Churchill was an enthusiastic and focused student, spending time during the day repairing and updating the cottage with money he had made from the family business. Apart from when he was away on assignments, Church seldom left the cottage, with his evenings spent with Pearl and Jack in the portal room.

Church used the money from John to buy an Acorn computer to record his assignments and other information. Fitting a washbasin, mirror, and kitchenette in the portal room, he bought a mahogany desk and along with his desktop computer, he felt like an executive in his new office.

Church recorded his observations on his computer, he wrote:

The spirit world has two levels. The first level is similar to border control, known by various names over the centuries depending on religion and culture; Purgatory, Limbo, Twear-Youmork. This level is the soul’s first port of call when mortal life expires. Every soul passes through here and transcends through to the final level ‘afterlife’,commonly referred to as Heaven, Nirvana, Jannat, etc. The afterlife is the soul’s final resting place and a place of no return, so it is unknown.

Granny Pearl and the Potts journal described the first level, which I compare with the ringed planet Saturn. The immense globe of intense white light of the afterlife would be Saturn, while the rings are countless orbs of light.

These orbs vary in colour. Large glowing blue orbs are portals and the multi-coloured lights pulsating in the centre that are spirit Keepers. Crimson orbs orbiting portals or inside are the Chosen-ones’ Spirit Guides and the many smaller crimson orbs that flit about are the Spirit Guides.

The constant streams of bright white orbs are new souls passing through on their journey to become one with the afterlife. Granny Pearl described this as columns of glowing white ants heading for their nest and explained that this little solar system was in perpetual movement: a cacophony of colours, like slow-moving fizzy bubbles of light, with Guides, Keepers, portals, and souls.

Church surmised these lessons thus:

Humans are individuals with their values, ethics, and beliefs. There are leaders, followers, good people, and evil people, with different coloured skin. In life, there are Christians, Muslims, Buddhist, etc. In death, people shed their mortal shell and pass into a state of being, which passed through the first level, then immediately onto the afterlife. However, some souls have something important they need resolving in the mortal world before passing over. These lost souls leave the organised flow to the afterlife to seek out a Spirit Guide to take them to a Keeper at permanent portals or through temporary portals to contact the mortal world, through a mortal Guide at a séance.

Other souls that won’t go into the light taking them on their celestial journey, cannot accept the fact that they are dead. They hang around the mortal plane, convinced that their family will contact them. These lost souls can detect gifted ones’ auras and until they fledge bombard them with futile attempts to make contact, which gave the young one’s gifted blinding headaches and hearing incoherent voices. These souls, once located and reassured by Spirit Guides, continue to the afterlife.

Some souls flatly refuse to pass over for no reason at all. Known to mortals as ghosts and poltergeists, they haunt buildings or a fixed point, poignant to a significant part of their lives. They stay on the mortal world and manifest themselves to scare the bejesus out of people. They were usually grouchy people in life and a nuisance in death but usually pass over when they get bored or exorcised.

* * *

One day, in 1986, Granny Pearl came to the portal. Church picked up emotion from his Spirit Keeper that he had never felt before… fear.

“Hello Granny Pearl… what’s the matter?”

Church could hear the concern in her trembling voice as she told him, “Church, the afterlife’s in turmoil. I haven’t long to explain and I will come and tell you more when we have restored order. In the meantime, you need to research Diabolus in the journal, so you are prepared. Be careful my grandson.”

The portal closed and Church rubbed his chin. “That didn’t sound good,” he said aloud and took the journal from the cupboard, put it on his desk, and looked through the pages. He came across several entries in the journal relating to the subject and read about spirits with dark blue and black auras, known as Aura Diabolus. Church read that this phenomenon, which although extremely rare and inexplicable, Keepers described it as pure evil, capable of damaging the fabric of the spirit world, leaving turmoil in the celestial plane for decades. He became more concerned when he read about the doom the mortal world faced should a Diabolus re-enter the living world as a spirit.

