Screams From Somewhere Else
My name is David Frost, and if you are reading this, I was probably found dead by my own hands some time ago. I have not slept for six days and nights now, for whenever I try to close my eyes even for seconds, I get caught by the most dreadful fear on this earth. Even though the memories alone are frightening enough to drive the coolest brain into a state of utter madness, my insomnia and restlessness are not caused by them – not by the horrible events, that caused the deaths of over two hundred men – but rather by the maddening knowledge, that something is still lurking. I can feel its dark, emotionless, predatory eyes watching me, like a hunter stalking its prey. And although the bunker's electrical lamps are shining brighter than the sun itself, not even the fire of a thousand suns could eradicate the cancerous shadow, which is gnawing through my body and soul alike.
It was the 1st of November 1917, my platoon had just fought off a brutal German attack, predated not only by extensive artillery strikes, but also the release of their lethal mustard gas. Had it not been for our gas masks, we would have died within a minute – while choking on our own blood and coughing up our lungs piece by piece. Luckily for us, we were already prepared for this occasion, and when their ground forces finally stormed out of their trenches, we mowed them down with our trusty machine guns one by one. Not all of us made it alive, however. Dixon and Perry, two of my oldest friends in the army, were found dead afterwards, slashed to bits by the enemy's shrapnels.
The muddy ground had just started to freeze, and the air was filled with tiny snowflakes, innocently dropping down from the infinite heavens onto the bloody battlefield, barely covering any of the rotting corpses which plastered the godforsaken no man's land between them and us. Then, at circa 1pm, one of our young recruits remarked that it was getting darker and darker every minute. Though the rest of us had not been aware of this fact before he had pointed it out, there could be no doubt afterwards: As if God had finally lost his hope in our world, the heavenly light was growing dimmer as we spoke. Looking up into the sky with a mixture of marvel and fright, we witnessed something blocking out the sun. A solar eclipse, of course – that was, what we all told ourselves... even though, we knew that the high command would have told us of such an event. Having watched the moon for the past nights, I was also pretty damned sure that the creeping shadow, which covered more and more of the sun's surface, should have come from the opposite direction.
Within minutes, nothing more than a dim twilight was left of the formerly bright day, making us anxiously look over to the German front line: After the heavy casualties they had suffered, we had deemed it unlikely for them to attack again today – but maybe they were now willing to try their luck with a sneak attack. We scanned the terrain carefully, and just as we thought ourselves in safety, a hellish scream cut through the night with the intensity of an air raid siren. Being deployed at the Western Front for two years then, I had heard my fair share of death and agony, but nothing of that compared to the sound that came from the enemy's side of the battlefield... I had not previously known, that a human voice could bring forth such a horrific tone.
Our blood turned to ice immediately, and before we could even look each other in the eyes, we heard a second voice, and a third... whatever was happening over there, seemed to grasp around, and after not more then twenty seconds, we all had do drop our guns to cover our ears, for the ever growing cascade of human screams seemed to pierce right through our eardrums and into our brains like sharp needles. Then, not more than half a minute later, the whole macabre concerto ceased away from one second to the next. Shivering with dread, we slowly took our hands from our ears, only to find out, that the dead, smothering silence that followed was even more horrifying than all the cries we had heard before: Without speaking a word, we all knew that there was not a single thing alive over there anymore.
Looking back, I can not even be certain that we were still on God's earth at that time. As I peered into the endless void of darkness that used to be the horizon, I was overcome by the most unsettling feeling that something sinister was closing in on us. I had no reason to believe so, for I could not hear a single treacherous sound – maybe it actually was this growing absence of sound, rather than anything else, which made me suspicious. And then, just as our minds started to think of a rational explanation of what we had witnessed, the screaming began anew... but this time, it was coming from the northernmost point of our own trench.
Writing the last paragraph, my heart stopped twice and my hands are so sweaty that they are soaking the dry paper I am scribbling on. Before I could think of anything to do, my brother Carter had already climbed out of the muddy trench and pulled me with him. Still in a state of complete frenzy, I started running merely because that was what he did, and when the dying screams of our comrades filled the unholy air with their despair, I knew that he had saved my life. We ran like blazes across the icy, half frozen, half muddy acres behind our front line, closely followed by some evil not to be closer described, which had in less than a minute slain over two hundred armed and battle-ready soldiers.
By pure luck, we made it to the ruin of an old French church, which had taken heavy damage from the last enemy bombardment. Of course we knew, that the old, wooden doors would not stand a chance against whatever was following us, but on the other hand we could not have run a minute longer. After barricading the brass handles with a metal bar, we hasted up a balcony located right over the altar, from which we could watch the entrance out of an elevated position.
"What the bloody hell was that?", was the first thing Carter was able to speak, after he had caught his breath again, "what in the Lord's name is going on here?" Neither of us could give an answer to that, but before anything else could be said, we knew that we had been found. Again, I can not put into words, exactly how I knew that... the feeling I had can best be described by being cut off from the rest of the world, trapped inside a shrinking compartment of reality. There were neither sounds nor signs of violence, and even though the entrance portal did not even move an inch, we felt the sudden presence of something that should not be. At once, the darkness around the door became even darker as before, shifting into an endless black of immeasurable, terrifying nothingness.
As pew after pew disappeared in front of us, we knew that our final stand had come and opened fire at the approaching formless shadow. No apparent damage was caused by our hopeless gesture of resistance, and to my shame I have to admit, that I finally closed my eyes in horror, waiting for my inevitable annihilation – but just as I felt the creeping chaos engulfing me, suddenly, the sun came out again. After all the darkness of the past eternity, my eyes hurt horribly from the long forgotten golden shimmer that was shining through my closed, trembling eyelids. Immediately, everything was back to normal: Along with Carter, I stood inside the wasted ruins of a former chapel... completely alone. Our guns were shot empty, the balcony was covered in empty bullet casings – but in the stone floor, we could not find even one single bullet hole.
When we were found later by our army's advancing reinforcements, we heard that the sun had been shining all day – of course, there had been no unexpected eclipse, why would there have been one? Upon arrival at our former defensive position, there were no dead bodies anywhere – everyone was well and enjoying the temporary cease fire, even Dixon and Perry, whose torn bodies I had buried after the German attack just three hours ago. Nobody there remembered anything about the screams or the other horrific events that I still shiver from, so Carter and myself were diagnosed on the spot with shell shock and shifted away from the front.
The mental doctor, who has been assigned to my case, is still trying to convince me that my memories are wrong by inviting different members of my platoon to visit me, who are indeed very much not dead. At first, I really wanted to believe them, but as soon as I realized, that all of their eyes had the same color of black charcoal, I have refused to speak to any of them again.
Poor Carter has gone completely insane, and had to be put in a straight-jacket for his own good. He did not close his eyes back in the church, so when the first rays of light had shone in, he must have caught a glance of our adversary, before it had disappeared into thin air. It could not have been for longer than an instant, but in this one moment he must have seen something that was never intended for human eyes to see, nor for our feeble human brains to comprehend. All he ever muttered since then have been random single words like drones, empty, tentacles, space, puppets, eyes or beehives, no matter what was asked of him.
At some point, he started speaking pure gibberish, uttering sounds like R'lyeh or Shoggoth, until one morning six days ago, when he did not wake up any more and was declared dead by a perplexed coroner, who could not find a single thing wrong with him. The night before, I had asked my brother for the hundredth time, whereto the thing in the church had gone. I had hoped, that the answer would help me find peace, but when Carter's cell was examined after his death, they found a note he had written in his own blood for me to find: "Back Down"