Something to live for

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in the room that we're sitting in
now, a friend told me a strange and horrible story. It's true to say
that what she told me changed her life. I'm not sure I should repeat
it, but since you press me, I will tell you as much as I can
recall.
It was a cold November night like tonight. That winter was as fierce as
this one and I was more than a little surprised when the doorbell rang.
It was late and I was already wrapped up in my dressing gown when I
went to the door. Of course, I knew something was odd simply by the
hour of her call, but the expression on - I think I had better call her
Jane - the expression on Jane's face told me that not only was
something odd, something was wrong. I saw fear on her face and when I
took her hand to draw her into the flat, I felt it tremble. She had
very small hands, dry and narrow and bony. Her hard little fingers dug
into me as we went up the stairs. As soon as I had fixed her a hot
toddy to match my own, I asked her what the matter was.
She looked up at me. Her normally pinched face looked almost
skull-like, her dark eyes were small caves. She lifted the glass to her
mouth as she gazed at my face and took a long drink.
"I don't know where to begin."
"Well," I said, settling comfortably into this wingback chair that I'm
sitting in now. "Begin at the beginning my dear."
"That's it," she replied. Her voice was abnormally high. She lowered it
self-consciously. "I don't really know when the beginning is. It might
all have begun so long ago. Before I was born even. That's what he
said. Oh I don't know." She swallowed more whisky. I waited and said
nothing. I find quiet often helps people collect their thoughts. After
a pause she began again. "He told me that all time had been waiting for
it to happen."
She expected a response, so I obliged. "That is a statement which is at
once meaningless and profound. All time has been waiting for every
moment to happen. Why don't you tell me what brought you here so late
on such a cold night?"
That was when she began her tale.
"I came because I'm desperate, because I don't know what to do.
Something terrible has happened. I won't bother explaining about the
other things yet, but the thing is I think I've seen the devil or. .
.or . . .a demon of some kind."
I leaned back and chuckled comfortably.
"No listen. Evil exists. I know because I saw it. I saw it tonight. I
saw it in my own flat."
Jane lives alone in Maida Vale. She has a smallish flat with a bedroom
and large living room. Pride of place in the living room is taken by a
very beautiful black marble fireplace. When she moved into the flat the
fireplace was half-covered by plaster. Jane lovingly scraped it off to
reveal the mantel, which was intricately carved with a pattern of
grapes and vineleaves. She threw a small party to celebrate the
mantel's rebirth and it was shortly after that that she disappeared. At
the time I wasn't worried. You know London: people go under and
resurface. One has only to wait and stay still. But as I was saying,
her flat was small, a conversion, so odd shaped rooms and this
beautiful fireplace.
"It's the mantle. There's something wrong with it. I was staring and
staring at it. Honestly, for months now I've been. . .God this sounds
mad."
"No." I lied.
"I've been clean, I've done no drugs for years. You know that."
"Tell me what happened."
"I was sitting in front of the fire, tonight, when he grew out of it. I
was just sitting there. Looking at it and you know those leaves and
vines and things: they began to squirm like horrible twisty worms. They
squirmed and squirmed. I couldn't look away. Then they started to form
a head, a moving head with a mouth and a beard. But even as the head
spoke, the wormy things kept moving in it."
She was staring at me now as if she were seeing it all again. Almost as
if I were the face she had imagined. "It started to speak," I
prompted.
"Yes, it started to speak. Horrible low growls at first and then it
cleared as if some kind of reception had improved."
I leaned forward. "What did it say?"
"It told me to come here."
"And you did."
"Yes."
"And here you are."
"Yes."
"So what happens next do you suppose?" I was intrigued. You know my
life had become rather boring at that time. The same daily routines,
the same friends, the same gossip, the same lack of gossip. I had
already been living alone for some time and even for someone of my
solitary temperament I was beginning to feel I had far too much time on
my hands. I was ready for a diversion and I scented it in Jane.
I'd known her quite well at one time. Not intimately of course. But our
paths had crossed with some frequency. She had always struck me as
rather a fanciful creature, a little difficult, a little eccentric. I
was never surprised to find that she was still single or that some love
affair or other had ended badly again. She never seemed to have too
much trouble attracting men, though they were invariably of the wrong
sort. But she never managed to keep them. Over the years her little
eccentricities had become more pronounced, more intriguing; perhaps
like so many of us confirmed bachelors she had simply stopped bothering
to hide them. In her way, Jane was very likeable and she had a large
and varied acquaintance. I suppose that was one of the things that drew
me to her; her friends were not all of a type. At one of her little
gatherings one was as likely to end up talking to the postman as a
great aunt from Hull or a film historian. She had a generosity and
curiosity about life that led her to strike up all kinds of unlikely
friendships. I was curious to see her so distraught, because among all
my single acquaintances, I'd thought she succeeded better than most in
diverting herself from the prospect of a lonely old age.
"I don't know," she replied.
"You haven't told me the full story yet," I said, pouring a dash more
whisky into my glass. "Do you know who he was?
She looked frightened again and she hid behind her glass. "Yes. I told
you. It was a demon."
"But you haven't begun at the beginning." I got up as I spoke and
passed her the whisky decanter. I was ready to stay up as long as it
took to get the story out of her. "Tell all, my dear. You'll feel much
better."
