Return of Souls

by Andy Remic

  The Rusting Jungle. “Nightmare into Reality.” 28th. September 1917.

  IN THE TRENCH. DARKNESS. The rain had stopped. Dark clouds bunched like iron bruises over the trenches. The whine of warfare was distant, growling, a caged beast that never settled.

  Jones opened his eyes, groaned, and rubbed them. He heaved himself to his feet, clothes already sodden with muddied water and old black oil. There came a tinkle of laughter in the distance. And nearby, heavy footfalls on three-inch boards.

  Jones, looking nervously behind him, began to run. He had no other option. He scrambled through a trench unfamiliar to him, then clambered up a ladder with a singular thought: end it. End it now.

  He stood, silhouetted against the wire, his rifle above his head, his mouth open in a silent scream. But . . . no guns roared. There were no shots. No shells.

  In the distance came flashes, white blasts of light, flares, the boom of guns and the scream of crumps. Jones looked around, eyes narrowed as breath steamed from his hot, twisted mouth. Old metal speared from the ground, rusting and obscene, phallic protrusions of ancient weapons long disused. Barrels were piled in one trench, their surfaces scratched and black and pitted. To one side sat tight coils of burnt barbed wire. An old motorcycle listed, the wheel of its sidecar dangling over the gaping maw of a trench slit.

  Jones turned around, gazing at the debris. He began to walk, slipping past a pile of old rotten tyres smothered in foul black oil. Metal spiked from the ground in an attempt at tripping him. Wire tried to tangle his legs. A pile of old bayonets glinted evil in their pit, castoffs from another war.

  Jones stopped beside a flooded trench and stooped, hands on knees, panting, sweat dripping from his brow. There were no sounds of pursuit. No more ghostly laughter.

  He rested against his rifle and peered over the lip of the trench. Dark oil sat heavy on the surface of the foul-smelling water. The flooded trench was perfectly still, a black mirror from which his own face peered back. Silence seemed to drift. The wind sighed, the last breath of a settling corpse.

  A lone bird drifted high against the bruised clouds.

  Its song, mournful and bleak, cut across the sky . . .

  A snarl erupted in Jones’s ear, and it was behind him, a walrider, vicious fangs crunching, as a droplet of sweat fell from Jones’s brow, impacted, rippled the mirror so the image was instantly distorted . . .

  Jones whirled, rifle coming up, but too late! It stepped forward, claws slashing at his face, and Jones stepped back, plunged into the flooded trench with a scream that drew oily water into his lungs as he sank back, kicking, forced down into the depths of watery darkness.

  He came up choking, vomiting oil and stagnant water, and went under once more with arms flapping; he tried to swim, but the convulsions in his body forced him into instant panic, and this dragged him down deeper until his boots touched the duckboards and kicked against something soft. His eyes flickered open in this watery underworld, and despite the blackness, he could see the vague outline of a Tommy, boots caught beneath rotting duckboards, face a dark pink and mottled black in a state of advanced putrefaction. His dead mouth was a bleak O, as if he were screaming.

  Jones kicked out hard, breaking the surface with a gasp and splash, and his hands managed to grasp a limp, rotting ladder, which he clung to for dear life.

  He finished choking and spat, and spat again. He could feel oil on his teeth, on his tongue, a slick coating in his throat. His eyes stung and his ears were blocked with filth. His hair was cold and matted, lank against his face.

  He managed to get his eyes open and through a blur of tears and anger saw the creature squatting beside the trench, with only a few feet of water between them, its figure shrouded in darkness, its face almost hidden—almost. It was a twisted face, slanted grey eyes, yellow fangs, and helmet merged with its slightly bulging skull.

  “I hunt you,” said the creature, voice sibilant.

  Jones coughed, shivering, and tightened his grip on the ladder. The short stretch of water between them was not enough to give him confidence. And he’d lost his rifle. Bastard.

  “Well, come and get me, then,” he hissed, lifting his head, eyes burrowing into the solid stare of the creature.

  The walrider laughed, a curiously melodious sound, out of place, disjointed, fractured from the grim reality of the surroundings.

