He was there with us in the cabin. I couldn’t see him, but a vision of him appeared in my mind. He was standing between the aisles, and with his million blind eyes he could see our souls. His countless claws were painted with the dried blood of newborns; flesh-eating worms wriggled in his thoughts. His horns scraped the plane’s green upholstery. He walked between the rows, looking for his victim.

‘Ar’gtatoth, the servant of the Lord of a Thousand Goats,’ the old man whimpered behind me; his withered chest could hardly handle the burdens of altered gravity. Still, he went on. ‘It is an honor to share time and space with him.’

‘My second husband,’ the old woman gasped, ‘was a servant to the Great Goat Lord. Oh, the amount of goat shit I had to shovel in my departed youth! The two of them must have met. I wish the Lord had taken my husband’s life personally. Then I wouldn’t have had to do it myself!’

In my sleep, my head became as heavy as dead meat, drool trickled from my lips. The smell of urine struck my nose; someone beside me was shaking from fear, his teeth chattering as if he were coming down with a fever. I wanted to see, not just imagine, our guest, but I was incapable of movement. I was paralyzed. A scream echoed through the cabin, my eardrums quivered. It was a man, or a woman; I’m not sure, and it makes no difference. Their scream was so filled with terror and despair, so hopeless and painful, that I hoped I would never hear it again outside of my dreams.

Of course, I have heard it several times since.

The screams faded as I dived deeper and deeper into the unconsciousness of dreaming.

I woke up as the plane’s wheels touched the runway; I felt an echo of disappointment for having missed the chance to buy from the duty-free catalog.

I looked around and found everyone else waking up just like me, which somewhat alleviated my disappointment. I retrieved my luggage from the overhead bin, my head heavy with fatigue. I sent drowsy smiles at my fellow passengers, which they mirrored with their own tired smiles.

Between the aisles, a stewardess was trying to clean up a stain from Coke spilled on the carpet. As we went around her with our luggage, we all tried not to notice that it wasn’t Coke, but blood.

The second crossing

We arrived at night. Most of the airport’s shops had their shutters down, many of the units were empty and for rent. There was a smell in the air I associated with dirty bathrooms. The overhead lights seemed to radiate uncleanliness.