Halfway Down the Stairs

by Gary A Braunbeck

  And so Edward Something-or-Other, heroic warrior and village handyman, began to speak less and less, until, at last, he spoke not at all...except to the priest.

  Everyone in the village took to calling him only “Soldier Boy,” and found much humor in it. Edward Something-or-Other merely nodded his head and went about his business. He took to wearing a bandage on the space where his nose used to be. The bandage reached the back of his head and was kept in place with a safety pin. He covered the lower half of his face with a long grey scarf, which he liked to imagine flowed in the wind behind him as he walked, like in the old photos and drawings he’d seen of the aviators in their planes as they flew over the battlefields of Europe. Perhaps, he fantasized, people would see him walking with his flowing scarf and think to themselves, “This is an heroic-looking fellow, and I know he was in the war and was given many medals, perhaps he deserves more respect than we have given to him.”

  But this never happened.

  People left him alone, save for those times when a merchant in the village needed something repaired, or hauled away, or a local farmer needed someone to help spread fertilizer. Edward Something-or-Other was the boy for the job; quiet, a bit disturbing in appearance but seemingly pleasant in nature, no job too hard or too dirty or too undignified.

  The odd jobs became sparse, so Edward Something-or-Other, under the name “Soldier Boy,” became a fighter with a local carnival. He wore a mask and boxing trunks and was said to be able to knock out any and all challengers before the end of Round One. This he did three times a day, six days a week, throughout the spring and summer. He was always careful never to hit any of his opponents in the face for fear he might leave permanent damage; a good, solid blow to the center of the chest usually did it. “Soldier Boy” was never once knocked down, never lost a fight, and made a great deal of money as a result, though he continued to live as he always had; frugally, in a small and sparse room, continuing to do odd jobs in the village whenever they were offered.

  Still, there were times, late at night as he lie in his bed trying to remember what his old face had looked like, when he longed to hear the cheering of the crowds as he fought. There, in the ring—even if it was with the carnival—he was, for a little while, admired and cheered as a hero, and no one cared what he looked like.

  But like the scarf and his hopes it gave him the air of a hero, it was only something to cheer him a little before he fell into sleep, a little something to help keep the bad dreams away.

  The village grew as more children were born and they, in turn, grew to have families of their own. Every summer people came to cheer “Soldier Boy” as he fought his opponents in the ring at the carnival. He was so tall and strong that tiny children would ask to climb on him as if he were a mountain. Edward enjoyed the children, their laughter, the touch of their warm and affectionate hands on his arms, the way they would hug him.

  Those who had been alive when he returned from the war grew old and died; only a few remained, and their memories grew dim and fragmented.

  “Who is the big fellow who wears the scarf?” younger villagers would ask.

  “I don’t quite remember,” the older ones would reply. “I think he was a hero in the war or something.”

  “Why does he hide his face?”

  Then they would remember: “Because he doesn’t have one. That’s ‘Soldier Boy.’”

  Children stopped wanting to play with him after that.

  One morning, after cleaning up a local merchant’s basement after heavy rains had caused the sewers to back up, Edward Something-or-Other was drinking a glass of water (being careful to hold the rim of the glass under his scarf) when the merchant asked of him: “Did you see many men die during the war?”

  Edward Something-or-Other looked at a space in the air as if it contained a window only he could see through, and beyond this window he seemed to see something that haunted him and made him sadder than he was, and instead of answering the merchant with words, he gave a slow nod of his head, but his eyes betrayed that there was much more to his silence and melancholy than this gestures revealed.

  What he did not speak of to the merchant that day, what he dared not tell anyone except the priest, was this: he suspected that he was not supposed to have lived, that he somehow had been accidentally passed over by Death that day on the battlefield when the shells were screaming and the mortars exploding and the mines reducing men to chunks of searing meat.

  And he suspected this because of the ghosts.

  Now, whether they were actual ghosts, he was not at first certain. He only knew that one night, while he sat in his room reading and listening to his tiny radio, a dog began to howl outside his window. The dog sounded frightened, and so Edward Something-or-Other went outside (taking care to first don the scarf so his face would not alarm anyone who might happen by) and lifted the dog in his strong arms. The animal continued to stare down the darkened street and whine, then snarl, and, at last, bury its head in the crook of Edward’s arm.

  A procession of figures came out of the darkness, walking without sound, all of them carrying burning candles. As they passed by the opened door of Edward’s room, he saw that they were all figures of dead soldiers, many of which he had stepped or fallen over on the battlefield. Some were missing arms, others legs, and many, like Edward himself, were missing parts of their faces. It was these figures—those missing facial features—who slowed their step as they passed by his doorway and nodded to him like old friends. They spoke to him, whispering secrets, imparting promises.

