Personal Demons

by Christopher Fowler

  Ann insisted on seeing the lottery draw live on television, so that he was forced to miss the end of the programme he was watching in order to stare at some capering ninny and his simpering sidekick while they made a big deal about reading the numbers from coloured ping-gong balls – ping-pong balls!

  'Doesn't it amaze you that we have all this modern technology, and the best random-number selection device they can come up with is running a hairdryer under a box of ping-pong balls?' he asked, but was shushed. Ann excitedly checked each number, and even managed not to reveal her disappointment when she failed to match a single digit to the winning line. Her innocent enthusiasm never ceased to surprise him; it was one of her most charming qualities.

  It was then that he remembered the scratchcard in his back pocket. And it was only when he looked at it properly that he realised what an odd item it was. One word was emblazoned across the top of the card in crimson: WIN! Win what it didn't say, almost as if the promotions company could not be bothered to put details on the card. Underneath this were six grey panels, and beneath these were instructions: Scratch off each of the boxes in turn. Each one will reveal a word, WIN or LOSE. The more you WIN, the bigger your prize. To be the Prizewinner Of The Week you must uncover three WIN boxes. To be the Prizewinner Of The Month you must uncover four WIN boxes. To be the Grand Prizewinner Of The Year you must uncover all six WIN boxes. On the back was an address where you had to send the card to by registered post if you were a winner. He rested the cardboard oblong on his knee and began scratching across two of the boxes with a five pence piece while he was still talking to Ann. He stopped talking as soon as he saw the words revealed beneath the plastic coating, WIN, both.

  Then a third.

  'Ann?' He looked down at the card on his knee, and she followed his gaze. 'How many do you need?' she asked.

  'Not sure. All, for the grand prize.'

  'Keep going, then.'

  He placed the edge of the coin against the corner of the fourth square and scratched. WIN.

  And the fifth. WIN.

  He swallowed and looked across at Ann. She gave him a puzzled look, a suspicious this couldn't happen to us look. 'Well, do it.'

  He scratched at the sixth square, but could not bring himself to look. Slowly, he opened his eyes.

  WIN.

  'It's a trick, it's not a real card,' he said, 'it must be selling something.'

  'No, you paid for it, didn't you?'

  'Yes, but – '

  'Then you've won, Gary. My god, you've won. Does it say how much?'

  'No, it just tells you how to do it, and there's no company name, it's weird. I've never seen cards like these before.'

  'Maybe they're new, maybe the money goes to some special charity. Fill in your name and address, send it off.'

  'I'll put your name down, if you like.'

  'That's sweet of you,' said Ann. 'But you picked that particular card, you were chosen fair and square.' So he filled out his own name and address, and on Monday morning drove back into town to send it off by registered post.

  The next few days crawled by in agonising torpor. They had agreed not to mention the win, not to even think of it, but to behave in such a way would have been a defiance of human nature. They'd pay their bills, thought Gary, be prudent, clear all their debts, start anew and not make the same mistakes. Find somewhere decent for Ann's mother to live instead of her damp run-down flat. Find himself a job that paid a proper salary. Maybe they could even think about starting a family… The locks seemed to be falling away from the sealed gates of their fate, and some kind of decent future beckoned beyond. But Gary could not allow himself to think of such a thing; the more he dreamt, the greater would be his disappointment if it turned out to be a con, if the company was, say, a double-glazing firm attempting to hook customers.

  He did not even believe in the lottery. Surely somebody less contemptuous should have won, a true believer who slavishly worked out the odds of various numerical formulations in order to maximise winning potential, someone who paid visits to the ticket dispenser with the regularity of a devout churchgoer? When it came to the divine power of chance, Gary was an agnostic. The idea of fate was unnerving; it contradicted natural laws. Someone had to win, Ann told him, but that meant someone had to lose.

  One odd thing happened four days after he bought the ticket. He had stopped in town to pick up some shopping, and entered the tobacconist's to buy a newspaper.

  'Where do you get your scratchcards from?' he asked the young Asian man stacking shelves.

  'We don't sell 'em, mate.'

  'Yes you do, you've a machine -' he indicated a space just past the regular lottery ticket dispenser, ' – just over – there.' His words dwindled away as he found himself pointing at nothing. 'It was there on Saturday,' he ended lamely.

  'No, mate,' replied the boy, 'we've just got the regular one.'

  'But I saw it, a red box near the door. I bought a ticket from it.'

  'If there was anything like that there, someone must have brought it in from outside and then taken it away again.' He chuckled, shook his head and returned to aligning boxes of tampons.

  Maybe it had been a scam. He had heard of bogus cashpoints being set up in empty shops, then removed at the end of a busy Saturday, filled with credit card details. As the days passed he grew convinced that he had been abstractly victimised – but then the postcard arrived.

