Return of Souls

by Andy Remic

  It is early morning. I sit writing by candlelight. I write, not in the hope that somebody will find and read this, but in the hope that it can allay my fears as to my own shattered sanity. Ever since the deaths of Bainbridge and Webb, since the loss of my true love, Sarah, I have been plagued by dreams. I have just awoken, and with each passing instant the dream fades from my mind—but of one thing I am certain. The longer I persist with my life, in this place, the more intense and frighteningly real the dreams become. In them I can smell and taste and feel emotions . . . it’s like I am really experiencing the horror of my nightmarish visions.

  What I would give for some ——ing whiskey!

  I dream I am being hunted by creatures not human. The dream started a few nights after the deaths of my friends . . . I went over the bags alone, and that scared me, for in friendship on the field of battle, one at least feels a minor sense of security, that somebody out there is watching your back. But I was totally alone.

  Whistles filled my head with shrill screams. I dragged myself through mud . . . “Bring back some prisoners for interrogation!” they said, and I thought, “Yeah—why don’t you bring back some prisoners for interrogation yourself, you ——ers?” It’s not easy to drag an enemy across No Man’s Land when he’s trying to stick a bayonet in your bollocks.

  Anyway—the hunting—I am being hunted.

  They call themselves walriders. They are like . . .

  No. It is too insane to write. They will lock me away . . . again. Like what happened when I was a child.

  I am alone, and scared. I have never been scared of the dark. Never. A year back, my only fear—a fear made real by the war—was that I would spend my life without another drop of whiskey.

  But now I am scared of the dark. I am scared of closing my eyes. I am scared of sleep . . . and I am scared of dreaming, for in my dreams the walriders are always waiting. And it always, always hurts.

  I fear I am slowly going insane.

  Ypres Salient (3rd. Battle of). Menin Road Ridge. 21st. September 1917.

  ROBERT JONES CROUCHED BY an old stone wall, hands sweating despite the cold and leaving a smear across his rifle stock. Men crouched beside him, voices low, their eyes wide . . .

  “We’ll be all right, lads!” said one.

  “We’ll teach the bloody Hun a lesson!” said another.

  Jones ignored them, turning his face away.

  Machine guns thundered and Jones felt himself curiously detached from the battle. Artillery guns roared in the distance, and nearby a tree exploded, sending soldiers diving for cover. Chunks and spears of wood, along with glowing shrapnel, scythed through the air. Men screamed as multiple thuds signalled impacts, and they died with mouths full of blood and cold death turning their eyes opaque.

  Jones peered over the chipped stone, its surface cold and rough and solid beneath his hot, burning skin. It was an attachment of Earth, an anchor securing him to the gyrating face of No Man’s Land. Tying him to the planet.

  Soldiers were advancing over the mud.

  Jones, along with the other men of the battalion, poked rifles over the stone and, upon the order of Johnson, sent round after round into the advancing Hun. Men were cut down, their limbs thrown up, faces pale oval discs, their screams heard even over the sound of roaring guns and artillery.

  The air was full of smoke, black and curling.

  Jones rubbed his eyes, leaving an oil-black smear across one cheekbone, then reloaded his rifle beside his comrades. And waited for a signal.

  A tank could be heard in the distance, but it faded through smoke.

  Johnson cracked a joke. “What do you call a fat nurse with crabs?” The answer was vulgar, and some of the men laughed. Not Jones. He was peering out over No Man’s Land with wide eyes. He had seen it!

  A flash . . . a dark oiled body.

  A walrider . . .

  He watched, eyes narrowed. Somebody nudged him, passed along a canteen, and he took a swig, but his eyes did not leave the spot.

  More Germans, running, heads low, kit bouncing, headed out across the darkness; Johnson screamed the command and the rifles thundered, and then Jones saw it again, dancing in the mud, a swirling black shadow, stooped, bent low; he could see its face although its body was clearly not human. The face was a deformed man’s face wearing a Hun helmet pulled low over creased forehead . . . but as Jones stared unblinking, mouth half-open, breath frozen, heart thundering in his ears so loud as to deafen the scream of crumps—so he realised the face and the helm were one, twisted, merged, a joining of flesh and metal just like in his dreams, but this was no dream; this was reality, the battlefield, the mud and smoke and death, and the creature danced and twirled before him, some twisted marionette or puppet, controlled by the strings of God or the Devil, and it carried a rifle with iron bayonet gleaming dull and pitted, and eyes fastened on Jones, who wanted to cry out, wanted to turn to his friends back in the trench, wanted to shout, “Do you see it? Do you ——ing see it!” but he could not pull his gaze away, and it was charging at him across the mud, coming at him now, slipping and sliding, claws raking the earth, dark body glistening with damp and mud and blood and its grey eyes were fixed on Jones who fumbled with his rifle, tried to load a fresh magazine but his fingers were shaking and he could see long, twisted yellow fangs sliding from beneath the helm face and the creature was lifting its rifle with black clawed hands and a snarl of triumph marking its inhuman mask. The rifle thundered in its long, slick claws, smoke rising, and Jones wanted to duck—but he was frozen in this moment which had haunted him. A bullet nicked the collar of his heavy coat, and suddenly, hands dragged him swiftly back down behind the wall.

  “What you doing, you idiot?” panted one Tommy.

  He breathed deep . . .

  “It’s coming!” he screamed.

  “Calm yourself, soldier,” came Johnson’s steady voice; rifle shots echoed and stone disintegrated in a spray of fine dust that settled over the waiting Tommies. The soldiers returned fire, and steeling himself, Jones slotted a slippery magazine into his SMLE, held the rifle before him as a ward, and peered over the wall, his protective charm.

  The dancing walrider had gone.

  “Damn.” He touched his weary eyes. “When will I be right again?”

  “Move out!” bellowed Johnson, and the words came to Jones as if in a dream; and he was running with the men, moving with the pack, and they breached a low hill, slipping in mud, kicking barbed wire out of their way, and crouched down in a ditch, panting heavily.

  All around, dark swarms were advancing. The heavens opened and rain smashed down in diagonal sheets. Nobody groaned, nor complained, for out there, the rain suddenly made men feel alive, helped offer a little cover, and their stinking boots were already so sodden, a little more rain didn’t matter.

  Allied machine guns roared, and artillery shells pounded the Hun lines. There came constant explosions and screams as bodies were flung high into the air, front-rank pawns of God strewn carelessly across a game board without any boundaries.

  Jones propped his back against a black, blasted tree and took a deep drink from his canteen. The water was grey and tasted of dust. He swilled his acid mouth and spat it out. As he looked up, past the faces of his own men, he saw it creeping up behind the soldiers, rifle at the ready, bayonet glistening with fresh blood. Its twisted metal face was lopsided and hideously deformed and grinning, fangs chewing its own lip in bubbles of blood and strips of bloody flesh. Jones leapt up and charged the beast with a sudden surge of anger and hate welling violently inside him. He had been through Hell, walked the Roads of Despair, suffered the Furnace—and now, to be hunted in the darkness by this creature of nightmare, to think himself crazy, he could take no more.

  The walrider saw him and grinned.

  They charged one another with rifles raised, and Jones dragged the heavy trigger and saw the smash impact of the bullet before he’d even heard the crack of his shot. The creature staggered, waving its rifle as if i
t were a flag, and with a burst of superhuman strength and speed, Jones reached the beast, charged his bayonet into the creature’s chest, and blood splatters slapped his face.

  He shivered and looked down into the dying Hun’s eyes. The man had dropped his Mannlicher, and blood-slippery hands clung to Jones’s rifle barrel. The man’s eyes were downcast, a groan bubbling on his lips, and slowly he slid from the bayonet and lay crumpled on the ground. Jones fell to his knees.

  God, he was only a kid. Barely more than sixteen, he thought.

  “Well done!” growled Johnson, slapping him on the back, but then all was darkness and oblivion, and he was back in the trench, now totally alone; alone, and lying on his back on the duckboards in the mud.

  The Rusting Jungle. “Nightmare or Reality?” 21st. September 1917.

  TANKS GROWLED IN THE distance. Jones dragged himself to his feet and looked down at the bayonet still stained with the fresh blood of the young German.

  He heard claws. On the boards. And turning, without looking behind, he started to run, slippery fingers attempting to reload his rifle but dropping his magazine with a clatter along the way. A ladder flashed to his left, and with boots slipping, he scrambled up the rough wooden rungs and dived over the sandbags and lay very still.

  Something paced below, and stopped.

  It was sniffing. Jones could hear it sniffing, and whilst he lay there, listening, terror gnawing his mind, he tried to rationalise what was happening.

  His eyes roamed the skies. Dark clouds gathered overhead and a powerful cool breeze sent shivers coruscating through his body. Water seeped through his trousers but he would not move—dared not move!

  He could hear boots in the trench below. There were more than one.

  They were hunting him again.

  Tears wet his cheeks.

  When would it end? When would it ever end?

  Gradually, the sounds faded.

  And they were gone . . .

  “I wish you were still here, Bainbridge,” he whispered, and eased himself through the mud to peer down the ladder. He looked left and right. The trench was now empty of both monsters and men. Black smoke curled through the air. He could smell frying sausages. And yet the trench was deserted.

  “What to do?” He closed his eyes, grasped the stock of his Lee-Enfield tight but found no comfort there. The weapon felt useless. Somehow . . . inadequate. He needed heart and courage.

  He turned and looked behind him, out over No Man’s Land. All was quiet. Deathly still. Jones’s eyes narrowed, and then he crawled along through the churned earth, over abandoned wooden planks, splintered and torn, avoiding lengths of ragged, rusting barbed wire, his hands cold and gritty as he pulled himself along.

  He stopped. Listened.

  The wind howled across the deserted mud plains of No Man’s Land. It was a wind-borne demon, screeching and groaning.

  All Jones could think of was to run. Get away. Get back to . . . humanity.

  Images flickered through his mind like cinema newsreels.

  A pub back in London, a beautiful blonde singing to the sounds of an off-key piano, Jones buying her a drink and kissing her cheek at the bar . . . An assault course, somewhere in Devon, pounding along, a pack breaking his back, his boots too large and giving him blisters as sweat was pouring from his brow, and he wanted desperately to stop, to crawl into a hole, but the sergeant is screaming abuse, his mouth inches from Jones’s ear, screaming screaming screaming . . .

  School, being taunted by a ring of scruffy boys, fatty, fatty, listen to him cough, listen to him choke, go on, choke to death, fatty . . . choke to death, you horrible little weakling . . .

  And then the sanatorium. A shard of glass in his hand, cutting through the skin of his palm, wild thoughts of death scattered through his fragile disordered mind . . . If he comes near me, I’ll slash his throat, straight across his windpipe, watch him writhe and squirm on the floor below . . . but he was scared, terrified to strike that killing blow, scared of what would follow, but he’s in the room now, his cold hands reaching for the young body on the bed,

  and words,

  Go away or I will kill you.

  Cold fact. Then a retreat. And peace.

  Now crawling, through the mud of No Man’s Land, in and out of shell holes, past the dead wood of ancient forests, ancient heartwood torn by the metal of man.

  Crawling. Into a shell hole.

  Sitting there, shivering. So cold. So cold.

  Waiting to die.

  Diary of Robert Jones. 3rd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 23rd. September 1917.

  I woke up in hospital. My sanity, it seems, has returned—or so they tell me. I can at least think with some clarity.

  I do not remember the last week.

  Johnson visited me, his face glowing ruddy in the lamplight. He was excited. Said how I’d saved all their lives in the dead forest; I saw the Germans sneaking up behind our flank and dived on their scout, my bayonet in his guts, and then the rifles were thundering and it was all chaos. But our lads won through, and it was all down to me.

  I remember nothing.

  Despite waking in the hospital, I had only a few minor wounds: a slash to the back of my hand, splinters in my palms, a knock to the back of the head with a lump the size of an egg.

  The nurses who attended me were all grey-faced, exhausted; but then, the casualties were up again, and I was soon kicked out. They needed my corner of the floor and the rough blanket I coveted.

  I looked around with bright, eager eyes for Sarah. But she was not there. I asked other nurses about her, describing her in detail, but nobody had even heard of her.

  I left the hospital, disappointed, disorientated, feeling sick.

  I returned to my dugout with the intention of finally writing a letter to Edith, Webb’s sister. But I still couldn’t find it in myself to put pen to paper . . . She will know by now, of course. They all will. But I wanted to make it personal, put down my feelings of regret and sadness, and explain how it was I who finally pulled the trigger; it was I who ended Webb’s life.

  How can I tell her? Without making her hate me?

  Diary of Robert Jones. 3rd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 24th. September 1917.

  I’ve been looking back through my journal, and there are many blank pages. Recently, there have been days I just don’t recall. I think it’s something to do with this madness that has infected my blood, the constant death which has taken my soul.

  I should be writing about the Menin Road, but as I have written before in this journal, there is nothing to write. It will be recorded in history books and then forgotten. It might not take fifty years, or a hundred years, but it will be forgotten in the end, and the heroism of men like Bainbridge and Webb and all the millions of others will have been for nothing.

  I cried today. The line has advanced and our battalion is taking up new trenches. I have to leave behind the dugout I shared with Bainbridge and Webb, and this pains me greatly. I have become deeply attached . . . I feel by staying, I have some link with the past, the days when they lived. I miss them so.

  I had to search through their kit. The captain said any personal belongings were to be sent back to the families of Webb and Bainbridge, but if I wanted their boots or coats, then I was to take them. I took Webb’s boots and found a lighter in Bainbridge’s kit which I’d never seen before. It was worn and smooth with age, the silver polished and obviously old. There was a faint inscription that had been rubbed away with years of constant handling. I could make out one word: Orana.

  I left the dugout in the pouring grey rain.

  I was devastated. But—it’s only a hole in the ground. I suppose I will get over it.

  Diary of Robert Jones. 3rd Battalion Royal Welsh Fusiliers. 26th. September 1917.

  They are watching me. Everywhere I go. I am sure. Thoughts of madness fill me with deep terror. I think of ending my life. All it would take is a moment’s courage (or cowardice?). The barrel in my mouth, close my
eyes, for King and Country and pull the ——ing trigger.

  I am sure I’m going mad. I dwell on this thought day after day.

  I came up with a theory today: maybe the enemy has invented some kind of gas, more terrible than phosgene or chlorine. A gas that is clear and odourless, like mustard gas, but instead of burning, it attacks the brain and induces insanity. It is a subtle weapon. Even now, maybe all the men in the trenches are suffering from the effects of this chemical?

  I’m losing it. I’m ——ing losing it.

  I want to go home.

  I want to die.

  I heard a story. Bainbridge told me as we sat on our bunks after a greasy stew and a coffin nail. It was about Captain George F. Howard—him and Bainbridge were good friends, old drinking pals on the streets of Nottingham and London.

  Howard was posted to the Bakerloo Mine, the west of Messines in Belgium. But something happened down in the mines as the sappers tunnelled under the enemy front lines and planted tonnes of explosive . . . Bainbridge told me he’d read the diary of Captain George Howard, and it had frightened the —— out of him. Bainbridge said whilst down the mines, a group of Hun sappers broke through into the tunnels of the Tommies, and there was a running battle, bullets crazy in the air, men fighting in the dark with pick and shovel, beating one another’s brains out against the thick beams that held up the roof. And then one of the beams gave out . . . the roof came crashing down and ended the fighting in the tunnels. George Howard lived through it. They found him three days later, trapped by both legs and suffering a broken spine. According to his diary, he’d spent three days watching creatures in the tunnels, dark creatures with no features and dull grey eyes. Afterwards, in hospital, he got a young Tommy to find his diary, and dictated the final pages before he died from a ruptured spleen.

  The diary fell into Bainbridge’s hands. I searched his kit after he died but could not find it.

  I will finish writing now. The ridge has been taken; there have been many casualties, but then, there always are. I hope one day that my diary, too, can save the life of a Tommy in the trenches who thinks he might be going insane and offer some support in the fact that he isn’t the only ——ing one.