Chapter 7: THE MAN WHO WAS ONCE A SUPERHERO

WARNING!

This chapter may contain flashbacks!

Peter Perkins had finished sketching his ideas for the welcoming display that would serve as the centrepiece for the Arnold Chemicals public relations event that was due to take place in the Newtown Community Centre in one month’s time. He was behind schedule and that worried him, not least because he was afraid that his boss, Clifford Stine, might reject his latest design, as he had for the previous three attempts he had submitted for his approval.

He had learned from bitter experience that Clifford Stine was a hard man to please and he yearned for the days when his life was much simpler. He missed his old friends Jim and Claire and Emily Yip and wondered where the three of them were now. More than anything though, after rebuilding his career and starting to work at Arnold Chemicals, he missed his alter-ego, I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man. He couldn’t understand it – he hadn’t thought about I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man since Everard Hinchcliffe, the head of the Frontiere Corporation had recalled Jim and Claire to New Zealand just weeks before their misguided government enforced new legislation that made the playing of Trivial Pursuit illegal a few years earlier. Jim and Claire had actually sent him a New Zealand edition of Trivial Pursuit before the ban came into place but he found it difficult to play owing to the lack any vowels on the question and answer cards.

As a result of his fear of Clifford Stine and his yearning for any kind of adventure he took to the streets as a vigilante, using his skills as a philosopher to combat crime wherever it raised its ugly head in Newtown. He thought long and hard about the consequences of returning to crime fighting, especially as I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man was now a distant memory, a ghostly figure from his past that haunted his dreams, causing him to relive every painful moment of his acrimonious divorce and the estrangement from his children. He knew very well that it had been his alter-ego that was to blame for it all.

After receiving a paper cut from a radioactive copy of The Boys’ Bumper Book of Western Philosophy, mid-mannered philosophy student Peter Perkins from Sheffield became the fairly well-known, reasonably celebrated and mildly irritating superhero I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man, capable of diffusing any dangerous situation with carefully chosen words of philosophical wisdom. With his costume of brown jacket with patches on the elbows, brown corduroy trousers, striped shirt with a plain collar, spotted tie and comfortable suede shoes, and his cry of “This looks like a job for I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man!” Peter Perkins became a minor celebrity.

He married his sweetheart, Mary Jane Webster, but ten years and three obnoxious children who had inherited his radioactive genes later the marriage was over. 

Peter was recruited into the New Zealand Secret Service (UK Cheese Division) as the first point of contact for any Kiwi agents arriving in the country. He put on some weight and lost some hair and preferred obscurity to the limelight of his heady days as a superhero.

But he needed a new name and a new costume. He needed to disassociate himself from I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man because none of the old philosophies fitted in with the modern world of superheroes in the 1990s, especially those of René Descartes. He needed an identity that was up-to-date, snappy and dynamic. There were many new and strange philosophical movements he could choose from for his new superhero name, but they just didn’t seem right.

There was Animisman (from Animism, that states that when looking at souls and spirits, the two not only exist in humans and animals, but also in rocks, plants, thunder, mountains and other objects) but that made him sound like a beast; Next up was Atomisman (from Logical Atomism, that says all truths are dependent on a layer of atomic facts and asserts that language mirrors reality) but that was too nuclear; Phenomeman (from Phenomenalism, that professes that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena) was too tongue-twisty; and Monoman (from Neutral Monism, that theorises that the mental and physical are not two fundamentally different things and the body and mind are made up of the same material, which isn’t mental or physical) just made him sound like a boring old fart.

And then he got it – Solipso!  (from Solipsism – the philosophical theory that states that a person can know nothing but that he or she exists, and that the self is the only existent thing). It was perfect.

Next was the costume. His old I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man costume was too dull – he needed something that would attract attention, but wasn’t too garish. The one thing he did want, though, was a cape. He liked capes – Superman and Batman had capes – and although he didn’t have the powers they had he thought that a cape would give him more gravitas (and possibly make wrong-doers think he could fly). He drew up several designs that didn’t seem right until he came up with the one that was perfectly suited to his new identity – Solipso! This is what he eventually decided on:

 

He spent days hunched over a sewing machine, stitching together his new costume and when it when it was finally ready he tried it on, viewing himself in front of the full-length mirror in his tiny flat near the railway station. He twirled around, watching his cape billow out as he did, and he knew he was ready.

His first (and last) night out as Solipso was a disaster.

