Like Light for Flies

by Lee Thomas

  I turned to make sure Horrock’s had made it inside and found him standing on the narrow porch, hands wrapped on the doorjamb for support. The fact that the door remained open surprised me as I’d considered the room so quiet, but I had little time to wonder on this phenomenon. Horrocks’ posture and face made me uneasy. He wore a queer expression, part uncertainty and part amusement. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth and then he was hauled upward off the porch. His head collided with the eaves, cracking like kindling under a boot. Then he fell away, landing on his feet—a bit wobbly but otherwise appearing in good health. He stomped forward, smiling again.

  “Cock sucking storm about sent my ass flying,” he said.

  Just as he finished the statement, a hand crept over his face and fingers gripped his cheek so tightly they broke the skin. Horrocks’ eyes doubled in size as confusion gave way to fear. A black form fastened onto his side, and another of the grim sailors crawled forward to clamp its mouth on his leg. A third emerged from the bleak evening at his back, and the sight of this third whitish face stunned me.

  It was Graham Rowe. His skin retained the doughy pallor of death but his eyes were as black as a sharks.

  Horrocks struggled against the three men. I stepped forward with the intent of helping the foul-mouthed communications officer, but I couldn’t have moved fast enough. Before my boot even hit the floor, the doorway was empty. Horrocks and his attackers were gone, vanished like a magician’s rabbit to be replaced with a black foaming gap as the storm’s intensity climbed.

  Two men closed the post office door, and they threw a wooden slat across a couple of L-shaped brackets to lock it. The men who had witnessed Horrocks’s last moments all shouted, demanding answers, but I knew no more than they did. They’d seen the grim sailors and Graham Rowe as clearly as I had. I held no secrets or answers, and I wanted to be left alone. The door was closed and locked. The storm continued to thrash the camp and send refuse against the back wall of the post office in great crashes, and out in the storm were men, who weren’t really men though one of them had been a good friend of mine only a day ago.

  The hurricane returned to my head, battering and blasting away reason, showing me pictures of war buddies dismembered by explosions, and punched by bullets, and showing me a woman who carried a nursing child through the carnage, and my sister with her arms opened as a pack of crazy bald women stood above her and giggled at the pretty redness—the color of the fanciest of lipsticks—pooling about her wrists. And my legs went out from under me and I sat hard on the planks of the post office, ignorant and indifferent to the continued questions, some shouted and others hushed, that filled the room in a ridiculous mimicry of the merciless wind.

  Bainbridge touched my shoulder but I didn’t respond. I stared at the floor, wincing with each new image kicked up by the tempest in my head. I wanted the train to come. If the train came then it would take me away from the fear and anger, and I could leave the storm behind my eyes with its weather-born parent, and when we reached Miami I would find a safe room with no windows where nothing—not even a good friend—could find me.

  “You shouldn’t ought to hope,” a dry, reedy voice whispered in my ear. I turned to find Leonard, the old man from the infirmary sitting at my side. “Hope is the fucking carrot that keeps us working, convincing us that there’s something grand and tasty at the end of a rough road. But that’s not right, is it? It’s all rough road. Often enough, the path never evens out. It just stays nasty and ugly, and the carrot gets gnawed down by flies and gnats and rot until you can’t hardly see it, and you’re left trudging along, following the memory of it. You think one day you’ll get that carrot. But you won’t. Hope is a cold-hearted and lying bitch. We’re better off without her.”

  “You gotta have a reason to open your eyes in the morning,” I muttered.

  “Why?” Leonard asked. “Either way you’re just dreaming, but you don’t have to work so hard for the lies that lead you when you’re asleep.”

  “Sleep sounds good.”

  “Might as well get you some,” he said. “That train ain’t never gonna make it here in time. Best to just close your eyes and let the world take its course. That’s what I’m gonna do. I just wanted to say my piece, because you seen what I seen. You know what I know.”

  “Thanks.”

  And I did know what he knew, and I believed him when he told me that train would never arrive in time, and the reason I believed him was because I could picture the train in the depot. I could see it pulling into camp and see all of us climbing on board and breathing our sighs of relief as the locomotive dragged us north, and I could hear Bainbridge in my ear, telling me he never doubted the evacuation for a second, and men would joke and blow raspberries at the hurricane and we’d reach the station in Miami and be greeted by brilliant, warm sunshine and bottles of whiskey and claps on the back, and congratulations for surviving the worst that nature could throw our way. All of this I had imagined with such clarity that I knew it to be a lie. Like Leonard had said, it was a carrot my mind hung out of reach, distracting me from the fact that I was trapped in the mud and sinking—my journey at its end.

  Leonard stood to remove himself from my company and left me on the floor where I wandered my thoughts, like strolling along a city street, peering through a variety of windows, each showing me a place and time. The men shuffled around me and I noticed their legs, their dirty and wet trousers, and the muck on their boots, and I remembered my childhood with Marjorie.

  Our family gathered for Easter Sunday and we moved through the forest of legs, sneaking bits of chicken and savory roast pork and snatching sweet crumbs from the plate of cookies in the kitchen aware that mama would scold if she caught us scavenging morsels before the meal was served. Marjorie guided me, and I followed. And at a point she turned to me in a panic, tears glazing her eyes, and she whispered, “What are they all doing here? What do they want?” For her, all of the familiar faces suddenly belonged to malevolent strangers. Marjorie only recognized me, trusted me alone. She grasped my hand and dragged me from the house, and we raced into the fields and Marjorie cried, because the wheat was too low for us to tie the stalks together. There would be no tunnels in the wheat. No rounded hut, like a womb, for us to retreat into.

  Then a bomb went off, shredding Marjorie and the field and the sunlight, making it dark, and the legs I saw were clad in hoary frayed uniform trousers. The scents of wet wool, blood and rot filled my nose and throat, covering me like a fouled shroud. Once my rifle was reloaded, I returned to the lip of the trench and sighted, but the nursing mother, naked and peppered with wounds from scalp to toe strolled through the mayhem, walking directly for me, and when she reached the edge of the pit, she looked down on me and smiled. The bundle at her breast squirmed and kicked. I asked, “Who are you?” and she told me she was the Mother of Blood, and a bullet clipped the top of my helmet, yanking it from my head and sending me to the sucking black floor of the trench. The Madonna laughed cruelly and then hissed like a perforated canister of mustard gas.

  Then lightning struck and I stood on the beach, facing the grim sailors, but they were gone the moment the air cooled to black, and I stood at home plate in Hilltop Park and Graham Rowe stood on the mound, and he was naked and striking—his skin the color of death. In his hand, something small and red dripped crimson to the pitcher’s mound, and I waited for the pitch.

  Then glass shattered and my mind tried to recall the image that accompanied the sound, but there was too much shouting in the cramped post office and the legs about me took on a frantic shuffle like cattle in a pen. The dreams broke apart in my head.

  “It’s got Carlson,” a man shouted.

  I sprang to my feet and was jostled to the left by the uneasy herd. A man lay across the window frame, his enormous legs grasped in the filthy hands of workmen while his torso and head extended through the jagged remains of the pane. The workmen heaved; dragging the large man someone had called Carlson back into the post of
fice and with him came one of the grim sailors. His fingers raked into the fabric at Carlson’s shoulders, its face pressing close to the man’s scalp. The workmen heaved again until Carlson was fully inside the room and the monstrous sailor, clad only in strips of gray fabric hung over the sill. Through all of this, I had been moving, my legs carrying me without instruction toward the window.

