The Crumbling Edifice

The Crumbing Edifice

First published in March 2024 in For Tomorrow: Wellbrook High Yearbook, 1993 (edited by Dan Coxon, Black Shuck Books), The Crumbling Edifice introduces the world to Adam Pasmore, demon-hunter and qualified driving instructor. At the outset, Adam is summoned to investigate strange events in the dour outer London suburb of Farworth. A family has been murdered by an assailant with cult connections and occult aspiration. Although the killer has been caught, the demon he evoked is felt to be still corrupting the area. Adam comes to the rescue, but the escalating conflict turns very personal, with its origins in the 1993 Wellbrook High Event.

Origin Story

I was asked to write this story, but its first inkling was in a news story about a man who, misled, exploited really by malign dark-web voices, signed a contract in blood with a demon, then killed two people expecting to win the lottery in return. My initial idea was to dramatize this relationship between fool and monster. On committing to write a story for For Tomorrow, I ended up shifting the story towards an investigation into, rather than a dramatic reconstruction of the crime. The twist at the end of the story came as a surprise to me. I wasn’t intending until I sensed it when I was writing the last pages. Fortunately, the story needed little adjustment to facilitate the twist. The story was written at the end of 2022 and took about two months to complete.

Extract

“Dig a little deeper and we realise that you had been talking about your wants to people on the dark web, members of the so-called Arcane Order of the Temple of Ashes – AOTA – whose T-symbol, like a satanic version of the Sergio Tacchini logo I had seen today on the plywood board covering the Da Souza’s backdoor. AOTA had steered you to Grand Jack Thorian, who also goes by the name The Candleman, or The Remembrancer, or in Cumbria, Jack Wondrous. AOTA had shown you how to summon and bind Grand Jack and sign the contract. It was Mo Dent’s assertion that not only was Grand Jack Thorian real, he was still in Farworth. Hence her contacting a demon hunter.”

Reviews

For Tomorrow received a few good reviews, a notable one in Runalong the Shelves:

‘There feels room for dark comedy in ‘The Crumbling Edifice’ by Ashley Stokes as we meet a demon hunter and driving instructor but this story is one of the darkest in the collection. It uses the idea of those who claim they’ve done horrific deals thanks to demonic pacts and imagines what if these could be real. Neither answer will make you feel better about the world and for those of us who were isolated geeks back in the 1990s this may bring some uncomfortable moments of similarity that slightly make us worry could we ever do this. Stokes takes us on a history tour of one particular online myth and those who believe they encountered it and then in a great spooky urban location we have to decide what will happen next. A great story!’

The story also made it onto James Everington’s list of Best Horror Short Stories of 2025.

Benjamin Kurt Unsworth in Phantasmagoria said, ‘Even the more distinctly standalone stories possess a quaint nostalgia which they exploit perfectly: ‘The Crumbling Edifice’ by Ashley Stokes, notably, focusing (via the narrative of a demon hunter) on the ramifications for a driving instructor with perfect dark humour.

Eeriepedia

The Crumbling Edifice is a standalone story and has proved more a gateway to other things than part of a definite sequence like my Underkin and EerieEngland stories. It is also quite possible that Adam Pasmore will return in other stories, as could Grand Jack. 

Farworth is also referred to in Under the Tower that Fell (the paranormal investigator Henry Cawthra fatefully finds his copy of The Underkin and Other  Stories by Astrea Themis in the waiting room of Farworth Station (which is where The Crumbling Edifice begins). In How Beautiful You Are, Erasto’s mother is said to work in the Sainsburys in Farworth. Also in How Beautiful You Are, Marie-Elena works at the Murder Ink tattoo parlour Adam visits here.