Despite it being early evening, Angela decided she would turn in for the night. Frank was looking after Sammie and there was little to worry about. She got up from the bed and went into the bathroom, wanting to brush her teeth before having a long sleep. When she entered, the room was steamy. The shower in the en suite was switched on. Funny. I swear I turned it off last time I used it. Hope I’m not around when the water bill arrives.
Angela padded over to the shower and reached inside to turn the knob. The water stopped with a splutter.
She turned back around. “Oh, my Lord!”
The sudden fright sent Angela reeling backwards, landing ass-first in the wet shower cubicle. The steam in the room was swirling and shifting, collecting around the contours of what looked like a human being. There was an entity in the room with her and it was quickly taking shape.
“Who-who are you?” you asked the steam cloud.
The vapour swirled and twisted, making up the curves of a round, humanoid head. The sound of the figure’s voice was like dry leaves crumbling. “I helped you once beforrre. Now you have helped meee.”
“What? Who are you?”
“Chamuel. I am Chamuel. It was my power that helped you expel the demon inside Charles Crippley. I was there that day, at the church. I heeded your prayer. I helped you. And then I summoned you to help meee. And you have done sooo.”
Angela shook her head and blinked the moisture from her eyes. “What? How did I help you?”
“You freed meee. The father brought me near, prayed for an angel to watch over his son. I came to protect the boy, but found him fouled and malignant. I tried to cleanse the boy, to save his soul from evil, but once inside him I found no soul to save. I became trapped in the void where the boy’s soul should beee. It was a dark place, a wretched place, devoid of hope and joy. It was a place of pure evil and emptiness. The child made me his servant, abused my power for wicked purposes. I tried to rot him from within, to sicken him, but he only used my influence to grow stronger. My torment inside of the boy was endless, until you emancipated me. Thank youuu.”
Angela’s eyes went wide. She thought about the painting of the cherubs above her bed and the statue outside of Sammie’s door. Suddenly she remembered what she had been trying to recall for the last several days. “Chamuel! You’re the angel that expelled Adam from the Garden of Eden. One of the seven Archangels?”
“I am the Loving One; Archangel of Love and leader of the Cherubim. You freed me from Hell and returned me to Heaven, but your work is not yet done.”
Angela understood. “Sammie? He’s…he’s evil?”
The steam wisped and curled around Chamuel’s spirit, bringing him even more into shape. He looked like a rain-drenched silver statue as he continued speaking to her. “He is the purest evil. He is the Devil’s own spawn. He is the great pretender; damnation incarnate.”
“God help me,” said Angela, not wanting to believe it. “He’s the antichrist?”
“His nature was unknown to me until it was too late. I was imprisoned and helpless. Now I am free, but still unable to act. I can take no hand in this. It is mankind’s burden, for mankind to prevail over. You must finish what you started, Angela Murs. Finish the Blood Exorcism.”
“But I already did finish it.”
“No.”
Angel thought about it. “The final stigmata? I still need to pierce Sammie’s side, kill him?”
There was no answer from Chamuel. The steam was once again just steam. Angela dragged herself up from the shower’s floor and sprinted into the bedroom. She reached into her luggage and pulled out the cloth bundle that contained the ceremonial dagger, but when she pulled opened the bundle, the dagger was gone. Only a dried bloodstain remained inside the cloth.
“No, no, no. He has the dagger.” Angela shuffled her feet into her shoes and crossed the room in three urgent strides. She ran down the hall, heading for the staircase. She needed to warn Frank before it was too late.
She thanked the Lord when she found him on the floor below. He was taping up the gap in the railing where Tim had smashed through and fallen to the floor below. He smiled when he saw her coming. “Ms Murs,” he said. “Just trying to make this place safe again. Last thing we need is Samuel taking a fall after all we’ve been through to keep him away from harm.”
