Black Static Horror Magazine #3

by TTA Press Authors

  At the rim of the far crater knelt a shape that caused Arthur to doubt his own sanity.

  Back in the shelter of the pit, Arthur crawled to the captain's side and pulled his canteen free from his webbing. He offered the captain a drink, helping the man take a sip, before he took a swallow himself. The water tasted brackish and metallic, but Arthur felt a measure of strength return. He had thought the captain cracked, but...

  "Sir,” Arthur began, not sure how to approach the subject. “Those women ... the ones you mentioned before?"

  "You've seen them, haven't you?"

  "I don't know, sir. I don't know what I saw up there. It was—"

  "Dressed in rags, all bloody and torn; stained red from all the death. Its skin blackened and filthy; its hair wild and tangled; its eyes mad and glaring, filled with a hunger, an insatiable lust, that burns brighter than the sun,” the captain interrupted, voice monotone and chilling.

  Arthur didn't know how to respond. If he hadn't seen the crouched figure it would simply have confirmed his original thought on the state of the man's mind, but now the captain's words, coupled with his dream, scared him like the war never had. He felt seconds stretch into minutes as he struggled to reconcile his previous notion of reality with what the captain had said and what he had seen. After all the horrors of the war, all the death and the bodies and the blood, after all the pain, desperation and anguish, why did this frighten him so? Why did the very thought of it turn his bowels to liquid? Was it all imagination, delusion? Could he trust his senses?

  Finally, Arthur found his voice. “What are they?"

  He had to know. He had to know what his dream meant.

  The thought of Lillian corrupted was worse than any hell he could envision and he would do anything in his power to prevent this harm befalling her.

  "Have you heard the rumours of angels appearing and helping the wounded, turning aside enemy bullets, carrying men in from No Man's Land or leading them past hidden dangers?” the captain asked.

  Arthur nodded. “Yes. All the men know those stories."

  "And that is all they are, Watts. Stories. Lies. Falsehoods. Fairytales. Those women are devils, demons, not angels. They don't help the wounded, beyond ending their pain with death, and then the only place they carry them is down into Hell.

  "You see, Watts, when I was a boy I loved to read about the Greeks and Romans. I would read about their heroes and gods, their legends and mythologies, they were great stories, Watts, though now, unlike the men's tale of angels, I know they were not just stories. I have seen them, Watts. I have seen the truth of them. I know them. I remember them from my books. They are the Keres."

  "Keres?” Arthur asked. He had no idea what the captain was on about. “What the heck is a Keres, sir? Where're they from? What do they want?"

  The captain shook his head, his face filled with anguish. “The Keres are death, Watts. They are daughters of the goddess Nyx. Demons of the night. They come out at dusk and float between the lines, hundreds of them, fighting amongst themselves like vultures over the dead and dying, feasting on blood, but only after they have torn free a man's soul and condemned it to an eternity of damnation.” The captain paused, licked his lips and swallowed. “It is the Keres that haunt our battlefields, Watts. They always have."

  The captain lapsed into a deep silence, lost in thought, which allowed Arthur the time to think about what the man had said. Arthur wasn't sure he understood half of what the captain had gone on about. All he did know is what he had seen up there and, even if just the half he had understood was true, then he didn't want to be here when those bloody women came to find them.

  "I'm going up top to see what's going on,” Arthur said. Not that he ever wanted to see those things again, but he knew if he sat around waiting for them to make their move he would go barmy. He needed movement, distraction, and they needed a plan. Waiting for the morning was no longer an option and neither was hoping for the best. That felt too much like giving in.

  Arthur pulled himself up the bank to the crater's edge. He inched his head above the lip and glanced left and right, before ducking back down and flattening himself against the ground. His heart lurched again and pounded nineteen-to-the-dozen, the beat so loud it sounded like the thumping boom of the morning guns in his ears.

  One of those things was almost on top of them.

  They had to move out now. If they didn't they would be trapped in this hole until the bloody creatures swept down upon them and ripped them to shreds. And neither he nor the captain was in any shape to fight the damn things off when they came.

