The Writer and the Devil
Created | Updated Feb 29, 2008
I’d heard that Hilda Fustian was a strange person; that’s why I wanted to meet her. My editor didn’t think that this reclusive writer would agree to an interview. To my delight, she did and I readily agreed to drive to her house. I had half-expected a Gothic mansion, so I was reassured to find a normal red-brick house, albeit overshadowed by the dark wave of the South Downs.
As Hilda opened the door, a black cat slipped out and I could see another in the hallway. Hilda didn’t fit my image of a successful writer, as her hair hung limp and her face looked as if it was wasting away. I sat in her living room, which was lined from floor to ceiling with books and magazines, and launched into my prepared introduction. To gain her trust, I said that I had read many of her detective novels and was impressed by her insight into human psychology. To my surprise, she just looked at the floor.
“That’s what everyone says. They don’t know the cost.”
At first, I kept to obvious questions and received banal replies. After a while, I plucked up the courage to ask the question that had been lurking at the back of my mind.
“Would you care to dismiss the malicious rumour I’ve heard, that you sold your soul to the devil?”
For a moment, she sat in silence, staring out of the window at the hill behind the house.
“I don’t think I’ve got long to live. That’s why I agreed to see you. I’d better tell you the truth.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you were ill,” I mumbled.
She ignored me and launched into her story.
“ I’d always wanted to write, ever since I was a teenager. So I wrote whenever I got the chance – short stories mainly. But I didn’t have much success. One or two of my stories were published in small anthologies, that was all. And I never had time, what with working and bringing up my children.
It wasn’t until Dave died that I decided to throw myself into writing. I wanted to give my life a new direction. I started on a novel and just wrote round the clock. However, I still got one rejection slip after another. And the harder I worked, the more desperately I wanted to succeed. I suppose it became an obsession.
One day, I grew tired of sitting in front of my word processor and set out to walk up the hill behind the house. There was a brisk wind blowing when I started, and clouds were building up. By the time I reached the top of the hill, the wind was shrieking as if all the fiends in hell were out and the sky was black as midnight. I stood there, feeling the wind pulling at me as if it was trying to carry me away.
It was then that I became aware of the man walking towards me.
“Bad weather for a walk,” he said. He was tall and dark, good looking I suppose, but there was something odd about his eyes.
“I came out here to think.”
“About anything in particular?”
“I’m tired of being an unsuccessful writer. I’d do anything to succeed.”
“Take my advice. Try detective stories. You’ll succeed. Trust me.”
With that, he walked away and I’ve never seen him since.
I started work on my first detective novel the next day. The idea came to me easily enough, because I based my victim on the bank manager who had refused me a loan. It annoyed me that he could sit there in his smart suit, smile and calmly dismiss my writing as a hobby. So, I imagined him sitting at his desk with a knife in his back. To my surprise, I finished the novel in record time. I was even more surprised when it was accepted for publication.
When I next opened my local paper my heart seemed to seize up. There was a photograph of the bank manager and a paragraph explaining that he had been found dead at his desk. According to the article, he had suffered a heart attack. I sat there stunned. I felt like going to the police and saying that I’d killed him. That didn’t make sense, of course. There were no suspicious circumstances about the bank manager’s death. All the same, it took me a long time to calm down and accept that it was simply a coincidence. Or so I thought.
My first novel was a great success and my agent encouraged me to write another. So I came up with a story about a woman who used her position as a parish councillor to wage feuds with local people. She was based on a neighbour of mine who I heartily disliked, so it was with some relish that I imagined her poisoned with her own tarts.
When I heard how much my publisher was prepared to pay for my second novel, I drove to the village to buy wine for a celebration. I rounded the corner and had to brake sharply to avoid several ambulances drawn up outside the church hall. I hurried over to enquire what had happened and was told that several people, including my neighbour, had been taken ill after a wedding. She died in hospital a few days later, from a severe case of food poisoning. I was cast into despondency. It didn’t seem possible that my novel had caused her death but I felt that it had.
I couldn’t give up writing though. For one thing, my agent was pressing me for another novel. For another, my mind was fizzing with ideas which I felt compelled to write down. However, the pattern continued: whenever I based a victim on someone I knew, that person died. I felt haunted. I kept thinking about the mysterious stranger I had met on the hill and my conversation with him. Who was he?
At first, people had joked that it was bad luck to annoy me. Later, they began to avoid me. I was aware of people talking behind my back, of stories that I had sold my soul to the devil. In the end, I was so racked with guilt that I couldn’t stand it any longer. I did the only decent thing I could think of doing. My last novel concerns an unpopular writer who dies in an arson attack. You can work out for yourself who I based her on.”
As Hilda stopped speaking, I became aware that tears were flowing down her face.
“I’m sure there must be perfectly rational explanations for the deaths,” I said, struggling to make sense of her narrative.
She shook her head. “I would advise you to leave this house. I heard from my agent earlier today that they’ve accepted my novel.”
I rose and thanked her for the interview. To be honest, I was glad to leave the house, as the piles of books, the cats and the looming closeness of the hill made it claustrophobic. As I looked at her face for the last time, I saw in her eyes a depth of despair that I had never seen before.
I repeated to myself that I didn’t believe in the devil and that Hilda’s story was the product of the same creative imagination as her novels. As I drove down the lane, I began to think that I smelt smoke, at first a suspicion on the wind and later an acrid tang. I heard the siren of a fire engine and drew into a layby. Looking back, I saw Hilda’s house silhouetted against sheets of flame.
