Darkplace: Mogrophobia

I just had to do it. I'll probably be sued, but if that happens, the judge might well just throw the case out for being too ridiculous. To cover myself as best I can, I'd better start out by announcing that I don't own Darkplace and am making no money from imagining what would happen if Garth Marenghi persuaded MI8, the powers that be, Dean Learner, Todd Rivers, and at least three demons to approve the production of

Darkplace: Mogrophobia*

Photo from garthmarenghi.com gallery
with alterations by me.

In 1976, shortly after I'd invented the internet with my novel, Mindgrid, I met with my publisher and best friend Dean Learner to discuss the ground-breaking new horror idea that had come to me shortly after drinking a cup of Ovaltine prior to retiring for the night. Which I need because my mind is such a fetid quagmire of terrifying visions that I need a milky drink to settle myself before I go to bed. And yes, there are nights when I sleep with the light on just in case some demon from another dimension puts in an appearance, like the one in my novel Creeptor: Hidden From The Light, the story of a demon that's afraid of bedside lamps and terrorizes West Ham until footballer and psychic warrior Max Pele defeats it with... well, that would be telling, then you wouldn't buy the book, and I'd be doing myself out of royalties.

Anyway, Dean and I agreed that this idea was so  brain-bendingly insane that Channel 4 would crap their pants at the mere thought of committing such a dark vision of Hell-spawned horror to television. Nonetheless, Dean insisted that something be done to  bring my story to the screen, so I borrowed my sister's video camera, made this myself and posted it on YouTube.

In the middle of the night shift, something stirs in the dark basement of Darkplace hospital, where Barry Renwick, who looks exactly like his brother Larry (because they are identical twins -- well, they were. Long story.) is furtively going through some records by torchlight.

"There's got to be some record here of what happened to my twin brother Larry," says Barry to himself. He is startled by the loud bang of a shotgun from behind him. A pile of records disintegrates near his head, but he is unharmed. He turns around to see hospital administrator Thornton Reed, who is pointing the shotgun at him in a threatening manner.

Reed: "What are you doing here in the secret records room? These records are top secret, which means that you can't just walk in here willy-nilly in the middle of the night and go rifling through them."

Barry picks up the torch he has dropped and steps towards Reed, who then aims directly at him. "Don't shoot!"

"Why not? You're Larry Renwick, aren't you? You're supposed to be dead, but not even shooting and flamethrowers can end your existence."

"No, I'm his twin brother Barry. I was told he had exploded. Then you and your colleagues shot him at the funeral and Dagless doused him in napalm, but I never got a satisfactory explanation for it."

"How do I know you're not a conduit to the deepest pits of Hell?"

"I can wear a cross without being burnt by it."

"Prove it," says Dagless, popping out from behind Reed, brandishing a crucifix. "This one has been triple-blessed by the Pope for extra added holiness."

"Not one of the Borgias, I hope," says Renwick. "They were responsible for a lot of murders and wars."

"You know your Popes," says Dagless, impressed.

"I should hope so, I'm a priest," says Barry. He takes the crucifix in his hand.

"You're not burned," says Dagless.

"I'm not Larry," says Barry. "Why are you so convinced that I was him?"

"It's a long story," says Reed. "Come to my office and I'll tell you all about it."

In Reed's office, the three men are seated and Rick Dagless explains what happened. "Your brother was intent on opening the gates of Hell, Barry. I pleaded with him not to, but he did it anyway, right in the canteen. I was just getting back from the kitchen with a coke float when I saw that he'd gone utterly insane and there was evil all over the floor and on one of the walls. A few weeks later, I was just going to check on him when he suddenly exploded. All that remained of my buddy was his head. Everything else was spattered all over the room. At that point he begged me to take his life. So I got a shovel and bashed his head in. Later on, at the funeral, he came back to life and we shot him. Even with all that lead in him, he kept on coming. That's when I went for the flamethrower and finished him off."

"You shot my mother," accuses Barry.

"She tried to stop me, to save her son," says Dagless, "so I capped her in the shoulder. I told her I was sorry. Why weren't you at the funeral?"

"I was in Papua New Guinea as a missionary. I'm one of six who have never been eaten by cannibals."

"That's impressive," says Reed. "Why aren't you wearing your vestments?"

"I'm off-duty."

The following day, Sanchez and Liz are called to the top secret records room. On the floor are the remains of a worker.

"What did you call us down here for?" asks Sanchez. "This man is dead. Look, there's only an ear and one of his arms."

