Flock of Shadows

by Houguez, Claire; Parfitt, Rebecca;

  Guy accepts the mirror with muttered thanks. He settles in a funk hole and draws down the cover, though for once it isn’t raining. He breathes in earth stink and rotting flesh before fumbling for his matches. He strikes. He doesn’t see his reflection right off – a trick of the dead air, no doubt.

  The image evolves as if conscripted into being. His face is a porcelain mask, his eyes stare in an offensive of self-awareness.

  ‘Tsss.’ Air escapes through breaches in his teeth. The flame licks his skin; he drops the match.

  *

  Guy draws his laces tight.

  Sid smears whale grease over his feet and slips on the socks. He pauses and contemplates Guy. ‘Do you want to lose a foot, a leg?’

  Guy looks off, other things occupy his mind.

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Sid thrusts his foot into a boot.

  An explosion booms: it’s close. Morsels of earth trickle from the corrugated seams of the dugout. The punch and zing of bullets follow.

  Sid’s gaze shifts from door to ceiling; the whites of his eyes glow. ‘You young men are all the same. I know. Believed I was invincible when I fought at the Western Transvaal – signed up as a boy, returned a man. Now this: “War to end all wars”.’ He smiles, a bitter, private smile that seems to invite destruction.

  Guy stands and stamps his feet, imprinting the ground. He huffs across his fingers; his breath fogs the air. He needs to get out of this lair, infected with shit and urine, sick and blood. He licks his lips.

  Of all the men selected for the wiring party, he was the only one who didn’t react.

  Sid sniffs and wipes his nose with the back of his hand. ‘You ready for this – this jaunt across No Man’s Land?’

  Guy feels his lips spread as if to shape a smile. No Man’s Land: a place for no man.

  ‘Are you brave or stupid?’ Sid frowns. ‘In another month, the weather’ll be with us, and then the show really begins. You won’t find it so amusing then.’

  Guy shifts to the entrance and tries to suck up unsoiled air, drawing it into his lungs.

  Sid turns his jacket inside out, lights a match, and runs the flame along one seam. ‘Got the bastards.’ He waves the life out of the match before it sears his skin. ‘I’d offer to do yours,’ he says. ‘But they don’t bother you, do they?’

  Guy shrugs as if in mockery of the men whose shoulders jolt and shudder. He won’t remove his jacket and expose the vacant seams.

  Outside the firing lulls; a blackbird starts to sing in a repetitive trumpet: two notes long and low; two short and high.

  After ten minutes, Sid swears. ‘Smug critter trots out the tune, over and over, as if in ridicule: I’m free, you’re trapped – I swear that’s what the bugger sings – aimed my rifle at it more than once.’ Sid continues with his mini massacre. ‘Never had the heart to pull the trigger. The other lads like to hear it, but I wish it’d change its bloody tune.’

  Guy stares at the trench wall opposite; a rat scrambles without fear over the top. ‘Perhaps it can’t,’ he says.

  *

  They inch out in the mouldering light. They wedge pickets into the earth with cloth-bound mallets.

  ‘Keep focused. Strike again, not so hasty,’ Sid tells a new recruit, voice low and assured.

  Guy has a soundless tread. He doesn’t fumble with the equipment; he’s quick, efficient, machine-precise. He doesn’t struggle to negotiate his way in the dark. Sid watches him with admiration and something else – fear, perhaps?

  Guy’s hands are chalk-rock white and just as steady. Sid and Guy unravel the apron and complete the next section as fast as the squelch of mud will allow.

  There’s a hiss and a flood of light. The sun’s switched on.

  As if hypnotised to pose as a statue, Sid waits with screwed up eyes. A thud and he’s knocked sideways. His limbs tangle in the apron.

  Guy is transfixed. He’d heard stories of light-shell rockets. Dusk is displaced to facsimile day. He blinks, adjusting to its harmless brilliance. Every man from his party is cowered in deformed prayer, as if seeking salvation from the mud.

  The strike, when it comes, is a punch to his gut. Face in the sludge, he’s unable to discern where the earth ends and his blood begins. Blood, he can smell it. He bites on his lip to stop from screaming. He wills his throat to silence, his limbs to rigidity. Part of him wants to laugh; the dead posing as the dead.

