The terror began immediately.
Scratching at the bedroom window, icy chills, voices speaking in empty rooms.
Then Fiona begins to suffer from blackouts - medical experts can't explain. Her eldest daughter, Harmony, is threatened by the appearance of...
And Steven had to know what the hell was going on. Fiona had rang him on his mobile. Not; making any sense. Just something about the girls being in danger.
'Is it him, the old man?'
'I don't know; it could be. I'm sorry, I have to go.'
'Where?'
Fiona didn't say. The line went dead.
'Fiona?'
'Fiona?'
No reply, just silence
The kind of silence that made you redial, and when no answer came back, terror shook you by the collars, screaming in your face.
'Fuck.'
Steven knew Fiona was making a bad move, going to his mum's house. Angela, the social worker, might turn up there, and that would be it.
The girls, without question, would be taken away from his mum's house and put into strangers' houses, or worse, a fucking home and those places were just full of horror stories.
Stories he had to close the chapter on, put it out of his mind. Because the real worry here was the girls. Not what could be or might be, or even the fact Fiona was on her way to his mum's house. But Harmony and Katrina being in danger from the old man.
Something he couldn't tell his manager, only that Fiona had phoned him up. One of the girls had fainted at home.
'Is she okay?'
'I don't know, but.'
The lie had to work. Steven couldn't tell his manager his kids were in care. That would bring up all kinds of questions. And he couldn't mention the devil living in his house. Nobody in their right mind would believe that.
'Tell you what, just go home, don't worry about anything.'
'Thank you, thank you.'
The lie had worked because Steven was now on his way to his mum's house, travelling by bus.
The journey to his mum's house should have taken twenty minutes at best, but the council was digging up the road. And the makeshift traffic lights - changing red to green. Every five seconds was delaying the journey.
The traffic was moving like a snail, passengers getting on the bus. Christ, they were slow.
'Come on, for fuck's sake.'
Ringing Fiona again. Nothing happened, only voicemail.
What the hell was happening?
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Fiona was on the edge. The vision of hell had slipped away, but not the afterthought. The epilogue was still with her. Those terrible screams, so loud, so ear-piercing. The foul stench from that place and the heat.
