Author: Iain Bain. Iain has had short stories published in literary magazines, anthologies and the web, short drama performed, and sketches, songs and a comedy-drama series broadcast by BBC Radio Scotland. He spent several years working as a desk editor for some of the larger UK publishers and the BBC. A former Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award winner, his novels, Brackenrib, a comic fantasy, and A Man of Letters, on Glasgow postmen, are as yet unpublished. Iain writes and records with his band, Radio Ghosts.

Edward tugged at his waistcoat, well satisfied.  A gentleman leaves the bottom button of his waistcoat undone, a matter of form and style, a signifier of quality. Why this is so is essentially immaterial: some things simply endure regardless of their origins or initial purpose. Edward was however well aware that the practice began when his namesake, Edward VII, gaining weight, found it necessary to allow him simply to sit down, and the court and people of quality followed suit, as it were, out of respect and loyalty. It remains to this day proper so to do. Respect and loyalty, these are scarce commodities in this age of me-first, me-too, me, me, me.  Edward dined alone; he had no need of friends and preferred to keep colleagues at arm’s length. He would attend no Christmas parties and the other traditions of the season he would leave to those with less on their minds. This was a season for reflection and lately, he had become more ruminative than usual, his sleep troubled by past grievances and present discontent as he looked back on a lengthy political career now heading for the buffers. The disquiet which bubbled around his waking consciousness he managed to subsume that evening in the course, indeed many courses, of a delightfully heavy seasonal dinner.  The journey from aperitif to digestiv with a lengthy detour in the Burgundy region left him beached and sweating on the rather too comfortable bench seat. He may have required a couple of attempts to rise but he did not slur his questioning of the bill, whatever that twit of a boy waiter’s smirks may have suggested. He was well known for his eloquence and clarity of speech, as debating chambers the length and breadth of the county would testify, and if he did bump into the adjacent table, rattling glasses and spilling a jug of something sticky and red it was the responsibility of the establishment to arrange proper spacing and not cram everyone together in order to wring more profit from their already overpriced menus.

Light snow drifted in the night air, which had no sobering effect; he slipped and staggered into a parked BMW, the driver staring aghast at him as he sprawled on the bonnet. Eager to put this unseemly episode behind him he lurched away down the chilly, deserted street. He then became aware of a distressing sound. It was a grating, nasal groan, the sound, it seemed to him, of a soul straining under unendurable pain, too weak, perhaps too far gone to scream. He increased his wayward pace, eager to leave the upsetting noise behind him. As he neared his own tree-lined suburban street he found himself almost choking on a foul smell, which hung in the air about him, the stink of decay and something unidentifiable but he suspected could be rotting flesh.  The grinding, low-strangled wail, the song of a failing dentist’s drill, and the disgusting smell persisted and although he was unable to discern their source, still they pursued him as he hurried through the night, only dying away as he shut his own front door, gasping, shaking and unaccountably terribly afraid.

The events of the last few days had been all too much – that dreadful meeting with the PM’s special advisers. The sharks were circling. With an election possible early in the New Year, they suggested that now might be a good time for him to step aside, to make room for fresh blood. They then alluded to information held by the whips relating to what they snidely referred to as unwanted advances, sexual impropriety, and serious misconduct, all nonsense of course. The mistletoe incident was years ago, but these days a fellow can’t even slap a handsome arse without a court case ensuing and one is expected to ask for a birth certificate before kissing a girl, he had remarked to his humourless betrayers. Where was the respect, where the loyalty? He may not have made much of a fist of constituency affairs, but there were matters of more import than the petty problems of Mr and Mrs Nobody. He may not have climbed the slippery pole but he had served, stuck to his post and considered himself a figure of some substance. He stood on his record, damn it, and proud to do so.

That damned miserable screeching woman at his constituency surgery had grabbed at him, paraded her tears and snot, whining on about her starving children. There are foodbanks, aren’t there? In this something-for-nothing society, the slobs just sit around watching gameshows on enormous televisions and leech off the rest of us. Responsibility is the key. A man, or indeed woman, should take responsibility for his own upkeep, and crawling around the office floor wailing about starving offspring, all that butters no parsnips. ‘How can you sleep at night?’ she had bleated. ‘How can you look yourself in the mirror?’ Finally, and most ludicrously, she had whimpered that it was nearly Christmas. He had absolutely nothing to reprove himself for. Nothing. Had he?

A day or so later he thought he had caught sight of it. At first, he had only a vague impression of the thing, occasionally lurking somewhere behind him. When he turned to look back he thought he might have caught a glimpse but could never quite form a full picture. It was an impression, however, which produced in him a cold, shivering dread. Again the horrible moaning, again the reek. There was fear now in his tired, bloodshot eyes when he turned to look.

