Author Introduction: Hello my friends. Well it's been a while since I've posted a new story, and it's exciting to finally post this effort and share it with you all. Seeing as he is hardly given the attention he surely deserves, and I love him a lot, I decided to focus all my efforts in finishing this story I've been writing for a good while based around Pinhead's alter ego Elliot Spencer. It's set during the first year of World War 1, and I'm basing it around the first battle of Flanders, which took place between October and November of 1914, the year when war broke out. I hope all is accurate. I did do some research. I'm not entirely sure when Elliot was promoted to Captain so I just put in that he rose up a rank from Lieutenant after the first few months of the war. Like I said, I hope I am historically accurate. If not, please let me know. I hope you enjoy. As I state above, it's the first story I've uploaded in ages. I've had this on my computer half-written for a good while now, and some parts have been recycled from an older story. I did intend to make this a flashback for Pinhead during the Hellbound 'You were human' scene, but it was dragging on too much, and besides I am already writing another Hellbound-based story and don't want to clash too much. :) Please enjoy, and don't forget the feedback. Thanks for reading. - Laura
No Man's Land
The First Battle of Flanders, November 1914...
There'd been a time when he'd considered himself a fine and dutiful officer, a man so devoutly reverent and dedicated to serving King, country...and God.
But war changes a man, and the longer this war had raged on... for each day, and for each month, he felt a little piece of his humanity being chipped away at, leaving a small semblance of the sympathetic and kind man he had been a lifetime before this campaign had begun.
He was truly fatigued by the living Hell which surrounded him day after day.
The suffering was never-ending, the death toll high and ever needless, and there was no mercy...even for those who had hardly started living.
Captain Elliot Spencer stared down at the wounded young man who lain before him in the muddied quagmire. The Private was struggling for breath and groaning in agony from the multiple enemy bullets embedded in his chest.
"What's your name, son?"
The gunner looked up at his superior officer and gave him a wan smile. As he spluttered his answer, a rivulet of blood crept out of his mouth and trickled along his sweat slicken jaw.
"S-Spencer..." the lad wheezed, trying desperately to keep his pained gaze locked with the Captain's empathetic blue eyes. "W-Wilfred Spencer, s-sir."
Elliot felt a pang of guilt about forgetting the young Private's name, but it was always difficult to identify a face whose features were so contorted with pain. Recognition never got any easier, despite the vast number of anguished features he had encountered during the campaign. His heart sank when he noticed that the lad had no stubble on his face. Elliot's lips thinned at the sight; it was clearly obvious that he hadn't even started shaving yet.
'Another boy who had never disclosed his real age to join the campaign, hoping for adventure.' Spencer thought sadly. There had been many child soldiers, oblivious to the true horrors of war, and many of them had ultimately perished.
It was such a waste.
Elliot gave the wounded soldier a warm smile and kept his hand firmly on the boy's chest. He was certain that the compress would be ineffectual but company for the wounded was the tiniest of luxuries that could be afforded those not killed outright by sniper bullets and shell fire. It was the presence of a friendly face that distracted the dying from the dead that lay beside them. In a small way, it also afforded them a slice of hope even if hey knew in their heart of hearts that it was a futile promise.
"You have the exact same surname as me," Elliot remarked, keeping the boy's gaze. "A strange coincidence, wouldn't you say, old chap?"
Elliot smiled again and re-positioned his palms across the gushing wound. "The stretcher bearers will be here soon, and the medics will fix you up in no time at all."
It was a lie, and one of many he had told in the field. He idly wondered if there was any such thing as a good lie. Still, it was a small sin in comparison to what he and his comrades had done during the last few months. So many had gone, some by his hand, some by the hands of others, but there was little choice; if you didn't shoot, you would be shot.
No, this wasn't murder. It was war, and maybe with enough repentance you can still keep your soul.
Not long ago, he had been quickly promoted to the rank and position of Captain. It felt like a lifetime ago, for there seemed to be no end to the conflict which had begun a little before the time of his promotion, and of course...no end to the reams of dead youth whose eyes lost their sparkle as he watched on helplessly. He could barely remember the days he felt honoured to be part of the British Expeditionary Force and serve his country, of the last time he felt so proud of his promotion, and when the promise of duty was the beginning of a thrilling adventure. Those days were long gone.
Elliot felt movement under his hands and clenched his jaw as the boy's body began to jolt. Wilfred's lungs were desperately trying to embrace the freezing air, but were simply too ravished by the bullets which had peppered his chest maybe an hour before. Elliot was surprised and horrified that the Private had lasted this long. Of course, he wanted the young man to live, but there was a part which prayed for merciful release from the pain he was obviously suffering, and it now looked as if his prayers were being listened to.
Breaking his gaze from the boy soldier, he peered into the smoky night sky and caught sight of a shooting star, leaving no more than a ghost of a scratch in the heavens.
"Do you know that when I first arrived here, I saw a shooting star and made a wish? Did you know that, son? That you can wish upon a shooting star? Alas, they have never come true on those occasions, yet I keep wishing each time I see one." Elliot gave a soft sigh. "I suppose you young lads might say it was naive, but..."
