Neighbours from Hell.

One.

Things were just getting back to normal at the 1811 East Craigmullen Street, another one of the countless red brick tenements in the heart of Glasgow. The Police had turned Flat 2A inside out and the lurid and grim details of the nocturnal hobbies of the tenant, Johnny Fisher, had made all the papers. On Reporting Scotland the police labelled Fisher one of the worst serial killers in Scottish history. It was an honour of sorts, so his upstairs neighbour Martin thought, though he mostly considered Fisher an utter dick.

Martin had, until recently, no beef with Fisher, he had kept himself to himself and ran a quiet house, most of the time. There was the odd, droning singing that went on for hours but that was only on specific dates each year; barely tolerable but not a persistent nuisance. Still, what Martin had originally thought were the normal drunken screams of mid twenties Glaswegian women, turned out to be the rape, torture and killing of five poor girls from across the city. When the police suggested to Martin that most people would be able to easily differentiate between wails of debasement and mutilation and excitable happy screams he shrugged and said he found it surprising the Police had never been outside a pub at closing time.

Martin wasn't a pleasant fellow and he knew it, but at least he wasn't so bad as to chop up five young women in some kind of Satanic sex frenzy. That was why Martin thought Fisher was a dick, though more importantly he came to that conclusion because Fisher disturbed the peace of the close by getting caught. Having the cops and reporters traipse around the place for weeks, disturbing the peace and leaving the close in a right state had been a nuisance. He was glad the idiot hanged himself in his prison cell. He hoped it hurt.

Things were just getting back to normal and Martin was satisfied that once again his little routine would go on without disturbance. That was all he really needed. Left alone he was happy but when confronted with the bullshit noise and behaviours of others he would find himself becoming obsessed, unable to ignore it and would rile himself up. He'd never do anything about it, he was a wimp but if someone handed him a button he could press to exterminate those people, he would have jabbed on it with his index finger over and over with great delight. Aside from spates of megalomania within his inner life, he was quite an affable and social chap, if you were white, protestant, Scottish and from the West Coast but not Paisley or East Kilbride or anywhere like that, they were all scum. He wasn't too fond of the West End “poofs” as he called them, nor the filthy Tims from the East end. In fact, truth be told, he was rarely pleasant to anyone. To Martin, everyone else was a dirty foreign bastard, whether he consciously realised it or not.

He was an officious little runt too, always writing to the council or his factor complaining about the state of the common areas, demanding the police come and remove children who were playing in the back green. He'd put up rotas for people in the close to wash the stairs, leave printed notes demanding doors were closed quietly, would bitch and moan to himself about the heavy steps of some of his neighbours. It was probably for everyone's benefit that he kept himself to himself, so to speak.

About six weeks after the arrest of Fisher, Martin was woken up in the middle of the night by a loud screech which ended with a heavy dull thump. Immediately he thought he'd been woken by a car accident and bounded out of bed and to the window like a pleased child checking for an ice-cream van. To his dismay the street outside was empty. He heard another sound, like that of furniture being dragged, it was coming from downstairs. Was someone moving in? So soon? At this time of night? With all the sounds it appeared so. Martin pressed his ear to the floor and heard several sets of heavy footsteps stomping around and voices speaking, harsh and sharp. He thought perhaps they were speaking German. Immediately he was annoyed, the racket was outrageous. Martin argued with himself for half an hour about whether he would call the Council's nuisance noise department, the cops or go downstairs and knock on the door. He decided to be neighbourly, no point antagonising them. Although, they were moving in at a ridiculous hour. He'd hold that as ammunition, just in case they acted like arseholes in the future. The thumping and banging completely subsided about half an hour later which Martin thought was quite reasonable. He decided to go back to bed and was lying there trying to doze off when he realised something was still bothering of him. When he'd woken up he thought he'd heard a car crash and when he looked outside he saw nothing. Nothing, no vans filled with furniture no removal lorries, outside had been silent. Martin thought it odd but no odder than moving into a house at such a god awful hour. He had no problem falling asleep.

