Mister October - Volume Two

by Edited by Christopher Golden

  “Like I told you before, Eddie, I hit that damned green man with four bullets from my rifle, I saw them break into its skull, and I saw at least a couple of them leave the other side of its head. I didn’t figure it could be hurt. What I hadn’t counted on was that John Crowley seemed to be just as tough. I saw that thing throw him halfway across the room, and I saw him bounce off a wall with enough force to send him another five feet on the rebound. I figure most people would have been dead after that, or at least unconscious. Crowley came off the ground like a scalded cat and reached out to one of the soldiers standing too close to where he landed. He grabbed the man by his hair and yanked him hard enough for the man to shriek. Then Crowley grabbed the needle gun in the Nazi’s hand and fired every round he could into the monster coming at him. Somewhere along the way he got the thing where it was vulnerable. He shot out its eyes. Lord, the mess! And its blood was green too. I don’t know what they did to that poor man, but I swear I hope the secret is never discovered again.

  “Any living thing that had its eyes shot our would very likely fall to the ground screaming, or probably even die, what with the brain being right behind the eyes. Not the green man. He kept coming, tilting his head and listening to every sound. It might have worked with someone else, but Crowley could move so softly you wouldn’t even know he was there if he didn’t decide to let you know. I pretty much forgot about the Germans then, and I reckon they forgot about me. We were all too intent on watching what was happening. It was sort of like seeing a car wreck…you don’t really want to slow down, but there’s this part of your mind that makes you look, if you understand what I’m saying.”

  I thought about that for a second and nodded. I’d had that same compulsion a few times, in Viet Nam and stateside as well. Some things are just too extreme not to stop and ponder.

  My grandfather lit another cigarette, and then opened another Budweiser for himself and for me. When he started again, his voice was a little calmer. “I guess maybe not all of the Krauts forgot to do something productive. That Gestapo fella called out in barking German, and I guess he told that thing where Crowley was, because it turned sharply and it grabbed him by his arms. That thing pulled him close in a bear hug and squeezed him like it was trying to get juice from an orange. Crowley almost howled, and I reckon I would have too, ’cause I could hear his ribs breaking.

  “I remembered the rifle sitting in front of me as that freak dropped Crowley on the ground. I shot the man in the fancy uniform. I figured that way maybe he wouldn’t have a chance to pull any more stunts with calling out warnings. Also, I didn’t like his face. He was smarmy and full of himself.

  “Well, he died in a bad way, with a bullet that clean blew out his spine just around the same height as his belly button. He screamed a lot. And I confess I enjoyed hearing him scream. I took a shot at another one, and heard that empty clicking sound. I was out of bullets once again. I figured it was about time to meet the Almighty and beg His forgiveness for my sins.

  “I was pretty sure things couldn’t get any worse. They were about as bad as they were likely to get in my estimation. That was when I learned that the green thing standing over John Crowley wasn’t the first one the Nazis had made. I guess wherever they’d been put, they responded to the alarm. They marched into the room in perfect unison, wearing outfits that made it clear they were designed to be as scary as possible. They wore SS uniforms and the guns they carried would have looked better on a tank than in their hands.

  “That was it for me. I had my limits. I was alone and I had no weapons. I got up from my spot on the ground. I was one story above all of those freaks, and I figured if I stayed I’d either end up dead or like one of those green giants. One of them Germans boys called frantically to the things and they stopped where they were, falling into formation. The blind one stayed where it was, and the remaining soldiers—living soldiers that is, not zombies in Nazi clothing—breathed a sigh of relief. I took one look down at Crowley, deeply saddened that I’d have to leave his body behind for them to mess with.

  “And I almost fainted when he looked back up at me and winked. That grin of his stretching even wider than I’d have thought possible, like he was just having the time of his life. Last I saw of him he was rising from the ground, and he was starting to laugh.

  “That laugh of his was worse than the sounds those men had made when they were being operated on. Worse even than the sight of the monster battalion walking into the room. I swear the sounds that came from that man’s mouth shaved five years off my life.

  “I went ahead with my plan, and I ran like the Devil himself was on my ass, with the sound of that laughter following me all the way to the entrance of that damned place. I got lost four times trying to get back to the main entrance of the building. I stumbled and I fell and I got up and I ran some more, and through it all, I heard Crowley’s laughter and the screams of the Germans.

  By the time I’d reached the door, I saw the rest of my squad looking at me with pale, shaky faces and eyes that were close to mad. Every one of them was hurt, and badly. One of the green men managed to find its way outside, in advance of me. Between the three of them they’d managed to get one of the green men down and incapacitated. It was still alive, but it was so shot up and torn that it couldn’t move more than to shake and flop like a fish out of water.

  “I looked at them in silence for a few seconds while they shot questions at me. Then I looked at the monster they’d stopped; its clothes were torn and shredded like they’d been in a hurricane, and on its forearm I saw a series of numbers. They’d been tattooed in place. I didn’t know what that tattoo meant then, but I figured it out later, after Auschwitz. I saw the fat face, with that eyes that looked around and glowed in the darkness, and I shivered. I wondered if the poor thing could still feel and could remember what it had been before the Nazis got their hands on it. That thought still gives me nightmares sometimes.

