A Death Less Ordinary?

The door wouldn’t open. The damn door wouldn’t open! These were the thoughts flashing through Joel’s submerged brain. Rapidly they were backed up by another thought; ironic under the current situation, God I need a drink! He tried the door again with the same result. The doorframe had warped on impact with the final positioning wedging the door tight. He gave up with a petulant final wallop. The buckled roof on his upturned Chevy Superior made it difficult as he tried to make his way to the exit used by Julianna and George. As he turned to look at the newly desired departure point he spied a pair of flailing legs. He knew the owner of those legs and he could see why they weren’t going anywhere fast. Julianna’s shoulder bag had fastened on to the fender and wasn’t looking ready to relinquish its grip on the crooked and dented piece of steel. Joel perversely found the situation rather humorous. Ever since he’d known Julianna he had never seen her legs properly. Of all the women he had charmed and bedded she had stood against his playboy arsenal of wit and money as impenetrable as an ironclad with a peashooter. She had been his unobtainable object ever since he had been exiled by father to his current domicile, his Unicorn. Now while struggling on the very edge of danger he had the best glimpse of them ever. The sodden flannel of those trousers, most maligned by the prominent women of the town, was teasingly clinging to every curve. What only made the situation funnier was the manner of his impending doom.

All his life he had been a thrill seeker. He had faced monsters and horrors beyond the ken of the most fantastic mind. He had dealt with gangsters, thugs and the very verge of the law with aplomb and nervous excitement. He had even spent three nights in the ritziest bordello in New Orleans using his name to secure a room of girls and then run for his life when he told them he thought they should have paid for having him as a guest. That had certainly made journeys to New Orleans more exciting since then. Now he was going to die in a car accident. Drowned at the bottom of a fast flowing river because he hadn’t been paying attention to the road ahead wasn’t exactly how he had seen his death when he had been planning his life book.

Joel was strangely calm at the thought of death. He had always known he would die young. The life of the heir to the Harpy tobacco giant fortune was boring. Never wanting for money had never taught him the more mundane challenges of daily life for the everyday person. To make up for it had sought out entertainment and courted danger, any danger as long as he didn’t have to be responsible. Well that wasn’t a problem now. His Father had disowned him for the scandal in Boston which had also claimed the job of his good friend Perry. Perry had actually shown him a darker side than he had previously seen, a side so dark even a black sheep such as him could see the struggle against the dark was worth it. With it had come a terror that had ignited an adrenaline rush better than anything he had ever known before. On top of that he would be a secret hero, saving the world on a regular basis and no one ever knowing it was a wonderfully satisfying feeling. As far as his Father was concerned Joel was a social embarrassment waiting to happen, Joel knew better! Joel considered himself more in the mould of Stoker’s Texan Quincy Morris, dashing, brave and charming. Mind you he was sure Quincy had bothered to learn to swim, a task Joel had never had time for. The only liquid he wanted surrounding him was single malt, an aspiration curbed by the current prohibition laws. That failure was in severe danger of ending his world saving antics since the liquid currently surrounding him most assuredly was not whisky. It was almost poetic really.

Looking through the back window he could see the sun filtering through the water. Silhouetted against the light George Peterson could be seen fighting the current to gain the shore. The last week had been a trying one for George, dragged into the good fight quite against his will, he had so far accounted himself well. Now George would never know that it was all Harpy’s fault that he had even been introduced to his new life. George had been unfortunate to have been at the scene of a burglary set up by Joel. The goal of the heinous act being a book that Joel had recognised as being on Perry’s list of volumes you most wished that the wrong people did not have in their grasping claws. The owner of the property being of that ilk, Joel had hired a couple of “specialists” for the task. Joel had managed to talk them out of killing George but since then George’s sedentary life of favoured Architect never quite got back on track. In fact continual derailment seemed de rigueur. At least his luck seemed to have changed in this circumstance. As for the original owner of the book he was in Hospital after one of the goons got a little liberal with the lead. Good help was so difficult to find these days!