Referred to in the journal as Diabolus or Demon spirits, he read the shortlist of mortals with Aura Diabolus in the past, with only the last two names he recognised, the others pre-dated mortals history books. One was Genghis Khan, and as he looked at the most recent name, a cold shiver went through his body. Church felt concerned about the portal that the Diabolus entered into the mortal world through.

Church made a cup of tea and studied the ancient English text about the last Diabolus encounter. He read how that demon had come in through the Potts portal.

The entry was dated March 1859.

Mortal Keeper: Joshua Potts. Spirit Keeper: Samuel Potts.

Joshua had written:

“I had a terrifying encounter with a powerful Diabolus spirit, known in the living world as Adam Weishaupt S.J., a professor, Jesuit, mass-murderer, and founder of the Illuminati, who entered the spirit world and thwarted all attempts by Spirit Keepers and Guides to contain the demon. The Diabolus flitted from Portal to Portal before finding and entering ours. I was unprepared, with little knowledge known or written about these demons.

I was awaiting my father, the Spirit Keeper when the demon burst into my portal sucking the life out of the room and knocking me off my feet. With fear and trepidation….”

Joshua described his epic battle with the Diabolus, using all his power to keep him in the portal room until his Spirit Keeper, accompanied by many other spirit guardians rushed through the portal. Joshua described the scene and then wrote. “Although it took our combined strength, the spirit guardians ushered the demon back through the portal and herded it to the afterlife.”

Joshua then wrote a stark warning. “It is crucial to avoid these demon spirits leaving a portal that a pentagram along with our symbols of protection must encircle all portals. These symbols would contain any spirit within the portal with no soul able to cross.”

Church then noticed Joshua’s writing became a scrawl as he wrote: “It has been several days since my encounter with the Diabolus. I feel that with the demon entering my body, some of his demonic spirit remains inside me, making me weak and unable to regain my strength. I am now preparing to take my place as the next Spirit Keeper at our portal, to expel what remains of this demon for eternity.”

Church looked at the heading of the next entry also dated March 1859 and gasped:

Mortal Keeper: Arron Potts - Spirit Keeper: Joshua Potts.

Confused and shaken, Church took a drink, sighed, and stared into his cup, deep in thought. ‘It’s 1986, I don’t know of anyone nowadays who I would describe as pure evil, so if there was now a Diabolus, who could it possibly be?’

After wiping pearls of sweat from his brow, Church looked over at the faint pentagram and symbols painted on the floor in the corner of the portal room and thought. ‘From what I’ve just read and the terrifying emotion that I picked up from Granny Pearl, I hope I never come across a Diabolus.’

The true guide of life is to do what is right.

Years passed, and with Church almost forty, he felt content with his strange lifestyle. With his stocky build, thinning hair and jovial features, he could be mistaken for Bob Hoskins, and with his powerful gift, he had led a solitary life, only meeting people briefly while on assignments.

Granny Pearl noticed a change in his demeanour. She knew it was a time for a change to occur in his life. She had explained many times about the Joining, the time when Chosen-ones found their eternal partner. Although usually at an early age, there was no timescale for the joining and Church was not looking forward to that bit.

He now thought himself to be too old and hoped the spirit world had overlooked this part of his edict after the turmoil the Diabolus had caused decades ago. Besides, what did he know about women? He’d never had one and couldn’t see much use for them.

Some of his rewards had been generous and he’d amassed treasure and money, living well within his means. The external features of the cottage remained untouched, but he had landscaped the grounds with a large wall and gated fence now surrounding the property with a new BMW 3 series parked in his new garage. His driveway now led to the main road into Radcliff town.

He had modernised the interior of the four-bedroom cottage with modern furnishings throughout and large televisions in every room along with the most up-to-date computers and surveillance equipment. Large monitors and a flat-screen TV now hung in the portal room, which had now become his plush office and where he spent most of his time. He had redesigned his kitchen with more storage facilities to stock food and other supplies for months at a time.

The remote cottage suited Church during the early years as his gift made him reclusive. By the time he would become familiar with his special talents, he had grown accustomed to the solitude… although he was never alone.

