“I said that.”
“Helmets then.”
“Call for more reinforcements. Get on the blower, Briant. There’s a full-scale war going on here. Good Godfrey, that’s a head on the bonnet, isn’t it?”
“Looks like a Viking head, sir.”
“No, more like a Saxon.”
“Or a Celt, sir.”
“Dammit, Briant! I don’t give a shit about its nationality, get the bloody thing off my bonnet!”
Constable Briant stared out through the security grille at the carnage beyond. “I’m a bit doubtful about going out there, sir.”
“You’ll be on a bloody charge, constable.”
“Ten-four, sir.”
“Down this way,” said Professor Slocombe.
“It doesn’t smell good,” said Jim.
“Just follow me.”
“Arrest all this gold. Meek, I saw you filling your pockets. Rune, put that back.”
“One per cent, Hovis, I’ll take it now.”
“No you bloody won’t. Meek, I’m warning you. Reekie, I don’t know where you got that wheelbarrow but…”
The figure on the high catwalk gasped breathlessly; the stairways led up forever. But now he knew that at the top, at the top… he faced another stairway and prepared to climb. But his way was blocked.
“You,” said Kaleton. “You did this? But you’re…”
“Dead?” said John Omally, for it was no other man. “I all but was. Your filthy creatures damn near had me in pieces. But I survived, I crawled away and I hid out. And I watched you and now I’m going to kill you. Where is my girlfriend, what have you done with her, you bastard?”
“You’re a hard man to kill,” said Kaleton. “However.”
Omally shifted his suitcase from hand to hand. “Where is Jennifer?”
“She’s nice and safe, would you like to join her? Shall I call Jennifer that you might see her one more time, kiss those soft red lips? She’s so close you could reach out and touch her.”
“In here?” Omally’s free hand reached to the gasometer, but an icy blast tore it away, numb and bleeding.
“No,” said Kaleton, “she’s in here,” he pointed to his mouth, “and now you can come inside.”
“You’ve killed her, you… whatever you are.”
“Whatever I am. Who do you think I am?”
“You are Choronzon,” said Professor Slocombe, “lord of all anarchy, destroyer. You are Choronzon.”
Kaleton spun about. Above him on a higher catwalk stood Pooley and the Professor. Jim’s eyes bulged, filled with tears. “John,” he gasped, “John, is that you?”
“Watchamate, Jim,” said that very man.
“Blessed be,” said Jim Pooley.
“I am the Soul of the World,” cried Kaleton in many voices and many tongues, “I am Choronzon, I am Baal, I am Kali, I am Shiva. I am all that has gone before and all that is yet to come. Ruination lies in my hands, ruination for you and your kind. You dirt, you worms. Your time is at hand.”
“Where’s my girlfriend?”
“My future wife?” asked Jim. “He’s got her?”
“I am yesterday and tomorrow, Alpha and Omega. You are finished.” Kaleton twisted, distorted, the hideous mouth opened wider, swelled as if to encompass everything, the borough, the earth, the universe, the whole damn lot.
The earth trembled. The warriors beneath gazed up towards the iron tower. The riot police, prepared to batter skulls, halted in mid-swing. Rune made sacred signs. Meek continued to fill his pockets for the meek shall inherit the earth, after all. Hovis considered bee-keeping on the Sussex Downs. Behind Pooley’s left ear a particle of dirt resembled the exact shape of the lost continent of Atlantis.
“I am Choronzon,” cried the voices of Kaleton, the voices of the millions gone forward into the oblivion of yesterday. “We are the planet’s revenge, we will have no more of you. All die.”
“But you first,” said Omally, priming the suitcase and thrusting it into the ghastly void which spread before him, the mouth of hell.
The facade of human resemblance fell away from Kaleton. He was an unearthly shape, an elemental, the bogey man, the nightmare of children, the dreams of the mad, the delirium of the dying. He was all that was opposite, life in reverse. “You cannot stop us. You cannot reverse the process. A great shot will ring out across the universe. All will die, forever die, be gone. We are your Nemesis!”
Pooley swung down from the catwalk, struck the swelling creature from behind and catapulted it into space. Kaleton flew into the air, a whirling mass of neutrinos, primal flux, ancient evil made flesh, a formless horror that was many forms, many pasts and presents. And somewhere in that hinterland of time, lost between seconds, between yesterday, today and tomorrow, Omally’s suitcase exploded. It might have been in Brentford or even anywhere in the unknown world or the partially explored cosmos. But it was within the universe that was Kaleton. Great streamers of trailing sparks spun across the sky, the gasometer rocked and shook, the stadium shuddered and trembled, the air swam with visions, dreams, memories.
Pooley clung to the rocking staircase and saw it all. The world as it was, torn by elemental forces, a battlefield of unreason. Man’s ascent from the darkness, towards the glorious future. And he saw much more, the mistakes of generations who had lost their way. The terrible mistakes which had led to this. Pooley saw it all, and it was dead profound, I can tell you. All in the split second, or the lifetime or the eternity, it was all one and the same.
The streaming motes which were Kaleton, Beelzebub, the old serpent, the Grex, rained down upon Brentford. Flowed in a pure golden shower, dissolved and were gone. The stars returned, reason returned. Truth and tomorrow returned.
With a startled cry Jennifer Naylor returned from a deep, dark unknown place and fell into Omally’s arms. There was a bit of a hush.
Commander West stood in the now empty Ealing Road wondering where Armageddon just went.
“Shall I cancel the reinforcements?” asked Constable Briant.
In the teepee at the bottom of the garden, Paul Geronimo said, “It is done, the gods are happy, and now we smoke many pipes.”
“And possibly get some kip,” his brother suggested.
Neville turned once more in his sleep. “Alison,” he said, “you naughty girl.”
Inspectre Hovis struggled towards the hastily commandeered ice-cream van with an arm load of gold bars. “Keep sticking them in,” he told Hugo Rune, “there’s plenty of room in the back.”
“Do I understand that you are taking an early retirement?” the mystic asked.
Professor Slocombe turned his face towards the heavens. “It is done, I so believe,” said he, “it is done.”
“Does this mean I am a millionaire?” asked Jim Pooley.
Chapter the Last
A beaming face beamed out across the world. “This is the London Olympics.”
In the stadium flags flew, athletes marched and the cheering of a million voices rose towards the summer sky, like a prayer of thanks.
In the Professor’s study Jim popped the cork from a bottle of champagne. “Easy does it, Jim,” said the old man. “That’s a hundred-year-old vintage.”
“Put it on the slate,” the lad replied, distributing large libations. “In five minutes the games begin, in six John and I take a stroll down to Bob’s, in the company of the local constabulary. In an hour we shall be gloriously drunk.”
“I will drink to that,” said Omally. “A toast to the Brentford Olympics.”
“To the games,” said Jim. “Although not to their founder.”
“Hm.” John sipped champagne. “That blaggard, what was he, Professor, was he a man or a devil or what?”
“I am not certain even Kaleton knew that. He loathed mankind because he was not of man, thus he had to prove he was greater than man. His character, if indeed he possessed one in the true sense of the word, was one of constant turmoil, a torment of raw conflicts. He was ego, power, good and evil by degree. He denied all human emotion but he was subject to it nevertheless. Egoism, pride, monomania, he craved recognition for his own mad genius.”