Joel struggled over the bench seat spanning the driver’s compartment. His lungs were almost at their limit. He might of led his life on the ragged edge but he’d be damned if his friends lives were going to be laid at his door. Numbness crept inevitably into his frame as the legs of Ms Keezar redoubled their effort in blind panic. It was getting harder to move. Bubbles escaped from his nose as he lunged forward out of the rear door. He threw his right arm forward dislodging the bag as simultaneously a torrent of bubbles exploded from his lips and the water rushed into the void left behind. Julianna burst to the surface. Joel smirked at the disappointment to be had by the local Gentlemen’s Club and branch of The Daughters of the American Revolution. Julianna Keezar lived again to fight against society’s moral conceits of inequality and elitism. Their association had always been the talk of both organisations, Joel’s Fathers name assuaging any scandal on his part. Of course it was easier for them to believe she was a regular bedpost notch of his, but truth be told he’d never seen her in anything less than dress of the utmost propriety. The Playboy and the Suffragette shtick hadn’t done any harm to his reputation as a Lady-killer and couldn’t make hers any worse anyway. They’d rather believe her a slattern than him a traitor to his peers, righteous pricks that they were! A thread of blood drifted from his nose and passed his eyes. His lungs were shot. He turned towards the surface and faced the filtered luminescence. Thinking was getting harder as if his brain was immersed in hardening concrete.

As the light faded to darkness he smiled and thought that his Father would finally approve of something Joel had done. He loved his Father and Mother but he could never do things right. His Father was too driven to let Joel be anything other than a miniature version of himself ready to take over the Harpy Legacy and his Mother too well drilled in her duties to openly object to his regime. The last words with his Father had been bitter. He had been told in no uncertain terms that the Boston incident was the last time that he would pull strings for him to cover up. A quick exile to a seaside resort with a stipend and a loud denial of parentage were all Joel had taken with him. The only contact from that point allowed him was via the hired eyes that Joel had glimpsed observing him and undoubtedly reporting his every peccadillo back to his Father. Joel deeply regretted the split and missed his Mothers company; he even missed his Fathers continual disapproval. The pressure had only got worse in ’20 when Father had informed him rather boringly of his expansion plans for Harpy Tobacco. Father had had the whole next decade through till ’30 planned. The investment was immense and Joel was to be groomed for a major position before then. Joel didn’t want that, he didn’t want to spend his life in cigar smoked rooms with fat balding little men leering over their secretaries who were only interested in what screwing the boss could get them. Joel had slept with scores of women but any woman who slept with him and expected a sugar daddy style relationship was in for a very disappointing time, well at least in the sugar daddy manner. Now they didn’t matter, nothing mattered anymore. Two final thoughts fixed the smile on his face. He had finally in his last living act given to a woman something truly precious, her life back. Also that at least he had proven Father wrong in one way. After all could anyone with his past lifestyle as a measure have had a death less ordinary?

“A Death Less Ordinary?” copyright Tony Bennett 20th August 2005

One Man's Treasure

I often like a walk in town, particularly that part round Devonshire Green. It has so changed recently. The Forum has come along so much it is the quintessence of cutting edge cool. This City so in touch with it’s transient population of studenthood that parts just seem to attract them like flies to an Insektacutor. Young girls walk by in fine weather almost in the altogether and lads lie around watching them. Families picnic out on the grass and the scrape-clunk of skateboards on a half pipe fills the air. The elderly are nowhere to be seen as if they fade to nothing. In fact I don’t recall seeing them anymore. Before the trendy restaurants, the coffee shops and the designer stores they were heavily in evidence, now they just seem to fade to grey, if you will excuse the pun? Yes, I love this area of town!

What I love most though are the bookshops. Somehow they hang on like wet tissue on a newly cut shaving nick. Once they blended in, now their very quaintness burns the retinas as they stand proudly in their shabbiness against the glitz. I sought a particular one now, Odd and Risqué, a long time favourite of mine for the treasures it has held in its long and distinguished sojourn over the Green. I had heard on the grapevine among other collectors of certain antiquities that J.T. Furnival’s entire library had been cleared to here from his estate after his mysterious disappearance and subsequent court appointed death. He had been missing near a decade but the authorities had held on longer than normal before deciding he must be dead under pressure from his only son whose only interest was how much junk he could buy to shoot into his arm from his Fathers property. The son died last week but not before selling the entire library for the princely sum of £200!

I crossed the Green with hurried stride hardly noticing the pneumatic brunette in pink halter and shorts. Well I am only human! Even on such an errand as I was on time could be spared for appreciative glances. The bell over the door tinkled to announce my entry and I was assailed by the glorious odour of aged scriptures and yellowed paper. That’s what makes books better than reading them on computer screens. It’s the smell and feel. Nothing on earth is quite like it. I made my way to the new acquisitions section and there they were. 300 assorted leather bound books within well oiled bindings. Care shone from them only making some more obvious than others. An ill aspected 1940’s reprint of The Books of Dzyan, a folio of pages of translation from the scribing of that mad Arab of lore’s infamy and of course that for which I sought. Standing almost aloof in its battered oilskin cover stood an original binding of Moorcroft’s Messages of the Pharaoh. My studies had shown the notorious fates that had dogged the owners of such a chronicle. The Human race was drawn to self destructive impulses by their very nature and who was I to defy natural yearnings. The nervous shop owner informed me that he was putting it up for the paltry sum of £45. The price insulted its pedigree!

