Remember Why You Fear Me Read online

  The next morning everyone was glued to their television screens. Even the sceptics, who stubbornly insisted the whole thing was some elaborate conjuring act, waited with bated breath to see what trickery was lined up next. And in countries where casual murder had become a part of everyone’s daily lives, the perpetrators surprised themselves by holding back for once, and tuning in to see whether the killings they executed so nonchalantly had any deeper meaning. In Britain, the BBC didn’t even bother to prepare their scheduled programmes. And so, when a second message resolutely failed to appear and explain life and death and matters besides, the BBC were caught on the hop and forced to transmit a series of Norman Wisdom films. Worldwide, the excitement gave way to disappointment, then to anger. It’s quite certain there would have been riots in the streets, causing more bloodshed and more death, had Something Not Happened.

  So it’s just as well Something Did.

  Of course, it took some people a while to realize anything had. They were so intent upon the TV screen that they ignored the sound of the letterbox, of the daily post falling onto the mat. Had they stopped to consider that all the postmen were at home, the same as them, they might have shown more interest.

  The envelopes were light brown, soft to the touch, and seemed almost to be made of vellum, like medieval manuscripts. There were no stamps on them—and the names weren’t handwritten, but typed. And there was one for each member of the household, however young or old. Inside, each recipient found a card, stamped with his or her full name. And underneath that, as plain and unapologetic as you like, was a short account of when and how the recipient was going to die. Some poor unfortunates, either elderly or obese, found the news so startling that they died right there on the spot—and the card in their dead hands had predicted that exactly. Sometimes the explanation would be moderately chatty, and full of information. Arthur James Cripps learned that he was to die in fourteen years and six days, by “drowning, after being knocked over a bridge by a Nissan Micra; frankly, if the water hadn’t finished you off, you’d have died minutes later from the ruptured kidneys caused by the collision in question.” A lot of people learned that they were just going to die of ‘cancer.’ No fripperies, no more detail, no context—the word ‘cancer’ on the card saying it all, as if the typist had got so bored at hammering out the word so often that he could barely wait to move on to more interesting deaths elsewhere.

  The Norman Wisdom films were interrupted, and news updates directed people to their letterboxes. The anticipation was terrible—worse than checking your exam results, or your credit card statement after a particularly expensive holiday. Parents with large families had to be put through the torture again and again, forced to confront what would happen not only to them but to their offspring. And if, inevitably, some were appalled by the bad news—a twelve year old child to die of meningitis, a three year old girl whose ultimate fate was to be abducted after school some seven years later, raped and strangled and her body never recovered—most went to bed that night somewhat reassured. At least they knew now. They might only have one month—one year—fifty years—but at least they knew. In fact, sales of cigarettes tripled over night, as smokers and non-smokers alike realized that all the agonizing over the health risks was now redundant. If it wasn’t going to kill you, why not take it up? And if it was, well—it’s a fait accompli, isn’t it? Might as well enjoy it whilst your lungs last.

  Just about the only person who wasn’t reassured was Henry Peter Clifford.

  Harry would never have thought he was an especially special person. Even in his moments of hubris or overweening arrogance—which, for him, were few and far between—he’d have been hard pushed to have described himself as anything better than distinctly average. He naturally assumed, on that fateful morning, that his envelope simply hadn’t arrived yet. This was nothing new to Harry—his birthday cards were always late, he only received postcards after everybody else had had theirs. His wife Mary read her fate with shaking hands, and all he could think was that he’d probably have to wait until tomorrow to go through the same thing. But the next day there was still no envelope for him, nor the day after. The world had subtly changed, but for Harry it all looked pretty much the same.

  The Government had quickly set up a number of help centres to deal with the crisis, and so, on the fourth day that Harry still hadn’t found out when he was due to die, he caught the bus down to the citizens’ advice bureau. The streets were that much more dangerous now; cars sped along roads knowing full well they weren’t about to be involved in some tragic accident, and pedestrians ran the traffic with similar impunity. The bus driver catapulted his eight ton vehicle of red metal down the hill with the certain knowledge that his number wasn’t up, and as Harry gripped the seat to prevent himself from being flung bodily down the aisle, he only wished he could be as sure.

  There was a surprisingly long queue at the help centre, which cheered Harry somewhat—in spite of the long wait he’d have to put up with, it reassured him to think others were having complications too. But it turned out these people in line were just wanting grief counselling for deaths that hadn’t even happened yet. Indeed, the rather bland blonde behind the desk suggested that Harry was the only person who hadn’t received a death envelope.

  “Well, what can I do about it?” asked Harry lamely, and she shrugged as if the oversight was in some way his fault. “Is there anybody I can write to?” The woman told him that since no one knew where the envelopes had come from there wasn’t much she could do. “But if you don’t know anything about this whole thing, why have you set up a help centre?” The woman shrugged again, and called the next person in the queue forward.

  “Maybe you just lost it somewhere?” said his secretary brightly. “It fell behind the sofa cushions or something. I’m always doing that.” The secretary had been saying everything brightly after finding out that her death, in sixty-seven years’ time, would be a painless little thing, her heart giving out in the throes of sexual congress with a South American toyboy. “I should check under the cushions again,” she said, not a little unhelpfully.

