Dear –,
I know you may not understand this, and that it could cause you more grief than you were meant to bear, but it is your duty to humanity to bear this knowledge. This is merely a letter; recorded words on a paper that you can set down whenever the reading becomes uncomfortable, but I beg you to treat this message as if it were my own words, from my own lips.
What I mean to tell you is this: I am dead.
True, as I hold this pen and write, my body is still as strong –if not stronger– as you knew it last, but I feel that very soon a dear friend of mine will catch up with me at last. I haven’t invited him, but he’s been expected for a long time. I don’t know when he’ll get here; only that it will be soon. When he at last arrives at my bedside, we might have a short chat; I could ask him for a favor every one of his numerous hosts have asked, but to each was given the same answer: why would I receive his favor? I think by now you know this friend I speak of, but let me tell you how I met him.
It was a December night, in 1876, when I was only eight years old. I had two sisters, a baby brother and a small dog. Naturally, we were very poor and cold in that dreadful winter, but we managed however we could. Our mother did everything imaginable to scrounge meals, rags and pieces of hope for us.
On Christmas Eve, I remember waking up at midnight to the sound of Mother crying. It wasn’t in the least a happy sound, but I rightly couldn’t do anything about it, so back to my scant covers I returned. The next morning Mother stayed in bed because –she said– of a slight headache. The next day it was the chills, and the day after that she could hardly speak. I wiped her pale face with the little water that wasn’t frozen and tried to call a doctor, but he was busy…so Mother died.
I sat by her side all night on the fourth day, holding her cold hand in my trembling one. She murmured feverishly in her sleep, often calling out my father’s name. Suddenly –at exactly midnight; I could tell by the town clock– a man walked into the room.
He was dressed in dark clothes, like a priest’s gown, but blacker somehow, and it smelled of something dreadfully awful. His face and hands were whiter than my mothers, but his eyes were like black, hollow holes. In his bony right hand he clutched the long handle of a scythe, and with his left he gripped my mother’s wrist tightly. Her teeth clenched like a vice for a few seconds and her eyes shot open with a wild desperate look. She screamed with more fervor than a woman at childbirth, kicked the bed sheets, and then fell silent. Her body went limp –with the man still holding her hand– and soon after became stiff.
The man never looked at me, never said a word, but in the next moment it was morning and I woke up in my dead mother’s arms.
Now I am sure you know him, his name and his profession, but let me give you one more example.
It was in the year of 1891, and I had acquired a job of delivering coal for a number of houses on a long street. I remember the long hours of trudging up and down, scrubbing the black streaks off my face and –most of all– refusing coal to the begging mothers who could not pay for it. I supported my brother and sister (the youngest sister had died in the same winter Mother had) by the meager pay I received for my coal job. Without it, we most assuredly would have starved, as my sister knew no trade other than that of a washer–woman and as my brother was lame in both legs after a coach accident.
On the night of one fateful summer that year, I had only just obtained my paycheck and walked home with the paper in my pocket. I passed several pubs with loud noises, glaring lights and copious amounts of smoke and rough men. My brother frequented those places, singing for pennies (hard earned indeed) but I had never once set foot in any pub. I was only two houses away from the apartment we three lived at when a group of men passed me, going opposite my direction –towards the pub.
One of them –heavily intoxicated– inquired after my health and that of my sister, in words I desired not to hear. I must say my anger took control of me, and I flung myself headlong at him, outnumbered though I was. My swift attack knocked the man backwards into the arms of his companion, and it was within seconds that the counter-attack came.
Just before they all five set on me, I saw the same man just within the circle of light from a gas lamp. He smoked a cigarette, and the glow from it lit his face ever so slightly –just enough for me to recognize those same, black eyes.
Then it seemed to me that all I could see were those two eyes, growing wider and bigger and deeper and darker than ever; obscuring all else until my sight left me completely.
I woke up in my sister’s arms, and she told me how I had slept for nearly a fortnight. The doctor –who had been absent before my mother’s death but luckily available before my near-death– had almost declared me dead when had he arrived. Dangerous cuts, bruises and broken bones and ribs were scattered across my body in a nasty jumble. And, of course, my money was gone.
When my sister left to prepare me a meal, the man came into my room and sat on the same chair my sister had only just left. He told me how he had been cheated, and how it made him feel –in no fair words, mind you– and that he would soon ‘get his own back’ in ‘The Game’ he and I were playing. It made no sense to me, and I could not answer, for something very much like terror kept my words in my throat, but it makes sense to me now.
As I am sure it does to you.
So know this, my letter will take time to reach you, and remember that I have said he will come soon; remember how close ‘soon’ really is, and remember not to forget.
Sincerely
–
