by Giselle Ava
The bombs. These were the bombs.
The dates line up. It was very recent.
Who ordered the bombs? My eyes scan down the page and then stop, and I let the world go out of focus. Do I want to know the answer to that?
You already do know it, says the whine.
The papers begin to tremble in my hand.
“Do you smell that?” Walter says.
Slowly, I return the sheet to the box and sniff.
“It’s urine,” I say.
“This equipment is running off a generator,” Walter says, wiping his nose with the back of his hand, then keeping it there. He kicks a giant black cable that snakes off into the darkness. “I don’t think anybody’s touched this in a week, at least.”
I walk over to the radio equipment. “Any ideas?”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand on-end and I feel a shiver go through my body. There’s something in here with us. My fingers tighten around my pistol but I know my pistol won’t do any good. The rafters creak. A spidery shadow splashes across the ground as though by the hand of a talented painter. I see it out of the corner of my eye.
Don’t look up.
It hurts when the whine speaks to me. It’s the feeling of your ears popping but without the pop, just that shrill voice, a voice that sounds like an old friend.
Walter aims his pistol into the rafters.
Slowly I turn around and I stare at the shape on the ground, warped and distorted, like a thin-limbed man perched overhead, the sun against his crooked back. A man with his bones bent out of proportion. The kind of thing you see on the battlefield after somebody like us is done with them. Its back rises and falls. Suddenly I can hear it breathing, reverberating through the church like the sound of crashing waves. An animalistic purr.
A bead of blood splashes in the centre of the shadow.
“Reveal yourself!” Walter yells.
I’m not looking up. I’m staring at the bead of blood, which begins to disperse across the ground as raindrops do before a storm. I’m feeling the shadows move.
The hairs on the back of my neck prick up again.
Don’t look behind you, says the whine.
I know there’s one emerging from the shadows behind us because it snickers. Another bead of blood drops from the ceiling, splashing on top of the other one. Another shadow extends out from the darkness to the other side and there are two red eyes staring at me.
From the black is a wide smile of white teeth.
Three Ghosts
There’s a whine in my ear and this is what it says:
There are three of them.
Right. There are three of them. One is above us. One is behind us. One is right there, its eyes bright red, its mouth torn wide in a toothy grin.
“Son of a bitch,” Walter mutters.
“Wait,” I tell him, my body alight with goosebumps. The air is cold but my body is hot. The creature in front of me steps out of the shadows into the light. Its flesh is wet and sinewy, like a corpse pulled from the ocean, slimy with tar. It is humanoid only in form. It has no nose, no hair, and there is no pupil in its eyes, but it smiles, and purrs softly.
Walter trains his iron sight on this one.
“Where is the crew that was here?” Walter says.
That black creature’s bare foot slaps the ground as it takes another step. It does not blink. Its mouth does not change shape. The rafters give off a groan. I hear breathing behind me and I want to look at what’s there but the voice in my ear says:
Don’t look behind you.
Don’t shoot, Walter.
Walter’s breaths become tense.
“See.”
Black. Deeper than when you close your eyes. Space without stars.
The universe sketches a scene. There’s a decrepit house with a flat roof, its eaves lined with leaves and sticks, rainwater drips into muddy puddles, tin cans ring atonally. Out the front of the house is a swing-set with one swing missing—the left one. Brown water sits on the one that remains, and the chains bristle in the wind. The trees don’t shake. The sky, it’s grey.
You know this place.
This is the story of Arthur.
No.
Arthur walks to the house and pushes open the door. The door is wet with rain, the wood splintered and chewed up by insects that are attracted to death. Maggots and flies, burrowing in the wood, cockroaches in the walls, rats in the floors. He looks around. The radio is playing music in the living room. There are dishes in the sink in the kitchen, stewing in soapy water. But no, there’s somebody else in here with the dishes.
There’s a woman in the kitchen.
She looks at Arthur and this is what she says:
“What are you doing in my house?”
What does Arthur say?
This didn’t happen—
Oh, let me tell you what Arthur says.
He says: “Where is your husband.”
“He’s not home,” the woman tells him.
Don’t believe it—
The woman’s hands are wet and soapy from washing the dishes. Last night’s meal was mashed potato, a side of vegetables, and meat from a rabbit they caught. It’s hard times during the war. You’ve got to eat what you can get, but they’re well-fed.
The floorboards creak.
Arthur turns.
“Get away from my wife, you bastard,” a man growls. He’s bear-like, a strong beard and thick brows. His skin is blemished and where there’s no beard there’s whiskers, and scars from shaving accidents. There’s a shotgun in his arms, cocked, the muzzle hungry.
I wasn’t there—
The man shoots at Arthur but Arthur isn’t like them. No, he’s here because he’s not like them. There’s already metal in him, pieces of it, nuggets like the sorts that made men rich during the gold rush, but these aren’t nuggets of gold and they’re making nobody rich but the men who already have money, the men who sent him here in the first place.
The ones who told him there’s a family who needs to die.
