Aaaiiieee (3 page)

I had watched that mass of bodies descend, as if in slow motion. It was a heavy and crushing blob of darkness woven from frail scarecrow figures. It had descended on me like one many-armed creature, but this pile was only a part of the creature, I realized…and I was screaming again, at the knowledge. Clawing, squirming, desperate for breath as I realized that the bodies beneath me were also a part of this creature. The bodies all around me. Linked, locked, braided and meshed. They were all weak as individuals, but as this one unified form they had become amazingly strong, and they had trapped me. And their intent, of course, was to absorb me into the mass. To make me one of them, and thus a part of
it
.

I blubbered crazily for help. The weight seemed only to press me down deeper. Were more of them from either side moving in waves to pile further atop me? Were dead bodies not yet dragged from the barracks now slithering across the camp on their bellies and toppling themselves into the pit?

A girl’s long hair had fallen across my throat, her face nuzzled into my shoulder. A bush of pubic hair ground against my forehead in a terrible moist kiss. Fingers had hooked in the back of my shirt collar, the nails lightly scraping my skin. I shrieked and began to sob outright, hopelessly, like a woman, lifted my neck as best I could away from those nails…but my cheek pressed against the sharp ridge of a spine barely painted in skin.

It was as though the sharp bones above and below me were fangs that meant to impale me, fanged jaws that meant to rend me, devour me.

They’re not all dead, I reasoned in an effort to remain sane. That was it! The officer had pointed it out himself. In the barracks, the dead lay thick upon the floors mixed in with the living so that you could not tell one from the other. Living people must have been thrown into the pit with the dead in our haste to finish all the burying. That was why the hands seemed so purposely to be reaching to me, taking hold of me. That was why the cadavers seemed to have intentionally rolled atop me, covered me…

That some of the bodies were alive is not very possible, but it may be. True or not, it didn’t comfort me much. Was it that the living mixed in with the dead sought to have revenge upon me…or that the pale starved spirits of all those dead had somehow merged into one powerful entity? Both possibilities were equally hideous—rational or supernatural. Because either way, I was helpless. Either way, they would have their revenge.

Because I was never getting out. I was going to suffocate, or my chest would be crushed, or my heart would burst, or that hand at the back of my neck and others were going to curl around my throat at any moment…

Nails raked down my face. I squeezed my eyes shut as the nails clawed my eyelid. I wanted to die at that moment, my friend. Right then. Before the other nails came. And the strangling hands. And the teeth. I wanted it over with because the officer had had his revenge on me, too—he had abandoned me—and I would never escape this pit.

The bodies were churning atop me, moving more actively, and a hand took hold of my arm in an unmistakable grip.

Then the pressure eased from my chest and I looked up to see a face hovering above me, the eyes glittering, the teeth grimacing. A flashlight beam fell upon my face. More bodies were lifted off me, and I realized this was the reason for the feeling of activity above me. More hands took hold of me. I was passed up to other men, all British. I pawed crazily at the dirt slope of the grave, in my frenzy probably hindering their efforts to rescue me.

“What happened?” I heard one man ask. “Did he attack you?”

“No,” I heard my officer say. “He just…fell.”

Those were the last words I heard from him, as the man never spoke to me again.

I was out now, standing on the edge of the pit. I had been rescued from hell. I turned to look back down, and in the new lights I could see the creature. It had many eyes, some catching the light. I saw many mouths, smiling in that odd little expression of faint amusement so often seen on the dead.

What I did then was inexplicable. Like kissing my British officer. But I had been driven mad. It didn’t matter that I had been rescued. The monster was smiling at me, staring at me, it knew it had shattered my mind and my soul and its will was strong, it commanded me to give myself to it. It would have me yet. It was the only way to exonerate myself, to repent, to pay for my sins. The British would not execute me. I must execute myself…

And I had to die, I felt, as I reached out to my officer and snatched the revolver from his holster. Dying was the only way I was ever going to escape those eyes.

And dying was the only way to empathize with it in the way the monster demanded of me.

The soldiers clawed at my arms to stop me from thrusting the barrel in my mouth. Maybe that was why the bullet went wrong, up through my nose and into my eye socket rather than into my brain. Or, as I have suggested, it may have been the will of God that I should not have escaped my punishment so neatly.