I placed it reverently into the carryall I had bought for the purpose and left before he realised his mistake. I imagined envious eyes glaring with insatiable desire for my precious purchase and flagged down a Taxi. The black Hackney carriage pulled over and the Asian operator brusquely asked my destination. I knew his game; he only wanted to know where I lived in order to arrange the theft of the book. I gave him an address two streets over knowing I could cut through a couple of gennels to get to my abode. The citrate eyes of the driver seemed to be boring into me from his mirror. He knew what I had, he had to know! I banged on the Perspex divide and indicated for him to stop. With slow cunning he did as I said and I pushed a twenty through the slot and bolted for the park. I could see his expression of frustration and cheered at my narrow escape.

Pain exploded in my eye as the fist connected with my face and I fell sprawling to the path. A burly hooded youth stood over me, Burberry cap prominently protruding. Air escaped from my lungs as a trainer connected with my solar plexus from his coloured colleague. The carryall was torn from my hand. I must stop them, the book was mine! Purposeful anger filled me and I lunged at the thugs. White hot pain lanced through my chest and warmth flooded me. The glint of sun on steel rouged with my life’s blood glinted almost mockingly as I sank mortally wounded to the path. As the light faded from my eyes I saw the youths rip my prize from the bag and disappointedly hurl it into the hedges. I wept at their ignorant abandonment and heard the gravel scrunch at their renewed approach. The last thing I felt was their scrabbling dirty hands searching me for a more vulgar reward for their crime before my own fate claimed me!

Copyright Tony Bennett 14th July 2005

A Tale

Routine

The 12.45 pulled out from Manchester heading to Sheffield. Sweat permeated the air mixed with alcohol, vomit and sex all the sordid trademarks of a Friday night out on the town in Sheffield. Jared wondered why the dingiest trains seem to be always reserved for these early morning services and why were they not cleaned out properly before they were turned round. The train company obviously did not think much of its post inn crowd. Apparently it had been worse tonight because a well known band had been playing some arena or such. Jared didn’t have time for modern music. The semi vocal percussion hisses on those modern little music boxes sent a shiver down his spine. Like a pit of snakes and drums. The squeals of accompaniment often filled with profane language making it sound as if a castrated sailor had been tossed into the self same pit for amusement. What was worse though was the ritual nodding from the wearer. He’d noticed over the years the phenomena grow and grow. Technological Zombies all nodding to a distant Voodoo beat. It got worse if the wearer tried to sing. Strangled and bastardised murmurings made them sound like Middlewood madmen. Jared dimly wondered if they ever finished that extension to the mental hospital because he was sure the modern youth were going to need it! If only Roy Fox could get his band on board for him alone. The soothing tones of something by Porter would really help his nerves. He had gotten the train as he regularly had and as usual his carriage, the smoking carriage, was empty. Most nights it was empty because so few people smoked nowadays. He placed his outdated bowler on the upper rack and unfolded his regular copy of the Daily Mail. His friend Crawford Jones had advised him towards reading it and he had found its political sympathies reassuring. Jared had read it ever since. He wasn’t sure why he bothered nowadays nothing much ever changed just like his routine. Maybe it was the familiar comfort? He folded it and decided on a different comfort. He stoked his pipe and settled for a quiet calming smoke. He finished as the train pulled in at Edale.

