One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (31 page)

Startling fucking big result news or what? I now knew the towns where these beasts roamed. Names of towns, oh yes. Go to the towns and just look for the Meltburger sign. The tragic deaths of Brent, Dean and Leander Pitt-Rivers Baring-Gould must in some manner be paid for, that much I knew. In turn, the two brothers now knew that I was off in search both of that magic cloak
and
of its illegal wearers. I bear-hugged Jim and his brother, waved an undefeated right fist in each of their faces, then thanked them both profusely. But – thinking mythologically – I resisted my desire to explain my ease with D. H. Lawrence references. Let these gentlemen think I
was
the new Thomas Chatterton, well, the new
old
one! Let them with all of their current problems be inspired by our mutual aid! I started to walk out into the pitch-black darkness back down the thorny avenues and cattle droves towards the SP 65. And as I pitched forwards into the night sky, some ‘little foam upon the deep’ inside me was occurring. I felt inside my muddy mind some meagre plan a-stirring.

One hour into my Macomér walk, with veins elastic and pumping arteries I strode. The newness of this life now upon me in spades, the former life – being not yet receded – did still inform my growling underworld ghoulself as beside me it walked, trudged, trolledged on. Reaching the 131 quickly, I had plugged in my iBeam to 89.9 FM, and was now marching along like Ted Hughes’ Iron Man up the well-lit motorway right up to Abbasanta junction. But although I could get only intermittent radio reception, the tar-black sky swallowed every last air football that I punted skywards, dancing like Diego in
a new ephedra frenzy,
and
with a new spherical knowledge: with the balls to make it all work. Soon I was cutting around the heritage site entrance of the 3,000-year-old Nuraghe Losa – how the Sards love these cooling towers! – then back up the course of the motorway. Dammit, I felt as though I was walking so fast that I needed a crash helmet. Striding back up on to the unlit section north of Abbasanta, I suddenly saw five stripes on my iBeam, which burst into life. The last classic minutes of ‘Can’t Cheat Karma’ by Zounds was just concluding, then I heard Jesu Crussu announce the 11 o’clock news and traffic report.

In near ecstasy I walked now, hoofing it up the motorway. At my back, a spectral army of Sardu cave anarchists urged me, percussioned me along. In front of the speakers, angelic and alone, one teenage guitarist danced us all Mithraic, light-bringing, flinging us headlong into a new age. And throughout it all I bowled along rampant and roaring with this newfound strength of companionship and indefatigable spirit.

By 1.30am, I was entering the environs of Birori Valley, Macomér’s dark foreboding fortress still menacing as it presided over this most important of ancient junctions. But as I turned left off the 131 and began to hack it up that dead-straight Roman incline into the town, over between the industrial estate and the waterworks did I feel something a-stirring at my presence. Shaking the ground around on account of my presence. Into my head like a telecast I saw myself coronated as Old Tüpp, sat atop my great contraption carried by my stout new Select, one at each corner shouldering my rig onwards. I knew nothing of what this meant. But this was surely the most peculiar vision to which I had ever been privy! Now, I observed my Kingly Self sat atop my great contraption carried out of Ashop forever, carried down the southern waterways of the Vanmark, down through the Danmark into Mediterranean climes. I knew not where they carried me, but I knew that they did right to bring me here. Click! The telecast was over.

I was at the door of Su Talleri barely five minutes later. As planned, Anna had secreted my hotel keys under the flowerpot at the entrance and I ascended the staircase with all the fizzing energy of one preparing to embark on another long journey. As I closed the hotel room door and switched on the kettle, the only discomfort that I experienced was around my jaws and teeth, all of which buzz and rattle incessantly during Inter-Time Travel; knees and elbows also become horribly twisted over and across time. But now I just felt exhilarated at the prospect of kicking some bastard asses, at the righteous prospect of some kind of Cosmic Restitution. Even after having been flung once again across the Universe, I can’t pretend that walking the
eleven miles back to Macomér was in any way difficult, because I didn’t even notice it really. And that fact inspired the hell out of me. While I was in this super space, I could take on all of those immoral fuckers. Hell, I even had Blessèd Anna on my side!

