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Remember Why You Fear Me

Page 42

by Robert Shearman


  And I decided that this was all a mistake. That I should get out before I was identified. Get out before Margaret saw me, and made it impossible for me to leave. But no one looked at me, and I searched the room for her, I looked hard, and Margaret wasn’t there. And then S_____ read his ghost story. He performed. As I say, I don’t think he performed it well. I don’t think it was a good story. But the world seemed to shift, and I decided I had to explore what this new world was before I got back on the train to Oxford and lost myself once again within the old one.

  It was strange. After the impact his story had made I would have expected S_____ to have been flooded with well-wishers, students and academics alike congratulating him. That had certainly been the way when he was an undergraduate performing his ghost stories for the first time—and how shyly he had received those compliments, how he had blushed. But now, though he was a bona fide celebrity, everyone ignored him. The lights were turned back to full, he sat down morosely, stared at his food, prodded at some vegetable matter with a fork.

  I went to see him.

  “My God,” he said. “Is it you? Is it really you?” And his face lit up, and years fell off it in an instant—not enough, I should add, he was still pushing fifty, but it was an improvement. “Did you like my story?”

  “I’m afraid I arrived too late to hear it,” I said. And at that his face fell so glumly, and I wished I could call back the lie. I wanted to reassure him, I promised I’d come to the next year’s.

  He indicated I should lean in, he wanted to say something to me in confidence. “There won’t be another year’s,” he said. “I’m getting out of it. I’m getting out of the ghost story racket.”

  I told him I was pleased to hear it, and he nodded seriously.

  “Can we talk in private?” he said. “Can you come to my rooms?”

  And I said yes.

  He seemed properly affectionate towards me as he showed me in. As if all the years of silence hadn’t mattered a jot. He showed me around his study, waited for my approval.

  “More than serviceable,” I said.

  “I’m sure your rooms in Oxford must be . . .”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “But that’s Oxford.”

  He nodded.

  I told him that academia would be delighted he was giving up his spook stories, that he had become something of a laughingstock. And he smiled and said, “Indeed, indeed!” and nodded, like a crusty old don, like the crusty old don he’d become, wanting to make a good impression on his bright young pupil.

  “I should have listened to you in the first place,” he said. “That’s the truth of it.”

  I asked him why he’d written horror stories in the first place. And I expected the same answer he’d given me so many years ago. But it was different.

  “Because,” he said, “horror has to find a way out into the world.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say to that. He looked apologetic. Wine, would I like some wine? To ease the mood, I said I would. A cigar? Why not, I said. We lit cigars, and as always, he never looked comfortable with a cigar, it looked ridiculous jutting out of his mouth like that, his eyes watering all the while. “This is good,” he said, “this is fine, having you here again, yes, yes.” I asked him how he was, generally. Like Margaret, he said he was well. I asked him how Margaret was. Well, he believed. I said I was pleased.

  “They’re not stories,” he said suddenly.

  I asked him to repeat himself.

  “They’re not stories,” he said. “They’re all true.”

  I scoffed at that. Asked him whether some sort of ghoul scaring hapless hotel patrons was true.

  “No,” he said. “I’m not saying it happened. But it’s true all the same.” He poured me another glass of wine. “But,” he said, “I’m stopping that now. Before it’s too late. And there’s nothing they can do to me worse than what I’ve done to myself and to Margaret.”

  He asked how I was. I said I was well. He asked if I had a wife, was she well? I said I didn’t have a wife, but if I had one, I’m sure she would be well, well. I told him to explain what was going on, I told him to stop dancing around the matter like a student who hasn’t prepared his tutorial.

  “The stories don’t die,” he said.

  Wait, I asked, his ghost stories? I understood the print run had been rather small.

  “Any stories. Do you know why Chaucer wrote? Do you know why Milton wrote?”

  I said I’d spent an entire lifetime discussing why Milton wrote.