When he woke the next morning he knew something was wrong but it took him about twenty minutes before he could pin it down. His whole house stank. At first he thought the smell might be a gas leak but he soon realised it was a heavy odour of cigarette smoke, stale cigarette smoke. That was all he needed, to be stuck above a bunch of filthy smokers stinking out his house with their disgusting habit. Martin had decided his new neighbours were going to be trouble, he just knew it.

He opened a window by a tiny amount and then got ready for work. He sat eating breakfast, his senses keen for any other potential problems from his downstairs neighbours. By the time he left for work he had worked himself up into quite a barely suppressed fury. This he was impotent to release upon his colleagues given that he was at the bottom rung of the corporate ladder so it stewed all day until he got home. He was just looking for trouble when he travelled home. When he climbed the stairs he noticed his new neighbours had stuck a name plate to the door, “Aguares” emblazoned in a heavy cursive script. From that he concluded they were Spanish rather than German and began to call up his preconceived stereotypes in order to imagine what foul cretins he'd ended up with beneath him this time.

He slowed as he passed their door, attempting to hear any sounds from within, something he could use against them but the house was silent. He was almost disappointed more than he was relieved. His home no longer smelled of smoke and he began to relax, turned on the T.V. and watched the news. He needed something to annoy him, it was like having an irritant in his nose and looking into the light in order to sneeze, he needed to blow off steam.

He muttered his angry opinions to the screen, cursed the news-reader, complained about the stupidity of the politicians, chuckled at tragic misfortunes abroad, moaned about the irrelevance of local news and then sighed about the weather forecast being biased towards England. There was still no noise from downstairs and Martin let his guard down, sat watching the idiot lantern for a few hours and went to bed.

He could not have said what had woken him up. Some extreme sensation that pushed him from a deep sleep to fully awake without any pause. His heart thumped against his chest, he was startled, panicked, dazed. Everything was silent. Had he been dreaming? Had he had one of those moments where he imagined falling and instead of sleeping had woken up in terror? Martin could not say. He sat there, his flabby white body shivering under a duvet he'd pulled tight around him.

It took him a while to calm down and then he fell into a fitful sleep. He was besieged by a fragmentary dream-state in which he was a child again. There was something awful which lay unseen behind a hedge, something he knew to stay well away from. His mother called him to dinner. He was in a swimming pool with his school mates, one of them was drowning. His brother staggering towards him, covered in blood, a screw-driver sticking out of his neck. He knew these were all dream images as he endured them. He never fully reached the oblivious rest state necessary for a good night's sleep.

In the morning he was cranky and swore he would deck the first person that said he'd gotten out of the wrong side of bed. The smell of cigarette smoke was suffocating, almost nauseating, so he skipped breakfast. He left for work and gave a snarling noise as he passed Melanie on the bottom floor as she was taking her bins out. He stepped out the close and paused, went back and apologised. He explained he'd been getting kept awake at night by the new neighbours. Melanie said she hadn't known anyone had moved in yet. Martin was only too happy to bring her down with his moaning about the unseen Aguares family. Up all hours of the night, smoking like chimneys, shouting and dragging furniture around. Melanie agreed it was awful which cheered him up slightly more. It was always good to have allies, other people one could use as witnesses. They hadn't been in a week but already Martin knew they would have to move on. This was a quiet close for civilised people, not some crack den slum filled with single mothers and illegal immigrants. He intended to keep it that way.

He tried and failed to engage several of his work colleagues in conversation, most of them didn't seem interested in the latest goings on at his close. He understood. Most of them had told him they understood, had heard similar stories. One of them, John, always took it too far though, John was, as far as Martin was concerned, a racist. Martin complained to him once about the noise from the Romanian family underneath and John agreed they were a menace and said that it were up to him he'd round them all up and put them death camps for making excess noise like that. His attitude was so negative, so mean-spirited that Martin found ways to avoid speaking to him.

When he went back home that night he noticed the Aguares' had put some curtains up finally. He almost wished they hadn't. They were a thick brown material almost like sack-cloth which had been patterned with a lurid, almost fluorescent, green paisley. As he looked up in disapproval he thought he made out a figure moving behind them. The Arguares family had most definitely taken up residence.

There was no noise as he passed the door and again his house was free of the foul cigarette smoke. He had a quick dinner and sat on his laptop, leaving pointlessly mean criticism on a variety of Youtube channel comment sections and went to bed satisfied with his vitriol.

