The Brothel on the Sea of Dream - Part 1

Part 1

My car grumbled as I slipped it into fifth gear and accelerated down the M1. On both sides spilled drab brown fields and ancient hedges, forming something like a chessboard but without the pieces. It was a far cry from the steel, concrete and glass of the city. The occasional bird stalked the ground, looking for seeds, and a few cars moved on distant country roads.

It was Friday morning and the commuter flow was towards London. An adulthood of London driving made the motorway seem near deserted but in truth I shared the road with plenty of other vehicles. I drew up on a lumbering Mesmertain goods lorry and moved into the right-hand lane, accelerating to pass. It fell behind on my left and I moved back into the middle lane.

It wasn't a long drive and was a reasonably simple one. I followed the M1 out of London and North West some fifty miles to Milton Keynes - an artificial place I never cared for. From there I took the A 421 south for about thirty miles. All told, I pulled into the village of Winslow, Buckinghamshire, a little over one and a half hours after leaving the city.

Despite working in and around London for coming on thirty years, I'd never been to Winslow before. The architecture showed a clash of styles I'm surprised the local planning office allowed: eighties new build houses, alongside restored nineteenth century homes and quaint cottages. The people were the opposite. In London the streets would be filled by a multicultural mix of all ages. Here the locals tended towards old and white.

My destination was on the south side of the village and after winding my way through Winslow's twisting streets I pulled up the short, private and overgrown driveway and stopped before Somnus House. It didn't quite match its photo.

As best as I can describe it, Somnus House appeared a mixture of tenement and castle, as designed by a somehow precognisant architect who'd tapped into the brutalist school. It wasn't large, as country houses are judged, but the jutting towers and hard angles made it stand out from the drab landscaping. No two windows appeared the same shape. Some were square, some were round, some were arched and some were stranger things which must surely be custom fitted. A single large chimney rose from the roof.

I switched off my car's engine and got out. The air was brisk and I was glad for my light jacket. The agent's car, a yellow Ford, stood nearby, and I saw her standing next to the large, imposing front door.

"Ah, Mr Jackson," she said as I walked up. "I'm glad you found the place."

"It's nice to meet you Ms Wright," I said, holding out my hand. "I hope I didn't keep you."

"No, no. You're right on time." She shuffled a pile of folders into her other hand and we shook. Ms Wright was a pretty young lady in her late twenties of mixed African descent. She kept her hair in a tight bun and wore a smart suit. The folders bore the logo of Bond, Bovell and Sons, the estate management firm she worked for.

"So," she said once we broke apart. "What do you think of the place?"

"It's certainly something," I said.

"Yes." She gave a wineglass laugh, high like crystal. "It is that." She grew serious. "Tell me Mr Jackson, if I may ask, why did you do it? Most of the bids came from developers. You were one of the few private individuals."

Why did I do it? I looked up at Somnus House, trying to find an answer in its walls but they provided no easy solace. I'd spent no little amount of time over the last few weeks asking myself this very question and the best I had come up with was this: Because after thirty years of working a respectable job in the respectable firm of Slate, Grey and Smith, I needed to something, anything, to be someone else.

"It seemed a good opportunity," I said instead.

"Oh very," she said wearing a business smile. "Country houses are becoming increasingly popular. Why Tony Blair considered moving into Winslow Hall just up the street. Do you remember reading that?"

I admitted that I might remember reading something of the sort in the Times a few years before, though I hastened to add that I did not follow celebrity culture with any particular closeness or interest.

"Great," she said. "Well, let's go inside. I can show you about and tell you more about the place." She produced a large black key and slotted it into the lock. After straining against the internal mechanism for a moment, it turned with a clunk and the giant front door fell open with a groan. "You may wish to have the locks changed at some point, but remember, this is a listed building. You need to be careful with any changes to the structure."

We went inside. The front hall was cavernous and very very bare. Our footfalls echoed against the dusty carpet like dropping stacks of documents. I looked up. The room took up two stories and a lonely light fixture hung high overhead.

"The non-essential fittings where auctioned separately, I'm afraid. Most of the kitchen is left, as are some of the beds and a few other pieces English Heritage considered integral to the character of the property. The art has been owned by the V&A for a number years and they've called it all in. It was accepted in lieu of tax twenty years ago I believe. I know it may seem bare, but think of it as a chance to put your own stamp on the property, which I can assure you is a rare treat for this kind of house."

"The history," I said, snatching for that life line. That simple bid I'd placed in the estate auction seemed an increasingly bad idea. "You said you know something about it?"