Edward berated himself for allowing vague and irrational suspicions ungrounded in solid reality to affect him so. He must gird his loins and maintain business as usual, the first order of which was a stiffener in the snug at McGinty’s. There is little more reassuring than a single malt and the Times crossword in a quiet corner there on such a night, he told himself, a prospect to buttress the soul in a treacherous climate. The warmth, fug and murmur of the place offered a welcoming balm to his unquiet mind. On this night, however, after multiple single malts, Edward’s uneasiness crept back in, tugging and nagging at his sense of well-being. The familiar faces of groups of regulars, that night many in Santa hats, tinsel scarves and garish knitwear, began to seem contorted, corrupted with something approaching malice. Darting glances were thrown his way and every attempt at a greeting or even a friendly nod was spurned with expressions of distaste. Sinking round after round and trying to avoid the attention of all the other customers did not restore his equilibrium. He was now certain that they were all giving him looks of open contempt and there was an edge of aggression in the increasingly raucous festivities. Fearful that actual violence might develop he hastily though awkwardly gathered himself together and left the premises.

Unnerved and by this time very drunk he stood swaying and confused on the high street. His attempts to light a cigarette were frustrated by a blustery wind. And then he saw it. The thing lurked in the window of a shop long closed, standing there in the darkness, surrounded by mannequins in evening wear, dinner suits and long dresses, the Christmas street lights glinting on sequins and highlighting the hideous, shiny red face, leering through the window at him, a mask of ugliness, dribbling, bloated, vile. He ran clumsily away and turned down an unfamiliar alley, to escape the thing, to hide, to catch his breath, but slipped on the slick cobblestones, falling to the ground, his forehead smacking against a wall. Vaguely aware that blood now dribbled down his face, he tried to regain his feet but slipped and collapsed again, amongst sentinel bins by back doorways, spilling discarded food, takeaway containers, broken bottles and worse. Loud, belligerent drunks looked on from the end of the lane as he floundered on the ground. Rest. He needed rest. He sat on the filthy cobbles and hung his head, fighting the need to vomit. He must avoid the city’s would-be citizen journalists. Gawpers with their bloody mobile phones were ubiquitous, ready to scoop up the slightest misstep and share it with a merciless, sneering nation. Tears blurred his vision, snow turned to slush and the wet filth of the lane soaked through to his plump buttocks.

The woman had green eyes, intelligent, penetrating. In other circumstances Edward might have found her attractive. She was just short of middle-age and he had admired her figure as she paced around his office, unable to remain seated, wringing her entwined fingers, nodding her head compulsively as she built her case, pleading for his intervention with various agencies on her behalf. Her increasingly desperate rambling accounts of her situation distorted her face into intense, shrewish ugliness. She spoiled herself. Edward had outlined, quite calmly and logically, he thought, his stance on her prospect for state aid and her reaction had been quite out of order. The accusations she had levelled at him, the excoriation of his character, had shaken him in a manner he had not hitherto experienced. She seemed to think that the future well-being of her children was somehow his personal responsibility.  Assistance had been required just to get her out of the door, screaming and clawing at his staff. He had performed his role in the matter with professionalism and, yes, even courtesy, in trying circumstances. It was the next day when two lumpen and ill-mannered police officers had appeared at his door carrying a slip of paper bearing his name, the only pointer towards identification found on the broken body discovered in reddened snow at the foot of a nearby high-rise building. He deeply resented their loaded questions, their moronic inability to grasp the absence of any actual connection on his part with the dratted woman and their leaden stares heavy with insinuation.

Edward clambered to his feet and began to make his way homeward, tramping along puddled streets. But as he walked he flinched as he again caught flashes of his pursuer, haunting and harrying him. He picked up his pace, tripping and stumbling, the trickle of blood down his face worsening as he thumped against walls and fences. The thing was relentless. On and on with no escaping. He feared a heart attack might take him before he reached the door. His face became smeared with blood, sweat, filth and spittle as he snivelled and wiped himself with his sleeve. He felt no shame at his crying and moaning as he ran. But there was the door, the beautiful door. His keys, too many keys, frustrated him as he desperately fumbled and twisted the jumble of metal, willing one of the blasted things to turn and save him. Finally, the door opened and he slammed it shut behind him, falling to his knees. When he had recovered himself he trudged upstairs to his bedroom. But there it was. Staring in open-mouthed revulsion, mirroring and mocking his own shuddering horror, hateful, goatish, bloody red, a picture of evil, Satan in a filthy Jermyn Street suit. Staggering, blinded by blood, anger and fright, he stumbled towards the monster, determined to strike it down, to smash the foul beast into nothingness. Grabbing a bedside lamp he lashed out. With a sickening crash it was gone, vanquished.  But not before it struck back at him, its slicing, jagged, splintering blows slashing at his arms, his face, his throat, lacerating his corpulent gut, his waistcoat and shirt ripped open. In twitching, groaning agony he gradually fell still, his jowly face an ugly island in a dark red lake. Beyond Edward’s front door a small group of off-key carol singers sang of joy, of hope, of charity and of goodwill to all men.

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