Belief

Disbelief

He doesn't know, as he enters the door to Louis's place, that ignorance is bliss, but of this he will soon be certain. His life to date has been largely unremarkable; the only child of well-to-do parents of above-average intelligence and a cultured (but not sophisticated) lifestyle, he went to a good school, achieved good grades, and attended a university which although not Ivy-League was at least a respected Red Brick. These days he works in a bank and performs his job well, but he will never be promoted out of the ranks, so to speak. No, despite what awaits him in Louis's place his future life will be as unremarkable as his past, and even those moments that might have been blessings of sublime wonder, such as his marriage to Elizabeth or the births of his sons Mark and Graham, will be soured by the haunting memory of the next few minutes.

But he knows nothing of his future, and if he did he would be as desperate to repress that knowledge now as he will be after the event. He has been here a hundred times before, here to Loius's place, and he enters the door with casual familiarity and a belated knock out of courtesy, but he doesn't know that this time Louis is not his friend, that Louis is a hideous remnant of his former self, no longer entirely human. A demon from the lesser, malignant depths lurks in the rotting shell of Louis's still-living corpse. It hides from the sunlight, the blackness of Louis's basement pierced only by the red glow of its ethereal eyes, and awaits nightfall when it will emerge and bring corruption to the unbelieving masses that it scorns.

The man who was Louis's friend is an atheist and does not believe in hell, or heaven. His world is unremarkable and has no room in it for malevolent creatures such as that inhabiting Louis, and as he enters the door to Louis's place his only intimation of an encounter that will shock him to the core and shake his beliefs with gale-force winds is an ominous stench of decay that will lead him inexorably to the basement door and to the horror beyond.

Commentary

But what of Louis? What did Louis do to deserve such desecration? Surely he must have done something. Surely there must be, amongst the volumes that line the shelves in his office, or amongst the varied books scattered about the rest of his house - for Louis is (or, rather, was) a prolific reader, rarely seen without a paperback or two in his hand or peeking, title half-readable, from a coat pocket - or perhaps in a secret chest, wooden and inscribed with mysterious runes, hidden in the basement where even now he crouches, shivering with fear of daylight, but certainly somewhere, yes somewhere, there are other books, probably in Latin, or possibly bearing the name of that notorious sorceror Aleister Crowley.

What else could explain it? Why else would that malevolent shadow encroach on Louis's soul? He must have done something.

Imagine! Imagine if he hadn't! Imagine if Louis was an innocent! Oh, he was no saint, of that we can be certain, but imagine if he was no more deserving of his terrible fate than you or I! Perhaps the Devil was playing demonic roulette in his infernal casino, and the ball landed in Louis's slot. Just think! Perhaps one day it will be our turn, and you and I will be sitting in our respective basements, hating the fearsome sun, our souls twisted with malignant loathing of all that is pure, all that is clean, all that is healthy.

And to take this hideous imagining one step further, imagine a world where we are told on good authority that as well as a one in fourteen million chance of winning the Lottery, or of being struck twice by lightning, that there was a similar chance of ending up like Louis in his basement, a rotting undead corpse with a yearning for corruption.

Just imagine!

Far easier to assume that Louis deserved his fate, brought it upon himself. Such a pity. He seemed like such a nice man, such a quiet man, kept to himself, not many friends. We all know the type. Still waters run deep.

Truth

But in truth he did deserve it, or at least his end was an inevitable consequence of his actions. There was nothing arbitrary about his fate. You, with your mundane, unbelieving lives, have no need to fear this particular evil. You will die, and you will rot, unless of course you are consigned to the flames, but through this you will sleep the eternal sleep. Not for you the corruption of a broken soul and the infernal hunger of the damned.

Louis's crime was in daring to write. Surrounded by books full of fantasy and romance, he was a voyeur of adventure. He, who had never strayed beyond the boundaries of the village of his birth, whose bedroom window looked out at the dull-yellow gritstone walls of the school where he had learned and loved, who knew all the faces of the village though little of the thoughts behind them, dared to write.

And in truth he did have a certain talent, a lyrical and often poetic way with words. Language, to Louis, was a friend to be delighted in; it was not a weapon to be wielded. Not for Louis the barbs of a rapier wit or the abrasion of sarcasm, and certainly not the bludgeoning of vulgar invective. Unfortunately, the overriding impression of Louis's writing was that it was `nice'. The publishers thought it was `nice', and his friends thought it was `nice'. Louis's heart broke. To an author, even (or perhaps especially) to an aspiring author such as Louis, words have a precise meaning and `nice' is not a nice word. It can be a damning criticism veiled in a mist of diplomacy to one who has ambitions of artistry.

Louis was ambitious, wanted to be able one day to point at a novel, even if it was the only novel he ever wrote, and say with confident pride: `I wrote that!'

But there are some truths that none of us, not even near-sighted Louis, can deny, for they are all too apparent no matter how tight we shut our eyes or how deep in the sand our heads are buried, and there is only so much tedious script a discerning scribe can pen before he presses his palms to his temples and screams `Enough! Enough! I cannot bear to write another word!'

Louis had had enough. You could have heard him screaming a mile away, heard the echoes bouncing about the valley as they reflected off the quarry walls - and perhaps you did, but if so did you recognize in them the last vestiges of sanity?

Do you belive in the Devil? Would you know where to look for him? Louis knew. With the genius of madness, he knew. If God is in the detail, then surely, he surmised, the Devil is in the Errata, that curse of the First Edition. Reasoning thus, Louis gathered to himself every mistake, every typographic error, every undotted i and uncrossed t, and placing these in a large black cast-iron cauldron he knelt to pray.

He prayed to that master of fiction, the Great Deceiver - yes, to Satan himself. `O Lord of Apocrypha,' he intoned, `Hear my prayer! Grant my request! Make me the very, very best!'

Which was, it must be said, a nice (but unremarkable) little rhyme.

And Louis's dark prayer was answered, his request granted. Hellfire devoured the cauldron's contents and black smoke surged from its gaping mouth, but Louis's mind was filled was sudden wonder, with breath-taking clarity, and his fingers itched. He raced inside, feeling the strain of a dam struggling to hold back the swelling waters of a rain-swept reservoir, a pent-up power that would destroy him unless he gave vent to its urgency.

Words came bubbling out, whole phrases erupted into his mind which quickly became a turbulent stream of adjectives that coursed poetically from his pen to paper with images of transcendent beauty that caused tears to cascade down his cheeks blotting the blue ink page after page.

And suddenly he stopped. Stopped as suddenly as if he heard a woman wailing for her demon lover, for in that instant he knew, just knew, what Coleridge had been about to write - had been about to write, when interrupted by that person from Porlock.

`What genius!' he cried, and cried, more tears of joy that he, Louis, could complete the Master's great work.

And Satan was jealous. He who in his great pride had sought to improve the Word of God, only to be punished for his presumption, listened to Louis's sacred river of words and was jealous. In a hideous rage he tore apart the pages, shredded them into a blizzard of paper snow, until not a word of Louis's hellishly brilliant outpouring remained intact.

Reduced to a wordless anguish, Louis's heart broke again; and when the Devil sent his minion, Louis did not resist its invasion.