by James Stoddard
In his dreams that night, he stood once more by the
wheel on the Sangier, still
holding his lantern and cutlass. The moon hung exactly where it had
been before, but this time the vessel traveled east rather than west,
and he wondered what it meant.
He glanced down into the water on the starboard side
and spied the black mass of the ghost ship moving abreast his own
vessel. He thought he detected black forms moving up the masts of the
shadow vessel toward his ship. As one of them drew near, it detached
itself from the darkness. At first, he thought it a trick of the eye,
until the figure pulled itself over the railing. It had the shape of a
man wrapped in bulky robes, carrying a cudgel.
With a roar of fear and rage, Hodgson leapt across the
deck, cutlass raised, lantern swinging loosely in his other hand. He
slashed at the figure, who reeled backward to dodge the blow. And in
that moment, the blade lit with a fiery glow, a supernatural light
bright as day. Will felt a surge of power run through him, an almost
superhuman strength.
The sword struck home, passing right through the
creature, cutting it in half at the waist. An unholy scream erupted
from its lips. It toppled to the deck.
The head of another of the invaders appeared just above
the railing. Hodgson thrust, stabbing it between the eyes with the tip
of his blade. The sword swelled with energy, a blinding flash that sent
the shadows scattering.
He turned a half-circle, seeking more of his enemy, but
the decks were empty. He glanced over the rail. The water lay still;
the vast bulk of the pirate ship had vanished from the sea.
He laughed aloud in triumph. It was as if the power of
the White Circle had returned to inhabit his blade. For the first time,
he had a weapon against the darkness.
Yet, even as he exulted, a deep voice called, "Wait!"
He spun around. Another specter had pulled itself up to
the railing, a shadow among shadows. Hodgson lifted his cutlass.
"Do ye want to have her back?" the ghost pirate asked.
"The one who died?"
Hodgson hesitated.
"We can return her to life. She could love ye again."
"How?" he asked.
"All things are possible to them I serve," it said.
A dozen emotions ran through him: loathing, hope, fear,
the heartsick loss of losing her again. "And what do you want in
return?"
"The house. Give us the house."
Hodgson stood, open-mouthed, overwhelmed by the
possibilities. It was too much to consider.
As if in answer to his thoughts, the vision faded,
falling apart, and the brightness filled his eyes.
When his sight returned, the scene had changed, but
instead of waking back in Belgium, he was in another vision, walking a
road that wound down the side of a canyon wall in a series of
switchbacks. The air was cold and bit like iron; there was no wind. The
sky was nearly white, all the color washed from it. The rift down which
he traveled was surreal in its immensity. Its slate-gray walls
stretched miles below, losing themselves in a gloomy haze. Close to his
position, the two forks of the canyon met at an angle of nearly ninety
degrees. The sun shone at the horizon along the western branch, a
crimson ball in the dusk, its rays shooting along the canyon,
illuminating its walls for hundreds of miles. The northern fork was
cloaked in shadow.
"The Great Bight," he muttered. Then, quoting from a
book he had written years before, he said, Yet am I to my pen again; for of late a
wondrous hope has grown in me, in that I have, at night in my sleep,
waked into the future of this world, and seen strange things and utter
marvels. . .And surely it is all so strange and wonderful to set out,
that I could almost despair with the contemplation of that which I must
achieve.
The road before him was narrow and formed of an
unfamiliar material, with no mark upon it. He was alone, in a place
hundreds of miles and millions of years from Belgium and the war; and
he thought how incongruous he must look, dressed in his helmet and
uniform, his Enfield rifle in hand, a soldier from a forgotten
civilization. There was no sign of life - not a bird or fox, not an
insect crawling across the road - only the cold, and the awful
desolation, and the tramp of his boots on the road.
He trudged along, trying to absorb what was happening.
But his thoughts kept returning to the pact the ghost pirate offered.
In all the years, this was the first time one vision had led to
another, rather than being a complete story unto itself. But, are they
separate stories? he wondered. And what if the creature really could
give Colleen back to me?
"I swear," he muttered, "I would deal with the devil
himself for her."
With such thoughts he occupied his time, until the
monotony of his trek gradually filled him, and he found himself
humming. What was the song? Some variation from Kipling. He began to
sing, a marching tune.
To the legion
of the lost one, to the cohort
of the damned,
To my brethren in their
sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of
England, cleanly bred, machinely
crammed,
And a trooper of the
Empress, if you please.
Yea, a trooper of the
forces, who has run his own six
horses,
And faith he went the
pace, and went it blind,
And the world was more
than kin, while he held the
ready tin,
But today the
Sergeant's something less than kind.
Back to the Army again,
sergeant,
Back to the Army again.
Don't look so hard,
for
I haven't no card,
I'm back to the Army
again.
The road continued
making sharp bends as it wound down the side of the canyon. He had
never seen the Rift in daylight; in his previous visions this had been
a land of utter darkness, with scattered fires and terrible monsters,
and a pyramid seven miles high holding the remnants of besieged
humanity. But these things were not yet come, and were of a future age.
Yet, through gaps in the haze below, he thought he saw, on the canyon
floor to the south, under the barrage of the sunshine, the outline of a
city.
He grimaced. He had
been walking for hours and the sun had not moved. With a sinking in his
stomach, he realized it never would. In this age, the earth's rotation
had ceased. The sun would remain where it was, lighting the eastern
canyon through long eons, growing ever more dim until it was but a
smoldering coal; and then that too would fail, leaving only the
darkness.
Where is England?
he wondered. Lost
top-side in the cold wastes. Oceans frozen, or long
evaporated. Lifeless. The land we shed our blood for. The war isn't
even a memory now.
Tears sprang
unbidden to his eyes, and he wiped them quickly, almost savagely, away.
It's only a vision, like the times before. I'll wake soon, back in
the
trenches. He gave a grim laugh. As if that were a better horror.
He rounded a bend
to another switchback and discovered a village built on a plain cut out
of the canyon wall. This amazed him almost as much as his first sight
of the Rift, for the excavation, burrowing into the stone for
half-a-mile, was the work of machines capable of melting and fusing
rock to a glassy sheen. The buildings were pyramidal, made of the same
imperishable material as the road, and windowless with round doorways.
He raised his
rifle. Nothing moved around the nearer structures, while those farther
back lay lost in the shadow of the shelf. He gave a halloo and waited
expectantly. Moments passed. He stepped closer to the buildings.
Beside one of the
pyramids lay scattered bones and a human skull that stared at him with
its empty sockets. He backed away. Walking with his gun trained on the
village, he continued along the road, moving past the pyramids. Whoever
had lived here had probably abandoned it long ago. The legendary Road
Makers had built this road through hundreds, even thousands of years,
paving the way for the last vestige of humanity to reach the warmth of
the canyon floor; no doubt when they were far enough down, the
villagers had followed. Were the bones the remains of a hermit, living
alone in the heights? He would never know. He took another hairpin turn
onto the next switchback, and the village was lost to sight.
He wondered if the
bottom of the Rift were his true destination, and if so, why he was
going there. It would take days to reach it.
-----------------------------------------------------------
He woke back in the
trenches. A soft rain pinged against his helmet.
That day was spent
positioning the guns. The bombardments to the south and west were
drawing closer. Despite the work and the war, Hodgson kept brooding
over his strange march into the Great Rift, of Colleen left alone in
Kraighten House, and of the ghost pirates.
With the artillery
in place by mid-afternoon, he and two subordinates, Corporal Stephens
and Private Ridley, were sent out as forward observers. They traveled
on foot, leading a pack horse, stringing telephone wire behind them as
they went. Seeking high ground and locating the enemy was a dangerous
job; he was usually almost straight in front of his own guns, and to
the enemy killing an observer was like blinding the gunners' eyes; but
Hodgson had volunteered for the work. He was good at it, and what he
did saved British lives.