"Oh yes," she said and tapped a folder.

As she explained it, Somnus House was constructed in 1869 by the banker Francis Figmarsh as a rest home outside the city for his sickly wife. "The noises and smells made it impossible for her to rest and recover, and her doctor, a Mr Thomas Kiernan, advised she leave London. There are a number of books by the local historic societies if you wish to known more."

Following his wife's death, Figmarsh sold the house to a banking colleague of his from Edinburgh, an R. J. MacGregor. Despite a record of sale, MacGregor never took up residence and the house remained vacant for a number of years.

Upon MacGregor's death in 1901, the house was auctioned off. "In fact," said Ms Wright, "it was Bond, Bovell and Sons who managed the auction. I had the paperwork retrieved from our archive when I was assigned this case. A fascinating piece of history, though the supervising agent's handwriting was simply appalling." The house was bought by a charitable trust, who established a seminary specialising in certain esoteric questions of theological thought. It never proved successful and closed around World War One.

During and after the war, the house served as a private hospital for army officers. This vocation proved equally short lived and by the start of the Second World War, the house was passing through the hands of a succession of private renters. During the war it was hit by a bomb, which thankfully did not detonate, and the remains were made into a statue which remained in the back garden, if I cared to brave the somewhat overgrown hedges to search for it. After, the house was bought by the Baronet Edward Smyth, who had made his fortune in India. He left it to his eldest son, Cassius Smyth, who continued to live in the property until his death, one year before.

"And that's the tale," she said. "As I'm sure you can agree, it has a charming and storied history."

I nodded my head, unsure what to make of the history or how it really related to the house around me.

"Oh and before I forget," she said, "this is for you." She handed over the large black key. It felt weighty in my hand. The bow showed a stylized raven's head.

Over the next half hour, Ms Wright gave me a brief whistle-stop tour around the house, starting at the dusty rafters in the attic and finishing in the kitchen with its ancient fittings. Then, on a near-antediluvian wooden table, warped by time and damp, she laid out the final contract.

I took up the pen she offered and looked down at the dense lines of type. It was already too late to back out but this would be the final nail. Two weeks before I'd seen the notice of auction. I'd placed a bid on a whim, never expecting a thing, and now this: an ancient country house, bereft of fittings as it was of purpose.

With a sinking heart, I signed.

---

Ms Wright left after that, spirited away by her yellow Ford to another job. I had a job too but had taken some holiday days to give myself a long weekend. The plan was to spend the next two nights at Somnus House and return to my London flat on Sunday night, ready for work Monday.

With the raven headed key in one hand and my newly inked deed in the other, I walked the house.

Discoloured squares hung bare on the walls were the artwork once swung and dents showed in the carpet marking where tables, dressers and other furnishings no longer were. I found one of the few exceptions in the master bedroom. An immense four post bed stood in the centre, the posts and headboard carved to show strange, dreamlike scenes. I walked in and pressed down on the mattress. It wailed like a hall of widows.

A large library lurked down the hall from the bedroom but all the books were gone. A set of strange shaped windows let in bright midday light but all it illuminated was old wooden shelves and a lacquered card catalogue. I pull the catalogue open and peered inside. Empty save for dust. Whatever great collection Somnus House once held was long sold.

For the following hours I trudged the halls of the house. My intentions were good - do a bit of cleaning, scope the place out - but in the end I wondered like a poet who'd lost his inspiration on the wind. It was probably for the best. Knowing my luck English Heritage considered the dust integral to the character of the property and would sue me if I tried to remove it. I even explored the back garden a little, beating my way through overgrown topiary and weeds to find the bomb monument. It sat in the middle of a weed penetrated gravel circle, probably once a focal point of the garden. Some bygone sculptor had turned the tail fin of the WW2 bomb into a statue. Either he or the impact had warped, discoloured and bent the metal. The shapes it made were faintly disquieting in a fashion I couldn't quite name.

My garden sojourn was an exception, however. Through no conscious intention, I kept finding myself back in the corridor which joined the library and the master bedroom. It formed something of a house within a house, sealed from the wider manner by an old green door whose paint was dull and scratched. Wooden panels lined the walls, lending them some character missing from the rest of the place. Off it sprung the bedroom, a bathroom with truly ancient brass fittings, the library and a few now empty rooms whose purpose I could only guess at.

As I walked down the corridor for what must have been the tenth time, I idly tapped by black iron key against the wall. It returned the deep resonant sound of solid wood and firm stone. At least the house had that going for it.