After approaching a group of yobs who were drinking cider outside an off-licence and abusing people as they walked by, Peter tried to call up his philosophical super-powers but found to his horror that he knew virtually nothing about the new-fangled philosophy he had taken his name from and was therefore unable to say anything profound or meaningful to diffuse the ever worsening situation. Instead of crumbling like the villains of his glory days when he was I-Think-Therefore-I-Am-Man, the yobs turned their abuse on him, calling him a big girly poof and his brightly coloured costume he had worked so hard on stupid and gay. He had just time to say, “Err . . . err . . . I think, therefore I am,” before they kicked the living daylights out of him and left him lying semi-conscious on the pavement.

It was a massive bow to his self-esteem and he realised what a prick he had been deluding himself that he still had what it took after years of idleness. He was getting too old to be wandering around at night looking for trouble and this incident only reminded him of that. He picked himself up off the pavement, wiped the blood from his face and with grazed knees and elbows wearily shambled home to make himself a cup of hot chocolate and get an early night.

The kettle had just boiled when Peter heard the knock at the door.

“Who is it?” he asked.

“You don’t know me,” the voice on the other side of the door said, “but I’ve been told to contact you by an agent of the British Secret Service Cheese Division.”

The words ‘Cheese Division’ brought back happy memories of his time with Jim and Claire and Emily Yip and he opened the door, only to be confronted by a young man with a pudding-basin haircut and wearing what appeared to be National Health spectacles.

“Hello,” said the young, extending his hand in friendship, “my name’s Harry Potty and you, I believe are my contact.”

“My what?”

“Contact – you know, secret agent stuff and all that.”

Peter sighed and said, “Well, you’d better come in, then. Would you like a cup of hot chocolate?”

“Have you got any Dr Pepper?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a drink that tastes like Germolene.”

“Sounds awful.”

“It is, but everyone says they like it in order to sound cool and hip.”

“Oh, right. Well, I haven’t got any.”

“What have you got then?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you take a look in the fridge?” Peter pointed to the small fridge in the corner of his apartment, and as he did there was a knock at the door.”

Harry looked over at Peter in alarm. “Are you expecting someone?” he whispered.

“Not at this hour,” Peter whispered back.

“Well, who is it, then?”

“I may have once been a superhero, but unfortunately one of my powers was not x-ray vision.”

“Pity.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you better get rid of him or her or whoever it is.”

Peter stepped over to the door and, with his hand on the doorknob, asked, “Who is it?”

“Is this the residence of Peter Perkins?” came the voice from the other side of the door.

Peter smiled. He recognised the voice and its use of words with its lack of vowels. “Jim?” he asked.

“Let me in, Peter.”

Peter flung open the door in a state of jubilation. There stood in the doorway, as large as life, was his old friend Jim. “I don’t believe it,” Peter said, “I thought you were back in New Zealand!”

“I was, but something’s been happening here in Newtown that’s important enough to involve me. There’s always been a Frontiere operative in Britain – the last one was John Smith – and we all know what happened to him. And as for the last one – Craig – well, he turned out to be a religious maniac and a wanker to boot. Ordinarily they would have sent me back to Braintree, but they thought what was going on here was important of my attention.”

“Wow, it’s great to see you again, Jim. Is Claire here too? What, then, is so important that they sent you here? And how did you know I was here?”

“I didn’t – I was looking through the Arnold Chemicals brochure and I just happened to see that you were their PR man. Claire’s back in New Zealand working as my handler. As for what’s happening here – well, people have been disappearing, people have reported that they’re shrinking and there’s a strange pink blob-like thing that keeps appearing that has Australian Bitey as one of its constituents. The whole town it seems is under some kind of spell and we suspect it has something to do with where you work. By the way, what happened to your face? And why are you wearing that gay costume?”

“It’s a long, sad story, Jim, and I’m not going to go into it now. First off I’d like to introduce you to Harry Potty.”

“G’day,” said Jim, extending his hand in friendship.

“But it’s the middle of the night,” said Harry.

“He’s from New Zealand,” said Peter, “just accept it.”

“It could be worse,” said Jim. “I could be from Australia.” He shook Harry’s hand and chuckled to himself at his witty and well-timed response. “And what brings you here?”

“I’ve been accepted into the Arnold Chemicals School of wizardry.”

“The what?”

“The Arnold Chemicals school of wizardry. They teach apprentice wizards about magic and stuff.”

“You do know that there is no such thing as wizards and magic, don’t you?”

“That’s what John Langdon said.”

“John Langdon? We interviewed a man called Paul Langdon, but he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“He was John’s brother. John works for the British Secret Service (Cheese Division) and he’s investigating his brother’s disappearance. He’s asked me to spy for him.”

“British Secret Service (Cheese Division)? Why wasn’t I informed of this? I didn’t even realise they had a Cheese Division. These bloody Poms, they never tell us anything?”

“Jim works for the New Zealand Secret Service (Cheese Division),” said Peter to Harry.”

