The Altonevers

by Frederic Merbe

  “Why do you remember and they don't?” she asks.

  “The truth is, my best guess is this is a kind of pasture for the passed on. It must be my purgatory, of me coming from my hell,” the medic says.

  “Anything to do with us?” Cider asks.

  “No, nothing at all. I was a field medic in this soul torturing war, of kids sent to die, needlessly, hundreds at a time to hold on to a hill, a little hill. The screams of soldiers, and their never ending mortal wounds and death gargles. The agony and moans of the maimed and dying haunt me to this day. I watched thousands die in my own arms, endlessly more arrive, only for me to watch them die as well. Their blood and bones litter the battlefield, a swamp of corpses made by the chemicals and mortars.

  Almost never sleeping, many of the others went into shellshock, not recovering, becoming raving mad, and daft as ducks. Losing their minds under the constant threat of death and the scenes of horror which they ceaselessly see and live around them. Feeling the ripples of explosions. A carnage that cleanses men of their souls. To survive this senseless savagery, of man onto one another. A person must become devoid of emotion, a walking corpse instead of a resting one.”

  “That sounds like hell to me,” he says, taking a puff of a stale tasting smoke. Anna's now looking empathetically at the nearly weeping medic.

  “That's what it felt like to me, ravaging me to my core. An eternal torment of unending decay and decimation of the soft souls of boys who are barely men, slain to the sound of the mortar shells stripping the soil from the earth,” Mickey says as they're standing comfortably, casually chatting in the middle of the raging war zone. The gray uniforms on the other line have more munitions or zeal at the moment. The blue dressed, Mickey's side, is content with holding the line under an atrocious rain of artillery fire.

  “I saved them,” Mickey says, “a lot of them.”

  “It sounds like you we're a brave medic?” she says.

  “Yes, but I mean I saved them from that place. That hell.”

  “What do you mean?” Cider asks, looking over to Anna.

  “The battlefield. I saved them, after a few years, losing count of the days, only counting supplies and who can be nursed back to life, and who can’t. I realized that I can save them, truly save them from all of it, from their hell and mine. That those dying in slow agony and the mortally wounded are actually the lucky ones,” Mickey says zealously. “They're free of the plague on their humanity that is this torturous trench warfare. So when they got injured, I over injected them with the stat packs. They just slip slowly into a calm sleep and slide into their own oblivion. Like euthanasia to sick puppies, crying puppies wailing for their mothers and begging god not to live, to be free of this place, and often begging for death. To them the god that has placed them here, is the same one that decided the depth of their wounds”

  “How many?” she asks.

  “Thousands,” Mickey says proudly, almost in praise of himself.

  “You're a hero,” she says from the side of her mouth and straight to his face.

  “Thank you very much. It's so nice that you understand.”

  “How'd you get here?” cider asks.

  “Well I saved myself in the end. I finally escaped from the trenches hell. Anyway, there is where I woke from sleep, under that tree. In the same place to see the same day, the day of my death as every day.”

  “For how long?” he asks.

  “Forever.”

  “Or maybe for the number of lives you took, uh saved,” she says.

  “Home,” the medic says pointing to the unblemished square steeple, with the fumes of a fireplace falling from the top of its stone chimney. Surrounded by a small vegetable garden with thick blankets of vines wrapping a third of the beige mortar walls. A small steeple that at one time was used by the soldiers to pray.

  As they near they can see candlelight dancing through dusty windows framed by trimmed shrubs. The other side of the house is filled with piles of trash. Cans, wood planks and paper are thrown around a rusted maypole that he's using for a laundry line. They come to a stop in front of his wooden mailbox and walkway of separated stones leading to a heavy looking freshly painted white door.

  “You have quite the green thumb,” she says, seeing his garden of carrots, tomatoes, cabbage and cucumber, though fixating on the carrots buried up to their heads.

  “You could say that. The soldiers used to come to this place to worship and pray, but not today, never today,” Mickey says as he turns the door handle, and Cider realizes there is no lock or keyhole on the door.

