Presents

Geoff Anderson was not the world's biggest fan of cats. He'd grown to tolerate Megan's two feline companions when he stayed at her flat but if it were up to him they'd have gone along with his Radiohead and Jay-Z posters when they finally moved in together. Sadly, she had no intention of giving up Fidget and Goon and the two black Toms knew it. They'd get right in his face and he was sure the furry little shits would sneer at him.

The things you do for love.” He'd sigh to himself.

To be fair, once they moved into their new home, the cats had bothered him less. The house backed onto farmland and so the cats had plenty of territory to do their feline business. Most days they'd just drape themselves off the wall at the back and sleep or vanish completely for hours on end. He preferred that to them skulking around the top of the sofa, tails lashing the back of his head while sticking their noses in his ears. It took only three weeks before they managed to find something new to piss him off.

He came down for breakfast one morning to find three eviscerated rat corpses. Bloody innards and crimson paw-prints were strewn across the brand new linoleum and both cats sat in front of the cat flap looking mighty pleased with themselves and their nocturnal slaughter. He called Megan downstairs to look at the disgusting aftermath thinking she would be as horrified as he but when she came down she clasped both her hands to her chest and said “awww, they've bought us presents.”

Geoff could not believe it. To him presents meant after shave, a nice single malt, hell even a card with twenty quid would have been nice. Butchered rodents were certainly not something he'd ever have put on a gift list.

“They brought you presents.” He corrected. “You can clean the mess up.”

“It's their nature, Geoff.” Megan explained apologetically.

“Aye and that sort of thing giein' me the boke is my nature.” He retorted.

She gave him a jovial scowl and got the dustpan from underneath the sink. Geoff left her to it, hearing her praising and encouraging Fidget and Goon. He wished she wouldn't do that, but it wasn't worth the trouble of an argument. Geoff could bear it, the cats were a bit of a pain but at least they weren't his previous flatmate, Sean.

Sean had been a weird bugger, really weird. A Goth, sadly enough, always draped in black and adorning his room with ostentatious candelabra and plastic skulls. That wasn't the problem though, the problem had been his penchant for black magic. He used to talk endlessly about it and had even slaughtered a chicken or two in his bedroom inside some crude magic circle he'd laid on the carpet using masking tape. Geoff had confronted him twice about the smell, the noises and the mess. He'd kept the bad dreams and creepy feeling of some presence in the flat to himself. Sean said he'd keep it to a minimum, claimed he'd found a coven and then one day simply left.

This had pissed Geoff off no end, since Sean still owed three months back rent but he'd left most of his stuff too, which Geoff decided to sell after six weeks not hearing from him, everything but a small plaster sculpture which looked like an egg timer. There was something about it that he liked so that object he kept. He considered it all compensation rather than theft. With Sean gone he felt better, the flat didn't feel as eerie at night, his nightmares vanished and he returned to a normal life. Despite advertising it regularly, he could never find a flatmate to share the bills. There had been plenty of interest but none of those who visited the place ever got back to him. In the end he was quite happy when Megan suggested they move in together. After dealing with Sean, then rising costs, two cats being cats were not going to be that much of an issue, especially since Megan was quite happy to clean their gleeful butchery up.

So it went. Every so often he'd come down to find blood and remains in the kitchen, sometimes feathers, once they'd even managed to get the better of a small fox. It was disturbing and impressive how good they were at hunting, given they'd spent most of their lives cooped up in a one room and kitchen. Making up for lost time, Geoff guessed. Megan took it all in her stride and Fidget and Goon? They strutted about like two little hard-men with flick knives for claws, waiting for whomever was next to mess with them.

That June Megan went on holiday with her friend Sarah. The holiday had been booked long before she and Geoff moved in together. She also promised her little sister that she could cat-sit, which Geoff was delighted with. Megan had taken both the cats over to her mother's house for the fortnight. Geoff was chuffed to bits, he didn't want to clean up blood and entrails that was true but the idea of having the place to himself for a couple of weeks seemed like bliss. He loved Megan but she watched a lot of crap. He took the two weeks off too, bought a few box sets he wanted to catch up on, a couple bottles of single malt and a half ounce of grass. He even chuckled to himself, half remembering the old adage “while that cats away...”