"It wasn't long after that party, you remember, I started to feel a
compulsion, a need to stay home at certain times of day. At first it
was just between eight and nine in the evening. I managed that all
right. But later, I started to need to go home in the afternoon. I knew
I needed to be in my sitting room at a quarter to five exactly. I
rearranged work. I fixed my schedules. I made sure that I crossed the
threshold of the flat no later than twenty to five every afternoon. I
didn't dare leave London. I haven't been out of the city in more than a
year. My friends. I didn't even invite any round. I needed to be alone.
I was all right the rest of the time. I was fine. You know me. And I
know about these things. I recognised the signs of compulsive/obsessive
disorder, but I decided to let myself go, to allow myself, just for a
change, to indulge my urges. If I wanted to be home at certain hours,
then I thought to myself, "why the hell not?"
She clapped her glass on to that little round table there. I thought
for a moment she'd damaged it, but she hadn't. I handed her a cigarette
and lit it for her. Jane was only a social smoker, but she sucked it
down avidly. Her little mouth clamped around it like a baby at the
nipple. I waited for her to start again while I fitted a cigarette into
my holder. The talking was doing her good. Her eyes were beginning to
look less glazed and a little colour had crept into her cheeks. She was
beginning to look herself again. I guessed she was somewhere in her
late thirties, but she had always looked about the same and I had known
her for more than ten years. She flicked the ash nervously and pulled
her pilly black sweater a little closer around her torso. I smiled
encouragement.
"So I thought, why the hell not be neurotic? Why not just let it
happen? I even thought, maybe this will lead somewhere." She laughed,
showing me her narrow white teeth. Then she swigged more whisky and
leaned forward, looking me right in the eyes for the first time that
evening. "Well, this went on for a bit. Quite a while actually. Until
sometime in the summer, when I realised nothing was going to happen. So
I stopped. One day I just didn't get back at twenty to five. I didn't
even go back in the evening. I went to the Crown instead and talked to
Alfie behind the bar for a couple of hours. I rolled home at about ten
feeling rather pleased with myself. I had a horrid feeling as soon as
the door closed behind me. I hurried to turn on the lights. The one in
the hall had burnt out, so I went into the sitting room. I didn't
notice anything odd at first. The street light was flooding into the
room so I could see across to the fireplace. I walked over carefully
and switched on the little lamp I have on the mantle. It shed a circle
of light just in front of the hearth and lying there was a dead
blackbird. It was hideous. At first I thought it must have fallen down
the chimney or something, but there was too much blood. A neighbour's
cat could have brought it in, I suppose, but I took it as a warning. It
sent shivers down my spine. It's little dead eye seemed to be staring
at me beadily. I don't know how I managed to pick it up but I did
somehow and I threw it out the window.
"I tried again though. I thought I wouldn't be so easily defeated and
after all it might just be coincidence. That was when I began to feel
the anger. Every time I went back to the flat, I felt a kind of dark
black anger. Eventually I gave in and arrived at home punctually every
evening.
"I decided to move out then, but, as you know, I'm locked into a long
lease, so I couldn't leave without finding someone to take my place.
The estate agent's sign is still outside. At first they brought the odd
person round but every time they came, something horrid would happen.
Once there were cockroaches and another time some poor woman cut her
hand on the edge of the sink though lord knows how she managed
that.
"Then the hours started getting longer. I had to be in all evening and
I started to hear the voices. Whispers and laughter in the sitting room
whenever I left it. As soon as I opened the door they would stop. I
felt as if I was being excluded from something in my own home."
"But this must have gone on for months," I interrupted.
"Over a year," she said tiredly, reaching for another cigarette. "And
it sounds so silly in the retelling. I expect you think I'm a silly
neurotic lonely woman." She paused to light up. "I expect I am one. But
I don't imagine things."
She took a drag and carried on. "I had dreams too. Extraordinary
dreams. Quite enjoyed them for a bit. A lot of sex, penetration, you
know. Something I don't get a lot of at the best of times. But haven't
had at all with all this going on. Couldn't bring a man back to the
flat you see."
"But you knew this was, to use your word, evil. Why didn't you just
pack up and go?"
"Go where exactly?"
I wondered if that was really the reason. Perhaps like me her life was
too dull to pass up any excitement, no matter how disconcerting.
"What happened next?"
"My dreams had one thing in common. A creature. Like a man. With thick
thighs and a back covered in coarse dark hair. I only ever saw him in
silhouette. The dreams became more brutal - bodies dismembered, tongues
torn out at the root. You know the sort of thing," she said
casually.
"Was he the head in your mantlepiece?"
"I'm certain of it."
"So why did you follow his direction to come here," I asked just as
casually as she.
"What else was there to do?"
I expect I've frightened you now with my story. Perhaps I meant to.
I've told you about the strange events that I did not witness. Don't be
disturbed when I tell you about the thing that I did witness. Jane was
rather like you, as a matter of fact. Small, delicate, a morsel of a
person. I couldn't help laughing to myself when I rented her the flat.
She didn't ask about the previous tenant. Why should she? Why did you?
It's a shame that you did really. Otherwise we could have had so much
more fun. As it is you know you won't be able to go now. Jane knew when
she looked into my eyes. I like to think that she enjoyed the pain.
They usually do you know. And besides - I'd given her something to live
for in that last year of her life.