by Greg James
Still, Wilson reached out a shaking hand to Bone. Bone was aiming the barrel of his revolver right between Wilson's eyes.
“Don't do this, sir.”
“Farewell, Private Wilson. Hell awaits.”
The gas reared up, rolling over Bone in a tidal wave. Its diaphanous folds embracing him. Wilson could hear the wet sound of the older man gurgling as the gas went gushing down his throat, eager to drink his insides dry. Bone's body bucked violently, writhing from the violation.
Wilson saw no more.
The monstrous creatures were swarming around him. A mummified hand snatched at him. Wilson roared, batting it away. He had dropped the crucifix when he was shot. His fingers slippery with mud, blood and tainted fluid. He reached out for it. Clicking skeletal hands grabbed him, dragging him away from it, forcing him over onto his back. Wilson squirmed as they held him down. He felt the barrel of a revolver being pressed into the top of his head. He felt the cool metal hollow digging into the skin. He heard the percussion of it being cocked, a thunderclap, shaking him to the core.
“No! Please!”
He tried to bite his way free, gnawing at the fingers scrambling over his face. His teeth sank into the dried skin with ease but they did not seem to feel pain from his bites.
The hammer of the revolver cracked home.
…a coward dies many deaths, a brave man dies but once…
Wilson closed his eyes, hoping that he had been brave enough this time.
The bullet powered through skin and then the bone of Wilson's skull. It went smashing into the brain beneath. Sending a gout of blood and colourless matter streaking back out of the entry wound. Wilson could smell his hair burning. The air above him was blurring into the colour of dawn. Wilson's head was released. It flopped to one side. His eyes were still and glassy. His mouth fell open, slack. He could feel rats sniffing at the wound in his skull. He could feel them poking their noses inside. Tiny claws and teeth were scrabbling away at the edges of the wound, pulling away obstructing fragments of bone. Clearing the way. Making the hole bigger. Big enough. Scabby skin and sodden fur grazed against the rim of the opening. The rats burrowed their way deep inside. He could feel them, scratching and scratching. Through the shuffling legs of the nightmare crowd, Wilson saw the thing from the crypt, it was watching him.
Its eyes were glinting, it was smiling at him, amused.
Chapter Thirteen
A light!
It was over there, washed-out, a haziness, a steady white glow. He could see something at the heart of it, a stocky shape, standing, picking bits and pieces out of its beard, inspecting them, then discarding them.
“Smithy?”
It was Smithy. The haze made him seem out of focus. He was wearing ragged old clothes and had an unruly thick beard, but it was Smithy.
“Yes, it's me, Wilson. What d'you want?”
“I dunno. Where are we? What is this place?”
“This is nowhere. Those rats had me, so here I am.”
Wilson avoided the spectre's eyes.
“I'm sorry, Smithy.”
“Sorry? For what? You thought of yourself, Wilson. You kicked me in the face so you could get away. That's what people do. We all think of ourselves first in the end, when it comes down to it, not others.”
“I should've helped you, Smithy.”
“You should've but you didn't. There're lots of things in your life you should've done, I‘ll bet. You think about those things. You dream about them. You want to go back in time and put them 'right'. But you can't.”
Wilson looked into the eyes of the apparition. There was no hatred or malice there. They were just empty orbs.
“Don't be afraid of me, Wilson. I ain't here to judge you. I was no bleedin' angel. I'm just here because you want to see me. The guilty part of you wants to say sorry. But you can't say sorry to the dead, Wilson. You can't hear much when you're six feet under, know what I mean?”
“I will say this to you though, Wilson. You are halfway there. Do not go further than this. They know you're here, talking to me.”
“Who are they? I thought there was just that thing from the crypt after me.”
“No, there's more of 'em. They don't want you knowing that. They don't want you knowing what's happening to you.”
“Happening to me? Smithy, what the fuck are you talking about? Who are 'they'!”
“Be careful, lad. The shadows are gathering.”
Smithy dimmed, a dying candle, flickering out.
