There are three characters in this dream of mine: a man, a woman, and a boy. The man was me at times, and at other times I was observing and seeing what the woman and boy saw.
The story starts with a man in his early thirties standing at the window of his solicitor’s office. The view outside is a pleasant one, with a large tree just across the narrow road bathed in the sunlight of a warm English Summer. Up and down the road are pleasant, Georgian style buildings also occupied by quiet professionals in expensive suits. Inside the room, the brass door handle welcomes you onto soft carpet and a tastefully under-stated solicitor’s office with an old, polished wooden desk and chair with two visitors’ chairs in front. The door is on the North side of the room towards the Eastern corner. If you were to enter the room, you’d see the man’s chair to your immediate right with its back to the wall, the large polished desk in front of it, and two visitors’ chairs on the South side of the desk with their backs to the large windows behind, letting in the sun.
The man is content with his life. He’ll never be wealthy but can expect to remain comfortable, and that suits him fine.
The woman and boy enter the room as any new clients might, except that it’s not particularly usual for children to be present at a first meeting about anything. His expert eye considers the pair as they come in. They are completely anonymous, the kind of people you pass day after day around town without ever noticing them for a moment. They look average, they dress average.
Aware that on entering a solicitor’s office for the first time people usually come with some kind of prepared speech, he quickly and politely ushers them into the visitors’ chairs and takes his own seat between the desk and the wall. The woman facing him is in her mid-forties, has a halo of short, blonde very curly hair that sits naturally off her high forehead around her round, somewhat reddened face. Her eyes are round and staring, and most noticeably unblinking. She is smiling at him a broad, toothy grin, but there is no humour about her at all. She looks worried behind the weird smile. To the left of her, and on her right, the boy sits unspoken and almost unnoticed by either of them.
“How can I-” he starts to ask.
“The demons are coming,” she interrupts, showing no sign that she had heard him.
“I’m sorry,” says the man, “I’m not sure I-”
“The demons are coming,” she repeats, in the same plain tone as before.
He/I looks at the woman, with surprise, dread, and fear starting to well up. Her second declaration had been said without her lips moving. He/I wasn’t even sure if her lips had moved the first time.
As she said it again, the room started to shift. His attention was drawn almost entirely to her head as the phrase began to repeat over and over. The room around was growing dimmer, while the woman seemed to be lit from behind or within by something the colour of a yellow flame. She smiled and stared on at him while his flesh recoiled at the sight of a long, grey, serpent-like pointed tail waving gently behind her head. He felt like there was a gargoyle sitting opposite him, whose body was that of an anonymous mid-forties woman but whose long, swaying tail suggested wicked intent.
She didn’t know why she and her son were even there. As they sat in this lovely room trying to warn the pleasant man about the demons, he had begun to change. Behind her, the sun was still shining and the large tree moved slightly in a gentle summer breeze, but inside the room the air was very still and starting to become uncomfortable. The man was changing before their eyes. Terror gripped the visitors as they watched the man changing before them, turning into a creature of disgusting malevolance and hate. Unable to move, she and the boy wept as she continued her dire warning, “the demons are coming”.
Through his darkness, he/I knew he/I had changed and was yet the same. A deal was being struck, but by whom and to what end he/I could not fathom. It would be settled tomorrow: yes, they would be welcome back tomorrow when business would be concluded.
He/I looked down, slightly surprised to see the familiar suit and normal surroundings again. Walking over to let them out, the woman rushed straight through the unopened door like a ghost, followed by a scrawny, medium-sized shaggy black dog who ran through the crack between door and door frame, again without the door being opened for a moment. It was her son.
He/I caught his reflection in a mirror and was not alarmed to see ugly, over-sized teeth in a distorted face. He/I knew it would wear off soon.
The man walked over to the window wondering what to do next. He looked down into the sunny street, trying to remember what the deal was that had been made. Should he turn up and honour it? Or should he get as far away from this place as possible? And what, if anything, was inside him now?
