This is about a ghost.
Well, sort of.
Not in a haunted house, poltergeist, Ouija board kind of way. But a ghost, nonetheless.
Hmm. I’m not describing this very well, am I?
Shit.
I’ll explain later.
*
So how did I get into this mess?
A few years ago I was just another insignificant speck on the amorphous, sweaty mass of society. Now I am, technically, a mass murderer. Among other things.
How did I go from afternoon naps on the couch to scooping bloody body parts out of it? I’m quite serious. Fingers. Down the side where the remote used to get lost.
I mentally survey the wreckage of my middle age. What happened here? Where did it all go wrong?
I really can’t pinpoint it, if I’m perfectly honest with you all. My life since leaving school has felt like a perpetual collapse, never quite hitting the ground but never quite recovering either. So what was the seed, planted in apathy and watered by neglect, which sprouted such a miserable tree? My goodness that’s a terrible metaphor. Apologies.
Perhaps it was when I got married. That sounds awful, doesn’t it? I don’t mean she was to blame. Not at all. Simply that our relationship may have been the first wrong turn on my highway to disaster.
My wife.
This story is as much hers as it is mine.
When we first met we both believed we had something special. Or at least I think I thought we thought we did. For a brief moment in my monochrome existence there was a flash of colour. We were the only two people in the world. So when this feeling evaporated, as it inevitably does, our lives were all the emptier. Like the difference between a new home and an abandoned one.
We lived and worked in the city, sleepwalking through the years, mindlessly embracing the monotony. We never had children. Friends grew increasingly distant.
You grow up thinking the tide is carrying you somewhere. You get older, buy a home, change jobs. Eventually you realise all the tide does is move you. You have to fight it to go where you want. To stop people drifting away.
I don’t think I fought. I don’t think either of us did. Slowly, inexorably, inevitably. Time is a wasting disease.
Eventually I came to feel as if I had outstayed my welcome in my own home.
So why didn’t we separate? I had many rather feeble excuses. Fear. Laziness. Apathy. A wilted sense of loyalty. It can be a terrible thing you know. Even virtues can be taken too far.
Loyalty.
Whenever I hear that word it reminds me of a story from my childhood. Our neighbour in the apartment above was an elderly lady who lived with her highland terrier. The yappy little thing never left her side. One day the woman was cleaning her windows and slipped, tumbling out to plummet 5 floors toward an unforgiving pavement. Her loving pet launched himself after her without a second thought. The dog died but she survived. Loyalty is overrated.
I digress.
The great tragedy of human existence, in my humble opinion, is our astonishing ability to realise things right at the very point where it becomes too late to do anything about it.
I had realised I was very unhappy in my marriage. Yet I felt too deeply trapped within my circumstances to escape.
My wife, who I had once loved with an intensity which caught my breath in my chest, now evoked only a sigh and rolling of my eyes. I don’t doubt she felt the same. She certainly rolled her eyes a lot. We had both spiralled down into the kind of exhausted depression where you can’t even be bothered talking about it.
Even our families had become as distant and disliked as our former friends. And I didn’t even care. Her mother in particular had always terrified me anyway. The kind of woman who would laugh hysterically, a cannibalistic look in her eyes, for no discernible reason. People who place doilies under every item in their home are not to be trifled with.
Not that my own clan were any better. A motley crew with the intellectual depth of crepe paper, documenting via social media each generations fresh defeat of evolution. One uncle of mine requested in his will that his ashes be flushed down the lavatory and the attending video posted on Youtube. I despair.
In summation, I had nothing and no-one and spent a solid decade teaching myself not to care about anything. Routine replaced emotion. Avoidance replaced action. I made quite an art of it.
Lost my job? Okay. Comically high blood pressure? Thanks for letting me know. Parents passed away? Happens to us all eventually, I suppose.
I was untouchable. Disaster washed off me like cheap shampoo, leaving me feeling slightly greasy. When you care for nothing, how can anything be taken from you? My simple, irrefutable shield of delusion parading as logic. I was a tiny, boiling, festering, impenetrable ball of nothing whatsoever.
