Of Hats and Harmonicas - Part One

Of Hats and Harmonicas



Bill Wiskins. The man in the hat ran the name over and over through his head, formulating theories, drawing his own conclusions, testing and re-testing ideas. At length, he ceased his meditation, his mind made up – Bill Wiskins was a stupid name. Still, it was the name of his target and the man in the hat would pursue him to the ends of the earth should it be demanded of him.

Bill Wiskins. The man with the name rode slowly through the wasted plains, the scorched dry landscape stretching uninterrupted for miles in every direction. The sky arced over him like a monstrous blue cavern, silent and empty from horizon to horizon. The searing blaze of the sun burnt the flesh at the back of his neck as he leaned into each pedal, but he did not feel the scorching at all: he had devoted his entire mind, all of his physical strength and concentration to the task at hand.
Which was pedaling.
Which had been pedaling for the past three weeks and would almost certainly continue to be pedaling for the next week at least – unless he or his bicycle broke down from sheer exhaustion.
Ragged grass tore at his legs and weeds spun themselves determinedly around the spokes of the wheels of the bike, slowly dragging Bill Wiskins to a reluctant halt. The weeds forced him to stop every two hours or so in order to clear them from his wheels, but this would be the last stop of the day. The sun had relinquished its command of the heavens for another day, and now it sank moodily behind the mountains that bordered the wastelands to the west, making a spectacular purple-red hue affect the clouds which still lingered there.
The air, which had been still and humid all day, was suddenly heaved up with a wind of such unexpected ferocity that Bill staggered and almost fell against the frame of his old yet dependable Raliegh.
He strode on for a few yards more to a clearing where the grass and weeds gave way to a gritty mix of dirt and sand.

Bill was being followed – tracked and followed. He knew this, could feel it, yet he made no effort to disguise his tracks. Doing so would only slow him down and wear him out, and if he was to reach the city alive then he would have no time for such activities.
Bill was also following someone, or he liked to think that he was (it helped him to keep some degree of sanity). The fact of the matter was that Bill had no idea where he should be heading, whether the reason for his flight was escape or hunt. He marched steadily North mainly because North seemed far more important than East, West and South, and also because he was pretty sure he’d come across a city sooner or later that way.
And wherever he went, the man in the hat followed.

His campfire burning down, Bill lay asleep with his head against his packsack. The bicycle lay to his right, hidden from view by scraggy weeds and light green grass. They were sheltered from the harsh wind that blew in from the North-West by a huge, dusty scarlet slab or rock which rose from the sand at a sharp angle.
On the rock, ever watchful, was the man in the hat. The famed hat was large, dark and very, very old. It was tipped forward, obscuring the features of the face with the shadow it cast. The image was completed by rough black leather boots and a huge dark overcoat that flapped and contorted almost as a living creature, and it’s energy was the wind.
Sand driven by the powerful wind lashed at the man’s feet as he stood vigilant on the rock. His quarry was inexperienced and apparently unarmed, but it would be unwise to underestimate anyone out here. Tracking Bill Wiskins had been easy – apart from the blatant tyre tracks, each night it took Bill a good hour to start a decent campfire, and all that was necessary was to walk in the direction of the loud and excessive cursing.
The man in the hat did not understand “Ah Bugger” or any of the things that the man Wiskins had exclaimed every night at his fireplace but he assumed them to be profanities. Indeed, he had reason to curse, if only at his pathetic inability to set fire to things.

* * *

Bill Wiskins could see the city.
The towers and spires now dominated the skyline to the North, shimmering and shining in the heat. They were only another day’s walk away, but the going was ever tougher and Bill had packed insufficient provisions for his trek -–he had gone without food or water for three days. The dirt and struggling weeds had given way to soft, lightly coloured sand and Bill could no longer ride the bike. Instead, he pushed it beside him as he walked, using ever more energy.
For the last week, Bill had started to notice things. Small things, little inconsistencies that would have gone unnoticed by anyone lacking the heightened paranoia that Bill had always possessed. Sand that was not quite undisturbed, marks which probably weren’t footprints around his campsite but which could have been – to Bill they were.
He knew that whomever was following him had caught up with him. He felt it in his bones, and promptly made a mental note not to listen to his skeleton no matter what it told him. The truth was that he felt slightly uneasy about the fact that someone would hike out into this oven of a desert just to find him.

He was starting to slip. Unused to extended periods of hot weather, the man in the hat was becoming less careful. He thought that although he was becoming ill, Bill Wiskins knew of his presence.
Since he had caught up with Bill, the man had been reduced to travelling only at night, as he had been trained to do in such circumstances.

