by G. R. Yeates
One, dead.
The other, soon to be.
Wilson felt sick, watching Smithy flounder, drowning under the grim, ferocious tide. His uniform hanging in shreds, as was his skin, Wilson could barely tell one from the other. Twitching scabby forms, slick with gore, wriggled over Smithy, chewing on him. As Wilson watched, Smithy’s skin began undulating, rising and falling, bubbling.
There were rats under his skin.
Wilson gagged at the sight.
They were inside the Sergeant. Gnawing away his vitals. Smithy grasped one last time at the steps, trying to haul his violated body free. His eyes locked onto Wilson’s. Smithy opened his mouth to speak. He could not speak. There was a lump in his throat. Wilson could see it, protruding, moving. Smithy tensed his oesophagus, trying to clear the obstruction. It didn’t clear. The world spun in a hot, dizzy haze. Brilliant streaks of agony raced along the remnants of his nerves. Smithy felt hairs pricking his Adam’s apple. Bony daggers raking the back of his mouth. Tooth and claw cutting soft membrane open. Blood ran into Smithy’s mouth. Oblivion’s brackish waters swept through his brain. He felt his bowels emptying, sending rats squealing away from the sudden gush. He couldn’t stop his body convulsing. His mouth was filling with a mass of fetid skin and wiry hair.
His jaw cracked. Forced open. Splitting wide.
A black rat burst free from Smithy’s mouth, robed in a miasma of blood and matter. Smithy fell. His eyes rolled up, revealing the whites. His fingers clutched-unclutched. Then he was still.
The rat looked at Wilson. He recognised it. It was the rat from the shell hole. Big, black and unafraid. It made no move towards him. Neither did any of the other rats. They all perched on the corpses of Smithy and Brookes. Dozens of tiny glittering eyes illuminating the crypt, calmly watching the shivering Private.
They know me, thought Wilson.
Wilson clambered up, one unsteady foot after another; he started backing up the last few steps to the surface. He looked at the rats. They looked at him. None of them moved. He felt rubble grind under his heel. Another few steps. There was a squelch underfoot. One more step. He felt a light breeze. He was back on the surface.
Out of the crypt.
Wilson turned and ran. The wail of shells was, for the first time, greeted by him with a smile. He flung himself onto the ground. Breathing in a mouthful of muck. It tasted good. Rolling over onto his back, he spread his arms wide. Rain hammered down on him from the heavens above. It mingled with the tears pouring from his eyes. Wilson looked up at the skies, at the empty darkness there, the cold and ancient light of the stars. He laughed out loud.
It was an awful sound.
Chapter Ten
Dawn crept through the sky. Light spread, washing away shadows from the battered landscape. Wilson awoke with a cry. The rats had not come after him. He was alive. It was no comfort. His mind was pulsing with the livid images of the night.
Brookes and Smithy were dead.
Wilson got to his feet, swaying and staggering. Not knowing what to do next. The rats in the crypt. If he went back, they would get him, tear him apart. Wilson saw them, running over his body. Stinking shades peeling back his skin with long teeth. Plucking out his eyeballs. Lapping at the blood welling in wounds.
He didn’t want to go back there.
But he owed it to Brookes and to the Sarge. Smithy’s face flashed before his eyes. Broken and bloodied. That swollen rat forcing its way out of his mouth.
Wilson headed back towards the church.
Wilson could not find it.
He scanned the land around him, looking for the church’s jagged remains. It should’ve been there, standing in skeletal solitude against the morning sky. He had not run that far from the church, he was sure. There was no sign of the place. There were only shell craters here, old ones too. He peered over the edges of the holes, into the watery depths. Half-expecting to see Smithy and Brookes there, bobbing up to the surface, swollen with gas and water.
A volley of shells whined overhead. Wilson looked up. He watched the murderous blurs come arrowing down. He was too dumb from fatigue to move. The ground erupted. Wilson went flying, the wind knocked from his lungs. He landed in the crater with a wet wallop and a gasp. He lay there in the slurry, out of breath. After some minutes had passed, he was able to breathe. He slithered around, clawing at the sides of the crater, heaving himself to his feet. The water came up to his knees. Then, it crept up to his thighs.
