After spending years away from home, Tristan Thomas is persuaded to return by his sister, Bobby. Tristan has ghosts that need exorcised and now it's time for the damaged 31 year old to try and deal with them. He picks a strategy that will end in bloody results, but could transform his life for the better, and bring serenity to his tortured soul. This chilling, yet, moving thriller, deals with a sensitive subject that highlights how people are affected in different ways. Packed with mental torture, an unusual developing love story, mixed with vengeance, Demons is an emotional and violent story.
Excerpt:
The stench in the bedroom was so foul, she almost passed out before she even opened the door. When she got to the top of the landing and walked in, the tang tortured her nose with a jumble of unpleasant odours she didn't recognise.
Her dazed body was urging her to go to sleep despite the smell, in fact, Margaret Gee was so drunk she would have slept on a park bench if she had no other choice. But on this night, it would have to be next to her malodorous husband.
Why he smelt so bad, was also beginning to bother her. She couldn't make up her below par mind whether he had messed himself, covering the bed sheet with liquefied unformed excretion, or, if he had stained the sheets with his fetid urine.
She took a step forward and drunkenly fell backwards into the wall. She managed a short burst of laughter, then immediately placed her hand over her mouth realising her outburst was too raucous. The last thing she needed from her husband was a lecture on what time it was. It was nearly 1am.
Margaret had just come back from a girl's night out and had deserved to go out for a change. After all, it had been only a few days since her husband was out with his workmates. She didn't fancy the idea of watching her husband drink himself into a stupor in front of the television again, so she decided to go out with her work colleagues.
Still standing in her bedroom, Margaret lifted her chin up and sniffed like a dog. Her nose was sending a message to the brain that her first estimation was incorrect, and that in fact, the smell was a mixture of musty booze, dire breath, and strong reeking body odour coming from her husband. Satisfied that going to bed wouldn't be a life threatening and soggy experience, she began to undress. She was now struggling to keep on her feet, as she began to manically pull her clothes off before her legs and vision decided to relinquish.
It was a race against time to get undressed, before unconsciousness decided to appear. The fifty year old then fell to the floor on her backside, wearing nothing but her knickers and socks. She bent over, making her flabby stomach look like an accordion made of white skin, and then patiently took each sock off and then whipped off her white urine stained knickers that landed on the dressing table.
She slipped into bed, pulled the duvet up to her neck and fell asleep within seconds.
*****
"Oh no."
Margaret half fell out of bed; the uncomfortable sensation in the back of her throat was building. She ran downstairs in the dark, fortunate that she didn't injure herself, and with her hand over her mouth, she reached the toilet just in time before a jet of vomit came out. She tried to sniff, feeling and smelling some of the rank lumpy fluid making its way up to her nasal area. It was over within thirty seconds.
She spent a few more moments cleaning her mouth by spitting into the vomit covered toilet bowl and then she blew her nose, trying to remove some of the puke that was still in there. The toilet was flushed and she brought down the lid. She then sat down and placed her weary head in her juddering hands.
"Happens every time I mix my drinks," she reprimanded herself. She should have known better at her age and with her experience.
Margaret wiped her teary eyes with her forearm and put her fingers through her sticky hair. Her face was full of repugnance, knowing that her hair was full of hair products from the night before, and now it was covered with fresh sweat from her ordeal.
She went into the kitchen, switched the light on and ran herself a glass of water. Dehydration was upon her, and she clasped her head to prevent it from whirling like a child's spinning top. Her head span and ached; she held onto the sink for balance and looked at the clock. 5:47am.
She finished the glass of water in the dim kitchen and smelt her armpits. "I need a shower."
She stumbled to the bathroom and flicked the red power switch that was situated outside the bathroom door. She turned the hot shower on, which steamed the window and the bathroom mirror almost immediately, and she put the bathroom light on. Although her fragile eyes were begging her not to expose them to the brightness of a sixty-watt bulb, she didn't have a choice. Showering in her condition was risky, but in the dark, was even riskier.
