Remember Why You Fear Me (18 page)

The constable said, “Begging your pardon, would you look at the body, sir? It’s got us properly stumped, and you’re a man of science and all.” I pointed out that my science was photography not medicine, but accepted after further pleading that I was still the best qualified scientist there, and permitted them to present me the corpse.

The sheet was removed. In death Harries looked larger, swollen somehow, as if he’d been the victim of drowning—though his body, naturally enough, was perfectly dry. That he was peculiarly bloated was not the most disturbing thing about him—it was more that his mouth was open, wide open, opened wider than I thought a mouth could stretch.

“For heaven’s sake,” I said, “give the man some dignity. At least shut the mouth!” And the constable said to me his men had tried to do just that, but the mouth
wouldn’t
shut; “The jaws have got stuck somehow, sir.” So I had a go. I put on my gloves, and reached out to Harries’ face. I saw as I neared it there were fresh scratches upon his cheeks. I pulled on the chin, but it was indeed stiff. For a moment I thought his body had frozen hard like the carcass of the cat he had shown me—but no, I pulled harder, and I could feel some give—I admit, I was none too gentle about it, and at last the hinges of the jaws gave way to my bidding and the mouth snapped tight shut.

“Thanking you, sir,” said the constable.

“That’s all I can do, I’m afraid,” I said. “This death goes beyond the knowledge afforded me by photoscopic theory. I’d say he didn’t die easily, though. Poor devil.”

Back home I perused the contents of the box once more.

There was nothing new to be gleaned from the enigmatic letter, so I destroyed it. I checked the camera; it had no film. I left it in the kitchen. It was junk, but I thought I might cannibalize it for parts.

I took the photographs up to my study. I sat in my favourite chair, drank a brandy.

Yes, some of them had clearly been taken by Harries. Two of them were of his own lodgings for a start, and I assumed they were failures from his cat experiments. But others seemed to be not of his hand at all, the style was wrong, the composition. There were pictures of empty anonymous streets. There were pictures of famous London landmarks, the one of St Paul’s Cathedral at dusk was especially striking. There was a man and a woman outside a church, all dressed up in their best—was it their wedding day? Or was it nothing of the sort?
They looked uncomfortable, was that at the prospect of spending the rest of their lives together, or that someone was aiming a camera at them and stealing the moment and freezing it for his own ends and committing it to film and making it possible that strangers like me could finger at it and paw at it and stare at it without shame? There was Queen Victoria. She didn’t seem amused.

I could see nothing to connect the pictures whatsoever. I tried to puzzle it over, but not too seriously; it wasn’t my mystery, after all, I didn’t have to care. I felt drowsy. I raised a glass to Harries, and toasted him. I meant it respectfully enough, but quite see it may have come out wrong.

I dozed.

And when I woke up, the fire was nearly out, and there was a crick in my neck, and I’d dropped the photographs all over the floor. I looked at the time—and it was on the verge of midnight—and then, soon enough, the grandfather clock downstairs began to chime. But that wasn’t what had stirred me, that started
after
I had woken, and it was as if there was a little alarm inside my head and it had gone off, it had made sure I was able to see all the fun. . . .

The top photograph was of Harries’ room. And I stared at it. I didn’t
want
to stare at it. I didn’t want to see a dead cat shimmer into view. But I couldn’t take my eyes off it—and yes—soon enough—there it was, the outline, then filling in with more clarity, more depth—there was the cat, sure enough, its ‘graph taken at the very point of death. The previous cat had looked merely surprised. This one was angry.

And it wasn’t alone.

Because the picture continued to blur, now all around the fringes of it, I could see the blurring ripple beneath my fingers and I all but dropped the photograph, it buzzed to the touch. And there was a sound to it now, a whispering? A hissing. And more cats began to appear.

How many cats had Harries squeezed into his studio? What had he done?

There were a dozen—then there were more—then the picture was
full
of them, a hundred cats, a hundred and one, who could say?—big cats, kittens too, and all spilling out over each other, jostling for space, cramming themselves into every last crevice of space the picture could afford, blotting out the background of the room until all that could be seen was wall to wall cat.