Angela ignored his words, just noise in her head. “Frank!” she yelled. “Sammie wasn’t possessed – I mean, he was, but not in the way we thought. It was an angel inside him, trying to help, not a demon. Sammie is the demon. The evil came from him. He has no soul, Frank. No soul whatsoever.”
Frank stood up and looked at her with concern. “Whoa, whoa, what are you talking about?”
“Sammie is…God, I can hardly say it. Sammie is the antichrist. It all makes sense. If he takes over Black Remedy one day he will be powerful enough to rule the world. All the signs were there, I just missed them. He’s the bastard son of a stranger, destined to take on great power and responsibility.”
Frank laughed. “Are you saying that Samuel is the Devil?”
Angela nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, yes, he is.”
“But he’s been fine since the exorcism. Everything worked out.”
Angela shook her head in frustration. “The Devil deceives. He’s pretending. It was Chamuel who was making him ill, trying to warn us, to kill Sammie before he could grow up into the man he intends to be.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“We need to find the dagger and kill Sammie, but the dagger is gone. I think he’s done something with it.”
“Samuel hasn’t done anything with the dagger,” Frank said matter-of-factly.
“Frank, you’re not listening to me.”
“I hear you well enough.” He produced the dagger from beneath his jacket and drove it deep into Angela’s chest. “I know Sammie didn’t take the dagger, because I took it.”
Angela tried to speak but found her throat was filled with blood. Frank shoved her through the gap in the railing and the ground went out from beneath her. The last thing she saw before the ground hit her and her vision went black was the sight of Frank leaning over the balcony two floors above and mouthing the words, “I’m sorry.”
***
Frank headed for Samuel’s room, feeling sick at what he’d done. It was unfortunate that Angela had insisted on staying behind to help. It was always going to be a matter of time before she figured it all out. She was smart. It only made Frank even more aware of his own stupidity. It was insane to think that he hadn’t seen what was right in front of his face the whole time.
Samuel had confessed his true nature the evening after the exorcism. Frank had been stunned – and a little incredulous at first – but somewhere deep in his heart he knew that Samuel Raymeady was indeed the Devil’s spawn. Yet, when he contemplated killing the boy and putting an end to his evil intentions, he found himself unable. He loved the Raymeady family and he loved Sammie. He had failed the boy so much already and there was nothing else that mattered to Frank anymore but keeping him safe – he had made that promise to Jessica. Besides, there was already Hell on Earth; he’d seen it from his days in the army and pretty much every day since. Frank’s eyes had been opened years ago and he was not against the changes that Sammie’s eventual reign would bring. Surely things could not be any worse.
When Samuel had asked Frank to look after him, to be his protector and guardian until he was old enough to take the reins of the vehicle that would steer him towards world domination – Black Remedy Corporation – Frank had hesitantly agreed. He knew it would be an unsavoury job with questionable responsibilities – killing Angela had proved it – but he had made his decision. Protecting Samuel Raymeady would be the last job he ever took, and he was going to see it through to the end. He had committed sin, murdered men in the name of his country, why not for a young boy whom he loved?
Frank entered the Samuel’s room with a melancholy sigh. The boy – his soon to be adopted son – w
as watching South Park, but pressed pause when he saw Frank coming. Frank understood now why the boy loved that particular show so much. It highlighted all of the darker parts of humanity, but also gave a clever insight into politics and the public’s unspoken view of things. It was reading between the lines and understanding that the underbelly of society was really the mainstream that would help Samuel gain the control over the world that he needed.
“Everything okay, Frank?” Samuel asked him.
Frank nodded. “There was a little bit of an issue, but I dealt with it.”
Sammie smiled and nodded. “Shame, I’ll surely miss our resident priest. Still, there will be little need for preachers, in time. The world will have a new God to worship and will have need of heeding only one voice - mine.”
Frank swallowed a lump in his throat and sat down on a chair beside the boy who would one day become head of the world’s largest corporation and perhaps even mankind itself. The world wasn’t going to know what hit it.
