Into the Night

y time is nearing its end, danger lurks around me and yet my task is not quite done. Once I could remember everything clearly, but more often of late by memory slips into shadow. Soon all will be dark so I must make a record while I still can.

It started quite casually one day in summer. The year and the place are long since lost to me, but I remember walking through a town and pausing to stop to retie a shoelace. On completing this simple action, I looked up and saw my face in a television screen behind the shop window. The video camera filming me winked its little red light from a nearby shelf. Despite being momentarily startled by this innocent event, my attention rapidly moved to the background of the television picture, where I spotted in abject horror the disembodied face of a friend whose funeral I had attended some months before! He grinned evilly at me and faded from view. My wits momentarily deserting me, I ran from that spot, only stopping when exhaustion finally overcame me.

It was about this time that bad dreams started to menace my nocturnal hours. Demonic images of grotesque horror and awful perversion intruded into my otherwise normal slumber. I spent the days bleary eyed and dozy, endeavouring at last to sleep as much during the day and sit the night out. Of my daytime occupation during this time I have but fleeting memories of office desks and telephones ringing, and feel sure that it was about this time that all such activities ceased.

Sleeping during the day helped my condition, but alienated me from the few 'friend's and acquaintances I, at that time had. Relief however was short lived as my dead 'friend' came back to haunt. My memories are shrouded in shadow but these events are never lost to me even though I dearly wish to forget them.

I distinctly remember him slowly materialise before me late one winters night. This time his shoulders were also visible. Time and nature had taken it toll on his face and his grin was more due to rictus than to humour. For a few minutes this ghastly apparition paralysed me with abject horror before fading slowly into the shadows from whence it had come.

Night after night the ritual re-occurred. By this time my nerves were frayed to breaking point and my thinking was anything but coherent. As a last desperate attempt to save my sanity, I attempted to sleep at night again using a mixture of alcohol and drugs. A foolish idea in hindsight, but one born out of the desperation of my condition. The dreams that night were horrific beyond belief, and the combination of sedatives merely held me in a paralysis which I could not break free from until well after dawn.

Following this experience I resolved to sit the madness out and continue with my nightly vigil. Night after night my dead 'friend' appeared more solidly, and within a fortnight of his first nightly appearance his whole person was visible.

He was dressed in a long flowing black cloak terminating in calf high matching leather boots. His face was a mask of decaying flesh and in the decay of his right hand, he held the gleaming blade of a long knife. For the first time he moved and with a swift motion pulled the blade above his head and brought it down in an arc before him. With this he faded from sight.

At once I knew what I must do. Jumping up, I dashed down the stairs making my way into the kitchen. Once there I selected the largest knife I could find and thrust it clumsily into my belt. I then donned my raincoat and headed out into the darkened streets. My next recollection was awakening fully dressed in a chair with the knife, now bloodied, grasped in my right hand.

From this time on, my 'friend' ceased to haunt me, but as each night drew near I would feel a strange restlessness creep over my being. I could not resist it and the city streets drew me like a magnet. Eventually I would succumb and take to the streets again. My faculty for clear thought only returning to me as I returned to my house, blood splattered and exhausted as the rays of dawn broke over the horizon.

How long this continued I have no idea, but as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months the nature of my night time activities became more clear. My senses started to stay with me through the night and I was at last able to see exactly what the nature of my activities were.

At first the knowledge horrified me, but soon I came to understand and perhaps even relish it. I was doomed to circumstance, yet the importance of this mission entrusted to me overcame all my fears and objections.

I must purge the city streets from the foul scum which corrupts them. This foul task which I must do alone because those I strive to save would condemn me if they knew the truth. So each night I take to the streets and hunt out the scum of this corrupt city. Each one is judged by the authority which has been bestowed upon me, and those found wanting, I condemn as harlots with the sentence of my knife. Swiftly I judge and swiftly I flee lest the 'authorities' catch me. For they cannot understand how necessary my actions are.

My time is drawing near now. I have become hunted by those foolish authorities who do not, who will not understand. My house is no longer my own and I have nowhere left to hide. One last time then, must I cleanse the streets of vermin. Once again must I strike down the harlots that corrupt this once fair city.

Once more I must go into the Night.