Crimson sprayed the ice as I pulled the monster away from the man, leaving a burst of wet garnets scattered over the snow. The man—later I would learn his name was Gabe—grabbed his own flayed throat, gurgling a swan song as his trachea slid past my hand, down the creature’s gullet in a single, swallowed lump.
The throat. Why did they seem to always go for the throat?
Or was it the throat? As Gabe’s blood sputtered and arced across the white between us, it occurred to me that it wasn’t the throat itself the monsters were after. It was the jugular. One of the largest veins in the human body, so close to the surface, throbbing and teeming with life. Warm life, mere centimeters under such tender skin. Easy for the taking. The tearing. The swallowing.
The thing writhed in my hands, wriggling to escape. It was then that I wondered what in God’s name I thought I was doing! I was no match for these monsters! But I had one by the throat and had no intention of letting the thing go free. For lack of a better course of action, I held on.
Thankfully, Lightbridge’s second shot was better placed. A loud report sounded to my right, followed by the revenant’s head bursting open in my very hands with the consistency of a spoiled tomato. In an instant, I was covered in gore once again, as bits of brain and skull and old dead blood dripped down my face and clothes in cold, wintry lumps. It was more akin to being showered with a bucket of slushy ice water than to being splattered by human remains. In those first few moments, I could still sense the echoing whistle of the bullet as it ripped past me. One inch more, the smallest of degrees to one side, and the very same shot that saved me would have laid me down dead.
As I sit listening to the bays of those things at my door, I find myself wishing Lightbridge had mislaid the shot and killed me instead.
In the time it took Lightbridge to reset his pistol again, the second creature tossed the remains of his meal—Alexis was the poor lad’s name—to the snow-covered ground, and set his sights on the weapon bearer. The thing snarled and made a dash for Lightbridge, who but calmly raised the weapon and shot the creature in the head. I lowered my gaze as he did, unwilling to watch the gory display. I had seen enough of such things for ten lifetimes. Though it was far from the last such scene I would witness.
His shot rang out, clean and clear. We stood quietly in the aftermath of the attack for a moment, the lingering echoes of the men’s screams and the weapon’s reports still ringing in my ears. Lightbridge stared down at the two dead men. Two more victims of his trusting crew. All at once, the man looked his age. He was weary, so tired, and had a distinct air of defeat about him. This was too much for the old man to bear. The weight of what had just transpired wore greatly upon my friend, but there was an even heavier burden for us to take on before this episode could come to a close.
“Lightbridge,” I said. “The men will return soon.”
“I know,” he said, his voice heavy with grief.
The destruction of his ship was one thing.
The ruin of his last chance at honor, another. But this? This insanity was going to tip him over the edge. I could see it in his tired eyes. This was going to kill him. Without a single revenant laying hand upon the poor man, he was going to die, and soon. This terrible fate to which he had resigned forty poor souls was going to break his heart, both figuratively and literally.
Yet there were question to be answered. Work still to be done. I could see the three men exiting the mouth of the ship, running across the snow to meet us and our bloody deed.
“Lightbridge?” I asked. “What will you tell them now that they have seen it with their own eyes?”
He looked up to me and sighed, his burden a worn and heavy cloak cast about his person. “The truth. We shall tell them the truth.” He paused, as if considering his own words, before he added, “Ignorance is bliss, but it seems the Arctic wants no man happy.”
“And what of them?” I asked, pointing to the freshly dead men.
“What of them?” he asked, unsure as to my implications.
“You must dispatch them.”
Lightbridge’s eyes went wide with horror. “Mr. Syntax! I will not defile—”
“You must!” I shouted over him. “Have you learned nothing from my tale? Or from Albert’s? Why do you think those two returned?”
The man wrinkled his nose as he said, “But to act so … disrespectful.”
I did something then, something of which I am neither proud nor ashamed. It was a desperate act, performed by a desperate man. I snatched Colonel Gideon Alabaster Lightbridge by the lapels of his heavy jacket, drew him down to meet my wild gaze and pleaded, “I beg of you, if I die, if I fall in this godforsaken place, promise me that you will put a bullet in my unmoving skull. Do not let me come back like that! Promise me, Gideon! Promise me that you will release me from this certain Hell!”
I only wish Lightbridge had lived long enough to take me up on my request.
I look back upon this moment as my greatest sin. With all I have done, all that has come and passed, this moment replays itself to me with exquisite horror.
If only
becomes my mantra as I recall it. If only I hadn’t stopped to beg him to rescue me. If only I hadn’t distracted Lightbridge. If only I hadn’t been such a coward. If only I had grabbed the gun and did the very deed I begged him to do myself. If only one of these things were different, then he might have survived. He might be here with me, now, helping me set to record our terrible deeds and prepare the world this warning.
But alas. My actions cannot be changed any more than I can take back my joining the crew in the first place. And so, it is with heavy heart I report that my deeds at that very moment killed Lightbridge. My pause for discourse, my hungry need to be assured that he would set me free from the bitterest of ends, killed the only man I had ever come to love as a true friend.
Here is how I killed him.
As he leaned in toward me, listening to my plea, a beatific smile crossed his aged face. He nodded, slow and purposeful, as if finally grasping an understanding within my words. I was reaching him! Bless the heavens above, I was making sense to him. In his eyes, I saw he understood; he knew that the skulls of the fallen had to be destroyed, lest they return. In that smile there was no humor, only remorse and regret and a man who could do nothing but smile at my senseless request.
He smiled down at me and said, in a very low voice, “Philip, in all of my days, I would never have imagined I could promise such a thing. Yet now I find myself without recourse. I promise that if you should fall before me, I will … take care of your remains. But only if, should I fall first, you will promise to take care of mine.”
