Alright George Bloody Harrison, out!'

I came to, sat upright, cross-legged, in that ossuary, the sheet wound around me. The young men, to their great credit, had returned for me and with their aid I tentatively made my way back along the tunnel. The demonic presence, which I later imagined as Saturn and which I had drawn into myself before casting it into the ocean of non-attachment which is our true essence, had apparently vanished from both the tunnels and the house.

It was only much later that I understood some trace was left, smeared within my soul.

Once back in the house, I slept, dreamlessly, upon the sofa.

I was awoken by a frantic hammering. Around, the young me were seeking to tidy up after themselves as quietly as possible.

‘Don’t open the door,’ hissed Aquinas.

‘I see you,’ an elderly lady was shouting through the letter box, ‘the police are on their way.’

‘We’re fitting the Sky,’ Mozzer shouted back.

‘Nonsense, your van has been here for days, besides this is a conservation area, we can’t have one of those hideous plates on the house.’

Realising that the young men sought to disguise their true activities for fear of ridicule, I understood that it was time for us to cast aside the veils of subterfuge.

‘We should tell her the truth,’ I said and making my way to the door shouted, ‘Madam, we’ve faced a significant evil here, our courage and our faith have both been sorely tested; you should be humble enough to recognise the deeds of others.

‘There’s a group of young drunks and an old tramp,’ I head her saying to another.

‘I’m a Hindu sage,’ I returned, adopting a tone contemptuous enough to shock piety into the heart of any deluded, bourgeois, materialist baggage.

It transpired that she had a policeman with her, who was rather anxious that we all vacate the property. Aquinas, Mozzer and I conformed to his adjuncts, the others choose to disappear through the backdoor and over the wall into the churchyard.

This officer of the law – whilst I cannot expect him to perceive my own divinity I at least expect some cordiality and respect from him – ignored my declarations of saint-hood and even had the temerity to say, ‘Alright George bloody Harrison, out!’, as he ushered me from the building.

I don’t know if this was a case of mistaken identity or some joke on his part but I offered no resistance, choosing instead to recite the mantra, or a version of it, which had found me within the cellars below:

(PUNI BANI AINDRII AAVAHU MAATAAADBHUTA SHAKTI DIKHAAVAHU MAATAAJHATAPATA LEHU KHALAHIN SANHAARIMORI MAATU JANI KARAHU ABAARII)

As he turned his attentions to Mozzer and Aquinas, I sat on the flagstones of the driveway, creasing myself into the lotus position.

It appeared that adopting a yogic posture and entering into Samadhi is frowned upon in ‘conservation areas’, such was the fuss that rose around my devotions. By the time I had been placed into a police car, the other two gentlemen managed to abscond.

Once at the police station – an establishment I have since become rather well known at over these past months - it transpired that Aquinas, did not have permission to enter the house at all but had gained entry duplicitously. He had obviously found out about the haunting and learning that the owners of the property were away decided to move ourselves in. As I could not name any of my assistants – I cannot bring myself to call themselves accomplices – and my descriptions of each were vague, it was explained to me that I was likely to face a potential charge of burglary along with an ‘Antisocial order’ of some sort, forbidding me from going into other people’s houses. I was told I might have to also face the ‘victims’ in a ‘reconciliation’ committee, although my enthusiasm for such a meeting seemed to dismay the police officers interrogating me.

Obviously my account of our experiences was deemed nonsense by the officers who kept me in the cells overnight, although when the neighbour who had alerted the police had gone through the house, declaring apparently that there was no obvious signs of damage or theft, I was cautioned and released.

Eventually, it was decided that we were squatters rather than burglars or vandals and no charges were brought against any of us. No official mention was made of my findings although when I met Aquinas at a hostelry some months later, he reported that the bones found by investigators in those tunnels had fallen from the churchyard above due to subsidence.
No doubt those tunnels are by now filled in or bricked up and although what had haunted there had gone, I was to find some trace of it, staining my psyche.