I’m sure it had a big fancy name, but I couldn’t remember. All I knew was that inside lay a congregation of the most powerful cultists in all of Raughnen, an army of demonic monsters, and one little golden key. If I was lucky. If not, it would just be the first two, and that really would spoil my day.

I also knew that this would make a sweet picnic spot otherwise. It was quite charming, all sunny yellow masonry with a simple square steeple and a nice rustling row of trees leading up to its big wooden door. The eastern side of the nave looked like it might date back to the thirteenth or fourteenth century! Then I observed the three-eyed ogre head carved beneath a window and all at once my knowledge of medieval Northern English buildings seemed a little bit inadequate.

Beneath the wind, all was silent. I crept past the first crooked tombstones, waiting for the freezing grip of ghostly fingers on my arm. The graves looked like broken bottles in the gutter of a dodgy street when you take a wrong turn in the dark, but nothing so scary as Vinny the Alley Rat appeared this time.

When I was halfway through the dead, a big dark shape caught my eye at the end of the wooded walk. There was a caretaker’s cottage there, with golden light blazing from the windows. A faint humming within. And a bright crimson door before me.

I backtracked in my mind, and a startling revelation bubbled up. The Glorious Order... of the Red Door! So the church was a trap all along. My tea trip wasn’t pointing at the bigger building to my right. It was guiding me here, to the treasure trove of the order.

I didn’t hesitate before I flung the door wide open. It wouldn’t have done me any good to think.

“Hello, dearie,” said a kindly voice from somewhere in the depths of the kitchen. “Kettle’s on!” I snapped the door back. Maybe there wasn’t some riddle at the end after all. I’d take my chances with the army.

Two seconds later, I was across at the big wooden door of the church, but this time, I did hesitate. I took a step back, my eyes taking in every minute lichen encrusted crevice in the stonework. And I asked myself what I consider to be a sensible question.

What the fuck was I doing here?

I thought about everything that had brought me to this point. The dark shiny things. The hospital. Greggs. Everything else. And when you couldn’t even really enjoy your Greggs you knew you were in for a bad day, didn’t you? Road trips were just an excuse to eat crap in your car when it came down to it. And I even had to walk to get to that crap.

So what was I still doing within a hundred miles of Raughnen? Let alone coming knocking at the headquarters of evil death wizards to free a demon for a pint of beer. Even if he did have a cardigan.

And did I have a plan? Did I buggery! I’d spent so long trying to find this stupid place that I hadn’t a clue where to go from here. Well, I had considered getting someone who knew what they were doing along for the ride. But, as I’d already said, you just can’t trust human beings.

But here I was all the same. As I had been a thousand clueless nights before. And I hadn’t died yet.

Yeah, as always, I’d do it for the lads. It’d be a hell of a laugh back in the local. The lads weren’t bad, were they? Even Jez hadn’t drawn a cock on my head for a few weekends.

I opened the door.