‘Is it yet Henry who is king? I do not keep my ear to new events.’

  ‘No, it has not been Henry for a ten-year now, but rather Richard, called Heart of a Lion, who battled heathen Saladin in the most recent of crusades. Our third, I think, that surely has decided the affair.’

  ‘There have been three crusades? My oath, this is a world where there is always something going on, although I think men are so wicked it must soon be ended when we come at last to Judgement Day.’

  ‘It is a certain thing. I am expecting it next year, when calendars shall be all twelves and not elevens. It is well known that the natural way of things contrives they should be done in dozens, as the months that go to make a year, so it is likely that the Lord would have that be the date where he was done with us. Twelve hundred, I am sure of it, shall be the midnight of the ages, although neither of us shall be still alive to hear its chime, not in my reckoning.’

  ‘I can do no more than agree, for you seem a more learned man than I, whoever I might be.’

  ‘Ah, yes. We did not settle on which one of us you were before our conversation made a turn, but it may be that we can put our heads together on the matter, and in this way come upon an answer to it.’

  ‘That would be a pick-me-up. I think you have already said you are John Halpen out of Banbury, so that is one gone from our list, for I cannot be you when it is plain you are somebody else entire. What of the other Banbury man you talked about? Might he not be the sort of fellow who’d be me?’

  ‘Will Tite? I should not think it. I would play on Banbury Green with him when we were boys, and even then he had a deeper voice than you have now. In any case, he’s dead. I would not swear it, but it comes to me he was perhaps the first of us to go that way.’

  ‘Oh … now I think I have him! Was it him tried running off when we were near to Wootton?’

  ‘That were Will. He said he could not more endure the lash, and soonest would be dead.’

  ‘That was a stern conclusion he had reached, though I cannot help but admire his pluck.’

  ‘Well, it might be as he thought better of it. He was not far off the road when one of them what follow rode him down and struck his head in with a mace – that I would think a good sight worse than scourging. And it was not quickly done with, either. I heard what to me seemed an unfortunate number of blows afore Will ceased with his shrill protest.’

  ‘You have said before he had a voice more deep than mine.’

  ‘Aye. I suspect the hurt of being struck so many times was one not easily made plain in a low register. Still, now we are decided you are neither I nor yet Will Tite, are we not nearer to an end of your conundrum? I should think that— blast it!’

  ‘What was that, now? Did you stumble?’

  ‘Aye. I put my foot down in a rain hole, that I did not see for all this mazy air that’s everywhere. I should not like to happen on the spider who has strung this gossamer all over things. It is a great impediment, when I and thee would both prefer as our ordeal were faster done with.’

  ‘In that, you’re not wrong. Is it a long way further, do you now suppose?’

  ‘What, our return to Brackley? No, I do not think it can be. It is my belief I saw a milestone some way back behind us, else it were a post whose markings were but accident. That said as it were two mile or it might be three. The bottom of the number was not to be read for cow shit.’

  ‘And so that shall be an end to our unfortunate parade, at Brackley?’

  ‘Would it were. At Brackley they shall set us to reburying the fellow that we dragged from sanctuary there, so that at least we shall no longer bear our sorry load. Then they would have us walk to Lincoln and be scourged again before we are set free, though it is plain we shall be lucky if we make it to the top end of this hill what we are on. I am surprised that you do not better recall our sentence, for it made a terrible impression on us at the time.’

  ‘I have a sense of most of it up to the hanging, although after that, my memories are vague things or not there at all. The next I knew, we were together on this journey and have been so since. How is it with your visions? Are they fairer and more saintly, so as not to play you up so much?’

  ‘Should you compel me to be truthful, I would say, if anything, that they were worse. This ploughed ground that we pass seemed not a moment since, to me, to be an ocean all of soil where were the ridges and the furrows like to black and crumbling waves. And in this great deluge of dirt were swimming skeletons, that leaped and dived amidst the filthy breakers as though grinning fish. Fanned out their naked ribs like fins, they did, and breathed earth through their empty eyes. Not only men and women were there, but likewise the greater bones of horses, charging breast-deep in cold land, dead roots for manes, all snorting beetles. None of this seems saintly in my reckoning. If these be visions, then they are more noisome and yet more a burden than this falling-to-bits scoundrel that we lug.’

  ‘Then you have seen no angels, from the sound of it, lest they were skeletons.’

  ‘I should not think as angels may have skeletons, when they are surely made of naught save spirit.’

