Hunting Angels (Box Set) (The great horror writers (Masterton, Saul, Herbert) and now Jones)

by Conrad Jones

  The four men in the cellar were reported missing by their families. At first, their disappearances were treated as isolated until I linked them to the Niners on the Internet. I didn’t explain how I knew, I just made enough noise for the press to hear it, and they picked it up and ran with it. The police searched their homes, and low and behold their laptops contained thousands of pornographic images of abuse. No one alluded that their evaporation was my fault, which suited me. Jennifer Booth was already dead, so nobody was looking for her.

  Two months on and the weather has changed. Winter is upon us again. The wind roars around the caravan at night like an angry beast trying to break in. Things are very different now, though. I received a message which was posted on a book review site. Attached to it was a jpeg file. The photograph was the scan of an unborn baby. The message attached read, “This is our child, your unborn son. I pray to Lucifer that his heart is as black as yours, Conrad. I may rear him to be one of us; or I may slaughter him as a gift to my dark lord. Either way, your son is a child for the devil, love Jennifer.”

  I’m jumping at shadows. Every creak and groan makes me turn around fearing the worst. This book is about monsters and it is they who hunt me. I have to pinch myself to see if I am awake. I wish it was all just a dream, but it is not. It was real, and although I have written many books, I could not have imagined this story in my most creative moments. This is a shocking tale; it may disturb you and make you question my grip on reality, and your own, too. You will tell your friends that it cannot be real, but as I listen to the wind gusting against the windows and watch the lightning flashing against the blackness of the sky, I can still hear her screams in my mind.

  I am scared of the dark and scared of my own shadow. The Staffie is healthy and she eats lambs’ liver every day because I never know if it will be our last. She gets tummy tickles at every opportunity because if it wasn’t for her I wouldn’t be here. The press have the identities of the men at the farm, but I have their contacts. I have their mobiles phones. I’m working my way through them one by one and the body count is rising. Constance is still missing, but I won’t stop looking for her until I know that she’s safe. I’ll never stop looking for her.

  Eventually, one of them will lead me to Jennifer Booth. If she is carrying a child then I’ll send them both to her demonic master. Until then, we’ll travel and hide, and then we move on and start over. If you believe a single word that I have written, Google them and read their websites. They are there and they are in the millions and they’re coming for me. The difference now is that I am hunting them, too.

  Black Angel

  The Diaries

  A Child for the Devil ‘BOOK II’

  By Conrad Jones

  OTHER TITLES BY CONRAD JONES

  SOFT TARGET

  SOFT TARGET II 'TANK'

  SOFT TARGET III 'JERUSALEM'

  The Rage Within (18th Brigade)

  BLISTER

  THE CHILD TAKER

  (Published by Thames River Press)

  CRIMINAL REVENGE

  (Published by Thames River Press)

  CRIMINALLY INSANE

  (Published by Thames River Press)

  FROZEN BETRAYAL

  A CHILD FOR THE DEVIL

  (Published by Thames River Press)

  Dark ANGELS

  (Published by Thames River Press 2014)

  NON FICTION

  HOW TO WRITE A NOVEL IN 90 DAYS

  HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR EBOOK IN A DAY (Thames River Press)

  EBOOKS AND TREE BOOKS, HOW TO SELL THEM

  (Champagne Books Canada)