Cosy in my Su Talleri bed, sheaves of archaeological notes scattered around the floor, I was sitting bolt upright nursing a nice hot cup of some instant hotel-provided sachet froth in one hand, in the other a sweet-as-anything three-skinner courtesy of Jim Feather. Yes, I’d been up all night and no I didn’t feel sleepy. Indeed, the residue of my otherworldly travails had this time not entirely left my consciousness, and I lay just slightly in two places at the same time. But now, still raring to go in these midnight hours, I was determined to make good use of this providential return to Macomér and the neighbouring Birori Valley. Nevertheless, however hard I tried to research these places, all I could make out through the language barrier was that the ancient people who’d carved the Doorways had stopped their practice not far south of here. Beyond that point, all the tombs had been accessed through great archways of masonry bricks – and those people didn’t even carve stones, just left them rugged and brutalistic. Throughout our troubled descent along the 131 past Macomér a couple of days ago, the Great Being had called out to me from the Altar of Punishment; during the ‘events of sixteen years ago’, my escape from the Fascist Cheese Factory had led me on a right old Dance of Doorways all across the Birori Valley, but it had – again – all terminated at the Altar of Punishment. Even
Giampaolo’s experience had drawn him towards the industrial estate itself, again wherein lies the Altar of Punishment. Aha, then I saw it right there on the map! Of course, the Altar of Punishment was built directly at the confluence of three streams: Macomér’s waterworks butts up right next to it, still takes its town water from
those
streams. If our experiences at Bidil ’e Pira had been due to the fissures in the rock strata, then the confluence of three different watercourses was going to act like an Uber-fissure! Score in a big way! I stared outside at the blinking, watery-green hotel light and toked a final one. Then I sunk down into my lazy bed and forgot, at least temporarily, that our place of kidnap and incarceration was now barely 200 metres away. My subconscious mind, however, did not forget this fact. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …

This horizontal window was so narrow that I tore my cock on the lock as I thrust my naked self out in the half-light, desperate not to lose contact with Brent, whom I’d spied haring off through that very slat I’d next moment had to pass through. But by the time I was out, my eyes could barely grope for his lofty wraithlike ever-diminishing form as it weaved its spectral and sinewy path along the precipice of the gorge 400 yards or so ahead of me. Moreover, attempting to catch him got me so scratched up to fuck that I was raw meat when I reached the place I’d last spotted him. Fuck English nettles, man, the Sards even had some fruit plants that would tear a man’s Gore-Tex to pieces, and I was discovering this bollock nekkid. ’Struth! But I couldn’t lose Brent. No way. I can’t say to Gabriella that I lost Brent; he’s fourteen years old and I used to do smack when I
baby-sat him. Oh, fuck’s sake what am I? Naked, bloody, starving and in Macomér. As the coughing-his-guts-up gimp loved to tell us like we couldn’t work it out. Well, one thing I knew? This was Macomér, this gorge was in Macomér, the lights were Macomér, my bleeding cock was in Macomér. I’d seen enough fucking road signs during our police chase north, and that rushing of headlights and roaring of traffic over to my right beyond the gorge? The 131. There’s no other road on the island where traffic can go that fast. I never smiled, but I had a plan. Find Brent and follow the 131 south. It’s a plan. Find the kid and go home. Rock’s progress. It’s a fucking plan, man. And as the vicious cuts on my naked legs and feet took my mind off my hunger, I held on to my little comforter itself so lacerated by my overly dépêche defenestration.

But such was the excruciating slowness of my movement as I edged along the steep-sided ravine, shuffled along as though with the bound ankles of some unfortunate Chinese woman, that I did become enveloped in a gelatal mist of my own making, a right old pudding of a fog: and in all of the wide Macomér landscape, this whipped cream haze whirled around my head alone. And now – like some self-pitying Eeyore – I sunk even further into semblance than ever before, even further into progress for the sake of discovery? What? Like Rock’s progress? Mmm, I like the sound of that. I like progressive. War Pigs and peace. I love peas. Soaky peas and mushy peas. I’d like mushy peas and fritters, please. With extra salt, Auntie Vera. Thanks so much. Can I put the salt on myself? I’m having a can of something, anything really. Corona. But I’ll have two sausages … and I’ll have the fritters not in newspaper, thanks. It’s that
Eastwood Advertiser
newsprint comes off on the chips. I’m drinking at the Man In Space tonight. What time you shutting up? Shall I just
pre-order chips with curry now? I’ll be supping out in the car park. You can just get your Ian to yell.

