by Iain Scarrow
Soon after, and in a nefarious collusion with a jealous junior bishop waving the promise of Heaven in a preservation contract, a plan was hatched between one and all who had been witness to the fat Fornicator Under the Crown of the King’s demise.
Soon after a trench was excavated, though its location kept secret, and the whale-like blubber of the ermine clad beast tipped from a relieved horse’s back.
The animal itself, a strapping war-horse of a beast, snorted in relief when the weight finally left it, but an axe between its doe-like eyes ended its career soon thereafter, and its body also sent tumbling down the side of the selfsame trench whereupon it landed slap bang on top of the dead pug-faced bishop with what, some swore, was a great big pop.
Perhaps the bishop-no-more had burst his guts under the weight of the dead horse.
No one bothered to find out.
The stench was bad enough as it was.
And so in the trench was soon back filled, along with a few other illiterate unfortunates who were bludgeoned to death because of their knowing eyes, just to make sure that this heinous act of unconsecrated burial was kept well and truly secret, and unknown, from anyone except for the privileged few.
Well now onto the house of folly itself.
No one (left) knew what to do with it.
Was it a house? A castle? A prison? A cursed carbuncle on the land?
It was called all those and everything else of a disparaging nature.
But no one, it seemed, even for the house’s dreary splendor, wanted the ugly thing.
They were too damn scared of it.
And so now it stands, in this present and more enlightened age, dumped squarely in the middle of two hundred and forty-five acres of a forgotten gully squatting somewhere behind the Tarbrax Hills.
“Who wrote this shit?”
Collins flipped the page over. There was nothing.
He sighed, relit his cigar, leaned back and read on.
Legend has it that the land surrounding Brock House is dead.
Even the few roads leading in its direction are really illusions that go nowhere, which only goes to explain why every road and pathway leading to it are overgrown with carpets of squelchy moss dripping goo and snot from dead branches of the bark-less trees stretching over the perimeter, thus successfully dividing the grounds of Brock House from the outside world of sanity. A place where from even the trees seem to be attempting to flee, only to have what’s left of their living essence drained out of them in the process, by the vampire grass that grows in profusion here (I wonder why) by suckling the last of the life out the trees” gall-ridden roots just before they can escape.
(Poor things.)
Therefore, the unfortunate roads that do lead up to the land surrounding Brock House itself are less like life pumping arteries of commerce than they are calcified veins exsanguinated centuries ago, metaphorically speaking of course.
No one, therefore, has any need to cross the evil ugly hills into Brock itself, even if they could find it, except perhaps for those who have a peculiar compulsion to do so.
It would be the perfect hiding place for a recluse then, don’t you think?
And so back to the house itself before we lose track of what’s on offer here.
The grounds hold the oldest Arancaria in the country at one hundred and thirty-five years of age. There are several transplanted Wellingtonia, only no one has any idea how they came to be seeded there, one of which at least is two-hundred and seventy-two years of age at this time of scribing.
There are also Lebanese cedars, evergreen pines, Scots pines, Japanese umbrella pines, nootkas, beech and oak trees, sessile and pedunculate, as well as a dense sprinkling of yew trees that seem to be in the process of strangling each other to death amongst other things.
Surrounding the house itself, and at a safe distance one might add, is a jagged ruff, a thorny moat, a gartering ring of gnarled roots coiling in a pallid swathe of green fire that would, one would think, suffice as a warning to anyone attempting to enter this dump.
Rich and fertile land it might be, but only if you keep out.
The forests surrounding the house itself are of some biological and botanical interest even if they are riddled with a pox-like mix of mythological dread.
The sensible, therefore, keep out, whilst the nonsensical find themselves like bees sucked into arsenic laden honey, or rats to Stilton injected with Warfarin, or even spoiled money grabbing little brats to strawberry ice-cream radiating with luminous-blue plutonium sprinkles promising perfect peace at an otherwise unremarkable family picnic.
Even the odd wayward scientist, and odd he would have to be, but aren’t they all, determined on a missionary zeal for this biological Dread Zone has a hard time extricating himself from the Land of Brock with his head still on the right way around, in spite of the head-reeling effect of the place’s ungodliness.
Yawn.
“Jesus Christ, how much of this crap is there?”
Collin’s put his feet up on his desk and kicked his In Tray to Kingdom Come.
(oh dear, oh dear, if only he knew what was already happening to him)
Even with the aid of the biologist’s reductionism viewpoint, that all is the sum of its parts, that particular idiotic philosophy provides no protection for the scientist from the insidious influence of Brock.
Men find themselves trapped as much as a bluebottle finds itself trapped by the beauty of the sticky sun-sweet yellow and blood-red tendrils of the gigantic carnivorous sundew that find themselves quiet at home sweet home here.
Yet a man has to admit that one should be surprised at sensible men who continue, even unto this modern and enlightened day, in futile attempts to try and emulate Mungo Park, a man who ended up stuck in the Congo or some such place, it matters not which to our story, by attempting fruitless uninvited explorations of Brock. For alas those overzealous missionaries of science only ever end up suffering the same fate as that brainless twit Mungo. But one is, still surprised that is.
Sweepingly dark and gloomy are but some of the words used to describe the forests surrounding Brock. By still others as awe inspiring, fascinating and rich, by aging goggle-eyed wilting flower-power hippies itching to find the ultimate of ultimate herbal highs rumored to grow here. Hippies coming here attempting to escape the strangulation of modern life and completely avoid all sense of social maturity with their bizarre, zonked-out-of-it-all, behavior.
Well, if the Jesus sandals fit as they say.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending upon one’s viewpoint, Brock enthralls as much as it entraps, for explorers rarely return, mentally or physically, in one piece, if at all.