  100 WAYS TO PUBLISH AND SELL YOUR OWN BOOK AND MAKE IT A BESTSELLER (Published by Constable and Robinson)

  Copyright@Conrad Jones 2013

  Prologue

  I’d like to say that I slept like a baby but I didn’t. My dreams were tortured by the haunting sound of an infant crying. I searched everywhere that I could in the dream but I couldn’t find her. I knew she was a girl. I don’t know how I knew it, instincts I guess. One minute her crying was close to me, the next it was miles away, just a whisper of distress on an icy wind which whistled through the derelict structure. It had been a hotel once. It was built to mimic a castle, with towers and turrets, battlements and arrow slits. Though its shape was imposing against the seascape, it was painted white, like a vision from a fairytale. Once a place full of laughter, wedding feasts and christening parties but now in my dreams, it was a burnt out shell perched on a rocky outcrop overlooking a stormy sea. The white fascia had turned to mottled green, blistered and peeling. Smoke-burns snaked from the empty windows like eyelashes above blackened sockets. They seemed to offer a view into an infinite black abyss. Nettles and thorny weeds pushed their way up through the crumbling floors. When I looked towards the ceilings, I could see an angry sky through the gaping holes in the roof. The slates and rafters had collapsed, leaving the timbers hanging dangerously. Lightning forked earthwards, momentarily illuminating the heavy black clouds like a massive camera flash. The ear-splitting thunder threatened to shake the decaying building to the ground. Echoes of the past reverberated from the crumbling walls, ghostly laughter mixed with sounds from the past; tears of joy and tears of sadness.

  As I walked through the remnants of the bar, I glimpsed the ghostly hotel owner sitting alone on a stool crying into his whisky. His head lolled onto his right shoulder, his broken neck no longer capable of supporting its weight. His eyes bulged almost ready to pop and his tongue hung from the corner of his mouth like a fat black slug. He didn’t seem to notice that the wooden bar was nothing but a charcoaled frame, the optics long gone, the staff moved on to different jobs years ago. Next to him was the rope with which he eventually hung himself to escape the pain of losing his philandering wife and the insurmountable debts that she had left behind. Although it was a dream, I shouted at him nonetheless. I needed help to find the girl. No matter how loud I shouted, my pleas for help went unheard. I felt the desperation of the years gone by, dragging me down like a weight around my waist,slowing me down as I ran in search of the source of the tortured cries of the infant. I knew the child was a stranger to me and yet something told me that there was a connection somewhere. I had to find her. Every door was locked and every window barred. When a corridor opened in front of me, I ran as fast as the weight would allow me but I never made any progress. It was like running on a giant treadmill through mud. The desperate sobbing was ripping my heart out. I had to find her. My nightmare was interspersed with gravelly laughter from behind me. It was evil laughter whispering in my ear, a ghostly echo like an itch that you can’t scratch. I knew it was Jennifer Booth who plagued my dreams but every time I turned around, she was gone, the laughter replaced by the soul destroying sobbing of a baby in distress and a lingering stench of decomposition. It was the same dream every time I closed my eyes. I couldn’t stop the landlord slipping the noose around his neck and I couldn’t find the child. My frantic search left me exhausted when I awoke. It seemed that there truly was no rest for the wicked and wicked was what I had become.

  ********

  It had been a year since I escaped the clutches of the Order of Nine Angels and I was no closer to finding Jennifer Booth, their human goddess, Baphomet. If you still don’t know who they are or are unsure if my tale is true, I have put their history at the back of the book. Or Google them if you dare. Despite everything that the police and the internet giants have tried to do, they still have websites and Facebook pages and as one closes down, another springs up to replace it. They are more prevalent now than ever. The more I searched for them, the more I got to know how they function and the more I understood her too. She is the evil which drives them. She is their tangible link to the insidious evil that they worship. Because she is real, a tangible God, they believe that their efforts are not in vain. They can touch her, hear her sermons and see her depravity with their own eyes and that gives them faith in the sinister way.

  Unlike the traditio
nal faiths, they have a tangible focus on this planet. She walks amongst them, encouraging them to live their lives with no boundaries. The laws we respect, our civilised values and moral framework are considered as ‘mundane’ to them. Most of her followers are involved primarily for the unbridled sex which their religion allows, but once they are drawn in by the promise of pleasure with no limitations, they soon realise that Satanism is not a game. She takes over their hearts and minds and there is no way out. She holds the threat of them being exposed hanging over them permanently and demands more and more until they either submit completely or break. The weak ones are deemed as a threat to the Order and tend to disappear. She is far more powerful than traditional religious icons because she is alive. Because she is alive, it is easier for them to believe. Jesus is long dead and yet Christians the world over worship him. Could you imagine the power he would hold if he walked the earth? Well, she does walk amongst us and her followers revel in her existence. They believe that she is the devil incarnate. Baphomet, the Dark Goddess.

