The Oeuvre Read online

  Wilson stood before the Vetala. The spaces within him, the old wounds, were brimming over with the bad blood of thought, feeling and memory. He shuddered, nauseated by terrible remembrance. Some things are best left forgotten. Wilson knew now what the dead fear, what follows on, the fate that comes after extinction. When something becomes nothing. When everything of you and about you is gone from this world. When no-one remembers your name.

  And my name is all I have left, he thought.

  He could feel the infernal scratching worsening, raking the inside of his skull with its blinding fury. Darkened claws raged away. Scratching inhuman languages into hard bone. Every letter, a jagged point. Each word, a series of gouges.

  …What're you doing here, boy? This is no place for you…

  A ripple passed through the cancerous hateful form.

  Wilson looked up at it, “What is this place?”

  …This is the Grey, where we dwell. You know that much…

  “What am I doing here then? I'm not the same as you.”

  …You are. You're becoming one of us. Once we're inside you, there's no getting us out. Heh, you might say we're like having rats in the brain…

  More ripples coursed through the beast.

  It was laughing at him.

  “I'm not like you.”

  Wilson brandished his bayonet. His stomach knotted. He held out the blade, then he inverted it, resting its point against his heart. He could feel the life-giving organ shuddering underneath. His time was almost up. He heard the voice of Brookes.

  …Do the right thing…

  He could feel the scratching under the skin of his arm. Wilson ground his teeth, glaring at his hand, paralysed. His fingers loosened. The bayonet began to slide free. The laughter of the Vetala shook a shower of limestone stalactites down from the vaults above. Better do it now and do it quick. He looked into the shimmering spider-eyes of the horror hanging before him.

  “I might be a lie, I remember nothing about who I am, and you might well be the truth of me, but you know what? Sometimes, a lie can be noble.”

  He drove the bayonet blade home. A mountainous shudder ran through the Vetala. A howl ripped out of it, a raw, hopeless, bleeding sound.

  Everything stopped.

  There was a moment of perfect stillness.

  A wintry flush ran through Wilson. He clenched his teeth against it. Feeling his fingers and toes burn with prickling chills. Everything became blotchy. A ferocious scratching tore through his insides, burrowing into his heart, his lungs and kidneys. He let it pass through him. He knew this was it, the threshold between life and death. There was no going back. This was the point of no return. The rats inside his skull scurried over one another, scratching away at his brain, shredding his senses, trying to claw their way out, escape. But the black river came thundering through him, washing the rats, and the scratching, away forever. Wilson's head fuzzed and went light. A strange aching pressure flared and then receded inside his skull. The Vetala trembled, shook, its carapace becoming translucent. A hissing wave of excretory fumes washed over Wilson. The Vetala was rotting, receding, crumpling in on itself. The shell of its hide crumbling, coming apart at the seams. Raining soundlessly to the ground. Fluids went gushing out in thick maggot-ridden rivers. Its eyes shattered like mirrors. Its tendrils writhed desperately over the dead bodies below, seeking to draw some sustenance from them. Wilson saw something small and black squirm its way out of the titanic carcass. The next second, it was gone. Then, with a cataclysmic groan and a reverberating crash, the Vetala fell from its cradle. Its grip on the roots of Black Wood dissolving completely.

  All became quiet and still.

  Smithy and Brookes were waiting for him, sitting on the steps of the crypt, sharing a fag, puffing out smoke through the holes in their bones. Smithy smiled a crooked smile, despite his broken jaw.

  …Well done, Whiner. Couldn't have done better m'self, and that's saying summat…

  Brookes nodded at Wilson. He was smiling, satisfied, stroking the open wound in his throat with a restless fingertip.