Then my wife died.
And I realised we hadn’t spoken in weeks.
She had exercised and ate well as long as I had known her. Got enough sleep and regular checkups at the doctor. Didn’t drink or smoke or take drugs. Then she died anyway, because fairness is just something humans made up.
It broke me.
After the funeral I walked home alone. I felt like it should at least have had the decency to rain, but the sky persisted in an oppressively featureless grey.
I folded her old clothes, tidied her books. A final, silent goodbye. I had let her down. I knew that. Despite everything, more than anything, I wanted her back.
I sat in my grubby kitchen, imagining growing old in that very spot. Drowning in guilt and regret and lukewarm tea. Days, weeks, months, years. I would die there like a forgotten houseplant, starving and withering and getting dusty.
No.
The word popped unbidden into my mind.
“No.” I said it aloud, feeling out my newfound defiance. Unsurprisingly the empty room did not respond, although it felt very much like the oven was watching me.
I didn’t want my life to go on like this. To end like this.
“No.” I said again. A little louder this time.
The refrigerator had the decency to look embarrassed.
No! I shouted, but to myself so I didn’t upset the neighbours. It didn’t have to be this way. I wouldn’t let it. I could, should, would change my life. Starting this instant! With a click of encouragement and a mediocre coffee from my trusty kettle, I vowed to begin again. To create a new me, filled with hope and belief and ambition.
In retrospect, this was a mistake.
*
I know what you’re thinking. So far, so what? This is no different to a million other lives! Isn’t this supposed to be a horror story? I concede that it has been more banal, existential horror to this point than anything else. Don’t worry. I’m just getting started.
So why all the backstory and associated fluff? Well, my hope is that these details will help you understand why I made the decisions I did. The mistakes I did. This matters a great deal to me.
Forgiveness, I feel, will be too much to ask. But understanding? Perhaps. If I’m lucky.
*
One cannot simply leap from an emotionless void to become a social colossus. Not that I had such lofty goals. All I really wished for was positive change, of any kind. Something to fill the hours. Anything more than nothing. This caterpillar was not ready to be a butterfly, but would happily settle for being a slightly more active caterpillar.
You know what I mean.
I made many false starts in my attempt to turn my life around.
I spent all my savings on moving home. Got a new job. Made a spirited if futile effort to reconnect with friends and family.
Every so often I would take stock and be crushingly disappointed at how little things seemed to have changed. Depression, I have found, has a certain stickiness to it. I couldn’t break free of its web, despite my increasingly frantic wriggling.
Still, I refused to surrender. Obviously something more was required, something to occupy those long evenings which fuelled my melancholy.
And so it began.
I plunged headfirst into the murky underworld of middle-aged hobbies. There is no subculture quite like it. In my city alone there are hundreds of different classes with thousands upon thousands of students. The majority of people I encountered were financially secure, well educated and simply desperate for somewhere to direct their energies. These are dangerous people. Laugh if you like but I’ve often thought, if someone could unite this invisible demographic, they could quite comfortably take over the world on a free evening of their choice.
So what did I try?
If memory serves, my first course was Picture Framing. Then Meditation. Learn To Sew. Personal Photography. Timelapse Photography. Macro Photography. How To Draw Chickens (yes, really). Calligraphy. Jewellery Workshop. The choices appeared endless.
Many of these were clearly missteps. In writing this I actually found myself referring to my many disasters alphanumerically in an doomed attempt to keep track of them.
The Beetle Fighting ring I joined was, for example, mistake 9 year 1 (M9/Y1).
Just over a year since my wifes death I saw an advertisement for a woodworking class. I was intrigued. I had never really done anything with my hands other than wring them helplessly. The idea of woodwork seemed quite manly in an old school kind of way.
I signed up immediately and attended my first class the next night. It was a joy. I had no discernible aptitude for it whatsoever but loved it anyway. The whole process of actually creating something filled me with a warm glow. I would have a tangible reward in my hands to show for my efforts, despite innumerable failures and errors. It was relaxing in an infuriating way.
