0513485001343534196 christopher fowler (39 page)

rpm record, and it dawns on him that he took Masters' name from the label, which features a dog and a gramophone. He wonders how many other characters' names came from spines of books and recollections of friends. A video of
Brief Encounter
, a copy of
Dracula
, a photograph of New York, a lottery ticket, a drawing of a phoenix, a brandy bottle, a hotel brochure, a dog's collar, an Arsenal scarf, childhood notes. He looks for the patterns that shape his own life and finds only tarmac, concrete and steel, the dead carapace of something lost to all but his mind's eye.

His own past is as dead as his - and Masters' - recollection of it.
Dr
Beeching closed the branch lines, road planners cut the streets in
half, smashed down the houses, constructed swathes of concrete
through the hills, the roads, the railways, the gardens, and like a
bush cut through at the root, everything familiar died. The shops of
his childhood were boarded up, homes falling to the wrecking ball,
friends divided, families relocated. Now oil-drenched vibrations
pulse the once-still air. A bright patch of pavement remains where
once he stood with his face to the sun, free as the sky
.

That was his reality.

Everything now is fiction.

They feel different, he notes, fact and fantasy. The former rooted in observation and experience, the latter bound by publishers' conventions.

Sitting in the small cold study, the storyteller determines to leave behind his outmoded world of locked-room mysteries and vampire soaps in search of something real. But how hard will it be to leave such a cosy niche for a place with endless horizons and no perameters? Even letting go has a learning process.

He pushes back his chair and goes to the open window, inventing as hard and as fast as he can. It is a beautiful spring morning, and the breeze causes his eyelids to flutter. There is brine in the air. He looks down from the window-ledge at the thin white clouds racing far beneath, then loosens his belt and steps out of his trousers. It only takes a moment to remove his T-shirt, pants and socks. Drawing a deep breath, he walks confidently out on to the rope-covered surface of the springboard, determined not to show that he is scared.

How the releasing of shackles makes his body feel lighter than air.

Poor old Harold Masters, not being allowed to finish his story. It was so obvious to see where his tale was going that there was simply no reason for the author to finish it himself, not when his readers could put together the clues and do the job for him. The burden is always on the author to rediscover ways of surprising his audience, and that task has been fulfilled, albeit in a rather unorthodox manner.

It's good to be standing at the edge, he tells himself, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. There's a new world ahead. As the old century closes, he can leave behind his plots and characters. There are some excellent practitioners of the art who seem more than happy to close up the store behind him. There will always be the attraction of lies.

His body is pale and unused to such exposure. The clouds below appear as if seen from an airplane window. He moves further to the end of the board and gives a few experimental bounces. Then he bends his knees, jumps into the air, comes down on to the board and straightens his legs. The tension released in the board springs him high into the air, so high he feels he could punch a hole in the sky. For a brief moment it seems as if he could stay like this forever.

And for those who are left back on the ground, blinking in the sharp sunlight, those who are all too familiar with where they have been, the question for them now is how not to look back, how not to look down, but where to begin.

Where to begin.

And the answer, of course, is right - here.

Personal Demons was scanned from the original book, OCR'd, proofed and converted to HTML

by Luc P.