Untitled

A man discovers something about his "inner demons".

It was about a fortnight before I was supposed to embark on the ship. The day had already advanced well past noon, yet I was still idly lying on my bed when I heard a strange voice outside. At least, I thought it was a voice at first; but when I tried to listen more carefully, the sounds of what I had thought to be spoken or whispered words seemed to melt together and drift along on the breeze. I decided that it must have been the wind that I had heard. I got up from the bed to look out the window at the courtyard at the back of the inn where I was staying. The inn was situated in a relatively quiet part of the town and there were no streets passing by the back of the building. In the courtyard stood a single ash tree, which - as I suddenly noticed - did not move at all. There was not a breath of wind to be felt! The moment I realized this, I could see a man entering the courtyard from the corner of my eye. There was something unusual about him, or rather, about his surroundings. It seemed as if his shadow was darker and more present then it should have been, almost as if it was three dimensional. But while the man continued his walk across the courtyard and I attempted to focus my eyes on him, his shadow seemed to fade back to its normal proportions and intensity and I recognised the man as the innkeeper’s melancholy servant Alfonso. Suddenly I realized that I could hear the strange voice again that I had heard earlier, but once again the sounds faded and disappeared as soon as I became aware of hearing them. I looked out the window again, only to find that Alfonso had left the courtyard.

 

I spent the next few days in my room with the windows and curtains closed, mostly lying on my bed or drawing charcoal pictures by the light of the dusty old lamp hanging from the ceiling. I had not been feeling very well for quite a while, especially mentally. In fact, I think I can say that I was actually rather depressed those days. One day, a number of new guests arrived at the inn and some of them were staying in rooms close to my own. Now, this was nothing new in itself - many guests had come and gone during my stay at the inn - but this time something was different. I could hear these new people talking every time they passed by my door on their way to or from their own rooms, even when I was certain that they were alone. And, just as it had been on that day when I saw Alfonso in the courtyard, every time I realized that I heard people talking, their words seemed to die away and vanish into thin air.

 

Not much later I decided to leave my room, take a walk around the town and maybe watch the ships in the harbour or the busy people on the main street. I hoped this would make me feel a little better, as staying in my dim, poorly lit room most of the time did not really help much at all in changing my despondent feelings. There was a hallway outside of my room that led directly to the inn’s barroom. When I entered, I thought the barroom was empty and I was about to make my way to the front door when I noticed the gloomy Alfonso cleaning a table in the corner. Once again there seemed to be some sort of ghostly presence in the shadows beside him, but when I turned to greet him this presence was gone and he simply nodded his head at me and went on with his work.

 

I stepped outside and followed the road to the harbour. I believe I already mentioned that the inn was in a quiet part of the town and therefore it did not surprise me that I was the only person out on the street. When I came closer to the centre of the town, however, a man approached from the opposite direction. I did not pay much attention to him at first, until I noticed something about him. Something similar to what I had seen when I looked at Alfonso. The sun was at my back and cast my own shadow in front of me and that of the approaching man behind him; and from this shadow seemed to emerge a being, hovering behind the man and following him in his steps. When he passed me I looked at him directly, and he - looking perfectly normal now - tipped his hat, greeted me and continued on his way. However, once he was behind me I could have sworn that I heard a voice that was distinctly different from the one I had heard when the man greeted me and that disappeared as soon as I became aware of hearing it.

 

At first I had ascribed the things I saw and heard to my own cheerless state of mind or perhaps also partly to Alfonso’s doleful appearance. I think I might even have been too apathetic to particularly care about something I did not see as important at that time. But now I began to suspect that there was something much stranger going on with me than I had initially realized; and my suspicions were confirmed when I arrived at the busy main street of the town. There were people all around me now and all those who were in my direct field of view looked just the way you would expect normal people to look, but the people I could see from the corners of my eyes or those at whom I was not consciously looking all had some sort of apparition rising from their shadow and all these apparitions seemed to be whispering things to the different people to whom they belonged in voices that died away as soon as I tried to listen to them. And whenever I turned my head or directed my vision elsewhere, the people who had seemed normal just a second ago now became just as the others, with ghostly beings emerging from their shadows. These beings appeared in all shapes and sizes; some were tiny, some were about the size of a human being and some were huge. Some looked particularly vicious, while others looked almost cute, but I could never really see them well enough to exactly describe what they looked like, because they disappeared as soon as I looked straight at them.

 

Now, it may not be immediately apparent from my rather simple and perhaps a little too detached description of these events, but I was really quite shocked when I first saw all these shadowy apparitions in the crowded main street and so I swiftly rushed back to the inn, where I immediately went back to my room. However, after thinking for a while about what I had seen, I realized that I was actually rather intrigued by what was going on and I decided to visit the town again one of the following days. So, that was what I did; a few days later, on an especially warm day, I went back to the town and walked along the harbour and the main street, observing the people there and the strange beings following behind them. I knew what to expect this time, so I was not so much afraid as interested in what I was going to see. But just as before, I could not actually see much at all, because the beings seemed to fade away whenever I tried to look at them. This was rather frustrating to me and I was about to go back to the inn once again, when I noticed a girl curiously looking at me. She too had some sort of figure hovering beside her (it looked fairly large and rather dark in colour), but unsurprisingly, it was gone when I looked straight at her. When she realized I had noticed her, the girl quickly stood up, avoided my eyes and walked away.

