The Oeuvre Read online

  “Bullshit. Wilf's not your fault. You didn't put the knife in his hand, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, not your fault is it? He did what he did for his own reasons.”

  Wilson's words helped a little, making the icy pit inside her contract a little at the edges. Kitty leaned gave Wilson a gentle kiss on the cheek.

  Then, she left.

  He ran a finger over the spot where she had kissed him. There was movement out of the corner of his eye. The thing from the crypt stood there, with the tent flaps billowing around it. Beating like a giant bat's wings. Its eyes glinted white and then black. Its face was split by that ever-present livid grin of amusement.

  Wilson screwed his eyes shut.

  He opened them again.

  It was gone.

  Outside, Kitty wiped her wet eyes and headed back to help Madeleine pack for the journey home. Her big sister had been ashen after seeing Wilf mutilate himself.

  What a night to leave the hospital, thought Kitty.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  The lust was upon it and the sun was low in the sky. It could smell blood on the wind. It walked as a shadow amongst the tents and the huts, waiting for the last light to pass away. Tonight, it would feed well. So too would its brethren.

  It was outside the hut, watching her, the younger sister.

  Kitty finished packing their cases. It was growing dusky outside. She left the tent to find her sister.

  It was elsewhere, outside a hut, listening, unseen.

  “I've come to say goodbye, Dawson.”

  “You leaving us then, Sister?”

  Madeleine smiled at his purposeful misuse of etiquette. They had only been together once but she felt that she owed him, at least, a farewell.

  “Yes. Sister Fearing doesn't want us here and it's too hard on Kitty, the tension. I'm not going to fight her over it. It's better if we go and the Sister gets someone else in who she likes better.”

  It heard the younger sister coming closer.

  “Have you seen my sister at all, Trevor?”

  “Sure, Miss. She just went into Dawson's bell tent over there. Saying her goodbyes, I should imagine. It's a shame you're going. You're both nice girls and none of us believe nothing of what's been said about you.”

  Kitty coloured at his words. “Thank you, Trevor. You're very kind. You and the boys must behave whilst we're gone. Promise me, that?” she smiled at him.

  “Oh, we will, Miss. We definitely will.” He winked at her as she headed off towards Dawson's tent.

  It heard what was falling to earth from above. In the darkness, it smiled, amused.

  It was then that the bomb hit the tent. The air screamed as it struck and burst open. Twisted shrapnel went scything through the air. Flames roared out, scorching the surrounding tents and huts. Golden tongues licked up into the night sky. The thunder of the blaze drowned out the screams of those who were still alive within it. They thrashed about as if they were lost at sea, drowning in burning waves that were roasting them to a crisp.

  No-one got out alive.

  *

  “Madeleine!”

  Kitty's eyes were transfixed by the sudden eruption. She ran towards it. Waves of heat soon beating her back. She felt her eyes watering from the hot dirt swirling through the air. She watched the fire raging away.

  Her sister was in there.

  Bleary-eyed, Wilson shuffled to the tent opening. Wondering what was going on, watching unsteady silhouettes run this way and that. Unsure what to do, his mind still tired and foggy, he walked out into the jostling pandemonium. He saw Kitty. She was too close to the fire. He heard her scream a name. Her sister was in there. Trapped in there. Like the men on the night of the fire.

  Burning to death.

  “Get fuckin' down!”

  She recognised the voice. Wilson knocked Kitty flat with his weight. A whistling sound was coming from all around. There was a shriek and a bang. It split the air, multiplying. It was everywhere, a chorus of banshee shrieks and thunderous roars. Huts dissolved into matchwood. Tents ignited, disintegrating. Howls came from inside. Kitty saw flapping shapes come hurtling out, dragging their burning bedding behind them. The pathways of the hospital were a chaos of activity as men and women rallied to fight the fire, stop it from spreading. Patients who could stand but not walk, rocked back and forth on their crutches, watching the brilliant aurora before them.

  Hypnotised by Madeleine's untimely funeral pyre.

