The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, volume 15

Simon Clark & Tim Lebbon Exorcizing Angels

THE CITY took the hammer blows with the fortitude only a 2,000-year-old city can. On the walk up here to the London district of Highgate he’d heard a taxi driver call out to a policeman, “It’s a bit lively out tonight.” It was gallows humour, and he recognized it well.

The man chose to walk in the centre of the road. There was little traffic, and virtually no people were about. They were all snugged away in cellars and shelters on this September night, no doubt praying that the death raining down from hundreds of German bombers fell on someone else’s street, someone else’s house.

He pulled up the collar of his army greatcoat as the cold air caressed his skin like the chill fingers of a dead man. From here, the sound of the bombs came as strangely soft thuds that reminded him of books falling to a library floor. Through the midnight air he caught the scent of ancient roof timbers burning from the direction of Bloomsbury. Once, hot air belched against his face from a stray incendiary blazing in a nearby garden.

The street, like the rest of Britain, was subject to total blackout. In front of him was a fog of darkness through which he caught the glints of windows, shining like so many demon eyes, glaring at him, expecting a Nazi bomb to tear him to pieces at a moment’s notice. But two decades ago he had walked through worse firestorms than these. And tonight he had the most important appointment of his life. Hitler and his henchmen would not deflect him.

He paused to look back. Here on Highgate Hill he could see down onto the burning capital of country and empire itself. Whole areas of the city blazed. It was as if he was looking down upon the face of an old friend that had erupted into fiery red sores. More bombs fell, ripping out the heart of offices and ancient houses. Anti-aircraft guns returned like for like, pouring out white-hot shells that ascended into the sky with a beauty that was as ethereal as it was deadly. And above the thud of bombs, so eerily deadened and softened by distance, he could make out the guttural drone of German Heinkel bombers as they passed overhead to deliver their lethal cargoes.

A line from a story he’d once read came to him: “There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened.” Tonight those words were made real.

With a sigh he turned his back on the inferno and walked on. The time was just fifteen minutes to ten. A quarter of a mile to his right a bomb exploded in Highgate Cemetery, startling him into a crouch. Immediately his imagination flew to the site of the impact. How the hundred-kilogram ordnance would have penetrated the ground; male hardware entering female earth. How the steel shell would have shattered coffins, crunched through leathery skin and powdery bone. How the explosion would have torn a crater twenty feet across. How bones and rotten flesh would have come falling from the sky to be impaled on fence spikes. How arms and legs and heads would hang in the trees like the loathsome fruit of an orchard in hell.

“A night for resurrection,” he murmured to himself. “A night when we raise the dead.” His grim smile died immediately as the rising scream of another falling bomb slashed through the cold night air. The fear he felt wasn’t for himself. No. What if the bomb struck the house he was walking toward now? He’d come a long way to meet the man whose letter he now gripped in his hand. If that man were to die… such cruel irony… he’d never know the truth.

Fifty yards away the road surface twitched, then bulged, as if some subterranean creature had briefly raised its head to see what was happening outside. The man walked toward the still-steaming mound. By the light of a burning church down the road in Archway he glimpsed the shining carcass of a bomb. The detonator might have failed. Then again, perhaps it was set on a delayed fuse, and the device was merely biding its time before it blasted the nearby houses into atoms.

The time was now five minutes to ten. He could not permit anything to delay him further. He walked a little faster up the hill to a row of houses that overlooked Highgate Cemetery. Built on the whim of an architect with obvious Gothic tastes, the tops of the walls were castellated and a tower stood at one end of the row, as evocative as any that had imprisoned a fairy-tale princess. He hurried to the house that bore a brass figure eight on the door. So here it was: Number 8 Sabulum Reach.

My God, my heart’s beating hard. London’s being bombed into the ground, yet I’m more unnerved about knocking on this door.

He even paused as he raised his gloved hand, ready to knock. A liquid sensation flooded his stomach. His pulse rate quickened. And even now a voice in the back of his head told him: It’s not too late. You can walk away. You don’t have to meet him.

But he knew he hadn’t come so far to turn back now.

He rapped on the door, a firm rhythm that sent echoes announcing his arrival deep into the house. They seemed to recede into impossible distances, fading away beneath the foundations of the building.

Presently, the door opened. A white-haired man stood there with a tartan rug around his shoulders. In this light it resembled the cloak of some ancient wizard.

“Good evening…” But the sight of the old man robbed the next words from his lips. After all this time planning the visit, he wasn’t sure what to say next.

The old man seemed to understand. With a benign smile he said, “Good evening. Lieutenant Daelamare Smith, isn’t it?”

He nodded.

The old man continued, “It’s rather a filthy night out. I half expected you wouldn’t come.”

“No.” He almost shouted the response. “Nothing would have stopped me coming here tonight. Nothing.”

“Well then, lieutenant, please come indoors. Something warming would be timely for us both, I believe. Ah, we haven’t shaken hands…”

“Of course. Lieutenant Delamare Smith of the Monmouthshire Infantry Brigade.”

“A Monmouthshire man, hmm? Honoured to meet you, sir.” They shook hands. “And I, as you will have deduced, am Arthur Machen. Now, what is so important to have brought you all this way to see me?”

Smith closed his eyes before he passed across the threshold into Machen’s house. In the distance, and all around, he could hear the impacts of bombs, the crackling of ack-ack, the grumble of collapsing buildings and the soft roar of firestorms in their infancy. London was taking a true pounding tonight, that was for sure, but his senses seemed to echo memories of a different war.

True, he thought, it’s all true.

Drifting from the house before him was the pleasant warm tang of pipe smoke, but beneath it Smith could smell the rot of the trenches, corpses and muck and hopelessness mixing a rancid stew. He turned his face to the sky and rain pattered down onto his cheeks, but it could have been mud thrown up by the shelling, clouds of shrapnel and body parts pelting down like deathly snow. Water in his eyes… he hated that now. Back then, in the trenches, Hell had been water.

All true. I was there. There’s no other way to explain this.

He opened his eyes and met the gaze of the old man before him.

“I need you to tell me who I am.”

There were ten thousand dead Germans laid out before them. Gunshots still rang out, but the offensive had halted. What they heard now were the individual reports of German officers shooting their men as they turned tail and fled, and perhaps the occasional sound of a suicide. They screamed and shouted, these officers, urging the attack onward even though the slaughter was already over, accusing their own men of treachery and cowardice. Blinded by terror at what they had seen, it was their Lugers that gave final judgement.

“Thousands of them!” Bill said. “There’re thousands of them dead out there!”

Smith stood against the mud wall of the trench, rifle resting across the backs of two empty ammunition boxes. Its barrel was still hot. “Five thousand,” he said. “Maybe even ten.”

The nearest dead Hun lay only a stone’s throw from their forward trench — seemingly untouched, Smith noticed, as if he had simply lain down and gone to sleep — and stretching back from this corpse was a sea of grey, a frozen-ocean tableau where the highest waves were made of piled corpses, and the troughs were where old craters held the dead in their watery embrace. There was little movement: an eddy here and there where a limb twitched, a head raised, a hand clasped at the air for help. A strange silence lay over the whole shattered landscape. The German artillery was mute and even the rain had ceased.

Smith hauled himself up the side of the trench and stood at its lip, walking forward a few paces, stepping over a rotten body from a battle of weeks before. He could not tell whether it was British or German.

“Delamare, back here, you bloody fool!” Bill hissed.

Smith took no notice. He was looking at the sea of dead, aware suddenly of what he could not see. There was mud and water and the pale faces of the dead, hair adrift in puddles and limbs askew and lost rifles smoking their last… but there was no blood.

No blood, anywhere.

He was used to the smell of it by now. The taste of blood misted the air after an artillery barrage, it had dried on his face and neck after one vicious hand-to-hand fight in a German trench just the week before, and with this many dead men before him he expected to be gagging. But the blood of these Germans remained just where it belonged: inside them. Stopped now, stagnant, already clotting and giving itself to rot.

Smith turned and looked back across his own lines. The pale faces of his mates started at him from their trench, and further back more trenches crissed and crossed, mud banks here and there like boils on the earth, a skeleton of trench supports pointing at the sky to his left where a shell had erupted within. He saw bodies — hundreds had died over the past couple of days, and there was never enough time or opportunity to bury them properly — but there was no hint of whatever had come to help them. No footprints, no disturbances in the smoke drifting slowly from left to right across the battlefield, no shadows disappearing back towards the rear. Only silence, and stench, and the mangled evidence of futility.

“There’s no way I saw what I just saw,” someone said from further along the trenches. It sounded like he was crying. “No bleedin’ way at all.”

“I saw nothing,” another voice piped up, but its owner stared out at the sea of dead and repeated the other man’s “No way,” sounding as if he were arguing with himself.

“Angels,” Bill said. “I saw angels.”

