Stephen Jones: The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Vol 15

Smith stood on the opposite side of the road for a while, staring at the church. He was trying to make a connection, feel something pertinent to his reason for being here. It was in this place that Machen had conceived the story, after all. Perhaps that very thought had held more power than any normal prayer. But Smith could feel nothing, no sense of revelation, and by the time he saw Machen approaching slowly along the street he was depressed and gloomy.

Dusk was falling. The bombers would be here again soon. People were rushing home, to the safety of their shelters or the Tube stations. Cars, buses and other vehicles hurried through the streets, a few of them turning on their covered headlights but most defying the coming dark.

“Lieutenant Smith!” Machen called from across the street, waving his walking cane.

Smith waved back. Perhaps tonight, he thought. Perhaps to night the truth will out.

He crossed the road and shook Machen’s hand.

“Did you sleep well?” Machen asked.

“I had a nightmare.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Machen avoided Smith’s gaze, looking down at the pavement, up at the church. “I had an odd dream, too. But then I am an old man, and my mind often wanders of its own accord. Shall we?” He indicated the church doorway, inviting Smith to enter first.

“After you,” Smith said. And as they walked through into the lobby and then the cool church interior, he knew that they would see a light in there, a luminescence shimmering above the pews, hanging beneath the ceiling like a great bat examining them soundlessly.

But there was nothing. The stained-glass windows on the left shone with the pink of the setting sun, yielding a little light to see by. The church was empty but for the two of them.

“I thought a church would be busy in these times,” Smith said.

“It is, during the day,” Machen smiled. “But when it comes to night-time and bombings, people would rather worship from the safety of an air-raid shelter. Did you hear about St Paul ’s? Lost one of its clock towers, I hear. Terrible shame. Lovely building. I was in the Whispering Gallery once, alone, and someone whispered to me.”

They sat together in a pew halfway down the nave, silent and companionable. Agitated though he was, Smith felt an immediate sense of tranquillity. His beliefs and faith were a mixed stew, but how could one not come to such a serene place, a place where so many found comfort and peace, and not find peace oneself?

“This is approximately where I was sitting,” Machen said. “The church was full then, brimming with people desperate to understand. To come to terms with what was happening over the Channel. Fear permeated the atmosphere. Tales of the barbaric Hun were rife in the press — the crucified soldier, the spearing of babies, how German soldiers cut off the hands and feet of nurses — and there was true terror in the idea that the Kaiser’s armies would cross to our fair isle. So we prayed. We prayed for the victory of Good over Evil, because in those days the definitions were clear-cut.”

“I saw thousands of dead Germans,” Smith said. “They all looked like me. They had parents and siblings and lovers who mourned them. We were all equally as scared out there.”

“And yet the demonization of Germany exists today as much as it did twenty-five years ago,” Machen continued. “It is neither right, nor wrong. It is simply how the public has to deal with these things. We — you and I — are useless in this current fight. We have to lend moral support, and for that we have to believe ourselves morally right.”

They sat in silence again for a while, but Smith sensed that Machen was uncomfortable. The old writer kept glancing at him, as if to confirm to himself that this lieutenant was the same man with whom he’d had such an adventure last night.

“Tell me,” Machen said at last. “Tell me of the time in the trenches, when your angels came and saved you and your men. What did they look like? Describe them to me.”

“But you know what they looked like, you wrote of them.”

“I wrote some of what I imagined. But the translation between imagination and paper is imprecise at best. Please, humour me.”

“Are you starting to believe?” Smith asked, suddenly excited. “Do you see some truth in what I say?”

“I see inconsistencies which I must explore. And I feel… obliged to pursue our inquiry. Please, Delamare… tell me.”

Smith closed his eyes for a few moments, gathering his thoughts, sending himself back to that time in the trenches. The guns roared, explosions flared along the front, and a tide of grey-clad men headed their way across the plains of Hell.

And then…

And then the muttering began, and the laughing, and the muttering again in a language that Smith did not recognize. One of his mates in the trench had gone mad, and in amongst the snippets of music-hall song and encouraging shouts, his voice was quiet and yet loud, loudest of all.

And then something passed over their heads, singing through the air, going the wrong way because all their own artillery had been pulled back.

The first line of Germans fell, struck down by spears of light.

Smith turned around, his gun hot in his hands, slipping down the wall of the trench as he saw what approached.

At first he thought it was a cloud of gas, but it was drifting sideways against the breeze, its trajectory exact and defined. And as it came closer and let loose another cloud of whistling shapes — they passed straight over the trenches, slashing through the air as fast as bullets — he saw figures beginning to manifest from the cloud. The outlines of men, archers, their longbows constantly drawn and letting fly, drawn again. The arrows ripped across the ruined land and buried themselves in the lines of advancing Germans. A new hail was fired every second, even as the shining, glowing shapes approached nearer, nearer… and then passed over the British trenches, advancing onward.

The rattle of German gunfire cut smoky holes in the nebulous shapes, but their forms flowed to fill the spaces slashed through reality, and their bows let loose once more.

At their head, astride a shining horse, a man in armour. He waved his sword and encouraged a charge, charging himself, sword hacking at the air and cutting down ten grey men. The arrows passed through him and rather than damaging his glowing inconsistency it seemed to empower their shafts even more. A dozen men fell from each arrow, its path hacked back through the hordes.

Smith watched the horse rear, its rider shouting silent exhortations heard only in the minds of those British warriors watching and not believing… and he blinked back a sudden blast of recognition.

That way, true madness lay.

“It must have been from books,” Smith said. “I’d seen his image before, and it was stored in my mind. He was known to me.”

Machen sat silent, ashen-faced in the pew beside Smith. His eyes were closed. Smith hoped that he was praying.

“And now?” Smith asked quietly. “And now, what do you think?”

“I will assume nothing,” Machen said, “and neither should you. But your account is as I imagined it, similar in every detail. When I reread my tale last night, hidden in the depths of the archive, I realized how ambiguous my descriptions were. Given the restrictions of length that I had to obey — it was for a newspaper article, after all — I intimated rather than described. But your account… it is as if you were me, sitting here all those years ago and conceiving the tale. Your words are my thoughts. I… I do not understand.”

Smith smiled and sank back into the pew, certain that truth was finding its own way. What that truth was, and how its complexities worked, did not concern him for the moment.