My Grandma the Soul-Sucker

Grandma was a demon. A fire-and-brimstone demon. And that soul-sucker waited until her dying breath to sign over her dirty work to me.

I spread the picnic blanket out in front of the grave.

ELIZABETH CAPRICORN

Our arse-kicking angel

December 7th, 1986 - October 1st, 2003

Someone in the street nearby shouted. The sound jumped the wall, and I nearly knocked over the glass vial delicately balanced in front of me. I snatched it upright - I was not getting blood on this blanket. Again. Not even this time - the last time.

Now, when Grandma was alive, I loved her. I’d been awarded the honour of the task before me thanks to being the favourite grandchild. But I've had a long time since she died for my feelings to, let's say, decay.

Eighty-six, she was. Eighty-six and - in my mind - still kicking it. I’d honestly thought she’d go on forever, worrying about opening tins with arthritic hands and cursing subtitled TV. I never imagined she was - well, it’s unspeakable, really.

‘Azariah, I'm not long for this world,’ she'd wheezed, after I said she was looking a little peaky.

‘You mean because you're old, Grandma?’

‘No, Azariah. I'm going to die today.’

She said it like she was telling me the bingo hall was shut.

Of course, I protested. How could she possibly know? Was she in danger? Should I take her to hospital? Should we at least turn off Bargain Hunt?

To be fair, she tried to give me a heads up to what I was about to witness. Thirty seconds is better than nothing.

‘Azariah,’ she said, firmly. ‘In a minute my eyes will be on fire. I'm not mad and you're not hallucinating. Understand?’

I was already halfway to calling an ambulance when - pop - her irises ignited.

I screamed, leapt up. She rolled her eyes - she did have a tendency for impatience - and set the door on fire, preventing my exit.

‘Just stay where you are,’ she said, now with a demon surround-sound echo. Realising this was alarming, she coughed, grasped her throat, and in an equally alarming squeak, said, ‘sorry, can't do anything about the voice. It's a demon thing. But really, don't worry.’

Worry was ten stops back; the next station was terror. But I shouldn't have feared imminent death. Just long, slow obligation, and a whole bunch of other nonsense beyond my imagining.

* * *

At the grave, I properly arranged my implements. Vial of blood, paintbrush, an embroidered handkerchief that says “sorry you died”, a lighter, a small scrap of folded paper.

The hardest thing about this whole shebang is that I can’t just say sorry, I have to mean it. The underworld doesn’t accept half-hearted remorse. It took me too many failed attempts to get to grips with that one. And when I realised what the secret was? I was even more pissed off with her.

But it's the last time. The final time. After this - I'll be free.

So I sat and considered ELIZABETH CAPRICORN, the arse-kicking angel, and sought the last shred of sympathy I had within my heart.

* * *

‘Grandma, if you are a demon, why did you have to tell me?’ I wailed.

She sat down, bit into a Garibaldi, and held the plate out.

‘Biscuit?’

‘No!’ I cried. ‘For god's sake, Grandma! Or maybe - Satan's sake, or -’

She looked like she was about to offer some clarification.

‘- I don't want to know! Can you not just wipe out my memory?’

‘Doesn't work like that, sweet.’

‘People die with terrible secrets all the time, Grandma, why couldn't you be one of them?’

I thought back to my most treasured memories of Grandma. She taught me how to tell the difference between the call of a Blue Tit and Great Tit. She taught me how to macramé. She rationed me out just one boiled sweet per visit, and what a thrill it was trying to last as long as I could each visit without asking for it.

‘Because I need your help, Azariah.’

‘I'm not signing my soul away in blood, Grandma.’

Spoke too soon there, didn't I?

‘Well, although I am not after your soul,’ she began, ‘it is nevertheless true - I do, er…’

Her eyes, for a moment, burned brighter.

‘Can’t dance around it. I eat them,’ she said. ‘Alas, there is no other way for me. Every lunar month, I acquire a soul, which will keep me ticking over until the next one.’

‘And ... you've run out of souls?’

‘No,’ said Grandma, reaching for the remote to turn off Bargain Hunt, just as the red team claimed victory with a profit of £45.20. I've run out of road, my girl. Too tired to do it again, and today’s the first day of the month.’

‘I’ll, I'll get you a soul, Grandma. Just tell me how to do it. It doesn't have to be the end, yet.’

I wasn’t thinking. But who wouldn’t offer to harvest a soul for their Grandma?

She surveyed the mounted plates on the wall and sighed.

‘Azariah, it's more brutal than you know. First, the travel. One should not turn one's friends and neighbours into hollow meat sacks. And since they think I’m too old to drive, I’m reliant on the indignities of Southern Rail. Then if you ever arrive, there's the overpowering,’ she mimed grasping someone by the lapels and leaning in, ‘before one must… well, suck the soul from the body.’

I stared at her, aghast.

‘I do pop in a breath mint,’ she said, reaching out a hand of reassurance.