  “So they’d never die,” said S_____. And he grinned at me then, and he showed all his teeth, and at that moment I had a flash of fear, I had the most certain knowledge that my old friend was quite mad.

  “They’re kept alive in the books,” he said. “In all the books, they live on. And they come to me, you know. They stand over me. They stand over me at night, when I’m alone.”

  I asked him whether Chaucer came to him, and he said he did. I asked him whether he could talk to Chaucer, and he said he could. I told him that must be useful for a lecturer in Chaucerian studies, he could ask him for all sorts of tips. But S_____ wasn’t listening to me, and couldn’t be chivvied along by my good humour.

  “They’re all trapped in the books,” he said. “And they’ve had enough. They want to die. I’ve got to set them free. Posterity just isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

  I asked him then about Margaret. He told me he didn’t see much of Margaret anymore, he slept alone in his rooms. I asked him how Margaret felt about that. He said it didn’t matter, he had to help the ghosts, they wouldn’t come unless he slept alone.

  “The stories make you write them,” he said. “They tell you they want to be let out into the world. Let them out, and they promise they’ll leave you alone. That’s what they told Chaucer, and Milton, and the rest of them, that’s what they tell me. But they’re liars. There are always more of them. Always more, filling your head, blocking out the light.”

  But I reminded him he only wrote one story every Christmas.

  And he gripped my hand, and I recoiled at the touch, it felt like old man’s skin, it felt like thin paper. “I write one every day,” he said. “I write a new story every single day.”

  He asked me where I was sleeping that night, and I told him I had a hotel in town. He said I should stay with him and Margaret, and I replied that I wouldn’t want to put them out at Christmas. He made me promise I would visit him the next day, and I said I would.

  I went then and got on the next train back to Oxford. It was a long wait, and it was snowing. But I felt better for it.

  As I left him, and wished him a happy Christmas, he said to me again, “I should have listened to you. I should always have listened to you. You were my best, my dearest friend.”

  And he said, “I’ll do my best to last as long as I can.”

  S_____ didn’t even last the year. “Ghost Writer Dies in Blaze,” said the newspaper of December 29th. It went on to report that the ‘Master of the Macabre’ R_____ S_____ had burned to death in the great libraries of the university where he had made his home. They suggested it was suicide, that he had set fire to himself whilst gazing out on all the great works of literature he held in such high regard. There was no note. The article went on to say that he is survived by his wife, Margaret, and two children, John and Abigail. I never knew he had children.

  The article of course doesn’t explain many things. Why kindling was found all around the library itself, as if he’d wanted to set fire to the whole collection. (Not a single book was even scorched. The university reported that this was a stroke of luck.) Nor did it explain why, had S_____ wanted to kill himself, he’d not doused his body with a flammable agent like alcohol or gasoline first, that might have hastened the process. Self-immolation otherwise would be such a slow and painful way to go.

  I wasn’t invited to the funeral. I wrote to Margaret offering my condolences. I told her in the kindes
t of terms that she would be welcome to visit me in Oxford, at any time, for tea and cake. She hasn’t written back yet.

  There has been renewed interest in S_____’s fiction. I understand why the publishers have wanted to get his complete ghost stories back into print, in one easy volume like this one. As I say, I am not sure it is what the author would have wanted.

  And I had said no. I wouldn’t write this introduction. For that reason, and more. Because although S_____ called me his best and dearest friend, he was wrong, as he was about so very many things.

  But the publisher keeps writing to me. They won’t take no for an answer. Every day I receive a new letter, longer, more insistent than the last. I have never heard of the publisher before. I do not even know where I can send this introduction. They have not furnished me with a return address.

  I can only hope that now I have written this out, that they’ll keep their promise, and will leave me alone.

