Love at First Fright (ExorSquad #1)

1. Charlie

one

Charlie

Thirty-four years old and answering job adverts stuck to lampposts.

Living the fucking dream.

Rain drummed against my glasses, turning the world into a watercolour smudge.

I squinted down at my phone, then up at the building that supposedly matched the address.

The email inviting me to an interview had seemed legitimate enough—professional formatting, proper spelling, even a company logo.

But standing here, soaked to the bone on a nameless South London side street, I questioned every life choice that had led me to this moment.

The address pointed to a narrow doorway squeezed between a betting shop and Doughlicious Pizza.

The pizza place’s front window displayed grease stains like abstract art, and a laminated sign boasted “Taste the Difference!” beneath a food hygiene rating of two out of five.

Someone had scrawled “eat if you dare!” in black marker underneath.

Brilliant.

I studied the photo I’d snapped three days ago. The job advert, stuck to a lamppost with gaffer tape, already half peeling in the drizzle when I’d found it.

WANTED: Spirit Extraction Specialists. No experience necessary. Full training provided. Competitive salary. Travel opportunities. Immediate start. Don’t delay, ring ExorSquad today!

Spirit Extraction Specialists.

What kind of legitimate company advertised for “Spirit Extraction Specialists” on a bloody lamppost?

I’d googled it, obviously. No LinkedIn profiles, no Glassdoor reviews.

Nothing. Just a company website that looked like it had been built by a twelve-year-old—all Comic Sans headers and spinning skull GIFs.

This had to be a wind-up. Some elaborate prank my old uni mates had cooked up after hearing about my latest employment disaster. Maybe they’d hired actors, rented the office space, just to film me looking like an absolute mug on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

I glanced around for hidden cameras, half expecting to spot one tucked behind the overflowing bins or mounted on the opposite building. The street stretched empty in both directions—mostly rows of Victorian terraces converted into flats.

The rain intensified, turning my hair into a sodden mess that dripped steadily onto my collar. Cold seeped through the fabric of my jacket, settling into my bones.

Leave, now. Walk back to the Tube station, go home, and pretend this never happened. Spend the evening applying for more call centre positions or retail jobs that last exactly three weeks before you inevitably mouth off to a manager about their stupid policies.

But that would have meant going back to my flat. Back to Jake scurrying past my bedroom door like I carried some contagious disease. Back to scrolling through job sites that offered nothing but variations of the same soul-crushing positions I’d already failed at.

Back to lonely silence.

My phone buzzed. The family group chat—Mum’s domain of relentless positivity and photo spam.

Mum

Look at our brilliant Emily! So proud! X

The image loaded slowly through the dodgy signal.

My sister Emily stood beside some bloke in a suit, holding a crystal award that caught the camera flash.

Her smile blazed with the confidence of someone who’d just been recognised for groundbreaking cancer research.

Behind her, a banner read “Royal College of Physicians Excellence Awards.”

Three messages from Emily followed in quick succession:

Emily

Can’t wait to celebrate tonight! Lily is so excited to see Uncle Charlie! X

Don’t forget the restaurant booking is at 7! X

Hope the trains aren’t delayed! X

Another image quickly followed. My niece, Lily, blonde curls wild around her face—same messy hair as mine, same blue eyes. She was grinning at the camera, gap-toothed and perfect.

My throat tightened. I’d told them I’d be there. Promised Lily I’d bring her that ridiculous stuffed dragon she’d been obsessing over. The one with the glittery wings that cost thirty quid—money I didn’t have.

Emily. Just turned thirty, saving lives, married to a decent bloke who made her laugh. Living in a proper house with a garden where Lily could ride her bike in circles, squealing with delight.

Meanwhile, me. Fast approaching thirty-five, soaked, jobless, trying to sign up for what was probably a pyramid scheme.

Or a kidney harvesting operation.

A car roared past, hitting a pothole at exactly the wrong angle. Muddy water erupted from the kerb, splattering across my glasses with the precision of a tactical strike. The world dissolved into brown smears and distorted shapes.

I yanked off my glasses, squinting at the warped lenses. Fucking brilliant. Just bloody brilliant.

