by A. W. Exley
"Thank you," she whispered as the journey came to an end. "One day I shall leave Somerset behind and follow the balloon to see all those sights for myself. Perhaps I shall make it all the way to New Zealand."
That burst my balloon, knowing the day edged closer when she would fly free. Hazel would leave our rural corner behind and probably never cast a backwards glance at those she left. Who would accompany her on the grand exploration? Would she roam the world alone, or find some hearty fellow with good prospects to carry her luggage?
Selfishly I wished we could stay in the tower high above the ground. Here the world didn't exist. It was just the two of us and a myriad of stars out the window. In this quiet space it almost didn't matter that I was broken. I could pull my pieces together for her and shade over the cracks with my charcoal.
The delicate clock on her curved mantel chimed the hour, and I looked up with a start. Time had slipped on me again, but not in the usual rush of burned gun powder or ear splitting screams. Instead, hours passed in gentle companionship and laughter. A small crack in my soul healed itself. If only we had years together to find all my lost pieces and put them back together.
I stood up and pointed to the clock and then out the window. Full dark had fallen outside and I needed to return. Assuming Cossimo had waited for me. If not, I had a long walk back to the farm.
"I know, time for you to go." Her smile dropped and the loneliness crept back into her eyes. She gave me a hug and then stood to one side as I climbed over the ledge.
Once, Hazel had been a vibrant member of our group, leading us in adventures around the countryside. Keeping her in isolation would never make me good enough for her; I’d simply be her only option.
The realisation ran cold through my body. I wanted her to feel for me what I felt for her. But locking her away would never inspire those emotions. It engendered a pale regard for me that sprang from her captivity and desperate need for companionship.
I jumped from the last rung to the ground and she hauled the ladder back up. A quick wave and I ran up the hill. At the top, I looked back on her tower. The soft yellow light glowed at the window, a pale beacon.
The only way to prove how much I loved her was to set her free.
I tossed and turned that night. Time ran back and forth, tormenting me with different paths, forks, and splinters of different worlds and decisions not made. But no matter what choice I made, I kept signing my name on the bottom of the recruitment sheet and my feet kept marching toward war. No matter how fast I ran in the opposite direction, fate dragged me back and threw me down in the mud.
Memory became my escape. Within those rooms, I could hide. In my darkest moments I ran through my castle, my boots pounding over carpet, tiles, or wood. Up stairs and down hallways. I ran until my lungs screamed to burst. I had to reach the one room that held back the nightmare.
But the castle often changed. The walls flexed and bent, staircases unfurled and reformed, and the rooms swapped places. The secret place tormented me, even as it called to me. When I found it, I would slam the door and jump on the bed. Then I curled up in a ball, pulled the quilt over my head, and held onto my most precious memory.
Life as it once was and Hazel.
As the terror and misery seeped into my body, I spent more time in my castle. I ignored the gunfire and cries of my fellow soldiers and instead ran through lush meadows, climbed trees, and went swimming in the river. Over the course of months, I spoke less and less. I only responded when spoken to directly. One day I opened my mouth and nothing came out. That was August 1917. I had been fighting for England for three years and just turned eighteen. Finally old enough to legally enlist, but still not old enough to serve abroad. But my mind could take no more.
The doctors examined me, declared me fit, and returned me to my battalion. I was teased, cajoled, bullied, and ordered to speak, but nothing induced a sound past my lips. My voice lay discarded somewhere in one of the rooms in my mind and no amount of searching could locate it.
I awoke in darkness, my skin clammy and my throat dry. The nightmares would never leave me alone. I was too damaged and death had etched itself on my bones. Pushing the pillow up behind me, I sat in the dark and waited for my heartbeat to calm. As the rapid thump fell back to a more regular pattern, I wondered how I could ever share my life with someone. What did I have to offer except nights of unrelenting horror?
There were so many ways I could contaminate Hazel when I climbed the wall and crept into her tower. From the obvious taint of the pandemic caught in my hair or clothes to the reek of my cowardice. Or more worrying, what if my demons lingered and reached for her? The risk was too great. Better I stay alone to protect her and everyone I care about. As much as it pained me, I wouldn't see her again until the time came to spirit her away.
We agreed she would wait until spring and her eighteenth birthday. That was only three months, I could last that long without hearing her voice. I had it captured in one of my memory rooms.
Death could come for me but it would not touch her. I planned to trap it in the labyrinth in my mind.
15
The dawning of 1919 was a subdued affair, with little to celebrate as the new horror unfolded across the country. Father Mason's deceased wife turned up in his kitchen one night and the encounter shattered the last of his fragile confidence. Over at Serenity House, the former duke escaped the mausoleum and was dispatched by the capable butler, Warrens.
Winter deepened and created a frozen tableau, which bought us some time. It's much harder to climb from your grave when the topsoil is frozen solid. We all wondered if the victims would sprout up with the warmer temperatures like daffodils.
As January unfurled, Lady Jeffrey grew tired of us all peeking around the parlour door and moved the wireless to the kitchen. She deemed news of the Turned, as they were now called, far too unsavoury for her girls anyway and only suitable for our lowborn ears. That included Ella.
