A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Well readers, it's certainly shaping up into an epic mystery, is it not?


Apologies for breaking in - your faithful editor here, and I must turn the glowing light-beam of scrutiny upon the mysterious “Devotees of Rakuu”, an organisation to which Augustus occasionally mentioned he was a member.

Very little is known of this most shadowy of shadowy Victorian cabals - even the usually verbose Mr Stigwood remained resolutely tight lipped - other than the following:

1. It was variously spelt Raku or Rakuu, although three u's and above was generally frowned upon.
2. At its peak its membership rose to fifty or sixty, all men, and all - intriguingly - mustachioed.
3. All records of the organisation seemed to peter out by the early 1880s.
4. It is not known what Raku/Rakuu was, although it is supposed (by myself) that it may have been a supremely intelligent alien life form which which the members communicated via an ancient crystal that had been dug up with the Dead Sea Scrolls.
5. The above theory was heartily postulated in my dream-cycle trilogy 'The Reconfiguration of Elmer Swervizor", which regardless of the comments made by 1986 Hugo Awards panel, shat all over anything by Isaac Asimov.
6. But I digress. The Devotees were known to meet in secret, at regular intervals, perhaps in ancient (or more modern) buildings, where they would practice their Devotion (or otherwise) together (or alone).

And as I turn my modern pen once more from older lands to newer futuristic ones (perhaps populated by tiny robots) I shall leave Augustus to continue with his own story.

What developments shall emerge when our hero consults with his fellow Devotees at The Porcupine?

JC Guthrey
Science fiction author

A rendezvous at The Porcupine awaits...

Tonight, dear friends, I take myself to my club, The Porcupine (owned by Lord Derby), where I intend to meet with two fellow Devotees of Rakuu, the organisation to which I am a member and of which I may not divulge any information, on pain of death. It is with these brothers of mine - who are well-versed in the dark realms of magik and mystery - that I  hope to gain advice and information about the sickening incident of inter-arthropod intercourse that my pal Lumpy Pete observed in the dark wastes of Non-London.

While there, and in developing information for my investigation, I may also be seen to indulge myself of numerous shrimp-oils, a portion of cactus fat, some darkened boys from a mystical land, and a heartening and manly rub-down in the Roman Baths. Pip Pip!

The dreary piss-water eyes of England's shadow

Ah the dreary piss-water eyes of England's shadow and top hat toiling forebears... caps doffers kicking shins and tasting to taste of fog in slime 'n' oil dripping down throat in caustic sea disaster memories of olden hearts, it corrupts me. How in those tasteful times I did worry hearts and drive monsters in tribeholes like Salamander.... where the she-gypsies practiced their cold arts of passion and silence and drilled skulls for penance of sickness

The worrying plastic dreamers voided their souls and trawled to a land of caps and carpets.... my eyes! this silence did end with the travel of a thousand times. I was proud of those monsters dicing with the bodies of many, chop chop! Ha ha!

Oh eyes... eyes... This burning mishap did finally treace me. I walked alone for three days, then burnished my hand upon a Magna Tree. I was indeed lost. Plastic man enabled me a prayer, and I was released into Morden (via Bank). In which Southern ways did tip me westwards. Therein, I bought cabbage,cheese, bread loaf, business cards, filofax and crampon and rode my busy body home... teatime slugs, anyone?Chip chip!

I recall the Banyan Tree, where Saldanerii did foster and drool on its tapered madrigals. Jelly wed pour from terrible joins and

An unholy union of arthropods

Once we had seated ourselves in the smoking room and lit our cigars, Lumpy began his story.

"I followed Rebekah Brooks' carriage as it travelled into the unknown cavernous regions to the north of London," he said, as he immediately slid down onto my hearthrug and caressed my calves.

"Pulling up outside a complex maze of caves, Rebekah stepped down from the carriage, her tresses all a-ripple, and payed the Hansom man in song: 

'Thank you my man for bearing me here
 Thank you dear friend for your unerring steer'

"Such a trill, Augustus! Anyhow, she then walked into the mouth of a cave as I followed at a safe distance, grasping lengths of elderberry leaves to protect from potential destruction via cabbage gas. I followed her into a vast hall room, where I watched her drink from a goblet set upon an ancient table. She then loosened her clothing and, dear God... her features simply fell away! All her body skin and flesh shed to the floor a-crumple. Ugh!

"Her true form was as spider - an Orb-Weaver Spider - elevated and elongated, a cluster of eyelets twinkling with terrible malice in the gloom. O but I must confess that I soiled my cloth there and then, Augustus!