Hot mortification crawled up my spine. My younger sister was out there changing the world, and I couldn’t even afford a train ticket.

That was it.

Any job was better than being an unemployed bum for the third month running. Even if it meant walking into what was obviously a disaster waiting to happen, looking like some swamp creature dragged from the Thames.

I shoved my glasses back on and marched toward the narrow doorway. I was going in. A doorbell hung beside the entrance, its white plastic yellowed with age. The name had been written in smudged ink: ExorSquad, accompanied by a wonky arrow pointing upward.

The doorbell clicked weakly, then the door buzzed open with a grinding electronic whine.

Inside, the stairwell reeked of damp. The carpet squelched under my feet—a brown pattern that might once have been beige, now decorated with mysterious stains and what looked suspiciously like rat droppings scattered along the skirting boards.

Takeaway containers and cigarette butts formed small shrines in the corners.

My stomach clenched unpleasantly. What was waiting for me upstairs?

A scam targeting desperate jobseekers. Identity theft.

Something worse. The sort of story that ended up as a cautionary tale on true crime podcasts, complete with dramatic re-enactments and concerned voiceovers about the dangers of following mysterious job adverts.

But I climbed anyway.

At the top of the stairs, a door bore the company logo—the word ExorSquad written in childish lettering inside the outline of what appeared to be a deeply depressed ghost. Its eyes drooped with existential despair.

I knocked.

The door swung open immediately, revealing a thin young man with hollow cheeks and eyes that darted nervously past my shoulder.

“Um… hi,” I mumbled. “I have an interview with Gerald?”

“Are you Charlie? You’re late.” He clicked his tongue with the disapproval of someone far too young to carry that level of workplace stress.

“Yeah… sorry about that. I had trouble finding it.”

The reception area beyond him was microscopic, barely large enough for his desk and two mismatched chairs that looked salvaged from a charity shop.

Despite the emptiness, the young man—Ted, according to a handwritten nameplate—studied me with the frazzled energy of someone drowning in administrative chaos.

“Punctuality is very important to us, here at ExorSquad.”

My tongue started sharpening, ready to deliver some choice observations about what perhaps should be more important to them, like a professional-looking logo, or operating from premises that didn’t resemble a crack den.

But… money. I needed money. For food. For rent. For those gorgeous doughnuts in Borough Market that I walked past every day like some Victorian street urchin pressing his face against bakery windows. For train tickets to see my niece’s face light up when I walked through the door.

So I attempted to shoot him my most winning smile, which I suspected looked more like a grimace of constipated desperation.

“Right. I’ll just make sure he’s ready for you.”

I blinked. “Ready? But I’m late.”

Ted didn’t answer. He vanished through a door behind his desk, leaving me dripping onto the threadbare carpet.

The silence pressed in, aside from a radiator clanking with alarming irregularity, like it might explode at any moment. I shifted my weight, my trainers squelching.

My gaze drifted around the cramped space, searching for something—anything—that might suggest this company was legitimate. Professional certificates. Health and safety posters. Even one of those motivational prints about teamwork featuring penguins or whatever.

Instead, my eyes snagged on a photograph mounted on the wall beside Ted’s desk. A man in his thirties grinned at the camera, holding what looked like a modified vacuum cleaner.

A golden plaque gleamed beneath the frame.

Andrew Wright

First ExorSquad Employee

First to Fall in the Line of Duty

“He Answered the Call”

A laugh burst out of me before I could stop it.

They were taking the piss. They had to be.

The door behind Ted’s desk creaked open. Ted reappeared. “He’ll see you now.”

He held the door open, gesturing me through with a jerky wave.

I glanced back at Andrew Wright’s photograph one more time. The bloke’s grin seemed wider now, almost manic.

First to fall.

Really?!

Ted cleared his throat pointedly. “Gerald doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

I moved toward the door.

The man behind the desk didn’t look up from whatever he was scribbling.

He looked to be in his sixties, short hair completely grey.

He sat hunched in an oversized leather chair that had seen better decades, its arms worn smooth and cracked like old saddle leather.

The office was tiny—barely larger than a cupboard—but every available surface groaned under the weight of bizarre objects that made the space feel like either a hoarder’s paradise or the world’s most chaotic museum.