I stare up at the wrought iron gates of the old cemetery. Quinn and I had agreed the night before that I would take a look at the various sights of potential main gates to the Underworld. The gates are no longer open, they were shut down by angels long ago to prevent a disaster of epic proportions from happening.

I enter and wander around, feeling for the particular energy that would leak off a gate to the Underworld. I pass headstone after headstone all lined up one after each other, feeling nothing. Some had flowers placed in front of the headstone and some people were visiting loved one’s graves and talking to the deceased.

They’re never going to get the message.

Their spirits can’t hear what the person is saying, they are either up in heaven or down in the pits of the Underworld. The only ghosts that ever stuck around were the ones that refused to cross over, the ones that somehow evaded the Grim Reaper’s grasp. They were usually people that had died in a horrific way, had unfinished business or were damn pissed off.

A dark energy catches my attention, it’s very faint and I’m lucky I’m able to sense it. It is coming from a mausoleum and I stalk toward it like it owes me money. You can tell it was built years ago, it’s old and falling apart. It looks like a house and on top sits a cross.

I never understood why people put so much faith in a deity that couldn’t care less whether his creations lived or died. And no, I’m not talking about the wars, illnesses, famine and all that lot. They are necessary, if there was none of it, the world would be overpopulated and everyone would be living in desolate wastelands. Those would seem like a walk in the park and minor in comparison.

I’m talking about demons roaming the Earth, possessing and killing humans. He doesn’t give a shit, yet people still pray to him like he is going to suddenly get off his high horse and help them. All he does is sit up there, looking down on everyone with a feeling of indifference.

Okay, in all honesty, I had no idea what he was doing up there, but that’s the image I have in my head. He is a little child who has grown tired of their toys and created things to shake things up. Try telling that to these fools and they get all huffy and basically come at you with pitchforks and torches, a real lynch mob situation.

It was from that point that I learnt that religion is never to be discussed. People generally don’t like it when you call them idiots and tell them that their saviour is a sadistic fucker that doesn’t actually care what happens to them and that he probably is in cahoots with his beloved fallen son Lucifer.

Yeah, never go and discredit their beloved “Father”.

I push open the heavy-set door to the mausoleum. Lining the walls on each side are torches. I can feel the energy becoming stronger and stronger the further I venture in, although still not as strong as it should be. The only sound is the echo of my shoes on the stone floor.

I enter the only room situated at the end. The only thing inside is a single concrete coffin, the lid sitting slightly askew. Treading lightly to the centre of the room, I take a moment to feel for the energy which leads me to the coffin.

“The gate can’t be in the coffin. Maybe there’s a secret door or something.” Vee says.

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

I place a gentle hand on the cold stone wall and run my hand along it as I walk around, feeling for a little give in the stonework that’ll suggest a secret room.

After feeling around and finding nothing, I walk over to the coffin and push the lid back. The stench of rotting corpse assaults my senses. The kind of smell that could literally peel the skin off your bones. Instead of there being the skeleton of a deceased human, there is a set of steps leading to an underground room.

“What’s the go with the stairs?” Vee asks.

“I don’t know. It’s not something you find in a coffin, let alone a mausoleum. The only thing I can think of is that the mausoleum was built on top of whatever is down there.”

I jump over the wall of the coffin and head down the steps. I don’t have to go far before I reach the bottom. It isn’t the best welcome. Lying on the ground, rotting away and looking like zombies, are six humans. None of them had managed to get to the stairs to escape, not that it would be been possible to even if they had. It looks like these guys were trying to summon a demon, judging by the pentagram on the wall.

I examine the bodies closer, it’s like the demon they summoned had been struck by the muse of creativity. Each one has been killed a different way. One has blood seeping from its eyes, so much that the only thing you can see is red. Another has a hole in its chest cavity, and the middle section of its ribcage ripped out, leaving splintering along the remainder of the ribs. Organs splayed out, half hanging out of the person and a massive pool of dried blood sitting beneath them. Whoever the demon was, it went to town on these poor saps. None of them stood a chance against it.

Humans always thought they knew how to summon demons and what they were getting into. The stories told at church are nothing like what the reality is. Demons are brutal. They have little regard nor hold any emotion for those around them, especially for those they feel are beneath them. They are cooped up in the Underworld, so when summoned by stupid humans they let loose and wreak havoc, leaving a trail of corpses in their path.

Carefully walking through the piles of bodies I keep my attention on the pentagram placed on the wall. The energy that is being emitted from the pentagram is of dark energy, but not the one that is a gateway to the Underworld. I crack the pentagram on the wall making it unusable for any future summons.

I take out the map I had bought with me from my back pocket, marked with the places that I needed to travel to.

Next stop on the gateway to hell tour. Haunted house.