  Easing his head up once more, Arthur peeked out at the advancing Ker. It had turned away, occupied by something on the ground, and now had its back to Arthur. He could guess what had caught its attention and was thankful the night shrouded the sight from him. The faint slurping and slobbering noises, the low growls that floated through the stillness of the evening, were enough.

  He looked beyond the Ker. From what he could see other women had begun to mass and move out over the wasteland. They scrabbled in the pits and pools, crawled over the corpses littering the ground, and floated through the wire like it was nothing more than mist. He was sure at any moment one of them would hear the hammering double beat of his racing pulse, or smell the waves of terror washing through him, and swoop at him like a hawk.

  Arthur eased back down the bank. His mind reeled from the change the world had undergone. The war had always been madness and chaos and a hell on earth, but he had never believed it literally. These creatures were impossible. How could they exist? Where had they come from? And how had he seen them in his dreams?

  "Captain Floyd. If we're to go, sir, we have to go now.” Arthur knelt at the officer's side as he spoke, although he found it difficult to tear his eyes away from the opening above and look at the man.

  The captain nodded and, as if reading Arthur's thoughts, asked, “How many of them are up there?"

  "Too many."

  "What are our chances do you think?"

  "I don't know, sir, but they have to be better than sitting waiting for them to find us. I'm hoping if we're on the move we can avoid them as much as possible."

  "I will not be much use to you if we have to run for it,” the captain said, illuminating his meaning with a nod at his mangled leg. “Might be best if you left me here. I still have my pistol if things go bad. I'll not let those witches have me."

  "It won't come to that, sir,” Arthur pledged, his right hand upon his breast, resting over his heart and the photograph of Lillian. “I won't let it."

  The captain's leg offered no support. It was too damaged. Fresh blood soaked the wool of the captain's trousers and the effort of standing, even held up by Arthur, made bullets of sweat pop out on the man's brow. Arthur had felt the man tremble and stiffen in his arms as he helped him up, although the captain made no sound of protest until he was erect, then he said, “I think we were both a little over confident, Watts. That was a tad harder than expected. I think you had better go on without me."

  "No sir,” Arthur said. “We go together."

  The captain smiled. “You are a good man, Watts."

  The two of them shuffled to the edge of the crater wall, but the gradient soon defeated them and, in the end, Arthur had to drag the captain up the slope by his underarms.

  At the top, Arthur gripped the man's wrists and the lifted the captain like a sack of coal onto his back and then set off across No Man's Land.

  The creatures were everywhere. It seemed there were as many Keres as corpses amidst the mud and blood. The flicker of movement was all around. Whenever they caught him off guard and came too close, Arthur would detour rapidly away, his body bent double, or hunker down and pray, the captain pulled close. At those times he could only hope the bloody witches had enough to keep them busy.

  No shells or gunfire sounded, which was a blessing of sorts, though Arthur soon began to long for those familiar noises of war: anything to blot out the noise of t
he Keres. For all around them the night was filled with the screams of the dying and the prayers of the wounded. Voices cried out at them from the darkness, begging for help, boys and men calling for their mothers and wives, and, over all this, the slobbering, rending, wet animal sounds of the feeding Keres.

  Arthur wanted to block up his ears and cover his eyes. The sights and sounds were unbearable. He felt as if, for first time, the blinkers through which he had viewed the war had been ripped free. He didn't understand how he could have been so deluded, so oblivious. How could he have been so numb, so deaf, dumb and blind to the truth? He had known, or at least recognised, the horror and terror of the war, but the futility, the immorality of it, had escaped him.

  When Arthur joined up, he had believed the war just, that he had a moral duty to King and Country and that God was on their side. Now, Arthur questioned everything.

  How could God allow this?

  From somewhere up front Arthur heard the bark of a Maxim gun and instinct threw him to the ground. The impact caused the captain to scream in pain, albeit the man bit the cry off the instant it left him.