  At last one of them—an older man, missing forehead and one eye—broke away from the procession and came toward Edward and gave him a lighted candle.

  “Keep this nearby,” he said to Edward, “and the next time we pass through this ungrateful place, give it back to me.”

  And with that, he fell back into the procession of dead soldiers and followed them through the streets of the village and into the darkness of the night into eternity.

  Edward took both the candle and the dog inside. He allowed the dog to sleep at the foot of his bed. The candle he placed on his nightstand and let it burn through the night as he slept.

  He kept hearing the old man’s voice calling the village an “ungrateful place,” kept seeing the hatred that was in his eyes as he said it, listening as the night carried echoes of the disgust in his voice.

  Or perhaps that was all part of his dreams.

  * * *

  When he woke the next morning, he saw that sometime during the night the candle had changed into the faceplate of a skull.

  The dog at the foot of the bed would not look upon the face. It growled when Edward tried to touch it, then bolted out the door and down the road in the same direction taken by the ghosts.

  And it was then Edward Something-or-Other realized that he had been destined to die in battle and not come home with this grotesque remnant of a face.

  He went to confession and spoke to the priest. Edward spoke slowly, for his dentures and hoarseness made speech difficult, as did the drooling because he could not swallow at all today. He also spoke in this manner because the priest was now so very old and had trouble hearing.

  “Father, they told me that if I were to solve the riddle of the Old Man’s Candle, then they would give me back my face.”

  “Your actual face?” asked the priest.

  Edward hesitated a moment before answering. “No, Father, not exactly. One said he would give to me his ears for the sides of my head; another promised me his nose so that I would no longer have to wear this bandage; and yet another said that he would give me his teeth so I wouldn’t have to wear these dentures and pretend to not notice when the people laughed at me because sometimes they become loose and click.”

  “Do you believe them to be ghosts?”

  “Yes, Father. I recognized some of them from their bodies on the battlefield.”

  “This riddle you speak of—”

  “The Riddle of the Old Man’s Candl
e.”

  “—yes. Do you know its solution?”

  “No. The candle, Father, it...it changed during the night.”

  “How did it change?”

  “It became...well....” Edward reached into his sack and removed the faceplate and showed it to the priest.

  “Lord save us,” the priest whispered.

  “I know what it is, Father,” said Edward. “It is the bone of my face as it will appear when it has been healed and made whole again.”

  The priest gave the faceplate back to Edward, who, feeling embarrassed and humiliated, slipped it quickly back into his bag.

  “Do you read your Bible, Edward?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Do you remember what Jesus said to the leper who asked that He heal the sores which covered his body?”

  “No, Father, I don’t.”

  “Jesus said: ‘Heed not the clay countenance that is the flesh, for bright be the face of the soul.’”

  Edward said nothing for several moments.

  “Edward?”

  “Yes, Father?”

  “Do you believe that, if these spirits indeed are real, that they will keep their word?”

  “I’m not sure, but I suspect not.”

  “Ah—you still believe that you were meant to die in that battle?”

  “Yes.”

  The priest was silent, deep in thought and seemingly troubled by what he was about to say. At last, he leaned forward and whispered: “This is what you must do, Edward; take a candle from the altar and I shall bless it for you. Take that candle home and light it and then set it upon the face of the skull you have shown to me. Allow the wax to melt so that it covers the entire face, let it dry and harden, and then set three more candles on it—two on the sides, to represent where your ears should be, and one in the center, to show where your nose once was. Do this, and then wait for the spirits to return to you. Only then should you light the three candles and return it to the old man.”

  Edward did as the priest instructed.

  Autumn passed into Winter, and then came Spring and still the sprits had not returned.

  Edward Something-or-Other came to believe deep in his heart that he was not meant to be here, and wondered how many more there might be who were like him, if they too ached for company as they lived out their days in ungrateful places.

  Summer arrived, and with it the carnival and the rides and the ring and the return of “Soldier Boy”—only now there not so many to cheer his battles. He fought well but without the energy of years past. He was knocked down once by a young man from another village, but managed to rise and defeat his opponent.

  He looked once into the crowd and saw, sitting among the spectators, those spirits whose faces were incomplete as his own.

  He knew they would be coming for him soon.

  Summer passed into Autumn and with its passing came the dry, whispering leaves which skittered along the streets during the day and gathered in dark corners at night.

  It was on just such a chill and whispering Autumn night that the dog returned to Edward’s window, howling.

  “How are you, old friend?” asked Edward as he came outside and lifted the dog into his arms. He wore neither the scarf tonight nor the bandage; his face was, for the first time in many decades, exposed fully to the world...but no one was there to see it.

  The dog buried its face in the crook of Edward’s arm as the procession of the dead came out of the darkness, their candles burning bright.

