The next day, Annie was not working and Eden wished that was not the case around 11:30, when Meg walked into the coffeehouse with another guy. It was nearly shocking. Meg’s entire demeanor was different. She was not smiling. Her hair was not shining. She was not glowing from happiness. She looked tired, old and mean, even though she was wearing the same kind of sharp outfit complete with blazer and heels that always adorned her. Even her earrings seemed to have less life in them, as they dangled around her face.
“Hey Meg,” Eden said as she approached the counter. “You want the usual?”
Her eyes when wide at the question, and before she could answer, the man she was with looked at her curiously and asked, “The usual?” He was a whole head taller than Meg. He had graying curly hair and a very trim beard. He looked like an aging villain from a Saturday morning cartoon. Handsome, yet ominous, smiling but in a dangerous way. Meg seemed to shrink away from him when he spoke to her.
“I come here a lot for work,” she said, brushing away his inquiry. “The usual is fine,” she said to Eden.
Eden wished she could pass her a note. Meg was clearly in distress with this man. Why didn’t they have something like an “angel shot” on the menu, only known to those who used the women’s bathroom. She wondered if she mentioned it, if Meg would pick up on what she was asking. Instead, Eden just stared at her for too long, smiling, waiting for her to say anything, or suggest anything, or ask for anything else from her. When she didn’t, Eden very slowly turned her attention to the man. “And what can I get for you?” she asked.
“The usual, I guess,” he said. He was smiling, but Eden could see the way it made Meg shudder. She stepped out of the way so that man could pay and Eden’s eyes went to the man’s left hand, where she saw a plain gold wedding band. Her stomach dropped. This man must be Meg’s husband.
“Anytime else?” Eden asked, trying not to let her voice waver. She glanced at Meg, who just looked away from her, and crossed her arms. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“No,” the man said. And he sounded rude when he said it.
Eden made the drinks and passed them over to the couple. When they left the counter, she immediately pulled out her phone and texted Annie. She’s in here with another guy.
Meg? Annie’s reply was instant.
I think it’s her husband. I don’t like him. I don’t think she likes him. She furiously typed out all the details, sending about 12 messages in a row before she finally ran out of things to say about it. She chewed on her thumbnail as she tried to watch the two of them surreptitiously. They were arguing in hushed tones. The man had a folder full of papers that he was flipping through, pointing things out to her as she shook her head. Eventually, Meg got up from the table and headed towards the bathroom.
She’s going to the bathroom. I’m going to follow her and ask what is going on.
Annie sent a thumbs up emoji with the words Good choice. This guy sounds like a prick.
Eden waited about a minute before she started to move. “Wendy, I’m stepping away,” she called to the back room, where her coworker for this shift was organizing the delivery from that morning. Eden marched to the bathroom and nearly threw open the door in her haste to find out what was going on with Meg. When she entered the bathroom, she heard the crying, but it quickly stopped.
She was in one of the two stalls. Eden didn’t even pretend like she needed to use the unoccupied one. “Meg?” she asked softly.
The sniffling stopped, but she didn’t answer. After about a minute of uncomfortable silence, the stall door opened and Meg emerged, wiping away her tears with a wad of toilet paper. She looked at Eden with desperation, but the words that came out of her mouth were, “It’s okay, Eden. Don’t worry about me.”
Eden wasn’t going to let her back away though. “It’s not okay,” Eden said. “I can see that. I’ve never seen you look…like this,” she said, gesturing at Meg. “Do you need to call somebody? You want me to get the police to get him out of here?”
“No!” Meg said. She looked horrified, but only for a moment, before it melted into a smile. “No, Eden, I don’t need that. Although, I really appreciate you looking out for me.”
“Of course,” she said. She was confused, but she was just going to let the situation play out. “I wanna help, if I can. What can I do?”
“Well,” Meg said, moving to the sink and starting to wash her hands. “You can let me finish signing the divorce papers, so that he can get out of here.” She finished washing, and pulled a paper towel from the dispenser. She looked right at Eden, and she could see that beautiful, bright smile, the one she had when she was with Park, trying to spread across her face. “I love that you came in here to check on me.”
“I…I had to,” she said.
Meg nodded. “You’re a really sweet person,” Meg said. She threw the paper towel away and moved around Eden towards the door. “Hopefully this won’t take long.” She left the bathroom, leaving Eden with too many questions.
She pulled her phone out of her smock. It is her husband. They’re getting divorced.
“Hey Park,” Eden said as he slowly approached the counter. “Cappuccino today? Or you wanna do the flat white again?” She began to take a fresh cup off the stack next to the register, her pen ready to scribble down his order.
“Oh, cappuccino is fine,” he said. He always seemed timid when they spoke, not at all the same demeanor he had with Meg. He looked over his shoulder, watching the door.
“Looking for your wife?” Eden asked, as she rung in his order to the computer.
“My wife?” he asked, his cheeks coloring. “No, Meg’s not my wife.”
“Oh!” Eden said, acting surprised. She had never really thought the two of them were married. “I’m sorry, I just assumed…”
“It’s okay,” he said. “We are just…close. You know?” He smiled, but he looked so uncomfortable that Eden almost felt bad about her plan to pry information out of him.
“I have friends like that too,” she said, an attempt to ease his nerves. The man was practically bouncing on his toes from anxiety. “How long have you known each other?” she asked.
“We worked together some years ago,” he said. “And, we recently just…ran into each other in the grocery store.” He laughed. A nervous laugh. The kind of laugh you do when you’re hiding something that you’d rather not say.
Eden didn’t press anymore. She handed the cup off to Annie as she took Park’s payment. “That was fortuitous!” she said. “It’s like a movie.”
Park just smiled, but he also bit his bottom lip. He glanced away from her, towards the door, just as Meg walked in. She was wearing the black heels today, black blazer with bright pink pants. Her hair was styled into soft curls around her face. She took off her sunglasses as she came towards the counter, reaching for him with one arm. They hugged, greeting one another as if they hadn’t seen each other in years, completely ignoring the fact that Eden was standing not two feet from them.
When Park pulled away from her, he said, “Eden thought we were married.” Then he and Meg both laughed as if it was the funniest thing they had ever heard.
Eden waiting politely and patiently at the counter, knowing what Meg was going to order, but not ringing it in until she was ready.
When Meg finally stopped laughing, she took a long step to the register and said under her breath to Eden, “I mean, if he’d have asked me ten years ago, we would be married.” She laughed at herself some more, and that’s when Eden saw that she was wearing a wedding ring. She tried not to smile too broadly at this bit of information. She couldn’t wait to pick this apart with Annie.
“Iced coffee, room for cream?” Eden asked, not commenting on the information or the scandal that she was imagining.
“You know… today, let me get whatever he got,” Meg said.
Eden froze. This had never happened before. “Sure,” she said, ringing in a second cappuccino and handing the cup off to Annie before she began pushing buttons on the monitor in front of her.
Park and Meg quickly ignored everyone and everything that wasn’t each other. Just like always. Eden watched them from behind the counter intermittently, between serving other customers and keeping the counter tidy. When Annie strolled in, she nearly ran to the backroom to intercept her.
“Meg is married, but Park isn’t. They used to work together but lost touch for a long time, and then ran into each other at the grocery store.”
