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Warning: This story contains strong language and scenes of a violent and sexual nature which some readers may find disturbing.

Do you believe in the supernatural? Have you ever had any first-hand experience with visions, voices or worse still, with an enemy from the fathomless bowels of hell? Unless you have actually witnessed anything remotely ethereal, or have heard voices – familiar or otherwise - then I suspect not. I fully accept why a person might deny the existence of spirit beings or why they may want to remain sceptical, as most Beliefs are founded on empirical evidence: that is to say, physical experience learned through the senses. Do you know what, I didn't believe in ghosts or evil spirits until recently. But allow me a moment to fill you in on the background.

Shortly after my thirtieth birthday, things occurred that really left me in no doubt what so ever that there was such a place called 'Hell', but not in a spiritual sense; well, not at first - but rather in the physical aspect of the word, as the hell to which I am referring existed here on earth. It wasn't until several years later did I experience the true existence of the sepulchral elements of hell that exists beyond the forces of the physical realms. That hell has one necromancist, Satan, the first fallen angel; the original serpent who continues to turn his enormous iron rod of death inside the churning caldron of rejected souls. More about that in a short while.

Back to my physical hell. It all started, I guess, two months before my thirty first year when I received a mercenary letter from the bank informing me of their intentions to freeze my account and all other assets should I refuse to take appropriate action to pay off my huge overdraft.

Evidently my financial situation was bleak to say the least and I was forced to abandon my enormous house in the leafy suburbs of Birmingham. It wasn't long before I reluctantly settled for a quaint Edwardian cottage in the heart of the countryside just outside the grassy landscape of Worcestershire. Shortly after that, I met my husband, Malcolm, and both he and his parents sold their own bungalow and moved in with me. I say 'moved in', they did more than that, they bought a 50% stake in it as they felt I needed some spare capital to spend on their son (then my husband) and on our future.

We were happy for a while, but then I discovered various unpleasant things about Malcolm's parents; and not long after that, with much foreboding, I learned shocking revelations about my own lover which I do not want to enlarge on here.

Apparently Malcolm had been abused as a child by his mother and father who had themselves been victims as children.

Initially, I dismissed those evil things and blamed everything on my infertility; and with good reason. Malcolm had always wanted children from the outset. So I had no real cause to feel emotionally wounded when he had looked coldly at me when I sheepishly confessed to him my inability to conceive due to an abnormality of nature. It was then that I first experienced the physical and mental effects of 'hell on earth.'

Malcolm's initial desire for wanting a child quickly turned into an obsession. The obsession grew into something more sinister, something far beyond the power of human description. Rape! It was as though he were somebody possessed.

Even to this day I can still recall vividly how the bastard had alluded his lubricious shaft touching my clitoris prior to penetration as 'the serpent's kiss.'

The mere thought of it makes me shudder and I almost choke on the acid that surfaces in my throat each time the memories of this hateful and perverse episode enters my mind threatening to contaminate my thinking. I shall spare you the unforgivable words he use to utter slowly through clenched teeth afterwards. I wished him dead even then! So you can well imagine just how elated I felt when I later learned the fucker had suffered a heart attack behind the wheel of his lorry six months following our separation.

Suffice to say, things went from bad to worse after I had told Malcolm I was infertile. The little shit openly flirted with other women; relentlessly drank intoxicants which made him violent, until I couldn't take anymore and subsequently ended our marriage a few months prior to our tenth wedding anniversary. Thank God we hadn't any children.

I lived in fear of that monster. I kept worrying whether he would stalk me, bombard me with endless threatening messages or worse still, plan to murder me.

Even though he moved out into rented accommodation after our separation, his parents didn't, which made things terribly awkward for me. We hardly spoke and very quickly my life snowballed into one intense fear that just refused to go away. If that weren't bad enough, the next episode was undoubtedly more horrible.

One night, while I sat before the fire in the cottage, I found that my eyes, for no apparent reason, happened to fall on the poker that hung from a wrought iron hook to the left of the grate. Then what I witnessed, made my own internal life source run cold. For there, trickling between the sculptured engravings of the iron-work, looking as fresh as fresh, was the unmistakable sight of blood.

I screamed! But that wasn't the end of it.

Seconds later, I gazed goggled-eyed as the blood-soaked poker twitched itself free from its hook and rose – unaided - into the air, where it hung there for a moment or two before it swept wicked and threatening over my own head, dripping blood onto my untidy hair before it very slowly descended - with purposeful accuracy – towards the fireside and lastly its hook, on which it came to rest.

What little energy I had, soon drained from me and I slumped back against the cushion.

Then when I finally found enough strength to raise my head to look at the fire, my entire body subsided again.

As I glanced over at the poker, I saw to my intense supprise no trace of blood what so ever - how ever hard I scrutinised its entire iron surface.

