It wasn't the type of bar I usually frequented, and at this time of night most people had long since given up and gone home. The Church, however, was open twenty four seven, and that meant it attracted the sort of person for whom drinking was more than a social occasion. Inside, it was permanently dingy and unpleasantly cool, despite the sticky warmth of the night outside. The décor was nicotine brown and other assorted stains, all given a sickly yellow cast by candles spilling wax down the sides of old wine bottles. It was the type of bar tourists avoided, where people came to be alone... or to be forgotten.
I was here because over the last few months I'd found myself suffering from a strange and unfamiliar kind of depression, a nagging, empty feeling that I couldn't put my finger on but was helpless to resist. I began to resent my life, and the people in my life - my colleagues, my family - even the people milling about on the streets became too much to bear. And every day the feeling got worse, until I found myself phoning in sick to work; then I didn't bother to phone at all. Shrinking into myself and losing focus, my days became nights as a miserable insomnia gripped me. I took to drinking to try to drown the black tide of my thoughts, frequenting the seedier drinking holes around the city - which inevitably led me here.
Even in the deepest grip of my melancholy, I knew I would never have set foot in a place like this if I had been in any way approaching my right mind, but now it suited me. The drinkers in here kept themselves to themselves, and the barman (I'd only ever seen the same guy) did not deign to indulge small talk. In here it was all business - actually, it was a religion. Maybe that's why they called it the Church, I don't know. But this was where I came, night after night.
It was quiet tonight, even for the Church. Only a few hunched figures dotted around the tables. There had been some sort of incident nearby, the city square was being cordoned off with police tape when I walked past earlier. I didn't care; in fact the only reason I noticed at all was the unpleasant, sickly sensation the flashing blue lights gave me as I hurried past. I sat down at the bar, the sweat on my back turning clammy in the chill, and ordered a whisky. I downed it, relishing the burn in my throat, and signalled immediately for a refill. The barman poured without a word and set the bottle down in front of me. I nodded my acquiescence and he left me staring into the glass.
I poured and drank again, poured and drank again - not counting the shots, just looking for some sort of comfort in the drink. I knew I wouldn't find it; but I also knew after a few more I wouldn't care, anyway. Maybe it would help me sleep, later. If I was lucky, I wouldn't dream.
I don't know how long I'd been sitting like that when the door opened behind me.
A few people turned to look, then quickly turned away as the guy made his way across the bar and sat at the stool next to me. He carried himself as if he was tired, or hiding some physical pain, but he still looked dangerous and imposing. He was tall - maybe six two - and dressed in scruffy black leathers, despite the heat outside. At his hip hung a large, battered leather satchel. I could smell him, too - not body odour; more a weirdly familiar aroma of sulphur underscored with the metallic tang of blood. His hair was long, filthy and knotted with dreadlocks.
But all that wasn't what made people avoid his eyes - it was his ruined skin that did that. Tattoos spilled from the cuffs of his jacket as if resentful at being hidden; they crawled up his neck onto his face. When he shucked his jacket off, I could see his bare, muscular arms were sleeved with them. Not High Street inkshop work, though - these things were crude and brutal; embellished with tribal scarring. No words or pictures that I could recognise, just weird shapes and odd designs that scrawled hither and yon across raised scars and burn tissue. This wasn't tasteful body decoration of any kind, it would have been extreme even in a third world prison yard. His arm left a smear of blood across the surface of the bar as he positioned himself on a stool. I tried not to look at him, but my eyes seemed to have developed a will of their own.
“Dark Budvar,” he said to the barman. His accent was unfamiliar, and I was surprised at how rich and cultured his voice sounded. His drink arrived and he took a long swig. Beside him, his satchel twitched slightly, without being touched, as if something inside had moved. He patted it with one scarred hand, then spoke quietly.
“Hush,” he said to it. He unslung the bag from his shoulder and placed it carefully on the bar. It twitched again then was still.
That was it for me. The man was clearly trouble, and probably profoundly mentally disturbed as well. Whatever - the vibes coming off him were bad enough that I wanted to be anywhere else in the world; and quickly. I downed my drink and made to get up, but he leaned across and caught my arm, and I felt my stomach turn to ice.
“Don't go, man. I need to talk to you.”
I tried to pull away, but his grip was iron.
“Listen, man. I've had a... difficult... night so far. So don't, okay? Just listen.”
He was grinning, his teeth amazingly white in that painted, scarred face.
“I was on my way home when I saw you coming in here. I thought about it long and hard, 'cause I'm really tired, but I couldn't just let it go. Let you go. So I came back, and here we are. Drowning your sorrows, right?”
I nodded, hesitantly.
“Sure you are. And I bet you're having a real bad time right now, yeah? Feel like you're on a downward spiral?” he continued. I didn't know what to say to him, and tried to pull away again, more forcefully this time. He went on regardless, as if I hadn't moved.
“Thing is, you got an Imp on your shoulder, man. Literally. A nasty little son of a bitch it is, too. Don't look, man, it's invisible. But I see it - even if you can't. I'm... kind of tuned that way, you know? Wired differently. I see... lots of things you people don't. It's burrowing in, that's your problem - and things won't get any better until you get rid of it. It's a minor demon, really, but it's feeding from you,” he said. He was still holding my arm, but his smile was gone. His eyes bore into mine, unblinking. With his free hand he took another long drink and set the empty bottle back on the bar.
“Look, just let me go. I don't know what your problem is, but I don't want any trouble,” I said.
“Sorry, man. You got no choice,” he replied.
What was I meant to do? Confronted by a lunatic raving about invisible demons only he could see, when all I wanted to do was be left alone with my despair. I was suddenly bone weary, sick of it all. I'm not a fighter and I hate confrontation, but suddenly it was all too much, and a red black rage clouded my thoughts. I swung my fist at him, wanting to see the colour of his blood spread across those ugly tattoos.
I put everything I had into it but he moved faster than I would have thought possible, and caught my punch in his hand before it was anywhere near connecting. He held my fist easily, twisted down sharply and spun me around, wrenching my arm up my back. The pain was astounding; any further and my wrist would break or my shoulder would pop out of its socket. I howled in agony, but his other arm wrapped around my neck, cutting off my scream before it really began. He brought his lips to my ear, his voice low and dangerous.
“I could have just gone home, man. I didn't need this, but you got to understand - I'm one of the good guys. And if I don't help you now, in a few weeks you'll be putting a bag over your head and opening your wrists.”
It was almost seductive as he leaned in even closer, and I shuddered as the awful tattooed skin of his face brushed against my cheek as he spoke. I strained to move my head away from his, but couldn't. I was sure I could hear amusement somewhere in his voice.
“Or worse - you might decide you want to take it out on someone else. Most of those guys you read about in the news - the ones that decide to shoot up their offices, or a firebomb a school or something? This is usually why they do what they do,” he said. I felt his lips form a grin.
“Imps whisper, man - and your soul hears it, even if you can't. They slowly drive you mad and feed off your energy. The worse you get, the stronger the Imp gets. The stronger it gets, the worse its influence on you, you follow? Something's gonna give, my friend, and looking at you it's going to happen soon.”
I tried to speak, but the arm across my throat was like a noose and all that came out was another shrill yelp of pain as he pushed my arm even further. Across the bar, I saw the some of other drinkers looking at us; others didn't even bother to turn around. The Church saw drunken violence regularly, it was best not to get involved. There would be no help forthcoming; I was at his mercy.
“Anyway, beautiful... I'm not asking for your permission,” he continued, and roughly spun me around to face him. I gasped for breath, but his hand was around my throat before I had a chance to back away, squeezing my windpipe and cutting off my air supply again. I felt my knees buckle but he held me up easily, even as my hands struggled ineffectually to loosen his grip. Any thoughts I had of escape vanished as constellations blossomed in my vision. He was still grinning fiercely as he reached toward me with his free hand, his fingers splayed. He was looking intently at a point just above my left shoulder.
“Now, you little piece of filth...,” he said. His grin became a snarl. “Let him go!” he shouted. I noticed his incisors had been filed to sharp points, making his appearance even wilder. His whole bearing proclaimed ferocity, and I felt myself overwhelmed by it. My cowardice was a revelation; but I was utterly helpless in the face of it.
I saw the arm reaching for me in crystal detail for an instant - the brutal tattoos, the scars, the burns - and then something happened to them. The crude black ink changed, somehow - it began to lighten and seemed to emit a rippling orange glow around the edges, the shapes began to writhe and swarm on his skin. The arm itself began to shake with effort and I saw the cords of his neck tense and raise. His muscles were rigid as his fingers closed on thin air, in an identical choke hold to the one that was currently crushing my throat. I grabbed his arm in desperation and felt searing pain as if I was holding a burning log. Dimly, I was aware of the other people in the bar scrambling to leave, the clatter of chairs being booted over in the rush to get out. The patrons of the Church had finally witnessed something to shake them from their apathy, it seemed. Glass smashed on the ground as the barman vaulted over the bar, catching some bottles with his boot as he went.
