by Mae Ronan
“Sit down, then, and tuck in,” he said. “Then get to bed. We’re up with the sun.”
The soldiers positioned themselves hurriedly in a circle. “Come, Pedro!” said Boothe to Ricardo. “Let’s have it, then!”
They devoured the cans of beans which Williams and Ricardo had prepared; and then laid out their bedrolls.
At one end of the row lay St. John; and at the other lay David. He turned onto his side, and stuffed his hands beneath his head, looking out into the darkness. He passed his hand before his face, but could not see it. It seemed a whole colony of mosquitoes had settled themselves down upon his neck, and the side of his face; but still he closed his eyes, and fell quickly asleep.
***
He woke what seemed only a short while later. There was no difference in the thick darkness. When he opened his eyes, he realised that most of the mosquitoes had flown away; but naturally, once he was awake, they returned in droves.
The edge of his exhaustion had been worn away, and he could no longer ignore the injection of their sharp prickers into his skin, merely for the purpose of falling asleep. He looked to the row of sleepers. Of course he could not see them; but he could make out very clearly the slow, steady sound of their breathing. Surely they all slept soundly.
He untucked the bedroll, and slipped quickly into his boots. Then he was on his feet, and walking slowly towards the edge of the clearing. He held out his hands to either side, till he felt them touch the bark of the trees. It was in this way that he ascertained he had reached the edge.
He stood there for a little, blinking his eyes against the dense blackness, and swatting mechanically at the hovering insects. He was debating whether he would step outside of the clearing. The air, here, was heavy and oppressive. He knew not why he thought it would be any different, out there; but for some reason he did. When he closed his eyes, and tilted his face towards the sky, it was almost as though something were calling to him – calling through the jungle, calling for him to follow.
He looked back once more towards the slumbering soldiers. Still he could not see them; but he could feel them. He could feel them, occupying the space, and breathing the air he breathed. It was they who oppressed him; it was they whom he must escape.
But to where? Quickly he asked the question; and nearly as rapidly he was answered. In the jungle there was a voice, and it called to him. It was soft, and gentle. It whispered like a cool breeze through the humid night, its dulcet tones caressing his face teasingly, before pulling away, and disappearing.
“Where did you go?” he whispered. “Where are you?”
“Come,” it called.
“Come where?”
“You will see.”
“But where have you gone?”
“Come.”
He stepped out of the clearing. Still he kept his hands outstretched, touching the trees as he passed. Some were sticky with sap.
“Where are you?”
“Come.”
He walked for a few minutes more, sometimes speaking out the same question; and always receiving the same answer. Sticks and leaves crunched underfoot as he continued on his way. Small beads of perspiration began to break out across his brow, and trickle down his face. He wiped his eyes as the stinging liquid fell into them.
“Where are you?”
Suddenly he stopped; for a light had appeared before him. It was a tall, shifting white mass, writhing like smoke. But it was bright as a pearl.
“Who are you?”
The white smoke continued to shift. It grew taller, and then shorter; wider, and then narrower; back and forth, back and forth, till it arrived at the same height and girth as himself. Still it moved, wrapping all around itself, and projecting strange arms from its sides, which looked almost like angels’ wings.
“Who are you?”
The white shadow was still. David’s eyes opened wide, and he stared disbelievingly, as it took human form.
He saw himself. He saw himself – exactly as he was now. His hair was mussed, and his shirt was rumpled. His belt was unbuckled, and his boots were untied.
“What is this?” he whispered.
“Come,” said the shadow.
“Come where? What are you?”
“I am your ghost.”
David looked down at himself, and felt his body nervously with both hands. “Am I – am I dead?”
The ghost smiled. “Not yet.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To show you. Follow me now!”
The ghost began to glide away, back in the direction from which David had come. David hurried after it, tripping over his dangling shoelaces.
Finally they arrived back at the clearing. With the white light that emanated from the hollow body of the ghost, David could see it all very well now. He could see each of the sleepers, lying peacefully in his bedroll.
“What will you show me?” he asked.
“Look,” said the ghost.
It reached down with a shining white arm, and took up the gun that lay beside David’s empty bedroll. It checked the cartridge; put the butt to its shoulder; and smiled back at David.
“What – what are you doing?” David choked.
“Watch.”
The ghost looked down on the sleepers. It straightened the rifle against its shoulder, and took aim.
“Don’t!” David hissed.
The ghost looked back, surprised. “Would you have me do it, David Carton?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No!”
David paused, and looked down at the soldiers. “No, I – well, I . . .”
“Would you have me do it, David Carton?”
“I don’t know.”
The ghost turned round once more. David said nothing.
Six shots resounded through the clearing. Five men woke in response to the first; but the ghost felled each of them speedily.
It looked no more at David. It dropped the gun to the ground; frowned for a moment at the unmoving soldiers; and then drifted slowly away.
***
David woke with a start. He sat upright in his bedroll, clutching frantically at his chest, where his heart was thudding wildly.
