Deathcult Armageddon

Here is another guest posting, this time, it's from lauren and again it's about Brodsworth and the supposed Crimes Against Humanity that went on there last year. Sit back, relax, pull up a biscuit and enjoy....

Deathcult Armageddon

If you’re interested in stories with happy endings, you’d be better off reading some other blog. In this blog, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and hardly any happy things in the middle. This is because not many happy things happen in the presence of Alex Sotheran, (a.k.a. Herr Sotheran, or “Führer und Reichskanzler”)

The sorry story I am about to impart concerns Herr Sotherans dealings with the once breathtaking student archaeological excavation at Brodsworth. I myself am partly to blame for this, which is the reason why I now write – to warn future students from dealings with this madman, nay, monster. Two years ago it came to pass that myself, a naive young archaeologist with a yearning to please, had the foolishness to introduce Herr Sotheran to Brodsworth's evil ruler Overlord Merrony. After a brief dalliance and several sacrificial offerings, it was decided that Herr Sotheran was to take charge of excavation the following year.

The full impact of this brief liaison between Sotheran and Merrony two years ago is unknown, but it should be noted that one student, one Adam McWhan, was never seen or heard of again. Rumours persist that somehow he escaped their evil clutches, changing his name and fleeing to Holland. These stories however may simply serve as a device for saddened friends and relatives to come to terms with his sudden disappearance.

What really happened to Adam McWhan

What happened the following year was unforeseen by all. The once beautiful grounds of Hickleton Hall had been transformed. Grey and desolate was the landscape, the hulking shell that was the camp kitchen the only building left fully standing. The Hall itself was ruined and aflame, the charred corpses of its former residents littering the ground. As the students stood aghast at the scene before them, Herr Sotheran appeared. “Welcome to your new home, my pretties” he sneered. “Meet my loyal servants, Von Redface, Donkey Kong and Sykes. They will help you...settle in”. The horrified students were sent to set up their tents in silence under the watchful eyes of Herr Sotheran and his servants, any protests being met with beatings unlike any ever seen by the eyes of man.

The grounds of Hickleton Hall after Herr Sotherans “alterations”. You don’t want to know what A, B, and C are...

I realised the full consequences of my imprudent actions over the coming days. At 5am every morning we awoke to the sound of Her Sotheran thrashing the engine of his car (which he had stolen from a passing old deaf man) and playing SS marching tunes at an ungodly volume. If any person was not up and out of their tents withing 5 minutes of this event, Herr Sotheran would run them down, driving his vehicle like a madman. Tents and bones were crushed in the furore, mud, blood and gore splattering Herr Sotheran's face as he laughed at the injustice of it all while Sykes, Donkey Kong and Von Redface looked on in cold indifference.

Artists impression of Hickleton campsite, 5.05am

Students caught committing anything deemed a “crime” were singled out and publicly humiliated. Such crimes included not laughing at Herr Sotheran's childish jokes, not liking Burzum and being a fan of historically inaccurate Hollywood films. One girl, the poor unfortunate Kate Brown, was ritually beaten with wet bamboo in front of the others, before being forced into a half finished test pit and covered with tarpaulin. It was only when she crawled inside that she realised the scale of her punishment – the hole was already filled to the brim with dead clowns. Dead clowns with no trousers. “That’ll teach you for denouncing the Chosen One” laughed Herr Sotheran, his eyes burning with lust for revenge on the girl. “Hvis Lyset Tar Oss is fucking brilliant. You will learn to love it too”.

One of the inhabitants of Kate’s test pit

While I cannot possibly recount the total number of atrocities committed by or in the name of this monster, I feel it necessary to list some of their names and fates. Their friends and families were lied to incessantly about their dearests whereabouts, and I feel it is my responsibility to impart the truth, as gruesome and shocking as it is.

Ben Wheatley – Herr Sotheran's sex slave. Required to refill his arsehole with crushed limestone every morning so Herr Sotheran can “feel natural”.

Kyle Leaper – hypnotised by Overlord Merrony to serve Herr Sotheran. Mind control is exercised through the forced wearing of a leather waistcoat.

Angela Walker – in hiding. One of the few who got away. Discovered that Herr Sotheran had designs on her as the mother of his “master race”, to be conceived though the medium of a pair of beige pyjamas and a teatowel soaked in his seed.