  It had been mailed inside a plain white envelope, presumably to preserve his anonymity. The frank-mark indicated that it had come from London. The address was computertyped, and the back took the form of a generic tick-box reply, the kind you found attached to the guarantee when you bought a toaster. The top of the card bore the legend GRAND PRIZEWINNER. It asked a variety of simple questions, his age, marital status, if he was a houseowner. At the bottom it read Our representatives will call you to arrange a time when they can visit. There was no other information on the card, or in the envelope.

  'Don't you think they're being rather mysterious?' he asked Ann over breakfast on the morning the card arrived. 'No company name, no details, no picture of cars, or cash, or sundrenched beaches…'

  Ann shrugged and gathered up the plates. 'They obviously have their own system,' she said, 'you'll just have to be patient.'

  'When I was a kid there was a special offer on the back of a packet of cereal,' he recalled. 'Something called a 37-In-One-Scope, a kind of – instrument – that had 37 separate uses, magnifying glasses and knives, all sorts of stuff. You had to send three and six – '

  'My god, old money,' laughed Ann.

  ' – to get this wonderful thing. I'll always remember how excited I was when the postman called to deliver it, but when I opened the box I found this tiny, badly made piece of plastic. The illustration on the cereal box had been greatly exaggerated, and the magnifier was blurry and the knives were plastic. It was junk.'

  'Poor Gary.' She reached down and gave him a kiss on the head. He seemed melancholy today. She decided not to show him the final demand from the gas board that had arrived with the card. 'Well, you never know. Maybe your luck has changed.'

  'Not me,' he replied, 'I never get chosen for anything.'

  'But you have been,' she said, waving the card at him. 'You're a good man. Why shouldn't you get what's coming to you?'

  A man rang that evening, to arrange the visit. He and his colleague would come to the house on Saturday night, one week after Gary had scratched the card. He thought it odd that they operated outside of normal office hours, but said nothing to Ann; she had quite enough on her mind. On Saturday evening, shortly after a watery sun had set behind the trees, there was a knock at the front door. Two gaunt, unhealthy-looking young men stood side by side in matching black ties and raincoats. They looked like eastern European government inspectors, he thought, or Bible salesmen.

  'You are Mr Gary Chapman?' asked one.

  'Yes, I am,' replied Gary. 'Do you want to come in and have a cup of tea?'

  'T
he same Gary Chapman who filled in this form?' He held the card up between thumb and forefinger.

  'That's right.' Gary held the door wide, but neither of them showed signs of accepting his invitation. 'What have I won?'

  'Will you be available to receive your reward here, say, tomorrow afternoon?' one asked, ignoring his question.

  'I suppose so, yes.' He felt vaguely put out by their dour, unsmiling behaviour. Wasn't this supposed to be something to celebrate? Shouldn't he be congratulated on his luck?

  'Shall we say four o'clock?' The man took a small black notebook from his colleague and jotted down the time.

  'Yeah, fine.' He nodded at them defiantly, looking from one to the other.

  'You'll be ready tomorrow, then.' They turned to go. 'Good day to you.'

  'Wait, will it be you coming back tomorrow?,

  'No, not us, sir – someone else. Well, good day to you.' They walked to the corner of the street in perfect step – as though they had rehearsed the movement together – and were gone.

  'Why didn't you ask them anything useful?' Ann was watching from the kitchen, waiting for him to shut the front door.

  'How could I? You saw what they were like.' Something they had said bothered him. The word reward. Surely they'd meant award?

  The forecast for the day ahead was stormy. By noon on Sunday the sky had blackened and the wind was flattening the grass in the fields behind the house, making the moors resemble billowing green sails. There was an uncomfortable, heavy atmosphere in the kitchen. They barely spoke to each other as they sat studying the newspapers, watching TV, eating lunch. At five minutes to four they began surreptitiously watching the kitchen clock. By a quarter past four rain was falling in a light fine drizzle, and Gary had begun to feel as nervous as a condemned man in his last hour. He tried to read an article in the paper, something about the Church of England revising their definition of hell, but found it impossible to concentrate for more than a sentence or two.

  'Nobody's coming,' he concluded finally. 'Look at the time. It's gone half past now.'

  'Perhaps the weather has set them back.' Ann put down her book. 'Pacing about isn't going to help. If someone's coming up from London, the traffic's probably bad on the motorway.'

  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.

  STILL LIFE

  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.

  The tea grew cold in her hand as she idly turned the pages. How many times so far this week? Six or seven at least. Soon, perhaps, it would only be once or twice. Perhaps his earnest face would only come to mind on rainy Thursday afternoons, describing a routine day at the hospital until the whistle for the boat train gave him pause. Sometimes she played a game, staring hard at the book until she was convinced that he would be standing there when she looked up. She played it now, closing the cover and wiping it dry with the back of her glove. Now she would look up and see -