The Oeuvre Read online

  As the hostilities gathered pace, he saw everything and everyone with a German name become the enemy. Leichner's greasepaint was banned from theatres. Spa water was replaced by Buxton water. Germanic delicatessens flew Union Jacks and swore that their sauerkraut and liver-sausage were, in fact, English viands. Citizens changed their names to escape persecution, only for their aliases to be published in The Times. Even prostitutes of German descent adopted Belgian identities. Bone did the same. Before the war, his name was Bonewitz. He changed how he spoke too, working on his English.

  It was all madness. Fearful tales of spies were told. Some were seen signalling out to sea. Others were caught being dropped in baskets onto the mainland by Zeppelins. The enemy was everywhere, according to rumour, if you listened to so-and-so.

  Then came the riots.

  Lives were ruined. Shops and homes were set alight. People died. The populace of England went from pettiness to murder in such a short space of time. He wondered if there were any hanging trees in England that would soon be used again. He felt raw inside from bearing witness to the horror that was Man. God was gone, humanity abandoned by its disgusted Creator. They were playthings of the Devil now, preferring his Lies to the Light. A world of meat puppets, eager to butcher one another.

  Bone looked down at his ageing hands, useless. Here he was, a soldier and a Captain in his Majesty's army, going through the motions. Sending men to their deaths over the top. Sending men to their deaths before the firing squad.

  Death, death and death again.

  His every action seemed to end in death. What else was he to do? What was the voice of one man when so many were baying for blood?

  He recalled an old Chinese proverb.

  If you stand up then, like a nail, you will be knocked down.

  Captain Bone sat staring, in the shade of his dugout, doing nothing.

  *

  Hammer Cole stood guard over Wilson throughout the afternoon, never faltering. If only he could get past Hammer and escape. But where was he going to escape to?

  No point heading further behind the lines. The only other way was out into no man's land. He looked up at Hammer Cole. He decided he would stay put. This was justice. I left Smithy to die. If only it could happen over again. Then he could make amends. No-one deserved to die like that, eaten by those rats. Wilson screwed his eyes shut, willing the memory away.

  He saw Smithy smiling at him. His broken jaw resting in a crooked grin.

  The light of day ebbed away. Night spread its dingy presence over the trenches. Hammer slapped Wilson on the shoulder, “Better be going.”

  Wilson looked Hammer Cole over, thinking about taking him on. Hammer was too big. Thick with muscles and scar tissue. He would knock Wilson's block off in a second, easy. He'd do him some damage, no doubt about that, but Hammer would pound him into the ground for his trouble. Wilson made his way out of the dugout in silence. Raging inside against the fate that had befallen him. A moment of weakness had brought him to this. Hammer was close behind him with a bayoneted rifle in his meaty hands. Mud sprayed into their faces as a volley of shells chewed up the ground in front of the trench's sandbag parapet.

  “Ho, look at that. Jerry's a bit off today. That lot of shells fell short,” Hammer said.

  One of the sentries crouched down on the fire step, looking out through a rusted periscope apparatus. It gave him a good means of viewing no man's land without the risk of taking a sniper bullet in the eye.

  The colour ran out of the sentry's face.

  Warning whistle blasts sounded down the length of the trench. Sickly tendrils of vapour were pouring in, staining the air.

  “Gas! Gas! Quick, lads!”

  Chapter Twelve

  The gas came crawling towards them. Hammer fumbled with clumsy hands at his gas mask, his breaths coming quickly as he freed it from its holder. He would be dead in seconds if he did not get it on.

  Wilson could look after himself, the coward.

  Wilson took his chance. He lashed out at Hammer's kneecap, feeling it give as he drove his heel downwards. The big man yelled, dropping the mask, clamping his hands to his knee. Hammer roared with pain. He lunged at Wilson. The gas washed over him in a suffocating wave and the big man went down with a splash, gagging on the deadly fumes. Wilson snatched up the mask and wedged it over his head, pulling the strapping tight. He'd always been good at gas drill in training. The mask goggles misted over from his breathing, giving everything outside a washed-out quality. Wilson peered through his goggles at Hammer. Wilson gasped into the stale interior.