  “Finally, I looked at Sarge and I told him that there were more of those things inside and that Crowley was probably dead by their hands. That was enough to get us moving. We didn’t even try looking at one of the trucks the Germans had rode up in, we just stared walking, taking turns helping Toby Baker, who’d had his leg crushed by that thing when it came up on them.

  The next morning we heard the explosions coming from where direction of the château. We didn’t talk about it. We just kept going. Walking when the sun fell and sleeping away the days when we could sleep.

  “It was three days before another American squad found us. By then we were all in bad shape. I was still doing better than most, but I think my mind was trying to shut down. It didn’t like what it had seen and I guess maybe I ain’t as strong upstairs as I’d like to imagine I am. They have fancy names for what happens in wars, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and I’m sure a few others. Whatever the case, I was almost as numb as I hoped those green men were. Poor Toby lost his leg. The surgeons couldn’t help much after the infection set in properly.

  “We told our stories to the commander just the same. We told him where we’d been and what we’d seen. He might not have believed us, except for the trophy Springer had brought along. He’d sawed at one of the monster’s hands, and taken it with him, wrapped in a blanket and tied in place with the sling of his rifle. The Major took one long look at the hand and decided we weren’t as crazy as we sounded. The hand was still twitching, trying to do something about where it was. The Major looked downright calm as he poured a fifth of scotch over it and set it to burning. His face was pale and his disgust obvious, and his hands shook when he struck the match.

  “Two days later one of the men who’d gone up to the chateau told me about what they had seen, which was mostly a lot of nothing.

  “He said ‘The whole building was in ruins, Finch. There wasn’t a part of the walls that wasn’t broken and burnt. We found a lot of bodies, but they were all in bad shape.’ I asked him to elaborate and he did; I also bummed three cigarettes off him while we tal
ked. ‘We went down into that cave you talked about, the subbasement. There was a lot of stuff down there that had been busted all to hell. I don’t know what those machines they had were supposed to do, but they were melted and shot and a couple of those things that had been bolted to the ground were knocked over and smashed so bad you could barely tell what they were supposed to be. Finch, some of those Germans were damned big men. Like over seven feet tall and that was after the fire got done roasting them. You know how meat gets smaller when it cooks too long? I don’t want to know how big they were before that fire.’

  “‘Did you see any Americans?’ I had to ask, Eddie. I had to know if Crowley was down there and dead or if he’d escaped.

  “‘I don’t know for sure, Finch. All I know is that nothing was alive when we got there.’ He put a hand on my shoulder as he stood up and got ready to leave for his shift. The man looked like he’d seen things he never wanted to think about again. You know the look, Eddie. So do I.

  “A week after that, I was reassigned. I got my orders and it was back to duty for me, and that was fine. They wanted me on one of the companies heading for Germany and I wanted to be there, because I wanted to lose myself in something other than my own miserable thoughts. I couldn’t take being alone with my memories any longer. I’d have killed someone, I’m certain of it. I kept feeling bad for all the men I’d killed and I kept feeling even worse for the folks they’d made into those things.

  “As I was heading for my new squad, being driven down in a truck, I looked out at the sides of the road and tried not to think about the monsters or what I had done. I tried to forget how I’d abandoned Jonathan Crowley. I was thinking about him a lot, and hating myself for leaving him behind, for not even being able to give him a proper funeral like I swore I’d do.

  “I wasn't paying too much attention to the sights, but I always waved to the other soldiers I saw walking along with their gear and those lost looks on their faces. Just a little courtesy to let them know we were all in it together. About halfway to the post, I spotted another small group walking along the side of the road and I looked up from my hands to wave, and I froze as surely as I would have if I’d fallen into a pit of angry rattlesnakes.

  “I looked right into the face of Jonathan Crowley, and I know I must have turned dead white. He looked right back at me and he smiled that nasty smile of his, and he winked.

  “We weren’t driving all that fast. It wasn't possible to drive over the roads in the area at high speed without throwing half the soldiers out the back of the trucks.

  “Jonathan Crowley got a running start and caught the back bumper of the truck I was on. I thought I was going to wet myself when he climbed over the gate.

  “One of the sergeants tried to question him, but Crowley shut him up with a look and then walked over and sat next to me.” My grandfather shook a bit as he spoke.

  “You ever have to leave someone behind, Eddie? Someone you wanted to save but couldn’t?”

  I allowed that I had, and tried not to think about Corporal Murphy, who begged me to come back for him just before the napalm eradicated the spot where he’d been bleeding out on the jungle floor.

  “I swear to you, Eddie, I thought he was going to kill me right then and there. I hadn’t seen what was left of the château, but I’d seen the people who came back from it and they came back haunted by what they’d seen as surely as I was.

  “‘Finch,’ he said to me. ‘Finch, I thought for sure you got yourself killed up there.’

  “I think I whimpered. He was smiling, you see, and that smile of his, damn, Eddie, that smile of his was a frightful thing.