  No bullets slammed home. Arthur lifted his head and looked for the telltale flare of the muzzle flash. The machine gun still fired, but Arthur didn't think it was at them. Now that he thought about it, he realised they were still behind the enemy line. It would be very unlikely the Hun were shooting in this direction. More likely the bullets were aimed at some unlucky Tommy out ahead of them.

  "Sorry about that, sir,” Arthur whispered. He knew the dive would have jarred the captain's leg something terrible, but there was no helping it. The sound had hit him and he had reacted without thought. The captain gripped Arthur's hands and said, “Always better ... better safe than sorry, Watts."

  The German defences were only a couple of hundred yards away. If they could cross the short gap and avoid the Hun, make it over the fortifications and past the wire, they would be on the way home.

  That was, so long as the Keres didn't find them first.

  Arthur glanced around. The field still crawled with the creatures. Everywhere he looked he saw the shrouded women. They were like the lice in the bedding or the rats in the trenches, only more deadly. All around, they fought and fed, hunting the wounded in packs and squabbling over their finds. No quarter was given to either side, German or English, all were fair game. Arthur was thankful the darkness hid the atrocities from sight, as the sound alone would haunt him for the rest of his life. To see the women feeding, tearing wet flesh from broken bone, would be too terrible to endure without going mad. “Time to go, sir.” Arthur gripped the captain's wrists and, without waiting for an answer, stood up and lifted the captain onto his back.

  Crossing the Boche line and climbing down the fortified embankment proved to be no real problem. The area of earthworks Arthur chose was empty of the enemy and they were able to cross and climb down without incident.

  Navigating the wire proved more difficult. The tangled black mass of rusted, razor-sharp barbs, tripwires, calthrops and spikes, although somewhat flattened by the morning bombardment, was still a deadly jungle, made even more lethal by the darkness and by the fact, in places, the shellfire had simply lifted the wire up and dropped it down in a worse tangle than before. The whole mess forced Arthur to backtrack and retrace his steps through the maze more often than not and by the time he and the captain had escaped the wire they were both cut and bleeding from a dozen fresh wounds.

  At times Arthur feared they would never find the path out of the wire. Each turn seemed to lead them onto yet another dead-end. After a half hour the tension burned like acid, as with every step Arthur expected to join the hundreds of machine-gunned corpses that hung like rotten fruit upon the black metal vines. Left and right, front and back, bodies were twisted and tangled in the strands, men pinned in grotesque postures and ripped apart by gunfire. Some men looked as though they were praying, propped up, dead on their knees, the wire preventing their fall if not their prayers.

  In the end, it took almost fifty minutes to reach the edge of the wire and Arthur had to crawl through the last section towing the captain by the arms, slithering through the mud and blood like snakes.

  Exhausted, Arthur collapsed in slime of a shallow crump hole. The captain, slumped in the mud at his side, looked half dead. The man's face was pallid and gaunt beneath the dirt and grime. Slack.

  Oh, no. Not now. Not after all this.

  Arthur forced himself to scoot around and grasp the man's shoulder. “Captain Floyd, sir?” he said, shaking the man, his voice thick with emotion. “Don't you dare give up on me now. Not now we're almost home."

  With a groan, the captain came to. He blinked open his eyes and looked at Arthur. “Don't fret,” the captain croaked, “you'll not be rid of me that easy, Watts."

  Arthur breathed a sigh of relief, his eyes filling with tears. “Just as well,” he said, smiling down at the captain. “I'll be buggered if I'm buying my own drinks from now on."

  The captain grinned. “I can cope with that,” he said.

  Arthur rolled onto his back and looked up at the sky. Overhead, the night had lost its stranglehold; the darkness had thinned and faded from pitch to charcoal. Arthur realised the dawn would soon be upon them. He checked his watch, but found it gone.

  Time to go, he thought. They needed to be off the field before everyone woke up and started shooting. If they waited too long the dawn would find them exposed. They had been lucky so far. They had avoided the Keres and the Boche gunners. No point chancing more to Lady Luck than they had to.