The clearing was filled with morning light. He sighed with relief, and dropped his face into his hands.
It was only a dream.
“Williams,” he began, as he turned to touch the shoulder of the nearest sleeper. “Williams, why aren’t you –”
His voice caught in his throat. He found himself looking down upon a bloody, mutilated head. Joe Williams was dead!
David leapt to his feet, and ran down the row of bedrolls. He looked carefully down at each.
But they all cradled the same bloody heads.
“Jesus!” he screamed, reaching up to tug at his hair. “Jesus Christ – who did this?”
A faint glimmer caught his eye. He looked to the edge of the clearing; did a quick double-take.
His ghost hovered placidly between the trees.
“What have you done?” he cried. He raised his fists in the air, and ran screaming towards the white shadow. But his hands only fell through it. He looked into its face. It smiled grimly, and nodded down at his hands.
David followed its gaze. He saw his own palms, streaked with red.
“What have I done?” he whispered.
The ghost nodded once more to David’s hands; and then back at the dead soldiers.
David turned towards them reluctantly. He crossed the space which parted them, then stood and watched their pulpy faces for a long while. He looked to his own bedroll. The gun still lay beside it.
He reached down, and picked it up. He hefted its weight, and looked towards the ghost. It nodded solemnly.
David closed his eyes, and tucked the rifle up under his chin. A moment of thick silence filled his mind, as the warm barrel pressed into his flesh. He looked once more to the ghost, which watched him intently.
He pulled the trigger. His body fell down over Wil
liams’ feet.
The ghost glided into the clearing, watching David’s body. Soon a sort of grey smoke began to rise from his open mouth, twisting and turning into the air, like smog caught up in the wind. It grew taller, and then shorter; wider, and then narrower; back and forth, back and forth, till it arrived at the same height and girth as the ghost. The two forms began to merge together, one white and one grey, to form one single, silver outline of the dead body of David Carton.
The eyes looked in farewell to the soldiers. The hands reached vainly towards Williams; but they only fell through him.
A single, mournful cry went up from the lips; and slowly, slowly, the ghost disappeared into the earth.
Nights in Finland
(1880)
I.
The darkling moon, ensconced in steel-grey clouds, hung barely visible in a vault of black. The air was frigid, and the wind was biting. There was some protection from the latter, in the incredible height of the massive pines which grew up on either side of the road; but their presence, unfortunately, did pose yet a different problem. From their depths (although, perhaps on reflection, not so very deep at all) came the clear, blood-curdling howling of wolves.
The road between the trees was wide, wide enough for what two travellers rode upon it, to ride abreast of one another. Indeed, they came sometimes so very near to each other, that their heavy boots in their stirrups came in contact with that of the neighbouring one. Their heads moved from side to side, and their eyes darted to and fro, made nervous and afraid by the calls of wild beasts.
The young men were wrapped to the eyes in furs, with gloved hands clutched in almost a frozen position to the reins of their respective horses. Jacob Ginwood had no complaints concerning his own horse, and was indeed quite pleased with its conduct, even amidst the rolling voices of the not-so-distant wolves. Micah Ginwood, on the other hand, was growing quickly tired of his own animal, having several times nearly flipped from the saddle upon a demonstration of its fright. He glared angrily at his brother’s horse, and crossed his creaking arms over his chest.
“And how far is it, Jacob?” he asked, in an irritated tone of voice. He had been made bitter and spiteful by the cold, and would show no politeness. He was sure he would do no less than holler and shout, till he was placed before a large fire, and given an even larger supper.
“Perhaps twenty miles more,” answered Jacob, keeping his eyes straight ahead. He was grown used to his brother’s disposition, and had no will to check it.
“Twenty miles?” cried Micah. “Twenty miles? You might as well tell me I must remove both of my shoes, and walk through the snow beside this useless horse! It could be no worse than riding twenty miles more!”
“It’s not so bad as all that. You must remember, Micah – you are not the only one who is cold.”
“Yes, but I have greater right to complain of it. You even got the better horse, after all!”
“Oh, curse you, Micah! I let you have your choice of the two.”
“Yes – but you tricked me! You know more of horses than I do. You saw very well that this was the inferior of the pair; but you knew that I would choose it, because its beauty was greater than the other’s.”
“Perhaps, then, you should not be so very vain.”
“Vain!” Micah exclaimed. “I said the horse’s beauty; not my own.”
And so the brothers continued to bicker, exchanging one hot comment after the next. To hear them, one would have thought that they were recently departed from the comfortable parlour of their wealthy father, and straight on the path to another. Why they were riding, alone, in the dead of the night – well, perhaps that could be best explained by their location. In that part of Finland – at that time of the year – it was quite impossible to order a coach. They did not run but once a week, in those two months wherein the light of heaven was withdrawn from the earth, and the tenebrous fog of the underworld was thrown up all upon it. Never once would the sun show its face, till these one-and-fifty days (precisely) had elapsed.