I learned how moisture could change the size of the wood. How to sharpen and maintain your tools. Hand planing, miter joints, glueing. All the basics I could have done in school if I had taken that class. Alas, I had chosen to cry over algebra instead.
We met every Tuesday and Thursday at 7pm in a local church hall. And this was where I first met Jon.
Brave, fearless Jon, the blind woodworker.
*
I had actually seen him once before at another class (traditional English Home Cooking, Fridays at 5.30pm). Neither of us had stayed long at that one. The tutor was a giantess of a woman with a ferocious temper. I had, on more than one occasion, witnessed her reduce grown adults to tears over the thickness of pastry. Each week her arrival in class conjured images of Godzilla approaching Japan. Inevitably I would quiver in fear like a Tokyo skyscraper, immaculately designed for standard earthquakes yet utterly helpless in the face of a 500ft lizard. No Beef Wellington was worth it.
Jon was a conspicuous figure in this class, as he was in most he attended. He was completely blind yet powered on through goodwill, enthusiasm and an outright refusal to believe that everyone wasn’t 100% with him. It worked more often than you might think.
This previous association with Jon, as minor as it was, gave me the courage to begin a conversation with him. I spotted him after woodworking Tuesday night, sitting alone in the tiny cafe where I got a latte for the walk home. I waved, felt like an imbecile, then went over.
“It’s John isn’t it? From the woodworking class?”
“Yes! But no. It’s J - o - n. Jon.”
“Ah.”
“Please, have a seat and drink your coffee!”
I had a seat and drank my coffee.
I was terrified of saying something stupid and unintentionally offensive.
“Nice to talk to someone,” he said, “yes indeed. People hardly ever speak to me, other than niceties! Think they are scared to say something stupid or offensive.”
“Surely not.”
“Yes! Certain of it. World needs more outgoing people. Loneliness is the cancer of our times you know.”
“I thought that was still cancer.”
“Well, that too. You know what I mean.”
I did not.
Of all the skills I didn’t have, I was once again reminded that I didn’t have conversational skills the most.
Jon broke the silence.
“Being blind isn’t the disability it used to be! Modern technology is incredible. I can use the internet and everything. The things I’ve done since I lost my sight … I’ve had 10 times the experiences I had before!”
“Ah … really?”
“I have! Let me tell you …” and away he went as I let him tell me.
I wasn’t used to extended conversation. I found myself replying with shorter and shorter noncommittal phrases in an increasingly desperate bid to escape. Jon ploughed on oblivious. He was a vocal avalanche, burying then carrying me helplessly away.
Stop! I berated myself. This is why I was doing all of this! Wasn’t it? To meet people, to learn, to change. Speak! Interact! Try harder!
Sweat beaded my forehead.
I noticed Jon had leaned toward me in conspiratorial fashion. “You know … the dark web?” he whispered.
“Oh yes!” I replied with relief, “Yes I know this one. Is that when you can make the background black for nighttime?”
He sat back, looking somewhat crestfallen, “No. That’s not it at all.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never been very technologically minded.”
To his credit he rebounded almost immediately.
“You don’t need to be! That’s the great thing. Just a PC and some basic software and you’re off. The things I’ve discovered! Proper experiences, real learning, not this vanilla stuff. I just do these other classes to fill the time. There’s a world of possibilities out there at your fingertips. You don’t know what you’re missing!”
“Well I wouldn’t. I’m missing it.”
My crushing tsunami of apathy thundered down on him. He surfed it effortlessly.
“You want to learn real skills?” he asked, “Life altering knowledge about the world? That’s where to find it.”
“My goodness. How interesting.”
“It is, isn’t it!?”
We met again the next week. And the week after. After a few weeks of meeting for a coffee after class and being talked at, he invited me to one of his “other” clubs. I would love it, he told me. Nothing illegal, he promised me. It was like a history class, he assured me.
Sort of.
