The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic 2 Read online

  ‘Oh I see,’ Phillips fawned. ‘Then you’re in the business?’ He hopped excitedly from one foot to the other. ‘What kind of medium do you work in, my dear? Pastel, oil, or watercolour?’

  ‘Spray can,’ she grinned.

  His disdain was worth the entrance fee alone and Elise gave herself a mental pat on the back for having got under the skin of this toff.

  ‘How colourful,’ Phillips said, slowly inching away.

  Not to be dissuaded from their verbal sparring, Elise followed him through into the next room. Leaning lazily beside one of the Gallery’s three Tiepolos, she planted her pierced tongue firmly against the inside of one cheek and made a loud popping sound.

  The picture was a sketch of a fresco: Virtue and Nobility putting flight to Ignorance against a backdrop of clouds.

  ‘Bit sexist this one,’ she observed wickedly, making little effort to stifle her grin. ‘Making Ignorance a woman is so last century, don’t you think?’

  ‘At least they knew their place back then and didn’t speak out of turn’ Phillips countered moodily. Slapping his guide book closed, he moved to the next alcove and continued to glower. ‘Perhaps this one is more suited to your somewhat insurrectionary nature?’

  Elise followed his gaze to the Rubens – Saint Barbara fleeing from her Father; and felt suddenly cold, as though an old ghost had awakened.

  ‘You remind me of my dad,’ she muttered, hiding tightly balled fists.

  ‘Oh really’ Phillips purred. ‘Was he also an artist?’

  Her eyes hardened as she recalled the dry creak of bedsprings and stale smell of whiskey breath in her ear.

  ‘No’ she said quietly. ‘He was something else.’

  Phillips took her silence as his cue for a further offensive.

  ‘That’s a pity,’ he smiled. ‘I believe it was Durer who said that ‘if a man devotes himself to art, much evil is avoided that happens otherwise when one is idle.’

  Overwhelmed by memories, Elise staggered away. Phillips followed, flanking her in the centre of the room, and made a brief pirouetted appraisal of the last collection of paintings. Closing his eyes, he let out a seedy exhale of pleasure before blinking milkily at her like an over-gorged lizard.

  ‘Well my dear, this has been a most educational morning. I hope that I’ve instilled some appreciation of the gap which exists between the art of a thing and the power of words to fully describe it.’

  Elise bristled. ‘I still prefer to make art, not read it.’

  Phillips smiled sympathetically.

  ‘To quote Robert Henri, ‘‘the object isn’t to make art, but be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.’’

  She scowled, wondering whether he would be still be so smug with her fist rammed down his throat.

  ‘No,’ she retorted. ‘The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.’

  ‘That’s very profound. Was it Picasso, or Degas?’

  ‘Banksy’ she grinned triumphantly and made a dash for the exit.

  *

  A chorus of pneumatic drills greeted her exit from the Gallery; Dulwich Council having seen fit to upend yet another long stretch of tarmac in their vain quest for progress. Crossing to the opposite pavement Elise darted through College Gate into the Park and made her way through the lines of parked cars. Diving into the trees she took a shortcut over to the boating lake, wanting to put as much distance as possible between her and the lizard. The mumble of wooden slats as she trudged across the boardwalk reminded her briefly of Brooklyn’s busy streets and she felt a pang of homesickness for her adopted city.

  She let her gaze fall on the black and white rendering of Murillo’s Three Boys, as she passed by the Pavilion; one of the works from last year’s festival by the London-based Stik. Elise enjoyed the simplicity of his figures, the central one appearing to eye the empty picnic tables, scratching his head at the lack of ice-cream laden patrons. On the adjacent wall was a more cartoon-like interpretation of Tiepolo by the French artist, Noir. Elise held Thierry’s work in the greatest respect ever since she’d got drunk with him one night and found out about his illegal work on the Berlin Wall during the 1980s. She didn’t think she would have had the balls to paint so freely under the constant threat of being shot at by guards. Spring-Heeled Jack would have probably lit up a flare on the wall and begun dancing a merry jig beneath a hailstorm of bullets. Elise wished she could be more like him, resolutely sticking two fingers up at the establishment and propagating her legend.

