Graham Masterton - The Devils of D-Day

Breathing hard, I stood still for a while and listened. There was no sound except for my own panting, and the soft whispery fall of the snow. In the distance, it was almost impossible to see the trees and the farm rooftops any more, because the snow was thickening and closing in; but Father Anton stood alert with his white hat and white shoulders, still holding the silver crucifix up in his mittened hand.

I tapped on the turret, and said, “Is anyone there? Is anyone inside?”

There was no answer. Just the dull echo of my cautious knock.

I wiped my chilled, perspiring forehead. Madeleine, her hair crowned in snowflakes, tried to give me a confident smile.

“Well,” I said, “this is the big one.”

With a wide steel chisel, I banged all the way round the hatch of the turret, breaking the rough welding wherever I could, but mostly knocking dents in the rusted armour plating. I was making my seventh circle of the hatch when the blade of the chisel went right through a deeply corroded part of the metal, and made a hole the size of a dime.

Even in the freezing cold, even in the blanketing snow, we heard the sour whistle of fetid air escaping from the inside of the tank, and a smell came out of that Sherman like I’d never smelled anywhere before. It had the stomach-turning sickliness of rotten food, mingled with an odor that reminded me of the reptile houses at zoos. I couldn’t help retching, and Madame Saurice’s rough red wine came swilling back up into my mouth. Madeleine turned away and said, “ Mon Dieu! ”

I tried to hold myself steady, and then I turned back to Father Anton and said, “I’ve broken a hole through, father. It smells really disgusting in there.”

Father Anton crossed himself. “It is the odor of Baal,” he said, his face grey in the afternoon cold. Then he raised the crucifix higher and said, “I conjure bind and charge thee by Lucifer, Beelzebub, Sathanas, Jauconill and by their power, and by the homage thou owest unto them, that you do torment and punish this disobedient demon until you make him come corporally to my sight and obey my will and commandments in whatsoever I shall charge or command thee to do. Fiat, fiat, fiat. Amen.”

Madeleine whispered: “Dan—we could seal it up again. There’s still time.”

I looked at the tiny hole, out of which the polluted air still sang. “And then how long before it gets out of here, and comes after us? This thing killed your mother, Madeleine. If you really believe that, we have to get rid of it for good.”

“Do you believe it?” she asked me, her eyes wide.

“I don’t know. I just want to find out what’s inside here. I want to find out what it is that can make a man puke maggots.”

I licked my lips, and raised the hammer once again. Then I struck the turret again and again until the hole grew from a dime to a quarter, and eventually the armour plating began to break off in leaves of black rust. Within twenty minutes, I’d broken all the metal away around the hinges of the hatch, and the hole was the size of a large frying-pan.

Father Anton, still waiting patiently in the snow, said, “Can you see anything, monsieur?”

I peered into the blackness of the tank’s interior. “Nothing so far.”

Taking a crowbar from the canvas bag, I climbed up on top of the Sherman’s turret, and inserted one end of the crowbar into the hole. Then I leaned back, and slowly began to raise the hatch itself, like opening a stubborn can of tomatoes with a skewer. Eventually, the welding broke, and the hatch came free. I stood there breathless and hot, even in the sub-zero temperature of that gloomy afternoon, but at least the job was done. I said to Madeleine, “Hand me the flashlight.”

Her face pale, she passed it over. I switched it on, and pointed the beam downwards into the Sherman’s innards. I could see the tank commander’s jumpseat, the breech of the cannon, and the gunlayer’s seat. I flicked the beam sideways, and then I saw it. A black sack, dusty and mildewed, and sewn up like a mailbag, or a shroud. It wasn’t very large—maybe the size of a child, or a bag of fertiliser. It was lying next to the side of the tank as if it had fallen there.

Madeleine touched my shoulder. “What is it?” she whispered in a frightened voice. “What can you see?”

I stood straight. “I don’t know. It’s a kind of black bag. I think I’ll have to go down there and lift it out.”

Father Anton called, “Monsieur! don’t go in there!”

I took another look at the bag. “It’s the only way. We’ll never get it out of there otherwise.”

The last thing in the whole world I wanted to do was get down inside that tank and touch that bag, but I knew that if we tried to hook it out with the crowbar we’d probably tear the fabric. It looked pretty old and rotten—more than thirty years old, maybe more than a hundred. One rip and whatever was inside it was going to come spilling out.

While Madeleine held back the jagged hatch for me, I carefully climbed up on to the turret and lowered my legs inside. Even though my feet were freezing cold, I had a strange tingling feeling, as if something inside the tank was going to bite them. I said hoarsely, “I always wanted to see what a tank looked like inside,” and then I lowered myself into the chilled, musty interior.

Tanks are claustrophobic enough when they’re heated and lighted and they’re not possessed by demonic sacks. But when I clambered down into that cramped and awkward space, with wheels and instruments hitting my head and shoulders, and only a flashlight for company, I felt a surge of fear and suffocation, and all I wanted to do was get out of there.

I took a deep breath. It still smelled pretty foul in there, but most of the odor had dispersed. I looked up and saw Madeleine’s face at the open hatch. She said nervously, “Have you touched it yet?”

I shone my torch on the sack. There was something or somebody inside it, whatever it was. As close as this, the fabric looked even older than I’d imagined. It could almost have been a piece of the Bayeux tapestry, or a medieval shroud.

I reached my hand out and touched it. The cloth was soft with age. I ran my fingers gently along the length of it, and I could feel various protrusions and sharp knobs. It felt like a sack of bones—an old and decaying sack of bones.

I coughed. I told Madeleine, “I’m going to try and lift it up to you. Do you think you can take it?”

She nodded. “Don’t be long. Father Anton’s looking very cold.”

“I’ll try not to be.”

I wedged the flashlight against a hydraulic pipe so that it shone across the inside of the turret, and then I knelt down beside the sack. It took a lot of summoning-up of nerve, but in the end I put my arms around the black fusty cloth, and lifted it a foot or so upwards. It was saggy, and whatever was inside it, the bones or whatever they were, tumbled to one end of the sack with a soft rattling sound. But the fabric didn’t tear, and I was able to gather the whole thing up in my arms and lift it towards Madeleine. She reached down and gripped the top of it, and I said, “Okay, heave.”

For one moment, for one terrifying moment, just as Madeleine took the weight of the sack and hoisted it upwards, I was sure that I felt it wriggle, as if there was something alive inside it. It could have been a bone shifting, or my own keyed-up imagination, but I took my hands away from that sack as fast as if it was burning.

Madeleine gasped. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“Just get that sack out of here quick!” I yelled. “ Quick! ”

She tugged it upwards, and for a few seconds it snared on the rough metal around the broken-open hatch. But then she swung it clear, and I heard it drop on the hull outside. Taking the flashlight, I climbed out of the tank on to the turret, and I haven’t ever been so glad to see snow and miserable gloomy skies as I was then.