Wilson’s stomach clenched.
He could feel the bottom of the crater softly collapsing under his feet, softly sucking him down. Crying out, he flung his hands out. Gouging his fingers deep into the muck, finding no purchase.
The water rose.
It was now chilling his armpits. Despite the constant crash and boom of shells, there was a sudden quiet settling over him. The boundaries of his world shrank in to the edges of the crater. He bobbed in the water, half-in half-out.
Wilson closed his eyes.
Praying for rescue.
None came.
******
Night fell, draining the last of the light away. Wilson waited. His legs were frozen logs beneath him. His teeth chattered and rattled, giving him a headache. Rain began to spatter the water of the crater.
Wilson fought the urge to cry out. Any sound in no man’s land at night could bring down a shell on your head. Then it would all be over.
Death by fire or water. What a choice to have to make. The water lapped up around his chin. Heavy rain drops hammered down, splashing his face and neck. He tipped his head back, gulping at the air. Water ran into his mouth. A murky curtain descended, obscuring everything momentarily.
He was blacking out.
He struggled. He fought. His mind screamed in protest. His body was giving up, surrendering to the grip no man’s land had upon it. Letting it claim him. Wilson watched the water’s surface shiver from the pounding of the rain. It was closing over him. Then, everything was drifting away, lost above him, as the sucking pit of the crater pulled him under.
Into the Grey.
******
It clouded Wilson’s senses. Clinging to him as he sank into it. Peering into it, trying to focus, did not work. There was nothing there but the Grey. He settled onto his feet. Wilson started walking through the all-pervading Grey. Clutching his arms to his sides. Hugging himself. Looking down, he could only see more of the shifting Grey beneath his feet. Wilson looking around at the limbo he was in. Gooseflesh crawled over him. He was being watched. He could see nothing but he could feel eyes watching him.
Wilson glanced over his shoulder.
They saw him.
Worse, he saw them.
His scream shook the swirling stuff of the strange space. Ripples swept out from him, giving his presence away, bringing them to him, parting the veil. He saw them moving, reaching out for him, scratching for him with those long, broken fingernails.
Chapter Eleven
Wilson jerked up from the bunk. He flopped forward, panting, gulping down air. He looked around. He clutched at his chest. Pain shot through it. His heart hurt. His head spun. Then, the pain eased, passing away. His throat hurt when he swallowed. He rubbed it ruefully. Passing a hand through his hair, Wilson huffed out a breath. It felt good to breathe again.
He remembered running, falling into a crater and then—
That was it, nothing more.
Looking around, he could see that he was in a dug out. The walls were shored up with lengths of fresh timber. The bunks all looked sturdy and new. I must be quite a way behind the lines, he thought. The trenches out on the perimeters of the Front were that in name only. Nothing but shell holes and ditches. This was very different to what he was used to. Wilson ran an appreciative hand over the solid wood of the bunk he was lying in, the rough brown blanket that covered him. A scattering of tiny colourless forms scuttled away as his fingers disturbed the surface of the fabric.
Lice.
Oh well, you can’t ha
ve everything.
A shadow passed over him.
“Awake at last, sunshine?”
Wilson blinked at the thick-set figure which had entered the dug-out.
“Smithy?”
The new arrival had a broad smile with four teeth missing. His nose was a large broken monument to fighting. The eyes were a clear sky-blue.
“I’m Hammer Cole, pleased t’meet you.”
The accent was tinged with a lilt of Scottish. The hand extended towards Wilson was thick and powerful.
“Private Wilson,” the words were spoken in a flat, functional tone. Something in the other man’s manner made him decide to keep his introduction formal.
Hammer shook Wilson’s hand with a single firm movement, “I see y’looking at my nose here. I do a bit of boxing when I’m on leave. Gets me a bit of extra pocket money. That’s how I got my name ‘round here. I’ve got myself a mean right hook, knocks men bandy,” he stroked his swollen nose as he spoke.
