Dead Letters Anthology (12 page)

She sighed. “His name is Nico and without him, this place would fall apart.”

I resisted the urge to tell her that was some rather heavy credit for somebody who just swiped cards. Unless updating the provenance was code for saving the world. Instead, I decided to come clean. “Look,” I said, “the truth is, that’s not really my card.”

She raised a skeptical eyebrow at me and produced what looked like a smartphone from her blazer pocket. “Well, let’s just see whose it is then.” She held out her hand and I gave her the card. She touched it to the phone screen, waited a second, then gave it back to me. “Yes, it is,” she said and showed me the screen. “Not having an identity crisis, are you?”

I saw the same photo I’d seen on the receptionist’s screen. It was a head-and-shoulders shot taken outdoors but I couldn’t tell where. The clothing was familiar but I’d gotten rid of that shirt a long time ago, and I couldn’t remember my hair ever being that long. But it was definitely me. Below the picture all in caps was the legend: CANCER DANCER.

“What kind of a sick joke is that?” I said angrily.

Stella rolled her eyes. “Do you or do you not have cancer?”

“Yes, but—”

“It’s just a designation, you don’t have to tell anybody what it is if you don’t want to. At least it’s easy to remember and it might even help you with the process.”

“What process?” I said.

“Side-step. It’s always a step to the side. Like this.” She demonstrated by stepping from one side of the hall to the centre. “Then you go on as long as you want to.” She took three steps forward. “And when you come to a place where you want to side-step…” She stepped to the opposite side of the hallway. “See? Easy. Side-step till you find one of the lines where you’re in remission. But don’t bother trying to find one where you didn’t get cancer in the first place. You’re locked out of those.”

Light was starting to dawn. It shouldn’t have because this was nonsense, impossible, total woo-woo. Nonetheless, I was getting it.

“Just remember to look for a swipe,” she said, pointing at the one next to the door. “If it doesn’t work, just move on. Oh, and don’t be stupid and try to take someone with you. The Eternity Club has a strict no-guests policy. The consequences are quite severe. Maybe it’s not fair but that’s just how it is.”

“Is that what happened to Michael Parris?” I asked.

“I don’t know anyone by that name,” Stella said.

I handed her the envelope. She examined it, then looked at the papers inside. “I couldn’t say. But let’s suppose, for a moment, that, oh, let’s say a woman decided she’d try to side-step someone with her, someone she had grown very fond of. Maybe a man with a heart condition and she wanted to save him, by taking him to a line where, say, he didn’t die of a heart attack.”

“And?” I said.

“Well, it wouldn’t work. As a non-member, he wouldn’t have a room. He’d die and her card would be lost. And you know the rule about lost things. Finders keepers,” she added when I shook my head. “Congratulations.” For some reason, her attitude toward me had softened. “You know, except the ones they know for certain are caused by things like smoking or asbestos, most cancers are just plain old bad luck. But every so often, some small compensatory action happens at random. You got lucky. Exercise care and good judgment and don’t break the rules and you just might side-step the endgame for two, even three decades.”

“What if I were happy where I was and I wanted to give my card to someone else?” I asked. I was thinking of my son.

“It’s not yours to give. It’s ours. Read the terms and conditions.”

“And if I didn’t want to use it?”

Stella’s expression was pitying. “You could give it back. But I’d suggest not doing anything rash. Hang onto it for a while, in case you change your mind.”

“But—”

“Please,” she said wearily, “I’ve told you as much as I can but I can’t spare any more time. I’m trying to quit this damned job and if I don’t get going, I might be stuck here for ever.” She strode off down the hall and around a corner before I could even say “But” again.

I looked at the door, at the swipe, and at the card in my hand. Everything that woman had just told me was complete and utter nonsense, I thought, so it wouldn’t matter if I used the card. So I did it, quick, before I changed my mind.

There was a clunking sound as the lock opened. I pushed through—

—and there I was in the reception area again, looking at What’s-His-Name. Nico. I whirled, thinking I could catch the door and go back through. Nope – it was the front door from the outside, not room 47.