*
Wilson opened his eyes. It was night. Heavy raindrops were spattering his face. He was lying on a stretcher. The bearers were walking down a length of churned slurry, once a road. Wilson felt the lining of his stomach beginning to crawl. He looked over his shoulder into the tumbling rain behind.
Nothing but the light of falling flares could be seen.
Dying candles, flickering, slowly going out.
He fingered the top of his head. The skin there was undisturbed. He looked up at the bearer carrying the rear end of the stretcher. The man had his face bowed, he could not make it out in the dark. Wilson watched the rain course down the curve of his tin helmet, gathering into beads, dropping down onto his tunic. It was hypnotic. It took his mind off the crawling sensation in his guts. His shoulder and thigh pulsed with dull pain. Wilson couldn't see beyond the edge of the road. The fall of the rain was too dense for that.
He wondered what was out there, watching them.
He'd heard the stories about the wild dogs. The lost pets of the local peasantry. Abandoned to eke out an existence in the squalor of no man's land when the bombardments started in earnest, back in 1914. Some people were scared of the rats. Everyone was scared of the dogs. The dogs were bigger, more vicious. They could fell you more easily, chew damn great holes in you, bite your throat out in one go.
Something was there.
He shook his head, flicking fat drops of rain out of his eyes. The rain marked out a shape on the road behind them. It was hanging back, keeping pace, stalking them. The body was low and long. It wasn't a man.
It was one of the dogs.
Wilson looked away. It was not a dog. His eyes were playing tricks on him. He was imagining things. That was all. Christ, he wished they were at the station already and that he was off this bloody stretcher and on his way. It would be dry and warm and well-lit in the train. No wild dogs in there.
What was he going to do?
Say something to the bearers?
No. they'd just think he was doolally from his wounds.
He looked again.
There it was, following. It hadn't attacked them. Maybe it was okay. Maybe it wasn't wild. Maybe it was just a normal stray. Hungry and hoping they would lead it to food. Wilson didn't believe that for a second. He lay back on the stretcher and began to sing to take his mind off it.
“Pack up yer troubles in yer old kit bag and smile, smile, smile. Pack up yer troubles in yer old kit bag and smile boy, that's the style.”
Spitting out the rain as it landed on his lips, he thought only about the next line that was coming, belting it out.
“What's the use of worrying? It never was worthwhile. So pack up yer troubles in yer old kit bag and smile, smile, smile.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Wilson watched the shape in the rain following them. It did not shrink back as he sang, nor did it move to attack. Whatever it was, it kept on coming. Dim points of lights broke through the gloom in front of them. Wilson felt his heart skip a beat. They were nearly there, at the station. He heard the chunter of a train pulling in. A whistle blew. A flare burst overhead, illuminating the face of the rear bearer.
It was Smithy.
His broken jaw hanging open. The head of the black rat poking out of his ruined mouth. The skin on his head was mottled and loose, coming away from the skull. Bulges rose and fell underneath the shredded cloth of his uniform as more rats foraged in his guts. The black rat hissed at Wilson. The obsidian gems of its eyes staring de
ep into his own.
Wilson looked to the head bearer.
Brookes turned his head and leered at Wilson. His torn throat flapping open. The dead boy grinned, gurgling, pointing to the battered sign hanging over the station entrance.
Wilson read the words on the sign.
Halfway There
Brookes and Smithy were laughing.
It was an awful sound.
Chapter Fourteen
Madeleine jerked up from her cot. Standing in the shelter of the shadows, they were always there, always with her. She could feel them but not see them, watching her. They did not speak. She was glad of that. She knew that it was not the done thing for the living to speak ill of the dead, but she did wonder if the dead spoke ill of the living. She talked to them every night. Telling them about her day, how Kitty was doing and what she had read in the newspapers about the war effort. She would ramble on in desperate whispers, hoping to placate the restless spirits. As each night passed into the early hours of morning, she would weep. She wrung her hands in penitence, begging them to go away, leave her in peace.