I had no words.

‘All that is to say, that in that department you cannot help me. But once I am gone, I need your assistance in the area of, er, reparations. For the souls that I took.’

‘And those people,’ I hesitated. ‘They fully died.’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, nodding gravely. ‘But I left them to be found. Never left a family wondering.’ She spoke with an air of professional pride.

I started multiplying the months in my head. It took me a minute.

‘Grandma, you killed over a thousand people.’

She furrowed her brow.

‘And without an act of penance for each, they shall never be at rest, and it will be an eternity of pain for me -’

I felt the fire in me, cutting in: ‘Don't you deserve to burn?’

‘… and my descendants.’

Of course. Barely a pause before she moved on.

‘You have the required empathy, Azariah. The creativity. The logistical conscientiousness.’

A thought struck me.

‘Does mum know?’

She shook her head. ‘And I wouldn't dream of asking her either. She'd only half-arse the thing.’

‘So she doesn't…?’ I couldn’t say it. I mimed leaning forward - grabbing the lapels...

‘Oh no,’ she waved a hand. ‘It's a recessive gene.’

* * *

Oh, how many times between then and the night at the final graveside, had I concluded that I'd rather face an eternity of pain in death than do this sorry ritual, again and again in life.

Grandma left me a handwritten ritual and a list of every soul she’d sucked. Naturally, she hadn't digitised it, preferring to keep her eternal fate at the mercy of flood, fire or burglary.

‘This will be all you need,’ she promised, pressing it into my hands.

It wasn't.

I needed names and memorial sites.

She had names, at least. But her locations? Useless.

Julian Plowman, in a copse in that bit of Giggleswick where the hills look like bums…

Matilda Greenshields, in that layby in Fingringhoe with the awful hot-dog van…

Clearly, she'd misread the ritual. Burial place, Grandma, not scene of the crime. But I couldn’t exactly pop down to wherever she was now and ask for a second draft.

You know those people who trace back their family generations to find out where their great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandpa shone shoes for a living? Yeah. That’s not me. I couldn’t have located someone’s final resting place if it was directly under my floorboards.

So, like a person begging to do a stretch at His Majesty's Pleasure, once I got over the initial horror - I started researching a thousand suspicious, unexplained deaths - praying my Internet Service Provider didn’t have a direct line to the police. Or the underworld.

* * *

Graveside again with ELIZABETH CAPRICORN. I didn't know anything about her, beyond the fact that her family maintained a burial plot half a country away from anywhere she actually lived. She'd been an absolute pain to find. And because the ritual has to be done out of sight, it’s three in the morning and absolutely freezing.

I felt the energy slipping as I moved away from sympathy and into annoyance. Come on Azariah, try harder. The girl didn't even make it to seventeen. She probably had big dreams, big plans, the whole future rolling out ahead of her.

I pictured all those possibilities severed cleanly so I and mine could keep breathing. A heaviness settled in my chest.

Before it could fade, I dipped the paintbrush into the blood - my own, obviously. I can draw blood better than a ward sister at this point; practice makes perfect.

I traced over her death date with it. An illuminated circle flared up around me, grass knotting and twisting around itself in agitation. Good.

Then the embroidered handkerchief and the lighter: one corner lit, flames taking properly before I set it down at the headstone. The ritual just said “a burnt offering of your creation”. Lessons learned: avoid anything plastic, always bring a spare lighter, and never underestimate how wet midnight grass gets.

The handkerchief went up in smoke. The ground started to rumble, and the gravestone began to sink into the earth.

The last stage of the ritual required “a personal incantation of repentance”. I’d learned the hard way that two lines = not enough remorse; prose = zero emotional credit; and generic chants = an automatic fail. The dead, like strict English teachers, insisted on original work.

The ritual has collapsed at this point in the past. I’d say there’s no burn worse than creative rejection, but that would be a lie - I’d seen a worse fire incinerating Grandma’s periwinkle blues from the inside. I picked up the paper, hands shaking from the cold and the fear that ELIZABETH CAPRICORN would hate what I’d written. I had so little to go on.

‘Elizabeth, I stand here at your grave,

And speak the words she left but could not say.

I’m sorry for the lives she had to take,

And hope your soul can rest another way.’

I held still, eyes fixed on the black hole into which the gravestone disappeared. The last one. It was the last one. Come on, Elizabeth.

After what seemed like forever, five translucent fingers stretched their way out of the ground, gripping the grass. The ground shuddered at her touch.

* * *

I've spent years doing this. Eighty-six years of Grandma’s mess to clear up - research, travel, ritual prep, the lot.

At first I thought I could fit it around my job as a Trainee Solicitor. Weekdays drafting briefs for barristers; weekends nipping down to the local crem to knock out a few apology ceremonies. No problem. Except no part of the ritual can happen in daylight. And Grandma’s atrocious record‑keeping made everything ten times worse. At that pace, I was going to die of old age before the list was done. Next thing you know I’ve accidentally put one of Grandma’s victim’s names in a prosecution for Grievous Bodily Harm and found myself googling how to break into crematoriums in Cockfosters.