Liz bends down to take a closer look and touches the arm. Then she looks up and screams.

"What is it, Liz?"

"I've had a vision," she explains. "There was something here. Something evil. It ate this poor man."

"This can only mean one thing: trouble," says Sanchez.

"Did someone call me?" asks Dagless.

They turn around and see Dagless, who surveys the scene, then draws their attention to some marks on the floor.

"Look," says Dagless, "there are marks on the floor. They look like the pawprints of a giant animal."

"The Hellbeast was here," says Liz, then faints into Sanchez's arms.

Later on, Barry Renwick returns with Reed to look at the room. Liz looks at him askance, but says nothing. "I'll bless the room," he offers, "to make it safe for the cleaners to return."

"I'll fill up a bottle of water for you to bless," says Reed. "Is a Coke bottle all right?"

"It'll do," says Barry. "I'll need some candles, some chalk, and a bit of privacy. I can't do it when everyone is watching."

Confused, the others get him the things he has asked for and leave him to get on with it.

"I'm suspicious of his motives," says Liz. "I'm convinced he's up to no good."

"Yeah," says Sanchez. "What kind of priest doesn't want an audience?"

"He says he's a missionary," says Reed. "They're attention-seekers."

Dean Learner: That scene meant a lot to Garth. He spent weeks with what's-his-name...

Off-screen: "Lawrence Michelowski."

Dean: Some Polish bloke, working on the nuances of his performance. Garth is a perfectionsist, if nothing else. Well, he's an actor, writer and a lot of other things, but you know what I mean. He had a nervous breakdown afterwards. Not Garth, the Polish bloke.

"Let's confront him," says Dagless. "Bring your shotgun, boss, this could get ugly, and I don't mean me first thing in the morning."

"That would be funny if this wasn't so serious," replies Reed. "Which it is because evil is involved."

Suddenly there's a loud scream. The four of them return to the secret records room to find the remains of another dead body lying on the floor.

"Renwick," says Sanchez, hunkering down beside what's left of the body. "He was a bit shy about performing in front of us, after all."

"Then why is there a Pentagram drawn on the floor, along with other occult symbols?" asks Dagless.

"I can feel evil closing in around us," says Liz.

Suddenly, a doctor races in. "Come quick," he says, "there's something in the canteen."

They run to the canteen and find more bodies there.

"These people have died in horrific circumstances," says Reed. "Won Ton will have my hide for this. The press will be all over it."

"And there's nothing the press like better than an occult scandal in a hospital," says Sanchez. 

"Unless there's a kiddy-fiddler in the mix," says Reed.

"The children's ward!" wails Liz.

They all run to the children's ward where some vile Hellbeast has evidently gone amok. Liz puts a hand to her temple and says, "There's something in that cupboard."

"Cover me, Sanchez," says Dagless, and bravely approaches the cupboard with his gun drawn. He opens it, and there he finds a cowering child. 

"I told them there was a monster under the bed," says the child, who is crying.

"Don't be afraid, son," says Dagless. "We'll get it for you."

"'Cause we've got guns," adds Sanchez. "And bullets."

"And lots of them," finishes Reed. "Come on."

"Where to?" asks Dagless.

"The secret records room," says Reed. "I've got a hunch."

Garth Marenghi: Even though the others had no idea where I was going with the plot, they trusted me completely. They knew that, whatever foul pestilence my tortured mind dredged up from its depths, I would protect them. They would be safe. 

Except for Madeleine Wool, but that's another story. I still don't know what happened to her. It wasn't during this episode, though.

The team return to the secret records room where they behold the terrifying sight of a huge Hellbeast feasting on the remains of a cleaner. A broken mop lies on the floor nearby.

"Look!" shouts Sanchez. "It's a Hellbeast that looks like a giant zombie cat!"

"Attack!" shouts Barry.

The team open fire with an assortment of weapons but the Hellbeast keeps coming. Dagless, out of bullets, pulls out a sword and hacks at the beast. Finally, he reaches into his shirt and pulls out the crucifix, which he throws right into the Hellbeast's gaping maw. It explodes.

"I should have killed you while I had the chance," snarls Reed.

"Why didn't you?" asks Barry, who is pinned against the back wall with Reed's shotgun against his throat.

"Because this is a hospital and the authorities frown upon that kind of thing," replies Reed. "Won Ton takes a particularly dim view of anything that might reflect badly on the hospital, particularly gun battles."

"Why did you do it?" asks Sanchez. "Those poor kids."