The door opened to the carriage and a girl staggered in. She was immodestly dressed and noticeably obliterated on either narcotics or alcohol. She dragged an equally outrageous lout with her. Both their hairstyles were greased into vile parodies of Indian savages from the Americas and parrots. The seat backs flexed in response to pressures from the razored coiffures indicating the strength of the preparation needed to uphold such follies of vanity and Jared noted the streaks of black make up smeared from the lout’s eyes. Lloyd George certainly had a lot to answer for. His weak leadership formerly holding such promise allowed such freaks to flourish. After the war he could have been a strong leader and stopped the second one ever happening. He didn’t though and that necessitated action, action Jared had been proud to be part of. Jared had worn his black shirt with pride as he marched with the BUF. He had seen Mosley at Sheffield and the power of the man had bowled him over, so much so that he had been equally as delighted to meet him on this very train or at least its equivalent all those years ago in 1933. Jared was forced to avert his eyes as the lout thrust his black nailed hand up the belt that passed for a skirt on the young trollop. The lack of the scrappy undergarments that young ladies (if that word was even appropriate) wore revealing the epilated nether regions allowing him easy access as the girl started cooing in ecstasy. It infuriated Jared that he was not even considered in this display of pornography. People just didn’t notice him anymore. They hadn’t noticed him for decades. He always sat in the same seat only changing it when the train changed and he always would. They had the whole carriage to choose from and they still chose to sit here and molest each other like animals. Panting grew insistently from the opposite seats and the sound of a zip could be heard as a wet slapping filled the air accompanied by grunts from the lout. Well he wouldn’t move he had sat through worse! No one had ignored him in his black shirt; people had known what he stood for. People like the dregs sat opposite would have known also. Oh yes the louts face would have been streaked with red to mix with all the black rather like the colour scheme of the train. The smacking of the billy on his head would have been a perfect accompaniement for the rhythmic slapping and grunts. The girls squealing got higher as she undoubtedly climaxed and then the sound could be heard of her sliding onto the floor. Jared sneaked a look to find the lout leaning back as the avian hair of the trollop eclipsed his groin and initiated a bobbing motion. The repetitive motion of the train and indecent act seemed to be mocking his repetitive routine non-existence. One person, just one, was the only one he could recall who had noticed him since that fateful meeting with Mosley and that one observant soul had run away screaming. Jared’s neck still ached sometime from the remembrance of that meeting of his movement’s enigmatic creator.

The lout let out a gurgling sigh and his face contorted as the girl sat up wiping her lips on a filthily fragile hand only to stain the seat covering with the waste. Jared’s lip quivered in disgust. She pulled herself onto the soiled seat and demurely crossed her legs to preserve modesty. Jared laughed at the pointlessness of the gesture. A cigarette packet appeared in her hand and the lout snatched one from the crumpled packet lighting it with a fuel lighter decorated with a battered skull. If Jared had his way the lighters skull wouldn’t be the only one so battered. They hadn’t reacted to his outburst. Not even a twitch. The train pulled in at Dore. The couple got up and left the carriage, the stain on the seat the only evidence to their act. He watched them walk off. The lout zipped his fly unashamedly while he roughly mauled a handful of the girl’s derrière in his other hand. His cigarette drooped at a macabre angle and the chunky metal flashes on the girl’s boots glittered yellow in the station lights. The back of the girl’s jacket had the words “Daemons Whore” painted upon it in Germanic script. The irony forced a snort of derision from Jared’s nose for surely in his day the lout would be assumed to be daemonic in aspect if not a servant of such at least as much as Jared now was and the girl certainly acted slatternly. His time was not far off as the train pulled out of Dore. He pulled his pocket watch out and looked at its familiar terribly reliable face. Nowadays the final stretch took only 5 minutes. Back then it had taken 15 minutes at least. The door shut behind him and he shivered as the familiar chill overtook him. As always the watch showed nothing in the glass as the black clad figure walked by and sat down opposite him. He always marveled at how he had missed that small matter way back then. A two week older copy of his own Daily Mail was put down beside the newcomer unblemished despite age and the moustache still hinted at its waxy management. The dark hair dragged back from the scalp much like Jared’s own black locks crowned the awe inspiring visage. The lightning badge of the British Union of Fascists stood proud on his breast and with dread Jared noticed the Crown Inn flash by on his right. The train clattered over the road bridge sounding every bit like a drum marshal at an execution. Beads of sweat burst onto his cold brow as he realised how little time was left before the inevitable routine. He did not speak to that figure anymore the only change in an unchanging dance. The terror never diminished even after the decades that had passed. That first time he had spent the 15 minutes from Dore drinking in all of his hero’s thoughts and mannerisms only to finish with those wretchedly prophetical words, “What can I do to serve?” Time slowed down as it had seemed to at this moment’s origin. The simulacrum of Oswald Mosley stood and smiled in answer. The smile stretched till it threatened the ears and the mouth opened. It peeled back over that waxy moustache and the fiery passionate eyes. A smell like over ripe corn and brewery waste filled the carriage as the dark figure started to split, unzip even from the lower lip down ever down spilling forth the black leathery, red sinewy interior. Pustules and warts stood proud as the crimson hooked claws shredded their way out of the fascist leader’s finely manicured hands. Putrescent gobbets of rancid flesh splattered Jared’s face. A viscous mix of unnameable colours and unholy textures cascaded from the rent to pool sickly at both their feet. Jared once again felt his eyes glaze over and the front of his starched shirt dampen with sweat and drool. A myriad of wormlike chitinous tentacles spilled from the bulbous head surmounting four insect like compound eyes hued in dried blood.

