"She's late. She's never late. They always met here at this time, every Friday. Where is she?"

Ian turned away from the wind, pulling up his coat to shield the lighter from the wind as he touched it to the end of the damp roll-up he had clamped between his wind chapped lips and inhaled. He let the coat drop back down and jumped as scan inches from his own face was another, so close it must have been virtually touching the fabric screen that had been there a moment earlier.

It was a gaunt looking man, probably in his late fifties thin grey hair drawn tight over his skull. A rumpled grey suit hung from seemingly impossibly thin limbs.

"Good evening Mr...", the figure looked thoughtful for a moment, "Mr Taylor? It is Mr Taylor isn't it? Mr Ian Taylor?"

"Yes ", Ian answered curtly, trying to recover some of his composure and exhaling cigarette smoke clumsily; "who wants to know?"

"Ah, excellent", a smile spreading over the strangers face, "if you'd like to come with me."

"Wait! Who the hell are you and what makes you think I'm just going to wander off with you?" Ians temper receded a little, he was still tired; "anyway I'm meeting someone."

"Yes, Miss Farmouth. Oh I'm sorry, Teah"

The poorly constructed cigarette fell from Ians lips as he gasped in surprise, his hand reaching for the short sharp knife he kept in the inside pocket of his long jacket, "If you've harmed one hair on her head...."

A dry chuckle rattled out of the strangers chest, ending in a rasping cough, "Mr Taylor, I can assure you that Miss Farmouth is quite alive and well. She has merely gone on ahead and is waiting for our return. Now, shall we?"

Without another word the suit turned and headed off down the street swerving in and out of the crowds almost as though the parted for him; Ian having to jog to keep up, dodging and occasionally bumping into people who turned, utter a brief curse or obscenity and carried on their way. In time, the figure began to draw away; Ian increased his pace as best he could, each corner he turned he caught sight of the nameless man turning another corner at the edge of his sight, encouraging him to speed faster still. He had to catch him, for Teahs sake.

Teah....It had been but a few scant months they had know each other, but Ian was sure she was the one for him. They had just clicked, she liked the same bands he did, the same food, the same, well; everything. She was perfect. They'd met in one of the smokey little bars Ian seemed to enjoy huddling in the corner of; trying to look all sinister and mysterious in his long black duster jacket and assorted occult paraphernalia when she had walked in. Dressed in an almost indentical female equivalent to his outfit, she got herself a glass of dark red wine and sat down opposite him. As he looked into her dark green eyes, he felt like he was drowning; mumlbing an brief incantation under his breath he reached his senses out to her and found that she did indeed have the craft so immediately his guard went up. They got talking however and found they had so much in common that they should end up together was inevitable.

That was then however and the now required Ians immediate attention. He ducked round the next corner to find the stranger gone. Panic raced through his mind before it was dragged back by the sudden clang of a metal door slamming shut. Ian raced over to it, a rather delapedated looking warehouse. With hardly a second thought he raced into the darkness that lay beyond. It was dark. Unnaturally dark. Ian called out a summons in latin to a spirit of fire he'd had dealings with in the past. There was a brief flicker of light and then a barely audible scream and darkness once more.

The darkness didn't last long. Slowly a sickly green light began to creep from the walls, floor and ceiling till the whole room was bathed in a rotten glow, the walls themselves seemingly grown from sick dead flesh. At the end of the corridor stood the suit, looking more dead than ever in this light. The flesh seemed to be hanging off the bones and the suit little more than rags stitched to the drying skin. As he spoke, the air in front of him seemd thick with spores of mould and specks of dust, "So glad you finally made it Mr Taylor. If you would like to just step this way." The figure indicated a section of fleshy wall just to his side.

"Where's Teah?" Ian demanded as he stepped forward, noticing with some degree of panic that the surfaces of the room seemed to be pulsing rythmically in some form of obscene convulsion.

"Through here. I assure you she's quite alright." The corpse like skin around the mouth puffed and cracked with a noise like torn paper as the creature parted its dead lips into a grin. "Why not see for yourself?"

Ian took another step forward, as he did so the wall to which the corpse had gestured parted into a wet vertical tear in the flesh drippinga thick clear goo as it did so; Ian fought to keep his bile down as the stench hit him, sticking to his throat like the foul tasting cough medicine his mother used to give him as a boy. Looking up through his watering eyes, Ian saw that he was now alone and the door behind him had vanished. The only way onwards and possibly out was through that pulsating gateway ahead of him.

Fighting back the nausea, he pushed between the warm, slick folds of flesh trying not to breath. Almost with out warning they began to suck and pull at him, sucking him deeper into the darkness. Then all at once a voice echoeing round his mind

"Welcome, my love"

"Teah?"

"Well yes, to you I suppose I am. But I've had many names over the centuries, being reborn into one sack of frail meat after another. But to you, yes I am Teah."

"Where are you? Are you OK?"

"I'm fine my dear. You however may feel some discomfort for a while. This process is not the most comfortable from what I recall. But it does pass."

"Wha.......?" The question remained incomplete on Ians lips as pain like fire ripped through him from his toes to the end of every strand of hair. But it went deeper than that, as though his soul itself was being tortured.

"Freely you joined with me Ian. Freely you came here and freely you entered the Caul. You really have no one to blame but yourself."

Finally realising the danger he was in, Ian gave out a desperate scream of pain and defiance.

"Ian, Ian, Ian....relax, from what I recall, you liked a bit of pain."

An rippling giggle was the last thing Ian Taylor heard before blackness mercifully swallowed him.

Some time later, a wet fleshy tearing sound once again echoed through the barren warehouse and Teah and her new initiate stepped out to wreak their Lords desolation on the world.

-- Written by Ben Griffiths --