by Claire North
I turned towards it, walking by moonlight, skirting the edge of the old wildwood where the badgers snuffled beneath frozen trees. I clambered through a foot of untouched snow, stumbled through the churchyard of cracked stone, beneath icicles hanging from the old wooden gate. I followed the railway tracks, letting the whisper become a chant – “I love her, I love her not, I love her, I love her not.”
And finally, in the rising light of dawn, I saw him, heading towards me, dead ahead, shimmering tiny against the horizon. I nearly laughed to see him, my old friend, but the sound caught on the words that now rushed from my lips, unstoppable in their joy. “I love her, I love her!” I broke into a run, though he never changed his pace, reaching out for him, throat breaking in the frozen air, the sun a nail of white spilling at his back.
“I love her I love her I love her I LOVE HER I LOVE HER!”
Langa raised his hands to me as I ran to him, fingers outstretched, the fire still tumbling black from his broken flesh.
The tears spilt down my face as I reached out to greet him.
Chapter 77
Abbey was humming, a drifting, warbling note that he half held back with jaw clamped and mouth thin. It took me a moment to realise that his story was done, but that the truth was breaking up from within him, pushing and pressing against his soul, and that somewhere behind the noise were words that he could barely hold back.
I could hear my sisters running in the corridor, the thump of cannon too close, and rifles too, a snap-bang knocking against the night. Not night, I realised – not night. Just a day turned dark by the smoke tumbling across the window, a thick, greasy black that blotted out the sun. I looked at the professor, who was leaning over his son, pressing a hand to his sticky face, and I thought that maybe Charlwood – Richard – might not wake up, that he’d slept too deep, too long, and that the professor had come to watch his boy die.
Then Abbey blurted, because he had to speak, “She died instantly she died she died the shadow came and she died and Albert saw it too, he saw just for a moment the shadow rise from her chest and knew it was Langa, he knew it was Langa and he thought it was beautiful the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen God why would you forsake us why would you make these things teach us how to see how to learn what is our truth what is truth truth is all truth we look for truth for I hunted him I hunted him I wanted him to pay but he ran now he runs now he runs and hides hid in America for a while I looked for him there hid in Singapore I hunted him ran to India that’s where the trail went dead but his son! Oh his son was so brave wanted to be a brave little soldier ran away to war stupid stupid boy I would have kept you safe I would have spared you stupid so stupid so proud so brave so stupid look where you are now and that’s how I found him found his son found him just like Margot did…”
He stopped, sudden as he’d begun, gasping down the breath, pressing both hands over his lips, groaning, rocking, tears in his eyes. “Killed her killed her killed her loved her killed her he’s here he’s here he’s…”
The professor lunged forward so sudden, I hadn’t known he had it in him, flung himself round the bed and reached for the knife in Abbey’s hand. I stood frozen a moment, not knowing what to do as the two men swayed and struggled, but it were over before I could make a choice, Abbey shoving the professor back hard enough that he tripped and fell, then diving for Richard’s throat with the blade out.
I shouted something, maybe stop, tried to grab his hand, reached up with the morphine needle, and in the scuffle of hand and steel, found myself pressing it against Abbey’s neck. He froze, eyes meeting mine, lips trembling in a tangle, and there we were, I wish you’d seen it, Matilda, the four of us, such a bleeding mess. I didn’t know how we’d got here, didn’t understand what I was doing, but maybe like the man had said, it were both the stupidest thing I’d ever done, and that I was most proud of.
“Not this not this please not this if you can see please not this,” hissed Abbey, and it took me a moment to realise that he was speaking the truth of my heart, babbling out the terror of my soul that I were too busy to think on. Then his eyes darted to the professor and he hissed, “Not my son not my son not my son there’s so much I did wrong so much I failed at not my son please mercy mercy mercy I’ll do anything me instead not my son mercy – where was your mercy!?”
He screamed the question, screaming the only way he could get it out of his lungs, a blabbering, jabbered thing through the truth, and then was back again to his gallop, “Must get out leave the patients leave the patients must get out they were only going to die anyway they agreed to die I didn’t agree to die oh God forgive me I thought when tested I would be someone else…”
I stared into his eyes, trying to fathom whose truth this was now, and at the moment the door clicked and began to open had it solved, because I was standing stiff to attention, needle hidden in my apron, and Abbey had spun to face the window, shaking with the effort of keeping still, knife turned away and pressed against his body.
Matron burst in, and the terror that Abbey muttered was hers, and looking at this scene she saw at once the professor on the floor and barked, “Sir, you need to leave now! Sister Ellis, the kitchen, immediately!”
“Yes, Matron.”
She waited for us to obey, and when we didn’t, for the first time in her life she didn’t enforce her command. The earth shook and there was darkness at midday and Abbey whispered, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me, as Matron snapped, “Well – move!” and ran away before she could see her bidding done.
The door bounced back on its hinges as she scampered into the hall, the gunfire snapping now so near outside I thought I could feel the weight of the trigger on my own finger, feel the heaviness of it on my shoulder, feel the hearts of the men fighting they beat so close to mine.
