Books Of Blood Vol 1

THE YATTERING AND JACK

WHY THE POWERS (long may they hold court; long may they shit light on the heads of the damned) had sent it out from Hell to stalk Jack Polo, the Yattering couldn’t discover. Whenever he passed a tentative enquiry along the system to his master, just asking the simple question, ‘What am I doing here?’ it was answered with a swift rebuke for its curiosity. None of its business, came the reply, its business was to do. Or die trying. And after six months of pursuing Polo, the Yattering was beginning to see extinction as an easy option. This endless game of hide and seek was to nobody’s benefit, and to the Yattering’s immense frustration. It feared ulcers, it feared psychosomatic leprosy (a condition lower demons like itself were susceptible to), worst of all it feared losing its temper completely and killing the man outright in an uncontrollable fit of pique.

What was Jack Polo anyway?

A gherkin importer; by the balls of Leviticus, he was simply a gherkin importer. His life was worn out, his family was dull, his politics were simple-minded and his theology non-existent. The man was a no-account, one of nature’s blankest little numbers — why bother with the likes of him? This wasn’t a Faust: a pact-maker, a soul-seller. This one wouldn’t look twice at the chance of divine inspiration: he’d sniff, shrug and get on with his gherkin importing.

Yet the Yattering was bound to that house, long night and longer day, until he had the man a lunatic, or as good as. It was going to be a lengthy job, if not interminable. Yes, there were times when even psychosomatic leprosy would be bearable if it meant being invalided off this impossible mission.

For his part, Jack J. Polo continued to be the most unknowing of men. He had always been that way; indeed his history was littered with the victims of his naпvetй. When his late, lamented wife had cheated on him (he’d been in the house on at least two of the occasions, watching the television) he was the last one to find out. And the clues they’d left behind them! A blind, deaf and dumb man would have become suspicious. Not Jack. He pottered about his dull business and never noticed the tang of the adulterer’s cologne, nor the abnormal regularity with which his wife changed the bed-linen.

He was no less disinterested in events when his younger daughter Amanda confessed her lesbianism to him. His response was a sigh and a puzzled look. ‘Well, as long as you don’t get pregnant, darling,’ he replied, and sauntered off into the garden, blithe as ever.

What chance did a fury have with a man like that?

To a creature trained to put its meddling fingers into the wounds of the human psyche, Polo offered a surface so glacial, so utterly without distinguishing marks, as to deny malice any hold whatsoever.

Events seemed to make no dent in his perfect indif-ference. His life’s disasters seemed not to scar his mind at all. When, eventually, he was confronted with the truth about his wife’s infidelity (he found them screwing in the bath) he couldn’t bring himself to be hurt or humiliated.

‘These things happen,’ he said to himself, backing out of the bathroom to let them finish what they’d started.

‘Che sera, sera.’

Che sera, sera. The man muttered that damn phrase with monotonous regularity. He seemed to live by that philosophy of fatalism, letting attacks on his manhood, ambition and dignity slide off his ego like rain-water from his bald head.

The Yattering had heard Polo’s wife confess all to her husband (it was hanging upside down from the light-fitting, invisible as ever) and the scene had made it wince. There was the distraught sinner, begging to be accused, bawled at, struck even, and instead of giving her the satisfaction of his hatred, Polo had just shrugged and let her say her piece without a word of interruption, until she had no more to embosom. She’d left, at length, more out of frustration and sorrow than guilt; the Yattering had heard her tell the bathroom mirror how insulted she was at her husband’s lack of righteous anger. A little while after she’d flung herself off the balcony of the Roxy Cinema.

Her suicide was in some ways convenient for the fury. With the wife gone, and the daughters away from home, it could plan for more elaborate tricks to unnerve its victim, without ever having to concern itself with revealing its presence to creatures the powers had not marked for attack.

But the absence of the wife left the house empty during the days, and that soon became a burden of boredom the Yattering found scarcely supportable. The hours from nine to five, alone in the house, often seemed endless. It would mope and wander, planning bizarre and impractical revenges upon the Polo-man, pacing the rooms, heartsick, companioned only by the clicks and whirrs of the house as the radiators cooled, or the refrigerator switched itself on and off. The situation rapidly became so desperate that the arrival of the midday post became the high-point of the day, and an unshakeable melancholy would settle on the Yattering if the postman had nothing to deliver and passed by to the next house.

When Jack returned the games would begin in earnest. The usual warm-up routine: it would meet Jack at the door and prevent his key from turning in the lock. The contest would go on for a minute or two until Jack accidentally found the measure of the Yattering’s resistance, and won the day. Once inside, it would start all the lampshades swinging. The man would usually ignore this performance, however violent the motion. Perhaps he might shrug and murmur: ‘Subsidence,’ under his breath, then, inevitably, ‘Che sera, sera.’

In the bathroom, the Yattering would have squeezed toothpaste around the toilet-seat and have plugged up the shower-head with soggy toilet-paper. It would even share the shower with Jack, hanging unseen from the rail that held up the shower curtain and murmuring obscene sugges-tions in his ear. That was always successful, the demons were taught at the Academy. The obscenities in the ear routine never failed to distress clients, making them think they were conceiving of these pernicious acts themselves, and driving them to self-disgust, then to self-rejection and finally to madness. Of course, in a few cases the victims would be so inflamed by these whispered suggestions they’d go out on the streets and act upon them. Under such circumstances the victim would often be arrested and incarcerated. Prison would lead to further crimes, and a slow dwindling of moral reserves — and the victory was won by that route. One way or another insanity would out.

Except that for some reason this rule did not apply to Polo; he was imperturbable: a tower of propriety. Indeed, the way things were going the Yattering would be the one to break. It was tired; so very tired. Endless days of tormenting the cat, reading the funnies in yesterday’s newspaper, watching the game shows: they drained the fury. Lately, it had developed a passion for the woman who lived across the street from Polo. She was a young widow; and seemed to spend most of her life parading around the house stark naked. It was almost unbearable sometimes, in the middle of a day when the postman failed to call, watching the woman and knowing it could never cross the threshold of Polo’s house.

This was the Law. The Yattering was a minor demon, and his soul-catching was strictly confined to the peri-meters of his victim’s house. To step outside was to relinquish all powers over the victim: to put itself at the mercy of humanity.

All June, all July and most of August it sweated in its prison, and all through those bright, hot months Jack Polo maintained complete indifference to the Yattering’s attacks.

It was deeply embarrassing, and it was gradually destroying the demon’s self-confidence, seeing this bland victim survive every trial and trick attempted upon him.

The Yattering wept.

The Yattering screamed. In a fit of uncontrollable anguish, it boiled the water in the aquarium, poaching the guppies.

Polo heard nothing. Saw nothing.

At last, in late September, the Yattering broke one of the first rules of its condition, and appealed directly to its masters.

Autumn is Hell’s season; and the demons of the higher dominations were feeling benign. They condescended to speak to their creature. ‘What do you want?’ asked Beelzebub, his voice black-ening the air in the lounge.

‘This man...‘ the Yattering began nervously.

‘Yes?’

‘This Polo...‘

‘Yes?’

‘I am without issue upon him. I can’t get panic upon him, I can’t breed fear or even mild concern upon him. I am sterile, Lord of the Flies, and I wish to be put out of my misery.’

For a moment Beelzebub’s face formed in the mirror over the mantelpiece.

‘You want what?’

Beelzebub was part elephant, part wasp. The Yattering was terrified.

‘I — want to die.’

‘You cannot die.’

‘From this world. Just die from this world. Fade away.

Be replaced.’

‘You will not die.’

‘But I can’t break him!’ the Yattering shrieked, tearful.

‘You must.’

‘Why?’

‘Because we tell you to.’ Beelzebub always used the Royal ‘we’, though unqualified to do so.

‘Let me at least know why I’m in this house,’ the Yattering appealed. ‘What is he? Nothing! He’s nothing!’

Beelzebub found this rich. He laughed, buzzed, trum-peted.

‘Jack Johnson Polo is the child of a worshipper at the Church of Lost Salvation. He belongs to us.’

‘But why should you want him? He’s so dull.’

‘We want him because his soul was promised to us, and his mother did not deliver it. Or herself come to that. She cheated us. She died in the arms of a priest, and was safely escorted to —‘

The word that followed was anathema. The Lord of the Flies could barely bring himself to pronounce it.

‘— Heaven,’ said Beelzebub, with infinite loss in his voice.

‘Heaven,’ said the Yattering, not knowing quite what was meant by the word.

‘Polo is to be hounded in the name of the Old One, and punished for his mother’s crimes. No torment is too profound for a family that has cheated us.’

‘I’m tired,’ the Yattering pleaded, daring to approach the mirror.

‘Please. I beg you.’

‘Claim this man,’ said Beelzebub, ‘or you will suffer in his place.’

The figure in the mirror waved its black and yellow trunk and faded.

‘Where is your pride?’ said the master’s voice as it shrivelled into distance. ‘Pride, Yattering, pride.’

Then he was gone.

In its frustration the Yattering picked up the cat and threw it into the fire, where it was rapidly cremated. If only the law allowed such easy cruelty to be visited upon human flesh, it thought. If only. If only. Then it’d make Polo suffer such torments. But no. The Yattering knew the laws as well as the back of its hand; they had been flayed on to its exposed cortex as a fledgling demon by its teachers. And Law One stated: ‘Thou shalt not lay palm upon thy victims.’

It had never been told why this law pertained, but it did.

‘Thou shalt not ...‘

So the whole painful process continued. Day in, day out, and still the man showed no sign of yielding. Over the next few weeks the Yattering killed two more cats that Polo brought home to replace his treasured Freddy (now ash). The first of these poor victims was drowned in the toilet bowl one idle Friday afternoon. It was a pretty satisfaction to see the look of distaste register on Polo’s face as he unzipped his fly and glanced down. But any pleasure the Yattering took in Jack’s discomfiture was cancelled out by the blithely efficient way in which the man dealt with the dead cat, hoisting the bundle of soaking fur out of the pan, wrapping it in a towel and burying it in the back garden with scarcely a murmur.

