The Devil Below Us: Chapter Five

This chapter contains scenes of extreme sexual and drug abuse and mild profanity, which may cause some readers distress. Please be warned. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. It is a work of cautionary fiction.

The Initiation | (For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord — Jeremiah 29:11)

Chapt 4 | Contents | Chapt 6

veryone pays.

Some pay later. Some pay now.

What mattered was that come the day, everyone pays what they owe.

Baba Mamba knew that. It was one of his tenets. Everyone pays. He looked down at Caleb, the boy's hands hidden in the hoodie he had found or stolen that day, and felt an unusual rush of pity for him. Unusual because Baba Mamba rarely felt pity for anyone. Especially the shadowed dogs he had unleashed on to Downland.

Everyone pays. If you can't pay, then you don't play. It was as simple as that.

"This don't sound like a good idea to me, kid."

Caleb looked agitated. "Why?"

"It's a bit like shittin' where you eat. I got bosses, too, y'know. Things like this can bring unnecessary heat on us, and we got a good thing going here."

"But he's foreigner. A refugee almost. He won't ever get the pigs involved."

"Uh-huh." Baba Mamba's voice remained unchanged, but his eyes were a different matter. "Maybe, maybe not. My Mam would call the police quicker than you drop your pants, kid."

Caleb took a step back, realising what he had just said. "I didn't mean it like that. I just meant he is new around here. He don't know the ways. He hasn't got the means."

"Uh-huh." He lifted his head and looked up at Derek's kitchen window, to see the old man staring down at them. "Do you know what your doing, Caleb?"

"He's very vulnerable. He needs our protection," Caleb pleaded. "We can t-t-talk if you like. Regular like we used to."

Baba Mamba gave a shake of his head, his dreadlocks fell out from beneath his white puffa jacket's hood. "Our talking days are over," he said with a knowing grin. "You've changed, Caleb."

"That's not fair, Baba. I'm still your boy."

"That's not what I meant. I got plenty of boys, plenty of dogs. But your leash has changed hands, pretty boy. I got no hold on it now. So if this fucks up, I won't be responsible for it, ya see?"

"It won't, I promise it won't! Trust me."

Baba Mamba let out an uncharacteristic laugh. "I don't trust anyone, boy. And for certain not someone like you. That's why I'm still in the game. And will be for a long time if I stick to the rules. First rule, everyone pays. Second, don't shit where you eat. You break the second, we all feel the first."

Caleb felt his shaking hands tense in his pockets. "My old man's a good customer, Baba. You know it."

That was true. Ever since Caleb had started telling them of the regularity of his visits, no one else would knock at the old man's door. Caleb almost lived there. That stable door was closed to the rest.

Baba Mamba gave a sigh. Third rule. Money's the pussy no one says no to. "Let me think about it, pretty boy. I'll get back to ya."

Caleb almost jumped in excitement. "You won't regret it. I promise."

"Uh-huh." He looked back up at the kitchen window, but Derek had gone. He had a bad feeling about what Caleb was proposing, but the old man paid well. He didn't want to lose a customer, especially a paying one. Everyone paid up what they owed one day, Baba Mamba knew, but what about those who didn't ask for any credit? What did they pay?

He didn't have a rule for that.

erek's stare pierced through Caleb as he entered the kitchen.

"Well?" Derek asked.

Caleb averted his eyes. He looked at the floor and shuffled his feet. "He said he'd think about it. But he'll come around. He's got a lot of resources."

"I wasn't asking about that. He'll do it alright. Those type of people will agree to anything for money. I mean did anyone see you come up the steps?"

Caleb looked up. Shook his head. "Baba's always treated me right. And I know how to get in somewhere without being seen. Done it for a long time."

Derek walked up to him. Caleb flinched, expecting a fist to the face. "Sorry. It's just, I get a bit irritable when I'm off the dark for too long."

He wished his old man would stop going for his face. He was a quick healer. But still.

Instead of hitting him, however, Derek motioned for him to look out of the kitchen window. "Look down there."