But the brothers’ situation, quite truly, was not so comfortable. They came not from any warm or well-lit parlour, but rather from the empty house of their old friend, Jonathan Merrick – better known as Long-knife. They had spent days poring over the dead man’s papers, searching for any clue as to the secret which he had been meaning to tell them. The greatest, most important secret of all, he said it was – but they had not arrived in time to hear it.
Presently the men’s arguing began to simmer down; and they rode along in silence, their minds having turned collectively to the memory of Long-knife. Each wiped a tear or two from his eye, and then raised up his thick scarf, to keep the harsh wind from his damp cheek.
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when they finally reached the wide dirt lot of the inn. They dismounted their horses, just as the front door flew open, and a well-bundled fellow dashed out into the shallow snow drift that the porch had become. He nodded to them, and took their horses, so as to lead them back round the little building.
They took a moment to sigh heavily; but then proceeded inside.
An old woman sat at a heavy desk just past the door. She lowered her spectacles to survey them; waited impatiently for them to approach the desk; but offered them no greeting whatever.
“We would like a room, please,” said Jacob. It was he who would do most of the speaking; for Micah had never put much effort into the task of learning Finnish.
“Just one?” returned the old woman.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Fifty markkas.”
Jacob untied the string to his money pouch, and counted out the coins. He passed them to the old woman; but still she only scowled at him.
“Here is your key,” she said. “Room number twelve.”
She passed him a tiny little key, which he slipped inside his glove. He turned away with a thin smile, though his brother offered only the same unpleasant expression which seemed permanently etched into the woman’s own countenance.
Through a narrow doorway in the left wall, there lay a diminutive dining room. The brothers sat down together at a corner table; but it was nearly fifteen minutes before they were waited upon, by the same fellow who had taken their horses. Now, however, he was free of his many layers, and the whole of his dark-eyed, swarthy face could be seen. He provided his guests with a limited menu, and then bustled away with their orders like a busy maître d’hôtel (though the two men were in fact his only customers). All the rest of the small, square, pine-panelled room was filled with nothing but vacant tables and chairs.
And yet, before their meals had even arrived, two additional guests were admitted to the inn. Jacob viewed them, just as soon as they had entered, through the open doorway; but Micah was so preoccupied with the drinking of his coffee, while he shivered on and complained of the lingering cold, that he did not notice them.
The two men came into the dining room. One of them stopped behind Micah, whose back was turned towards them, and clapped him on the shoulder; thereby causing him to spit out a mouthful of coffee, and to choke for rather a long number of seconds.
“Damn you, Edmund!” he shouted.
But the prankster only grinned, and took a seat between the tormented party and his tranquil brother. The second man sat down across from him.
Edmund More began to call out immediately to the heavy silence of the inn, requesting a bit of food, any sort of food, for God’s sake. He then proceeded to snatch Micah’s coffee cup away, and to drink all the warm liquid that was left in it. Micah glowered at him, and kicked his shin under the table.
The second of the newly arrived was one Brandon Dúpont. He waited silently upon the arrival of his own coffee, and sat entirely composed, with his pale white hands folded on the table before him. He looked, every once in a while, around the room; thought, perhaps twice, that he saw a strange shape moving past the dark window; but quickly decided that he had seen nothing, and became just as serene as before.
> “So Brandon,” said Micah, appearing already to have released some of his recent hostility, “have you decided yet – which country you despise the most? Will you hang Finland, or England?”
“Either is dwarfed infinitely by the majesty of France,” replied Brandon, in a smooth voice tinged ever-so-slightly with its native accent.
“Hear him talk!” cried Micah. “Nearly twelve years in London – and this is the sort of talk we get! You were hardly ten years old when you left majestic France, Mr Dúpont! What wonderful and significant things can you possibly recollect?”
And so the Frenchman (indeed the youngest fellow of the small party) adopted an expression of deep thought; and was lost to the voices of his companions for some minutes, although he never did go on to expound upon what “wonderful and significant things” he may have in fact remembered.
Soon, all four men were consuming ravenously the pitiful contents of their dinner plates. Then they called for whiskey, and all leaned back in their seats, rubbing their hands together in anticipation as the swarthy fellow set glass tumblers down in front of them, and a full bottle in the centre of the table.
As the bottle neared its halfway-point, the men grew pensive. They began to glance at one another, furtively. But none seemed to know how to begin.
“What of it, boys?” asked Edmund finally. “Did you find anything?”
Jacob shook his head sadly, while Micah stared angrily into the depths of the whiskey bottle.
“Nothing?” Brandon interjected, raising his eyebrows in astonishment.
“Not a thing,” Jacob answered. “We spent nearly a week going over the house. But there was nothing.”
“Then whatever shall we do?” asked Edmund. He put a hand to his head, and slammed his empty glass down on the table.
“We shall have to figure it out for ourselves,” said Micah. “We’ve done it before. We’ll do it again!”
“We’ve not done this before,” Edmund hissed, leaning towards Micah with a flushed face. “We’ve not done anything like this.”