And for thy peace I pawn my own soul.

The air was pregnant with decay. The stench of putrid meat mingled with the sharp metallic tang of dried blood and the smoky fugue of charcoal. The world crackled with a dark red energy which surged through the ruined student flat like arcs of summer lightning. Lines of blue and white police tape criss-crossed the blackened maw of the scorched doorway.

"What the hell happened Henry?" Asked Kelly. She reached out a hand to touch the charred wood.

"Don't touch anything!"

Kelly's hand snapped back from the door and she turned her gaze toward Henry with her nostrils flared. 

Henry sighed. He ran his fingers through his hair and his green eyes flashed.

"Trust me Kel...leave it to me."

Kelly nodded.

 Henry made his way through the tape, a vice grip of tension seized his shoulders.

"This is wrong..." He breathed.

Fat, lazy meat flies drifted through the room, their constant heavy buzz a dark soundtrack. They crawled across the mounds of filthy plates that jutted from a sink of stagnant brown water; islands of gristle floated through a thick skin of grease.

Henry drifted through the room with Kelly at his side. His eyes flickered over the dark flat.

Long, jagged cracks twisted down all four walls, each of them shrouded in thick black scorch marks.

Henry's eyes widened. 

Thick red veins snaked through each crack. They twined together and spread over the wall in a red net that pulsed with a slow, malevolent heartbeat. 

 "No...oh no"

"Henry?"

He waved his companion away, and his eyes fell on the sofa.

Cars sighed past the flat. The pure white glare of their headlights blared through the gap in the ragged curtains and threw the gruesome scene into sharp relief.

Six teenagers were arranged in two groups of three. They faced each other on two battered old sofas, each of the mangled cushions coated in a thick film of greenish black mould. They formed a rather haphazard square in the centre of the room and their heads lolled backwards over the back of each sofa, mouths agape. The black flies buzzed in and out of their open mouths and nostrils, some perched on the swollen tongues, their multifaceted eyes fixed on the intruders. Another car sighed past the window.

A sea of empty crisp packets covered the floor along with disposable plastic and takeaway food trays from at least five different restaurants. Broken plastic cutlery lay strewn around each of the teens in almost artful patterns. Half filled cans of fizzy drinks lay in sticky puddles at the edge of the sofa, the flies supped at the new found nectar with greedy relish and they paid Henry no mind. He moved to the other side of the sofa and saw the nearest girl's eyes. 

Sightless pale orbs stared up at the ceiling, Henry followed her gaze and watched the lattice of the red vines pulse again.  

Henry's gaze returned to the girl. Her face was almost unrecognisable as human. The skin was pulled taut, the contours of her skull outlined in crimson trenches that ran across islands of waxy, blackened flesh like routes on a map which all converged around the milky, dead eyes. A thick, crusted slurry of dried blood and yellowish pus oozed from what remained of her nose and the corners of her mouth. Her jaw flopped against her chest like a vestigial scrap of skin, the flesh of her lips a patchwork of inky bruises. Maggots writhed from inside a mound of half chewed food that still coated her tongue.

 A veil of blackened, jagged flesh dangled from the throat and exposed sections of pearl white bone. Silver moonbeams blazed through the window and revealed more of the horrific scene. Her stomach was a bloated mass of greyish blue veins and white, jagged stretch marks. Hideous black rents tore open each side of the girl's stomach and, though repulsed, Henry forced himself to examine the wounds a little closer. They grinned back at him and he squinted at the edges of each. No bite or claw marks. Thank heaven for small favours.  

Henry leaned over the girl and squinted into the gloom. He craned over the edges of the sofa and felt something dark pulse at the edges of his mind. For a moment, a curtain of blood fell over his eyes and stained his world crimson. A furious heat blazed inside his head, his vision broiled, and the world transformed into a gruesome watercolour wash. The girl became a smeared black outline, an abstraction which emphasised the horror of her situation. The red fog lifted what remained of the flesh around the girl's jaw and flaked away like old paint, Hairline cracks twisted along the bones and shimmered with an eerie golden light like rivulets of lava which coalesced in the centre of her bloated bottom lip which accentuated the almost imperceptible cross shaped cut at the centre. 

"Sin eating, has to be" Henry whispered.

"What?"

"Sin eating. An old regional ritual. A local villager would eat food passed over an open coffin at a wake in hopes of absolving the dead and their family of the sins committed in life but I've never seen anything like this".

Fingers of twisted flesh clawed at the edges of the ruined floorboards in the centre of the makeshift circle, flattening out into wide translucent sheets that spread over the floor like a virulent fungus. Long animalistic tracks slashed through the sheets of flesh and left deep trenches in the wood beneath. Almost as if something were trying to lift itself out of the hole. 

Henry craned his head over the hole. Strands of viscous black slime dangled limp and lifeless from the fleshy walls, the cool night air drifted through the nearby window and granted each of them an eerie half life like broken cobwebs caught in a breeze.

Icy fingers brushed Henry's neck. 

In the centre of the pit, surrounded by the broken black slime strings, was an almost human shape. Its grey, cracked and peeling flesh reminded Henry of the horrific scenes in Pompeii. People trapped in their last terrified moments in a prison of ash and dust. 

Hairline cracks ran across the ashen shell like antique pottery. The papery flesh warped at the chest and stomach where the cracks widened before the body split into two pieces at the groin. Henry turned his eyes back to the bloated, distended bellies of the teenagers.

"How long you think they were here?" Asked Kelly. 