  The veins in Hammer's face were bulging, writhing as worms under the skin. The arteries on each side of his oak-thick neck were swelling, straining through the flesh. Skin began splitting open, creating a network of deep bleeding lines. Wilson saw the gas coiling around Hammer's prone form, turning crimson, then ruddy, as it became suffused with his lifeblood. The body shuddered, convulsing as it was drained dry.

  This stuff's not Jerry gas, thought Wilson.

  He turned and ran from its encroaching fingers.

  *

  Captain Bone heard the screams. The crimson gas followed. He fitted Forsythe with a gas mask before seeing to his own. He ventured out into the trench. One of the men, his face a maze of bloody lacerations walloped into him, knocking him back against the trench wall. The bleeding man fell to the ground. Phlegmy clots of gore trailing in sticky ribbons from his mouth. The man jerked a few times then was still. Bone blanched, pressing the back of his hand against his mouth.

  “What in the hell-”

  The poison gases used by the Germans were usually corrosives or irritants. They attacked the insides and the more sensitive extremities, the eyes, nose and mouth. This was something very different. He saw the blood-coloured haze settling over the trench. His men were falling, crumpling, collapsing. Every one of them, bleeding to death through their skins. Bone raised his own hands. Seeing speckles of blood dabbling them.

  His eyes were wide behind his mask's goggles. Bone felt a sensual elastic snap inside his brain. A strange smile spread across his lips as he realised what was happening here. He had not been wrong. All these years, he had been right. This part of the world was becoming an outpost of Hell, the tenth circle, Erebus.

  This was the End.

  The Last Day.

  Atop the sides of the trench, he saw snaggled old trees reaching out of the earth, robed by the infernal atmosphere. Tangled in their coiling branches were soldiers. Every one of them crucified. Their heads hanging. Gruesome twists of thorn piercing their wrists and ankles. Skin dangling over bone in drying twists. Rats making nests in their hollow chests. Gnawing fingers. Biting off toes. Plucking at the fringes of ragged wounds. Making the half-dead scream, weep and beg. Yet, as the men screamed, they did so wearing the most wicked of sensual smiles.

  Bone saw Him coming.

  A dapper moustachioed gentleman in a black suit, top hat and tie. His skull-tipped cane squelching in the flesh of the fallen. His feet walking on the air, just off the ground. His shoes were a shining ebony, their tops covered with immaculate white spats. The elegant, scarlet fork of his tail flicking out between the tails of his suit jacket. He plucked at the curling tip of his goatie beard with finely manicured fingers, the fingernails of which were ebony too.

  The Devil stopped before Bone.

  His lacquered hair shone. He was smiling, flashing a pair of sharp vampiric incisors. Satan made a courteous and sweeping bow. Raising his bowed head a notch, Lucifer winked a wink that could snatch out a man's soul. To Captain Bone, he extended a delicate, feminine hand. His voice was smooth, urbane and mercurial.

  “Oh, Captain, sir, may I have this dance?”

  Bone took the Devil by the hand.

  *

  Wilson dodged his way down the trench, weaving through the rolling banks of murderous gas. Shrieks echoed all around him. Bleeding hands snatched at him. Bodies fell, crumpling. Streaming rivers of blood ran from splitting skin. The burst
s of the first flares of the evening shone through the gas, making it glow a ghoulish crimson. The world was on fire. Everyone was drowning in flame.

  Like the night of the fire, all over again.

  The past was after him. Bursting into crude life behind his eyes. The memories, hot and scalding.

  …his face, what's he doing to his…

  …you want some, pal?...

  …s'good this…

  Wilson shouldered his way past dying men. A fine red film having settled over the goggles of his gas mask.

  …coming from the hoses it was on fire…

  He could feel it soaking into his uniform.

  …the burning stuff…

  This was the doing of that thing from the crypt. It had turned into rats and now it had turned into gas. Must be after me, thought Wilson. Not these poor bastards. Must've followed me here. He stopped. He removed the gas mask, threw it away. Turning around, he called out.

  “Oi, you want me? Recognise me? You after me, you cunt? Well, come on then! Catch me, if you fuckin’ can!”

