The Reaper

The Reaper

I met Luke the very same day he moved in.  He was of a tall, slim build, bordering on athletic with short black hair and slightly sunken eyes.  Although he did not stand out as being strikingly good looking, he was not particularly unattractive either.  His age was more difficult to determine.  I estimated that he was older than me, but not by more than about five or six years.

I was sitting at the kitchen table eating a late breakfast when he entered, carrying an armful of orange shopping bags from the local supermarket.  He introduced himself – unpacking eggs, bread, milk – the usual things.  I spoke to him politely but with minimal interest.  Most of the tenants kept to themselves in the solace of their own rooms.  It was not uncommon to go days or even weeks without seeing one of them and consequently I found little point in trying to get to know them.

I however preferred to sit in the conservatory, reading and watching the foxes sneak over the back fence to nosy about in the bins or next door’s cat unsuccessfully attempt to snag himself a bird.

Oddly, Luke transpired to be an amiable and outgoing kind of person and would often join me during the evenings, on his return from wherever it was he went during the day.  Sometimes he would pull up a chair in the conservatory – others cajoling me in to sitting in the garden where he would light a fire in a fat ceramic wood burner he had brought with him and stare gleefully in to the flames as he told me far-fetched tales of the people he had come across that day.  As he did so he would gesture wildly with the silver topped walking cane he always carried, sometimes narrowly missing my head or the top of the ceramic wood burner in the process.

He never asked me about the previous occupier of room four and I hadn’t the heart to tell him the sorry tale.  I had answered the front door that day to the friend who had arrived to visit, only to find that Luke’s predecessor was dead.  Apparently he had a heart condition. An ambulance was called and arrived – then departed – quietly, after the body was carried downstairs on a stretcher.

I don’t believe in ghosts but afterwards there seemed to be an odd chill around the second floor landing, even though it was the middle of summer.  I wondered if Luke had felt it?  If he did, he never mentioned it to me.

I had a morbid fascination with death which had started almost a decade ago.  At first it was a mild interest bordering on the macabre but soon I began to think about it almost all the time.  I recorded endless re –runs of “Casualty” and “ER” and followed most medical documentaries.  I pored over books detailing diseases and NHS direct looking up symptoms for the illnesses I might have which would eventually kill me.  I definitely had one of them, at least.  I had been off sick for months and spent countless hours at the doctors or in hospital waiting rooms counting the minutes until I met with some specialist or another.  Yet after years, the cause nor type of my illness had been discovered.  Eventually my GP signed me off work with anxiety and depression – although I thought I would be far less anxious if they could simply find out what was wrong with me and provide a cure for it.

By some odd coincidence Luke appeared to have the same fascination as me.  The topic that made most of my friends and family weary, uncomfortable or simply bored seemed to delight him – and not only that, he could reel off the kind of statistics I could only dream of remembering – how many people had died of lung cancer in the past 6 months, the percentage of people between the ages of 25 and 50 who typically had an aneurysm in the United Kingdom every year, the odds of surviving a plane crash – and so on.

One evening I asked Luke if he believed in any kind of life after death.  I was in the middle of sorting the mail.  Every so often I would go through all the letters delivered to the house and write “Addressee Gone Away” on any letters for people who no longer lived here.  Then I would drop them in the letterbox on my way to the supermarket.  Luke had come home whilst I was halfway through this task.  He pondered the question carefully until I had written on all the envelopes.  Then he poured us a couple of brandies and said “There is no life after death; there is only death after death.  But this does not necessarily mean that death is also the end.”

“Are you afraid of death?”  I asked him

“ I am not, “ He replied “There is no point spending one’s life fearing something which is inevitable.”

It seemed a reasonable answer, if foolish.  But when I retired to bed that night I could not stop thinking about what he had said – death WAS inevitable and fearing or not fearing it would not make it any less so.  Was I afraid of death?  I knew it was inevitable – if not imminent.  I never thought of myself as afraid of it.  I just wanted to be ready for it – for the reaper – when he came.  I did not want death to catch me unawares.

The next day was a Saturday and as I wandered in to the kitchen to make my breakfast I ran in to Lacy, the landlord’s daughter who stood at the window looking at her watch and drinking a glass of water.

“Hello” I said “everything alright?”

“Oh hello Kate” She smiled “Sorry to disturb you – I hope I’m not in the way, shouldn’t be long – in fact – I’m just waiting for a prospective tenant to view room four, should be here any minute actually.  Terrible thing that happened to….but well, we have to let the room”.  She looked at the floor.

My face darkened “But what about Luke?” I asked urgently “Has he moved out?”

“Luke?” Lacy looked puzzled “Who is Luke? I didn’t think anyone else had moved in since – I mean, Dad didn’t mention it -”          

I ran up the stairs ahead of her and flung open the door to room four.  It was empty.  Only a bed, a wardrobe and a desk stared blankly back at me.  I sprinted down to the conservatory; the ceramic wood burner was gone.  So was the bottle of brandy from the windowsill.

As I stood bewildered and confused in the eerily empty room I heard the clink of the letterbox and the familiar sound of post dropping on to the mat.  Dazed, I wandered through the hallway and picked up the letters – there were two.  The first was addressed to me.  I opened it.  Inside was a single sheet of paper.  On it were five words.

“It is not your time”

Then the signature.

“Luke”

I looked down at the other letter.  The name read “L G Reaper” followed by the house address.

“Kate?  Is everything okay?”  Lacy asked as she reached the foot of the stairs.  I looked up at her.

“Yes – I’m sorry – I got confused.  I’ve not been well. “ I added.

“Well –you take care of yourself okay?”

I nodded as I went upstairs to my room still clutching the letters.  I sat down on the bed and stared at them for a long time.  Then I stood up, took out a pen and wrote on Luke’s letter:

“Addressee gone away.”

The following week I posted it in the letterbox, on the way to work.