Wilson nodded.
“How’d I get here?”
“Y’don’t remember?”
Wilson shook his head.
“Found you in the communication trench, lying there like a dead man. Didn’t think y’were breathin’ too well so we brung you back here. You were making a horrible din whilst you were asleep. We all thought y’d gotten the horrors and that y’mind was gone f’good. Which outfit y’from?”
Wilson scratched away the lice nibbling at his neck.
“Westshire Rifles. D Company.”
“Where’re all your pals?”
“Back at Black Wood.”
“Black Wood? Christ Almighty, that’s miles away. Why, that’s nearer Passchendaele than Wipers. How the fuck did y’end up ‘round here?”
Wilson gnawed his lip and shrugged.
Silence was not the best answer to give when you looked to all the world like a deserter. It was the only answer he had though. He had no idea how he ended up here. He could not remember at all.
“Well, you can talk to the Captain about it. He asked me to come along and check on you. As you’re awake, you’d better come with me to see him.”
Wilson rolled out of the bunk and got to his feet.
Hammer didn’t like the newcomer. There was something about the man’s eyes. They were old and cracked. Not the way a young man’s eyes should be. Wilson was damaged goods. He could almost smell it on him. Whatever was wrong with the man, it was not shellshock. Something else had happened to him. Something worse than the war. That was what those strange eyes of his told Hammer Cole. He hoped the Captain would send Private Wilson on his way quick. His being there, in their trench, was bad news.
Wilson followed Hammer down the trench to the officer’s dugout. Losing your kit and your rifle was a punishable offence. He’d also been alone when they found him. He looked around at the men he passed on his way down the trench. None of them regarded him with a friendly eye. Picking his way over fire buckets, sandbags, navigating past scaling ladders, Wilson tried to keep low in the trench. He didn’t have a tin hat on.
A full-blown Morning Hate seemed to be on the go. He felt like it was directed right at him. He hunched down as shells screamed overhead, falling with dirty bangs behind the trench. Steadying himself, he saw Hammer thumbing at the entrance to the officer’s dugout.
“Here we are.”
A battered board proclaimed the captain’s name in angry red paint.
Captain M. Bone
Wilson entered the dugout.
******
A makeshift desk squatted in the centre. It was made from planks propped on top of empty ammunition boxes. A pristine field telephone rested on one corner of the table. A gleaming, well-polished gargoyle. Faded prints of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary hung from the uneven walls. At the back were two beds, one of which was occupied by a man with a bandaged brow. His eyelids flickered fitfully as he slept. The man at the desk was of medium build with auburn hair, parted in a diagonal fashion and slicked back. A bright red wart bulged out from his left cheek.
The sight of it made Wilson feel ill.
Captain Bone was supping from a steaming tin cup whilst reading The Times. He raised two pale ginger eyebrows. Looking up at the intrusion into his space.
“Captain Bone, Private Cole reporting with Private Wilson,” Cole saluted.
Bone folded his newspaper into a neat rectangle and snapped an unemotional smile in Wilson’s direction, “Ah, the unknown soldier. You may go, Cole. Thank you for bringing him to me. I’m afraid Forsythe still isn’t feeling up to much,” he gestured at the sleeping man.
Must be his bat-man, thought Wilson.
Cole left Wilson with the Captain.
Wilson felt very alone.
Bone eyed Wilson, his voice was quiet when he spoke. There was a drawling, earthy twang to it, “Where’s your outfit, Private? Why aren’t you with them?”
The lies were the easy part, “Lost ‘em, sir. I was in the attack on Black Wood. We were separated and I lost track of me mates. I took shelter in a shell hole and then headed back to the line, sir.”
Bone eyed him up and down, “I see. You ‘lost’ them. How do you lose your comrades, Wilson? Are they small change? Do they fall out of a hole in your pocket?”
“No, sir.”
“No, you’re right. They don’t,” Bone glowered at Wilson, keeping his voice even, he continued, “I think that you are not with them because you ‘lost’ them on purpose. You’re not the first. You won’t be the last. I can see it in your eyes. You ran away.”