Church decided a few years earlier to form a company. He called the company Paranormal Assisted Treasure Hunter, or PATH, for short. He found this to be a good icebreaker when meeting the relatives of the lost souls, making first contact less obtrusive and reassuring.

* * *

His ability to converse in every language came in useful with one of his most important cases.

PATH PNK183: 2009.

Church was in the portal room when Granny Pearl, accompanied by a Danish spirit named Heidi, came into the portal. He not only picked up Heidi’s sad emotion, but she had a crimson aura, so he realised she was a Spirit Guide.

Church felt baffled why a Spirit Guide needed help. Granny Pearl, detecting his confusion said, “As you know Church, Guides cannot use their power to help themselves and Heidi’s problem was special.” Both spirits sniggered and Church picked up a mischievous emotion from Granny Pearl, one he had not felt before from his Spirit Keeper.

He frowned at Granny Pearl smirking, as Heidi related her story.

Heidi lived alone until her death aged fifty-two in a small village near Aalborg, Denmark.

As a teenager, Heidi became reclusive, suffering from frequent headaches and claiming to hear voices. Heidi’s sister, Greta, was different, although twins, Heidi had a pallid complexion and looked drawn, while Greta had rosy cheeks and was outgoing, unlike her standoffish sister.

To earn money for the family, after finishing school they found work on a small dairy farm in the next village. Greta would go into the village at night to party, while Heidi remained in her room, becoming ever more distant and reclusive as the headaches and voices intensified. While Greta dreamt of Prince Charming and living happily ever after, Heidi dreamed of normalcy, believing she was mentally ill.

Before long, the sisters ran the farm because the elderly owners could not work.

Heidi and Greta continued working the farm until the owners passed away. First, the wife and a few months later, the husband, with the farm bequeathed to their son, Svend Pinquist, who had moved to England during World War II to fight alongside the Allies. He remained in England after the war, where he married and started a family.

Svend and his wife, along with their twenty-year-old son, Harold, came to the farm to bury their father and sort out the estate. Harold and Greta, now almost eighteen, fell for each other.

Svend sold the farm, giving both Greta and Heidi a chunk of money to resettle. Heidi bought a small house in the village, while Greta and Harold married and moved to England. It was many years before Harold and Greta had a daughter, and Heidi told Church that their daughter, Sharon, would be eighteen the following day.

Heidi told him that she stayed alone in her house throughout her life. Greta and Harold visited her several times, but never stayed long and stopped coming after their daughter’s birth, breaking off all contact with her and with her unable to speak English, she had no way to track them down.

Church saw Heidi’s spirit smiling as she then explained, “I discovered about my gift when a Spirit Guide named Peter came and spoke to me on my eighteen birthday. He explained about the gift and told me that I was a mortal Guide. I worked the rest of my life as a local medium, with Peter as my Spirit Guide.”

Heidi went silent, so Church asked, “What do you want me to find? Did you leave treasure hidden in Denmark?”

“No,” said Heidi. “It’s not a treasure I need to find. I want to pass straight to the afterlife, but there is a troubled relative that I need to help first.”

Church knew that non-chosen one’s Spirit Guides could pass to the afterlife at any time. Heidi continued, “I knew my gift was not passed through bloodlines so I assumed that I was the only one with the gift. However, I now know my twin sister Greta had the spirit gene that remained dormant but has somehow passed to her daughter, a gifted one, although she doesn’t realise it.”

Church read his notes and said, “I’m confused. This is a Spirit Guide’s job. Grandpa Jack can do this. I am a Keeper and I…”

Granny Pearl interrupted, “This time Church, there is no treasure involved. This time, it’s personal.” She sniggered.

Church felt the mischievous emotion again emanating from Granny Pearl’s spirit.

“What do you mean personal?” he asked, and then looked aghast as he realised, ‘Bollocks, she must be a Chosen-one,’ so he repeated, “What do you mean by personal?”

His question went ignored as Heidi gave him directions, and although listening and taking spirit notes, he mumbled as his mind focused elsewhere.

