The Altonevers (19 page)

As they near they can see candlelight
dancing through dusty windows framed by trimmed shrubs. The other
side of the house is filled with piles of trash. Cans, wood planks
and paper are thrown around a rusted maypole that he's using for a
laundry line. They come to a stop in front of his wooden mailbox
and walkway of separated stones leading to a heavy looking freshly
painted white door.

“
You have quite the green
thumb,” she says, seeing his garden of carrots, tomatoes, cabbage
and cucumber, though fixating on the carrots buried up to their
heads.

“
You could say that. The
soldiers used to come to this place to worship and pray, but not
today, never today,” Mickey says as he turns the door handle, and
Cider realizes there is no lock or keyhole on the door.

“
Where's the gas?” he
asks.

“
Oh, they have fuel, but
it'll be a while until we can get it, so you might as well just
come in for a minute. Have something to eat, stay awhile. It'd be
delightful to have you two over for coffee. It'll be a while before
the battle opens its east flank anyway,” Mickey says on the brink
of begging. Speaking as pleasantly as he can, and waving them to
follow him inside.

“
Is that where the gas is?”
she asks.

“
Yes we'll have it soon,
take a seat, make yourself at home.”
They
enter the quaint steeple, and he closes the door quietly behind
them. Anna's eager to sit after being on her feet for so long. Her
first impression is that the room is small but cozy and that it
needs a good dusting, aside from that it’s not so bad. A few pieces
of furniture fill most of the space of the room, everything is
cluttered around the dim dancing light of his fireplace.

“
Coffee?” Mickey asks his
guests.

“
Sure,” Cider
answers.

“
Yes please,” she
says.

“
When you say you saved
yourself, how did you mean?” she asks, as Mickey takes his seat on
a creaking rocking chair across from the two sitting sunken into a
soft brown sofa.

“
I was going to save a
soldier, a doughboy leatherneck who thought courage was blind
bravery. He tried to lead a charge from the trench. I had to go and
fetch him when he fell. I dove to avoid a frag and split my stomach
on the barbwire, tearing my guts out. I was laying on my back
trying to keep my organs inside me, then asking why? why hold on?
for what? to survive in this living torment, and thinking of how I
saved the others. I wanted to live, to live in the hell to save as
many of them as I could, but I couldn’t bare the agony anymore,”
Mickey says, with a deepening tone

Anna's realizing her surroundings as
he speaks. That the floor is actually littered by the letters from
home of all the other soldiers, and their watches, coins and
trinkets, necklaces, flowers and dog tags are everywhere she looks.
All trapped in centuries of wax accumulated underfoot from candles
that cover about every flat surface in the steeple. Their lit wicks
drip wax that cools into the shapes of miniature wax mountains and
cliffs. Over time the dripping wax spreads to cover the entire
floor with feet high shallow wax hills. At the moment only twelve
of the hundred or so candles are lit.

“
Ugh, to live in that hell.
It was my turn to go so I put two in my neck like a spider bite,
like the rest. It was so...cold as it coursed through my
veins.”

All the wood is molded black, and
rotting like gangrene flesh, the room now seems as humid as a sauna
to her. There’s a wooden barrel of water next to the fireplace with
long pieces of rusting scrap metal sticking out of it. Next to it
is a large window, the only one to the outside, showing a still
clouded sky marred by windows dust. What was long ago a freshly
made beige place of prayer, is now a time defiled, dimly lit battle
worn crumbling chapel that would be condemned.

“
The venom streamed through
me, my panacea cooling me of that heat, the soul burning pits of
hell. I was bleeding out from my stomach, and the blood loss
prolonged my pain, bleeding out the morphine and slowing my death.
I laid writhing in pain, basking in the thought of being saved,
bathing in the tongue biting wailing of dying men screaming for
their mothers, wives and children. Ensuring my soul to the desire
my death.”

“
A tough road to have to
travel,” Cider says.

“
That's a terrible life to
have had,” she says consolingly.

“
Thank you for your kind
words,” the medic says with a nod.

“
Though I have a question,”
she says.

“
Yes and what's
that?”

“
Where did all of these
things, trinkets, pocket watches, feathers, journals and these
flowers come from?” she asks about the multitude of trinkets
trapped in the small hills and mountains of accumulated violet
wax.

“
Oh them, I've collected
them from around the fields and their pockets. Some of their hiding
places where quite hard to find, in the woods, buried, in their
shoes, things like that. I like to meet them, like a collector of
their personalities, their memories. They don't make any new ones
anyway, only the same day over and over and over again. I often
wonder who's better off, me or them, the goldfish I call them. I
like to take things that are sentimental emblems of their memory,”
Mickey explains.

“
Why?” he asks, before she
can.

“
So I could have new
memories,” he says sorrowfully. The three sit through a candle
fireplace lit lull in the conversation. Mickey gets up and rustles
through cluttered and clinking pots and pans, knocking over a coat
rack as he does. Getting frustrated looking for something, then
lifting an empty sack and spilling the last two brown beans onto
the ground.

“
Ah, it seems as though
I've run out of coffee, what a terrible host of me. I'll have to
snatch a bag from the lines. Care to join me?” Mickey
asks.

“
Yeah I’ll do that aga-”
Cider starts to say.

“
No thank you, we’ll wait
here,” she barks, dreading having to ballet around the bullets and
bombs again.

“
I'll wait here, thanks,”
Cider changes his mind.

“
It’s okay I get it, first
day on the field can be jarring to the nerves, especially without
some fresh coffee in you. Right then, make yourselves at home,” he
repeats, “I'll be back in say, fifteen minutes,” the medic says
moving swiftly for the door, then through it.

“
Sounds good,” Anna
says.

