I had no idea how I got through those daft little streets all the way there in one go. I also had no idea how I’d first heard of the museum, or why I’d come to Raughnen in the first place, or why we’d just sold the only decent striker we had left before next season. I contemplated that all the way through the alleys and I didn’t ever go down in the pools of blood, even with how slippy it was. I also didn’t look at the things that hulked and swayed in the doorways where it all was. You don’t get through twenty years in Grove Hill by looking.

The Demon Museum looked just like any other municipal indoors attraction - big pseudo-white pillared building that you might think looked a bit Roman if you’d failed key stage one history. There were all the usual banners shoving just how free it all was down your throat, to lull you into a false sense of non-panic before you got face to face with the cashier and had no time to back out of an exhibition year pass with gift aid.

Well, let’s just say I’d been around the block, as far as fascinating historical landmarks went, and I was prepared. I wasn’t so prepared when I went up the stairs and the the uniformed security guards manhandled me through the prison hall doors with nary a threatened fee to assault my pockets.

I was particularly pissed off because, as I twisted out of their grip, I had the chance to peer into the main hall and straight into the display of peeling Polaroids of the lumpy temple things where I’d parked my car just a couple of hours ago. I craned my neck, straining in vain for a bold date or builder in the wall of text, as the heavy wooden doors of the exhibition creaked shut before me. I was left with utter darkness and the despair of a useless fact left unmemorised nagging at my mind.

The turn of a key on the other side sealed my fate. Then, the lights came on and I saw I was in a room of signs free of the late summer holiday mass of whining children. I waited patiently by the door, hands curled into fists by my side, because I knew such a beautiful moment simply could not last in Britain on a Saturday lunchtime.

Then I saw him.

It had to be the demon, encased as he was in a swirling cage of metal rods as thick as my arm, which glowed menacingly with foreign gibberish and funny symbols as I approached. He looked just like any other bloke to me though.

“Y’alright?” I ventured, and my words echoed into the timeless dust of the vaulted ceiling high above.

“How you doin’, mate?” said the man, and nodded. In my direction. I liked him instantly.

“Good thanks. And you?” I shut my mouth then, because I’m a pathetic disgrace of a human being when it comes to the simple task of saying hello. I nodded back instead.

The demon moved forward out of the impenetrable shadow which pooled at the centre of his domain. He was wearing a cardigan, for God’s sake, and he had a little table in there with a teapot on it. Nobody evil in the history of mankind has ever possessed a teapot.

“Looks like you’re as stuck as me,” he said, and he laughed warmly. My mouth rose into a mirroring grin seemingly of its own accord. “Which is to say, not very.”

I laughed too. “Of course not. I mean, this is a public institution funded by the taxpayer. We’re pretty top blokes all in all, aren’t we? Aren’t we?” I was inexplicably and embarrassingly desperate to be liked by this being. He was just one of those guys, you know? Not like those cold, manipulative devils from kids’ books.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

The becardiganed demon regarded me with eyes that were definitely not cold or manipulative. “You know that means they’re run by the government, right? Or do you come over and polish up the thumbscrews after work, cos I’ve never seen you?”

“Oh,” was all I said. I was a little bit worried that I had sensed the edge of a burning abyss of cruelty and malice as he spun that question, but surely I was just in a bit of a tiz. It was gone a moment later. The demon was looking at me with something like satisfaction, as if I’d passed a test I didn’t even know I was taking. Which was good for me, because I’d never passed any test I had known about before. I was still waiting for the DVLA to catch up with me for all these day trips in Dad’s banger (it was one little unauthorised lane-change for fuck’s sake. Bloody confusing roundabout). The bank probably wanted a word too.

“You know what?” said the demon, smiling. “I like you. I think we’d get on like a world on fire if only I got out of this mess. Damn this cursed cage!”

I was bloody beaming by then. “Surely you can do better my man. What you get, like, minimum wage?”

I caught a hint of a snarling tooth, a deep embery glow from somewhere just beyond the epiglottis, but

then he started speaking again and I had to concentrate. “When I say cursed, I mean cursed.” He threw up his hands then as if coming to a big decision. “Look, you seem like a man of action, so I’m just gonna give it to you straight. This isn’t any government run thing. It’s worse.”

