Empty Devils

By Jack Greene

When Sarah moved into a new flat to start her life over, she had no idea her troubles had just begun. The upstairs neighbours seemed friendly at first, but then the noises start, strange bangs and crashes that follow Sarah from room to room. Then things start moving around in her home, and her friends begin to vanish one by one. Somehow it is all connected to the strange neighbours above her, but how, and why? What secret are the odd couple upstairs keeping and will Sarah survive to tell the tale?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jack Greene
• Release date: Apr 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781310257193

Jack Greene

Jack Greene has been writing horror fiction with a sci-fi twist for many years, perfecting the style that you see in her books today. Influenced by the likes of James Herbert, Anne McCaffrey and Dean Koontz, Jack has taken the horror genre a little further down the path, adding her own dark humour as well as giving her characters a flawed depth that some seem to lack in fiction today. Jack gets ideas from all kinds of places, strange ideas and fantasies that turn into stories both macabre and twisted. A peek into the mind of a horror writer is a glimpse into insanity, and Jack Greene scoops up the pieces and creates a story from them.

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Empty Devils

By

Jack Greene

Text copyright © 2015 Jack Greene

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This book is dedicated to Simon Bondar, who lived through the nightmare with me, and Sarah Bakr, inspiration for the main character.  Some of the events in this book actually happened to me in real life, and some are pure fiction.  I will leave it to your imagination to decide which is which.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter one

Chapter two

Chapter three

Chapter four

Chapter five

Chapter six

Chapter seven

Chapter eight

Chapter nine

Chapter ten

Chapter eleven

Chapter twelve

Chapter thirteen

Chapter fourteen

Chapter fifteen

Chapter sixteen

Chapter seventeen

Chapter eighteen

Epilogue

Prologue

Alison heard what sounded like digging coming from the back garden of the converted flat she lived in. She peered through the dark room towards the window and saw a light flash past the closed curtains. Quietly, she slipped out of bed and padded over to the window. Alison carefully pushed back the curtain to see what was going on out there. From her position at the side of the window she could see two figures with their backs to her; one was digging and the other was shining a torch onto the hole. Alison was about to drop the curtain and move away when she spotted a third figure moving further up the garden between some trees. She scanned the whole garden and managed to pick out at least two move dark shapes lurking in the bushes. This was enough for her and she let the curtain fall back into place and headed for the phone in the hallway.

Alison muttered under her breath, not again, and picked up the receiver. There was no dial tone and she pushed the buttons on the handset feeling sudden panic rising when it did not respond. She went over to where she kept her mobile phone and saw it was missing. She checked everywhere, but it was gone. Alison ran to her laptop in the lounge and turned it on, her breath coming in short, fast gasps. The computer couldn’t find a network connection – her phone line must have been disabled. Alison ran back to the window to see if there were still people in the garden.

From the same position, she lifted the curtain and peeked out. The two figures by the hole were dragging something very large and heavy to the hole. As they placed it down something fell out of the sacking surrounding it. It was a pale shape in the darkened garden but it was clear to Alison that it was a hand. She let out a small cry of alarm and immediately dropped the curtain, fearing they had heard her. Feeling trapped and terrified, she ran back to the phone in the hallway and tried it again, already knowing it was never going to work. As she picked up the useless device, there was a pounding on the front door. She was so shocked she dropped the phone, which landed on her right foot. The banging continued without stopping and Alison ran to the back door, hoping to escape. As she neared the door, fresh banging started from that door and on the windows in the kitchen too. Running back into the hallway, Alison realised the pounding was coming from every door and window the flat had.

By now she was so scared that she simply put her hands over her ears and slid down to the ground, bringing her knees up to her chin. After what seemed like hours the banging stopped, and she looked around. Suddenly it started again and this time the glass in the front door smashed. Alison heard the glass tinkle on the porch floor and then a robed figure entered the hallway. It walked solemnly towards her and behind it another entered and then another. In a few short seconds Alison was surrounded by half a dozen robed people, all of them standing silently above her crouched position on the floor. Slowly, one of the robed figures produced a rope and another a large knife. As one, they advanced on her as she screamed. Her screams were short lived.

Chapter One

Sarah looked up at the large house and smiled. The other houses down the long, winding road were similar, opulent, with many bedrooms and set on large grounds and gardens. This particular house was split into two flats, one upstairs and one down. Sarah’s new flat was the downstairs one, and had its own entrance to the left of the house. The upstairs neighbours had their own front door to the right. As she stood at the little blue gate that separated the garden from the road, she looked up at the path that split in two and gently sloped up towards both doors. On either side of the paths were daffodils, swaying gently in the warm spring breeze. Sarah thought she would like it here. She took in a deep breath and started up the path, dragging her suitcase behind her with glee. She passed under a couple of large trees, and she could hear birds singing. It was the perfect place for a nature lover like her.

The peace and tranquillity was somewhat muted inside the flat, but Sarah opened some windows and the back door and let the fresh air in. The flat had apparently been vacant for some time and had a musty smell to it. She knew she could soon get rid of it with some fresh air and incense. She plopped the suitcase in the bedroom and decided to go back to the car for some of the boxes she had brought with her. The rest of her belongings would be coming later, along with her babies; the cats. Her uncle was driving up in his van with all her worldly goods this afternoon. For now, she was content to bring in what she had stuffed into the car, and then start cleaning the place. It was already clean, but nothing beats the knowledge that it’s really clean. Sarah was a little OCD; she liked things clean to her standards, and anything less would make her feel physically sick in her stomach. She had been known to be awake at 3.00am scrubbing the floor if she thought it was dirty. Not such a bad trait, she thought, if it meant things were hygienic and clean.