The square wooden box crackled and chirped all day long. It seemed the horror would never end, as reports emerged that those attacked by the original influenza victims also died in similar circumstance. People feared the Turned would soon outnumber the living. When the wireless wasn't chattering about updates from local villages or the towns, academics debated the rights and status of the Turned. Were they dead or alive? Did they have souls? Was it murder to dispatch a poor unfortunate?
Ella left the room when those debates filled the kitchen. The village declared her our local slayer. No one wanted to risk their eternal soul when hers was already soiled. She didn't talk about how she shouldered that burden, and it’s not like I could ask. None of us could take that load from her, but we could lighten her worries at home. Alice, Stewart, and I pulled together to cover her chores. We shielded her when Lady Jeffrey rampaged about her tea tray being late. And we all held our breath until Ella walked back through the door after she had been called out.
Mid January and winter held us in a tight grip. Dark plummeted fast outside the window and we sat around the pine table after dinner. Ella played with a mug of tea, her thoughts miles away. Or perhaps she mentally patrolled the bounds of our farm and the village.
"I think there's more of them out there. I think people are hiding their family members, hoping they will be cured with time." Ella dropped her mug back to the table.
"Can't say as I blame them," Magda said. "Imagine if a loved one turns up on the doorstep. Do you cut their head off or bring them in and put them to bed?"
We all stared at Magda. It could so easily have been her. The influenza gripped both Magda and Charlotte but we fought and kept hold of them. What would we have done if she clawed free of her shroud and knocked on the door still covered in the dirt from her grave?
"I'm starting a record. I need to go over to Serenity House and see Warrens. He has a list of all those who died there. We need to know how many to expect." Ella rubbed her hands over her face.
There was a gruesome thought. If all those who die
d came back, at least we could number our enemy. Or at least that wave. What happened to those who sickened and died when attacked by the Turned? There were rumours they would likewise rise and return.
"How's Hazel? You haven't snuck out to see her for weeks. Did you two argue?" Alice nudged me and changed the subject to something less morbid.
I snorted. Hazel was none of her business.
But no more. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. We waited for spring. With the thaw she would spread her wings and fly her high nest. None of which I would relate to Alice. That girl lived for gossip. On clear nights and even from my bed in the barn room, I could hear the laughter and cackling of her and Ella in their attic room.
She is well and I have been too busy to visit, I wrote on the scrap of newspaper.
Alice snorted this time. "Too busy? That never stopped you sneaking out at dusk for weeks on end. What happened? Did Mr Morris catch you and threaten to fill your backside with buckshot?"
If Mr Morris caught me climbing the tower he would have done more than shoot my disappearing arse. I suspect I'd have ended up fertilising their vegetable garden. I stopped the visits to protect Hazel. No matter how much I yearned for those few short hours together. I couldn't risk invading her sanctuary with my taint. I would never say any of that in front of this lot. Hellhounds couldn't drag that from my dusty throat.
He never caught me. It just got too cold to hang around in the field, I scribbled next to a report on the numbers of Turned that had surfaced in London. There comes a point when a number is so large it loses all meaning. Those victims likely never even made it back to their homes. Soldiers caught and corralled the London Turned right outside the cemeteries. Many were decapitated by passing trains when they tumbled over rail tracks.
Alice drew breath, about to make some other dig about Hazel and me, when Ella interrupted our banter. "We need to start checking the fences and fixing loose wires. Keeping sheep in is one thing, keeping the Turned out is quite another."
They were like enemy soldiers, crawling across No Man's Land at night. That was when the idea lit my mind like a flare in the dark. I grabbed the paper and drew over the text with dark strokes; soon I had a fence with wires. Crawling soldiers advanced between news articles, arm over arm on their bellies. Then I drew one caught in the bottom fence, little criss-crosses at regular intervals along the wire.
I tapped the sketch with my pencil. Barbed wire, I wrote next to it. Barbed wire was a sod and you quickly became entangled in it if you tried to crawl under. It might slow a few of them down and stop them creeping up on us at night.
"Brilliant idea, Henry." Ella smiled at me and warmth flowed through my torso. "Could you go to the general store in the morning and see if you can order rolls for us?"
I nodded. At last a job I could do. We would need hundreds of feet of the stuff to run a bottom wire around the house paddock, but it should allow us to sleep easier. Thoughts of sleep conjured Hazel before me. I wondered if Mr Morris should string barbed wire along the top of their wall. That would stop any Turned going over. Could they climb though? Perhaps they were safe with a simple wall. I found it hard enough to scrabble over and my heart still beat, even if the shadow of death tried to squeeze that muscle into silence.
I threw myself into whatever job needed doing. I didn't care it was the middle of winter; the cold meant Hazel was still trapped in her tower. When her birthday arrived, she would be gone. I had even mustered up the courage to approach Mrs Grigg who ran the haberdashery store. She agreed to give Hazel both a job and a bed while she found her feet. At least I would still see her on my visits to the village, until she truly spread her wings and flew away. She always wanted to be an adventuress; I wondered what corners of the world she would explore?