Employment and soul‑saving were not compatible. Benefits were only ever going to be a stopgap while I worked my new full‑time job: fixing the afterlife.

Try explaining to the Job Centre that you can’t look for work because you’re currently catfishing a stranger to find out where they scattered their husband’s ashes.

Saving souls is filthy work.

The last few years had been the worst of it, as well. I knocked out all the easy ones as quick as I could. Then came the hard cases - the people no one was connected to, the ones missing from every public register, the ones whose families couldn’t or wouldn’t talk, or the ones from long ago when keeping the poor on file was a nice-to-have (who recorded those for me? I’d never know).

I’d been everywhere from John o’ Groats to Land’s End. From Killybegs to Grimsby.

I'd had to use subterfuge, manipulation, and had literally run from the law.

I was exhausted.

I never wanted to write another poem. Never wanted to draw another vial of blood. Never wanted to speak to another local authority archivist. Never wanted to think about souls, or gravestones, or demons, ever, ever again.

I just wanted to lie in bed and watch sloth sanctuary videos until the end of time.

* * *

I’d never learned not to be terrified when the - people? - clawed their way from the grave. There was no relief as I watched Elizabeth’s spindly fingers push through the soil, twitching like timelapse mushrooms, then curling over to grip the grass.

Terrified, not least because this one, apparently, was arse-kicking.

A second hand followed, clenching the earth. The blades of grass shivered under her chipped nails. Fingertips bent backward as she hauled herself up like someone surfacing from deep water, a guttural rasp spilling from her mouth, contorted as if dragged down at the edges, eyes rolling.

I leapt back, knocking over the vial of blood. Perfect.

Her hair was one huge matte, her face sharp‑angled, frame lithe. She was wearing some kind of martial‑arts outfit.

She roared, lunged -

I screamed, scrambled over wet grass, and fled the ritual circle. The glow vanished.

- and Elizabeth collapsed into snorting laughter.

She straightened, brushed the matte from her hair, and looked around as if checking her stop.

‘Where the hell is this?’ she asked.

‘THAT’S A GOOD QUESTION.’ I was amplified by terror and outrage.

She shrugged. ‘Well, it's better than the last place. Nice to be free. Well, see ya.’

She waved and attempted to wander off.

‘You can't leave,’ I said. ‘You're bound to me. I have to free you to your eternal rest.’

‘Can't you just … free me to my parents’ house?’ she asked.

Normally they came out so thankful to be freed from whatever stasis they'd been in, they were pleading for the great beyond. Desperate to be dissolved.

‘I … I don't have any other options,’ I said, mindful of the outfit. ‘Sorry. It's eternal peace or … back there.’ I nodded towards the ground.

The ritual would need restarting. I could manage it, though. There was still a drop of blood in the vial, and I had a pocketful of hankies to burn. This wasn’t my first rodeo. I felt around for the paintbrush.

‘No way!’ yelled Elizabeth. ‘I haven't even watched season seven of Buffy the Vampire Slayer!’

‘Really?’ I asked, raising an eyebrow. ‘I think the reviews were middling.’

‘NO SPOILERS,’ she yelled. ‘It was just about to come out, then that old bat came and -’

‘Less of the old bat,’ I said. ‘Grandma was demonic.’

‘Grandma? Wait -’

She kicked the paintbrush clean out of my hand.

‘Please,’ I begged, trying to force the ritual back to life through sheer panic. The grass convulsed again. The light flickered. ‘You’ve got to go. You don’t understand.’

‘No,’ she said, blinked, and like someone yanking a plug from a socket, everything shut down. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘How did you do that?’ I asked, feeling hope drain from my body.

‘You don’t think they teach mental discipline in aikido? You’re not as strong as Grandma, you know.’

‘Maybe,’ I sniffed. ‘But I am - I’m - resilient.’

I began to cry.

The baby sloths went up in smoke.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘You can free me, I’m sure. Just - instead of sending me to the beyond, you can send me back to life.’

‘I don’t know how,’ I blubbed.

‘You’ve dug me out the grave,’ she said, cheerfully. ‘I believe in you.’

She bundled the ritual supplies into the picnic blanket, stuffed it into my arms, and started steering me toward the gate.

‘Guess we’re stuck with each other now,’ she said. ‘You research resurrection, I’ll get settled with season seven of Buffy. Have you seen the others?’

I shook my head, sniffling.

‘What have you been doing?’ she exclaimed. ‘Cancel all your plans. We’ll start at season one.’

As we walked out of the graveyard, I thought: you’ve won the battle, Elizabeth. But I’ll win the war.

Still, I felt her hand on me, gently but firmly pushing me forward - I’d better watch my back.

Otherwise she really would kick my arse.