  ‘Then how can they have brows, chins and noses what stick out, rather than all their faces sagging in like a wet sack? Why do their arms and legs not dangle ever in the breeze?’

  ‘Put like that, I can see your reasoning. What I think proves my point is that an angel cannot die.’

  ‘That may well be, but neither can a skeleton.’

  ‘I … can we not turn back our talk to fathoming if you should be Martin of Peterborough or else Rob of Bedford? I have not the strength nor yet the character to speak on the insides of angels.’

  ‘If that is your wish. I have contrived a way that I might know the pair of them apart, by means that have but lately come to me: which one was it got sick and brought up all the black material, and which one was it broke his leg so that we left him in a ditch?’

  ‘Why, you are right! That is a simple method that has stared us in the face this while. Now, let me think on it … so far as I can tell, it would be Rob as did the dreadful vomit. What it was that he produced I could not say from looking, but he soon thereafter died from it. As for Martin of Peterborough, now I think, he looked to be the oldest out of us and was already frail. I am near certain it was he who tripped from off the road into its ditch, not very long after Will Tite was lost to us. The leg was broke on his way down, and those who follow said as we should leave him there. From what I can remember of it, he made loud entreaty, asking that he should instead be killed by some means that would take less time, and would not be so likely to involve wild animals. His argument to me seemed forceful and well-reasoned, at least to the point where he went from our earshot. Well, now! What about that? We have in between the two of us worked out an answer that will fit our riddle.’

  ‘I am struck with wonder by the skill of our deliberation.’

  ‘As am I alike. Though in hard circumstance, we have our wits about us still.’

  ‘Aye, that we do. So, in the end, which one of us did I turn out to be?’

  ‘Well, you are … did we not just now establish that?’

  ‘I cannot think we did. Most of our talk has been concerned with who I’m not. I’m not Roger of Hinckley, when by your account he is in France. Neither am I John Halpen out of Banbury, for that is you, you have convinced me. Will Tite had his head done in, while old Martin of Peterborough begged that his should be done in the same. Rob, come from Bedford, did the vomiting. I’ll own my adding up is very bad, and well it may be there is somebody I have forgot.’

  ‘For my part, I can think of no one. Not unless it happened that you were the …’

  ‘Yes? Unless it happened that I was the what? Have you cast light on our besetting mystery?’

  ‘I … I would sooner that I did not say.’

  ‘Oh, come now! Surely you do not intend as I should be left hanging?’

  ‘I think … I think it is better that I do not further talk with thee.’

  ‘How is that better, when I thought we were become fast friends and fellows in adversity?’

  ‘ ’

  ‘Say that we are not back to that again. To walk in silence, sure as anything, shall drive you mad.’

  ‘ ’

  ‘Well, then. If such be your reply, that is a game for two to play.’

  ‘ ’

  ‘ ’

  ‘ ’

  ‘ ’

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First of all, I would like to thank Edgar Allan Poe for taking time off from the torment of his life to invent the short story – still the best form for a young writer to learn their craft, and still the most versatile vehicle when they’re elderly and bent beneath the weight of all those words.

  Of the yarns collected here, ‘A Hypothetical Lizard’ was my first serious attempt at short prose fiction, written in 1987 for the third of the Liavek shared-world anthologies published by Ace Books, for which I’d like to thank Emma Bull and Will Shetterly, who edited the series and provided the imaginary city in which the tale occurs. I’d also like to belatedly acknowledge the superb Lewis Furey, for a line in his song ‘Poetic Young Man’ from the album The Humors Of, which sparked off the tale’s central identity-theft conceit.

  ‘Not Even Legend’ was written in 2020 for inclusion in the fifth volume of Uncertainties (Swan River Press, 2021), and thanks are due to the redoubtable Brian J. Showers as the weird fiction anthology’s editor and publisher, keeping the myriad voices of Irish fantasy alive there in Dublin.

  ‘Location, Location, Location’, written in 2019, was originally intended for a science-fiction anthology issued by my beloved Northampton Arts Lab and edited by the magnificent Donna Scott. Admittedly, what with the appearance of Plague on his coughing horse and the (properly) chaotic workings of Arts Lab, this may never appear, but I still want to thank Donna and all my Arts Lab pals just for being there, wherever the hell we are.

  ‘Cold Reading’ was written and published in 2009 as a seasonal ghost story in the Christmas issue of my exquisite-but-ruinous underground magazine Dodgem Logic. I made the central character a fraudulent psychic so that my many atheist and rationalist friends could enjoy a tale of terrible supernatural revenge, despite their cheerless and depressingly evidence-based philosophy.

