Bigot Hall

POD

I ascended the narrow stairwell to the tower where the Verger lurked in a kind of chaotic apothecary. He was writing at a rolltop desk and facing away from me when I entered with a doorcreak. Lambent sunlight played through dust and glass vessels.

‘Hello Verger. Weather’s brightened up.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that, laughing boy,’ he said without taking his eyes from his work

I scuffed aimlessly.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing of interest to the lustful.’

I pottered around the room, trailing a finger through shelfdust and scrutinising murky jars. ‘I say, Verger — is this a dove you’ve preserved?’

The Verger turned, raised his eyebrows and stood enraged, storming over. ‘No business of yours, hell-child,’ he thundered, yanking at the jar with such force that it flew over his shoulder and exploded against a wall.

The Verger roared me down the stairs to Father’s study. ‘Bottomless arrogance,’ he told him. ‘Uncontrollable urges. Smirking evil.’

‘In English, Verger.’

‘Well there was I in the precious sanctuary of the tower when laughing boy here pranced in and made a remark. A remark which left nothing to the imagination.’

‘Listen to me, Verger,’ I said, ‘the amount of bullshit I take from you is unbelievable. You and your bland assumptions can balk awkwardly into the lake. If there’s one thing I deplore, Father, it’s a bigot on the high ground.’

‘Have you two fellows ever heard of conciliation?’

The Verger and me began to laugh simultaneously, and halted glowering at eachother.

‘My point is this,’ Father stated mildly. ‘Man stands alone in sickness unto death. You could save alot of time, emotion and money by cultivating your own amusement — tying snakes in a knot, pronging your nose with a hoof spike and so on.’

All this was completely alien to the Verger, who regarded Father with tortured amazement. ‘Did I hear correctly?’

Father gave me a helpless look. ‘I’ve done what I can.’

‘This beggars belief,’ said the Verger in astonishment. ‘Your son rides roughshod over my life and you sit there like a barrel.’

‘What precisely did he do, Verger? Answer without lying if you can.’

‘He picked up a jar,’ stated the Verger with an effort of self-control, ‘and threw it.’

‘Threw it?’

‘Further than was either pleasant or necessary.’

‘Father, do you think I’ve no more pressing business than to play volleyball with this moron’s jars of snot?’

‘Is this true, Verger?’

‘Why should I put snot of all things in a jar?’

‘Postponement of a more permanent decision?’

‘A reluctance to accept the natural order,’ I suggested. ‘After all, Father, you and I try to escape our snot as fast as we can. This gentleman surrounds himself with the stuff.’

‘The boy’s reasoning is sound, Verger, though I say it with tears in my eyes.’

‘I see no tears.’

‘All in good time,’ said Father. ‘You may anticipate a veritable flood.’

‘I’ve better things to do than stand here anticipating your secretions!’ yelled the Verger, and slammed from the room.

‘Did you hear that?’ I said to Father, with meaning. Ofcourse I hadn’t the faintest idea what was in the Verger’s jars but I was damned if I’d let him steal the show with lies inferior to my own.

One night when the household was performing a ritual in the reading room, I snuck into the tower with a torch. I swept the beam along the shelves and selected a good-sized jar labelled V5, taking it down and unscrewing the lid. Shining the torch inside, all I could see was a murky green sludge. I rocked the jar a little. A pale object emerged through the surface and disappeared again. Impatient, I took down a larger jar. V9. I found a pair of tongs and dipped for the contents, bringing out something which looked like a severed tap root, covered in slime. As the slime drooled away I discerned rudimentary features carved into the mould, incredibly ghoulish in the torchlight. I took this as confirmation that the Verger was a member of the clergy.

A creepy feeling was crawling over my shoulders as I shifted a container the size of a larder keg and removed the lid. A soft doll rested inside, half-submerged in liquid. Flashing the torch around, I could see traces of the Verger’s sombre expression in its face. I dropped the torch, and daren’t reach in to fish it out.

Stumbling in the darkness I crashed through something, grabbing out for a handhold — the surface in front of me gave onto an unknown space. The Hall was wormholed with hidden anterooms, the blueprints resembling a Mandelbrot fractal. This one was narrow and carpeted with warm earth. Something glinted in the darkness.

This was not a horror movie — I reached aside and switched on the light. A large glass vat stood before me. Emerging from a fog of sediment was a fish-eyed Verger, frilled with drifting, ragged mycelium. The cowl had begun to emerge from its head, darkening and hooding over. Here was the last in a series of experimental, trial-run Vergers, each more complete and distinct than the last.

‘You’ve done it now, laughing boy,’ boomed a voice behind me.

‘Verger,’ I stammered, spinning to face him. ‘Why aren’t you with the others?’

The Verger cast a wily eye at the pupa floating in the tank. ‘That’s why. Don’t worry, boy, I won’t bite.’

I hadn’t even known this was among the options.

‘Seat yourself on this pile of rats, boy, and I’ll explain everything — we’ve a very limited time.’

I sat down and glanced at the glass vat — the contents moved a slow arm and I heard a faint clink.

‘Well it’s the old, old story,’ the Verger began. ‘As you know, people generally delegate any real achievement to their offspring and so little is achieved in any one generation. Add to this the contamination of a million opinions it’s a wonder anyone does anything by their own impulse. Me and the line were devised to speed up the process unaffected by human concerns. All this cloak and scowl nonsense is just a bit of pretending, the simplest camouflage. We’re grown out of spores.’

‘I must say Verger you seem remarkably light-hearted about all this.’

‘D’you take a dim view?’

‘Well I don’t know. I don’t know, Verger, it’s alot to absorb — I mean you tell me you’re grown in a jar and then expect me to chuckle or something? Yes I suppose I do take a dim view. I won’t sleep soundly for weeks after this.’

‘It’s a shame, it really is.’

‘So when did this nightmare kick off? Who grew those jammy monsters out there?’

‘The prototypes? The real Verger — a hundred and fourteen years ago. Keen gardener. Here’s one of his botanical sketches, if you’re interested.’

He unrolled a scroll which portrayed the Verger’s head emerging from the gilled stipe of a bark fungus.

‘What sort of life span are we discussing?’ I asked, scrutinising the sketch.

‘Three months. Enough to outlive human curiosity but being inconspicuous isn’t all. The entire three months are spent seeding and growing the next Verger. Delegation again, you see — postponement. We all record and write instructions but it seems personal wisdom can only be learnt in the physical, not passively from a book. Each generation is as moronic as the last, a clean slate. Almost no cumulative knowledge.’ He smiled. His face imploded like a blown egg, releasing a little puff of dust. ‘Sorry you had to see this, laughing boy,’ he said through the mess of his face, then with a loud snap he collapsed like an articulated skeleton.

I prodded the still mass at my feet — it rustled like a sack of leaves. Enjoy your childhood, I thought, while you can.

The vat began to bubble and bump like an eggboiler. The new Verger was shifting its limbs in the swirling suspension, slow and blind. The plasma roiled as the creature reached a glistening hand over the edge of the tank. There was no lid. The new head arose from behind the glass. The film across its milky eyes broke, and it blinked at me. The caul over its mouth tore as the new Verger tried to speak. ‘Oh,’ it said.

‘Eh, Verger?’ I asked, unwrapping a new stick of gum.

The Verger squinted like a newborn. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘what a tangled web we weave.’