Saturnz Barz

The house was clearly old. It was the sort of house some rich, colonialist toff would build as a summer home, a chunk of old Victorian England admist the quaint backdrop of sea breeze and coconut oil. Apparently there had been murders, occult rituals and other nasty things going on in here, which is why the place had been left to rot and gather cobwebs, heavy with rumours of strange noises and sightings. The fact that it was still standing was a miracle, not a testament to the quality of the building material or the workmen involved.

In short, it was pretty shit. But the Gorillaz and Stephen needed a place to stay, and there had been whispers of a basement perfect for recording music. Which, honestly, was all you needed as far as a band who hadn't made new music for six years was concerned.

It was the usual balmy, tropical Kuwahawi weather when the band pulled up outside - perfect for sunbathing, swimming or very alcoholic drinks. So when Murdoc rang the doorbell, expecting to meet whoever the landlord of this place was, the sudden crack of lightning followed by rain was a little odd. But then again, the gang all together had seen odder things in their lives, so nobody did much more than duck under the overhanding porch roof for protection, assuming this to be just a freak tropical storm.

"Loudest doorbell I ever heard," Murdoc observed, staring intently at the button.

The door opening by itself, however, was a new one. Nobody had quite expected that.

All five walked inside, greeted by the kind of Empire-era decor that does not age well and is popular with no-one except stuffy old men in pressed shirts. Everything had seen better days, from the floral pattern carpet on the floor to the broken-faced grandfather clock by the staircase. Old carboard boxes lay scattered around, covered in dust and eaten away by damp - whoever had lived here before had moved out in a hurry. A picture of some big-nosed old lady hung on the right-hand wall, although there was nothing to identify whom the artist capable of drawing such a plastic-looking face would be, nor whom the face belonged to.

"Looks like a fixer-upper," muttered 2D, stating the obvious thought.

Russel sniffed, taking in the reek of old wood, mold and damp plaster. "Welcoming."

"A little too welcoming, I'd say." Murdoc idly dragged his shoe on the carpet, cutting a swathe through the dust. "Would it kill them to vacuum?"

Noodle said nothing, peering intently around behind the sperical, red-and-blue lenses of her new glasses. Also silent was Stephen, who had his arms hunched around his torso as he tried not to focus on one detail too many. He'd been apprehensive since he'd first laid eyes on the house, and now he looked like a startled cat that was ready to bolt at any moment - preferably out of the door of this house and into the sea. A few months of living with the Gorillaz had desensitized him to some of the stranger things that surrounded them like a cloud of flies, but on this occasion it was almost as though he'd reverted back to nervous, stuttering Stephen Classic in his demeanour.

Nobody noticed

"We should split up," Russel said at last, "and take a look around." And without further remark, he turned and began ambling up the staircase, the old wood creaking dangerously under his weight.

"Great idea, Russ!" chimed Murdoc after him. "Always works out well in horror movies!" Chuckling to himself at his own stupid joke, he turned and headed another way, rubbing his hands like a kid on Christmas deciding what presents to open first. 2D headed the opposite way, not wanting anything to do with the bassist at this point, and both Noodle and Stephen headed for the basement

-------

As he paced down the dusty, cracked corridor, Murdoc reflected upon the nature of the house they had found.

It had been put up on Craigslist a while ago, and whilst you could usually never trust anyone who put anything up on that wretched website, the band had just been evicted from their place in London. In any case, it had been relatively cheap - he could see exactly why, now he was in it - and the record company had offered to cover any expense the band paid out of their own pockets. He never told the others where he'd gotten the money to purchase it, and frankly he wasn't going to, ever. But it was safe to assume that the El Mañana incident had been entirely worth it after all.

From what'd he'd been able to divine via drunken Google searches, the place had been built in 1808, at the time when the British Empire was starting to wake up to the idea that slavery was, in fact, a bad thing. The man who'd commissioned it apparently had been a real piece of work - he'd moved here in defiance of the abolition and tried to set up his own little prejudiced paradise here, on this island. In short, the kind of guy Murdoc reckoned he could have hung out with. And the fact he'd insisted on building it on what the natives considered hallowed ground was a bonus as well.

But then the facts started trailing away, to be replaced with... well, there were hushed stories about what the soldiers had found when they kicked the door down. The servants, all of Cherokee or Cree descent, gibbering half-formed insanity about the revenge they had tried to take, and the horror they had unleashed as a result. The scullery-maid, torn apart in the kitchen area as though some horrible beast had set about her. The mistress, strangled in the basement, though by what, none knew. The butler's corpse, mangled and with an eye missing, tumbled out of the closet in the master bedroom.

And that wasn't getting into what happened to the poor sod who owned the place. Rumour had it that he'd been trying to pretend that nothing was going wrong at all, that his stiff upper lip alone would keep him afloat in this tidal wave of inexpliable death. But the mistress popping her clogs was too much for the old bastard, and he'd seen something that had finally made him snap and lose all of his proud British constitution. No-one agreed as to how he'd died, but a common thread was that it had taken place in-

Murdoc paused.

Then he backed up a few steps and looked to his right.

It was a bathroom. It was the dirtiest one he'd ever seen - the mirror cracked, the tiles slick with mold and the paint almost all flaked off. But it was unmistakably a bathroom, as was proven by the single flickering bulb that shone a dim, depressed light around the room, thickening the banks of shadows that lay in every concievable corner. And right by the wall, with the shower curtain ripped away...

"The bath!"

It was, indeed, a bath. It looked as though someone had installed it in the 80's and forgot to add the 80's onto it, sticking out like a sore thumb admist the cracked, grimy tiles. And, for some reason, it was already full of hot water, the steam gently rising from the surface. Granted, it seemed oddly black and shiny, which is something water really should not be, and the question of how it even got there was a very pertinent one.

But Murdoc didn't care. He hadn't had a decent bath since Vegas.

"Hey, you guys!" he called down the corridor. "I'm just gonna take a bath!" He knew nobody would hear him anyway, but it would mean that he'd be afforded a little privacy as he threw off his clothing with the air of a man in the desert racing for an oasis. Who cared if the house belonged to the ghost of some rich, racist geezer with funny ideas about property - he wanted a bath, and he wanted it now, damn it.

At least, he reasoned, nothing could happen to him whilst he was in the bath.

-------

Press the button to begin...

------- 

The next thing Murdoc knew, he was flying through outer space, completely naked.

He was orbiting Saturn, the planet glowing a brilliant, fiery orange against the blackness of the cosmos. Surrounding him were the countless meteorites that formed the rings, each one carved from a different chunk of space rock that glittered and shimmered in it's own unique, psychedelic way. His flight was controlled through easy banks and swoops that felt almost natural, as if he'd cast of his ugly old body back at... back at... actually, did that matter? Why this was happening, and for what reason, seemed a very distant problem when he could just drift freely-

"Oof!"

Oh, yep, that was a meteor straight to the groin. So this wasn't a dream at all.

It was whilst he was still nursing his brusied gentleman's area that the Spirit House came into view, as old and dilapadated as ever. But what caught Murdoc's eye was the strange, multi-coloured glowing from within, which he knew at once to not be the work of the ill-fitted lightning of the home itself. Curious, and forgetting his pain for a moment, the free-floating bassist manouvered himself closer to have a look.

He watched as Russel, in the master bedroom, was hefted out of bed by a bulky, multi-armed spectre with one eye, who seemed very cross about something. In the kitchen, 2D choked on various still-full packets, pestered by a floating slice of pizza with pepperoni for eyes and a rip in the cheese for a mouth. Murdoc even saw Noodle, in the basement, struggling in the coils of a blue-skinned, one-eyed worm thing that seemed a little too into her, and wondered where Stephen was to try and stop that. Probably ran off screaming, the wimp. Eh, well, forget about him.

For some reason, he decided to straddle the house. That was easy enough, since for some reason he was now extremely tall and the topmost part of the building only came to his chest. Steering the house wasn't so much difficult, either - it was a lot like leaning on a bike, except you couldn't fall off, only go upside down. But the weirdness began (as if it already hadn't) when he suddenly found himself flying down a kaliedescopic tunnel of psychedelic Tron lines and swirling neubla-mist, dotted with vague impressions of strange galaxies too far away to reach.

There was a light at the end of the tunnel. Of course there was, it wouldn't be much of a hallucination if there wasn't one. But then, as he grew nearer to it, something suddenly came out of the light and barreled towards him - something huge and dark, like a shadow with a grudge, glaring with accusing hatred in it's mad yellow eyes that belonged to no sane creature. And as it reached for him, blood staining it's claws and the still-struggling, half-chewed corpse of Stephen in it's mouth, Murdoc did something he hadn't done since he was a little boy.

He screamed-

And woke up, at eight-thirty in the morning, looking more like a prune than usual.

-------

That morning, all the Gorillaz left the house as though nothing particularly had happened at all. Russel even looked well-rested, as if a one-eyed spectre hadn't been tormenting him whilst he was trying to nap. Noodle herself confessed to falling asleep whilst listening to some old records she'd found in the basement, but said nothing beyond that. The odd ones out were 2D, who looked like he'd gotten into a fight with a bear, and Stephen, who had gone pale as a sheet and said nothing at all.

One by one, the gang piled into Murdoc's car - three in the front, two in the back. And it was Murdoc who asked the important question.

"Breakfast...?"

"Oh, yeah," grinned Russel. "I got a real appetite."

"Just a peppermint tea for me," groaned 2D from the back seat.

Next to him, Stephen looked back at the house as the car pulled away. If one looked closely, one would note that his expression seemed to be that kind of mute, uncomprehending horror that one experiences as they see a meteorite plummeting towards them from the sky. Something was in that house - something old, something big.

Something... wrong.