Shand sat in his gloomy flat, gazing at the raindrops going south across the window.

Friday night and here he was still smarting from the critical drubbing given to him that the previous weekend  by the Writers’ Group.

 He wondered whether it was worth going back.

Some of them had slated his stories for being derivative,  trotting out the usual list of suspects: H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Ramsey Campbell, and the like. Some of the comments had   been downright nasty. Just because he was not writing fey poetry about being in love, paying strict attention to rhythm and metre of course, or short stories about wee wifies in Scottish villages, or even stories with animals acting like people!

Ok, admittedly he had plundered Lovecraft and King, but so what? Didn’t everyone copy their heroes to start with? What was wrong with wearing your influences on your sleeve?

In his own eyes at least, he was the “Master of the Macabre” and nobody was going to take that from him! He would show them all one day.

Shand had been writing his “supernatural tales,” as he liked to call them for about ten years_. His flat was cluttered with books and magazines of the genre. He was not giving up writing this because some nippy academic types had slated them for being “Pulp Fiction” or “Like the stuff you read in airports,” who were they to decide what was what?

The members of the group were could at best be described as representing a diverse selection of the population. If he wanted to be less charitable (and after today’s critical mauling, he was feeling less charitable) he would be more inclined to describe them as a mixed bag of misfits, social inadequates, and otherworldly eccentrics. Three of the group had been particularly vicious.

Fiona Sinclair was the ringleader. Victoria Beckham-thin with blonde highlighted hair, she was always first to dive in and critically savage the work of the latest wannabe poet or novelist. Nobody had read any of her stuff in recent years, but she was believed to have a couple of collections of erotic poetry published in the 1990s.

Then there was Robert Ash, a dry, waspish academic who lectured in various things, all of them boring. Ash’s criticism of fellow group members was always one sided and very rarely constructive, he had come down particularly heavily on one of Shand’s tales, his update of Dracula to a North-East of Scotland location in the present time.

There was also Bill Denning. Denning was a solicitor, who made a living out of being supercilious, pompous, and condescending. He looked every inch the part, with his well-cut pin-striped suits and his immaculately coiffured silver-grey hair, which he believed lent him a distinguished air. He attended the writers’ group sporadically, but always raised the hackles of others when he did turn up. His prose work, like Fiona Sinclair’s poetry, was thinly disguised autobiography. He would go on about all the cases he had taken, using the persona of “Bill Matthews,” a solicitor who would take on any client, no matter how dodgy. He was working on a novel, with Matthews as main character; he hoped to be outselling Ian Rankin before long. Shand’s stories had been severely criticised by Denning several times, he had savaged them in a manner like that which he regularly demolished the Crown’s cases in trials courts. Denning had really got under Shand’s skin.

Having stared out the window to the street below for about an hour, Shand decided to brave the rain and take a stroll down to the “Queen Vic. He did not fancy venturing into town on a rainy night like this.Once in the pub, his gaze was met by a few inhospitable looks, from the regulars. It felt like walking into a saloon in a western movie. The dearth of customers made any chance of a fight breaking out unlikely. It was more likely that a tumbleweed would blow in the door of the place!

Shand stared into space and avoided making eye contact with anyone. He fumed silently as he drank , anger and alcohol mixed in equal measures. A heady cocktail indeed. He was midway through his third Stella and whisky chaser when a plan to get his own back on his literary tormentors began forming in his mind.

Shand chuckled to himself as he staggered home. He was imagining three sets of smug smiles being wiped away, as he started writing;

Fiona’s Tale:

“In her life outside the writers’ group, Fiona was a stickler for perfection. Some had labelled her “obsessive-compulsive,” but nothing had been proved as regards that. She did not suffer fools gladly and longed for the day when the perfect man would walk into her life and sweep her off her feet. So far, any men she had been involved with had been scared off after a few months, by her. As a result, she often found herself sitting in her flat, alone, drink within reach, typing out poetry of past relationships and dressing it up a little as erotica. This made her feel good about herself and she had published a couple of chapbooks in this style, penned under the pseudonym of “S”. Nobody had guessed who the mysterious “S”was, though some of the writers’ group had come close.

Anyway, today she was doing overtime at work. She held a management position in a government office. Management? That was a laugh! She felt that she ran the place on her own most of the time and got little or no thanks for it. Nobody had any gumption these days, she thought to herself. She was beginning to sound like her mother, she was only thirty-seven, but was sounding like her mother or even her dear departed Dad. It was true though, the place was falling apart, it was like a scenario from the stories of that new guy in the writers’ group, Shand. Shand was a horror writer, like James Herbert or Stephen King, and people like that. To be fair, she thought, Shand’s stuff was ok, but a little too creepy for her, he was a bit of a creep himself, always seemed to be peering over the top of his steel rimmed specs, he thought this gave him an air of superiority. He always was wearing the same combo of checked cotton shirt, white T-shirt and jeans that had seen better days. An odour of staleness always hung around him. There was something else about him too, something that she could not pin down.

Fiona made her way up the stairs to the canteen to make herself a cup of coffee. It was coming up for half six. She would have a coffee, work another half hour, and then make tracks for home. Treat herself to a pizza and a glass of wine, a large one of course, she deserved it. She was knackered, had been in work since just after seven this morning and her mind was beginning to flag. She would take the lift on the way back down, she told herself. The kettle was full and still warm, someone had obviously been up here recently, folk were always going where they should not, though nobody had ever been able to prove it-things had gone missing, purses, laptops -it beggared belief. Someone had left out a jar of coffee, so she would help herself to that; nobody would miss a spoon of coffee. If you can’t beat them, join them, she thought. She spooned the Nescafe into the mug and poured in the now boiling water, then switched off the light and the kettle.

She shut the door behind her and carried the mug out into the landing to the lift. The lift was open when she went through the door into the lift area. Fiona walked in. As soon as the doors closed, she regretted not taking the stairs.

The back wall of the lift opened into a grotesque netherworld, a dark cavern of a place. It stank, like a sewer or something rank and quite possibly dead. She heard a slithering sound, like something wet and squishy making its way towards her through the dankness. There was a muffled chattering. The squishing came closer and closer. The lift shaft door seemed to grow further and further away then urgently slammed shut. Fiona was enveloped in darkness and felt cold wet tentacles grabbing at her. Her screams filled the dark void…”

Shand wondered about this ending. He thought about calling it “Her Work Was Her Life, But Proved to be her Death,” but decided-against it – it was a bit naff! Imagine what his detractors in the writers’ group would say about that! Fatigue was closing on him and bed was the only prospect for him as it was three o’clock in the morning and the drink was catching up on him. He clicked “save” and started to shut down the computer. He would print it in the morning and present it at this week’s meeting. The Group met on Saturday and after mulling it over and having authored a short story depicting the demise of one of the “critics,” he was prepared to go back with his head held high.

“Bye then, have a nice evening, Fiona!” he said to the silent room, as the screen faded to black..

Saturday morning flicked bars of sunshine through the gap between the curtains and Shand dragged himself and his hangover from the bed and off to the Arts Centre. He arrived to find several the group sat round a table drinking coffees from Styrofoam cups, heads bowed in deep discussion.”Hey Shand, didn’t you hear?” one of them called, “We’re cancelling today’s meeting as a mark of respect for Fiona”.

Shand struggled to keep an appropriately sad expression on his face when he heard the rest of the story. Fiona had been found dead at work in a lift shaft, just like in his story. Her funeral was to be held somewhere down south, he was not going, it was not as if she had been family or even a friend.

Was the whole damn thing coming true? He wondered crazily whether the wall of the lift had opened into a “grotesque netherworld” and tried not to giggle.

The rest of Shand’s weekend went by in a blur of paranoid thoughts. He had drafted a story describing her death in the way it had happened, and it just so happened that the act had coincided perfectly with the fiction. But his rational or at least the more rational side of his mind dictated that no one could suspect his involvement in Fiona’s death just because of a story he had written.

Surely it was just a case of life, or in this case, death imitating, art?

Monday washed dirty rain down over the Granite City. Shand’s working day in the insurance office was mundane and mindless as ever. Today more than ever, he kept to himself and did not get involved in anything with fellow staff. Despite his shock at the weekend, he was working on his second story, albeit under the guise of project work.

Ash’s Last Pint:

“Ash sat at the desk musing over whether to go for a drink after work. His day had been good – He would go home and look over the poems he was working on for the next meeting of the writers’ group. His stuff was widely published in small press magazines and various poetry websites. He was looking to collect enough poems to publish a small book at the end of the year. He had been favourably compared to Ted Hughes and his chapbook “Fieldfares Flight” had garnered great feedback from various respected literary magazines.

He would walk to a pub, any pub, just for a couple of pints on the way home, preferably pints of real ale. Once he hit the city centre, it was getting dark, and the starlings were flying in scarf- like formations over Union Bridge. He imagined that if this moment had been scripted by Shand, the starlings would have no doubt formed themselves into a skull shape, with snakes wriggling through the eye sockets. He laughed at his even thinking that what was he thinking about that idiot for?

The guy was a real geek. He had been coming to the group for a few months now and seemed to produce a story a week, which in any other circumstance might be great, the only thing was, all his works ripped off everybody else, it was like having a pub quiz called ‘Spot the Influence’ with all Shand’s tales.

Ash was reminded of when Oasis had burst onto the scene and he and his pub mates had been listening for the compendium of influences in everything they played; like Oasis, Shand’s work was highly derivative of other folks, and he needed pegged down a bit. Fiona had done her best, but he kept coming back, a glutton for punishment.