“Oh!” Nico said. Same brief look of surprise, quickly covered with a smile. “Welcome to the Eternity Club.”

Wouldn’t you just fucking know it, I thought. I’d stepped from the frying pan into one of those lifetimes. And I still had cancer.

And then suddenly I understood why Stella was so annoyed with me, what kind of help poor Karen, whoever she was, had really been asking Detective Sergeant Michael Parris (ret’d) for, and why I probably couldn’t expect any, either.

Pat Cadigan has won the Locus Award three times, the Arthur C. Clarke Award twice, and most recently a Hugo Award and Japan’s Seiun Award. The author of fifteen books, she emigrated from Kansas City to gritty, urban North London, where she has lived for the past twenty years with her husband, the Original Chris Fowler, and Gentleman Jynx, coolest black cat in town. She can be found on Facebook and tweets as
@cadigan
, and she really did kick terminal cancer’s arse, at least for the time being.

“When Conrad invited me to this project and sent my envelope of goodies, I made several false starts. Then I was diagnosed with terminal cancer and the story wrote itself, with barely any help from me. Now the book has come out and, thanks to medical treatments that worked better than anticipated, I can expect to live somewhat longer than the original estimate of two years (which would have made 2016 my last). So I’ll be hanging around indefinitely, checking the mail when I’m not trying to finish a new novel and marvelling at how changeable those crazy winds of change really are.”

Conrad, I’d better say at once that I don’t think this is for your book. It isn’t fiction, even though I’ve given it that kind of title, and so I don’t imagine it will fit in. I hope at least you may feel able to respond to it – perhaps even help me understand what happened to me. Please be aware that I’m not blaming you. Perhaps I should blame myself.

You’ll recall that I was one of the writers you invited into an anthology of tales based on items returned to the dead letter office. I liked the idea and was eager to contribute, but by the time the proposal found a publisher I’d been overtaken by several projects of my own, and so I had to let you down. Other work put the anthology out of my mind, and when I received a package a couple of months ago I didn’t think of your idea at all.

While I don’t generally examine mail before I open it, this item put me on guard. It was a white Jiffy bag – to be precise, a Mail Lite manufactured by Sealed Air – with a price sticker on the back, 39p from Osborne Office. The packaging looked unusually pristine, as if it might be designed to seem innocent. The First Class Large stamp wasn’t franked, and my address had been written by more than one person. Most of it was in bold capitals inscribed with a black marker pen, but the postcode had been corrected with a ballpoint. You may understand why I was growing suspicious, unless you think it doesn’t take much to rouse my paranoia. The contents might have made you feel that way as well.

Inside I found a small white envelope on which several people appeared to have written. It was addressed to Roland Malleson at 1 Harvell Crescent in London (West Heath, SE2), but all this had been crossed out and marked NOT KNOWN AT THIS ADDRESS. Someone else had written
Postage unpaid
where a stamp should have been. On the back I read NO FORWARD ADDRESS in yet another script, and return to sender in a fifth one, using a pink marker. Was all this meant to confuse me so that I wouldn’t think about what I was taking out of the envelope? One point in particular made me cautious. Although the NOT KNOWN message was printed with a blue marker, it was unquestionably in the same hand that had addressed the entire package to me. Roland Malleson’s mail hadn’t been returned to the post office, though I was meant to think it had.

Other aspects didn’t ring true either. The envelope had been roughly opened, but if the addressee was indeed not known, why had the recipient looked inside? At least this let me do so. The envelope contained a pair of cardboard rectangles approximately two and a half inches by four and a half, crudely cut out of a larger piece of card and taped together so closely that there wasn’t space between them for much more than a scrap of paper. It occurred to me that in the days of LSD on blotting paper this might have been how people sent it through the mail. Call me paranoid again if you like, Conrad, but I was afraid that somebody had set me up – that if I opened the cardboard packet I would incriminate myself or be accused of having done so. I even wondered if the post office was involved in the operation.

