Stupefying Stories: August 2016

by Sarah Read

  He pushed the thoughts of Simms away, closed his eyes and tried to picture what Lanny would look like now. The last time he’d seen her in the fall of 1862, she had been just three. Even then though, Reims knew she would grow up to be the spitting image of her mother. She was a shy, quiet girl, and small for her age. Over his two-day furlough, Reims had taken to calling her “my itty, bitty thing,” which eventually was shortened just to “Bitty.” From then on, all his letters to her had opened with, “Dearest Bitty…”

  Reims started nodding off and splashed his face with water from the canteen. That’s enough rest and reminiscin’ for now, I reckon. Best be on my way. He stood, gathered his things, and broke into a run, hoping he could keep it up for at least a few miles and make up for the time he’d taken to rest. As it had the night before, the North Star shone bright and clear, making it easy for Reims to stay on course. After about twenty minutes, however, his legs began to tire, and, worse, throb at the knees and ankles. He had to stop. Though only twenty-six, Reims felt like a man who had long passed by his fortieth year. I’ll never get there ‘fore Simms, whatever he is now. Never—

  The unmistakable sound of men talking diverted his thoughts from how tired he was. Reims peered into the darkness. It was impossible to make out what they were saying, but the fact that he could hear them at all meant they had to be close. He crouched down and moved toward the voices. Within a few moments, he caught a glimpse of a faint fire and heard something else that made his heart race—a nicker. They got a horse, whoever they are. He pulled out the LeMat and continued on toward the fire. When he was within ten feet of it, he hid behind a giant ash and scanned the area. There were three of them, all sitting close to a fire with their backs turned to his position, all wearing the navy blue uniforms of the Army of the Potomac. One of them wore a wide-brimmed hat bearing a gold badge with two crossed sabers in the center. Sheridan’s Corps. Best take care. They’re good horse soldiers.

  Reims surveyed the ground between him and the Federals. It was hard to tell in the dark just what lay before him, but for the most part it looked like packed mud. His eyes went back to the Yankees and their horses. Gotta get one of them mounts. Might be my only chance of beating Simms to Spotsylvania. He came out from behind the ash tree and moved fast toward the Yankees. He was halfway there when the heavy heel of his riding boot snapped a twig, causing the Union men to turn in his direction. Reims didn’t hesitate. Without losing a stride, he pointed his weapon at the man in the middle and fired a single shot. The man fell dead just as Reims emerged from the brush. One of the soldiers, no more than nineteen or twenty, froze when he saw his companion lying dead in front of the fire. The other, a stocky man with a long, thick beard, immediately went for his sidearm.

  “Don’t do it, Billy Yank,” Reims warned. “I just want one of them horses.”

  The bearded soldier, a corporal, fell back to his rump. “If it was just a horse you wanted, why’d you have to shoot Holmen?”

  “Guess I wanted to show you blue-bellies I meant business. Now, I’d be obliged if you’d throw those rifles and Colts aside.”

  They did as they were told.

  Reims nodded at the boy. “You. Bring that animal over here. The big bay. He looks like he could handle some hard ridin’.”

  The bearded soldier’s eyes narrowed. “What’re you doing out here all by your lonesome, Johnny?”

  “Goin’ home, corporal. Goin’ home.”

  “Lee surrender and we not hear about it?”

  “Not yet, but he will soon enough.” He watched the younger soldier closely as he unhitched the bay from a tree and started to walk him past the fire. “Any more of you Yankees close by?”

  Neither soldier answered.

  Reims cocked the LeMat’s hammer and pushed it against the corporal’s forehead. “Now, I urge both of you fine gentlemen to take a real good look at your friend Holmen. I also urge you not to make me ask again whether any more of you blue-bellies are ridin’ around this particular stretch of woods.”

  The younger soldier’s face was bathed in sweat. “We’re scouts, Captain. Closest regiment is ten miles from here.”

  “Music to my ears, Billy.” He kept his gun trained on the corporal and climbed up on the bay. He grinned at the two men as he took up the reins. “Well now, gentlemen, I surely do hope the three of us can get together for tea and biscuits once the current unpleasantness winds down.” He tipped his hat to them. “Sorry about your friend. You may find this hard to believe, but I’ve had just about a bellyful of killin’ and the last thing I was lookin’ to do when I spotted your little soiree was to blow one of you to Hell.”

  The corporal’s eyes seethed with hatred.

  “You have the look of a man with a mind to follow me and seek vengeance for what I done,” Reims said. “Boy, you get on over there and untie those horses now.”

  The boy did so.

  “Now, give ‘em each a good slap on the rear and send ‘em a runnin’.”

  The horses bolted off into the night.

  “And now, I bid you two fine gentlemen from the North a fond farewell,” Reims said.

  ¤

  A cold wind blew dead leaves across the eaves of the farmhouse and sent a chill through Reims’s bones. It was dusk now and the failing light made the house look drab and forlorn. The house’s windows were dark and part of him hoped that Claudette and Lanny had been driven off the land by the Yankee army. Reports of the Federals enthusiastically requisitioning supplies from the local population in northern Virginia had reached his regiment in Petersburg months before. The house looked as if it had not been tended to in a season or more—the gardens were overgrown with weeds and an entire section of the slat fence surrounding the property leaned heavily to one side. Reims dismounted, pulled his revolver, and walked the bay up to the front porch. There, he secured the horse to a hitching post, just in case he had to make a fast escape.

  The horse nickered, making plain his displeasure at being denied water and a meal after the long ride north. Reims pointed the revolver at him. “Shut up or I’ll send you back to the lines to haul artillery.”

  The bay groaned and turned its massive head away. Up above, the weathervane made lazy half-turns in the wind, too weary (and too rusty) to perform a full revolution. Reims put his hand on the door knob and pushed it open, using the doorframe as cover just in case Simms was already in the house.

  He poked his head inside. “Claudette? Lanny? You in there?”

  The old house, built by his great grandfather, creaked in the wind. Reims took a few tentative steps into the foyer, on the lookout for intruders, but the light in the house was poor and every corner seemed shrouded in shadow. His grip on the revolver tightened and sweat formed on his forehead, despite it being cold enough for him to see his breath.

  A sound came from the kitchen.

  Reims cocked his pistol’s hammer, took a deep breath, and started toward the kitchen, calling out, “I reckon whoever’s in there better clear on out ‘less they’re achin’ to get shot!”

  But the kitchen was empty and dark, save for a few weak rays of dying sunlight struggling to penetrate the dirt and grime on the window. His eyes went to the cellar. The door was ajar. He flung it open.

  “Who’s down there?!”

  His only answer was the sound of the house moaning in the wind. “All right! I’m comin’ down! Any one doesn’t want to get shot better get on out before I get there!”

  His voice seemed to die as it traveled down the stairs into the blackness. He scanned the kitchen and found an oil lamp sitting on the table. A few moments later, he had it lit and was on his way down into the cellar. Down here, the dampness added a nasty bite to the cold. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, Reims found the cellar empty. He was about to head back up when his eye caught a flash of movement to his right. One of Claudette’s pots swayed noiselessly from where it hung from the ceiling in front of a dark, open entryway into a pantry. Reims’ eyes narrowed. He walke
d toward the pantry, holding the lamp high, his weapon ready.

  “Whoever’s in there better come on out before I unload,” he warned. “Last chance.”

  Even through the shadows, he was able to detect movement. His heart pounded as he waited for the intruder to come out. A small form began to take shape and then appeared in the lamp’s dim yellow light.

  “Papa?”

  Lanny was in a worn green dress with little blue flowers. She held her hands up to shield her eyes from the lamplight.

  Five years of killing had taught Reims the dangers of trusting his eyes though. Still sensing danger, he motioned for her to move aside with a wave of his weapon. “Your mother in there, girl?” Without waiting for her to answer, he called out, “You in there, Claudette?”

  A woman’s hands fell on the girl’s shoulders and moved her aside. Claudette stepped into the light.

  “George?”

  “You alone?”

  “Yes, it’s just me and Lanny.”

  It had been a little more than three years since last he had laid eyes on her, but Claudette looked as if she had aged at least ten in that time. Her hair, once curly and full, was now flat and brittle. Her face was pale and gaunt, sickly almost, and her eyes tired and sad. Lanny’s appearance mirrored her mother’s. She had always been thin, but the child now before him was nothing more than a fragile collection of bones with sallow skin and cavernous eyes.

  “So then,” Claudette began. “It’s over, is it?”

  Reims found he was too exhausted to bother lying. “It is for me, Claudette.”

  “But... If General Lee hasn’t surrendered...” Her hollow eyes registered shock. “You deserted?”

  Reims’s eyes went to the ground. “I’m all used up, Claudette. I’m all used up.”

  Lanny looked up at her mother. “Mama, is that papa?”

  Claudette studied Reims for a moment, as if she needed to make sure the man standing before her was indeed the same who had left her three years before. Then, she went to him and put her arms around his neck. He breathed her in, hoping to catch the scent of the lavender she had always loved to wear before the war, but it had long since been replaced with the hard smell of cheap soap. He kissed her on the forehead, then looked down at his daughter.

  “It’s me, Bitty,” he said. “It’s papa.”

  Lanny ran to him and wrapped her arms round his legs.

  After a moment, however, he remembered they were in danger, and he pulled away. “Be best if I searched the house now. Claudette, the shotgun where I left it?”

  “In the pantry upstairs, yes. Why? What’s wrong, George? Is someone after you?”

  Reims’s eyes took on a haunted look. “You wouldn’t believe a word of it if I were to tell you what I seen and done these past two nights.” He started back up the stairs.

  “George, wait!” She took him by the crook of the arm. “Are we in danger?”

  “I ain’t sure. If I got here before he did, we might be all right.”

  “Before who got here—”

  “Got to get my shotgun,” he said, cutting his wife off midsentence and racing back up the stairs.

  He found the shotgun and ammunition in the large walk-in pantry. When he came back into the kitchen, Claudette and Lanny were waiting for him. Claudette watched as he dumped the box of cartridges onto the kitchen table and loaded the shotgun.

  “George, please tell me what’s happening. What’s gotten into you?”

  When he was finished loading the weapon, he handed it to his wife. “Hold that for a minute. I got to be ready when he comes.” Reims cursed then. “Left the damn rifle on the horse.”

  “When who comes? George, I’m frightened!”

  She followed him out to the front of the house. The sun had slipped below the horizon and it was dark. The trees on the far edge of his property stood black and skeletal against the backdrop of the failing daylight. He slipped the carbine out from the saddle holster and loaded it as he went back into the house. He was heading toward the kitchen when something stopped him dead in his tracks. A smell.

  Claudette wrinkled her nose at the stench. “What is that, George?”

  Burnt human flesh. He put the carbine aside and took the shotgun from his wife. “Get the baby and go upstairs.”

  “She’s in here with me, Captain.”

  The sound of Simms’s ruined voice had come from another part of the house. Reims stepped in front of his wife, raised the shotgun, and walked into the parlor. Simms sat in Reims’s favorite chair, the one next to the hearth where he used to go to smoke a pipe and warm his feet after a long day of work. He had Lanny by the arm and a triumphant grin on his decaying face. Claudette entered behind her husband and screamed when her eyes fell on Simms’s revolting visage.

  “I see you made it here first. Found a horse, didja?”

  Reims pulled the hammers back on both of the shotgun’s barrels. “Let ‘er go, Simms.”

  “Not just yet, I don’t think.” He stood. “Figger you won’t chance takin’ a shot at me with your little one here right in front of me.”

  Reims lowered the shotgun. That elicited another gruesome smile from Simms, who nodded at Claudette. “Pleasure to see you again, ma’am. My name’s Lieutenant Marcus Simms. I had the good fortune to share a meal with you in this very house just after First Manassas. ‘Course, you probably don’t recognize me after what your good husband done to me night before last.”

  Claudette opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out, and Reims saw she was starting to wobble. He steadied her with one hand while keeping his other finger on the shotgun’s trigger.

  “Guess maybe you heard the good Captain here decided to leave the front before General Lee finished whippin’ the Yankees. I tried to remind him of his duty to the South and this is what I got for it,” he said, gesturing at his face.

  “The war’s over, Simms,” Reims said. “Everyone knows the Glorious Cause is lost.”

  “No, it ain’t!” Simms yelled, his voice breaking. “And that don’t matter none no how anymore anyway. No way I can go on fightin’, an’ no way I can go on home to my wife and girl lookin’ like this. No way. You ain’t left me with much, have you, Captain? Well, I mean to make you pay. I told you there would be a reckoning, and that reckoning is here.”

  “Back up there a moment,” Reims said. “You said if I beat you home we might be able to come to some kinda arrangement.”

  “That I did, Captain. That I did. You want to hear what I had in mind?”

  Reims laid the shotgun and his revolver down on the parlor floor. “If it’s me you want, you can have me. But leave Lanny and Claudette out of this. They ain’t ever done you any harm.”

  “No, they ain’t, but you have, Captain. You’ve done me grievous harm. Powerful grievous harm, and I mean to see you suffer.”

  “Hasn’t there been enough suffering?” Claudette finally said.

  Simms gave her that terrible grin again. “No. Not near enough, to my mind. Not for the good Captain. Though I do admit, it pains me that he brought you and your little one into this.” He ran his charred fingers through Lanny’s hair. “But outta respect for what we done together on the battlefield, Captain, I’m gonna give you a choice. More of a choice anyway than you done gave me.”

  “The hell are you on about, Simms?”

  “You get to pick which one of these here two lovely ladies gets to die. How that be?”

  Claudette looked at Reims, her eyes desperate.

  “I won’t…” Reims stuttered. “I won’t do that…”

  “You’ll do it or I’ll kill ‘em both. And don’t you try putting one in your mouth either, Captain. You do that, well, the living will cease to inhabit this fine house of yours.”

  Reims fell to his knees. “Marcus… Please… Don’t… Don’t make me choose…”

  Simms gave him a smile that was absolutely malignant. When he spoke, his voice was full of barely suppressed glee. “Now, it were me in this pick
le, well, I gotta consider this here little gal ain’t had much of a chance at life just yet. Seems only fair she get a few more years, don’tcha think so, Captain?”

  Claudette struggled to control her fear. “You are the devil, sir. The Lieutenant Marcus Simms I met that fine evening years ago would never threaten a woman and her child. Especially a man with a wife and child of his own.”

  “Well now, five years of shootin’ Yankees and watching our Virginia boys die will make a man hard, so you’ll have to forgive me if I ain’t as gentlemanly as I once was.”

  “It’s not me you should be seeking forgiveness from, sir.”

  “Is that right?”

  Claudette stuck her chin out at the lieutenant defiantly. “Yes, it is. Betsy would be ashamed if she knew her husband—the father of her child—was involved in this savagery.”

  “You talk like you know her when I know for a fact you ain’t never laid eyes on her or my little Maureen.”

  “You are wrong, sir. All the wives of the First Virginia have grown close since our men rode off to war. We write letters to one another. Visit one another, make sure the children have mended clothes and enough food in their bellies. Some days, the only thing that gets us through this terrible war is the company of a fellow officer’s wife. I knew your wife well. And your little girl.”

  “That’s very touching, Mrs. Reims, it surely is, but I came here to do a thing, an’ I aim to do it.” He turned back to Reims. “Now, Captain, you got a choice to make, an’ one I don’t envy you at all. Is it your wife, or ...”