by Killip, Alan
“Well, it's catching up with a group of old friends really,” he said hastily.
The paintballing day arrived, and he got a lift with Roger up to the venue, a sprawling wood in Hertfordshire. Pretending to be a commando with a group of old friends was great. Henry’s fitness was a little below parr, so he found he could be most effective simply lying in a hiding place, sniping at enemy soldiers who strayed too near. He tried not to shoot them in the back, but sometimes it couldn’t be helped. He was quite pleased with this strategy and had clocked up a few kills this way when suddenly Lachlan burst out of the woods, dressed in his usual hooded top with combat trousers and holding a very real looking rifle. He lurched to a stop in front of Henry's hiding place and threw back his hood. His head was grotesque, with scaly skin, yellow eyes, and a pair of black holes instead of a nose.
“Fucking great idea this Henry,” he rasped, slipping a magazine into his automatic rifle with a dextrous scaly claw. “I’m gonna make you famous!” He grinned a lipless grin and licked a passing butterfly into his mouth with his whiplash tongue.
Henry stayed glued to the ground. “What do you... what do you mean, famous?”
“Like Brevik, like Ryan, like the Colombine boys. They all had a ‘Lachlan’ you know.” His lizard’s eyes twinkled and twitched. “Tally ho, onwards and downwards!” He fired three live rounds into the air and listened as the detonations echoed through the woods. “See you on the other side Henry. We’re gonna be spending a lot of time together, you and me.”
Henry buried his face in the ground, his limbs, his lungs, his heart and stomach all clenched and knotted. He ground his teeth and waited for the sound of mayhem and carnage. But it never came. Planes scudded across the sky, birdsong echoed, and breezes caressed the leaves and branches. After about an hour, he rose stiffly, dusted himself down and sought the compound at the entrance to the wood. Crowds of paintballers and organisers milled around, laughing and swearing. A hand clasped his shoulder. He jerked round, to see Roger grinning at him.
“Ah, the sneaky sniper! – Hey you ok?”
“Oh, I’m fine… I think… I’m just tired. Great day though!” His voice was brittle.
In the weeks that followed, Henry became skilled at anticipating Lachlan’s appearances, and was able to make sure he was alone when they occurred. Sudden muscular tension and acute sensitivity to light and sound were the most common precursors, and they occurred most often in the evening, after dinner, as he and Elaine sat catching up with each other about their days, as Elaine started to steer the conversation towards the subject of looking for a larger home. If the symptoms started, he would remain calm and make an excuse about needing a spot of ‘me time’ to unwind after the stresses of the day, and slip out to the shed, where sure enough Lachlan would be waiting for him, hands on hips, spitting obscenities and insults. He dreaded the shed but he dreaded the appearance of Lachlan in the house even more.
At first it was a struggle to control his fear, and keep it from turning him to jelly, but as time went on it became easier. It alternated with irritation and disgust, and he began to regard the demon in much the same way as he regarded his business partner: an unpleasant but unavoidable part of life. Instead of just silently absorbing the stream of insults, Henry began to interject.
“Why do you hate me?”
“I hate everybody, especially the weak.” Lachlan’s eyes twitched as he spoke.
“Where do you come from?”
“The darkest ring of Hell.”
“When will you stop tormenting me?”
“When you stop wanting me to leave.”
“What if I say I want you to stay?”
“I know you want me to leave.”
One evening he found Lachlan sitting slumped in the chair, his head in the ruins of the matchstick galleon. Four months of meticulous construction had been reduced to a scattered mess.
“What happened?” he said, a lump in his throat.
“Lachlan is tired.”
“Why?”
“Because I have had a long day. Parkour in the city, performing petty molestations like Spring Heeled Jack.”
“You… you’ve destroyed my ship...”
“I destroy everything.”
His relations with Elaine became frosty, and he knew that his life was taking a turn for the worse, but he didn’t know what to do. His conversations with Roger were some small comfort, but even they began to irritate him as time went on.
