MARTYN BATISTA AND THE FIENDS FROM HELL

CHAPTER ONE – SHANGHAI SURPRISE – 1920.

1

When I first met Martyn Batista in Shanghai in May 1920 I was ignorant of many things. The first was the tickling cough my wife Emma had contracted was TB and that it would eventually kill her. The second was time travel is real.

I met Martyn Batista in a back-street gin joint. I was a recent attachment to the British Embassy as a junior under-clerk. I had been in Shanghai for three days and was due to meet my Embassy contact, Dr. Wilson Bowes, at a local solicitor and translators.

The heat was oppressive. It was the kind of heat that strangled you and then baked you. The damn flies were everywhere. The sound of the street was like a modern Tower of Babel and the smell! Fish, horse shit, the smell of unwashed bodies and that metallic tang of greed. The smell was straight out of the Devil’s arsehole.

The appointment was just before lunchtime. The location was about half a mile inland from the bay and the main thoroughfare that curved around the water. It was down a street that I later found out meant, when translated, ‘The Avenue of The Pilgrims’. I was early by around half an hour as per my silver pocket watch that was. I put the timepiece back into my waist coat pocket noting the inscription.

‘To My Charles – I will love you always, Emma’.

It was she who had insisted I take the government up on their offer to post me to Shanghai. I resisted and fought with all my heart but she insisted and as usual she won.

I turned in the narrow street and saw through the door that had been left ajar right behind me that I was outside a bar. I wondered about the wisdom of meeting Dr. Bowes with alcohol in me but what harm could a water do? I was sure the proprietor would oblige me.

I entered the bar. It was a filthy place with crooked tables and broken chairs and a pitted, scuffed wooden floor. Above me was a wobbly ceiling fan that seemed more and more likely to detach itself after every revolution and kill the man sitting directly beneath it. The bar was an atrocity. It was gored and pitted and marked with strange symbols, as if knife wielding patrons waiting for service had carved their way into eternity. Completing the filthy tableau was the dirty stain up the far brick wall which could have been blood or excrement.

There were three of us in the run-down bar, Myself, a miserable looking elderly man who tended bar and a big man sitting by himself with his back to me, He wore a brown shirt with a huge sweat stain on the back. This cursed humidity made everything sweat. He had a thick mop of unruly black hair that was almost collar length. I pursed my lips. The man looked like an undesirable but what else had I expected in a place like this? On the table in front of him stood a line of empty shot glasses. They were lined up next to a half empty bottle of brown liquid.

The man heard me enter and turned slowly. An ocean liner avoiding an iceberg. It happened as slowly and dramatically as that. He was older than I had assumed maybe early forties. His face was brown and layers of skin tanned by the sun covered his skull. His nose was bulbous, it was the kind of nose that infants grab at and laugh. His face was stubble heavy and he had two black eyes. The man looked like a drunk panda. He looked like the word ‘trouble’ had been created specifically for him.

‘Do yourself a favour and get out of this stinking fuck-hole’, he growled.

I stared at the obscene sight and hoped to hell that he was not Dr. Bowes.  I touched my forehead in a mock salute. ‘For the advice, I thank you Sir’. I turned back to the bar and said, ‘water’, to the sullen bar-tender and placed currency on the bar so he would not think I was asking for charity. I waited for my drink not intending to waste any more time on the thing in the seat. Countrymen we might be but from the same species we were not.

It might have ended there and what happened next may never have happened, had the money lender’s goons not chosen that moment to walk into the bar. I think the fates of myself and Batista were always meant to become entwined in one way or another. If it had not been that ‘stinking fuck-hole’, as Batista had said so poetically, then it would have been another ‘stinking fuck-hole’.

I glanced at the door and a huge Chinese man dressed in a white smock and sandals walked into the bar. He had to squeeze himself through the door-way. Behind him came three smaller men. They were all dressed in peasant garb. I assumed they were the big man’s back-up. Although if anyone bested the big fellow, I did not know what the hell they would do about it. I might have been nearly twenty-one but I was no fool. I knew when danger squeezed into the room. This was verified by the miserable barman running out of the side door and slamming it behind him.

As I did not know these fellows I assumed their argument was with my drunken fellow Brit. I heard mumbled words of Chinese and then pidgin English. The tone started out pseudo -friendly and then turned aggressive very quickly. I heard the scraping of a chair and I turned and saw Batista on his feet pointing at the big man. Two of the minions had circled Batista and the third was sizing me up.

‘Shit’, I muttered to myself.

‘Tell Mr Tao, I can’t pay him his money I haven’t got any money. I, Batista paused and smiled at me, I gambled it all away last night’. Batista started to laugh and then slowly we all started laughing. Even though there was nothing funny about the situation the giggles infected us all.

Then I tried to take control. I stepped forward. ‘British Embassy.’ That was all I got out before it all went to hell. The big man slugged Batista full force in the face. Blood flew up, Batista flew back and the bottles, glasses and tables flew everywhere. I saw from the corner of my eye that an underling was nearly on me. His hands were whirling in an aggressive pattern. He lashed out. I moved back and hit him with a right cross straight into the jaw. I saw his eyes whirl in his head and he went down for the count.

Oxford university – Boxing team captain. Two years running.

