Marc Heal - The Sussex Devils: A True Story of the 1980s Satanic Panic

Dear Reader,

The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound.

Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

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Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.

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Thank you for your support,

Dan, Justin and John

Founders, Unbound

Special thanks to my agent Robert Dinsdale for his patient support and to my wife, Sarah: how kind and understanding you have been. I am also immensely grateful to David and Alison Baker, who spoke to me without reservation and to everyone else I mention in the book, especially Mark Biggs, James Harrison-Griffiths, Pete Cox, Rodney Orpheus, and of course Derry Knight.

I want to thank again all the supporters of this book who are listed separately. In particular I thank the most generous with their time and money: Simon Brind, Jeremy Dronfield, Bill and Denese Colbourne, Robert Lyle, John Henderson, Simon and Julia Waters, Catharine Lascelles, Kim Frankiewicz, Joe Rider, Ian and Sara MacDonald, Kristan Morrison, and Erik Tricity. A further doff of the cap goes to Grant Morrison and Clive Barker, whose endorsements were crucial, and everyone at Unbound for seeing me through.

I remain thankful to my parents for everything they did for me. I tell it here only as I lived it. To all my friends and family: please know that I had a blast and that I love you all.

For my parents

In this book I have drawn from my own experience, interviews with others, autobiographies and archives. With allowances made for the inaccuracy of memories and the media, everything in the story is true. Where I was not witness to the events I describe, I did frequently imagine dialogue but every scene is based closely on contemporary accounts. I never alter the outcome.

Except where indicated, all money is quoted in the original sums from the 1980s. Multiply by a littleover three to reach an approximate 2015 value.

I have tried to be accurate in my description of both Christian and occult theologies but I have only gone into the depth of detail required by the story. No doubt the faithful will find that some nuances are missing: it is hard to please everyone in such matters. As should be obvious, this is a very personal view. I was going to say unashamedly personal, but that s not true. I try not to spare myself when I describe events that I now find embarrassing, even traumatic. No one else was to blame. The shame was mine; the horror was mine.

I closed my eyes. I saw the city again, very close now. Its hideous iron buildings and factories towered above me. There was the clank of primitive machinery and shapes of gigantic instruments of torture silhouetted against the red glare. The screaming was never-ending, so that it became a continual, violent tearing sound. Yes, I had arrived. Now at the last I was standing on those airless, alien cobble streets and from every shadow came the slobbering of abominations that fed on obscene, unknowable energies.

Then the vision faded, although that sickening noise still drove me on, on, never stopping. I saw the small man standing in front of me again, clutching his Holy Book. Just for a moment his features looked oddly simian, not human at all. I sneered. They were good at preaching, these Evangelicals. But listening, ah, that was another matter. So now they wanted to talk. Very well.

I was almost relieved finally to speak of it, even in this circumstance, even to him. I resolved to be honest. Broken with drink and exhaustion, the slurred drone of my voice surprised me. I said something like:

I have been walking across a plain, across hundreds of miles of broken human bone. I see heads floating in the sky, searching for me, always searching. I see a city made of iron. Something is waiting for me in there.

He fell back in horror, sensing it was the truth.

What is it? What is waiting? Does it have a name?

I tried to smile at him, but I was aware that my eyes were vacant, my grin reptilian. Certainly I was weak, but a sick reserve of strength flooded into my arms, the power of madness. I was on the very edge now and I knew that if he came closer I would do anything to silence him.

Does the demon have a name? the elder asked again. I heard someone else mumbling a prayer, perhaps my father, standing nearby, I think.

I wanted to laugh, but my dry cackle only alarmed them further. A name! He asked me for a name! I wanted to make this little man see what I had seen. To describe to him the faceless monsters, the erasure of individuals, the agony on the bonefields, the breaking of limbs in such numbers they sounded like the popping of a wood fire. I saw that mound of fused humanity again, colossal above me, millions of eyes and arms and mouths fused into one, the screaming so loud it made a stabbing pain.

He raised his hands and said firmly, I am going to cast the demon out.

Then from all around I heard a huge roar of exultation, the savage triumph of an army of torturers as the first screams of their victims are rendered. So this was it: my destination. The bonefields were behind me now. There was one last giving , an irrevocable breakage followed by a spiralling downwards. At that, a massed choir soared in a requiem of insensate delight, scored in burning, ripping flesh; the rustling of millions of insects, squealing in pleasure, feeding on the faces of their living victims, crawling into eyes, mouths, anuses, brains.

He closed his eyes. In Jesus name... he began.

Did I cry out? Maybe, I dont know. I tried to talk again but the terror and alcohol and a final fatigue fuddled my words.

Then he held out his hands to place them upon me and there was one thing of which I was certain this was beyond toleration. Weak as I was, I knew that his touch could not be endured. Now the scream came, and I could hardly have blamed him for thinking I was possessed. I smashed his arms away, but back he came. I retreated and I remember chanting an obscene mantra, over and again:

Dont fucking touch me, dont fucking touch me, dont fucking touch me!