Apart from the fear of losing the only girl I ever loved, the demon of death etched in my skin and the unrelenting nightmares that kept pulling me back into the war, one other enemy tormented me. Phelps.
Serenity House shrugged off her hospital guise and returned to being a stately country home. Albeit one without a duke, who was still abroad. My tormentor should have been busy ironing the newspaper that would never be read and polishing the silverware. Yet our paths kept crossing, and every time he delighted in inflicting some injury or sly gibe.
The general store telephoned to say the first delivery of our barbed wire had arrived. I hitched Cossimo to the larger hay cart and we undertook a slow journey to the village. With the cold weather the roads became frosty and slick and I didn't want the trusty animal to slip and go down in the traces. And lo! My arch nemesis appeared before us on the road. He came at us from the direction of the village in a gleaming black motor. A grinning Phelps sat in the passenger seat and I assumed the duke's chauffeur drove.
For a footman who should be at his post six and half days of the week, he seemed to have an awful lot of free afternoons. I briefly wondered what the staff did all day in the absence of the new duke or any family to tend. Did they set the table for invisible guests, serve meals that would remain uneaten, or did the likes of Phelps skive off?
I manoeuvred Cossimo to one side, closer to the tree line. It would be a tight squeeze for the cart and motor vehicle to pass on the country lane. Unless the driver had a care for the glossy paint job, the cart wheels might scratch the side of the travelling car.
Phelps waved a hand and spoke to the driver. I imagined he said something like, carry on and push the bastard off the road. They stuck to the middle of the road and kept on coming. Idiots. Where did they think we were going to go? Cossimo was no Pegasus. He wasn't going to sprout wings and fly out of their way.
At the last moment the driver seemed to realise the folly of following Phelps’ idea and he pulled the steering wheel hard to the right. But his angle was too sharp and the motorcar ran off the greasy road. The front wheel hit the ditch with a thud and then dirt flew up as it lost traction and spun in the mud.
The driver turned off the engine and got out. He stared at the wheel, now sitting a few inches deep in cold slush. I toyed with carrying on and leaving them to it, but my conscience stayed my hand before I flicked the reins against Cossimo's rump.
Phelps climbed from the other side of the car, his face red with anger as he raised a fist in my direction and started yelling. "You idiot! Look what you did. You made him run off the road."
I raised an eyebrow. From where Cossimo and I sat, it looked like Phelps' own stupidity caused the accident. If they had slowed right down and held steady, we would have passed within a hair’s breadth of each other, but the car would have kept four wheels on the compacted road.
Cossimo snorted, farted, and then dropped a steaming, cob-sized, deposit on the road. I wished the horse had accompanied me to the front; he seemed to have the right response in such situations. However, I probably shouldn't pull down my trousers and imitate him, no matter how strong the urge.
"Give us a pull out with the horse, will you?" the driver asked.
Phelps threw up his hands. "Don't ask him, he's useless. Complete coward during the war, you know. Let good men get killed because he was too scared to shoot back."
I pursed my lips. What I would give to be able to throw back a witty retort that shot him down. I might have lacked backbone, but being a bully isn’t brave either. I jumped down into the back of the cart and picked up a length of rope. It would do if we tied it to the front axle. I tossed it to the driver, who caught the rope and dropped to his knees to affix the line.
Phelps, perhaps sensing he would get no bite from me today, moved to lean on a nearby tree trunk and lit a cigarette. He had no intention of helping it seemed, but as usual would watch others do the work.
I patted Cossimo and then started unbuckling the harness. It wouldn't take long to haul the car back on the road and then we could continue on our way. A low moan rustled through the trees and I shuddered. It was an eerie sounding wind.
"Bloody hell!" Phelps' cry broke the silence and I looked up to where he l
ounged.
He seemed to be batting at something. I glanced at the driver, who shrugged. Perhaps he dropped ash from his cigarette on himself. His hands kept thumping at his chest and as I stared, I realised what struck me as wrong about the picture.
He had too many hands.
The wind's low moan turned into a snarl and my spine tingled. Vermin, Ella called them, like rats scuttling about in the dark and filth.
The creature had grabbed Phelps from around the back of the tree and tried to haul him to one side. Except it couldn't, because the tree trunk was in the way.
"Help me. Get it off me." Phelps kicked out but only hit the tree. The hands scrabbled at his clothing. One found the collar of his overcoat and finally managed to wrench him to one side. The pull caught him off guard and he went down to his knees.
"Heck." The driver stood in shock, watching as his fellow servant was pulled around behind the tree. Yet he did nothing.
I raised a hand to Cossimo and told him, stay. Then I jogged across the road and through the trees to where Phelps' feet were disappearing into undergrowth while he screamed and yelled. His arms flailing about but not grabbing onto anything.
I grabbed a boot and pulled back. Then I managed to catch his other one as he kicked out, probably thinking it was another vermin. Wasn't like I could yell out, it's just Henry the coward.
A horrid game of tug of war ensued, as I fought for control over Phelps with the undead creature. I started to win and part of Phelps emerged through the scattered leaves. The vermin had a hold of his jacket and Phelps' arms were trapped in the fabric as it rode up.