In the autumn of 2004 I wrote three episodes of a story entitled The Horrible Cave. It was left unfinished, but I always meant to get back to it, and now I have. Rather than sending readers back to the (unhelpfully indexed) archive for the first three parts, I decided to republish the whole thing here. So scroll down for all four episodes of… (sinister voice) … The Horrible Cave!

Talk to any spelunker and you will soon learn that nobody who strays into the horrible cave emerges with their wits intact. Sometimes their hair turns white, they shake and gibber, they have to be fed with slops. Others retire to farmyards and spend the rest of their lives among pot-bellied pigs. Yet still the reckless and the foolhardy risk their sanity by ignoring the big signpost I hammered into the ground at the approach to the horrible cave. This is the horrible cave, reads my notice, If you have a shred of sense you will durst not enter. I spent quite some time on that wording, and ended up in hospital because I chewed the end of my pencil so fretfully that I contracted lead poisoning. It is by no means a pretty ailment, but I would much rather suffer that than the terrible derangements of those who step but once into the horrible cave.

While I was in the hospital, I was visited by a government agent who was curious about my signpost. I suspected he was from some secret agency, for he was dressed in a trim black suit and did not remove his sunglasses. He had a very close-cropped haircut, carried an attaché case which I noticed was chained to his wrist, and he seemed to exude the scent of frangipani or dogbane, which is often a telltale sign of covert operatives in my country. Standing beside the bed on which I lay splayed out, he introduced himself as Christopher Plummer. “Not to be confused with the actor who played Atahualpa in The Royal Hunt Of The Sun,” he added hurriedly, although at that time the name was new to me. I have since followed the agent’s namesake’s career with growing interest.

I was subjected to a series of questions about the signpost I had placed near the horrible cave, and answered as best as I could, given my fevered state. The agent made notes on a little hand-held pneumatic turbonotepad of ingenious design. I often find myself wondering why they never caught on. These days you are lucky to find one at a jumble sale or in a junk shop, luckier still if all the notes made on it are still readable. When Christopher Plummer had finished interrogating me in his strangely stiff manner, he depressed a knob on the turbopad and, with a surprisingly loud hiss, it clunked into hibernation mode. I watched the jet of escaping steam.

Years later, sitting in a café in a tremendous town, flicking idly through an intelligence journal, I learned that Agent Plummer had been exposed as an alien life-form from some far planet riddled with horrible caves. I thought how fortunate we were to have only one horrible cave, terrible as it was.

Last week I hiked out that way to see if my signpost was still there. Prancing majestically along the path, I encountered dozens of terrified people being attacked by cows. Sorry, that was a typing error. I should have said being attacked by crows. One poor wretch who had been pecked at was slumped beside his makeshift tent, fruitlessly trying to wrap a bandage around his head. I knelt down beside him and gave him a hand, and could not resist asking what was happening, but he was unable to speak. I surmised, however, that the crows must have flown from the direction of the horrible cave. Perhaps they nested there unbeknown to the local bird inspectors. It seemed like a good idea to forget about my signpost for the day and go to the headquarters of the bird inspection team instead, so that’s what I did. Although it was at least fourteen years since last I had roamed these parts, I still recalled the bus routes, so after making sure the pecked man’s head bandage was not too tight, I changed direction and cut across the moors towards the bus stop. It was a dismaying sight, for the shelter was in ruins, and the glass behind which the timetable had been pinned up was smashed and the timetable itself torn to shreds. Further evidence of violent crow activity, as if any were needed.

The bus pulled up at this dismal scene a few minutes later. I clambered on board and became somewhat uneasy to discover that I was the only passenger. Was this going to be one of those frightening journeys where the driver would turn to look at me and I would see that he was a fiend in human form, cackling hideously as the bus hurtled to perdition? I had forgotten that it was Saint Eustace’s Day, and that most people, except for me and the bus driver and the people being attacked by crows would be staying indoors, in darkness, behind fastened shutters, imploring the saint to keep them safe from poisoned air for the coming twelvemonth. I hoped that the bird inspection headquarters would at least have a skeleton staff on this special day, and settled back in my seat, thinking to take a nap while the driver steered his bus around the many dangerous corners on the route.

