The Vulcan, The Basset, The Lotus and The Nut

My brother was never really one to talk, many of the interactions we had were slanging matches in passing, nothing of any substance and so when he ushered me into his bedroom on a Sunday evening, I was nervous.

There’s about 8 years difference between me and Jonah as I have just turned 18 and I often think of myself as the mistake; 8 years is a long time between siblings. Surely you would want your children to be closer in age so they could have a connection? There was not much of connection between me and Jonah and really, between me and either of my parents either. Jonah was always treated as the golden boy and in my parent’s eyes, he could do no wrong whereas I got most of the blame for anything that did go wrong.

When he killed the neighbour’s cat by accident (if you can call getting drunk and driving an accident) I got the blame as the poor feline wouldn’t have been on the road if I wasn’t calling it over. He was called Felix and he was my best friend, at least for a time… I got the blame when he came home from school with a black eye because he said he was ‘saving’ me from my bullies beating me up. I didn’t get any pocket money to will the bullies at my school to beat me up and it wasn’t me that threw the first snowball at the leader of pack whilst the whole school was watching, laughing. In Disneyland Jonah went missing for 5 hours, he was 16 so could manage to be alone but my parents went mad with fright and got everyone involved to help find him. It turned out that he had seen one of the lads from school there too and went off with their family instead of ours. Somehow this was my fault because my parents were looking at me rather than him and so they should have been, I was only 8 and couldn’t get on the tea cups without an adult with me. Each time I would get:

“Robert, be more careful” or

“Oh Bobby, you idiot, look after yourself” or

“Robert, you fool, what was you thinking!”

It got old pretty quickly but I still loved my older brother, standing here now I can see that and longed for the opportunity to tell him that again, the last time I got the chance was that Sunday evening.

“oi, bro, come here will ya, I’ve got something to show ya”

Here we go, I thought, it’ll probably be a punch to the ear to deafen me for a while or a kick to the balls for his entertainment but when I walked into his bedroom, he looked dreadful and a little frightening. There were two big purple circles under his eyes and he was white as a sheet, with his hair stick up in every which direction, he looked like a clown, not my brother. It smelt like an overused, unwashed sock in here and the blinds were closed keeping the horrid odours in. This is not the way to live for a 26-year-old I thought to myself.

“what ups?” I asked him

“sit down will ya, this is important” he blurted

I reluctantly perched myself on the edge of his bed waiting for the inevitable hit but it didn’t come. He slowly turned around in his chair and faced me, his head in his hands. When he took them away, I could see tears seeping out of the side, as he wiped them away, he started talking.

“I’ve got a favour to ask you, but I need you to keep it a secret from Mum and Dad, in fact from everyone, do you understand?”

I just nodded, not knowing where this was going. He pulled out a little black book and carried on

“Okay, so me, Joe and Fran have found ourselves in cahoots with a local gang. It was all fucking Stu’s doing; you know Joe’s brother? He invited us along to his party out by the Tuscan estate. Rough as old boots out there you know and we somehow ended up helping him pick up some drugs and dropping them off and apparently that was our initiation”

I didn’t know what to say, my mouth was wide open, he continued anyway, handing over the book as he did.

“This book contains the names of all the people that we could get that are part of the group. I need you to keep this book safe and out of the hands of anyone that is associated with them. I’ve heard that they worship a triad of ancient gods and their aim is to have ultimate power over life and death. It sounds like bollocks to me but they have their fingers in so many pots and drug pushing is just one way their make money. I’ve seen things Bobby that I wish I could unsee. This group is dangerous and they’ve got people everywhere Bobby so please, don’t go spurting this to anyone, not even to Seth”

My brain couldn’t compute what Jonah had just said. I knew he was bit of an arsehole but to get dragged into a local gang, a gang worshipping gods for Christ’s sake, who does he think he is, an Avenger!? Mentioning Seth was an interesting choice, why bring him into this? I said all I could muster

“Right okay, sure”

I took the little black book from him, it felt heavy in my hands, weighted with the words that came with it. I was holding the lives of everyone named in this book in my hands, knowledge is power and I had all the knowledge now that my brother had, what would that bring me?

“Bobby” my brother said, whimpering “I love you know; I don’t tell you that often enough and you deal with my shit a lot but I do love you, you mean a lot to me and that’s why I’m giving this to you. I know you will do the right thing”

This interaction was confusing me, I had so many questions. He’s never said those words to me before, why now? Why have I suddenly gained a book of names? Why was my brother acting soft and mysterious? What did all this mean? I had to tell Seth, didn’t I, I mean, he is my best friend, someone I trust to keep a secret, he suffered in his family like I did but somehow managed to lift me up and be my rock through his suffering, he was my everything.

“I love you too Joan but what do you mean, I don’t get it – what do you want me to do with this book?”

Clearly my confusion came out as anger as this stopped my brother from whimpering, he sniffed and cleared his throat and uttered

“you’ll know what to do, now do one you little shit and remember, no one is to know, K?” and with that he grabbed and threw me out of his room.

That was the last time I saw my brother alive.

6 weeks had passed since that night and right now I’m standing next to his grave. There are not many flowers, clearly his reputation of being a not so goody-2-shoes reached further than I had thought. I carry the little black back around with me, too scared to leave it anyway around the house or anywhere that was easily accessible, the thought of gang members coming after me was enough to do that to you, I had seen plenty of films to know how all these things panned out but one thing that they didn’t have was my bank balance.

Shortly after the funeral, a Will was found detailing the movement of Jonah’s estate. I didn’t quite understand this as I thought Wills were for parents and old people, not for young people and why did I get asked to come into the solicitor’s office and not Mum and Dad? I sit down in a heavily brown coloured office; someone was in need of an interior designer.

“Hi Robert, my name is Ted Broadshaw and I’ve brought you here to discuss your brother estate, please sit”

I sit down on this awfully uncomfortable wooden chair, was it supposed to be this uncomfortable? Ted continued

“The reason I have called you in is because Jonah has named you, Robert Eweshire, the sole beneficiary to his capital”

Great, I thought, just god damn great.

There was no autopsy needed to determine the cause of death of Jonah, it was suicide by carbon monoxide and there was no blaming me when Dad unlocked the garage door the next morning, finding Jonah in a sea of fumes. My conclusion (as the wily detective I thought I was) jumped straight to the gang that I now knew about; it cannot be a coincidence that my brother gave me all the knowledge he had on this gang the night before he took his own life but how and why had it got him to the point that death was the only option out? He must have been in deep.

I drop to my knees, staring squarely at my brother’s head stone.

“Why, for god’s sake why me”

I weep a little. I don’t know why my dick of a brother thought this to be a good idea, to lumber me with a book full of random names and £20,000 and bugger all else to work on.

“what do you want from me Joan?”

I was lazy and couldn’t be bother saying both the syllables in my brother’s name but it gave me a thought, what was it that Joan of Arc had said, ‘I am not afraid, I was born to do this’ maybe my brother gave me the book and money for a reason, maybe I was the one to stop the gang from carrying out its goal, to help Joe and Fran get out? The book contained 4 names; Vulcan, Lotus, Basset and Nut. Words I knew but made absolutely no sense at all. I had to talk to Seth, he would know how to do.

I pushed my tears away and stood up from my brother’s grave, kissed my palm and placed it on his grave.

“I will avenge you brother; I will make this right”

I bounded off towards the unknown.