Annie was tying her around her waist. She didn’t say anything as she retied her ponytail and put on her visor. Eden watched her slow movements, tapping a finger against her arm as she waited. Finally, Annie took a long drink out of her water bottle, screwing the cap back on, and then placing it in the cubby next to her bag and her keys. “So,” Annie began, “it’s not a possibility, but he still wants her.”
Eden grasped onto those words with glee, the secret burning her lips even as she spoke it. “But that’s the thing! I think she wants him too!”
“Did she say something to make you think that?” Annie asked. They both began moving back towards the counter, the door to the back room continuing to swing as they exited the store room.
Eden dropped her voice. “She said, kinda under her breath, that if he’d asked ten years ago, they would be married.”
Annie’s eyes widened for just a moment before a slow smile crept across her face. “Oh, I see,” she said. “So there’s trouble in paradise.”
“She didn’t say anything about her husband to me,” Eden said. Her eyes trailed across the coffee house, resting on the friends as they talked, leaning forward into each other, all smiles. Meg’s face was particularly glorious today, and her black curls were shining just like her expression. She was wearing golden earrings that flashed in the light every time she laughed. She was beautiful.
There was a customer at the counter. Annie moved around her to greet the man and take the order. Eden moved towards the espresso machine to get started making his drink. A line formed behind him, and Eden and Annie didn’t get a chance to talk any more about Meg and Park for a long stretch.
But Eden watched them as they left, hugging one another for a long time (although this time there was no peck on the cheek). They split from one another in the parking lot, each going their own way. Eden wondered if Meg’s husband knew about these meetings with Park. She wondered if Meg was as happy with him as she was when she was here in the coffee house. It didn’t seem like she could look at anyone else with the same intensity as she looked at Park.
“Maybe she’s that way with everyone,” Annie said later, when there was a lull, and they stood behind the counter with their arms crossed, feeling tired and ready for shift end.
Eden looked at her watch. They only had twenty minutes left. “She’s never that way with me,” Eden said. She picked as a thread coming loose on her apron, wondering what the end goal was for either of them. Why would a married woman meet up with a man, especially if she felt such joy like that around him, if she was already happy with another man? Why would a man continually meet a married woman—and kiss her!—if he wasn’t trying to start a relationship with her? It was clear now that the two were not simply friends. But they weren’t quite at the beginning of a romance either. Or were they?
“You know, we don’t know if these are their only meet ups,” Eden offered.
Annie nodded. “So you think they are having affair?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” Eden said.
Annie grimaced as if she didn’t agree. “I don’t know. They see too nervous around each other for that.”
Maybe that was true. Eden didn’t know. And really, it wasn’t her business anyway. But they were right there in front of her face at least once a week, and she just wanted to know what was going on.
They started coming into the coffeehouse about 8 months ago. The woman was perhaps in her mid-forties. She colored her hair. Sometimes the roots grew out to where Eden could see them, streaks of gray among the black. She was about Eden’s height, a little over 5 foot 3, unless she was wearing heels. And she liked to wear heels. She wore them with jeans even. She always had a blazer on. Her name was Meg and she drank iced coffee with no flavoring. She always asked for Eden to leave room for cream. She carried a bag that was big enough for a laptop, though Eden never saw her use while she was there.
The man’s name was Park. He was older than Meg Well, maybe. Not by much. His beard was graying, but it was hard to see because it wasn’t thick. He still had a full head of hair though, no balding even though his temples were silver. He wasn’t tall for a man, but he was taller than Meg. Unless she was wearing heels. Then they were the same height. He wore everything from jeans, to suits, to sweats when they came in. Sometimes he had a backpack. Sometimes he brought nothing. He would usually arrive first, and he would wait near the counter for her before he ordered. He drank everything on the menu, but he had his favorites—the cappuccino with a swirl of vanilla syrup, or the americano. Lots of days he just ordered black.
“Do you think they’re dating?” Eden asked her coworker, Annie. Meg and Park came into the coffeehouse in the middle of the day, at least once a week. It was usually slow at that time of day and she liked to gossip about the customers to anyone else who was with her.
“Beats me,” Annie said, smacking her gum, though she too was looking at the table were the pair were talking with their heads close together.
They never touched, but they always smiled. Sometimes they would hug, but not all the time. Mostly they would just sit, leaning into each other, just like they were doing now. It always made Eden think of the scene from Lady and the Tramp when the dogs were eating spaghetti. All those two needed was an excuse to kiss and Eden was sure they would do it. Whatever was in their bags from day to day went untouched.
They didn’t do any work together. The laptops, if they had them in their bags, never emerged. They didn’t check their phones. They didn’t ever write anything down on a notepad produced from Park’s backpack or Meg’s purse. These were not meet ups for anything other than drinking coffee and staring into each other’s eyes.
“Maybe they’re having an affair,” Eden said. The shop was slower than usual today.
“He doesn’t wear a wedding ring,” Annie countered as she swept the floor.
Eden stuck her hands into her apron pocket, studying that hands of her patrons. She could clear see that Park did not wear a wedding ring, but she couldn’t see Meg’s left had at all. It was clutched around her coffee cup. Meg’s hair was tied up in a ponytail today. She was wearing a black turtle neck under her blazer, and her jeans were a dark wash. She had a patent leather black pumps. She had crossed her legs and was sitting back in her chair as Park told her a story. He was in jeans and tennis shoes, and his zip up was dark gray. He had been wearing a green plaid scarf but he’d taken it off his neck about ten minutes ago, and it was slung over the back of her chair across the peacoat he wore. Meg laughed at something he said and then leaned forward, nearly whispering to him in response. It was so annoying that Eden could never hear what they were saying.
“Maybe he’s her brother,” Annie said, coming behind her to whisper the words into her ear.
A customer approached the counter and she was momentarily distracted from her spying. She took the man’s order and as she stepped the espresso machine, she saw that Meg was standing up. Park stood too. Today they hugged. It was a short hug today—not a lover’s hug, not a long, lingering “I’ll miss you”, not a hug for someone who is having a rough day. Just a quick one armed hug. They were both still holding their coffee cups as they moved to the door. Park took Meg’s cup so she could button her jacket, and then she returned the favor. The two of them stared at each other, smiling awkwardly, like they didn’t want to say goodbye. Then Park leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. She laughed and it looked like he apologized, though Meg didn’t look upset at all. Her face was rosy, glowing even. They left the coffee house.
Eden handed the drink to the waiting customer at the counter, then went to find Annie. She was putting the broom away in the back. “He’s not her brother,” she said. “He kissed her!” she said.
Annie didn’t seem nearly as scandalized as Eden felt. “What kind of kiss?”
“Just a quick peck on the cheek,” Eden said.
Annie frowned, and blew a bubble with her gum. “Eh…could still be her brother I guess.”
“My brother never kisses me. And he doesn’t look at me like that.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” Annie said. “Next time they come in, you should ask how they know each other.”
“What…just…ask?” Eden gasped.
“Why not? They come in here all the time. You know their names. You now exactly what Meg is going to order, and you can form a good guess for what Park is going to order based on what he’s wearing. They make chitchat with you sometimes. Why not ask them?”