  S_____ suggested to me he had hundreds more stories he’d written secretly. No one in the press has made mention of them, so I’m assuming they were not found amongst his personal effects. Maybe S_____ managed to destroy them in time. Maybe he never wrote them at all. Maybe, as I suspect, they are hidden—and for his sake, they should remain hidden. For pity’s sake, leave the man alone, let him rest in peace.

  As for these, now back in print—I’m sorry, Robert. I’m truly sorry.

  BONUS MATERIAL:

  EBOOK EXCLUSIVES

  I don’t know what to call these following eBook exclusives. They’re not novellas, surely? That’s far too grand a term. They’re short stories, but that’s such a silly description when it’s all too obvious they’re not particularly short. I can’t call them novelettes. I hate the word ‘novelette.’ Does anyone ever use the word ‘novelette,’ really, truly? “Hello, Mr Bookseller, I’d like to buy some novelettes, please—I’m going on a train journey, not too short, not too long, and I need something appropriately vague in length to fill the time.” Pshaw.

  These are four tales that I’d have wanted to include in the print version, but each of them are somewhat generously proportioned (some would say ‘fat’). They’re not novelettes, and they’re not novellas. They’re short stories that ate too much. And more truthfully, they’re stories I so loved writing that I found they somewhat outgrew their inspiration, and they became richer and denser than I had expected. I love them for that. I also worry about them, just a little bit, and get intimidated in their company.

  “Tiny Deaths” was first published in the collection of the same name back in 2007. It features Jesus Christ, rather a lot.

  “Jolly Roger” was first published in Love Songs from the Shy and Cynical, and is set upon a Mediterranean cruise. I was on a Mediterranean cruise when I wrote it, because it was a fairly dull holiday with overcast weather, and the movies they were showing on the entertainment channel were frankly rubbish. An awful lot of the story is true. Right down to the cameo appearance of Jesus, and what he’d do with those towel animals.

  “The Big Boy’s Big Book of Tricks” is from Everyone’s Just So So Special, and showcases to an almost embarrassing extent just how frightened I am of small children. Jesus gets a well-earned rest here, and all the miracles we see are performed with the benefit of a simple top hat and magic wand.

  Jesus is back with a vengeance in “The Girl from Ipanema,” though, standing tall and open-armed in Rio de Janeiro at a height of forty metres. I was honoured to be a guest at the Cultura Ingles festival in Brazil in 2011, and I was so excited by all that I saw there, including the famous Christ the Redeemer statue, that I began this story on the flight home. This is its first publication.

  TINY

  DEATHS

  1

  There’s no getting away from it—that Jesus Christ was smart, oh yes, he was smart, no question. But that doesn’t mean he knew everything.

  In matters of scripture he couldn’t be beaten. He fairly zipped his way up and down and through those ancient texts, knowing them verse by impenetrable verse, to the delight of all his followers and the jealous fury of the rabbis. You could be having a perfectly ordinary conversation with Jesus, then throw him a curve ball—what did Elijah say to the angel, what did Elisha say to the bears—and he’d come back at you with the answer without even blinking. But on practical matters, forget about it! No point turning to Jesus if you wanted groceries buying—he’d stand there with his twenty shekel note trying to buy nothing more than a quart of milk, and would have no idea whether to expect change or not. As his parents had said, somewhat ruefully, there was a lad who knew the value of everything and the cost of nothing. And he was by no means blind to it; when the apostles teased him about it he’d roll his eyes in mock irritation, then break out into that lazy grin of his that had won him as many enemies as it had friends. He’d listen patiently as his disciples at the Last Supper tried to tot up the bill and work out how much everyone should put in—they should just split it thirteen ways Andrew had suggested, but Simon Peter pointed out that was all very well but he hadn’t had a starter, and Thomas went on to say that he had had a starter but it had only been olives, that was the cheapest thing on the menu, that hardly counted, in some restaurants they’d be thrown in gratis, it was hardly his fault this one didn’t. And Jesus would say nothing, just watch them indulgently, would wait until he was told what his contribution should be, and put in without further comment.