"That's why he did it," says Liz. "To discredit the hospital. To avenge his twin brother. Isn't it, Barry?"

"He was my buddy," says Dagless, in tears. "You've desecrated his memory."

"You shot him and set him on fire at his own funeral," retorts Barry.

"Yeah, but he was demon-possessed at the time," argues Reed.

"You shot my mother," shouts Barry.

"She was trying to stop me shooting your brother," says Dagless. "I had no choice."

"There's always a choice," says Barry.

"Yes, there is," says Dagless. "Like the choice you made to lie to us about being a priest so you could reopen the gates of Hell, and the choice you made to bring that Hellbeast here to eat doctors, patients and cleaning operatives."

"I thought they were called sanitation technicians," says Barry.

"Whatever," says Dagless.

"What was that thing?" asks Sanchez, picking through the remains of the Hellbeast. "It looked like a mutant zombie cat."

"It was," says Barry. "I ran over one on the way here and brought it back to life with a series of occult rituals, then let it loose to wreak havoc."

"Which it did," says Reed. "I'll never be able to keep this out of the press." There's a desperate gleam in his eye, and just when it looks as though he's going to shoot Barry, the police arrive.

"Stop!" shouts a policeman. "Put that gun down right now. Slowly."

Reluctantly, Reed complies.

"Hah!" says Barry. "Now I've got you. The reputation of Darkplace is ruined forever."

"Officer," says Liz in her sweetest voice, "this is an incident with occult overtones and the possibility of government involvement. Can you order a media blackout and have this classified as top secret?" She bats her eyelashes. "Please?"

"Oh, all right, then," says the policeman, "but just this once."

"No!" shouts Barry. 

The policemen drag him away.

Later on, Dagless stands on the roof of the hospital, a place he often goes to get away from the stresses of life as a doctor.

'I don't know what it was that drove Barry Renwick to madness, but it was clear to me then that whatever I did to keep a lid on the evil that infested the hospital, it would never be enough. There would always be a demon here or a zombie there, popping up to remind me of what a dick I'd been to go messing with the forces of evil that fateful night,' he muses in voiceover. 'I should have insisted on watching Match of the Day instead. It would have been safer. Much safer. But there was no point in crying over spilt milk, or in my case, a coke float.'

The End

Sources:

http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/garth_marenghis_darkplace/

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397150/

http://www.channel4.com/assets/programmes/images/garth-marenghis-darkplace/series-1/episode-1/witchy-woman-wittering/garth-marenghis-darkplace-s1e1-witchy-woman-wittering_200x113.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/show/garthmarenghisdarkplace

http://sporedtodeathtome.blogspot.com/2008/01/garth-marenghis-darkplace.html

* I mean, it's not like I'm selling Darkplace: Mogrophobia tshirts and mugs or anything.

Mogrophobia

I did say someone would have to make a movie about this, and it looks like it'll have to be me, except that I haven't got the requisite equipment and Hollywood is unlikely to be interested. Undeterred, I shall blog to bring you the masterpiece that is...

On a sunny day, a young woman drives through a leafy suburban street. A cat darts out in front of her but she is unable to stop. Sobbing, she approaches the twitching remains of the cat and calls the police to report the incident. Then she leaves.

A month or so later, an older woman is washing her car late in the afternoon. Startled by a sound and sickened by a noxious stench, she looks beneath her car to seek the source. She screams as she is dragged under, but by the time her neighbours arrive, she is nowhere to be seen. It doesn't occur to anyone to look down.

Plagued by nightmares about the cat she ran over, Cecilia Breakheart wakes up in a cold sweat just as the dawn chorus begins. She looks wildly around, then gets up to wash her face. A sense of foreboding hangs over her.

At breakfast, news of the mutilated body under the car is splashed all over the newspaper her husband is reading at the table. Baffled, he peers around it to tell Cecilia, "Apparently, it was an animal."

A few days after that, the news on television is full of tales of missing people who have turned up partially eaten. A special squad has been called in to investigate.

At a secret government headquarters, a team of top scientists, army personnel and government officials have convened to discuss the matter, convinced that a rogue virus-infected animal is loose. They're busily blaming each other. After a while, Lieutenant Steve Gamble (played by Daniel Craig) slams his manly hands on a table to get attention. "Gentlemen," he says, "whatever it is, it has to be stopped, and all we're doing is blaming each other. I've hunted man-eaters all over the world from the Serengeti to the Gobi desert. I'll sort it out."

Somehow the others agree to this and allow him to take charge of the matter. He is given everything he needs and sets up an incident room, working with the police to make a map of the killings to work out how to find the beast.

