************* JOLLITY **************

               

 

                   Chapter One

James Healy knew he'd been kidnapped.

He'd woken in a room not his own and had no memory of getting there.

The bed was comfortable enough but he had a feeling that the cord around his ankle was made of something durable.

The place had a moneyed feel, tending towards the mahogany note in terms of wood panelling, bookcases, furnishings and doors, but nothing really ostentatious.

Maybe it was the one nice room in a hovel.

A window gave the impression of woodland stretching far to the horizon.

He knew the window would be as unbreakable as the cord.

There was the oddest feeling of being in America.

James scanned his mind for all he knew about kidnapping.

There'd been a case much vaunted in the British tabloids in 1977 when James was eleven, where a woman supposedly kidnapped a man and raped him repeatedly.

James, the only cosmopolitan reader of British tabloid newspapers in Kilcullen Boys National School at the time, had been infuriated that his sole friend at school Mugs Baines had refused to believe the story and outright accused him of making the whole thing up.

He'd never really forgiven Mugs for this and Mugs had never admitted he was wrong.

Not much use getting het up about it now.

Anything else.

There was a book by Irving Wallace about a woman film star kidnapped by a bunch of male fans and then seducing them one by one to play them off against each other.

James had skim read it in his teens looking for the sexy bits which had been more than a little disappointing. He did not foresee any of Irving Wallace's plot twists helping him in the present situation.

Anything else.

There must be more.

An awareness of another kidnapping tugged at his consciousness from somewhere earlier in his childhood. Ah yes. Back in 1975 when James was nine years old, the people trafficking, drug dealing, child abusing, IRA terrorist mafia had kidnapped a Dutch industrialist and held him in a safe house a few miles from where James lived.

The industrialist had been rescued after a two week siege with the Irish police force.

James sat in the bed reviewing his options.

The above three scenarios were all he knew about kidnapping.

Sexy woman.

Over enthusiastic fans.

The IRA.

Those were the prototype kidnappers of his imaginative experience.

James really hoped it wasn't the IRA.

A sexy woman would be good for a larf.

And fans?

But think rationally.

Who would want to do this?

Who would have the motive and the means?

The door opened and a chubby nondescript figure, more like an owl than a man, entered carrying a tray of food.

He placed the tray on a bedside table and then turned and sat in a chair facing James.

It was Stephen King the world famous writer of horror books.

                           Chapter Two

"So there I was, the world famous Stephen King. I'd become obsessed with this unknown little diary website on the internet. I was trying to figure out: Is he mad? Is the harassment real? Is there really a charity in his town run by devil worshippers? Is there really a corrupt cop who built a mansion on an elderly alcoholic's land and then murdered the elderly alcoholic while the whole community looked the other way? Did a satanic hairdresser really set James up to go after the cop just for the hell of it? Are James neighbours really drug dealers who built their own palaces, bought farms and drove around in souped up motor cars paid for by addicting kids and adults from the town to their drug poisons and porn movies and paid for even more with the deaths and insitutionalisations of the town's children and adult junkies over fifty years, again while the whole town looked the other way? And if they were out to get him, why didn't they just, you know, get him? I mean you. Then there's the Muslim issue. Are there really Arab clan gangs after you? And did a Tinker gang really try to kidnap you? Is the IRA priest Ruairi O'Domhnaill real? Did he really facilitate an IRA false befriending operation against you by setting up a Medjugorje prayer group as a cover for the perpetrators? Did his three hag accomplices like the witches in Macbeth really turn you into a drug addict via gifts of food without you ever knowingly taking drugs? Is Archbishop Diarmuid Martin really a Soviet era infiltrator of the Catholic church? Did he really promote Ruairi O'Domhnaill to parish priest and Paul Dempsey to bishop on the eve of his own retirement in order to hand on the Catholic church to the next generation of IRA mafiosi? Is this all ludicrous surrealistic fun? Heelers I've got to know the answers."

James sighed.

"No. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. There are different ways to get people, the gangs have developed harassment methodologies so that they can cause exponential harm with very little risk of going to jail. Yes. Yes. Yes. Most probably yes. Yes. Most probably yes again. Yes. And that depends on your point of view."

"Okay then. What about your cast of walk on characters with their curiously mellifluous names... Are they real? John Herlihy of the Kerry Eduction and Training Board, Doctor Donaldson of the Vista Clinic, Doctor Andrew Boko Shingani of Naas hospital, Nurse Ruth Ibeabuchi of Tallaght hospital, Betty Hickey, Hugo Magee, Adrian Doran, Vivian Clarke, Brian Clarke, Brendan Moran..."

"All real. All cunts."

"Heelers I've got to meet these people. And please don't use the cee word. My wife wouldn't like it."

"You don't want to meet them Stephen."