  The men not holding Carlson had cleared the space around the window, cramping themselves into tight huddles. I climbed onto the counter. The sailor twisted his emaciated face in my direction, revealing a gaping mouth and snake-like fangs curling into his mouth and dripping with spit or venom. I kicked at the mouth. Once. Twice. The workmen hauled the devil deeper into the room and I jumped from the counter, landing solidly on the sailor’s back. A satisfying pop erupted at impact and the sailor yipped like a wolf in a trap. We dropped to the floor, and my boots sank into his ribs with further satisfying cracks as we hit the planks. Men moved in at my sides, delivering violent kicks to the man’s face and torso and stomps to his arms and hands. Carlson wriggled out of his slicker and rose to his full height, appearing like a giant in the small room, and he produced a knife from his belt, and then other men produced knives, others held clubs devised from the legs of a shattered chair, and I again found myself pushed by the tide of men, shoved off of the sailor’s back and pressed to the counter.

  Carlson gripped the hilt of his knife in both hands and dropped to his knees before the sailor, driving the blade with tremendous force through the back of his neck. Blood sprayed from the wound bathing the surrounding men and more came as Carlson worked the blade free for a second blow. The sailor’s extremities, having endured dozens of boot stomps, lay pulped and useless at his sides. Carlson drove the knife home a second time, piercing the dimple at the base of the sailor’s skull, and he worked the blade back and forth, slicing and chipping away at the spine connected there.

  I backed onto the counter, lifting my feet away from the spreading pool of blood, but the other men waded in; it seemed they all wanted to have a turn at the sailor. Shouted obscenities ricocheted from one wooden wall to another given ominous accompaniment from the howling storm and the clatter of debris striking the exterior of the post office.

  The display of rage seemed perfectly natural to me. We had been attacked and we were simply defending ourselves, but the assault against the prone man continued long after the threat of him was gone. Carlson ripped the head away leaving a ragged stump at the neck, and he placed the head at the feet of two men who took it upon themselves to crush the face under their boots. An eye came free of the sailor’s socket and teeth flowed from the mouth on a crimson stream. Bits of hair came away, stuck to the soles of boots.

  A frenzy built as men tried to get close enough to the sailor to deliver punishments of their own, but I continued to back away. The ritual of retribution seemed endless and might have continued all night, but a wailing noise, sounding miles away and yet so close froze everyone in the room.

  The evacuation train was pulling into the depot.

  The angered voices and the tromping boot heels abruptly silenced, leaving the torturous sounds of the storm. Every man stood mutely. Heads cocked in attention, listening for confirmation. The horn sounded a second time and the wail of the camp klaxon cried out in response. Celebratory cries rose in the post office and the men threw their hands in the air victoriously. Smiles cut through expectant expressions and men embraced in joy, their recent brutality already forgotten as they gathered their canvas kits and sang the praises of the Captain and the government and the Florida East Coast Railway.

  Bainbridge, whom I’d completely forgotten, placed his hand on my shoulder and gave it a squeeze. He appeared relieved though he didn’t smile, and he gave my back a sharp clap before setting off toward the door.

  In my mind, I calculated the distance to the depot. There was a short path, maybe fifty feet, to the highway and the tracks lay twenty yards beyond that. I could already picture the women grasping their children’s hands tightly as they led them from the schoolhouse to the station. I could picture men climbing onto the train and taking their seats and laughing in relief, and I could picture myself nestled comfortably in one of those seats, drifting off to sleep with the rumble of the wheels on the track.

  And it was this last fancy that served to convince me that any escape was impossible. Still, I waited with my heart in my throat as Bainbridge and another man knocked the locking plank from the brackets and pulled open the door. The storm howled but no battered sailors drifted into the room on its cries. If they had given up for the night, finally acquiescing to the power of the weather, I couldn’t say. The evening beyond the doorway was still black as pitch.

