a lino-covered landing, and up to the doorway of what estate agents laughingly refer to as the Master Bedroom.
Here he halted, breathing heavily, further hasty progress rendered impossible by the nature of the room’s contents. It was literally filled with books. How the floor of the room was capable of supporting such a load was a matter for debate, but that the room contained what surely would have been sufficient to overstock an average public library was beyond doubt. The books cramming the open doorway formed a seemingly impenetrable barrier.
Small Dave looked furtively around, then withdrew a long key which he wore on a leather thong about his neck. Stooping, he found the hidden keyhole and swung open a tiny concealed door, formed from dummy bookbacks. With a curious vole-like snuffling, he dropped to all fours and scampered into the opening. The door of books swung silently shut behind him, leaving no trace of its presence.
Inside the room of books, Small Dave penetrated a tortuous labyrinth of tiny tunnels which were of his own creating. Deeper and deeper into the books he went, to the room’s very core, where he finally emerged into a central chamber. It was a chamber wrought with exact precision into the interior of a perfect pyramid, aligned to the four cardinal points and fashioned from the choicest leather-bound volumes of the entire collection.
Within this extraordinary bower, illuminated by the room’s original naked fly-specked bulb, were ranged an array of anomalous objects. A low dais surmounted by a single velvet cushion, a crystal, a milk bottle containing joss sticks, a framed picture of Edgar Allan Poe and a lone sprout under a glass dome.
Small Dave scrambled on to the velvet cushion and closed his eyes. The spines of the books stared down upon him, a multi-coloured leathern brickwork. He knew that he could never remove a single volume, for fear of premature burial, but as he had read every book in the room several times over and had memorized all by heart he had little need ever to consult them. His knowledge of the books transcended mere perusal and absorption of their printed words. He sought the deeper truths, and to do so it was necessary for him to consort with their very author. For if it was strange that such a chamber should exist and that such a collection of books should exist, then it was stranger still that each was the work of one single author: Edgar Allan Poe.
It was certain that if any of the Swan’s patrons, who knew only Dave the postman while remaining totally unaware of Dave the mystic, had viewed this outre sanctum, they would have been forced to re-evaluate their views regarding his character. If they had witnessed the man who even now sat upon the dais, hands locked into the lamaic posture of meditation and legs bent painfully into a one-quarter lotus, they would have overwhelmingly agreed that the term vindictive, grudge-bearing wee bastard hardly applied here. Here it was more the case of vindictive, grudge-bearing wee lunatic bastard being a bit nearer the mark.
Small Dave began to whistle a wordless mantra of his own invention. His eyes were tightly closed and he swayed gently back and forth upon his cushion.
He had come to a decision regarding this camel business. He would ask help from the master himself, from the one man who had all the answers, old EAP. After all, had he not invented Dupin, the original consulting detective, and hadn’t that original consulting detective been a dwarf like himself? Certainly Poe, who Dave had always noted with satisfaction was a man of less than average height, hadn’t actually put it down in black and white, but all the implications were there. Dupin could never have noticed that body stuffed up the chimney in
Small Dave screwed up his eyes and thought “Sprout”. It was no easy matter. Ever since he had first become a practising member of the Sacred Order of the Golden Sprout he had experienced quite a problem in coming to terms with the full potential power of that wily veg. His guru, one Reg Fulcanelli, a greengrocer from Chiswick, had spent a great deal of valuable time instructing Dave in the way of the sprout, but the wee lad simply did not seem to be grasping it. “Know the sprout and know thyself,” Reg had told him, selecting a prime specimen from his window display and holding it up to the light. “The sprout is all things to all men. And a law unto itself. Blessings be upon it.”
Small Dave had peered around the crowded greengrocery, wondering at the mountain of sprout sacks, the caseloads and boxfuls cramming every corner. “You have an awful lot here,” he observed.
“You can’t have too much of a good thing,” the perfect master had snapped. “Do you want two pound of self- enlightenment or do you not?”
Small Dave hadn’t actually reached the point of self-enlightenment as yet, but Reg had assured him that these things take a good deal of time and a great many sprouts.
Dave contorted his face and rocked ever harder. Ahead of him in the blackness beneath his eyelids the mental image of the sprout became clearer, growing and growing until it appeared the size of the room. Reg had explained that to ascend to the astral, one had to enter the sprout and become at one with it. When one had reached this state of cosmic consciousness all things were possible.
A bead of perspiration rolled down to the end of Dave’s upturned nose. He could almost smell the sprout, it was so real, but he did not seem to be getting anywhere with the astral travelling side of it. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for one really hard try.
Downstairs in Small Dave’s ancient enamel oven the now unfrozen
Small Dave, however, would remain unconscious of this until the conflagration had reached the point which sets schoolboys dancing and causes neighbours from a safe distance to bring out chairs and cheerfully await the arrival of the appliances.
It is interesting to note that, although these things had not as yet actually come to pass, it could be stated with absolute accuracy that they would most certainly occur. That such could be so accurately predicted might in a way, it is to be supposed, argue greatly in favour of such things as precognition and astral projection.
Small Dave would argue in favour of the latter, because by some strange freak of chance, while his physical self sat in a state of complete ignorance regarding its imminent cremation, his astral body now stood upon a mysterious cloudy plane confronting the slightly transparent figure of a man in a Victorian garb with an oversized head and narrow bow tie.
“Mr Poe?” the foggy postman enquired. “Mr Edgar Allan Poe?”
“Small Dave?” said that famous author. “You took your time getting here.” He indicated something the ethereal dwarf clutched in his right hand. “Why the sprout?” he asked.
11
Norman had returned to his kitchenette, leaving his camel snoring peacefully in the eaves of his lock-up garage, its head in a Fair Isle snood. He surveyed the wreckage of his precious equipment and wondered what was to be done. He was going to need a goodly few replacement parts if he ever hoped to restore it. It was going to be another quid or two’s worth of postcard ads in all the local newsagents: “Enthusiast requires old wireless sets/parts, etc., for charity work. Will collect, distance no object.” That had served him pretty well so far. And if the worst came to the worst then he would have to put in a bit more midnight alleyway skulking about the rear of Murray’s Electrical in the High Street.
Norman picked his way amongst the tangled wreckage and pondered his lot; it didn’t seem to be much of a lot at the present time. It was bound to cost him big bucks no matter how it went, but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that his theory was at least partially correct. The evil-smelling ship of the desert lodged in his garage testified amply to that. But there was certainly something amiss about his calculations. They would need a bit of rechecking; it was all a matter of weight, all very much a matter of weight.
Norman unearthed his chair and slumped into it. It had been an exhausting day all in all. As he sat, his chin cupped in his hand, his mind wandered slowly back to the moment which had been the source of inspiration for this great and wonderful project. Strange to recount, it had all begun one lunchtime in the saloon-bar of the Flying Swan.