“The EU?” I gasped.

“The Glorious Order of the Red Door. The Glordites, as they’ve liked to be known since they discovered the joys of Geocities for their acolyte recruitment site and found themselves in want of a trendy acronym.” I was beyond words by then, so he carried on, hoping I’d retain something from osmosis or the like. “They run half of Raughnen now. Even the Witches’ Tea Rooms on Gloucester Street, after all of Gladys’ high talk of local businesses needing to be owned from local astral faith planes. Used to be good unfettered beings like meself could go around doing an honest century’s soul-stealing without playing into all these bloody circuses.” He was looking forlornly at the door now from between the vaguely hissing bars. “It was a proper wild west in the old days round here, yer know. The Cult of the Deathwyrm, Iron Band of Beheaderers, Circle of Chiropodists... all gone now.” He sighed for reasonably dramatic effect. “Temples and tomes getting bought up by the Glordites. It was all downhill once they opened up that scone factory. Means of production and all that shit. Won this town’s heart and then paid for its spirit. It was only a matter of time before their pathetic, puny mortal manapools weren’t enough. So they started binding me own folk. Put us in places like this, got the locals to pay to exploit us more, got more power, rinse and repeat.” He eyed me from his cage, just, just out of reach.

I was always a quick lad, and I’d been putting most of it together through the whole sorry tale. Place sounded like a laugh back in the day. Big heartless company of demon-summoners destroying a good time for everyone. Trapped this nice bloke in some fancy contract when he could be out with the boys. And then I came along... a man of action. He said so himself.

“So you want me to help you out?” I whispered into the gloom.

His smile was all the reply I needed. Told you I was clever.

But then, there was something else, there at the back of my head. Some little niggling feeling that wouldn’t go away, like I’d missed something important, something that could change everything.

Then I had it.

“What was the price for this bit?” I asked.

He sighed, deeply and morosely. “Five quid. Seven for a little aura drainage. Fifteen for a commemorative frisbee with me mug on it.”

“So why was I shoved in for free?” I demanded. Gotcha! There was something else going on here. With all I’d seen in this godforsaken shit-tip of a town, there were probably dark and mysterious conspiracies behind every closed door, but nothing so telling as getting in something you wanted to do for nowt.

His face changed then. And I don’t just mean expression. I’m talking Stretch Armstrong here. Nice old geezer to spitting colossal necrotic vampiric elder of the eleventh dimension of hell in a second. I just remembered that time I got dragged over the border with Kool Kev and the midget on The Bad Friday and kept calm. The same couldn’t be said for the monster. He was twisting and spitting and spasming like some crackhead down Union Street, and all at once I sensed his unbearable raging impatience wrap me up like a wet blanket.

“It’s... complicated!” he rasped like a foghorn. “The Order of the Velvet Doom... they owed me... back from the ritual. They need to pay back the Deathguards of Primrose Park, you see, stop the Orb of Undoing from reaching the Apostles. Took care of the Glordite guards...” He gestured with one claw-paw to my side, where a charming pair of mahogany footstools stood beside a Welsh dresser of bizarrely manly proportions. “So we came to an agreement... that when I’m free... Oh sod this!” And there stood the bloke again, smiling from his prison, and for the life of me I couldn’t recall what he’d just been. “Quit the nattering. Man of action, right? Reward? Reward.” His wittering slowed, calmed. He turned his back, casually walked over to his teapot. Conjured a nice big cup from thin air with my name and the Boro crest on it. “I could grant anything, you know, once I’m out.” He tipped the pot, and I cringed away. I don’t know what I was expecting but the stuff that came out looked like tea at least. “Money... girls...well, women I suppose for your age... power.” The cup was full. He passed it through the bars. It was shocking, blast-furnace hot and yet it didn’t burn my hand at all. “Protection from curses?”

I considered a moment, my whole life reshaping before me.

“A pint,” I decided. “I’ll do it for a pint.”