A Following Of Demons

by Jessica Cambrook

people with no limbs that are still pumping out blood onto the floor. It’s a slaughterhouse, the evidence of their brutality smeared across the place. When smell of the freshly cut flesh and warm blood hits me, it makes me vomit on myself, and when I try to wipe it away, that’s when I realise I’m tied up to the wall surrounded by corpses.

  When I try to move, something’s holding me back and I see blood and some kind of slime run down my arm. I can’t turn my head. They all stand around me, waiting for me to look in their eyes. For a while, I don’t. But then I’m compelled to, if I don’t look in their eyes that are dragging mine to theirs I’ll probably die anyway. So I look up, and meet the eyes of the tallest one with all of the tattoos and long, black matted hair. Except in my dreams I’ve never seen them in any detail. Then he comes and opens my stomach with his long fingernails, and I watch as everything spills out onto the floor with a heavy, sloppy thud. Blood drips loudly, and I don’t feel like I’m dying. I’m just as alive, but in excruciating pain. I know it’s never going to end, for as long as anyone will live. I scream and scream but no one comes to help, they all just watch as the black haired guy rips me slowly, limb from limb.” I stopped, and bit my lip. Gwen cried silently, face puckered in sympathy.

  “Oh, Rick. Why didn’t you tell me before?” She said before throwing her arms around me and engulfing me in a reassuring hug. “Don’t worry, I would never let them take you there.” She grasped my hand with shining eyes. “I’ll never let you be alone, remember?”

  “I’ll never let you be alone, either.” I smiled with a tight throat, glad in the knowledge that she wasn’t going to leave me for being weird or haunted, that I would always have her behind me. She leaned forward to kiss me and we sat hugging for a while before she suddenly pulled back. My heart sank as I realised she was probably about to leave, but with wide eyes she said, “Rick, does that mean they watch you in the shower?”

  Her words took me by surprise and as I struggled to find a response to that random question, a laugh burst out of me. It began quietly but when Gwen joined in too, it echoed loudly around the room, the reverberations mingling together until all we could hear was one two-toned noise of elation.

  The Downfall

  When my parents died, a year before we entered the house where it all began, the damned place where demons were free to roam, I let them back into my life. I hadn’t seen them in over a year and I’d gotten used to it being just me and Gwen. Depressed and feeling alone even with Gwen firmly by my side, my feelings were made worse by the hurt I saw in my grandparent’s eyes at losing their son and daughter-in-law. They were broken, and it ruined me too. They had raised me almost as much as my busy, career focused parents who only ever wanted the best for me and Seb. The car crash they died in didn’t have particularly suspicious circumstances, just a drunk driver at night three times above the legal limit who also died in the crash; but I knew that somehow, the demons were involved in it. I think they got tired of waiting for my protective happiness to lessen and took action themselves by controlling the drunk driver. The papers never named the other party in the accident until after he hung himself in the mental asylum he lived in for a few years, but I knew it was Joe. It was entirely my fault for my parent’s deaths for allowing him in, for my part in ruining his life with insanity.

  I stopped all contact with my family including my grandparents, Seb and Gwen, scared of letting them get possessed by my demons which weren’t their problem to deal with. A few days after my parents died I realised sharing the bed with Gwen was extremely dangerous for her, and I moved out into a nearby cheap hotel where I drank all day and night to numb the pain of having no one. I didn’t let anyone know where I was, and I didn’t leave the hotel for anything other than a new bottle of vodka. I had savings for our wedding to live on but I hoped the booze would kill me sooner than I could spend all my money.

  Every night after a day of watching bad quality television programs and listening to upbeat radio presenters, I would sit with a bottle of vodka and a pile of prescription pills. I knew what needed to be done, to save everyone from my demons. I never found the courage to actually do it in the hope Gwen would find and save me.

  After a few weeks of chronic depression and alcoholism, Gwen finally found me.

  “Oh my lord, I’m so happy to have found you! I missed you so much; you scared the hell out of me!” She scattered little kisses all over my unshaven face and neck. I felt ashamed, like I’d failed her. If I’d had more motivation I’d have moved to a different city or country. But secretly I’d wanted to be found. I couldn’t live without Gwen but I didn’t want to harm her in any way.

  “I can’t be near you. I passed them onto Joe when we were younger when I slept at his house and he killed my parents so if we share the same bed when I’m in a crazy emotional state they’ll get you too.” I slurred. “You have to go and leave me forever.” I began to wail loudly.

  “Think logically, you’re good at that. We’ve shared a bed for about a year or more now. I’ve never been possessed by any crazy demons so far, and I’d much rather risk having you with me and sharing the spirits than not having you in my life. I can’t live without you now. You know I’m scared of the dark, you can’t let me be alone.” She sat next to me and rested her head tenderly on my swaying shoulder.

  “I’ll never let you be alone, I said that didn’t I?” I looked at her blearily.

  “You did say that, and you’re currently leaving me alone. How could you?” She joked gently.

  “I’m so sorry! So sorry! Please, please take me back. I don’t want you to have them too, but they can’t take you away from me, never ever!” I began crying drunkenly again; sure she’d walk out and leave like I’d done to her.

  “I forgave you the moment I saw you. I knew why you walked but I just wanted you back. Come home, now.” She took my hand, threw the vodka bottle into the wardrobe with a loud clatter and she helped me stumble out, paying my final bill on the way. The hotel manager moodily threw a receipt at her as she led his best customer for years out the front door. She drove me home and ran me a bath with a cup of tea, and that night was the best of my life. I have never felt so loved or cared for.

  Although I was in a better state of mind and I apologised to all of my family and Gwen for the next few weeks, the angry souls who so desperately wanted to torture me were closer than ever, almost within arm’s reach. Sometimes in enclosed spaces I could smell their rancid flesh and hear the mixture of pus and blood dripping steadily to the floor. I heard them scratching their crusty scabs and the small ripping noise as they came free. The licking of their grey lips and the spit dropping audibly to the floor as they realised they could get me soon.

  I recognized that as soon as they learnt how to get close enough to be able to touch me, they would drag me with them and my nightmare would become reality. That’s when I asked Gwen to help me find a psychic that could help exorcise me of the spirits, whatever they turned out to be. We found Esther.

  Esther

  Listed in the phone directory as Esther H. P. Lovett who claimed to be the best psychic in the field of “unexplained entities”, I rang her and got her answer phone. Although she seemed like the best and most relevant psychic, I didn’t think anything of it and continued to look for more. As I was about to press the button to ring Madame De Mona, medium extraordinaire, she rang back. The shrill blearing of the phone shocked me, and they all crept forwards. She greeted me formally as Mr Lightwater, and talked about my situation with a deep understanding that I’d never known before. I warmed to her immediately, as someone who understood. We arranged for Gwen and I to go to her home, west of ours in a bad area. We arrived early at her small, shack like hose and knocked on the thin wooden door. She opened it immediately and the rickety door swung inwards to reveal a living room still in a seventies devastation of a florally patterned hurricane. Pendulums with different coloured stones swung gently from a fan blasting in the corner, even though it was a generally warm day
outside.

  “You must be Mr and Mrs Lightwater?” Esther said with a peaceful smile, gesturing us indoors. Before we stepped in, I saw them recoil. I hurried Gwen in before they could change their minds. Esther shut the door and locked it saying a little chant as she did so. She touched the door seven times before hanging a silver locket on the handle.

  “Almost!” Gwen giggled. “We’re engaged to be married as soon as we can afford it.”

  “Ah, marriage is but a ceremony. The will to be married is the deed done. Please, come in. Make yourselves at home.” We smiled at each other excitedly as Esther floated inside with a grace that can only come with years of practice.

  “Tea, my dears?” We both thanked her but said no. Esther had a curious way of making you feel welcome, like she had known you for years. I felt so relaxed in this little house. They hadn’t followed us inside of this protective abode where I knew no badness could seep in. “I have many protective charms and amulets here, they won’t follow you in.” She sat down in the deep flowery armchair beside the red, horrifically patterned sofa where Gwen and I were.

  “It’s boiling in here.” I panted, wafting my face with an old spiritualist magazine from the table next to me.

  “Rick, you’re so strange.” Gwen giggled, wrapping her coat more tightly around her. “It’s got to be about minus eighty in here.”

  Esther smiled indulgently at us like we were ignorant children, “You’re boiling because of “them”. That’s what you call the spirits, isn’t it? I had my fan ready for you.”

  “What have they got to do with my body temperature?” I asked, not knowing if she was joking with me.

  “They use their body heat to keep you warm, unintentionally. They are about two hundred degrees by nature, so even being near to you is enough to keep you warm.” She flicked the fan higher. “If you were in a small, empty room, chances are you would be cold. If you were in a small room full of people, however, you would be rather warm, don’t you think?” She winked lightly, letting me in on the joke. “So! These... dark entities. You say they are getting closer?” she peered at me closely.

  “Well yes, they are. My parents died less than a year ago...” I cleared the thick emotion from my throat. “After that, I sort of invited them closer. Now they’re just an arm’s reach away and honestly I’m scared they’re going to get Gwen, or me.”

  “I see.” Her eyes looked strangely sad. “How long have you been dealing with these demon spirits?”

  I thought about it and the first memory I had of them was when I was four, but it was very vague memories I couldn’t quite recollect. My grandfather had also told me I was about four when it began, when I started being suspicious of everything and constantly looking over my shoulder, more mature than just my few years of age. My grandparents took the approach that they would shower me with love and commitment; if I knew people were there for me it wouldn’t be so difficult. It definitely made things easier to cope with, and along with my parents and Seb, I had a strong backing behind me that kept me going, that stopped me from ever giving up.

  “I was probably around four years old.” I finally said.

  “Okay that’s fine. Also, you said you were almost twenty four? So you’ve dealt with these entities for almost twenty years now?” She looked as if she was taking mental notes, concentrating hard and listening carefully.

  “Yeah, I’d probably say so.” I raised an eyebrow, wondering where this was going.

  “This is probably worse