Alex Bratby – drowned in a portaloo.

Sam Stein – still working at Brodsworth, only because her feet were nailed to the floor. Frequently passes in and out of consciousness. Locals, scared of freeing her and incurring the Wrath of Sotheran, now visit and treat her as a prophet of the future.

Chris Nolan-Rennie – bound in chains of adamantium and backfilled into one of the churchyard trenches.

Owen Watts – choked on his own hair.

Caroline Esberger – danced to death in shoes made of heated iron, to the tune of “Dance Yourself Dizzy”.

D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dizzy!
D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dizzy!
Tonight they're turning on the heat
Tonight you're in for such a treat
Tonight, put on your dancin' feet
And dance, dance, dance

Mario and Luigi (real names unknown) - painted red and green respectively, beaten, and forced to eat pizza whilst jumping over barrels until death by exhaustion.

RIP

Adam Doore – dissected alive as Herr Sotheran tried to discover the source of his luxuriant beard.

Ryan Wilson – crucified on top of “Pimpin’ Jesus”

Daniel Goldswain, a. k. a. “Sex Machine” – literally turned into a sex machine.

It is here that this sorry tale must end. I know no words of comfort that may aid individuals affected directly or indirectly by these crimes. The Brodsworth Deathcult continues, with no end of Herr Sotheran and Overlord Merrony's tyrannical reign in sight. All I can hope is that this message is received and serves to discourage unfortunate students from signing up willingly to serve this torturous machine. Unless the only other option is going to join the Stonehenge Chain Gang.

The Oubliettes of Brodsworth

Here I present the second in a very occasional series of guest blogs, this one comes from the computer of David Menear of Hull University (if you can really call it a University...). So sit back, tighten your belts, relax and enjoy...

The Oubliettes of Brodsworth

Yes I was a survivor of Brodsworth 2008, one of only a handful to escape the gruelling punishment that Alex, or Grupenfuhrer Alex as he liked to be known, would mete out over the three weeks Hull University were there. I remember the first day clearly as yesterday....
The rusting minibus trundled out to the site where we would get our first archaeological experience digging trenches in a medieval graveyard, mindless nervous chatter to cover the empty silences, to banish the thoughts of the tales we had heard of Herr Alex. The first sight of the bespectacled beast brought each member of the team quickly to attention.

Grupenfuhrer Alex looking for victims for his cult

‘You will only speak in zee German accent’ he growled at us, blithely pushing aside his revolver and WW1 airplane book. His near balding head catching the sun, his eyes tilted menacingly at the group and selected a random member, Ben- now lost to history/Brodsworth. ‘You will be zee bum boy, imitating ze great teacher, me!’. We had heard of Alex cherry picking people out of groups and humiliating them by making them dress up in Ninja outfits and making them goose walk for his pleasure. We could never expect Ben to be the same way ever again.
Lining each person up against the church side, he drove his car close to the line of students and proceeded to play a 30 minute rendition of Burzum and ‘Ninja metal’ on a tape player. He said he was going to break Iceland with his music, become a megastar and get a model girlfriend. Inside, we all laughed at the handlebar moustached man in front of us, but we did not dare show it outwardly. After showing us last year’s workers and what had become of them, he wanted us to dig a trench section by the end of the day or else face the wrath of ‘Ninja Metal’.

Previous volunteers

After a hard days graft, with Alex disappearing every 20 minutes to the tea room nearby (whilst he made us work throughout our dinner break), he said we had finished for the day. Little did we know that this did not include Ben. The last we saw of him was Alex leading him to his menacing Citroen car, parked right in the woods.
Back at the base camp Alex prowled around the main utility building, daring anyone to verse him at Monopoly or any other assorted board game. Watching the man, nay beast, play at such a game you could not help wonder what exactly went wrong in his life. How could a man, aged 30 +, take such great cackling desire out of beating poor students, why did he revel in it so much that he dressed the losers up?