Ash stopped in the Prince of Wales, one of his favourite places. It was unusually quiet for a Thursday night; late-night shopping had brought folk to the shops and not to the pub. He bought a pint of Old Peculiar and sat down in a corner to read from a Neil Gaiman novel, amused at the sticker on the cover that read “As good as Stephen King or your money back!!” His amusement was by a voice behind him, a cackled—slightly camp voice, was addressing him. The stranger sounded like Kenneth Williams, the actor in the Carry-On films, except he did not say “Oooh Matron”, he was giving Ash verbal abuse. Ash looked round, the guy who delivered the insult looked like the vampire on the  cover of Stephen King’s “Salem’s Lot,” a guy with a shaved head, pale bloodless looking skin, and a pointed chin, he leered exhibiting the pointed teeth that vampires are reputed to have. Ash got into the Gaiman novel, American Gods, it was not really his thing, but the Oxfam bookshop had a copy and he needed to have something to read if he was going for a solitary pint or two in the Prince, prior to returning home to a pile of ironing and unwashed dishes. He ignored the “vampire” and read a few more pages, Gaiman was not that bad after all, mind you it might have been the Peculiar going to his head, as he’d eaten little since lunch. Feeling an ache in his bladder, an urgent need to piss, he left his pint and book, and made for the Gents.

Behind the door was the man from earlier. Eyewitness accounts said that “Mr Ash had left with a weird looking man with a shiny bald head and cadaverous appearance”. Ash’s body was found later that night in a nearby graveyard, his body exsanguinated”.

Shand snickered quietly at that one. He imagined that Ash himself would have savaged his episode saying that vampires did not come out in the light, but what would it matter?

The following day, he did not check the newspapers, listen to the news on the radio, or watch it on TV, had he done so, he would have discovered that “A body, had been found in St Nicholas Kirkyard, seemingly drained of blood.

 Shand, oblivious to this, was focused on his third story.

Denning’ s Last Case.

“Denning entered the court buildings, walked past security and the sniffer dogs. He had his head in the air in his usual manner and ignored the court reception staff as they inquired what court he was appearing in. Did they not know that he, William Edwin Denning of Denning, Denning and Smith, the best solicitor in the city, was appearing once again for Willie Rankin. Rankin looked certain to go to jail, given his extensive list of previous convictions, his spiralling drug habit, not to mention his chaotic lifestyle -the social worker’s conclusion of the report indicated that a custodial sentence was “The only disposal Rankin could realistically hope for.”

Rankin was a bad bastard, there was no doubt about that but, Bill would get him off lightly, and he knew it. He had swung cases like this before, and had written about them as his fictional alter ego, Matthews.

The first case seemed to take forever, as neither agent nor fiscal seemed to be prepared, the clerk had said that he would call his case third if possible, as there were a couple of solicitors who wanted away to deal with cases in other courts.

Dennings’ mind started wandering. He gazed vacantly around the room, taking in the faces of the spectators, some fellow solicitors, some accused who were waiting also, some wives and girlfriends who had come to support their loved ones, and at the end of the row, near the door, was Shand. Was it really Shand, the specky git from the Writers Group? Sure, enough the checked shirt and white T-shirt, his usual uniform, was much in evidence, as wrinkled and stinking as always, and his John Lennon glasses. He mouthed something towards Denning as he caught his eye. Denning ignored it. Denning was not going to let the geek spoil his day; he would be here to see one of his deadbeat, junkie mates appearing in court.

The second case was called and as the accused had not turned up the sheriff granted a warrant to apprehend the accused, despite the protestations of the fiscal.

The clerk called Denning’s case, “The diet of Her Majesty’s Advocate against William Rankin.” Denning moved forward as Rankin shuffled in from custody cuffed to a security guard. The fiscal narrated the facts of the case to the court. It was a bleak and sorry tale. Ten charges of Theft by Housebreaking, one from the house of an 80-year-old woman, whom he had also beaten up in the process.

Denning was rifling through his files when Shand caught his eye again. He was giving him the finger and mouthing obscenities , something that none of the court officials even saw. What had Denning ever done to Shand apart- from slag off a couple of his stories? – They were crap anyway, surely, he was not as sensitive as that, to come and stalk him during working hours, because of something as trivial as that.

The fiscal sat down and took her place. Denning then launched into one of his legendary (in his mind) mitigation speeches.

 He began to tell the court how his client’s early life had been plagued by his alcoholic father’s domestic abuse of his mother, his sister’s descent into living on the streets as a prostitute, his grandmothers recent death from cancer and how these factors when added together had driven him to a drug habit and his catalogue of thefts over the years to fund and fuel the said habit, not to mention the fact that his lifestyle was descending into a maelstrom of chaos.