  …Thanks, Reg. You did the right thing…

  *

  Wilson opened his eyes. He could see pale sky through the branches of Black Wood. He was sprawled on his back, wounded, his life-blood pumping into the ground. His breathing was shallow. Every breath was a battle won. Wilson felt the bullet in his back grinding against bone. The still, white-eyed corpses of Smithy and Brookes were sprawled over him. Their eyes, glassy and empty. Shells whined and roared overhead. Men screamed and yelled. Everything sounded so distant, so far away. The rat from the crater was squatting on his belly. It was looking down at him, its eyes calmly regarding him. Something hurt in his side. Wilson drew it out from his pocket. Small, silver and tarnished. A crucifix. The stigmata scar it had made showing, white on his palm. His eyesight flickered and dimmed. The rat was swelling, spreading, dissolving into formlessness and shadow. He sighed, closed his eyes.

  Overhead, he heard the black birds cry.

  Shapes in the Mist

  Dedication

  Dennis Wheatley (1897-1977)

  & William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918)

  ... is all that we see or seem,

  but a dream within a dream? ...

  Edgar A. Poe

  Chapter One

  The dreams were nothing. Vague, a fraying mist, settling in the darker corners of the bunk room. He sat up, wiping dried grey webbing from his eyes. The flavours of war, not peace, were in the air. Petroleum, salty sweat and burnt metal. It was going to be a hot one, he could feel humidity slithering over his bare skin. Moisture breaking out on his brow. Jerry Reinhart went outside to watch the dawn, the morning glory. A ritual he had not broken faith with since he was six years old. Soon, it would be time to take his kite up into the big blue.

  He was a long way from home.

  *

  Anti-aircraft fire tore through the air. Jerry wig-wagged the wings of his ageing Nieuport, twisting her this way and that, weaving through the steel hail scouring the air. He had to get out of here. He had been taking down Drachen all afternoon. Drachen were colossal observation balloons used by the Boche, usually positioned a few miles behind the lines at about two thousand feet, tethered to trucks. The observer in a Drachen could scan a ten-mile radius of land on a clear day. The more of these things they shot down, the easier life would be for the soldiers on the ground. Also, Drachen were clumsy things, difficult to manoeuvre and unarmed. This made them prime targets for the fighter-pilots of the Entente. Attacking them in the evening was the best time. The observers in the balloon were less likely to spot you coming in, especially if you stayed low, hiding in the camouflage of twilight. If they did spot you, there wasn’t much they could do, unless they had been assigned a gun battery. The gun batteries were armed with ‘flaming onions’, explosive flares that fired in bursts of five. If just one of the things hit you then you were cooked, falling to earth, roasted alive, your plane becoming a burning coffin – not a nice way to go.

  Jerry took down his first two Drachen with relative ease. He came in on them low and quiet, engine off, flattening his plane into a glide, minimising movement so that the tell-tale singing of the wires strung between the top and bottom wings would not betray him. The Drachen observers and ground crews were preparing to finish up for the day. Conscientious workers, they were absorbed in their tasks, not noticing the humming shadow rising out of the valley.

  Jerry was sure he heard cries of surprise each time, as he swept up in a gentle glide, firing the Nieuport’s engine into life. He would bank and then turn in for the kill, sighting his machine guns into the heart of the Maltese Cross painted onto the side of each Drachen.

  Then, up from the ground, flaming onions flashed, bursting around him, none of them hitting him. They were panicking, firing blind, their aim completely wild. Jerry squeezed his triggers tight. Streams of white heat erupted across the centre of each black cross. Flowers of fire blossoming from the burning metal
seeds he planted. The observers jumped from their baskets, trailing white umbilical cords of parachute. They snapped them open. Catching the hot wind billowing out from the crumpling balloon. Jerry circled away victorious, dodging crazy volleys of flaming onions. Twice that evening, his luck and judgement held.

  The third Drachen was his undoing. His Nieuport was low on sauce. He was getting tired but he could not admit it. He wanted one more before heading home, three in a row, that would look great on the scoreboard.

  One step closer to being an Ace. Night was hurrying over the land. The sky was streaked with pink, orange and turquoise. Visibility for the observers was down to nothing and there was no gun battery that he could see. Easy pickings, Jerry thought, with a predatory smile on his face. He headed for his target, not bothering to stay low. The Nieuport’s engine was muttering to itself, the wires of its wings sang a forlorn ghostly song.

