The Body of the House

 

As Summer gave way to Autumn and the evenings gradually darkened, I would make my way
back to the flat after an evening in the pub, my head swimming a sea of alcoholic angst.

My thoughts,usually mundane musings about work, middle age and the like, had lately been replaced by a burgeoning obsession with the works of horror fiction writer, Adam Maxwell-Farquhar.I discovered a couple of dog-eared anthologies of Maxwell -Farquhar’s short stories in a charity shop and managed to read them both by the following evening.

 

 

I was absolutely staggered by this author’s imagination and power to convey total and utter fear - nothing at all like I had ever read before in my life.

I searched online for information about him, truly believing that I had unearthed a Scottish master of the macabre, an author so enshrouded in mystery that even the most astute anthologist had failed to include him in the multitude of “Dark Terrors / Dark Voices” style collections that grace the horror and fantasy shelves in high street shops.

What I found was somewhat vague and skeletal, I include a short extract for your information from a site specialising in the Macabre tradition: “Maxwell- Farquhar, whose work was influenced by the cosmic horrors of H.P.Lovecraft and the macabre gothic of Poe, was born in Aberdeen in the 1890s, and lived in the fishing community of Torry, Aberdeen in the early Part of the 20th century.

It was here he found his inspiration for such stories as “The Ghost of William Tawse, “a tale of a sea captain returned to haunt his remaining crew - inspired by his solitary childhood and his watching the trawlers entering the harbour through a miasma of fog.

“The Haunting of Lady Mhairi a tale of a lady laird haunted by ghosts was evidently inspired by an unrequited love of Maxwell - Farquhar.

He is said to have lived the life of an outsider, keeping himself to himself and turning out multitudes of stories in the macabre tradition.

Few photographs survive of him, and he is believed to have been the last in his family line.

His death is shrouded in mystery. According to “The Praise and Journal,” a local newspaper, a man answering his description was found frozen to death on the city’s Castlegate in the 1950s and was buried as “Adam Maxwell-Farquhar’.

I lay awake for many an hour thinking about his story ‘The Body of the House,’ in which a young man inherits a house from a distant relative, only to find that the house is a living thing- a living entity- with a heart.

Home is where the heart is, after all...

Like the protagonist of “The Body..., “I was somewhat isolated from the world outside. Life had passed me by, and I lay in bed listening to the vehicles passing by outside as I too thought up my gothic horror stories. My stories were always good at the time wrote them when I was drunk and they always seemed to be what I believed to be as good as Lovecraft, Poe or .M, R. James.

In the cold light of day however, they revealed themselves for what they were: drunken imaginings of a social outcast whose grip on reality was slipping.

One evening, worse for wear, I sat in the silent solitude of my garret room and listened to the peace, the quietude of the four walls and imagined that “The Body of the House,” was taking place within my own surroundings.

I heard a noise, an insistent tattoo, which I first took to be the sound of electronic dance-music pounding through the floorboards from the flat below. I swear I could feel the bass reverberate through the building  as I paced the floor. Owned by a girl of maybe half my age, it always had a party going on, these young people barely needed to sleep these days, perhaps it was the drugs or those high energy drinks they all take!

On closer listening, I discerned that it was more like the sound of a heartbeat, a pulse, emanating from the floorboards. I put my ear to the floor and listened attentively.

In addition to this, there was also a rasping, asthmatic breathing.

My imaginings were becoming reality -- was this what alcoholics suffered?

As the months passed, I became convinced that I was perhaps losing my mind. Each night at the same hour, I would hear the same sounds; the heartbeat becoming gradually faster, followed by the asthmatic wheeze. I noticed that a patch on the wall had become stained—a blood red colour, just a thin stripe, but nevertheless blood red. I wiped at it with my finger and licked it.

It was blood -- that sickening coppery taste, but coming from a wall in my flat? I had not cut myself recently, had I?

Had I?

HAD I?

The stained patch had become a huge blister, like an air pocket in the wallpaper, albeit an air pocket that was expanding by the minute - a swollen belly, ready to deliver.

I didn’t remember anything like this in the story, though.

Dumbfounded, I rose from the chair and staggered towards the bookcase. As I picked the ‘Lady Mhairi’ volume up, something fell from it, a slip of paper or something like that?

It was a photograph, which at first glance, appeared to be of me. Balding head, rimless spectacles, beard bearing traces of grey.

The photo visibly transformed in my hands, changing colour and morphing into a sepia washed image - the person was not someone of these times - this was Maxwell Farquhar himself-- the enigmatic writer -- my doppelganger?

These thoughts and many others raged in torrents inside my head, as the blister on the wall burst, sending spouts of thin blood splashing all over the place.

Sodden layers of wallpaper fell away to reveal the body of the house- fleshy and pulsating.

That rasping asthmatic wheezing, closer and closer, closer and. closer.

It was then that the “walls” began to close in on me as the pounding of the house’s heart became deafening and all else was blotted out.

 

(Manuscript of story found in flat occupied by lain Carvell)

 

Extract from the “Evening Empress” dated 6 August 2005

“A Court heard today about the bizarre incident which led to the death of lain Carvell, a 41-year-old Aberdeen man.

Gwen Friel, on behalf of the Crown, told the court that Mr Carvell, a loner and aspiring horror novelist had become obsessed with the noises inside his flat and had evidently written a highly original short story chronicling the events that took place and which led  to his  untimely death.

The alarm was raised when a neighbour, hearing loud cries from the flat above, had contacted the police. Mr Carvell who was believed to have problems with alcohol, was found dead, his corpse enveloped in layers of wallpaper, which on closer inspection resembled human skin.

In the detritus of the flat, several manuscripts including one entitled ‘The Body of The House”, described incidents which mirrored what had happened in that flat. Police at the scene commented on the noise, a heartbeat-pulse-drumming sound coming from the place as they entered it. A smell of sweat emanated from the walls that looked to be perspiring like human skin after exercise.

One of the officers also indicated that he had heard a wheezing sound “like someone gasping for breath”

There were gasps from the courtroom as photographs were shown to the court of Mr Carvell’s corpse and the remains of the room he died in.

The Sheriff, commented that ‘this was the most bizarre case he had dealt with in 40 years of shrieval practice’ and indicated that he would issue his findings at a later date.

 

Extract from ‘Fortian Times- The Journal of Strange Phenomena: 

 

In 2009 Britain’s oil capital, Aberdeen was shocked by the bizarre occurrence which was apparently documented in Iain Carvell’s unpublished horror tale,” The Body of the House”.

Seemingly the fiat was a living organism, with skin for walls and a heart which beat and kept its occupant awake night after night.

An alcoholic loner, he was prone to delusions, but had no documented mental health history.

The photographs shown at the Fatal Accident Enquiry displayed indeed what the fictional (?) tale mentioned. The walls were flesh and what Carvell was wrapped in appeared to be layers of skin. Maybe the photos had been tampered with by some computer expert, but the impression we at the ‘Times are left with is that this is one of the most bizarre cases we have seen in our time in circulation.

More information on Adam Maxwell- Farquhar/ Iain Carvell can be found on the ‘Macabre Aberdeen’ Podcast , my podcast of the weird and wonderful happenings in the ‘Granite City’.

© Callum McCallion 2023