  Memories of Phillips’ yellow teeth gnawed at her as she walked up Court Lane. Skirting The Plough, she was glad of the colourful sight of Francisco’s Queen Bee in the rear car park. Never one to toe the party line, Nunca (as he was better known on the scene) had eschewed the general theme of the festival last year to create a full-length piece entirely unrelated to the Gallery works. His two-storey high insectoid matriarch had been carefully constructed over the course of a single weekend. Six spindly legs protruded from matron-like skirts, holding hot mugs of tea as though the insect were offering refreshment to the pub’s incoming patrons. Elise found it oddly comforting.

  Phlegm’s silent Triumph of David heralded her arrival onto Goodrich Road; the Sheffield-born artist selecting a solitary trumpeter from the source work by Poussin. His black and white figure resembled a two-legged earthworm in drag, carrying a mighty curved horn which reminded Elise of a gramophone. Phlegm’s work was always so precise, the exacting nature of his brushstrokes a sharp contrast to the bland whitewashed wall upon which the piece was installed.

  The railings around her old playground were corroded with age and seemed more suited to keeping Liqen’s enormous Mandarin Chicarra penned in then to protecting children at play. The Spaniard’s vibrant homunculus was an insane fusion between grasshopper legs and oversized fruit, daubed across the end of a terrace. A rodent-like mouth comprised the base of its face and the demented, homopterous thing looked as likely to pluck a small child from the swings as it was to begin munching on the nearby foliage. Elise loved it and hated it in equal measure. Vaulting the fence, she hurried northward, keen to put the fruit/fly behind her.

  On Spurling Road she passed Conor Harrington’s Duelling Pugilists, more by luck than design. This was her favourite piece she’d decided, the depiction of two bare-knuckle fighters in Georgian dress coming on like a towering Regency Fight Club. Something about the juxtaposition between old and new fired Elise’s imagination and she stopped to drink in the scene.

  Having gorged herself upon the banquet laid out by her peers, she headed east past The Vic, where ROA’s hunkered canine creation leered down at her from the side of the pub. The mammoth hound was bent in a pose that suggested it was taking a shit. Having sampled the beers on offer with Mags the previous night, Elise tended to agree with the dog. Ten minutes later, she was deep in the suburbs, beneath a seldom used underpass rarely stirred by the churn of trains, where she had chosen to install her own addition to Dulwich.

  Spring-Heeled Jack had been her muse since she’d first picked up a spray-can, but despite her continued enthusiasm, this newest depiction was not yet complete. Lighting through the underpass was poor and she had been forced to rely on daylight; though the long shadows limited her output and made it difficult to choose the right colours. The advantage of this location, she reminded herself, was that it was largely undisturbed. The whole point of the Festival was for artists to exhibit their work where they might have the most impact, but this was something she’d consciously chosen to ignore. Jack was hers and hers alone. Even now, without the additions of his trademark cape and horns, his cavorting figure was every bit the roguish misanthrope she had fallen in love with as a child.

  She had depicted him leaping down from a wall, clad in thick leather boots and dark jodhpurs; the sepia-coloured stripes across his deathly black oilskin giving the impression of a hollowed out rib-cage. Elise didn’t need to paint in a heart to know Jack’s was larger than
life. He lived for anarchy and delighted in chaos, jumping out from the shadows to belay the unwary. A dingy passage like this was ideal for his purpose. Without Jack’s meddlesome ways Elise knew she might still know the taste of stale whiskey and had begun worshipping her adopted God long ago. With every brushstroke, she knelt before the altar of his church. It was no accident that she had chosen Pygmalion as a name for herself. Like the Cypriot sculptor of old, if she could have imbued her creation with life so that he might come again, she would have done so without a second thought.

  His face was overtly impish, the jaw elongated, with pointed tips to his ears, so as to make him seem almost daemonic. His pencil-thin moustache curled maddeningly upwards like a nightmarish Dali, as though a thousand volts coursed through his body. Yesterday, she had added clawed metal hands to his arms, reaching out towards the viewer with glee. Now, as the day drew to a close, she began emphasising the bold of his eyes, using such a vibrant colour that Jack’s manic glare sought to rival the sun.

