Christopher Fowler - Personal Demons

At five o'clock he could stand it no longer. The house felt small and suffocating. He had to go outside, to look down on the town and see for himself. He pulled his old gaberdine raincoat and boots from the cupboard under the stairs. Boots, the Labrador, leapt to his feet.

'Where do you think you're going?' Ann asked wearily. 'What do I do if they turn up before you get back?'

'How do I know?' he snapped. 'I need to go out for a while. Take Boots for his walk.' He snapped a lead on to the panting dog.

'But it's raining.'

'I just need to – see for myself.' He opened the front door and looked back at her, seated calmly in the armchair with a book in her lap, a frown of concern creasing her forehead. 'It's to do with fate. It can't be helped.' She did not answer.

'Well, goodbye, then,' he said.

'I love you very much, Gary.' She gave him a gentle smile, and watched as he went out into the night.

He had not meant to alarm her. Of course it was fate, like meeting a woman or becoming ill. The dog pulled him across the rising moor, the wild wind buffeting his back. The sky was a roaring black morass now, sparked by distant cracks of lightning. As they neared the dark woodland at the hill's brow, the sound of thrashing leaves drowned out any other. But then there was another noise, the shrieking howls of icy air sucked through branches that sounded like a psychotic raging choir.

He reached the edge of the wood and slipped Boots from his lead, but the Labrador ran off fast and hard in the opposite direction. In moments he was lost from sight in the flailing grass.

When Gary looked over at the trees he saw something shifting back and forth, as if trying to free itself from the foliage. He stared harder. It was moving toward him, an immense black shape wavering between the oaks. It was almost as tall as the trees themselves, but hunched over, like a man searching for something beneath a table. When it raised its great head against the sky, above the treetops, he gasped. It had a face, not human at all but with small eyes set far apart, reflecting the night like an animal. It was hunting him, sensing him, unsure of its direction, and then it had his scent and was crashing through the undergrowth toward him, uprooting bushes in showers of earth and shoving aside great trunks, splintering them in its fury.

Gary turned and began to run then, back through the slippery wet grass until – as he knew he would – he stumbled and pitched over, and the great roaring darkness of the Fallen One's shadow swept across him like a cloak, and the satanic stink of his pursuer burned deep within his throat.

The wind dropped as it drew back for a moment, the better to build its strength.

Then it blasted down and roared through him, smashing his ribcage into pieces, shredding and pounding with such force that parts of him were buried deep in the hillside, and other parts, whipped dry of blood, were tumbled away across the moor so that his obliterated body looked like the remains of an air crash victim. His skull was separated so completely that it later proved impossible to identify his remains. His bones and teeth were split and ground into a pulpy dust that turned to mud and was washed away by the thundering torrent. He was there and then gone, like a bolt of summer lightning, a swatted mayfly, a sunray caught in the painted saints gracing a church window, and like all of those, it mattered not that he had been there at all.

Ann found the Labrador shivering and crying on the moor, loping in uncertain circles. She saw no sign of her lover in the turbulent fields, and knew instinctively that only her memories of him now survived. The dog cried for his master so often that she was finally forced to give him away. Ann made a vow that she would never enter the lottery again. She saw no point in having to win at someone else's expense. Even fate, she reasoned in the terrible empty days that ensued, was expected to maintain a sense of balance. There was no joy without pain.

The following week, a ten-year-old child was found dead from malnutrition in a block of luxury flats, and a woman who ran a successful clothing company in Oldham won ten million pounds. She told the clamouring press that her good fortune would in no way change her lifestyle.

Outside, the bell clanging, the rain falling. Inside, the cat, gingerly picking its path through the clusters of chair and table legs. Black as the coal in the dented copper scuttle standing in the corner. Its tiny tongue rasping the parquet floor, collecting the few crumbs of rock cake that remained.

'Beryl, take a broom under table four. We'll be having mice in here next.'

'Yes, Mrs Bagot.'

The woman behind the counter cracked upright, tall and pale and dry as a stick, cardigan pulled tight about her flat bust, colourless hair scraped high. 'For the life of me I really don't know why people can't use their napkins properly.' A bony forefinger ran around the rim of the cake dish on the corner of the counter. The edge of an apron was applied.

'I said to Mr Sanders, you ought to put down linoleum what with people traipsing in and out of here in all weathers. I might as well have saved my breath.'

A coal popped in the grate. Beyond the tearoom, drizzly twilight faded into darkness. A brisk stamping of boots on the platform outside and Mr Godby entered, his station-issue raincoat buffeted by the wind. With him came cascades of rain and the chill of the October evening. Faced with the imminent attack of Beryl and the broom, the cat fled from beneath a table out into the night.

'Are them Bamburys fresh? If so you could do worse than let me 'ave a couple with a nice cup of tea.'

'Most certainly they're fresh.' Myrtle's height grew with indignation. 'And you can take just one. I've got my customers to think of.'

'Customers?' asked Mr Godby with a wink to Beryl, 'I don't see any customers. Wouldn't be surprised meself if your rock cakes hadn't driven them out into the rain.'

Beryl turned her giggle into a cough and concentrated hard on the floor.

'I'll thank you not to be so cheeky, Mr Godby. We had newlyweds in this afternoon, off on their 'oneymoon. Pretty as a picture, she was. No complaints from them, I noticed. Haven't you got the boat train to let through?'

'It's not due for another ten minutes, so it's a cup of tea or a kiss, which?'

'I'm sure I don't know to what you are referrin'.' Myrtle turned over a cup and stood it beneath the urn. 'You can have a cup of tea and welcome if you keep your sauce to yourself. Beryl, put some more coal on. That wood's too damp to pick up.'

All along the platform, the light shades clanged rhythmically against the girders of the station roof. Rain cascaded down the tobacco-coloured sloping glass. Laura stepped through the swinging pools of light toward the butter-glow of the refreshment room windows, coat knotted tightly around her, Boots library book tucked high under one arm.

Inside, she waited for a break in the conversation to order. The reedy, tittle-tattle voice of the woman behind the counter faltered as she acknowledged her customer. This is how I want to remember it, thought Laura, the pop and crunch of the fire in the grate, the rain outside. I shan't be coming here again.

'A cup of tea, please.'

'Certainly.' Myrtle turned a cup. 'Cake or pastry?'

'Perhaps a Bath bun. Are they fresh?'

Mr Godby shot a knowing look at Beryl.

'Made this morning.' Myrtle removed the glass dome and tonged a bun on to a thick white plate. 'That'll be fourpence.'

Laura dug into her purse, the volume of Keats sliding from beneath her arm toward the floor. Mr Godby stopped it, placing it on the counter.

'Thank you so much.' Laura awkwardly removed her purse, tea and cake to a nearby table, returning for the book.