"I do. I really do."

"Stephen, there are some you should fear even as you pity them."

"That can be the tag line for the book I write about them. I could put you in the book. Someone on the fringes of all this evil who sees things as they are but whom everyone regards as a sad, mad, shambolic lonely dissolute pathetic figure. A sort of shabby hipster doophus Van Helsing."

"Stephen, I'm right here. I've got feelings you know."

"Help me write that book James."

"Not going to happen," said James.

There was a silence.

Stephen Kings' owl like features had deepened into classic owldom.

James had always liked owls but his attitude was modifying.

Presently Stephen King ruffled his feathers and straightened himself.

"Umph. Okay, we'll leave it for now. So there I was obsessed with your blog. And then James old pal, then you reviewed one of my books with a single line review, an interrogative, a question, or a statement, asking or declaring or just musing: Did you kill that man Stephen? That was the whole review. And I said to myself this young Heelers has earned himself a central role in a real life Stephen King novel."

"I'm fifty five."

"Well you know what I mean."

"A central role? You mean the hero you mentioned ealier who copes with atrocious circumstances and overcomes them?"

Stephen King's owlish mellowness evaporated. He became positively glacial. He didn't do anything but he suddenly seemed quite threatening. He had an aura.

"You're living through a parody of my most famous novel Misery. Where do you think it's heading?"

James, refusing to take the hint, nodded excitedly.

"Yes, yes. I can see it all. You invert everything in  Misery. There's no torture. No killing. A famous writer kidnaps an unknown one. They become friends. It's a merry romp. Then he lets him go. No one will expect this from Stephen King. The critics will go bananas. Your publisher will tear his hair out. But there it is. The last thing they ever expected. A life affirming celebration of life being affirmed and celebrated life affirmingly. Maybe it's the book you were born to write. I can see it all. You can call it Jollity."

"That's not the book I'm seeing," said Stephen King darkly.

                           Chapter Three

"How did you kidnap me?"

"It was opportunistic. You fell over. I thought to myself: Well, it's now or never, or maybe sometime in the future. I decided on now."

A rush of restored memory discombobulated James briefly.

"You saw me fall?"

"I did."

"Did you see anything else?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, anything. Anything at all? When I fell, before I fell, after..."

"You mean like a crow the size of a man which didn't take too kindly to you telling it to worship God, and struck you down in about two seconds flat? That's much too many too sounds for anything I would ever say or write."

"You saw!"

"Heelers I saw nothing."

"You saw. If you saw you know it's real. You know it's not an entertainment. The cosmic battle. Forces of good versus forces of evil. Everything. You should be telling people to repent and be saved. You should be repenting and being saved yourself. You should be running to a church and asking to see a priest."

"Nah. I don't want to."

"But you saw that thing."

"I'm telling you I saw nothing."

"You can't mean it."

"I mean it alright. After a life time evoking the most terrifying grotesque supernatural possibilites in those best selling books you so disapprove of, I Stephen King am telling you I'm not touching what happened to you with a forty foot barge pole."

"But why?"

"James as you would say yourself... It's scary shite."

                              Chapter Four

"So why do you hate my books?"

"I don't hate them exactly. I loathe them."

"Interesting distinction."

And somewhere the ghost of Woody Allen was smiling.

"Look. Your books are masturbatory paeans to evil. I wonder do they damage people. I wonder do they damn people. Did that play of mine send out certain men the English shot?"

"Exsqueeze me?"

"WB Yeats had an attack of late flowering conscience and asked himself that question after some revolution or other that he'd cheerled from the sidelines. Surely you've asked it."

"Heelers they're just books. Very very profitable books."

"In Salems Lot you wrote about an evil house attracting evil people. Do you think it doesn't happen with books?"

"Have you ever enjoyed anything I wrote?"

"Salems Lot, Carrie and The Shining interested me as a kid. Even though they all have that drawback of turning evil into an entertainment while exposing people to its seductions. But Salems Lot had resonances, you know, like the old style scary story where you're down in your seat rooting for the forces of good. The Shining attracted Stanley Kubrick to film it. I wondered what he worshipped on a dark night, eh Stephen. As for Carrie, I've refuted Carrie."

"Well done. I'll give back the hundred million dollars."

"I think I've refuted it. It's based on a girl having telekinetic mind powers. I'm suggesting there's no such thing."

"As girls?"