The sound of a child crying, the wail of a baby woke him up. He sat in bed his nerves vibrating along with the grating sound. He clenched his teeth and then hissed an angry curse through them. Martin flung the sheets aside and stood there naked and livid wondering if he should bang on the floor or go downstairs. The noise was awful, a squealing shrieking sound as if the child was in pain. As he pulled on some boxer shorts and a robe it continued and he realised there was something off about the crying. Martin, determined to cause a fuss, marched out of his front door and into a chill that almost crippled him. He felt his warm skin tighten and the cold seep through to the marrow in an instant. He had no idea it would be so cold, it was the middle of August. He could see the clouds of panting breath in front of him and shivered violently, like he'd been deposited in the Arctic. The wailing sound came up the stairs, echoing creepily off the walls. Martin was resolute in his anger and would not be deterred by an anomalous weather condition. He dragged himself down the stairs. His will was stronger than his body's natural reaction to go back inside, close the door and pretend to sleep. He descended and with each step the temperature decreased. The cold was almost intolerable by the time he made it to the Aguares' front door which was blasted with a thin, sparkling dust of white frost.

Martin, by now, was shivering so hard that his first attempt to knock on the door was an appallingly weak effort but he was thankful for that. The edges of the knuckles which had touched the door were now pained and red and blistering. His curiosity got the better of him and he bent down and looked through the keyhole, he soon wished he had not.

The hall was dark save for the faint illumination radiating from the wailing thing that floated around the room. At first Martin thought it was a sliver of photons being projected onto one of the walls, a rogue beam of light from outside bursting through those thick ugly curtains but it moved into sight and his mind drowned with perceptions of something alien to him.

The thing was a mockery of the human form. A large bloated white egg, perhaps the size of a watermelon, parodied a head. A multitude of black corrosive wounds pockmarking the surface was the attempt at features. This foul appendage was affixed to a body. Equally smooth and white it was a similar size to the body of a child's doll, perhaps a foot in length all in. Tiny stubby legs hung from the bottom of this pale bloat but what it mistook for arms were thin as cable and stretched downwards about six feet, like tendrils of a jellyfish. At the end of each were long spidery digits, too many for Martin to count. The thing floated through the air like a fish in an aquarium, a fish that cried like a tortured infant.

He had the impression that it was patrolling through the empty rooms. Martin thought better of knocking on the door and decided that he was too cold to deal with this insanity right now. He struggled to get back upstairs but managed to get back through is front door with some haste. His heart was thumping, he had the strangest cold sweat trickling down his back as if an icy spider ran across his skin. He had a headache, felt woozy and almost collapsed across his threshold. Martin pushed the front door shut with some force and it slammed. Instantly the hideous noises from below stopped.

Moments later they were replaced by the sound of harsh angry voices shouting up through the roof. The words were incomprehensible but terrifying. Whatever residual animal instincts that made Martin incorrectly behave like he was an Alpha, leaked out, soaking his boxer shorts. While disgusted, he was momentarily relieved to have some warmth on his frozen flesh.

Like the scared little ape that he was he retreated into his bedroom, closed the door and leapt into his bed without touching the floor. He pulled the covers over his head, put on his noise-cancelling headphones and fell asleep to the sounds of waves crashing against the shore. He concluded he was probably having a nightmare anyway. The Aguares family could wait.

Two.

The walls were endless. Each grubby white brick seemed to have been placed with such mathematical precision that it was both uncanny and unsettling. Above the heavy iron struts shuddered and pigeons angrily shat from their perches upon them, a rain of bird faeces trickling and spattering onto the ground where he stood. He could not protect himself and the dung of dozens of pigeons ran down his cold and naked flesh. He knew where he was, though it had never been like this before. He was under Central station, the bridge on Midland Street to be precise, not it's more famous brother, the Heilan'mans Umbrella. He had walked through it hundreds of times. Yet tonight it stretched on endlessly, he couldn't see the Crystal Palace, MacSorley's or the shops on Jamaica Street, it was just a long empty darkness filled with the rumbling of a million overhead trains. He was trapped in the most mundane and dreadful of labyrinths and could do nothing but press on. He had to. Behind him, it was stalking.