*
The night came and I arrived early to the address Jon had given me. It was a huge, beautiful house in a distinctly upmarket area of the city. I sidled through the gate, worried that I looked like a burglar.
He answered the door himself and led me inside. Thick plush carpet, expensive old furniture and expensive new appliances. You could have fit my apartment in the hallway.
“I know what you’re thinking!” he said, “It’s a bit much for just me, this place. But it’s been in my family for generations. My dear departed mother would spin in her grave if I sold it.”
Concern.
“This is … your house?” I asked.
“Oh yes! Thought I said. Sorry.”
Growing concern.
“And … where is the rest of the class?”
“Just us! Thought I said. Sorry.”
Concern in big flashing red letters.
I was ushered onto a couch bigger than my bed.
“So … what exactly is this class?” I said, eyeing out potential routes of escape.
Jon, who was uncharacteristically sheepish, explained.
I opened and closed my mouth several times like a gigantic landborne goldfish.
“What?” I managed after a few attempts.
He explained a second time.
“John.”
“It’s Jon.”
“Sorry. Jon. You said this was a history class. A history class with … with latin and ancient languages.”
“It is, it is! Among … ah … other things.”
“Demonology.”
“Well, you could say that, yes.”
“I could say it because it’s true. It’s literally what you said. Demonology.”
He looked like a well kicked puppy.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds.” he replied in a small voice, utterly abashed.
“It’s not as bad …”
I paused.
A hesitation for contemplation in my exasperation.
What was I so annoyed about? I asked myself. Really?
Did I have something better to do?
No.
Rather embarrassingly, I did not.
So what did I have to lose?
Nothing.
That was the truth of it.
Nothing at all.
“So,” he said, wilfully mistaking my silence for enthusiasm, “what do you know about summoning demons?”
*
As the night passed Jon expounded his theories on demonology and the potential summoning of said demons. It was quite an education.
He talked with admirable passion for two hours about fallen angels, ancient spirits, malevolent ghosts, corrupted souls, succubi and incubi. Writings and legends on these subjects stretched back throughout human history, he informed me. Christian demonology was the section with the greatest material for study, although there was a deal of crossover much like the religions themselves. He showed me amulets, drawings, texts filled with ancient treatise on the subject.
But this was just the warm up.
Jon believed that consciousness was its own dimension, one that served as a crossroads for all the others. With the aid of the correct alignment of the planets, at the right time of day and year, with the correct symbology drawn out and the appropriate focused sound waves (speech), the dimensional walls could be breached. You could reach into that other reality and from there to any other. Most importantly, he believed you could bring something back. And he wanted to try.
In his defence, it sounded less insane in person.
“But …why?” I asked. A small part of me suspected some diabolical plot to take over the world with demonic power.
“Why? Well…” for the first time since I had met him he appeared genuinely lost for words. “Just .. something to do I suppose. No reason really. Thought it might be fun!”
Something to do. Might be fun. God help me.
“Will I … see you next week?” he asked, rather nervously.
“Oh yes.” I told him.
Oh no, I told myself. This was well signposted mental illness territory. The smart thing would be to steer well clear. I could find something else to do, couldn’t I?
Then next week came and I could not.
There was no harm in it really, I reasoned with myself. Better than sitting in my kitchen alone. It wasn’t as if raising evil spirits was actually going to work. And it would be awful to hurt Jons feelings by cancelling.
“I had nothing to do with myself once my mother passed.” he told me that night, “And I couldn’t face just rotting away in here! Had to find something to occupy me. That’s how I got interested in all of this. Old books I found in the attic. Before I lost my sight, of course. We are on a leyline here did you know that? I’m just going to grab some things from upstairs. Have a seat and give me minute.”
I had a seat and gave him a minute.
When he returned he was carrying a fresh stack of books, loose papers and memory sticks filled with audio files. Jon had met many like-minded individuals online who had aided in his research. In fact he had been hiring many of them to dictate entire novels, studies and textbooks for him. The latest batch were translations of Buddhist and Hindu writings, which themselves were transcriptions of text found on ancient stone megaliths.
His voice quivered with excitement.