When will I ever learn? No sooner had I closed my eyes than the bus braked sharply, jolting me out of my seat. The driver cursed, for which I reprimanded him. He apologised for his rudery, then pointed in front of him, and I saw that the road was blocked by a fanatical preacher man, naked from the waist up, caked in filth, standing on a barrel and shouting his head off in a language I had never heard before. The driver and I exchanged looks of befuddlement, then he reached under his seat and hoisted up a rectangular tin which he opened to reveal a clotted mass of stale food. He invited me to share his lunch, but I declined, given that there appeared to be a number of weevils crawling about in it. Their presence did not bother the driver, who began shovelling the food into his mouth with his surprisingly dainty fingers. I noticed that his nails were painted with bright red lacquer, flaking off in places as if it had been applied some time ago. His eating habits were so repulsive that I turned to look out at the preacher man again. He was shouting even louder now. I decided to get off the bus to try and persuade him to move his barrel to the side of the road. As I got closer to him, I nearly jumped out of my skin. Surely I was mistaken? But no, there was no doubting it. Underneath all the caked muck, I recognised my Pa!

“Pa!” I cried, sudden tears streaming down my face. I may as well have been invisible. He ignored me and continued to harangue the sky in his unintelligible tongue, the sky that was now growing black as monstrous clouds swept in from the west. I am tempted to lie and say that my tears were copious, but I have to confess they were not. I snivelled a bit and then remembered why I had got off the bus in the first place. It was clear to me, however, that asking my Pa to shift his barrel out of the road would be futile. I wondered how it would be if I just pushed him over and cleared the way myself. The laws here on toppling preacher men are draconian, and I would have to make sure I did not get caught. I judged that the bus driver was too intent on bolting his food and would not be paying attention. If he saw me push my Pa off the barrel he would almost certainly inform on me, for we all know the reputation of bus company personnel, hand in hand with the police force, at least in this neck of the woods, for obvious historical reasons. As for my Pa, would he lay an accusation against his only son? It was a risk I had to take.

Just as I was nerving myself for the odious deed, I was distracted by a mordant fancy which had been nestling dormant in my brain until that moment. I am utterly perplexed as to why it suddenly uncoiled itself, as it were, and sprang to the forefront of my mind, casting out all other thoughts. It was a vision – so very vivid! – of myself dressed in rags, exhaustedly swinging a leper bell from my withered arm.

Weird, that. I slapped myself on the forehead a couple of times to dispel the hallucination, came to my senses, yanked my Pa’s ankle so that he fell off the barrel, pushed the barrel over and rolled it to the kerb, and got back on the bus. The driver had finished his lunch, so, swerving slightly to avoid my Pa, who was sat in the road dusting himself down, he drove me to my stop ten minutes walk from the bird inspection unit. What I found there was brain-dizzying.

I arrived at the Bird Inspectors’ Hut to discover that it had been engulfed by a tsunami and lay in ruins. A solitary moorhen was paddling about where the door used to be, but there was no sign of the inspectors. I fancied that perhaps this might be a talking moorhen which could apprise me where they had gone, and asked my question in a slow, clear, loud voice, as one might use in speaking to a recalcitrant infant. But of course the moorhen was incapable of speech! What was I thinking?

I felt it more important than ever to track down at least one of the bird inspectors and relay my theory that crows were nesting in the horrible cave, with alarming consequences. In my experience, most bird inspectors sport Italianate mustachios and preen them fanatically with oils and waxes, so I decided to head off on foot for the nearest village and seek out a shop selling oils, waxes, and other hair treatments.

I was in luck, for as soon as I strode purposefully into the village I saw not only such an emporium, tucked between a wholesaler of dinghies and a clapboard hovel, but a man with Italianate mustachios lurking in the doorway. He was sopping wet, making his moustache droop, but that made it all the more likely he had been caught in the tsunami.

I hailed him from a distance of some forty feet. That is the last thing I can remember. I have no idea what happened from that moment until today, three weeks later so I am told, when I found myself sitting in an armchair staring out at a dying lawn, being proffered cups of tea and mashed potatoes by an oversolicitous nurse. Her name, she told me, was Primrose. That name rang a faint bell in my memory. I associated it with something petrifying and terrible, but Primrose the nurse seemed to be neither. In fact her fawning was getting on my nerves.

