Free The Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code by Robert Rankin

Hawtrey, ‘if you are prepared to adopt a medieval overview of life – that the insane are indeed Devil-possessed. The thing is that that theory works just as well as any theory of mental imbalance.’
    ‘So you believe him?’
    ‘I don’t know what to believe. But I don’t think I really believe thatmessages are being beamed into his head via the pop-up toaster.’
    They ceased their perambulations and sat down upon a bench.
    Ranger Hawtrey took out a small, white contrivance from his pocket. ‘New iPod,’ he said. ‘You can store two thousand tracks on this. Do you like They Might Be Giants?’
    Jonny Hooker shrugged. ‘I’m a big fan of The Lost T-shirts of Atlantis,’ he said.
    ‘Check this out.’ Ranger Hawtrey stuck the tiny earbuds into his earholes, tinkered with his iPod, pulled the ear-bead jobbies from his earholes, passed the whole caboodle to Jonny and said, ‘Check this out,’ again.
    Jonny slotted the ear-bead jobbies into the ears that were his and then pressed the appropriate button.
    There was a moment of silence. In stereo. And then a voice said, ‘We know where you are, Jonny. You can’t hide from us.’
    It was a dark and horrible voice.
    It wasn’t Mr Giggles.

10
     
    Jonny Hooker tore the tiny earphones from his head. He handed back the iPod to the ranger.
    ‘That was a bit quick,’ said Ranger Hawtrey. ‘You’ll want to listen longer than that before you make up your mind.’
    ‘Make up my mind.’ Jonny Hooker said these words slowly. If he could make up his own mind, he would make it up out of concrete and surround the thing with steel.
    ‘Are you all right?’ asked Ranger Hawtrey. ‘You seem to have gone somewhat pale.’
    ‘I’m fine,’ said Jonny, who was anything but. ‘That iPod is yours, is it?’
    ‘My brother’s, actually. I gave it to him as a birthday present, but he heard the voices speaking to him from it at once. So he gave it straight back to me.’
    Jonny Hooker gave Ranger Hawtrey what is known as ‘the Old-Fashioned Look’.
    ‘
What?
’ said Ranger Hawtrey. ‘Well, all right, yeah,’ said Ranger Hawtrey. ‘I’d always wanted an iPod.’
    Ranger Hawtrey now took off his cap. He mopped at his brow with an oversized red gingham handkerchief. The cap lay in his lap with its insides upwards, as it were. And Jonny spied these upward innards.
    ‘Tinfoil,’ said Jonny Hooker. ‘Your cap is lined with tinfoil.’
    ‘No it’s not,’ said Ranger Hawtrey. Hastily replacing the cap upon his head.
    ‘It is,’ said Jonny. ‘And you know it is and you know
I
know that it is.’
    ‘Look,’ said Ranger Hawtrey, ‘like I say, I don’t know whether my brother is mad, or whether he really
is
persecuted by hiddenenemies. And if he is being persecuted by hidden enemies, whether these enemies are ghosts, or devils, or transdimensional space beings, or the bloody Air Loom Gang itself—’
    ‘The
what
?’ said Jonny.
    ‘The Air Loom Gang. Surely you’ve heard of the Air Loom Gang.’
    ‘Curiously, no.’
    ‘No, I suppose not. I only came across them by chance when I was trawling the Internet for information about my brother’s supposed medical condition. And it did all happen a very long time ago, In the seventeen nineties, as it happens, but it’s interesting stuff and it made me think.’
    ‘Go on,’ said Jonny.
    ‘There was this mental patient,’ said Ranger Hawtrey, settling himself back on the bench and tucking away his oversized red gingham handkerchief. ‘His name was James Tilly Matthews and he had been an English secret agent. A kind of James Bond of his day. Well, somehow or other, and I’m not entirely sure of all the details, * he got it into his head that a certain gang had managed to actually get inside his head using a piece of equipment called the Air Loom. This contraption was an amazing bit of kit, designed and built by someone named Count Otto Black and operated by someone known as the Glove Woman. It was fuelled by all