  My dilemma was that the police were searching hard for me, and the evil cult the Order of Nine Angels searching harder still. They were holding a girl alleged to be my daughter hostage; a daughter who I had never met. She was supposedly the product of a relationship that I’d almost forgotten about. Although it was serious at the time, it ended in tears and I'd shut it out of my mind. I’d met Pamela on a course at work and she blew my mind when she walked into the room. I thought she was the one but I couldn’t convince her that she felt the same. In the end, I gave up trying and we parted on reasonably good terms. Finding out that she was pregnant months after we had split up, her mother took the decision that it would be better to pretend that her new boyfriend was the father. She was obviously so heartbroken that she had fallen into bed with him a week after the split, so at first wasn’t sure if Constance was mine or not. Or that’s what she told the newspapers when she went fishing for a lucrative exclusive. My notoriety had shaken a lot of old ‘friends’ from the woodwork. Each one brought a nugget of information from my dull past, most of it bullshit but the press pay well for lies and exaggeration. With the new boyfriend out of the picture and the recession biting single mothers hard, Constance’s mother, Pamela jumped on the bandwagon with a story that in terms of impact, blew the rest out of the water.

  ‘Murder Spree Crime Author is the Father of My Daughter’.

  The silly cow had no idea that the niners were looking for anyone related to me so that they could force me out of hiding. I had painstakingly wiped out my internet footprints so that they couldn’t target anyone that I cared about. It had been a difficult process cutting all ties with my family and friends but their safety was paramount and I knew that the police would be tapping their calls to try and track me down. Pamela had no idea how widespread this insidious religion had spread or how powerful they were. Her daughter Constance was snatched within a week of the headlines being published. I didn’t know if she was telling the truth about her being mine or not, but either way I couldn’t leave a young girl in the clutches of paedophile Satanists. I had to find her.

  I had a head start on them this time around. Months before, I’d tracked some of the niners to a remote farmhouse aptly named, Brunt Boggart, old English for ‘burnt witch’. The farm was built on the site of the ancient execution of a local woman who was accused of being a witch and her legacy was documented throughout history. Every building ever built there mysteriously burned down and the families were plagued with sickness, death and misfortune. It seemed that the niners searched out such places to hold their ceremonies. To cut a long story short, I interrupted one of their gatherings and three of them were sent to meet their dark lord, despatched with my twelve gauge shotgun. The mobile phones which I had taken from the dead niners proved to be very useful tools in my search for the kidnappers. I knew that it could be weeks before they realised that their sicko friends were killed in the fire at Brunt Boggart. The bodies of the niners that I had shot were in the cellar and the building had collapsed on top of them. The emergency services would have no idea that the farm had a cellar as it wasn’t marked on the structural plan. The damage was severe so nobody looked for it. It would be months later when developers cleared the site that the cellar and the charred remains of three men were found.

  During that time I had free reign of their phones. I had sent a series of texts from the dead men and eventually tracked down one of the niners who were holding the girl.

  ‘Jennifer B wants me to bring ‘presents’ for the daughter.’

  It was vague enough to confuse anyone who had no knowledge of the hostage but clear enough to provoke an answer from her captors. Sure enough, a reply came back from a number stored under the name Andrew. I asked where he wanted them dropped off and he replied that I should bring them ‘to the mill’. The farm at Brunt Boggart had been chosen for its remoteness. I guessed that somewhere close by in that green-belt area, I would find a mill. Google Earth helped me to pinpoint an abandoned saw-mill a mile away from the farm. After studying it on Google and watching from a distance for a few hours, I knew that they were there.