  Staying here, watching it burn will only get us killed, thought Wilson. The bombers could come back and this place is lit up like Christmas, thanks to the blaze. Keeping your head down is the only way you're going to survive this shitty business, Smithy had once told him.

  I need to get her out of here, Wilson thought.

  Wilson was dragging Kitty to her feet, talking to her. She listened to him, wanting a distraction from the morbid spectators.

  “-thing you can do. She's gone, your sister. That fire is going to act like a bloody beacon to the Jerries. They can bomb the shit out of this place now. They can see us from the air, plain as day. We need to get out of here.”

  Kitty heard the words tumbling out of his mouth. She wasn't taking them in. Her world had just blown up in her face. Mad was smart, strong and sensible. Mad had known what to do when mother and father died, when their uncle died.

  Kitty didn't know what to do.

  There was a shape in the fire, moving. Something was still alive in there. It lurched onto its feet, stumbling forward. The fire parting before it, rolling away in fluid waves. The air was rich with the smell of burnt pork, boiling glue and old fat. A patient screamed and ran, dropping his fire bucket, as he saw it stepping out from the inferno, sizzling, hissing. Flakes of flesh clung to raw muscles that pulsed with each step it took. Scalded, blistered, it strode through the devastation, a lipless grin slicing across its face. Wilson saw it and yet didn't see it. He was back in the night of the fire, at Hooge Crater, two years ago.

  …turning burning howling…

  …guttering human candles…

  …falling away melting…

  …sizzling fleshy sloughs…

  As the burning figure strode on, it hunched and buckled, rolling and twisting in on itself. Wiry shoots sprouting from its body, engulfing its charred flesh in thick fur. Its face stretching, cracking, forming a lupine snout. The bones of the body splitting apart, then flowing together once more, making strange new formations. Powerful jaws snapped at the air, a predatory growl came from deep in its throat. A strong tail lashed the air. The wolf jerked its head back, pointing its muzzle at the sky.

  A wintry lonesome howl echoed through the camp.

  The sound brought Wilson out of his reverie.

  It made him shudder to the core. He grabbed Kitty and led her away from the inferno, holding her hand in a way he had not done before. It was a firm and confident grip, not slack and nervous. Kitty was shaking as she ran along beside him. He didn't know where he was heading for, just away. Away from the fire. Away from the memories. Away from that evil thing, hidden for so long in his dreams, now roaming abroad, seeking him.

  He was talking as he led the way. A barrage of nonsense, hoping to distract her from grief, “Christ, I remember when I was still fresh meat. The other guys went out to this whorehouse one night. When they came back, they pinned me down on the bed and rubbed their fingers all over my face. Talk about fish fingers,” he laughed at the memory.

  It was then that he felt Kitty tear away from him, running off into the night, crying.

  Nice one, Reg, he thought.

  Her insides were bursting. She needed to get away from all these people, all this talking, all this noise. She wanted to run down to the sea. She wanted to fling herself into the water, tear off the wretched uniform she was wearing and be baptised anew, cleansed.

  …garbed as angels of death are we…

  That's what Mad had said. It had been a joke but it was true. For ev
ery life saved, a dozen more died. All the filthy things she'd seen men dying from clung to the uniform she was wearing, infecting it, soiling her.

  It was a taint.

  The touch of death.

  The Blighty Touch.

  Screaming, she threw herself forward. She landed with a squelch on something soft. Kitty reached out a tentative hand, probing a mushy surface. Her fingers pierced it and it parted. The shitty smell of death gushed up into her face. Opening her eyes, Kitty saw the sickly flesh of a dead man, bleached and porcine from decay. His eyeballs were colourless nuggets of gristle. She scrambled away from the horror. Her hand sunk into the ruptured belly of another corpse. The clouds parted for a second, letting a momentary shaft of moonlight spill down. The dead were everywhere, all around, bodies and corpses littering the swampy land as far as the eye could see. Millions crushed together, somehow all brought here to be interred in this abysmal place by the war. And, hanging over them all, she saw an oozing chitinous bulk, a leviathan, dragging the sea of the dead with teeming fungal members, long, lithe and thin, gluttonously drawing hefty doses of blood and decaying substance into itself. Millions of motes polluted the air, exuding from oscillating cystic pouches where the crusty meat of the thing was naked and exposed. Tumour-hued bulbs seemed to have burst forth from the charnel folds of its under-flesh. These enseamed moons gave off a sickening fuliginous light that found Kitty. Burning, hot and cold, into her eyes. She heard the ancient goliath let out a cosmogonic groan.