  Light, artificial and natural, terminates. In the trench on both sides men shuffle and mumble in contrast to the churchyard hush of day.

  Casualties, able to move, emerge as if surmounting graves. Guy sees them, and so do the German snipers; bullets hail no man’s land. Figures fall, retreat to crud.

  Sid’s breaths beset Guy’s ears. The air is comatose.

  Better Sid doesn’t wake, but he stirs and moans. His voice: a thin reed, gurgles, ‘Hey, Peterson, Mathews, anyone. You out there? Guy. You’re not dead, are you? Guy.’

  Guy’s own injury dulled to nothing within minutes. When he poked his fingers into his ruptured greatcoat, he discovered unbroken skin. Anyone else would call it a miracle. Hunger gnaws to the core of his bones.

  Shut up, Sid, please. Shut up.

  There are mutterings from the other side and an abrasive laugh.

  Sid starts up again. ‘Lads, come and get me. Don’t leave me. Someone, anyone. Are you out there? Guy.’

  As if in reply, there’s the suction of boots and a shadow picks its way closer. In the other direction, a click and more muttered voices. No laughter this time. The zip of bullets: one, two. The shadow stops, gasps and falls.

  ‘No. You bastards.’ Sid’s voice is impossibly high. His breath follows, rough and fast. ‘Guy, please. I promise I won’t moan about that bird or anything anymore, please.’ Words stutter, ‘Send another. You’re there, aren’t you? Guy. Those bastards.’ He pauses. A moan, could be a sob, broken by words. ‘Just shoot me…don’t leave me…don’t…not to them, no. Not the rats.’

  Put him out of his misery, it’s the humane thing to do. Guy’s mind clunks these thoughts like a cog and wheel.

  But a different voice grinds with gathering insistence; if they leave him, Guy’s weeks of restraint can be reasonably fed. The smell of blood pervades Guy’s airways and catches in the base of his throat.

  *

  Just before dawn, Guy skulks towards the scratch of Sid’s voice.

  An act of mercy, he tells himself. But compassion has little to do with the grip of hunger that has him pinioned in its jaws.

  Sid stops calling for him or anyone else.

  As the day revives, Guy’s flesh starts to smoke; he wills the plume to a wisp. Lost in steaming mud, he’s just another casualty.

  At dusk he stirs to life.

  He’s right up close to the watchman before he whispers, ‘It’s me – Guy.’

  The soldier starts but recognises him. ‘Get in.’

  An officer and two older men evaluate him. The officer, young and pale, stares wordlessly. One of the soldier’s foreheads is gouged with a scar. The other has a round face and kind eyes, but he’s frowning. ‘Every man in your party fell. How are you untouched?’ His eyes rove the greatcoat with its punctures and dried blood.

  The officer swallows. ‘The wire?’ he says.

  Guy stares at his boots. ‘Not secured, Sir.’ When he clawed at Sid’s body, the wire was torn, leaving a spiked-tooth yawn.

  ‘Christ,’ the soldier says.

  The other one rubs his scar philosophically. ‘Just a jammy bastard, aren’t you?’ He touches Guy as if he can extort some luck.

  The round-faced soldier shakes his head and shifts aside.

  *

  It’s the same the next day and the next, sometimes Guy catches a look as he lights up another man’s cigarette. They sense his difference. Whilst they battle with reams of mud an
d the stink of festering wounds, he has other horrors to conquer.

  Guy is no longer a part of their troop.

  He thinks of the legacy the Countess left: obsession with humankind and a hunger for blood. But he yearns to be human, even in the filth of a trench.

  He cuts his nails, which grow to claws each evening. The sun which scorched her, and every Nosferatu throughout time, causes him only a sizzle as it nurtures a new day.

  Some of the men, the more observant, call him ‘Smoky’, but it’s said with camaraderie and a slap on the back. Others look askance, as if he’s a dark spirit, but returned for what purpose?

  In the dugouts the rat population decreases when Guy’s around. The men do not wonder at it; they are too tired for that. They are grateful for small mercies in a place where sanity has turned madman and wields a bayonet.