Smith walked forward until he drew level with the first dead German. The young man looked barely old enough to bear arms. His helmet was lost somewhere in the mud, his rifle lay inches from his outstretched hand, and his eyes… they were wide, deep, amazed. Smith knelt down and touched the dead boy’s neck, just in case. Nothing. He was still warm, but as dead as the million other men melting back into this hungry earth. His uniform was muddied and wet, but it showed no signs of damage, no point of impact. There was no blood. The boy’s face… those eyes…

Smith heaved the corpse over. The muck relented unwillingly, and the sucking sound startled Smith so much that he stumbled over his own heels and fell into the mud. His hands sank down and touched old, hard things below the surface.

How old? he wondered. Days, weeks or ancient? Too old to know of machine guns and gas, perhaps}

“What’s up, Delamare?” someone shouted from the trench behind him, but Smith did not answer, and the men had enough of their own disbelief and fear to contend with to pursue the matter.

He ran his hands over the dead German boy, lifting his leg, pulling apart the lapels of his greatcoat, tipping his head back so that he could see his neck. In the end, Smith stood and gazed out across the field of dead.

Only a few minutes earlier, he had seen the sky darken with cloud after cloud of singing arrows. He’d heard the hiss of longbow strings as the shafts were released. And now that the battle was over, and the dead could not come back to tell their story, there were no arrows to be seen.

None at all.

The only proof of what Smith had witnessed was ten thousand dead men.

“We are all someone different to ourselves,” Machen said. “No one can ever really know us but us. So asking me to tell you who you are… that’s foolishness.” He puffed on his pipe and added to the dingy atmosphere of the room. A string of bombs fell in the distance, and glass buzzed in the blacked-out window frame. For some reason, the room felt incredibly safe.

“I’ve hinted at why I wanted to see you, I believe,” Smith said. “In my letters to you, my desperation to meet you. Surely as a writer your interest must be piqued?”

Machen nodded, but said nothing. He never took his gaze from Smith’s face. Smith felt scrutinized, his thoughts laid bare, as if this old man knew everything about him and could, given time, find things that he himself did not know.

“I mean to ask you about a story you wrote a long time ago,” Smith said. “But first, I need to tell you of the angels that saved my life.”

Machen relit his pipe. “Go on, Lieutenant Smith. You have my attention. Providing we have no surprise interruption…” He cocked his head toward the sound of falling bombs. “Then I should be pleased to hear your talk of angels.”

“Sir, cast your mind back to the Great War.” Smith leaned forward, his heart pumping hard. He longed to unburden himself of the secret that had weighed heavily for so long. Now he feared that the words would jam in his mouth and he would not be able to speak. A trickle of sweat rolled down his neck to his shirt collar. “Cast your mind back to the Great War,” he repeated, willing his lips to form the words he’d ached to speak for twenty-five years. “I was with a company of a thousand men from my regiment, holding a salient in the fields of Mons. Though in reality, of course, there were no fields any more. Artillery had transformed the land into a morass of mud and shell craters, filled with stagnant water and the pulverized remains of thousands of men, from both the German and Allied armies. The German and British lines were separated by three hundred yards of ground at this point. We were close enough to hear the German troops singing their songs or calling to each other. That was a dreadful time for us. Everywhere, the Germans had been advancing. Our own troops were falling back in confusion. Mr Machen, I can still hear the terrified cries of our men as they threw away their rifles and ran for their lives. And I can still see the look of terror on the faces of infantrymen who just weeks before had been boys working in factories. Their eyes would be wide open, staring so hard you’d swear they were going to burst from their faces…”

Machen spoke gently. “Here, let me refill your glass.”

“Thank you.” Smith took a deep swallow of the whisky. He needed to feel that burning spirit in his mouth, but at that moment it had the potency of water. “My battalion — or the thousand that remained of it — had been ordered to hold the trench against a German assault. It was to allow our troops — all eighty thousand of them — to make good an orderly retreat to new, better-fortified trenches five miles behind our position. It was vital that my battalion held the line and prevented a German breakthrough. We knew only too well that if the Germans launched an attack and broke our line, they would flood through in their thousands to attack our retreating army. And believe me, Mr Machen, our men in that month of August were so exhausted and demoralized that they’d have either run like rabbits or surrendered.” Once more he gulped at the whisky. If only it were stronger. The wretched liquor was tasteless.

“You and your men were courageous,” Machen told him. “A thousand Welshmen pitted against an enemy of how many thousand strong?”