I went on, walking slowly towards the library. Step. Thud went the key. Step. Thud went the key. Step. Tap went the key. I froze in place and turned slowly.

Carefully, I tapped again. The wall repeated the hollow sound, almost tinny in the echoing halls of Somnus House. I tried not to over think my discovery. True, this was an old country manor, prime fodder for a blytonesque secret passage, but there were far more logical explanations. Maybe workmen had created a void when refitting the house for electricity or perhaps there was simply a small flaw in the stone.

I repeated my test, sketching out the hollow. It extended in a rectangle, floor to ceiling and about three feet wide. It wasn't just my imagination. There was something hidden in the wall. Perhaps a room had been boarded over years ago? Perhaps something more exciting and secret.

To find out I started to explore. The edges seemed a good place to start but they lined up with the slats of the wooden panels, hiding any join. I tried pushing but the square didn't budge. I tried sliding, too, in both directions, but that didn't reveal anything either. Finally I tried pulling. I worked the raven's beak of my black iron key into the edge of the square and pulled back. The wall resisted for a moment, then popped.

I stared with wide eyed amazement as a section of wall swung out on creaking hinges, revealing a dark hidden room.

Hand almost shaking, I fished my car keys from my pocket and flicked on my LED torch key ring. It shot out a thin beam of light and I played it across the room.

It looked like a private study. A bookshelf stood at the back, laid down with well-worn leather-bound tomes. Before it sat an old but cared for desk, with a lacquered box at top it.

I entered the room, feeling almost like an intruder, which was silly. I owned the house and everything in it. I was no house breaker. Still, the feeling of trespass persisted. The dark silence hung heavy on my shoulders.

Torch in one hand, I ran a finger along the book spines until one caught my eye.

"An Atlas of Dream," I said aloud as I rubbed the gold embossed title printed on the spine. I pulled the book out and set it down on the desk with a meaty thump. The book was thick, with old heavy pages. The writing was old too, a too-small copperplate that so filled the pages as to make them seem black. I flipped through and stopped at an illustration.

'A map of the Sea of Dream,' read the label, but it was unlike any map I'd ever seen. It comprised circles, some separate, some concentric and some interlocking. They had titles like 'Gate of Horn and Ivory', 'Maw of Guf', 'River of Souls', 'The Beast Below' and 'The Millar's Wheel'. Monsters curled at the edges of the page, where a fantastical map might bear sketches of scaled beasts complete with legends like 'here be dragons'. These were no dragons, though.

They appeared as ill-defined shades or phantasms. Their cross-hashed eyes bore into me from within mist-like cowls and I snapped the book shut. The leather cover locked their gazes away.

With the book shut I again scanned the room and noticed a lamp standing just inside the door, hidden from view from outside but obvious from within. I walked up and toggled a fat Bakelite switch. The bulb warmed slowly to life, staring dark and red but brightening quickly.

Even lit properly, the room lost little of its mystery. The leather of the books was old and warn, like the hidden troves of an ancient library. A print of Redon's Guardian Spirit of the Waters hung over the door, the great otherworldly head peering down at me. The lacquered box shone with an almost opalescent shimmer.

I walked over to the box and picked it up. It had a small keyhole and a test showed it locked tight. From the weight there was something inside.

I searched the desk draws and found a small silver key. It fit the keyhole and turned with an almost inaudible click. I set the box back down and flipped the lid. It was filled with perhaps a dozen clay coins, each about the size of a fifty pence piece but far thicker. I picked one up, careful to not crush the thing. One side was blank. The other showed a strange mark, a diabolical signature. It appeared almost like a Celtic triskelion but warped, as if partly pulled into three dimensions. While the coins themselves differed slightly in size, shape and smoothness, the marks were perfectly identical.

Once I'd removed the last coin to check it, I noticed something at the very bottom of the box. Before I'd mistaken it for some kind of lining but now I saw it for what it was: a folded piece of paper.

I caught a nail under a corner and pulled it out. It was a letter, hand written in a loopy flowing cursive. I recognised the name of the man who'd owned Somnus House before me.

Cassius,

I have found what you require. My contact called them obols but I believe them to be the dream tokens discussed in Al-Kindi's codex.

They were bundled with a fragment of poetry. Translated it reads. "Hold in hand, for good dreams." I should note the word from which good is translated has connotations of earthly rather than spiritual fulfilment.

I believe this may be our chance to contact the Atavi.

Yours in friendship,
Elwin Ransom

As interesting as my discovery was, I couldn't afford to spend all day on its investigation. It was several hours past noon, and I needed to eat lunch and buy the supplies I needed to survive the weekend. The room had survived a year undiscovered; it could suffer a few hours more.