Regret of ever reading that damned book filled him as he once again tasted the fragments of foul flesh casually deposited by the explosive transformation in his ever slackening rubbery mouth. The original journey had been carried in an ill mind, nerves jangled from the horrors revealed within that ledger of evil. Crawford Jones had assured him that Mosley himself had recommended the self same volumne to him so Jared had sought out the book to find reference of it at Manchester University Library. One Friday after he had closed up the bank he had taken a train to that Northern haven of knowledge and sat in a dank nook under the eagle eye of the matronly attendant. The language was difficult and crabbed in the sinister tome its leathery binding cool to the touch. This did not phase the middle aged Bank Manager who had seen far worse in the accounts of clients. The succinctly titled “Moorcroft’s Messages from the Pharaoh” however contained things of a much more malign bent. Angles and symbols alien to a normal mind and descriptions of things better left in distant realms of reality, worst of all the arcane phantasm known as the Herald of Chaos. What reason could Mosley have for this abomination? Why had Crawford foist the desire to read it on Jared’s measured mind? Why had he told him it would help him serve the organisation? A fever had fallen upon Jared and he had left in a bolted hurry to the sound of disapproval from the attendant observing the rapidly spreading dark stain in his pinstripe trousers. He had run straight to the Station to get the next train. A train he was assured would get him back near two in the morning That hoary phantasm now stood before him as his eyes slid to the header of that Daily Mail of 1933 drenched in ichors revealing his friend Jones’s murder spree and subsequent death not one day before his literary recommendations.

Jared vomited in fear, madness and disgust as one insidious claw pierced his shirt touching his breast. Rapture filled him and his seed spilled down his leg as his face twisted with the horror and ecstasy. From within the nightmare a cavernous laughter bore itself unwelcome finally unhinging Jared’s mind as the unbearable truth descended upon him and he almost wrenched the carriages door from its hinges in a fit of insanely enhanced power and threw himself from the train. The door slammed back with the energy of the act closing on the monstrous fiend. As the drumming from Heeley Bridge began its execution beat the momentum carried him perilously towards relief as the railing spike from the underlying fence impaled and decorously displayed him for all to see. It had been so cursed to do so every Friday night since that night in 1933. With his final breath the ghost of Jared Wilkinson listened to that rancorous laugh fading and his routine oblivion claimed him.

"Routine" Copyright July 2nd 2005 Tony Bennett

A Door to Madness

Its the late 1920's and behind the seemingly normal lives a darkness grows. Small events seemingly insignificant grow. Those who fight against it face a battle on many fronts not least of which is their sanity.

Dr Anthony Perry a well known writer of horror and resident professor at Miskatonic U as well as special assistant to Dr. Armitage and ex-special investigator to the Massachusetts Police wonders how many stories he will have to write before the readers become aware that his tales are not fictional and feel real fear.

Calum J O'Reilly/McCrindle the adoptive Irishmen who discovered a dark past and that he was in fact Scottish, a finder of lost antiquities and part time adventurer sits telling his part time archaeology class of the wonders of egyptian tombs by day while at night studying arcane books having his tea bought by Agnes his young housekeeper. A gun never far away in case the ever present Cultists try to pry his secrets from him in order to aid their dark masters convoluted and alien plans. Unlike his friends or maybe because of the war he is actually the most stable of them all even with his continual delving into pages of long forgotten and dark lore!

Jim the Native American Micmac Defender of the Earth sworn to fight the evils that threaten the human beings and their invasive cousins the whiteman, willingly subsuming his pride in order to better locate the sources of bad medicine.

The mysterious pilot Irons running from unknown enemies but with a hard boiled outer self sits wondering how come organised crime now seems like a distant and welcome friend when faced with what he has learned.

Joel Harpy of the esteemed Harpy Tobacco giants of Massachusetts, a Black Sheep and hedonist finds that his exile to Kingsport to be less attractive than it first seemed as he discovers worrying signs of Mythos he thought he had left behind. Now he finds that he has become the most unlikely of humanities defenders for he has seen what apathy brings and against all his instincts and in spite of his dwindling sanity the darkness gains the enmity of humanities long shot hero.

Finally Julianna Keezar friend and enemy both to Joel and one of the few women he cannot add to his bedpost. She fights against a male dominated society for womens rights and has only just opened the door on something more monstrous than men.

Between them they face the dark and foreboding landscape of Lovecraftian enigmas and the diabolic and alien ideals of the Elder Gods and their servants. This blog will bring you their tales and others.

Welcome to the Temple of the Dark Pharaoh, Nyarlathotep.

Welcome to the very door of Madness.