Personal Demons

by Peter Gifford

I don’t know how long I’d been seeing things out of the corner of my eye. A few months maybe, perhaps longer. After a while I started thinking that I should visit an optometrist and get my eyes checked. Maybe there was something scratched on my pupil, or a few cells had gone dead that I only saw when my eyeball was tilted a certain way. I think like that, you see. I think about things while I’m going through my day, formulating intricate explanations for what’s going wrong in my life. After a while it doesn’t seem necessary to do anything about my problems. I’ve worked it all out in my head and confirmed any suspicions I began with.

So I didn’t get it checked out. And at first infrequently, then more and more so, I’d be distracted by a nearly imperceptible flash of movement. There was never anything there when I looked closer. No scuttling cockroach, no dried leaf blown by the wind. I’d try and focus on the surface of my own eye to see the tiny hair of grain of dust that ran just ahead of my vision, but there was nothing there. Sometimes, even my body jerked with the effort of catching sight of it.

It happened more at night. Enough for me to start really paying attention, maybe three or four times a week. Walking down the street or driving in my car, the streets empty, only lit by the blue wash of electric light that comes from nowhere and everywhere at once. That fleeting glimpse of movement. A flicker of darkness.

The first time I knew that this was no scratch on my eyeball, no self-delusory brain shudder, it was at night. I had a couple of beers after work, no more than a couple, and then began walking home alone. In fact I remember I was particularly sober that night. It was one of the first cold nights of Autumn and I didn’t have a jacket. The wind bit through my cotton shirt. I was walking fast and my head was lowered. There was no one around. I came to a street corner and as I tuned it, a tall figure brushed past me, turning the corner from the other direction. We just missed each other. It happened so fast I didn’t have time to mutter "sorry", but instead walked on for perhaps five paces before stopping. Something was wrong, and it took me some moments to realise what it was. I had felt the same sensation as I passed that black shape as when I saw those will o the wisp flickers in the corner of my eye. I stood there and thought for a moment, my head tilted, then turned and walked the rest of the way home.

The next time I was in my car, and again, it was late at night. I drove up to an intersection and stopped, and waiting for the lights to change I saw something move quickly over a fence and into a black wall of shrubs. A cat, I told myself. But I had a faint afterimage in my minds eye, an image of a long black featureless shape with spindly limbs, moving as quick as thought. I physically shook my head to clear it. The light changed.

That night I went home and began obsessively tidying my flat. I lived alone, and most of the time the place was pretty messy. But I stayed awake until the early hours of the morning, moving like a back paper silhouette behind my brightly lit windows, picking up stray newspapers, moving furniture as quietly as I could, uncovering dark spaces in the room, bringing light into corners.

I woke the next morning fully clothed on my bed, all the lights in my apartment losing a battle with the morning sun. I felt unwell, unrested, dissatisfied, and decided to take the day off work. No one would miss me there, I knew. I worked in a featureless maze of cubicles in a featureless job. I punched a plastic keyboard all day long and didn’t talk much to anyone. So I didn’t even call in sick. I changed my shirt for another one of the same colour and stayed inside.

The next day I felt better. I walked to the bus stop and caught the number 53 into the city to the building where I worked. I found myself looking at other people as I walked, wondering if they saw things too. And sometimes I saw shapes among the city crowds. Tall, dark shapes that disappeared when I tried to focus on them. I started to search for them among the faces, and I smiled to myself when I saw one, if only for what was probably half a second. I imagined they smiled back, though I never saw them clearly enough to see their features. After a while I gave them a name. They were The Tall Men.

I worked late, stupidly I suppose, in hindsight, because it was dark again when I caught the bus home. This time I wasn’t even surprised when I saw a black shape scurry along the gutter of a terrace house. I caught enough of it to describe it to myself. Spiderlike, with long, jointed arms — I don’t know how many — pulling itself along at the speed of a cockroach surprised by the kitchen light. So I called it The Spider. Naming them gave me a way of controlling what was going on. I had begun to feel hunted, or chosen, different from anyone around me, but at least I knew what they where now. They were black things, that moved quickly around me, but they had names.

Now, day or night, I’d see them, and always for a little longer. I no longer had to turn my head to catch a fleeting glimpse. For a full second I saw them, sometimes. The Tall Men seemed to prefer crowds, but sometimes you’d see them at night, standing on street corners, like they were waiting for someone who never showed up. The Spiders stayed on the move, flitting like disembodied hands up the walls of buildings, pulling themselves into potholes or the tops of trees. I never walked under a tree I saw one in. The Creepers liked to stick by you, but I never got a look at one — ever time you turned to look they were gone, and only when you started walking again did you feel that prescence again, sidling up behind. The Bugs were tiny, and came in swarms, and they’d get way too close. You’d see them for half a second on your arm, and when you went to brush them away they’d be nothing there.

They were all silent, and they watched me, and they waited for something. They all came from the same world, and they knew that I could see them. They knew that I saw them more and more each day. The more I saw them, the less I was afraid of them. I’d given them names, and habits, and even personalities of a sort. None of them had ever hurt me, and aside from a bad surprise now and then, they didn't even seem to go out of their way to scare me. They just waited. So I started searching them out. Some were hard to catch, but they had their favourite haunts, and after a bit of persistence and effort, I could find them. I had some weights at home and I’d always kept in shape, which was lucky, because the Spiders were fast and you had to be fast to keep up with them. I’d run through car parking lots to catch them jumping from under cars, climb over fences and push through undergrowth to get a glimpse of their lanky, double-jointed bodies. The Creepers I never managed to see, though I spent many hours trying to second guess them, walking along dark city streets, turning suddenly in hope of catching them as they diappeared. The Murkers liked the darkest places, and if I sat still enough and long enough in the darkness they would come and peer over my shoulder.

I’d wait at night on a street corner, just out of the light, for a Tall Man to appear on the pavement opposite. And after a while one would appear. Not walk out of the shadows, or even fade into existence — you’d be distracted for the tiniest moment and when you looked again he would be there. Just standing there. Like me.