MicroHorror

18th October 1916
Picardi, France

Dear Mum,

I’m sorry it’s been so long since my last letter, but I really haven’t had the time to write. All the boys say thanks for the biscuits you sent me–we had them with a cup of tea and they all said how they were the best biscuits they’ve had since leaving Blighty, so well done mum!

I’m on watch duty tonight and Corporal Jenkins is filling in this month’s munitions order in the dug-out, which means I’ve got both time and light to write to you. I know you must be worried about me, but everyone reckons it will be all over by Christmas and we’ll be on our way home. Won’t that be nice? Christmas back home with you, dad and Emily–I can almost taste that turkey!

There aren’t so many of us left as the last time I wrote. Not many came back from the last charge… well… we’re not really sure what happened to the others. Sergeant Parker says they deserted and I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about, but where would they go? One of the boys says Davenport hauled himself over the top of the trench one night and walked off across the mud, as bold as you like and disappeared into the dark.

I’m scared. I shouldn’t say it, but I am, because I’ve seen it–seen something out there in No Man’s Land–a shadow that’s darker than the night. You’ll think I’m being silly, but it’s true. I saw it last night and the night before, something so black that it blots out the moon and the stars. It dances out there in the churned mud and dirt, as thin as a sliver one minute, then wide enough to eat the sky the next.

That’s not all, mum. It speaks to me, I’m sure it does. When I’m out here, waiting for the dawn to come, I can hear a voice in the dark. It’s low and sweet and gentle, so quiet that I can barely make out the words, yet I can hear it over the howling wind as clear as church bells.

It’s calling me, telling me to rise from my post and climb over the top of the trench. There’s nothing to be afraid of, it says, the guns won’t get me while I’m dancing. I can’t make out the words; I just know that’s what it wants me to do. It sounds so lonely, like it’s seen some terrible sadness.

The shadow is moving again; closer than the last couple of nights. It’s so dark and cold, that I can barely keep my fingers from shaking. It’s coming closer, weaving in and out of the barbed wire, twisting and turning as though it’s trying to move in a hundred different directions at once.

I’m trying to be brave and I’m trying to do my duty, but I can’t take my eyes off it. That voice is in my ear again, telling me to join in the dance, just like Davenport and all the others. I don’t want to go, but it doesn’t feel like a request, more like a prediction.

I’ll have to stop writing now; I can see Jenkins blowing on the ink of his report and I suppose he’ll be putting out the lamp and retiring for the night. Don’t worry mum, I won’t be on my own. All the boys are with me, all those boys that went out and danced, knowing that they’d be safe from the bombs, the blood and the madness.

It’s moving closer, now; I can see it stark and black against the sky. Soon the light will go out and I won’t be able to see it any more, but it will be there, dancing through the valley of Death.

I love you mum. I love dad and I love Emily too.

I’m not scared any more.

Your loving son,

David.

The breeze off the ocean blew her long golden hair across her face and pressed the white shift against her skin, the invisible hands of a lover holding her up as she fought for balance at the edge of the cliff. In the background, the drums throbbed, pulsing through her body and weakening her knees.

She looked down at the massive gray rock, while waves crashed in darkness below. Her eyes traced the outline of the closest of the crude sarcophagi all ranged in a row, awaiting their charges. The beat of the drums changed. Her signal. She turned her back to the sea and watched as seven bearers lifted the body of her husband and approached the open tomb.

So young to be a widow, hot tears ran down her cheeks, whether for her… or for him, she was unsure. She had known it would be so ever since their wedding night. It seemed like yesterday. Lying naked under the bearskin she had caught a glimpse of gray in his hair, caught in the firelight, as her new husband slid aside the hide flap of the tent. She smiled, remembering; the drums were present even then. As he had come to her, with trembling hands, she had felt the deep creases in his skin as he caressed hers. The realization had hit her then, even as he entered her, that this day would come; she would not grow old with her husband. He had already spent his youth, and she must give him hers. But she was duty-bound. Traditions from time immemorial decreed that it should be so, the price of betrothal to a chief.

As their queen, she stood erect while seven young men, stripped to the waist, their oiled muscles glistening in the firelight, lowered the corpse into its eternal home, then wailed aloud as they strained and the heavy stone ground into place, sealing the tomb away.