  “Where's the gas?” he asks.

  “Oh, they have fuel, but it'll be a while until we can get it, so you might as well just come in for a minute. Have something to eat, stay awhile. It'd be delightful to have you two over for coffee. It'll be a while before the battle opens its east flank anyway,” Mickey says on the brink of begging. Speaking as pleasantly as he can, and waving them to follow him inside.

  “Is that where the gas is?” she asks.

  “Yes we'll have it soon, take a seat, make yourself at home.” They enter the quaint steeple, and he closes the door quietly behind them. Anna's eager to sit after being on her feet for so long. Her first impression is that the room is small but cozy and that it needs a good dusting, aside from that it’s not so bad. A few pieces of furniture fill most of the space of the room, everything is cluttered around the dim dancing light of his fireplace.

  “Coffee?” Mickey asks his guests.

  “Sure,” Cider answers.

  “Yes please,” she says.

  “When you say you saved yourself, how did you mean?” she asks, as Mickey takes his seat on a creaking rocking chair across from the two sitting sunken into a soft brown sofa.

  “I was going to save a soldier, a doughboy leatherneck who thought courage was blind bravery. He tried to lead a charge from the trench. I had to go and fetch him when he fell. I dove to avoid a frag and split my stomach on the barbwire, tearing my guts out. I was laying on my back trying to keep my organs inside me, then asking why? why hold on? for what? to survive in this living torment, and thinking of how I saved the others. I wanted to live, to live in the hell to save as many of them as I could, but I couldn’t bare the agony anymore,” Mickey says, with a deepening tone

  Anna's realizing her surroundings as he speaks. That the floor is actually littered by the letters from home of all the other soldiers, and their watches, coins and trinkets, necklaces, flowers and dog tags are everywhere she looks. All trapped in centuries of wax accumulated underfoot from candles that cover about every flat surface in the steeple. Their lit wicks drip wax that cools into the shapes of miniature wax mountains and cliffs. Over time the dripping wax spreads to cover the entire floor with feet high shallow wax hills. At the moment only twelve of the hundred or so candles are lit.

  “Ugh, to live in that hell. It was my turn to go so I put two in my neck like a spider bite, like the rest. It was so...cold as it coursed through my veins.”

  All the wood is molded black, and rotting like gangrene flesh, the room now seems as humid as a sauna to her. There’s a wooden barrel of water next to the fireplace with long pieces of rusting scrap metal sticking out of it. Next to it is a large window, the only one to the outside, showing a still clouded sky marred by windows dust. What was long ago a freshly made beige place of prayer, is now a time defiled, dimly lit battle worn crumbling chapel that would be condemned.

  “The venom streamed through me, my panacea cooling me of that heat, the soul burning pits of hell. I was bleeding out from my stomach, and the blood loss prolonged my pain, bleeding out the morphine and slowing my death. I laid writhing in pain, basking in the thought of being saved, bathing in the tongue biting wailing of dying men screaming for their mothers, wives and children. Ensuring my soul to the desire my death.”

  “A tough road to have to travel,” Cider says.

  “That's a terrible life to have had,” she says consolingly.


  “Thank you for your kind words,” the medic says with a nod.

  “Though I have a question,” she says.

  “Yes and what's that?”

  “Where did all of these things, trinkets, pocket watches, feathers, journals and these flowers come from?” she asks about the multitude of trinkets trapped in the small hills and mountains of accumulated violet wax.

  “Oh them, I've collected them from around the fields and their pockets. Some of their hiding places where quite hard to find, in the woods, buried, in their shoes, things like that. I like to meet them, like a collector of their personalities, their memories. They don't make any new ones anyway, only the same day over and over and over again. I often wonder who's better off, me or them, the goldfish I call them. I like to take things that are sentimental emblems of their memory,” Mickey explains.

  “Why?” he asks, before she can.