Alex’s deluded jokes and one of his many victims

Throughout the whole stay, every night we often heard a wolf how along with the shouting of ‘Ninja is for life’ at midnight. Each morning another volunteer had ‘disappeared’, their tent ripped to shreds by either claws or ninja knives. Each morning we looked into our lecturer’s eyes, the other trench supervisors and outside volunteers for help but each looked away, as though there something we were not meant to speak about. It was like something out of Darkplace, just something we had to accept and not mention.
I could see the tension that Grupenfuhrer Alex was having on the place; I could see it on the ashen faces of Helen and Colin. The biggest effect was on Angela, one day after breakfast she just snapped. Throwing aside the worn monopoly board, running out into the grounds she screamed and ran head first into the minibus. This was the effect that Alex: Titan of Terror, the Queen of Queer, was having. Surely I thought, as I finished my toast then looked at Angela’s caved in head, it could not last.

The Chainsaw was out of sight

The penultimate day. I had rang home begging for a lift back on the morrows eve. Having managed to avoid Herr Alex by cleaning artefacts and bones (I hesitate to wonders whose), I gamely limped back (Alex had also taken one of my crutches as a cruel joke) to the cabin. Feeling a sudden heavy clawed paw on my shoulder I knew it was he. “Are ze coming for food and drank Frau David?” I literally could not resist, not least because he threatened to beat me and MY mother up. The hairy bastard.

We eloped from the base and made our way to the local club, a place where they were as mad as to serve Sunday Lunch on a Thursday, it makes me sick too dear reader. We sat opposite each other and ate, his little red face gulping each piece of meat that his claws threw up to his face, his spectacles rattling with the joy of eating the bloody steak. I tried to engage him in music, something I knew he had a passion, but it was no good. He kept waffling on about Bajrs this and Bajrs that. I think he may have recently eaten some. I kept picking at the steak I had chosen, something was not quite right about it, something was off. Admittedly it might have been the colour of the steak or the tuft of hair on the side of the plate. But I could not refuse not eating it, especially since I had known Alex never takes anyone to dinner.
As the last morsel of food popped into my mouth a mad cackle from Herr Alex emanated forth, he tugged at his moustache, pulled his trousers down and made obscene gestures. I could make neither hide nor tail of what he was saying but one word was getting through...“gegessener Freund Ben!!”. Jesus. This is what Alex wanted, this is how he lived his life. The last I saw of Herr Alex he was running full pelt towards the nearby woods screaming as he went. I had to stay behind and vomit my best buddy back up.

His favourite food, steak, human steak (preferably rare)

It is with an ashen face that I find myself contemplating returning to Brodsworth this Summer, I know the horrors ahead and I still see the devastation around me every day when I’m in lectures with less and less students in the seats. I have to face Grupenfuhrer Alex once again.

Genesis of Terror

My call for guest blogs has been finally answered. Daniel Salter, former owner of the Pylon Cafe, more recently of Salter's Travelling Pigeon Loft and finally lodger at Treeton Towers has penned the following tale.

GENESIS OF TERROR

November 23rd, 1990

The stench of woodbines and cheap coffee hit me full in the face as I first approached the front door, and nearly knocked me off my feet into a nearby dustbin overflowing with dead leaves and despair.
Having parked my Sinclair C5 round the corner, and checked my map for exact directions, I had eventually stumbled upon the Sotheran residence with very little difficulty, though a passing old lady had spat maliciously in my face as I swung open the gate, for reasons lost in the gloomy darkness and the fierce wind.
I shut the gate behind me, turned up my collar, and pressed on down the rocky path.
The agency had warned me that I would be out of my depth here but I was too young and reckless to heed their advice. One day, they had said, I would learn. One day.
I pressed the doorbell, stood back, and shivered in the relentless biting cold.
The sound of the first latch being drawn back startled me, and I stepped back further, narrowly avoiding a small mountain of cat shit. I was edgy tonight. I quickly pulled out my hip flask, took a reassuring gulp of White Lightning, and waited for the final latch to be drawn back.