He ran and ran through the ceaseless torrent of shit and never once looked back, never once. He did not have to, he knew it was there, yards or feet or even inches behind him. He could not look, he was too afraid, so afraid that even the thought of looking made his bones ache. He kept running. He kept running. He glanced to his left to witness The Arches which had been shut for being too much fun. It was open now, but the line of people waiting for entry did not seem like the standard freak-show that he'd seen and joined in a previous life. No pink haired boys in rubber shirts or be-speckled day-glo Goth hybrids, just horrors. The corpse of a child upon a skeletal horse, not a corpse, something undead, old and dangerous looking out through the little puppet's eyes. A stark, twisted silhouette of an ominous looking tree, in the distance upon a hill. From one of it's branches he could see a body swinging from a rope. It was impossible but there it was, right in the queue next to the ghostly hags and the squat grinning imp thing with a switch-blade. A great big black dog in conversation with a young gaunt woman with raven black curls; she wore ornate red, black and yellow robes and seemed disinterested in the discussion, preferring to scrutinise her phone. Both glanced at him as he ran past. And on and on this crew of strangers went. It petered out after an hour or so and once again he was alone. Except for it. He knew it was right there, if he turned he would stare into that awful visage he had witnessed through the keyhole earlier. That pitted deformity was after him and he could not let it get him. He did not know exactly what it intended but he doubted it was going to be beneficial.

To the right, the great iron doors of one of the arches swung open with a metallic groan. There was a yellow warning sign on one of them. Something was bound in a red circle and a heraldic bend sinister, also red intersected it. He wasn't paying too much attention, worrying what might be behind those huge heavy gates, but part of him knew that the word inside that circle was “hope”.

He crossed the threshold and screamed. The terror and agony so absolute that the universe dissolved and remade itself in front of him. The bricks faded into a grey-violet hue that became the walls of his bedroom in the pre-dawn light. He was awake, he'd been dreaming, he was crying, he'd…

Martin could not recall what he had been dreaming, some vague ghost still haunted his interior but he was awake and never had been so relieved to be so. A bad night, bad dreams. He cursed to himself as he took a deep breath only to inhale a thick stench of cigarette smoke. He was going to have to sort this out, it was clearly having a detrimental effect on his sleeping habits.

Thankfully it was Saturday and he did not have to work. He opened his bedroom window an inch or two, pulled the covers back over and attempted to go back to sleep. Try as he might he could not stop the feeling of dread he was experiencing which ruined any chance of a lie-in. Martin got up and got dressed in a bad mood. He walked into the hall and noticed there was a letter lying on the floor next to the front door. He went over, picked it up and opened the envelope with his thumb. It was just another credit card promotion, he immediately threw it in the bin. After watching the T.V. for a good twelve minutes he remembered Saturday morning T.V. was shit and decided to go and get the papers. It would give him a good excuse to knock on the door downstairs. Introduce himself, be neighbourly.

He got dressed and headed out, somewhat relieved to be out of the flat. As he walked down the stairs he stopped when he heard someone talking on the floor below, he couldn't make out what was being said. He crept down, hoping to catch a glimpse of the people below him but the sound of a door closing put paid to the idea before he reached the second floor.

Martin was almost certain whomever he had heard had entered the Aguares flat and yet not one sound came from behind that door. He wanted to listen at the door, to look through the keyhole but something stopped him. He did not know what but concluded it was his sense of decency. Pleased with himself he decided to leave the neighbours alone and go get the papers, perhaps go for a nice walk, get some breakfast in a sit-in.

His plans, like his positive mood, were thwarted by an ugly downpour that left him soaked through and his newspaper a soggy pile of illegible mush, that stained his fingers. He returned home and decided to start drinking. With nothing in his stomach but bile, he drank and drank until all the beer in his fridge was gone, then he started on the vodka, then the gin. By the time midnight came he was so intoxicated that he fell asleep on his sofa, both he and it covered in sick.

He woke at some point in the night, he could smell smoke, someone was smoking. Barely able to cohere a thought, maintain muscle control or balance, he pulled himself up from the sofa and looked at the ugly dark figure sitting across from him, on his good chair, smoking a cigarette.