“Listen,” said Jim, “as your both here, why don’t we work together. Peter, my old friend, I need you spy for me again – I need information about what Arnold Chemicals and particularly Clifford Stine is up planning. Are you up for it?”

“Am I up for it? Does a bear shit in the woods? Of course I’m up for it!”

“Right then, we’ll meet here in two days at the same time. Peter, find out what Stine’s up to. Harry, get me in contact with John Langdon.”

“This is brilliant!” shrieked Peter. “It’s just like the old days. All we need now is Emily Yip and the gang will be back to together.”

Jim sighed. “I’m afraid there’s not much chance of that happening. She’s got herself a plum job back in New Zealand. I doubt very much if we’ll ever see her again.”

But unknown to Jim, Emily Yip was already in the air and heading for Newtown.

And she was angry.

Very, very angry.

The Possum Book of Failed Superheroes, from which book this chapter was taken.

 

Chapter 6: THE MAN WHO WENT BY TRAIN

John’s train had been delayed by one of the many excuses the Rail Network used these days in order to pass the blame onto someone or something else rather than admit to their own incompetence. In fact, such was the frequency of delays that the Rail Network had long since stopped making up their own excuses and had instead begun handing out questionnaires to delayed passengers for them to fill in so they could select their most preferred reason why the train they were waiting for was not running on time. John was handed his questionnaire by a surly Railway official, who scowled at him and said simply, “Fill this in,” before striding off to hand out the remaining forms clutched in his gnarled hand to the weary travellers queuing behind him.

John looked at the badly photocopied form now in his possession and read down the list. The form read:

We apologise for the delay in the arrival of your train. It is due to:

o    Essential maintenance

o   The wrong type of leaves on the track

o   An earthquake in Bolivia

o   An overabundance of frogs

o   The Prime Minister

o   Velociraptors escaping from Jurassic Park

o   The price of New Zealand lamb

o   Gregorian chants

o   Several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict

o   Other (but not us)

Please select one excuse only. Thank you for taking the time to fill in this questionnaire. Your opinions are important to us. We hope you enjoy the rest of your delay.

John sighed and selected ‘The Prime Minister’ because he didn’t like him. It was ironic, he thought, he loved traveling by train, but hated waiting. More than anything he hated waiting on King’s Cross Station because it was Tramp Central. More tramps frequented King’s Cross Station than any other part of London – some days there were more tramps than there were passengers and it had become increasingly difficult not to make eye contact with them. Making eye contact with a King’s Cross tramp was fatal. As soon as a tramp realised a passenger was making eye contact with him, he would shuffle over and hold his grubby hand out for some cash. Most of them went away after they had been told ‘no’ thirty or forty times but others were more persistent and would stand firm, looking like swarthy, greasy-haired, badly dressed highwaymen, until they had extorted enough cash to buy a two-litre bottle of White Lightning.

John stuffed the questionnaire into his jacket pocket, ready to show to the conductor, along with his ticket, when the train eventually arrived. He looked up at the electronic board that showed when the trains were not arriving and inadvertently caught the eye of a passing tramp.

“Shit,” he muttered to himself as he watched helplessly as the tramp shambled over to him. The tramp had long, grey, dirty hair that appeared to have some kind of bird’s nest within its matted, filthy mess, along with two or three plastic World War Two American soldiers. He wore a long, threadbare, buttonless, brown coat, which was secured to his body with a length of frayed string. His trousers were worn at the knees and his shoes were scuffed, the soles of which were coming away from the uppers, revealing his bare, blackened toes. He stank like he had been sleeping in the urinal of a busy Soho pub on a Saturday night. He held out his hand and said, “Giz some change.”

“I haven’t got any,” said John quickly, hoping to rid himself of this foul smelling creature.

“Giz some change,” the tramp repeated.

“I told you I haven’t got any change.”

“Giz some change,” the tramp said again.

This exchange went on repetitiously for another five minutes, before the tramp moved on to the next person in line. John was relieved that he had been approached by one of the less persistent ones, but the constant repetition as the tramp moved down the queue gave him a headache. Eventually though, the tramp reached the end of the line and he wandered off to catch the eye of someone else, leaving his piss infused aroma lingering in the air.

He looked over at Platform 9, where his train had not arrived, and was surprised to see several adults with children running into a wall until they knocked themselves unconscious. He was wondering what they were trying to achieve when the elderly lady behind him tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me young man, I need to call my daughter and tell her that I’ll be late getting in. You don’t have some change for the phone, do you?”

“Sure,” said John, fishing around in his pocket and producing a handful of coins. “How much do you want?”

“Fifty pee’ll be fine.”

“Giz some change.”