That first night he got blootered watching the first season of “Narcos” which left him feeling pretty rough the next morning. He padded downstairs into the kitchen anticipating another bloodbath before remembering he was in the house on his own. He had a glass of orange juice, followed by a shower and then decided to go to the gym to sweat out his hangover. By lunchtime he felt much better. In the afternoon he went over to his folk's place. It being a warm Sunday they'd invited him over for a barbecue, which he was not going to miss, especially since his older brother Robert was back in town. Robert had joined the Navy at 18 and went from being a total tadger to a stand up guy in five years. He was an engineer, travelled all around the world and so Geoff hardly ever saw him but when they got together it was good times.

When he got to his parent's house he realised they'd decided to make a big thing of it, extended family, neighbours, friends. The back garden and kitchen were packed with familiar faces of people that Geoff had not seen in a long while. He greeted his brother with a hug and the two of them instantly slid into the same banter that they'd had since they were children.

Soon the garden was filled with chatter and the delicious redolence of charring meat. By the steps of the conservatory, Geoff and Robert were laughing like excited schoolboys as they caught up. Their laughter seemed to be infectious and the whole day turned into an evening of good food, cheap booze and fine company. At some point Geoff and Robert found themselves talking to Mr Brown, who was a neighbour of their parents and a policeman. Mr Brown insisted they call him Allan and was curious as to what horrors Robert had witnessed in his time in the Navy. Robert was reticent but as twilight faded into darkness he and Allan Brown began to trade stories. Geoff, a quiet witness listened to them with a smile on his face. It reminded him of the spooky camp-fire stories his Scout master used to tell when they were a kid. He was drunk, half listening as he reminisced about his youth and only began to pay close attention when he heard the word coven.

Allan described his involvement in a case wherein the police were called to a large house a few miles from Port Patrick on the west coast. According to Allan the house belonged to a cult, or a coven, who were practising black magic and indeed human sacrifice. In the cellar they found cages with several dead bodies of young men, burnt so badly and so chopped up that they had difficulty in identifying the remains. Geoff instantly thought of his former flatmate and added his own experiences with Sean just to add flavour to how weird and detached people of that ilk could be. It was a great night and he got a taxi home with a large smile on his face and a feeling of boozy contentment which was so pleasing to him that he slept like a baby.

The next few days he slowed down after drinking so much, he watched more T.V. smoked a lot of weed and ordered take-aways. He was enjoying his holiday from normal everyday life, it was a pleasant torpor he wallowed in, one he generally had no access to.

On the third day of the second week of his hiatus from normality he came downstairs to find his a dead rabbit in his kitchen. Immediately he cursed Fidget and Goon until he realised that the cats were not at home. For a while this disturbed him but he decided it was likely that some other feline had invaded his territory. Luckily for him this furry interloper did not seem to be as savage as his own cats, the rabbit's neck was broken but there was no blood or guts. As he removed it from the floor into a black bin bag, he considered the poor thing may have somehow managed to struggle into the house to die. He felt bad about it and then uncharacteristically decided to bury the beast in the back garden. Geoff felt better for the rest of the day after burying the rabbit.

Megan called that night, which he hadn't expected. She told him she missed him, that the holiday had been shite and that Sarah had been a right pain for most of it after getting badly burnt on the first and second day. They spent about twenty minutes talking before the conversation dwindled to a natural end. Geoff was glad of that, he'd reached a cliff-hanger on the show he'd been watching and was determined to devour the next episode along with the entire next season before bed. He failed, instead falling asleep at the back of two in the morning with the T.V. still blaring. He woke up sometime before dawn still on the sofa and with a cramp in his neck.

As he grumbled to his feet, eyes half shut, he felt nauseous. A foulness stung his stomach. It began to churn and he felt it spasm, pushing bile up his throat until he realised he was going to vomit. Geoff stumbled rapidly into the kitchen, headed face first towards the sink just in time for another spasm to force the sickness out. He retched a few times until he was spewing nothing but air. After he gained some composure, he poured a glass of water and drank it slowly. That was when the smell hit him, a rotten, sour odour that was so strong that he thought he might be sick again. It took him seconds to locate the source, it was lying on his kitchen floor, a dead rabbit. Not just any dead rabbit though, this one was still covered in the soil he'd used to bury it. He was too tired and weak to be horrified, to consider what had happened, he just picked up another black bag, and set of kitchen tongs and got rid of the thing in the bin outside his kitchen door, he chucked the tongs in too, they were ruined.