When the text came to her phone, pinging like a clear bell in the finally silent house, she almost didn’t look at it. Whoever it was could wait until morning. These night time hours were precious—when she could draw, or paint, ink, stamp, glue, print, tape in peace. Amy finished the last stroke, letting the pen tip end in a flourish atop the stalk of golden grain on her page. She held up the drawing to the light, taking a moment to examine it, and feel her own pride swelling, before she carefully laid it down on the desk. She reached for her phone—she had left it on the bookshelf behind her—and saw that it was from Gabby.
The good mood that she had carefully cultivated over the last hour in her studio melted when she saw the name on the screen. She opened her iMessages and read through what she knew would either be a request for help, or some kind of emotional breakdown that she did not have the energy nor patience to engage with.
Hey! How are you? Do you have a screwdriver I can borrow? I need it to fix the handle on these cabinets that we hung in the garage. Aaron took his whole tool bag home so I don’t have anything to tighten up these screws.
Go buy one, Amy thought to herself. She put her phone back on her shelf. She closed her eyes and tried to remember that moment of pride she had just a minute before. Before Gabby’s neediness and insecurity and incompetence and ineptness intruded into her perfect evening. The anger inside her would not settle. She picked up her phone and pulled up her messages with Andrew.
How do you break up with a friend? She typed it out fast, her fingers fueled by a searing rage that was months in the making.
I don’t think you do. I think you just ghost them. She could hear the flatness of his tone in the words on the screen. He would have raised one eyebrow if she had been there, an unspoken question lurking inside the expression. They had talked about Gabby before. How terrible she was for Amy’s mental health, because she was so oblivious to anyone else’s needs, desires, interests or insecurities. How Amy had to do so much hand holding to be her friend. How Amy had to take a backseat to what Gabby wanted when they were together. And how Gabby always needed something from her, but never gave her anything in return. She didn’t return favors. She didn’t want to. All she did was take. The entire relationship was for her benefit.
That’s not working. She keeps texting me. Amy sighed, then got up from the desk. She pressed her forehead against the window of her in-home studio, looking at nothing in the darkness behind her house. None of her neighbors had exterior lights on at this time of night. There was a new moon, and the stars were hidden by patchy clouds and light pollution. It looked like the end of the world at her doorstep. The ping of another text drew her attention.
Well, you keep answering her messages, even if it does take you a few days. Andrew was typing something else. The three blinking dots were like lasers into her eyes. She stared without blinking until the next message came through. Just ignore her.
Just ignore her. How could she ignore someone who had taken up so much space inside her head?
Amy returned to the desk, where she pushed aside the drawing that she had just completed, and turned to a new page in her sketchbook. She adjusted the neck of the desk lamp. She leaned back in her chair and crossed one leg over the other before placing the heavy sketchpad on her lap. She let her hand move freely, not thinking. The whirlwind of annoyance calmed as she drew—each line like a cresting wave, or blooming flower, a sparkling star. She laid the pencil down on the desk and examined what she had drawn.
A mess of blots and screws dotted the page, and in the middle, a simple line drawing of a woman with a short bob and big glasses yelling “how am I supposed to fix this?” At her feet lay a shattered vase and in her hand, she clutched a hammer. Amy smiled at the picture, a commentary on the tempestuous Gabby. Something was always wrong in her life, and usually, it was her own fault. But the smile did not last long. She was ready to be done with this relationship for good.
She texted Andrew first. I think I just need to tell her. You know. Like I would if she were a guy.
His reply came almost instantly. You mean, you actually are gonna break up with her?
She hovered over the screen. There was a sea of concerns she could not name. She second guessed herself. She flipped over to Gabby’s message, and re-reading it. She almost typed out a reply, something benign like I’d have to find mine, or Just ask Aaron to bring his back, or I can’t get it to you this week. Then she thought of typing something she actually wanted to say. Screwdrivers are really cheap, so you could buy your own. Stop asking me for things. Don’t text me anymore.
She didn’t text Gabby any of these things. She went back to her chat with Andrew. Yeah, I think I am gonna break up with her. She is an emotional vampire. She put her phone down on the desk, and her eyes fell to the drawing of the woman with the shattered vase. In the past, Amy would have helped Gabby pick up that vase, and glue it back together. But she could never take the hammer out of Gabby’s hand, and that was the real problem. Until Gabby decided to stop sabotaging her friendships with her inability to be self-aware, that vase would keep getting broken. Amy didn’t want to clean up the pieces of it anymore.
Her phone pinged. She read Andrew’s response without picking up her phone, her face hovering over the screen so the camera would recognize her. I really wish I could just break up with Jeff. But I’ve invested too much in the friendship at this point I think.
The posture she had taken on made her feel like a crone. She sat up straight in the chair, and picked up the phone to reply. She typed out the message with one finger. He’s not the best friend imo but you have been friends a long time. Maybe it’s different. Now Amy was getting tired. Gabby didn’t even have to be in the room with her in order to suck all the life from her. Just the thought of having to interact with her was enough to make Amy feel like it was time to go to bed. She rubbed a hand over her face, wishing there was an easier way. She pulled up the chat with Gabby and stared at the blinking cursor in the new message. Hey she wrote, before she erased it.
She tidied up the studio—restacking papers on the shelves, putting away paint tubes, pouring out old coffee—before she turned off the light. She thought about Gabby, and how she used to feel like a kindred spirit. How had it gotten so bad? Had she just not seen the signs of narcissism and immaturity before? Or had something in herself changed. Was she the one who was in the wrong here? It didn’t feel like she was. Then why do I feel so bad about this?
It was now 11 pm. She’d left all the lights on in the house when she went into the studio. She went through the house turning them off one by one, then pattered to the bedroom where she found the cat curled up on top of her pajamas. The whole bed to lay on, and the cat decided to lay on the one tiny section where she’d left her shirt. Amy shooed her away, then stripped down. Before she could redress she heard the ping of another text coming through. She picked up the phone from where she had tossed it on the bed.
Did you do it? She imagined Andrew chewing his nails for an hour waiting for a word from her. Her brother always wanted all her gossip.
No not yet. She pulled on the nightshirt and tossed her dirty clothes into the hamper. She was halfway through brushing her teeth, wondering what Gabby was doing, when she got the second text from her that she knew was coming. There was always a second text that made it seem like Gabby didn’t want to be an inconvenience, but it was always a disguise for her not wanting to do any work for herself. Gabby wanted a hand out, and she’d take it from anyone who was willing to give it to her.
If it’s easier, I can come get it from you tomorrow. That way you won’t have to drive out to my place.
Amy wanted to scream. What would be easiest was if Gabby bought herself a screwdriver and left her alone forever. This was how it had been since they first met. Can I borrow that book? Do you have an extra sweatshirt I can wear? Can you swing by the store on your way over? Can you give me a ride? Can you recommend a house sitter? A dog sitter? A vet? A plumber? Can you tell me which plants I should get? Can I come over? Can you bring me a few of those candies you like when I see you tonight? Can I come to your next book club? Can you bake me a loaf of bread? My friend needs a cake; can you make one? Take, take, take, take, take.
And yet, whenever Amy needed something, Gabby was never there. Oh sorry, I was on the phone. I was asleep. I have ADD. I was having a panic attack. I didn’t see your message. I was at work. I had a client. I was in a meeting. I was out with a friend. She never gave anything back.
