12. A Nice Hanging

THE HIDDEN FOREST - 12

“Even good things must come to an end,” thought Paul to himself as the executioner gently and with feeling put a sack over his head prior to sliding the noose round his neck.

“Sorry about this, guv,” he grunted into his ear, “but the little bloke in his glass jar orders it, and what he orders I does or it’s curtains for me too.”

Then he pulled a lever and the floor gave way under Paul Fairweather’s feet, the noose tightened around his neck, and he disappeared from sight to a very dark place indeed.

“You shouldn’t have done that!” barked Davey, forcing his way through the wall as if it was candy floss, “he was my neighbour and we could have become friends if he lost a bit of weight.”

“Orders from the jar,” growled the executioner, “look here, pal, I don’t get to have any say who I send to the great beyond and who I don’t, and that corpse has been going round saying he owns this place, and there’s one thing old Blondeauu don’t like and that’s competition.”

“You mean you’re like an automaton with no thoughts of your own?” barked Davey, “an empty headed robot performing unpleasant duties without any thoughts of your own as to whether it’s right or wrong?”

“Oh come off it, guv,” mumbled the executioner, getting his apparatus ready should it be needed again soon, and adjusting the noose just right, “what you waffling about right and wrong? I’ll tell you what right is, it’s what the boss says is right. It’s the same everywhere. Here it’s Blondeau, bless his tiny heart, but other places its presidents and prime ministers, princes and kings. They say what’s right and they say what’s wrong and we all go along with it… or else.”

“Or else what?” asked Davey.

“Or else we get the chop like your mate did and like you might if you keep this line of talk up for much longer,” warned the executioner. “Toe the line, that’s my advice, it’s what we all have to do whoever or wherever we are.”

Doctor Zenith had been looking on with an amused expression on his face, the sort of expression that suggested he might have heard it all before, and he probably had.

“Look,” he said quietly to Davey, “he’s hit the nail on the head, so to speak, but let’s get out of here and we’ll discuss it civilly. Your friend’s no longer with us, which is, I suppose, a good thing seeing as he’s got so much blubber on him. He might even get to go go to the pie room and contribute a few calories to the pies the fleeters are so fond of.”

Before Davey could respond he pulled him back into the sleeping room where the two beds that had apparently been intended for himself and the apparently late lamented Paul were already occupied by two newcomers. Besides being newcomers they were clearly on their way to becoming fleeters, and Davey nearly jumped out of his shoes when he recognised one of them.

“That’s the young copper who tried to do me for driving under the influence!” he exclaimed, “what’s he doing here?”

“Ah, him: he’s new. Came along recently, poking his nose into where it wasn’t wanted,” nodded Doctor Zenith, “he’ll be in here for a few days and when he wakes up he’ll start worshipping Blondeau. It’s what they all do. It’s so heart-warming.”

“I’ll have to report that when I get back to the station, you know. We can’t have policemen being kidnapped left, right and centre. Now tell me, doctor, which way do I have to go to get out of this nightmare place?”

“You don’t,” replied the doctor, shaking his head, “I wanted to get out once, probably felt the way you feel, but you get used to being here. Even the fleeters are happy. Look, I’ll ask one, any one, you pick him and I’ll ask him.”

Davey was unconvinced and thought that the robotic fleeters were probably under the influence of some mind-bending drug. But there was one who looked marginally more alert than most, a Scotsman by the look of him, with Scottish hair.

“Ask him,” he said, pointing.

“You,” ordered Dr Zenith, pointing at him, “you tell this man what it’s like being here.”

The fleeter looked dopily at Davey and his one word might have been created on a speech simulating machine that used a Northern accent. “Heaven,” he said.

“That does it for me!” snapped Davey, “say what you like, Doctor, but I ain’t listening any more. The only people I’ve met here are like robots, and as far as I’m aware robots are soulless and lack any vestige of humanity. It’s shocking, but you’re robotic too, Blondeau this and Blondeau that! Now would you kindly show me the way out?”

“Can’t do that, squire,” replied the doctor, shaking his head, “once a man finds his way into the manor, he stays here. Blondeau’s law.”

“Then you can tell Blondeau this,” snapped Davey, angry at last, “I’m off, and nobody, not his robot puppets, not his priest or medic or even pretty nurse, is going to stop me!”

“Me? Not even little me?” oozed Nurse Betty, appearing from nowhere.

“You’ve got it in one,” growled Davey, “I was trained to resist temptation and even though you’re as pretty as a rice pudding on a freezing winter’s day, I’m not yielding!”

Then, without any more ado, without even giving a clue to himself what he was going to do, he darted off, hoping the corridor he found himself on would behave itself and not change into a bottomless pit or something equally dangerous to a desperately running man.

He was lucky. The Manor may have been a three-dimensional confusion most of the time, but there was a way out and either by chance or because that was the way of things, he found himself stumbling through the porch and then out into the sunshine.

“Golly me,” he muttered, and continued running, hopefully to where he’d left his cab.

The sounds behind him spurred him on because he could hear the growling and snapping of canine teeth beahind him and could almost feel the warmth of its fetid breath on the back of his legs as he stumbled through where a gate might have been, but wasn’t.

He could see his taxi across the road, the most welcome sight since he’d been four and a half and caught a glimpse of Santa Claus kissing his mother in the flickering reflections of warm firelight.

“That’s far enough, Basil,” he hissed at the hound.

“Don’t forget me, Davey!” urged Paul Fairweather at his elbow, “I’ve got a stiff neck and can’t keep up. I tell you what, though, I’m going on a diet when all this is over. A seefood and bin it diet, you just see if I don’t!”

Davey, no lionger, it seemed, shockable, and followed either by Paul himself or the spirit of Paul, he wasn’t sure which, shot across the road and tumbled into his taxi.

“About time too,” whispered Nurse Betty from the rear seat.

© Peter Rogerson 13.11.20