  The trouble was that everyone seemed to share his secretary’s scepticism, and expressed it much less complacently. They were perplexed at first by Harry’s outrageous claims he’d had no envelope, that he had been left out of a global miracle that had changed them all—as if he were the one man still claiming that the world was flat when everybody else had accepted it was a bloody sphere now, thank you very much. Then they’d get angry with the idea that he was trying to get attention. “Why wouldn’t you get an envelope? What makes you so special?” Typically, Harry hadn’t thought of it in this way at all; on the contrary, he had wondered why the universe had deemed him so insignificant that he was the only one to be ignored. He vaguely mused whether he preferred the idea of being singled out because he was the most important person in the world, or because he was the least important. And decided he wasn’t fond of either much, frankly.

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go,” said his boss. “You know, it’s not my decision. But I have bosses, and they have bosses, and, you know . . .” He gave a smile. “You know how it is.”

  There had been some controversy about just how much employers had the right to know about their employees’ life expectancy. Companies would argue that it was surely relevant whether or not they could expect their staff to go on providing good service, or whether they had to accommodate for the fact they might be dropping dead left, right and centre. At job interviews prospective employees lost out to candidates who could demonstrate they had longevity on their side, and those already in work found their bosses would rather ditch them quickly before they were subject to expensive health plans. The Government said something non-committal about the data protection act and employee confidentiality, but also that any organisation had the right to expect full productivity from its staff. None of which helped anybody very much. When Harry was first asked to show his death envel
ope at work, his inability to do so was taken to mean he had something terrible and contagious and doubtlessly fatal to hide.

  His boss gave him another one of those smiles. “Really, you’re lucky,” he said. “Getting out of work is the best thing that can happen to you. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy the rest of your life. I wish I could,” he said with apparent regret, “but it seems this old ticker of mine has another forty-seven years to go. Bloody thing!” He held out his hand to wish Harry goodbye, and in spite of himself, Harry shook it.

  And later that night his wife told him she was leaving.

  “I can get another job,” said Harry. “Nothing fancy, I know. But there’s lots of casual labour, they don’t care whether you snuff it or not. We can make it work, Mary.”

  “No, we can’t,” said Mary. And she told him how when she’d held that death envelope in her hand, scared to open it and find out how long she’d got, she’d made herself a vow. If I’ve only got a couple of years, she thought, if that’s all I’ve got. Then I’m out of here. I’m not going to waste anymore of my life. Because we only go around once, and I’m letting it slip by, I should be climbing mountains and exploring deserts and scuba diving and sleeping with people who’d do it with the lights on. That’ll be the present to myself. If I’ve got two years or less, I’m leaving, Harry.

  “But,” Harry pointed out gently, “you haven’t got two years. You’ve got thirty-eight. The cancer doesn’t get you for thirty-eight.”

  “I know,” said Mary. “And I was so disappointed. And then it dawned on me. If I’m that disappointed, that I’d rather be dead than living with you, then I shouldn’t be living with you. Goodbye, Harry.”

  He couldn’t argue with that.

  Mary wasn’t a cruel woman. She recognized that Harry wouldn’t easily be able to earn money, whilst in her robust and not-yet-carcinogenic state the world was her oyster. She left him the house and a lot of the money. She also left him the cat, which Harry thought rather a shame as he’d never much liked it—he’d simply never got round to telling Mary that. And Mary said she wanted to start the rest of her life as soon as possible, and was gone by morning.

  And, of course, a lot of people out there were following Mary’s example. Those who realized that the end was in sight decided that this was their last chance to see the world. Thousands of elderly English people flew to America, and thousands of elderly Americans flew to England—until, at the end of the day, roughly the same number of the diseased and the dying were roaming the streets in both countries, just sporting different accents. With typical brilliance, Disney decided to exploit this new trend in end-of-life tourism. They used a motto—“Make the Last of Your Life be the Time of Your Life,” which had a certain catchiness. If you could show proof you had three months or less, you were entitled to discounts to all the theme parks, and V.I.P. treatment once you were through the turnstiles. There was a special queue for the nearly dead, and a soberly dressed man-size Mickey Mouse or Goofy would respectfully show them to their rides. As it turns out the venture was so wildly successful that the Nearly Dead queue was often longer than the regular one, but that didn’t matter—the ticket holders still felt they were being given special treatment. And attendance went up all the more when the elderly, who had always sworn that being spun through the air on a rollercoaster would be the death of them, now had concrete evidence that, in fact, it wouldn’t.

  Harry wouldn’t have much wanted to visit Disneyland, but if his time were soon to be up, he’d certainly have wanted to have gone somewhere. But he couldn’t afford a holiday. Unemployment benefits hadn’t exactly been abolished, but it was hard to justify why you should be given a free hand-out when your death envelope demonstrated you had another fifty years of health in front of you and weren’t just about to die in penury. And any attempt Harry made to get some money was thwarted by the absence of that envelope. So when, one morning, it came through the letterbox, Harry was delighted.