As she furiously scrubbed her teeth clean, she knew it would never get better. She looked at herself in the mirror, how her face was a mask of anger—and hurt—over how this woman, who was supposed to be her friend had put an enormous strain on her by taking advantage of how compassionate and helpful she was. This was the problem with loving to help other people. Sometimes, you ended up in a toxic friendship that sucked away all your desire to help anyone. Amy finished brushing and slowly wiped her mouth. She continued to look at her reflection, relaxing her face until she could see herself and not her anger. She turned off the bathroom light, and then sat down on the edge of her bed.
Hey, actually, I have been meaning to talk to you about something. I don’t think this friendship is good for me. We can talk about this if you’d like. When she hit send her heart was beating like she had just run 12 miles.
Gabby’s response was instantaneous. Oh, that’s fine. No need to explain yourself. Sorry if I made your life hard.
Amy stared at the screen, wrestling with that part of herself that liked to keep everything smooth and comfortable for other people. Was it really that simple? Did Gabby really not need any explanation from her? Did she not care at all, or was this sarcasm? She laid her phone down, feeling relieved, and confused by that relief. But the confusion was short lived.
She lifted her phone again and texted her brother. I did it.
His reply too was instantaneous. Good. I’m proud of you.
She smiled to herself, reading over his words again. Why hadn’t she told the truth to Gabby months ago? It had been so easy, because a friend like Gabby never really cared what she thought anyway. Amy had a crawling feeling that she would just move onto the next person who liked to please other people, but she also recognized that was not her problem. She had cut Gabby loose, and now, she would never have to let her borrow things she didn’t intend to return, or listen to problems she had no intention of fixing, or complain about difficulties that were caused by her aggressively selfish behavior. She was free.
Yeah, I’m proud of me too. She ended the message with a smiley face.
Everyone told me that there would be trouble if I went through with it, but I’m hopelessly optimistic that everyone will see my side of things, so I ignored them and forged ahead with my plans. Even so, I had to give myself a good talking to in the mirror on that morning I went to the bank; staring at myself and saying things like “You are capable” and “it won’t be a problem” and “he’s the best one for the job, and you know it. He knows it. Everyone knows it.” Except there was one person who didn’t know it, and who thought all of it might be a front for something that would never happen.
Nevertheless, as I found myself pulling into the parking lot of the bank on that chilly November afternoon, my spirits were high. Nothing had gone wrong—yet—and maybe it never would. Maybe everyone else was just blowing it out of proportion. Maybe, after we opened the business, she would see that it was just that—a business. Then she’d see that I was not a threat to her.
I was wrong, of course. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Dickerson was already in the parking lot when I arrived. When I’d first met him—freshman orientation weekend—he had introduced himself with only his surname. His given name was Barret, but he said that was one of those stupid names that rich people named their kids, so he didn’t use it. His dad was an investor, and his mom was an attorney, and they did a lot of things that were beyond me, a barely middle-class woman, who had to rely on scholarships to even attend business school. Dickerson was standing outside of his car waiting for me, his ears turned deep red from the biting wind. Why he wasn’t wearing a hat was also beyond me. Didn’t want to mess up his hair, I suppose. His hair was meticulously combed, as always, just like his sharply ironed and pressed clothes. His beard on the other hand looked like it belonged on a dwarf. He had oiled it up real nicely today. I could smell it as soon as I opened my car door.
“Hey Nattie,” he said. My name is Nat. No one, not even my mom, ever called me Nattie. Except him. He had done it since that first conversation we’d had 8 years ago on the steps of the co-ed dorm, when the administration had let us have an hour of free time before mandating that we should all be in bed. Why he gave me a pet name before we’d even become friends was just a quirk of his personality. I liked it.
His wife did not.
“Hey,” I greeted, practically running past him to get to the bank. “Why are you standing out here? It’s freezing!”
He laughed. Sometimes that was all the answer he had for his behavior.
He trotted ahead of me, opening the door, and giving me one of his wide, endearing smiles. That face was why everyone loved him. He sure knew how to turn up the charm. He made everyone feel as if they were the whole world to him. All the time. It was his special gift.
I went through the door of the bank, waited for him in the outer atrium, and then went through the inner doors a step ahead of him. We glanced around the lobby, and one of the tellers caught my eye, and called out, “I can get you over here!”
Dickerson went ahead of me and I could hear the smile in his words as he said, “We have a meeting with the loan officer.”
“Of course!” I noticed how she looked at the pair of us, like we didn’t belong together. I flashed a smile at her and it did the trick to pull her away from her internal wonderings. “Let me take you to him.”
She let us into the west side of the building, to a man sitting behind an enormous wooden desk. It was littered with picture frames, awards, notebooks, assorted boxes, a half-eaten sandwich still in the restaurant wrapping, several unused napkins, a calculator, and right in the middle of the desk, an enormous calendar that had at least four items scratched out onto every single day, including weekends. “Heath? These people are here for you,” the teller said, before she melted away.
Heath stood and stuck his hand out towards me first. “Heath Arnold. Pleased to meet you,” he said as he shook each of our hands in turn.
“Nat Coleman,” I said. “And this is my business partner, Barret Dickerson.”
“Oh! You’re here to close on the loan…for the bar?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I said, swelling with pride. This was my dream, and Dickerson was just along for the ride. Because he was the best accountant I knew. I trusted him to do it right, because he not only cared about doing it right, he cared about me. He was the perfect person for the job.
When I first approached him about it, I had asked him to meet me for coffee. At the time he was working for his dad, but he was craving to get out from under his thumb. Mr. Dickerson, as I always thought of him, because he’d never told me to address him by his first name, was the kind of man who continually second-guessed everyone around him. Not because he was the smartest person in the room, but because he thought he was the smartest in the room.
“I want to open a bar,” I said, blowing on the hot coffee in my mug.
“A bar?” Dickerson asked, smiling brightly. He stroked his beard. “And let me guess…You need me to manage the books for you.”
“Can’t think of anyone else I’ve rather have. Plus, I figured you were tired of your old man.”
He laughed, sparkling. “Am I ever.” He took a sip from his own mug. “And let me guess again…you want Dad to invest in it?”
“God, no,” I said, shuddering at the thought.
“Good idea. He would want to stick his nose too far into our affairs.”
In hindsight, I’d have rather had Dickerson’s father poking around. But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
“So what do you think?’ I asked.
He mulled it over for a minute or two. “Ellie might not like it,” he said.
It was the only hesitation I had. Ellie, his wife, would be jealous over a pretty waitress, or someone’s mother who smiled too much, or an overly friendly dog. They had only had about ten people at their wedding since she didn’t like or trust anyone. Sometimes it seemed like she didn’t like or trust Dickerson either. “It’d be a lot of late nights,” I said.
He nodded. “Doesn’t bother me.”
It would be a lot of late nights with me. I should have said it, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to ruin it.
And I wanted to believe that it wouldn’t matter, even as the thought that it would not be crawled through me.
Heath handed us paper after paper after paper to sign. Dickerson smiled the whole time. “Alright,” he said, when we’d reached the bottom of the stack. “You’re all set.”
Dickerson and I looked at each other. We were practically kids, who barely knew what they were doing, trying to do something exciting together. “Yeah, we are,” I agreed. I felt ready to take on anything, and I knew that I had the right person at my side to make it happen.
I just wish Ellie would have seen it that way too.