She waited, impassive, as a long line of people filed by, placing flowers on the stone. Would they do the same for her? She watched, detached, as the final petals fell atop the pile, then stiffened as the rhythm of the drums changed once again. Her knees buckled, but rough, dirty hands caught her and lifted her in the air. Grasping, groping fingers soiled the pure white of her raiment as they laid her down.

Calmly, she took one last breath of cool sea air, one last look at the stars in the sky, then closed her eyes as the grinding sounded, locking her inside.

The earth was black with blood: slaughtered livestock swung from hooks in the killing shed. Big John and others worked their knives, cleaning, skinning beasts.

Turnips and tatties were stacked in clamps. Necklaces of onions dangled from the barn’s beams. Each apple that hadn’t been crushed into cider was wrapped in dry straw and stored in trunks, or placed out like marbles up in the eaves near the hay pile.

Bonfires were heaped in the bottom field. I’d gathered branches, the windblown dead limbs, with others, and we’d arranged them into two stacks. We’d scrambled up and down, heaving up wood, cracking twigs with our clogs, scratching legs as we ran down laughing, jeering at the ones looking up, those littler than us.

When darkening came the fires were lit by men in masks. Orange sparks blew westwards, twigs cracked again. Every villager walked the cleansing path between the burning heaps. Old Maggie was pushed in a cart; her hollow cheeks appeared deep and black as rock pools, her cackles shrill as herring gulls’. Her eyes glinted around the merry crowd, then she laid a hand upon the one pushing her and said, “There’s an extra amongst us.”

Word went round and those who could count counted the throng; some used a finger that they pointed at each person, counted aloud. Those without the counting swung about, tried to guess who was the stranger behind the masks.

“Maybe it’s an ancient come about us at Winter’s birth. Do not fear, this is their evening, they walk amongst us,” Echo said.

Most turned back to the trestle where a roasted boar was now showing its ribs.

“The ancients are here with us tonight, but this is no ancestor that sneaks through the smoke. Look.” Maggie grabbed my arm as I went to find my little sister. “Look down there abin the copse. See the folks stood in front of the old oak?”

I looked towards the rowan wood and through the gloom. After a while I could see lines of people stood as thin as the birch trunks in the Hare field. But I did not look towards Hare field.

“See?” Maggie’s fingers dug into my arm. “See the tiny ones wriggling on the floor?” Not waiting for an answer she continued, “That’s the unborn, the unwanted ones that were poisoned, or stabbed in the womb with knitting needles, or just withered because they weren’t meant for this life.”

I saw many. They looked like the skinned rabbits that would be put onto the embers before the storytellers started. I felt for the paw I’d ferreted from the midden pit, had delved in about the entrails and had it in my pocket. Us boys had all fished one from the pile of guts and waste that the foxes would feast on before the dawn came. It curled cool against my fingers, had stiffened now. I rubbed my thumb against its soft fur, traced the slight scratch of its claws. Its pads had the feel of smooth blisters.

“I’ll be stood there next Samhain, beside my Joe,” Maggie whispered.

“Will I see you?” I asked.

“You will indeed; you have the sight.” Maggie’s fingers released my arm, her hand dropped to her side and she sighed, “Now, Fingal, go seek the stranger.”

I looked again at the gathered departed and left Maggie staring at those she would soon be stood beside.

I wove in about people I knew by their clothes or stance. Snatches of conversation came as I walked by: all the accents the same, but the pitch or a pause of a word gave my ear their name. Some masks had slipped, lay on collars, or the ground. Some villagers were missing, lay giggling in the hay pile, or under hedges with their wenches. I stepped over legs, until I came upon a robed man with no face beneath his cowl.

I watched as he walked down towards Maggie, laid on her cart.

The first train was scheduled to arrive in the morning.

It was nearly midnight and the air was cool and clear. Bobby Jenkins sat on the town’s sole bluff watching the work crew laying track. He had been asleep on the coarse blanket that served as his bed, but the noise had woken him–that familiar clang of hammers against steel. So he snuck out as his father snored on and muttered in his sleep; his father often claimed to hear low voices in the dark.

Bobby thought the work had been finished; he had watched it progress for over a year, ever since he’d heard the first explosion. “That’s the ’glycerine,” his father told him, wild-eyed. After that, the tracks appeared, and the workmen with them.

The coming of the railroad was the most exciting thing that had happened to this town since he’d been alive–Bobby was born the day the war for the Union had ended. He read Andy Dibble’s newspaper as best he could and he was excited when they said that this was the beginning of a new age–that of the “iron horses.”

The boy preferred watching the workers to going to school: the iron men, the spikemen, the trackmen. They were gruff and strong, all, wearing hats and overalls, swinging hammers and picks. They smoked constantly and used words that his father spoke rarely and, when he did, prayed about for days after.

Earlier in the week, Bobby had seen the tracks finally meet the station–a barren patch of land with one spare but newly built cottage of wood and tar. The men let out whoops and hollers. Andy printed a front-page story saying that the tracks were operational and the first train would arrive in the early hours of November 1.

But now this night crew was working nearly a mile back from that station house. Bobby did not recognize any of these silent and disparate men. They were certainly not of the same rowdy group he had watched all year, though none of them had been locals either.

The railroad bosses had scouted the area before beginning construction. They knew right away that the townspeople didn’t have the strength or the numbers to do this grueling work; the population was a mere hundred and fifty, quiet and sad folks. It had started as nearly a thousand, but disease hit hard; Indian attacks, too. There were accidents, and so many men lost in the war. Now, it was nearly a ghost town. And so they called it Deadman. The water to the west was known as Deadman’s Sound.

But the tycoons saw money here, and with the lure of money comes people. Thus, the railroad.

Bobby’s father spoke against this. “The dead run this town. You can’t tell me otherhow,” he said. “And the dead don’t like the living–not us and certainly not outsiders.” Bobby was surprised at how many of his neighbors listened, as if they heard voices as well.

“Boy,” his father whispered to him alone, “don’t expect them to stand for this.”

But Bobby was happy. This first train was bringing in workers and families. It would be a fresh start for a place preoccupied with ghosts.

From below him, the only sounds were of tools splitting the tracks. Cutting them, turning them. The men did not rest; there were many of them and they moved fast. They were blue in the moonlight.

Bobby breathed in the rising mist and soon fell asleep. He dreamed of an empty town.

As the night wore on, the men continued to work. They re-laid the rails with great efficiency, leading them leftward, away from their original path. When they finished, just before dawn, the tracks ran to the water, with no stop and no end. The men disappeared in the light of the sun as the train sped toward town from the south.

It would arrive in Deadman as scheduled.

He was the greatest player to play the game. Period. I don’t want any of what I’m about to tell you to color that. I’m only telling you because this time next week, I’ll be gone, and it’s important that someone knows. You can tell whoever you want; just don’t expect them to believe you. In fact, they’ll likely hate you for it. You’d be pissing on a legend. It’s the truth, though, and that’s enough for me.

He had a phenomenal arm. He earned his way into the bigs pitching. Son of a bitch had a curve that shook worse’n my hands do now. The hitting is another thing. He could drop a single into the slot with the best of them, but back then, he couldn’t clear that fence but once or twice a season. It’s a fact.

We were two years in the minors, then he was traded, and I didn’t run into him again until we were both wearing pinstripes. By then he was slugging them into the parking lot twice a night. I wish you could have seen it. Three years on, I asked him about it. We were roommates, and during a particularly awful stretch in the middle of August, we got drinking, and then we got talking.

“What in hell happened to you, anyway?” I asked. “Back on the farm, you’d get one out the back a handful of times at best.”

He looked at me a long time then. His eyes cleared right up, like we hadn’t touched a drop. This next thing, I’m not proud of, but it’s part of the story, so I’ve got to tell it. All I’ll say in my defense was that times were tough, and I was weak.

“Okay, Pete,” he started in that booming voice he had, even when he whispered. “I know for a fact you took dough to shave some points during this trip, so if I tell you this, it all stays you and me, correct?”

I had, and I said it did.

He took a deep breath, lifted his shirt up, and I had to stifle a shout. On his gut was a spider web of thin white scars. “This game needed something. You know that as well as I do. It was good, but it needed to be great. I knew I could be the one to do it. But I needed help.”

“What kind of help?” I knew then that I didn’t want the answer.

“I sold my soul, Pete. There was a shady character I used to know–Mr. Jesse. He got me this book, and with the book I talked to this thing.

“I was specific. I wanted to hit the long ball. The demon agreed; the little bastard drove a hard bargain too. He said he didn’t want no ‘deathbed welsher.’ Instead, each time I bang one out, he takes his cut. Feels like something’s raking my gut with a dull fork each time I connect. But it worked. Look at the game, Pete. It’s never been better. Baseball is what it should be.”

I could only stare. “It ain’t so. That stuff, magic… demons… it’s not real.”

“Real enough, Pete. Take a look. It’s not just the scratches either. It’s making me different. I’m meaner now than I used to be, colder.”

I thought of the grim look he always got at bat, face screwed up in determination, or pain. I was terrified for him. “So one day, you’ll hit one out, and that’ll be it?”

“I thought so. But remember back to the ’26 series, that thing with the kid? Well, after that game, I felt better. I realized then that being selfless, maybe, maybe there’s hope for me. I’m tired now, Pete. There ain’t no more to tell.”

I watched the rest of his career on tenterhooks. Every homer, I felt it. Every good thing he did, I wondered, “Is it enough?”

For his sake, I hoped so.

Rather my mother had not borne me than that this grim remembrance be the price of life! I blame myself for horrors seen, my friend–for horrors merely endured. Such endurance was a sin itself. Had I had the courage of my brother Yves to end it, the first time at Smolensk, I ought. I recall the very musket shot that rang out in the woods. I see his tear-stained and beloved face beg for the mercy I could bestow, and I did, and stripped him there on the field and took his clothing for my sorry rags. His feet came away in his boots. I thought I would bring up my very lungs, so great was the stench. My heart I left there with him in the mud and blood and promised I would tell our mother only that he loved her.

We were an army of the living dead. Our glorious songs, long silenced in our parched throats, had been choked in heat and dust. Our eyes, painful and encrusted, saw only death, not battle. Columns before us foraged all they could take. Cattle behind us died of stroke and dearth. Then came the rains and wagons of supplies were swallowed, horses-whole in claggy mud.

Our enemy led us on a-dance. They stood to fight one day, then disappeared like spirits into the night, deeper beyond Smolensk, until we stood depleted in the midst of ruin in Moscow. Nothing of value was there. Great works of art, silver and fine goods there were a-plenty but what are those to hunger? I saw many a wagon laden with suchlike trinkets, abandoned soon upon the road. I took a Russian coat and some good cloth to wrap my feet against the coming cold. I ate a dog that was half starved like me–remembered how we’d thought ourselves so poor, back in my mother’s house where there was bread and beer. Now I wished only to see her face once more and feel her gentle hand upon my head and the warmth of her tears for my brother. That would have been sustenance enough.

We left Moscow burning and turned back along that desolated path whence we had come. Southern lands were full of plenteous harvest but our number was now small. We were forced to follow the Baltic Route west. The bloated corpses of those who had perished on the assault became pillows to bivouac. Discarded weapons littered the way. Men too weak to fight need no weapons. Many I saw drop and never rise again for lack of will. I saw them stripped naked before they’d exhaled their final breath, nor did they curse their looters. We did not smell or taste or feel or weep for we had no saliva or tears. Alas! I would cry yet if I could.

Smolensk the second time was execrable. I have not told you of the freezing cold; minus thirty on November 11th. My feet no longer hurt for want of feeling but remembering my dear brother, I did not remove my bindings; such was my fear. That night I wished to die but I chose to survive. I will never forget that night. I crawled towards a faint snorting noise in the dark and suddenly my body came upon the great bulk of a fallen horse. I felt its breath warm but uneven and knew neither of us might live out the night. So, I took my knife and slit its belly open and it screeched so that I cannot forget the sound. I put my mouth to its warm blood that oozed. I took its entrails in my hands and dragged them from it, living, and inside I crawled for warmth, curled up as it were my mother’s womb.

Ah, God forgive me! I cannot look her in the face again. After that date, I dined on human flesh. So tell me, of those 600,000 souls, can I truly say this soul survived?