Possibly the beginning of a longer story in which a Demon we all know and love has occassion to be hideously embarrassed by the antics of a distant relation. This opening chapter may well stand alone for a while until I've worked out which direction the tale will go in and what to include out of a great wealth of real-life subject matter...

Leamington, Warwickshire, England. 1887.

Edward Alexander was twelve years old. Beyond fury, in a cold icy rage, he lay motionless and face-down on the bed, assuring himself that one day they would pay for the indignities they were inflicting on him. Oh, the maidservant had been sacked without reference and threatened with the courts for the sexual corruption of a minor. Edward regretted this, not because of the shame and ignominy brought on the girl – they were ten a penny, servant girls, and it had been her manifest destiny to serve the sexual curiosity of the young Superman – but because of the time it would take to persuade the next of her manifest destiny to Serve to his needs. And anyway, They would be watching now, the dullard, stupid, bovine people who temporarily ruled his destiny.

Edward winced from the recent beating, administered at his mother's request by an Elder of the Church to drive out the evil and restore Christ's peace to his soul. One day, when he was grown, he'd grab the rod and break it over the old hypocrite's head. And when he came into his own, to consign the Plymouth Brethren to hell where they belonged. At least he'd be at school soon, away from Their foul clutches. It might be a different sort of hypocritical Christian establishment but just maybe there would be more room, more space, where he could grow and take his own course. He was made to ascend to greatness. This stood to reason. For now, he had to resist the demands of clods and dullards that he descend to their level. He could reckon with then (he twitched and winced as the marks of the lash cut in) later. His day will come.

___________________

Azirpahale took the late summer air in the Jephson Gardens, quietly appreciating one of the fruits of his Arrangement with the demon Crowley. The demon had been given control of Birmingham, Coventry and the Black Country; the Angel had taken pains with Stratford-upon-Avon, Kenilworth and Leamington, and today he was looking upon his work and seeing that it was good. He passed the Midland Oak and read the plaque, wondering idly if its boast to be at the very centre of all England was scrupulously correct. Aziraphale felt proud of what he had achieved here: he exchanged a "good afternoon!" with a promenading couple and walked on. Then he felt the note of discord in the Sunday air. It jarred: it felt like the first unwelcome stirrings of a toothache.

Aziraphale, mildly concerned, walked on out into Royal Leamington Spa, looking out over the imposing Victorian majesty of the Pump Rooms, following the river Leam in the rough direction of the psychic disturbance.

Oh, he was no fool as to think nothing evil could ever happen here. If that were not so, then he couldn't get into Manchester occasionally, to deliver the occasional touch of grace and redemption that the Arrangement with Crowley made provision for. If Crowley had passed by, it would have been fleetingly, just for long enough, to add a note of discord to the atmosphere. But nothing this strong, Aziraphile thought.

Azirapahale's feet led him into a genteel middle-class suburb of the spa town, the sort of large detached houses favoured by prosperous merchants who could afford to retain domestic servants. Clarendon Square, he read.

He paused outside Number Thirty, and sampled the psychic atmosphere. There was no doubt about it: it reeked of corruption, the psychic ether stank and radiated the wrong, discordant, colours, the purply-pink of magenta that alerted anyone with a psychic eye to the presence of sentient evil. 1(1) And nobody has a better psychic eye, nor a spirituality finer-tuned for discerning evil, than an angel.

Aziraphale had a moment's qualms about entering the house, worried about the morality of intruding on the privacy of the occupants, but reflected that if God is omnipresent, humans logically have no such thing as privacy from the lawfully accredited representatives of Heaven anyway, and he was surely going about his lawful business by investigating a potent source of evil in its lair.

Moving silently and invisibly, making his being intangible and insubstantial, he followed, moving down the over-ornately appointed hall, noting the lacework covers draping the otherwise exposed legs of tables and chairs from sight.

I know we wanted the pendulum to swing back the other way from the debauchery and sexual licence of the Regency years, thought Aziraphile, but sometimes I wonder if we overdid it. These Victorians are just too prudish and hung-up for words. All we wanted was a little balance in the centre. Too much permissiveness is harmful for a society. But so is too much prudery and sexual repression…

"Well, I don't know what we can do with the boy now" a male voice said, with a resigned note. "Maybe the Lord knows, but I'm at a loss, Emily."

"You've done your best, Edmund, brother dear." said a female voice. "The boy has just been unmanageable since the deaths of his father and his baby sister. Some gentleness was called for in dealing with Alick. But I will not have depravity in my house!"