BOOK 2 OF 5
ASBO
YOUR FEAR IS THEIR ENTERTAINMENT...
Andrew’s life is one of bored contentedness: a teenage daughter, a faithful wife, and a middle-class job. He even has a Mercedes. His life is without drama, and the comfort of middle-age is setting in.
That all changes when he refuses to buy a pack of cigarettes for the local gang of youths. Led by the emotionally unstable, and sadistic, Frankie, the gang target Andrew and his family in an escalating campaign of terror and violence that threatens their very lives. It isn’t long before Andrew starts to wish that he’d just brought those damn cigarettes.
Anti-Social Behaviour Order (ASBO): issued in response to "conduct which caused or was likely to cause harm, harassment, alarm, or distress, to one or more persons not of the same household as him or herself and where an ASBO is seen as necessary to protect relevant persons from further anti-social acts by the Defendant.
It is the failing of youth not to be able to restrain its own violence.
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence.
- Jim Morrison
Chapter One
“Those trouble-makers are hanging around outside again. Must be ten of them now. Should we call the police?”
Andrew turned to his wife, Penelope. She was peeking out of the living room window through a gap in the curtains. “They’re just harmless kids,” he told her. “We were young too, once upon a time. Not that I can remember that far back anymore.”
Pen dragged herself away from the curtain and allowed herself to crack a smile. It was a rarity these days, which made the gesture all the more attractive. “You’re thirty-eight, Andrew,” she told him, inflecting her words with a sarcastic tone. “I don’t think your memory is going just yet.”
“Exactly, and I can remember being a sixteen-year-old with nothing to do. Me and my brother used to get up to all kinds of mischief. Didn’t mean we were out to hurt anyone. Just ignore them and they’ll ignore you.”
“Isn’t that what they say about wasps?” Pen spoke without turning around, too busy resuming her spying through the curtains. She’d been doing it now, on and off, for the last ten minutes and didn’t seem able to pry herself away. Outside, the streetlamps had turned on with the arrival of dusk and were casting angular shadows over her face. She looked like a private detective out of one of those old Film Noirs.
Andrew couldn’t help but giggle. “Wasps, snakes, rabid-dogs, whatever. I think it makes pretty good sense in most situations. In other words, stop being such a nosey-parker.”
Pen let go of the curtain and let it sweep back into place. She padded towards him, barefoot, across the beige carpet of the living room and let out a deep sigh. “I know, I know. They just make me uncomfortable. Where’ve they come from all a sudden? Why do they have to be right outside my house?”
Andrew wrapped his arms around his wife, enjoying the warm feeling of her hips through her blouse. The flesh there was softer now than it had been ten years ago when they’d married, but still trim for a woman of forty. Pen worked the rowing machine every Wednesday and Friday and it showed. Andrew was a lucky man. He kissed her forehead.
“I think you mean our house,” he told her. “Anyway, will you just stop worrying? The kids outside haven’t done anything wrong, have they?”
Pen shook her head against his chest. “You’re right, I’m just being silly.”
“Don’t worry, I’m used to it. Now what’s for dinner, woman?”
Pen slapped him on the arm with a stinging backhand. “You’ll get put to bed on an empty stomach if you call me woman again, cheeky sod.”
“Did I hear someone mention dinner?”
Andrew spotted his daughter coming down the stairs in nothing but a plump white towel. Her shoulder-length brown hair was a wet and tangled mess around her glistening shoulders.
Andrew sighed. “You’re not a little girl anymore, Bex. I really wish you wouldn’t walk around half-naked.”
She rolled her eyes. “I just got out the shower. Anyway, back to my earlier question: did I hear someone mention dinner?”
“Sit down, sweetheart.” Pen dumped herself down on the room’s bulbous, cream sofa and patted the cushion beside her. “Let me get those knots out of your hair. You look like something out of a horror movie.”