I wanted to ask her where I was and how I got here, but she had already skipped off to fetch more potatoes. Deciding to follow her, I walked rather unsteadily into a corridor. It was painted a hideous shade of orange, and on the walls hung framed portraits of members of Jethro Tull, Emerson Lake and Palmer, and Barclay James Harvest. Was this some kind of benighted prog rock haven? I should add that these were paintings rather than photographs, although perhaps the word I am looking for is daubs. My infant child could do better, if I had an infant child, but I do not. Long ago I vowed never to bring a new being into a world with a horrible cave in it, lest the mite should accidentally wander into it. I could not forgive myself if such a thing happened.

I could hear what sounded like potatoes being mashed coming from an open doorway over to my left. Entering the room, however, I did not find Primrose. Instead I was confronted by a slobbering ghoul. It spoke – or rather, groaned – at me in Latin, for it was a Vatican ghoul. Atop its gruesome head I could see the tattered remnants of a biretta, in which a number of locusts seemed to be feeding. Were they eating the ghoul’s straggly locks, or its priestly hat? Or both? I was so fascinated by the locusts that I am afraid I paid little attention to the gravel-voiced Latin being spouted at me. At this point Primrose came in.

“There you are, Mr MacTavish!” she cooed sweetly, addressing the ghoul, “I’ve been looking all over for you. It’s time for your mashed potato poultice. Come with me, there’s a dear.” She took it by what I can only assume was its arm and steered it away, still groaning. I was rather disconcerted that Primrose had ignored me completely. Perhaps I was being oversensitive. I looked at my wristwatch and saw that it was just coming up to midday. Why in heaven’s name was I dressed in pyjamas? I opened a cupboard and rummaged around until I found a shiny and brand new boiler suit. I changed into it and checked how I looked in a mirror, noting that its broad black and yellow hoops gave me a faint resemblance to a giant bee. It was time to leave this place, wherever it was. I pranced out onto the lawn and peered around, looking for a signpost.

I have always been fond of crocuses, and there was a clump of them nearby. In the absence of a signpost, I decided I could do worse than tarry awhile examining their flowers and leaves, and perhaps scrubbling in the soil to have a quick look at the corm. One should take one’s pleasures as one can, and if I was to stride onward with a spring in my step, a few minutes’ contemplation of foliage would calm my brain for the inevitable travails ahead. These were early crocuses, or Crocus tommasinianus, as no doubt the ghoul could have told me. I wondered whereabouts on his grisly frame Primrose the nurse was going to apply that poultice of hers. His head? That spindly arm? I wondered, too, how she would cope with the locusts, who would devour the mashed potato as quickly as she could apply it.

Thus lost in thoughts of potatoes, ghouls and crocuses, I failed to notice that a man had approached me, all but silently.

“Good day to you, sir,” he said, clearing accumulated phlegm from his throat as he did so, “Would I be correct in thinking you know something of the horrible cave?”

I looked up, astonished, and saw that my interlocutor was none other than the so called limping irredentist, Florenzio Pabstus.

Along with Blenkinsop and De Groot, Pabstus was the man who brought rigour to the study of animals’ bones back in the fifties. I wondered what he was doing wandering disconsolately around the garden of a Bewilderment Home, for that is where I assumed I had been plunked. Before I had a chance to ask him, he began to jabber questions at me about the horrible cave. After fifteen or so queries, all of which I answered as best as I could, Pabstus changed tack and asked me why I was dressed as a giant bee. For my part, let me say it had not escaped my notice that the world-famous irredentist was clad in raiment of the utmost gorgeousness.

We seemed to have struck an instant rapport, so we strolled off together towards a nearby pie shop which, Pabstus informed me, he had eaten at every single day for the last thirty years. When we entered the place, I pondered his judgment, for the floor was alive with scurrying beetles, huge black terrible things, and the air was thick with the smell of hamster. Seeing me about to swoon, Pabstus grinned, and I saw that his mouth was packed with fangs. There seemed to be too many of them to fit, but my eyes did not deceive me.

“You have an alarming number of teeth, Pabstus,” I observed.