The air clenches and the bullet stops, turning red with pent-up energy. You can see the man’s eyes, can’t you, see the look on his face when this happens. Everybody’s heard of the secret weapons the British have been hauling, but few believe the rumours.
This man believes them now.
What did they call you?
Let’s ask our friend with the gun.
His eyes wide. His mouth agape. It all looks like it’s happening in slow motion but it’s not; the world’s just sometimes slow to respond when there’s one of you in its presence.
“Unkindly...” he breathes.
Arthur throws himself to the floor as the bullet explodes, showering the room in metallic shards. The woman screams and, as if propelled by her voice, Arthur sprints at her husband, grabbing the shotgun in both hands. Aims it at the floor. A gunshot goes off, blasting the floorboards. Don’t kill him, Arthur. He’s not the right man—
I didn’t know—
Poor fella. Arthur doesn’t give a damn. He thumps his boot into the man’s knee and sends him to the floor. He rips the shotgun from his hands and empties it. Shells clatter to the ground with dull thuds. But that bear-like man doesn’t give up easy. He flies to his feet, grabbing Arthur’s coat and piledriving him into the wall. Arthur’s back smashes a photo frame, shattering it on impact. The photograph sails to the floor. Arthur pivots the shotgun between them and shoves the man off him, cracking the gun across his head.
The floorboards quake as the man falls on his back, blood spewing from his face. A baby screams in the other room. The man climbs back up, touching his face. Blood covers his hand.
What does Arthur say now? What does he do?
Nothing. My god, this isn’t how it happened—
No? Then why is there a woman lying on the floor with a kitchen knife between her ribs? Why is there a man with a broken neck, his arm ripped off, blood splatters on the freshly-painted walls? Why is there a child screaming in
the other room? Why then, when the child looks up from its cot, does it see a ghost, not his father, not his mother?
Screaming!
There’s a man in the doorway with a gun.
Not the baby, Arthur!
You wouldn’t hurt a baby!
They made us. We just did what we were told.
Poor Arthur.
Everything disappears and I’m back inside the church. I’m on the ground and there’s a creature standing over me, red eyes and a wide smile. My arm is outstretched, and the pistol in my grasp is aimed at the creature’s face. Somebody is choking. I look to my left and see Walter standing where he was before, his own pistol stuffed down his throat.
“Walter!” I scream.
“See.”
Black. Deeper than when you close your eyes. Space without stars.
The universe sketches a scene. There’s a room on the third floor of a tenement building. The curtains are drawn shut because it’s night. The lamp at the writing desk illuminates a man’s face, and the clock on the wall. The man is Walter Milne. The time is two thirty a.m.
You know this place.
It’s a study. There’s a woman in a black nightgown standing in the doorway; she’s watching him. Her long fingers touch the corner of the wall. Her bare feet don’t cross the threshold, only the very tip of her longest toe.
“Walter?” she whispers.
“Don’t come near me,” he says. He’s been crying. His journal, which is open somewhere in the middle, is wet with tears, the handwriting illegible and senseless. The woman’s foot sways into the room and the other one follows. She grips the gown around herself. Walter’s shadow splashes across her face. Walter slams the journal shut. His pen falls to the carpet.
“Walter, I’m here for you,” she tells him.
The woman is his wife.
He mentioned his wife.
Walter stands up and stares at his wife across the room. Tears streak his face. His coat is open down the middle and you can see his ribs. He doesn’t eat. He hasn’t eaten since the war. What year is it? If you’d looked at the latest entry in his journal, and if you tried hard enough to read his scribbled handwriting, you would see that the year is 1921.
His mouth falls agape and he screams.
The lights flicker. A window smashes. Papers lift from his writing desk. Pots and pans clatter in the kitchen. His hands tremble erratically—no, you can’t call this a tremble; they shake as though being manipulated by something else, something horrible. They shake violently as he lifts his hands to his face and block his ears. He wants to say help. He cannot.
“I’m here,” his wife says.
She steps closer to him, reaches out her hand.
The room convulses and the lights shatter. Bones break. A body thumps to the ground with a dull sound. Walter loses his balance and collapses across his writing desk as pages go flying and his journal lands on the carpet. In his hand is a pistol and the barrel’s in his mouth.
Arthur, you have to save him.
My pistol is still aimed at the creature with red eyes. I pull the trigger and it drops, melting across the ground of the church. Walter glances at me, his eyes red with tears. Save me.
I pull his arm out of his mouth and he drops the pistol.
He’s staring at me, his mouth agape, saliva dripping from his wet lips. His hand closes around my forearm and grips it so tight it hurts.
He looks up into the rafters but there’s nothing there anymore. There’s nothing in the shadows. There’s just one body on the ground, not moving, its red eyes staring at the ceiling. I can’t speak. I can barely remember what we were doing here in the first place.
“Let’s keep looking,” I say, walking from Walter.
Your wife is dead, Walter.
We both saw the same things.
I enter the prayer room which is just off the main chamber and find two men in there. One of them is dead; he’s lying face-down with half of his head splattered across the wall. The other one has his back to the wall, his knees to his chest, sitting in puddles of piss, looking at me.
