by Crowe (epub)
All at once the pile began to rock. Men shouted out for whoever it was to stop, but one voice rose above the others in a high shriek.
“Dear God, no!” it screamed, not in pain but in terror. “What is that?”
Johnny felt heads around him turning toward the voice to try and see what was going on. The pile wobbled, then rolled. Someone’s knee or elbow plunged into Johnny’s wounded shoulder. Johnny thought he yelled out in pain but couldn’t tell. He had blacked out again.
Johnny let the cool night breeze wash over him. It felt good after the heat of the bodies and the stench of the pile to just lay here in the wet grass and ---
Johnny sat up, careful not to use his bad shoulder. He was free from the pile. Around him, wounded men were lined up in a row. Next to him lay the upside down man, who, like all the others, appeared to be in a deep sleep. Or dead, Johnny thought with a shudder. Try as he might, he couldn’t shake the thought. It didn’t help that each of the men had their arms crossed on their chests, the same way that Grandpa Crowe had been laid in his casket. Johnny looked down the row. The bodies reached as far across the field as Johnny could see, which wasn’t very far now that the darkness had settled in for the night.
Looking the other direction, Johnny saw that he was near the front of the line of men. It was much easier to see this direction. Just beyond the line of men, canvas tents had been set up in neat rows. The sight reminded him of the camp outside of Richmond, only each of these tents was marked with a big red cross on the side. Small greasy-looking fires had been set to illuminate the triage area and gave off thin lines of oily black smoke that rose straight up into the air, undisturbed by the gentle breeze. The camp was full of activity. Johnny could make out silhouettes moving about inside the tents, some tall and thin, others short.
The tall ones must be the surgeons, Johnny thought. The short ones almost looks like little kids in there. Puzzled, he watched while the tiny figures danced about in the light of the campfires. Wonder why they brought kids with ‘em?
Two of the shorter fellas were coming back toward the row of bodies. Something about them, about the way they moved and spoke in low guttural tones, just didn’t seem right. On instinct, Johnny laid back down, crossed his arms on his chest like the others, wincing as his shoulder screamed in agony, and scrunched his eyes. He left them open just enough to make out the shapes of the two little fellas against the firelight.
The two spoke in their strange little language. Johnny saw their glossy, obsidian claws glinting in the firelight when they ran their little black hands over the soldier laying at the front of the line, poking and prodding at the man’s wounded leg. One of the small creatures scurried up to the man’s head while the other worked his way to the man’s feet. They scrambled like rats over the soldier’s inert body, their tongues clicking and clacking. The one at the head called out something Johnny couldn’t understand and together the two hoisted the soldier up and hauled him into the nearest tent.
Just like rats. Johnny fought to suppress a shudder, remembering the rats that had swarmed onto the road and chased him and Bart all the way to Norman’s farm. Once the little fellas were gone, Johnny propped himself up to get a better view. The two imps swung the soldier’s body and tossed it onto the table, where it landed with a sick thud. The surgeon, who had his back to the proceedings, turned to the soldier, laid a long and sinister looking saw next to the unconscious man on the operating table. The soldier stirred and gradually awakened while the surgeon moved over to the bad leg. Johnny heard the soldier speak, his voice slurred at first, asking the doctor if he could save the leg. The doctor said something that Johnny couldn’t make out; it must have been some sort of joke since the surgeon and the imps burst out in laughter. The sound sent a shiver down Johnny’s spine. He saw the soldier try to sit up, panicked, but the imps jumped up onto the table and pinned him down at the feet and at his head.
A sound began to come from the tent while the surgeon rolled up the soldier’s pant leg. Johnny couldn’t place the sound at first, but soon realized that it came from the imps as they held the soldier in place.
Ah ha ha
Oh ho ho
Ah ha ha
Oh ho ho
Johnny listened, numbed by the rhythm. It seemed to have a similar effect on the soldier, who stopped struggling and lay still. With the leg exposed and the soldier no longer resisting, the tall, thin surgeon picked up the wicked looking tool and began to slice into the leg, his own voice added to the rhythm.
Ah ha ha
Oh ho ho
Hehehehehehehe
Johnny watched, feeling his stomach roll. On the Ah ha ha’s, the surgeon lifted the saw to his mouth. On the Ho ho ho’s, a serpentine tongue shot out and licked the blood from the blade. On the Hehehehehehehe’s, the surgeon sawed at the leg, his movements in perfect time with the rhythm. Blood pulsed out in thin streams, splattering the inside of the canvas tent.
The surgeon’s song weakened the enchantment. Johnny felt the urge to move return fighting through the numbness in his brain. Like before, the same effect was had on the soldier, who added his cries to the rhythm.
Ah ha ha
Oh ho ho
Hehehehehehehe
“No!”
Ah ha ha
Oh ho ho
Hehehehehehehe
“Oooohhhh!”
The soldier’s moaned and wailed throughout the amputation. Chunks of bone and flaps of muscle flew up in a cascade every time the surgeon sawed. Johnny looked away, and that’s when he realized the same thing was happening in each and every one of those tents. He could hear the rhythm being repeated all throughout the camp.
Ah ha ha
“Help!”
Ho ho ho
“No!”
Hehehehehehehe
“Unghhhh!”
Two more of the imps were coming toward the row of bodies. Johnny looked down, seeing that he was now third in line. He lay back down, in his terror he hardly even noticed his shoulder this time, and held as still as he could while the imps poked and prodded and hauled off the next soldier.
Johnny sprang to his feet. He hated the thought of leaving these men in the hands of the gruesome surgeons, but knew that if he didn’t get away and tell someone that he’d be no help to them at all. Johnny started down the line away from the tents and across the field, crouching low and moving as fast as he could while trying to remain as quiet as possible. It wasn’t long before he reached the tangled pile of the wounded, where two more imps were struggling to pull the bodies free and line them up with the others.
No good goin’ that way, Johnny thought. In spite of his dread, he turned and headed back toward the tents, then broke to his left a little ways from the camp. He worked his way around the tents, careful to stay out of the firelight and hidden in the shadows. Johnny found the road and worked his way to the north, remembering the tree line. If I can get in there, he thought, I could lay up for a while ‘til I was strong enough to go for help.
Johnny stepped on something soft, hearing it squish and feeling it roll beneath his boot. He fought to maintain his balance and held his breath, hoping that no one else had heard the commotion. He watched the camp, and when he was sure that no one was coming to check on the noise he lifted his foot and looked down. In front of him was the pile of amputated limbs, arms and legs pocked with bullet holes, sawed off by the surgeons and hauled out here by the little black imps. He lowered his gaze and looked at what he had stepped on. It was a man’s hand and forearm. Johnny could see grass poking up through the hole in the wrist.
In the nearest tent, the silhouettes of two imps lifted a soldier from the table. One of the imps dragged the body away while the second snatched the man’s amputated arm. Johnny ducked down behind the pile of limbs. Even when he did, it was clear to him that he couldn’t hide be
hind the pile; it just wasn’t big enough. The imp holding the amputated arm scuttled toward the pile. There was no time to try and run, he would be spotted for sure. Johnny fought back the urge to retch as he wormed his way into the pile of limbs, the sticky blood smearing his face and hands. The imp carried the amputated arm to the pile, tossed it in with the others, then walked back toward the tent. Johnny held his breath and remained as still as he could. Once he was certain the imp wasn’t going to come back, Johnny decided that he needed to get away right now, but where was that other imp? It wouldn’t do any good to try and escape from one if he ran right into the other.
Johnny crawled out of the pile of cold limbs and headed in the direction that the second imp had dragged the soldier. Up ahead was a long tent, bigger than any of the others he had passed. Another imp dragged a soldier missing both of his legs at the knees from one of the surgeon’s tents and hauled the man through the front flap. Beyond the long tent was the tree line. If he was going to cross into those trees, then Johnny’s would have to pass close to the big tent.
Maybe that’s where they’re takin’ the men to recover, Johnny thought without much conviction. If I could just see that they was goin’ to be okay, then I wouldn’t feel so bad about leavin’ them.
Johnny checked that the way was clear, then moved toward the big tent. It was lit from within by lamps hanging from the posts that gave the tent its structure, and Johnny couldn’t see the silhouettes inside. Creeping around to the long side of the tent, Johnny found a place in the canvas where the light poured through a tear in the fabric. He tiptoed over to the gap and peeked inside the tent. What Johnny found was far worse than anything else he had ever seen.
Inside, the soldiers were placed on a long table that ran the length of the tent. An imp stood on either side of the table where the men were loaded, turning on a long crank. While the imps cranked, rollers on the top of the table carried the men down the line toward more of the ghastly surgeons, each armed with those same sinister blades. As the soldiers rolled by, each surgeon sawed off his piece, one the left arm, another the right leg, until all that was left was the head and torso. These limbs they chucked behind them into wagons, one cart full of right arms, one full of left legs, and so on. At the end of the line stood one final surgeon, possibly the most gruesome of them all. He was big and muscular, in stark contrast to the wisp-thin surgeons around him, and he hefted a large axe. When the limbless body got to him, the bullish surgeon raised his axe high and with a single chop separated the head from the body. Two final imps collected the head and torso and piled them onto two separate carts.
Johnny was horror-stricken, stunned and unable to move or will himself to look away, until a shriek of rage pierced the night.
Hob waited around for Nob. He had just tossed another arm into the discard pile while his partner had dragged the rest of the body to the processing tent. When Nob arrived, the two scampered over to the line of men, ready to take the next one to the surgeon. They both knew that this kind of work was essential to the Master’s plan, and both knew better than to say anything bad about the Master or his plan out loud, but neither could wait until the work was finished and the real fun could begin.
The two went up to the next soldier in line, this one with a bad foot. While Nob moved on up to the head, Hob looked over to the next soldier in row. Where there should have been another wounded soldier there was nothing but grass, a break in the line. Nob called out to lift, but Hob cut him off, pointed to the hole in the row. The two stared at the empty space when two more imps came up behind them. Hob pointed to the empty space, and spoke to the others in their impish language. The other two imps looked at one another, then shrugged. Not our problem. The bigger of the two pushed the Hob aside and they each grabbed one of the soldier’s legs and took off, dragging him toward their tent.
Hob got up and shook his fist after the two, then looked to Nob, who was still holding the soldier’s head. Nob tossed it aside; the Master had made it clear that dead men were no good to them. Hob dropped to his belly and saw the man-sized footprints in the wet grass. Nob joined him and the two looked up, their eyes following the prints up and down the line of bodies, then veering off to the side of the camp. Hob let out a howl of rage and the two set off following the prints.
Johnny tore through the woods, hearing the imps crashing through the brush behind him. They were gaining on him. His eyes darted back and forth, searching for some place to hide but finding nothing. His chest heaved and his shoulder ached. He was weak from a loss of blood and not having eaten since Lord knows when. What it all added up to was this: try though he did to get away, in the end, Johnny was caught.
The two imps hauled him as fast as their stubby little legs could go, back through the trees and undergrowth toward the camp. Johnny was tired, wounded, hungry, and miserable. He didn’t much care about what happened to him at this point. He gave up, closed his eyes and let himself be carried back to camp to be cut into pieces.
His eyes closed, Johnny saw Anna Lee’s tear-streaked face. He heard himself telling her that he would come back and that they would be married. Here he was, feeling sorry for himself and about to let that promise be broken.
“No!” Johnny shouted, twisting and thrashing about. “Let me go!” He felt the imps dig their little black claws into his flesh, tightening their hold. “I wanna live!”
The imps said something in their odd little language that Johnny took to mean that they had heard this all before.
“I mean it,” Johnny cried out. “I’ll do anythin’… just put me down!”
No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Johnny hit the ground. The fall knocked the wind out of him and set his shoulder afire again.
“What have you got to live for, anyhow?” asked a gruff voice.
Johnny sat holding his shoulder. His shirt was tacky with blood from the pile of limbs and from his oozing wound. He had looked around for the imps, but they appeared to be long gone. Johnny was all alone in the woods, except for the sharp-dressed fella who sat across from him.
The stranger looked a bit like Doc Lawson in his dress. He wore a brown, wool suit and matching bowler hat. He even wore the same style of spectacles as the Doc, the ones with the wire frame and little round lenses. However, that was where the similarities ended. Where the Doc was tall and thin, kinda like those surgeons, Johnny thought with a shudder, the stranger was short and stocky. He was a hairy man. Coarse black hair poked out from under his hat and hung around his shoulders. More poked out the sleeves that covered his long arms. Further, while it was hard to tell when the stranger was sitting down like he was now, his shoulders slumped forward, giving his back a pronounced hump and causing his knuckles to hang just above the ground when he walked.
The stranger had picked Johnny off of the ground and helped him to a sitting position. He didn’t seem the least bit concerned when Johnny rambled on about little black imps and tall surgeons, about the grizzly scene back at the triage camp, about how they needed to get out of here in a hurry and get some help. The stranger parked himself on a moss-covered stone, took out his pipe, and lit it with a flick of his fingers. Johnny tried to think of something to say to make this man understand the urgency, but when he looked into the stranger’s eyes, he felt his own cares begin to melt away.
“What a lot of nonsense,” the stranger said in his deep, gravelly voice. Now that Johnny thought about it, being that he wasn’t so frantic nor all alone anymore, he realized that the scene he had just described didn’t make any sense at all.
“But… I was just…”
“You were just laying here on the ground hollering that you would do anything to have a chance to live.” The stranger pointed at Johnny’s shoulder. “I suspect you were out of your head with that shoulder wound. Delusional. Seeing things that weren’t really there.”
Johnny hung his head. He knew what he had seen, didn’
t he? Wasn’t it all so real?
“What I want to know is what’s so important that you need to live for.”
As if hypnotized, Johnny told him all about Anna Lee and about how he had joined the army in order to become somebody she could be proud of, a success. Johnny told him about how he promised Anna Lee that he’d come back, that they’d be married, that they’d live together and raise a family up on Devil’s Knob.
“That’s a funny name for a place,” the stranger interrupted. For a fleeting moment, Johnny thought he saw flames leap up in the man’s eyes, but passed it off as one of those delusions the fella had talked about. “Why do they call it that?”
“Not sure,” said Johnny. “That’s just what it’s always been called.”
“You never saw the Devil up there, though,” the man asked. “Have you?”
Johnny couldn’t tell if the stranger was fooling with him or not.
“No,” said Johnny.
“How do you know?”
“How do I know what?”
“How do you know you never saw the Devil before?” the stranger asked. “What do you think he’d look like?”
“Don’t guess I ever gave it much thought,” Johnny replied. “But I think I’d know if I saw the Devil.”
“Give it some thought now,” said the man. “What would he look like?”
“Well,” said Johnny, “I guess he’d have horns…”
“Uh huh.”
“…and a tail…”
“Go on.”
“…and hooves and a pointy beard,” Johnny finished.
“Yeah,” said the stranger. “I’ve heard that story, too. But,” he said, leaning in close to Johnny, his voice a whisper now, “what do you really think he looks like?”
“I don’t know,” Johnny whispered back.
“Well, then,” the man said, leaning back against a tree, “I guess the description you gave is as good as any, hmm?”