I refolded the letter and put it back in the box. On top I stacked the coins and locked them away with the silver key. The bow of the key was too small to fit on my key ring so I put it and box both into a desk draw and closed the draw tight.

On my way out the room I noticed one of the coins lying on the ground, wedged sideways in the thick carpet. It must have rolled off the table while I was examining its siblings. I bent and scooped it up. The clay had a good weight to it and felt smooth, almost as if glazed though it had no special colour. I ran my thumb over the triskelion mark, feeling the sharp edges of the lines cut into the coin. Elwin Ransom named it an obol while Cassius called it a dream token. Perhaps the two definitions weren't so in conflict. Wasn't Thanatos twin brother to Hypnos after all?

I shrugged. Such philosophising would get me nowhere. Rather than reopen the box, I slipped the coin into my pocket and left the room, pulling the door shut behind me.

---

I took my car to Winslow's main street and drove around until I found a likely pub. Not all pubs sold food but it was a good bet that any within a few hours' drive of London would. The carpark was small and tight but I backed my car into a marked space without crashing. Gravel crunched under my feet as I got out and stretched.

The pub was called the Wistful Soldier. The sign showed a faintly Napoleonic looking soldier, rifle against his shoulder as he stared into the sunset. I checked my wallet and phone were in my jacket pockets and went inside.

Two pm on a Friday afternoon wasn't the busiest time of day for a public house but a few customers sat at scattered tables. I pulled up a stool at the bar. "A half of cider," I said as I sat down, "and do you have a menu?"

The bartender, an older, grey haired gentleman in a white shirt and waistcoat, nodded and bought my drink and a menu.

"Here you are," he said and I handed him a £5 note.

I sipped the cider while looking down the menu. If this was a London pub, there was a better than even chance the items would have silly themed names but the Wistful Soldier laid things out straight. "What's the soup of the day?" I asked.

"Lentil." He paused, as if considering whether further commentary would push his rural establishment towards the dreaded London theme pub of my own musing. Finally he added, "It's good."

"I'll have that and a side of chips."

While the barman disappeared into the back I nursed my cider. It had a hard edge to it, like winter apples, and was rather nice. My food came not too long later. As I ate, I chatted to the barman.

"Did you know Cassius Smyth?" I asked.

"Can't say I did. Didn't socialise with the village much." He raised a shaggy eyebrow, clearly asking my purpose.

"I bought Somnus House," I said by way of explanation. "Well, not bought, really. Won. They tried to sell the house normally but apparently there were no takers. In the end they auctioned it off. My bid was highest."

The barman nodded. "Didn't know Mr Smyth myself but my father did." My explanation had clearly bought me a little leeway. "He ran with a strange sort. Met them at Oxford, or so I heard. They'd meet at the house, Somnus I mean, and have strange discussions. My dad was the butcher's boy at the time and he heard them one day. Big into hypnosis and Sigmund Freud. Universal wisdom and collective unconscious. That kind of thing. Don't mistake them for the new age sort interested in those now days, though. Back then, well, back then everything was a bit different. A gentleman could have eccentricities. Esoteric they called it."

I nodded with interest. "The group?"

He sucked air through his teeth. "Can't really say. My dad might've known but he's long gone. There were a dozen of them. All about the same age. Suppose today we'd call them the last true country gentry, but didn't seem that way at the time.

"I remember one, Nicole something; I can't remember, something French anyway. Saw her about the village occasionally when I was a boy. Dressed like a Parisian starlet. Stylish, you know, but strange. Thought she could reach a whole different world through opium.

"Then there was Jackson Flippant. Made something of himself that one - medicines and chemicals in America. Must have lost and made his fortune a dozen times. I still see the occasional new story about his companies.

"And there was Elwin Ransom of course."

The name made my heart jump. I remembered it from the letter. "Why him?"

He gave a gruff laugh. "Local folk law. He was the minister's son. Went to follow in his father's footsteps. Did for a few years but then they removed him. Had him up before the church courts. The rumours said magic, witchcraft and the like, but that’s rumour for you. I went up the cathedral one summer and saw the records. It was doctrinal. He was preaching some strange things apparently. Can't say I noticed from the pews but what do I know? Don't teach theology at the secondary modern."

A Parisian drug addict, an American entrepreneur and a rogue Church of England priest, to name but three. What a strange group Cassius Smyth gathered.

I paid my food bill, said my goodbye and left to do my shopping.

Continued in Part 2

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