The Night Jogger

According to a manual on fitness that Tam once read, it was best to exercise in cold weather. He had taken that advice to heart early on in his attempts to shed the excess pounds he'd collected when the wanton behaviour of his 20's had become the unhealthy habits of this 30's. He lacked the confidence to go to a gym and the discipline of a strict fitness regime but was motivated to go out at night jogging mainly as a respite from his wife and children who he'd also collected in his late 20's.

His route was a couple of miles down the long main road near his house and through the old industrial estate with it's endless stretches of high red brick walls and long abandoned factories. He took some aesthetic pleasure from the area. The empty silent streets, the darkness of the economically dormant estate and the austere functionality of the dated and vandalised architecture seemed to Tam to hold a kind of stark, haunting beauty which he considered satisfyingly eerie.

When he told people of his route and his joy in it they always scowled asking him if it was dangerous. The estate was commonly seen as the domain of dodgy knife wielding kids, smack-heads, mentally ill-tramps, but in the months he'd jogged the route he'd seen no-one but a tired looking elderly man who walked his dog. He always confirmed people's fears though, telling them it was indeed rough. He liked to keep the route his own little secret. He didn't fancy someone joining him, it was his hour or so of complete detachment from his world, a form of ritual meditation in which he could, for a small while, escape from his family and work responsibilities. That he had lost some weight was in and of itself only a side-benefit. Sticking on the mp3 player and jogging while Gallows or Death Grips blasted his eardrums and his cares away.

Another night came and an hour after dinner Tam stuck on his shorts and trainers and fled his home for his nightly route through the industrial estate. About twenty minutes into his jogging his mp3 cut out and he realised he hadn't charged it up. This was frustrating to him but he persevered. Past the garage and the waste-ground he paced, past the bus-stop where a couple of fat kids in compulsory sportswear were stuffing their faces with a battered sausage supper and past the chip shop where he used to buy all his dinners from. The smell from the place was still delicious but he knew he couldn't go in. Like most addictions, his for greasy fried food was potentially fatal and like some drug addictions, his had lead him to experience the void, through a blocked heart artery rather than some unique neurological event that shifted his perceptions into the realm of the numinous.

Tam jogged past Billy Chapman's cut price supermarket as the old man was pulling down the shutters for the evening. He rounded the corner into the industrial estate, past the Brown Bull pub, where wrinkled and broken men stood outside in the cold fresh air sucking on cigarettes. Tam recalled “the incident” the long timeless moment of nothingness between stepping off the bus to waking up two days later in hospital, with a long scar down his chest and an ache in his ribs that subsided but never quite disappeared, even two years later. It had been the rude awakening that had set him on the path to fitness, not the pain and the confusion but the empty nothingness. He had not experienced the mythical life flashing before his eyes, nor a tunnel of light, nor any suggestion of anything beyond, just nothing, not even blackness, nothing. That had terrified him beyond all measure, the thought of death, of just stopping, of just no longer being and so he took up walking, then jogging. It helped take his mind off that bleak eventuality too. Except, that night, it didn't. He blamed the lack of music.

As he jogged beside the long red brick wall of the old plastic manufacturers he smelt a hint of burning which seemed to get stronger with every step. It wasn't long before it caught in his throat and made his mouth taste like charred chocolate. It wasn't coming from behind the ridiculously long wall but from somewhere far to his left, down by the old Church and Alloway Metal works. The smell was thick, pungent and soon he could see black smoke billowing from the direction, flickering flames reflected in the broken glass of the distant building. It wasn't on his route, far from it, but his curiosity and sense of concern got the better of him and so he crossed the road and turned left down the small slope towards the huge dilapidated factory. The place was surrounded with twelve foot high spikes chained together into fencing once painted light blue to make it look ominous. As he continued down the diverted route he could hear noises, music, singing but of an odd type, almost folky, but with wild pipes and crazed drums. He thought it sounds from a passing car at first but it sustained, grew louder and more frenetic as he approached the entrance to the Metal works. At a distance he noticed something bound to the chainlink gates one of which had been swung open. Closer, Tam swallowed in disgust and screwed up his face when he realised that someone had tied a small dog to the chainlink with tight wire and then gutted the poor little thing. There was a shocking amount of blood running down onto the ground where its innards lay cooling in the frosty night air. Tam felt sick, but worse he felt like crying, someone had taken a defenceless little animal and butchered it for kicks. Probably the same shitheads currently having a bonfire party in the old metal works. His first instinct was to leave and call the police but the caterwauling and droning cacophony from within the empty crumbling factory drew him in. It was so unusual and out of place that he knew he had to risk a look. He slowed his pace as he cautiously stepped over the large puddles of dog blood, past the factory gates and into the Church and Alloway driveway.