 

I suppose my depression had gotten slightly better at this point, although I still felt rather cheerless, but at least I did not feel the need to stay in my room all the time anymore. There was only about a week left before I had to leave on the ship now and I spent the time I had to wait making several more trips to the centre of the town. Although I did of course realize that it was far from normal, I was beginning to get used to the strange beings I could see following everyone I met. When I was taking another walk along the harbour, I ran into the same girl again that I had met a few days earlier. The first thing I noticed was that the figure emerging from her shadow seemed to be smaller than the last time I had seen it, although I could not be entirely sure, since it - of course - disappeared as soon as I had noticed it. The girl had apparently recognized me as well and was once again looking at me curiously, but when she passed me, she smiled and greeted me and as I walked back to the inn I realized that she seemed exceptionally pretty.

 

Yet another couple of days after that, I stepped outside the inn’s front door once again for what had now become my daily routine of visiting the town. It was a fine and pleasant day and this must have affected me in some way, since I was in an unusually good mood; at least, compared to how I had felt most of the time those days. Not far from the inn, along the road to the harbour, was a small grove of aspen trees. As I walked towards it I saw someone sitting under one of the trees and when I came closer I recognized the girl that I had seen twice before now. This time I was quite certain that the dark figure beside her was much smaller than it had previously been; the difference was obvious enough for me to notice right away before the figure faded in front of my eyes. When I had reached the tree under which she was sitting, she stood up and came walking beside me. She remained silent and just smiled elegantly and I did not say anything either, simply because I did not know what to say. We walked together for a while when suddenly she looked at me and said:

‘You can see them too, can’t you?’

I stopped, because I immediately knew what she meant, yet somehow I still needed her to confirm that she did indeed allude to what I was thinking she was alluding to.

‘Those apparitions, you mean?’

She laughed, probably because of my choice of words in naming the beings that I could see.

‘They are demons’

‘Demons?’

‘Well, not actual demons,’ she explained, ‘more like people’s inner demons. Manifestations of their fears, anxiety, inner troubles and conflicts. Negative feelings like that. They exist in many different shapes and sizes, depending on what someone is feeling and on how bad it gets…’

She paused for a while and looked down at the street.

‘…mine used to be pretty bad.’ She added.

I hesitated a little before I answered her.

‘It must be getting better though,’ I began, ‘when I saw you before, that… thing… was much bigger and more menacing than it is now.’

We walked by a large field where she stopped again and sat down in the grass. I sat down beside her and after a while she looked at me and smiled.

‘Yeah, it’s getting better.’

 

For a while we sat there silently. I do not know what she was thinking about and to be honest I do not quite remember what I was thinking about myself either. I do know, though, that I was glad that there was finally someone who wanted to talk to me after all those days I had spent alone in my room at the inn. It occurred to me that it was perhaps a little strange that she had known right away that I could see the same things that she could see and I wanted to ask her about it, but she was just ahead of me.

‘You must be wondering how I knew that you could see those demons as well.’

‘Yeah, in fact, I was just about to ask you.’ I answered.

‘Oh, to be honest, I don’t really know,’ she began, ‘I think I just had a hunch. You see, I’ve been able to see them my whole life, for as long as I can remember. I see them all the time, even when I’m looking straight at them. And I know that there are others who can see them as well, but usually only when they’re not consciously looking at them. When I saw you looking around in the town I thought you might be one of those people who could see them like that.’

I was not sure what to say. Suddenly, the situation seemed really bizarre to me and I wondered if I was dreaming. But the field in which we were sitting was real, the street in front of us was real and the girl sitting next to me was very much real, too.

‘You know,’ she continued with a gentle smile, ‘I can see your demons too. In fact, that’s the reason I talked to you… because they’re actually very much similar to mine.’

Quickly she looked down after having said this. I was surprised by this sudden revelation and I realized that I had not been saying much at all during our little conversation.

‘Well…’ I tried, ‘it’s true that I felt rather down not so long ago, but it’s been getting better for me too these last few days. I guess you must have seen that.’

‘Yes, I have,’ she nodded, ‘but it’s not just that…’ She paused for a while before she continued. ‘You know, I was hoping we could help each other, that’s why I followed you today, but maybe I should’ve talked to you sooner… tomorrow I’ll have to leave on the Caerus’

‘What? You mean the ship? The ship Caerus?’ I asked, suddenly surprised. ‘That’s the same ship I’ll be leaving this town on tomorrow!’

 

The next day, when I left my room in the inn for the last time, I was feeling much better. I came across Alfonso in the hallway and I was surprised to find that, although he was still his melancholy self, I could no longer see his demons floating beside him. When I arrived at the harbour, I saw that it was the same for all the other people I saw. They were once again simply regular people in my eyes and I did not see any demons around. I boarded the Caerus, where the girl that I had met was already waiting. She told me that she too had been feeling much better since that morning and I told her that I could no longer see the things I had seen before. She smiled and said:

‘That’s good.’

And after a while she continued, ‘your demons are almost gone, you know. In fact they’re so tiny now that they look pretty cute. They’ve got these little horns on their heads and everything…’

We looked at each other and burst out laughing as our ship pulled away from the quay and made its way to the open sea.