Another man - another time

THE DARK MANTRA

Another man - another time

The next morning.

At 8am, Wilf arrived at the tube station. He was smartly dressed, and feeling particularly strong and confident this morning. The reason being, he was going to have a long overdue meeting with the famous Arthur Nozbend, who had become a Guru to him.

It was a strange day too, because as far as he knew, and according to the news stories he’s read, Arthur had died recently. So he had been very surprised, to say the least, to get a call from him out of the blue late last night.

During the telephone conversation, Arthur had sworn Wilf to the strictest secrecy on the matter. Telling him that only he could help him, and that he needed this help immediately.

Flattering Wilf had the desired effect, and he agreed, without asking too many awkward questions as to the nature of the meeting, to meet Arthur in secret the next day.

When he reached the inevitable queue at the ticket office, he walked straight past it, and onto the platform, just making it onto the awaiting train. Warnings of on the spot fines, for ticket-less passengers meant nothing to him in this mood.

It was a slow, late rush hour train, stopping at all the dreary suburban stations between Richmond, and Earls Court.

“Oh dear.”

He noticed two ticket inspectors board the train at the dreaded Hounslow East.

“Tickets please! Have your tickets ready please! Thank you!”

The excuse he had concocted, for why he didn’t have a ticket, except of course for the true one, i.e., that he couldn’t be bothered to wait in the queue, had started to filter into his mind. He smirked, and felt slightly embarrassed at the juvenile level of thinking he had fallen into. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the ticket men disappeared again.

“Oh well,” Wilf sighed.

Then for a brief moment he heard Gwen’s concerned voice in his mind, regarding his changing for the worse, but he shrugged it off quickly.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” he muttered uncertainly.
“Nothing I can’t handle.”

He eventually arrived at Earls Court, and quite prepared to pay his due fare, he went to the excess fares ticket window.

Being patient and reasonable, were two of Wilf’s main talents, as long as it didn’t mean being, too reasonable for too long, five minutes being long enough in his opinion.

As usual, at the understaffed, underground station, there was no one behind the excess fares window, so Wilf shouted several times, as politely as he could.

“Is there anybody there, please!”

He then tapped a coin on the counter, a fatal mistake, that made everybody in the queue look at him and, the staff ignore him even more. He thought they were assuming, as Wilf also knew he would assume, that any person standing at the excess fare ticket window, was obviously some lower form of life, a cheat and fare evader, and possibly even a violent criminal. A person like this, at the very least, was surely in no position to expect to be treated fairly, like a normal human being. He felt embarrassed, and enraged, at this slight to his importance.

Having run out of patience, he turned to the one of the overweight, underground staff slouching nearby. Getting good eye contact with the man, he held out his hands, in a kind of, ‘can you help me?’ plea.

The man shrugged. “You shoulda bought a ticket like everybody else mate, can't you be a bit more patient?”

Wilf’s reply came quick and sharp.
“Yeah I can mate, and Fuck you too, you fucking peasant!”

He pushed two one-pound coins into the man’s hand and vaulted over the ticket barriers.

“Fuck them all. They have no idea who I am.”

He huffed, imagining crowds cheering him on, but in reality the people in the queue, and the underground staff, pretended not to notice anything at all. They just waited patiently for something else to happen.

As he strode on to the roaring of imaginary crowds, a more sensible and objective part of Wilf was becoming slightly disturbed at this emerging rebellious side of his personality, But as he turned onto Warwick road, he let these doubts fade out, because all he cared about right now, was the fact that he had a very interesting day ahead of him.

If he had known just how interesting his life was going to be after today, he would have turned around and gone home again. But sadly for him, he never turned around and went home, instead he reached the coffee bar, where he was about to meet the mysterious Arthur Nozbend.

He entered the café, scanned the room, and saw Arthur had not arrived yet.

The owner of the coffee bar reminded Wilf of the, Gollum character from ‘The Lord of the Rings’.
He was a very sad and despondant human being, at the best of times.

“Black coffee please?” Wilf said.

Without a word, Gollum poured a perfect cup of black coffee.

"Two pounds please.”

Taken by surprise, at this unusual act of politeness, from this otherwise obnoxious man, Wilf paid him, took his coffee into the back room, and sat down.

He was feeling good and saw Gollum’s unusual act of politeness as a very good omen.

“Now, where was I?
No, not where was I?
But rather, who am I?”

He enjoyed the weight of these particular thoughts. The ‘who am I’ question excited him a great deal.

He lit a cigarette, sipped his coffee, and began to relax. Arthur was about to arrive, but not in the way Wilf expected.

As he continued to let go, he noticed that he had gone into a deeper state of relaxation, than he would normally allow, especially for an occasion such as this.

Then he heard Arthur's familiar voice. It seemed to be whispering in his ear.

“That’s it Wilf, let go son. Good lad.
Just let yourself relax, a little bit more.”

Wilf felt disturbed and was unable to resist the stupor he was falling into. At first, he imagined the voice was outside, but as he attempted to open his eyes, to acknowledge his guest, he realised the voice was inside his head.

He was slipping away, and to his dismay, he was now in one of his bad dreams. One of the bad dreams he'd been having for the last six moths.

Within this strange dream he was being sucked up into the darkness of a smoky, vaulted, wooden ceiling.

His body felt light, as he continued to rise up and through a hole in the ceiling, moving into a very large attic room. He felt light and free, as if he was no longer attached to his physical body. But it didn’t feel right and he started to panic.
A massive sense of fear and dread overwhelmed him.

“Is this really happening?”

As he spoke these words, the deep and fearful knowledge, that he was being abandoned and left alone in this very dark room, crept up on him.
He knew rationally, that he was in the coffee bar waiting for Arthur, but a deeper part of him knew that something terrible was happening.

Meanwhile, back in the mid morning real time of the coffee bar, several minutes after he had started to relax, the figure, that still resembled Wilf in every detail, sucked in a deep and healthy breath, yawned, stood up and flexed his spine.

This person, who was still, to all outside appearances Wilf, stretched gracefully and looked intently into the mirror on the wall. With a smile spreading across his smug face, and without glancing back, he walked slowly through the door and out onto the street.

“That was easier than I thought it would be!” he said.

Arthur Nozbend, was now in Wilf’s body and he spoke out loud, with no shame.

“I must say this feels very good, and fitter than I thought it would be, hmm nice.”

He was referring to Wilf’s body as if he was wearing a new suit.

The dreaded Arthur Nozbend had met Wilf a couple of years earlier, and was instantly impressed by the young man’s knowledge of the occult. It was this fact, and Wilf’s arrogant and quietly rebellious nature, that had impressed Arthur. So much so, that he had desired possession of Wilf, quite literally, from that moment on.

The grooming process had then begun in earnest. Arthur used a constant stream of flattery and coercion, until he had eventually got what he wanted, Wilf’s young and fit body.

Although he hadn't realised it. At the time of meeting Arthur, Wilf had been very close to discovering the secret of the ‘Dark Mantra.'

Arthur, on the other hand, had been studying the book for many years, and knew he was the most advanced person alive with this particular sphere of knowledge.

“Yes, I have to admit it. Wilf was the perfect person for this 'unusual operation'. Unusual operation sounds slightly better than body snatching”

He roared with laughter, and at this point, was very aware that passers by probably thought he was completely mad.

“If only they knew.”

This made him laugh even more.

“If only they bloody knew, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”