  “Why would I want to come in there?” asked the creature, and squatted down on the ground, its claws digging into the old sandbags lining the trench. Sand trickled from one split sack and spread across the oil in a swirling, circular dance.

  Jones said nothing.

  “Why come in there when I can bring you to me? Any time I like. You are a toy, little man, a toy with which I play . . . I am hunting, hunting you in this life, and I hunt you after your death. I hunt you in your dreams. I hunt you in your nightmares. I hunt you for pleasure, and for pain, for sport, and fear. I am your worst nightmare, Robert Jones of the Welsh Fusiliers . . .”

  “What? But . . . Why me?” spluttered Jones, and jumped as the corpse from the bottom of the trench bobbed up beside him, its eyes white amidst the mottled, rotten flesh. With a shaking hand, Jones pushed the corpse away and watched it drift off down the trench, silent and eerie.

  The creature shrugged under its heavy German overcoat. Still Jones could not see properly. He rubbed his red-rimmed eyes, but succeeded only in introducing more oil.

  “Why not?” replied the walrider.

  “Kill me, then, if you must,” snarled Jones. Anger surged through him like a train wreck.

  “I don’t need to kill you,” purred the creature, and it rose up above Jones, and he blinked as the creature opened its arms wide and seemed to flood out like dark smoke, filling the sky. “There are a million men waiting to do it for me.” And the creature laughed again, a booming, rich, choking laughter filled with hate and contempt for man and for humanity. “You see, your God is of no use now, little man. Your God deserted you centuries ago. He left you stranded in a world you did not understand; he left you to destroy yourselves, so little did he think of you and your evolution. You are pitiful, and I despise you.”

  The creature spat and turned; there was a flash of white—vertical white—and then it was gone, and Jones was left alone, clinging to the rotting ladder, his eyes full of oil, his heart full of despair.

  “We will meet again, little man,” came the creature’s voice. “My name is Five Stripe; remember it well.” And then the world was filled with a terrible, heavy silence, and Jones clung to the ladder and cried tears of black oil that smeared his cheeks, and he forced down his head with shame for what he was and what he had done.

  In the distance, a mortar bomb exploded. The ground shook. Ripples spread across the flooded trench. Further down the trench, the dislodged, bloated corpse bobbed against rusting barbed wire. Rotting flesh tore with ease, allowing pus to mix with the trench water.

  “What have we done?” whispered Jones.

  Ypres Salient (3rd. Battle of). Battle of Passchendaele. 14th. October 1917.

  JONES RAN THROUGH THE mud, struggling on, his rifle in steady hands, his comrades around him and before him, the occasional burst of enemy machine-gun fire making him duck his head.

  A white-hot explosion. Men screamed. Were kicked into the air like dolls.

  Jones hit the ground hard on his belly, air expelled from lungs, mud splashing his face, grit worming into his eyes. He could suddenly hear rattles, the gas rattles, and a fear took hold of him as he scrambled for his mask.

  “Mustard!” screamed a distant voice.

  Bullets flew, whined, crumps hammered, and Jones drew on his mask and the world became glass, as under a dark ocean. Events seemed to slow, viewed through the twin circles. An artillery shell exploded to the right, and Jones winced and watched it in horror . . . It was widely known the Germans now enclosed chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas in artillery shells and mortar bombs, and Jones felt the blast through his boots, so close
had it been . . .

  To his right, men started to scream, scrabbling at their masks and rolling on the ground, choking. Panic spread like a virus through the ranks and soldiers sprinted madly for cover, only to run into drifting patches of the chemical weapon . . .

  Jones kept low and crawled, sometimes on his belly, sometimes his hands and knees. Machine guns cut through struggling, screaming Allies, bullets punching them from their feet in sprays of pulsing blood. Jones came upon a man without a mask, writhing on the ground. His first, instinctive thought was to crawl away, but the pain in the man’s eyes, in his choking contortions, forced Jones into action. Taking a deep breath and closing his eyes, he removed his own mask and tried to force it over the man’s face, but the soldier—a Frenchman—must have thought Jones an enemy because he started to struggle violently, cursing in French, screaming in French, as Jones felt his skin start to tingle and then burn, and the mask was wrenched from his hands, and with burning eyelids Jones staggered to his feet and sprinted in the hope of leaving the gas behind . . . He didn’t dare open his eyes for fear of blinding himself, and he tripped over a low barrier of rocks—rocks that had once formed a stone wall but had been pounded into a smashed oblivion. He went down hard, tumbling and hitting his face on stone.

  He lay still, not daring to breathe, his face and neck and hands burning and sending shivers of pain through his body. He cursed the French soldier, his stupidity . . . and then cursed his own stupidity at trying to save the man. Now he was lost in No Man’s Land, mustard gas surrounding him, and without a ——ing mask . . .

  Maybe it’s time to die, he thought, mind strangely calm, as rifle shots echoed to his left. Machine-gun fire churned mud twenty or thirty feet behind him. This time, he did not flinch. He was beyond the terror. Death was a second away.

  He crawled in close to the wall and waited, hugging the stone, the burning making him want to scream as it got worse, began to eat his living flesh. And then he could wait no longer, and he gasped like a stranded fish at the air around him, sucking in great lungfuls and waiting for it to send shards of broken glass tearing through his windpipe . . .

  But . . . nothing.

  He breathed.

  And then pain hit him like a sledgehammer, and he tried to scream but his throat and lungs and chest were on fire, and he was gasping and choking and heaving, the pain on his hands and face forgotten but his eyes squeezed tight shut, brain slamming the thought, save your sight, save your sight, and the fire raging through his lungs and eating his lungs and burning his insides and his tongue was molten and his throat was being ripped from his body and ripped from his flesh, and he could hear other screams, high-pitched screams, and with shock he realised they were of his own making, producing these impossible noises, his own mouth and lips and throat wailing, wailing, sobbing . . .

  The fire was inside him, violating him, raping him with its toxic filth.

  He held his breath as long as he could so as not to cause more damage.

  Redness formed behind his eyelids. For long minutes, Jones thought the gas was burning through his eyes.

  He fell into a dark realm of unconsciousness.

  Fell down a long well of burning agony.

  Jones awoke.

  He took a deep breath.

  Pain washed him with an icy purity.

  He vomited on the burnt grass, heaved, and heaved, and then looked up, eyes watering but his sight intact.

  Thank . . . God.

  Tenderly, he touched his face; could feel the burns scarring his flesh, looked down with horror at his hands and the burns searing across the skin, great sores, weeping, cooking him with agony.

  He breathed, rasping breaths.

  He was alive.

  Slowly, he grasped his SMLE with shaking hands and looked over the wall. Am I dreaming? he asked himself, and he could feel eyes upon him and knew not whether he slept or strode the land of the living.

  Wind howled across No Man’s Land, rattling the arcs of barbed wire on their crooked supporting poles.

  There was no other sound.

  Jones got slowly, painfully, to his feet, hindered by his burning throat and lungs. He wheezed, unable to take in full breaths of precious air, and suddenly he knew what it was like to drown, only to drown in air polluted with chemical filth rather than under a beautiful ocean.

  He moved out over a section of burnt grass and plunged into the churned mud. Still he could feel hidden eyes following him, and he stumbled on, gasping, trying to fuel his muscles into action but unable to give himself true strength. Before his eyes, his hands were a blistered nightmare. He did not dare think about his face.

  Suddenly, he saw dancing figures in the distance, kicking up mud and cavorting between stumps of blackened trees, their German long coats swirling about their hefty black boots. Jones stumbled on, unaware of his location, not caring of the direction in which he struggled, only knowing he had to get away from his pursuers . . .

  Although he carried his SMLE, it did not occur to him to fight.

  He ran, across the broken land, with the swirling dancers following, cackling, their claws gleaming.

  And he knew.

  He had reached a point of insanity, of breakdown, and the dark crow had taken him in its wings and enfolded him with dark feathers. And although his mind struggled to break free, it was no use, for the wings were tight and the feathers stank of old oil which filled his burnt nostrils and . . .