  The last parcel of undulating, blasted and pitted France awaited. Once they made it across they were home free. Arthur sat up, his head just above the lip, and looked around. The approaching dawn meant Arthur could see far more than before.

  It also meant the Boche could as well and, from what he could make out through the lessening darkness, so would the Keres. For just as behind the enemy lines, the Keres owned this area of No Man's Land too.

  The women's burial garments marked them all too clearly as they went about their horrid business, and muffled screams and cries punctuated their visits upon the wounded. Arthur felt terror wrap around his heart. Before, the horror had been cloaked and covered by the night, now the full evil of their acts was being unveiled and Arthur did not want to see.

  Lifting the captain once more onto his back, Arthur crouched and set off. Each step felt like his last. His arms and legs were leaden with fatigue. Mud clung to his boots and turned his feet to blocks, the additional weight making it near impossible to lift them clear of the chopped and churned surface.

  Twice he fell. The first time was accidental. Arthur tripped, his boot snagged on the outstretched arm of a young soldier, and dropped to his knees. He swore and slithered about three feet in the mud before he regained his footing and carried on. The captain grunted and groaned in Arthur's ear at the drop, but didn't cry out. Arthur squeezed the captain's wrist in apology, too done in to speak or do more.

  The second time Arthur was forced to dive for cover over the edge of a crater. He had just changed tack to bypass a pile of twisted and broken earth-covered bodies, when a figure rose up in front of him. Arthur reacted to the Ker even before he knew what he had seen. The blooded robe and wild matted hair had scarcely registered when he launched them over the crater's rim.

  The landing was not as bad as it could have been. The crump hole was only about four feet deep, shallow and, for the most part, dry—only about two inches of filthy, stinking water had pooled in the base. Arthur slid down the slope and spluttered and gagged as his mouth flooded with the stagnant slurry. The captain rolled free and lay on his back at the water's edge, gasping and twitching like a landed fish. The pain in his leg, Arthur knew, would be raging. He would have to be blessed not to lose it.

  Arthur swept his gaze up the slope. The Ker had been no more than six or seven feet away when it appeared. The only saving grace was that it had been facing away from them when Art
hur had made his move. If the thing had turned at the last minute, alerted by some noise or sense of movement, and seen them go over the edge, or if it managed to sniff them out, then they were done for.

  Water dripped from Arthur as he shuffled across to the captain. Every muscle in his body felt shredded. All he wanted to do was curl up and sleep, right there in the mud if need be. No more running. No more hiding. No more fear. No more war. Just to sleep for one hour would be bliss.

  Not going to happen, he told himself as he knelt by the captain's head.

  "How bad is it?” he asked the captain, voice a whisper.

  "Hurts like the dickens. What happened?"

  "One of those witches sprang up on me."

  "They see us?"

  Arthur shook his head. “Don't think so. Best check though."

  It took all Arthur's resolve and courage to crawl up the slope and look out. The coast was clear. The Ker had drifted away.

  In the distance, a razor cut of vermilion sliced the horizon: a tinge of red that radiated out and upwards through the sky like blood in water. True dawn couldn't be too far away.

  Arthur slid back down to the captain. The tone of his skin had paled and Arthur guessed shock and blood loss would be taking a toll. He only hoped he had the strength left to finish what he'd started. Only one way to find out.

  "Just another step. It's not far now. Just another step,” became Arthur's mantra as they closed in on the line.

  The wire was just ahead.

  "Just another step. Just an—"

  He was on the ground, the words knocked out of him, lost to the impact before he even heard the shot. He was turned around. His arm tangled in the wire. His breath locked up tight. The patch of dirt to his left spat skyward. The captain, sprawled to his right, jumped and flopped.

  The flat crack of the sniper fire rolled over him. It echoed and rang in Arthur's head and pain flooded through him hot on its heels. Blood burst from his chest and flowed down his tunic. Arthur coughed and tasted it on his lips.