The third cat that Polo brought home was wise to the invisible presence of the demon from the start. There was indeed an entertaining week in mid-November when life for the Yattering became almost interesting while it played cat and mouse with Freddy the Third. Freddy played the mouse. Cats not being especially bright animals the game was scarcely a great intellectual challenge, but it made a change from the endless days of waiting, haunting and failing. At least the creature accepted the Yattering’s presence. Eventually, however, in a filthy mood (caused by the re-marriage of the Yattering’s naked widow) the demon lost its temper with the cat. It was sharpening its nails on the nylon carpet, clawing and scratching at the pile for hours on end. The noise put the demon’s metaphysical teeth on edge. It looked at the cat once, briefly, and it flew apart as though it had swallowed a live grenade.

The effect was spectacular. The results were gross. Cat-brain, cat-fur, cat-gut everywhere.

Polo got home that evening exhausted, and stood in the doorway of the dining-room, his face sickened, surveying the carnage that had been Freddy III. ‘Damn dogs,’ he said. ‘Damn, damn dogs.’

There was anger in his voice. Yes, exulted the Yattering, anger. The man was upset: there was clear evidence of emotion on his face. Elated, the demon raced through the house, determined to capitalize on its victory. It opened and slammed every door. It smashed vases. It set the lampshades swinging.

Polo just cleaned up the cat.

The Yattering threw itself downstairs, tore up a pillow. Impersonated a thing with a limp and an appetite for human flesh in the attic, and giggling.

Polo just buried Freddy III, beside the grave of Freddy II, and the ashes of Freddy I.

Then he retired to bed, without his pillow.

The demon was utterly stumped. If the man could not raise more than a flicker of concern when his cat was exploded in the dining-room, what chance had it got of ever breaking the bastard?

There was one last opportunity left.

It was approaching Christ’s Mass, and Jack’s children would be coming home to the bosom of the family. Perhaps they could convince him that all was not well with the world; perhaps they could get their fingernails under his flawless indifference, and begin to break him down. Hoping against hope, the Yattering sat out the weeks to late December, planning its attacks with all the imaginative malice it could muster.

Meanwhile, Jack’s life sauntered on. He seemed to live apart from his experience, living his life as an author might write a preposterous story, never involving himself in the narrative too deeply. In several significant ways, however, he showed his enthusiasm for the coming holiday. He cleared his daughters’ rooms immaculately. He made their beds up with sweet-smelling linen. He cleaned every speck of cat’s blood out of the carpet. He even set up a Christmas tree in the lounge, hung with iridescent balls, tinsel and presents.

Once in a while, as he went about the preparations, Jack thought of the game he was playing, and quietly calculated the odds against him. In the days to come he would have to measure not only his own suffering, but that of his daughters, against the possible victory. And always, when he made these calculations, the chance of victory seemed to outweigh the risks.

So he continued to write his life, and waited.

Snow came, soft pats of it against the windows, against the door. Children arrived to sing carols, and he was generous to them. It was possible, for a brief time, to believe in peace on earth.

Late in the evening of the twenty-third of December the daughters arrived, in a flurry of cases and kisses. The youngest, Amanda, arrived home first. From its vantage point on the landing the Yattering viewed the young woman balefully. She didn’t look like ideal material in which to induce a breakdown. In fact, she looked dangerous. Gina followed an hour or two later; a smoothly-polished woman of the world at twenty-four, she looked every bit as intimidating as her sister. They came into the house with their bustle and their laughter; they re-arranged the furniture; they threw out the junk-food in the freezer, they told each other (and their father) how much they had missed each other’s company. Within the space of a few hours the drab house was repainted with light, and fun and love.

It made the Yattering sick.

Whimpering, it hid its head in the bedroom to block out the din of affection, but the shock-waves enveloped it. All it could do was sit, and listen, and refine its revenge.

Jack was pleased to have his beauties home. Amanda so full of opinions, and so strong, like her mother. Gina more like his mother: poised, perceptive. He was so happy in their presence he could have wept; and here was he, the proud father, putting them both at such risk. But what was the alternative? If he had cancelled the Christmas celebrations, it would have looked highly suspicious. It might even have spoiled his whole strategy, waking the enemy to the trick that was being played.

No; he must sit tight. Play dumb, the way the enemy had come to expect him to be. The time would come for action. At 3.15 a.m. on Christmas morning the Yattering opened hostilities by throwing Amanda out of bed. A paltry performance at best, but it had the intended effect. Sleepily rubbing her bruised head, she climbed back into bed, only to have the bed buck and shake and fling her off again like an unbroken colt.

The noise woke the rest of the house. Gina was first in her sister’s room.

‘What’s going on?’

‘There’s somebody under the bed.’