Caleb peered out. He saw a short, tanned man with waist long, black hair doing some form of martial art movements he had only seen in the movies. He wore a silver crucifix around his neck that swung back and forth, like a hypnotist's pendulum. A high tinny version of the music he had a few weeks back was coming from below them, playing on a smartphone's loudspeaker, lying next to him on the grass verge.

"Is that him? What's he doing?"

"His exercises." Derek said, without emotion. "He'll begin to pick up litter next. It's his daily routine."

Caleb scrutinised the strange figure below. Dante was thin, but muscled and sinewy under his black, tight fitting top, and he watched intrigued, as Dante stopped his exercises to tie his hair back in a bun. In that moment, he saw Dante's rainbow coloured Pride flag on the front of his shirt.

"He's gay!" He exclaimed, unable to hide the disgust in his voice.

Derek gave a quick nod. "He sure is, and openly proud of it, too. He probably escaped Sicily to come here thinking we accept that kind of thing."

Caleb didn't think he could hate anyone as much as he did that little brown faggot in that moment. Fucking rainbows. You don't get them without rain. He thought of his third year teacher again, that bitch Mrs York. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled. How dare this little man break his old man's edicts? To be out and seen openly gay like that? They had a devil in their midst. A devil in disguise.

"You know, my old Ma used to say that Catholics are demon worshippers. No lie."

Derek turned to look at him, with his usual inscrutable stare.

Caleb gulped. Did he go too far? "What is it?"

Derek gave him a small smile. His old man never showed any emotion towards him until he got the dog collar on. To Caleb it was like manna from heaven.

"I was just thinking, the day I met you must have been the luckiest day of my life," Derek said.

Caleb got a higher hit than off the heroin on hearing that. It couldn't get any better. "I'll make sure that faggot's noise never bothers us again. I promise."

Derek shook his head. "It's not just his noise, boy. Do you know, why I stayed on this street after your lot moved in? Because I love watching degradation, boy. Taking something beautiful and destroying it, and getting away with it, that's where the real power lies."

The more Caleb listened to his old man, the more his respect for the man grew. Derek had never talked so much. Had never confided in him like this before. It was a revelation.

I've melted the ice man, he thought, thinking his heart was going to burst with the realisation of it.

Caleb watched Derek stop, suddenly, to compose himself, and he waited impatiently for his old man to resume his religious tract. "It's not just the sound of his music and singing that I want silenced. I want his effeminate voice silenced. I want his joy silenced. I want his soul to be silenced."

"I thought we were just gonna get the boys round to frighten him. Now, how're we going to do that?"

Caleb knew how to kill a man, had seen it done, but how would they get away with killing a neighbour living so close to them? Getting away with things was a passion of his. Could it be done? He was sure his old man would show him how, though.

"Not in the way you're thinking. Not yet," Derek said, more calmer now; his stoic expression returned back to his face, as though a breathing gargoyle had turned back into sculpted stone.

"We are going to take from him everything that gives him joy, and replace it with pain."

To hear his old man speak in this way gave Caleb goosebumps. To have someone else's life in your hands? To change the course of their life? To destroy them? Now, that was power. He wanted that power. But he wasn't sure how it could be done.

He asked again, "How?"

Derek turned away from the window. "We're going to turn him into someone like you, boy," he said.

right sunshine filtered through Dante's kitchen. It was a warm March morning, and he welcomed it with open arms. The last two months had been particularly cold since his arrival to England, and the biting chill of Spring particular to the country was something he wasn't used to.

But to Dante, this morning felt like one in his village in Siciliy, warm and bright, with its rays of sunlight blossoming the flowers in a person's heart.

With a single push, he opened his kitchen window wide, to let the air in. He greeted the gentle caress of the breeze he had invited in with a smile.

He gently dabbed at the wet soil in his Mama's planters on the window sill, and spoke to the seedlings bedded there. To the little green buds of new life, he said out aloud, "Grow my little darlings. And grow strong."