I never much believed in God or in punishment, until after I had met that officer. Until after I had met that monster.

They are a monster in your country, aren’t they? Numerous and unified, rich and powerful. Can I blame them? They are a monster in Israel, smaller but tougher and with very sharp teeth. I have a deathly fear of both countries. Of their retribution. Monsters always turn on their makers.

You think I’m still insane, the way I’m talking. That after that night I never regained my sanity. But I did, my friend. I am sane now. In fact, I didn’t really go mad when I fell in the pit. It was up until that point—before I fell—that I was insane.

And maybe I was saved when they pulled me out of that hell. Maybe my eternal soul has been burned clean. But maybe not.

So that is my story. I see you don’t believe certain mysteries I’ve suggested. Just as the British officer didn’t believe me about the Rat Kings. And now that you know my past, you find me repellent, as he did. Repulsive, now that you know the truth about me. You can call me a demon, a monster. Something other than human. Just like we called the Jews and the rest. Anything, so long as you can say that I’m not a man like you.

Yes, you found my story a trifle unpleasant, eh? But like my officer…you wanted to listen.

Chapel

“You want TV tonight, honey?” A small gray-haired woman with a clipboard came walking into Devin’s room so quickly that it startled her. She had been gazing out the plate glass window which ran along one wall.

“Yeah…sure,” Devin said.

The woman inserted a key into the small color television suspended from its bracket, swivelled it so that the set was within Devin’s reach. “Watch a few Christmas specials, honey; take your mind off.”

“You work on Christmas eve, huh?” Devin asked with very little interest.

“My kids are grown and moved away, and my folks and brother are dead. I have one son right over in New Hampshire but he can’t come to see his mother until tomorrow night. He isn’t even married…but he chooses to be with his girlfriend’s family.”

Don’t complain about your son, Devin thought. At least yours is still alive.

“How much is that?” With a small groan she reached for her purse. The woman told her, and Devin counted out five dollars. “Expensive.”

“Well, there are four pay-per-view movies on every day, honey.” While the woman made notations on her clipboard Devin turned the dial through the small offering of stations. The woman said, “When I get home tonight I’ll watch the midnight mass. You should, too, hon…it will make you feel more at peace, y’know?”

I doubt that, Devin thought, so devout an atheist that she doubted even the historical existence of Christ, let alone the son of God part. “What is this?” she asked, coming to one channel. “Is this where they show the mass?”

The woman leaned over Devin to peek. “Oh no, I mean on regular channel Five. That’s hospital channel Eight—
Chapel.
That’s the chapel right here in the hospital. Right down at the end of maternity, here, past the cafeteria. They’ll have a service tomorrow, but not tonight.”

“Five dollars, and one out of what—eight? ten?—stations is a security camera view of an empty church.” Devin snorted a tired little laugh.

“Chapel,”
the woman corrected her. She clicked her pen point in. “A lot of people who can’t get out of bed rely on
Chapel,
honey. It gives them comfort.”

To be so simple a soul, Devin thought. She smiled at the woman. “Merry Christmas. Nice to talk to someone. You seem to be the only person working tonight.”

The woman drew closer conspiratorially. “Don’t get sick on a weekend or Christmas eve, hon. I feel bad for you that tonight it’s both. Not even a room-mate, huh? What are you in for, honey?”

“My baby died.”

“Aww. Oh, poor kid. I had a miscarriage once. How far along? Few months?”

“Yeah. Few.”

“It’s hard, honey, but it’s God’s will. We don’t understand His plan, but…maybe the baby wasn’t forming right. Most miscarriages are because of that. Or maybe he would have died some terrible way when he was older, and God spared him worse. It’s a mystery.”

“Yeah.”

The woman squeezed Devin’s foot through the blanket. “Be tough, hon. And merry Christmas.”

“Thanks.”

The woman took Devin’s hand and pushed her five dollars back into it. She winked, and left the room at that same hurried pace. Devin almost felt the urge to call her back, and a moment later she began to sob quietly but heavily, as if she had been abandoned. She felt not only physically hollowed out inside, with her baby gone, but that her very spirit had been hollowed out as well.

Few months? No. Devin had been full term. Her due date had been next Tuesday.