“No more than any other member of my extended family,” he replied, tapping a bell upon the counter to summon the pie shop person. I have had a long and full life, but never before had I heard so dreadful a sound as that bell. I clapped my hands over my ears and began to weep like a distressed orphan child. Pabstus saw my discomfort and bared his fangs at me again. The hideous Beelzebubesque bell-pealing faded, but only once the sound had died completely did the proprietor appear. I had expected some sort of jolly figure like Mister Dough The Baker from a deck of Happy Families playing cards, but the pie shop person looked and acted more like a fop of the Regency period. He even wore gloves scented with lavender. With a rakish twinkle in his eye, he greeted us, and somehow made the words “Good afternoon, would you like to buy some pies?” sound lascivious.

“Yes we would!” shouted Pabstus at top volume, “For myself, I want to buy one of your big crinkle-pastry dumpling and endive and chicory pies, and two small mustard balls. My colleague here will have…” and he trailed off, inviting me to complete our request. Not having been to this pie shop before, I had no idea what I should choose, and there seemed to be no menu visible. But I sensed inexplicable danger, and wanted to get out of here as soon as I could. “I’ll have the same,” I announced, weakly.

“That won’t be possible I’m afraid,” said the pie-fop, “As you must surely know, today is Saint Eustace’s Day.”

I did not have the energy to argue. Perhaps that blow on the head which found me slumped in an unfamiliar armchair and suffering from amnesia had taken more of a toll than I thought. I pointed to two celery pies on a shelf behind the counter and asked for them. The proprietor preened his locks with macassar oil, and said, “Those pies are for rental only.”

Beetles were now climbing up the legs of my borrowed bee-like boiler suit. I could stand no more of this. I turned and left the pie shop, slamming the door behind me. I decided that I would rather go hungry than allow myself to fall under Pabstus’ spell. It was a decision I would learn to regret.

Assuming the limping irredentist would pursue me as soon as he had got his hands on his pies, I flung myself into a ditch and covered myself with a flag that happened to be lying about. I was surprised that the flag had been abandoned, for it looked as if it had been stitched only recently, and there was still a needle attached to a dangling piece of thread. I accidentally prodded myself with the needle, in the general area of my right collarbone, and had to stifle a yelp in case Pabstus was already on my trail.

Crouched under a flag in a ditch in the early afternoon, I turned my thoughts once more to the horrible cave, and to the crows that nested therein. It was a long, long time since I had been perturbed by birds, so long ago that I had difficulty remembering much about the days when my parents’ toffee shop had been attacked by flocks of mutant sparrows and wagtails. But the malevolence of the crows I had seen near the horrible cave was unprecedented. Tippi Hedren had an easy time of it by comparison, I reflected ruefully, for I am given to rueful reflection, especially when I can feel silage seeping into my boots, as I could now. Could I risk standing up? I knew that if I maintained my crouch for much longer I would suffer from agonising cramps, and I had left my cramp medication in the breast pocket of my pyjama jacket, back at the nursing home or whatever it was. I wondered if I could flee from the ditch and make it to the building without being waylaid by Pabstus. All of a sudden that stuffy lounge with its creaking armchair, and Primrose the nurse with her mashed potatoes, even the rake-thin ghoul, seemed more attractive than this stinking ditch.

Crawling out from under the flag, I peered over the lip of the ditch to check that Pabstus was no longer in the vicinity. He was not. Perhaps he had taken his pies and was sitting on a park bench, masticating them with those fangs of his, swallowing every last crumb. I clambered up and was about to stalk off towards the mercy home when I thought the flag might come in handy, so I stooped to pick it out of the ditch. It was heavier than I thought, but eventually I had it wrapped around me. As I turned to go, I saw that now my way was blocked by thousands of cows, all of them gazing at me intently, as if I were something they might want to chew up and digest. Were they cows, or were they super-intelligent beings from a planet in a distant galaxy who looked like earth-cows? Within the next few minutes, I would learn the truth, a truth far more incredible than my puny brain could comprehend.

I stared at the cows, and the cows stared back. They showed no sign of letting me pass. And then it dawned on me that they must have been sent as emissaries to stop me returning to the prog rock bewilderment home where Primrose tended to ghouls. The cows were trying to save me from becoming a ghoul myself, and urging me, in their quiet, cow-like way, to turn around, and to return in the direction of the horrible cave!