  “He reached out and touched my lapels, straightening them as he looked me over. ‘Glad you made it, old son. Listen, you ever need me, you give me a call. I’ll come running. And if not, who knows, maybe I’ll come see you in Summitville. I’ve heard it’s a nice place.’

  “He stood back up and climbed over the side of the truck, easy as you please. I watched him as we rumbled by and he gave me a proper salute and then winked at me before the truck took a bend in the road and he vanished from my site.

  “That was the last time I saw him.

  “I don’t know what those things were that the Nazis made. I don’t know if they used science no one knows about, or if they used magic to make them. I heard a lot of rumors about the things Himmler was into, and after what I saw at the chateau, I don’t know if I can honestly doubt anything like I used to.

  “I sure as hell don’t know how Jonathan Crowley survived that place and, frankly, if I never meet him again or find out what he did, it will be too soon.”

  My grandfather rose from his seat as he crushed out his last cigarette. He looked around the farm and smiled faintly. “It’s good to be here, Eddie. It’s good to have survived that whole damned war. I still have some memories I don’t like to think about, and now and then, when it’s dark outside, I still have moments when I’m almost sure that the people I killed are waiting for a chance to get back at me for stealing their lives. I did a few things I’m not so proud of, but I did them for the right reasons. I reckon maybe you did, too.”

  He said his goodnights, and I saw that my mother had gone to sleep already when my eyes followed him into the house. I shouldn’t have been surprised. My watch let me know it was after midnight, and life on the farm starts early.

  We never spoke of our time in the wars we’d endured again, but I pulled myself together after that. I had survived, and I had done things that I was not proud of, but I was alive and that meant I had to get on with living.

  My grandfather died three years later. He died in his sleep, and I hope he died with a good dream playing in his mind, but I suspect I’ll never know for certain.

  At his funeral, I saw many an old man from around Summitville. They’d been his friends in some cases and in others they were just paying their regards to another fallen soldier, one who had survived the war like they had. I saw one young man, too. He was of average height and lean, with brown hair and brown eyes.

  When the funeral line was arranged and all of the visitors were saying their condolences to us, the stranger looked at my mother and took her hands gently in his own. He spoke softly and solemnly and said to my mother, “Ben Finch was a fine man. He was a fine soldier. They don’t make them like him anymore. He will be missed.”

  When he came to me, he spoke just as softly and his hands held mine in a strong grip until I looked him in the eye. “Your grandfather was strong, Eddie. Make sure you honor that. Do wrong by his memory, and we will not be friends.” He smiled when he was done talking and I was the only one that saw it.

  He had a smile that looked like it belonged on a killer. He only flashed that smile once after that, when I was looking at him, and either he winked at me, or the wind blew something in his eye.

  That night I looked through the register of names from those who’d attended my grandfather’s funeral, prepared to send thank-you notes. I noticed the name Jonathan Crowley, but no address.

  For just a few seconds I wondered if maybe the man I’d seen smiling was the same man who’s smiled at my grandfather so long ago in a chateau in France. But that just wasn’t possible. He’d have been older, certainly; old and gray and frail.

  But I thought about that smile, and I thought about that wink, and I remain uncertain. Like my grandfather, I think if I never meet that smiling man again, it will be too soon.

  IT’S

  By Amber Benson

  The Internet was invented for stalking. There are so many ways to keep an eye on your victim: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Search, Blogspot, Tumblr. Type in a name and see what pops up. It’s like stealing candy from a baby, or whatever euphemism for “easy” you’d like to “insert here.”

  Before the Internet you really had to commit. There was no way to know your victim’s comings and goings other than to stake out a spot somewhere nearby and watch and wait. Now all you have to do is go online and all the inform
ation is there for the cherry picking. And it’s not just logistical information––though that’s all there, too. No, there are intimate, personal things. Information no amount of trash trolling could ever dredge up. I might know your financial dealings through the unshredded detritus you leave behind in your garbage can, but your emotional state, who you’re dating, your personal photos, what songs you like, the kitten memes you share with your friends…those were, in the past, forever out of my reach.

  But here in cyberspace you share them with me gladly. Here online I am your follower, your friend.

  And I am. I really, truly am.

  * * *

  You are going to a party. A birthday party. For a girl you like. I know you like her because you “like” everything she posts on her Facebook page. Only because I am looking at your life from afar and through the prism of my computer, I can say this with true objectivity: You are being obvious.

  I’ve been up and down her page, read her twitter posts and responses, and I’m pretty sure she’s seeing someone. Her relationship status reads: “It’s complicated.”

  And still you are not dissuaded.

  So tonight we are going to a party. A birthday party. For a girl you like.

  * * *

  I get there ten minutes after you do. I’ve timed it that way. You are always late. But just to be on the safe side I parked in front of your apartment building and waited. You came out the front door––your roommate has the secure parking spot in the garage––and walked to your car. You were wearing the black Wrangler jeans and snap down red plaid shirt you bought at the mall yesterday. I watched you try them on in the store. I could see a slice of you through the dressing room curtain, your skin pale yellow in the fluorescent light. I almost creamed my pants.