Intrauterine strangulation. Her child had been killed with his very own life line. Not even two weeks before, a nurse practitioner upon examining Devin had told her everything was okay. The baby’s heart had sounded strong. Devin had heard it herself. “Slow,” the nurse had said. “Could be a boy.” She had been right. Devin had picked the name Christopher, if it were to be a boy.

Should she call Christopher’s father? Peter was way out in sunny California these days. He didn’t even know that she’d been pregnant. First the good news…now the bad news. But to Peter, which would be the good news and which the bad news? Would the death of his son be a tragedy, or a relief?

How could Devin know, when she had struggled with such questions herself these past months? Was it a folly, going through with this pregnancy? Was this really what she wanted…to be a single mother?

Maybe I should have had an abortion after all, Devin thought now. It would have been the same result. Only, she wouldn’t have had to go through twelve hours of labor had he only been two months old. Twelve hours of agony. Women coped with the pain because they knew there was a reward at the end. But Devin had suffered those many long hours already knowing that in the end only a different kind of agony would be her prize.

I’m sorry, Christopher, she thought. I should have killed you a long time ago. I would have saved us both the pain…

She couldn’t afford a plot for him, a coffin. Some people did that. But in her customer service job she made barely enough to scratch by. What would they do with him? She had to ask them…but at the same time she didn’t want to know.

She had held him. They encouraged that, thought it helped with the coping. His face had looked so tired, so unhappy, as if he had merely been disturbed from his peaceful slumber within. Devin didn’t think it helped her to have seen him. She wished she had never seen how beautiful he was. Had never smelled his wispy fine hair, making a spiral on the back of his head as if God had left his thumb print there.

Keep Your hands off my kid, asshole, Devin thought, unbeliever though she was. You condemned my son and hung him. Even if I did believe in You, I’m through believing now.

How could that stupid old woman believe? How could she think that Devin could find comfort in the empty dronings of some sexually repressed priest? “God’s will.” Devin would have resented the woman for that, if she weren’t feeling so very tired. Tired and unhappy. Just like Christopher.

*     *     *

How often did it actually snow on Christmas eve? Well, it was snowing out there now, but she was in here. Not home. But what was home these days? Peter long gone. Her father dead and her mother remarried to that dick Phil, both in Florida for the winter. She hadn’t called her mother. Didn’t want to spoil her holiday. Didn’t want to talk about Christopher. This was her private ordeal. She was glad all the doctors were gone, all the nurses inattentive. She wanted to be alone. Still, she saw colored lights glowing out there beyond the dozing dark parking lot with its few cars, shrouded like old furniture. There were children in those homes, dreaming of the morning.

She missed that stupid little TV lady. TV. That’s what she needed—distraction. Hopefully something really mindless; a Kung Fu flick, a Godzilla movie. She pulled the hovering set down closer to her, turned up the volume a bit. Six-twenty; early enough for some dumb old Christmas cartoon, maybe. Ah; on the special movie station they were playing a Christmas movie starring that redneck Ernest guy. Perfect.

A nurse brought dinner. It was better than she would have thought. Another nurse came to read her blood pressure, take her temperature. Devin told her she was fine, just to get rid of her, but afterwards regretted that she’d forgotten to ask what would be done with her baby. She considered buzzing, decided not to. She still wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She hadn’t wanted to know what became of her cat Sting last year after he had to be put to sleep. If only she had him to come home to. Not even      that…

After the Ernest movie, Devin clicked through the channels again, and paused out of mild curiosity when she reached channel Eight. Taped religious music played softly as a background to the one static camera angle of the St. Andrew’s Hospital chapel. The camera was apparently close to the ceiling, pointing down toward the altar. No lights were on in the chapel, but for one candle just to the left edge of the screen, its glow more visible than the flame itself. The scene was so dim, so grainy, that Devin watched it a few moments if only to discern what she was seeing. She saw the first two or three pews at the bottom of the screen but had no idea how many there might be altogether. An aisle between them led to a slightly raised dais, where a block shape must have been the draped altar table. In back of that were three thrones, as Devin thought of them, the one behind the table particularly tall. That was all she could be sure of. There seemed to be a podium set off to one side and a door in the corner, but it was just too murky. It was as lonely a place as this hospital room with its one occupied bed.