I span around and pranced off with renewed vigour in my step and a sense that I had a mission to fulfil. Someone, or something, must have sent those cows, and whoever or whatever it was emboldened me now. Soon I reached the blasted heath, and I unwrapped myself from the flag and fashioned it into a sail, and as if on cue a howling wind was dinning in my ears and the wind caught my impromptu sail and I was blown across that hideous heath in a matter of minutes. I laughed as I thought of the robbers and sprites that haunted the heath, lying in wait for innocent travellers, and how astonished they must have been as I sped past them at inhuman speed. I was back in the village before the shops shut up for the afternoon.

Thus I was able to exchange my bee suit for more suitable garb at a tailor’s. While I waited for the pins to be removed one by one from my newly-boiled shirt, I quizzed the tailor about the events of the past few weeks, since the terrors of Saint Eustace’s Day. He was forthright with replies to my jabbered questions, explaining in vast but pointless detail that the crow-attacks had been but a prelude. A prelude to what?, I demanded. He removed the final pin from my new shirt and handed it to me, and as he did so I saw that his face was suddenly stricken with terror. He was staring at something behind my left shoulder. I turned, and came face to face with Christopher Plummer.

Gone were the appurtenances of the secret agent he had pretended to be. Now he stood in the full splendour of his alien weirdness, with several extra eyes gleaming on the end of stalks. I realised with sudden clarity the world-shaking import of the message the thousand cows had been sent to give me. Not only must I return to the horrible cave, but I had to take Christopher Plummer with me, and somehow stop him ever getting out again. I put on my shirt.

That was just two hours ago, since when I feel as if I have lived a hundred lifetimes. I can barely credit that I am sitting, now, in the reading room of a paddle steamer, heading up river to my home, where all I hold dear awaits me. I will be faintly embarrassed to be given the hero’s welcome I know is my due, to fight my way past streamers and bunting to get to my garden gate. There will be music and balloons and streamers and bunting. And tonight, in the tavern, I will be pleaded with to tell, over and over again, the tale of how I outwitted the fiendish intergalactic hellhound known as Christopher Plummer.

Freshly fitted out in my new suit, I skipped past the being and out of the tailor’s shop. Clearly, if he was no longer adopting his secret agent disguise, he had an agenda different from his previous visit. The stricken pallor of the tailor hinted at what that was. I hid in a culvert and waited for Christopher Plummer to leave the shop. When he did so, I was not surprised to see the tailor tripping in his wake, like an organ grinder’s monkey. I followed them at a distance, past the swimming pool and the gas board offices, until they stopped at the gate to the allotments. After that, it was simple. I knew that Christopher Plummer would drop his guard as he communed with hollyhocks, that the energy he needed to exchange swirling thought-patterns with the plants would leave him temporarily exhausted. As soon as I saw them clamber over the gate, I hared back to the pie shop and, finding it shut, hammered on the door like a maniac. Luckily, the fop had not yet left the premises. When he let me in, in his world-weary manner, I apprised him of the situation with a rapid-fire blizzard of babble. It had no effect. He was the most infuriating pie shop fop I have ever come across. Judging that I had little time left, I pushed him aside, grabbed hold of his pie-trolley, broke the wheel-locking mechanism with my bare hands, stuffed into the pockets of my new trousers a huge amount of pastry box ribbon, and ran back outside, pushing the pie-trolley ahead of me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the cows looming over by the market square, and I knew then that I was doing the right thing.

At the allotments, it was child’s play to overpower the enervated Christopher Plummer. I had him tied up with pastry box ribbon on the pie-trolley in the blink of an eye. Pausing only to force a draught of Wainwright’s Invigorating Syrup down the tailor’s throat, I bore off with my captor towards the horrible cave.

Yes, I went back. I had to. I could do no other. And there, at the gaping mouth of the horrible cave, I gave the pie-trolley a mighty push, and Christopher Plummer was sent helplessly into the darkness.

Before I left, I found my signboard and touched up the wording with an indelible marker pen, and I planted hollyhocks all around, and only then did I head off to catch the paddle steamer to take me home. Later tonight, after the celebrations, I will sleep like a baby, for I must be up and about at dawn tomorrow, to investigate the terrible pond.