  Elise liked to think that those dancing red eyes were the last thing her bastard father had seen as he lay in the mud by the canal. The official version of events, as given to her by the police, was that Daddy-dearest had been mugged on the way home from the pub. They said that, unable to defend himself in his inebriated state, he had apparently lost his footing and tumbled head first into the water. They said witnesses had seen a dark figure fleeing the scene over rooftops. They said kids were getting more and more daring these days. They said they were sorry.

  The fact that the contents of her father’s wallet had still poked from his pocket had been of no apparent interest to the police, and a label reading ‘case closed’ had been attached to his malingering corpse with all the studious banality of a Car Boot sale sign.

  Twelve-year old Elise had known better though. In that stone-cold morgue, she had seen the rictus look of terror upon her father’s face and known for sure that something had come for him out of the dark. A need for answers drove her to the city’s libraries, striving to uncover the many truths and bizarre accounts of Greater London’s unexplained deaths. When her research had led her inevitably to the legend of Spring-Heeled Jack, she knew with an inexplicable certainty that she had found her saviour.

  Reports of Jack’s appearances had been somewhat sporadic since the start of the twentieth century but Elise had taken on the role of apostle. Travelling the world with her paint-cans in hand, she had spread Jack’s anarchic influence across the globe; installing his portrait in darkened corners and alleyways in an effort to appease her personal Jesus. She adopted Jack’s values of anarchy and mischief as her own. His creed of chaos became her mantra. As she had grown into womanhood, so too had she sought to rail against the establishment, hoping that perhaps one day Jack would see fit to step from the shadows again and steal her away.

  *

  Elise made her way across the garden under cover of twilight. Behind her, the trees cast long fingers towards the shape of the house, as if somehow seeking to join with its darkness. The jemmy she had brought proved unnecessary. A half-open window on the ground floor granted her access. Mounting the sill, she felt a queer draft of air play out from within and froze, feeling an indistinct vibration from somewhere deep in the house. The disturbance brought the sash down on her trailing ankle, pinning it painfully against the sill and causing her to let out a brief shriek of pain. Wrenching the window up, she gingerly withdrew her injured leg and prayed her cry wasn’t heard. Fortunately, her heavy boot had prevented much of the damage and she found that she was still able to stand. Cursing the fact that she would probably limp for a week, Elise did her best to ignore the dull throb and lodged her crowbar beneath the sash, preventing it from closing and providing a quick exit if needed.

  The room appeared to be a study judging by the large mahogany writing desk and accompanying chair which stood disinterestedly with its back to the window. Night-blinded, Elise inched cautiously forward until she located a door and stepped gingerly out into the corridor beyond.

  Drawing on indistinct memories from her underage drinking, she figured she was heading towards the bar, but she couldn’t be sure. A series of lit candles illuminated numerous picture frames stacked up on the floor. Many she recognised as original works by well-known painters, which she presumed had once held pride of place on the walls before being confined to rot away in this damp airless vestibule. The new owner obviously had no appreciation for art; preferring bare nails on his walls. Elise’s Robin Hood gene itched at the thought of liberating some of the pictures to a more appreciative audience. She reminded herself that she’d not come here to steal, but rather trespass with abandon.

  The corridor did indeed lead to the bar, now filled with books rather than beer. Row upon row of elaborate shelving now reached from ceiling to floor on two levels and the room overflowed with a preponderance of texts. Further candles burned in the corners and the merest hint of a draught gave the hall a cathedral-like air. For a moment, she was a thirteen-year old girl again, beset with the urge to explore. Tugging down one of the volumes at random, Elise plonked herself into a nearby chair and began reading.