They were not called for another three days. The letter Frank was given was thick. As he tucked it into his pocket, he heard whispers in an unknown tongue. Corrupted. He tried not to think of it, but that only made me think of the words that had been seared onto his eyelids. Daag glash naag abaat glaag blan. He shivered as he tucked the letter into his breast pocket.
Fred drove. About halfway into their journey, Frank took the letter from his pocket, and read. The paper did not have words; it was more like impressions. It was like falling down a darkened hole. He lost himself for a moment, and blinked back the darkness only to find that it had infected him. He could hear the voice of someone else in his head. The letter lay in his lap. He refolded it, hid it in his pocket. Frank looked up and Fred, who was singularly focused on driving. His helmet and goggles hid all his expressions, and masked all his thoughts. Frank closed his eyes, seeing the strange the words.
At the shack, they did not find Madame Joile. Her encampment looked to have been abandoned for years. She had left paper and pencil though, as well as an oil lamp, with a bit of oil in it. Everything was covered in dust, as if she had never been there at all.
“What do you think happened to her?” Frank asked.
Fred trailed a finger through the dust on the desk. “I don’t know, but I don’t like this at all.”
Frank could feel that slow creeping darkness sliding through him. He tasted it, the smell of it filled his nose. “Corruption,” he said. His voice was like sandpaper.
Fred glanced at him, the concern plain in his eyes. “What did you do?” he asked.
“I read the letter,” Frank said. He was bubbling, like a boiling pot. His whole being felt like water dripping through rocks. “I couldn’t help it.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Fred said, reaching for his arm. He pulled him towards the door, but Frank’s feet grew heavy. Fred’s eyes were wild with confusion, with fear that he was barely containing. Then Frank felt the presence around him. The klumskaag. What had Reiner said? It had been trying to call him. It lived here and it wanted him here too. He thought back to Madame Joile’s skeletal smile, trying to remember what she had said. She would ascend. That’s it. Frank laughed to himself, aloud, and Fred dropped his arm in horror. The klumskaag was helping them; that’s what Reiner thought. It was helping them ascend.
“Go, Fred,” Frank said. He hesitated. “Go home.”
“Frank!” Fred tried to argue, but Frank hushed him.
“Don’t you want to go home?” he asked.
Fred backed away from him, the fear beading on his forehead, and then he ran towards the motorbike. Frank watched him speed away, the dust cloud of the raid rising behind the vehicle. Frank watched for a long time, until the dust was gone from the air, and the night had settled over him. Then he shut the door of the shack and sat down at the desk.
Frank handed the letter with the strange markings to the captain once they got back to the camp. He tucked it into a folder without comment, then shooed him away, as he waited to the collect the next letter from the next soldier. Frank moved off slowly, wondering about what he had seen. He could still make out the markings if he closed his eyes. They still didn’t make any sense, but if he tried hard enough, he could see how all the markings were connected. Maybe there was an order to it after all.
Frank and Fred stood in line in the mess hall, waiting for their stewed potatoes and beans, or whatever other meager meal was being dished out today. The hall seemed emptier than it had the first week. Frank looked around, studying the face. Several notable people were missing tonight. He nudged Fred. “Hey,” he whispered, and Fred dipped his face closer to him. “What happened to everyone else?”
Fred looked around the mess hall too. The wooden walls and dark floor seemed to swallow all the light that came in through the windows. Frank scratched his head, wondering why it felt dark, even though the sun was still out. Chatter was sparse tonight. An uneasy nervousness buzzed in the air.
“Did Jack and Peter go out today?” Fred asked, still eyeing the room.
They had almost made it to the front of the line, where a man everyone called Kitchen Joe was dishing out the stew. “I think so,” Frank said.
“Where are they?” Fred asked.
As soon as he asked, their friend stumbled into the mess hall, looking haggard, like the dead. Harry was with them, and he too looked almost gray with fatigue. Or fear. Or something else, Frank thought, the idea sliding up from the dark parts of his heart. Something other, like the script.
They found each other at the table. “You look bad,” Frank said to Harry.
“I think I’m sick,” he said.
“Go to the medic,” Fred offered. He chewed on a potato.
“No, I think I’m sick in my mind,” Harry said.
Fred stopped eating, looking hard at Harry from across the table. “So, go to the medic,” he said again.
But Harry didn’t go to the medic. He went outside in the middle of that night and he never came back.
It was another five days of waiting before they were given a letter to take to Madame Joile. This time Frank drove the motorbike. Fred carried the letter, and argued with Madame Joile, who looked older than the last time they had seen her by several decades. Her smile was almost skeletal as she handed them the reply they had forced from her. Fred tucked it into his breast pocket without even glancing down at the paper.
“We are nearly completed,” Madame Joile said. “That is my final reply. I will not be hear when you return.”
“Why? Where are you going?” Frank asked.
Fred nudged him hard. Maybe he shouldn’t have asked.
“Why do you ask? You want to go with me?” she said. Her lips peeled back into an awkward grin. There were too many teeth.
“No,” he said, even though yes was the first word that came to mind.
“You can learn how to ascend if you follow the maps through the tree,” Madame Joile said.
“What?” Frank asked. His chest felt tight with anticipation. He swallowed the lump growing in his throat.
“No thanks,” Fred said, steering him away from the woman, who stood in front of the shack watching them go. He could feel her eyes on him, like twin beacons of fire at his back.
“You drive,” he said to Fred, as he climbed into the sidecar. “Let me carry the reply.”
“Why?” Fred asked, looking hard at him, all but saying that was a terrible idea.
“Because…I’ve already seen it, and this way, you won’t be tempted to look…”
“I don’t want to look,” Fred said.
Frank’s hands shook as he thought about the script in the letter he had opened the previous week, and the letter that was in Fred’s pocket. “You don’t?” he asked.
Fred looked at him as if he was out of his mind. “No,” he said with disgust. “Why would I?” Frank didn’t have an answer, and Fred continued to stare at him, his expression morphing to one of concern. “You shouldn’t either,” he said.
“Why?” Frank asked, though he knew why, and now it was beginning to make sense why they had needed so many messengers.
“Don’t you want to go home?” Fred asked.
He nodded. He did. He wanted to go home more than anything. But whatever had taken hold of Harry, of the others who had gone missing, he suspected was already rooted in him. “I shouldn’t have looked at the script,” he said.
“Nope,” Fred said. He started the bike, and rolled off down the road, away from Madame Joile and her strange, other-worldly smile.
Peter had not come back with Jack. Frank, Fred and Jack all stood around the burn barrel that night, silent to their companions, through Frank was internally screaming. The markings he had seen where still on the backs of his eye lids. When he looked, he could almost read them now, but he didn’t understand the language. It wasn’t French or German. It didn’t sound like Russian or Polish. He wondered if it was an invented language, something the army created just to send letter back and forth to informants. He watched the fire, closing his eyes for just a minute, to get another glimpse, another taste. Daag glash naag abaat glaag blan. He didn’t understand what it meant but it felt wonderful sliding around his mind.
“We followed a girl into the house,” Jack said. “The one that looked wrong, like a rotten apple in a bag of perfectly crisp ones.”
“I don’t want to know,” Fred said. He stomped out his cigarette and walked away without another word.
Jack looked at Frank, and Frank could almost hear a whisper in the air, the words in his mind on the wind. “Tell me about her,” he said to his companion.
Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair, scratched the back of his head before he launched into the tale. “She was gaunt, and looked sickly, but in a sort of nice kind of way, you know? I followed her up those stairs ‘cause I thought…well you know, a girl invites you inside and you think…you know? So I went, but Peter was ahead of me, and he seemed crazed over her.” Jack’s eyes had grown wide. “And he said he’d go first and then I could go in after he was done, but he never came out. Something just…I don’t know, I think I came to my senses, and I remembered I was supposed to wait five minutes and then leave.”
“Was her smile all wrong? Too many teeth? Too big for her face?” Frank asked. His mouth had gone dry and his fingers tingled. He wiped the sweat from his face.
“What do you think she is?” Jack asked.
“Klumskaag,” he said, the word coming to his lips without a thought.
“What is that?” Jack said, his voice shaking. “German?”
But Frank didn’t know, so he just shook his head.
A crunch behind them alerted them to the presence of someone in the shadows. “Reeves,” the voice said, using Frank’s last name.
“Sir?” he asked, turning towards the voice, which he was pretty sure was the German captain. He had learned his name was Reiner.
“Come with me,” he said.
He took a long, desperate look at Jack before peeling away. Jack couldn’t save him from whatever it was he had gotten mixed up in. He turned from the light of the fire, and followed Reiner across the green behind the barracks, to the building where the officers worked. Reiner said nothing until they had moved all the way into the building, and the door was shut behind them. There was an oil lamp on a desk. Reiner sat at the desk and pointed to the chair on the opposite side. “Sit,” he said.
He sank slowly into the chair, waiting for revelation, for reprimand, for release. He wasn’t sure. He fidgeted nervously as Reiner folded his hands in front of him, elbows resting on the desktop. The captain stared at him for what felt like half the night. Then he cleared his throat and asked, “How did you know about the klumskaag?”
“What?” he asked, surprised by the question. He tried to think of anything to say that wasn’t the truth—that he had no idea how he knew about the klumskaag, whatever that was. “I…well, I think…I don’t…”
“Did you read it in a letter?” Reiner asked.
“No,” Frank said forcefully. He was sweating under Reiner’s stare.
“But you read other things in the letter?” Reiner asked.
His mouth worked against his will. “Daag glash naag abaat glaag blan” he said mechanically.
Reiner nodded. “Yes, that’s what I thought.”
“What does it mean?” Frank asked.
“It means the klumskaag is trying to find you,” he said.
“What is the klumskaag?” Frank said, his anxiety rising. His heart was racing like he was climbing a hill with a full kit strapped to his back.
“We don’t know,” Reiner said. “That’s what we’re trying to find out.” He stood and moved across the room, to another desk, where he picked up a piece of paper. He turned slowly, held it out for Frank to take.
Frank hesitated, but then, snatched up the paper, reading through it as rapidly as his eyes could move. He inhaled sharply when he had finished. “So that’s why we’re all here? That’s what we’re doing?”
Reiner nodded. “We’re messengers to the Others,” he said.
“But…why?” Frank asked, the word burning on his tongue.
“Don’t you want the war to end, Reeves? Don’t you want to go home?” Reiner asked, folding his arms over himself.
Frank suddenly wanted to go home more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. “Yes, of course I want to go home.”
Reiner seemed pleased. “Then let the klumskaag have you. It is trying to help us.”
“Why would it want to help us?”
Reiner shrugged. “We are also trying to discover why that is.”
Did he have a choice? “What are people like Madame Joile?” he asked. Reiner raised an eyebrow, and he elaborated. “What is she?”
“Corrupted,” Reiner said.
The answer satisfied him for the moment. He imagined how many others there were in the world—people who used to be people, but were now something else. “So what do you want me to do now?”
“Now you will write messages,” Reiner said. He took a fresh sheet of paper from the desk, and handed it to him. From the desk drawer, he fished out a pencil. He sat, then passed the pencil over to Frank.
“What messages?” Frank asked.
“Any message that you think will help us solve this puzzle,” Reiner said.
Frank looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand, laid it on the desk gently. ‘I don’t know if I should,” he said.
Reiner leaned forward in the chair. “This is why you were brought here. You are a messenger now,” Reiner said. “Most will only deliver the messages, and return the replies. But some of you will write the messages.”
Reiner had a desperate expression, as if his future depended on Frank picking up that pencil. Frank wondered how Reiner got to be a captain of the French army, managing an American encampment. None of this made any sense. “Can you write to the klumskaag?” he asked. “Does it speak with you?”
Reiner smiled. “No,” he said.
So they were being used. They’d been drawn into a war that wasn’t their own, to fight a fiend they couldn’t see so that the French could protect what men they had left. And they’d drawn this defected German into the picture as well, and he seemed happy enough that he wasn’t the one risking his neck. “I’m not doing it,” Frank said.
Reiner raised his eyebrow, then thought to himself before pointing to the door. “Then you’re free to go.”
The words crawled through his head again—those odd words that didn’t mean anything, and yet held all the answers he had ever searched for. “That’s it?” he asked, skeptical.
“That’s it,” Reiner said. “You can go. Next time I need a messenger, you and Kilpatrick and go back out on your motorbike.”
It was too easy. It unsettled him. “Okay,” he said. He stood, watching Reiner suspiciously. He looked expectant, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even rise from his chair.
“Okay,” Frank said again, before he began moving to the door. He paused, looked over his shoulder at the captain. He was calm, waiting patiently for an exit, or an argument. Frank shook his head in bafflement. He yanked open the door and left the building.
Harry was eating in silence that evening while the others chatted idly about the things they had seen that day while delivering letters. No one had believed Frank when he told the story about the woman eating his letter, until Fred piped in that he had seen it too. Peter and Jack had gone somewhere called Aubigny-en-Artois, which Jack had pronounced very poorly.
“Our delivery was in an actual town,” Jack said, speaking of the events of the day. “It had a church in the center, and a main road that went past shops, though most of ‘em were closed. And I saw moms walking ‘round with their kids, almost like there wasn’t a war going on at all.” He paused, then shook away a thought, or a memory, with a way of his head. “Anyway, we roll up to this townhouse…I guess that’s what it was. Looks real old and run down, not at all like the other building on the street. They’d all been painted recently I think. Can you imagine painting the town when there’s a war in your backyard?”
Peter laughed, as Jack rambled on about the experience. Frank and Fred both listened too, but Frank’s eyes kept sliding over to Harry. He wasn’t eating anything now, and he had a terrible look about him, like he hadn’t slept in days.
“Hey, Harry, you alright?” Frank asked, interrupting Jack’s story about some young woman he’d chatted with on the way out of Aubigny-en-Artois.
The table went quiet as everyone turned their attention to Harry. He had his head in his hands, staring straight down into his soul bowl.
“Come on, man,” Peter said, slapping him on the shoulder. “Was it that bad?”
Harry dropped his hands from his face. “Bill didn’t come back with me,” he said.
Fred leaned forward. “What do you mean?”
“You know how they told us to leave if the letter carrier was gone for more than 5 minutes?” he asked. They all nodded. The captains in charge of this unit had been very clear about this direction. 5 minutes, that’s it. Wait any longer and you might be dead too. “Well,” Harry said, letting the story hang unfinished. They were all smart enough to fill in the details.
“Where did you go?” Fred asked.