  “So I could have new memories,” he says sorrowfully. The three sit through a candle fireplace lit lull in the conversation. Mickey gets up and rustles through cluttered and clinking pots and pans, knocking over a coat rack as he does. Getting frustrated looking for something, then lifting an empty sack and spilling the last two brown beans onto the ground.

  “Ah, it seems as though I've run out of coffee, what a terrible host of me. I'll have to snatch a bag from the lines. Care to join me?” Mickey asks.

  “Yeah I’ll do that aga-” Cider starts to say.

  “No thank you, we’ll wait here,” she barks, dreading having to ballet around the bullets and bombs again.

  “I'll wait here, thanks,” Cider changes his mind.

  “It’s okay I get it, first day on the field can be jarring to the nerves, especially without some fresh coffee in you. Right then, make yourselves at home,” he repeats, “I'll be back in say, fifteen minutes,” the medic says moving swiftly for the door, then through it.

  “Sounds good,” Anna says.

  “Okay, see you then,” mickey says closing the door behind them. The two sit still for a few quiet minutes, waiting to be sure he's far enough away for them to speak freely.

  “I don't know about this guy,” she says lowly.

  “Oh relax Anna, he's fine, just had a rough road,” Cider waves her off.

  “I heard and that's tragic, but look around, this place smells horrid, even the air is rotting.”

  “That's rude. A man invites you into his home as a guest and this is how you react?”

  “This isn't a time for jokes.”

  “It’s a little weird that there's no door lock,” he says rubbing his chin.

  “Only that? look at all these candles, most of them aren’t even lit.”

  “So light them and lighten the place up a bit,” he says shrugging, not seeming to be as alarmed as she is. They start lighting them, lighting nearly a hundred in total, all placed as closely together as possible. One by one lifting the room into visibility, and laying bare the true extent of his plundering and madness. The decrepit walls are sporadically painted with splashes and stains of browns and burgundy, that Anna thinks could be blood and feces, resembling the scenes he stopped to show them when leading them here. The whole of the ground is covered in feet, not inches, of layering wax, entombing innumerable memories under their soles. Countless watches and chains and various types of trinkets, all rotted to the core as though they were formed from rust rather than metal. Jewels, and feathers, pieces of aged parchment and dying flowers are thrown about the decrepit cottage.

  “How long does it take for wood to rot?” she asks.

  “I don't know, a decade or something?”

  “And for it to petrify?”

  “A couple hundred, I guess?”

  “And for gold to rust?”

  “It doesn't.”

  “Silver? or those steel tank tracks rusting in that barrel?”

  “I don't know thousands of…” he says.

  “Years” she says, “he's been here for thousands of years, at least!”

  “So, it must be lonely to be him, don’t you think,” he laughs.

  “He's a madman, and that stuff about saving people,” she says.

  “Ah, I mean, I dunno his heart was in the right place, right?”

  “That's one way to think of it,” she says dismissively, pointing to bones buried in the wax a foot under his feet.

  “Those could be from anything,” he shrugs.

  “There’s a skull right in front of the fireplace.”

  “So we'll get the gas and get out of here soon as we can,” he says, “if that’s what you want, then of course.”

  “Good, I can’t wait. It already feels like we've been here forever,” she says then clearing her throat of rotting air.

  “How was that cigarette he gave you?” she asks.

  “It was alright, a bit weak though,” he says.

  “And that whiskey?”

  “It was kind of bland too, almost like water,” he says.

  “The chocolate he gave me before was tasteless.”

  “Tacky, to give a girl chocolate when you meet them, I think so too”

  “No, I mean it had no taste.”

  “I had your point the first time, pay attention.”

  “You pay attention,” she says frustrated. Their bickering pauses when watching the glow of the sun shining through the large filth filmed window. She's drawn to it like it’s the first sunset she'd seen in decades. Mickey's shoulders pass through the view, startling her to jump back to the sofa as though she never moved.

  “Welcome back,” she says lightly as a feather, sitting stiff as a board on the soft sofa.

