His eyes, uncluttered and raw, looked up from his bed. Gabby swallowed a growing lump in her throat. Her uncle had such rough times ahead, days without his maternal security blanket of the last fifty-odd years, and Gabby knew she was a mediocre substitute at best.
She stroked back his hair and pulled his comforter up. He smiled. Grinning back, Gabby lifted his chin with her hand and looked him in the eyes, just as her grandmother did to them both before tucking them in, night after night, year after year.
“Good night, Uncle Fred.”
“Gabby?”
She braced herself, praying he wouldn’t bring up her grandma up again.
“She has teeth.”
Gabby held her breath. Her expected anger had manifested as unexpected fear. “Who has teeth, Uncle Fred?”
“Momma has teeth.”
“Your momma lost her teeth twenty years ago.”
“I see them.”
The familiar throb started behind her temples, a rhythmic and distant threat. Gabby ran for her medicine.
# # #
She awoke with demons bowling in her head, and the balls they used were spiked and billowing fire. Never had she felt such misery. She thrashed in her bed, hands to head, trying to squeeze the pain out. She might’ve screamed, but all she heard was the roar of the flames within her skull.
Until Uncle Fred spoke. He sat in the doorway, his wheelchair reflecting the moonlight through the bedroom window. To Gabby’s pain-blurred eyes, he was a regal silhouette on a throne of chrome.
He didn’t move. He simply repeated five words, over and over, a loop of foolishness.
“Mommas turn she has teeth mommas turn she has teeth mommas turn she has… ”
Gabby tried to speak, wanted to scream at him to call 911 or to shut the fuck up or something, but the pain allowed only purposeless writhing.
She fell from the bed, rolled to her back, and saw Death descending from above.
Mamasturnshehasteethmamasturnshehasteeth..
A swirling mass of night rolled across the ceiling. Like a blanket of ebony smoke, it curled around the spinning blades of the ceiling fan and swam through the air to the shrieking woman below.
The air seemed to freeze. Gabby coughed as a rancid stench swept through her bedroom. The nausea competed with the agony in her head for her loudest screams. She tried to roll away from the darkness, but terror froze her to the floor.
Uncle Fred howled, his mantra unintelligible.
The roiling fog of black crept closer. From deep within its essence a gleam of white appeared, shining like a lonely star amidst the surrounding midnight. The whiteness grew. Features formed.
Uncle Fred stopped chanting.
Gabby stopped screaming.
The skull of the Reaper floated within the mass of blackness, a mass Gabby now saw as a cloak. It stared at her through pits of infinite darkness. Its eternal grin mocked her pain with blindingly white teeth.
Teeth.
Gabby craned her neck to look at Uncle Fred. He still sat in his chair, motionless, speechless, himself a black shadow in the doorway. Something glistened in the moonlight, something wet against his cheeks.
She turned back to the apparition, her own tears flowing freely now. The pain throbbed on, but her fear had faded. She felt… numb.
A white shadow moved inside the cloak, and a skeletal hand emerged. Instinct told Gabby to scream, fight, Death was coming for her! but a sense of serenity embraced her instead.
The hand of bones reached forward, touched a cold finger under her chin, and raised her head.
It’s her turn.
Gabby smiled. Her pain was gone.
The misty cloak swirled around her. All sense of self ceased to be, and her Uncle Fred’s voice cut through the nothingness and lit the way.
“Hi, Momma.”
I was on leave and didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t trust the bars in this part of the world but I figured the booze would kill whatever was floating in my glass.
The place was packed. Soldiers filled the joint, packed at noisy tables. From the door, each table was a different colour; green, olive drab, navy dress blue. Don’t make the mistake of sitting at the wrong table.
One table was empty though. Empty except for a sour looking Joe, sitting alone. I got tired of elbowing the saps out of my way at the bar so I thought I’d check out the loner. I walked real loud, to let him look up and see me coming. I shouldn’t have bothered. He was out cold over his drink.