Sarah plugged in the portable CD player and put some music on to help her work. Plus it was as quiet as the grave, and she found it a little unnerving. She soon got going with the cleaning, getting the whole flat done in less than two hours. The fact that it was mostly empty helped quite a bit. Sarah had never been a clutter bug, but it was easier to properly clean without much furniture there. It would add to her peace of mind on those long, tortured nights, when everything crowded in her mind and made her doubt her own sanity. She could easily dismiss this as a job well done, one less demon to contend with, thank you very much! Sarah took a break and found the kettle in one of the boxes she had brought up with her. She had also stashed some peppermint tea, sugar and a cup. She washed the cup and the kettle, even though she knew they were clean; after all they had been in a dirty cardboard box. Then she made her tea and sat on the back step, watching the clouds floating lazily along in the sky.

She finished her tea and set about unpacking what she could of her belongings. The flat came with a bed and a wardrobe, and she had scrubbed those the best she could already. A lot of her things had to wait until the van arrived, and after a short time she had run out of things to do. She decided that while she was alone and the place was empty that she would bless and protect the new flat. In one of the boxes was her set up, as she called it. It contained four bowls, hand made herself out of clay, several white candles, incense, salt, a lighter, a braided circle of dried grass and a few other odds and bods in a large blue velvet bag. She set out the grass circle and set the four bowls so they were at equal intervals; she used a compass from the blue velvet bag to determine north and put one bowl in the north position above the circle and the others to correspond with the other points of the compass. Once this was done, she filled one bowl with water, one with earth from the garden, one with a charcoal block which she set to burning and one with incense, also lit and burning. These represented earth, air, fire, and water - the four elements.

While the makeshift Wiccan altar was warming up, as she thought of it, she took some incense and lit it, this one a long stick, and walked the entire perimeter of the flat, waving the stick past every wall and window in a protective wall of her own. To this she added a little of her psychic essence, using her mind to imagine a strong psychic barrier against those who would do her harm. She did this three times to make sure she was secure and then went back to the altar. The charcoal was now glowing bright orange and the incense smoking thickly, so she began her short blessing ceremony. She called to the four elements in turn, and asked for their blessing in this new flat. She asked for protection from harm and to bring only joy inside, leaving sorrow at the doorstep. Then she made a small offering of breadcake that she had prepared earlier, putting it inside the grass circle and leaving it there while the charcoal and incense still burnt. When she was satisfied that the ritual was done, she left everything as it was and went to the bathroom to wash her hands.

Sarah walked in the garden for a while, letting the air really get into her lungs, forcing the last of the dirt from the city she had left behind out. She felt alive, refreshed and not at all scared about being in a new and strange town. She still had her friends at the end of a telephone, but she needed to be somewhere new. Somewhere far away from Richard, she thought, the asswipe that broke my heart. She shut his image from her mind and looked at the daffodils that seemed to grow everywhere at the moment. She knew that in a few short weeks they would be gone, and Sarah wondered what other pretty things would grow in their place. The back garden had a gate either side of the house, one near her front door and one near the neighbour’s door. The rear seemed secure enough, and had a long green lawn surrounded by borders and a pathway on either side. There was some sort of storage building at the end of the garden, but that was fenced off and obscured by trees. Sarah remembered there was a part time gardener, so she presumed this was where he kept his tools. She noticed there were two washing lines, both empty at the moment; she presumed it was one for each flat. Ivy grew up the walls separating her garden from the one next door, and there were a few small trees dotted about here and there. Sarah was sure she was going to love it here.

When Sarah had arrived earlier that morning, there had been no cars parked outside. As she came out to meet her uncle’s van however, there was now a small silver car in front of her own little red car. The van had to park a little further up the road, which was slightly annoying as they now had to lug all her things down the road and then up the path to her new flat. Sarah greeted her uncle with a kiss on the cheek, and then helped him to unload everything from the van, dumping each box or piece of furniture in its respective room. Her cats were shut in the bedroom and let out of their cages. They were both scared, and hid under the bed so Sarah left them to it and closed the door on them. After an hour of hard labour it was done and as a thank you, she took her uncle out to a pub nearby for a well-deserved lunch. Uncle Joe was in a great mood and said he had been only too happy to come and help his favourite niece. Sarah always giggled at this, as she was his only niece. Eventually uncle Joe left and Sarah went back to her new flat, ready to put in a few hours of hard work, unpacking and arranging everything to make it feel like home.

Back at the flat, it was silent, and the musty smell had started to creep back in to the rooms. It felt empty and cold, so she turned on the portable CD player again and blasted some music while she set about the unpacking. The cats watched her with fearful green eyes from underneath the bed. Sarah knew it would be a long time before they adjusted to their new home. Sarah sang along to one of her favourite albums, and was soon getting stuck in to the monolithic task of getting everything unpacked. As she moved from room to room, she took the CD player with her, for company, and it was when she started on the living room that the problems began. She plugged in the CD player and started singing along, opening a box and pulling out green cushions and a matching throw for the sofa. Overhead she heard a bang, like someone dropping something heavy. She paused, cushion in hand and stared up at the ceiling. Nothing happened, so she carried on, ignoring it and getting on with the business at hand. Then it came again. More like someone stamping their foot. Sarah realised the upstairs neighbours must be at home up there, maybe someone had dropped something. She ignored it again and laid the throw on the sofa and arranged the cushions, making it look cosy and snug. Then the banging came again, this time