  The book was dusty, speckled with mildew and age, but the name on the front cover was just about legible, identifying the author as Edward Plunkett. The title was unfamiliar, as was the name and mystified, she began flicking through the first pages, which told her she held a first edition of something called The Gods of Pegâna. From the brief introduction, Elise ascertained that Plunkett had been the eighteenth Baron of a place called Dunsany. None the wiser, she discarded the book and took down another. This one had no name whatsoever. The crusty pages were stiffened parchment and filled with hand-drawn images of strangely malformed creatures. Taking it for some kind of reference text, she discarded it too and perused the rest of the shelves.

  She discovered that the books were ordered chronologically; the publication dates decreasing towards the rear of the room. Recognising several works by noted twentieth century horror authors at first, she moved on to less familiar names. Here was a collection from the Twenties, the same seven authors featured again and again: Smith, Howard, Bloch, Long, Kuttner, Lieber and Lovecraft. Of these, Elise recognised only two. Immediately below this section was an entire shelf devoted to one August Derleth, each volume bound together with a dry, skin-like material, which came off on her fingers. Exploring further, she found other texts written in an unknown language, their covers adorned with indecipherable symbols.

  At the furthest end of the room, a last set of shelves partially obscured a tiny stone staircase leading down to a cellar. The oak door at the base of the steps was locked and its thick frame reinforced with a number of oversized hinges and padlocks to prevent any possible entry. The door itself was covered with spirals, interwoven in an almost lucid display that could not possibly have formed in the grain of the wood. Elise had noticed similar whorls on the bookcases and wondered if it was some form of ancient language. Returning to the library, she carefully began examining the individual books for some clue as to its origin. These last titles were unlike anything she’d ever heard of before and the words made her feel queerly apprehensive: Liber Ivonsis, Cthaat Aquadingen, The Eltdown Shards, De Vermis Mysteriis, The Book of Eidon – their names were entirely unfathomable, each text sounding stranger than the last and each one fuelling her growing unease.

  A loud thud from the staircase brought her heart to her mouth and, dropping the book she was holding, Elise peered round the edge of the shelves. Watching the cellar door slowly contort and swell, she listened to the terrifying sound of something large and wet throwing itself up against the other side, and decided it was time to leave.

  Elise backed away across the library and a familiar voice suddenly called down from above.

  ‘Why, Miss Pygmalion, what an unexpected pleasure.’

  Howard Phillips stood atop the first floor balcony, his face illuminated by an ornate candelabrum held out in his left hand. Climbing down from t
he first floor, he stepped theatrically out into the centre of the library like a ringmaster introducing his lions. Clad in pyjama bottoms starched within an inch of their life, a plush, burgundy smoking jacket and thick carpet slippers, he sidled forward like an emaciated toad emerging from beneath its stone.

  Elise stared warily at him, prepared to run from this demented Noel Coward. The jacket was too large for him, presumably a hand-me-down of some sort, and the monogram sewn neatly onto the breast pocket bore the letters ‘H.P’.

  Phillips noted the errant piles of books and tutted quietly. ‘I see that you’ve been reading my books and sitting in my chair,’ he reproached her, sidestepping so as to obscure her route to the exit. ‘Perhaps I should have left a bowl of porridge out for you too?’

  ‘I’m no Goldilocks,’ she replied, reaching into her jacket for the crowbar, before remembering it was stuck in the window and silently cursing.

  Phillips strode to the table and gathered up the discarded books, cradling them between his overlong fingers. Holding them as one might a newborn baby, he ferried them back to the shelves and lovingly slid each one back into place with an almost reverential zeal.

  Elise began to get a bad feeling. ‘So what’s with all the candles?’ she quipped, doing her best impression of brash. ‘You forget to pay your electric bill or something?’

  Phillips stiffened but remained facing his shelves. ‘I am a student of the past, Miss Pygmalion,’ he replied, in a soft voice, stroking the books. ‘If one wishes to study the old ways, then it is wise to do so via the old methods.’

  There was a faraway look in his eyes when he turned to face her.

  ‘I think it lends the place a certain ambience, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah right,’ she muttered. He was still a dick, and she thought of telling him so. ‘Just like something out a horror film. All we need now is a flash of lightning and for you to sprout fangs.’

  As if in answer, another thud came from the cellar door. Phillips stepped closer to her, his body wreathed in smoke from the candles.