The Flaunting

Three days we’d been locked in Schonhausen, Peter Lawwell’s country retreat; three days since the storm shutters had mysteriously closed on their own and kept us in here in the presence of a maniac.  The first death happened as soon as the shutters locked and the lights went out and everyone screamed, including me and Tom English who were still by the piano singing Three Little Maids from School and trying to fend off Jim Spence who was drunk on Buckfast and crying out for Eton Rifles although why he’d want to be armed in the middle of a party I don’t know, perhaps he foresaw the bloodshed to come?

Once the lights came back on, Lawwell laughed and called for more wine but Neil Doncaster who was Lawwell’s waiter for the evening was too busy crawling around the floor looking for his wig.  “There you are, Doncaster.  More wine and make it quick before I forget my good mood and take the horse whip to you.  Doncaster!  Doncaster?”
Doncaster was quite still, on all fours, his arse sticking out from underneath our piano.  I thought at first that he’d been caught blowing Tom English but then his face looked out from the gloom and he shivered, “There’s a body under here,” he said baldly and suddenly no one felt like listening to the Mikado anymore.

“Who is it?” asked Ralph Topping.  “Anyone important?  Is it Campbell Ogilvie?”
“No, it’s not Ogilvie” said Jim Ballantyne.
“Bugger,” cursed Topping.
“And it’s definitely nobody worth worrying about, I don’t recognise him at all,” said Ballantyne, motioning for Doncaster to get up off his knees and pour him a drink.
“Well, English?” called out Lawwell.  “I’m not not paying you to sit around on your arse not playing the fucking piano all night - play something.  And make it maudlin,” so Tom struck up again and everyone went back to slapping each other on the back,  breaking the tops off bottles to celebrate Lawwell’s official position now on the SFA Board, and singing misty eyed ballads that don’t rhyme.  It was during one of these ballads that the ceiling caved in and Jack Irvine crashed into the room on a  four poster bed.  “Is it Campbell Ogilvie?” shouted Ralph Topping, dusting himself down as a clean-up squad rushed in to change Hugh MacDonald’s underwear.  By this time, Tom and I were beginning to look like the Stranglers in the Golden Brown video and so decided to beat a hasty exit.  We were running up stairs two steps at a time when a headless body came running downstairs towards us three at a time, knocking us on our arses and covering Tom in gore.  “Bejeesus, it’s rented too!” cried Tom as I put my arms around the waist of the carcass and tried to lift it off of my friend and just at this moment, David Longmuir appeared and muttered something about being perverts but before I could take him to task on the matter, a noose fell from two flights up, tightened around his neck and pulled him up into the darkness.  “Bloody hell, did you see that?” I shrieked.
“Longmuir?  Ach, I’ve seen it all before in here” muttered Alan McRae, paying more attention to the headless corpse whose arse I seemed to have pressed against my groin.  Embarrassed, I quickly dropped it to more groans from Tom but before anyone could crack any jokes about the situation we were interrupted by Lawwell thundering out his room, horse whip in hand.  “No fucker kills any fucker in this house unless he’s called Peter fucking Lawwell, got that?” he roared and cut McRae a cracker across the cheek.

“Listen,” spoke up Doncaster, his wig on backwards.  “I make that at least five dead bodies in here,”

“Cunt can’t count,” whispered someone at the back.
“There’s a maniac loose in the house and we’re locked in here with him.”  Everyone started looking at the ground and shuffling their feet.
“Oh come on, he’s not talking about me!” sighed Lawwell.  “There’s some other fucking maniac in my house – my house!  And I’m not standing for it.  And what the fuck was Jack Irvine doing on my bed?”  But before anyone could answer him the lights went out again and someone screamed like a girl.  “Sorry,” I said.

Then from behind us came the sound of a zippo lighter sparking up and we turned to see someone lighting a cigarette.  The lighter illuminated a face as it looked up and blew smoke in Stewart Regan’s eyes and I knew immediately who it was and just how at home he was in a charnel house such as this.

“My name’s Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter” said Jorg Albertz, Demon Hunter.  “And you geezers have a bad dose of the possessions; this place is haunted, Lawwell.  There’s a ghost in your house.”