“Well it wasn’t a row of sheds like where they sent you, but it wasn’t much better,” Harry said. “We could tell that it used to be…community of some sort. There were actual houses there, maybe 12 or so, packed not too tight, but still close enough that it seemed like it was a village. There was a huge crater just on the outskirts of what I’d say was the village boundary. Big hole in the ground. Couldn’t see the bottom of it as we drove by.”
The men all looked around the table at each other, each wondering if they should ask a question or let Harry continue in his own time. The dining hall was emptying out. Mess was almost over, and they had to be in their bunks in one hour. An hour didn’t feel like enough time to talk about everything Frank wanted to talk about.
“Anyway, we went to the house. They said it would be marked with a red circle on the door. Bill knocked, and somebody answered, and next thing I know Bill is walking into the house. I waited 5 minutes, and then…” He was choking on the words. “I left him,” he said. “I left him behind.”
Frank could see the guilt was eating Harry alive. “Hey, Harry, man, you don’t know what happened. For all we know, he’s with some nice family getting a home cooked meal.”
Harry’s eyes were hard. “Now you know just as well as I, that isn’t true,” he said. “And I left him there, to face whatever it was alone.”
“You followed orders,” Fred said.
“Doesn’t mean it was the right thing,” Harry said, clearly on the verge of a breakdown. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, and looked away from the other men at the table with him.
“You’re right,” Frank said. “But, it’s the reason you’re alive right now.”
Harry got up from the table, leaving the mess hall without another word, his soup uneaten.
There was no assignment the next day for Frank and Fred, so they hung around the barracks, and the village where they had been built. There was a tiny church, and what Frank thought of a park near the center of the village. There were a few women and kids there that day. None wanted to chat. They all kept their eyes averted, downcast. Frank smoked about half of his cigarettes, thinking about home and his mom. Fred didn’t say much at all, but he was good company. They wandered back to the barracks, looking for lunch, when the sun rose high. Bread, butter and beans. He couldn’t complain. It was better than 8 hours in a sidecar.
The next day there was no assignment. And the day after that they did a whole lot of nothing too. But on the fourth morning as they were standing in queue, the captain handed Frank a letter, tri-folded and stamped with wax just like the other one had been. This captain was someone he hadn’t seen before. He was tall and looked distinctly unhappy.
“Get a reply from Madame Joile this time,” he said. His accent was different than the other French captains. He could never remember any of their names. They didn’t all look the same, but they all sounded the same. Except this one. He spoke English like he was shooting a machine gun.
“I was hoping we wouldn’t have to go back to her,” Frank said, not sure why he had let it slip.
The captain stared at him, scowling fiercely. Frank felt like a puppy about to be scolded. “Madame Joile is doing important reconnaissance,” he said.
“Yessir!” Frank said, saluting robotically before stepping out of line with the letter, Fred on his heels. When they were far enough away from the officer, Frank leaned his head towards his companion. “What’s with that guy?” he asked.
“He sounds like a German,” Fred said. Fred was smart like that. He had taught school or something. Or maybe he’d just been to school. Frank couldn’t remember.
“A German!” Frank whispered in disgust, nearly scandalized. “What’s he doing here?! Did he defect?”
“Beats me,” Fred said.
They made the drive again, nearly four hours stuffed into the side car, slipping past wastes and pastures and those funny, cold places that felt like death. Back to the little hill with the five sheds. One of them had lost a door since the last time they’d come. When Fred killed the engine on the bike, Madame Joile burst from the house, running towards them with frantically wild eyes. She took the letter from Frank before he could get himself up out of the sidecar. She turned her back to them, and began pacing as she read. Her cap was gone, and her whitening hair was in disarray. They waited.
Madame Joile turned around, and wet her lips before she said very smoothly, as if she hadn’t been frazzled at all. “No reply today.” Then she began to tear the letter.
“Oh, no, we need to take a reply today,” Frank said. He was out of the sidecar now, and Fred had hopped off the bike as well. They stood side by side, and he assumed the most threatening posture he could.
Madame Joile stuffed parts of the letter into her mouth. “No reply,” she said around the paper.
Frank drew his pistol and pointed it at her. The fear was getting ahead of him. He tried to settle himself as Madame Joile drew a pistol of her own. They stood there, a game of chicken that neither one would win. Frank swallowed his nerves. His hand was shaking. “We need a reply,” he said.
Madame Joile swallowed the lump of letter shreds in her mouth. “Fine,” she said. “Come here.”
She returned her pistol to its harness and stomped back across the short yard to the shed. Frank looked at Fred, and then they both slowly followed, keeping their distance. Madame Joile huffed her way into the shed, but neither entered with her. For one, it was too small for all three of them. For another, Frank had an itching sensation crawling up his back that she was dangerous. He thought about Bill disappearing into the house where Harry had driven him. He didn’t even step up to the door. Fred hung back even further than that. They could hear her in the shed, shuffling around, scratching out a reply, folding paper. When she emerged from the darkened structure, she pressed the note into Frank’s hand. She was like ice, too hard and too cold.
“Your reply,” she said huffily. Then she returned to the shed and slammed the door.
The letter was not sealed. Frank’s curiosity overcame him and he unfolded the letter. The script was like nothing he had ever seen, all scratched out without any apparent order. Was it even an alphabet? Was it a map? Was it a joke? He passed the letter to Fred, but he turned his head, averting his eyes.
“I don’t want to see,” he said.
Frank knew that Fred had better sense than him, and he regretted looking at the paper. He refolded it and put it in his breast pocket. The markings were on the backs of his eyelids when he blinked, like when you stare at a light too long. He rubbed his eyes, trying to rid himself of the view of them.
“Let’s get out of here,” Fred said, dragging him back to the motorbike.
They went out in pairs the next day. One was the driver, the other was the carrier. The letters were hand written, tri-folded then sealed shut with wax. They looked like something from a by-gone time. Peter went with Jack, hopping into the sidecar of the motorcycle before Jack sped off down the dirt road that led away from the town and the barracks. They didn’t know where Frank and Jack were headed. They had been instructed to tell no one. Harry had gone with another guy named Bill who they had met on the boat over. He was a nice fella, one of those classically handsome American guys that could turn the head of any woman on the street. The French girls they’d seen in town had all noticed him first, whispering behind their hands and giggled the way women do, pointing to him sitting at the bar as if no one could see what they were doing. Bill was an alright guy, Frank though, but he was only here because he’d been too stupid to get into law school. He had to do something to make his dad proud.
That left Frank to go with Fred, and Fred wanted to drive. Frank had wanted to drive too, but he lost the staring match that Fred started when he said so. Frank just sighed instead and hunkered down in the sidecar, feeling like a tag along, or a sister, as he folded his arms across his chest. Fred handed him the letter. He resisted snatching it and stuffing it into his breast pocket. Instead, Frank soothed his blistering pride by pulling his cap down over his eyes, pretending to need a nap, even though it was 8 in the morning. Fred kicked the motorcycle into gear and they were off down the dirt road.
They couldn’t talk on the drive, the machine was too noisy, and the wind stole any of the words he would have said. Frank watched the countryside roll along in the distance. There were whole sections that look burnt to a crisp, pocked with muddy pits and fallen trees and crisscrossing wires. Then there were other patches which looked untouched. Sometimes they passed a house or a farm. Not a single one of them looked inhabited. Perhaps the people who lived there were just good at hiding. He couldn’t imagine living this close to some of the terrain he’d seen. What had these people had to endure?
