NO FOOLING THE VICAR
Meet The Vicar, a psychopathic contract killer, whose mission is to send sinners into God’s welcoming arms. When he realises he’s killed the wrong person, he sets about discovering where his real target is hiding. And, in a race to save the life of Hollie Stevens, so do the police. But The Vicar gets to her first.
Can Hollie Stevens talk her way out of The Vicar’s clutches? Nobody has ever succeeded before. And the only guidance she has had has come from a strange ‘Intuitive’ called Camille, and Atticus, a one-eyed black man with dreadlocks. So, when facing The Vicar in an anonymous hotel room, she is all on her own. When the police arrive, it’s already too late. The Vicar has done what he must and fled the scene, taking with him the details of one final hit. Can anything stop him?
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NO FOOLING THE VICAR
“A week after the attack, I saw the man who raped me, walking down the Champs-Élysées. As I went to approach him, he turned and recognised me for who I was. And right there, right on the footpath, he became a host of ugly grey beings.”<
The Vicar leaned forwards. “A host, you say. Describe them to me, my child.”
“There were five or six of them. These beasts were like menacing presences from those nightmares that originate in lives lived long before our own. Awful dreams that emerge from our primeval creation. The creatures were short. They were naked, but androgynous. They were neither male nor female. They moved together, along the footpath, towards me. Nobody else seemed to notice them. It was like they were invisible to everybody but me. They lacked anything that I could call a face. And it seemed like these terrifying entities were all straining to scream, although no sound escaped them. Where a face should have been, there were no apparent features, but only a wide-open grey-lipped orifice. Like the mouths of transparent hookworms that inhabit the intestines and live off the faeces of an infected person.”
The Vicar shuddered. “How dreadful,” he muttered, absorbed in the story.
Hollie continued. “At a distance, I couldn’t be sure, but I thought that some sort of repulsive organ slithered around within those demonic mouths. Have you ever heard of the tongue eating louse, Vicar?”
“I can’t say I have.”
“I don’t recall its Latin name but it is a fish parasite. A marine-louse, if you will. They can grow to about an inch in length. The awful things even have faces. It is the only known organism to replace an entire organ of its host species, in this case, the poor fish’s tongue.”
“Which, I presume, kills the fish?”
“In fact, no. Fish can live without tongues. But I’ve seen photos of these things and they are evil beyond belief. The louse pierces the fish’s tongue with its powerful bite, and then starts to suck its fill of blood. It will live there until the fish dies a natural death, or is eaten by a predator.”
“And what is the point of this information?” The Vicar asked.
“It’s because that’s what I believed I saw convulsing within those disgusting open mouths. A demon within a demon. A smaller parasite with a face and a naked, bloated body taking succour from its evil host.”
“How disgusting.”
“And I was gripped with fear that froze me to the spot. Total, paralysing fear, Vicar, like I have never experienced before in my life. The hands and feet of the demons were no longer human. The fingers and toes lacked knuckles. They resembled grey, sinuous tentacles. Short toxic talons slithered out of the ends. Short, but sharp like the claws of a predatory beast. Sharper than a serpent’s tooth. Those things that passed for hands and feet seemed to be clear and defined yet, at the same time, vague and shadowy. It was as if, by an act of pure will, these evil creations could reshape that writhing tentacle into a deadly weapon.”
“And what happened next?” The Vicar asked, perched forward on the edge of his seat.