"She grasped a small bell with her pincer and let forth a tinkle, and was immediately joined by her former employer, Mr Rupert Murdoch, whose eyes twinkled with delight at the arachnoid vision before him. He couldn't help but to lick and slaver over her sickly ashen flesh. O! Augustus, how I retched in that antechamber at the sight of such depravity! I was nearly forced to look away!

"But then the match-made millionaire croaked out a speech: 'Phase Two! The crocus-field will be burning over this little number...'

He pulled a cord and a wall fell away, revealing Nick Clegg, who stepped forward. Clegg, the Whig who had thrown in his hat with the Tory Party! Clegg walked forward and spoke forth:

'There is no way that the 50p [rate] is unilaterally going to be dropped in the absence of progress on lowering tax on people on low and middle incomes and looking at ways the wealthiest pay their fair share,' he said menacingly.

'If millions of taxpayers feel they are being overlooked, ignored and passed over, as preference is given to people who need the least amount of help at the moment, you destroy the very fabric of consensus without which a sensible tax system cannot survive.' 

"O how I shudder to think of those words in its unknown tongue, Augustus! But the worst was yet to come, dear friend. Once he had uttered his mysterious incantation, he supped of the same goblet as had Rebekah, and at that too shed his skin! He revealed that beneath he held the physicality of a moth, a monstrous dust-covered Poplar Hawk Moth, some eight feet in height.

"And at that, he and the arachnoid Rebekah began a terrible coupling, their bodies intertwined in some ancient sexual rite, wings beating in ardour against the sickening flanks of the spider's sinewy thighs, as she lassoed him with her sticky bolas. Her fangs chattered viciously as he probed her with his sticky thorax, then grasped her with his vice-like valva and they made their ungodly marriage. And all the while, the sinister match-seller danced and guffawed around the two with glee.

"This terrible sexual communion continued for hours, Augustus, and as I watched I voided my stomach more times than I can remember. Finally it ended, and the sinister spider bit deeply into the moth's abdomen once his use was over, then consumed him entirely. The match millionaire cackled as he watched it done.

"At this, I had to leave, Augustus. It was too much for me to bear! What can it mean, my friend? What purpose was there in this most unholy of unions?"

Awoken from a revery to terrible visions of Shakespearian pustules

Demons stabbing each other in the eyes... the elegant leaking of life... my eyes. my burning eyes.... cold dark hard walls...and the wisp of a familiar silver nightgown... the burning taste of good hard vinegar in my gullet... the light is dimming and she turns to look at me... glutinous folds, o glutinous folds... water pours down the walls and I am free...

I came to from the most sinister of visions with the sickly pustules of Lumpy Pete staring me full in the face, and in my inebriated state each nodule seems to take a terrible face and each face screamed at me: "Marry, then, sweet wag, when thou art king, let not us that are squires of the night's body be called thieves of the day's beauty: let us be Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, minions of the moon..."

A brisk slap to my jowls brought me around, and I found myself deep in the arms of my darling Lumpy, a tincture of opium hanging from my open vein and the walls of my study stippled with my own excrement in a manner reminiscent of the latest works of Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

"Augustus!" he bellowed. "Augustus! Rouse yourself! You must hear my story of this most fearsome conspiracy!'

This called for Augustus' patented Instant Sobriety Elixir to be brought forward, which Lumpy knew well. A funnel was inserted into my mouth and poured therein was the cracked extract of four raw quails eggs, a sprinkle of Parmesan and a dried cabbage leaf. The funnel was then extracted and the adrenaline glands from a living human body were brought forward, on which I vacantly chewed for a few minutes.

"I say, Lumpy," I said, "I'm as fresh as a daisy. Now do tell me about your adventure! I am indeed curious."

And so myself and my faithful pal took up brandys and cigars, removed our shirts and rubbed each other with the usual pigeon fat, then retired to the smoking room where he revealed all...

TO BE CONTINUED...

Lumpy Pete takes watch... and I consult with a spirit

Today I sent Lumpy Pete to follow Rebekah as she went about her business, hawking her pretty nonsense rhymes around East Acton. "Now remember, you fool,'" I warned him tenderly. "Don't get up too close, hoping to grab a stare at those ginger bubbies." He glanced away shame-faced, clearly having planned a little tit-watching.

He was to keep me informed of developments via a wireless telegraph device which I have recently developed. Instead of using Edison's patented electrostatic coupling system (dreary!), my device propels lines of "voice information" by pressurising and de-pressuring shafts of air betwixt stations. It was, in part, modelled upon the spinnerets of the common house spider, although with entirely different useage.