Mother, father and Uncle Albert.
Father and Uncle Albert died at The Somme.
Madeleine remembered receiving the letter. The official buff-coloured envelope with OHMS printed on it. They might be sick or wounded, she thought at the time, swaying on her feet, aware of little else but the feather-weight of the dour envelope in her hands. It was cool and smooth. She knew what it was going to say. She tore the envelope open. Snatching out the contents, casting the tattered envelope to one side, she read what was there. A standardised form headed by a short sequence of letters and numbers.
B.104-82B
She read a little more.
'It is my painful duty to inform you….'
She bit her lip.
'….sympathy of their Gracious Majesties…'
The tears were hurrying down her face as she read on.
'….sincere regret of the Army Council…'
They were gone.
She felt pierced to the core. She sank down. Her knees giving away. Tears spilling down her cheeks. Her throat gagging on grief. The words became a spidery, indecipherable plague of letters. Something inside her gave way. She could not remember telling Mother and Kitty a thing. It was all a blur, a grey shapeless fog.
She could remember discovering Mother the next morning, hanging dead from the crossbeam, her feet made fat, and stained near-black, by livor mortis. Her lips bulging out as a white crust of bloodlessness. Those eyes, all of the capillaries broken open, making them into hellishly livid bubbles staring off into nothingness, out to nowhere.
Madeleine remembered the words of their housekeeper, Miss Hearn, as they stood on the platform at Victoria station. The train hissing, impatient.
“You be careful, my dears. This war will ruin your hands. Just make sure it does not ruin your hearts n'all. You've had a devil of a time, losin' your folks and your uncle. Mind you don't let things get on top of you. There's no worse judge of us and what we do than ourselves, you mark my words.”
Madeleine looked down at her hands and smirked at the memory of the old woman's remark. Miss Hearn had not been wrong. Her hands were not as they had once been. Scrubbing, cleaning, brushing, fetching and carrying had made sure of that. She picked at the remains of blisters, wondering how Miss Hearn was. Communications between the continent and England were haphazard. She hoped to see the village of Sevengraves again, someday. She imagined arriving there, with the sun out. Everything bright and beautiful. The cottage door opening. Miss Hearn being there, waving them both inside with a flutter of her veined hand. The table laid. A feast of roast pork, vegetables and potatoes. All ready for them to tuck into.
Madeleine was disturbed from her dreamy reflections by one of the orderlies walking in. It was Dawson.
“Time for your round, Sister. You asked me to come and get you.”
He was a balding man with a limp face. Bands of wrinkles traced their way over his mottled skin. His hands seemed bigger than they should be. His frame was a wiry one and he slouched as if the weight of his large hands bore him down to the ground.
His eye caught hers.
Madeleine averted her eyes from his gaze and swung her legs off the bed, slipping her feet into her shoes. She began fastening them, “Thank you for letting me know, Dawson. Please don't call me Sister on the ward though. I'm a VAD. You know how Sister Fearing is if we're referred to otherwise.”
“'Course. Sorry 'bout that, Sister.”
Madeleine smiled at him and stepped outside, brushing against Dawson as she did.
There was a loud crash from the direction of the nearest ward hut.
*
Wilf was a pock-marked youth from the east end of London. He'd been nothing but trouble since being sent back from the Front. The crash of metal had come from a trolley. It now lay overturned on the floor of the hut. An orderly was standing there. Hands bunched into fists. Ready to teach Wilf a lesson he would never forget as Madeleine entered the hut.
Kitty was sitting on the bed with Wilf; her sister was the one who always seemed to be able to talk sense into the rowdier ones. Madeleine knew why. Kitty was the prettiest girl in the hospital. She'd blossomed since leaving England. Her figure curving into a shapely hour-glass. She had the sweetest elfish smile too. It brought out her dimples, working a subtle magic on the boys. It wasn't just her looks though that made her so popular. She was always calm and approachable. Madeleine was prone to being snappy after too little sleep, but not Kitty. She was always on her best behaviour. Kitty looked up. She saw Madeleine approaching, said a few more words to Wilf, then went over to her sister.