John turned from the elderly lady and looked in bewilderment at the smelly tramp standing directly in front of him, his grubby hand extended, with the palm open, ready to accept the free hand-out he felt sure he was going to receive, now that he knew the angry looking man who told him he had no change did in fact have some change to give him. He had been on the other side of the Station when John saw him last and John couldn’t quite believe he had been able to move that quickly, considering he looked almost at the point of death, having not consumed nearly enough of his daily quota of White Lightning. It was as if he had been beamed there by Scotty from the transporter deck of the USS Enterprise.

“Fuck off,” said John firmly, handing 50p in change to the elderly lady and dropping the rest of the coins back into his pocket, “and don’t come back.”

The tramp glared at John with mixture of surprise, confusion and disappointment. “I only asked for some change,” he said sorrowfully, before moving away.

The other people in the queue looked at John as if he had just taken a shit in front of them. He heard them mumbling about how course and vulgar he was and how the tramp had only wanted a little bit of small change. He turned away from them and mumbled something himself. “Fucking hypocrites,” was what he mumbled.

The train arrived at King’s Cross Platform 9 thirty minutes later and, after stepping over the unconscious bodies, he found a carriage as far away as possible from the people who had been queuing with him. He placed his bag in the luggage rack above his head and sat down. More passengers began to fill the carriage until the seat opposite him was the only empty seat left. This was filled a few minutes later by a strange looking young man with a pudding-basin haircut and sporting a pair of what seemed to be old National Health spectacles.

“Hello, my name’s Harry,” the young man said. “Harry Potty. Potty by name, potty by nature.” He snorted, obviously finding his own feeble joke amusing.

John didn’t normally talk to complete strangers on long train journeys. He found that they usually turned out to be tedious nutters who drank their own urine when they didn’t have to or they sacrificed small children to some fictional demon whenever the moon was full.  He was still in a bad mood after waiting for hours on King’s Cross Station and therefore had no intention of striking up a conversation with Harry Potty, or whatever the fuck he called himself. He didn’t look like someone who would drink his own urine or sacrifice young children. He looked like he was something worse – the worst possible person anyone could engage in conversation with no means of escape. He looked like a train spotter.

John grunted a cursory reply and then opened his newspaper.

“Are you going to Newtown?” asked Harry Potty, as the train was leaving the Station.

John didn’t reply. Instead, he shook his newspaper, which was the international sign for ‘shut the fuck up and leave me alone’.

“I’m going to Newtown,” said Harry Potty, ignoring the warning sign John had so clearly shown him, “I’m an apprentice wizard, you know.”

John rolled his eyes and folded up his newspaper. “You do know,” he said, “that there’s no such thing as wizards?”

“On the contrary,” replied Harry, “I’ve been accepted as a student in the first wizard academy in the country.”

“Really? And I suppose you’ll be learning how to do magic and cast spells on people and turn them into frogs or whatever wizards do?”

“I suppose so. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead, to be honest. I thought they might start by teaching me a few card tricks, you know, like Paul Daniels.”

“He’s a magician, not a wizard.”

“So you say.”

“So everyone says.”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, well, that’s probably because you’re delusional.

“What do you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“I told you what I do.”

“That’s different.”

“Why is it different?”

“I didn’t ask you what you did. You told me. You interrupted me when I was trying to read my newspaper.”

“But you weren’t reading your newspaper. You were just using it to ignore me.”

“So? What if I was?”

“Well, that’s just rude.”

John passed his hand over his face and said, “Does this look like the face of concern?”

Harry stared at John’s face for a few moments before saying, “Yes, actually, it does.”

“All right, if I tell you what I do for a living will you leave me alone?”

“Promise.”

“I’m a games designer.”

“What? Board games?”

“No, computer games. Who designs board games anymore?”

“Wow, that’s brilliant. What games have you designed?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Is that for security reasons or because you’re lying to me about being a games designer?”

“I’m not lying.”

“Yes you are. I may be young but I’m very observant – it’s one of the qualities that’s required for admittance to the Arnold Chemicals Wizard Academy. I’d say, judging by your covert manner and the bulge in the left-hand side of your jacket that you’re a secret agent.”

“Whoa, go back a bit. What Wizard Academy did you say?”

“Arnold Chemicals.”

John went silent for a moment while he reflected on what Harry had just said. He realised that he had seriously misjudged this young man – far from drinking his own urine or sacrificing young children or even being, heaven forbid, a train spotter, he seemed to be actually intelligent with a keen set of observational skills that may be of use during the forthcoming investigation. John reached into his right-hand jacket pocket and produced a wallet, which he opened, revealing the contents to the young man sat opposite him.