By twilight they
reached a hill overlooking a wide plain that had been forest before the
barrages leveled the trees. Hodgson studied the ground with his
field-glasses. Two layers of British trenches ran across the plain, and
beyond them, past the barbed-wire barricades, stood the German
excavations. Will studied the area with a practiced eye, looking for
any signs of the enemy massing beneath the cover of the trenches in
preparation for an attack.
They made camp that
evening behind the protection of the hill, eating cold biscuits from
their kits, lighting no fires. The night was clear and the stars burned
down in all their magnificence; and he thought of how the sky would
someday be utterly empty.
He slept fitfully,
as he always did at his observation post, but soon found himself once
more on the Sangier, exactly
where he had been before, though the ship
now traveled west. He kept guard along the railing, watching the
shadows beneath the vessel. There was no sign of the phantom ship
beneath the waters.
The night passed. A
mist arose, shrouding the vessel. The sea remained calm. Morning turned
to afternoon and afternoon to evening, and the mist faded, revealing
the setting sun. The moon rose and the vessel sailed on, guided by
mysterious hands.
He grew morose. His
life had been nothing but an empty vanity, a moving from place to
place, always trying to escape the visions, always failing. He wondered
why so many of the characters in his dreams, the monsters, even the
heroes, were both nameless and faceless. Were they figments of
imagination brought on by his own lack of identity? He had been an
unhappy sailor, a failure at Physical Culture, a hack as a writer. Now
he was playing soldier in a war it seemed no one could win. Nothing he
had ever done had mattered. And it was all because of the White Circle.
Why wouldn't it leave him alone?
And yet. . . and
yet. . . Colleen had come back, at least in the vision. And how could
he wish not to see her again? But he did not know if he ever would,
unless he could find his way once more to Kraighten House.
At last, he began
to feel the now-familiar dissipation of the dream.
-----------------------------------------------------------
He found himself
sitting in the same chair as when he had left her. Someone touched his
shoulder from behind, and looking up he found Colleen, and he closed
his eyes and took her hands in both of his own, pressing his forehead
against them, holding them tightly.
"What's wrong?" she
asked.
"I'm sorry I was
gone. I don't ever want to leave you, but I can't control it."
"You've been right
here. We were talking and you got the strangest look on your face."
"I've been away for
hours."
"You haven't."
He studied his
surroundings more closely. The last rays of the day still shone outside
the barred windows. The Swine-Things still snuffled around the house.
"Come into the
kitchen and I'll brew some tea," she said. "You can tell me where you
were wandering."
He did so, and
despite the lurking horrors beyond the walls, they sat and talked as
they had not done in years; and time seemed to slip backward, returning
Will to the days when they had been young and in love, and had spent
many such evenings in sweet conversation. He told her all that had
happened since they parted - of his failed business and his writing, of
his meeting with Harry Houdini, of his enlistment when the war came,
and of some, but not all he had seen there.
She watched him
talk, and her eyes were dark in the shadows and very lovely. Finally,
he paused, and laughing, said, "I've gone on and on about myself."
"You've talked
about everything," she said, "except your wife."
He looked down at
his wedding ring, his face suddenly burning. "I. . .guess I haven't.
Not much to say, really. I - "
"What's her name?"
"Betty Farnworth. I
call her Bessie. She worked for a magazine. We met because of my
books."
"A fine thing, to
be a writer. You always had a way with words. I'm proud of you for
that."
"Colleen, I - "
"But I see the
truth now, sure as the world. You've been unfaithful, Will."
"I haven't," he
cried, his voice filled with passion. "It wasn't like that! I always
loved you. I've never forgotten you. Not even for a moment. You have
to
understand. You were gone. I was lonely. But even after we married - "
"It's Bessie you've
been unfaithful to," she said.
"I - " His mouth fell
open, and he could not speak. A strangled noise escaped his throat.
As was always her
way when a point was made, she did not say more, but kissed him on the
forehead and walked from the room.