“
Okay, see you then,”
mickey says closing the door behind them. The two sit still for a
few quiet minutes, waiting to be sure he's far enough away for them
to speak freely.

“
I don't know about this
guy,” she says lowly.

“
Oh relax Anna, he's fine,
just had a rough road,” Cider waves her off.

“
I heard and that's tragic,
but look around, this place smells horrid, even the air is
rotting.”

“
That's rude. A man invites
you into his home as a guest and this is how you react?”

“
This isn't a time for
jokes.”

“
It’s a little weird that
there's no door lock,” he says rubbing his chin.

“
Only that? look at all
these candles, most of them aren’t even lit.”

“
So light them and lighten
the place up a bit,” he says shrugging, not seeming to be as
alarmed as she is. They start lighting them, lighting nearly a
hundred in total, all placed as closely together as possible. One
by one lifting the room into visibility, and laying bare the true
extent of his plundering and madness. The decrepit walls are
sporadically painted with splashes and stains of browns and
burgundy, that Anna thinks could be blood and feces, resembling the
scenes he stopped to show them when leading them here. The whole of
the ground is covered in feet, not inches, of layering wax,
entombing innumerable memories under their soles. Countless watches
and chains and various types of trinkets, all rotted to the core as
though they were formed from rust rather than metal. Jewels, and
feathers, pieces of aged parchment and dying flowers are thrown
about the decrepit cottage.

“
How long does it take for
wood to rot?” she asks.

“
I don't know, a decade or
something?”

“
And for it to
petrify?”

“
A couple hundred, I
guess?”

“
And for gold to
rust?”

“
It doesn't.”

“
Silver? or those steel
tank tracks rusting in that barrel?”

“
I don't know thousands
of…” he says.

“
Years” she says, “he's
been here for thousands of years, at least!”

“
So, it must be lonely to
be him, don’t you think,” he laughs.

“
He's a madman, and that
stuff about saving people,” she says.

“
Ah, I mean, I dunno his
heart was in the right place, right?”

“
That's one way to think of
it,” she says dismissively, pointing to bones buried in the wax a
foot under his feet.

“
Those could be from
anything,” he shrugs.

“
There’s a skull right in
front of the fireplace.”

“
So we'll get the gas and
get out of here soon as we can,” he says, “if that’s what you want,
then of course.”

“
Good, I can’t wait. It
already feels like we've been here forever,” she says then clearing
her throat of rotting air.

“
How was that cigarette he
gave you?” she asks.

“
It was alright, a bit weak
though,” he says.

“
And that
whiskey?”

“
It was kind of bland too,
almost like water,” he says.

“
The chocolate he gave me
before was tasteless.”

“
Tacky, to give a girl
chocolate when you meet them, I think so too”

“
No, I mean it had no
taste.”

“
I had your point the first
time, pay attention.”

“
You pay attention,” she
says frustrated. Their bickering pauses when watching the glow of
the sun shining through the large filth filmed window. She's drawn
to it like it’s the first sunset she'd seen in decades. Mickey's
shoulders pass through the view, startling her to jump back to the
sofa as though she never moved.

“
Welcome back,” she says
lightly as a feather, sitting stiff as a board on the soft
sofa.

“
Thank you. Oh I see you've
lit the candles,” Mickey’s face twitches as he speaks.

“
Yeah it was kinda hard to
see, so,” Cider says.

“
Oh no it's fine, no
worries I got the coffee, so where in good shape, and it gets dark
this time of day anyway,” Mickey says, then immediately rustles
around the room, knocking over photographs and throwing trinkets
and papers around, searching for something. Minutes later emerging
from behind a thrown over table holding a mallet.

“
Found it,” Mickey says,
then begins slamming the bag of beans, pulverizing them with loud
clapping of his mallet. Cider sits comfortably on the couch smoking
a bland cigarette and sipping clear whiskey from a rusty tin
cup.

“
They hadn't had any milk
so it'll have to be black,” the medic says handing her a rusty tin
cup filled with oily black slop.

“
Do you have any sugar?”
she asks to stop herself from gagging, and stall from having to
raise it to her lips.

“
Sure, two cubes for each?”
Mickey asks.

“
Three for me please,” she
squeaks, holding her cup out and avoiding the blank intensity of
his stare.

Plop plop. plop plop, plop.

“
Thank you,” she says,
slowly raising the cup to her lips, and sips in the oil thick
fluid, though not able to mask her look of horror.

“
Oh, that's actually not
bad, is that French vanilla?” she asks.

“
No it's not, it’s
hazelnut?” Mickey says.

“
Yes. Yes, my favorite,”
she says, giving a spooked look to Cider. Mickey puts another pot
of water to boil in the fireplace, and the three sit near the fire
in conversation, surrounded by a chorus of candlelight. Mickey and
Cider are trading war stories, and close calls of their trades, the
only thing each actually knows. She sits out of most of their
banter, weary of the polite medic she thinks is a madman. Thinking
of this as more of a polite nightmare then a pleasant time.
Cider seems to her to be having a fine time,
she's in awe of how he can be so comfortable here. Not because this
man is a professed killer, she's actually fine with that, she
understands his logic in ‘saving’ people though is still unsure if
she agrees with it. It's that she finds his abode to be so
particularly repulsive to her sense for any semblance of
cleanliness. She chews on chunks of chocolate to pass the hours,
laughing along with the happy two becoming fast friends.

“
I see the designs on the
walls are those landscapes?” she asks.

“
Yes, I started doing those
not long after I got here. The fresher layers are a little brighter
than the last. There are so many atop one another,” Mickey says.
One in particular is lighter, and larger than the others. She see’s
it’s a replica of the tree line where they’d met him.