“Let’s get started shall we?!”
*
Against my better judgement I became somewhat invested in the process. Jons infectious enthusiasm and, admittedly, some natural fascination on my part had me hooked.
I particularly enjoyed drawing huge elaborate pentagrams (5 pointed star) and pentacles (5 pointed star with a circle round it). I practised pencil on paper first, the basic shape followed by hundreds of additional symbols placed at strategic points in and around. It was like a gigantic art project and only got better when I moved onto using chalk on the wooden floors.
Time passed and the rest of my life remained largely unchanged. This wasn’t too surprising as I spent most of my days at Jons house, or buried in the 500 year old diaries of monks burned for consorting with the devil.
As strange as he undoubtably was, Jon became a fire in the dark for me. I see it now. In the end I may have burnt my fingers, but I had come in from the cold.
I would regularly shake my head in incredulity at things he said or done. Then I’d be back the next week. We spent so much time together that I often look back in amazement at how little I knew about him. He knew plenty about me. Rarely would an hour go by without his friendly interrogations, always fascinated by even the tiniest thing I had to say. My dour self was the polar opposite, as inquisitive and attentive as any other piece of furniture.
I did find out that he had a son. It came up after he had probed me over my own turgid private life.
“He would be in his 30’s now.” Jon said, sitting back in his chair. It was one of the few times I can recall a change in his demeanour.
“I was so determined, you see.” he continued, “So determined I would do the best I could for him. Make my son the best man he could be! I thought, I’ll make him a good man and a happy man. No matter what I have to say or do or sacrifice, even if he hates me for it! In the end I failed at both and he hated me anyway. Flaws rub off easier than virtues, I think. Have you ever thought that? Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do for people. Sometimes all that matters is what you are.”
I didn’t know what to say to him. How to answer this little glimpse of pain through a dark window, his eyes which saw only the past. Then the moment cracked like glass and he laughed and smiled and changed the subject.
His speech hung with me for several days, loitering in my thoughts as I walked, muttering in the back as I tried to sleep. Then, like every other bit of insight or good advice I’ve ever heard, I decided it would never apply to me and dismissed it.
You know what I mean.
As for the actual “summoning”? We soldiered on, undeterred by our formidable record of utter failure. I was the Igor to Jons mad scientist, fetching and carrying and getting a sore back.
We researched allegedly successful summonings from history, perfected our chanting voices and learned the lunar calendar off by heart.
I won’t detail all of our failed attempts. The goat incident is one particularly cringe-worthy episode I never wish to revisit in any manner whatsoever. Still, neither of us considered scaling back our efforts for even a second. We had become, for want of a better word, obsessed.
In fact the only evening I still had free was Tuesday for woodworking where, after several months of dedication, I almost made a beautiful mug stand.
In late summer the time came for a major attempt. I spent days drawing on the dining room floor, nights memorising the required chants. We even had to use some fresh blood (mine as Jon was afraid of needles).
I have this one tagged as mistake 3, year 2 (M3Y2!).
It warrants the exclamation mark.
*
Allow me to set the scene.
There were, as always, a genuinely oppressive volume of scented candles. Jon insisted on them, particularly the ones which smelt like Christmas at a retirement home.
The time approached as the sun sank on the horizon. We began the chants. It should have felt silly, grown men doing these things. But it didn’t. We were both so captivated at this stage that it didn’t at all.
I recited my incantations, staring at the symbols on the floor, fixing their detail in my mind. I held them there, in the realm of consciousness, reaching out. Jon splashed the blood into the centre of the largest pentacle.
Something actually happened.
The temperature in the room plummeted, my breath fogging in front of me. Then the lights went out, even the awful candles. I would have rolled my eyes at the cliche of the moment if I hadn’t been suddenly quite terrified.
I stood there in the complete dark, chant caught in my throat.
