Bronte's Inferno XI (All of Them)

Enoch stood, brushed at the damp seat of his trousers and gave a short whistle. The dog ran over to the opposite side of the cricket ground and sat down at the gate the two of them had come in by.

‘You can keep the book. I assume you have looked inside already?’ he said.

I had. And I had got it. That feeling. You know the one, the one where you see your words, your actual words, in a real book. I had opened random pages and gloried in the feeling. Even though it wasn’t my name on the cover.

‘Don’t look inside it again, until you get home.’

It was a strange thing to ask, but I nodded, grunting an ‘OK’.

The man straightened, suddenly seeming less corpulent, lither than before.

“The Editor will be in touch. And that will be the third time of asking, won’t it?’

I was trying to think of an answer but he had already walked straight across the hallowed ground of the cricket square itself and I wondered what the groundsman would have said if he’d seen him.

It was full daylight. The traffic hum had started and the birdsong had stopped. Or been drowned out by the cars and lorries and buses taking people and things from there to here and back again. A car marked Elland Taxis almost ran me over as I stepped onto the zebra outside The Fleece. I saluted a single magpie as I turned onto my street, he winked at me and I winked back.

Back in the house, I made more coffee and took it upstairs to the office, along with my book. When I put it on the desk, the cover no longer had Valteri Mitie under the title. My name was there. I opened the book at page 402. It was blank. As was page 13, 42 and 66 the start of chapter Six. All of them, all of my precious words were gone.

A slip of paper fell out from somewhere between the pages. “Compliments of Charnel House” it read, with the stylised initials beside it, looking more like a goat’s head than ever. I took my coffee downstairs and poured it down the kitchen sink. My burner phone rang, the display showed a “Baphomet” was calling from a concealed number. I let it ring out. Then I poured a stiff gin, though it was only nine in the morning.