by Rick Hautala
He didn’t dare turn his back to the thing so he could try to find the box of shells he knew was on the top closet shelf. The seething black horror towered above him, its arms spread so wide they touched opposite walls, leaving huge smudges on the wallpaper. The mountain of chunky black earth, crawling with maggots and worms, swept up like a tidal wave and then came crashing down on top of him, engulfing him in suffocating blackness that oozed and writhed all around him. Horrible things clawed and scraped at his flesh, and when he fell and hit the floor, the air was forced from his lungs with a burning gasp. Within seconds, the weight of the compost heap squeezed the life out of him.
* * *
“What’s that over there?”
“That? Oh, that’s nothing but an old compost heap,” Merilee Bryant, the real estate agent from Century 21, said as she walked with Ben and Sarah Cauldwell out behind the Parker’s barn.
It was a hot August afternoon, and this was the seventh showing she’d had this week for prospective buyers. Following Merit and Lydia Parker’s mysterious disappearances, Merit’s brother Al had put the house on the market without even bothering to clean it out. Al claimed all he wanted was some quick money so he could pay off his son’s college expenses, but Merilee knew Al’s reputation and was fairly certain he’d drink as much of that money as he could. With the prices houses were going for these days, even this far out from Portland, Al was going to be set for years.
“Compost, huh?” Sarah Cauldwell said, wrinkling her nose as she took a cautious step back from the large, sloped pile. It stood more than head-high. She glared at her husband as he knelt down beside it and dug his fingers into the rich, black loam. He made a ball of the stuff and squeezed it until it compacted in his hands.
“Sure,” Merilee said. “You take grass clipping, leaves, and any vegetable waste, mix it with some dirt, and it turns into the best fertilizer going.”
“It looks like an old garbage pile,” Sarah said, taking another step away.
Merilee looked back and forth between the man and woman, wondering if this was going to be another no sale. She could definitely sense some tension lurking below the surface between these two. The hostility was subtle and barely repressed. Merilee could feel it like a taut wire about to snap. In all her years selling real estate, there had been plenty of times when one partner loved the property and the other wasn’t so sure. She hoped this time it wouldn’t kill the deal. She needed the commission. On their walk-through of the house, things had seemed encouraging, and she didn’t want something as insignificant as a compost heap to be a deal breaker.
“I certainly don’t want to live where there’s a pile of … of garbage in the backyard,” Sarah said. She waved her hand in front of her face. “Phew. It stinks, too.”
“No.” Ben looked at his hand, which was stained black from the compost. “Like Merilee says—it’s great for gardening.”
“You can use it if you want to,” Sarah said, her voice thick with disdain. “But you can count me out.”
“It’s my understanding,” Merilee said, “that if you do it correctly, it won’t smell at all. Just like rich soil. This one probably just went bad because the people who lived here didn’t manage it properly. You need to cover it over so the bacterial action can work”
“And you know,” Ben said rather meekly, “we can use it to grow roses in front of the picket fence out front. And maybe I’ll have a little tomato patch out back here.”
“If you do have any gardening—” Merilee said. She was about to say more, but she hesitated when she thought she saw the compost heap shift slightly. Maybe it was just some of the stuff sliding down because of the handful Ben had scooped away. After a second or two, she regained her composure and continued, “Composting is the way to go. Anything you put in here will rot away in a few days or weeks, leaving behind nothing but fertile soil.”
“Really? It will decompose anything?” Ben’s eyebrows arched for a moment as he stood up and looked at the real estate agent. He brushed his hands on his pants legs, leaving behind wide, black smears. Placing his hands on his hips, he looked past the barn, down to the wide field that bordered a pine forest at the far end. Then he turned and looked back at the house, appraising it. After clearing his throat, he said, “You know what? I think we should make an offer. I definitely think we’d like living here.”
“I don’t know, Honeybunny,” Sarah said, frowning and biting her lower lip as she shook her head slowly from side to side.
“I’m not so sure I like the idea of living so far out from town,” Sarah said.
“Ahh,” Ben said with a dismissive wave of his black-stained hand. “It’s not all that far out. And you know I could use a little peace and quiet.” He glanced at Merilee and smiled. “There’s nothing wrong with a little peace and quiet, now, is there?”
“No. Nothing at all,” Merilee said, smiling to herself because she knew she had just clinched the deal. “Everybody needs a little peace and quiet.”
Over the Top
If anyone thought about it at all, people visiting the Aisne-Marne Cemetery in Bois-de-Belleau, France, that day in late April would have assumed the older man and the little girl were father and daughter. No one ever would have believed the truth.
The girl’s name was Sally Edwards. She lived in the small town of North Platte, Nebraska, where her mother was a schoolteacher and her father was a truck driver. She was twelve years old but, because she was so short and frail, she looked no more than ten. Unlike the few other children who were visiting the cemetery that day and running all around, Sally didn’t have an over-abundance of energy. She walked quietly with a slow, deliberate pace, her head slightly bowed.
The man’s name was Alan Edwards. He was tall and slender with thinning light brown hair, and he walked with a vigor that belied his true age. The most striking thing about him was his eyes, which shone like twin chips of blue ice. The tears that gathered in his eyes from time to time as he surveyed the cemetery further enhanced the distant, dreamy effect.
It was late in the afternoon. A gentle breeze carried the damp, mulchy smell of growing things and made the leaves flutter like thousands of tiny green hands, waving a greeting. The distant sound of bird song rang from the forest behind the chapel. Slanting bars of golden sunlight angled across the well-manicured lawn, lighting the arcing rows of white crosses with a near-supernatural glow. The blue shadows of the crosses stretched fully twenty feet and more across the dark, emerald green grass.
“It’s hard to imagine now, it’s so pretty, but there was a big battle here a long time ago,” Alan said, his voice as distant and dreamy as the look in his eyes.
He reached out and took Sally by the hand as they walked out behind the chapel. For someone only twelve years old, Sally showed a remarkable level of maturity. Maybe it was because of what she’d had to deal with already in her short life. She didn’t fidget as Alan, whom she called “Grampy,” stood there for a long time, staring at the woods that bordered the cemetery.
“American soldiers who fought here and who sleep in unknown graves.”
Alan flinched as he recited the inscription on the memorial. He had visited here enough times over the years so every word on every plaque was seared into his mind and heart and soul, but like a litany, he repeated these words softly to himself every time he came here.
Until this trip, he had always come alone. This was the first time he had brought Sally or anyone else with him. He had his reasons for being here with her, and they may have accounted for the tears in his eyes as much if not more than the memorial to the U.S. Marines and Army soldiers who had died here more than ninety years ago.
“Can we go back to the hotel soon?” Sally asked as she cast a worried glance at the darkening sky above the trees.
“You getting tired?” Alan asked.
“Kinda, but I’m also .. you know … kinda afraid of the dark.” When she looked up at Alan and saw the tears gathering in his eyes, she asked, “Why are you cry
ing, Grampy?”
“Oh, it’s just that …” Alan sniffed and wiped away his tears with the cuff of his jacket. Even though the day had been warm, the evening brought a chill. He shivered. “A lot of men—on both sides—died here needlessly.”
“Is that why you’re so sad?”
“Partly, yes.”
“Did you know anyone who died here?”
For a long time, Alan didn’t answer her as he scanned the darkening woods. The shadows under the trees were as black as a wash of ink, but even so, he thought he could detect vague figures flitting about in the deepest shadows. With twilight, maybe they would come out.
“Yes … yes, I did,” he replied. “Back then, it wasn’t beautiful like this. A lot of the trees were blasted by artillery shells, stripped of their leaves and branches, just stumps, and there were craters and trenches and foxholes and barbed wire … and death and destruction everywhere you looked.”
“And fighting,” Sally said with a far-off luster in her eyes. “Why were they fighting, Grampy?”
Alan started to answer but caught himself and sighed. “For the same reason men have always fought, Sweetie … because some of them had what other people wanted.”
Sally nodded and turned to follow his gaze out past the curving rows of crosses to the trees.
“It was terrible … absolutely terrible,” Alan whispered with a shudder. “Truly, it was Hell on earth.”
He was grateful Sally couldn’t see what was in his mind. As he stared across the cemetery to the woods, he superimposed over the view the churned up mud, the chaos, the carnage that had surrounded him and the men in his unit of the AEF, the 6th Brigade of the U.S. Marines. He could still feel and hear and smell the war—the sticky black mud, the reeking bodies that had been blown to pieces and left to rot, the smoke and exhaust that burned eyes and throats and lungs.
“It’s hard to imagine this is even the same place,” he said, but as he looked over the treetops to the slumped hill in the distance, he knew exactly where he was.
Back then, during the battle, that hill had been called Hill 193. Only much later, once the war was over and his wounds completely healed, did he learn the hill’s real name—Belleau Torcy Hill. It was less than a mile away from the forest, and even with the sun setting and Sally’s desire to get back to their hotel, he knew they had to go there.
Today.
“Grampy …?” Sally said, her voice edged with real fear as she pointed off to one side. “Is there—? … I thought I saw something moving in the woods over there.”
“Did you?”
She nodded and sucked in a shallow breath, which clicked audibly in her throat. The glow of the setting sun colored her face, giving her skin an uncharacteristically healthy glow.
“Are there ghosts here?”
“No, Sweetie. There are no ghosts. You don’t have anything to worry about. Trust me.”
Sally nodded, but when Alan looked in the direction she had indicated, he also saw something flitting in and out of sight. The difference was, he knew what—or who—it was. They were the reason he and Sally had come here.
“We called it going ‘over the top,’” Alan said in a voice heavy with melancholy. Sally’s grip on his hand tightened, but she was captivated by his mood and remained silent. Just like the words on the memorials, what had happened here in the summer of 1918 was seared into his heart and mind and soul.
“We’d line up in the trenches, the stinking, muddy water halfway up to our knees, soaking our feet. The dead were lying all around us, and when the commander blew his whistle, we would clamber up over the top and run straight into the enemy machine-gunfire. Once we were in the forest, we couldn’t see where they were until they started cutting us down.”
Staring blankly at the forest as he spoke, it didn’t strike him as at all odd that the darker it got, the keener his eyesight became. The figures moving about in the woods resolved more clearly. He wanted to tell Sally more about them and why they had come here, but he wasn’t ready to. Not yet. She had to understand about the war and what had happened to him, first.
As dusk came, the last few stragglers were leaving the cemetery. The gates closed at five o’clock, but Alan was prepared for this. He had parked the rental car far down the road, and he and Sally had walked up to the cemetery late in the afternoon.
“There were explosions everywhere … bullets whistling by over our heads … men groaning as they fell, and screaming and crying as they died.” He shivered as he looked at Sally, tears blurring his vision. “We were trying to get to that hill over there.” He pointed toward Hill 193. “But I never made it.” Kneeling down in front of her, he held Sally by both arms, squeezing tightly as he looked deeply into her eyes. “Here in the woods is where I died.”
Sally’s eyes widened with shock. A tiny exhalation escaped her as she stared back at him, and an expression of worry washed over her face. Alan knew she loved him as much as he loved her, and he knew she had to understand that she could trust him with her life because that was exactly what he was going to demand.
“The fighting lasted for three full weeks,” he went on. “It was the first time, really, that Americans experienced the kind of trench warfare the French and English had been engaged in for four years.” He took a deep breath to steady his nerves. “It was a terrible slaughter on both sides, and as we pushed toward that hill, a bullet hit me. Right here.”
Reaching up to his neck, he hooked the collar of his shirt with his forefinger and pulled it down to reveal a thick tangle of white scar tissue on his throat. It looked like a miniature range of snow-covered mountains that went from behind his left ear to just below his Adam’s apple.
“What do you mean you died, Grampy? You’re not dead.”
She looked at him, her eyes glistening in the gathering darkness. He hated himself for scaring her like this, but she had to know. She had to understand.
“No, Sweetie,” he said, lowering his voice even though he knew those figures lurking in the woods could hear him clearly, now, no matter how softly he spoke. “I died that day more than ninety years ago. And I would have stayed dead if not for … them.”
Saying that, he nodded toward the woods where the figures appeared to be moving slowly forward, becoming more discernible in the gathering twilight. Their pale silhouettes stood out in sharp relief against the black backdrop of the forest, but even so, it was difficult to focus on anyone for more than a second or two before they flitted away, vanishing out of sight only to reappear as soon as he looked away.
“They’re here to help … I think,” Alan said, and he gave Sally’s shoulder a bracing shake. “Come with me.”
With that, he stood up and, hand in hand, they walked down the gentle slope toward the woods.
“Pardonnez moi, monsieur," a voice suddenly called out from behind them.
Alan looked over his shoulder and saw the cemetery guide standing in the doorway at the back of the chapel. He was waving his arms at them.
“We are closing soon,” he called, his voice thick with a French accent.
Alan turned away and started walking more briskly toward the fringe of forest.
“Monseiur, arretez, s’il vous plait!”
“Grampy. He sounds mad. Are we gonna get arrested?”
But Alan didn’t answer her or the guide as he strode across the neatly trimmed grass toward the woods and the figures waiting for them there.
“I never knew what hit me,” he said breathlessly, now, as he practically dragged Sally along with him. Memories of what had happened that day were flooding back with frightening intensity. “One second I was running. And the next—? Nothing … Total darkness … and terrible pain. I have a vague memory of looking up at the sky. It was thick with gun smoke and shrapnel, and there were flying things that looked like dragons and griffins, not airplanes whizzing by overhead. I thought I must be imagining it. When I tried to call out for a medic, my throat felt like it was on fire. The only sound I could make wa
s a thick bubbling sound whenever I took a breath. And then … then I saw … someone.”
They were about halfway between the chapel and the forest when Alan stopped short. Kneeling down again, he shuddered as he hugged Sally tightly to his chest and sobbed.
“I was sure I was dead,” he said. “I knew I must be because even though I could see our own soldiers and medics rushing around the field, checking the dead and wounded, this person leaning over me—if it even was a person—certainly wasn’t a soldier or a medic … He was—”
His hand was shaking as he pointed to the woods where now more than a dozen gauzy figures were flitting back and forth in the shadows. He never got a good look at any one of them, but he could feel them watching both of them.
“It was one of … them.”
Sally’s eyes widened as she looked from her Grampy to the woods.
“I thought the one leaning over me was an angel who’d come to carry me off to Heaven,” Alan continued. “He had long, flowing white hair that framed his pale face, and his eyes … his eyes were large almond-shaped ovals. And the light in them was … was unbelievable … indescribable. I rolled my head to one side and saw several others, moving about the battlefield as if … as if they were medics, checking on the dead and wounded. And then this one picked me up. It was like my body didn’t weigh a thing. I was as light as a feather to him. And he carried me off the battlefield.”
“Where did he take you?” Sally asked, her eyes wide with equal amounts of fascination and fear.
Alan was silent for a moment as he stared into the distance. He wasn’t sure how many of them were there in the woods now because he was remembering what he had seen that day more than ninety years ago.
“He took me into the woods. As we went, I saw more and more of them … hundreds, and then thousands—an entire army. Their weapons gleamed even in the deepest shadows under the trees, and they had banners and pennants flying, but I was in too much pain to see or think clearly.”
He paused for a moment and looked at the figures in the darkening woods. Resting one hand on her shoulder, he looked down at Sally. Her gaze darted back and forth as she scanned the trees and then looked back at him.
