Ghosts of War: A Tale of the Ghost

by George Mann

  Inside the hangar was suspended a enormous airship, a transatlantic liner that had been adapted, altered, and otherwise transformed into a military behemoth of a sort never before conceived. Weapon clusters bristled from wide gashes in its silvery, reflective skin—machine guns, grenade launchers, even cannons—and it bore no livery or marking of any kind.

  The maiden voyage of this particular vessel would be its one and only crossing of the ocean. No air traffic controller in London was expecting to receive it at a berthing field on the outskirts of the city. No wives or children impatiently awaited the return of their menfolk who had been away on business. No, the purpose of this particular vessel—which Abraham had taken it upon himself to name Goliath— was singular and devastating.

  Goliath was designed with only one purpose in mind: to deliver a weapon to the heart of the British Empire, a weapon so powerful and unique that it would bring the empire to its knees.

  Within days of Goliath's arrival in London there would be a new world order. Buckingham Palace would have been utterly destroyed, and with it, Queen Alberta and her legions of cronies. The war would be over before it had even begun, and the victors—the great republic of America—would reap the spoils. What was more, it was down to him, Abraham, that such a thing could even be conceived.

  Abraham shivered with delight at the thought. In his hands he held the power to change the world. He had discovered and built the device that would win the war. Now he was fitting it inside the ship that would deliver it to its final destination. His chest swelled with pride.

  Of course, all of this was colored by Abraham's concern that, by rushing him in such a way, the senator was effectively dooming them all. The man was arrogant—an egomaniac, even—and while his belief in the American ideal was to be applauded, his zeal also spoke to Abraham of a certain ignorance. He seemed to think that faith alone would be enough to protect them, no matter what they unleashed on their enemies. He clearly thought they'd be able to control the creatures, once the weapon had been activated and they had spilled hundreds, if not thousands of the things upon the unsuspecting British.

  Abraham, however, knew differently. He knew this because he had tested a whole plethora of weapons against the creature he had trapped in the other hangar, and it had proved impervious to them all. Something about its extradimensional origin meant that it didn't react to terrestrial matter in expected ways. He had managed to harm it eventually, of course, but that was only because it was weakened by his continued ministrations of the poison. He kept it that way, just on the verge of death, just to be sure. Nevertheless, it had proved incredibly resilient. Even if it managed to escape in its current condition it would put up a hell of a fight. Without the solution—without the blood with which to make it—even the might of the American military would be as nothing against an army of these alien things.

  The weapon was a Pandora's box: once it had been opened it would be near impossible to close it again. That was the price they would have to pay for victory and dominance, and the risk they would run for their haste.

  Abraham rocked back on his mechanical legs, admiring his handiwork. The cavernous interior of the hangar bay in the lower section of Goliath was filled with a vast array of mechanical and electrical components: a bank of six miniature Tesla coils which, when powered up, would generate enough electrical current to force open the dimensional rent; thick, snaking cables tied in tight bundles; pneumatic pistons that would open the loading doors and release the creatures once they had begun to pass through the rift.

  Then, at the center of it all, his crowning achievement: the gateway itself. It was like some bizarre fusion of the ancient and the modern: a large archway formed out of shaped iron girders and steel cladding, but etched with an array of incomparably ancient runes and symbols, some of them so intensely alien that Abraham couldn't even look at them for more than a few moments before being overcome with a strange giddiness.

  It had taken him weeks to etch them onto the framework, and longer still to prepare himself to test it. He'd known what to expect, of course—during his time working for the Roman he'd become more than familiar with the procedure used to birth the creatures through the interdimensional rift, but procedure was one thing, and he had not been present when the Roman had finally managed to lure one of the creatures through. He was glad of that, in retrospect—the procedure had evidently gone horribly wrong and the Roman had been killed in the process, along with pretty much everyone else who'd been present.

  Of course, Abraham's attempt to test his machine had been far more successful, and had given rise to the creature now trapped in the pit in the neighboring hangar.

  The Roman had been almost as zealous as Senator Banks, Abraham mused, and that, he supposed, was why everything had gone wrong. It was an object lesson in caution, and one Abraham had been quick to learn. He certainly believed in letting others make all the mistakes first.

  Abraham had been employed by the Roman ostensibly to build the crime boss an army of artificial mobsters—golems created from earth and clay, built on a subframe of brass. They'd been effective, in their way, but inelegant and rather unwieldy. Nevertheless, they'd inspired Abraham to develop the raptors, using the techniques he had learned creating the moss men, drawing on the occult sciences and marrying those ancient methods with more modern techniques. The results had been quite astounding.

  Abraham wondered how his flock was getting along. He'd taken a huge risk that evening, sending them all out at once on Senator Banks's instruction. He supposed he'd had little choice. He needed to find a ready supply of the right blood if he was to have any hope of making enough of the solution to pacify or destroy the creatures that would be deployed by Goliath, and with Banks accelerating the timeframe of the whole venture—well, he'd had to do it, of course.

