“I knew he would,” said Dave.
And now other front doors were starting to open, as front doors always do at the arrival of a police car. Folk were issuing from them and into the Butts Estate. Posh folk, some of them, folk who looked as if they surely must have daughters who were good at impersonating ponies.
And then the front door of the wake house opened and a number of drunken men, who looked for the most part as if whatever offspring they might have had would all be rubbish at whinnying, came a-blundering out with greatly raised voices of their own.
Amongst these were the Daddy, who, to my surprise, and also my satisfaction, was accompanied by Mr Timms the undertaker, whose head he held firmly underneath his arm.
“It seems that your daddy took your side,” Dave observed. “They must have been fighting for quite some time. It looks like your daddy is winning.”
A policeman turned upon my father and asked what he thought he was doing with the undertaker’s head.
My daddy told him and I heard the word “homo” once more being used.
I shall get to the bottom of this homo-business, I told myself. Which might have been funny if it had meant anything to me.
I heard one of the coppers saying something about the Butts Estate being “a den of vice”. But as the only vice I knew was in the woodwork room at school this didn’t mean anything to me either.
“Wooo-eee,” went Dave.
“Yeah, it’s good this, isn’t it?”
“No, wooo-eee, woo-ee.”
“Eh?” said I.
“I’m hooting.”
“In your pants?”
“Like an owl. It’s the signal.”
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
“Follow me,” said Dave. And I followed him.
Things were warming up nicely in the road, if you like that sort of thing. Fists were beginning to fly and truncheons to be drawn. Those were the days before riot sticks, CS gas, electric prods, stun-canes and phase-plasma rifles with a forty-watt range. These were the days when villains put their hands up when caught and said things like “It’s a fair cop, guvnor”. There was respect for the law in those days.
A constable struck down Mr Purslow with his truncheon.
My Uncle Jonny, who played darts with Mr Purslow, struck down the copper with his blind-man’s cane.
We skirted around the growing chaos and slipped back into the wake house.
Dave shut the front door quietly behind us and put on the security chain. “Mr Penrose awaits you,” he said to me, as we stood by ourselves in the hall.
I hesitated for just a moment. Well, it was a big deal. I was about to reanimate a dead man. I was in uncharted territory, so to speak.
“Are you scared?” asked Dave.
“Of course I’m not.”
“Then, get on and do it.”
“All right, I will.”
I strode down the hall to the wake-room door and pushed it right open. Before me the room lay in silence. Shafts of smoky sunlight still fell through the tall casement windows, onto the coffin of the great author, lighting up his nose.
I hesitated once more.
“Go on,” said Dave. “Go on.”
But I was now having second thoughts. I don’t know why this was. Well, perhaps I do. I think it must have been the silence and the sense of peace. The repose of death, if you like. Death is first of all about stillness. Of everything becoming still. The senses themselves. The organs of the body, the blood, the cells. All the things that were chugging away – the lungs going up and down and the heart going pump, pump, pump, and the bits and bobs in the brain going think, think, think – all have become still. All are silent. Still.
Well, for a brief while at least. Until the putrefaction begins. Then there’s lots of activity.
The nose of Mr Penrose looked terribly, terribly still.
“What are you waiting for?” Dave asked. “Get on with the reanimating.”
“I don’t know if it’s right,” I said.
“What?” Dave stared at me. “Are you bottling out?”
“Don’t say that. I’m not. It’s just …”
“Give me the herbs,” said Dave. “I’ll stick them into his gob.”
“You can’t just stick them into his gob. You have to do the ritual. Say the words.”
“Go on, then, if you really are as brave as you’re always saying.”
I crept slowly forward, reached the coffin and peeped in at the face of Mr Penrose.
And didn’t it look peaceful. So at rest. So in repose.
“He looks happy as he is,” I said to Dave.
“I don’t believe this,” Dave said to me. “After all the trouble I’ve gone to, telephoning the police and everything, and now you’re bottling out.”
“I’m not. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right.”
“But he’s your favourite author. He wrote the Lazlo Woodbine books, the best books in the world. And if you bring him back to life he can write us some more.”
“Yes, but …”
“And don’t you think he’ll thank you? He’s bound to be happier being alive again rather than being dead, isn’t he? And everyone else will be happy too. And the Queen will give you a special badge. And P.P. Penrose might even make you a character in one of his new books. Maybe a baddie who will be shot dead by Laz with his trusty Smith & Wesson during the final rooftop confrontation.”
I shook my head.
“And there’s something else,” said Dave.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“If you don’t do it, I’ll punch your head in.”
“Oh,” I said.
Dave made a fist. “Sorry,” he said, “but we’ve come too far to go back.”
I considered Dave’s fist. It was a fierce fist. I’d seen it in action. “I’m sorry too,” I said. “I’m just being silly. I came here to bring Mr Penrose back from the dead. And that’s just what I’ll do.”
“Good man.” Dave hugged my shoulder. “Then, please hurry up.”
I took out the book I’d borrowed from the library and the special herbs that Mother Demdike had given me.
“Take the herbs,” I said to Dave. “And when I tell you, and not before, you put them into his mouth.”
Dave looked down at Mr Penrose and I saw a look of doubt appear on his face. “I’m not doing that,” he said. “That’s your job, putting the herbs in.”
“But you just said—”
“I’ve changed my mind,” said Dave. “You should take all the glory.”
“You’re scared.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re afraid to touch his face.”
“You can catch the syph from touching a dead man’s face.”
“What’s the syph?”
“It’s a terrible disease.”
“All right, let’s forget the whole thing.”
Dave dithered, but only for a moment. “All right,” he said. “I’ll prise his mouth open with my penknife.”
I shook my head. I really did have my doubts.
“All right,” I said too. “Let’s do this.” And I opened the book and began to read out the ritual.
I knew that there was more that should be done than just reading out the ritual. I knew there was supposed to be beating drums and frenzied dancing about by half-naked brown ladies and even a cockerel getting its head chopped off. But it seemed to me that in theory the words and the herbs should be enough.
In theory.
Now, one thing that I didn’t know then was that when you perform a magic ritual you have to do it very loudly. You have to shout the words right out. Magic is a very noisy business, which is why its practitioners have always chosen out-of-the-way places like blasted heaths and distant forest glades to perform their rituals. The line that divides the world of man from the world of spirit is not a thin line, it’s a chunky solid affair that takes some breaking through. If you want to be heard on the other side of it, you’re going to have to shout very loudly indeed. I pass on this information to you in the interests of science. And because I know that passing on little titbits like this, as I will throughout this book, really gets up the noses of ritual magicians, who love to keep things like this secret.