“So, technically…” said Roger, holding his pint in his right hand and opening the palm of the other, “...you’re mad.”
“Am I?”
“Lachlan is a middle aged vagrant who jostled you one night in the pub, not a denizen of Hell.”
“But I can see him, hear him, smell him.”
“We all can, unfortunately. He drinks super strength cider and dines at Chicken Cottage.”
“So you think I should be locked up?”
Roger thought for a while, sipping his pint and tapping his chin with his index finger. “Are you a danger to yourself or others?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Does ‘Lachlan’ tell you to harm yourself?”
“Er... no.”
“I see. And does he tell you to harm others?”
“He sort of implied that he was going to make me complicit in a massacre.”
“The paint balling incident?”
“Yes.”
“So he wanted you to go on a shooting spree? To shoot people with paint pellets? Isn’t that what you were meant to be doing?”
“But he had a real gun!”
Roger shook his head. “Honestly Henry, you need to concentrate on reality. The things that are really stressing you out.”
“That's not so easy when you're being stalked by a six foot lizard.”
“Did you contact Julian?”
“Yes, we had a few emails back and forth. He said he'd give the business the once over. Charged me a grand, said it was a massive discount. So I sent him the details of the code repository.”
“And?”
“That was three weeks ago. I haven't heard anything since.”
“Well, he's a busy man. He's got blue chip clients. You're probably not that high up on his agenda. It'll take a while I reckon.”
“But in the meantime I've got to put up with Lachlan.”
“Oh Henry...” Roger shook his head, sipped his ale, and thought for a bit.
Henry looked around the pub, envying the people who jostled, drank and laughed, enjoying their simple, lizard-free lives.
After a minute or so, Roger spoke again. “Lets suppose,” he said, cocking his head slightly, extending his index finger, “that Lachlan, demon Lachlan I mean, has a purpose.”
“Yes?”
“Now I’m no expert on these things, but often in ghost stories the spirits are pacified when they're asked what they want, when their needs are addressed.”
“So you think I should ask Lachlan what he wants?”
“It’s worth a go.”
“But he’ll just say he wants to smash and kill everything.”
Roger shrugged and smiled agreeably. “It’s either that or have you committed and pump you full of anti-psychotics.”
That evening Henry was saved from having to answer a particularly awkward question from Elaine by a phone-call. It was Julian getting back to him about Copyware. He went out to the shed to have the conversation.
“Thank's for getting back to me, Julian, I know you're super-busy.”
“No worries Henry. It's been interesting. I'm going to send you a written report but I just thought it'd be nice to actually have a chat about it.”
“What's the verdict then?”
“Well, I'm not sure it's really my domain. You're in digital marketing aren't you? So, fast turnaround, disposable, novelty, high impact apps?”
Henry shivered. It was much cooler in the shed tonight, he thought. “Er, well, we're hoping to disrupt the advert
ising industry.”
“Really?” There was a burst of static in Henry's ear, then an escalating series of shrieks. Julian's laugh had evolved from a kookaburra cry to the alarm call of a rhesus monkey.
“So... a verdict?” Henry was finding it difficult to speak, as though his mouth was full of glue.
“I don't know what to say really Henry. I mean, it looks like a lot of different people have had a good go at simulating some sort of AI. I didn't have any trouble getting it to run, but I had a whole heap of trouble figuring out what references what. It's like a mish-mash of those sites that compose random sonnets and limericks. There's a weird standalone class that's heavily commented with some pretentious rubbish about Chomski and structuralism. Then there's an attempt to tie it all in with a machine learning library. It's a heap of spaghetti tangled up with nuggets of bullshit.”
“I see,” he said, although he didn't. It was just more jargon. Alex would be able to counter it with jargon of his own.
“I hope you haven't spent too much money on this, Henry.”
“Er, no, just an experiment really.”
“Fail fast, that's what they say.”