  Suddenly, he was amongst the tanks, in a mud-stretched field of tanks, their engines rumbling, fumes filling the air and making his failing eyesight hazy. He tore at his hair and screamed, for the tanks were all around, a maze, and the hunters cavorted after him through this paused battleground, and he ran left and right, but always they followed, zigzagging, cavorting, and Jones ran on, cutting a random path through the tanks belching fumes, immobile, stationary, rumbling and growling and threatening, and Jones could hear the voice of Five Stripe, the leading walrider he had met back in the flooded trench, and it was taunting him with words of terror, words of horror.

  And he learnt Five Stripe had begat creatures, and he could not ignore this one fact, this one beloved fact, that with Five Stripe, one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day, and Five Stripe is not slow about his promise as some count slowness but is forbearing toward you, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance and all should perish and all should burn but the day of the Five Stripe Lord will come like a thief and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise and the elements will be dissolved with fire and the earth and the works that are upon it will be burned up burned with gas and fire and gas and Jones was falling out of his dream, and could see himself running between the tanks, staggering, his breath wheezing from damaged lungs, and mocking words echoed, chanted, as if in ancient rite and ritual, eat him burn him kill him eat him devour his body and body and soul and host and soul and soul, and he stumbled, fell against a rumbling, choking tank, fell into the mud, and the creatures leapt, were upon him, their claws tearing at his legs, ripping into his flesh, piercing him, tearing him open.

  A voice suddenly boomed. Tears ran down Jones’s face. The voice belonged to Bainbridge!

  Thunder echoed in the heavens, lightning slashed the sky into jigsaw tatters, and machine guns roared, and roared, and tore, and maimed with bright splatters of poppy blood. There came sudden ripe thumps, and the creatures screamed, contorting in agony, and Jones watched them flee screaming and spouting blood and fire, and Jones was swallowed by a soul-crushing blackness, with fleeting sensations tingling at the outermost edge of his senses . . .

  He felt fingers take his hand. But they were rough, like bark.

  The scent of the forest rushed over him, cooling him, soothing his burns.

  A powerful grip squeezed his fingers.

  “I have you, boy,” came a gentle voice, a voice like the sighing of autumn leaves.

  Part Two

  Castle Shell

/>   Woodland Dreams. 20th. October 1917.

  ROBERT JONES AWOKE in a tangle of woodland bracken beneath the spreading branches of an ancient, twisted ash, limbs rising above him like knobbled arthritic fingers. He was dazed, filled with pain, and a low groan escaped his scorched lips. He rubbed at eyes which burned with a hot intensity, and opening them with an air of caution, he gazed at the diffused glow of the surrounding trees.

  All about were scattered dense sycamore and maple, and weak green shafts filtered from above. Jones pushed himself into a sitting position and leant his back against the ash tree. He looked at his fingers and noticed clay sat under his nails. His neck ached, his chest burned, but he was alive.

  “I am alive.”

  He forced words through dirty teeth and concentrated on breathing for a long while. His throat and lungs were tender, and he was crying in pain after a few moments. But he laboured on, laboured to breathe—fought to live.

  Jones pushed himself away from the tree, and crawling across the ground, he found something hard pressed into his hands like a gift. It was his SMLE. With burning fingers he carefully fished out a magazine from his pouch and sat there on a pile of damp and rotting leaves, pushing bullets into the cartridge with hard clicks. He slotted the magazine into the rifle and then slung it across his back.

  His entire body screaming, he set off crawling across the woodland. Twigs bit at his fingers, and the damp, cold smell of decaying undergrowth filled his nostrils like ash from a funeral pyre. But fear had left him, and thoughts of madness had left him, and for the first time in months, his mind was perfectly calm. He was filled with stillness, a central core of perfect clarity.

  He crawled for a while, unsure of his direction. And then, stopping, he used a nearby sycamore to help him gain his feet. Leaning against the broad trunk, he took a piss which burned, and rested his head against the damp rough bark.