  She screamed.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Wilson found Kitty kneeling. Her eyes streaming, hard bullets of crystal that were threading their way down over her dimpled cheeks. Her body was shaking. Her breathing was rapid and halting. She was staring at the dead. Her eyes flitting from one corpse to another.

  She was getting the horrors.

  He could see it, rising up in her, undoing her reason. Wilson bit his lip, knelt down and pulled her to him. Kitty wrapped her arms tight around his torso. They embraced with a fierceness that was strange for two people who barely knew one another. They parted with a sharp exhalation. Kitty wiped her eyes.

  “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have run away from you. You were only trying to help me. Do what was best.”

  Wilson let out a dry bark of laughter. “Are you kidding? I didn't know what I was doing. I've no idea how to make someone feel better.”

  “You've been in the trenches though. You've seen the killing. You know what happens. You know what to do.”

  “Yeah, but that's different. Out there, you expect your number to be up at some point. You know there's a bullet with your name on it. This is different, this is a hospital. People are supposed to get better here, not fucking die,” he said, looking around at the mangled bodies, which had been blown out of their graves by the German bombs.

  One of them moved. A chill ran through him. He squeezed Kitty's hand. She smiled back at him through her tears.

  “I thought I could get away. I thought I could just run down to the sea and keep on going. Close my eyes and just run forever. But you can't outrun these things, can you? They catch up to you in the end.”

  Wilson nodded, not speaking, his eyes were on the corpses. He could see more of them beginning to twitch. He hoped it was his eyes playing tricks, insanity, anything other than reality. The clouds were over the moon. Rain began to patter down. They both got to their feet, wiping muck from their clothes.

  Kitty dabbed at her eyes. “Crying doesn't solve anything, does it? I should stop.”

  “Rubbish. Crying solves plenty. It makes you feel better, gets it all out of your system. There'd be no point in us being able to cry otherwise, would there?”

  “No, I guess not. You talk too much sense, Reg.”

  They smiled at one another.

  Wilson looked up at the rain falling from the sky. He stumbled, feeling a tremor run through the ground, damp earth shifting under his feet. Kitty cried out and grabbed onto him for support. Wilson felt his heart clenching. The ground was moving, as if it were a vast lung, inhaling and exhaling in long breaths. The corpses were stirring, jerking in awkward spasms. Dead heads rolling back and forth on loose necks. One of them bucked, arching its back. There was a soft, wet tearing sound. Its thorax ripped open. A great shape bulged out. Obscene, invertebrate, pushing up through the clinging ropes of internal organs. Writhing free, its segmented hide decorated with a livid flaking crust of acne. It flopped onto the ground, floundering, its rear end was still embedded in the dead body. It nuzzled the ground with its bulbous blind head. Murmuring like a drowning man, it began to heave itself towards Kitty and Wilson, dragging the corpse along behind. They could see other corpses splitting open. Giving birth to more. The worms squirmed towards them. The rain battered down, harder and harder. Kitty felt tears on her face. The worms were surrounding them.

  There was no way out.

  *

  The wolf watched the scene unfold from the cover of night. The worms had Wilson and Kitty surrounded. It cocked its head back, baying a single icy note of command. One of the worms reared up, lunging forward. Its stump of a head thumping into Wilson. Winding him. Knocking him down. He grappled with it. His fingers digging into the slick matter of the creature's hide. It squirmed up onto him, pinning him.

  “Run, Kitty. They're after me. They'll leave you alone if you go now. Get back to the hospital.”

