Remember Why You Fear Me (2 page)

“Oh, Steve,” he sighed, “as I keep telling you, I’m not really a horror writer. All my stuff turns out to be weird or humorous. Not the kind of thing anyone would want to see in a horror anthology.”

I asked the waitress to bring him the pudding menu and patiently explained that that was what made his stories stand out from so much other genre material. I also suggested that he might want to go away and think about it some more.

He did. The result was “Good Grief” and the British Fantasy Award-nominated “Alice Through the Plastic Sheet,” two of the most blackly comic horror stories it has ever been my pleasure to publish.

All the above, plus a number of original and uncollected tales, are contained in the book you are now holding. (There are also a few more if you happen to be reading the e-book version.)

Besides the collections, Rob has also published an omnibus of his stage plays,
Caustic Comedies
, and he’s been working on a novel for nearly as long as I’ve known him. Or so he claims.

Over the past few years we have become good friends—attending the same conventions, meeting up for riotous lunches and dinners, or simply working together on various publishing projects. So here are some little-known facts about Rob that I would like to share with you:

Rob was born in the West Sussex town of Crawley in 1970. He tells Americans that it is near Gatwick Airport, just to make it sound more interesting. Rob looks older than his age. I hesitate to say “wiser.”

Rob loves eating. When you meet him, he has either just consumed a meal or is on his way to have one. Sometimes both at the same time. And he is certain to regale you with a story about how he is about to go on a diet the following week, or is already on one and has lost several pounds. He really does believe this, and nobody has the heart to tell him differently.

Rob loves drinking. Sometimes, when we go out for one of our “lunches”—which have been known to last until dinnertime—and we have consumed our body-weight in bottles of wine, Rob will still have a few whiskies on the way home as a “night-cap.” I really don’t know how he does it, especially when I have barely managed to crawl back to my own residence.

Rob loves travelling. He’ll go anywhere. He’s been known to travel to the ends of the Earth (well, Australia) for a free convention membership. He has also been fêted around the globe by various cultural organizations with too much public money at their disposal. And, if all else fails, he’ll take a cruise to teach Russian literature to little old ladies. I’m not even going to go there.

But Rob does love the ladies. No, really. Who knew? The guy is a babe-magnet. I remember that after blearily leaving a British Fantasy Awards Banquet in Nottingham, Reggie Oliver and I were amazed to observe Rob semi-lounging on a sofa, surrounded by half-a-dozen attractive women draped over the furniture or literally sitting at his feet. Personally, I put this attraction down to the fact that women think he is funny and “safe.” It also helps that he looks like a big, cuddly teddy bear.

Rob loves reading his fiction aloud. I hate most authors reading their own stories, but he is apparently very good at it. At one of his book launches a few years ago, Sarah Pinborough and I were admonished by his publisher for talking too loudly—
outside
the venue! I can only presume from this that Rob must read very quietly indeed.

Rob loves writing. But not in his office. Or even his home. He prefers to work on his hand-written first drafts in museums and art galleries—and of course, cafés. I don’t know if this makes his work any better, but at least it gets him out of the house.

Despite a reputation that continues to grow, Rob probably still doesn’t consider himself to be a horror writer. But that’s okay, because by now everyone else does and he has the awards to prove it. The creepy, disturbing and, yes, often hilarious stories in
Remember Why You Fear Me
will only add to his well-deserved esteem, and I am delighted to have been the catalyst for at least a few of them.

However, there’s still one thing that I simply do not understand—just how
does
he get to hang out with all those attractive women at conventions . . . ?

—Stephen Jones

London, England

May 2012

On first impression, it looked like an apology. But the more you reread it—and it was reread a
lot
that day, it was pored over and analysed, governments around the world made statements about it, dismissing it first as a hoax, then taking it more seriously as the afternoon wore on, until by evening you could have sworn they had been in on the whole thing from the start, television programmes were rescheduled to make way for phone-in discussion shows and cobbled-together news reports that had very little actual news to report. . . . The more you reread it, you couldn’t help but feel there was a note of disappointment to it. It was almost patronizing.

This is what the message said.

“You’ve got it all wrong. And we’re sorry, because it’s our mistake. If we’d made things clearer to you right from the start, none of this would have happened.

“We gave you a knowledge of death. We thought it would make you rise above the other animals, give you a greater perspective on how to live your lives fruitfully, in peace and in happiness. But it’s all gone horribly wrong, hasn’t it?

“You obsess about death. Right from childhood, it seems to exercise your imagination in an entirely unhealthy way. You count all the calories on every single tin in the supermarket, you go to the gym twice a week, just so you feel you can ward it off that bit longer. You pump botox into your cheeks and stick plastic sacks into your breasts so you can kid yourselves you look younger, that death isn’t on the cards yet. And then, when death finally does happen to someone you know, you go to long boring funerals and sit on hard benches in sullen silence, dressed in smart clothes that make you itch, with only flat wine and sausage rolls to look forward to. And the growing certainty that soon it’ll be your turn, the sausage rolls will be eaten for you.

“You’re frightened and you’re miserable. We can’t blame you. Looking down at you, it makes us pretty miserable too!

“Houseflies and worms and llamas have the right idea. They understand that death is just part of the system. As much as birth and procreation. A thing to avoid when it isn’t necessary, and to accept when it is. And so houseflies and worms and llamas have a better grip on what’s expected of them, to be as good houseflies, worms and llamas as they can be, and not let all that death baggage get in the way.

“As we say, sorry. We made the mistake of giving you a little knowledge, when either none or more would have been more sensible. There was some hope we didn’t need to spell it all out for you, but don’t you worry, that’s our fault, not yours. And so we’re going to put an end to it.

“We did consider that taking away the knowledge of death would be the best thing. But there was a general feeling that it’d be a shame to go backwards—and that we’ve enough houseflies and worms and llamas as it is. They’re coming out our ears! So, starting tomorrow, expect things to be different. It’ll be a new chapter. For you and for us!

“And in the mean time, please accept our apologies for any distress we may have caused you.”

You see, that patronizing disappointment was hard to ignore. Especially after multiple readings of the message. Some very well-known intellectuals appeared on the phone-in discussion programmes that evening to complain that they’d been so obviously talked down to. “After all,” grumbled one, “what do they expect? If they’re going to turn the secrets of life and death into a crossword puzzle, they can hardly object when we all sit around trying to solve it.”

The first message had naturally taken everyone by surprise. In every country around the world, on every television set, on every radio and in every newspaper, the words appeared. All in the language of the country in question, of course. Many people studied the different translations, just to see whether they could glean any hidden meanings, but all they could conclude was that (a) German words can be irritatingly long and never use one syllable when six will do, and that (b) French is very romantic. So no one was any the wiser.

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.