“What upset him this time, Kitty?”
“He's going back to the Front tomorrow. Dr Meredith wouldn't give him a Blighty ticket. It's my fault, Mad.”
“Don't be silly, how?”
“You know how some of the boys believe I have the Blighty Touch?”
Madeleine nodded.
She knew Kitty put in a few kind words for the poorliest patients, in the hope they would be sent home. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't. The patients didn't take much notice of the latter cases though. As far as they were concerned, Kitty had the Blighty Touch. She could get them sent home. That was that.
Kitty went on, “Wilf believed it. I was giving him his supper last night and he reached out. He touched my cloak and smiled up at me. He said, “I'm going home now, aren't I, Sister?” He thought just touching me would do the trick. When they gave him the news today, that he was being sent back to the Front, he couldn't believe it. He started shouting and swearing and then he attacked Trevor,” she gestured at the orderly who was busy righting the trolley. “He hates me, Mad. He thinks that I told them to send him back,” her voice broke as she finished speaking.
Mad looked over at the youth. His eyes were accusing. He'd pinned all his hopes on Kitty putting in a word for him. He'd been let down. Mad was sure he'd been let down many times before. It showed in the way anger was carving his face into a hard, unforgiving scowl.
“What do you think will happen to him, Mad?”
“Oh, I'm sure he'll be fine, Kitty.”
Mad hated the aftertaste the lie left in her mouth. She couldn't tell Kitty the truth. Wilf would go back to the Front and he would die. To be invalided back from the Front once was lucky. To be invalided back twice would take nothing short of a miracle.
Madeleine slipped a comforting arm around her sister's shoulders and walked her away. Kitty still had such a hard time absorbing the brutal realities of war. She remembered the first time Kitty had seen a serious injury.
They were both helping Sister Fearing clean up one of the new arrivals. The flesh of his backside had been shredded by barbed wire on the first day of the Big Push at the Somme. Sister Fearing peeled back the last of his uniform. They saw the wound where his buttocks should have been. A suppurating mash of flesh, faeces and pus-flecked gore. Kitty fled from the sight.
Madeleine found her on her knees, being sick behind the hut. Her face colourless. Her body trembling.
She was trembling again now, as Madeleine led her away.
Base Hospital Twenty-Six was close to the coast. Everyone cursed the stinging sea winds that came in, but the pure bite of salt in the air was something many of them had not known since leaving England. After months of breathing in nothing but the smell of dead men, dead horses, dead everything, it was a scent that came straight from Heaven. The sun was burning low in the sky. Waning from brilliant yellow to a dusky orchard orange. Shadows lengthened across the camp. The air rang with the plaintive notes of The Last Post. Every base hospital had a cemetery.
Madeleine and Kitty stopped by the cemetery to watch the funeral ceremony taking place. The rest of their ward round had been uneventful. Apart from Wilf, the boys were pleased to see them. They changed dressings on wounds and blushed a little at the soldiers' bawdier jokes and sing-songs. Their round done, they decided to take a walk in the fresh air. There wasn't another rush of wounded due until the next day. The best should be made of the few quiet hours they had.
It was an officer's funeral that was taking place.
Madeleine and Kitty had seen many of them. The coffin was wheeled into the cemetery on a hand-bier, draped in the Union Jack. The coffin was then carried down to the graveside where the chaplain would read a short service before the coffin was lowered into the grave as 'The Last Post' sounded.
To the side of the grave were two women. One was old, frail and grey. The other, a young, thin redhead. Their heads were bowed. They seemed to be alien to the formality of the ceremony. This was a terrible, unique moment in their lives. The eyes of the priest and the pall-bearers were glassy from overexposure to wartime horrors, whereas for the women, this was their first experience of it. They held hands as they cast handfuls of dirt onto the descending coffin. The sound of their weeping was carried inland by the sea breeze.
