martinlivings | Tuesday's Ten Minute Tale

Here we go. Thanks to

capnoblivious for "a better place",

mynxii for "brain leeches", and

shrydar for "hairdresser"... lame this time, I apologise!

Acclaimed Supernaturalist Leaves This World

Last night, acclaimed supernaturalist Sir Nigel Scunthorpe passed away in the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, aged 207. Scunthorpe was best known for the discovery of the Seven Black Gates, portals which lead to the Dimension of Torment. His six sons and one daughter, whose names and identities have been kept secret for security reasons, remain at this gates to guard against any possible breaches, but sources close to the family have informed the Mirror that they have been informed by means of psychic communications of the passing of their father, and are mourning his death.

Sir Nigel Scunthorpe began his career when, as a policeman in the Met, he was assigned to investigate the Hellfire club in the mid-1800's. It was during this period that he was infected with the brain leeches that both extended his life and turned his perceptions towards the Dimension of Torment from whence they originally emerged. There are rumours that it was Queen Victoria's undead consort of the time, Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who purposely introduced the leeches to Scunthorpe's body, but Sir Nigel himself has repeatedly denied this. Her Majesty, who recently celebrated her 171st year as Queen, dismissed these rumours, though it was shortly after this that Albert vanished. He has never been seen again.

Scunthorpe's career as a supernaturalist has been exemplary. It was he who exorcised the hungry demon from famed hairdresser and cannibal Sweeney Todd, after following the creature's spoor from Kenya to the streets of East London. His most famed case was alongside detective Sherlock Holmes, and it was his necromantic raising of Holmes after his body was retrieved from the Reichenbach Falls, that led to the capture of the notorious houngan Moriarty. To this day, Z-Holmes operates from his Baker Street offices, and in a brief statement to the mirror, declared that Scunthorpe would be "sorely missed... a great man, with one of the finest brains I've ever encountered".

There is speculation that Scunthorpe's discovery of the final Black Gate was responsible for his death. Certainly the sigils that he and his children placed upon the obsidian-hewn structures caused all creatures from the Dimension of Torment to weaken here on Earth, including the brain leeches that sustained him. It seems no coincidence that his passing comes mere weeks after the sealing of the final Gate by his daughter.

There will be a public memorial for Sir Nigel Scunthorpe at Great Russell Square on Sunday, followed by a private funeral at Westminster Abbey. We at the Mirror pray that he has gone to a better place, a Dimension of Peace rather than Torment.