‘Do you need the bog?’ asked the vision.

‘Very shortly, I think. But please don’t kill us, please.’

‘Us?’ said the vision. ‘It’s only you I’m intending to kill. Get off me barrow and things of that nature generally.’

‘But…’ and I pointed to my brother.

‘One thing at a time,’ said the vision. ‘So how do you want to go? Explosion, or grand piano falling from an impossible height? I really love that one.’

‘No, please no,’ I wailed and I fell to my knees as I did so.

‘What a wuss,’ roared the vision, laughing near to burst.

‘Just tell me why,’ I wailed some more. ‘Tell me why, I beg you.’

‘Tell you why?’ The vision drifted up from the bed and hovered in the air. There was a corona of light about her head and I wondered perhaps whether this was in fact none other than the Virgin Mary herself. There were always reports in the papers of her manifesting here and there about the world, usually to not particularly bright people, to whom she would pass on not particularly bright messages. And I had always wondered about that. But then it occurred to me that although she might have been the Mother of Christ, that didn’t necessarily mean that she was the brightest candle in the Communion candle box.

You don’t have to be clever to be a mum, you just have to be loving and kind.

‘Your son won’t like this,’ I said, suddenly emboldened, although not altogether certain from where this sudden emboldenment had sprung. ‘He’s the big cheese in Heaven now, and he won’t take kindly to you killing off one of his flock. My mum’s an Evangelical – she talks to Jesus all the time. She’ll tell him what you’ve done, if you do anything to me.’

‘Jesus,’ said the vision. ‘You think I’m Jesus’s mum?’

‘Well, you are, aren’t you?’

‘No,’ said the vision. ‘I’m not. I am something entirely different. In fact quite unrelated to Christianity. Three-bob-a-pound-tomatoes, get ’em while they’re ’ot.’

‘Then please tell me,’ I begged. ‘It’s only fair. If you’re going to kill me and everything.’

‘Oh, all right. Sit down on the floor there and I will tell you a little story. It is a true story and it has a moral, and if you listen very carefully you will understand. Do I make myself understood?’

I sat down on the floor before her and nodded that she did.

‘Right then. I will drop the cockney patois, as frankly it does not enhance the telling of the tale. The tale goes this-aways. There once and still is a family called Perbright. Every generation gave birth to a noble Perbright who fought for King and country or Queen and country, and always for God and country.’

I was about to open my mouth and say that I’d already heard this story and so could the vision tell me another one. A really really long one (in the hope that help in one form or another might arrive in the meantime). But I thought better of it and kept my mouth tight shut.

‘You see,’ the vision continued, ‘there is more to this than simply men dying for their monarch and country. These men, these heroes whose names appear upon the war memorials – these men are magical sacrifices made to appease the Gods of War and return peace to our land.

‘And this is not a metaphor. This is a fact. The War Memorials, you will notice, are nearly always in the form of obelisks. Magico-phallic megaliths erected at key points across the country, inscribed with the magical names of the sacrificial ones. These magico-phallic megaliths channel natural energy through the landscape, fertilising the soil, bringing joy. And bringing forth the next generation of heroes who must do the same. Such is the way it is and such has it been for thousands of years.

‘But since the end of the Second World War, when many heroic sacrifices were made and many magico-phallic obelisks raised, there have been ripples in the ether. Signs and portents in the heavens. Omens of the coming of Ragnarok.

‘All over the world, the magicians who advise our world leaders are doing what they can to deal with the situation. A dark force is moving over the face of the Earth and many sacrifices must be made to assuage it. In America the Grand Magus has advised the President to purchase the rights to a war in Vietnam to help take care of the problem. But over here we have no such war to engage in. The Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury have been holding meetings and they hope to get a civil/religious war going in Belfast. Let us hope that they are successful. But on mainland Britain-’

‘No, hold on there,’ I said. Well, I couldn’t help myself. ‘Are you telling me that wars are started for magical reasons? Because in order to protect the planet from some immense overwhelming evil force, it is necessary to sacrifice heroic noble victims, so that their names become ritual words upon magico-phallic obelisks, which channel natural energies throughout Great Britain and keep everything hunky-dory?’

The vision nodded. ‘You have a better explanation?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Not at all.’

‘So, do you want to hear the story?’

‘Do you mean it hasn’t begun yet?’

‘Hardly at all. Do you want to hear it, before I destroy you?’

‘Yes,’ I told her. ‘I’d love to hear it. And take your time with the telling.’

I watched the vision as she spoke and tried to get some measure of her. If she was not the Mother of God – and it seemed a fair bet that she was not – then what? A demon, perhaps, clothed in false beauty? That sounded reasonable, considering that she promised death. Alien? No, I wasn’t going for alien. Nor fairy, although there was much of the fairy about her. I noted that I had not noted any evidence of wings, fairy-like, angelic or demonic. This lack of wings might have been significant. But then again-

‘Are you falling asleep?’ the vision asked of me. ‘Because if I’m keeping you up, as it were, it might be better if I just put you down, as it were, and have done with it.’

‘No, no, no,’ I said to the vision. ‘I’m all ears, me.’

‘Then I will continue. As I have said, a dark cloud of something has settled upon the Earth. A choking lifeless cloud. And those who can sense its presence are doing all they can to engage it in battle and defeat it.’

Mr Ishmael, I thought. But I didn’t speak his name.

‘Pongo Perbright,’ said the vision. ‘A hero, a noble man, a magical sacrifice. A man torn, for, as one who knew and understood what was expected of him and what his fate should have been, he became a tortured soul. He roared and raged and would have done harm to himself and others had he not been visited by a powerful magician who offered him a proposition. This powerful magician was an alchemist, and he possessed the method of transforming base metal into gold. And he offered this formula – for it is a formula – to Pongo.’

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘If you possess the secret of transforming base metal into gold, why would you share that secret with anyone else?’

‘Only because they might possess something even more valuable that they would be willing to exchange.’

‘And what would that be?’ I asked.

‘A soul,’ said the vision. ‘A warrior soul, a noble soul – the soul of a magical sacrifice.’

‘But surely Pongo wouldn’t have traded. He knew what he was and how important his sacrifice was.’

‘Indeed, but this alchemist was a most persuasive talker. He spoke in honeyed words to the poor, tortured soul that was Pongo Perbright. He convinced Pongo that he had been forgotten, cast aside, that he was no longer needed.’

‘I don’t think Pongo would have believed that if he was really noble,’ I said.

‘Well spoken,’ said the vision. ‘And indeed he would not. So the alchemist persuaded him that he could do so much good with the gold that he could create that God would take him directly into the Kingdom of Heaven as a reward.’