My assailant was struggling and shouting words I didn't understand, sweat forming on his forehead as he pulled at the air around me. At the same time, the grip on my neck became a push against me as he tried to separate the distance between his hands. And then... the strangest sensation. Suddenly I could feel something dragging at my skin... I thought of the feeling of having a tooth pulled, or of a fish hook in my flesh... only this was coming from deep inside me. I could hear a high pitched screaming noise like a kettle boiling, growing in volume as the tattooed arms moved apart. In the dimness of the bar the glowing marks on his arms seemed to bleed fire, then long scratches suddenly scrawled and bit into them, weals of blood forming instantly in triple lines as if he was holding an extremely pissed off cat. He shouted in pain.
“I said let GO!” he shouted, and then his words became something else entirely; a stream of noise that might have once been a language, but that I doubted anyone alive today would recognise. Guttural, brutal and filled with glottal stops, clicks and pauses, it sounded alien - powerful, rhythmic and above all, ancient. He was speaking a dead language. I knew that as well as I knew my own name; as well as I knew my mind must surely be slipping free from its moorings.
He wrenched his arm back, pushing me hard in the throat. There was a sound like paper tearing and a flash of light, and suddenly I was free and falling backward, that tea kettle scream shrieking even louder. The guy reeled back and I saw something was squirming and coiling around his hand. It was about the size of a cat and its tail was whipping around madly as it tried to use its claws on the guy. I'm not sure, even now, but I thought the dim fire from his tattoos seemed to repel the thing somehow; certainly it couldn't get a grip on him, and he easily held it by its throat. He turned to the bar.
“There you go, that wasn't so bad, was it?” he said. I thought he was speaking to me, but he didn't take his eyes of the hissing creature. I could hardly breathe, let alone speak - my throat felt as if it had been crushed flat. I raised myself up on my elbows and watched him. He was still holding the thing at arms length as he opened his leather satchel. He smiled at something inside.
“Hungry?” he said. The bag jerked again, violently this time. From where I was lying I couldn't see inside it; but that was okay. I really didn't want to. I tried to get up but my body felt weak and alien, disconnected from my brain. The guy was still speaking into the bag.
“Yeah, I know. I'm tired too - It's been a long night. Here you go. Enjoy,” he said, and without further ceremony he stuffed the writhing thing into the satchel, which was suddenly alive with movement from within. The creature scrabbled madly to escape, but the guy pushed it inside easily. That awful screaming began immediately... but only lasted a few seconds. From the bag there came a meaty crunching sound and the scream died abruptly. The guy lifted the satchel off the bar and slung the strap over his shoulder, then turned and looked at me as if I was something he had found on the sole of his boot.
“You'll feel better soon,” he said. His head was cocked at an angle as he ran his tongue over his teeth, and he surveyed the bar like a critic surveying a new art gallery. He looked at me, considering.
“Hmm... you know, I don't think this is your kind of place at all, man. I'd think about giving up coming to places like this, if I was you?” he said. It really wasn't a question. He picked up his jacket, gently laying a hand on top of his satchel. It shifted again, and I heard a low, contented mewling noise - followed by another dreadful crunch.
“Go home. Get some sleep, and tomorrow this might all have been a dream. Probably better that way, I'd say - best not to remember stuff like this. Could drive a man mad, if you let it,” he said. His eyes bore into mine. All trace of his good humour had vanished; the black scarring on his face made him look at least as dangerous as whatever it was he had just fed into his satchel. A thin ribbon of blood trickled down his arm and dripped onto the dirty floor, but he paid it no mind. Just kept his gaze on me.
“And you don't want to remember me, beautiful,” he said, and that grin resurfaced. With that, he turned and walked out into the heat of the night. The door slammed shut behind him.
I couldn't move for a while, lying on the floor in the ugly cold darkness of the Church. Then I felt the whisky I'd consumed earlier sitting heavy and poisonous in my stomach, the pain and horror of it all, and my heart still thumping in my chest. Sickly sweet adrenaline overcame me, and I rolled onto my side and vomited. Then I began to cry.
* * * * *
Outside, the night was just giving way to the first hazy light of morning, the sky a beautiful gold blue colour, stars still visible overhead. The streets were as quiet as they ever got, which I was thankful for as I emerged up the steps from the bar - my clothes were filthy and crumpled, and stained with my own mess. I may even have pissed in my trousers at some point in the proceedings, who knew? Still. The air smelled clean and fresh after the stagnant atmosphere in the Church. The guy with the dreadlocks was long gone, of course; he wasn't the type of person who would ever be seen by daylight. Actually, I doubted he was the type of person who would be seen unless he wanted to be seen.
I closed my eyes, let my head fall back and felt the strength of the sun warm on my face. The morning was beautiful, I thought. I hadn't thought that about anything for a long time - what else had I been missing?
Only one way to find out.
I set off down the street. I didn't feel the need to look back.