Mmm, I wasn’t having curry after all. Not in Macomér tonight. I still could not find Brent and I’d been looking since yesterday early morning. Rock’s Progress? I was crouching at sundown in that same steep ravine beneath the 131 without a plan. The pain in my side from that kicking the gimp had given me on account of not getting to bum me? Yeah, it fucking killed, man. But the industrial doses of string-out they’d laid on all of us were still comatising me two days later
and
I was seeing spectral Doorways all over the landscape. Yeah man, massive glow-in-the-dark spectral Doorways. How many? All right, all right. Maybe Brent’s stashed himself in some great safe house behind a great Doorway and now he’s giving out cosmic signals as to his whereabouts. Tell you the truth, when forty-eight hours said No Brent, I was just too thirsty to wait any longer. So I clambered up out of the temporary safety of the ravine to a concealed spot along that great curved, elevated road section of the 131 where it roars like some petrified concrete waterfall out of the great Campedero Mountains, arcing steeply around hilltop Macomér as it rushes towards the valley below. Exhilarating, intoxicating southern views of freedom, it was just incredible to view so clearly my possible escape route and so harsh to accept my excruciating flightlessness when that very route that I so desperately sought was blazing before my own eyes. Now Macomér was Moscow, the winter was coming on and we were Napoleon’s stranded soldiers desperate to peg it back to snivilisation.

But although it was sundown, I was still naked and jonesing for drugs
and
wanted by both cops and cunts. However, by now convinced – through hunger, withdrawals and those forcibly administered industrial-sized Largactil doses – that Brent had
most assuredly passed through an ancient Doorway into another safer world, my compulsion to hide out – to ferret my naked self away under the 131 – was constantly being undermined by my incontinent fury at the rough justice having been meted out to my accomplices and myself. Still, I danced close to the 131 at all times, itching and teetering along the ravine’s steep sides, rubbing my sticky and drugged-out form against the reinforced steel supports – so cavernously cooling; so calming just fifty feet below that seemingly endless Upper World rush of frantic Sardines. And from the pedestrian safety of my Lower World, I hobbled gingerly for close to two downhill miles accompanying this superhighway’s vast arc southwards around that dreaded Macomér, always keeping under its massive structures wherever I could.

But right at the point where the road’s wide arc begins to hit exactly due south, right there did I spot a great Doorway blazing at me just 400 metres east of the 131’s raised concrete stanchions. Convinced that this spectral place must be the escape hatch into which Brent had tumbled, I advanced now with great recklessness across the steep sides of the unverdant scrub, hollering for Brent at the top of my voice. But when I was no more than ten feet from the Doorway, I saw that the small standing stone beside the entrance was actually a tiny sentinel, a terrifying figure who screamed at me, and declared that he was Nuscadoré, guardian of the Doorway of Nuscadoré.

And lo, across the valley floor eight great blazing Doorways lit up before my eyes. I thanked the apoplectic midget and set off at once, gingerly picking my way downhill towards the nearest of the eight. Shit, they were all miles apart. I stood silent for a moment trying to deduce a more circuitous and unpopulated route to the nearest of the Doorways, a route that would not compromise my nakedness. But no matter how I read the situation, one way or another I would still have to streak right through the centre of Birori village – and me the very opposite of your typical streaking kid. Fucking hell, off I jolly well trotted with a ger-zillion misgivings. What poor Birori biddie deserved to experience my wretched unfedness? Shit, I was skinny enough at the best of times. But the belting that the gimp had been dealing out had left me permanently blue-black along my whole left rump. No late-night dog walker would wish to chance upon such a morbid sight. Nevertheless, I was nearly caught several times in the matted back passages of Birori before I’d navigated correctly its dizzying maze and tear-arsed out the other side into rural blackness again. Phew, fucking hell. Sweet relief! Out into the darkness I picked my way once more towards the spectral Doorway, now looking quite accessible, no more than 600 metres hence. Nevertheless, my progress was again battered to a halt by tightly constructed drystone walls ensnared with barbed wire, then fastened down with vegetation. How I bled. How I was torn. In the dark. In the arse nakedness of it all. Nevertheless did I – not soon but eventually – arrive at the first Doorway. But no sooner had I approached that handsome shining stone, there he was again,
another Action Man-sized spectral dickhead of the Doorways! Whoosh!