I just couldn't believe it. I know I was losing it, but not to that extent. There had been blood on that poker when it had miraculously ascended into the air. Christ the damn thing had even flown over my own head and dropped the unpleasant evidence it bore onto my hair. I felt the pissing perishing stuff splatter my skin, for Pete's sake!

I screwed up my eyes and turned my face away from the fire in case it had just been an optical allusion. But when I opened my eyes and re-focused them once again on the poker, there it hung, innocently, on its usual hook by the grate next to the yawning mouth of the crackling fire, completely clean, as if it had been well and truly cleansed by some invisible hand.

Then by way of confirmation, I reached up and Very gingerly touched my hair with the tips of my fingers and shuddered as they came into contact with the sticky substance. Examining the tips of my fingers with my eyes I saw quite clearly that they bore the unmistakeable traces of blood.

There you go, I hadn't imagined it. My fingers exhibited the evidence!

Then I sighed. given the condition of my feeble mind, I lacked the energy to analyse logically the meaning behind these strange and horrible goings on.

All I can tell you is - As hard as it maybe for you to accept - there had been blood on that poker when I saw it hovering in mid-air as though held up by an invisible hand.

From that time on, matters worsened until they seemed to have transformed into one continuous nightmare plagued by familiar visions and spine-chilling voices which grew more and more intense with each new day; only they weren't really days for me, but rather one eternal coma of indescribable horror that eventually robbed me of what little sanity remained.

A day or so later, (or was it An hour or so later), I couldn't tell, just when I had almost muscled up enough energy to drag myself off to bed for the first time in ages following the commencement of this unexplainable torment, there entered the room an unusual cold breeze which immediately chilled me to the very core.

Papers and various drapes flapped and lifted in response to the unwelcoming alien draft. ineffectually I waved my arms at the unfamiliar imposta. Then things began to happen rapidly!

Amid the devistation erupted an eary sound, rather like that of freshly fledge flames breaking free from a well constructed fire on bombfire night. Screams and evil laughter quickly ensued!

Then Something heavy thudded into the side of my skull and, for a split second, all fell black.

I next found myself staring transfixed into the gaping and fowl mouth of death, into which I very quickly tumbled. within this dense and terrifying cavern, I distinctly glimpsed the blood-stained gates of hell. Then the nightmare really did worsen.

From Whose Prospective?

Sitting in the dimly lit room of the old cottage – in a rocking chair before the almost dying embers of the fire – was Christine Morrison: a skeleton of a woman of uncertain age whose only item of clothing was a faded purple cotton dress.

Her hair, which hung in fine greyish wisps, swung freely about her face like a thin curtain of little protection.

Christine's life had been a miserable one almost from the day the silly bitch was born. She had married at the age of 31, bore no children due to her stupid infertility and lost her husband, Malcolm, to jealousy within 10 years of them being together.

Six months later, Malcolm had suffered a hart attack at the wheel of his lorry while travelling back from London and was pronounced dead almost immediately.

From the age of 10, Malcolm had hated both his mother and father for the unspeakable things they had done to him that had, without a shadow of a doubt, developed him into the monster he later became; thanks to me.

Following there separation – and subsequently Malcolm's demise - Christine very quickly withdrew into herself. What few friends she had, no longer visited her and she vowed to terminate all contact with the rest of the outside world. She had longed to rid herself of Malcolm's elderly parents who partly owned and shared this Edwardian cottage with her.

Now as the sterile bitch of Christine sat featureless in her mother'-in-law's ancient wooden rocking chair, she found that her eyes were unconsciously drawn to the flickering image of the grotesque face peering out at hers through the reddening flames in the old grate, all the while wondering where she had seen it before.

At one stage, the eyes seemed to come alive, for they danced and narrowed, danced and narrowed within the conflagration and had the effect of tugging at her own eyes until they were held as one in the same stealthy gaze.

Christine's head drooped, as if weakened by the power of the opaque hypnotic face that stared continuously and motionlessly back at her, as if in a moment of reflective contemplation.

The frail woman then found herself drifting into an uncomfortable sleep – the evil vision of the face she had seen in the fire, partially obscured now behind the curtain of her own drowsiness, still remained, as if determined to haunt this woman's unconscious hours.

Christine's head lolled forward until her chin dug into her chest.

'I rubbed my hands in sheer glee. Not long, now', I thought.

Outside, the storm raged about the overgrown garden that attacked the few beach woods to the back of the house and speared the tangled strands of long grass, causing the lengthy tendrils of blackened blades to sigh as they involuntarily bent and unbent their thin wiry bodies against the strain of this ungiving turbulence.

In the black sky over head, the thunder clouds rolled and raindrops the size of ten pence pieces cascaded earthward in a parabola of sulphur and flickering sparks.

On the mantle piece above the sleepy fire, the clock was gathering itself in readiness to strike midnight.

Still the figure in the chair slept; her breathing sounded laboured, a symbol of inadequate protection guarding her tabernacle of her aimlessly nocturnal journeys.