The door slowly edged open, with a piercing howling creak that seemed to rise from the bowels of hell itself. The figure that now stood before me, enveloped in darkness, was an elderly gentleman with a heavily lined, craggy face and a bushy white beard. A streak of pale moonlight illuminated bits of twig and bark protruding from the beard. He observed me with disdain, and sent another icy shiver down my spine. “Yes?” he boomed.
I cleared my throat, and tried desperately to drum up some confidence in my voice. “Mr Sotheran?” I enquired. “I’m from the agency. I’m here about your son, Alexander. You made an appointment last Thursday.”
The tall tree-like figure stared gravely down at me but said nothing. Eventually, he reluctantly beckoned me in, and led me into a dark damp kitchen, lit only by a candle on an ancient wooden dining table. I placed my briefcase on the table, and reached into my inside coat pocket for my business card.
“My name is Daniel Lee Salter,” I said, offering the card to Mr Sotheran. “I’m your appointed representative from the Lifestyle Agency. If you will allow me, Mr Sotheran, it is my intention to become Alexander’s Lifestyle Doctor and move this unfortunate situation forward until we have reached a satisfactory conclusion that all parties are happy with.”
Mr Sotheran grunted non-commitedly, and ignored my offered card, which I placed back inside my coat. There was an awkward silence. The air was becoming thick with heavy gloom, and I began to wonder if I should just make my excuses and leave.
Suddenly, he clicked his bark-like fingers, and a monkey butler, dressed in a dashing red waistcoat, emerged from the shadows. “Take this gentleman to the Lower Basement, he’s come to sort our Alexander out,” said Mr Sotheran. The Monkey Butler nodded obediently, and Mr Sotheran turned away to face the kitchen window. He picked up a box of matches, lit a giant pipe, and stared vacantly at the view. It was clear our conversation was over.


I picked up my briefcase, and followed the Monkey Butler down an endless winding corridor, leading deeper and deeper into the bowels of the house. Eventually, the monkey came to rest at a large pink door. He rapped at the door three times and scuttled off back into the gloom, leaving me alone with my ever-increasing sense of regret and misfortune.
The stifling silence continued to hang over me like a black rain cloud. There was no movement, no sign of life. I took another swig from my hip flask, and opened the door.
A single naked light bulb illuminated a small, untidy bedroom. A giant poster of Cliff Richard had been amateurishly stuck to the dank walls with blu-tac, whilst a row of wonky bookshelves displayed an extensive collection of large oversized tatty paperback books, every single one of which seemed to be about the Eurovision Song Contest.
In a dark corner of the room, a spotty youth with a mop of curly hair was sat on a swivel-chair, staring intently at a green monitor, and occasionally pushing at a joystick that he was cradling in his sweaty hands.
“Alexander?” I asked, tentatively. There was no answer. The only sound in the room was the monotonous drone of what sounded like an aeroplane which seemed to be coming from the monitor.
“Alexander?” I asked again. This time, I moved much closer into the room and found myself in-between the piercing eyes of the youth, and the monitor on which he was so engaged. The effect of this interruption was electric.
“Gaaaargh!!” he screamed, throwing the joystick down on the floor in rage. “You’ve ruined it, you idiot! You bloody bloody shitting idiot! I was going to get the highest score ever and you’ve ruined it!”
He leapt up from the chair and threw himself onto a small bed with a Thundercats quilt cover and matching pillow cases. The only noises in the room were Alexander’s wailing sobs and the continuing drone from the Amstrad Flight Simulator.
I took the liberty of switching off the Amstrad, and sat in the vacated swivel-chair. “Alexander,” I said, gently. “My name is Danny, and I’m your new Lifestyle Doctor. Your father asked me to come and visit you, so that we can work on some exciting new lifestyle changes together, to make you more interesting. That sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”
Eventually, the sobbing subsided, and Alexander sat up sulkily on the bed, clutching a tiny plastic figure of He-Man for comfort. “Well…as long as it doesn’t take too long,” he mumbled. “The Crystal Maze is on in a bit.”
“Our first appointment will only take a couple of minutes,” I assured him. “We can just get some of the basics out of the way to begin with. In fact, let’s start with your name. Do you like Alexander?”
“Yes!” he barked without hesitation. “I’m named after Alexander the Great. He was great, and I’m great too, ask anybody. Ask anybody about how great I am and they’ll tell you.”
“Hmmm. Well, it’s a bit of a long name isn’t it? Why don’t we try shortening it to something more fun and snappy? How about we just call you Alex from now on, would you like that?”
The youth simply shrugged, which I was happy to embrace as an acceptance of sorts, so I pressed on further. “Now then Alex, your father told us over the phone that you want to be a Hairdresser when you leave school, is that right?”
“Yes,” he replied, still fidgeting with He-Man. “I’m good at hair.”
“Hmmm, it’s a bit gay though isn’t, Alex? Isn’t there something else you’d rather do?” I glanced around the room for inspiration, and my eyes came to rest on an Indiana Jones comic which had been thrown on the floor. “Indiana Jones, now he had an interesting job. He was an Archaeologist, wasn’t he? Wouldn’t you like to do something exciting like that?”
Alex simply shrugged again. “Don’t know,” he said.
“Good, good, I’ll enroll you in a course first thing tomorrow morning. Don’t you feel better already? Now then, What kind of music do you like, Alex?”
At this point, the youth’s eyes flashed with excitement. “Cliff!” he bellowed excitedly, gazing adoringly at the large poster. “Cliff Richard! He’s my hero. I’ve got every cassette he ever made.”
His eyes suddenly narrowed. “It was an outrage when he didn’t win the Eurovision back in 1968. His song was miles better than that Spanish crap, everybody knew that. If I had a Time Machine, I would travel back to 1968 and kill all the other contestants to make sure that Cliff took his rightful place as Eurovision King, and saviour of the people.”