“Sure.” Dry gums, head throb, a sense of Lachlan looming in the dark.
“You could make a great spoof site out of it.”
“Right.”
“Send me the link if you do. It'll be hilarious.”
“Thanks, Julian.”
“Oh and Henry?”
“Yes?”
“Don't worry about the second five hundred, ok?”
“Really?”
“Mates rates. I think you're gonna need it more than me.”
Henry killed the call and sat in the dark. Julian's hideous laugh still rang in his head, and his anger and fear coalesced before his eyes as Lachlan, Lord of Nightmares, Scourge of the Weak. A horrible rattling and wheezing came from the reptile's throat.
“Christ Lachlan, you're the last thing I need right now.”
“I'm the first thing you need right now.”
Henry remembered Roger's advice. “What is it that you want, Lachlan?” he said, trying to look the beast in the eye.
“Go tell Elaine you're skint, the business is worthless and you're not moving to a castle in the country.”
“Ha!” Henry shook his head, then let it sink into his hands. There was awful pressure building in his skull.
“And I want you to stop being spineless.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re pathetic. You swallow your rage.”
“I don’t have any rage,” said Henry to the floor, fighting rising nausea.
“You swallow it. You give your money to lazy Alex, and then when Elaine asks were is it you scuttle out here to play with your matchsticks.”
Henry realised that the pressure and nausea he felt was a reaction to the truth of his situation, and the truth in those words. He relaxed his grip he had on his feelings for a split second, and the lizard's image faded. Then Lachlan was inside him. The rage he'd resisted for so long filled his body, swelling his jaw muscles, his throat, his torso, and scouring scales formed a layer beneath his tender skin. He looked at his hands and was surprised not to see a pair of scaly claws.
“Oh please God, no, make it stop,” he said aloud, but his voice was a guttural rasp. He staggered as his stomach contracted and he vomited forth the evening's shiitake and quinoa fricassee over the leaf blowing machine that lay with the junk at the back of the shed.
“Make it stop,” he said again, his voice a rasping whisper now, the words a reflexive echo. He no longer wanted it to stop. He'd ceased trying to control the unfamiliar energy that had caused him to vomit and he felt it run freely through his veins and form a current that made each nerve and synapse hum with conviction, a delicious feeling of being right and of having been wronged. The last words Elaine had said to him that evening resounded in his head:
“When are you going to stop Alex from pissing our money away?”
He made his way out of the shed, across the garden and into the flat.
The sitting room was quiet, with Ruby curled up by the radiator and Elaine dozing on the sofa. A home improvement magazine resting on her swollen belly, she looked serene and peaceful, as if she was dreaming of herself in the bright and glossy interiors in the magazine rather than the damp and pokey basement.
“You have no right to say that!”
Elaine opened her eyes and winced. She looked around blearily, then looked up at Henry and said, “What?”
She had no appreciation or understanding, Henry told her, of the effort and complexities involved in starting a digital business from scratch. And she was taking his money for granted. She bullied him into long term plans they couldn't afford, and then blamed him when he didn't come up with the goods. She satisfied her ego by doing a low paid worthy job while he had to go out and grapple with the harsh world of business.
Elaine did not take kindly to her usually diffident and evasive husband suddenly confronting her out of the blue, having had a pretty long day at the wellness clinic. They traded bitter narratives for a while, then Elaine burst into tears and left with Ruby, saying that she was going to stay the night with Aunty Sarah, that she'd had enough of Henry’s bullshit, that he really needed to sort himself out.
In the silence that followed the slamming of the front door Henry noticed his anger had left him. In its place was a familiar tension, emptiness and despair. He stood for a while looking around the room, at Elaine’s discarded magazine lying on the coffee table next to a bottle of nail polish, at a cobweb flailing in the air. In the kitchen the fridge hummed and a tap dripped. He could hear cars swooshing by beyond the window.
He noticed a wheezing and a darkness on the periphery of his vision, then a guttural rasp.