‘What?’

Gina picked up a paperweight from the dresser and demanded the assailant come out. The Yattering, invisible, sat on the window seat and made obscene gestures at the women, tying knots in its genitalia. Gina peered under the bed. The Yattering was clinging to the light fixture now, persuading it to swing backwards and forwards, making the room reel.

‘There’s nothing there —‘

‘There is.’

Amanda knew. Oh yes, she knew.

‘There’s something here, Gina,’ she said. ‘Something in the room with us, I’m sure of it.’

‘No.’ Gina was absolute. ‘It’s empty.’

Amanda was searching behind the wardrobe when Polo came in.

‘What’s all the din?’

‘There’s something in the house Daddy. I was thrown out of bed.’ Jack looked at the crumpled sheets, the dislodged mattress, then at Amanda. This was the first test: he must lie as casually as possible.

‘Looks like you’ve been having nightmares, beauty,’ he said, affecting an innocent smile.

‘There was something under the bed,’ Amanda insisted.

‘There’s nobody here now.’

‘But I felt it.’

‘Well, I’ll check the rest of the house,’ he offered, without enthusiasm for the task. ‘You two stay here, just in case.’

As Polo left the room, the Yattering rocked the light a little more.

‘Subsidence,’ said Gina.

It was cold downstairs, and Polo could have done without padding around barefoot on the kitchen tiles, but he was quietly satisfied that the battle had been joined in such a petty manner. He’d half-feared that the enemy would turn savage with such tender victims at hand. But no: he’d judged the mind of the creature quite accurately. It was one of the lower orders. Powerful, but slow. Capable of being inveigled beyond the limits of its control. Carefully does it, he told himself, carefully does it.

He traipsed through the entire house, dutifully opening cupboards and peering behind the furniture, then returned to his daughters, who were sitting at the top of the stairs. Amanda looked small and pale, not the twenty-two-year-old woman she was, but a child again.

‘Nothing doing,’ he told her with a smile. ‘It’s Christmas morning and all through the house —‘

Gina finished the rhyme.

‘Nothing is stirring; not even a mouse.’

‘Not even a mouse, beauty.’

At that moment the Yattering took its cue to fling a vase off the lounge mantelpiece. Even Jack jumped. ‘Shit,’ he said. He needed some sleep, but quite clearly the Yattering had no intention of letting them alone just yet.

‘Che sera, sera,’ he murmured, scooping up the pieces of the Chinese vase, and putting them in a piece of newspaper. ‘The house is sinking a little on the left side, you know,’ he said more loudly. ‘It has been for years.’

‘Subsidence,’ said Amanda with quiet certainty, ‘would not throw me out of my bed.’

Gina said nothing. The options were limited. The alternatives unattractive.

‘Well, maybe it was Santa Claus,’ said Polo, attempting levity.

He parcelled up the pieces of the vase and wandered through into the kitchen, certain that he was being shadowed every step of the way. ‘What else can it be?’ He threw the question over his shoulder as he stuffed the newspaper into the waste bin. ‘The only other explanation—’ here he became almost elated by his skimming so close to the truth, ‘the only other possible explanation is too preposterous for words.’

It was an exquisite irony, denying the existence of the invisible world in the full knowledge that even now it breathed vengefully down his neck.

‘You mean poltergeists?’ said Gina.

‘I mean anything that goes bang in the night. But, we’re grown-up people aren’t we? We don’t believe in Bogeymen.’

‘No,’ said Gina flatly, ‘I don’t, but I don’t believe the house is subsiding either.’

‘Well, it’ll have to do for now,’ said Jack with nonchalant finality. ‘Christmas starts here. We don’t want to spoil it talking about gremlins, now do we.’

They laughed together. Gremlins. That surely bit deep. To call the Hell-spawn a gremlin.

The Yattering, weak with frustration, acid tears boiling on its intangible cheeks, ground its teeth and kept its peace.

There would be time yet to beat that atheistic smile off Jack Polo’s smooth, fat face. Time aplenty. No half-measures from now on. No subtlety. It would be an all out attack.

Let there be blood. Let there be agony. They’d all break.

Amanda was in the kitchen, preparing Christmas dinner, when the Yattering mounted its next attack. Through the house drifted the sound of King’s College Choir, ‘0 Little Town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie...‘

The presents had been opened, the G and T’s were being downed, the house was one warm embrace from roof to cellar.

In the kitchen a sudden chill permeated the heat and the steam, making Amanda shiver; she crossed to the window, which was ajar to clear the air, and closed it. Maybe she was catching something.

The Yattering watched her back as she busied herself about the kitchen, enjoying the domesticity for a day. Amanda felt the stare quite clearly. She turned round. Nobody, nothing. She continued to wash the Brussels sprouts, cutting into one with a worm curled in the middle. She drowned it.

The Choir sang on.

In the lounge, Jack was laughing with Gina about something.

