The Spectral Book of Horror Stories (28 page)

Mr Norton sighed. “We’re far too busy with the actual job of assessing to give our department much publicity.”

“Nevertheless, I don’t know anyone who has been through what you’re suggesting,” said Franklin, “and I know a lot of people.”

“Ah,” said Mr Norton, as if that explained everything. “That’s because of the Oath of Secrecy.”

Franklin’s eyes narrowed. “The what?”

“The Oath of Secrecy.” Mr Norton tucked the clipboard under his right arm. “Once your Life Assessment has been completed, you will be required to sign a document confirming that you swear not to reveal either the contents of the interview, or the fact that you have indeed been interviewed, to anyone.” He scratched the side of his nose with the Bic. “It prevents people from swotting up beforehand.”

“Swotting up?” Franklin snorted. “I’ve never heard of anything so ridiculous in my life. Now, if you would be so kind as to move onto whomever else you would like to bother with your crack-brained ideas, I have work to do.”

He tried to close the door but the toe of a highly polished black Oxford prevented him from doing so.

“I’m sorry to have to do this,” said Mr Norton, reaching into his raincoat pocket once more. “But you leave me no choice.”

Franklin felt a pang of panic as he waited for this obvious lunatic to draw either a gun or a knife. When he saw it was a mobile phone he relaxed. Mr Norton tapped the screen twice to bring up a video feed, and then held it so Franklin could see.

On the screen Franklin’s wife Eleanor and his two children, Jocasta (eight) and Tobias (seven) were tied to chairs in the darkened confines of what looked like someone’s garage. Their faces were tear-stained, but as far as he could tell, they were unharmed.

“A brief glimpse into HM Department of Corrections,” said Mr Norton. “If you are happy to continue with your assessment, then hopefully I won’t have to show you any more of their work.”

Franklin wasn’t listening. He was still staring at the screen, and so Mr Norton switched it off and put it away.

“I’m sorry I had to do that,” he said, “but we’ve found it the best way to encourage uncooperative individuals to see sense.” He tapped the clipboard. “Now, I have a quota that must be satisfied by the end of the morning, so can we get on?”

Still in a state of shock, Franklin nodded dumbly and held the door open.

Mr Norton made another mark on his sheet and stepped inside with a curt, “Thank you.”

The hallway was given a quick once over, with a glance to the staircase on the left before Mr Norton’s eye was caught by the framed certificate on the opposite wall. He peered at it and wrote something on the form.

“It’s Jocasta’s piano exam,” Franklin explained.

“Yes.”

“Grade One.”

“I see.”

“We were very proud of her for getting a distinction.”

“How interesting.” The man ticked another box.

“Really?”

“No, not really.” Mr Norton looked around. “Is there somewhere we can sit down?”

Franklin gestured to the lounge.

Mr Norton shook his head. “I’d prefer somewhere with a table.”

“How do you know there isn’t one in there?”

The man in grey shook his head in a way that suggested Franklin should have known better. “Of course I know,” he said. “Shall we go in to the kitchen?”

Franklin didn’t need to lead the way, which merely served to disconcert him further.

“Very nice,” said Mr Norton as he beheld the bright and airy space into which every conceivable (and, at Eleanor’s insistence, very fashionable) modern convenience had been unobtrusively fitted.

Franklin pulled out a chair from the matching pine table that dominated the floor space. “I would have imagined you already knew what it looked like,” he said.

“I do.” Mr Norton sat opposite him, crossed his legs, and rested the clipboard on his upraised knee. “I was just being polite.”

“How very kind of you.”

The response this time was a thin, pitying smile that made Franklin more annoyed. Then he remembered the image on the phone and did his best to curb his fury. He tried to keep calm but couldn’t help digging his fingernails into the overpriced wood. The action did not go unnoticed. Mr Norton wrote something on the form and then sat there quietly, regarding Franklin with calm detachment.

Franklin stared back.

It wasn’t long before the silence became unbearable. The silence and the waiting and that awful image of Eleanor and the kids that he couldn’t stop thinking about. What did this man want? Surely he couldn’t really be the person the card claimed? A Life Inspector? It had to be a ruse, a scam, some new and horrible way of getting money out of decent hardworking people like himself.