  The tranquillity was shattered by the sudden roar of engines that were not his own. Four Fokker planes appeared from the shadows below, peppering the air with bullets. How long had they been back there?

  Biding their time, waiting to take him down. He had not noticed them, had no suspicions. Had he really let his guard down that much? Become so careless, so unaware of his surroundings?

  He was caught in their sights. There was nowhere to run to. The Fokkers rose above him. His only choice was to go lower, down into the shadows they came from. He could fly under them, go deeper into their territory, far over the lines, see if he could shake them off. His Nieuport coughed drily and jumped under him. Jerry ignored it. The air ripped open on every side, howling with the whine of stressed machinery. The Fokkers swept down past him, they came back up, buzzing close to him, too close.

  “Trying to run me into the ground, are you?”

  Jerry held the Nieuport steady, skipping her over ruined cottages and blasted copses, leaving the Drachen far behind. His nerves shook with each queasy lurch made. He could feel gravity drawing him down, each time he came a little closer to earth. He almost ducked as one of the Fokkers came so close he could make out the details of its fuselage. Then one of them was behind him, then two. All four were on his tail, he imagined them lining up on the back of his head with their gun sights. Would they kill him? Would they continue with the sport of the chase?

  He could not afford to wait and see. He had to climb. A Nieuport did not have the same stamina for climbing as a Fokker. He would have to push her, old and battered as she was, he would have to push her to her limits, or he would die right here. A scream leaping from his throat, Jerry sent the Nieuport into a steep zoom, barrelling her up into the air. The plane screamed with him, protesting at the agony he was putting her through. He could feel his upper arms aching. It felt like there was no flesh or muscle on his hands. He could feel the bones of his fingers grating on the joystick through his leather gloves. Gravity snatched at him, shaking the plane violently.

  This was the ceiling, he had hit it. This was as high as he could take her. Pitching the Nieuport over, out of the zoom, he stalled the engine.

  “This isn’t going well.”

  Taking her down, feeling the wind batter at him, he thumbed the triggers of his machine guns. Through slitted eyes, he regarded the German fighters coming at him.

  Jerry fired. He shot two of them down. One went into a spin, its right wing sheared through, crashing into one of its comrades. They went down, bursting into twin balls of streaked oily flame, exploding as they hit the earth. The other two dashed past him, out of sight for the moment. He would worry about them later. Jerry was plunging towards the earth himself. He sparked the engine, it didn’t catch, she was too empty.

  “I’m going to go into the ground like a fucking dart.”

  He sparked her again.

  “I just took down two of the bad guys. Come on!”

  There was no way he was going to be wiped out by his own hand. Another spark. The Nieuport dropped, a stone falling through the air.

  Dead weight.

  “One more time, baby, come on!”

  It caught.

  The dehydrated engine came to life.

  Yanking the joystick, Jerry steered the Nieuport out of her dive, levelling out, looking from his left over to his right, he sought his remaining two enemies.

  The Fokkers were gone.

  Jerry’s heart slowed. He could see the flames from the downed planes flickering away below, but the other two were gone. The darkening sky was clear, he was safe, he had won, but he was deep inside enemy territory.

  A long way from home.

  Maybe they would come back to finish him off. He had done well to out-distance four Fokkers and then take out two of them. He was good, a strong pilot, but he knew that he owed fifty-percent of his survival so far to Lady Luck. Low on fuel, flying on fumes, he knew what his options were. Land, surrender and then be captured. Or, attempt to nurse his Nieuport home.

  The first option was his best hope, he knew that, but the same pluck that made him go up alone that day resurfaced. There was as much sheer bloody-mindedness as there was courage in his decision to try and get home.

  The glare of the evening sun was fading, she was slowly settling into the cradle of the horizon. Night was not far away. He had no time to waste mulling things over. Letting his plane drop, allowing her to coast along, he set off for home. Behind him, a silent predator came on, unseen.