Heidi finished giving her instructions, so Church asked again, “Now, what do you mean by personal?”

Again, no reply was forthcoming as the two apparitions faded with the sound of women’s prankish giggling echoing around the portal room.

“Come back here and explain what you meant about personal,” demanded Church, at the now empty portal.

“Granny Pearl!”

Silence.

“Granny Pearl.”

This played on Church’s mind while he drove his shiny new BMW 3 series along the A19 towards Mexborough. “Why did they not just come out and say that I was about to meet my wife.” He mumbled. “I am too bloody old for this nonsense.”

Church had already spoken to Harold on the phone before he left as part of his preparation. Church intended to introduce himself as an investigator for the deceased’s estate. He’d told Harold that he was a UK agent for a Danish law firm and that he had some information and items to pass on from Heidi.

Church took with him an antique ring, which he would use to break the ice and meet the family. He pulled up outside the Pinquist’s terraced house on a small council estate.

He sat for a while and poured over his notes while the butterflies in his stomach settled. Church tried to imagine what his bride-to-be would be like, He had thought about the age difference. He was almost forty and she was eighteen today. He smirked as he imagined walking into the house and greeted by a young, demure, Princess Diana lookalike with an enigmatic smile.

After several moments, he composed himself, went to the house, and knocked on the door.

Greta answered.

“Hello, Mrs Pinquist. I called earlier. I’m Churchill Potts. Your sister Heidi’s representatives in Denmark sent me… Sorry for your loss.”

In her now broad Yorkshire accent, but with a Danish twang still audible, Greta said, “Hello, Mr Potts. I’m Greta, Heidi’s sister. We’ve been expecting you; please come in.”

She led Church to the living room, where Harold sat in a large armchair in front of the television. The house smelled of bleach and Church saw it was spotlessly clean.

Harold stood up when Church entered and introduced himself. Harold motioned for Church to sit and Greta sat next to him on a sofa while Harold moved his armchair around to face them both. Church noticed Greta was an attractive middle-aged woman. Her blonde wavy hair made her look a lot younger than Harold, and it was good to put a clearer face to Heidi. He noticed Greta’s aura was white, but with a slight tinge of crimson. ‘Probably with a Guide’s power, Heidi wouldn’t have noticed this.’ he thought.

“Thank you for coming, Mr Potts. The Danish embassy only told us recently that Heidi died. We lost contact with her years ago. I’m afraid we weren’t close,” said Greta, who looked guilty, and throwing Harold a piqued glare, said. “The last time we visited Heidi was when Sharon was born and we haven’t seen her since.”

“I understand she left some property for us?” Harold said, grinning.

“Well, sort of,” said Church. He took a small velvet box, containing the antique ring from his jacket pocket and took out the ring, showing it to the couple.

Greta gasped, “I have never seen that before,” she said, admiring the large, valuable looking antiquity.

“Now Mr Potts, what do you mean by; it was sort of for us?” asked Harold.

“Please call me Church. And the ring is for your daughter, Sharon, and my instructions were to give her this on her eighteen birthday, which I believe is today,” said Church, pulling out a sheet of headed paper that he’d made on his PC from his inside jacket pocket.

Harold and Greta looked puzzled, and although Church’s ability never stretched to picking up normal mortals emotions, he could see their embarrassment and guilt.

“But, Sharon never met Heidi. The only time she has seen her was just after she was born,” said Greta fidgeting.

“Be quiet Greta, you’re repeating yourself,” snapped Harold and continued, “That’s okay Church. We can give it to Sharon later. She is sick in her bed at the moment.” He stammered and looked at Greta for backup.

“Yes,” said Greta. “No problem, we will give it to her later… she will be pleased.”

“I’m sorry,” said Church, showing them the paper, “but my instructions were specific. I have to hand the ring personally to Sharon.”

He handed the couple the letter. He had added an extra incentive, which they read with their eyes widening as they read the bottom section.

Designer / Manufacturer.