Then, a noise. A rattling at first, followed by a beating of somebody’s fists against a door. Amanda dropped the knife into the bowl of sprouts, and turned from the sink, following the sound. It was getting louder all the time. Like something locked in one of the cupboards, desperate to escape. A cat caught in the box, or a —Bird.

It was coming from the oven.

Amanda’s stomach turned, as she began to imagine the worst.

Had she locked something in the oven when she’d put in the turkey? She called for her father, as she snatched up the oven cloth and stepped towards the cooker, which was rocking with the panic of its prisoner. She had visions of a basted cat leaping out at her, its fur burned off, its flesh half-cooked.

Jack was at the kitchen door.

‘There’s something in the oven,’ she said to him, as though he needed telling. The cooker was in a frenzy; its thrashing contents had all but beaten off the door.

He took the oven cloth from her. This is a new one, he thought. You’re better than I judged you to be. This is clever. This is original.

Gina was in the kitchen now.

‘What’s cooking?’ she quipped.

But the joke was lost as the cooker began to dance, and the pans of boiling water were twitched off the burners on to the floor. Scalding water seared Jack’s leg. He yelled, stumbling back into Gina, before diving at the cooker with a yell that wouldn’t have shamed a Samurai.

The oven handle was slippery with heat and grease, but he seized it and flung the door down.

A wave of steam and blistering heat rolled out of the oven, smelling of succulent turkey-fat. But the bird inside had apparently no intentions of being eaten. It was flinging itself from side to side on the roasting tray, tossing gouts of gravy in all directions. Its crisp brown wings pitifully flailed and flapped, its legs beat a tattoo on the roof of the oven. Then it seemed to sense the open door. Its wings stretched themselves out to either side of its stuffed bulk and it half hopped, half fell on to the oven door, in a mockery of its living self. Headless, oozing stuffing and onions, it flopped around as though nobody had told the damn thing it was dead, while the fat still bubbled on its bacon-strewn back.

Amanda screamed.

Jack dived for the door as the bird lurched into the air, blind but vengeful. What it intended to do once it reached its three cowering victims was never discovered. Gina dragged Amanda into the hallway with her father in hot pursuit, and the door was slammed closed as the blind bird flung itself against the panelling, beating on it with all its strength. Gravy seeped through the gap at the bottom of the door, dark and fatty.

The door had no lock, but Jack reasoned that the bird was not capable of turning the handle. As he backed away, breathless, he cursed his confidence. The opposition had more up its sleeve than he’d guessed.

Amanda was leaning against the wall sobbing, her face stained with splotches of turkey grease. All she seemed able to do was deny what she’d seen, shaking her head and repeating the word ‘no’ like a talisman against the ridiculous horror that was still throwing itself against the door. Jack escorted her through to the lounge. The radio was still crooning carols which blotted out the din of the bird, but their promises of goodwill seemed small comfort.

Gina poured a hefty brandy for her sister and sat beside her on the sofa, plying her with spirits and reassurance in about equal measure. They made little impression on Amanda.

‘What was that?’ Gina asked her father, in a tone that demanded an answer. ‘I don’t know what it was,’ Jack replied.

‘Mass hysteria?’ Gina’s displeasure was plain. Her father had a secret: he knew what was going on in the house, but he was refusing to cough up for some reason.

‘What do I call: the police or an exorcist?’

‘Neither.’

‘For God’s sake —‘

‘There’s nothing going on, Gina. Really.’

Her father turned from the window and looked at her. His eyes spoke what his mouth refused to say, that this was war.

Jack was afraid.

The house was suddenly a prison. The game was suddenly lethal. The enemy, instead of playing foolish games, meant harm, real harm to them all.

In the kitchen the turkey had at last conceded defeat. The carols on the radio had withered into a sermon on God’s benedictions.

What had been sweet was sour and dangerous. He looked across the room at Amanda and Gina. Both for their own reasons, were trembling. Polo wanted to tell them, wanted to explain what was going on. But the thing must be there, he knew, gloating.

He was wrong. The Yattering had retired to the attic, well-satisfied with its endeavours. The bird, it felt, had been a stroke of genius. Now it could rest a while:

recuperate. Let the enemy’s nerves tatter themselves in anticipation. Then, in its own good time, it would deliver the coup de grace.

Idly, it wondered if any of the inspectors had seen his work with the turkey. Maybe they would be impressed enough by the Yattering’s originality to improve its job- prospects. Surely it hadn’t gone through all those years of training simply to chase half-witted imbeciles like Polo. There must be something more challenging available than that. It felt victory in its invisible bones: and it was a good feeling.

The pursuit of Polo would surely gain momentum now. His daughters would convince him (if he wasn’t now quite convinced) that there was something terrible afoot. He would crack. He would crumble. Maybe he’d go classically mad: tear out his hair, rip off his clothes; smear himself with his own excrement.

Oh yes, victory was close. And wouldn’t his masters be loving then? Wouldn’t it be showered with praise, and power?

One more manifestation was all that was required. One final, inspired intervention, and Polo would be so much blubbering flesh.