Harry gazed at the identification card that John held in front of his face. On the top of the ID card were the words BRITISH SECRET SERVICE, and underneath was a less than flattering back-and-white photograph of John looking several years younger than he did now. Directly below the photo was his name, JOHN LANGDON, and his number, 8001281, and below that were the words CHEESE DIVISION.

“I’m on leave at the moment,” John whispered, after giving Harry enough time to take in the information on the ID card, “and the investigation I’m currently involved in is completely off the record. My brother had protested against Arnold Chemicals and last month I got a frantic call from him. He said he was going to come and stay with me in London and something about a report he had to make to the local police, but then he just disappeared off the face of the earth. I don’t know what he’d got himself involved with – he was just a cook, for God’s sake – but I’m sure it’s got something to do with Arnold Chemicals. Can you see where I’m going with this?”

“You want me to spy for you?” said Harry.

“Yes. Look, I’m not forcing you or anything, but your inside access to Arnold Chemicals could provide invaluable information for my investigation. What do you say?”

Harry’s eyes opened wide and he was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “Brilliant! A spy! That’s way better than being a wizard!”

John breathed a sigh of relief. “Excellent,” he said. “Now there’s already someone inside Arnold Chemicals who used to work for our New Zealand division. His name is Peter Perkins and he’ll be your first point of contact. I’m not sure whether he’s still a reliable source or a double agent, so be careful what you say to him at first.”

“Yeah. Yeah. Peter Perkins. Be careful what I say to him,” Harry said excitedly.

“Right. Now, when we get off this train we act like we don’t know each other. We don’t want to attract any suspicion. Understand?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Act like I don’t know you. Understood?”

“Good. Now, do you think you could leave me in peace to read my newspaper?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Leave you in peace. Read your newspaper.”

 

The train arrived at Newtown Station four hours later and John retrieved his bag from the overhead storage. He said to Harry, “You get off first and I’ll get off about thirty seconds later. That way no one will suspect.”

Harry did as he was instructed and made his way along the platform to the ticket barrier. He was about to hand over his ticket to the guard stationed there when he saw John leave the train. He raised his hand and waved. “See you later, John!” he called loudly.

John stopped in his tracks, turned around and shook his head. “Christ on a fucking bike,” he whispered miserably to himself.

The cover of The Possum Book of Long Train Journeys Sat Next to a Nutter, from which book this chapter was taken

 

 

Chapter 5: THE MAN WHO BECAME ONE WITH THE COSMOS

In his dream there was a complete absence of birdsong.

It was the first thing he noticed – usually he could hear the noisy little bastards outside his bedroom window as they woke him up at some unearthly hour of the morning with their merry but ultimately annoying singing.

But in his dream he was met with silence.

Paul Langdon sat up in bed, rubbed his sleep-encrusted eyes and reached over to the bedside table to retrieve his tape measure – but it wasn’t there. It was an automatic reflex, an obsession so ingrained into his psyche that he still felt the need to do it even now. If it had been there it would have a standard white tape measure made from soft plastic with metal triangular tips at each end. He had a vague notion that it used to belong to his mother’s sewing kit, but he wasn’t entirely sure.

He heard a bell ringing in the distance and he assumed that it must be a Sunday, but it couldn’t be. It was impossible. The giant bell of St Christopher’s church that woke him up on a Sunday, when all the efforts of the birds had failed, was deep and warm. It was nothing like he was hearing now – it was absent and in its place was a delicate tinkling, like the sound of the tiny bell that called rich people to dinner in BBC costume dramas.

He climbed out of bed and walked over to the window. He drew back the curtains and looked out at the clean, pastel-coloured wooden houses across the street. It was all so familiar – yet strangely different. Some half-forgotten memory told him that he should have his tape measure with him – that it meant something, a link to his past maybe.

He dressed quickly, selecting the clean, strangely starchy clothes from the dresser that stood in the corner of the room, trying all the time to recall what had happened to him over the past – but nothing came to mind. He had great gaps in his memory that he couldn’t explain, much less understand.

As he stepped into the street he noticed than it was cleaner than he remembered it – the shops across the road looked brighter, more inviting. He heard his name being called and he looked behind him and saw Amelia and Madge walking towards him. As he waited for the two women to approach he looked around at his surroundings – everything was different, not by much, but just enough to make him feel uncomfortable.

It was as if – somehow in his sleep – the town had undergone a subtle change without him knowing.

And then Paul Langdon woke up.

