Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #20 November 2015 | Page 41

Let’s get this over with, right? ‘cause it’s
pissing me off now. There was no so-called Satanic
cult involved in this case. I know the papers loved
that shit at the time, but it wasn’t like that. I can
tell you straight up, right now, there’s no such thing
as Satanism. Every time someone tells you their
shock story about a cult or a cabal or a magic circle
or whatever, you just know right away that the fire
underneath the smoke is going to be either a teenage
Goth, or some poor fucking loony-binner somewhere,
who starts hearing voices and figures it must be the
devil talking to him. Apart from nutters, and morons,
no-one actually believes in the Devil in this day
and age. Not really. It’s a crock. I said all this to the
papers at the time, although obviously no-one fucking
listened then. They just wanted the drama.

nice, in a big old Georgian town house, must have
been worth close to a million. The corpse was some
junkie kid, about nineteen. We thought at the time he
must have had rich parents or something, who must
have bought this place for him so they could keep an
eye on him, and this kid had been shooting up in the
flat by himself and had overdosed.
Now like I said, it was snowing outside. Great
big heavy flakes, like cotton wool. I came up through
Hotwells and crossed the river down by Cumberland
Basin on my way to the scene, and I shit you not, there
was ice in the docks, it was that cold.
We got to the flat and looked around. It was
like a bomb site in there. This guy must have trashed
the place looking for shit he could sell to score with.
There were no radiators, no doors, no glass in the
windows, nothing, and you can imagine how cold it
was in that place. The kid might as well have been
living in a cave. Even the water in the toilet had frozen
solid.

Alright, granted, it’s not always as simple
as that. Nine times out of ten it’s just idiot kids, but
every so often, like I said, you do get the odd nutter.
Sometimes bad shit goes on, obviously. The point is,
though, that with any Satanic cult where something
serious has actually happened, it’s almost always
because someone’s lost the plot. I ain’t saying it ain’t
serious, but is it Devil worship? Well, not really.
Now, I’ll tell you why I know what I’