"Could be weeks, could be days or hours. Never can tell with warped magic. Plays havoc with the ordinary".

"Reminds me of someone," Kelly smirked. 

Henry waved her away, studying the rotten mass of food scraps.

"Why six? Sin eating isn't powerful magic. One person can stomach every impure thought and murderous impulse of a family of four and there's just one corpse". He mused for a moment, grinding his teeth as the truth of the situation danced just out of his reach. He squinted through the gloom. His eyes roved over the twisted mass of ruined flesh and black mire. He stared, the cracks in the grey flesh pulsed a furious red and twisted branches of eldritch light crawled across the walls and ceiling. Something shimmered at the edges of his vision.

"Check the windows for me?" He said, more to the room than his companion as he drifted into the cramped kitchenette. 

"What am I looking for?" She asked.

You'll know it when you see it," Henry murmured.

Open bottles lay on the countertop. The contents dribbled over the edges and dragged islands of rotten food with them, which transformed into gelatinous stalactites on the underside of the counter. 

A thick, scabrous layer of burnt food infested the inside of the microwave. Something thick and red slathered the door which hung on shattered hinges, a black meteorite that might have once been a meal squatted on a cracked plate in the centre. Long trench like scratch marks criss-crossed across the cupboards that hung over the grime encrusted oven. Henry paused just for just a moment, the red heat boiled at the edge of his eyes.

"Hey Henry, there's something on the window sills". 

"Don't touch it!" 

The world flared white as Kelly screamed.    

Everything rushed back in an almost demonic roar of light and sound. The endless tunnel of a thousand colours narrowed to an almost infinitesimal black dot until at last Henry let out a long sigh, shuddered and opened his eyes. 

The welcome coolness of gentle rain prickled at his face. He shook himself like a wet dog as his brain sparked into wakefulness. 

"What did I tell you?"

"I know" Kelly hissed from behind him. 

"Well you could have fooled me!" He retorted. He ran his hands over his body and made certain his astral form had found the right body. His fingers brushed the wet, cold metal of the grip bar that lined one of the dirt encrusted wheels of his chair.

He swept a thin sheen of water from his long coat; the zipper struck the metal with a clang and he rummaged through the pockets. 

'Don't touch anything!'

'I know'

'Keep your hands to yourself!'

'I know'

'Your astral form is vulnerable'

'I know!'

Henry produced a length of old bandage and three iron needles rusted a deep aged orange.

'Give us your hand' 

'I'm fine'

'That wasn't a request!' Said Henry. He shifted in his chair and snatched Kelly's hand. He scrutinised it in the pale yellowish glow of a streetlight.

The flesh shined like a beacon, the swollen fingers blazed a deep angry red. 

Henry turned her hand from side to side. He grimaced, black flecks shimmered like obsidian underneath the skin.

'This will hurt but keep still alright?'

He took up one of the needles and gripped Kelly's wounded hand tight.

'1...2...3!'

 Henry plunged the needle into the tip of the first swollen finger. Kelly bit back a scream. The flesh hissed, bubbled and popped, a viscous dark fluid dribbled across the back of Kelly's hand and pattered to the ground. Black and blue sparks flared as Henry mumbled a few hasty words. He pressed his thumb against the needle and drove it deeper into the flesh.

Kelly winced and screwed her eyes shut. Her arm quaked against the pain.

Henry kept up the chant until at last the flesh shrank like a punctured balloon. It returned to normal, and wisps of acrid black smoke curled up from the point where the needle entered the skin. The familiar stench of brimstone curled in his nostrils.

'One down, two to go' Henry said. 

He repeated the strange ritual twice more, then produced a small silver hip flask from his pocket and washed the wounds with a clear liquid. He removed the needles from each finger but placed them lengthways down each injured digit like a splint and bound them to his friend's skin with the length of dirty gauze. 

'Cold iron, better than a plaster at any rate,' Henry said as he tied the makeshift dressing off. 

'You should be alright now. Keep that on and give it a few days. If your hand does anything strange tell me ok?' 

Kelly nodded, staring at her ruined hand.

'This is big,' said Henry and propelled himself into the street. The rain fell in heavy, slanted sheets and thunder rumbled overhead. 

"What are we going to tell Johnson?" Kelly asked. Henry remained silent, heaved the wheelchair up the curb, and let the rain roll down his face for a moment. 

"Henry?"

"What can we tell him? We found sod all, nothing that they won't explain away in the papers, anyway. I'm more worried about Mrs Carter." Henry's finger caught in the spokes of the chair's left wheel. He skidded to a stop, cursed and shook the pain from his hand.

"Need a shove?" Kelly asked with a thin smile. 

"I can manage." Henry shot back. The words hung in the air for a moment, and Henry's face fell a little when he saw Kelly's smile falter.

"Sorry I just- this doesn't make any sense. They don't operate like this, sure summoning circles, candles, chants all the usual guff, but this is beyond that. Sin eating is low-level magic, folksy stuff. You wouldn't do that to summon anything, let alone a bloody demon. There are rules to it, an order, someone's messing with it and they won't like the results. I can tell you that."

"Back to the books?" asked Kelly. 

"Only option we've got, I suppose." Henry started to move on then felt the weight of the night's work bare down on him. His back and shoulders roared, and he flexed his neck to ease some of the tension. 

"You know what? I will take that shove if you're still offering."

Kelly took up the handlebars and Henry slumped back in the chair a little, his mind still puzzled over the numerous questions the simple student flat presented him with. He hated being kept in the dark, although his gut told him things would fall into place soon enough.