Bex walked across the living room with her arms outstretched like a badly acted mummy. Then she collapsed on the sofa like a make-believe bullet had hit her in the forehead. Finally, she sat still long enough for her mother to run her fingers through the tangled bunches of her hair. She winced every time a knot was yanked.
Andrew glanced at his fourteen-year old daughter’s naked legs and wished once more that she would cover them up. She doesn’t realise how much of a woman she’s becoming. Time she started being a little more aware of herself.
Bex caught his stares and frowned at him, pulling down the hem of the towel so that it was closer to her knees. She knew him well enough by now to recognise his looks of disapproval. She raised her eyebrows at him. “Can we have chippy?”
Andrew looked at Pen for approval, not particularly fussed himself. He wasn’t a big eater most nights.
Pen shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t mind chips.”
Bex clapped her hands excitedly. “Cod and chips, please, Dad. Salt, no vinegar.”
Andrew laughed. “Don’t you think I know that? Been feeding you fourteen bloody years.”
“And if you don’t feed me again soon, I might not make it to fifteen.” Becky sucked in her cheeks so that she looked like a starving ghoul. Add the chaotic mess of her hair and the impression was quite convincing.
Andrew let out his breath in a whistle. “Alright, drama queen, I’ll get going right away; don’t want you to starve. I’m going to walk, though – save the petrol – but then the three of us can settle down and watch a movie together. Isn’t there a Stephen King film on tonight, Bex?”
“Yeah,” she replied eagerly, pulling away from her mother’s hair-straightening fingers and flopping back on the sofa. Her hair was now sufficiently straightened to pass for human. “Don’t think it’s for you, though, Dad; has monsters and stuff. You don’t like blood and violence.”
“Perhaps I’ll make an exception if it means spending some time with my increasingly-absent daughter. You never have any time for me anymore.”
“It’s because you smell so bad.”
“Charming. I suppose you’re too good for a bit of BO now that you’re a teenager.
Pen interrupted the exchange. “Can we save the banter for after we’ve all eaten? You’re as bad as she is sometimes, Andrew.”
Andrew put his hands up in defence. “I’m going.”
He left the warmth of the living room and stepped into the chillier hallway, heading to his right. His shoes were in the front porch and he went to retrieve them, whistling a made-up tune as he went. He saw the group of youths through the gl
ass window of the PVC front door. Pen had been right: there were about ten of them in total, mostly boys – but not all. Andrew counted at least two young girls about Rebecca’s age.
He still stood by what he had said earlier: they were just bored kids with nothing better to do. It wasn’t like there was a cinema to go to, or a bowling alley. In fact there wasn’t anything for the kids to do in town during the evenings. They needed to venture into Birmingham for anything beyond a scrappy game of football. The kids outside were just trying to entertain themselves. No reason to be frightened of them. In fact, it would likely make things worse. If you treated young people like thugs all the time then that’s probably how they’d end up behaving.
Kick a dog and it’ll bite.
Andrew pushed aside his shoes and decided on a pair of trainers instead. The Nike running shoes were new and a little uncomfortable, but he wanted to try and wear them in quickly. He tied the laces loosely to reduce the pinching on his toes, then stood up and pulled his brown-leather wallet from his jeans to check he had cash. He did – just over twenty-pounds in notes and change. The final thing he did was pull on his long, black overcoat from the stand in the corner. Even from inside the porch, it was clear that the weather outside was nippy. A tough winter was on its way.
Andrew fastened the final button on his jacket and was ready to leave. He unlocked the front door and stepped out into the bitter, grey dusk of the evening. The frosty air immediately gravitated towards him and he gave his shoulders a quick, yet vigorous rub as he started down the pathway. The dozen-or-so teenagers across the road noticed Andrew’s presence as he left his property, but they paid him hardly any attention. Just like he’d told Pen, there was nothing to worry about. In fact, je was going to walk right by them on his way to the shops. He was willing to bet that they wouldn’t make so much as a peep at him.
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