“Are you Duff,” I say, with no question mark.
“I don’t deserve to live,” says the man.
I stare at his white eyes, which don’t blink. He’s wearing no shirt, his white skin sallow and milky. His brown pants are unbuckled, soaked in urine. He’s one of us, you can tell by the shapes underneath his skin and the scars that suggest he was repaired with metal.
“Are you real,” the man says, climbing out of the darkness and into the light. Puddles of urine splash underfoot as he walks towards me, squinting. His neck juts forward unnaturally. He favours his left leg. He doesn’t blink. He keeps staring at me.
“I was sent by the Crossroads,” I tell him.
The man puts his arms around me and whispers into my neck.
“Are you Duff,” I say again.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“Is anyone else still alive?”
“Cowans.”
“Where’s Cowans?”
“He was in here with me.”
I step out of Duff’s embrace and look around the room. I stare at the dead body on the ground, his brains splattered on the wall. “Is that Cowans?”
“Oh,” says Duff. “He’s not alive, after all.”
We return to the main chamber and I walk over to Walter, who’s sitting on a pew by the exit. Walter glances at Duff, then at me. I offer him my hand.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” I tell him.
Walter takes my hand and I carry him to his feet. Duff is standing a little away from us, staring at the communication relay. He’s shivering. I can see his spine poking through his skin.
“Duff,” I say.
He looks at me. “The Crossroads.”
“What about it?”
“They know where it is.”
“Who knows?” I spit the words.
“Fortescue.” He says this slowly, each vowel landing thick and hard and reverberating through the empty church, empty but for us and the dead black creature, and the other two, somewhere in the shadows. “He’s going to attack it. Not just that. He knows everything.”
“Everything.”
“Someone’s been feeding him information.”
I glance back at Walter. There’s not much in his eyes but he looks back at me with impatience and I decide we’re better off discussing this when we’re back at the Crossroads.
I signal for Duff to follow us and we leave without another word.
Disorder Rises
When we return to the place under Room 203, there’s a different man at the pulley system, a man who is not Willcocks. He sends us straight down to the Crossroads.
Something isn’t right here.
I walk with Walter and Duff through the dark encampment, catching stares from other people as they sit about and eat. There’s the smell of stew in the air, and I remember it’s been a while since I last had a good meal. There’s something else.
People flood Thomas Cobbe’s tent.
“We have to send help,” one of the men is saying as we arrive. Thomas is sitting behind his desk, the tall and burly Vanessa on one side, red lights shining across her skin. On his other side is the man who Walter identified as Sir Willcocks, with a white moustache. The group is five people and they tower over Thomas, who’s bathed in everybody’s shadow.
I notice Frederick sitting in the corner, one leg over the other. There’s a thin copper wire trailing from an earpiece he’s wearing. His eyes are downcast but he’s listening. I wait for him to look my way but he doesn’t, just sits there unnoticed.
“It’s too risky,” Thomas Cobbe replies.
“If we don’t have each other, we have nothing,” one says.
“We must wait.”
“We know where they are.”
“And soon they will know where we are!” His voice cracks like lightning. I glimpse the man he’s speaking directly to, a tall man with a rough buzzcut and
thick brows. This man says nothing but he doesn’t need to speak to convey what he’s feeling. The air strains between these men like a bowstring strung too tight. “Wait,” Thomas says. “There’s time.”
The man with the buzzcut retreats. “Yes. Sir.”
He turns and walks away. Only one other guy follows him. One stays. The others go off their own ways until there’s a direct line of sight between myself, Thomas and Frederick. This is when Frederick notices me. He glances at Duff and removes his earpiece, rising from the seat mechanical-like. When Thomas notices our third man, he also rises.
“We’ll need to set up a new communication crossroads,” I say. “This is Duff. He’s the only one who survived. I’d suggest we get him looked after for a while.”
Thomas eyes Duff. “The hell happened?”
“It’s unclear,” I respond, somewhat truthfully. I don’t know what we saw there. I don’t know if it was real but I have an inkling of an idea. Walter hasn’t said a word since we left. We don’t have to talk about what happened. We both saw it. We both know.
“I see,” Thomas says thoughtfully. He signals to the man who remained behind, tells him, “Bring this man to the doctor, have him checked. Make sure he’s fed and looked after.” The man nods and obeys Thomas’s order. Duff does not say a word, following him out of sight. Thomas turns back to myself and Walter as we walk into his tent. He sits on the edge of his desk, hands clasped between his legs. Vanessa is watching me from the shadows. I watch Willcocks as he quietly slips from sight.
“We have a problem,” I say.
“I anticipated as much,” says Thomas.
“Fortescue knows about the existence of the Crossroads. He likely knows a lot of things. This is what Duff told me. He believes somebody has been feeding them information.”
Thomas’s brow twitches. “I see.”
I study him closely, study the way he sits there with his back somewhat arched, the gentle rise and fall of his shoulders. He avoids my eyes, staring at his interlaced fingers. The skin there is unblemished and clean. I say the words before I think them up: