Quite a Fortean one last night:
l was in a city which l knew was Dublin, though it didn’t resemble the real place, and in company with a tall, burly balding man whom l identified as our very own
@ramonmercado. (Whom l have never met IRL.)
lt began with us seated by the window in one of those cafés where the front windows open completely, virtually giving free access to the street. The road in front of the café was cobbled. They had run out of coffee, and l was grizzling about my need for caffeine. “Ramon” somehow arranged for a woman out in the street to acquire a coffee and hand it to me.
Scene shift.
“Ramon” is now driving us out of “Dublin” to meet a friend in the countryside. He’s driving at mental speed while l try and manage my cup of coffee, which is overfull, and in a paper-thin cardboard cup with a leaky sipper lid.
Scene shift.
We’re out in “the country”, and it’s now dark. “Ramon” has parked up, and we meet his mate. Apparently, we are going rabbit shooting with an air rifle, though no rabbits or rifles are ever seen.
We set off walking on grass, with a steep, 20’ high, almost vertical earth bank to our right. Suddenly my two companions start to run, and accelerate until their speed is sufficient to enable them to scale the earth bank with ease. l’m not so fast, and just manage to grasp the edge of top of the bank where “Ramon” and X are now standing, leaving me dangling over a considerable drop.
Here’s where it gets weird…
As l’m trying to heave myself up onto safe ground, l note with alarm that the earth on the edge of the path l’m trying to reach is pulsing up and down by two or three inches just to my right.
When l finally attain level ground, l point this out to “Ramon” and X. “Ramon” kicks at the bulging ground, revealing a strange shape. lt’s a crude flat ceramic plate, about A4 size and proportion or possibly a little larger. lt’s pale biscuit in colour, and the surface is coarse and grainy. On the surface is scratched a crude outline of a human figure. lmagine that the gingerbread man from
Shrek had been scrawled on wet clay with a knitting needle; that’ll get you quite close.
There are also letters or words on the clay, at the figure’s waist / groin level, running from left to right diagonally, but l can’t read them.
This creature is animated, and is saying something, but l can’t understand it. “Ramon” announces that we are not to read out loud what’s engraved on the clay, because it would free the homunculus, and that would be dangerous. There’s some blue adhesive tape clinging to the clay; we plan to use this to cover the legend, and prevent ourselves from inadvertently reading the text and releasing the creature.
We decide to interrogate it while it’s harmless. l select a stone, and throw it. lt strikes the creature’s forehead, provoking a scowl. l then place my foot on the ceramic plate bearing this odd effigy, and apply pressure as a means of - torture? Its face contorts, its mouth shapes into an “O” of discomfort, and a brownish peanut butter-like substance begins to extrude from the orifice in a perfect cylinder…
Bladder alarm!
maximus otter