Elliot paused when he realised that the boy's blood beneath his hands had eased its pulsating barrage against the pressure of his fingers, and the jolts had ceased. He glanced down at the stilled body, looking into what once was vibrantly green eyes that were now empty and void of life, and exhaled calmly. "They never come true. Rest in peace, son."
Captain Elliot James William Spencer rose from the mud and left his young namesake where he lay. The wagons would be around soon to pick up the freshly deceased body, and the rest of the corpses that littered the once beautiful countryside.
Elliot stayed in a crouched position for a while, wondering if he should doff his cap in respect for the newly dead before he headed back to safety. He knew that officers in the field were coveted targets for the enemy's trigger finger, and although the enemy charges on both sides produced massive casualties amongst the men, any officer leading would be effectively torn apart. Indeed, Captain Garrington had been slain the day before, giving Elliot a band of his orphaned troops to fight alongside his merry lot. The dead boy had been under Garrington's command yesterday, and under Elliot's command today.
Tonight, he was in no man's land under no man's command...except maybe God's.
Elliot clenched his jaw again.
God.
He had wanted to believe that there was a place better than this Hell on Earth, but with every dead boy, for all the slain and mutilated corpses, and every single loss of life under his command made him question the existence of any Deity.
He rose to the standing position with his cap firmly on and looked upwards, peering through the gloom toward no man's land and the enemy lines beyond. He shook his head, wiping his blood and mud-smeared hands along his coat, and then retreated, making his way back to the trenches.
On the journey, he stopped besides dead comrades and searched in their packs for any rations that could be distributed to his young charges back at base. The first time he had done this as a Lieutenant he had felt as though he was violating the sanctity of the dead, but as time passed the needs of the living were of priority. The dead were quickly mourned and you moved on. That's what you did, that's all you could do.
Once he had taken a few items, a can of bully beef and a pack of Woodbines, he set off again, aware that to linger above ground was foolhardy.
It took a few minutes before he reached the man with the barbed wire shrapnel in his face and knew that he was maybe a few hundred metres away from safety. Because the dead soldier's wounds were so severe, he had become a rather gruesome marker for Elliot. In order to get his bearings amongst the mud heaps, severed body parts and bomb craters, it became a morbid habit for Spencer to choose the corpse that was most memorably disfigured and use him as a human beacon.
The poor soul captured Elliot's attention at first sight. His pitiful image was burned onto his retinas and the revulsion of the grotesquely deformed man firstly hammered into his brain. The mortar bomb had gone off next to the barbed wire, which had exploded into a million ragged pins into the solder's face.
Elliot wasn't sure if he had died instantly, but he hoped that was the case. He looked back at the propped up nail-riddled face of the soldier and felt a few tears stinging his cheeks.
It was the first time Spencer had cried in months, helping to moisturise his smoke-dried and tired eyes, but allowing him to feel human once again...if somewhat a wretched one.
"I'm so sorry." he whispered to the long-dead man and bowed his head with respect.
But he couldn't linger. He wiped his cheeks with his sleeve and pushed onward toward his destination. In the distance, to the side of him, he caught sight of the medics winging their way around the bodies strewn across the scarred grounds.
It took a while before Elliot managed to reach the trench on legs that felt drained of strength. He gave the barbed fence surrounding the base a wide berth as the man riddled with shrapnel and needles, and the myriad of horrific images bombarded his mind, combining to make Elliot feel sick to his stomach.
As he descended the ladder into the muddy labyrinth, a soldier scurried up to him, straightened his posture, and saluted. It was one of his orphaned soldiers. Another young lad, possibly no older than poor Wilfred whose body was now being bundled along with the other corpses and laid to eternal rest in the unmarked grounds of this hellish land.
"At ease, Seagrove." Elliot spoke authoritatively, but with softness evident in his tone. The lad relaxed his shoulders, but held his respectful bearing before his superior.
"You alright, sir? You look peaky. You're not injured are you?" Seagrove inquired.
Captain Elliot Spencer gave a tired but genuinely warm smile. "No, I'm fine, thank you Benjamin. I just...I simply need to rest. Close my eyes for a little while." Elliot hoped the young man would take the hint and leave him in peace.
"Yessir." The concerned boy nodded and made his way down the mud passageway, alert to the tremulous tone in his superior's voice and recognising a fellow soldier's need for solitude.
Elliot uncurled his shaking hands from the wooden rungs of the ladder and crept down the trench a little way. He then realised that his dug out was near the other end and knew he could never make it with legs that were about to collapse from under him. Weary and shaken, he found an unoccupied funk hole and leaned heavily into the circular hole cut into the wall.
As fatigued as he was, there would be no sleep for the Captain. Not for the first time, Elliot felt that perhaps he was falling into insanity.
He glanced upwards, out from the trench and into the sky, only to catch another shooting star zipping through the atmosphere and as before...he made a wish.
He didn't want to be here anymore. He didn't want to remain alive, not when so many were gone. Most of all, he wished for an end to all the needless suffering.
His thoughts returned to the man with the barbed pins in his head and an unwelcome feeling suddenly grabbed at his heart like a black clawed hand. He didn't feel pity for the man now; he only felt an overwhelming sense of envy.
The End