“Whit you dain' here?” He slurred as if suffering from some palsy.

“Waiting for you Martin.” Johnny Fisher grinned. He wasn't looking too great. The crushed windpipe had left an awful bruise and he'd certainly began sloughing his skin. The stink from him was heavily disguised by the smoke but hints of it still came through making Martin think he was going to be sick again.

“Your deid, said in the papers.” Martin snorted, he was still so drunk he remained unaware that this was an impossible event.

“Aye.” Fisher said. “Still, here I am, eh? See aw that stuff they tell you about demons being untrustworthy? Turns oot they're no bad at keepin' a bargain after all.”

“Your talking shite, away and fuck off, I don't believe in ghosts.” Martin responded, thinking it was the wittiest thing in the world.

Fisher stood up and walked towards Martin, taking another drag from his cigarette as he did. The burning tip illuminated his dead and swollen eyes. He walked over to Martin and tapped ash onto his face. “Thing is Martin, most people think that possession is like in that movie with the wee lassie. Demons can possess aw sort of things. Like carpets, or paintings. We've possessed this tenement and well, we want you out. You like to cause trouble Martin, we don't need trouble.”

Martin was too drunk to process any of that. “away tae fuck.”

Fisher shrugged and ignored him. “I've been granted to make you an offer for the place. Sixty three thousand pounds. It's not market value, but its more than the place is actually worth. You have until the twenty eighth of the month to accept the offer or ...”

He cocked his head slightly, left the threat silent and implied.

Martin gave Fisher the finger before collapsing onto the floor in a state of unconsciousness.

Sunlight beaming into his eyes forced him awake. He felt terrible, looked terrible, smelt terrible. He needed a shower. With barely a spark firing across any of his synapses he shambled into the bathroom, climbed into the little glass booth and stood half-awake under the warm water. The water was soothing but he could not quite get rid of a creepy feeling in his neck and spine. He began to wash his face and for a moment thought he caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure standing outside, its details obscured by the condensation on the glass. He instinctively did a double take but there was nothing there. He did not get a second of relief. The water began spurting out, and smelled terrible. It was thick, brown muddy water that smelled like raw sewage. Disgusted, Martin staggered out and immediately plummeted head first towards the toilet bowl where he threw up for an uncomfortably long time. Unable to do anything else, the shitty water overflowed his shower and spilt out onto his bathroom floor and eventually seeped into the edge of the carpet of his hall.

The whole house began to reek of shit and piss. By the time Martin was in a fit enough state to deal with the mess, the hall carpet was soaked. He decided it was unsalvageable and tore it up, leaving nothing but the bare floorboards. He dumped the carpet outside and then scrubbed every inch of the bathroom until he was satisfied that it was clean. This took hours. It was evening by the time he finally settled down and after a bowl of soup he decided to sleep through the rest of the terrible day.

The night was equally as terrible.

He was there again, in the haunted endless impression of Midland Street. To the right, the great iron doors of one of the arches swung open with a metallic groan. There was a yellow warning sign on one of them. Something was bound in a red circle and a heraldic bend sinister, also red intersected it. He wasn't paying too much attention, worrying what might be behind those huge heavy gates, but part of him knew that the word inside that circle was “hope”.

He crossed the threshold and screamed. They pulled at him with claws and inhuman hands, creatures with contorted, mad features. The noise of their gibbering and cackling filled his ears as they tore at him, dragged him under, away into the burning labyrinth beyond. His terrible journey brought him to a huge industrial site, perhaps the size of a village, fire and smoke and smelted metal running like lava from vast cauldrons lit up the night sky. He had no doubt as to where he was. This was Dixon Blazes from his childhood, it was also Hell.

He found himself bound to a chair in piano-wire so tightly he bled, the creature behind the table seemed pleased by that. It could have been a man once, perhaps, but the rows of teeth and animal snout did not seem prosthetic. Nor did the black antlers sprouting from it's skull. It also wore rather tasteful glasses.