Money.

That was it.

And almost before he realised he was doing it, Franklin found himself blurting:

“Ten thousand pounds!”

Mr Norton raised an eyebrow at the broken stillness. “I beg your pardon?”

Franklin clasped his hands to stop them shaking. It helped a little bit.

“I don’t know who you really are,” he said, “but we both know this is going to come down to money sooner or later. So how about I write you a cheque now, or you accompany me to the bank while I make a money transfer, or however else you want it, but can we please stop this?”

Mr Norton frowned—not in anger, but in confusion. In fact, he made the kind of face someone at the post office counter might make if you asked for a new tax disc for your car but had forgotten the MOT certificate.

“We can’t ‘stop it’, Mr Chalmers,” he said. “That’s not how it works.”

Franklin’s knuckles were white.

“How does it work then?”

Mr Norton looked pleased now that Franklin seemed to be cooperating. “It’s quite simple, Mr Chalmers. I ask you questions and you answer them.”

Franklin didn’t know what to say. Was this really how he was meant to save the lives of his family?

“There’s no other way?”

Mr Norton shook his head. “No other way.”

“At all?”

“Not at all. If there were alternatives I’d be suggesting them. But there aren’t. Which is why I’m not.”

Not for the first time that morning Franklin was subject to the sensation of his stomach trying to invert itself. He made an attempt to stop his voice from shaking.

“Let’s get started then, shall we?”

Mr Norton removed the tissue-thin sheet from his clipboard and turned it over. “Oh, we’ve already done that, Mr Chalmers,” he said as he secured it back in place. “We’re on to Section B now.”

Franklin could feel his small intestine trying to go one better than his stomach by tying itself into a sequence of granny knots.

“But you haven’t asked me anything yet!”

Mr Norton wrote more on the form. “I have,” he said as he underlined something twice. “You just haven’t been paying attention.”

The knots tightened.

“Well, can we start again then?” he spluttered. “I wasn’t ready.”

“No we can’t.” Mr Norton looked ever so slightly annoyed. “That’s the point. I told you that earlier.”

Another tick on the form.

“Tell me, Mr Chalmers, do you read a daily newspaper?”

“You mean to tell me you actually don’t know something?” The words were out before Franklin could stop them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that.”

But it was no good. “Oh I think you did, and for your information, yes, we do know, but it’s your response to the question that’s important.”

“In that case, we—”

“What are you doing?”

“Telling you what newspaper we take.”

Mr Norton put the pen down. “You do seem to have trouble understanding, don’t you? I just explained that it’s your response to the question that’s important. You’ve already given me your answer to that one, so now we move on.”

“But I haven’t told you anything!”

“You have.”

What was the point of arguing?

“Would it help if I told you we take the
Daily Mail
?” Franklin gave Mr Norton what he hoped was an imploring look.

“No.”

“Or,” Franklin said, furiously trying to backpedal, “that it’s only my wife who reads it? I can’t stand it myself.”

“You can say what you like, Mr Chalmers. I’ve already filled in the box for that question, so it doesn’t really matter. Do you think it does?”

Franklin frowned. “Does what?”

“Matter.”

This was getting ridiculous. “Of course it matters! You should give your interviewees some time to think—not just accept the first thing that comes into their heads. That’s not fair at all!”

Mr Norton wrote something on the form.

“Was that my next question?” Franklin groaned.

“It might have been,” said Mr Norton. “Of course, I might just have been making an addendum.”

“You can do those, then?” Franklin saw a straw of finest gossamer being offered to him, one he knew he had to clutch ever so gently or his desperate grasp would tear it. “Okay, how about ten thousand pounds to rip that form up and start all over again? I promise I won’t tell a soul.”

“I didn’t say I
could
make an addendum,” Mr Norton replied. “I said I
might
be doing that.” He uncrossed his legs. “And, on an unrelated note, do I strike you as the kind of man who would agree to a bribe of such proportions?”