She stepped into the shower and as soon as the cluster of warm jets hit her face, she was feeling enhanced instantaneously. She let out a satisfied moan and began to wet her short brown hair. She looked for her shampoo, but something in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She quickly looked down to her ankles and stumbled slightly on the slippery surface, which was caused by an assortment of horror and alcoholic poisoning.
As the shower continued to soak her body, she noticed that very fine watery blood ran towards the plughole.
In confusion, she turned and frantically checked her body. Driven by panic, she felt for a wound, but there was nothing. She was convinced the blood must have been in the bed.
With his drinking, her husband had passed blood not so long back, and although he refused to see a doctor, Margaret had yet to tell him that she secretly had booked him an appointment for next Thursday.
Her concern grew however, when she inspected once again. This blood seemed thicker.
How did it stick to her body? It must have been pure blood, instead of blood mixed with urine, which meant he hadn't passed blood. But it also meant that her husband might have injured himself, but didn't notice or was too drunk to care, and went to bed with some kind of wound he had received while he was in a drunken state.
Now with her pessimistic thoughts racing out of control, she dried herself quickly to investigate the condition her alcoholic husband had left the bed.
It was early morning and she was still in a soused state, but she needed to get upstairs, switch the bedroom light on and investigate the damage to ease her mind. If he were injured, then she would get help. If he had had an accident, which she seemed to think was now unlikely, she would give him a harsh lecture first thing in the morning.
Margaret was sick and tired of this.
She couldn't go anywhere without worrying what condition she was going to find him in. She had lost count how many times he went to bed leaving the cooker on, leaving the windows open, and getting up in the middle of the night and urinating in the clothes cupboard, then going back to bed.
Before she left the house on her girl's night out, while standing at the door waiting for the taxi to turn up, her husband had asked her, what was wrong with the dress that he bought her. She informed him, that he had pissed all over it last week, and she had to throw it out.
She had to put up with twenty-five years of mediocrity. Not anymore.
Leaving him seemed to be the only option, and she couldn't wait forever. There was never going to be a good time to tell him. Her affair with her boss had been going on for six months, and the apartment was now ready to move in. But to her new lover's displeasure, she had been hesitating for weeks, as she wasn't sure how badly her husband would take her news.
Her mind was made up. She was going to tell him sometime this month. She needed to tell him that it was all over, before he found out from someone else; other people at her work were finding out, so she had to be straight with him. She was worried what he might do. F**k it, she thought. You only get one shot at life.
Wrapped in her emerald green dressing gown, and tired of her husband's selfish behaviour, she stormed upstairs angrily, clenching her fists together. Her head seemed less achy and her vision had been restored to its normal status. Her hair was still wet.
She pushed her bedroom door ajar and turned on the light. Her husband's body created a huge round lump under the duvet.
She approached the lump; the duvet covered his face revealing only the top of his head. She carefully pulled the duvet back down to his chin, and her eyes gazed at her husband's face. She noticed the paleness of his skin and the blueness in his lips. Her anger had diminished and turned into genuine disquiet for the husband she was ready to leave.
But she didn't need to leave him, as he had already left her.
"Francis," she whispered. Then she began to shake him. "Francis!"
With her left hand, she reached for the duvet, closed her eyes tight, and pulled the whole thing off the bed.
She didn't need to look. She did. But she didn't need to.
The appalling, deathly reek hit her firmly. She opened her eyes and saw him curled up; most of the bed was saturated in dark blood and his naked body was snowy white, both of his wrists had been cut.
He must have known. Oh God he must have known. But how did he know and when did he find out?
She fell back against the wall and began to sob. "I'm sorry, Francis. I'm so sorry. I couldn't have told you sooner. Francis! Francis! I'm sorry. You left me with no choice."
Her distressing cries continued for half an hour and it took a very concerned neighbour, who had heard her sobs through the wall, to call someone.
Twenty minutes later, the paramedics removed the corpse from the house and it was placed into the ambulance, just as the papergirl was delivering Francis's morning newspaper.