Tired, but confident, the Yattering descended into the lounge.

Amanda was lying full-length on the sofa, asleep. She was obviously dreaming about the turkey. Her eyes rolled beneath her gossamer lids, her lower lip trembled. Gina sat beside the radio, which was silenced now. She had a book open on her lap, but she wasn’t reading it.

The gherkin importer wasn’t in the room. Wasn’t that his footstep on the stair? Yes, he was going upstairs to relieve his brandy-full bladder.

Ideal timing.

The Yattering crossed the room. In her sleep Amanda dreamt something dark flitting across her vision, some-thing malign, something that tasted bitter in her mouth.

Gina looked up from her book.

The silver balls on the tree were rocking, gently. Not just the balls. The tinsel and the branches too.

In fact, the tree. The whole tree was rocking as though someone had just seized hold of it.

Gina had a very bad feeling about this. She stood up. The book slid to the floor. The tree began to spin.

‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Jesus Christ.’

Amanda slept on.

The tree picked up momentum.

Gina walked as steadily as she could across to the sofa and tried to shake her sister awake. Amanda, locked in her dreams, resisted for a moment.

‘Father,’ said Gina. Her voice was strong, and carried through into the hall. It also woke Amanda.

Downstairs, Polo heard a noise like a whining dog. No, like two whining dogs. As he ran down the stairs, the duet became a trio. He burst into the lounge half expecting all the hosts of Hell to be in there, dog-headed, dancing on his beauties.

But no. It was the Christmas tree that was whining, whining like a pack of dogs, as it spun and spun.

The lights had long since been pulled from their sockets. The air stank of singed plastic and pine-sap. The tree itself was spinning like a top, flinging decorations and presents off its tortured branches with the largesse of a mad king. Jack tore his eyes from the spectacle of the tree and found Gina and Amanda crouching, terrified, behind the sofa.

‘Get out of here,’ he yelled.

Even as he spoke the television sat up impertinently on one leg and began to spin like the tree, gathering momentum quickly. The clock on the mantelpiece joined the pirouetting. The pokers beside the fire. The cushions. The ornaments. Each object added its own singular note to the orchestration of whines which were building up, second by second, to a deafening pitch. The air began to brim with the smell of burning wood, as friction heated the spinning tops to flash-point. Smoke swirled across the room. Gina had Amanda by the arm, and was dragging her towards the door, shielding her face against the hail of pine needles that the still-accelerating tree was throwing off.

Now the lights were spinning.

The books, having flung themselves off the shelves, had joined the tarantella.

Jack could see the enemy, in his mind’s eye, racing between the objects like a juggler spinning plates on sticks, trying to keep them all moving at once. It must be exhausting work, he thought. The demon was probably close to collapse. It couldn’t be thinking straight. Over-excited. Impulsive. Vulnerable. This must be the moment, if ever there was a moment, to join battle at last. To face the thing, defy it, and trap it.

For its part, the Yattering was enjoying this orgy of destruction. It flung every movable object into the fray, setting everything spinning.

It watched with satisfaction as the daughters twitched and scurried; it laughed to see the old man stare, pop-eyed, at this preposterous ballet.

Surely he was nearly mad, wasn’t he?

The beauties had reached the door, their hair and skin full of needles. Polo didn’t see them leave. He ran across the room, dodging a rain of ornaments to do so, and picked up a brass toasting fork which the enemy had overlooked. Bric-a-brac filled the air around his head, dancing around with sickening speed. His flesh was bruised and punctured. But the exhilaration of joining battle had overtaken him, and he set about beating the books, and the clocks, and the china to smithereens. Like a man in a cloud of locusts he ran around the room, bringing down his favourite books in a welter of fluttering pages, smashing whirling Dresden, shattering the lamps. A litter of broken possessions swamped the floor, some of it still twitching as the life went out of the fragments. But for every object brought low, there were a dozen still spinning, still whining.

He could hear Gina at the door, yelling to him to get out, to leave it alone.

But it was so enjoyable, playing against the enemy more directly than he’d ever allowed himself before. He didn’t want to give up. He wanted the demon to show itself, to be known, to be recognized.

He wanted confrontation with the Old One’s emissary once and for all.

Without warning the tree gave way to the dictates of centrifugal force, and exploded. The noise was like a howl of death. Branches, twigs, needles, balls, lights, wire, ribbons, flew across the room. Jack, his back to the explosion, felt a gust of energy hit him hard, and he was flung to the ground. The back of his neck and his scalp were shot full of pine-needles. A branch, naked of greenery, shot past his head and impaled the sofa. Fragments of tree pattered to the carpet around him.

Now other objects around the room, spun beyond the tolerance of their structures, were exploding like the tree. The television blew up, sending a lethal wave of glass across the room, much of which buried itself in the opposite wall. Fragments of the television’s innards, so hot they singed the skin, fell on Jack, as he elbowed himself towards the door like a soldier under bombardment.