  He cringed when he considered the gaggle of pathetic, mewling creatures that would be waiting for him back at the other hangar—assuming, of course, that his raptors had done their work.

  Abraham had never intended to become an executioner, and the role didn't really sit well with him. The occasional death here and there—well, that was inevitable in his line of work, and he'd reconciled himself to that long ago. Even more recently, he'd enjoyed watching some of the people brought back by the raptors—the rejects from his experiments—begging for their lives before being pushed into the pit to be consumed by the alien creature. But it was all a matter of scale.

  It wasn't because he was squeamish, nor because he had any qualms about ending those people's pathetic lives. No, it was because, he considered, he would have to deal with them all while they were still alive. At the end of the day, Abraham simply wasn't cut out for dealing with people. He hated interaction with others, abhorred the way people stared at his strange, mismatched body, and worst of all, couldn't bear the way they would do anything—anything at all—just to hold on to their ridiculous lives. As if any of them had anything worth living for. Nevertheless, as his old mom had always told him, you couldn't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

  Abraham surveyed his work one last time. It was nearing completion. He'd had to work through most of the night, and would have to do so again the following day, but the Goliath would be ready for its maiden voyage on time.

  He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He couldn't put it off any longer. If the raptors had brought him a plentiful bounty of potential donors, he would need to start processing them immediately. It was a quick enough test to carry out—he need only draw off a vial of their blood and allow a few droplets of it to fall on the creature in the pit to identify whether he had a match or not. It would only take him an hour, and if he was quick, he could dispose of the unnecessary donors immediately. He didn't want to wake to such an onerous task in the morning.

  Abraham rose stiffly on his piston-powered legs, straightening his back. He left his tools where they lay—he'd need them again in the morning—and quit the belly of Goliath, hopping down the loading ramp and out
into the hangar beyond.

  Outside, the city was freezing, glossing over with a layer of sparkling ice. He could see it reflecting in the moonlight on the top of the nearby buildings. He hurried across the concourse to the neighboring hangar, anxious to get out of the cold. Even though he was now more machine than flesh, Abraham still felt the chill.

  He'd locked the door to the other hangar behind him when he'd left earlier that evening, knowing that the raptors would find their way in through the hatch in the roof. He fished in his pocket for the key, now, smiling at the sounds he could hear coming from the other side of the door. The raptors had returned, and with them, they had brought their prey.

  Abraham turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open, slipping quietly inside. The scene that greeted him was one of utter pandemonium. The raptors were playing, toying with the ragtag assortment of waifs and strays they had plucked from the streets. There were at least eight or nine people running around, screaming and wailing, as the raptors tormented them, slashing at them with their talons, hissing and shrieking, shrilling and chattering in delight.

  The raptors seemed to get some measure of enjoyment out of this torture, making the humans rush about in blind panic, herding them like animals. They were like cats toying with captured rodents, always stopping short of dealing the killing blow.

  Occasionally, after a particularly good haul like tonight, Abraham would toss a few of the rejected donors to the raptors instead of throwing them in the pit. The creature had a ready supply of warm bodies—much to his frustration—and it gave his pets pleasure to actually be allowed to shred one of the captives for a change. He would do that for them tonight. First, though, he needed to run his tests.

  “That's enough, children!” he called, and the raptors immediately ceased their antics and turned, as one, to regard him. They had only a rudimentary intelligence, but it was enough to recognize a handful of commands, and to recognize their master. “Tie them up with the others,” he said, and the raptors did as he commanded, shepherding their protesting flock to the shackles that awaited them at the rear of the hangar.

  Abraham waited until the raptors had finished securing the prisoners and had taken once more to the rafters, where they sat on their haunches, chattering and hissing at one another. He counted them off quickly and realized that two of them were missing. Had they simply not returned yet? Or had something happened to them? He felt a slight twinge of panic at the thought that they might have come to harm. He'd told the senator it wasn't safe to send them all out at once. After one of them had returned with a damaged wing the previous day…

  Still, it would have to wait. There was still a chance they could return. In the meantime, Abraham thought, rolling his sleeves up, he had work to do.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The eyes had continued to haunt him.

  All throughout the war, all throughout those long months of bloodshed, mortar shells, engine oil, and death. Every time he'd gone up in his aircraft, every time he'd looked to the skies, the eyes had been there, watching him, judging him.

  Gabriel had retreated into himself. He had prosecuted his missions with an increasing sense of dislocation. He felt as if his mind was disengaging. What was real? What was not? Had reality somehow fractured? Or was it simply his mind creating figments, ethereal ghosts, unable to cope with the atrocities he had seen, with the knowledge of what he was doing every time he depressed the trigger to set loose another shell. Was it simply the war, doing this to him? He didn't know, and soon enough even that question was lost as he drifted through the fog of those months, unable, in truth, to engage with anything or anyone other than what was strictly necessary for him to get through the ordeal as quickly as possible.

  Life became a series of stuttering moments, repeating over and over: eating, sleeping, shitting, flying, eating, shitting…The borders of his universe had shrunk, and he was hemmed in. Only the war in France existed. Nothing more. He felt as if he were being eroded by it, as if soon, that shrinking universe would close in on him completely and he would simply blink out of existence, forgotten, like all the others left for dead on the fields of battle.