There were other places that he couldn’t quite describe, places that gave him unspeakable chills in his blood, places that didn’t feel like they were part of the whole. He’d heard about these places, the places where the horrors spilled through. If the stories were true, that is. Frank wasn’t sure, but he could imagine why someone would invent a story about those places even if it wasn’t. It was like walking through a ghost, like trespassing into a tomb. The whole sky seemed to darkened when they came upon one, and the menacing feeling seems to lift like a cloud as soon as they passed through. That made him think about the book of Exodus, and he nearly laughed, thinking how proud his mom would be that he’d been thinking of the Bible. But that cloud that descended in the Bible was holy. These places, whatever they were, were the opposite.
They drove until the sun was sailing directly above them, to a little encampment at the base of a hill. The hill had single tree left standing on it. There were at least 5 stumps that he counted around the tree, the trunks of in splinters all down the hillside. There were five buildings here, shoddy, looking as if they’d blow over in a stiff breeze. As they pulled up, and Fred killed the motor of the bike, a door opened on one of the buildings. A women in French uniform dress emerged, shielding her eyes from the sunlight.
“Hello?” she called, her accent heavy.
Frank slowly rose from the seat, legs stiff, taking care with climbing out onto the gravel. “Madame Joile?” he asked. He held up the letter so she could see.
She came forward, and he was surprised to see how old she was. She walked with a stiff leg, as if she couldn’t quite bend her knee. Under her cap he could see that her hair was starting to gray. She was wrinkled all around her eyes and the lines around her mouth were deepening into grooves. “Americans?” she asked. Frank nodded, stretching out his arm, the letter dangling from his fingers.
She snatched up the paper, tearing open the seal. Her eyes sped back and forth across the page. She nodded, closing her eyes in what looked like pain when she came to the end of the message. She began tearing the paper into tiny pieces and then she ate it.
She ate it.
Frank stared at her, not believing his own eyes, as she balled each strip in her first and stuffed it into her mouth. His mouth was hanging open by the time she was finished. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, and laughed at his expression of horror. “We need to be sure,” she said.
“Sure of what?” Frank croaked.
“No one else reads them,” she said. Then brushed her hands on her uniform and waved them away. “No message to return today,” she said. Then she turned around and marched back to the run-down shed from which she had emerged.
Frank turned his eyes to Fred, who was clicking his tongue against his teeth, staring after the French woman with narrowed eyes. He slid his eyes over to his companion when he noticed him staring. “You wanna drive back?” he asked.
Frank waved the question away, and sunk down into the side car. They’d spent half a day to deliver a letter to a woman who had eaten it and then sent them away as if they were annoying kids on her lawn. What kind of farcical, mind-numbingly banal assignment had they been seated with? He pulled his cap down over his eyes as Frank drove. This time, he did take a nap.
The Messengers is a piece of fiction set in the world of Never Going Home, the flagship TTRPG of Wet Ink Games about eldrich horrors in the trenches of the first World War. I have the honor of being the fiction writer for the game line and the forthcoming campaign books allowed me to write more narrative fiction. This story will appear in supplemental materials after the books are released.
They stood in a circle around the fire that burned in the barrel behind the barracks. It was not a nice evening—nippy, he thought, like winter just couldn’t let go—which made him think of his mom, back home in Ohio. She would be wondering where he was, and looking for a letter in the mail. He’d sent one a few days ago, letting her know he had arrived safely, with a slew of other men from American, on the shores of France. From the docks along that northern coast they’d gone inland, not quite as far as the front lines that crisscrossed Europe. He was glad they’d never make it to those trenches. Nope, not this battalion. They were brought over for something else entirely.
He took a swig from the bottle that the other doughboys were passing around. One of them declined. He was a quiet fella from somewhere in east Michigan named Jack. Then there was Harry, he was from Ohio too, and Peter. He’d come from Pennsylvania. And the last man standing around the barrel that night was Fred. He was from Indiana. They’d only met earlier that day, but the five had taken a liking to each other fast, which is why they were all standing around the meager fire that burned, smoking cigarettes while their toes froze in the not quite spring weather.
“I think I’ve glad to be on this assignment, Frank,” Jack said. “I know I signed up to help end this mess, but I was afraid I’d end up in one of those trenches.”
He spit in the dirt. “I heard they aren’t even fighting in the trenches anymore. There’s nothing left of Belgium. There’s not much left of France.”
“Except this place,” Peter said. The bottle had passed to him, and he knocked it back, gritting his teeth at the end of the swig. He passed the bottle.
“I wondered about that,” Jack said. “These barracks seem new, don’t they? Why are they building new barracks just for Americans?”
“You want to be in a mud hole like the French?” Harry asked.
“No!” Jack said. The end of his cigarette glowed orange as he took a drag, like a setting sun all to himself. The fire lit his features, a lurid sight, before the hastening evening obscured him in darkness again. “This assignment though,” he said.
Sometime did feel off about it, if he was honest with himself. Delivering messages by hand. They were going to be gloried mail carriers. They’d been told it was to prevent the information from falling into the wrong hands. But the messages were going to other encampments in France; who on this side of the front would intercept them for harm? Did the Germans have double agents? Was someone being double-crossed?
“What about it?” Peter asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. Now he had the bottle. “It just seems like they could…use a telegram I guess.”
“Anyone could be listening on the wires,” Fred said. It was the first time he had spoken since they lit the fire.
“Don’t they know how to send messages in code?” Jack argued.
Fred smiled to himself, dark humor floating from him. “You haven’t heard what happened to the coders?” he asked.
Now Frank was on alert. He and the other four men leaned in. Fred cleared his throat, his eyes drifting to each other pair of eyes in the circle before he said, “Something got them.” His voice was a velvet whisper. “They all went mad.”
The fire popped and Frank jumped, then tried to disguise it with a stretch and a cough.
“What do you mean, they went mad?” Peter asked.
Fred just laughed, this time heartily. All the mystery and gloom was gone from him. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just heard some guys talking about it on the boat over here. You know, telling tall tales, is all.”
“You think?” Frank asked. “I mean, they French broads we met in the last town—they were talking some weird things. Monsters and magic, and…what did they say, Jack? Faeries?”
“Yes,” Jack said, nearly rolling his eyes. “Faeries,” he said mockingly, then laughed.
“The only monsters over here are the Germans, man,” Peter said. “And there’s nothing killing men in the trenches but Germans.”
“Well,” Frank said, watching the hot coals in the barrel. “I guess it’s good that we volunteered for duty then. Can’t win a war if you got no men.” His words felt hollow, and he could see from the faces of his companions that they had fallen flat. They had all wanted to come here, to serve. But now that they were here…
“It’s not like I thought it would be,” said Jack. He drank from the bottle.
“What were you expecting, a vacation?” Harry teased.
Jack just shook his head, shrugged his shoulders, passed the bottle.
“I tell you what I was expecting,” Harry said. “I was expecting to be met by some French men, eh?” He gestured around their camp. “Instead, they stuck us here in these brand new barracks, and tell us we’re gonna be delivering messages. There’s about a hundred of here, you know. How many messengers do they need?”
“We go in pairs,” Fred said. “Safer that way.”
“I still say something is off about this,” Jack said.
And Frank could feel it too, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
The Quick and the Dead 