The Eyes of the Dead

by G. R. Yeates

  Madeleine noticed for the first time that there was no wedding band on the white-knuckled hand of the Sister. No-one loved her. It could not be said outright but those were the pair of all-too-apparent ingredients that made Sister Fearing what she was. A lack of love and a lot of jealousy. A septic cocktail lacing the wound where her heart should be. She fed and cared for that wound the way a mother does a child, by punishing those around her for the bitterness she chose to bear.

  “You, Katherine Goldsworth, have broken the rules of conduct. You will both be put on the next train and taken back to England in the morning. May God have mercy on your sinful souls and one day show you the righteous path before your wandering feet.”

  “Me? But I have done nothing wrong.”

  Kitty was not happy with Sister Fearing. The attitude of this older woman was horrible. She treated the men as if they were carcasses on a butcher’s slab. They’d gone through all that pain and the thanks they got was this sour-faced scarecrow of a witch ill-treating them.

  “I saw you. I saw you carousing and holding hands with one of the patients.”

  “I did not carouse with anyone. I held his hand because he was feeling lonely and unloved. He needed to feel better about himself. Haven’t you ever needed that, Sister? Some affection?”

  Kitty had innocently put her finger right on the emotional wound at the heart of Sister Fearing. The puckers of Sister Fearing’s face deepened into ridges, drawing themselves together, knitting into lines, ferocious cracks and crags emerged. She came forward, her skin darkening with spots of blood. Her thin hand raised to lash out, fingers all stiff, then it faltered, wavered, collapsing in on itself, defeated.

  Sister Fearing’s eyes were becoming wet.

  “Get out! You…both of you, get out!”

  Madeleine drew Kitty away from the Sister and out of the hut. She saw the hard glint in the old woman’s glazed eyes as they left. She saw what was going through the Sister’s mind. The wolf of her dream flashed before her eyes. She felt her heart tighten and she urged Kitty on, towards their hut. Her plan had not worked.

  They had to leave tonight.

  ******

  Sister Fearing shook. She sat down at her desk, cradling her head in her hands. She began to cry. Thick, choking sobs burst out from her. Her body shook with wave after wave of weeping. The tears subsided after a time.

  A living piece of the night passed by her tent.

  It made Sister Fearing sleep.

  The moon was hollowed out, a broken shell crescent casting a paltry light. The graveyard was no longer a graveyard when night fell upon it. It was a maw of splintered gravestone teeth. Shadows seemed quick to gather here. A lonesome soul stood by her son’s resting place, her head bowed.

  Nathaniel Fearing

  1897-1915

  Gone but not Forgotten

  With our Father, who art in Heaven

  She’d watched him grow up to become reserved, educated, full of scientific rubbish, rejecting the rough and ready pursuits that were normal for a boy his age, instead becoming an effete thinker. He asked too many questions. He stopped attending church. He said that he did not believe in God. That there was no logical reason for His existence.

  Logic, she thought, what an ugly word to come from the mouth of an unwise child.

  Her son’s blasphemy shamed her as she sat in church alone. The other women were hand-in-hand with their sons whilst hers did not even deign to respect the Sabbath. Her relationship with Nathaniel grew into one of disrespectful silence. Bad feeling blossomed into a twisting tangle of tendrils that wound its way around their souls. Binding tighter and tighter each day. Feeding and watering the growths there with self-righteousness. Letting rage become hatred, allowing it to strangle their hearts. He thought her stupid. She thought him insolent. Other mothers wept and wailed as their young boys left home to fight in the war. Margaret Fearing did not. He signed up and off he went, without so much as a word to her. She had none for him either.

  She did not care.

  Nathaniel was invalided home, sick from gas gangrene. That early in the war, there had been no curative measures available for the bacillus that caused it. She sat at his hospital bedside, watching her son breathe his last. The defiance was gone from him. His eyes, red and sore from weeping. His body shivering, exhausted, as the bacillus did its degenerative work, eating him alive. She remembered that last look he gave her. She had held his hand, feeling him slip away as his grip went light and loose. When he looked gone, she allowed herself a little smile.

  A little triumph.

  His eyes opened, just for a moment.

  …he saw me smile…

  Then he died.

  Guilt for what she had wished upon him, what he suffered lingered, torturing her, driving her to try and save other young men. But, each one she saw, had Nathaniel’s face and she was repelled. Still wounded by her son’s treatment of her, unable to forgive him, unable to let her unhappiness go.

  The frosty sickle of the moon hung over the scene. A funereal fog shrouding it. A few maggots squirmed out of the ground. Margaret Fearing didn’t see the white squirming shapes at her feet. She was trying to speak. To get the words out that she’d never been able to say to him. Her words were silent, unheard. The ground beneath her feet shuddered. The earth there was breathing in and out. One hazy moment flowed into another before she realised something was moving, crawling up her leg. Margaret shrieked as she looked down and saw the small quivering forms surging around her. She looked up at the moon.

  She screamed at it.

  She tried to pull herself free from the parasitic mass. But, below the knees, there was little more than bone left. Unable to support her weight or co-ordinate, her legs buckled and she fell to the ground. Bucking, gagging on her own vomit and blood, she cried and slapped at the cemetery ground in desperation. She tore up fistfuls of grass, desperate to pull herself away from what was flooding out of the ground. She could feel the vicious invertebrates making their way up her. Burrowing into her. Her body shook violently, going into spasm. Dried tears mingled with snot and phlegm on Margaret’s face. Her cries were degenerate gurgles. The maggots ate their way through her soft insides, hollowing her out. Satiated clots of the parasites came spilling from her lips, ears and nostrils. Shaking, she began crawling, pulling herself over to her son’s grave. The earth had split wide open. The lid of the coffin was in pieces. There was not much left of Nathaniel Fearing but a sticky skeleton and the fraying tatters of internal organs. Segmented nuggets of puce matter clothed every inch of him. His eyes opened. His blue-brown irises, they were completely untouched by decay.

  They were weeping for her.

  In the waking world, a thin rancid flux of black-headed grubs and dead spiders ran out over Margaret Fearing’s lips and onto her pillow, soaking in, turning the linen to yellow and brown. For a moment, she gagged, choking on the vile syrup. Then, she was still, dead and gone. The shape in the shadows knelt down over her, to feed.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Madeleine held Kitty close to her as they made their way back to the hut to pack, “Why must she be like this? Why did she do this to us?”

  “It doesn’t matter, Kitty. It’s all over for us now. There’s nothing more we can do. We’ll go back home tomorrow and do what we can there.”

  Madeleine wanted to get her sister out of here fast. Sister Fearing’s murderous eyes were still burning in her mind.

  “But I don’t want to go, Mad. I feel we’ve let the boys down. They need as much help as they can get. We can’t go and leave them.”

  “I know, Kitty. I want to stay. I do want to stay here, but we’re not deemed fit for service. Maybe we can help out in some other way when we get back home.”

  She wanted to get away as soon as possible, before that witch of a woman went after Kitty. She knew she would, given half a chance. It was all in the eyes.

  A scream cut the air open.

  ******

  It was Wilf.
<
br />   He was naked and bleeding. A knife in his hand. He was carving at his skin. His sheets were soaked scarlet. Cuts criss-crossed every inch of his torso and he continued to hack and saw away.

  …rats on me…

  …need to get them off…

  Blinded by tears, he tugged and pulled at his savaged skin with his other hand, peeling it off in tatters. Twisting and jerking, he tried to shake off the rodents that only he could see.

  …they’re all over me…

  Kitty and Madeleine looked on in shock at the mad display. The scream had brought them running. The sight of Wilf mutilating himself without remorse stopped them dead. The men in the beds around Wilf shrank away. The boy was snarling, waving the knife with an animal ferocity. None of them dared get close to the frenzied sweeps and jabs of the blade. His body was a jigsaw puzzle of ugly lines. His knife hand was shaking. He was weakening from the loss of blood. His skin draining, becoming colourless.

  The voice was in his head, it was scratching around the inside of his skull. It had woken him. The voice had told him things. It had told him what it felt like to peel off your own skin. It had told him how a baby’s cries will rise to a certain beauteous pitch when you drive thorns through the softest parts of its body. It told him what it felt like to be eaten by wild dogs and rats. It told him that he was damned. Wilf could feel the rats inside him. Their sharp little feet and louse-infested skin. He could feel their ragged teeth biting.

  …one in my mouth…

  Wilf thrust the point of the knife into his mouth, gouging away at his tongue, sending a stream of blood and sloppy matter down his throat. The scratching in his skull was growing ever fiercer. They were inside his head, behind his eyes.

  …want my eyes!…

  …leave ‘lone my eyes!…

  He spat out the last meaty pieces of his tongue.

  …leave ‘lone my eyes!…

  Gritting his teeth, he stabbed the knife point into his left eye. He burrowed the blade in, twisting it, scraping its edge around the bone of the socket, working the soft sphere of his eyeball loose. The socket drooled jellied matter as he carved deeply into it. The eye came free in a cascade of clear fluid. He sliced the knife through the optic nerve. The soft remains of the eye fell away, severed. He could feel the rats nibbling at the back of his other eye, raking their claws around the rim of bone which it nestled in, shrieking a shrill murderous song that reverberated inside his skull.

  He dropped the knife.

  Wilf began clawing at his remaining eye with his fingers, sending a torrent of pale claret tears down his face. He dug his fingers in, crushing the eye, then raking it out as a handful of sopping translucence. Gouging into the socket one more time, he pulled free a clot of moist mush. He dabbed his fingertips at the tattered hanging strings of his optic nerves. He touched the slippery smears running from the holes in his face. He shook, feeling fault-lines of fire opening inside his head. He fingered the gashes on his torso. The stump of his tongue squirmed in his mouth. Bubbles of blood blew out, popping between his ravaged lips. He collapsed, moaning, haemorrhaging.

  “Where did he get that knife from?”

  No-one answered.

  No-one knew.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Wilf was watching the parade. It was the Sunday parade with the soldiers in their fine coats and medals. He loved their coats. He wanted one of his own. There was loud brassy music playing as the smart men walked past. Everything was safe and okay. The soldiers looked so smart. Wilf looked down at his worn clothes and wished he was as smart-looking as them. One of the soldiers had a very bright medal, a great big glinting disc that Wilf could not stop staring at.

  He would be proud if he had a medal like that. He would never run away from school again. You needed schooling if you were going to be somebody good in the world. That was what his mother told him. If you were good at your schooling then you could become one of the soldiers. Smart in the head will make you smart in a uniform, she said. He looked closer at the soldier’s face. There was something familiar about it.

  Things changed.

  The recruiting Sergeant rubbed his fingers through his moustache, assessing Wilf.

  “How old are yer, sonny?”

  “I’m seventeen, sir.”

  “You sure about that? I think you’ve made a mistake there.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Tell you what, go back outside that door and think about it. You look about nineteen to me. Come back here when you remember your right age. Tomorrow morning.”

  Wilf nodded and went out through the office door. It slammed shut behind him. The lights went out. He walked forwards, hands reaching out. Nothing was there. He turned around. Nothing there either. He tried to cry out.

  No sound came from his mouth.

  Wilf’s hands flew up to his face. His mouth was gone. There was just a plain of unbroken skin. His fingers found two depressions in his face where his eyes should have been. Running his hands over his head, he searched for the missing pieces of his face but everywhere was blank skin. He slumped down onto his knees, feeling himself sinking into the stuff of the void. Screaming and screaming a soundless scream.

  ******

  Kitty’s hand pawed at her mouth as she looked behind the screen that had been erected around the bed. Wilf was propped up on two pillows with bandages coating him. She could see spots of scabby blood, here and there from where he had cut himself. Thick bandages swathed his head. Two wads of cotton dressing were in place over his eye sockets. Kitty could see that they were deeply discoloured, partially sunken into the holes. Her stomach heaved at the sight. Tears swelled in the corners of her eyes, she wiped them away with her fingers. A hole was opening up inside her. Deep, joyless and forbidding. She reached out, touching one of Wilf’s bandaged hands. She squeezed it hard. The only way he could ever communicate with the outside world now would be by touch. As she came out from behind the screen, her eyes were drawn to Wilson. He was sitting quietly, huddled in his bed sheets, watching her. Sadness weighing heavy in his grey eyes. He didn’t seem to see her. His blank eyes were staring right past her, over her shoulder. Kitty looked around, following the direction of his gaze to the tent flaps.

  “It was there, Kitty. I saw it. The devil-eyed thing. It was there, I swear it was, just behind you, smiling at me.”

  Shaking her head, she managed a weak smile.

  She approached him and sat down on the bed.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “What d’you mean, leaving?”

  “Leaving the hospital. Mad and I are being sent back to England.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged, looked around, sighed, and then rested her gaze back on Wilson. “Sister Fearing saw you and I holding hands. It was bad conduct on my part. I was being too ‘familiar’ with you and now we’ve both got to go home.”

  His face sagged. “Will you write? Let me know how you are? Keep in touch?”

  “I’d like to. But I don’t know your name.”

  Wilson stared into her eyes, feeling a kindling inside him, a faint ignition.

  “Reg. Reg Wilson.”

  She smiled, delighted, “You did it. You remembered.”

  “I know. I don’t know how. I woke up and it was there. Back in my head. Somehow.”

  “That’s wonderful though, Reg. It shows you’re getting better. You’re healing.”

  “Yes, I hope so. Y’know, we could meet up after the war, y’know. When all this has blown over and everyone’s happy again.”

  Kitty doubted anyone would ever be happy again after this war. She moved around the bed to his side. She smiled at him. Wilson smiled back, faltering as he did.

  “I’ll come back later and give you my home address, Reg. You can write to me first.”

  “Okay.”

  She could feel that hole of cheerlessness boring into her heart. Tears were worrying the edges of her eyes. She hung her head. Rain was pattering down outside. Wilson’s hand fell on
hers. Tears burst from Kitty’s eyes. She wiped them away, trying to control the swelling of emotion rushing up from deep inside her. She turned away from Wilson.

  “He’s such a mess, Reg, and it’s all because of me.” She swallowed hard as another tidal wave of sobbing tried to burst out.

  “Why’s it your fault?”

  “I’ve got the Blighty Touch. Haven’t the others told you?” she laughed bitterly, “If that boy hadn’t touched my uniform when I tended to him, he wouldn’t be in that bed now. He did that to himself because he wanted to go home. It’s all because of me, because he believed in me. I let him down.”

  “Bullshit. Wilf’s not your fault. You didn’t put the knife in his hand, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, not your fault is it? He did what he did for his own reasons.”

  Wilson’s words helped a little, making the icy pit inside her contract a little at the edges. Kitty leaned gave Wilson a gentle kiss on the cheek.

  Then, she left.

  He ran a finger over the spot where she had kissed him. There was movement out of the corner of his eye. The thing from the crypt stood there, with the tent flaps billowing around it. Beating like a giant bat’s wings. Its eyes glinted white and then black. Its face was split by that ever-present livid grin of amusement.

  Wilson screwed his eyes shut.

  He opened them again.

  It was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Outside, Kitty wiped her wet eyes and headed back to help Madeleine pack for the journey home. Her big sister had been ashen after seeing Wilf mutilate himself.

  What a night to leave the hospital, thought Kitty.

  ******

  Wilf lay quietly in the bed. He could feel the fibres of the blankets grazing against his neck through the bandages. He treasured the sensation. So little was left to him of the outside world. His senses were failing. A stream of drool leaked out of the side of his mouth. If he still had a tongue, he could have licked it away. Instead he lay there, feeling the warm wet path it was tracing down the side of his bandaged face. There was nothing else he could do as he felt the world growing faint around him. If he let his attention wander from the myriad little sensations that teased and fired his thoughts, he would become aware of the emptiness. The void spreading around him. Separating him from the living. It was claiming him and it did fascinate him. But, he knew, if he let himself go into the void, he would be lost there forever. Never to come back.