I sat and stretched out my legs. The one ice cube in my bourbon had given up early; the warm liquor scorched my throat all the way down. I looked up, trying to catch the bartender’s eye to send over another.
I almost pissed myself when the joker at the table said, “I’ll have another beer, if you’re buying.” He looked rough, like he’d been through it. The thing I remember most was his eyes, they looked hollow, hollow and worn, like the ones you see in those dead animals they hang on the wall. Like maybe he was dead already too.
The drinks came just in time. He gulped his beer with both hands and just started talking. I sipped my whiskey, leaned back and listened…
# # #
“We got there at dawn. The mud was still frozen solid.
The funny thing… the funny thing right away was that it was so quiet. We were briefed about those damned camps, what to expect. No one said anything about so much quiet.
Sarge’ was smart. He knew what to do so we kept on doing it. Negretti cut the barbed wire and Blake and me headed in first. Nice and quiet. Just to take a look around before we took the place.
We found what must have been the prisoners barracks, they were half collapsed already. Weird thing though, they were empty.
No one alive I mean. There were plenty of dead ones. All Nazi’s though. None of them prisoners. And Jesus, those Nazis. It looked like wolves or something had gotten to ‘em. Pieces of ‘em all over the place. The blood, oh shit man, the blood.
We kept moving, looking for the guard house. The Captain wouldn’t move in before we knew where they were and their strength, and probably what they had for dinner. Typical officer, the Captain, he wanted to know everything.
Blake and me followed a…a trail. Chunks of meat, some still in that grey wool uniform they wear, laying in thick red pools. We forgot about trying to hide. We just followed the bodies deeper into the camp.
We passed more buildings as we went. In most of ‘em, the windows were busted out or the doors were off the hinges. Whatever happened, had happened here too.
We came to what must have been the Commandants quarters. It didn’t fit, too clean. There was even a flower box outside.
At least a dozen…stiffs were outside the place, but they were moving. They were walking around and pounding on the walls and shit, but they had to be dead. Jesus, they had their guts hanging out of them, they had to be dead.
Blake and I crouched down low around a corner. We heard glass break and a shout come from inside the shack. Then shots, real loud and fast. We stood and shouldered our rifles to fire.
I felt a hand slam down on my shoulder, I nearly pissed myself right there. I turned to slam the butt into the thing’s face and saw it was Sarge’. He had done the same thing to Blake. Scared the hell out of both of us. He whispered he’d come to see what the fuck was taking so long. Sarge’ whispered harder than most officers yell. We crouched down quiet and watched as those things, some of ‘em still wearing those fucking yellow stars, poured through the shattered door. A scream choked off with a wet ripping noise.
Right about then, the Captain showed up. He’d been trying to figger out what had happened. He was sayin’ somethin’ about how the Nazi’s used poison gas and about side effects. He figgered the gas brought some of the prisoners back before they got burned. The usual officer bullshit.
Then he saw enough to figure out what was going on here and he was pissed. He knew Blake and I were just grunts so he started yell
ing at Sarge’ while the rest of the unit took care of the things inside. The Captain had wanted officers for prisoners. Leavin’ ‘em for chow wasn’t part of the plan.
Sarge’ waited till the Captain stopped a second to breathe. He lit a cigarette, blew the smoke in the Captain’s face, and said, ‘I figured the bastards had it coming, sir.’ He saluted and stomped off, his five pound brass balls swinging free…”
The story was losing steam, his hands peeling at the paper labels on the beer bottles. I noticed a good sweat going on his shiny forehead. Story telling is thirsty work. I guessed another drink might get him going again and looked over to catch the bartender’s eye.
The other fella’, he just stood up and walked out. Never said thanks for the drink or nothin’. The story was worth the booze I bought him, so I was still ahead on the deal. I wrote him off as another drunk on leave and ordered another bourbon. A couple minutes later, there was a loud boom. A gunshot, just outside.
Most everybody in the joint jumped up and went to see. I stared at the empty bottles on the table. I knew how the story ended.
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends