Whims of the Soul: Chapter 1

“Mr. Grey!” A rich, geotic voice drifted down the corridor. “Mr. Grey!” Again the voice called, and again it failed to permeate the heavily draped study. “Mr. Grey!” Deciding to take it upon himself to deliver the message, the owner of the voice swept back the ladden curtains and called again. “Landon!” The air inside the study was heavy and rich with exotic scents, each carrying with them a story. The man seated behind the centered desk was guaranteed to know them all. “Landon, your brother has been calling.”

“Again? I thought I had made myself clear to his the last time.”

“Apparently not. He continually demands to be put through.”

The seated man sighed. “Alright. I’ll talk to him.”

The unbranded telephone looked out of place in the mismatched chamber of opulence. Its normalcy stood out against the ancient writing desk, covered over with imported throw fabrics and artifacts of varying rarity. Yellowed bones of unusual creatures were displayed with pride next to carved tablets and beaten copper weaponry. These objects, however, were few in number when compared to the piled assemblage of books. Of both foreign and domestic origin, the texts were given a place of disorganized honor.

Click. “Macklin?”

“God damn it, man! I’ve been trying for hours. Tell the help to be a little more helpful in the future.”

“Phineas isn’t help. I’ve told you before, he’s a friend.”

“A friend, my ass. I’m your brother, and you don’t see me getting a paycheck every month.”

“Macklin, we’ve had this conversation before, and as I happen to be quite busy, I would prefer not to have it again.”

“Just a few thousand this time, I promise.”

“If you cannot bring yourself to live off what I’ve already given you, then I see no reason to provide any more.”

“It’ll all come back. Please!”

“No.” The phone fell heavily into its cradle, cutting off the exasperating ordeal.

“The nerves of that man. He can only further tarnish this family.” Macklin Grey had pursued his brother’s riches for the greater portion of three years. Following the failure of his less than colorful overseas business exploits, the man had relentlessly solicited Landon’s successes. And, despite his every assurance, not a cent loaned had ever been repaid. He was the money pit, the one they had all refused to acknowledge. There was no Macklin Grey.

Staring absentmindedly into the literary abyss of antiquities, Landon filed away the resolve to finally get some shelving. Veronica hated the disorganization; the study may as well have been her least favorite room in the house. However much Landon despised his fiance's desire to incessantly clean their spacious home, compromise was necessary at some point. He had long ago learned to ignore the disappearance of his piled belongings and simply to hope that they would reappear in another equally convenient location. Unfortunately, it would seem they almost never did.

If the clutter were to ever exceed her personal limits, Veronica would vanish into her sanctum. Located in the house’s eastern wing, the art studio was to her as the study was to Landon. How anything of worth ever emerged from that room was beyond him; to

Landon, art was the beauty to emerge from the chaos of creation. Only where a whirlwind had preceded could paradise follow. And yet, the room constantly gleamed with uncanny order, any potential for beauty was hidden away inside the infinite cabinet space. Yet somehow, she accomplished the impossible again and again, and she was loved for it; by fiance and by client, though for vastly different reasons.

Landon was head of Greyhound Enterprises, one of the world’s leading technological suppliers. However, this was largely by inheritance and not by choice; his father was the co-founder, and following the concurrent deaths of both partners it was in the will that ownership would be forced upon him. As much as he could, he tried to avoid interaction with the company. He appointed his sister, the only truly business-minded child in the family, as CEO Regent, giving her half ownership and full responsibility. His only requirement was attendence to gatherings of certain importance and making himself and his company look good. At this, he was successful, and for it he lived the life of high society. Whether or not he was deserving, Landon tried to avoid lingering on such things.

Yet lingering on the subject was the only thing his mind would let him do. Legally, there was no way around it, and every attorney he went to said as much. Although he was obligated to retain ownership of the company, there was nothing tying him to the money. He could give it away as fast as it came in. Eccentric billionaire philanthropist, he would be called. Famous, and even more so. He had debated himself over this charity and that, lasting many times into the late hours of the cold night. In the end, however, he always found an unnatural attraction to wealth. He enjoyed his spacious home, his forested estate. And his nice clothes. And his staff.

Landon’s staff were a benefit of his wealth, kept on for the dual purpose of maintaining his life and preventing its end by virtue of his own extended carelessness. Long ago, he had come to terms with his own worldly incapabilities; he knew the limiting capacity of absent-mindedness. It had been Veronica that pushed the hiring of a personal chef for the house. It was four years ago, prior to their engagement, that Landon made his final attempt at preparing a luscious feast for Veronica and her parents. In the weeks following, the scent of burnt goose and scalded cream would not leave the house’s halls. Needless to say, he had since been forgiven for that unfortunate incident of culinary misfortune.

The only position of upkeep refused to the general hiring public was gardener. Landon insisted that the bricked garden out back of the manor remained his personal responsibility. The glass-walled structure stood to the north of the sky blue gazebo and the hedge gardens, holding arrays of planted blossoms and the memorial to Landon’s first wife. The statue was angelic in nature when viewed from a fair distance, but became less so as one approached. It had been salvaged from the near destruction of the Grey family cemetery and had originally resided at the sub-final resting place of Maria Grey, Landon’s mother. One of Landon’s first acts as Grey patriarch was to order the contents of the Louisiana cemetery to a location far less prone to frequent exhument: the family’s ample barings in the American Midwest. There, it could be suitably neglected, with the responsibility of care fostered off to some offshore employee.

Landon despised cemeteries. While he suffered no qualms to their grandeur, their purpose often turned his nose. He preferred to keep the dead in memory, without grotesque monuments to sorrow erected atop their remains. The thing he hated most was his society's double standard toward death, the dead, and their places of sleep. The fact that a plot, purchased and developed in respect and commemoration, would turn under the moonlight and become horror fodder; that an inscribed stone of deference could house beasts prepared to crawl through your open windows and devour your form and soul. It was a disgusting culture flaw.

Pulling to a halt his discoursing train of thought, Landon attempted to recall what was required of him that day. His scheduling was a duty given to Phineas, and as that day’s itinerary had already been announced over a breakfast of strawberries, cream, and minimal champagne, he was not keen to the prospects of asking again. Although he knew that his assistant’s opinion of him could not be higher, and was in no danger of dropping from such a trivial matter, Landon had personal standards that often trumped general courtesy.

He looked to the largest clock in the room, a gift from the China-based company division Greyhound was in the process of acquiring, for consult on the time. Resting in the center of the study’s crowded mantle, its embossed roman numerals proudly proclaimed twelve o'clock in the morning. The military beat of clockwork feet upon clockwork ground echoed hollowly within the clock’s carved wooden case, giving the wooden village of wooden people the illusion of tiny, wooden movements as the minutes ticked by. A brief inventory of the room’s other timekeepers, some on the walls and some on the floor, confirmed Landon’s failure to set the clock back to his native British timezone; it’s mind was still with the Chinese.

It was two o’clock. If it was, in fact, the eighteenth of March, he was expected to have tea with the chief public resource representative of the British-Indian joint embassy in one and a half hours. His general assumption was that he would be informed in the event of possible lateness; however, as his father was always so keen to inform him, assumptions would always make an ass of you and me. Somewhere in the house, there was certainly a plaque with that phrase or similar. Whether it had been subject to Veronica’s clean sweeps, or simply hidden in their other belongings, or if it never even existed at all, Landon could not seem to find it. Not that he put forward an extreme amount of effort forward.

It was a distinct possibility that the day was not the eighteenth of March. It could be the seventeenth, or the sixteenth. It could even have been the nineteenth, although that was not nearly as likely. The necessity of date tracking did not fall near the top of Landon’s priority list, and the unfortunate consequences frequently presented themselves. For several more minutes, Landon sat in his velvet cushioned chair and nodded his head in thought. Then, he recalled his own watch. Just one downward glance to the desk required. Lo and behold, it was the eighteenth. Of March. Landon sighed, squeezing his eyes shut in personal exasperation; another drink would be required. He would take up his smile at the door.