Sebastian Gloom

The First Visitor

     “Dear God!” exclaimed Benson. “You told me you'd destroyed this!”

     The manservant had finished his duties in the kitchen. He'd been helping the cook and her assistant clean the pots and cutlery from the household's morning breakfast, a breakfast they shared with their employer. It was a habit that Sebastian Gloom knew was frowned upon by the upper classes but which he insisted upon nonetheless, rejecting vehemently the notion that the company of any person, no matter how low their social station, was beneath him. Also, those whose company society maintained would be more fitting for him tended to avoid him because of his various physical ailments.

     Gloom needed human companionship as much as any other man, though, and so by necessity chose the company of those who did not have the option of avoiding him. The staff seemed to enjoy his company, though, even though they tended to be tense and apprehensive as they sat around the large, oaken table. They were still afraid that he might be as offended as any other member of the gentry by a careless word, even though several years of his company ought to have disabused them of this notion.

     Benson had then spent an hour in the basement laboratory cleaning up and organising the tools and equipment with which his master occasionally liked to amuse himself. He had acquired the corpse of a werewolf just a few days beforehand, shot dead by members of the Church's monster hunting squad, and Gloom had spent the previous afternoon dissecting it.

     Now, though, his duties accomplished for the time being, he had returned to his master to see if there was anything else he required of him for the moment. If not, Benson was looking forward to spending an hour or two with friends and colleagues in the Manchester Volunteers; a group of stout fellows who patrolled the streets at night on the hunt for ravishers and muggers with the grudging acquiescence of the local police. Gloom occasionally had need of their assistance on some of his more physically demanding cases and so it was important to remain on friendly and familiar terms with them, and Benson enjoyed their company anyway.

     Sebastian Gloom was in his study, sitting in his wheelchair in front of the huge oaken table upon which lay a collection of old books that he was studying by the light of an electric candle. He smiled at the look of shocked betrayal on the face of his manservant. “You worry too much, my friend,” he chided with his whisperingly soft voice. There were dark rings under his eyes, though, and a slight tremble in his hands where he gripped his favourite ivory fountain pen, so wrong for someone still in their early thirties. "It's not the church that'll finish me off."

     Benson scowled at the sight of three pages of hand written notes beside him. Clearly his master had been working for some time. "No, you'll finish yourself off," he said. "You'll exhaust yourself to death." He picked up the sheath of papers Gloom had been studying and cast his eyes across them for a moment before dropping them again as if they were fouled with some vile putresdence. "But this doesn't help."

     “The gospel of Judas,” agreed Sebastian Gloom. “A controversial character, it is true, but think how different history would have been without him. I believe he was telling the truth, that he was indeed acting on the express instructions of Christ. The other apostles knew nothing of this, of course. Their reactions to the betrayal had to be genuine or the Romans would not have believed them.”

     “The church will kill you if they find out you've got this. They have people who ‘take care' of those they don't like. The idea that God manipulated mankind, emotional blackmail. My son died for you. Now you owe me. They would find the very suggestion hateful.”

     “Christ knew he would be resurrected in three days. He told Judas, that was the only reason he agreed to the plan. Christ didn't give his life, he gave his weekend, and all so that he could make people feel guilty enough to follow him.”