***

A few days before his fourteenth birthday Paul Langdon had watched a black-and-white film on television called The Incredible Shrinking Man. It was about a man called Scott Carey who was accidentally exposed to a radioactive cloud whilst on a boating trip. As a result he started to get smaller, gradually at first, but by the end of the film he was so small he was able to climb through a wire screen in the basement and into the outside world, where he shrank away to nothing and became one with the vastness of the Cosmos. Maybe it was in his genes or maybe he was susceptible to its ideas, but The Incredible Shrinking Man had a profound effect on Paul and he had nightmares for weeks after.

Each morning he would wake up with an insane desire to measure himself – to make sure he was the same height as he was the day before. Everything was normal at first, but after a couple of weeks he noticed that he had started to shrink – not by much, but he was definitely getting shorter as each day passed.

He was terrified, struck dumb with an intense fear that he was – like Scott Carey – going to shrink away to nothing and become one with the vastness of the Cosmos. It was one of those irrational fears that all teenagers go through – fear of the dark or something nasty lurking under the bed; fear of sitting on the toilet because the devil lived down there (just past the u-bend) and was waiting to grab his little white bottom and drag him down to hell with him.

When he was twelve years old, Paul had told his younger brother, John, about the devil living in the toilet and for weeks his impressionable brother was afraid to sit down on the seat. It was only after he was discovered by his grandmother – when she barged into the bathroom because she was desperate for a wee – that he stopped squatting over the toilet with both feet balanced precariously on either side of the seat whenever he went for a shit.

“And there he was,” his grandmother would tell people later, “squatting on the toilet like a bloody Indian.”

On the wall of Paul’s bedroom, next to the door, was a height chart. It had been a free gift from the dentist after he had been for his last check-up, when he had to have a tooth removed, and it featured cartoon representations of molars and incisors up and down its length. Paul wasn’t entirely sure why a dentist would be giving away free height charts – perhaps, he thought, dental scientists had discovered that teeth had a mysterious effect on the growth hormones of teenage boys.

Paul measured himself on the first day of every month. He didn’t know why he did it – the dental height chart didn’t serve any practical purpose with regards to oral hygiene and so he used it for what it was obviously designed for. His mother used to measure him standing against the wall in the hallway of the house and she’d draw a line and write the date next to it with a soft lead pencil where the top of his head had reached. “Look how big you’ve grown,” she used to say, before she lost interest in it altogether and turned to alcohol instead.

Paul’s fourteenth birthday was on the first of the month and so, before he went downstairs to open his cards and presents, he stood in front of his dental height chart and measured himself. It was with a combination of surprise and shock that he discovered that he had not grown that usual extra fraction since his last measurement but had in fact grown shorter – by a whole inch. Just to make sure he measured himself again.

His mind was buzzing with panic as he walked downstairs, but when he saw the pile of presents waiting for him on the floor of the lounge the panic he had initially felt was suddenly replaced by avarice. His birthday was very much the same as all the other birthdays he could remember – he opened his presents in the morning, at lunchtime his grandparents came to visits with more presents and in the afternoon he had a party where his friends brought him even more presents. The evening was spent sitting lazily in front of the television watching whatever was being shown on the three channels that were available.

The following morning Paul was up early and was stood in front of the dental height chart before anyone in the house was up. This was not his usual routine – it was always the first day of the month and never on two consecutive days. But he had to make sure – to confirm to himself that the height he had recorded the previous morning was a mistake.

It wasn’t.

When he measured himself that morning he was a fraction of an inch shorter than he had been the day before. He couldn’t understand it – it was impossible. There was no way he could have been shrinking, no way at all, and there must be some rational explanation for it. If he was eating the same food, doing the same things, doing the same physical exercise as his classmates, how could he be shrinking? But the evidence was there, staring at him from the bright colours of the dental height chart.

It was the same every day for the whole month. Every day he measured himself he found that he was a fraction of an inch shorter and he remembered how Scott Carey had shrunk away to nothing to become one with the vastness of the Cosmos. Now it was he, Paul Langdon, who was the incredible shrinking man!

“Mum,” he said one day as his mother was loading a pile of his dirty clothes into the twin-tub washing machine, “can you notice anything different about me?”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know – just something that’s different.”

“Not that I can see.”

“Are you sure? I mean, are you positive?

“Look, what’s this about – can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Do I look smaller? Do I look as if I’ve been shrinking?”

Paul’s mother shook her head and carried on with the loading the washing machine. “How and why on earth would you be shrinking? Just stop asking me stupid questions and bugger off and bother someone else!”

Maybe his mother was lying, covering up the truth in order to conceal a conspiracy against him or maybe he was the victim of a clandestine experiment and his entire family had been sworn to secrecy – on pain of death. But how had this happened? Hadn’t Scott Carey been exposed to a radioactive cloud? Paul tried to recall when was the last time he had been exposed to a radioactive cloud, but nothing immediately sprang to mind.