As he stepped back into his house and closed the door he heard a noise from the garden, some liquid gurgle like that of a struggling drain. It certainly did not sound like laughter, he made sure he convinced himself of that before dashing upstairs. He also made sure the covers were over his head, because for the first time since he was a child Geoff felt the genuine sensation of fear. He trembled and though still feeling ill he knew he was shaking because of that noise outside. He managed to convince himself he was ill, tired, confused and that he'd been startled by an innocent if ugly noise. It seemed plausible enough to help him rest, for a while.

Waking just before midday Geoff felt better than he did earlier but was still feeling out of sorts. Deciding to lie in bed for a while he watched the motes of dust twinkle in a shaft of sunlight that sliced through the gap in the curtains. He pondered the previous night and recalled the sound outside this time concluding that it was probably an animal, perhaps a small stray dog growling. It made sense, he'd heard of mutts digging up people's buried pets but there was something still niggling at him. He couldn't shake the conversation at his parents, about the cult, about the mutilated bodies and wondered if Sean was indeed one of the victims. His eyes locked on Sean's little weird hourglass sculpture and his mind thought of the dead animals brought in through the catflap. Had the cult torn apart Sean like his cats tore apart those tiny creatures? Had Sean been an offering, a gift, in the same way the cats were bringing him presents? He got up, dismissing such morbid and weird thoughts. It was just as likely Sean was working in an office, or dead of an O.D. He didn't know and didn't really care, he had the last four episodes of “Narcos” to watch.

Geoff spent the day watching T.V. Late in the afternoon he called his friend Michael to see if he was free that evening. They went down the pub for a couple of hours and chatted a bit but neither of them was feeling it, they could hardly have a decent conversation given the pub was filled with people watching football. Between the blaring, asinine commentators on screen and the punters spouting their own daft opinions, it was far too loud. They split around nine and Geoff walked through the town picking up some burgers and eating them on the bus home. He went to bed early that night, still feeling quite tired after his disturbed sleep. He woke up briefly as Megan slipped into bed and curled into her, she was cold but he was too tired to move.

His mind reminded him that his girlfriend was still thousands of miles away. Geoff leapt out of bed before he was even aware he awake. The moment of terrified confusion dissipated, leaving him listening to his own racing heartbeat in a darkened room staring at the empty sheets on his bed. Sheets that were covered in some thick slimy goo, the same goo that covered his arm and front of his body. Geoff freaked out, a condition that escalated when he heard the noises from downstairs, some wet and angry squealing sound amongst clattering and thumping.

He stayed put. He wasn't stupid, wasn't about to rush down stairs to confront whatever horror was going on down there, but he knew it was coming from the kitchen. It had to be. Instead he waited until it died down, then waited a lot longer until he was sure whatever was going on down there had finished. The sun was about to rise before he finally plucked up enough courage and determination to head downstairs.

When he entered the kitchen he wished he had stayed in his bedroom because lying on the floor, was a small, pink and bloody severed hand, a child's hand covered in the same grey slimy substance he himself was caked in. Geoff found it hard to grasp this was a real hand but rather than touch it he did the only sensible thing and called the police.

The police clearly had more important things to do at that time in the morning than investigate the disembodied hand of a child being dumped in someone's kitchen. It took them almost an hour before they sent a couple of officers to investigate. They were both young men, around the same age as Geoff. Officers White and McPherson. White looked like a man who'd been bred in a lab to be a police officer, tall, muscular, mean and with a skinhead, McPherson was taller, skinner and gave off the impression that he was a pretender. They could not have been less alike but they were both professional and kept their cool regarding the horrible item lying on his floor. Geoff was asked if he minded if the forensics team took evidence samples and he was only too happy to cooperate. He asked if the police had heard of any missing children, and was so genuinely worried and perturbed by the whole thing that the two officers did not seem to suspect him, which was a relief. The last thing he wanted was to end up being questioned down the station.

