Graham Joyce - Catch Your Demon

First, Catch Your Demon

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GRAHAM JOYCE is A FOUR-TIMES WINNER of the British Fantasy Societys August Derleth Award for Best Novel (for Dark Sister, Requiem, The Tooth Fairy and Indigo). His other books include Dreamside, House of Lost Dreams, The Stormwatcher, the young-adult science fiction novel Spiderbite, and the novella Leningrad Nights. In 2001, Subterranean Press published Joyces chapbook Black Dust, while his novel Smoking Poppy appeared from Gollancz in the UK and Pocket Books in America. His latest novel, The Facts of Life, is from the same publishers.

This story is set in the scorpion-infested house I lived in on the Greek island of Lesbos in 1988, the author remembers. Before I knew about the scorpions in the house, I was awakened one night by a bad dream and the word scorpion on my lips. I lit the oil lamp and saw three of the creatures on the wall just as described in this tale.

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I MUST HAVE KNOWN THEY WERE there because some dark instinct jolted me awake. I sat upright in bed. The shutters were closed against the sirocco heat and there wasnt even the light from a single star. Fumbling for the matches I kept at the side of the bed, I lit an oil lamp. Not until then did I feel confident enough to swing my legs out of the bed without stepping on one of the disgusting things. I lit two other oil lamps and the flame dancing behind each glass dispatched skittering shadows across the floor. Not helping at all. It was stifling. I opened the wooden shutters and the heat rolled over me. It was 4.00 a.m.

I looked under the bed. I looked behind the cupboard. I lifted the mat at the door. I knew they were there somewhere because a voice in my dreams had warned me, and I tend to take these things seriously. I didnt know whether to walk down to the water to throw myself in or to try to go back to sleep. Then I saw them.

Three of them.

My grandmother used to have three ceramic flying ducks on her living room wall. In the eighties, it was ironic-kitsch to display three Volkswagen Beetles, or three Supermen flying in strict formation. Such is our cleverness. But here in my beach house on the Greek island of Karpathos Id managed to trump all that with three live scorpions. In ascending order: big, bigger, biggest. The largest not more than six inches away from where my dreaming head had slumbered moments earlier. We should trust our dreams. They are trying to help us.

Well, I didnt like them, the scorpions. Id heard they like to get into shoes and other warm, moist places. Perhaps if Id been less of a lout I would have behaved like a proper naturalist, making sketches of these beautiful creatures, taking scholarly notes about their habitat and behaviour. But Im not and I didnt. Plus I was thinking defensively about my own warm, moist places. I marched outside to my patio kitchen and reached for a heavy iron skillet. Aspro, a feral white cat living on scraps from my table, looked puzzled. I weighed the frying pan in my right hand, returned to the scorpions and hit Number One so hard that what didnt stick to the underside of the skillet left a scorpion-shaped applique on the wall. Bang went Number Two, and fuck you all the way to hell thou slimy carapace, thou whoreson zed, thou mere cipher. I was saying all this and lining up for the hat-trick when Number Three, coming to its senses, dropped from the wall and scuttled toward my bare feet, sting cocked.

I leapt on my bedside chair, tipping over the oil lamp. The glass smashed and the burning oil spilled on the stone floor, raising a small curtain of flame between me and the surviving scorpion. I have heard that a scorpion encircled by fire will sting itself to death. Nonsense. Undeterred by the conflagration in its path, the scorpion - almost casually - stepped through the fire and came to a swaggering halt at the foot of the chair. Its sting remained cocked. My six-foot height advantage notwithstanding, it raised its pincers at me like a species of dense English football hooligan, drunkenly beckoning me on. Then Aspro the cat appeared, and, properly challenged, the scorpion retreated to a crevice at the foot of the wall and was gone. I climbed down from my ridiculous perch and extinguished the small fire with a bedside glass of water. I examined the bottom of the skillet, where the crushed scorpions comprised no more than flimsy crisps of brown carapace and mucus. I let the cat have what it wanted, and anyway it saved me from having to clean the underside of the skillet. Aspro chewed thankfully and licked his paws.

Sometimes, Aspro, you disgust me.

The heat blanket made me sigh. Sweat ran in my eyes, down my back, trickled in my groin. There was no possibility of my going back to sleep. I decided to go and climb in the rowing boat, where at least I could sit with my feet in the water. I pulled on some shorts and Aspro followed me along the garden path to the boat.

I pulled up short. Someone was sitting in my boat. I didnt know who it could be. I had no friends and I discouraged all neighbours and strangers.

The sea was still, like oil, bearing a dermis of moonlight, but suffocating under the sirocco heat. The small, silhouetted figure hunched over the prow of the small rowing boat, gazing into the water. I stood under the fig tree at the gate to my garden, contemplating what to do. Aspro looked up at me as if to say, whatnext?

Youre in my boat, I said rather fiercely.

I dont like visitors, invited or otherwise. I dont like people bothering me. I expected the intruder to be startled, or to spin round, or to take fright in some way. But the figure continued to gaze into the water.

Yes.

It was a womans voice. I took a few steps closer, and I pulled up for a second time. There was a naked woman in my boat.

Youre in my boat, I repeated, stupidly.

This time she turned languidly to face me. She sat with her knees drawn up together under her chin. You dont mind.

It wasnt a question. It was a statement. Actually I did mind. I didnt want anyone around my place. Least of all a woman. Least of all a naked woman. I had to make an effort to avert my eyes from her breasts and the plump curve of her legs. Her lustrous black hair was cut in a fashionable bob. Her dark eyes trawled me with sensual laziness. She made no effort to cover herself. Indeed, I couldnt see any clothes with which she might.

Look, if it really upsets you Ill get out of your boat, she said. She stood up. Her skin was slightly wet. The weak moonlight slithered along her flanks like phosphorescence and her pubic bush glimmered with droplets of sea water.

I felt petty. No, you dont have to get out. I was just startled to see you there.

She sat down again. Ive been swimming. To get out of the heat.

Alone? You shouldnt swim at night alone. There are currents.

Youre concerned for me? Thats nice. But I wasnt alone. I went swimming with my two sisters. But when I turned around I couldnt find them.

Where? Where did you swim from?

She gestured vaguely in the direction of Mesahori, where the illumined, whitewashed church squatted on a freakish outcrop of rock. I doubted shed swum that far, but I didnt say anything. Go get some wine from your house. Lets drink together.

I was taken aback by her commanding tone. So much so that I found myself returning to my kitchen for a bottle and two beakers. I also found her a towel. I dont have a cooler, I said grumpily on returning to the boat. I tossed her the towel.

Does it bother you?

Please just cover up.

I meant does it bother you, living without electricity.

Not at all. If you live without electricity you let other things into your life. Cheers.

Cheers to you.

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Her name was Sasha. When she told me she was a writer I felt my teeth grinding. The writers I have known have all been drunks, dreamers, deceivers and frauds. That was just the successful ones. I should know. I was an editor. I was the one who had to deal with these whining, self-centred, immature psychopaths for a living. Anyway, after divulging this piece of information she looked at me in anticipation of the usual questions. Perhaps she expected me to be interested, but I let it go. We smoked cigarettes and drank the wine. The moons image floated unbroken on the water. After a while Sasha produced a battered-looking reefer, and asked me for a light. She took a deep toke before passing it to me.