I put the needle down, stood up straight by the soldier’s bed. “I have to evacuate the patients now, Dr Abbey,” I said, stiff as starch. “I am going to ask a sister to help me.”
Abbey turned slowly back from the window, and looked me in the eye, and smiled. There were tears in his eyes. “Asked Saira, at the end went to her asked her do I love her do I love Margot and she said ‘stupid man, stupid foolish man, I walked to keep you safe, you know I did that’ and she said ‘yes, yes you love her, you love her, you love her’, I loved her even at the end but she loved the fire more well it’s burning now, Margot, it’s all burning down.”
And his eyes went to the professor and he stammered, “Love my child love my child love my child we are all good men until we know the truths of ourselves God knows the truth I never believed in God but if there is no God how can we ever know the truth of anything at all except I love my child I love him I love him I love him.”
Slammed his hands over his lips, swallowing down the sounds, a half-howl, an animal cry. For a moment I thought he might cut himself, attack the professor, the child, me, and I snapped, “Abbey! Look at me!”
He did. “Matilda I wish you could see me now I think you’d be proud of me so proud of me doing the right thing someone has to do the right thing I’m brave for you brave for you so much easier to be brave for you simple now simple so simple now see? See how easy love could be?”
The words tumbled and his tears fell, and he smiled at me, and though I don’t know the truth of his heart, I think perhaps in that moment, he was grateful. I can’t pick at why, I don’t have a shadow that knows the truth, I don’t follow the songlines or know the secrets of the widows’ caves, but I do think he was grateful. Perhaps he were grateful cos in that moment, all I could think was how much I love you, Matilda. That was my truth. And it was simple. Finally, at the end, the simplest thing was true.
Then he turned to the professor, and raised his knife, point out towards the old man.
“Run,” he said.
For a moment, I thought the professor wouldn’t.
Abbey’s lips shivered with the effort of speech, his whole body quivering like the forest beneath the shelling.
Sometimes we don’t need a shadow to know the truth.
The professor looked at the doctor, and nodded, and turned, and ran.
Abbey swayed for a moment like a drunk man, then followed, shuffling like a shadow across the earth.
Chapter 78
The battle never broke through the walls of the Jardin du Pansee that day. The Germans made it across a trench, and overran the triage hospital, killing some, sparing some – there didn’t seem any order to it, any reason, whether you lived or died just depended on what soldier found you, how bright the blood burnt in their eyes.
They came to within a mile of our walls, and the shelling hit the garden, blowing apart the bench where sometimes I’d sit with Sister Helene, and blasting out all the windows on the east side. Matron was gone, evacuated with three others what were just the three she found near her when she bolted. The rest of us stayed, not because we weren’t scared, but because we were as scared of leaving as of going, and besides, the soldiers couldn’t leave. They couldn’t run away, and what kind of sisters were we if we left them to their fate? Life isn’t much worth living when you can’t live with yourself.
We dragged as many as we could from the windows, and the walking wounded from their beds, and piled them against the walls, thinking perhaps that might protect them when the shelling came. I don’t know if it would have. Within an hour, the counter-attack was under way, French troops from the Algerian corps, what were usually set only to digging and burying the dead, running into the machine-gun lines in torn coats and ragged shoes. They kept on shooting until night came – real night – and then finally they stopped, to count the dead. Everyone was back in their trenches, Germans on one side, our lot on the other, some seven hundred dead in between. Matron reappeared as if she had never been gone, with new orders and a little speech about keeping our nerve, as all around us the world burnt down.
I didn’t need no shadow to know the truth of Matron’s heart, and didn’t blame her for being human.
Of Dr Abbey, he were nowhere to be seen. Everyone assumed he’d just done a bunk.
But I heard later the story that I know was the truth, sure as I know any truths in this strange, spinning heart of mine.
I heard that at the very height of the fighting, as men cowered and blasted at each other through the trees, crawled on bellies through broken walls and cowered in the holes burnt by fire from the sky, two men were seen passing through the battle, as blind to it as if they had been hit by gas dropped from heaven.
The first man, old and dressed like a banker, far, far from his accounts and pen, scrambled and slithered through broken forest and over bloodied earth, now running, now gasping for breath; now stumbling into a creek where the dead were piled four deep, now crawling up untouched forest where still the blackbird hopped between the trees. A muddy, dishevelled shape, he paused sometimes to look back over his shoulder, as if fearful of the setting sun, and then ran on, and responded to neither German nor French, nor would he stop when the planes rattled overhead or the machine gun turned the spinning air to splinters.
And at his back, another figure moving through the smoke. He wore a doctor’s coat, but those who saw him said he was more akin to the figure of death, striding ever onwards, eyes set only towards his prey. He did not run; he did not stop. He had learnt long ago how the chase was done. He never slowed, never looked back, and it was said that all who saw him felt a darkness pass over their hearts, and that he shouted out in German, English and French to all who met his eye, and called them brothers, fellow travellers, heart’s kin, and knew their secrets, and forgave them all.
