by Greg James
Kitty handed Sister Fearing the fresh gauze padding she needed for re-dressing the patient's wound. A new length of tubing was fed into the hole. Then the pieces of gauze padding were packed in around it. The boy hissed between his teeth as it was all pushed into place. Kitty removed the cloth from his face. His eyes were open, blank and glassy once more.
Seeing but not seeing.
Kitty wanted to say something to him, comfort him in some way but she knew what Sister Fearing would say. She kept quiet, sorting all the used dressings onto a tray. As they walked out, the older woman cocked her head to Kitty. “He's not going to be much use as a man is he, eh? What girl would want that? Bet he wishes the Hun had finished him off properly.”
Kitty heard low sobs coming from behind the screens.
*
“How's the unknown soldier?”
Kitty and Madeleine were busy folding the newly-washed linen in the back of the main ward hut. The men were quiet. The afternoon was a clear one. The good weather had brought with it a soothing quality that prevailed over the hospital, for the time being. They both had a round to do with Sister Fearing and Dr Meredith in the evening. Until then, they had the menial chores to keep them busy.
“So, how is he? Your new favourite?”
“Mad! That's unkind. I don't have any favourites.”
“You do now. You asked to do the Eusol injections. You were by his bedside, even when his dressings were not being changed. You like him.”
“So what if I do? Nothing is going to come of it. You know perfectly well what the rules of conduct are for us here. If we start to become familiar with one of the boys, they will send us straight back to England.”
Madeleine smiled at the vexed expression on her sister's face. Kitty was a good girl. She wouldn't dare break the precious rules of conduct that Sister Fearing drummed into their heads on arrival. She had taken a shine to the unknown soldier though, Madeleine could see that. It was unfair. Her sister's first blossoming of tenderness for a man occurring in this filthy theatre of war. Nothing could come of it, Kitty was right. If something did, they would be found out. Kitty would be humiliated by her dismissal back to England.
Madeleine smiled a comforting smile at her, as they continued with their task, thinking of how things would change between her and Kitty now that men were becoming more a part of her sister's world. Practically joined at the hip, those two, mother had said. That was all going to change. There would be confidences, secrets and things left unsaid. There would be tears, worries and feelings of inadequacy that could not be shared. I'm going to lose her after all, thought Madeleine.
A weary silence settled between the two sisters.
Chapter Seventeen
Wilson was staring at the ceiling, his eyes tracing out imagined patterns. He could hear a sound. He kept on staring upwards, ignoring it. It was a scratching. He gnawed his lips, still ignoring it. He rolled over in his bed. Looking at the walls as they shivered from the wind outside.
Was it the wind making that sound?
Yes, it had to be the wind.
A shape went squirming and writhing over the material of the tent. A rat, hunched and black. He shuddered. Had they followed him here from the crypt?
He imagined them. Keeping pace with the train, racing along on their scabby legs. The black rat leading them on.
Scritch-scritch-scratch-scratch.
He kicked off the sheets.
No, no rats under there. His skin was itching. Itching. Scritching. Scratching. More shapes were swarming over the tent canopy, blocking out the light. Wilson cowered in his bed, hugging the bed sheets to his shaking torso. He could hear them. He could see them. They were everywhere.
They were inside the tent.
He saw wicked eyes glinting. They were all around him. A living carpet covering the other beds, the walls and the ceiling. A bloodthirsty mass of bubonic skin, ragged claws, broken teeth and hungry empty eyes. They'd overrun the hospital. Killed everyone. Biting out the throats of sleeping men and women. Peeling back their skins. Squirming about in the soft moist offal of internal organs, making the corpses twitch and dance about, as they were gutted by the ravenous vermin.
Scritch-scratch.
Scritch-scratch.
It leapt up onto the bed. It was the rat from the crater, the fearless vermin king. Wilson could feel its weight. His tongue was still, frozen, unable to call for help. His eyes fixed on the shifting, living mound before him. He wanted to close his hands around its throat. Strangle the beast. Stamp on its brethren until they were nothing but fur, blood and bones.
