I looked down and realized that the whiskey stain had spread mercilessly down their front, reeking of vagrancy. I looked up at him in horror, then with a flash of brilliance ventured, “do you happen to have a key to my place? Only I’ve left mine inside.”
“Of course, sir,” he replied, and with an air of someone who had long ceased being surprised by anything, he picked up a thick bundle of keys from his desk and led me into the elevator. Upstairs, I closed the door with muttered thanks, and breathed a sigh of relief.
* * * * *
The apartment was all still there, silent but illuminated now with the glow of electrical light. This was going to cost him a fortune, I thought with satisfaction, as I walked through the hallway and finally found the bedroom again, discovering with relief that one of the dressers was filled with fresh linens and crisp pants. I found a sharp, gray pair to my liking and abandoned mine on the floor.
Returning to the living room, I took stock of the situation. There was no sense going out until morning, I decided. He had my keys, my wallet, my hat. I would wait. I went to sit down, then saw the tin of Oreos on the table and I realized that I was hungry. I decided to make myself some tea.
I checked every door along the hallway until I found a kitchen. It was large and dark, not one of the rooms that we visited together. I fumbled for a pull-switch until I found one close to the edge of the door.
I found a teapot already on the stove, still full of water. I looked around for a pack of matches, then mechanically reached into a top drawer and found them in their place, next to the rubber bands. I lit the stove, and finding a pack of Chesterfields on the windowsill, lit one off the flames and waited for the water to boil.
It didn’t take long. I found the tea leaves in the small pantry underneath the sink, and brought over a flowered sugar bowl from the counter behind me, then took down my favorite cup from the third shelf,
and then I understood.
* * * * *
Back in the living room, I opened the drapes to reveal the city dazzling in its own artificial starlight. It was a clear night, and far below I could see the rush of Fifth in full swing, the press of cabs and furs on their way to the theater.
I looked out over this new, naked, fragile world, and took slow sips of tea, finishing his last sentence in my mind. You can walk through, I suppose.
I took a look through the mail, but decided it could wait until tomorrow. Then I remembered Ellie’s note. This was the last time she would come, she had said. It was my last chance.
No matter, I would make it up to her. I’d call on her tomorrow, I thought, and tell her just how sorry I was, and then take her out to tea at the Plaza and then maybe the Ziegfeld or the New Amsterdam.
Yes, she would like that. And that would be exactly what I’d do.
Trenchers
“Mon Ami.”
A whisper. Barely a whisper. A murmured hiss like the flecked exhalation of a snake. In the blackness of the long forgotten dugout, three stories beneath the poppies in a Flanders field, even murmurs lingered desperately.
“Mon Ami.”
A rasp.
Charlie Clerk turned, adjusting the bent wire clip on the flashlight at his waist. Barely ten yards ahead, shuffling through the tungsten haze, stood the Poilu. Rather, what was left of him.
He balanced unevenly, listing to one side. Filthy. His pale, waxy skin almost luminescent against the black, moldy, concrete walls of the bunker. The flayed remains of a horizon blue greatcoat, spackled with mud on top of dried mud, stained with rust. Dirt. Old blood. A dented Adrian helmet pasted with thick, garlicky muck wobbled on his narrow head. His eyes were flat, gray cataracts. Slick and weeping. He licked his lips as he spoke. Yellowed, broken needles for teeth.
“Mon Ami.”
A hiss.
* * * * *
Three years ago, steaming across the Atlantic toward France and Adventure, Charlie would never have imagined he’d one day be facing…this. Whatever this was. A man, certainly, but not really. A sad, broken mirror-image of life. But not quite alive. Not really. Charlie had killed too many men to be confused by life and death at this point. No, not alive. But close enough.
The war had changed everything. Charlie didn’t know that going in, of course. Nobody knew that going in. Going in it was all baseball and ragtime. Rides on Joe Springer’s tractor. The nickelodeon theater. Dancing with Lillian Katz. And good old George Walton with that Brownie he carried everywhere. Snapping pictures of nothing. Trees. Farms. The swept blue sky locked in filmy gray.
Back then Charlie didn’t think too much about Germany. In fact, Charlie really didn’t think about Germany at all unless someone else brought it up first. Fighting for old world Kings over old world countries for old world reasons. Some other people in some other place. An ocean away or even more. Where was Belgium anyway? Where was France? Over there.