Bill was also slipping – he was suffering from exhaustion, dehydration and probably sunstroke as well. Because of this, even as he walked he slipped into a drowsy, semi-conscious trance-like state during which he continued to march his bike across the desert.
The sand was blue and the mountains were pink, the distant city slabs or pure green neon. Bill didn’t mind. In addition to the alternate colour scheme, Bill had begun to experience previously undiscovered abilities concerning his vision. He found, with concentration, that he was able to focus his view and see further and more clearly than he had ever dreamed possible.
And what he saw fascinated him, for it was a man in a hat.
He could only see the man in the hat when he looked back across the flat plains, and Bill groggily estimated his range at a good fifteen miles, but what alarmed Bill was that the man was running.

When the morning came, the man in the hat did not stop to rest. Acting on an instinct that had been growing inside him for the last day or so, he ran. His coat was heavy and his boots offered surprisingly little support, but the man ran after Bill Wiskins oblivious to his screaming legs. Ignoring everything he had been taught, all that he had learnt, the man did not attempt to conceal himself or his tracks. And he kept running.
Bill kept slipping. He didn’t know what colour the landscape was anymore because although he continued to walk his eyelids had recently put on an awful lot of weight and on balance Bill decided that it would be better for everyone if he just closed his eyes.
It seemed that all of his senses had been dimmed considerably, and all that he was left with was the steadily growing sound of footfalls, behind him, closing in…
In a final desperate release of energy, Bill awoke fully. He could hear the man in the hat approaching and thought that maybe he ought to do something – possibly even something dramatic. But a voice deep in the back of his skull insisted that he couldn’t be bothered, and besides, it would probably be useless anyway.

The man in the hat bent his legs and crouched, gathering all of his energy for one final push. He concentrated his mind and body on Bill Wiskins, and launched himself through the air like a spring uncoiled. His hands formed claws and he aimed to lock his arms around Bill’s waist and bring him down, away from the bike, and finish this for good.
Bill Wiskins disappeared from in front of the man in the hat’s very eyes.

He landed in a heap, dazed and most definitely confused.
“You idiot.” Said the hat on the man.
“Don’t start…” sighed the man in the hat.

Bill was vaguely aware that he had been overflown by a man in a hat, but under the circumstances he deemed this unimportant. He turned his attention the the fact that he was falling to his probable death. He looked down – apparently, he was falling down some kind of narrow crevasse, line on both sides with painfully angled rocks which seems to yearn for a splattering of his blood. Bill saw this, and he also saw his bicycle.
It had fallen slightly ahead of him and had fallen at an angle, so that there came a point at which it was too wide to continue falling. It had wedged itself across the gap like a ridiculously shaped bridge, and Bill decided that it was very likely that it was his only hope of survival.
Bill secured his grip on the sturdy framework and cunningly swung himself straight into the rock wall. He fell a further four inches, then collapsed on a convenient, if slightly undersized ledge.

His impressive coat torn in too many places to worry about any more and one boot lodged firmly between two rocks almost ten feet above him, the man who was still wearing the hat looked terrible. He jumped across to where Bill Wiskins struggled to draw breath through a shattered nose, balancing on the ledge. He called hoarsely,
“Okay.”
“Ay…ay…ay….ay” demanded his echo as several strong ropes descended towards him. He secured them to the incapacitated Mr. Wiskins and repeated his cry to the blank sky.
Bill began to rise smoothly, and as he passed the man in the hat, he slipped something into Bill’s pocket which momentarily caught a stray ray of sun and glinted briefly gold.

Bill completed his journey to the city unconscious.

Bill awoke in a room so small that he swore it would have been put to better use as a cupboard. Three stone walls backed up a fairly solid wrought iron gate, which looked out on a poorly lit, dusty corridor.
He stood up, collapsed, then stood again, using the hard metal bars on the gate as an aid. He became abruptly aware that his face was on fire. Raising an investigative hand, he realised that there were no flames, which was good, but there were many cuts and abrasions, which wasn’t. He looked at his hand, which was covered with oil from his face. This didn’t seem quite right to Bill, and as he quietly doubted the information supplied by his eyes he stepped forward into slightly better light.
It gave Bill no relief whatsoever to see that the oil was in fact blood, although he did become less confused.
Feeling slightly annoyed, Bill put his hands into his coat pockets. He was surprised and once again confused to find that residing in one of them was a smooth, cold metallic object. He took it out and lifted it to the light.
He admired the intricate detail and master craftsmanship that had clearly gone into the making of this item. It was a golden harmonica, beautiful, heavy and unlike anything that Bill had ever seen.
As he currently had no pressing engagements, Bill raised the instrument to his lips, not knowing if any sound would be produced – he suspected it was an ornamental piece only.
No sooner had the first breath passed from Bill to the harmonica than the most intense, hypnotic sound Bill had ever heard issued forth. No sooner had the note been completed, than Bill Wiskins vanished.