-----------------------------------------------------------
The vision faded,
and he awoke in Flanders. For the soldiers, the following weeks would
be brutal, for that day was the beginning of the campaign later named
the Fourth Battle of Ypres. The town had been a strategic center
throughout the conflict - poison gas had first been used there - and in
the
course of the war, 850,000 men would die to control that blighted piece
of ground.
From the time he
awoke from his vision that morning, Hodgson was kept busy. Though the
troops directly before him remained in their trenches, at mid-morning,
an almost continuous barrage of enemy artillery began to the southwest.
The normal strategy was for heavy shelling before a surge from the
trenches. Using his compass as a guide, Hodgson triangulated the
position between the German and British guns, and telephoned the sector
information back to Captain Carver. When the 11th Royal Field Artillery
responded, Hodgson watched the shells fall and relayed corrections.
In combat, there is
never enough time for sleep. At midnight, with only sporadic sounds of
gunfire, Hodgson managed to wrap himself in his blanket while Corporal
Stephens kept watch. As he drifted off, he thought of Colleen and
Bessie. Faithful Bessie, who had been his friend and companion. The
truth was they had not spent that much time together. They had met and
married in 1912, four short years before his enlistment. Had his
intentions been as pure and honorable as he had claimed they were,
running off to war in the name of God and country? Had he ever truly
committed himself to the marriage?
In his dreams, he
was soon sailing east through the darkness, and a stiff wind filled the
Sangier's sails.
He wondered how many hours he was compacting in a
single day, living his life in Belgium and the ship and the house and
the Great Rift. He didn't feel any more exhausted than usual - one was
always weary in war - and he supposed the time and effort spent in the
visions did not impact his physical body. He wondered what would happen
if he were wounded or killed within the dream.
The hours passed
peacefully, without any sign of the pirates, and late in the night the
vision changed, and he walked the eternal twilight of the road again,
winding his way down the canyon clutching his Enfield rifle. He was
still high above the canyon floor. Disoriented by the change, he sat
down on the road to gather his thoughts. He had noticed a pattern: when
the ship went east, it took him to the road; when it journeyed west, it
brought him to Kraighten House, as if it were serving as a transport,
allowing him to travel from vision to vision, traversing both time and
space. And the ghost pirates had initially sought to prevent his
passage. Yet, someone - presumably those who caused his visions - had
given
him a weapon. But for what purpose?
A canine bark
pulled him from his brooding. He glanced around, surprised to think
there might be dogs in this epoch. But, of course, there must be, for
in later eons there would be the monstrous Night Hounds.
A beast came
sprinting up the road, a thin-legged mongrel that barked as it came. He
rose to his feet, looking at it stupidly.
When the dog was
within twenty feet, he said, "Pepper?"
The hound bounded
to him, bouncing its forepaws against his thighs, nearly knocking him
over.
What a reunion that
was, a long-lost boy and a long-dead pup, on the imperishable road, on
the dying earth, in the Rift that would become the last sanctuary for
all humankind. His fur was soft as down; he licked Hodgson's face as
if
to lick it off. Will laughed, the long, happy laugh of childhood. Not
since Odysseus and Argos had there been such a meeting; and he wondered
if all the dead would return to him. The idea turned his joy to
brooding, for Pepper, like Colleen, had been gone many years, and he
wondered again if his visions were in any sense true, or only the
hallucinations of a lunatic. Many times he had asked himself if the
Great Rift and the Night Land were real, and had never found a
satisfactory answer.
Sitting on the road
with Pepper beside him, he studied the panorama stretching before him.
On the canyon floor, he could now see the towers and domes of the town
that would someday be known as The Quiet City, and he could barely hear
the distant sounds of machinery. He wondered if perhaps the generations
of Road Makers were still at work.
He patted Pepper
again and rose, clutching his rifle. "Come along, old friend. I would
like to finally meet the ones who made these roads."
So Will Hodgson and
Pepper traveled deeper and deeper along the switchbacks into the chasm.
He hummed a marching song as he went, and the road went on and on
through hours that stretched to days. And as he thought of Colleen and
Bessie, he came to a resolution.
-----------------------------------------------------------
When next came the
flashing light and the breaking of the image, he was once more aboard
the Sangier, with the ship
traveling west. He had his cutlass in his
hand, and he fetched the lantern, for the moon had set and the night
was black. The stars shone down in all their splendor.
A rustling rose
among the masts, and he searched the darkness above him. At first, he
saw nothing, but then he spied a patch of emptiness in the shape of a
man, where there should have been stars. He raised his sword. The form
descended the rigging, but stayed out of reach of Hodgson's blade.
"We've given ye
time," the ghost pirate hissed. "Time for thought. We ain't attacked
the house. But we needs our answer, y'see."
"What are you?"
Hodgson demanded.
"A pirate and a
murderer, and I make no shame upon it. I'm captain of me ship."
"What is the house
to you?"
"Naught. But them's
I serve, they wants it, and they'll have it in the end, whether ye
would or no. They'll have ye too, if ye don't bargain, and yer pretty
woman with ye. They ain't pleasant with them that displease 'em."
Will raised the
lantern higher, so it shone on the phantom's face, but all he could
see
was a pool of darkness where the features should have been. But the
specter turned its head and growled, as if blinded by the light.
"And what bargain
did you make with them?" Hodgson asked. "What did they promise you?"
"That's none of yer
concern."
"I think it is.
What was it? Treasure? Immortality? And what did you get? A shadowy
purgatory, an unending life as a slave?"
With an animal
roar, the pirate leapt from the rigging onto the deck, but Will danced
back, avoiding the creature's grasp. He made a quick slash with his
blade, forcing the ghost away. The phantom hesitated, cowering from the
cutlass.
"Tell your masters
I'll give them nothing," Will cried, driving the pirate back. "Now get
off my deck or I'll cut you in half."
With the snarl, the
ghost backed its way to the railing and dropped without a sound into
the sea.
Will stamped across
the deck, a furious sentry. He trembled in his anger, his heart
pounding against his chest, and he flourished the sword and ached for
the phantom to return so he could finish it.
Gradually, his rage
passed, followed by an empty despair. He didn't understand any of it;
he didn't comprehend this game, in which he was nothing but a pawn.
And
where were the Forces of Good, the ones who had presumably given power
to his blade? Why did they remain aloof?
An hour passed and
the vision faded.
-----------------------------------------------------------
He was back in the
kitchen of Kraighten House, looked out over the wilderness garden. The
house was quiet. He was about to call to Colleen, but something made
him hesitate. He picked up the rifle off the table and made his way
upstairs to the study.
Bessie stood beside
a Morris chair, gazing out at the gardens. She turned at the sound of
his approach. Her hair and eyes were brown; she was a handsome woman.
"Hello, love," he
said.
"William?"
She ran to him and
guilt swept over him as they embraced. No matter how much he loved
Colleen, no matter how much he wanted her back, he saw that only a fool
trades the living for the dead.
"How can you be
here?" Bessie asked. "And where are we?"
"I am in Belgium
and you are lying safe in your bed at home; and we are meeting in an
odd sort of vision."
"Impossible."
"Nonetheless,
true."
He led her to the
couch and they sat holding hands.
"What does it
mean?" she asked.
"It means that you
and I need to have a little talk." Hodgson began uncertainly, unsure
what he would say. "I think I should tell you that I have not loved you
as I should, and that I am very sorry. I have allowed the past to color
our relationship. But I intend to change that. When I return home, I
want to be the best husband I can to you."
"But you've been
wonderful, William. We've had marvelous times! The days in France; the
times in England. You've been everything I ever imagined."
"But I have not
been everything I should. Trust that will change, my dear."
"I'm afraid," she
said, biting her lip. "This dream. Don't such things portend some
terrible happening? I worry about you all the time."
"Don't be
frightened. I have passed through the dark of the Night Land and the
dark of the ships at sea."
"Oh, William! Your
literary allusions." She smiled at him.
"Silly me," he said
warmly.
They spent a long
hour talking, until the dream ended.
© James Stoddard 11 Nov 2011
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