And with that, the micro-gatekeeper of Pradu Lassia ran about shouting and summoning up other
pradus
, spectral nosey parkers who began to pester me and nibble my flesh in, well, in another dimension. I soon figured Brent would have had no truck with the place. But now they began to bite harder, to chow down on my naked arse of all things, probably the only meat left on my P.O.W. form, to sting and burn me with their suckers of poisonous mucus. And all I was doing was looking for Brent. I’ve been out for days and I’m on the edge, chaps. Then, freaking out in agony, I recognised in the corner of the field, well, right where the field joined some gardens, a tiny shed, probably more of a sentry box than a shed. And being still plagued, mobbed, bitten by these spectral
pradus
, I rushed over to seek shelter and with considerable speed.

Once inside, I slammed the door and felt the hollow thud of these spectral lava beings pounding against the shed door. But when one of those rotters crashed at last up against the windowpane, so sticky was that knobhound that its spectral goo stuck to the glass and lit my temporary quarters brilliantly, revealing three pairs of wellington boots and a dirty beach towel. What? Search me, I just wrapped the towel around my waist, forced the biggest boots on to my still-too-large tootsies and fucked off
right quick. By now – the spectral rotter having dislodged itself and rejoined its fiendish clan the other side of the shed door – I hatched a wicked plan. I had noticed in the Doorway itself a crack around two-centimetres-deep by three-feet-long. And I now from the corner of the shed grabbed a large old-fashioned hoe, rusty, but hefty and blacksmith-forged. Then I burst out of the shed and rushed full bore over to the great Doorway, where I inserted the end of the hoe into the stone’s weakened spot, then went for it like a bastard. Bango, fuck off, bang bang bang! Down went the great stone in six easy pieces, out went the lights all around me. From deep inside the hollow earth, I heard the screams of the gatekeeper of Pradu Lassia. And I felt sick. But I really did think he’d asked for it somewhat.

Two hours later, I was out of my mind with exhaustion and nature rambling. Personal calls to the great Doorways at Santu Bainzu and Imbertighe had yielded nothing but more insults, whilst at the felled Doorway of Uore the light had actually grown dimmer as I approached, then faded out altogether when I’d yelled Brent’s name. The fifth great Doorway lit up the skies all around as I approached, but turned out to be the entranceway to Bórore Church: a Christian Parody no less – beautiful, but right in the centre of a well-policed village! Thereafter, I had headed up the river to the farm at Puttu Oes, but one even greater attracted me, called to me, beckoned me from the industrial estate across the 131. This was the Altar of Punishment, or S’Altare di Castigadu as the Sards named it. Now, as I approached across the half-lit scrub and burned-out cars of the industrial estate, I saw no micro-sentinel standing with baited
breath and disapproving shrieks. Instead, I felt only the rush of the waters, of the three streams where the Altar was erected. Instead, I knew only that in place of those micro-sentinels, here dwelled the Great Being. And here at the waters’ confluence I recognised perfection. This was the right Doorway! Down into the waters I stumbled, threw off the wellingtons and the towel, launched myself in. For the rest of the night, I lay with my head facing upstream. Warmed by those cooling black waters for the whole of the night, irrigated by that confluence of energies, that fissure in the Sardu-soil. Came sunrise, came the amphibian crouched within me, warmed by the full Mithraic glow. Then did he finally pounce: The Great Being! Now from under the ground he did grab my arms and legs. Now from under the ground did he bind my head and neck. Lastly, his wishes he announced.