HP Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror - Weird Tales

smoke billowed from the burning spot where the eldritch lightning
had struck the stage. As the stinking fumes cleared, the
Enochians took one look at what had turned up and broke for
the fire exits. Unfortunately for them, all the doors in the auditorium
had been welded shut by the electrical discharge as it
crackled round the theatre.
The boards jumped and splintered as the monster stamped
its enormous hooves. It snorted and acrid droplets sprayed from
its flared nostrils. Rorschach patterns melted and reformed along
its flanks while its tail thrashed like a flail. Eyes like frying eggs
turned wildly in hollow sockets. Then the two halves of the
abomination split apart with a sickening slurping sound and its
writhing internal organs wriggled into view like groping fingers.
The self-propelled guts grabbed the thing that had pretended to
be Spud McFee and pulled him apart like a wishbone.
“Fuck me!” Malky yelped. “It’s a pantomime horse!”
The Enochians’ hypnotic spell was broken and the fighting
began.
The Head shot into the rafters like a Montgolfier balloon
and spat his caustic saliva down on the little gray devils. The
rest of the teachers snapped out of their trances too, and
unleashed a salvo of curses, hexes and old-fashioned headbutts.
We had other things to worry about as the demonic pantomime
horse stampeded around the stage on its wonky legs.
This was something that was never meant to be and it knew it.
Because Dee’s incantation was properly formed, the spell had
to summon something, but since the words were nonsense, the
magic had just made something up.
“Ooyah!” Malky screamed as the hindquarters kicked him
into the backdrop. Meanwhile, the front end sank its snaggleteeth
into Jonah’s polystyrene wings and tore them off his back.
None of the class had time to cast any defensive spells.
“Run for it!” I yelled, waving everyone behind the scenes.
I got to the backstage door and threw it open. In a moment, we
were scrambling across the flagstones of the courtyard.
Then the two halves of the horse-thing smashed the doors
off their hinges and began to circle us. Poor Wullie moaned, “It
isnae fair,” and began to cry.
“That is quite enough!” yelled a very high female voice,
and Miss Sim walked out of the theatre, shotgun clutched in
her hands. Our drama coach was almost herself again and
now seemed to be channeling Lillian Gish in The Night of the
Hunter.
Both bits of the pantomime horse rounded on her, fused
together and charged. Sparks flew as its hooves clattered across
the courtyard.
“I will not tolerate gratuitous improvisation!” she shrieked
and gave the monster both barrels.
The hindquarters exploded in a shower of stinking offal,
and the furious front end stumbled to one side, crashing into
the wall, but the job was only half done. The surviving part of
the horse showered us with foam from its champing jaws and
turned on Miss Sim again.
“Perhaps I can be of some assistance!” said Mister King
brightly as he stepped out of the building, doffing his shiny top
hat. “Abracadaver!”
The beast roared in fury. Mister King waved a whitegloved
hand at it and then plunged his fingers into his hat. The
monster screamed again, but this time in terror. The conjurer
kept reaching deeper into his topper until he was up to his dinner-suited
armpit. The pantomime horse flinched and staggered
on the spot. Mister King’s arm had not come out the
other side of his hat—it had gone somewhere else.
Our teacher clutched something and began to pull. First
came the flags of all nations knotted together in a chain, then his
topper spewed out brightly colored internal organs as Mister King
pulled and pulled. Our nemesis began to shrivel as it was remotely
disemboweled. Finally, it rolled its yolky eyes and died.
Mister King gingerly peeled off his soiled gloves, dropping
them on his ruined hat and the steaming pile of guts.
I looked at him in amazement: “You told us your kind of
magic was all about illusions . . .”
“Well,” he said, smiling kindly, “I said ninety-nine percent
of all magic was about illusion, boys. The other one percent
does come in handy sometimes.”
He strolled over to Miss Sim and offered her his clean arm.
“My dear, dear man,” she said as they walked back into the
theatre, “I am so grateful to you, but you must tell me your first
name so that I can thank you properly.”
“Nosmo,” he replied dryly, “in the best music hall tradition.”
And as we stood, astounded, among the festering remains
of the demonic pantomime horse, Mister Nosmo King led our
drama coach off into the sunset, even if it was only a painted
theatrical backdrop.
THINGS got back to normal pretty quickly at Boleskin House.
As our Christmas present for saving the day, we were told to
clean the theatre up. The Enochians had come to a rather
messy end.
We had almost finished sweeping the stage when I smelled
smoke. Someone had lit a cigar. I shaded my eyes and looked
into the stalls. Two shadowy figures sat puffing away in the
back row. Jonah turned up the house lights and we saw that the
last members of the audience in the house were not so much
shadowy as ghostly.
“Mister Macbeth, your royal highness, sir,” Malky blurted.
“Doctor Dee, I presume,” I said, nodding to the other
shade.
The ghost of the not-so-good doctor winked and the
ancient Scottish king saluted us.
“Now, that’s entertainment!” he said. n
Andrew J. Wilson has published short stories in magazines and anthologies
in Britain and the United States, including DAW Books’s Year’s Best
Horror Stories, Markings, Fear, and The Thackery T. Lambshead
Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases; he has also
read his work on BBC Radio Scotland. His plays The Terminal Zone
and The Black Ambulance Gang have both been performed at the
Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He is the science fiction, fantasy and horror
reviewer for The Scotsman, as well as the co-editor of Nova Scotia:
New Scottish Speculative Fiction.
H . P . L O V E C R A F T ’S M A G A Z IN E O F H O R R O R 31