Pasqua would be upon them in a few weeks, and Dante had decided to give up carbs for Lent. It was proving difficult for someone with his appetite, but it was a small suffering compared to the Saviour's walk in the desert with the devil on his back to tempt him, he thought.

Today, though, he was going to practice his baking, and get his little kitchen's heart to beat in his new friend, in preparation for the holiday.

He opened his smartphone and chose his Mama's favourite aria to play as he cooked. As the soft, gentle melody began, Dante closed his eyes. He felt his spirit rise with the notes, filling him as it filled the kitchen. When the countertenor's voice began to embrace the music, his own voice joined in with the male falsetto voice, high and lilting, and as he sang, it raised him up on the shoulders of a distant, very distant now, memory.

"The soil is like a woman, my son," his Papa said, as he watered his fig trees. "And the tree her most precious of children."

"Yes, Papa," an eight year old Dante said, wanting to help with the heavy watering can, but struggling with its weight.

"It needs love and attention, but most of all it needs attention." His Papa lowered his voice. "Too much sometimes."

His Mama's voice rang out from the kitchen, "I heard that Papa!"

His Papa gave a loud laugh. "You always hear everything, my darling."

As they continued to water the trees, his Mama began to sing her favourite aria, Ombra mai fu, in her untrained, but beautiful female contralto voice.

"She sings that for me," his Papa told him, with a loving sigh. "It's not the usual choice for a Sicilian."

Dante looked confused. "Why, Papa?"

"Well, it's from the German Handel for one," he said with a grin. "And because it is not sung to a lover or God, but to a tree. A Persian king, mesmerised by its shade, sings in tribute to its gentle serenity."

"That is beautiful, Papa."

"Yes, but made more so by your Mama. No aria can outshine her beauty."

They both stopped to listen to his Mama's voice in the kitchen, as it rose higher, tranquil and dignified, in the air. When she came to the end, she said, "I sing it so your trees shall not be jealous my husband. For you do not show them even half of the love you show me."

A loud knocking at Dante's door snapped him back to the present.

He wiped the flour from his hands to stop the music.

Who would be knocking? He knew no one here well enough for them to come to his door. He had maybe spoken to his neighbour above twice in a chance greeting. He ventured outside very little, and only then to do his exercises or some food shopping. He realised most people here kept to themselves, and although very different than Sicily, it was one difference he had readily accepted. He preferred his solace.

The knocking at his door continued, and Dante felt his nervousness come upon him. But he had to answer. It would be rude not to.

With a sigh, he went to the front door. He opened it to see a lady standing at his door step, smiling brightly at him.

"Good morning, love. I hope I'm not bothering you?"

The lady looked in her mid-forties, but was garishly dressed as though she were a young girl of eighteen. Her dark hair was braided and decorated with multi-coloured beads, her skin the colour of the crema on Dante's favourite cup of espresso. And for some unknown reason that even Dante couldn't fathom, he took an instant liking to her.

He didn't show it, however. He merely raised an eyebrow, questioningly, and said, "How can I help you?"

"That wonderful smell coming from your kitchen. I tried to call out to you from your window. But you didn't hear me."

"You mean the Cannoli? It's a Sicilian recipe."

"Oh, you're Italian?"

"I am Sicilian," he corrected her. "Now, how can I help you?"

His direct way of speaking seemed to fluster her for a moment, before she said, "It made me so hungry, I haven't had breakfast." She began to walk away. "I didn't mean to be rude.'

The realisation hit Dante, suddenly. "You want some? Well, why did you not say. Come in, please."

Her face lit up. "That is so good of you, love."

"You bless my house when you share my food. Please, come in and tell me if it is any good."

She entered Dante's kitchen and looked around as though she had entered Aladdin's cave. "Oh, you have such beautiful ornaments hanging on your walls."

"They were my Mama's," he said quickly, wanting to change the subject. He placed two tubes of fried pastry dough, filled with ricotta cheese, on to a plate and handed it to her, indicating for her to sit down at his kitchen table.

"Here, please sit down. Eat."