If you look down on the battlefield, you can see them now, I think, one running into the darkness, the other following. I do not know what will become of them; I do not know whether death is mercy, or love is easy, or vengeance is peace, or if all these things are lies, or truth, or if it is the truest thing of all to say that life is all of these, all of these truths together, in perfect contradiction, blinding us to a greater truth that lies beneath.
All I know is what I see.
Two men, running through battle, lost to any truth but their own, hunter and hunted, looking for a little mercy, a little knowing, as it has always been and will always be until the last fire burns away the hearts of men.
And behind them, the shadow.
Discover Your Next Great Read
Get sneak peeks, book recommendations, and news about your favorite authors.
Tap here to learn more.
extras
meet the author
Photo credit: Siobhan Watts
CLAIRE NORTH is a pseudonym for Catherine Webb, who wrote several novels in various genres before publishing her first major work as Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. It was a critically acclaimed success, receiving rave reviews and an Audie nomination, and was included in the Washington Post’s Best Books of the Year list. Her more recent novel The Sudden Appearance of Hope won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 2017. Catherine currently works as a theater lighting designer and is a fan of big cities, urban magic, Thai food and graffiti-spotting. She lives in London.
if you enjoyed
THE PURSUIT OF WILLIAM ABBEY
look out for
GHOSTER
by
Jason Arnopp
Kate Collins has been ghosted.
She was supposed to be moving in with her new boyfriend, Scott, but all she finds after relocating to Brighton is an empty flat. Scott has vanished. His possessions have all disappeared.
Except for his mobile phone.
Kate knows she shouldn’t hack into Scott’s phone. She shouldn’t look at his Tinder, his calls, his social media. But she can’t quite help herself.
That’s when the trouble starts. Strange, whispering phone calls from numbers she doesn’t recognize. Scratch marks on the walls that she can’t explain. And the growing feeling that she’s being watched.
Kate refuses to leave the flat—she’s not going anywhere until she’s discovered what happened to Scott. But the deeper she dives into Scott’s digital history, the more Kate realizes just how little she really knows about the man she loves.
CHAPTER ONE
27 August
Thirty-five days before he disappears off the face of the Earth, Scott Palmer stops licking his ice cream cone and lays that look on me.
That hungry wolf look. The one that leaves me way too keen to be devoured.
The glass sheet of the sea reflects a high mid-afternoon sun as Scott says, “Well, why don’t you live here, then? I’m serious, baby. Why don’t you move down here and live with me?”
He broaches this idea so casually that it feels neither huge nor stupid, despite being both of these things.
My brain pulsates and pops.
The stones of Brighton’s beach shift beneath me. The air around us, so thick with salt and sun cream, carries an exotic shimmer. The West Pier wobbles.
The next time I even think about my own ice cream, it’s because the thing’s melted all over my hand, then down my wrist.
If I were the kind of person who believes in bad omens, I might notice how this cream is chilling the blood in my veins.
I might notice how the skeletal West Pier resembles a burnt-out carcass.
I might even notice how the growing wind has prompted a lifeguard to stride over and plant a huge red flag in a nearby patch of stones.
Not being that kind of person, I notice these things only subliminally, while transfixed by the kaleidoscopic beauty of Scott’s eyes.
Hello. My name’s Kate Collins and I’m balls-deep in love with a walking question mark whose smartphone will one day show me all of his deepest, darkest secrets.
My grin covers my entire face as I tell Scott, “You know what? I reckon I could just about do that,
you lucky fucker.”
All I can think about is how I will never, ever, feel alone again.
CHAPTER TWO
2 October
Where the hell is Scott?
I pound my interlocked hands onto Roy’s sternum, pressing deep and hard to circulate blood. Each time I release, the suction effect allows his ribs to recoil and fills the heart again.
Too late. Roy’s light has already ebbed. Wide and blue, with that unmistakable cataract gleam, his eyes stare clean through me. It’s no surprise when there turns out to be no electrical activity in his heart.
Despite this flatline, I carry on for Pat’s benefit. I want her to know that we’ve done everything we can.
She wavers in the living room doorway with one liver-spotted hand cupped over her mouth. My colleague Trevor makes gentle but fruitless attempts to coax her onto the sofa, in case her legs give out.
When life becomes extinct, there’s always shock. Makes no difference whether people deny the facts of mortality, or contemplate death on a regular basis, or even actively plan for death, right down to the grim nitty-gritty of graves and urns. None of this makes any difference at all. Because in the end, they never truly believed this day would come.
Hey, here’s an idea. What if Scott’s every bit as dead as Roy?
I pound on Roy some more. The grating of the ribs I’ve broken feels horrible, as it always does. But even worse, his face has become Scott’s face, because I’m a massive weirdo whose imagination is liable to run away with itself.
Scott goggles blindly up at me, his eyes two blown bulbs. A thick purple tongue lolls in his open mouth.