And even though the picture was full, I could see that the ‘graph was blurring still, and the hissing was louder now, it was a
seething
—
and there were still more cats being born, but there was no space for them, they were crushing the other cats now, they were bending themselves out of shape too, they were distorting, they were making themselves anew.

And still, still, the cats wouldn’t stop. And there was no light to the picture now, it was all just a mass of black, and the black was crying out, I knew that black wasn’t a void, it was anything but, it was the weight of all the cats in the world stuffed into an area no more than a few inches square, and still, still the cats wouldn’t stop.

And the other pictures.

There were cats piled up as high as St Paul’s Cathedral, they were choking up the River Thames. There were cats in the wedding dress, there were cats perched on top of the bridegroom’s hat, and pouring out from under his hat, and pouring out from under
him
. There was Queen Victoria, regal, unsmiling, and the cats were prodding at her face, they were prodding at her cheeks, they were forcing a smile out of her whether she liked it or not.

And I knew they were here. That the world was full of ghosts, stuffed together tight, and that we couldn’t see. But the camera could see. The camera could see the cats, at least. At least it could only see the cats.

I wanted to throw the photographs from me, get them away as far as I could. But I couldn’t move. And I felt something so heavy on my chest—and I knew they were there, all of them, all the cats who had ever died, all of them were sitting on me and crawling over me and trying to find somewhere warm to shelter away from the cold of extinction. I thought I couldn’t breathe. I thought I couldn’t breathe. Then, then I forced myself to my feet. And, of course, there was nothing pinning me down, of course there was no weight to shift—and, of course, nothing kicked and wailed and howled as it scattered to the floor.

I lit a candle. I went downstairs.

I had to get to the camera. To destroy it? I don’t know. To take pictures, lots of pictures, to fill the world with cats, say to everybody, look! look! this is where the dead go!

Film that doesn’t show us what is really there, that gives us stories and fantasies instead, what use could that ever be?

And as I went down the stairs I imagined the cats beneath my feet would trip me up, and I held on to the banister rail so tightly. And I imagined my stepping on their tails, my treading down on their backs, the crunch of their bones breaking underfoot, the howls, the mews, the pitiful mews.

I entered the kitchen.

The camera was where I’d left it, on the table.

Wrapped around it—licking it, even?—was a cat. The fattest cat I had ever seen. Greasy too, its fur looked slick and oily and wet.

It bared its teeth at me.

“Get away!” I cried. “Get out of here!”

It wouldn’t take its eyes off me. It wouldn’t move from the camera.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? What do you want? Tell me what you want!” I was ready to bargain with a cat. And I threw the candle at it.

I didn’t aim at the cat directly. I think it knew that. I think that’s why it didn’t even flinch. The candlestick passed harmlessly overhead.

“Get out!” I said, and I mimed throwing something else, although I had nothing left to throw, and of course the cat could see that. But it yawned, it stretched. It gave me a look that I can only describe as reproachful. And then, slowly, in its own time, it slinked away from the camera. It dropped off the table, and for all its bulk landed lightly on its feet.

“You get away!” I said. But it was ignoring me now. I backed away as it trotted towards me, out of the door, out of the room.

I looked for it in the corridor, but it was dark now without the candle. I couldn’t see it.

I went to the camera.

I was going to destroy it. But now I picked it up, I felt the urge to take photographs with it. What else is a camera for? No, I was going to destroy it. I was going to smash it down upon the table, now, hard, the glass would shatter, and all the ghosts would be locked away forever somewhere we couldn’t see.

And I saw there was film in it. There hadn’t been film earlier. I had checked. Who had put the film in?

I hesitated.

I took out the film, and had it developed.

I haven’t destroyed the camera.

I’ve told Cook to keep it in the kitchen. And if the cats get in, and sometimes they do, she is to remove them from the house. But she must be gentle with them. She must give them milk first, and treat them with respect.

I haven’t used the camera, either. Though one night I woke up, and I was downstairs, in the kitchen, and I was holding the camera with both hands. And I had never walked in my sleep before. I woke up in time, I went back upstairs, I locked my bedroom door. I keep the door locked every night now.