“Martin, isn't it? I'm Aguares, one of the Dukes of The East. You can't speak and this is rather distasteful so let me be brief. There is such a thing as eminent domain, that is to say when the powers that be decide your property befits their needs more than your own they can simply claim it as long as they seek to offer you fair recompense. This is what we have done. The land was claimed for us by Mr Fisher and there are rules in place. Unlike your mundane courts, who would fine you or imprison you and take your property, we will torture you into realms of madness you cannot even conceive of. So, take the money and leave. Do so quickly, do not try us human.” the great beast threatened.

Martin screamed as he was unravelled like a spring. His bones, meat and flesh all uncurling into some agonising and impossible shape. He landed awake and soaking with sweat on his bed. This time the nightmare did not fade, this time Martin remembered everything.

Most people in the world experiencing such an onslaught of supernatural occurrences would either be fascinated or terrified, perhaps both. Martin was not like most people and he didn't care if the fuckers were from Pandemonium or Pakistan, he was not giving up his house. There were rules the demon had said and Martin intended to find out just what rules he meant.

Martin was a stickler for rules, in case you hadn't guessed.

Three.

On the Monday Martin phoned in sick and spent the day watching his neighbour across the landing, 74 year old Mr Evans, pack up his stuff and with the help of his family leave his home for good. Evans had told Martin he'd been offered far above the market value, allowing him to buy a bungalow near his family. Martin was genuinely pleased for the old guy but that soon turned sour when he realised that it was probably the demon buying up all the flats. In the evening he began his first foray into demonology, browsing the web and finding himself entirely unable to figure any of it out. He gleaned that there were all sorts of demons, most of which depicted seemed to display the characteristics of medieval anti-Semitism rather the demonic features he had witnessed. He found the name Aguares, some demon or other, he wasn't sure how much of it mattered and became frustrated at all the nonsense he had spent the night reading. He went to bed awaiting nightmares.

He awoke at an ungodly hour, by what he did not know. It took him a moment to realise the tinnitus in his ears was being flattened by another sound, something he could not quite place, it was like a running tap in the distance. He wondered if he'd left the tap on in the bathroom and went to investigate. As his foot landed on the floor it immediately recoiled, something brushed against it. Martin gave a small involuntary yelp and switched on the lamp beside his bed. The room was infested with insects, bugs, worms, moths, flies and spiders. The noise was their movements. They had lined the walls like writhing black wallpaper, covered the floors in a seething carpet of wriggling life and the darkness had been the calm before the swarm. At the ignition of the light the room burst into life. A rattling, chattering, fluttering cacophony of bugs. Martin shrieked and stormed out, his feet crunching sickeningly on cockroach carapaces and the bodies of thousands of other creepy crawlies that ran and tickled and squelched between his naked toes.

In the living room he was sick, twice. He did not have the fortitude to make it to the bathroom, did not wish to know what hideous sights waited for him there. He fell asleep on the couch, cold and shivering but did not dream and when he awoke in the morning, the house was once again normal save for the foul odour of cigarette smoke.

On the Tuesday Martin phoned in sick and watched The Hopkins family from bottom left packed up their stuff. He knew what was going on so didn't speak to them. He had more important things to do. He got showered, dressed and tidied himself up and went down to the local chapel to have a word with the Priest, it was their job to sort this shit out after all. Or so he thought. After a short but angry ontological debate Martin was escorted by the priest out of the chapel. At this Martin took the opportunity to ask why the priest was in the job if he didn't believe in demonic possession. The priest, already annoyed, replied “For the chicks, now fuck off.”

This sort of thing was not an uncommon reaction from those who endured Martin in any official capacity. He saw such reactions as the exact proof of why he had to openly doubt the abilities of those in authority in the first place even when asking for their help. He found more help and professionalism from the ridiculous lesbian girl with face piercings who worked in the Occult Bookshop, though she mentioned her cousin had Asperger's several times during their conversation, apropos nothing.

She explained to Martin about the different beliefs and philosophies that surrounded demons and went on at length before getting to the point about how they were aspects of our imagination that gotten out of control. Martin was somewhat comforted by that but was no further forward in defeating them. When he explained about Fisher and the murders and the hauntings and the dreams she became less convinced about her world-view but asserted that as far as she was aware, such things could not harm him directly.