  The men filed out of the post office, some of them hesitating at the threshold, checking either side of the porch before bending forward against the elements and committing to the outdoors. I took up a position in the middle of the exodus, but I did not pause at the doorway. Instead I ducked my head and charged onto the porch and the walk beyond. The back of a broken chair flew by my head, hit the ground with a tumble and vanished in the gloom. Then I was clear of the post office and the wind slammed me low in the back, lifting my feet from the ground. Sand from the beach, carried like birdshot on the gusts, peppered my back and hissed as it blasted against my slicker. I caught my footing and managed three more steps before another gale threw me head first onto the highway. The world again tipped and I rolled with the unrestrained momentum of plummeting earthward from a dizzying height. I scrabbled for purchase, scraping my hands over the macadam I’d helped lay, and then I bounced into the air and came down on softer material. I yanked a clump of grass free and then another. Finally I managed to fight the wind and lay flat on the ground, staring upward at myriad shades of deepest gray churning like a vat of liquid charcoal. Rain sliced into my exposed face at sharp angles and began to fill the hood of my slicker. I took a moment to compose myself, breathing deeply and regularly until my wits had returned, and then I worked my way to my feet and continued the race to the train, which I knew must be ahead of me, though I could not yet see it.

  Eventually a pinpoint of light emerged from the darkness. I fixed on it like a lighthouse beacon.

  Soon enough the train appeared. Beside it, a man with a billowing oilcloth coat held a lantern in one hand and motioned with the other, waving me toward the engine, which appeared to be facing the wrong way. It’s nose pointed north into the line of train cars and I wondered if the locomotive had traveled the entire distance from Miami in this backwards manner.

  A gust of wind like a giant mallet struck me then. I flew through the air and collided with the side of the engine, pinned there by the merciless force and suspended three feet off the ground.

  Another river of wet sand blasted the side of the locomotive. I felt it slash my slicker, tearing innumerable holes in its fabric and the shirt beneath, but leaving my skin ostensibly unharmed. The signalman took the blast in the face. The grit shredded his cheeks and his eyelids. His lips peeled back and then vanished revealing a sickening grin before his flayed hand released the lantern and the scene went dark.

  The force slackened and I dropped to the ground before another gale pressed me again into the engine. From reflex I grasped a steel handle and held tightly.

  Water hit me at the knees. This was not a shower of hard rain spit at me from above, but a solid wave pushed across the camp from the ocean. In seconds I stood in a flood, holding onto the metal handle with all of my might as the tide rushed over my shins. So great was the current the train appeared to be moving, running southward through a pond, but the train was motionless. Water gushed over the sand and the tracks like a furious river, and my legs tore out from under me and I held tight to the side of the engine.

  Feeling an ebb in the pounding current, I managed to get my feet back on the ground. The only safety—if such a thing still existed—would be in the train, and I had to make my way to the west side where the cars blocked the
worst of the wind if I was to have any chance of getting inside. I struggled along the side of the engine, fighting the wind and the water. Then I slid around the back of the engine and left the ground again. The flood pressed me hard to the tail of the engine but the wind tried to snatch me away, creating a painful jostling that rolled me over the coupling and the pronounced metal ridges. The storm had trained my body, and once the conflicting elements again allowed me to set foot on ground, I crouched and leaned back and managed to waddle around the west facing side of the engine, which blocked me from the worst of the blow.

  Lantern lights burned in the depot, though the place was clearly empty, except for three corpses that floated face down in the water rising there. The ocean pushed in with one insistent wave after another. Another signalman stood in an open doorway halfway down the train, his lantern swinging frantically to guide the workmen. More men from the post office raced around me, using the flood to build momentum as they hurried for the safety of the cars and I saw them pile in by the depot lights, most ignoring the gesturing signalman and making their way into the first car they reached.

  I stumbled forward, hoping to join them, but as I neared the front of the engine, which nosed against the first passenger car, a hand slammed down on my shoulder, and I felt the puncture of fingernails in my skin. I was spun in the air and slammed against the iron siding of the engine again, but this time it was not the storm that held me.

  I looked down into the face of Graham Rowe. Water pooled and pushed at his knees. His open mouth revealed the same snake-like fangs as the grim sailor we’d destroyed in the post office.

  “Graham,” I said, my voice a whisper, weak with resolve.

  His head dropped to the side like a dog that doesn’t understand its command. His jaw slackened, and his eyes narrowed momentarily before flashing wide. Then I was falling and he was gone.