Shand stood up, cheering and clapping.” As good as one of your stories, Mr Denning” he jeered.

Again, nobody seemed to see or hear Shand.

Was it being just that this was a busy court, and nobody bothered about things like this as they wanted to be out of the room as soon as possible?

Denning continued, indicating that his client was at the core, a decent man, who has not had his troubles to seek and that he would benefit from a Community Payback Order, the maximum number of hours being appropriate in this case.

Shand was right beside him, whispering in his ear, ‘Ye don’t really believe that they’re going to fall for that one again, you used that one last week”.

Can nobody see this nutter standing next to me? thought Denning.

“Mr Denning, you’re slurring your words, have you been drinking?” said a voice, which turned out to be that of the Sheriff.

He hadn’t been drinking, he’d maybe been daydreaming. Looking around, he could see that the court was waiting for him, to give his mitigation on behalf of Rankin.

 Mr Denning, the court is waiting, your mitigation please!”

I have just given it, in, my usual inimitable way, thought Denning, he thought he must have daydreamed Shand and the mitigation. A look around the courtroom confirmed this. Shand was nowhere to be seen if he ever even been there.

Denning spoke, briefly saying that he concurred with the social work report, and that Mr Rankin, would benefit from a custodial sentence, and that he had nothing that he could usefully add.

The clerk read out the sentence indicating that it would be one year’s imprisonment.

Denning turned to find that Rankin had jumped the dock and held a blade at his throat. He then proceeded to plunge it into Denning’ s neck. Police and custody officers clamoured to restrain Rankin, but the sound of Denning’ s dying gurgle, his drowning in his own blood, punctuated by the gasps of the spectators, filled the silent courtroom. As life ebbed from him, he was sure he saw Shand’ s face melt and merge into Rankin’ s, swimming in and out of focus as they became one then separated as all became darkness.”

Shand saved the document and laughed. The story of Denning was a little different. The Shand creation in this tale was an idealised version of him, a menacing malevolent version. It wasn’t until he went to the local shop to buy some groceries and a newspaper that he discovered that “the local court had been disrupted by the murder of a prominent local solicitor”, the headline went into detail about how “William Denning, of Messrs Denning, Denning and Smith had been appearing for William Rankin, age 34.

The report indicated that the conclusion of the case had not gone in Mr Rankin ‘s favour and he took it out on Mr Denning, no comment was given regarding the weapon “

A smaller article, on the same page told that the authorities had finally been able to identify the body found in St Nicholas Kirkyard as Robert Ash, a local lecturer. The story also re-hashed the grisly details of his demise.

Shand read on in disbelief, first Fiona’s death, now Ash, in the same paper as Denning’s death. He could not avoid the obvious conclusion any longer. His stories had a power. They were not just scary or thrilling, was he some sort of psychic, with powers to kill others who crossed him in any way?

He had thought of himself as “Master of the Macabre” like Stephen King, but was he master of something far more sinister than that.

Shand swallowed hard. Evidently, the police were following a line of enquiry, didn’t they always say that?

Sitting in his front room, watching the raindrops run down the pane as he had done earlier in the month and tried to make some sense out of recent events.

He had written a story about each of the folk in the group who had slagged off his work; each story had become fact in what he hoped was a series of macabre coincidences. Each of the subjects of the stories had died because of these fictions, was it him, his computer, or the power of his fiction that had caused the deaths? His thoughts descended into the world of the paranoid, he unplugged the phone, shut the blinds, firstly looking down to the street to make sure that no police cars with armed police were not waiting to make their move, like he had often seen on TV Cop shows.

He sat at his desk and switched the laptop on. It whirred into action, and he opened the folder he kept the supernatural tales in, opened a new Word Document and typed in the words “Redemption”, thinking that by rewriting the stories in a more positive light, he felt he could redeem himself.

If he had written these adversaries to death, was it not possible to write them back to life and redeem himself in the process? That sort of thing happened in things like ‘Twilight Zone’, why couldn’t it happen in the Grey, rainy zone of Aberdeen?

Typing in a new tale about Fiona Sinclair, he noticed that every time he typed a word, nothing seemed to appear on the screen.

Looking around to see that everything was in order, he checked that everything was plugged in where it should be, all was fine. However, it was when he started typing again that he noticed that the words were making their way from the keyboard and crawling their way up his hands, wrists, arms…

He shut his eyes and opened them again in the vain hope that this was a nightmare, and he was still asleep, this hope dissolved completely when the words, which now spilled from the keyboard like a thousand flies, a black swarm, forcing their way into his mouth and ears,

His last sight, from word blinded eyes, was an image on the screen. It was the title of a story. “He Choked on His Own Words “, another Supernatural Tale by “Shand,” there was laughter coming from the computer .as Shand gasped and coughed, fighting for his last breath.