  At first he couldn’t believe it was really there. He’d given up hoping it’d ever turn up. But there was no mistaking it—that off-brown colour that you just didn’t find anywhere else, the softness to the touch.

  He opened it hastily. He didn’t care when he died, or how he died. Just so long as he had proof he did, in fact, eventually die.

  “HENRY PETER CLIFFORD,” said the stamp.

  And then, typed:

  “Awaiting Further Information.”

  Harry stared at it. Unable to believe his eyes. He turned over the card, hoping for something else. Something telling him it was a joke, not to worry, he was due to be impaled on a wooden stake that afternoon, anything. But instead, in ballpoint pen, someone had written, “Sorry for the Inconveniance.”

  As the day went by, as he did what he normally did—had breakfast, fed the cat, watched afternoon TV—Harry wondered whether the scrawled apology might even be God’s very own handwriting. Still, probably not. He’d probably use one of his underlings, some saint or angel or vicar or someone. He’d always imagined the handwriting of a Divine Being would be a bit more ornate. And that he’d be able to spell “inconvenience.”

  The next morning he thought there might be another envelope, a follow-up to the last. There wasn’t. But there was a knock at the door.

  At first Harry saw the envelope rather than the man who was holding it. “I think you should read this,” he said, and he held it out to Harry nervously.

  Eagerly Harry read the name on the top, was immediately disappointed. “Jeffrey Allan White. That isn’t me.”

  “No, it’s me,” said Jeffrey Allan White.

  “I don’t understand,” said Harry. He held out the card for Mr White to take back. “This isn’t me,” he repeated uselessly.

  “Please,” said Jeffrey. “Read the rest of it.”

  And Harry did. Then he read it again. He stared at Jeffrey for a few moments, and saw a man in his late fifties, a bit unkempt, shorter than average, plump, and just as scared as he was.

  “Can I come in?” said Jeffrey. Harry nodded, and got out of his way.

  Harry didn’t know what to do with his strange visitor. He led him into the kitchen, wordlessly indicated he should sit down. Jeffrey smiled a thanks awkwardly. The cat was excited that someone new was in the house, and jumped up on to Jeffrey’s lap. “Sorry,” said Harry. “Do you like cats . . . ?”

  “I’m a bit allergic,” replied Jeffrey. “But it doesn’t really matter anymore.”

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  “I’m fine, thanks.”

  “A coffee or a tea . . . ?”

  “A coffee then, thanks.”

  “All I’ve got is decaf . . .”

  “Decaf is fine.”

  “Milk?”

  “Yes. Thanks.” And there was silence from them both as Harry busied himself with the kettle. It wasn’t until the water was nearly boiled that Harry thought he should say something.

  “But I don’t even know you.”

  “No, I know.”

  “But I don’t. So why . . . ?”

  Jeffrey smiled, but it was a nervous smile that had no answer. “Thanks,” he said as he took the coffee. “Thanks, this is fine,” he said again.

  “Why did you come here?” asked Harry. “I mean, I’d have run away.”

  “But really. Where would I go?”

  Harry shrugged. “Well. Anywhere.”

  “I almost didn’t come,” said Jeffrey quietly. “When I first found out how I was going to die . . . I almost laughed, it was so specific. My wife, she’s one of the cancer ones, how can she avoid that? But if you know you’re going to die at the hands of Henry Clifford at 23 Sycamore Gardens on 16th September, it seems such an easy thing to prevent. If you’d asked me last week,” he said, as he took a gulp of his still too hot coffee, “I’d have said this was the last place in the world I’d have visited.”

  Harry waited patiently for Jeffrey to go on. Jeffrey couldn’t meet his eyes, loo
ked at the floor.

  “But if it isn’t true . . . if I could prevent it . . . then it’s all meaningless, isn’t it? Isn’t it? I’m not sure I could go on like that. I’m not sure I could cope with tomorrow, when I’m not supposed to see tomorrow in the first place. What would it all be for? My son,” he added. “My son and I never much got on, we hadn’t spoken in years. Once he found out I was going to die, he got back in touch. We’ve been going to the pub. Chatting. Like friends. Not as family, but friends.” He looked up at Harry imploringly. “You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to do this. It says . . .”

  and he fluttered the envelope at Harry weakly, “it says you do here.”

  “I don’t know how to stab someone. I’m not sure I could go through with it.” Silence. “I mean, it’s the actual sticking it in . . . I think I could do it if I had to shoot you, you know, from a distance. . . .”

  “It says stabbing.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  They both finished their coffee.

  “Maybe,” suggested Jeffrey at last, “you could just hold the knife. And I could run on to it.”

  “Okay,” said Harry. “We could try that.”

  Both Harry and Jeffrey were shaking as Harry pulled open the kitchen drawer and looked at the knives. “Do you have a preference, or . . . ?”

  “Best get one that’s sharp,” said Jeffrey.

  The first time Jeffrey ran at Harry’s knife, Jeffrey kept his eyes closed. The problem was that Harry did the same. And so they didn’t collide correctly, and the worst Jeffrey sustained was a cut on

  the arm.