Maybe I’ll destroy the camera anyway. One day. We’ll see. I just don’t think that would make the cats very happy.

There are African tribes I’ve heard of, savages really, who don’t like the white man taking photographs of them. They fear that it takes their souls. But I worry that the reverse may be true. What if the camera brings a dead soul back? What if every picture confers a little immortality, and the world simply cannot support the weight of all those never-to-be-forgotten memories?

I destroyed the photograph that I had found in the camera. No one else need ever see that. For my part, though, it might as well still exist. For my part, I might as well have framed it, and hung it over my bed. It’s not as if I’ll ever forget what was in that photograph, not one single detail of it.

The picture was of Simon Harries. And I now know how he died. And I now know why his mouth was open so unnaturally wide, because there was something forcing the bulk of its entire body in. It knew what it was doing, too—the photograph had caught a little jaunty wave of the tail. And I don’t think it was the first that had crawled inside Harries’ mouth, I think that Harries’ bloated body was full of them.

And I remember how I had forced his jaws shut, and the resistance I felt, and I think I must have had that ghost body bitten clean through.

I’ll destroy the camera one day. I will. But for now, I treat all cats well, and I sleep with the door locked, and my mouth taped up.

No one can take photographs of babies either. Babies have no souls. But no one wants a picture of a baby.

Once in a while, for a joke, they’d talk about what they’d do if the other died. They’d be lying in bed together, dozing, cuddling, they might even just have made love—and it was so warm in there, and death seemed so very far away. Janet would say, “I’m going to get you to scatter my ashes, somewhere really obscure,” and he’d ask her how obscure, and she’d laugh, and say, “I don’t know, the top of Mount Everest.” And David would say, “I’m going to leave you everything in my will, but only on condition you stay the night in a haunted house,” and she’d ask where he might find this haunted house, and he’d tell her he’d Google one on the internet—”don’t you worry, missie, you’re not getting out of it that easily!” She’d tell him that if he died she’d never marry again—and she’d keep his head in a box, or on display on the mantelpiece, to ward off potential suitors. And he told her that he
would
marry again, in unseemly haste that would shock the in-laws, someone young and pretty, and bring her to his wife’s own funeral. She kicked him for that. And then they’d doze some more, or cuddle some more—or maybe even make love again, there was plenty of lovemaking to be had back then.

What actually happened, when he found out his wife was dead, was that he went quite numb. He felt sorry for the policewoman who brought him the bad news: she was so upset, she was so young, she probably hadn’t done this much before. But only
vaguely
sorry, he wasn’t sure how to express himself. And when he thanked her for her time and wished her a nice day he hoped it had come out right.

And it was while numb that he accepted condolences, opened greetings cards telling him “sorry for your loss,” received flowers. That he phoned Janet’s parents, first to tell them their daughter was dead, the words slipped out more easily than he expected, too easily—and then on each night thereafter to see how they were, how they were holding up, whether they were doing okay—and he heard their numbness too, the way that the voices became ever softer, their words large and round and bland—and he thought, I’m doing this to them, I’m infecting them with numbness. It was while numbed that he had to take his sister’s phone calls, because she’d phone him every night too—”to see how you are, how you’re holding up, are you okay”—and she
was
crying, sometimes she’d be unable to speak through the tears, “oh, God, I’ve lost a sister, I always wanted a proper sister of my own,”—and he felt annoyed at that, that her grief was better than his. Especially when she hadn’t even known Janet that well, she had never once given a Christmas present Janet had wanted, Janet had never liked his sister much. He prepared the funeral numbed, was numbed as he organized flowers and arranged a nice buffet for the wake; he was really quite spectacularly numb as he wrote a eulogy to Janet, he wanted to tell the world how he felt now she’d gone forever, but he didn’t know how he felt, that was what he was still trying to work out; “I’m in shock,” he said, to reassure himself, “it has to be expected, I’m in shock,” but it had been
days
now, how long could you be ‘in shock’ for?