The closer you get to the house itself the more you will see how the trees are pained, twisted of branch and bough as if under some invisible cast-iron weigh. Their roots bolted as if suffering the bloated indignity of a good old fashioned slow heavy-metal cadmium poisoning.
The only living things able to survive in any close proximity to the monster house, in fact, are elder flower, brambles, pink and mauve rhododendrons, holly bushes, and, for some unfathomable reason, hawthorns with luminescent leaves of the prettiest radioactive-scarlet and puss-yellow.
The house itself, however, has never stopped growing in monstrosity over the centuries as towers, and God knows what else, have been added to it by each succeeding generation in habitation. Every one of whom has gone bonkers with residency, until now the ugly filthy thing stands comprised of thirteen bedrooms, two drawing rooms, an ante-drawing room, two libraries, a smoking room, a dining room the size of a masque-hall, a billiard room, a parlor, a torture chamber, a servants” hall, a kitchen, a larder, an endless fern house you wouldn’t believe, and a catacomb of underground tunnels and cellars still yet to see the natural light of day.
Not all of its underground tunnels, however, have been explored. And not all explorers have returned sane enough to tell.
Even the spying eyes of Google whizz over the creepy th
ing for fear of going blind.
And yet the fact remains that the origination of the house’s construction still remains a mystery, that is, for what possible purpose it was ever built in the first place.
Although it has long been rumored it was built to safeguard a platinum and red ruby clot-encrusted reliquary containing fragments of wood from a certain crucifixion, as well as dubious bits and pieces of various saints who were burnt, chopped and mangled, one way or another during the Enlightenment.
Enlightenment, I ask you!
But whatever the truth, if that reliquary still be there, then it is obviously buried deep in the foundations of Brock House itself.
And my, how such a reliquary would be priceless to a man.
Think about it.
What would the possession of such a thing bring to its owner?
What would you be able to do with it, to command?
Own the planet?
Live forever?
Blow up the moon for your own entertainment?
Create laws to suit you and you alone?
Enslave the world perhaps?
Think of the power, man.
You’d even richer than Bill Gates for Christ’s sake!
(Lucky you, hmm?)
The house is open for your personal viewing at any time.
No RSVP required.
Just turn up.
Collins ran his finger between his neck and his collar.
He loosened his tie.
“Shit, it’s hot in here.”
He couldn’t keep his eyes off the page.
He breathed harder.
“No fucking air in this place.”
He threw the pages down.
They fanned open on his desk.
He leaned back and lit another cigar.
“Brock House… Brock House,” he tapped at his big fat teeth.
He leaned forward in his chair again.
The button on his wasteland threatened to burst into shrapnel.
“And a priceless… what the fuck was it?”
He peered down at the relevant page.
“Reliquary?”
He leaned back again.
“What the hell is a reliquary?”
He left the office, envelope in hand, locked the door and threw his cigar on the pavement.
He didn’t bother grinding it out.
Pitt Street could burn to fuck for all he cared.
He tore the parking ticket from his four-wheel tank (new number plates every day – can’t be too careful), balled up the parking ticket in his hand and threw it in the gutter.
And after jumping half a dozen red lights he dumped his car in the garage and slammed the door shut.
He climbed upstairs up to his flat, and gripped onto the handrail with every excruciating step until he just about managed to drag himself up the last one and almost vomited on the landing with the effort.
“Out of condition my foot,” he wheezed. “It’s fuckin hypoxia that’s what it is. Idiot doc. Served him right for standing too close to the edge of the cliff, ha (cough, wheeze) ha!”
Once inside his flat he went through the self-same ritual he always did and double locked his front door, threw at least four deadbolts and left the rest, and, fist to his barrel chest, took slow easy breaths until his heart stopped feeling as if it were trying to chew its way through his ribs.
He yanked the cord in his front room at the side of the only window and slapped the wooden slats shut to cut out the bright sunny day. He turned on the lamp standing on the chessboard table next to the couch, and filled the room with shadows and weak orange light as it struggled to glimmer its way through the fake antique lampshade (real genuine plastic).
After that he took shuffling hippo steps into the kitchen where he cracked open a bottle of Wild Turkey and dumped ancient dust speckled ice cubes into a thick bottomed glass.
Leaving the ice-tray out on the work surface he failed to notice the big fat black mummified winged insect that had been cryogenically suspended in one of the other, already melting, ice cubes still left in the dented old bauxite ice tray.
Glass in hand, and a few slugs from it lighter, he grabbed a box of Havana cigars from the cabinet before he slumped down on the couch, wriggled his backside around a bit, and huffed and puffed as he lit up a cigar.
Off with the shoes, he put his feet up on the coffee table, and relaxed.
Collins would never go back to his office again.
It was just a front anyway.
He’d give it a couple of days of mulling things over as he sat alone in the dark with the blinds drawn day in and day out. And smoke one psilocybin laced cigar after another as he sipped one wormwood khat-tinctured Wild Turkey after another until he ran out. Then send out for some more bottles on speed dial
If he felt like sleeping he could always just stretch out on the couch, but he would never dream in the same way again.
His days would sail by and he would forget to eat.
What he would do, however, was think about things, lots of things. Old memories would be rekindled and new ones would precede those yet to come, such as money falling out of the sky, people tumbling under the bumper of his newly purchased four-wheel truck as he giggled himself into a stupor behind the steering wheel. Gold and platinum draped around his neck as he barked out commands and closed down whole nations, and ordering the biggest daisy-cutter nuclear warheads that money could buy, just for the satisfaction of bashing his fist down on that great big screaming-red button…
… and he himself blessed with the ability to live forever.
Yeah, life was about to get very tough for Mr. Collins.