I stood with my dukes raised but for the moment they left me alone. The thugs only had eyes for Batista. He was on the floor and he was scrabbling around like some drunk spider. He knocked over more chairs as he sought to get away. The big man stalked Batista. He was smacking his fist into his huge palm. The remaining two minions circled Batista. It was possible I was going to witness my first Shanghai death. I had been here less than a week and really did not want to get involved. But what could I do? What should I do? I made my decision. If it was a fair fight – one on one, then I would not interfere but if the odds were against the drunk man then I would even the score. It was the moral thing to do.

The minion on the right took a soundless flying kick at the Brit, who rose to his feet and punched the smaller man out of the air. Smaller man fell straight to the ground. Without losing a beat Batista grabbed the little man and hefted him up. This was at the exact moment that the giant punched out. The intended target was Batista. The actual target was his friend. This change in events confused the big fella who dropped his hands and looked at the body of his back-up now knocked out on the floor. The big man left himself unprotected and Batista pressed his advantage. Batista kicked the big man right in the ghoulies with his heavy desert boot. The sound was like an ocean liner smacking straight into an iceberg and the expression on the Chinese face was of a man who had just discovered what life-altering pain felt like.

‘Run!’, Batista yelled passing me as he headed for the door. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the wrecked bar and into the heaving street outside. ‘This way’, he yelled and propelled me down the street. We ran past toothless washer women and out of the street. We ran down an alley and around a corner. Eventually we both stopped and with hands on our knees we tried to catch our breath.

When we had sufficiently recovered then the drunk man stuck out his hand. ‘Martyn Batista’, he said by way of introduction. I looked at his huge, sweaty paw and wondered what I was getting myself involved in. Then manners took over and I took the proffered hand and pumped it three times, ‘Charles Henry Arthur Stewart, His Majesty’s Diplomatic Service’.

‘What a mouthful’. Batista laughed.

‘And yours isn’t?’ I countered.

Batista straightened up and wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand. ‘Thank you, Mr Stewart, you are a fair and just man’.

‘I thought you were drunk?’

‘Fighting tends to sober one up’.

I nodded. I had seen his kind before, shiftless, mercenary and destined for an early grave. We were not the same. I would have done what I did for anyone. ‘Well now. I must be off. An appointment you see’, I said.

Batista grabbed my arm, I looked down at his hand and then at him and raised my eyebrows. He did not take the hint. ‘Not down the Pilgrims’, he warned. Then he shook his head, as if he was sure I did not know what he was talking about. His hand remained where it was. ‘I mean that road where the bar is. It wouldn’t be a good idea to go back there just yet. Tell you what. Let me take you to your appointment via the back door. Follow me’. Before I had the chance to take my leave of this unsettling person he took off down the alley. He left me no choice but to follow in his wake.

2

We came out into another side street. This one was crowded with vendors, produce and livestock, I thought it must have been a market. The place was packed and we squeezed through bodies and moved along in single file past the stalls.

Then it happened. The real start of this insane mess and the chaos that was to follow.

I heard a strange sound like TAKATAKATAKATAKA. It was a grating and repetitive sound, I felt a little sick. The air came alive just above a bare bit of wood on the stall facing me. The air seemed to move and to shimmy, I could see the rough brick stone wall behind it but the air seemed to twist as if alive. I turned to see Batista staring at the same space as I was.

‘What?’ I questioned.

‘Ssshh’, he answered with his finger at his lips.

The background noise of the market seemed to fade away to a muffled roar. Even though the market was packed full of people it seemed to me that there was only the two of us. And the shimmy. Then the shimmy stretched a little and something strange fell out of it and hit the wood. It was small, square and gunmetal grey. There the object lay and then the shimmy started to shrink.

‘What on earth?’ I had no way to describe what I had seen and no way to explain what had just happened.

‘Oh my God, not again’, Batista muttered to himself.

I could hear voices raised in a question. Even in a foreign language I understood the tone of enquiry and I knew that more than just myself and Batista had seen this strange thing. I edged forward to this thing to try and get a better look. My heart was pounding.

Then the thing spoke.

It made a noise, a strange singing, I had not heard anything in my life so far to approximate it and I still hear it in my nightmares. The words, the delivery, the timbre so frightening and angry it made my brain vibrate.

‘HOMIES IN DA MUVVAFUKIN CLUB. WIT DA UZI AND DA CRAK. WIT DA HOES AND DA CRAK. FUK DA HOMIES IN DA MUVVAFUKIN CLUB!!’

At the same time, the thing came to life. It started moving and the wood of the stall seemed to vibrate and little lights flashed across the surface. I saw numbers and what seemed like letters flashing and jittering, I jumped back. I bumped into Batista who steadied me. Then the shimmy imploded and the strange thing with its otherworld sound and actions fell silent.

‘Holy Jesus, Batista, what have we seen?’

‘These damn things plague me’, he said. But I think he was talking to himself once more. Then he pulled me back. He must have felt the hostility of the crowd as they surged forward up-ended the stall and smashed the strange grey object with clubs and feet. It was soon buried under a seething mob of fearful and furious Shanghainese. I pushed back and called out to Batista.

‘What do you mean? What do you know Batista?’

But I was speaking to myself.  Martyn Batista had vanished into the crowd.