“Oh you’ve really done it now!”
He turned and saw Lachlan wearing Elaine’s dressing gown, his twitching yellow eyes brimming with joy. “You fucking loser. She was the best thing you had.”
“I thought you told me to stand up for myself.”
“It’s just you and me now, Hen. We’re gonna have a ball!”
Henry phoned Roger, and told him what had happened.
“I know,” said Roger. “Elaine called me. Said you’d flipped and become obnoxious. She's really upset. What on earth did you say to her?”
“Oh… nothing much. We were just talking about moving and so on.”
Lachlan wandered into the kitchen, shaking his reptilian head. He started looking in all the cupboards, yanking them open and slamming them shut.
“Really?” said Roger.
“It got a bit heated. I… took things out on her.”
Lachlan opened the fridge and looked inside. “Ah!” he rasped. “Meat!”
“Henry... is... is he there?”
“You’re not going to have me locked away are you?”
“Er, no… but I think you have to sort yourself out. Things are getting out of hand.”
“They certainly are,” said Henry as he watched Lachlan put a packet of mince on the kitchen counter, claw it open and scoop a handful into his mouth.
“So, what are you going to do about it?”
Henry was silent for a while. He watched Lachlan take a bottle of vodka from the freezer and swallow a third of its contents in one gulp.
“I think I know what I’ve got do do.”
“Really?” Roger didn’t sound convinced. “Do you want me to come round?”
Lachlan winked at Henry and nodded frantically, mouthing “Yes!” His face was smeared with fragments of mince, some of which he licked off with his whiplash tongue.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea at the moment, Roger.”
Lachlan rolled his eyes, then wandered into the living room. “Yummy yummy yummy yummy – meat and vodka in my tummy!” he sang in his deep, guttural rasp.
“Ok, well you know where I am if you want me.”
Henry hung up. Lachlan sat down at the li
ttle desk in the corner, in front of Elaine’s laptop. He hit the space bar twice, grunted with satisfaction as the screen flickered into life, entered the password and started to clack the keys and tap the mouse pad with his claws.
“Hey, how do you know the password?”
“I know what you know, retard. Now give me your credit card.”
Henry rubbed his eyes. “How long are you going to be here?”
“Until the sky collapses and the ground yields up the dead.” He clicked around a bit more, and then started to type very fast and rhythmically.
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Typing your confession.”
Henry walked over and looked. He recognised his own smiling, grinning Facebook picture, and saw that Lachlan was typing “I am a Spineless Cunt” over and over again into his status bar. He seized the little laptop and snapped it shut, then pulled the plugs out of the wireless router and seized that too. Lachlan made a disappointed grunting sound.
“Too spineless for honesty,” he growled, and flicked his eyes around the room looking for a new diversion.
Henry hid the lap-top and the router in a cupboard in the kitchen, and then took the bottle of vodka from the kitchen counter, went into the windowless bathroom, locked the door and sat on the latrine. He looked at the bottle in his hands. It was going to be tricky drinking enough vodka to get to sleep, but not so much that he was still drunk in the morning. In fact, vodka was not the ideal drink for getting to sleep. Red wine was best. With a decent meal. And Elaine’s gentle laughter and impish eyes…
There was something in the bath. Henry looked up and saw a dark shape moving behind the shower curtain. There was a coarse guttural humming, and splashing and squelching and slapping. Henry swore, got up and yanked back the shower curtain, and what he saw made him shriek and gag. Lachlan grinned up at him from a bath full of worms and maggots writhing and crawling in a viscous black liquid. He was wearing Elaine’s shower cap, and brandishing her loofah, which looked as if it had been dipped in crude oil. The smell of rotting meat was overwhelming.
“Lachlan must be clean! Lachlan must be clean!” chanted the lizard.
Henry pulled the curtain back across the bath, and sat back down on the toilet, cradling his head in his hands. “Lachlan this really is too much. I’ve got important stuff I need to do at work tomorrow.”