The room was so thick with a barrage of shards it was like a fog. The cushions had lent their down to the scene, snowing on the carpet. Porcelain pieces: a beautifully-glazed arm, a courtesan’s head, bounced on the floor in front of his nose.

Gina was crouching at the door, urging him to hurry, her eyes narrowed against the hail. As Jack reached the door, and felt her arms around him, he swore he could hear laughter from the lounge. Tangible, audible laughter, rich and satisfied.

Amanda was standing in the hall, her hair full of pine-needles, staring down at him. He pulled his legs through the doorway and Gina slammed the door shut on the demolition.

‘What is it?’ she demanded. ‘Poltergeist? Ghost? Mother’s ghost?’

The thought of his dead wife being responsible for such wholesale destruction struck Jack as funny.

Amanda was half smiling. Good, he thought, she’s coming out of it. Then he met the vacant look in her eyes and the truth dawned. She’d broken, her sanity had taken refuge where this fantastique couldn’t get at it. ‘What’s in there?’ Gina was asking, her grip on his arm so strong it stopped the blood.

‘I don’t know,’ he lied. ‘Amanda?’

Amanda’s smile didn’t decay. She just stared on at him, through him.

‘You do know.’

‘No.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘I think...’

He picked himself off the floor, brushing the pieces of porcelain, the feathers, the glass, off his shirt and trousers.

‘I think ... I shall go for a walk.’

Behind him, in the lounge, the last vestiges of whining had stopped. The air in the hallway was electric with unseen presences. It was very close to him, invisible as ever, but so close. This was the most dangerous time. He mustn’t lose his nerve now. He must stand up as though nothing had happened; he must leave Amanda be, leave explanations and recriminations until it was all over and done with. ‘Walk?’ Gina said, disbelievingly. ‘Yes… walk… I need some fresh air.’ ‘You can’t leave us here.’

‘I’ll find somebody to help us clear up.’ ‘But Mandy.’

‘She’ll get over it. Leave her be.’

That was hard. That was almost unforgivable. But it was said now.

He walked unsteadily towards the front door, feeling nauseous after so much spinning. At his back Gina was raging.

‘You can’t just leave! Are you out of your mind?’

‘I need the air,’ he said, as casually as his thumping heart and his parched throat would permit. ‘So I’ll just go out for a moment.’

No, the Yattering said. No, no, no.

It was behind him, Polo could feel it. So angry now, so ready to twist off his head. Except that it wasn’t allowed, ever to touch him. But he could feel its resentment like a physical presence.

He took another step towards the front door.

It was with him still, dogging his every step. His shadow, his fetch; unshakeable. Gina shrieked at him, ‘You son-of-a-bitch, look at Mandy! She’s lost her mind!’

No, he mustn’t look at Mandy. If he looked at Mandy he might weep, he might break down as the thing wanted him to, then everything would be lost.

‘She’ll be all right,’ he said, barely above a whisper. He reached for the front door handle. The demon bolted the door, quickly, loudly. No temper left for pretence now.

Jack, keeping his movements as even as possible, unbolted the door, top and bottom. It bolted again.

It was thrilling, this game; it was also terrifying. If he pushed too far surely the demon’s frustration would override its lessons? Gently, smoothly, he unbolted the door again. Just as gently, just as smoothly, the Yattering bolted it.

Jack wondered how long he could keep this up for. Somehow he had to get outside: he had to coax it over the threshold. One step was all that the law required, according to his researches.

One simple step.

Unbolted. Bolted. Unbolted. Bolted.

Gina was standing two or three yards behind her father. She didn’t understand what she was seeing, but it was obvious her father was doing battle with someone, or something.

‘Daddy —‘ she began.

‘Shut up,’ he said benignly, grinning as he unbolted the door for the seventh time. There was a shiver of lunacy in the grin, it was too wide and too easy.

Inexplicably, she returned the smile. It was grim, but genuine. Whatever was at issue here, she loved him.

Polo made a break for the back door. The demon was three paces ahead of him, scooting through the house like a sprinter, and bolting the door before Jack could even reach the handle. The key was turned in the lock by invisible hands, then crushed to dust in the air.

Jack feigned a move towards the window beside the back door but the blinds were pulled down and the shutters slammed. The Yattering, too concerned with the window to watch Jack closely, missed his doubling back through the house.

When it saw the trick that was being played it let out a little screech, and gave chase, almost sliding into Jack on the smoothly-polished floor. It avoided the collision only by the most balletic of manoeuvres. That would be fatal indeed: to touch the man in the heat of the moment.

Polo was again at the front door and Gina, wise to her father’s strategy, had unbolted it while the Yattering and Jack fought at the back door. Jack had prayed she’d take the opportunity to open it. She had. It stood slightly ajar:

The icy air of the crisp afternoon curled its way into the hallway.

Jack covered the last yards to the door in a flash, feeling without hearing the howl of complaint the Yattering loosed as it saw its victim escaping into the outside world.