The activity appears to be centred in the area around Acacia Avenue, Blingchester. 

Cecilia is increasingly frightened and sees that other people are locking their doors and afraid to go out by themselves. She sees a neighbour pointing at her car, and overhears her saying, "The Beast of Blingchester has struck again. Look at the state of my car!"

On Newsnight later on, Jeremy Paxman is discussing the matter with some MPs and one of the scientists we saw earlier on. "You know what this is," he insists. "This is a government experiment gone wrong."

"No," argues the scientist. 

"The genetically modified animals you were working on have escaped and are attacking British people. How do you explain this?"

"But I wasn't working on cats!" the professor protests. 

"Aha!" crows Paxman. "So it's a cat!"

"We're not quite sure," stutters the scientist, apparently shaken. 

"You were just now," says Paxman. 

Discomfited, Cecilia raises the remote control and changes the channels.

"Hey!" shouts her husband Clive. "I was watching that!"

Cecilia gets up and leaves the room.

Outside, a police incident van and other vehicles approach Cecilia's house. Armed with an assortment of weapons, Steve and his men, dressed in black, exit the vans and begin to set up surveillance equipment. They split up into twos and start searching for signs of the beast. Occasionally, they radio base to report in.

 Busy with his work, Steve acknowledges the reports and checks his Blackberry, which has an App connecting it to the Operation Ailur database. All sensors are working well, and the infra-red video cameras that have been put up are already returning images. Nothing out of the ordinary can be seen. Bats fly about catching moths on one and a local cat stalks a mouse on another. As Steve begins to move back to the incident van, his nose wrinkles when the stench of rotting meat wafts towards him. He says to his partner, "Can you smell something? Like rotten meat?"

Suddenly, there's a bang, a hiss, and one of the squad cars begins to sink. Steve shouts for reinforcements and he and his partner split and go to take a closer look at the car from either side. There's nothing to see. Distracted by an incoming call reporting the finding of another body, Steve heads back to the incident van while his partner lingers. A scream makes him turn around just in time to see his partner being dragged under the car.

Steve calls for reinforcements and runs over to the car. He sees the top of his friend's head and bends down to take a closer look, shining his torch under the car. Twin reflections of pure evil greet him just beyond his friend's twitching body, which is dripping blood. Horrified, Steve backs away and is pursued by the beast. Just in time, reinforcements arrive and the beast flees.


In her bedroom, unaware of the events taking place nearby, Cecilia prepares for bed. Faint sounds of men shouting make her turn around, her mouth full of toothpaste. She spits it out, then is startled by the sight of a pair of glowing eyes just outside her window. Fascinated, she pauses and stares back.


The beast crashes in, now swollen and huge, the size of a bear.

Cecilia screams and her husband comes running.

Startled by the screams and the shouts of approaching men, the beast flees back into the night.

"Darling, are you all right?" asks her husband.

"I've... seen that thing before," she says, "but I don't know where. I just know I have."

"What is it?"

"I don't know."

Cecilia collapses crying into her husband's arms.



Outside, the team is chasing the beast. Steve raises his weapon to fire on it, and although he hits it, the beast shows no sign of being injured. They shoot it repeatedly, but it keeps on going and breaks through the line of men surrounding it. They chase the beast, which runs down the street to an abandoned old building. Inside are the bones of some of its victims. They follow the beast to its lair and it turns on them, hissing, spitting and lashing out. Shooting repeatedly doesn't deter it and it kills three of his men, forcing Steve to withdraw and consider his options.

A call from HQ results in a plan to send a tank in, and helicopters have already begun to hover overhead.  From the chamber where the beast lies, Steve can hear the sounds of it moving.


Suddenly, the beast breaks out, surging past the cordon to the source of the sound. The approaching helicopter shines a light down to pick out the shape of the beast in the dark. Unexpectedly, the beast begins to paw at the dot cast by the light, trying to catch it.

"It's chasing the light like a cat," calls one of Steve's men.

"Follow it," shouts Steve, then pushes the button on his walkie-talkie. "It's acting like a cat, chasing the light," he tells the chopper pilot. "Lead it to the industrial park. I've got an idea."


The beast chases the light, frolicking and trying to catch it, followed by the men who have stopped trying to shoot it.

"Is it ready?" asks Steve.

"Roger that," confirms the voice of a colleague.


The helicopter leads the beast on a merry chase through the streets of Blingchester, watched by bemused residents from the windows of their houses. Some of them point cameras at the scene and speak of putting it on YouTube.

Finally, they arrive at the destination and the beast follows the light inside. It halts for a moment, confused, when the light is no longer there. It looks up, and for a moment it resembles the house cat it once was.

Outside, Steve shouts an order and the men withdraw. The building explodes. Flames leap high into the sky and everyone is bathed in an orangey glow for a while.


The following day, scientists pick through the debris and begin to examine the beast's body.


"As I suspected," says the scientist who was on Newsnight, "it's a common house cat, but grown to an emormous size."

"What caused it to mutate like that?" asks Steve.

"I don't know," says the scientist, an eager expression on his face, "but I can't wait to find out."


Cue ominous music.

The End.

Or is it?

Memories

This is one of those things that are off the telly and shouldn't actually work in real life because it's that flippin' weird. I mean, seriously, it's controversial and has apparently been proved to be utter nonsense on many occasions. On that basis, it can't be actually real, right? Uh, no. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

Mogrophobia*

What cats look like to Caroline.

This friend of mine -- let's call her Caroline, came to my house one day, and to be polite, I offered her a cup of tea. My favourite mug, the one with the kitten, I kept for myself, but when she saw me approach with it, she said, "That's not for me, is it?"

"No," I replied, and gave her the one with the comedy dinosaur. "Why?"

"Try not to laugh," said Caroline, "but I'm terrified of cats."

"That's not quite as weird as the woman who is terrified of Daleks," I reassured her. "Do you know why?"

She couldn't tell me. The first significant memory she has of freaking out at the sight of a cat was when she was on holiday and felt. Something. Strange. She looked beneath her deck chair. A cat! She screamed and ran back to her hotel room. Seriously. The weirdest thing for her was that she had always liked kitties before. It's just that something she could not explain had made her fear them so much she couldn't bear to be in the same room as one.

The theory

Naturally I thought there was probably a rational explanation such as weather balloons or counter-currents to explain this but gentle probing revealed nothing. Caroline had no idea why she was absolutely crap-your-knickers terrified of cats. Apparently it's better these days: she can bear to sit three feet away from a mug with a picture of a sleeping kitten printed on it. That's when I suggested that a repressed memory might be the cause of a fear that she couldn't explain.

We discussed it a few times with no light being shed on the subject and the more she told me, the more I was convinced that she was repressing something -- based on stuff I half-remembered from television shows. One episode of Law and Order or CSI Something-or-other (one without that prat who takes his shades off dramatically. I think it was the one with Jerry Orbach. You know, the dad from Dirty Dancing. Him.) came to mind, to wit, the one where some girlie shot and killed her own father because some deranged counselor told her he'd abused her and other members of her family (although he had done no such thing) and she had repressed the memories because it was all so vile and puke-worthy. It reminded me to not put ideas into Caroline's head and insist I was right, but to let her find out by herself by looking over the past few years and coming to her own conclusions.

The twist in the tail tale

I thought nothing of it for a while, and a few times when she came to my house again I hardly mentioned it. Then one day she came to see me and was excited to tell me that she'd worked out why she was so scared of cats that if you gave her a mug with a cat printed on it, she'd get all queasy and refuse to drink from it. Naturally, I was curious and eager to hear her story.

Caroline told me she had told her family and friends that I'd said she was probably suppressing a memory and one of them sat her down to tell her why I was right.

It seems that, a few years ago when Caroline was driving along a street near where she lived, a cat ran out in front of her and she couldn't brake in time. A considerate and law-abiding person, she stopped and went to check on the animal. It was twitching in its death throes and there was nothing she could do. She called the police to report the incident and went on her way. Then she blocked it so completely that she never even thought of it again. When her nephew confirmed this, memories of that day floated back and now she has full technicolour recall of the incident.

Confounded, I could think of nothing to say for a while, then I confessed that I was guessing about the whole suppressed memory thing and didn't actually take it seriously.

"But why am I afraid of them?" she asked, evidently seeing me as a fountain of knowledge.

"Guilt, I suppose," I replied, as the fountain of lucky guesses and half-remembered snippets of television programmes. "I suppose you're half expecting the Vengeful Cat From Beyond The Grave to appear one night and claim your soul or something."

She didn't think that was funny but conceded that I had a point.

Deep down, I think it would be rather cool if a Giant Zombie Cat came back from the grave to avenge its bretheren. Someone has got to make a film about that. But don't tell Caroline.

* Aw come on, it sounds better than Ailurophobia, doesn't it? No? But it's easier to say!