Dear –

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 a sister and a baby brother. We were very poor and cold in that dreadful winter, but we managed however we could. Our mother did everything 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 cold water while my sister went out into the winter to find the doctor, but he never came.

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, calling out a name. Exactly midnight a man walked into the room.

He was dressed in dark clothes, like a priest’s gown, but blacker somehow. There was a pungent aroma about him. His face and hands were whiter than my mother's, 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 tightly gripped my mother’s wrist. Her teeth clenched like a vice for a few seconds and her eyes shot open with a wild desperate look. She kicked at the bed sheets once, and then fell silent. Her body went limp but 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.

Later in my life, in the year of 1891, I was making a meagre living delivering firewood. I remember the long hours of trudging up and down the streets, refusing wood to the begging mothers who could not pay for it. I supported my brother and sister on the scant pay I received. Without it, we most assuredly would have starved, as my sister knew no trade other than that of a washerwoman and my brother was lame in both legs after an accident.

One late summer night I walked home my day's pay in my pocket. I passed several pubs with loud noises 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 public house we called home 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 replied that I didn't know him, and neither did my sister. His response was that, while I didn't, my sister surely would. I must say my anger took control of me, and I flung myself headlong at him, outnumbered though I was. Foolish, youthful bravado! 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 man. He was a short ways away, looking as though he were waiting for something. The moon 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

–