His arms remained at his side.
He could feel the rat squatting there, on his belly. He could hear its tail lashing back and forth. Its stomach was gurgling. It was hungry.
…feed the rats, Wilson…
…else, they feed on you…
*
Kitty closed her eyes to sleep but she could not sleep. The hut was empty and still. There was nothing to be afraid of. Why then, did she feel something was gathering there. Kitty opened her eyes.
The interior of the hut was as black as pitch.
She closed them and then opened them again. There was no discernible difference. There was just the same shapeless blackness flooding her vision. Nothing was becoming clear, her eyes were not adjusting to the dimness, picking out familiar shapes. The bed was all that she was aware of and that was because she was lying on it. She couldn't make out Mad's bed, which was only a few feet away from hers.
Had her sight, that most precious sense, been taken away from her?
Shadows were moving around the bed in a whispering sea, daring her to get up, tempting her, with their oppressive closeness, to get up and light the lamp. She did not move. She knew what would happen. Once she let her feet touch the space where the ground had been, the shadows would have her. They ruled the emptiness below.
She would go sinking down into it. Drown in a midnight sea of suppurating gloom. She felt a momentary pulse of panic rush through her. She resisted it. Biting her lip, she bundled it up into a tight ball and drove it down into the pit of her stomach, keeping it there by sheer force of will.
I will be strong, she thought.
Silence filled the hut.
She knew that was wrong.
This was a military hospital camp. She should be able to hear something. She strained her ears. There was a hissing. The same sound you hear when a radio is between stations. The static of dead air. Dead space, she thought, that's exactly what I am hearing. All the boys who have died, she thought, this is what they hear before they go.
There was a rustling near to her bed.
She could smell dried animal droppings and soured meat. The back of her throat became embittered as she inhaled the nauseating odours. There is something here, she thought, something old and dead. It hates me. I am young and alive, its antithesis. Feeling a shiver of gooseflesh rippling over her skin, she wondered what it was going to do to her. She could feel it coming in close, close enough to brush on her skin. She could feel the air stirring, parting around a spidery deadness.
There was a small thin sound. A scratching on her bed sheets. She drew her feet away from it, curling them underneath her. She did not scream. She had to be strong. She was getting too old to behave like a child when bad things happened. A presence pressed in on her, whispering in her ears, smelling of graveworms. Murmuring promises that she prayed would not be kept.
A face appeared, leaning towards her. It was very close. She could hear the unsteady rattle of its breathing. The face was somehow familiar. Familiar yet deformed by a smile of mouldering, splintered teeth. It hung there, silent and bodiless, a frail ephemeral mask. If she reached out, to peel away the skin of it and then the bleeding ruin beneath, she would be left with a sculpture of leering, chambered bone. Then, this would be no more - dust and ashes, and inside she would see nothing left but emptiness, that which lurks behind the veil of existence. That which waits, so patient, so quiet, an
cient, awful and forbidden. The dark stuff running through all things as a black river. From it came a groan, a shuddering of atonal throat chords.
Then, it was gone.
Kitty breathed in clean air and relaxed back into sleep's quiet caress. She would remember her visitor as a bad dream. This alone and nothing more.
*
Sister Fearing twisted and turned in her sleep. The dream was upon her again, the same one that had been tormenting her ever since her boy's death. Through imagined streets she ran, sobbing, in her nightgown, rain lashing down from a storm-stricken heaven. Behind her, he was coming, stalking her, unseen. A grim reaper in the rain. His ponderous footfalls sloshing through the floodwaters that ran over the cobbled streets. Lightning illuminating his fleshless head. His tin hat was studded with bullet holes. He held out a rusted bayonet before him. It had been bent and twisted out of shape by the elements. It was still good enough to do the job.
He marched on after his fleeing mother.
Margaret Fearing ran, her legs pounding in a furious rhythm. She was racing to the church. It stood on the crest of the hill, separate from the town, rising out of the heart of the graveyard. Its spire jabbing into the swollen belly of the night sky, a taunting gothic finger, beckoning her on. She had nowhere else to go. She scrambled her way up the hill, through the overflowing gutters of the streets. Falling, banging her hands and knees, getting back up, lurching onwards. Her skin was numb, drenched rubber. The church tilted, listing this way and that, as she made her ascent. Must be the rain, she thought, getting in my eyes. The tread of her pursuer could still be heard above the storm.
Sister Fearing spurred herself on.
Through the graveyard of crumbling headstones, she squelched. Stubbing her toes on chunks of stone, she stumbled up to the church door. Half-falling, she pounded her fists upon it, crying out for help, for sanctuary. She glanced over her shoulder. He was at the graveyard gate, kicking it open with a rusty shriek. Raindrops glistening on his yellow-brown visage. Skeletal fingers wrapped in dried skin were curled tight around his bayonet. A flickering flash of lightning made him appear to be smiling. His knees were buckling, unsteady, being only of bone, but he righted himself.
His eyeless gaze ever-fixed upon her.
He would never stop. He would always be coming for her.
Sister Fearing let out a caterwaul of despair. The heavy doors of the church opened with a crash. Sister Fearing ran inside, slamming them closed. She pressed her weight against the doors, waiting for the insistent pounding to begin. She braced herself on the flagstone floor. No pounding came. She moved away from the doors. They did not shake. They did not tremble, nor open.
All was still.
The silence in the church was sudden and suffocating after the roaring of the tempest outside. She crossed herself with dutiful, earnest strokes. She made her way further in. Candelabras lit the low curving gothic vaults of the interior with a comforting womb-light. The only sound came from the echoes of Sister Fearing's wet feet slapping on the stone floor. She made her way through the varnished network of pews.
She was drawn to the confessional box. She sat down inside it. The cushioned alcove was warm and dry. Shivering and damp, she crossed herself once more.
There was someone on the other side.
Through the ornate grille, Sister Fearing could see a silhouette. Its head was bowed in respectful patience. She leaned towards the grille, clearing her throat.
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”
She watched the dim outline of the priest's hunched, hooded head. He spoke in the calm, honeyed tones of Father Lawrence. Her childhood priest. The kind-hearted Italian man who baptised and confirmed her, “And what do you have to confess, my child?”
She opened her mouth to speak.
There was silence.
Maggie could not speak. She tried to. Nothing came out. Not a whisper, nor a mutter. There was just the sound of water dripping from her sodden nightclothes. Father Lawrence sighed his impatience. She tried to shout, to scream the words out. She had so much to say. She had to tell him everything. About Nathaniel, about her son's death.
Still, nothing came out.
“Nothing?” the priest asked in a terse voice.
She banged her palms against the alcove wall. Frustration coursing through her.
Tears came.
“You have nothing to say for yourself?”
Sister Fearing heard laughter echoing from the form of the priest. There was a soft squelching. Then, a harsh scraping. The rusted bayonet blade stabbed through the confessional grille.
Plunging into her face.
Sister Fearing awoke.
Her scream, this time, was very loud and very real.
*
Wilson wandered through a realm of fire. He could make out nothing and nobody. Flames danced and screamed. Laughing at him, pointing with charred fingers. A body came lunging out from the fire at him. Uttering a guttering scream. Flames ran over it in hungry tongues. Wilson jumped away, letting the corpse fall to the ground. The body hissed as it went out in the damp earth. Incinerated. Dead. Something heavy fell onto Wilson's shoulder, scaly with blackened skin. It was a rat, gnawing on a strip of burnt flesh. Its beady eyes looked at Wilson.
…want to try some?...
…try some, s'good…
…first cooked meat in months…
He awoke with a yell.
Wilson looked up from his pillow into a tired, white face framed by ebony hair, which was pinned tight under a white cap. The face was similar to the other nurse but it wasn't as young and there were no dimples.
“Good morning. How are you feeling? Kitty, Miss Goldsworth, asked me to check on you for her. She's helping Sister Fearing in another ward.”
He stared at her blankly.
“Miss Goldsworth? She's my sister. My real sister, I mean.”
He nodded.
“So, how are you feeli-”
“Rats.”
“I'm sorry?”
“Rats. Are there any rats in the hospital?”
Madeleine suppressed a shudder. She hated rats. Ever since she had come across one in the kitchen of the family home, she'd been terrified of them. She had been nine at the time. It had been late at night. She remembered the old grandfather clock in the sitting room chiming two in the morning as she tip-toed through to the hallway. In the hallway was the stair to the kitchen. The servants were all in their beds and she should have been as well. She knew she would be scolded if she was caught sneaking around the house in the middle of the night. Down in the kitchen, she clumsily navigated her way to the pantry. Her bare feet padding noiselessly on the stone floor. Opening the door, she saw a furry shape whip around to face her from inside. For a second, she thought it was their cat, Badger. Winston, the butler, had shut him in there before, by accident.
She reached out to pet her cat.
Tiny prickles sank deep into her fingers. She screamed, pulling her hand away. The rat shrieked, bolting from the pantry, skittering across the kitchen floor, back into the dingy places from whence it came. There was a thumping and shouting from upstairs as the household was stirred into life by her cries. She was found by Nanny, curled up on the floor, crying, nursing her wounded hand.
Looking down at the pale-faced soldier, she shook her head, “I'm quite sure there are no rats in the hospital.”
He did not seem to hear her, “I think they followed me here, from the trenches.”
“Followed you here? Why would they follow you here?”
“Because of him. He's them and they're him. Same thing. One and the other.”
He was talking rubbish, the same as the other nervous patients.
“I'm not lying, you know.”
“I'm sure you're not but they are not here now. Why don't you just lie back and relax?”
“But I see them.”
Madeleine shuddered as she saw the conviction in his grey eyes. Her voice became forceful. “Lie down p
lease. There are no rats in the hospital. You had a dream. That's all.”
Wilson chewed at his lip as she raised her voice at him.
“Yes, Sister,” he murmured.
He lay back down on the bed as she went about her chores.
Mad's hands were trembling as she did her round of the nervous ward. The unknown soldier had unsettled her with his ranting about rats. It was a coincidence, she told herself, that's all. There was no connection between what he had said and the dream she had last night. None at all. She had awoken that morning in a sweat. Fragments of the dream still there, floating on the surface. Flotsam and jetsam left behind by a sinking ship lost to the sea's depths. She remembered the landscape of her dream. The grey wasteland she had become familiar with ever since the deaths of her parents. But, this time, there was something different about it. It was no longer desolate. It was teeming with life. Squealing, hairy, scabrous life. Madeleine finished tidying up the tent, making sure that she steered well clear of Wilson.
The rats came again that night, destroying all hopes of pleasant dreams. Their grotesque king squatted on Wilson's chest, piercing him with its eyes. He could feel its empty belly rumbling through the bedsheets. Unable to move or scream, he listened as it told him what he was going to do. He would do as he was told.
Or, he would dream again about the night of the fire.
Chapter Eighteen
The scream startled Kitty. She was on night duty in the nervous ward. Wilson shrieked again, louder this time. He banged his head against his fists as the fit sent him thrashing around the bed. He curled in on himself with the bed sheets bundled up around him. He shook so much that the bed shuddered under him. His eyes rolled in their sockets. They darted this way and that. The muscles in his face twisted. A tidal wave of pure nightmare swept through him. His hands curled into claws, tearing at his hair, raking across his skull. The scratching was deafening. Even in sleep there was no escaping it.