“Hmmm. Well to be honest, Alex, I don’t think your father approves of this infatuation with a wimpy Christian virgin. Why don’t we try something a bit heavier?”
I flipped open my briefcase and pulled out a handful of cassettes. “Here’s a new exciting band called Monster Magnet,” I explaining, tossing him a tape. “Put it on, you might grow to like it. And when you’ve finished with that, we can move onto a bit of Norwegian Black Metal, that’ll make you much more interesting, don’t you agree?”
Alex took out a Cliff Richard tape from his dirty black Amstrad hi-fi unit, threw it on the floor, and clumsily inserted the new Monster Magnet tape.
As the first chimes of “Death Bastard Baby Strangling Window Licker” came blaring out of the cheap tinny speakers, I moved onto the subject of image.
“Right then, Alex. Finally, I want to talk about your clothes and your hair. Your pink dungarees and knitted jumper are very fetching, but I think there’s a more stylish and innovative look that we might be able to go for.”
I pulled out a collection of black tops and black trousers and black socks from my briefcase. “Why don’t we go for the nothing-but-black look?” I suggested. “I think that might suit you. Hey, and what about this?” I pulled out a long black wig. “Try this on whilst you’re at it – it’ll do until you’re able to grow your own hair long. That curly mop of yours is so 1973, I’m giving you the future here, Alex.”
Whilst Alex went to hide in the cupboard to change into his new clothes and wig, I briefly turned the Amstrad back on and played his rubbish Flight Simulator for five minutes, easily thrashing his puny high-scores without even trying.
Eventually, Alex emerged from the cupboard and admired himself in the opposite wall-length mirror. It was certainly a striking transformation.
Conscious of the time, and knowing that I had parked the Sinclair C5 on double yellow lines, I brought our first appointment to a close. “I’ll call again next week Alex,” I said, cheerily. “And we’ll work on this some more.”
Alex said nothing but continued to stare into the mirror.
Sensing that I wasn’t going to get a proper goodbye, I packed up my briefcase and made for the door. Something made me turn back and look at my client one last time before I departed. Something felt wrong.
As the thundering noise of Monster Magnet continued to pollute the air, Alex was still staring into the mirror. But his expression had changed. His eyes betrayed a new sense of purpose. A small, almost mocking smile began to form on his lips. “So,” he said slowly, seemingly addressing himself in the mirror. “It begins.”
A sudden chill swept into the room, and an unfathomable twinge of anxiety in my heart. I hurried out of the room, back up the winding corridor, and into the dark, cold kitchen, where Mr Sotheran was still staring out of the window, puffing on his pipe.
He turned to face me, and for the first time, I saw the horror in his tree-like eyes. “My God,” he breathed. “What have you done? In the name of all that is holy, I ask you, what have you done?”
I fled the house, and jumped into the Sinclair C5, never looking back for a second. I knew then that I would never return to this place.
There was a new menacing chill in the air that night, and it clutched at my heart with it’s fierce, icy grasp.
I sped off into the night, as fast as my crap vehicle would carry me, and considered a career change.