"Thank you, love. But my, I am famished."

"Famished?"

"Bleedin' starving, love. This will go down a treat." She sat down and immediately bit into the soft shell of dough and sweet, creamy filling.

Dante watched her eat. "Any good?"

"Good? I should say. It melts in the mouth, just like I do." She gave a laugh, and licked her fingers.

Dante decided to be honest. "I think you should know that I am not made for women. I am, how you say, gay?"

She looked at him with affection, and gave him an even bigger smile. "That much is as obvious as me being a tart, love. What do you say in Italian for prostitute?"

Dante smiled back at her. He had been right to like this woman, and was glad to have her in his home.

"Whatever the English is for a hardworking woman, is the same in Italian," he said.

She let out a loud laugh. "What's your name, love?"

"Dante," he replied.

"Around here they call me the Queen of Sheba."

Dante gave her a bow. "I am very pleased to meet you Queen of Sheba. You grace my home with your presence."

"You know what, love? I think you and I are going to get on like a house on fire."

Dante said nothing but passed her more of his handmade pastries.

He felt he had met a kindred spirit. A new friend to maybe help him love people again.

aba Mamba's street philosophy was that there was rarely anything in life to lose your cool over. Rage was a liability. To show your anger was a sign of weakness. Cool and calm was a mental state that not just saved the day, but saved your sanity.

That didn't mean people didn't piss him off. They did, and often. But you didn't show it with your emotions, you showed it with your actions. Action not reaction was his way.

Listening to Caleb's plan now, Baba Mamba didn't react. But he was pissed.

"I don't like the sound of this, Caleb. You're inviting trouble where there ain't none as far as I can see, and it smells like trouble you ain't equipped to handle."

Baba Mamba knew if a stable door didn't open when you knocked, you didn't force it open. And for sure, you didn't bring the innkeeper to everyone's attention. In and out, without anyone being the wiser was the best way. The safest way.

Caleb tried to kill his eyes. He gave out his best smile. "What do you mean?"

Baba Mamba bent down, to come nose to nose with Caleb. "I got no beef with this Sicilian, and I got no love for the old man. But ya askin' me to take sides. I've got enough to worry 'bout without getting into a neighbour dispute."

"It's not like that. The old man is really scared of him. He can't sleep at night because of this bastard. That's why I'm up there every night now. Y'know, like for his protection."

"Uh-huh," Baba Mamba said, and stood back up again. He thought for a moment. "Only my dealers spot you from now on. And only mine. Understood?"

"I don't go anywhere else, Baba. Never have."

"Uh-huh." He was about to say something else, when he heard hurried footsteps come up from behind him. He turned around slowly. Even if it had been an oncoming car, Baba Mamba only had one speed. And that was slow.

It was the Queen of Sheba.

Before Baba Mamba could speak, Caleb butted in to ask, "How'd it go?"

"You'll have no trouble, love. Gay as the day is long, you're right about that. But he's soft, too. Someone you can take for every penny he's got. Easy catch for you, Caleb."

Caleb grinned from ear to ear, like the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland, and ran off to his old man without saying another word.

The minute Caleb was out of sight, the Queen of Sheba's smile dropped. "I don't like this, Baba. That Dante seems like a nice kid."

"Dante? Is that his name?"

She nodded, but said nothing else.

Baba Mamba shrugged his usual nonchalant shrug. He had met many nice kids. He used to think Caleb was one of them. What did it matter if Downland swallowed up one more?

erek's dog collar was tight around Caleb's neck.

It was tighter than ever.

The sessions began in much the same way now. In the bathroom. Caleb beheld the holy sceptre. He baptised in Derek's holy water.

But this night, Caleb sensed something darker in his old man. He was more unplugged than ever. This time it was going to be a baptism of fire.

Under Derek's direction, Caleb had taken a cocktail of drugs. Not just his usual fixes, but a combination of mandy, poppers and a few gas cannisters, psychoactive drugs to prolong the session of degradation and pain he was going to suffer.