I could have embraced him.
I should have, then perhaps things would have played out differently for us both.
Again, excuse me the indulgence of wallowing in my regrets, for they are all I have now that everyone else is gone. I should have embraced the man, but I didn’t. What I did instead was nod and agree and give my thanks and grin back up at him like some great aping ass. What I did, in essence, was distract him, and myself, from the immediate threat. The very threat I was trying to force him to perceive. For as we grinned at one another and made our solemn pact and reached our understanding, the moment had already passed. It was already too late.
Harris took less than an hour to revive.
Gabe and Alexis were back in mere seconds.
****
****
The Loss of Light
A high-pitched wail rose from the once-dead men on either side of us. To my surprise, and Lightbridge’s I am sure, the creatures were already on their feet. They set upon Lightbridge first. Both of them. The very same corpses that Lightbridge had agonized over defiling took to their feet and pounced upon the man, tearing him from my grasp and dragging him to the ground. The three of them were a singular blur of blood and limbs and screams. I was so shocked by their quick return that for a fleeting moment, I didn’t react. I did nothing as Lightbridge struggled for his life.
Until I spied the man’s gun lying on the snow.
I crouched, scooped up the weapon and took aim as I readied it. But the three before me struggled as one; I could hardly tell where Lightbridge ended and revenants began. A sudden thought seized me. Did it matter if I struck him in the attempt to destroy these monsters? The answer was of course it mattered, just not enough to keep me from firing. Which I did.
The shot was guided by the divine, detaching Gabe from his mouth-latched spot on Lightbridge’s torso, and flinging the now truly dead man back into the snow. The second shot was not as well placed, clipping the second revenant across the shoulder. Yet it was enough to turn the beast’s attention away from Lightbridge and onto me. As he rose from his crouch, I steadied the weapon and fired.
I was met by an empty click.
“Give me your heat!” the beast cried.
He then leapt like a hungry wolf for the tender lamb of my throat. I cowered, throwing my arms up to ward him off, which did precious little good. The thing landed square upon my person, driving us both into the snow, and the breath from my lungs. I couldn’t cry out, couldn’t scream what were sure to be my last words. A great burst of pain exploded from my right forearm, and in natural reaction, I pulled away from the creature’s bite. Just as I jerked my forearm from its mouth, at the cost of a large chunk of my flesh I should add, the beast was knocked away from me.
As Lightbridge and I wrestled the monsters, the three men had returned with weapons and righteous anger. Lent had a length of piping—which he had just swung at the creature—while Collins sported a shotgun, and Bryant carried the small handgun I had used on half the crew only a few days before. The three men crowded around Alexis, intent on subduing him, but I knew that to be a disastrous course of action. They had missed the men’s first deaths and just saw me fire upon the pair. God only knows what they thought was happening.
“Alexis,” Lent said in a placid voice. “You need to calm down. We can help you.”
“Kill him!” I shouted.
“Cold!” Alexis screamed. He lunged for one of the men, who deftly stepped aside.
Collins snatched Alexis by the arms, catching the struggling beast in a bear hug as he yelled, “Alex! Be still! We don’t want to hurt you. Grab his legs!”
Bryant dove for the thing’s legs, gripping even as the creature lashed out with wild kicks.
I found myself helped to my feet by Lent, and I took the opportunity to pull him close and ask, “Can’t you see he’s already dead?”
In the man’s eyes, I found my answer. Lent’s face was pained, tortured with his knowledge of the truth. He glanced back to Bryant and Collins struggling to hold Alexis still. “Then Albert’s story was true?”
I was right in my reckoning. The men had eavesdropped.
“Yes,” croaked Lightbridge. “Shoot him.”
“Sir?” Lent asked.
“Shoot him in the head, quickly. Before he kills you all.”
At once I lost interest in the revenant behind me, rushing to Lightbridge’s side, thanking the heavens he was still alive. Yet as I drew upon his bloody form, I could see that he was at the end of his tether. Just as Albert was on his death bed in the warmth of the ship, Lightbridge was moments from his own demise out here in the cold. He was gored, gutted, with his thick jacket ripped open straight into the depths of flesh beneath. The ice about him faded to a pink slush as blood seeped farther and farther from his core. He was bleeding to death from his wounds. If we didn’t act, and soon, he would die in the frost, with his warm blood gathering in steamy pools upon the ice. Perhaps a fitting end, considering his insane quest for True North.
I didn’t witness the dispatching of Alexis. My focus remained upon my dying friend as the single shot sounded from behind me. What little life was left in Lightbridge’s eyes dimmed at that noise, at the knowledge that he had brought his crew to this awful state. That he had led them to this terrible end.
“Someone take his feet,” I commanded. “We have to get him inside, to Geraldine.” I moved to lift his shoulders, at which he cried aloud in such agony I was forced to back away again. The men lingered, but none moved to help. Perhaps they were wiser than I. “Help me, damn it!”
“No,” Lightbridge said. “I am done. Let me be.”
“Gideon. We can get you inside.”
“To wither aboard my worst mistake? No. I will die here, in the open. I always belonged to the great outdoors.”
I stooped to my knees, and for the first time in my long and weary life, I wept.
I may have been a man of weak constitution, yet I was not by any means a weeping man. I but nodded with a grunt at the news of my parents’ death. I had watched dry eyed when Geraldine walked away after telling me she was set to marry that bastard instead of me. I stood stalwart, years ago, as my beloved country slipped into the horizon, sure I would never see her again. Yet now, at the side of the only man to find a single redeemable quality in my useless soul, I wept. Unashamedly and loud enough to raise the dead yet again, I wept. Maybe it was because I was so exhausted, or perhaps it was because I respected the man just that much. Whatever the reason, I wept.