On its iron hook to the left of the fire, the poker twitched. A second or two later, it twitched again, only this time, more violently.

Still Christine slept.

The fire coughed and sighed, then belched and heaved; rose and fell; whispered and moaned.

Then the poker began to jig about aggressively as though it were trying to break free from its constraint.

Still the woman in the chair, slept. Through her hinged toothless mouth came short gasps at regular intervals.

A reddish hue suddenly blazed from the swaying poker.

Then, as the tension within the clock climaxed, a bolt of lightning shot through the partially drawn curtains and engulfed the room in a blue Hayes of blinding light.

Almost at the same time the poker was miraculously wrenched free from its hook and glided dagger-like towards the sleeping figure in the chair.

Dong! Dong!

By the third dong, the vicious red hot point of the poker had plunged with accuracy into the flesh of the woman's left breast and shattered the bone beneath before the fourth dong sounded.

With measured precision – and with blood pouring from the gaping wound through which protruded the wicked iron rod of death – Christine's almost lifeless and bedraggled frame was buoyed effortlessly into the air and precipitated with targeted accuracy into the yawning mouth of the open fire that received her with a ferocious roar and a fountain of flames.

Christine's frayed cotton dress quickly dissolved into ashes as did her hair. As the angry fire attacked its prey, the blood stained poker was slowly withdrawn from the woman's chest by an invisible claw and was returned back to the hook beside the iron grate, clean.

As the seconds ticked by, the only sound – apart from the regular tick tock of the mantle clock – was the hungry fire eagerly devouring Christine's flesh and bones.

Her toothless mouth was still open through which protruded a blackened tongue – its chard tip playing over the cindered lips as though questing moisture to quench its suffering.

'Now for my next task!'

Mary's screams immediately roused her husband from the clutches of his lustful sleep. His back arched as he struggled against the turbulence created by his wife's convulsing body next to him.

For a split second, Jack felt terrified as if seeing his wife for the first time; possessed and haunted. Part of him wanted to run away and escape from this, this demon next to him.

From the short distance that separated them, Jack could distinctly feel and smell the familiar acrid scent of sweat oozing from his wife's gyrating body.

“Dear God!”

Jack was physically trembling as he attempted to claw his way out from beneath the mass of crumpled and disarrayed sheets which to him, appeared bent on imprisoning him; barring his way of escape. It was though his entire body had been sapped of energy. He began to panic. But the more he panicked, the weaker he grew.

Jack suddenly became aware of another smell that was far stronger than the putrid odour emanating from his demonic wife and fresh horror compounded that of the first.

“Smoke!” Gasped Jack, hoarsely, trying once more to wrench his terrified frame from the pulsating bed and the awful spirit of divination next to him.

Then instinct urged him to make a grab for his convulsing wife and pull her to safety. But when he reached out his trembling arms towards her, the almost naked man was immediately propelled from the bed as if by a powerful electric currant and thudded with his unclothed back into the jagged iron bars of the ancient radiator beneath the bay window; his partially erect penis protruding from between his legs looking like some ineffectual weapon that had been the serpent of childhood depravity for many a young victim.

The pain caused by the sudden impact, momentarily deprived Mary's winded husband of the power of speech, but seconds later, when he was able to gasp air, his screams overpowered those of his wife – until the entire room was filled with a cacophony of auditory human terror.

Outside the thunder clouds boomed and lightning sliced through the evil sky and driving wind and rain.

An explosion from down below splintered the bedroom floor above and filled the air with acrid fumes of rotting flesh and thick black smoke that instantly began to suck the atmosphere clean of oxygen.

Still in a crouching and painful position with his back digging into the radiator, Jack silently plunged from sight into the inferno below.

More black smoke filled the room quickly followed by more angry flames that danced and crackled around and about the four poster bed in which still wheezed the choking form of Mary.

Soon the bed developed into an enormous ball of flame and, with a ferocious roar, the area of floor beneath this wild conflagration, collapsed inwards and both the bed and the bubbling flesh of Jack's wife, plummeted from sight.

'To the victor the spoils!'

The transformation was electric. As though there hadn't been an inferno blazing within the confines of the stone walls of Christine's Edwardian cottage at all. In fact, everything had returned to normal.

“I just couldn't believe I had the power. O yes, in life, manipulation and cunning were my middle names. Seduction was my first.”

In the ancient rocking chair with eyes fixed triumphantly on the dying embers of the fire in the iron grate, a poker laying next to his right foot and a pen by his left, the corporeal image of Christine noticed the ghostly figure of an old man nursing a young child.

He looked just as evil in death. Christine could not ever imagine that such an innocent young infant would aspire to the scales of evil as did Jack's own father whom himself in turn molested and subsequently scarred the innocence of that of Malcolm, years later.

It would seem that Christine had not only failed her own husband by her infertility, but she had evidently been a total disappointment to Malcolm's grandfather, too.

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