The statement was spoken not as an accusation but rather as a simple fact. Bone had assessed Wilson, made his decision and passed sentence on him. It was part of his duty as an officer. Deserters had to be made an example of to the rest of the men.
“I didn’t run away, sir,” Wilson protested.
“You did,” Again, the Captain’s tone was quiet and matter-of-fact, almost disinterested, “Do you know how far Black Wood is from here?”
“No, sir.”
“It’s more than five miles from here. That distance could not be traversed by a tank in a day under these conditions, never mind by an ordinary man on foot. You deserted by the time of the attack, planning to use it as a cover story.”
I did the wrong thing but I tried to make up for it, thought Wilson, put it right. He couldn’t say that though. He couldn’t tell this man that his mates had been killed by some bloody monster from a church crypt that did not exist. He stood to attention and looked straight ahead, taking the Captain’s accusations on the chin.
“You’ll be taken down the line at twilight, Private Wilson. You will be taken for court-martial. You will be shot. Dismissed. Private Cole!”
Wilson felt his heart closing up as Hammer Cole led him back to the infantry dug out.
Bone returned to supping his tea and reading The Times. After a few minutes of reading and re-reading the same sentence, he flung it down onto his makeshift desk. His face was a mask of deep, unhappy lines. Sometimes, his duties infuriated him. Sending men from his own side to face the firing squad was a hateful obligation. The court martial was little more than a formality, something that had to be seen to be done. This war, it was utter lunacy, a mad nightmare. If the Germans didn’t kill their men then they did it themselves.
What was the point? Where was the bloody purpose to it all?
He nursed the ornate silver crucifix around his neck between finger and thumb. These days, it gave him no comfort. He looked at the image of Jesus Christ on his dug-out wall. Blank beneficence looked back out at him.
The Virgin Mary?
Her eyes were averted. No answers there. It was all so idiotic. Ask a hundred of the men up at the Frontline what they were fighting for, beyond ideals, beyond heroism or patriotism and the answer would be the same.
None of them knew, not really.
The whole situation was goddamn absurd and, try as he might, Bone could not see the hand of God anywhere in the design. He c
ould see the hand of the Devil but not the Saviour. He could see a red right hand guiding the generals, speaking through the mouths of politicians, stroking their egos, laughing as they made the same mistakes over and over again. Feeding the slaughterhouse of the Western Front. The Prince of Lies was shaping this war into the blackest of comedies. Unequalled in human history.
A war to end all wars.
Bone smiled at the phrase.
There would be no end. Not to war. People liked killing people. That was the truth. Having someone to hate made life a damn sight easier to get through. There was purpose in hating someone. A sense of exorcism as all the unsightly parts of yourself were made the property of another. Without hatred and killing, mankind would have to face the truth about itself.
And truth was never a pretty thing, always unpopular.
That was why he left the States.
He did miss the Deep South. He missed its women, the sultry music of their voices. He missed the earthy attitude to life. He missed its curiously warm and honeyed aura, its homeliness but he did not miss the prejudice.
The race hate.
Near to his church, there had been a dead tree. It was called the Hanging Tree. One day, he awoke to find a Negro boy swinging from it. The mouth busy with flies. The body’s back was a network of ugly scars. A livid map carved out by patient torturers. It haunted him still. The Negro had been thirteen, maybe fourteen. Far too young for such a thing to happen. That is what he had thought then, before seeing the young boys in the trenches here.
Bone cut down the Negro boy, then the tree. It was an old gnarled thing that resisted his axe’s assaults with all its weathered might but, at twilight, it fell with an ashen crash.
Bone was ostracised for this act alone.
The cutting down of a dead tree meant more to the townsfolk than the lost life of the Negro boy. White children, well-schooled, sneered at him. Well-to-do women turned their backs on him. Their menfolk eyed him with a questioning fury. Bone was knocked back by the very people he was charged by God with saving. Man had been told to love thy neighbour and be kind.