Thick black smoke was billowing through the rafters of the long rectangular building spiralling into the night sky, illuminated from the flames, seemingly twisting along with the awful droning and howling from inside. The racket was surprisingly loud and Tam wondered if he was about to walk into some kind of avante-garde performance. What he found when he walked towards the building was worse, much, much worse. Inside was a great blaze, a huge bonfire around which dozens and dozens of figures, stood, sat, played instruments and danced. Some were naked, others were robed, all wore masks, rough ugly things, that looked more like leathery scabs rather than distinguishable figures. As weird as it was, none of it compared to the grim spectacle several feet to the left. An old man, gagged and bound, stripped naked and bleeding was tied to one of the iron pillars that suspended the struts and broken glass roof above. His wounded face was swollen and bloody and it took a few moments for Tam to realise that it was the old man who he had seen walking his dog. This led him to realise the slaughtered dog he'd seen at the gates belonged to the old man too. Tam was about to run away, to get help, call the police when he saw something so strange and unreal that he could not take his eyes off it. It was difficult to clearly see, half hidden behind the blaze.

In form it looked somewhat like a giant rottweiler, almost ape like in its musculature. The thing was jet black and with horns like a goat and eye sockets filled with fire. It stood on hind legs, quite naturally it seemed and was rummaging through a large collection of items upon a large disused conveyor belt. Rusty knives, swords, manacles, a rib cage, a wrinkled and severed hand all ran through its powerful monstrous paws before it chose a serrated bread knife that glinted and gleamed in the firelight. The congregation's noise grew more fevered, almost insane as the dog-thing walked towards the tortured old man. It stopped in front of him, sniffing him like he was a tasty morsel. In an unnatural rumbling voice which was so loud it was like thunder drowning out the cacophony the beast said something that stopped the twisted celebration. The masked maniacs stood silent, as if each was holding their breath with anticipation. The creature dragged the knife across the old man's throat and as the blood sprayed all over it, the crowd gasped in pleasure and Tam without thinking shouted. “You sick cunts!”

All eyes turned onto him and in seconds they were all swarming, howling and leaping towards him. Tam instantly fled. Back across the driveway he ran as the gibbering rabble poured out of the factory and chased after him, their insane howling echoing through the estate like the rabid shrieking of demons. Tam ran, ran faster than he ever had, ran for his life as the crowd kept a close pace behind him. A rock hit his back and a knife flew past him but he did not stop, past the dead dog back up the slope and along the long red brick wall of the plastic manufacturers he ran with the demonic crew gaining on him. He sprinted past the Brown Bull where the old men already wide eyed dropped their smokes and ran inside, sped past the supermarket, chip shop and bus stop but the crew did not stop. At the waste ground they were mere feet behind him and by the garage they almost caught him but Tam ran faster than he thought possible, saw the long straight road towards his home and prayed silently to a God he didn't even believe in that he might make it home.

His body was in agony, his heart felt like it might give out, his lungs screamed for air but still he did not stop nor did the gang of lunatics behind him. As he approached the small bridge that crossed the burn yards in front of his home, he felt long fingers scrape at his back, tear through his expensive sports top taking long grooves of flesh with it. The pain gave him one last spurt of energy and he blasted over the bridge, so fast that he lost his footing and went down, tumbling over it and landing on his front, rolling. He looked up fearing the worst, terrified that the deranged cult was about to descend upon him but there was nothing, no madmen, no dog-demon, no-one. They had vanished leaving behind a cold empty street and Tam with his heart pounding like a pneumatic drill inside his rib-cage. He gave a relieved and puzzled laugh, picked himself up and slowly walked back towards his home.

The strange event had left him scarred, three large tears down his back but more than that it left marks in his psyche. Like the heart attack it changed him and his habits. No longer comfortable with his night jogging he joined a gym he also joined the local church no longer convinced that everything ended with nothingness. He was convinced that night he had witnessed demons and realised that there were worse things than the empty void waiting for him beyond death.