He thanked her for the information and left with further resolve to stay in his house, they might make things unpleasant but if they couldn't hurt him it was all just drama. He was so chuffed about this revelation that he celebrated by spending the night in a local hotel; a cheap perfunctory room that reminded him of a prison cell. He slept well though and woke in the morning feeling better than he had done for a few weeks. Revitalised he decided that he was going to fight fire with fire and so went back to the local chapel. Near the front of the altar was a table with two heavy iron candelabra which bracketed a crucifix about a foot long which lay in the centre. Martin stole it, deciding it was of more use to him that a fat fraud who was only interested in keeping his gravy train on the rails.

When he got home he used two large nails to hammer the crucifix onto his bedroom wall. He missed a couple of times, denting the features of the affixed Jesus but reckoned it would do the trick. He also tried remembering and reciting the lord's prayer. It was Wednesday so he phoned in sick and waited to see who would leave today. No one did. Melanie was still on the bottom floor and Gary and Bill Chambers still across from Aguares. 50/50. As long as neither of them left, Hell could not control the building. So he tried to convince himself at least, knowing it was baseless.

He prayed before he went to bed that night and lo! He slept without a hitch. He was not awoken in the night, nor did his house smell of cigarettes in the morning. He was so happy he could have cried. Had the crucifix really worked? He found it hard to believe that Hell would be so easily deterred but he checked round his house and there were no horrors to be found, no annoyances, nothing. It was Wednesday, midweek, so he phoned in sick for the rest of the week and after a few terse words with the girl from H.R. took insult at her suggestion that he better have a sickline.

Aggrieved, as ever, he spent the day in a foul mood, looking up more ways to try and foil Aguares' hostile takeover of his domain, just in case. Again, he found it to be nonsense, gleaned nothing of value after several hours and then decided to watch television, hoping for some sport, or at least snooker. The BBC did indeed have the snooker finals on but only after an episode of the execrable “Doctors” which was already on. He sat watching it and waiting for the snooker, drinking a cup of tea with some added bourbon.

About five minutes in he realised the show had taken a rather dark turn. The episode seemed to be about the Doctors having to deal with a young boy who'd been supposedly been so traumatised after he and his sister had been abducted and he watched her be murdered, that he'd become mute. As the show progressed it became clear the young boy had had some serious psychotic episode and had in fact murdered his sister. That was weird enough but the whole thing had a theme of sexuality as one of the female doctors tried to seduce the young killer first of all because of sympathy and then after, being excited by his dangerous side. Martin was stunned into open mouthed silence when the Doctor woman hitched up her skirt and presented her bare arse to the camera and started shouting “Fuck me Martin.”

This was even more weird because all through the show the boy had been called Simon, not Martin. Martin realised that hardcore pornography was not within the BBC's remit even post-watershed and so thought he'd got crossed channels or something. He turned the channel over and back but still the woman Doctor was begging for sex. He glanced at the image once more and the camera moved, closing in on her face. It was the face of his ex-wife and she'd died years ago.

Right then he knew Aguares was still fucking with him. He turned the T.V. off and went outside for a walk which turned into a long stint in a local pub but that didn't ease his mood either. By the time he got home, late in the evening, he was in the mood for confrontation. As he entered his home he knew something was up right away. The place reeked of cigarette smoke again and once again the living corpse of Johnny Fisher was in his living room.

“You, ya fucker!” Martin shouted.

“And good evening to you too Martin.” Fisher croaked from a necrotic throat. He was atrophying badly and parts of him had lost cohesion and dribbled down his fungus mottled flesh. The smell was catastrophic on the nose. It took Martin all his will not to vomit.

“This is still my home you wee bastard and I want you gone.” Martin demanded, he stabbed a chubby index finger in the air.

“Martin, just listen a minute.” Fisher complained.

“No, I did not give you permission to enter my house, I don't care if you are a spook, get the fuck out!”

“Spook? Do I look like a fucking ghost?”

“In the name of God will you just fuck off?” Martin yelled, almost in a fury.

Fisher was about to say something else but simply vanished taking the cigarette stench with him. Martin felt triumphant and went to his bed pleased with himself and his actions. Hell, once again, did not interfere with his sleep and he woke the next day with a plan.