  Many times, day or night, Guy lies, eyes open. He listens to the roll of tins above the trenches as rodents feed on human dregs.

  Or sometimes when the shelling stops, he hears the birdsong.

  He revisits the fantasy of weaving his bicycle in and out of the fire-bays and traverses, over the duckboards, cutting through slush and bone as if man’s machines could defy death. If only he could pedal fast enough, time might slow; it is a dream he has. But there’s not much space for dreams here, and he never thinks on it for long.

  *

  On the fourth week of Guy’s third stint, a new recruit joins. He reminds Guy of his former self when untainted by her blood. But in this place innocence will save no one.

  The boy curls in a corner and his body shakes as if sub-zero winter has descended. An older recruit mutters in his sleep, but otherwise the men do not notice this new arrival.

  Guy shifts closer. ‘First time on the front line?’

  The boy jumps, eyes, shell holes beneath a metal helmet. He nods; his Adam’s apple jerks like a head bobbing above the parapet.

  ‘Here,’ Guy delves for his flask that contains the ration of rum he will not drink.

  The boy accepts it, takes a gulp and coughs. His eyes turn glassy.

  Guy smells his fear. ‘I’m Guy. What’s your name?’

  ‘Billy – thanks.’ He offers the flask back.

  ‘Keep it,’ Guy says.

  The boy’s breathing steadies. ‘How long have you been here?’

  ‘Day twenty-four,’ Guy says.

  ‘They said eight days maximum on the frontline, four days in reserve and four of rest. Oh God, twenty-four days.’

  Guy shrugs. ‘There aren’t enough men to keep to those schedules.’

  ‘Oh God.’ Billy hugs his knees and rocks back and forth.

  God isn’t listening, Guy thinks. Here is your world of science, your world of progress. And yet something stirs within him. ‘The fritz are rotten shots.’

  ‘Are they?’ Billy stops rocking and looks hopeful.

  ‘Bloody awful.’ He grins.

  The boy is drawn to him. Guy has this power now.

  ‘You’ll be back in reserve before you know it.’

  ‘I signed up,’ Billy says. ‘Can you believe that?’

  ‘I’ll believe almost anything these days.’

  ‘I wanted to do my bit, be a hero.’

  ‘There are no heroes anymore,’ Guy says. ‘Just chaps trying to get a job done.’ These are Sid’s words, spewing from his lips.

  Billy shivers. He takes another sip from the flask and they slip into silence.

  *

  On the third whistle, they trample the sandbags. Billy doesn’t move and so Guy shoves him. If he stays he’ll be shot by one of his own. A few yards before they reach the breach point, they see the wire hasn’t been cut. Billy stares mouth agape. Gunfire. He staggers and falls. Guy dives on his belly beside him.

  ‘Been shot, shot.’

  ‘Stay still,’ Guy says.

  Explosions greet their attack. Chaos. The boy’s sobs are lost. Later perhaps, he’ll have to be silenced.

  ‘I’ve a letter…see it gets posted? Don’t want Mum…Mum to think…want her to be…to be proud.’

  ‘You’re not going to die,’ Guy says.

  ‘Promise me…promise you’ll get it to her.’

  ‘If necessary, I’ll see it gets sent.’

  Billy bares his teeth, perhaps a smile, perhaps in defence of the pain. The slush around him turns from brown to claret.

  Guy pulls a field dressing from his kitbag, rips Billy’s jacket open and binds his chest and shoulder. The boy’s breath comes in fits and gasps. Guy works rapidly, turning his face away, forcing his need aside.

  He looks back, not so far. He waits for Billy’s breathing to settle. He lurches to his feet, hooks his arms beneath the boy’s armpits. Guy heaves; Billy screams: banshee, barely human.

  The boy is lodged like wheels in clay mud. In his mind’s eye Guy sees spokes spinning, racing and flying free.

  But a tune blossoms in his gut.

  This bird will sing a new song.

  He is no more monster than the men snarling, shooting and stabbing.

  He leans towards Billy, who swallows as if he will speak.

  Guy draws closer. He’ll keep alive the myth, forged from ancient tongues, now retold as black and white moving pictures of terror. He will find a fresh voice.

  He bends, bites into his own wrist and presses the wound to Billy’s lips.

  The shadow of absolute evil is no longer the fear. Good or bad depends upon which side of the parapet your head appears. The world is a shifting fog of boundaries, like the sky across the Western Front: a bruise.

  Mia

  Amanda Mason

  No-one else was going to help. I could see that. She was with this bloke at the back of the room, by the door to the toilets. He had her pressed up against the wall, leaning over her, and as I walked past I could see he had hold of her arm, that he was shouting at her. I could see his jaw working, the tendons straining in his neck as he screamed into her face, and she’s tiny, she looks all of fourteen years old as he’s spitting abuse at her. He was as mad as hell and she was just standing there, taking it.

  I couldn’t hear what he was saying. The pub was crowded and the music was too loud. Too hot, too loud, too busy for anyone to care. He took a step back and there was something about the way he moved, the set of his spine, made me think he was going to hit her and that’s not on is it? So I stepped in.

  ‘Is everything okay?’

  I could see Lucy standing by the bar, scanning the room, a glass of wine in one hand, a pint in the other.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  It was stupid, really, none of my business after all, and he was a big man. He looked like he might have wanted to make something of it for a minute, but then he let go of her. He let go and wiped his hand on the front of his shirt, slow and deliberate, never taking his eyes off her. He bent down and whispered in her ear, then pushed past me and was gone.

  ‘Are you alright?’ I asked again and she nodded, licked her lips, smiled.

  She was thin – skinny thin – and pale with smoky, vacant eyes.

  ‘Right.’

  And I turned to walk away, only she grabbed hold of me, cheap bangles jangling on her wrists. Her hands were clammy and her ragged nails were painted purple.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Her voice was low, soft; I had to lean in close to hear her. Her eyes were blue I could see now, heavy with black eyeliner and smeared with glittering green eye shadow. She blinked slowly and looked at me, waiting. I was close enough to see the goose bumps puckering the skin on her throat, close enough to smell her perfume, honeysuckle sweet. One tooth was chipped, I noticed, and I wondered if he’d hit her. I wondered if he’d hit her before and if she’d stayed with him anyway. I could taste blood in my mouth.

  ‘Will you be okay?’

&n
bsp; ‘I can’t go home now,’ she said, almost as if it was my fault.

  The thing is Lucy and me – it’s not like she’s my girlfriend.

  I looked down at her. She was trembling. He must have scared her more than she was letting on. I looked back at the bar, but I couldn’t see Lucy anywhere.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said, gripping my wrist hard enough to bruise.

  And she’s not my type, she’s really not. But it was hot in there and I was a bit pissed and there was something about the look of her, about that slow, famished look she had.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

  Mia.

  I was properly drunk by the time we got back to the house. We went to another pub which was noisy and full, and another which was dark and cheap and stank of backed up drains and piss.

  I remember flicking the hall light on and her standing there. There was something…

  She looked so fragile; the light seemed to shine right through her. You can stay here, I wanted to say. Sleep on the sofa. That’s what I meant to say. I didn’t bring her back just to…

  She reached up and switched off the light and in the sudden darkness all I could see were those empty eyes, gleaming. I reached out and pulled her to me and her mouth was hot and wet, and her teeth were sharp, and the taste of her was –

  Intoxicating.

  That’s not what I’d meant. I didn’t bring her back just to – I didn’t.

  Her mouth and her skin and her breath. Muscle and skin and bone. And she wasn’t fragile. Not at all.

  That was Saturday. And today is…

  I don’t know.

  We stay in my room most of the time, although I think she’s been downstairs. I think I’ve heard her in Simon’s room and Alex’s too. We keep the curtains closed and the lights low. She sleeps a lot. We sleep a lot, I think.

  I remember standing in the hall.

  ‘Come in then,’ I said.

  And she smiled and came in and I turned on the light and it was bright – too bright –

  For a moment there was something about her. I could see – she dyes her hair and paints her face, of course she does – but for a moment, I could see.

  Her.