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THE CASEBOOK OF GEEZA VERMIES

  I completed my side of the bargain and performed ceremonies of passing away on each head and mutilated body part as we buried them.

  Needless to say there was an uneasy atmosphere in the car after that. Understandable. I told Cripplesby the motives behind my actions, which to his credit he took quite well. Some people would have flipped. I don’t think he was too happy about it, but that’s mainly because he won’t be able to do any more of his research with that MacIntosh guy. Never mind. Like I said to him, he’ll find whatever he needs to know from someone else.

  For my part I felt great. I was filled to the brim with a feeling of deep satisfaction and could feel the Spirits’ joy as they danced about in their new found freedom. It felt good. Really good.

  This morning, when everyone had cleared out of the hotel to go to the race, I had whacked a handful of mushrooms down my throat; my last ones. But I had to – I had to be sure I found every one of the God-awful Animal heads and other trophies - there was a stool in one room made from an Elephant’s foot for Christ’s sake! In another an ashtray made out of a Gorilla’s ear… To make good my promise I couldn’t afford to take the chance of leaving anything behind.

  So, yes it feels good - it feels fantastic - to have got them all out, but it does mean I’ve got nothing left ‘herbal-wise.’

  Later on, while Elliot was driving after the digging had been done, Malika’s voice rose up out of the dregs of my trip like a Siren out at Sea. She told me to search for an old lady known by the name of Ramona, a healer who lives on the outskirts of a town called Voi. It is on the way to Mombassa so we don’t have to go too far out of our way to stop by; a slight detour is all. This Ramona would be able to help me out I was told, but when I asked how Malika flickered playfully into sight like an old film strip which jumped and crackled as she hovered in the air in front of us. She was smiling and teasingly wagged a long, thin finger at me.

  “You will find out when you get there,” she said. “Do you not trust your poor little Malika…?”

  The question was left hanging in the air as she faded away to be replaced by a faceless man holding three massive forks, each one at least ten or twelve feet tall. He was dwarfed into insignificance by them. It wasn’t just the difference in height though; he was made even more unnoticeable by the fact that he had no discernible facial features and also that his clothing was drab and indistinct. Even more telling was that the longer I looked at him the smaller he grew.

  As for the forks themselves, they seemed to be glowing from within, or was it that the Sun was going down directly behind them? Either way shafts of light were beaming out from them like you see depicted in all those religious paintings from the Renaissance, or whenever. Haloes, Auras, call them what you want – these forks had them for some reason.

  The man was stood on their right hand side and despite being only about nine inches tall by now, was still able to hold them upright in his massive hands, all out of proportion. He looked like Kenny Everett’s Brother Lee Love.

  The wind picked up suddenly and blew about a hundred tumbleweeds past the giant forks, from left to right as I looked at them. Given that I don’t know if you even get tumbleweeds in Africa I took this as being significant somehow; but how…?

  Elliot had to change down a couple of gears at around this point, negotiating a gully or something and the noise the engine made sounded to me like the chain being pulled on a toilet. The forks, and with them the huge-handed midget, the tumbleweeds and everything else swirled and gurgled away as if down a plug hole, disappearing out of sight with a loud sucking noise.

  As normal consciousness hit me, so did fatigue - I had been up all night and through the morning, nipping in and out of peoples’ bedrooms and all the other rooms of the Scotsman - so I put my seat back, closed my eyes and drifted into a well deserved sleep.

  ***