’s voice was full of easy enthusiasm

  “Hey, Calverley, I saw you! What a brilliant idea!”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I lied.

  “Oh, don’t be so modest! Channel 36B. The Blue Magnolia. The back of the bar in the classic “hat” scene. You were just sitting there taking a drink. It was brilliant. Didn’t I say it was brilliant, dear?”

  “You did, dear,” said a voice in the background. I shuddered as I recognised the tones of Emerald Rainbow, Anderson’s wife. I gave a cautious reply.

  “I’m pleased you liked it, Anderson.”

  “How did you think of it?” he said, a little too quickly.

  “Well . . .” I began, but he interrupted me. Anderson never gives you time to answer his questions.

  “Never mind. We think it’s such a good idea we’re going to join you. Me and Emerald Rainbow.”

  “No! Anderson, it’s a quiet bar. The essence of that scene is we are all, as human beings, alone. You join me at that table, you’ll crowd it, you’ll ruin the effect.”

  There was a pause. I heard Anderson and Emerald Rainbow whispering together. They seemed to reach a conclusion. Anderson came back on the line.

  “You know, Calverley, Emerald thinks you have a point. We’ll have to think about this, but quickly. We’ve already booked a time machine for tomorrow morning. They’re showing The Blue Magnolia tomorrow at thirty-five hours. Watch it! We’ll be there.”

  “Anderson. No, wait!”

  There was a note of panic in my voice, but it was too late. Anderson had already hung up. I slumped forward in my chair, my head in my hands at the enormity of what I’d done. Nobody is more convinced of Anderson’s talent than Anderson. He thinks he has discerning taste in movies. Odd that it never expresses itself until he’s read the reviews.

  The next night I was in the entertainment tank half an hour before the movie. Just me, half a bottle of Irish whiskey, a block of feta cheese, some black olives and a terrible sense of foreboding. I ate the cheese and spat the olive stones into a little glass dish that danced in the reflected flicker of the projectors. The film started at thirty-five. I was tense, sipping at the whisky and refilling my glass. Sipping and refilling. The movie progressed normally and I relaxed. Maybe Anderson had changed his mind. His fads seldom lasted. Maybe it would be okay.

  I should have known better.

  The movie came to the Hat scene. Bogart and Hepburn were standing at the bar, gazing at each other. Cary Grant speaks softly from his chair.

  “You’ve got to choose.”

  The camera pans slowly around the room, taking in Grant, Hepburn and Bogart. If you look carefully you can see me sitting alone at a table in the background, sipping whisky and looking kind of world weary. The camera pans back to Grant and then across to Anderson and his wife. Anderson is drinking a cocktail with umbrellas in it. Both of them are grinning at the camera.

  The phone started ringing. My eyes still glued to the screen, I snatched up the receiver in anger. There could be no doubt who it was.

  “Anderson!” I shouted.

  “Can you see us? There, on the table in the middle! Do you see us? Subtle, don’t you think?”

  “Subtle? Anderson, you . . . you moron!”

  Thinking back, this was unfair. It actually was quite subtle for Anderson. There was a pause. When he spoke again he sounded hurt and indignant.

  “You’re just jealous. Emerald Rainbow thought the cocktail was a great touch.” Emerald Rainbow would. “Don’t you think so? It had blue curacao in it.”

  “Because the film is called The Blue Magnolia!” called Emerald Rainbow in the background.

  I found myself speechless. My mouth moved silently as Anderson resumed speaking.

  “They’re showing it again tomorrow on 5B at twenty-six hours. Look out for us.”

  He hung up before I could speak. The door announced there was someone outside. I answered it to find Suzie, the woman from Timex-Swatch standing there, holding out the blue crackly box.

  “You phoned me, fifteen minutes from now,” she explained. “You know how it works, don’t you?”

  “Yes. You showed me this afternoon.”

  “I haven’t got there yet,” she said, and gave a little grimace. “We’re rushed off our feet at the moment.”

  “Oh? I would have thought you had all the time you needed,” I said absently, taking the box from her.

  I pressed the button and concentrated until the red light came on.

  “Okay?” said Suzie. “All done?”

  “Why can I never remember going back?” I said.

  “You don’t actually go back in time,” said Suzie. “You just move across to another reality where what you thought about actually took place. Actual time travel costs a lot more.”

  I looked confused. Suzie straightened herself and half closed her eyes as she recited her sales pitch.

  “Timex-Swatch offer a range of products tailored to meet the demanding lifestyle of the modern consumer. We have determined that model X46 best meets your needs. This model makes use of the quantum uncertainty model to provide a range of universe choices appropriate to your situation.”

  I shook my head, still confused.

  Suzie faltered for a moment. She closed her eyes fully, no doubt trying to recall a lecture from her induction course.

  “Well, it’s like this: Schrodinger’s Cat shows that situations can arise where you have a cat that is both alive and dead at the same time. Obviously, that can’t happen: it doesn’t make sense. It is far more probable that the Universe splits in two every time an event with multiple outcomes is about to occur.”

  “Are you sure?” I said, frowning. It didn’t sound very likely to me.

  “Oh yes,” she said, nodding seriously. “I mean, it stands to reason. It’s far more likely that there are millions of new Universes forming every second than for a cat not to exist until you look at it. That’s the whole basis of time travel.”

  I didn’t understand this, and she knew it. She smiled and shrugged her shoulders with a delicious creak of red leather.

  “Got to go. See you tomorrow.”

  “Okay. Bye,” I said. I watched as she walked away around the corner and then the thought occurred to me.

  Tomorrow? Surely she meant this afternoon?

  The classic Hat scene. The eternal triangle. A woman must choose between two good men, and she must choose the wrong man. They all know it. They all feel sympathy for Bogart, who must allow his duty to come before his personal feelings.

  “You’ve got to choose.”

  Hepburn never acted so well as in that scene. Those dark, confused eyes. The panic and the pain. Bogart is as world-weary and knowing as only he can be. I’m sitting at my table drinking my Jack Daniels. A drunk in a bar, oblivious to the scene around him. Grant is wearing the look of a man who has won and wishes he hadn’t. A pyrrhic victory. A bamboo screen stands in front of a table, cutting two imbeciles off from view. My doing.

  Bogart stands by the door. By the hatstand.

  “Hell. I can’t find my hat.”

&nb
sp; “It’s hanging by the door,” calls a voice from behind the screen.

  “Anderson!” You can see the surprise on my face, there on the screen. Bogart is a true professional. He ignores the voice. Grant grits his teeth.

  “We’ll mail it,” he says.

  “There’s no need,” says the voice from behind the screen. “It’s right next to him. It’s the nice brown one she bought him in Majorca, remember? It’s there by my wife’s red beret.”

  The phone started ringing. I was too shocked to answer it. Bogart had just taken his hat and was walking out of the door, a dazed expression on his face. The scene was ruined. The film was ruined. Anderson would pay for this.

  Every movie ever made is shown every day. Every song recorded, every painting, every book is displayed in some way. The entertainment corporations make sure that they are pumped into entertainment tanks in strict rotation every twenty-four hours. All of them. From the sublime to the ridiculous, the culture of the last twenty centuries is constantly broadcast to the world. Are we any richer for the experience?

  No. Not when morons such as Anderson call me in the middle of the night and say: “Did you like it? I think it gives the scene more . . . poignancy.”

  “Like it?” I shouted back. “You’ve ruined the whole scene. You’ve destroyed the meaning of the film.”

  “I improved it. It needs a happy ending.”

  “What?” I squeaked. I took a few deep breaths to allow my voice to return to normal and then began, very patiently, to explain.

  “Anderson. The whole point of the film is that sometimes life is hard. Sometimes the right decision to make is the one that makes us unhappy, but we go ahead and make it anyway because it’s just that. The right decision. The film lays out the best and the worst of the human condition in ninety glorious minutes. The ending is supposed to be unhappy.”

  “Oh no,” said Anderson cheerfully. “You always need a happy ending.”

  “Anderson!” I shouted. “You arrogant moron! What gives you the right to change the original concept?”