It was not an ambitious creature. All it wanted at that moment, beyond any other dream, was to take this human’s skull between its palms and make a nonsense of it. Crush it to smithereens, and pour the hot thought out on to the snow. To be done with Jack J. Polo, forever and forever.

Was that so much to ask?

Polo had stepped into the squeaky-fresh snow, his slippers and trouser-bottoms buried in chill. By the time the fury reached the step Jack was already three or four yards away, marching up the path towards the gate. Escaping. Escaping.

The Yattering howled again, forgetting its years of training. Every lesson it had learned, every rule of battle engraved on its skull was submerged by the simple desire to have Polo’s life.

It stepped over the threshold and gave chase. It was an unpardonable transgression. Somewhere in Hell, the powers (long may they hold court; long may they shit light on the heads of the damned) felt the sin, and knew the war for Jack Polo’s soul was lost.

Jack felt it too. He heard the sound of boiling water, as the demon’s footsteps melted to steam the snow on the path. It was coming after him! The thing had broken the first rule of its existence. It was forfeit. He felt the victory in his spine, and his stomach.

The demon overtook him at the gate. Its breath could clearly be seen in the air, though the body it emanated from had not yet become visible. Jack tried to open the gate, but the Yanering slammed it shut.

‘Che sera, sera,’ said Jack.

The Yattering could bear it no longer. He took Jack’s head in his hands, intending to crush the fragile bone to dust.

The touch was its second sin; and it agonized the Yattering beyond endurance. It bayed like a banshee and reeled away from the contact, sliding in the snow and falling on its back.

It knew its mistake. The lessons it had had beaten into it came hurtling back. It knew the punishment too, for leaving the house, for touching the man. It was bound to a new lord, enslaved to this idiot-creature standing over it.

Polo had won.

He was laughing, watching the way the outline of the demon formed in the snow on the path. Like a photograph developing on a sheet of paper, the image of the fury came clear. The law was taking its toll. The Yattering could never hide from its master again. There it was, plain to Polo’s eyes, in all its charmless glory. Maroon flesh and bright lidless eye, arms flailing, tail thrashing the snow to slush.

‘You bastard,’ it said. Its accent had an Australian lilt.

‘You will not speak unless spoken to,’ said Polo, with quiet, but absolute, authority. ‘Understood?’

The lidless eye clouded with humility.

‘Yes,’ the Yattering said.

‘Yes, Mister Polo.’

‘Yes, Mister Polo.’

Its tail slipped between its legs like that of a whipped dog.

‘You may stand.’

‘Thank you, Mr Polo.’ It stood. Not a pleasant sight, but one Jack rejoiced in nevertheless.

‘They’ll have you yet,’ said the Yattering.

‘Who will?’

‘You know,’ it said, hesitantly.

‘Name them.’

‘Beelzebub,’ it answered, proud to name its old master. ‘The powers. Hell itself.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Polo mused. ‘Not with you bound to me as proof of my skills. Aren’t I the better of them?’

The eye looked sullen.

‘Aren’t I?’

‘Yes,’ it conceded bitterly. ‘Yes. You are the better of them.’

It had begun to shiver.

‘Are you cold?’ asked Polo.

It nodded, affecting the look of a lost child.

‘Then you need some exercise,’ he said. ‘You’d better go back into the house and start tidying up.’

The fury looked bewildered, even disappointed, by this instruction. ‘Nothing more?’ it asked incredulously. ‘No miracles? No Helen of Troy? No flying?’

The thought of flying on a snow-spattered afternoon like this left Polo cold. He was essentially a man of simple tastes: all he asked for in life was the love of his children, a pleasant home, and a good trading price for gherkins.

‘No flying,’ he said.

As the Yattering slouched down the path towards the door it seemed to alight upon a new piece of mischief. It turned back to Polo, obsequious, but unmistakably smug.

‘Could I just say something?’ it said.

‘Speak.’ ‘It’s only fair that I inform you that it’s considered ungodly to have any contact with the likes of me. Heretical even.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Oh yes,’ said the Yattering, warming to its prophecy. ‘People have been burned for less.’

‘Not in this day and age,’ Polo replied.

‘But the Seraphim will see,’ it said. ‘And that means you’ll never go to that place.’

‘What place?’

The Yattering fumbled for the special word it had heard Beelzebub use. ‘Heaven,’ it said, triumphant. An ugly grin had come on to its face; this was the cleverest manoeuvre it had ever attempted; it was juggling theology here.

Jack nodded slowly, nibbling at his bottom lip.

The creature was probably telling the truth: association with it or its like would not be looked upon benignly by the Host of Saints and Angels. He probably was forbidden access to the plains of paradise.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘you know what I have to say about that, don’t you?’

The Yattering stared at him, frowning. No, it didn’t know. Then the grin of satisfaction it had been wearing died, as it saw just what Polo was driving at.

‘What do I say?’ Polo asked it.

Defeated, the Yattering murmured the phrase.

‘Che sera, sera.’

Polo smiled. ‘There’s a chance for you yet,’ he said, and led the way over the threshold, closing the door with something very like serenity on his face.