Caleb had come to understand that what really turned his old man on was watching his descent. It needed to be long and protracted, and it had to by his own hands. Rarely did the old man touch him now, unless it was to hit him, similar to his vocal commands. Rarely did he speak to praise. The only time Derek got his hands dirty was to rape him when his old man thought he couldn't sink any lower.

Caleb had to work harder and harder for any snippet of praise, and living with Derek, Caleb discovered that there were depths to his inhumanity that were so low his experiences when homeless now felt like he'd been living on Sesame Street.

His old man knew he would get away with what they doing and never get caught. So he did anything and everything. Caleb was just glad he didn't remember everything. There had been times Caleb thought he wasn't going to survive the session, but that was the least of it.

Sometimes dying was easier. It was a release, not from the pain, but from himself. The drugs always wore off, leaving you with your cock in your hand, or your arse in the air. But death was a release that you didn't wake up from in a position of shame.

But these were all thoughts he had when he was forced to eat out of his dog bowl in the kitchen. Tonight his eyes were glossy and his mind foggy, as he bit his lip and tried to close his legs; even in his deep stupor his body was rejecting the object Derek was forcing him to insert inside him.

A sharp wail filled the empty space in his lungs. He couldn't recognise his own voice as the wail turned into a scream. He couldn't stop screaming.

Derek walked over and gave him a swift kick to the stomach, to wind him and silence his screams. Caleb collapsed on to the bathroom floor. His old man raised his foot and brought it down on Caleb's head, keeping it there, pinning him to the linoleum.

"Please, I think I'm bleeding down there," he gasped.

"You're thinking right, boy, you are."

The drugs were wearing off. "Let me get up, please. I'll do anything you want."

"You do that anyway, boy. I've destroyed you. That's my brand on you. Even I won't fuck that sorry mess. Your arse is now literally mine. What do you say, boy?"

"Our Father. Amen," Caleb whined.

"That's right, boy. No thinking for yourself. You follow my plans. And when we do this thing, he won't touch you. Understand? You come back here every night. To check the seal I've stamped on you is unbroken."

"Father. Amen," he panted, breathless. The hatred that rose in Caleb was like bitter bile in his throat. So, this was all Dante's fault. That fucking brown faggot. He was the reason for the change in his old man. Caleb promised himself he was going to make Dante pay.

Whatever he had to do, he would do to make that faggot feel this pain.

"Good boy." Derek lifted his foot from off his head.

Caleb felt the pain in his guts, but the collateral damage was different this time. He was going to shit himself. Horrified, he tried to hold it in, but he couldn't control his bowel movements. Suddenly an unstoppable stream of strong smelling fecal matter began to flow from out of him.

He began to cry like a baby. Great, big, rendering sobs as unstoppable as the shit he was bleeding.

"Good boy," Derek said. "Now get up. Clean yourself and the bathroom. Then get out."

ante stood in the middle of his bathroom trying to figure out what he was hearing.

His brain couldn't make sense of the strange noises. A high pitched scream. The low sound of someone crying.

Then slowly, very slowly, a distinct smell began to waft down to him. It reminded him of the sewers in his Sicilian village.

In all that was Holy, just what was going on up there?

aleb sucked deep on the butt of his cigarette. He was outside now, standing on the steps to Dante's lower half of the maisonette.

He pulled on the cigarette again, making its single red eye glow in the night. He was thankful of the dark. Thankful for the shadows. Thankful his friends hadn't waited for him, but left a bike for him leaning up againt the wall, instead.

Deep in thought, he stared at Dante's bathroom window. He tried to ignore the pain that wrapped the lower half of his body. He hadn't felt this much pain since he was eight years old. He thought he'd experienced all the firsts he was going to. He'd been wrong.

He blew the smoke from the last drag of his cigarette, and threw it away. Then he spat out a huge gob of spit at Dante's bathroom window. Looking like a huge tear drop, he watched it dribble down the frosted glass.

He got on the bike, without sitting on the saddle, and cycled away into the night as fast as he could.

Published 24 April, 2026

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