"As telekinetic mind powers. I put it to you Stephen that mind powers are precluded by both evolutionary and Deist perspectives. Bear in mind that I insist any Darwinian mechanisms that exist in nature, exist there because God put them there. But for my present reasoning I will speak as if the Darwinian evoltionary perspective offers a second approach alongside the belief in God perspective. From the evolutionary point of view if someone had mind powers they could kill with a thought. That person would end up king on a field of corpses and the human race would die out. Carrie would be the last human. From the belief in God point of view, we are able to cause death but it always takes a conscious decision and effort to do it. It can't happen just with a thought. God has loaded the dice in our favour so that we need never commit murder. By the way I hope you didn't miss that little qualifier where I am suggesting that the evolutionary perspective attends upon the truth of God perspective since God made existence, including nature, including any evolutionary realities which happen to exist."

"No, I heard you. You're citing God and Darwin but you're saying any utility in Darwinism is there because God put it there. You're merely using the notion of evolutionary mechanisms in creation to rubbish my book. You're not saying we decescended from the apes. I get it. Although you probably think that if we did descend from the apes that's because God created us that way."

"You're right Stephen. I do."

"So no mind powers. No telekinesis. But James, there have been cases. You know... hauntings. That priest you used to like... the late Father Benedict Groeschel, he attributed poltergeist incidents to the presence at a location of someone going through puberty, normally a girl and being endowed with mind powers for purely physical biological reasons during that period of her life."

"My assessment is that Groeschel was wrong on this point. Mind powers do not explain claims of poltergeist phenomena."

"So how you do explain the moving objects associated with a person, Heelers? All fake."

"No. Not all fake. I think Groeschel is of such a seriousness as a commentator that we might accept there have been incidences that were not faked. There are some memorable fakes like the British case in the 1970s known as the Enfield Poltergeist. My assessment of that is that the girls faked everything. But no, not all polteregeist incidents are fakes. I'm just postulating that in any such incidence the young girl didn't move the objects with her mind. I'm saying there was indeed an evil spirit present, what might be called a poltergeist or a demon or a ghost, and it may have been interested in a particular family member. That's where you get moving objects in the vicinity of a person who sometimes genuinely thinks they have caused the objects to move. But the person isn't doing it. There are no telekinetic mind powers. I once showed my UFO video to two women in their flat in Dublin and a shelf came tumbling down in the middle of their kitchen. I didn't for a moment think that images of UFOs on a video tape could reach out from the TV screen to knock down a shelf. Nor did I accept the girls explanation that women don't know how to install shelves. It was too much to be a coincidence. Afterwards I formed the opinion that the women were playing with witchcraft and might have become objects of interest to an evil spirit which decided to scare the living bejabers out of me when I visited them. There are no mind powers. Carrie fails at every level except at the level of narrative thrust. It is a well told story about nothing."

"And that's it? None of my other books interested you?"

"The Dark Half, sad and tasteless though it is, interests any writer or would be writer even in spite of ourselves. Christine, like Carrie, had something in its evocation of bullying but again you're acting as an advertisting agent for the forces of darkness. The victim turns out to be a bigger villain than the perpetrators. Go to church Stephen. Learn about redemption."

"So no Nobel prize for me!"

"Oh I think you'll get a Nobel prize alright. You want it and you'll get it. You'll get it for the same reason Bob Dylan got his. To make the Nobel Committee look stylish. But you'll be too old to enjoy it. The devil's gifts are always a cheat."

"And I've never written a good book."

"You've written one good book."

"What is it?"

"On Writing."

"You actually liked it? You reviewed the book you actually liked with the one line sentence: Did you kill that man Stephen. Wow. You must have really hated the other ones."

"You got off lightly. I reviewed A Single Headstrong Heart by Kevin Myers with a one line sentence that went: **** off Myers you ****."

"Better than he deserved."

"Good one Kingers. I'm starting to like you. Are you starting to like me? I hope you are. Let me go and we'll call it quits. We can keep in touch by email if you like."

"What did you like about On Writing?" ventured Stephen King, delicately the poignant gibberish.

"You gave the only really good advice for would be writers that I have ever heard. The only advice that might genuinely help a person who wants to be a writer. You said: Blow up your TV. I thought it was just perfect, marvellous, brilliant, on the money. Because it wasn't cruel. It seems cruel. It seems heartless. But it's not. Anyone getting rid of their TV and focussing on their writing actually would improve their chances. Your advice was blunt as all hell. And it was so true. It's actually the only advice that might mean something. People think they want to be writers and it must be hard for a lad like you not being able to give them much hope when they come begging you for a scrap from the rich billionaire's table. But you gave them a simple challenge that seemed hopeless enough but was imbued with  real hope. If they did this, they might make it. How many would still insist they were ready to make sacrifices to be a writer if they baulk at this most simple sacrifice. A sacrifice that is actually very liberating. And you still didn't promise them success. Poetry is a harsh mistress. She asks everything but promises nothing. But you said: Do this, or forget it. It was blunt. It was honest. It was worth the price of admission. And blowing up their TV is actually the only decision a person can make which really might affect the overall odds of becoming a famous writer or better yet, a writer who actually writes something worthwhile. Best advice, simplest, most honest advice ever. Of course nowadays I would add: Blow up your mobile phone and internet access as well."