It was a Saturday, the 24th of April, and the sorting office was still open. I spent some time at the bathroom sink – my hands felt grimy, and I remember peering at them to convince myself they weren’t – and then I went to the sorting office. It’s fifteen minutes’ walk from this house, three minutes’ drive at my age. A number of women were waiting to collect their post, and I’ve seen faster queues outside a toilet, since there was just one postman behind the counter. When at last I reached the window I showed him the package but kept hold of it. “Who do I need to speak to about this?”

“Depends what it is. Won’t I do?”

His smooth round face looked as if he’d tried to scrub it younger, and I thought I smelled soap through the gap under the window; there might even have been slivers of pink soap beneath some of his fingernails. “Is the supervisor available?” I said.

“She’s busy right now.” Professionalism didn’t entirely disguise his resentment as he added “I can help.”

“If you can tell me why I’ve received this.”

He stared at the words on the front of the package I pushed under the window. “Is that you? Then that’s why.”

As he slid the package back across the counter I thought he was a little too eager to return it. “Have a look inside,” I said.

Did I glimpse a hint of reluctance? He poked the padded bag open with a finger and thumb and squinted inside before shaking out the smaller envelope onto the counter. He read both sides of it and then turned Malleson’s address to face me. “Did you send him this?”

“Of course I didn’t. I’ve never even heard of him.”

“Well, whoever forwarded it to you must think you have.”

“And why should they think I want what’s in there?”

The postman looked inside the envelope but left the cardboard packet where it was. “What is it?”

“I think you ought to check. It’s still your responsibility, isn’t it? Property of Royal Mail.”

“Not once it’s been delivered,” he said and slipped the envelope under the window. “It’s yours to do what you want with.”

I couldn’t help thinking he was as wary as I had every right to feel. Was he trying to pretend he thought the packet could be lethal? “I’ll open it here,” I said, “if you’ll be a witness.”

I could have fancied he was trying to compete with me at cautiousness. “A witness to what?” he objected.

“To the fact that I’m only just opening it now.”

“You could have done it once and stuck it back together.”

“I’ve done nothing of the kind,” I said with far less ire than I was experiencing. “I give you my word.”

He stared at that as if it was nowhere to be seen. He rubbed his hands together, apparently feeling they weren’t clean enough, while I removed the packet from the envelope. I made sure he saw how fragments of the cardboard stuck to the tape as I peeled it off. I opened up one long side of the packet and a short one, and fished out the contents. If I’d been alone I might have laughed at the anticlimax. My prize was a grubby pair of playing cards, a two of clubs and a six of hearts. “Using the mail for a game?” the postman suggested.

“At my expense, you’d have to mean.”

“Some people play chess through the mail, don’t they? Maybe someone’s having a game of cards.”

“I shouldn’t think so.” In case he meant me I told him “I haven’t played cards since I was your age.”

“So what do you want to do with those?”

“I’ll take them home. As you say, they were sent to me.”

Had I begun to wonder if they might give me an idea for your anthology, Conrad? If you’re like me you never waste material, however trivial it may seem. I put the cards in the envelope and returned that to the padded bag, and was on my way past the queue that had gathered behind me until the postman called “Don’t you want this?”

He was brandishing the empty cardboard packet. “Bin it for me,” I said, and now I wonder if I should have taken it with me, though I’ve no idea what difference it could have made.

I found myself rubbing my thumb and finger together as I headed for the car. It felt like a tic, especially since I could see no reason for it, and it didn’t let me think much about Malleson. Was the name wholly unfamiliar? Was it somehow associated with a convention I’d attended long ago? Surely I must have Miles Malleson in mind. He’d been in many of the Hammer horror films I’d sought out as soon as I was able to pass for sixteen, and decades later I’d seen him interviewed at the Festival of Fantastic Films in Manchester. All the same, this didn’t help me grasp an impression that was loitering just beyond reach in my mind. It seemed too vague to be related to the actor.

Once I was home I emailed you, Conrad, asking if you’d sent me the package even though I’d had to turn down your invitation. I don’t know if you received my message, since I never saw a reply. Of course you did say at the outset that you wouldn’t enter into any correspondence about the items you sent your contributors. I didn’t wait too long to hear from you before I did what I should have done in the first place. I searched online for Roland Malleson and his address.