Page 7 of Demons & Damnation

Chapter 4

Kyla Marshall glanced up into the night sky, admiring the vibrant stars twinkling above her. Leaning back against the cool bricks of the pub where she worked, she gave in to her nicotine craving. Grabbing the last cigarette from the battered silver packet in her hand, she grumbled about the cost of the damn things these days.

As soon as she lit it and took the first drag, she tried to breathe out all of her negative thoughts with it. The sweet rush of nicotine surged around her body, tingling through her veins. She dared to think back over her mere thirty years of life. Working in The Phantom Horse, and still being single at this age hadn’t been her plan, but since when did life care about plans?

Staring at the old oak tree on the boundary line between the pub and the mansion behind, Kyla found herself lost in thought. Daydreams of sitting in an oak-lined office with a psychopath offering up his mind for dissection brought a small smile to her lips. Her idealistic dreams of becoming a criminal psychologist seemed like a whole lifetime ago and belonged to someone she no longer knew.

Still, her morbid fascination of serial killers and the inner workings of the mind had never faded and even now she relaxed to murder documentaries and read whatever books she could on anything murder related.

A violent shudder ran through her, bringing her back to the present and leaving goosebumps in its wake. From out of nowhere, a powerful gust of wind whipped around the empty garden, knocking her sideways. Dropping her fag when she used her hands to steady herself against the wall, she frantically looked around for it.

“For fucks sake,” she said, chasing it across the grass.

She grabbed after it like it was a long-lost piece of treasure. Being her last one, she didn’t want to have to traipse into town when her shift finished. She could moan about needing to do that in the morning instead.

Fishing around in her pocket for her lighter, she placed her fag back between her lips and relit it. She’d barely finished inhaling her next hit before a clap of thunder and another strong burst of wind took it from her again.

“Are you freakin’ kiddin’ me?” she yelled, looking up into the vast dark sky.

With the threat of a storm lingering, she felt more than grateful she’d chosen laziness today and driven the two miles to work instead of taking her usual walk. Chasing after her fag again, she plucked it from its place near the hedge lining the boundary of the pub’s land.

“Kyla. Where are you?”

The high-pitched voice of Kyla’s boss, Keith, echoed through the shadowed garden. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and counted to ten.

“Coming,” she shouted back, trying to sound as sweet as possible.

Chewing on her tongue to stop a flow of curse words from spilling out, she threw her ill-fated cigarette over the hedge into the abandoned garden on the other side and stomped back to work. Reminding herself she only had two hours to go until she could go home, she plastered a smile on her face and played nice to the customers.

Several of the regulars were leaning on the bar with empty glasses, bored expressions on their faces. Wondering to herself what the hell Keith was doing and why he couldn’t serve them, she remembered that her boss was nothing but a lazy bastard and expected all of his staff to do everything. Regardless of whether they were legally entitled to breaks or not.

The man disgusted her, but to be fair even that didn’t describe the skin-crawling revulsion that swamped her every time she so much as thought of him. She couldn’t pinpoint anything specific that made her feel that way, it was just the whole package. Short, bald, fat, blackened teeth—the few he had left anyway, and small, piggy eyes, his entire demeanour made her cringe. That and the fact he perved over anything with breasts.

If he’d been a nice guy, she could have excused him for being the same height as her ample chest and not having anywhere else to look at eye level, but he wasn’t. The best word to describe him would be a leech. He only ever employed young, single women.

As Kyla was halfway through pulling a pint for the last thirsty guy, Keith scurried through from the kitchen. Sweat glistened all over his bright red face, and his belly heaved up and down.

“Fire,” he said, gasping for breath.

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