Georg Jensen, Copenhagen, Circa: 1925.

Commissioned for: Alexandrine of Mecklenburg-Schwenn.

24 kt gold setting

1 x 7 carat Emerald, oval cut (AGL 2) excellent

7 x 0.5 carat Diamonds, round, brilliant-cut (GIA E)

Total weight gold 9.4(gms)

Appraised: €730,000.

Church noticed the Pinquists’ expressions change as they both looked amazed at the ring and saw the name of its previous owner. Church prided himself on this deception and thought adding the Georg Jensen crest was a nice touch, although maybe putting the old queen consort of Denmark as the previous owner might have been overkill.

“How did Heidi get this?” Greta stammered.

“I don’t know.” said Church, “but you can see why I have to follow Heidi’s wishes; the item is of great value.”

Whilst still holding onto the document, Church could see Harold and Greta pondering, and Harold sighed and said, “Sharon has been sick for some time. The doctors say she has got adolescent schizophrenia, so she never leaves her room.”

“She gets violent,” interrupted Greta, sounding embarrassed, which got her an indignant stare from Harold, who continued, “It is a little difficult to see her now. She had a bad episode this morning, claiming the dead were talking to her again and ranting about a ghost called Jack.”

“We had to sedate her.” interrupted Greta.

Church sat back onto the sofa.

‘Grandpa Jack must have already contacted her. At least they are making my job easier,’ he thought. Church smiled and said, “I’ve had experience with these types of cases, which is why Denmark contacted my company and sent me along,” Church produced a business card from his top pocket and handed it to Harold.

“PATH,” said Harold, “What’s that?”

“I’ll explain later, but let me assure you I am only here to help you and Sharon. Now, if I could see her, I am sure I can help. I can give her the heirloom which she can sign over to you if she wishes.”

Church’s last sentence gave the Pinquists’ the incentive he had hoped, as Harold sighed and said, “Greta, go upstairs and see if Sharon is awake yet and tell her she has a visitor.”

Greta nodded, nervously got off the sofa, and went upstairs. Harold tried to engage Church in meaningless conversation, but Church’s thoughts and senses concentrated on what was going on upstairs. He had felt the presence of the gift from the moment he had entered, but could not detect any emotion from the gifted one, which surprised him. ‘She must be in a deep sleep.’ He thought.

A deep emotion hit him. Fear and confusion surged through his body, emotions that he hadn’t felt to this degree.

Although taken aback by the sudden surge, he remained calm.

He could hear Greta’s voice and then another voice yelling, “Fuck off, out of my room.”

Church heard Greta trying to calm Sharon down and obscenities went on for several minutes, until silence.

Greta came back downstairs and into the living room, shaking her head and looking bemused.

“What happened?” Church asked, seeing Greta shaken.

“I’m not sure,” said Greta. “One minute she was shouting and screaming as usual and then she went silent as if someone slapped her. She then smiled at me and said, “Please send Church up, Mother.”

“That’s an improvement already,” said Harold, who then asked, “Why do you have a stupid, bewildered look on your face Greta?”

Greta took a deep breath and said, “I didn’t tell her that she had a visitor, and I certainly never mentioned his name.”

Church then picked up another emotion coming from upstairs… Hope.

Church got off the sofa, putting the ring in his pocket, but leaving the valuation letter on the coffee table for the Pinquists to ponder over.

“I will go by myself to see Sharon if that’s okay with you,” he said.

“That’s fine. Go to the top of the stairs. It’s the first room on the right,” said Harold, putting his arm around his shaken wife’s shoulders.

Church looked at Harold consoling his wife and as he climbed the stair thought, ‘I bet that’s seldom witnessed in this house.’

He knocked on the door of the first room on the right.

“Come in, Church,” said Sharon, her voice sounding hoarse.

Church entered the room. His first impression was of a hospital ward. It looked clinical, with pill bottles and injection ampoules laid out on the top of a large white bedside cabinet, along with a carafe of water and a single glass. A yellow plastic box was on another table, used for sharps disposal.

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