She first came to me years ago when, as I balanced on the edge of sleep, she appeared in a crack of synaptic energy. Placed momentarily against the backdrop of my brain's stark, bright landscape, I saw her, clear in every detail – known to me, yet still unknown. Over the years that vision clarified. It continued to come unbidden as I teetered on the precipice of my dreams, but early enough that I knew I hadn't yet entered the fantastical terrain of my nightly imaginings.

 

 As I sunk my head into feathered pillows and let out a contented sigh, she would emerge from the depths of my consciousness, small at first, like a figure drawing nearer from a far off land, gradually resolving herself into some form of clarity. And I would wait for her, watching her move closer as though she were a welcome friend I was waiting to greet. Yet, familiar though her presence had become, she was by no means welcome. I knew her not by any name and, to my mind, not only was she unnamed but the very malevolence of her presence and the inexplicable nature of these visits made her, in truth, unnameable.

 

 In her nightly visitations she always took on the same pose and, after numerous encounters, I began to recall it well and dread it equally well. She was, undoubtedly, sitting upon a chair in a room somewhere; although I couldn't see her surroundings clearly enough to guess where that might be – the only clue as to her whereabouts was a large vase of lavender by her side and what looked like a metronome behind her.  

      Each time she was swathed in an old fashioned dark-grey dress with a high collar and black buttons which ran down the front, and her hands lay clasped tightly on her lap in a parody of dignified prayer. I say a parody because, once I had become familiar enough with her countenance, it was apparent that she was a woman who would not give herself over to the Lord easily.

      Never before had I seen such a terrible face – empty and evil all at once. Her black hair, pulled back in a tight bun at the nape of her neck, stretched her already thin features tauter still, parting her cracked mouth to reveal a set of yellowing teeth. Her cheekbones, high and almost regal, did nothing to detract from her cold, harsh expression and her hooked, angular nose reminded me of the stories about witches and goblins that my mother had told me when I was young.

      But it was her eyes that made me the most afraid. Eyes that I never wanted to see again but ones which I was unwillingly drawn to every night. There was a blankness in those two sharp pinpricks yet, at the same time, a canniness and a cold, hard, tangible evil. They were focused just above where my imagined eye-line was, but visible enough all the same. As a criminal lawyer, a defender of 21st century evil, I had stared often enough into the eyes of men and women who carried no mark of goodness about them, but until I saw her eyes I had no concept of what true evil really was.

 

For about two years, the image which I have just described appeared with nightly regularity. Sometimes it would be fleeting and, at other times, she would linger for what seemed like a good number of seconds. Always the same, never anything new. Until a few months ago, that is.

      Disturbed by these images though I was, I never thought to question them. Sudden flashes had come to me before, as I am sure they sometimes come to you – the semblance of a face that you have never seen before; perhaps some remnant of a person you passed by on the street months ago, suddenly filling the void of your consciousness. Whatever it was, I never discussed her with anyone and I never sought help to banish her. Perhaps I should have done, for things suddenly changed.

 

      The first variation was when the static picture of my visitor appeared to me one evening in a flash of kaleidoscopic greys and blacks. At first she sat in her usual position, as still as a portrait and, apart from the small fact of her existence in my mind, virtually unreal. And then I saw something, or thought I saw something. A flicker of her eyes, away from the point just above my eye-line, suddenly staring directly at me. It was so quick that I might have imagined it, might have almost believed I had imagined it, if it weren't for the cold stab of fear in the pit of my stomach and the feeling that evil had just looked right into my soul. And then she began spinning. The grey of her dress merged with the black of her hair and eyes, vortexing down into smaller and smaller spirals, sucking me in until I could hardly breathe. And then she was gone.

 

The next night, for the first time in two years, she didn't appear and I somehow thought that the previous evening's experience had been my brain's way of vanquishing her once and for all. That day I entered the barristers' chambers out of which I practised, with a jaunty step and a tune on my lips. It was only when I caught myself humming in the robing room before my case that I realised what a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I hadn't before appreciated quite how badly those nightly visitations had pulled me down. They had tired me, depressed me and, only now did I comprehend, stopped me living life to the full.

 

That evening I went out with my fellow tenants and set about getting pleasantly drunk. In fact, every night for the next week I went out and got happily tipsy after work. After a whole nine days without a vision, I was ready to rejoice. Be advised, if you ever feel that you are ready to rejoice about anything, give it a day and then celebrate. I didn't, and I only realised too late that my jubilance had been premature.

      It was with a body full of wine and good cheer that I lay my head down on the ninth night. For a moment, when my head began spinning, I thought that I had overindulged my fondness for the claret, until I realised that my brightly decorated room was, in fact, gyrating in hues of black and grey. Suddenly I felt as though my head had been slammed back on the pillow and the wind knocked out of my chest, although that was impossible, for I was already laying down. And, before I knew it, there she was. In those nine days, it seemed that she had been gathering power, perhaps even harnessing the energy of my own brain. Now her eyes looked right into mine and, worse than that, she seemed to be saying something. 

      It was impossible for me to hear her and, as if she realised this, the speed of her syntax slowed and she began to mime with a studied deliberateness. Nonetheless, I still couldn't interpret her words. All I did know was that she seemed to be taunting me. Her mouth was pulled down in a self-satisfied sneer and her eyes shone with a sense of power and hatred.

     

The next day at work, I was unable to focus on anything and willed the hours to slip away so that I could return home. Although, to what, I wasn't sure. At about four thirty, my clerk visited my room with an obscure message that did little to help my muddled handling of the set of pleadings I was working on. He informed me that he had just received a telephone call from one of my clients. He hadn't caught her name but she had phoned to let me know that she was getting out. Since I had a number of clients who, despite my best efforts, had still found themselves behind bars for varying stretches, this information meant little to me. Still, it cheered me to know that one of my regulars would soon be out and about, up to her usual tricks and keeping me in funds.