                                   Chapter Five

"What have you got for me today Heelers?"

His voice was perhaps self consciously like the character Ming the Merciless addressing his chief henchman during the opening scene in the 1980s Flash Gordon film

Stephen King set the tray down on the bedside table and installed himself Mingily in his comfy armchair.

James didn't answer.

He'd been thinking all last night that it was time to make this kidnapping a whole lot less fun for the kidnapper.

During the night he'd formulated the notion that from now on, no matter what happened, he would not speak a word to Stephen King.

It was a power play.

But even if he had to die he would no longer perform for the ring master.

Stephen King would never hear a word from James Healy again.

A silence hung in the room.

"I'm going to keep you alive as long as you keep me entertained." said Stephen King.

James abandoned his policy of non speaking with a groan of frustration.

"I'm doomed," he muttered.

"Not at all," said Stephen King. "You're an interesting man. You'll be able to think of a few conversational gambits that should keep me intrigued at least for a week or two."

"You see that's where you're wrong," said James. "People think I'm interesting but really I'm not. I can polish up a poem over the course of a year or two. I can come up with political insights that have occasional acuities if I take my time about it. I can even devise fairly readable humour columns or fairly engaging plot lines for theatre plays if I'm not in a rush and there's no pressure on me to perform. But put me in a social situation, say at a party with sexy women, or in a one on one with a kidnapper, and I'm hopeless."

"Don't be so hard on yourself," said Stephen King kindly. "You're doing okay."

"And what's all this week or two talk?" demanded James bitterly.

"In a week or two, no more Heelers Diaries."

"Oh for heaven's sake, if it's the blog we can shut it down now. That thing is more trouble than it's worth. Get me your laptop computer, I'll delete the blog and you can let me go."

"Sorry James. Er, when I said no more Heelers Diaries I meant the blog wouldn't be around anymore because you wouldn't be around to write it."

"Fuldroonz."

"What's that?"

"My language has been going to pot lately. I'm dropping F bombs, cee words and what have you every five minutes. I thought it was time for a change. In the quiet moments here between our little chats, I've been thinking up vulgarisms that aren't actually vulgarisms, F words that aren't actually the F word, cee words that don't break the last taboo, that sort of thing. I don't want to be just lying here cursing to myself all the time."

                              Chapter Six

James was alone.

Stephen King had been in for a visit and had departed.

He'd left his laptop computer on the dresser though.

Here's larks.

Has to be a game.

Why else would he do that?

Just a tease.

On the other hand maybe the old goat is hitting the cocainium again.

James retrieved the computer and entered a few key words to access a Youtube website account.

Make it brief.

A brief: "Help, I'm being kept prisoner by Stephen King."

That should do it.

The Youtube site had given him access.

Record and post.

Five seconds is all that's necessary. 

A message appeared on the screen.

"Before you go any further please help Youtube by answering one question."

On the stairs there came the sound of a world famous author of horror stories returning.

"Youtube you shower of mother Fuldroonzing Caractacuses," breathed James with strange detachment.

                              Chapter Seven

Daybreak wherever it is.

No doubt there are animals outside in the woods but you can't hear them.

For hours there is silence.

The first external sound of the day is when Stephen King comes clumping into the room with a tray of food.

"Kingers you should write a book about Hitler's top commando Otto Skorzeny."

"Maybe that would be a good conversational sallie if you'd been kidnapped by Jack Higgins."

"Higgins wouldn't touch the supernatural. I think supernatural Nazis might be more in your line. And you haven't done it before. And it's all based on fact. I mean what are you working on at the moment? Another mind powers books? Give it a rest. There's no such thing as mind powers. But there's such a thing as evil and it has servants... Otto Skorzeny lived in my town you know, after the war. There have been rumours that the SS were devil worshippers. An apparently mischievous book about Nazi links to black magic called Morning Of The Magicians came out in 1960 written by  two Frenchies, Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier. Whether it was intended to nor not, Morning Of the Magicians became a sort of how to book for contemporary devil worshippers. But it's based on something. Even Skorzeny's latest biographer coyly names his book The Devil's Disciple without once mentioning devil worship in the text. It's sort of the elephant in the Reichskanzlei. Everyone knows it's there but no one talks about it except speculative mischief making sensationalists like Pauwels and Bergier, and their fellow travellers who actually are devil worshippers and get off on the notion that the Nazis were too. Anyway, shortly after Skorzeny moved to Kilcullen there were rumours of odd goings on up at the manor house he had purchased."

"Ah," said Stephen King, "that hoary old cliche. Strange goings on up at t'old mill."

"You don't like hoary old cliches?"

"Heelers I've made a billion dollars out of hoary old cliches. I love them."

"Anyway. Skorzeny is living in Kilcullen at the same time as Pat McKenna, Northern Division Commander of the IRA. Do we think Skorzeny initiated Pat McKenna and the IRA into devil worship? Skorzeny's SS did liaise with the IRA before this during World War Two with a view to creating a fifth column against Britain. So there was prior history for Nazi IRA contacts. Is it reasonable to assume that while living at Martinstown House, Otto Skorzeny steered clear of Pat McKenna? I can tell you Stephen, I've met McKenna's supposed son and daughter, Joe and Breda, and I hold both of them in very low regard."

"Low regard! Gee Heelers, no need to get snippy. What are you trying to say? Are they a bunch of evil mother fuldroonzing caractacuses? And why do you say supposed son and daughter?"

"There were odd goings on at the time. The rumours I mentioned. Some of the local wenches were purported to be throwing tall blond Arian Nazi type babies."

"Throwing?"

"Sorry Stephen. A Kilcullenism. Giving birth to."

"So Skorzeny was trying to populate a fourth Reich personally with offspring from the cream of the Irish peasantry?"

"If only it was that simple. The McKenna son and daughter whom I've met, have associations with the Charismatic movement in Catholic Christianity. They also have associations with the healing nun Brid McKenna who is a native of Northern Ireland. I cannot confirm that they are related to the nun Brid McKenna. But Brid McKenna in 1981 supposedly issued a prophecy which has been interpreted as predicting the commencement of Marian apparitions at Medjugorje. The supposed apparitions began a few months later and have supposedly continued for more nearly forty years up to the present day. Millions of pilgrims go to Mejugorje every year."

"That's a lot of supposedlies in there."

"The nun Brid McKenna made her prophecy in 1981 to a priest called Tomislav Vlasic who for several years was very much involved with  the Medjugorje visionaries. The prophecy supposedly took the form of the nun Brid McKenna telling Tomsislav Vlasic that she could see him sitting on a chair, and that streams of water were flowing from under the chair, and that people from all over the world were coming to gain refreshment. The now deceased Bishop Zanic who had authority over the region where the visions occurred, was of the opinion that Tomislav Vlasic was, and I quote, a charismatic wizard. Tomislav Vlasic has since been laicised from the Catholic church priesthood. His last known whereabouts are supposedly with a UFO cult. In Ireland the apparitions at Medjugorje are still promoted by an organisation calling itself the Medjugorje Council of Ireland. Its only known member is the priest who in 2013 self identified to me as being from a highly connected IRA family, Ruairi O'Domhnaill."

"So we've got IRA Nazi satanists staging Marian apparitions through the charismatic movement? Why?"

"I'd try to bring in the Freemasons too. They love a good opportunity to sow chaos in the Catholic church while enslaving the human race on the side."

"Okay, Freemasons too. Anything else?"

"Well back to the local scene. After Skorzeny came to Kilcullen the town changed. Stephen it's like in your book Salem's Lot, where the evil house draws evil people. It was as if Kilcullen started to draw evil people to it. The Maloney gang made it the centre of their drug and porno distribution activities. A charity styling itself the Camphill Community moved in. The Camphill Community was set up in Scotland eighty years ago by a Germanic satanist of Austrian birth called Rudolf Steiner. They arrived in Kilcullen thirty years ago with a cuddly fuzzy bunny vision of helping handicapped people. Who could possibly be suspicious of that?  Occasionally when I was chatting to their members, I would delight  in asking them if they worshipped satan and they would wriggle and squirm and then earnestly explain that lucifer is an energy and it wasn't a question of worshipping him but of bringing him into balance. I gotta tell you Stephen, when people tell you Lucifer is an energy and that they can juggle him, you'd better make tracks. The only winning move is not to play. Then the Hutch gang moved into town. Then an Arab clan gang moved in and opened the Alke Babish chipper. They're believed by some to be associates of the Maloneys in the drug trade. The Maloneys used to deal with Moroccans when they were sourcing drugs to poison, make addicted, and murder the children and adults of Kilcullen in order to pay for the Maloneys' penchant for mansions, big cars and farms. All this in a town with a population of about two thousand people. The suicide rate went through the roof. As did disappearances in the hinterland, unexplained deaths, and drug ovedoses. One man tried to escape. He just fled the place abandoning his wife and children. He was scared out of his shit of something Stephen. A delegation from the town followed him and insisted he come back. He ended up self immolating behind a sports ground rather than live here. The gangs have thrived over the past twenty years in Kilcullen because they had one of their own, a corrupt thug cop, running the local police station. Meanwhile Ruairi O'Domhnaill of the Medjugorje Council of Ireland was providing cover for a coven of satanistic IRA bitches styling themselves Marian Bruce, Margaret Roche and Gwen Healy (not a relative of mine) who had attempted to insinuate themselves into my life with malicious intent through O'Domhnaill's so called Medugorje prayer group in the nearby town of Newbridge."

"Bitches or witches James?"

"Yes that's right Stephen... I broke with them in 2014 when I knew what they were. I discovered they'd been giving me food laced with narcotics and had made me a drug addict without my ever having knowingly taking drugs. Stuff happens Stephen. And a year later in 2015 a man who maybe didn't manage to break with them (he'd had known contact with at least one of them) suicided himself by jumping off the choir loft in Newbridge church. Ruairi O'Domhnaill has since been promoted to parish priest of Newbridge. Paul Dempsey, the parish priest at the time the guy jumped off the choir loft has been promoted to Bishop. You couldn't make it up."

"Back it up a bit. What about the corrupt cop? There was some suggestion that an evil hairdresser set you up to go after him"

"A bit speculative Stephen even for me. It must have just slipped out. But it has been said. I know that for a while the hairdresser was telling me all these awful stories about how corrupt Kinneavey was. And her sister was telling me Kinneavey had put her in fear of rape in her own home. Now get this. He's a thug alright. So I was happy enough that I ended up in conflict with him. I'd hate to have been living the quiet life and acquiescing to him while he was doing some of the things he's done to people in this town and elsewhere. But I was never sure of the testimonies from the hairdresser and her sister. It had the whiff of a set up. After all their talk about Kinneavey, neither she nor her sister were to be found when it turned bad for me. And let's just say the hairdresser had previous for that sort of thing. Well not previous. But additional. She told a friend of mine that someone was hassling her and my friend went to sort it out. And he ended up in all sorts of hassle himself. It was a very stressful part of his life for a few years. And throughout it all, there was never any sign of the hairdresser coming to his aid although he'd incurred this hassle trying to help her. So yes I have wondered was something similar going on when she seemed to be trying to programme me to go after Kinneavey. You know Stephen, there's a category of evil that seeks to create chaos, seeks to get people at each other's throats, and then steps back and pleasures itself on the train wreck, the pain of others and the destruction of lives it has caused."

Stephen King let out a long low whistle.

"It's a hotchpotch. Particularly when you try to cram everything in at the end and bring yourself into it. But there's something there alright. I'm not sure you should be in it. What would your character be?"

"I'm the guy who tries to inveigle Stephen King into writing about it."

"Like the way you tried to encourage those kids to do a school project on Skorzeny?"

"My blushes Stephen."

"You were really going to send out those innocent teenage moppets as your proxies to call on people from your town who knew Skorzeny when he lived there, in the hope you might expose a Nazi devil worship ring?"

"Well devil worshippers won't even talk to me. Not since I was blacklisted in 1997 by the United Federated Union for Crossborder Kinship of Satanists, just because I revealed live on Radio Mullingar in an interview with a Freemason that Freemasons worship satan under the title Jahbulon. By the way, don't mention Jahbulon, Stephen. I mentioned him once but I think I got away with it."

"United Federated Union for Crossborder Kinship of Satanists... U.F.U.C.K.S?"

"That's what they call themselves. Pant, pant, pant, believe it... or not."

"And were you in the slightest bit concerned that those innocent little teenage moppets might be in some danger?"

"Not really Stephen. Moppets today kick ass. Frankly I'd be more worried for the safety of the satanists."

"A few days ago Heelers you advised me against meeting those people from your town. You seemed to be trying to put me off the idea of a book about them."

"We've all grown a bit in the last few days. There are two things in life I no longer care about, Kingers. I no longer care too much for owls. And I no longer care if you get into personal trouble with the Kilcullen branch of U.F.U.C.K.S."

Stephen King thought about what he'd just heard. It was  a lot to take in.

"You really think I'd get a novel out of it? A thumping great horror story such as I specialise in?"

"No Stephen. I think you'd get a documentary."

                           Chapter Eight

"What's your favourite conspiracy theory?" wondered Stephen King.

"From among my own or somebody elses?"

"Either."