  ‘The Improbably Complex High-Energy State’ emerged from a single point in the quantum vacuum during 2019, and was written for the latest resurrection of Michael Moorcock’s New Worlds from the estimable Pete Crowther at PS Publishing, to whom both gratitude and love are due.

  The remaining four stories were all written for this current collection between February and August in 2021. Regarding ‘Illuminations’, based on a woefully misguided seaside holiday in 2005, I must thank my wife Melinda Gebbie for her tolerance, and apologise for threatening to set a blameless holiday-camp helper dressed as a cartoon animal on fire if he or she attempted to cheer me up. You know I didn’t mean it, darling, and I was only waving the cigarette lighter for effect.

  As for the tiger-headed elephant in the room, ‘What We Can Know About Thunderman’ exploded like a lanced boil between February and April, and I like to think it has an air of spring about it. Other than all those people in comic-book editorial and their unguarded moments, I must thank Addy Tantamed and Steven Grant for what I think they call ‘additional material’ concerning the much-missed Archie Goodwin, and a couple of intriguing rumours. I must also thank my dear friend of these last few decades, the immaculate Kevin O’Neill, arguably the finest comic artist of his generation and somebody who knows where all the restless horror-comic corpses are buried.

  ‘American Light: An Appreciation’ wouldn’t have been possible save for, again, the assistance of Melinda with her intimate knowledge of her native city and her memories of its shifting counter-cultures. I’d also like to thank the splendid Kevin Ring for his heroic Beat Scene magazine, constantly telling me new things about a literary movement I thought I knew. Subscribe now.

  The collection’s final story, ‘And, At the Last, Just to Be Done with Silence’, was also the last written, and is as good a place as any to express my enormous debt to my friend, collaborator, and indentured slave, Joe Brown. Joe hunted down ancient local newspaper articles and historical references for this piece, dug up investigative hearings for ‘Thunderman’, and provided me with uncountable obscure facts right when I needed them. It’s almost as if he has some kind of unimaginable magic looking-glass for finding out this stuff.

  My thanks go also to my first literary agent, James Wills of Watson, Little, for his astute and loyal labours, for his impeccable taste, and for the fragrant talcum powder he got us for Christmas. Thanks also to Paul Baggaley, Daniel Loedel and all of the wonderful people at Bloomsbury for their care, their enthusiasm, and for making this new experience such a pleasant and comfortable one.

  As always, thanks to my fellow language-mangles, Iain Sinclair, Brian Catling and Michael Moorcock for their unending inspiration and encouragement; to the superb Michael Butterworth and the memory of Dave Britton; and to the modern world for managing to stay several steps ahead of my most ludicrous imaginings.

  Finally, I am thankful to the people I love the most, and who provide my motivation for both writing and living: to my daughters Leah and Amber, who were around my knees while I was writing ‘A Hypothetical Lizard’ and who engaged with ‘Thunderman’ without retching. They, their husbands and our four unlikely European folk-tale grandsons are the illuminations of my existence. The same is true of the above-cited Melinda Gebbie, who as an eager initial audience for most of the stories here has been a first-responder at the scene of the catastrophe, and the warmest pandemic companion that anyone could wish for. I’d also like to extend my love and appreciation to Kirsty Noble, who’s apparently been looking forward to this collection. I really hope she enjoys it.

  And thanks to the tiny percentage of you readers who have read to the end of these acknowledgements. To be honest I usually skip them, so your efforts are truly appreciated.

  Alan Moore

  Northampton

  January, 2022

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  ALAN MOORE is an English writer widely regarded as the best and most influential writer in the history of comics. His seminal works include From Hell, Lost Girls and The League of Extraordinary Gentleman. He is also the author of the bestselling Jerusalem. He was born in Northampton, and has lived there ever since.

  BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA

  BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING, and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  First published in 2022 in Great Britain

  First published in the United States 2022

  This electronic edition published in 2022 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  Copyright © Alan Moore, 2022

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

  ISBN: HB: 978-1-63557-880-5; BARNES & NOBLE SIGNED EDITION: 978-1-63973-128-2; EBOOK: 978-1-63557-881-2

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  To find out more about our authors and their books please visit www.bloomsbury.com. Here you will find extracts, author interviews, details of forthcoming events and the option to sign up for our newsletters.

  Bloomsbury books may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at specialmarkets@macmillan.com.

 

 

  Alan Moore, Illuminations

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends