Taken Away

by Celine Kiernan

  I glare after the man who has done this to me, and I realise that he is the only distinct person in this shifting fog. I stumble after him, latching onto his sharp figure in the mist. He has fallen to his knees beside the wavering outline of another man and seems to be trying to pull him to his feet. I squint hard, trying to get a better focus. Pain sears my head, but details spring temporarily to life. I see the duckboards beneath the two men, the rain that pelts them, the vast rushing pandemonium of war that streams by.

  It is Shamie. The man who ran me through is Shamie, and he is trying to pull poor Jolly to his feet. Jolly is screaming and crying. He is lying half on, half off the slippery duckboards, his arms sunk to the shoulder in the liquid mud. He flails against Shamie’s touch and continues to grope about in the treacherous slurry.

  The pain becomes intolerable, and I have to press my knuckles to my temples and squeeze my eyes shut for a moment. When I am finally able to look again, everything is back to shadows and the dirty half-suggestions of shadows, except for Shamie, who stands out clear and true as a photograph in the murk.

  Shamie gets his shadow-companion to stand and turns towards me, his friend’s arm slung across his shoulder. He looks straight at me, and the sight of his determined face is a punch to the belly. Shamie is looking right through me, as if I no longer exist. Then he bolts, dragging his companion with him, and I stumble after, following him blindly through the shifting grey.

  ‘Shamie!’ I scream. ‘Shamie!’

  I stagger only steps behind, but Shamie doesn’t see me. So I stumble on, as I will continue to do forever, for an eternity, keeping Shamie in my sight, hoping for a glimpse of Fran, and I realise with despair that this is hell. This is hell, and I have purposely thrown myself from the very arms of heaven.

  I WOKE WITH A bump, as though I’d fallen from a great height, and my first thought was, Oh no. I’m awake and I have no pills left! Then I realised that my arms were empty, and Dom’s cold weight was gone from me. I began to grope around for him in panic, thinking he’d slipped to the floor.

  I called for him, but instead of shouting, ‘DOM!’ as I had intended, I found myself yelling, ‘SH AMIE !’ My voice was hoarse, a hoarse man’s voice, and I realised that I was groping about not on the floorboards of our bedroom but in a bed of dry, yellow clay. It crumbled beneath my fingers as I scrabbled about, and I called again, ‘SH AMIE ! SH AMIE !’ as if I’d been calling that name forever and couldn’t find a way to stop.

  A cautious voice said, ‘I’m here,’ and someone put their hand on my shoulder.

  I leapt away, pressing my back to the wall of the trench, and gaped up into Shamie’s young face. I knew him and I didn’t know him, all at once. My head spun with the contradiction.

  He stared at me, this young version of James Hueston, looking me up and down. He seemed as disconcerted as I was. ‘Laurence?’ he asked uncertainly.

  I swallowed, afraid to look down at myself for fear of what I might see. Shamie was dressed in a grubby soldier’s uniform. His nails were filthy, and his hair stuck up like a dirty blond hedgehog. He had a scruffy boy’s beard on his cheeks, and his pale-blue eyes were round and frightened.

  ‘Laurence,’ he whispered, ‘why am I here? What did you bring me back here for?’

  His tone of voice told me that here was not a place he had ever wanted to be again. He seemed to feel betrayed that I would bring him back.

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not Laurence, Mr Hueston. Don’t you know me?’

  The words sounded odd, coming as they did in that raspy man’s voice, but I knew who I was – and I knew what was going on, too. This was another dream. Somewhere in Skerries, old James Hueston was fast asleep and dreaming in his bed. Just like I was fast asleep and dreaming on the floor of our room, my brother’s body cradled in my arms. ‘We’re sharing a dream, Mr Hueston.’

  Shamie’s expression changed: all his wounded disappointment left him, and his mouth dropped open a little in wonder. ‘Are you . . . ?’ he stammered. ‘Patrick? Is that you, boy?’

  I nodded dumbly, and we blinked at each other for a minute. Then James Hueston laughed and scratched his scrubby beard, perplexed. ‘Now what in God’s name is this all about?’ he muttered. He got to his feet and looked around, his face hardening. ‘And why, of all places, are we here?’

  ‘Mr Hueston . . . ’ I began, and he glanced down at me, a spark of amusement showing through his confusion.

  ‘Now that’s just too peculiar,’ he said. ‘You calling me mister in that voice . . . with that face. I can’t cope with that, at all. Call me James.’

  ‘Dom is dead, Mr Hueston. He died.’

  His smile melted. He opened his mouth to speak, and I quickly put my hand up, as if to shield my eyes from his sympathy. ‘Don’t!’ I said, staring straight ahead, my hand blocking him from view. ‘If you look at me like that I.. . .I won’t be able to keep going.’

  There was a small moment of stillness; then he stuck his hand down into my line of vision. He was offering to help me stand. I glanced at him as he pulled me to my feet, and his face was carefully neutral.

  ‘I’m sorry, son,’ he said softly. I nodded and avoided his eyes, looking around me for the first time. He stood quietly, taking his lead from me.

  We were in a long, deep trench cut into the earth, and I recognised it instantly. ‘This is Black Paddy’s Trench,’ I said in my strange new voice. ‘This is where Lorry died – where he was sucked into the mud.’

  James nodded mutely, and his eyes wandered up the clay walls to a thin ribbon of sky.

  I looked down the endless, unpopulated length of the duckboards, first one way, then the other. ‘It’s very different to how I dreamt it.’

  He nodded again. It was very different. It was silent, for one thing. No breath of wind stirred; not a fly buzzed. And it was dry, so dry that the mud had baked beyond hard and was now soft and crumbling beneath our feet. Everything was yellow, or tinged yellow: the clay; the strange cloudless sky; the bleached wood of the duckboards and the ladders. Even the leaning sign that still faintly read ‘Black Paddy Rules’ had a yellow cast beneath the beating sun. There was no sign of human life. All the equipment and paraphernalia of war was gone, except for the unusual piles of rope that stood in silent coils all over the duckboards and hung in motionless loops and swags from every convenient outcrop.

  ‘Nan sent me here,’ I said. ‘She said Lorry wanted us to come here. There must be something . . . ’

  Without thinking too much about it, I leapt from the boards and scrambled up the nearest ladder, causing an avalanche of mud-dust and rubble as I went. I pulled myself over the top and stood up into open, breathless air, scanning the horizon. ‘It’s all empty,’ I said, my voice flattened under the weight of the dead air. ‘There’s nothing to see for miles.’

  Everything felt so real. The taste of the yellow mud-dust on my lips, the feel of the crumbling clay beneath my boots, the hot air in my nostrils; it all felt absolutely real, but far, far away. And I realised that Dom was an ache in my chest that had been with me for years. It was as though I’d buried him long ago. Mourned him and missed him and buried him. He was nothing but a tragic, manageable memory. I didn’t like that – it was all wrong – but it was better than the crippling terror of before. At least like this, I could function. Like this, I could get things done.

  Shamie stood in the trench shielding his eyes and looking up at me. I offered him my hand, but he seemed reluctant to climb up. ‘I never want to go over the top again, son.’

  I understood. I remembered everything now, and after those dreams – that terrible rain of fire and mud, Lorry’s awful death – I absolutely understood. But we couldn’t just stay here. ‘Nan says Francis is stuck, Mr Hueston.’

  His face kind of froze, and he waited for me to clarify.

  ‘Inside Dom’s body,’ I said. James’s eyelids fluttered at that, and he lifted a hand as if to push the thought away. ‘Nan says that he can still hear and feel, and eve
rything. But he’s stuck. Nan says . . . ’ The full horror of it struck me. ‘Nan says they’ll bury him like that. They’ll put him in a coffin and bury him. I’m not going to let that happen, Mr Hueston.’

  I turned and looked around, slowly scanning the horizon. The barren landscape shimmered under the blank sky. ‘But what are we meant to do?’ I whispered.

  ‘Lorry must have brought us here for a reason,’ said James, squinting up at me.

  I knew without discussing it that he was right; Lorry had brought us here. He had been bringing us here all along, trying to tell us something or show us something. ‘But this is different,’ I whispered.

  ‘I hate to dream about here,’ muttered James, down in the depths of the pit. ‘Why would he do this to me? Make me dream this again and again? It’s like he’s tormenting me. I can’t stand it.’

  I shook my head. ‘But this is different, isn’t it, Mr Hueston? It’s not . . . ’ I turned again, dust rising from my boots. The landscape was a painful shimmer all around us, the trench a silent, listening presence running in a straight line all the way to either horizon. I spun in a slow circle, taking it all in. ‘This isn’t a memory,’ I said.

  James Hueston stopped glancing fretfully about him and stared up at me, his pale-blue eyes startled in his grubby young face. ‘This is more like a place,’ he said.

  We met each other’s eyes, and I knew he was right. Lorry had brought us to a place: constructed it from his past, given it form and substance by his will, donated us bodies made from his memories. I lifted my hand and stared at it – it was not my hand. It was not my hand. I was suddenly terrified. Where was my real body? Had Lorry cast me out from it, in the same way Fran had Dom?

  ‘Are we dead?’ I cried. ‘Is this the grey?’

  James shook his head, fear widening his eyes despite his denial. ‘We can’t be,’ he whispered. ‘Why . . . why would Lorry do that to us?’

  I thought of the dream that I’d had before waking here – Lorry’s memory. I remembered the reason he had turned back: the voice that had called him from the threshold of heaven. ‘He’s looking for Fran. He’s been looking for him all this time.’

  ‘But poor Fran isn’t here!’ cried Shamie. ‘Lorry isn’t here. Your poor brother isn’t even here! What are we meant to do with all this?’

  The thought of Dom brought a brief and distant tug of sorrow. It had been so long since I’d lost him. I could barely remember his voice. But I knew that if it had been Dom lost out there, trapped and alone and terrified, I’d have done anything to find him. I’d have turned my back on heaven if he’d needed me to. I’d have spent my years searching, and I’d never have given up. The heat pressed down around us, dead and laden, and I knew I had to do something to help Lorry save Francis.

  ‘FRAN!’ I shouted. ‘FRAN! ARE YOU HERE?’

  My voice rang out against the brazen sky and beat up from the iron ground. Down in the trench Shamie winced and made a shushing gesture, as if afraid I’d call something down on us. I waited, my eyes fixed on the shimmering horizon. Nothing. No breath of wind. No sigh of dust crossing the lifeless plane.

  ‘LORRY !’ I cried. ‘WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING HERE?’

  ‘Son,’ whispered Shamie. ‘Please don’t.’

  And then, in that breathless place, the sound of creaking came soft and barely audible – the sound of something swinging lightly in a gentle breeze. ‘Can you hear that?’ I whispered. Shamie, his fingers pressed to his lips, shook his head. I crouched down low, listening. It was coming from the trench.

  ‘That creaking noise,’ I insisted. ‘Shamie, why can’t you hear it?’

  Suddenly I flung myself over the side. I didn’t even bother with a ladder or footholds; I simply threw myself over the edge, sprawl-legged and loose, out into midair, and let the dream catch me. I should have fallen straight down, ten, maybe twelve feet. But I slid instead, impossibly easy, down the sheer wall of clay. It was as if the sides of the trench swelled out and caught me and eased me to the ground – as if they’d been waiting for me to do this all along. I slithered to a halt at the bottom, lying on my back looking up at Shamie’s wide-eyed face.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That was cool.’

  He offered me his hand, and I got to my feet. ‘I think we’re meant to be down here,’ I said. ‘I could hear a sound up there, real faint, like as if . . . ’

  But James wasn’t listening. He was staring over my shoulder with a reluctant mix of wonder and terror. ‘What in the name of Jesus?’ he whispered.

  I turned to follow his gaze, and my mouth dropped open.

  James gripped my shoulder as if to hold on to himself. His voice was a tiny scratching in my ear. ‘Call me mad, boy, but didn’t this trench used to just go on forever, without bend or break?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It did.’

  He stepped to my side, and the two of us eyed the trench ahead. It no longer marched relentlessly on towards the horizon. Oh no. It stopped about four or five yards from where we stood. Just came to an end, faced off with a blank wall cut into the clay. The duckboards continued to three or four feet from the base of this wall, then turned right, leading around a sharp corner and disappearing from view. A broken stake jutted from the ground at the corner. A helmet hung from it, swinging gently in a breeze that did not exist, its leather strap creaking softly as if to say here, here, here.

  A sign hung on the blank yellow face of the clay wall. It pointed to the right, guiding us round the corner. It was just a rough plank-sign; a bit of torn-up duckboard from the looks of it. Someone had scrawled on it in charcoal, and the wood and the letters were tinted the same sulphurous yellow as everything else.

  It read: This Way to the Grey.

  STEP OVER TO GREY

  THE GREY. James, standing in front of it, was dwarfed by its immensity. For the first time in this sepia-toned world, I noticed the greens of his uniform, and the sandy olive-drab of his hair. Muted and worn as these colours were, James stood out as a technicoloured marvel against the great wall of dirty, shifting nothingness that made the grey. It filled the sky like a universe-sized cinema screen, and cut the trench neatly off at the edges. James, ant-like, craned his neck back and looked up, up, up, trying to see the top.

  I backed away, and kept going ’til I stood pressed against the far wall of the trench. I had been out there before, when I was Lorry. I had already felt that terrible silence battering my ears. I had already been buffeted by its malicious turbulence. I didn’t want to go back.

  The helmet creaked discreetly beside me, and I knew at once that this was Lorry’s helmet, the one he’d lost the night he died. I looked from it to the grey. Lorry needed us to go out there. But why? To find him? So that we could help him rescue Francis? Or release him back to heaven? Or what? To do what? To find what? So many questions and no hope of an answer. Not here, anyway.

  Not here.

  I nodded, took a deep breath and pushed myself from the wall. Charging forward, bull-headed, I passed the sign. I leapt a pile of rope. I passed James. He yelled something to me and reached out. I batted his hand away. The hollow sound of the duckboards beneath my boots gave way to hard, resonance-free ground. Colour left me as if it had never existed, and I crossed over into the grey.

  Silence grabbed me, and squeezed my skull so that I had to slap my hands to my ears and grit my teeth. My grief for Dom surged fresh within me. Raw and bloody, it blew a hole right through me, and I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t. It was too big for me to survive. I immediately spun, trying to find my way out. The trench lay about fifteen feet away, a wavering door of smoky-orange flame where James stood watching. I staggered towards it, but the door retreated from me, keeping its distance as I stumbled to catch it up. I could see James bobbing just out of my reach, screaming my name, and I put a hand out to reach for him. The silence surged gleefully in, and I had to clap my hands back to my head, hunching over at the pain of it against my eardrums.

  Someone grabbed my shoulders. I j
erked back in fear, but it was only James, smoky and pale-faced in the ashy light of the grey. He had come in here for me! I grabbed his jacket, so grateful not to be alone. Then my eyes slid past him, and I realised with horror that the door was closing behind him. The grey was shutting down, sealing itself like a hole in mud. James seemed to register the terror in my eyes, and I think he was about to turn, but we didn’t have the time; the orange rectangle of light was already half its original size. The trench light was fading as it passed behind the cloudy curtain of the grey.

  I didn’t think, and I’m sure that’s what saved him. I just took my hands from my ears and punched James in the chest. He staggered backwards into the trench, and the door snapped back full-size, its light a vivid fire through the fog once more. James landed on his arse in the dry, yellow clay, a cloud of mud-dust puffing up around him, I held my hand up to stop him coming back for me.

  The door continued to drift one step back for every one of my shambling steps forward, and I began to panic. I was stuck.

  I ran. My hands glued to my ears, my heart hammering, I ran as fast as I could, but I got nowhere. The door danced and bobbed, always feet ahead of me, James framed within it, a horrified witness to my increasingly desperate flight towards him.

  Suddenly he flung his arms up and turned away. At the same time, I tripped and fell flat onto my stomach, my legs flying out behind me. The air pounced on me like a big dog and I curled into a ball, my arms wrapped around my head. I’m trapped, I thought, I’m trapped. I’m trapped.

  Then something slapped across my back. Heavy and slithering, it uncurled itself along my backbone and ran along my shoulders to lay a snaky coil across the nape of my neck. Terror jolted me, and I tried to skitter out from under its grasp. As I rolled away, just before the heavy thing slithered from my back, I caught a brief flare of James’s voice, loud and clear in my head.