  The weight of the worm was on his rib cage, he could feel the thin bones screaming with the strain they were bearing. Begging to collapse, to give in and break. Each breath hurt. In his mind, he saw the edges of the bones brushing against the outer layers of his lungs. Tears stung his eyes as he heaved at the worm, trying to force it off. His teeth ground against each other. His shoulders shook. He could feel the worm matching his struggles, pressing down harder, harder. He could not breathe.

  Then, it was gone. Cooling rain pebbled his face. The suffocating monstrosity evaporated, leaving nothing but a tracery of bitter mist. Wilson blinked, swallowing deep lungfuls of air. He felt sensation returning to him. He got to his feet. Kitty was there. Her left hand was shaking, bunched into a delicate fist.

  The worms were all gone.

  The corpses from the cemetery were still all around them but they were intact, still, with no sign of violation. As they had been. The dead were dead.

  “What happened?”

  “I hit it. I punched it on the nose. It, they all, just went away. Weren't they real?”

  Wilson rubbed his aching shoulders with his fingers, touched his chest. The aches and pains from that thing crushing him were very real. He reached out for Kitty's hand and jerked his head towards the hospital. They were no safer out here than in there. Whatever was stalking him, it had forms other than the wolf and the thing from the crypt. Wherever he went, it would be waiting for him, somehow, in some blighted shape.

  “Come on, let's go.”

  The pair turned and began to walk back through the torn earth. The dying light of the fire in the hospital was just ahead. It was almost a welcome sight. Kitty caught Wilson's eye. Her irises were as black as the night around them. He blinked. Her eyes were normal again. Her brow furrowed as she saw him looking at her. Wilson looked away. Up ahead, there were screams.

  “Oh no, they're in the camp.”

  “Who're they?”

  Wilson didn't answer.

  He set off at a run, pulling Kitty after him.

  The wolf's eyes glinted, amused. It watched them run. It turned and broke into a loping stride, cantering along, building up speed. It could smell their blood, hear it roaring through their veins. Rain stung its eyes. It was burning with hunger. A hunger that never left it. It could quiet the hunger but it could never silence it altogether. The hunger was too much a part of it. The hunger wanted the girl. Licking its long teeth, the wolf raced after her. Lifting its nostrils high, it inspected her scent.

  Tasting her from a distance.

  They heard the swift breathing of the wolf before
they knew they were being pursued. It was coming, running in a rhythm sympathetic to the beat of the rain. Wilson looked over his shoulder and saw it, in all its nightmarish glory. As dirty and dire as the rats from the crypts. Eyes carved of ebony flint. Its skin scaled over with scars that came from centuries of hunting and killing. Its darkened claws flashed as it came on. It was closing the space between them.

  “Don't look back.”

  The words wheezed from his lips as he picked up his pace, ignoring Kitty's tired cry of protest. There would be time to care for and nurse their pains later. In his mind, he saw the powerful muscles of the predator at their heels working away. It was seasoned and well-built, able to keep up with its prey for mile upon mile. Wilson and Kitty were both drained and tired.

  They could not run forever.

  Even this short distance was enough to bring them up against their limits. Sleepless nights, distress and frugal rationed supplies left them with few reserves of strength to call upon. Wilson could see the hospital ahead, the flickering hurricane lamps casting their limpid glow. Hearing the sound of the wolf's paws falling close behind, he pumped his legs even harder. He hoped Kitty would be able to keep up. Nearly there now, he thought.

  Then, the hospital seemed to retreat. Moving further away. Wilson's heart skipped up into his throat. The hospital moved closer once again. Then away.

  Wilson shook his head, feeling dizzy. His vision swam, sending the hospital rushing off into the distance, until it was little more than a glowing point on the horizon.

  His heart sank. He slowed. The hospital camp was almost gone, barely visible across a lightless no man's land. Kitty's grip on his arm tightened. She pulled at him.

  “What're you doing? We can't stop.”

  Wilson shook his head, out of breath. Pointing at the distant light, he knew they would never reach the camp now. The wolf was going to get them. They were going to die. He could already feel its claws raking through his flesh.