Chapter Two - 8

8

 

Marie lay in Jean's bed. Her sleeping face was peaceful, and she looked totally unconcerned. Just looking at her like this made me feel as though I'd been cleansed of all the filth I'd accumulated during the war. I was filthy and desolate. It wasn't just the war. Perhaps I was still carrying all the burdens of fate I'd accumulated over the centuries.

I aimlessly passed the night, unable to sleep. Suddenly, without knocking, Hale entered the room. He had a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a glass in the other.

“Care for a drink, sub-lieutenant?”

“You know, I was just thinking I was thirsty,” I nodded. “She's asleep. Let's head downstairs.”

“Wait, you're both still dressed?”

“You notice some strange things, Hale.”

We moved to the next room. It was directly across from my room, and I had the strange sensation that I'd been sent to some sort of mirror world. We sat on the bed and drank.

“Even though you're an officer, you're so pushy. That'll kill you some day, you know. You should just give orders from the rear.”

“No one asked for your advice. Didn't they teach you in school to respect your betters?”

We both laughed uproariously.

“You're a good man. I'm glad I helped you out.”

“I haven't thanked you for that yet. That's twice now you've saved my life.”

“It's Jean you should be thanking. He took a bullet trying to carry you out of the woods.”

“And what can I do to thank him now?”

“Survive.”

“And send him flowers.”

“Might as well write a letter, too.”

“Of course.”

We spent some time sipping whiskey in silence. Hale was probably thinking about Jean. God knows I was. You could say our silence was dedicated to Jean. We'd both grown desensitized to death, but at the very least, we hadn't forgotten our dignity as human beings.

“Hale, I saw a lot of headless bodies the other day. Christophe, one of the German soldiers. And then there's the four recruits in the bunker. What do you make of that?”

“A shell went in the bunker and they got their heads blown off.”

“I think so, too. But then their bodies disappeared. That's what I'm curious about.”

“They must've sank in that muddy water and we couldn't see them anymore. That's your answer.”

“No, it's not,” I said, raising my right hand in denial. “Maybe if they were sank on purpose, but they couldn't have just sank on their own. Bodies float.”

“They sink if water gets in their lungs.”

“As a general rule, corpses don't drink. Those corpses didn't even have mouths. Even if water entered via the neck, it's unlikely all four corpses just so happened to sink at the same time.”

“Then someone must have carried the bodies away.”

“No one carried them. You and Rolo both testified to that extent. Let's draw a map of the trench and see if it tells us anything.”

I tore a page out of my notebook and copied the map that existed in my mind onto the page. As I spoke with Hale, I was able to produce a rough but mostly accurate map. (See figure)

 

“Rolo came towards me from the direction of the front line, saying his glasses had been washed away. I ran into him near the bunker and confirmed no one had passed him by.”

“What sort of an idiot wears glasses during battle, anyway?”

“Anyway, you were west of us, and you and Jean both testified that nobody passed you. So nobody could have approached or removed the bodies.”

“Couldn't they have just pulled it up from above?”

“After I saw the corpses in the bunker, I immediately went up topside. The bodies were gone by the time I got on top of the bunker. In that time, nobody had approached from above ground. But more importantly, why would somebody have taken the bodies away and hidden them in the first place?”

“Well then I guess they disappeared.”

“Oh, that's unusual. You actually changed your mind about something.”

“I'm a christian mystic by nature,” Hale said with a snort. “You hear about that British battalion that disappeared in Turkey last year?”

“Disappeared?”

“Yep. Completely vanished. Last August, 341 men of the Royal Norfolk Regiment disappeared during a battle on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. During the assault, they all plunged into a cloud of fog on a hill and popped out of existence. The Turks, who saw the whole thing from afar, won without a fight. On the battlefield, even the living disappear. So it's no wonder that the dead would, too.”

“That's certainly strange enough,” I said. Hale's story had come as a surprise. “341 soldiers disappeared and the British army did nothing?”

“Well, of course they demanded the Turks return the POWs. But the Turks claim that no fighting took place and there are no prisoners to return. The truth is still a mystery.”

“Was the cloud that made them all disappear really just a cloud? Couldn't it have been a poison gas weapon? The Germans are using poison gas weapons that look just like white smoke. The gas billows like clouds and flows across the plains.”

“I've never heard of a gas that can kill an entire battalion in an instant. I've heard of gasses that paralyze and gasses that corrode, but never a gas that can kill a man instantaneously.”

“Ah,” I nodded. “I also hear that the Gallipoli peninsula was a fiercely contested area. Just like Verdun is now. Perhaps some mysterious force is at work in places where life and death intersect. Or maybe people are hallucinating. I've seen plenty of people who thought they saw enemy troops they'd killed rise from the dead and attack them again. For them, believing the dead can return to life isn't insane. Neither is shell shock. There's no reason not to believe a shell could hit you.”

“So, sub-lieutenant, you're saying that the disappearing bodies you saw were just a hallucination.”

“I'm saying it's a possibility. I am the only one who saw the bodies disappear. Of course, it's a fact that four of our men are gone and that you saw the bodies. But that's only part of the story, and it doesn't mean the bodies disappeared. I'm the only one who saw the moment they vanished. 'But I was hallucinating'. If someone tells me that, I have no way to argue with them.”

I shrank my shoulders. I was rather talkative tonight. Maybe it was the whiskey. I put down the glass and decided not to drink for a while.

“Hmmm. Is it possible that, I dunno, someone put weights on the four bodies and sank them down?”

“Of course it is. I'd already thought of that. But what would they accomplish by that? No matter who the culprit is, sinking the corpses serves no purpose.”

Not even if it were Geoffroy. If it were him, he might have deliberately tried showing me the “disappearing” corpses. However, he'd already fled the scene beforehand and hadn't shown himself since. Even if it were his little magic show, it was too performative. For one, there was no guarantee I'd look into the bunker again after going topside. It was an unforeseeable coincidence. To an extent, that I'd look in might have been predicted by someone knowledgeable in psychology. But it was entirely possible that I just wouldn't check. Under such unsure circumstances, why would anyone have made the corpses disappear in such a flashy way? That was why it was hard to imagine any sort of artificial trickery.

“The bodies couldn't have sank on their own. It's unlikely someone else sank them. Either way, we're stuck.”

“If I had an answer already, I wouldn't have been so troubled by it in the first place.” I smiled weakly. “Let me tell you what other ideas I had. The bunker I saw from the trench wasn't the same one I looked into from above. In other words, there were two bunkers that were punched open by siege guns. But one look at the map makes it clear, there is no other bunker, and the communications room next to the bunker was still intact. Even if it was flooded, there's no way to to look inside from above if there's no hole.”

“What else?”

“An even dumber idea I had was that a second shell landed directly inside the bunker after I looked. It landed in the exact same place as the first one. In other words, it went straight inside the bunker and blew the bodies to bits. But I didn't see a second shell enter the bunker, and the surface of the water was perfectly still when I looked. It's pretty unlikely.”

“You're just full of interesting ideas today,” said Hale. I'm pretty sure he was making fun of me.

Hale looked tired.

“I think we talked a bit too much tonight.”

“Yeah, probably. But there's nothing wrong with talking too much. My old man always said that.”

“Then a toast to your father.”

“Not bad. Cheers! To my father, who was run over by a supply truck in the Balkans and died when I was just a wee lad! He was a soldier, too.”

I raised my glass.

Hale drank his whole glass in one gulp, tucked the map into a red book he had, and left the room. He was sleeping in the next room over. I also left the room and returned to Marie. Marie was still sleeping with the face of a child. I stroked her hair. I saw her face move slightly, but she didn't awaken.

Geoffroy was targeting Marie. It was obvious. Perhaps he had joined the army for the sole purpose of tracking us down. Or perhaps he'd just followed the dagger. Where there's a dagger, you'll find us. And he'd found us. He went out of his way to create a headless corpse so he could escape the army. It was safer than just running away. Geoffroy would come for us. I needed to kill him. As long as he kept trying to destroy Marie...

 

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