  This time, however, they did not pass Edward’s door but began to gather around. The old man who had given Edward the candle stepped forward and smiled, then asked of him: “Do you have the candle which I gave to you?”

  “Yes,” replied Edward, and produced from behind his back the wax-covered faceplate, now decorated with three burning candles.

  The old man smiled and took the burning face from Edward, holding it high for the others to see.

  “‘Bright be the face of the soul,’” said the old man; then, turning to Edward, said: “You have solved my riddle, Edward Howe. You have offered your soul to save your village as you once risked your life to save your fellow soldiers.” He handed the burning face back to Edward.

  It had been so long since Edward had heard his true last name spoken by anyone that he did not at first recognize it; nor did the words “...save your village” at first register.

  “You shall be rewarded,” continued the old man, “in two ways: First, we shall not, as we were supposed to do, take you with us.”

  “So it’s true, then,” whispered Edward. “I was supposed to die that day?”

  “Yes, but no matter now, you shall grow to be a very, very old man, and let us hope that it will be a happy life from this night on. Touch your face, Edward.”

  He did, and discovered that it was now whole and healed; ears, cheeks, teeth, nose, skin—it was a normal face, one that he would never again have to hide behind masks or scarves.

  “I am whole again,” he said, startled by the sound of his voice, its fullness, its richness and timbre. For the first time in decades he pulled in a deep breath through his nose; there was no pain.

  “Secondly,” said the old man, “you shall now be the only true face in your village.”

  “What do you—?” But before he could complete the question, there came from a nearby window a scream of singular horror, and soon a woman ran into the street clutching her face. She spun around, eyes wide with terror, and pulled away her hands to reveal that she had no nose, only a smooth, flat area of flesh.

  Soon other villagers spilled into the street, all of them missing facial features, some who had no faces at all, merely blank ovals of flesh where their features should have been.

  “No!” cried Edward.

  “Why?” asked the old man. “Look at us, Edward Howe. Fallen warriors, all of us. Some of us died in battle, but many of us, like yourself, returned home scarred and disfigured, only to find ourselves mocked outcasts. ‘Abomination!’ they called us. Well, now, let them know how it feels to be the one who is mocked, who is scorned and turned away from, who never again knows the warm touch of a friend, the kiss of a woman’s lips upon their own, the feel of a child’s loving arms around their necks. We have traveled from village to village to find others just like you, Edward, and they have all accepted our bargain. So many years since the war, and how easily those who never knew battle forget the sacrifices we made for them. Let them know now.”

  Edward saw the people of his village running, screaming, crying, clutching at their ruined or missing faces, and for a moment, just one moment, a moment he would never forgive himself for, Edward Howe, formerly Edward Something-or-Other and Soldier Boy, felt a brief, bright satisfaction in their pain; but a moment later he realized just how wrong this was and thrust out the burning face. “No. If this is the price of having a normal face restored to me, I do not want it; and if it means that you take my soul and I come with you now, then so be it. Return everything as it was and you can take my soul. I will not fight you. The wars are over. I have no desire to fight again.”

  The old man took the burning face and an instant later, the villagers found their faces restored to them. None looked in Edward’s direction; even if they had, none would have seen the spirits surrounding him.

  “So I come with you?”

  The old man shook his head. “Not now, but soon enough. A season or three. Listen to the wind, and you’ll hear our approach in the whisper of leaves across the cobblestones. Good-bye, Edward Howe. Enjoy your isolation and grotesquerie.”

  They left him there, alone save for the dog, and he watched them vanish up the road toward eternity.

  His throat was dry and his nostril cavities were blocked. It was time to take some medicine and try to sleep.

  The dog followed Edward into his room and slept at the foot of his new master’s bed, where he would sleep for the rest of his days. Years later, upon Edward’s death, the dog would be found sleeping at
the foot of his master’s grave and would refuse to move. It would lay there until it, too, passed away, and would be buried alongside its master.

  But that was many years away.

  The next morning, everyone in the village was talking about the horror of the previous night, wondering what they could have done to offend God so badly that He would punish them in such a way.

  “But He did not make the punishment permanent,” said one merchant.

  “True,” replied a cook. “It was as if he were...warning us.”

  “Or reminding us,” said the priest.

  “Reminding us of what?”

  The priest said nothing, only glanced for a moment toward the doorway where Edward stood, scarf and bandage in their place, his dog at his feet.

  Later that day, someone left a fresh-baked apple pie on the sill of Edward’s open window.

  The next morning, he found a tray with a delicious breakfast waiting outside his door. The odd jobs began to become plentiful again. Sometimes children would stop and ask him about his scarf and bandage.

  In their sleep, the villagers would often dream of Edward sacrificing his soul for them so they would never know the loneliness of having a face like his.