  “Thank you. Oh I see you've lit the candles,” Mickey’s face twitches as he speaks.

  “Yeah it was kinda hard to see, so,” Cider says.

  “Oh no it's fine, no worries I got the coffee, so where in good shape, and it gets dark this time of day anyway,” Mickey says, then immediately rustles around the room, knocking over photographs and throwing trinkets and papers around, searching for something. Minutes later emerging from behind a thrown over table holding a mallet.

  “Found it,” Mickey says, then begins slamming the bag of beans, pulverizing them with loud clapping of his mallet. Cider sits comfortably on the couch smoking a bland cigarette and sipping clear whiskey from a rusty tin cup.

  “They hadn't had any milk so it'll have to be black,” the medic says handing her a rusty tin cup filled with oily black slop.

  “Do you have any sugar?” she asks to stop herself from gagging, and stall from having to raise it to her lips.

  “Sure, two cubes for each?” Mickey asks.

  “Three for me please,” she squeaks, holding her cup out and avoiding the blank intensity of his stare.

  Plop plop. plop plop, plop.

  “Thank you,” she says, slowly raising the cup to her lips, and sips in the oil thick fluid, though not able to mask her look of horror.

  “Oh, that's actually not bad, is that French vanilla?” she asks.

  “No it's not, it’s hazelnut?” Mickey says.

  “Yes. Yes, my favorite,” she says, giving a spooked look to Cider. Mickey puts another pot of water to boil in the fireplace, and the three sit near the fire in conversation, surrounded by a chorus of candlelight. Mickey and Cider are trading war stories, and close calls of their trades, the only thing each actually knows. She sits out of most of their banter, weary of the polite medic she thinks is a madman. Thinking of this as more of a polite nightmare then a pleasant time. Cider seems to her to be having a fine time, she's in awe of how he can be so comfortable here. Not because this man is a professed killer, she's actually fine with that, she understands his logic in ‘saving’ people though is still unsure if she agrees with it. It's that she finds his abode to be so particularly repulsive to her sense for any semblance of cleanliness. She chews on chunks of chocolate to pass the hours, laughing along with the happy two becoming fast friends.

  “I see the designs on the walls are those
landscapes?” she asks.

  “Yes, I started doing those not long after I got here. The fresher layers are a little brighter than the last. There are so many atop one another,” Mickey says. One in particular is lighter, and larger than the others. She see’s it’s a replica of the tree line where they’d met him.

  “What do you use to paint them,” she asks.

  “Rust, of the steel in that bucket over there, some water and blood for the darker spots. The blues I have to make by grinding down an enemy sergeant's flask. It was very hard to get to, so I'm sparing with it. The few other colors are from different rocks, and anything I can grind to powder,” the medic says.

  “That's pretty cool, I like them,” Cider says.

  “They are nice, but we should really be going soon,” Anna says insistently placing her cup on a wax covered table.

  “Oh no, were just getting comfortable here,” Mickey says “No don't go, stay awhile longer. It's been so long since I've had company, someone new to talk to.”

  “Sorry, but we really should be going,” Cider says brashly, seeing Anna's frightened face and wanting her not to have it a minute longer.

  “No, no don't. Stay just for a while longer,” Mickey’s voice rises and boils louder as he speaks. Goosebumps raise from her neck as a chill rides down her spine, her body language cowers away from Mickey's rising tantrum.

  “Hey, hey calm down man. Relax, you're scaring the lady,” Cider says holding his hand out in front of her like a crossing guard. Standing squared off with the dauntingly tall medic, who starts raving, spewing inaudible tongues of demonic sounding gibberish while frantically waving his arms and stomping around the chapel. Knocking things out of place, and swiping out candles. She gets up to run for the door and trips over a candlestick jutting up from the floor.

  “Oww,” she says holding her knee. Cider jumps to her side to lift her to her feet.

  “You alright Carrots?” he asks.

  “Yes! Now let's get the hell out of here!” she yells. No longer hiding her disgust of the medic, who's now shouting lunacy.