He went back to the chapel to speak to the priest, who refused to see him but after several apologies and pleadings the old man agreed he could have five minutes. Martin explained his behaviour had been part of a crisis of faith which he had finally overcome through once again praying at night and was it possible to have a Bible. The priest handed one over to Martin, told him he hoped he found it of comfort and the meeting ended there, amicably.

At home that afternoon he began reading the bible aloud which seemed to help him until he watched another removal van and watched another house be claimed by Aguares, there was only young Melanie left besides him. She'd been the perfect neighbour. He had to chase the demon away once and for all before she left, otherwise he'd be surrounded.

By the time he got to the days of Enosh he was bored and decided to ditch the bible and escalate his plan. He left his house once again and went to the local D.I.Y store where he purchased a lot of long thin pieces of wood, a saw and plenty of glue. It took until nine in the evening before every wall in his house was covered in crosses and all his carpets caked in glue and sawdust. He started reading the bible out loud once more, skipping a lot of the rubbish bits. He fell asleep on his couch wondering what sort of god would demand a man sacrifice his own son, even as a test. He thought it sounded like that mad cult leader from the seventies, Jim Jones.

In his dream he couldn't tell whether Aguares was Jones, Elvis or Kim Jong Il. It was as if the demon couldn't decide nor take form properly. He was complimentary, said Martin had found a nice little temporary delay and that was clever but now the offer for the place was fifty thousand and he had until Sunday to take the money or else. Martin ignored him and quoted “the lord is my shepherd” at him until the demon left in disgust. Martin faded into deep sleep.

When he woke on the Friday morning there were the bodies of five dead young women in his living room. They were naked and had been brutalised a long time before. Now they just rotted, stank and writhed with maggots. He somehow knew they were Fisher's victims so he closed his eyes and started reciting the lord's prayer hoping they would go. They did not.

And then there was a knock at the door.

Martin gasped deeply and held his breathe, did not move, hoped whomever was behind that door would just leave. His eyes kept trying to drag themselves to look at the atrocity scattered across his floor and furniture he had to force himself not to look, not to scream.

“Martin, its Melanie, I need to speak to you.” A voice shouted through the door.

He didn't know what he was doing when he stepped over the corpses and into his hall, considered it inconceivably stupid as he unlocked the front door yet he did, he did. The young woman smiled at him and said “Can I come in, I need to talk to you about something?”

As she spoke she had already stepped past him and without thinking he let her into his house, as he had done several times before, they were good neighbours, friendly.

“So, uh what..” Martin began to say but his throat seized up as she made for the living room door.

Melanie turned, paused and said “hmm?”

Martin had to think fast. “It's about selling your house isn't it?”

Melanie nodded and frowned. “What's that smell?” she asked.

At this point he imagined she'd walk through the door just as his heart exploded to find it empty, it was only Hell for him after all. Instead her eyes and mouth widened and her hand raised up as if to stifle a scream of vomit. “Oh no.” she whispered.

What would you think? You open a door of your neighbour to find every wall covered in crosses and five naked, slaughtered rotting corpses. Would you wait for an explanation? Of course not. Martin knew that, knew he had no option but to slam the front door behind him and deal with this.

He protested his innocence even as he subdued her, apologised each time he slammed her head against the wall, begged her forgiveness as he strangled her and wept over her still lifeless body.

From behind him was slow sarcastic applause. He turned to see Aguares, in the flesh, so to speak. “Well done. Did you know she refused quarter of a million, said she liked the character of the street, didn't want it changed. She was coming here to tell you that.”

“What?” was the only thing Martin's brain could think to say.

“Yes,” Aguares chuckled. “funny how things turn out. We've reconsidered you Martin.”

“What?”

Aguares rolled his large bruise coloured eyes. “It seems you might be the type of tenant we are looking for. If you prefer your own home to prison that is.”

Martin could hardly understand what the demon was saying yet still knew well enough what it meant. “I want to stay.” He said, his voice one of complete surrendered.

“Good. However I did say might, there is just one more tiny little thing you need to do Martin.” Aguares said.

“What?”

“Eat her.”