Franklin was about to blurt a desperate yes, but immediately thought better of it. Instead he gave the man a strangled reply in the negative.

For the first time since he had invaded Franklin’s home Mr Norton gave him the hint of a smile.

“A sensible answer for once,” he said.

“Will that count in my favour?”

“We don’t like to use words like ‘favour’, Mr Chalmers. That’s not really the point of the inspection.”

“And what exactly is the point?”

“You’ll find out in just a minute.” Mr Norton turned the sheet over, added a few more ticks and then scribbled something at the bottom. “We’re pretty much finished.”

Finished? That was absurd! “How can we be finished?” Franklin resisted the urge to tear the forms from Mr Norton’s clipboard. “You’ve hardly asked me anything!”

“I’ve gathered all the information I need, Mr Chalmers.” Mr Norton signed the form with a flourish. “We decide what’s important and what isn’t about an individual.”

Franklin was incensed. “This is nonsense,” he said. “There is no way you have just carried out an accurate inspection of my life.”

“Oh, but I have.” Mr Norton scanned the two sheets of pink paper, poking his tongue out in concentration as he added the marks up with his biro. He wrote a number at the bottom of the final page and then gave Franklin a very solemn look.

“Mr Chalmers, I am very sorry to have to inform you that by the process approved by Her Majesty’s Department of Life Inspection you have failed.”

“Failed?” Franklin said with a snorting laugh.

Mr Norton regarded him without any emotion whatsoever.

“It’s no laughing matter, Mr Chalmers. I know this sort of thing doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, we believe the occasion should be treated with rather more seriousness than you seem to be giving it.”

Franklin got to his feet.

“I’m not treating this seriously because it’s bloody stupid,” he said, grabbing the cordless phone from the mottled granite of the kitchen work surface. “Now get out of here before I call the police.”

Franklin punched 999 and put the handset to his ear.

The phone was dead.

Franklin tried again.

Silence.

“Bloody thing.”

Franklin rammed the phone back into its cradle and took his mobile from his back pocket.

No signal.

Mr Norton didn’t move, but he did assume a slightly more sympathetic expression.

“You can’t telephone anyone, Mr Chalmers.” His voice was softer now, his manner appropriate for dealing with someone who has suffered a recent loss.

“Rubbish!” Franklin made his way into the hall where there was another telephone.

That was dead too.

“There must be a problem with the lines,” he said as he replaced the receiver.

“There’s no problem with the telephone,” said Mr Norton, who had followed him with silent steps. “The problem is with you.”

“No,” Franklin pointed a shaking finger at the little grey man. “The problem is with you, my friend, and you have just gone one step too far.”

Franklin turned and opened the front door.

To be confronted with the black, yawning gulf of absolute nothingness.

He slammed the door shut and looked out of the window.

Through the patterned glass Franklin could see a normal street. His street. The street where he and his family had lived for the last three years. The sun was shining. The old lady from number 37 was taking her terrier for a walk. The damn thing was shitting where it always did.

He yanked open the door to shout at her, like he always did.

Black nothingness lay beyond the gaping doorway.

Mr Norton allowed Franklin to repeat the door opening and closing ritual another three times before he spoke again.

“You can’t leave the house,” he explained, “because you don’t exist.”

“I don’t…”

“…exist. Therefore you cannot interact with the real world. You failed your life inspection. Therefore you no longer have a life. Believe me, I don’t enjoy failing people and I’m very sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”

Franklin looked out through the glass once more. The old lady and her dog had gone now, but he could hear the animal yapping. At the postman, probably.

The postman!

Sure enough there he was, and God bless him he had a handful of stuff to shove through the letterbox. Lovely circulars, wonderful bills—anything as long as they gave him the chance to communicate with another person.

As soon as the letterbox began to open Franklin screamed. It was a long, drawn out plea for assistance that began with the force of a bear but quickly tailed off into a sorrowful whine.

The second time Franklin tried all he got was the sorrowful whine.

The third time he got nothing.

“I’d save my breath if I were you,” said Mr Norton. “You don’t need a voice anymore, so it’s not going to last much longer.”