For the uninitiated, the Rookery is the sprawling gothic estate on the northeastern edge of town owned by the Rook family. My family. I grew up there unfortunately, so I’ve seen the skeletons in many of its closets. If you’re looking for a bit of “inside baseball” about the Rookery, I’m your guy!

The estate has been in my family for generations. It was build on land where a prisoner of war camp from the Civil War era once stood. The blood of countless Union soldiers seeped into the soil and whet the earth’s appetite. At least seventeen members of the Rook family have died within the grounds of the Rookery, and very few of those deaths occurred peacefully in bed.

My father Jonas Rook only inherited the estate because his older brother Samuel “accidentally” fell from the top of one of the spires. He died when I was still fairly young, but he was killed in a hunting accident in Blackwood Forest. Upon his death, the Rookery passed to my mother, Miriam Rook. It was under her watchful eye that the estate became the center of her micro-kingdom.

My mother, in her capacity as the president of the Raven Club, continues to spread her wings and cast her dark shadow over more and more of Emerson Valley. Raven Hall serves as the club’s official headquarters, but the real operation happens behind the closed doors of the Rookery.

If you’re ever unlucky enough to receive an invitation to her stately home, you might be treated to a horseback ride across the estate’s 48 acres of land. My mother might even let you see her beloved greenhouse and her crossbreeding experiments to create monstrous hybrids of previously lovely flora. If nature produces something beautiful, you can bet my mother believes she can make it better.

The inside of the mansion is decorated like it’s auditioning for the part of an old haunted English manor house. My family was never big on aesthetics, preferring to plaster the walls with portraits of men and women whose sins would make a priest immolate himself if he’d heard their confessions. There are also pieces of medieval weaponry in places easily accessible to children. I had to find out the hard way that battleaxes don’t make good toys. I’ve still got the scars to prove it.

To my mother’s everlasting shame, I had no interest in becoming “lord of the manor.” I would rather live a simple life free from the burdens of being a Rook. She made sure I couldn’t change my mind by writing me out of the will. The Rookery will instead go to her cousin Arthur if the devil decides to call her home before him. All I can say is, “Good luck, cuz. Try not to get any blood on your expensive loafers.”

I have no regrets about leaving that part of my life behind. The life I have no ain’t exactly a spring picnic, but it’s a hell of a lot better to be broke and free than rich and in chains. Or maybe it’s not. I don’t know. My moral barometer has never worked right. Maybe I’m rebelling against injustice, or maybe I’m just too spiteful to give people the satisfaction of falling in line. Either way, the only way I’ll ever go back to the Rookery is if I die and someone “Weekend At Bernie’s” me through the front door.

-Ashton Rook, Lifestyle, Emerson Valley Gazette