  The tainted air grew dense, thickening. Wilson tore through it, running. At his heels was a wet whispering, it came flowing after him, over the many bloodless corpses.

  Wilson dived into the communication trench. It was a branch of the diggings used by runners and signallers to report back to HQ. Stretcher bearers used it to ferry the wounded out to safety.

  The gas wasn't far behind him.

  Leaving the slaughter behind, Wilson felt his own remembrances fading. He felt nauseous. He wanted to know what had happened to him but, at the same, he did not. He had a nasty feeling crawling around in his guts. There was something waiting for him in those memories, from the night of the fire. Something horrific he didn't want to recall. He could see it. Under the surface of the sea of his thoughts. A charred black leviathan waiting to emerge.

  A probing coil of gas slipped around his throat.

  Wilson pitched himself forwards, falling away from it. He yelled. He stumbled. Flinging his arms out. He fell. He crashed through a tangle of waxy sheeting. He landed with a gruesome squelch. Untangling himself from the sheeting, he looked about and realised what he had tumbled into.

  It was the toilet pit.

  Excrement slopped around him as he moved. The walls of the pit were slick with shit. He couldn't climb out. He breathed the rancid methane in tight little gasps.

  Slow seconds passed by.

  The gas overhead rolled away. Wilson waited. He heard a voice. A human shadow was cast over the pit.

  “Hey, you down there!”

  It was Captain Bone.

  “Give me your hand.”

  Wilson hesitated. Then he reached up a shit-stained hand. The older man grabbed on and hauled him up.

  Bone smirked, “Private Wilson? So, Hammer didn't make it out of the trench before the attack.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So, what d'you think that was then, Wilson? A new kind of gas?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bone regarded him with a thin critical eye. He tugged his crucifix out, holding it between his fingers, before Wilson's eyes, “Why do you think this scared it off then, hmmm? Saved me? A gas isn't going to turn and run because of this now, is it?”

  “I dunno, sir.”

  “Wilson, what are you? An idiot? Have you never heard of vampires? Dracula? The undead? Do you know what I'm talking about?”

  Wilson's brow furrowed.

  Bone went on, “Then let me tell you about the Devil and his servants. Vampires are just one of the abominations he has visited on Mankind, Private. Vampires can turn into rats, wolves, bats and mist. The latter seems to be the form that this one has used on us today. Very clever, right? Having a form that we'd take to be a gas, deceiving us as to what is really going on.”

  “Yes, sir. Very clever.”

  “You don't seem to have much to say about it, Wilson.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, you listen to me. I have a lot to say. There're unholy beasts on this earth, demons, and I just saw one of them at work with my own eyes. GHQ will never believe me though. We live in Godless times, Wilson. We're here fighting Germany for a few miles of wretched land. We've turned it into Hell on earth and, in so doing, we have opened the way for creatures from the Nine Circles. From the heart of Hell, the Devil sends his agents to waylay us. Still, men remain blind to His deeds. We blame Man, but Man is only one vessel filled up by the Devil's evil work. There are many others-”

  There was a strange look to Bone as he continued his manic sermon. Wilson did not hear the rest of it. The look in the Captain's eyes made Wilson queasy. He knew what this all meant. It had nothing to do with demons and devils. Captain Bone had the horrors.

  He fixed his lost gaze on Wilson.

  “-and why did it spare you, Wilson? Why do you still live, in place of my men? Did you make a pact with the Beast, with Satan himself, to save your life? Did you lead it here? Is that it? Offering up the blood of your own kind was the price you agreed to pay for your life?”

  Bone drew out his revolver. His fingers were tight around the butt. A pulse was thrumming in the Captain's temple. His eyes were hungry for murder. Wilson said nothing.

  “You're going to help me, Wilson. You are going to help me root out this horror and you are going to be my witness. If one man testifies to the existence of this beast, he'll be locked up but two! They will have to take notice, right?”

  Wilson doubted it. Bone was raving, trying to stitch the pieces of his broken mind back together with the logical threads of his military training. They would both be locked up in the madhouse. Still, he thought, better that than going the same way as the dead in the trench. Wilson nodded his agreement.