But then came the U-boats. Before long it would be impossible not to think about Germany; The Lusitania, Black Tom Island, the Hercules plant over in Eddystone, the Zimmermann Telegram. The Hun. Always and everywhere. The Hun.
The Lusitania wasn’t even a warship. Neither were the other ships – however many there were. It didn’t matter. They were full of women. Kids. Just regular folk sent to the bottom by German torpedoes. No warning. No reason. Skulking in the ocean like a spider in the bed sheets.
Charlie volunteered and found France easily enough, as did George and Joe and the rest of the boys. Over there, over there. He found adventure too, if that’s what you’d like to call it, courtesy of the 28th Division. The Keystones. They volunteered. They had no idea.
* * * * *
The Poilu edged closer, etching lines in the dirt as he shuffled through the darkened tunnel toward Charlie.
Charlie unholstered his Smith & Wesson. The revolver was a newer weapon usually reserved for officers or pilots and Charlie hadn’t carried one during the war. However the Trenchers, as they had come to be called, were officially a part of the military police and so a sidearm was standard issue. It wasn’t quite as powerful as his old Springfield but then again it didn’t flash and recoil as much either. Perfect for crawling around dark bunkers and tunnels looking for people. Not people. Former people.
The walnut stock was smooth and warm. Comforting.
“Mon Ami.”
A sigh.
* * * * *
The officers called them Trench Wights. They started turning up toward the end of the war. Rumors at first. Ghost stories. The war inspired plenty of ghost stories; medieval bowmen descending from clouds at Agincourt to drive back the Germans with a punishing rain of arrows, packs of demonic wolfhounds dragging soldiers off to a grizzly death at Mons, or the sad crooning of Rompo as they devoured bloated Indian corpses at Neuve Chapelle.
The war itself was a ghost story.
The whole of Europe was a grave.
No Man’s Land. Trenches slashed haphazard bloodlines through nationless blight larger and longer than any national border. Fields and forests burned by the acre, mile upon ashen mile, leaving behind black, skeletal stumps and splintered, charcoal trees. The land was gutted and deformed by endless artillery craters soaked through with the greasy remains of mustard gas as lazy clouds of Phosgene and Chlorine blistered the air. Whole cities swallowed by mud.
Death was measured in populations. It was everpresent. It was at once constantly horrific and maddeningly meaningless. Charlie watched men rush headlong into entrenched machine gun fire at the thin screech of a Captain’s whistle. Watched bullets vip through woolen coats like sewing needles pulling threads of blood. He saw ragdoll men tumble and tear through coils of razorwire. Felt them disintegrate into wet, red mist from random, hellish bursts of fire and dirt. He ran along with them. Again.
And again.
And again.
He could still hear the whistle sometimes. Like an echo on the wind, calling him over the top.
Run.
During the war the de
ad were everywhere; in the trenches, in the towns, in the bunkers, in the streets, in the dirt, under the dirt. It was inescapable fact of life on the Western Front, if you could call it life. No matter where Charlie went or how deep he dug bodies were heaped upon one another marking grisly gains and losses. Gray skinned corpses, stabbed through by bayonets, slumping lifelessly against each other. Red, slick boys in rags radiating a forgotten crater, face down in the dirt. Victory and defeat were measured in nothing but an increased capacity for inhumanity.
The dead defined the landscape for no other reason than there was simply nowhere else to move them or they were blown to bits so completely that there was nothing left to move. They became landmarks. Features. Charlie used to think that might be for the best. He thought it might be better if his body marked a line of barbed wire or a minefield, warning others away. Watch out. He used to fantasize about dying. How would he die? When? He hoped to use his last once of strength to point out the enemy position. Right there, fellas. Watch out.
Yet somehow Charlie lived.
* * * * *
He raised his revolver and aimed squarely for the Poilu’s head, just below the visor on his helmet. A ricochet wouldn’t do anyone any good. The Poilu didn’t seem to care. His head lolled back and forth as he walked, unfocused. It occurred to Charlie that he couldn’t recall any of the Wights ever making eye contact or actually looking at anything. Really looking. Not with any sort of real comprehension anyway. And yet they seemed aware. Sort of. The Poilu seemed to know someone was here enough that he called out. Came forward. Charlie couldn’t help wonder what he was thinking? If he was thinking?
“Mon Ami.”
They sure do repeat themselves a lot, Charlie noticed. The Wights he’d encountered often muttered to themselves. A short phrase or a few words. Over and over. Sometimes they performed a simple routine like digging or walking a patrol. Again.
And again.
And again.
The officers said that the Wights were stuck somewhere between life and death. Charlie figured that made about as much sense as anything in the last few years. The war killed plenty of men who should have lived and left alive plenty more who would have been better off dead. The war broke everything else so why not break life and death too?
“Au revoir, buddy.”
Charlie pulled the trigger. A sudden flash washed out the tungsten haze of Charlie’s lamp. A bright, white blink exposing cracked, dirty walls. A fresh spatter of thick, dark maroon. Bits of fleshy hair. Something gray. The gun roared and the sound was everywhere, reverberating around the small chamber and echoing down the darkening passages. Charlie winced. His ears rang.
The Poilu’s body slumped against the wall. Most of his head was gone. His blood soaked helmet twirled slowly on the floor nearby, cradling fragile puzzle bits of skull and face. Yellow teeth scattered like dice.
Charlie absently tapped his left ear with one hand as he holstered his pistol with the other. He was supposed to look for an identification tag but the odds of finding anything useful were slim. Sometimes the identification tags were removed when the soldier was first killed. If the tags weren’t already removed the old aluminum was often corroded to the point of being unreadable. Wights usually remained as anonymous in death as they were in life. Not life.
Charlie crouched and adjusted his lamp. He checked anyway. Surprisingly he found a pair of grimy, pocked and pitted metal ovals threaded onto a piece of cord around the Poilu’s neck. He smeared the face of one with his thumb, wiping away a layer of crusted soil.
Edouard. Maybe Edmund. Something. 1917.
Charlie gently lifted the cord around the spongy stump of what was left of the Poilu’s head and stuffed it in his pocket.
“You’re in luck, Eddie.”
Charlie spoke out loud, although he could barely hear himself. His voice sounded hollow and distant. He felt himself speak more than he heard. The ringing in his ears chirped dully.
“You’re officially dead.”
Charlie stood to leave, once again adjusting the lamp at his belt. He rubbed his ears to clear the noise but the shrill warbling continued. Like a teakettle. Like a whistle.
Run.
But there was nowhere to run.
* * * * *
Something scratched toward him like a drowning dog. Wild and unfocused. Charlie backpedalled, tripping over the outstretched leg of the lifeless Poilu. He landed hard. Crunching. He kicked up a cloud of reddish haze. A dirty fog that seemed to fold and churn in the lamplight. Charlie coughed and choked as he scrambled backward across the floor of the bunker. The Poilu’s teeth bit into his palms.
He could hear it clearly now. Not just a ringing in his ears but a whistle. An officer’s whistle sounding in the darkness somewhere deeper in the tunnels. Faintly, tunelessly bleating. Calling the men over the top.
Run.
A crouched, skeletal figure emerged through the dirty haze. A filthy soldier caked in darkness. He was much quicker than Charlie would have thought possible. Practically running.
A whistle.
Run.
Charlie scrabbled across the floor, back and away, just as the Wight lurched forward. It fell into the glow from Charlie’s lamp landing on its knees in front of him with a kindled crack. A rusty puff of dirtsmoke. If it felt any pain it didn’t show it.
He was older than Edouard. At least, he looked older. His ashen skin was taught against his bones, stretched back from a broken, horse-toothed maw. Dark, sunken eyes stared blankly, fishlike, at nothing. Unfocused. Expressionless. No hate. No fear. He was barefoot, dressed practically in rags. What remained of his uniform was a faded, colorless gray.
Horsemouth groped at the wall above Charlie’s head with one boney hand. His black fingernails cracked bloodlessly as they scraped the concrete. His other hand gripped the rough, bent steel handle of a French Nail so tightly that the skin on his knuckles split. Crusted, scabby rips exposed dry, stringy sinew. He thrust the hammered point forward violently. Charlie was pulled back, pinned to the wall as the crude spike tore through the heavy cloth of his jacket. Luckily Horsemouth’s attack seemed driven more by instinct than intent. The blade scraped along Charlie’s shoulder. A few inches to the left it would have pierced his heart. Horsemouth leaned forward and croaked. His breath was cooked vomit. His leather tongue writhed, trying vainly to form words, to speak, but managed only a clotted hiss.
Charlie grabbed Horsemouth’s arm before he could pull the French Nail out of the wall. Before he could attack again. It felt like gristle wrapped in sackcloth.
“Allez…”
A wet voice in the darkness.
A second Wight heaved through the thickening dust from behind Horsemouth. Bloated and squat with thick, frothy slime running from his nose and mouth, dripping from his ears, from the corners of his soft eyes. Weeping. Tendrils of mucus splattered and stained his filthy, bullet pocked uniform. He reeked. A caustic, mulchy stench. His fat hands clutched the splintered wooden shaft of a French carbine. One reddish-black finger twitched repeatedly, uselessly at the broken trigger.
“Allez…”
A gurgle.
Charlie kicked hard against Horsemouth’s chest. He felt ribs snap like bird’s nests under his boot as Horsemouth’s body pitched backward into the too taut belly of the fat Wight. Horsemouth’s wrist snapped completely in two, his disembodied hand holding fast to the looped steel of the French Nail still embedded in the concrete wall.
The Weeper belched a viscous slime as Horsemouth blundered into his stomach. There was a sickening pop and a noxious wetness spread quickly across The Weeper’s abdomen. Rivulets of swampy pus drooled from beneath the front of his service coat scrawling foul nonsense in the dirt with each lumbering step.
“Allez…”
A croak.
Charlie pulled frantically at the French Nail pinning him to the wall.
The Weeper smashed at Charlie’s head with the splintered hunk of walnut that was once a rifle. C
harlie doubled over as jagged plowshares of wood slashed across his scalp. A white flash of pain scraped his face tearing out rows of hot blood.
A shout. His own voice? A whistle?
Run.
The Weeper hammered instinctively. Reflexively. A second blow caught the back of Charlie’s head as he hunched over, confused, clouded, watching absently as his own blood drizzled into the mix of fetid slime that oozed from The Weeper and pooled at his feet.
Again.
And again.
At some point the force yanked Charlie forward, wrenching the French Nail from the wall and Charlie’s shoulder, sending him crashing to the floor. He tasted dirt. He tasted something worse than dirt. His head rang.
A whistle.
Run.
* * * * *
After the armistice Charlie passed some time smoking cigarettes in an English hospital. He was fine, mostly. Tired, mostly. The hospital was old and weathered but it had a roof and walls, windows that weren’t broken and clean sheets. It was quiet. Mostly. Charlie would spend hours sitting on a small, wooden bench and watch nurses guide nervous soldiers around a grassy hill. An aimless routine for shambling, broken men.
Occasionally the doctors would talk about going home. Where was home anyway? An ocean away or even more. Some other people in some other place. Home was frozen moments of smiling dead boys locked in filmy gray. Over there.
No.
Charlie didn’t mind. He didn’t miss home. He supposed he should feel bad about that. He supposed he should feel a lot of things. But he didn’t.
The boats might go west but they would never go home.
* * * * *
With his cheek resting in putrid slime on the cold, dirty floor Charlie could see Horsemouth writhing in the darkness. The handless stump of a dried, jerky arm reached for Charlie. A crispy twig of bone pointed accusingly. Somewhere behind him The Weeper shuffled in his own filth.
“Allez…”
A slop.
Don’t think.
Sickly light from Charlie’s lamp strobed through the dusty passage, escaping momentarily to the left and to the right as he pulled himself across the floor. He knocked Horsemouth’s stumpy arm aside and grabbed his leather skull. Tufts of hair like scorched hay crunched in his hand. A dry slug tongue licked at Charlie’s arm. Charlie shoved Horsemouth’s head down into the ground as hard and fast as he could manage. Pain dragged like a salted fork through every nerve in his back and shoulders as Horsemouth’s head clunked into the hard packed floor. A crack. Like a stone egg. Charlie gripped tight, pounding Horsemouth’s head up and down into the floor. Again.