There was a … pulse, a feeling of power, like a surge of adrenaline without the spiky edges. I could see myself from above, frozen in place opposite Jon. I could see the city outside, my perception spreading and the world shrinking until it appeared as nothing but a toy set for my own amusement. The universe became a dark ocean filled with tiny moving sparks of light. I dove in. There were other universes with other sparks, an infinity of them, alive and waiting. I saw one lone light, rising from the depths below. It was coming straight at me, getting larger and closer with every instant.
Then the experience shattered, the images and sensations broken and snapped away like air into a vacuum.
I gasped for breath and almost fell.
The house lights flickered then came back on.
“What happened?” said Jon, “Did it … work?”
” … “ I replied.
In the centre of the room the creature turned its head to look at me. It smiled. Its teeth were really quite large indeed.
“Did anything happen?” said Jon, “What’s wrong?”
” … “ I replied.
My mouth was paper dry and I could hear my heartbeat.
The demon, for it was surely that, rose to its hooved feet. Heavily muscled limbs unfolded. The huge red and black figure filled the room, casting us both in shadow.
It winked at me.
Then it ate Jon.
*
I have never made any claim to being brave. I’ve always suspected, that when a truly dangerous situation arose, I might freeze up and be consumed by cowardice.
And I was spot on.
I did not leap forward to attempt a rescue or even try to escape. I simply fell to the ground, clamped my eyes shut and cowered in abject terror, trying in vain to block out the noise of eating and the occasional splash.
Eventually it went quiet. I could hear my heart again, still hammering away against my ribs.
“Hey.” a voice in the room I didn’t recognise. A deep voice, thick and rough and burnt around the edges.
I remained on the floor in the foetal position, soaked in icy sweat.
“Hey.” it repeated.
My thoughts began to reorganise themselves into something coherent. With a monumental effort I managed to crack one eye open a tiny fraction.
A huge black claw was poking me. Rather gently to be fair.
“Hey. Get up.” said the voice.
The words poured down on me like pure triple distilled terror.
“Why are you … cowering?” it said.
“…bgidfreeivvgwive…” I replied.
“What?”
“You!”
“Yes?”
“Are. Real.”
“Yes.”
“You. Are. A demon.”
“Also yes.”
“You ate him!”
I’ll admit it wasn’t my finest moment. I couldn’t stop glancing at the pool of blood and … pieces.
The creature followed my gaze and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“You didn’t want me to eat him?”
“No!”
“Well, that’s on you. What did you expect? That’s what the symbols say. Summoned to consume and destroy the human within or closest to the circle.”
“…aaaaaahhhhhhhh…”
The pool of blood had reached me and I was frantically trying to lift both my feet off the ground at the same time.
“Why are you so scared?” it asked.
“Aren’t you … going to hurt me?”
“Hurt you? How could I hurt you? You’re the summoner. I can’t touch you.”
I felt decidedly faint, slick with sweat, nauseous. This couldn’t be real, I told myself, it couldn’t be. I’ve went mad. Or this must be a dream. Was something in those scented candles? Maybe I’ve fallen and suffered a traumatic brain injury and I’m in a coma. Oh please God yes let that be it.
“Look, are you sending me back?” it asked, “You have to send me back soon or it will be too late. It’s a full year between alignments.”
“…bcukhdcuhva…””
“Can you stop that? Don’t you have any commands for me?”
“Nnnnn.”
“Come on man, get it out.”
“Nnnnno.”
“And you aren’t going to banish me?”
“I don’t know how. Sorry.”
“So I’m stuck here?”
“I don’t know anything about banishing. I never thought this would work. Not for a second. Jon was the … expert.”
Both our heads turned slowly down to observe the bloody remains sinking into the thick plush carpet.
“Well that’s unfortunate.” the creature replied, “I’ve never spent more than a few minutes in this world. Dimension. Reality. Generally it’s just “we summon thee spawn of satan, do our will and commit insert horror here, begone foul fiend.” Not much else, usually.”
“I … I’m sorry. I … don’t know what to do.”
I had managed to stop crying by this point. Feeling was returning to my limbs. The buzz of adrenaline fading.
“Huh.” it said, turning to survey the room, “Well now what?”
When its back was turned I fled.