  And, smart as he was, when they nailed him to the cross, and left him there to die, he couldn’t possibly have known. That in two thousand years’ time this very act of tortuous execution would be adopted so easily into the culture. What would he have thought to have seen the cross medallions hanging round the necks of aging pop stars as they cavorted across the stage, lip synching to the thump thump thump of their latest hit single? To have realized that his death, and the very manner of his death, would be so remembered, would be so stripped down to the basics that they missed the point of what those basics could mean, would be packaged up and blanded down and fetishized in such a way. The cross turned into nothing more than a fashion accessory, something glittery to wear against your cleavage, something macho to tattoo into your skin. Really, what would he have thought? He wouldn’t be flashing that lazy grin much, you can bet.

  The cross wasn’t planed smooth and flat, it wasn’t designed for comfort. It was ugly and coarse and splintered. Its victim would be stripped naked, tied to a stake, and whipped. Then, once he was dressed again, he’d be made to pick up the cross and lug it to the place of execution. Crippled with pain already—but, oh, nothing to the pain he had to look forward to!—the victim could hardly help but drop it on the way, hardly surprising as it could weigh as much as one hundred and fifty pounds. And when he dropped it, of course, he’d be made to stoop and pick it up again, and beaten on, and all the time he’d be aware that he’d never not be in contact with this cross again, there would be no part of his life that was left uncrossed, and soon he’d be looking back on his association with this cross and seeing this as the good times of the relationship, that this would be the honeymoon period, the time to get nostalgic about.

  Because once he’d reached execution point he’d be stripped once more. And made to lie down upon that cross, and be fastened to it with nails driven into place through the small bones of the wrists. Then they’d produce another nail, a special nail of extra length, and this would be hammered through both feet placed on top of the other. Binding the condemned man to the hard splintered wood until death. And then the cross would be raised upright, and there he’d sit, or lie if you prefer, or hang—often in the baking heat, often for days. The loss of blood could kill, of course—or the pain, the excruciating pain (after all, where does the word ‘excruciating’ come from?)—or the heat—but usually the real cause of death would be asphyxiation. With the weight of the whole body now supported by his stretched arms, the man would have great difficulty breathing, his lungs expanded to their full wit
h no chance of relief. And, struggling for air, he’d try to haul himself up on to his arms, to his nail-skewered arms, hanging on, quite literally, for every scrap of life he could. Sometimes the soldiers might take pity and break the victim’s legs—there’d be no way to fight the suffocation any longer. This was a death where you’d show pity by breaking a man’s legs. And there he’d cook, still able to see the crowds at his feet drawing lots for his clothes, jeering him, spitting at him—the splinters in the wood now hardly a problem, the whipping no more than a flea bite, even the nails so savagely piercing his limbs no longer really worth getting excited about. All that’s left is the drowning in mid-air, and the unending humiliation.

  Jesus Christ knew all this. He was smart, oh yes, no question. He decided he wouldn’t scream at the pain. But when they whipped him he just couldn’t help it—the agony was so overwhelming and so sudden, he knew it would hurt, of course, but not that—one moment there’d been flesh on his back, and the next—there, gone!—something that had been growing and knitting there for years removed in an instant by a man with a stick. And why not scream? he asked himself. He was a martyr, where did it say that martyrdom had to be performed stoically; it was a bloody sacrifice, wasn’t the pain the point? So Jesus screamed as he carried the cross, he screamed as they banged in the nails, screamed as he was raised up high.

  “Oh, for God’s sake,” croaked a man next to him. “Can’t you keep it down?”

  “But the pain . . . ” gasped Jesus.

  “It’s no worse for you than for me, I’ll be bound. And yet I’m not screaming about it. Making someone’s final hours that bit more unpleasant. Shut up, die in peace. And let me die in peace while you’re at it.”

  Jesus looked at the words above the man’s head, saw that he was a thief. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

 

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