  *

  Jerry’s brother was called the Badger. Always scruffy, his thick straw-tangle of hair always wild after being brushed and brushed by mom. A faun, son of Pan, who loved to be loose in the scrub and bushes by the railroad tracks. Loving the god-like boom and clang of the great iron juggernauts thundering by. His cheeks and brow smeared with soot and coal dust, his shirt and shorts, torn on brambles, were made of more holes than they were of fabric. Small red cuts were bandaged by dirt and mud. Badger was the untamed thing Jerry could never be. Years apart in age and polar opposites in temperament. They were firm friends for this very reason. Brothers bonded by more than blood. There was a heat haze in the air when they were close to one another. An aura of pure, unquestioning union. A strange innocence, waiting to be broken. A tenderness that would, one day, harden and die. Neither knew this as the trains thundered by. It was a hot, empty day. The last before Jerry went to fight in the war. The last time he would see his home, his mom and the Badger.

  Best not to think of these things.

  Jerry squatted on his haunches by the railroad track. Eardrums trembling, picking up the sound in the distance. The distant honk, a desolate horn. The cry of a lonesome beast. Wheels grinding iron into heat and smoke. Two thin discs shone the sun back into his eyes. Picking them up, feeling their fragility, he descended the slope, skidding, stopping by the Badger’s side. He put one of the discs in a palm that was small, wet and grubby.

  “What is it?”

  Bent metal, stress-dulled by striations and pain, it flashed and flickered.

  “A silver penny, Canadian.”

  Wrong change left on the tracks for train wheels to pound out of shape and turn into weird treasure, a keepsake for the brothers to share.

  “Keep it.”

  The Badger looked up at Jerry, his bitten lips breaking into a super-wide smile.

  “I will. Stay safe, big brother.”

  They embraced.

  Later that day, Jerry left for Belgium and her battlefields.

  *

  The network of sunken lines and churned earth below marked the beginning of the Entente’s territory. It was still a long way off, by the horizon, he would never get the Nieuport there. She was rattling, rising, sinking, getting ready to die. If he had to ditch in no man’s land, he could use the plane as cover, crawl to the lines. Sure, he might still be shot but that was part of war. Better to take a Boche bullet in the lung than ditch behind their lines and spend god-alone knew how long as a prisoner of war. Something in his gut shrank in on itself at the thought of surrender.

  No, not from a
Reinhart. Germany might be where his folks were from but Jerry was here fighting for Old Glory. There was no yellow in his country’s flag.

  “No, sir. There is not.”

  The hum of another plane disturbed his thoughts, there was no way this was going to be a friendly fighter. Jerry craned his neck, following the sound of the new arrival, looking over his right shoulder, he saw it clear. Scarlet paint shimmered in the fading sunlight, it covered every inch of the tri-plane’s bodywork. Maltese crosses were emblazoned on its wings. Here was a man both confident and arrogant, a king riding through his kingdom, not afraid to make a bold target of himself to all comers. A master of the wind.

  Richtofen.

  Bullets snapped through the air. He’s shooting wide, thought Jerry, trying to get me to ditch on his side of the lines. He looked back over to the horizon, seeing the trench works and the barbed wire that would be sanctuary for him. If he tried, he could out-run the blood-red knight, there would be no sport for his foe in shooting him in the back. Without the promise of a joust, Germany’s Ace of Aces would leave him to flee in peace, but it was that word that made Jerry’s mind up.

  Flee.

  He turned the Nieuport to face Richtofen.

  The engine choked on the manoeuvre, a mechanical asthmatic fit shook through the craft, making the turn lazy, slow, clumsy. There was nothing left in her, she was running on air and prayer, he would be lucky if she didn’t give out here and now.

  “I know you don’t have long for this, baby, but let’s give him hell.”

  His foe was already climbing, tempting him to rise up and meet him. Jerry urged his flagging steed up, pursuing the German, he readied his guns.