"My favourite among my own is that someone in British television during the 1970s was using TV serials to promote esoteric doctrines to children. I suggested that there was evidence of such an activity at the BBC in the form of a series called The Moon Stallion. Great story. Great music. Great actors, adults and children. A great horse in the lead role. Great countryside. Falls down a bit on the action sequences and special effects, but a lovely, lovely thing. The conspiracy theory is that it may have been a thinly disguised promo for black magic. Anyway I didn't really think it was. But its romantic depictions of paganism made it a candidate for the conspiracy theory. The second candidate was produced by a regional television company in Wales called HTV. It was called Children Of The Stones. Now this was a really sinister thing. It's children's TV but the resonances are very adult. It's superbly made, superb acting, a really marvellous villain, the whole thing a perfect example of film makers doing marvellous stuff with a limited budget. It's like the original Invasion Of The Body Snatchers in that regard. Story told through a mastery of the vocabulary of the screen. A genius for knowing what the screen can do with the merest economy of sensation. A real triumph of the film maker's art. Nothing wasted. Plot tight as a drum. Fine ham acting at close range. The budget becomes irrelevant because they're playing to their strengths. Music perfectly tailored. Eerie blood curdling scares effortlessly crafted into the narrative. Sylistically it's indebted to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers but thematically it owes much to a nasty pagan propaganda 1973 British horror film called The Wicker Man. The Wicker Man was written by the playwright Anthony Shaffer by the way and I wouldn't take bets on what he worshipped on a dark night. There's a self conscious nod to the Wicker man in the Children Of The Stones dialogue when the cultists of Children Of The Stones are said to be celebrating Wicker's Day. If you blink you'd miss it but the TV writers were paying homage to their inspiration. Anyway. I remember being scared half out of my wits by the first episode of Children Of The Stones in 1977 when I was about ten years old. Here's the rub. Children Of The Stones was much talked about. It was of superb quality. And it was only shown on British and Irish television once. It was never rebroadcast. The Moon Stallion was repeated whenever the Beeb got bored. But Children Of The Stones disappeared into the vaults at the HTV network never to be seen again in Ireland or Britain until its internet release. Now why was that then? Because it got a little too close to the bone and someone wanted it to be forgotten. Someone involved in its production and dissemination feared that they'd shown their hand and said too much and left a trail to their own front doors. It had to vanish. That's the conspiracy. Of course Children Of The Stones has become freely available on the internet. And so was The Moon Stallion. Up until I began advancing and publishing my theory via The Heelers Diaries that one or other or both of them might be linked to black magicians. And pouf! It was The Moon Stallion's turn to disappear. The BBC took it down from their website. It was no longer available on Youtube. Even the music was erased wherever it had been posted on the internet. Children Of The Stones is still there and spooky as all hell. The music too. But The Moon Stallion, the one I included in my favourite conspiracy theory as a filler, can't be found for love nor money."

"And your favourite conspiracy theory that's not one of your own?"

"Favourite in the sense that I think there's a chance it might be true..."

"Okay."

"It's a toss up. The Russian communist party arranging the assassination of John F Kennedy or a rogue faction within British intelligence arranged the murder of the Princess of Wales."

                               Chapter Nine

"Heelers I think we've reached the end of the road."

"Fine Kingers. Just let me go and I'll be on my way."

"That's not how it works."

Stephen King suddenly exuded an aura of pure threat. He wasn't doing anything. It was just there. Like on the first day when he got miffed about something. He looked like a very dangerous owl.

James searched for a comment but nothing came.

"This is the final hour of your life."

"Oh good. I've got an hour, have I?"

"I mean the final moments."

"Oh bawls."

"Any last conspiracy theories?"

"Your wife wrote your books."

"Oh come on. You can do better than that. It's your exit line. One for the road."

"Your wife wrote your books Stephen. Everybody feels sorry for Tabitha King. Because she's a writer too. And she's married to the world's most famous writer. Who could ever even notice her works when placed in the shadow of your perennial best selling masturbatory paeans to evil. They think she's the moon tragically obliterated by the sun. But they've got it wrong. She writes your books."

"I write them James."

"Oh you do the donkey work. I'll give you that. Labouring over the keyboard and all that. But any time you stray into anything a bit, er, life affirming, anything that smacks ever so faintly of, oh we can say it, of Christianity, she gives you the gentlest nudge back to the dark side. You labour over those books. But in the truest sense she writes them all. They reflect her. Not you. It's a sublime irony. Your wife seems hopelessly overshadowed by you but she writes your books."

"Me and Dan Brown, eh?"

"That's right Stephen. Well done. You're learning. Blythe Danner writes Dan Brown's books in exactly the same way Tabitha King writes yours. You're two country boys who married witches and thought you were in control. But your case is more interesting. Dan Brown is a flash in the pan. He'll be forgotten quickly. Violent storms soon burn out themselves. But you were genuinely touched by the light. You might have been a bringer of joy to humanity instead of a purveyor of masturbatory paeans in service to evil."

"Stop saying that."

"Your books might have enabled people, enobled them with a vision of the soul instead of enfeebling them with hors d'oeuvresque depravities. I'm seeing you at your own end Stephen, like Iaroslavski, President of the League of the Godless in the old USSR, screaming on his deathbed: Burn my books, burn my books, he is here, he waited for me, he is here."

"Stop it Heelers. You're freaking me out."

"Tabitha King wrote your books Stephen. Every one of them. You all but admitted it in On Writing. Remember? You noted that she occasionally gave you suggestions, such as when you'd written about a character's volunteer charity work, and Tabitha told you 'I don't mind you writing it but I don't want to read it.' That's how she did it Stephen. Just a nudge in the wrong direction any time you strayed off satanistic message. Kept your eyes on the mud whenever you glanced towards the stars. You know, I found your first book Salems Lot is just like John Carpenter's first film Dark Star. Full of seditious optimism. Take out the grotty bits and both of them might have come from a young Saint Thomas Aquinas. But what came next, for you and Carpenter, was a descent into hell. The more you walked away from God, the more your virtues became their opposing vices. You had a choice. To praise God with your talent or to praise something else. You chose wrong Stephen. So did Carpenter for that matter."

"Heelers of all the sad, inchoate, debilatory nonsense you've talked these past ten days, this is the limit. Tu as gagne ton niveau d'excellence. You have reached your supreme level of incompetence. In your paranoid delusional world, everyone's a devil worshipper. Me and John Carpenter especially. We're all the baddies. Is that it?"

"And Stanley Kubrick. And Jack Nicholson. Yes."

"I know if I was writing the book who'd turn out to be the devil worshipper," muttered Stephen King darkly.

"Ask your wife. Maybe if you ask her nicely she'd let you make me the villain."

"Oh come on Heelers. Try to keep a tenuous hold on reality. How would my wife manipulate me into spending my life writing masturbatory paeans to evil... Oh blast you. Now I'm doing it. Let's agree for the sake of argument to refer to my work as satanic propaganda pamphlets, shall we, disguised as books. How did she manipulate me through so many years without anyone suspecting? How would she keep her influence secret? Does anyone else know, aside from a genius like you?"

"You can bluster all you like but you can't quite cover it up Stephen. I know, and you know, and you know I know you know. She's married to the most famous author in the world. No one even notices her books. And that's the big joke. They're all her books. You're her puppet. She is the mistress of puppets."

"You maniac. That's not even a proper conspiracy theory. It's just picking out something that might really irritate me when I'm about to bid you farewell forever. Something that would irritate any writer. Tell him you don't believe he wrote his own books. Insult his wife. You've got a nerve I'll give you that. Of all the barefaced cheek. I'm going to send you to hell."

"You don't have that power. Regardless of what you do I expect to go to heaven. My hope is in God. He who is, he who was, and he who is to come."

"You're wrong Heelers. Calvary wasn't enough. There's no redemption. You're as lost as I am."

Stephen King had taken on the aspect and gait of the most malevolent owl in the history of malevolent owls.

"This is the age of the one true God, Stephen."

"You're about to discover whether it is or not from the business end."

"Enough Stephen. Let him go."

"Yes dear."

She must have glided into the room.

Or beamed in using a beaming device from Star Trek.

"Be gentle with his leg."

"Yes dear."

James thought her a not unappealing woman.

Her entrance lines had, somewhat paradoxically since she was a baddie, left her standing little lower than the angels in his personal world view.

"Come on," she said, "I'll drive you to the airport. Stephen, you wait here."

"Yes dear."

As James stumbled after her into the upper landing space of a huge mansion, he could have sworn he heard a strangulated whisper from the room he'd left behind, like the expiring breath of the dying guy on the mountain in the poem Excelsior.

The voice didn't say Excelsior however.

The voice, more a soft sibilant sigh than a voice, seemed to whisper on the edge of consciousness.

It said:

"Fuldroonz."

                             Chapter Ten

Tabitha King drove James through the Maine countryside.

"We've done you a favour," she smiled cheerily. "If you ever become famous, scholars will debate what really happened to you during that missing ten days. What are you going to dow when you get home?"

"I'm going to tell people Mrs King."

Tabitha King slapped the steering wheel and laughed and laughed and laughed.

She was enjoying herself so much James chose not to interrupt her.

"Oh Lordy, that was great," she said finally. "What makes you think after your track record of previous failures to convince anyone of anything, ever, that you can convince people that Stephen King and his crazy wife kidnapped you?"

"You've been reading my blog?"

"All the great writers read it," affirmed Tabitha King deliciously.

They drove up to the big airport in Maine, the main one.

She pulled in at the bit where there's no parking in the white zone only loading and unloading; Parking is to take palce in the red zone only.

"Here's where we part," said Tabitha King.

James began to walk.

He turned back to her for a moment.

She brought the passenger side window down.

"Repent and be saved Mrs King. While we yet live, it is a time of mercy."

"It's too late for me James. I'm not even on speaking terms with your God."

"That's why he sent me."

                                 THE END

*****

First published 2021