  The mill was a single storey structure with a vaulted loft space constructed of timber and breeze-block walls with a corrugated iron roof. A window above its double doors was protected by a mesh grill. There were two cars parked on a gravel path which didn’t move all the time that I watched. Another vehicle arrived and a bald man in his fifties stepped out of the mill and shook hands with the driver, who handed over a carrier bag with a logo resembling a fish printed on it. They chatted for a moment then the bald man went back inside and the vehicle left. I assumed it was a delivery of fish and chips to keep the captors and the hostage from starving to death. I knew that it would only take five minutes for me to cross the field between us. Rapeseed was growing waist high and its intense yellow flowers were almost dazzling to the eye; its scent sweet. I ducked low and headed towards the side of the mill where there were no windows.

  There was a path around the mill, made from tons of compacted waste sawdust. Waist-high grasses leaned over from either side, threatening to swamp it forever. I headed for the rear of the building hoping that the images on Google were recent. They were and I thought I’d seen a way in but until I saw it up close, I wouldn’t be sure. A conveyor belt protruded from the rear elevation, its cogs and wheels red with rust. The hatch above it was padlocked but below it was a flywheel, half in the building and half out. The axle was fitted to the rear wall, its belt twisted and warped by time and the elements. The mill had once supplied wooden beams to the coal industry, which were used to support the miles of tunnels deep beneath my feet. When the pits were closed, the mill went bust with them and it had never been sold on. There was a gap between the flywheel and the wall, which I had guessed was big enough for me to squeeze through. It was a tight fit but I was inside the mill in seconds.

  The smell of freshly cut wood had long since been replaced by must and mould, damp and decay. Armoured grey wood lice in their thousands scurried beneath my feet making the floor look alive. Every footstep seemed to crush a hundred of them, their crunching bodies threatening to give away my arrival. The loft above me was supported by a suspended wooden platform, thick curtains of grey cobwebs dangled from every crack in the floorboards. An antiquated giant bandsaw dominated the ground floor and I had to skirt around it to reach the front of the building.

  I heard muffled voices upstairs. All male. Three at least. A rotten wooden staircase was the only access, its handrail splintered into several sections some of which dangled uselessly in the air. The aroma of fish and chips drifted to me. They were having their dinner, which was a bonus. I had hoped that my rescue mission would be simple and straightforward, after all, they weren’t expecting me. I planned to bamboozle them so much that they wouldn’t know what had hit them until it was too late.

  I crouched at the bottom of the stairs and pulled on a black ski mask. I took a deep breath and sprinted up the sta
irs, taking the steps three at a time. I heard the conversation stop and a few surprised expletives were exchanged as my footsteps alerted them to my presence. As I reached the landing at the top, I shouted as loud as I could.

  “Armed police,” I bellowed. I held the Mossberg tightly against my shoulder and knelt down to make myself a smaller target. “Get your hands up in the air now!”

  The ski mask frightened them and combined with the dark military clothing which I was wearing, I hoped that they would think that I was part of an armed police unit long enough for me to disarm them. There were three men sat in a semicircle below the only window; the bald man who I’d seen outside, a grey bearded man in his sixties and an old biker-looking guy with sideburns and a ponytail. I couldn’t see any weapons, another bonus. The chairs were arranged around a small screen television, that was perched on an old crate. Ponytail stood up, his chips in one hand, raising his other above his head. His mouth was open revealing the half chewed contents. I couldn’t take my eyes off them to look for Constance.

  “Don’t shoot,” greybeard joined ponytail and stood up. “I can explain everything.”

  “Get your hands up, now!” I screamed. They jumped visibly and complied, three bags of chips spilled in the dust. “Where is the girl?”

  None of them spoke but their eyes involuntarily flickered to a point behind me. “Get on the floor, face down and do it now!”