And then remembered the dentist! The dentist had given him gas to knock him out when he had his tooth removed – gas that had given him the weirdest and most vivid nightmares. He had looked like a sinister character with his pencil moustache and lazy eye and his array of gleaming instruments arranged next to a liver beside him. He spoke with a clipped, foreign – possibly German – accent and he wrote secret notes when Paul wasn’t looking. “Now senn, I vont you to count town from ze numper zehn ant soon you vill be asleep,” Paul had heard the dentist say as he held the rubber mask over his face and turned up the gas. He was probably a mad Nazi scientist experimenting with gas that shrunk people until they became one with the vastness of the Cosmos and Paul’s mother had unwittingly delivered her son into his evil hands.  Just before he dropped off Paul was sure he heard the sound of a pair of heels clicking together and the dentist saying “Sieg heil, mein Führer!”

It all made sense to a fourteen year-old boy with an overactive imagination. Why else would a dentist give out free height charts if his ultimate aim wasn’t world domination?

In the end it wasn’t the dentist with his clipped foreign accent; it wasn’t the gas that put him to sleep and gave him weird dreams and it wasn’t a massive conspiracy in which his entire family was involved.

In the end it was just his brother.

Paul discovered the reason for his mysterious shrinking on a wet afternoon in November. He had been helping his mother with the washing up when she asked him to get a clean tea towel from the airing cupboard upstairs. While he was searching in the airing cupboard he heard some movement coming from behind the door of his bedroom. The door was slightly open and he pressed his head against the frame so that he could squint inside the room. What he saw there filled him with an overwhelming sense of anger and relief. Inside the room, kneeling on the floor was his brother – all twelve cunning, devious years of him. He had carefully taken Paul’s dental height chart off the wall and was about to put it back a few millimetres higher than it had been previously. He was prevented from doing this by Paul bursting into the room and calling him a little bastard.

“Why did you do this to me?” Paul asked.

“Why did you tell me the devil lived just past the u-bend in our toilet?” replied his brother.

“Fair enough.”

“Granddad told me how scared you were after you saw that film about the shrinking man. Was it really that scary?”

“Yeah – there’s this bit where he has to fight this giant spider, only it’s not giant, it’s just that he’s so small and  . . .”

***

On the morning he discovered what was left of DS Jones, Paul telephoned his brother. John was working as a games designer for a rising software company in the city of London and he was earning a fortune. He earned more in a single month than Paul earned in an entire year at the Stuart Hotel. Sometimes he wondered if was all worth it. Still, he loved cooking – even throughout the years he had been working with heavy machinery, where his ear drums had been damaged beyond repair. Even so he wished he’d studied a little harder at school and maybe he would have bagged a high salary job in the city.

John knew it was his brother calling and so he held the receiver as far away from his ear as he could to allow Paul’s booming voice to be somewhere approximating a normal speech level. At first he just laughed off what Paul had to say, but the urgency and pitch of his brother’s voice made him shut up and listen.

“Come up to London and stay with me, why don’t you,” John suggested. “Get away from Newtown for a while – it’ll do you some good, don’t you think.”

“ARE YOU SURE?” blasted Paul. “I DON’T WANT TO BE ANY BOTHER.”

“Look, it’s no bother. Just get pack some clothes and get on the first train out of there.”

“RIGHT. I HAVE TO REPORT THIS TO THE POLICE FIRST – THEN I’LL JUMP ON A TRAIN.”

“You do that. See you soon, big brother. “

“YEAH.”

Paul threw a few clothes into a suitcase along with his wash kit and a book to read on the train. He stuffed a pair of yellow Marigold gloves into his pocket, picked up the black plastic bin bag that contained DS Jones’ discarded belongings and headed off to the police station.

***

Paul felt a little better after speaking to DCI Smith, although he was somewhat concerned about what he had got himself involved in. His brother was right though – he did need a break. The atmosphere in Newtown was beginning to feel more oppressive to him as each day passed. He knew it had something to do with Arnold Chemicals but he wasn’t sure how or why. What he did know, however, was that the people of the town had behaved differently towards him ever since he had vehemently expressed his opposition to the plans for the location of Arnold Chemicals.

He tried to put those thoughts out of his mind and focus on the positive as he headed towards the Railway Station. He was so busy thinking about seeing his brother after such a long time that he didn’t notice the large black car with the blacked-out windows pull up beside him. Nor did he notice the two large men wearing sunglasses and dressed in black suits get out the car until it was too late. He had already been bundled into the back of the car before he knew what was happening.

“Well, well, Mr Langdon. Fancy seeing you here,” said the man in the back seat in his smooth, velvety voice. “I think you’ve been a thorn in my side for long enough.”