 

 Again that evening, I was plagued by my visitor. This time she stayed longer, mouthing her unheard message. I ducked my head under the covers and clamped my hands firmly over my eyes, but she merely gave me a cold, knowing smile and held my gaze.

      It didn't take my clerk long to comment on my dishevelled state the next morning and I was quite grateful when he informed me that he did not intend to send me out to court that day. Later that afternoon, he poked his head around the door and offered up a sympathetic grin.

      "I have something here that might cheer you up, Sir," he said. "That client of yours left something outside the front door for you. There was a note attached to them, letting you know that she's out now. Not my favourite flowers, but nice of her all the same," he said, as he moved into the room and placed a large arrangement of lavender upon my desk. Recoiling in horror, the elusive message that my nightly visitor had been trying to impart suddenly became clear. For once, I voluntarily dredged up the memory of her and brought to mind the deliberate lip movements with which she had been taunting me. All at once the message became frighteningly clear and I wondered how I could have ever missed it.

 "I'm. Getting. Out."

 

After much anxious fussing from my clerk, I managed to convince him that my reaction to the lavender had been because I was allergic to it. Thus assuring him, and unable to think of a good reason to instruct him to dispose of the pungent flowers, I had urged him to place them in our Head of Chambers' room as a surprise.

      As the remainder of the day ticked by, I realised that I was not disposed to returning home that evening and after a brief consultation with the clerk, I arranged to spend the night there. It was not uncommon for barristers who worked late to bed down in chambers and our Head's room was equipped with a pull-down sofa and en suite shower. Having organized this, I set to work on a large case that was due to come to court in a few months' time. By three o'clock in the morning I could hardly keep my eyes open. I had briefly teetered on the brink of sleep whilst perusing my files and, despite the ominous message I had received earlier, was pleased to note that she had not invaded me that night. Reassured, I therefore made my way to the Head's room and the comfort of a temporary bed.

      Unlocking the door to the room, I moved inside trying to locate the light switch. A dim gloom pervaded the space, which was lit only by the glow of lamps from the Inner Temple. As I took another step inwards, a blast of cold air suddenly struck me, followed by the inexplicable feeling of being bathed in a flood of evil. I cannot even begin to properly commit that sensation to paper but it was every stomach-flipping moment I had ever experienced rolled into one. And more. Much, much more.

 

It was then I saw her. She was sitting in the large leather chair, beside the desk - the vase of lavender beside her. All of a sudden I remembered that the Head's son was a concert pianist. Raising my eyes, I looked at the metronome - the first his son had ever used. I'd heard the story a hundred times, and seen the small, wooden object a million times more. Seen it, yet not properly seen it. As I looked, it suddenly unclipped itself and began swaying to and fro. For many seconds that was the only sound in the room, a quick pulsating rhythm, keeping pace with the pounding of my heart.

 

Click. Clack. Click. Clack.

 

"Click, clack, I'm back," she said suddenly, her mouth spreading into a predatory grin. "Told you I'd get out, didn't I."

 

Out of where, I wondered.

 

 As if in answer, a chill wind gripped the room and a large law book on the desk banged open. The pages rippled under some unearthly force before eventually coming to rest.

      Sensing what she wanted, I walked over to the tome. In the dim light, I was able to see that it was a case book, Kings Bench Division, dated 1781. Used to skimming cases, I allowed my eyes to travel quickly over the yellowed pages. Pages that told me everything I needed to know about the vision sitting opposite me.

 

In the Spring of 1780 Alice Florence Bayer had, under the alleged influence of a nightly visitation, killed her five young children with a meat cleaver. The vision which, she claimed, materialised to torment her waking hours, had come from the very depths of hell and was determined to drag her down with it. Her soul and her morality had been sucked out of her, leaving a hunger for evil which had resulted in her incredible act of malfeasance against her offspring. Naturally, the judge concluded that no such vision had ever existed and, on the sixteenth of November 1781, he donned his black cap and informed Alice Bayer that she was now, indeed, bound for hell and would be hung by her neck until dead.

 

It was with an aching dread that I looked back at Alice Bayer. A woman who had been sent to hell by nightly visions; visions such as mine. A woman who, eventually, had committed vile acts of evil and was now free of the hellish bonds which had held her steady for over two centuries. And finally I realised, it wasn't Alice Bayer herself that was unnameable, it was the rottenness of her soul and the evil which permeated her very being.

 

Last night, I sensed her roaming around my house. No longer in my mind, she has taken on a form and substance. I thought that I would never sleep again but we humans cannot deny that which eventually comes by itself. Last night, just before I fell into a fitful slumber, an image flashed upon my inner eye. There I saw a roomful of sinners; eyes as black as hell and souls as dark as forever. Every last one of them was reaching out for me.

      I know that they will come again and, like Alice Bayer, I will be unable to deny them, or her. That is why I am putting this account to paper. It won't make any difference in the end but, when I turn my hand to I-know-not-what form of evil, perhaps you will take heed of my defence. Alas, for me, I will not have Alice Bayer's luxury of being imminently dispatched. I will be forced to live out the rest of my life, languishing in some jail, tormented by these nightly visions and sucked dry of my humanity until, I too, am dragged into hell. Me and who knows how many unnameable others?

       If you are wise, you will heed my last word of advice. When, in future, those sudden sparks come to you as you hover on the brink of sleep, providing you with an image of some half-imagined stranger, don't look at them too closely.

 

You never know, next time it might be me.