McPherson suggested that after the forensics team were done he might want to spend a night or two away from the flat, that they would keep an eye on it, just to see who or what was depositing such things in his flat. Geoff agreed to it all, he just wanted something done. He contacted Megan and explained what was happening, suggested when she came home she stayed at her mothers. Megan obviously wanted all the details but Geoff was not in any mood to spend hours explaining it all. He made a pot of black coffee, drank three cups, had a shower, and sat in his living room watching 24 hour news cycle, every fifteen minutes while waiting for the forensics team, just in case there was any news about a missing child. There was no such news.

They arrived in the afternoon, two of them, a tubby women with greying hair and a small wiry man with jet black hair and thick glasses. They explained what they were going to do but he left them to it, thanking them when they were finished. He would have been more thankful if he had realised they had left his kitchen spotless. No sign of goo or blood or any evidence that anything was out of the ordinary. The only thing the two of them did not do was empty his dishwasher. He felt a lot better after that. He called the police station less than an hour later to thank everyone for their professionalism and to inform officers White and McPherson that he would be staying at home after all. His parents already had a full house with Robert staying and he didn't really want to lay all of the weirdness on them. He felt more secure knowing the cops were keeping an eye on the place.

He went for a nap on the sofa around four o'clock and woke just after seven in the evening, disturbed by the determined grumbling from his stomach. Ordering a pizza from the local takeaway he sat watching hour after hour of garbage on the T.V. It wasn't a conscious decision to stay awake all night, but his nap and a sense of rising dread left him too alert to sleep. He peeked out the window several times and was somewhat comforted to see the police car drive up the street and slow down as it passed his home. He could even see officers White and McPherson in the car, McPherson even gave him a nod.

At three forty seven in the morning he heard a noise from the kitchen. At first he decided to ignore it but felt emboldened by the fact the police were observing his home and decided to confront whatever or whomever was terrorising him. First though he sneaked into the hall and plucked a five iron out of his golf bag. It was the only use the club had ever seen. Wielding it like a sword he used his foot to boot open the kitchen door and chase the animal or freak from his home for once and for all.

He expected a dog, a cat, a fox, perhaps even some small weird kid trying to push his way in through the catflap. He did not expect what he saw. It was a long writhing thing which bore more resemblance to one of those slabs of takeaway kebab meat that suppurated and dribbled fat on a spit in than any creature he was familiar with. It smelt charred and damp and dragged itself into his kitchen with long spindly limbs, lubricated by the dark grey ooze that it exuded from its undulating length. Though it lacked a human face, the end closest to him had several mouths, unlipped, with rows of teeth and tongues which chattered and drooled.

It kept slithering through the catflap, eight feet of it emerging, god knew how much more was on the other side of the door. It rose up slightly, somehow sensing Geoff's terrified and immobile presence. “Swap.” it gurgled.

Geoff could not even tremble, only stare. The thing produced two more limbs from it's blubbering hide, one of which was holding a small white terrier with it's head twisted all the way round. The thing attempted to speak though it's vile mouths “Give me my soul, Geoff. Swap you.”

He knew that voice. “Sean?”

“The statue... save my soul… phylactery... give me... let me die… pleeease.” the disgusting mound pleaded.

Geoff understood. He dashed from his kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom, plucked the little hourglass thing from his and Megan's dresser and ran downstairs again. Opening the kitchen door he saw the thing in all it's horror, like a bloated nightmare centipede, limbs bristling on either side. Limbs with hands, tiny hands, all but one. He threw the ornament at it. “Here, take it and fuck off, never come back here, do you understand?”

The creature plucked the statue out of the air and snapped it open.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” it repeated desperately as it began to bubble and swell. It began laughing and continued to laugh in a manner that Geoff found unnerving.

When officers McPherson and White passed the house at just before four o'clock both heard the scream. They rushed out of the car and after receiving no response at the front door of Geoff's house, dashed round the back. The kitchen light was still on and they could see the dead terrier on the kitchen linoleum, surrounded by the same thick grey gel they'd seen covering the tiny hand. There was also a broken ornament, a small white thing looking like an hourglass and a broken golf club. Sensing something terrible had happened the two officers forced entry into the premises. On the floor was a burnt corpse.

At first they suspected it was Geoff, that foul play had happened but later forensic analysis they discovered the body had been dead a long time and was almost a foot shorter than Geoff had been, other than that they could not identify the body.

Geoff Anderson remains missing to this day.