  Throughout it all, the eyes had remained a constant, unwavering companion. They reminded him of his duty. Not his duty to his captain, or his country, but his duty to himself. His duty to protect the core of what he was, of who he was. He knew this conflict would change him, and everyone around him, utterly. Yet somehow the eyes reminded him to preserve what he could of Gabriel Cross, to bury it, to leave it untouched by the madness, and the violence, and the horror.

  So Gabriel had done just that. He had taken that small kernel, what was left of him, and he had buried it somewhere over France. It wasn't until years later, in New York City, that he had even been able to conceive of unearthing it again. By then he had changed beyond all comprehension.

  Of course, the horrors had continued. While Gabriel had become desensitized to the loss of human life—a notion he still found horrific to this day—the things he had seen during his crash, in those few lucid moments before delirium and his injuries had overwhelmed him, had perhaps done more to alter his perception of the world than anything that human beings could do to one another.

  He barely remembered the moments leading up to the crash. Just the sensation of hurtling through the sky, out of control, of thinking, Finally, this is it. This is where I die.

  Silence and motion. The blur of speed, of the world sliding past the toughened glass of the cockpit. Black smoke smudging the sky, peacefulness. These were the impressions he was left with. And then…nothing.

  When he'd come to, he had been on his side. The noise and the pain had returned with a startling ferocity, assaulting his every sense, filling his head with confusion. It had taken him a few minutes to realize what had actually occurred, to catch his breath and calm his nerves enough that he could think. He remembered pinching himself, disbelieving that he could truly be still alive. Then the world had resolved around him, suddenly snapping back into sharp focus. He'd glanced around, trying to get his bearings.

  His plane had saved his life—a metal cocoon that had protected him from the worst of the impact. He'd lost a wing in the crash, and the other, damaged beyond repair, had been pointing up at the sky like an accusatory finger, jutting proudly from the wreckage. The plane had clearly rotated onto its side as it struck the ground.

  Still strapped into his seat and hanging limply out of the shattered cockpit, Gabriel had been able to tell from the churned earth that surrounded him that the fuselage had gouged a long rent in the muddy loam, like a crazed plow, turning over the landscape as it came to rest.

  In the distance dark smoke rose in long spirals, and he'd heard the sharp whine of engines overhead: his brothers-in-arms, still intent on smiting the enemy, on avenging him, their dead, fallen comrade who had been blasted out of the sky by enemy fire. He'd known they would not come looking for him. No one survived a crash such as the one he had experienced. No one. To his friends and fellow pilots, he was already dead. Dead the minute the enemy weapon had burst open his engine housing and sent him careening toward the ground.

  Gabriel had fought to free himself from his webbing, and had cried out at the lancing pain the movement stirred in his leg. He hadn't been entirely unscathed, after all. Nevertheless, he'd known the danger of staying too close to the wreckage. The engine could have gone up at any moment if a stray spark found an exposed fuel line or spillage from a split tank. He'd seen it happen to other downed planes, even discussed it with the other pilots, explained how he saw it as a fitting end for a dead pilot, to be cremated along with his vehicle. Better that, surely, than being left to be picked over by scavenging animals? At least this way there was some dignity left for the dead man, something to be claimed from the horror of what had become of him.

  He'd never even considered before that some of those pilots might still have been alive.

  Taking all of the strain in his upper arms, Gabriel had heaved himse
lf out of the cockpit and slumped onto the wet, clinging mud below. He'd lain there on his back for a while, watching the sky. And surely enough, up there, in the distance, that pair of eyes had stared back at him, unblinking.

  It had been after this, after he had freed himself from the carcass of his downed plane and stumbled, near delirious, toward a farmhouse in a neighboring field, that he had first encountered the creature that would change his life.

  The farmhouse had been long-abandoned, its occupants most likely fleeing in the face of the oncoming conflict, the tide of violence and death that was sweeping across their country. But something else had taken up residence in the dilapidated building.

  Gabriel had practically fallen in through the door, desperately in search of help. His leg had been mangled in the crash, and he'd been barely able to support himself as he'd stumbled toward the building in the hope of salvation. It had taken every ounce of his remaining strength. With hindsight, he'd been able to see how foolish he'd been to expect to find any help in that crumbling old wreck of a home. Of course there would be no one there, in the middle of a war zone. They would have been evacuated months earlier, their home given over to the soldiers or left abandoned, target practice for the enemy bombers. Nevertheless, he had pressed on, fixated on the idea that if he could only get to safety, to the haven of that farmhouse, everything would be all right.

  Instead of the hoped-for assistance, however, instead of the kindly French farmer he'd imagined in his half-hallucinatory state, he'd found something else there, lurking in the dark. Something that should never have existed. Something that shifted and stirred in the shadows, that unfurled itself as he'd crept into that blackened shell of a building, readying itself to feast on his broken, exhausted body.