But enough of my genius! Once Lumpy had left, I consulted with my poor dead wife :;.^., the ghose who's appearance had tipped me off about Rebekah's strange behaviour. We held conference in the complex language of clicks and whistles spoken by her people, the %¬¬ tribe, all long dead now following a civil war caused by... ah well, that's another story. I asked her for some explanation of this mystery.

"$()()()£ %%$%%$  "!??@$@$%," she suggested. I was shocked at her remonstrations, as you can imagine.
"&&*&&&&£:@@:," I responded with heartfelt passion.
"::$::%:$$:::<>>><££"$$£"""$$$$$$," she explained further. I could hardly beleive my ears! If this was true, then... just as we were beginning to make progress on the case, the receiving station of my aero-modulator began to squark.

"Augustus!" called in Lumpy pete. "I'm following her now, she's taken a Hansom! She appears to be heading North... "
"Keep on her trail you dankish clot-pole!" I told him warmly. "Lose her and you're back out on the street, digging up street-grubs for tiffin."
"Right you are Augustus!" he barked, and I heard the cobbled streets gather pace beneath his trusted steed, Daphne.

It was then that a puff of purple air emanated from the aero-modulator and the device ceased to work. Damn the machine - I should have stuck with electrostatic coupling after all! Lumpy has been gone now some six hours, I wonder what fate has befallen my gentle colleague?

A depth of carion...

A depth of carion, some swine and a voluminious display of hollow... This is a shoddy moment in my life, that the mention of a spectral glimpse, a tethered nightgown or some glacial pumps should bring solicitude? Or was it sure contemptuous footsteps upon my passage? Perhaps I shall never be cheered? Perhaps my eyes shall be burnt as I wander in stately thrum, closed to a tiny tune, along the corridors of my lady's tepid mind-gas? The stretch of these moments abates me...

Lumpy Pete offers his services in the detection of a conspiracy...

It was as the pitter patter of moistened globules upon Augustus' tin roof awakened him (me) this three-quarterpast tiffin that I moaned deep and bulbous in a lowly bellow: "Booooaarrgghh..." and so it continued for a period of between 24 and 32 minutes, before that lowly slattern Rebekah finally cared to poke her pointed jaw around my frontal portal.

"Kind zurr," spoke she with impedimence, "how may I be of assistance to you today?" as she began to slip one arm from her hair shirt. "Not now!" I barked, in no mood for her slutted advances (I had already supped a little too deeply at the elfine cup last night). "Bring me my jabs, you owl!" She curtsied and went away for my works, affording me time to indulge in the pleasurable activity of multiple voidance.

As I took my customary injections with a little light vinegar, the images upon Augustus' walls of his (my) terrible forebears bore down on me (him) with sickening eye-judgement. I began to moan as if my foot had become impaled upon the very trident of Poseidon, and so gathered up my walrus boots and whip, in order to leave.

However, my passage was disturbed by Lumpy Pete, my cantankerous old lodger and co-expeditioneer who staggered in, having, I surmised, over-indulged in the lemony dog-milk in which he had beeen seeking solace of late.

"Augustus," he belched, lines of drool flinging across my cherrywood spankmaster. "Augustus, by my eyes! I must have her, that tousle-haired minxter!" I surmised that he refered to Rebekah Brooks, who I had recently observed confering in a back alley with one of the lizard set. I cracked my whip across his furuncled brow and drove my boot into his glutinous scrotum.

"You idiot! Keep away from the red whore! There is something afoot with her, and I must keep her under watch. The experiment must not be infected by your monstrous libido," I bristled, moustache unfurling and darting in cruel points towards the horrid boils on my housemate's jowls.

Lumpy dropped down upon one knee, his hands lifted in solemn entreaty. "Forgive me, Augustus," he begged. "I had no idea that the dollymop was involved in conspiracy. Please, tell me all, and I will endeavor to help."

And so I revealed all to the befuddled pratt; of the messenger boy with the mystery delivery, the receipt of payment from Rupert Murdoch, and Rebekah's horrid exchange with a sinister chameleon. And while I admitted that this final clue may have had much to do with the rather strong mescaline upon which I had gorged myself one hour previous, Lumpy did concede something was amiss.

"Why," he said, farting deeply into the chute I had especially developed for his increasingly noxious emanations, "this mystery calls for the work of Stigwood and Pete - the greatest detectives in Marylebone! "And while I found the half-wit's vapid remonstrations deeply irritating, I conceded that his help could be of use. But what next?