Aziraphile walked in to a scene of a typically dressed Victorian matron, in widow's weeds, and a prosperously dressed man in middle age who was evidently her brother. He read the air: the usual Victorian background radiation of sexual repression and genteel prudery, certainly, but the evil wasn't here, unless it was in… he paused and took in the prominent Bible and religious tracts on the table. Plymouth Brethren, he thought. One of the strictest Christian sects out. And these are Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. They broke away because they thought the parent religion was excessively lax and liberal.

In much the same way the demon Crowley had to be diplomatic to people calling themselves Satanists, while regarding them as ineffectual amateurs whose sheer amateur nastiness detracted from Hell's public image, Aziraphile was forced to coexist with groups positioned on the extreme fringes of Christianity, like Plymouth Brethren, Scottish Wee Frees, Ulster Presbyterians and American Evangelists. And pretend to like it.

"As the Good Book commands, I took my belt to the boy after his latest escapade." Uncle Edmund pronounced. "Spare the rod, and spoil the child."

"Blessed be the word of the Lord" Emily intoned. "I dismissed the Jezebel, obviously. Without reference. A great inconvenience, but what else could I do?"

"I'd like to say I beat the old Adam out of him. But I'm not sure. If I were you, Emily, I'd pack Alick off to a good school. One that doesn't take any nonsense."

Aziraphile sighed, and allowed his essence to float upstairs.

He almost choked on the reek of conscious evil. Self-centredness, Lust, Anger, Pride, and a sense of vicious, wanton,

self-justification. All emanating from the youth lying face-sown on the bed, visible to angelic eyes in an aura of magenta, scarlet, and black light.

Edward Alexander is large for his age. At twelve, he appears fourteen. He is good-looking in a dark, sensuous, way, with a full head of dark hair, full cheekbones and full red, almost womanish, lips. He has certainly had no difficulty in persuading the housemaid to play some enjoyable games with him. The reason he is lying face-down is the thrashing he has lately received from his uncle, who now stands in loco parentis following the death of his father from throat and tongue cancer. A hideous and prolonged death, and one which has marked the young Edward in deep and profound ways which are yet to fully materialise. In comparison, and contrary to his mother's expectations, the death of his baby sister at five months left him barely interested.

To ease the pain. Edward has let his trousers down and his buttocks, reddened and oozing blood in places, are bare to the air, much to Aziraphile's shuddering distaste. Wholly against his uncle's intentions, and in a way that would shock and disgust both mother and uncle, the first of several beatings he is to receive from Uncle Edmund have marked him in a different and more subtle direction. Underneath the pain and the humiliation, he has discovered he actually enjoyed it, in a way he cannot quantify and does not yet have the vocabulary to express.

Edward Alexander has discovered that he is destined to be a sexual sado-masochist.

Aziraphile quickly read all this, and shuddered. He knew it wouldn't be long before Hell homed in on somebody who showed such promise at such a tender age. He wondered what he could do to draw this youth to the Light, but sadly reflected that the Plymouth Brethren had given him a lifelong hatred for Christianity.

He tried a Materialisation.

The boy on the bed turned his head and sneered. The intensity of his eyes shocked Aziraphile.

"My prissy pious mother and her hypocrite brother are praying, are they? Sent you, did they? Thank you for the visit, but I'm not in the mood. Good day to you!"

"You do know I'm an angel?" Aziraphile said, politely. The boy sneered again.

"You couldn't be anything else! Go, and send me a fallen angel! One who can speak to me of Lucifer, the morning star! Because right now, Angel, I am more receptive to His message!"

Aziraphile was impressed at the matter-of-fact acceptance of his Angelic status, and the strength with which the youth was rejecting and dismissing him.

"It doesn't have to be this way, you know…" but his voice tailed off when he saw how completely the boy was blanking him.

"I will return." Aziraphile said, to reassure himself if nobody else, and dematerialized himself to the downstairs room again. He read the minds of Emily and Edmund, if only to find the boy's full name so as to alert Heaven to a problem.

He found the family name.

He goggled disbelievingly.

He looked again.

No mistake.

Then he laughed and laughed and laughed.

Just wait till I tell the demon, he thought…

1 (1) Author and occult scholar Dennis Wheatley – an associate of Aleistar Crowley in his glory years, and a possible co-member of his ritual magick circles - was adamant that magenta light heralded the presence of sentient evil. He uses this idea in his horror classic The Devil Rides Out.