  Bone smiled, “You will go first, Private. Take this.”

  He handed his crucifix to Wilson.

  “Like Moses, you will clear the way for me, through the red sea that lies ahead.”

  Wilson held up the crucifix, feeling ridiculous. He brandished it. He took a step towards the bleeding gaseous wall. It did not flinch. It did not recoil. It continued to hang there. He took a step closer, gnawing on the insides of his mouth with his molars. This had better bloody work, he thought. He winced as Bone's revolver nudged into his spine, urging him ahead. Wilson approached the heaving mass, holding out the crucifix. This was insane, walking straight into the stuff. It was playing a game with them, he was sure of it. Wilson's steps became smaller the closer he got to the gas. He could feel fear pumping around his veins. Bone continued to jab the barrel of the revolver into his back, hard.

  “Go on, Private, lead the way.”

  Wilson blinked sweat out of his eyes and, drawing a deep breath from the fetid air, he thrust the crucifix forwards, plunging his arm into the gas. He tensed, preparing himself for a rush of needling pain.

  The gas parted.

  It opened up, moving away.

  Wilson gasped and then let out a victorious cry, “Don't want us? Can't have us? What're you scared of, eh?”

  He jabbed the crucifix at the walls of gas on either side. It swam away, retreating in on itself, melting into the trench wall.

  “Come on then. We're right here. Come and get us.”

  Bone came up behind him, “Get us to my dug-out, Wilson. We can telephone GHQ from there.”

  Wilson's jubilation died quickly. Bone still had him at gunpoint. He was still going to be court-martialed and shot. His death was merely being postponed. He heaved himself onward, further into the trench, watching the gas part. Making a tunnel for them to pass through, rolling back in bilious waves. They didn't look down at the still forms of the dead as they passed them. Wilson's mind was racing. He had to get out of here, otherwise he was a dead man too. There was no guarantee the phone line hadn't been severed.

  What then? Would Bone execute him, summarily?

  The way the Captain was digging the revolver into his back, Wilson was sure he was eager to put it to use. The deadly gas had
not left the trench either. It was still hanging over their heads, fronds of it wavering over the trenchworks. The branches of a forest on the borders of Hell. Wilson jabbed at them with the crucifix. Feeling a small burst of satisfaction inside as they dissolved.

  There was a wet shuffling sound behind him. An inhuman ululation. Bone cried out.

  The thump of a body falling to the ground.

  Wilson turned, gaping at the scene that was unfolding before him. They were rising from where they had fallen, the dead men of the trench, pawing at the air. The ground sighed and murmured to itself as they clambered to their feet. Their flesh running like melting butter, reshaping into forms shambling, skinless and raw. Pus was leaking from the hanging folds of their faces. They were snatching and tearing at Bone. Their fingers were mummified, covered in coiled wrappings of cured human skin. They were kneeling over Bone, stabbing into him with their fingers, tearing at him with those quivering maws. The tableau was coloured macabre, the shades of an abattoir, cast over it by the rolling hood of gas hanging overhead.

  Bone screamed, snapping Wilson back to reality. He could feel blood hammering in his ears. He had to save Bone. Rescuing a superior officer, it would go in his favour. Clenching the crucifix tight in his hand, he charged in. Striking out. The acrid stench of burning flesh stung his nostrils as the crucifix made contact with the fruit-soft substance of the creatures. They howled and gibbered. Viscous muck ran from the wounds he was making. Their ruined faces seemed to hang, slack with sadness, as Wilson attacked them. Blood-flecked secretions spattered Wilson's face, stinging his eyes. He struck again and again with the crucifix. The creatures retreated.

  Wilson reached out to the prone Captain.

  “Come on, sir, we're going to have to run for it.”

  Bone's revolver went off.

  One bullet smacked into Wilson's thigh. A second hit him in the shoulder, burying itself deep enough to scrape on bone. Wilson shouted, falling to the ground. The third bullet shot past his ear. Through the buzzing haze of pain, he heard Bone ranting, “A coward, Wilson. That's what you are. A coward dies many deaths. A brave man dies but once. You will not cheat me of my death. You will not make me become as you are.”