Bernhard grunted. The old woman's words filled his head like a herd of droning cattle, choking off further squabbling. Instinct remained. Everything in his body drove him to attack. Not the old woman, or Gizela. The others on the floor. His son.
"All for following our hearts," Gizela said, her voice breaking. She took a deep breath, balled her fists, cutting herself with her own claws. "Why would that be so terrible?"
"It depends on what we find in our hearts."
Bernhard let loose a defiant roar. Gizela staggered to the side, went down on her knees, and joined him in raising her voice and releasing what was inside of her. Attendants appeared. Children screamed, ran behind a circular wall the adults had formed with their bodies. The old woman at their back laughed, her voice cracked by madness. Her laughter sank into guttural growls and barks. The attendants threw themselves on the prey. Bernhard stripped, his clothing chafing his skin. Gizela and the old woman did the same. Prey, caught between their former natures and the burden of their newfound souls, tried to change back to what they had been. They fought, turning on each other and dragging down attendants. The frenzy of whipsawing bodies and snapping jaws and flashing talons brought Bernhard, Gizela and the old woman short. Bernhard recognized a force at work greater than he, than the three of them combined, could challenge.
Bernhard, Gizela and the old woman whined and slunk into a corner, away from the frantic battle, satisfying themselves from random sprays of blood or with the meat from a tossed limb.
The violence, the purity, the nakedness of the curse's power and its cost cleared Bernhard's mind. He reverted to being only a vessel for the curse, its reliquary of flesh. He had seen one or two stricken with souls at the same time, but never so many, and the vigor of what possessed them tempered his sorrow over the loss of so many of his kind. The theater of carnage mocked the old woman's speculation about redemption, about wild things becoming human and dispelling the curse. The scene was a reminder that there was no escape from what they all were.
In this place of dying, broken in the face of what he was and could become, despair found Bernhard. The curse burrowed deeper into his heart.
The fighting subsided, the attendants gained control. They crawled like worms through the afflicted, many still locked in death struggles, ending the last battles, granting mercy to the wounded, chasing down survivors who went for the windows, skylights and door. None escaped the attendants' distended jaws and razor teeth.
Bernhard never saw who brought down Albins. There was nothing recognizable left of his boy.
The attendants began gathering the remains while other staff entered from discreet and secret passages with cleaning equipment and chemicals. Bernhard, Gizela and the old woman stayed, laying claim to a small pile of what was left of the dead. The attendants respected their claim and worked around them.
Without words, the three feasted solemnly on the remains. Prey or accursed, it did not matter. They honored what had been lost.
And as they gnawed on bones, Bernhard mourned his son; his brother, from long ago; his father and mother, lost to him in time; the packs he had run with; the promise of his mating with Gizela; the freedom of his wandering days; even Gizela beside him, who kept the wounds he'd given her inside for the sake of their son; even the old woman sitting with them, who could have been his mother for all her madness. All that had been a part of him, living or dead, was lost. Devoured by the curse. He sucked at the marrow but found no solace there, only the taste of emptiness, the bitterness of a fresh wound, a hole carved deeper into him than any other. Deeper than the curse, where are its bottom a soul might find space to nest, to grow like an unwanted tumor, and claim him, and kill him.
Or take him far from the curse he'd known all of his life, to another damnation that would consume him.
Relief surprised Bernhard as a new world opened up to him. He let the bone in his hand fall. Gizela did not notice, but the old woman put a hand on his shoulder, blessing him for a third time with her curious expression.
This time, her eyes opened wider.
Perhaps, he felt from the depths of his emptiness, in wonder.
Gerard Houarner fell to Earth in the fifties, where he became a product of the NYC school system and the City College of New York. Along the way, the likes of Joseph Heller, Joel Oppenheimer, Terry Bisson, Nancy Kress, and others have tried to pass along a clue or two about what they do. He remains, alas, a questionable reflection of their teaching abilities. He has also accumulated the necessary credentials to work in the mental health field in such places as Hells Kitchen, on the Lower East Side at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, and in the Bronx at the start of the crack epidemic before settling into a quiet, contemplative and genteel career as an uncivil servant at a state psychiatric center.
His publishing career includes three novels and over 260 short stories (some gathered into five collections and the occasional "best of" anthology, 50 earning Honorable Mentions in Ellen Datlow's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror/Horror), as well as editing/co-editing three anthologies and serving as Fiction Editor for Space and Time magazine.
He continues to write whenever he can, mostly at night, about the dark.
—FINAL DRAFT
by Mark W. Worthen
"How do those bastards move so quietly?" I wiped at my dripping forehead with a sodden sleeve. Moisture from the muggy air formed on the thick leaves of the dense jungle around us, and the wetness mingled with sweat and dust leaving muddy trails down our faces. Even at dusk, it sopped hair and created dark camo triangles on our backs and chests and sides. My hands were so slick I could barely hold on to my M16.
"That's the thing, Jared," replied a voice from my left. "The Viet Cong can go anywhere without making noise. It's damn creepy."
And the smell. The constant cloying foulness of the rotting plants made my throat clench, and my A-rations, never quiet, signaled an imminent return, coming up from my half-filled stomach into the swamp. My thighs and ankles ached from hours of trudging through shin-deep muck.
I nodded, holding a little tighter to my slipping weapon. "Like Death himself."
The only response I got was a snicker. We slogged on in silence, or our version of it, though we knew the suck-thwock sounds of our boots signaled our presence to VC for miles around. Finally, Poet Williams, a tall black man, intoned in his drawling southern Georgia basso:
"Upon his shield came the warrior home
His face, transformed by Death's unholy grasp,
Become a mask of calm serenity. . ."
"So who wrote that one, Poet?" A new voice, one I recognized as Andy Tyler's.
"I did," Poet replied.
"It doesn't rhyme."
"So what?" I shook my head in the semidarkness. "Who decided poetry always needs to rhyme?" Surrounded by a squad of hard-ass soldiers, how could I say it was beautiful, that it reflected the heroism I saw in the Army that made me want to join up in the first place?
"Nicely metered though," came the voice that had complained about the creepiness of the VC. "Iambic pentameter."
"Thank you, Justin," Poet acknowledged.
That's when I saw it.
I don't know why it caught my eye there in the dark-and-light pattern left by the retreating sun, but it did. The muzzle of a Russian AK-47, North Vietnamese weapon of choice, protruded from leaves in the jungle just ahead. My feet froze. I tried to speak, to shout a warning, but fear closed my throat. I screamed and screamed, but no sound came out.
Looking back, we shouldn't have been talking like that. If the enemy hadn't heard our mucky footsteps, they'd certainly heard our blithe conversation as we passed. Too late; we'd made our mistake.
Crack! A single shot, a firecracker sound, and time slowed.
To one side, Andy grabbed his neck and just stood there, suspended like a marionette, fingers dark with blood, all the muscle control seeping out of him. He looked toward me as if to ask for help, but I had none to give.
Puppet strings cut
, I watched him fall into the mud.
I bent forward and raised my gunstock to my cheek, wet from tears, humidity, or sweat, and scanned the rest of the foliage for unfriendlies. I could see nothing, only the shadows of trees and bushes. I couldn't even find the AK muzzle I'd seen before. Then, crack, crack, two more shots, and then the shattering chaotic staccato of fire from both sides.
I lurched forward and squeezed the trigger.
And I didn't see or hear anything further. My mind focused only on the pain that shot up my right leg, a searing, blue electric streak that blocked everything else. Hallucinogenic lights colored my vision.
Then everything faded.
When consciousness returned and things swam back into focus, I saw a vision of chaos viewed from the ground. All proverbial Hell had broken loose. Nearby, Poet triggered his weapon into the wall of foliage, which answered in kind. Screams. Gunfire. The backbeat rattle of choppers overhead, counterpointed by the booming of grenades all around.
I reached out for my dropped weapon with the thought of adding a few shots to the fray, but a new pain flashed down my side, taking my breath away. Lying on my left, pinning my arm, I couldn't move my free shoulder at all and still continue breathing. I panted, and with each breath, sharper and sharper the flare, as though someone had knifed me.
Lying there in the muck, afraid to move, I closed my eyes. When I opened them, I saw Poet's face.
"Jared. You all right, man?"
"Don't. . .don't know." I had to cough the words out as though they'd lodged in my throat.
"Hang on. We'll get you help." Poet stood up just as shots erupted again from the trees. Along the ground, successive bullets kicked up a path of splattering mud. For a moment Poet watched it, then looked at me and winked.
And stepped into it.
His body shook with the impact. Then the crackling gunfire stopped, and I watched him crumple to the ground.
That trail of spray would have led directly to me.
More noise, more light, blurring in and out, and then everything went quiet.
It was over.
I heard the battle break out again in another area, far to my left. As the choppers moved further that way, so did the rest of the sounds. The distant firefight was all I could hear; everything around me became silent, as though the jungle itself held its breath.
After a time, even the faraway sounds of warfare vanished, and an unnatural stillness lay on the jungle like fog over the Missouri. I heard only my heartbeat and labored breathing.
I inched my hand down my body, feeling for damage, and the pain sharpened as I did, making it hard to breathe again. If someone left a bayonet in me, it could be twisting as I moved. Finally my fingers found the spot, but no blade, no blood, no wound that I could find just by feeling around.
Bruised or cracked ribs, then.
I didn't try to explore the leg—couldn't bring myself to. If I'd lost it, I'd want to die. And here in Vietnam, wanting to die, I would.
Hoping to distract myself, I looked around, anywhere but at my own broken body. I could just see one of Poet's boots nearby. I tilted my head—and even that slight effort stirred the burning in my side—I saw him, lying still, the mud around him red. The smell of blood and death joined the decayed stink of earth. I couldn't tell how seriously he'd been hit, but he didn't move.
The jungle burned someplace nearby, and in the flickering light of the growing flames, I could see other men lying around me. One was Andy Tyler. Another I couldn't identify. Beyond them, two more bodies, just visible—no, not two, but two pieces of one. I shuddered, then gagged, but the throbbing from my ribs and leg provided sufficient distraction to still the reflex.
Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw movement.
Gingerly, I turned my head in that direction, but saw nothing. My imagination? I didn't think so, but I could be delirious from shock or loss of blood, or a fistful of other things. When I glanced away, the movement returned.
I fixed my gaze on a boot print in the mud of one of my fallen friends, then let my eyes unfocus, expanding my view beyond it. When I was a kid in the astronomy club, they called it "averted vision." Sometimes you can see more by not looking directly at an object.
What I saw washed me with a cold wave of fear. In the heat of the steaming jungle, I shivered.
A woman, Vietnamese, straight and proud, stood over the fallen shape of Poet Williams. A white robe hung from her shoulders, and light flowed from her as though she posed with her back to the bright illumination of a Fresnel lamp.
She knelt by my friend, knees together demurely in the slick ground, and leaned down very close to his lifeless face. Her lips seemed to brush his ear.
She ran her fingertips over his chest, and Poet Williams opened his eyes, an expression of surprise lighting his face. I'd assumed he was dead, like everyone else. I watched wide-eyed as he stood up and began to glow, radiating the same white light as the woman.
I opened my mouth to call out his name, but the two vanished, leaving me in the brightness of the flames and the heat of the jungle.
***
"How you doing, soldier?"
I woke with a violent start, which induced fierce pain in my ribs and back. I turned to the voice, and saw an Asian woman, all in white.
The woman in the jungle!
No, I was mistaken. A nurse. She placed a soft hand on my chest and eased me back to the mattress. Only then did I realize I lay on a hospital bed, antiseptic smells and noises of nurses and moans and cries of the wounded all around me.
"What happened to me?" I managed. "How's my leg?"
"Shh. Don't talk." She smiled warmly. I knew it was her job, but it made me feel warm too, all the same. "You'll be fine. You stepped on a punji stick—you know," she went on, "one of those little bamboo spikes the North Vietnamese leave lying around. Just one of their nasty little tricks."
She took my chart from the end of the bed and made a notation. Then she produced a thermometer and moved toward me. I opened my mouth and she placed it under my tongue.
"You were lucky. Sometimes they coat them with animal poo, and that's why they're so hard to treat." She looked at her watch, counting seconds.
I knew what a punji stick was, but I let her talk. I liked the sound of her voice.
"After that, as near as we can figure out, you fell on your gun or a rock and cracked three ribs."
The doctors told me about it in great detail in the days that followed. A good thing, they said. Probably saved my life, they said. Just damn lucky I hadn't found another spike when I fell. But I knew better. Poet Williams had saved my life, stepping into that machine-gun fire.
One afternoon some time later, a doctor with stubble shadow and a receding hairline came in, hands thrust in the pockets of his lab coat. He'd been around before, checking on me. "The bad news is that you're not going to be able to make it back to the front lines. I know you've got your heart set on it, but it's not happening."
I smiled in spite of myself. "Damn. And I really wanted to go back, too." When pigs fly. "Is there good news?"
"You're going to be okay. In a few months. Meantime, you're going home."
"Doc, could I ask you a favor before I go?"
He grinned. "Sure, you can ask."
"There was a guy in my unit, Williams. Lafayette, I think his first name was. We called him Poet."
"Hmm," he thought for a moment. "The only Williams that came in was a James Anton, but he wasn't in your unit. How about I make a call or two and see what I can find?"
"Thanks."
He gave me a nod, checked my foot and the bandages around my ribs, and wandered off to look at other patients.
Just before they shipped me home, he told me that Pierre Lafayette Williams hadn't been found and was listed officially as "missing in action."
***
Days later, in a military hospital in Okinawa, Poet came to me.
I don't know whether I was asleep and dreaming or awake that night. It fe
lt like I was drifting, somehow cut loose from myself, like a cloud of consciousness in the room. My thoughts wandered up and down the past several weeks, particularly those spent in the jungle.
I pictured that firefight in the mud, imagining dozens of variations on Poet's death, watching as fire from an automatic weapon sawed him nearly in half, while he sometimes whispered my name, sometimes shouted it.
"Jared." I came awake—at least I seemed awake—to a thin whisper like a breeze through a screen door. I should have jumped, but I didn't, almost as if I expected it.
"Poet," I said aloud, "I should have paid more attention to where you fell, so they could have taken you home to your family."
"I ain't dead, Jared. Least I don't think so. And there ain't no body to send home. Most of my family wouldn't care anyhow. Daddy kicked me out when I joined the Army."
There he stood, at the foot of my bed, looking very bright in the darkness. I could see every detail of his face, though the only light source was a dim forty-watt in the hallway.
"Why didn't you die, Poet?"
"Maybe I did, in a way. But in another way I didn't. Here I am, anyways."
"Here you are."
The apparition nodded its head.
"What are you, Poet?"
"Not sure yet. Still learning that."
A comfortable silence settled between us, as with old buddies hanging out together.
"I should be lying dead out there, Poet."
He shook his head. "Not your time, man. You got to stay." He smiled. "Me, I gotta go. You be seeing me again."
I closed my eyes and must have fallen asleep. When I woke, he was gone.
***
I did see Poet again, but not for eleven years. By that time, I'd convinced myself that his visit had been a dream and the woman in the muddy jungle a nightmare.
I'd thought about him many times, even thought about returning to Vietnam to see if I could find any clues about him, but I never did. My business was just starting to take off, and I really couldn't afford any time away from it.
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