Paul was about to speak but a blow to the side of his head sent him reeling into unconsciousness.

***

The first face Paul Langdon saw when he regained consciousness was Clifford Stine’s. He tried to move but found that he couldn’t.

Clifford Stine smiled. “It’s the anaesthetic, Mr Langdon. We don’t want you going anywhere, do we? Now, I know you’ve been speaking to the police but I don’t know what you’ve told them.”

“I WOULDN’T TELL YOU ANYWAY,” slurred Paul.

“I figured that much. It doesn’t matter what they know anyway – they’re far too stupid to find out what we’ve been up to here and what are ultimate plans are.”

“YOU’LL NEVER GET AWAY WITH IT,” slobbered Paul, “PEOPLE LIKE YOU NEVER DO.”

“Oh, but I already have got away with it, Mr Langdon. And as for people like me – well, we get away with it all the time. And do you know why? Because we’re rich and we’re powerful and we’re in control. I’m going to send you on a little trip – but don’t worry I’m not going to kill you or have done to you what I ordered to have done to that nice, but nosy, undercover policeman. I have something far more creative in mind for you – something that you’ve been thinking about for quite some time now. And guess what – it won’t hurt. The process has already begun. It’s been in your system for days. All its going take to complete it is a little prick.”

Paul heard a door behind him open and someone enter the room.

“Ah,” said Clifford Stine. “And here’s the little prick now.”

“Guten abent, Herr Schtein,” said the little prick.

Paul couldn’t move but that didn’t stop his mind whirling around in perpetual motion. The little prick’s voice had triggered in him a distant memory from his past. He heard something metallic being dragged towards him and then the hiss of a gas cylinder being turned on. A shadow fell over him and he looked up in horror at who he saw before him. He was older now, much older. His cheeks were hollow and his dark eyes were sunk into their sockets. But he still had that pencil moustache and the clipped foreign accent.

“Now zen, Herr Lankton,” the dentist said as he moved the black rubber mask over Paul’s face, “I’m going to giff you some of zis gas to relax you and zen you vill feel a liddle prick in your arm. It’s nussink to vorry about. It vill chust make you forget and go to sssssleeeep.”

An automatic reflex made Paul start counting down from ten as the rubber mask was pressed over his nose and mouth.

10 . . . 9 . . . . 8 . . . . . 7 . . . . . . 6 . . .  . . . . 5 . . . . . . . . .4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

***

He awoke, as if from a dream, on the hillside overlooking the town where he had a vague notion about picnicking during the summer. He had no shoes or socks on and he had no recollection of how he got there or how long he had been there. But it was a nice day – the sun was shining high up in the cloudless sky, unusual for this time of year. He tried to remember why he had come to this spot but it was useless. He couldn’t even remember his name.

He looked down at the town and it looked different in the sun – cleaner somehow, tidier, as if while he’d been asleep someone had gone up and down its streets with an industrial cleaner. He stood up and the grass too felt different, springier, and if he hadn’t known any better, artificial. He started to walk back to the town, down the grassy hill, towards the Railway Station.

It seemed strange walking in the hot sun. The air was quite still and there were no birds singing. It took him about ten minutes to walk to the outskirts of the town and he was surprised to see two oldish ladies stood by a sign that read: NEWTOWN WELCOMES CAREFUL DRIVERS. They were waving at him.

“Coo-ee, luv,” hailed the older of the two. “We were getting worried about you.”

“Worried? Why?” Paul replied, realising that there was something different about his voice, softer maybe. He couldn’t really say.

“Well, you’ve been gone for ages.”

“Have I?”

“Yes, absolutely ages,” chipped in the other woman. “What were you doing up on the hill?”

“I don’t know. I can’t remember – and I’ve lost my shoes.”

“Have you had a bump on the head or something?”

“I think I must have – and if I did I can’t remember anything about it.”

“Well, you look a bit pasty to me.”

“I don’t know what . . . have you noticed how quiet it is?”

“Quiet?”

“Yes, quiet. I mean there’s no noise at all. What’s happened to all the birds?”

“Birds?”

“You know, those little fling things that wake you up in the morning.”

“Flying things? Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be telling me next you can travel in space.”

“Well actually you . . . I’m sorry, I’ve . . . excuse me, but who are you?”

“You must have had a bump on the head,” said the younger of the two. “I’m Amelia and this is Madge.”

“Right,” Paul said, “look I’m sorry but I can’t remember my name.”

“Good heavens,” said Madge. “I think we’d better take you to casualty. You must have amnesia or something. Your name – it’s Scott. Scott Carey.”

 

 

The cover of The Possum Book of Weird Science, from which this chapter is taken.