The Thing that Slavered in the Night

I

It is 1.30 AM on Sunday morning. The young policeman approaching Angel Lane notices a bright light coming from the garden of the house at the corner. He strolls over to investigate. It has been an easy but long shift and he is doubtless looking forward to a cup of tea at the station; he is not prepared for the Boschean scene that is to shortly confront him. How could he be? Demonology is not currently on the curriculum at Hendon Police College.

The garden shows every trace of a savage mortal struggle. Pots and chairs are upturned; soil and garbage are strewn everywhere. The policeman glances down and just behind the wall sees a grotesque vision straight from the deepest pit of medieval hell: a monstrous squat toad-like form is frenziedly fighting with a large black shape. The shape appears inert – perhaps it has been subdued and is being consumed by the foul slavering toad. A lurid bluish light is blazing from the malevolent creature’s mouth. Its eyes are wild and the flesh on its forelegs a livid reptilian white.

As his eyes adjust to the crepuscular light, the policeman notices that the thing’s head is crowned with a mane of unkempt dishevelled hair. With a gasp of sheer horror he realizes that it may once have been human.

II

Late the previous evening, there had been an almighty rumpus outside my house. Things were being chucked about, somebody or some thing was snorting loudly and – most alarming of all – there was a weird scraping noise as though a knife were being sharpened on the patio. Screaming bellicose war cries and armed with a large bacon knuckle (handy weapon plus welcome source of sustenance in the event of a protracted struggle), I shot out of the house to confront the intruder, which turned out to be a large and extremely surprised badger. The badger fled & I contemplated my wrecked garden.

An hour or so later, I was outside the house again stuffing the detritus wildly into a huge black plastic waste bag. Suspecting badgers to be carriers of a whole host of foul diseases and to have absolutely lethal saliva – to my mind they were the mammalian equivalents of komodo dragons – I was suitably clad. Aside from my habitual and exceedingly tasteful green combat vest, I was wearing a pair of latex surgical gloves and griping a high-powered torch between my teeth. As there was little chance the badger would return, I had consumed the bacon washing it down with a litre or so of claret. After all, I had a hard dirty job to do.

“Good evening, Sir” said an authoritative if nervous voice just above my head.

III

I gaze up at the tall uniformed figure above me. Unwilling at first to relinquish the torch gripped in my teeth, I gargle “harrow” back. My voice sounds somewhat like that of a Tellituby. Dimly aware that the situation might look a trifle suspicious and that the policeman appears strangely agitated, I remove the torch and provide a more compendious albeit slurred explanation: “Buggery badger”.

“I see”, says the policeman, very, very slowly. He steps backwards doubtless wondering whether to draw his truncheon or whether the wiser course would be to summon armed assistance. We gaze at each other for a while. There is a pregnant pause.

IV

The policeman eventually continued his journey to the police station but not without a number of deeply suspicious backward glances. Deciding that my repairs to the garden would suffice, I retired inside to finish the wine. It had been a somewhat unusual but not entirely unsatisfying evening.