“Three hundred thousand.” He shook his head. “And I don’t know that we were courageous. I certainly didn’t feel at all brave at the time. I simply knew it was my duty…my sacred duty. That we had to prevent a German breakout. If we failed, the Hun would overwhelm the British troops. Of that there would be little doubt. Then there would have been nothing between the enemy and the Channel ports. And if the Germans reached the coast, it wouldn’t be long before the Kaiser’s men would be marching into London.”

“So you held fast.”

“We did our best,” Smith told him, as yet more squadrons of bombers throbbed their way through the night sky. The bitter smell of burning reached him, along with the distinctive scents of seared human flesh; the same aroma as pork roasting in an oven. But even the horrors of the Blitz weren’t pungent enough to prevent the memories of more than two decades ago carrying him back to that Great War battlefield. “We vowed to stand and fight with our bare hands if our ammunition ran out. Then we waited. Many of my men crouched down in the trench to scribble a farewell note to parents and wives. And all the time I could sense the coming storm. There was an oppressive heat in the air. Thunder clouds rose on the horizon. The sun turned a bloody red. There was no birdsong. Even the rats fled the battlefield.” Once more he tipped the whisky into his mouth. Good God, his taste was dead. The spirit was a bland liquid that did nothing to calm his nerves. “The German generals didn’t dally. Their spotter planes must have reported the mass retreat, and that a mere thousand infantry had been left to hold the trench-line. Within moments the fiercest artillery barrage imaginable rained down on our heads. You know, it’s not the big shells that are the most fearsome. No, they’re slow and throw up a lot of mud, and mostly you could hear them coming. It was the little three-inch shells, what we called whizz-bangs, that terrified us. They were fast, with an almost flat trajectory, exploding in the air at head height. I’ve seen countless men dissolve into…” The words dried on his lips. He shrugged, hating the grim weight of the memory in his stomach. “It was the shrapnel. They just dissolved, that’s all.” He rubbed his face. “I do beg your pardon. I’m falling into the trap of the old soldier. Telling you old war stories.”

“No, I’d disagree, lieutenant. This isn’t just another war story, is it? This one is unique. Why?”

Smith looked into the old man’s eyes. They were bright. Interested. Yet was there something else? A glitter of fear? As if he suspected he would hear truths expressed that he’d hoped would remain hidden.

“Lieutenant. You and your thousand men were subjected to an artillery bombardment. Then you were attacked by eighty thousand German soldiers. Tell me what happened next.”

“We stepped up to the lip of the trench and fired as the Germans advanced. We kept firing until we ran out of ammunition, or the guns jammed. The barrels became so hot that they glowed red.”

“And?”

“And the enemy kept advancing across the mud.”

“What did you do?”

“That was the strangest thing. My men began to sing music-hall songs and make jokes about the Hun and the shells exploding all around them.”

“Was that usual?”

“Before and after a battle, the men would sing and joke. But not during. You become focused on a tiny aspect of the conflict. You stop being aware of what is around you.”

“They were singing and joking. Weren’t your comrades suffering casualties?”

“Yes. Dreadfully. Within the hour our thousand-strong force was cut by half. Dead and dying men lay in the bottom of the trench.”

“What made your men experience such a mood of elation?”

“I don’t know, Mr Machen. It’s strange. I was frightened. I knew I would be killed, it was inevitable… but my arms and legs tingled. It was as if my body was stimulated by some impending event… something extraordinary. And yet my mind could only realize the terrible aspect of what was to come.”

“So it was as if mind and body had become somehow separate?”

“Yes… yes! That would be the best way of putting it, sir.”

“What happened next?”

“The Hun advanced like a solid wall of grey. Then they stopped.”

“Stopped?”

“Were stopped, would perhaps be more accurate.”

“Your weapons?”

“No. We’d all but run out of ammunition. Our big guns were being pulled back so we had no covering artillery fire.”

“And yet the enemy soldiers lay dead in no man’s land.” Machen inclined his grey head as he regarded Smith. “Dare I say the body count amounted to ten thousand?”

Smith nodded.

“And not a mark was found on the bodies? Not a single scratch?”

“That’s correct. The enemy assault failed. Our men retreated to their new lines in good order. Even the enemy artillery was silenced, and we could walk into no man’s land to collect their weapons. Our medical men eventually went out to examine the bodies. The doctors asked us how the enemy died and we told them-”

Machen harrumphed. “And you told them that they were slain by the ghostly archers of Agincourt?” His eyes burned with sudden anger.

“No, Mr Machen.” Smith shook his head. “They were killed by angels.”

Machen paused, but only for a few seconds. “Angels aren’t noted for their blood-thirsty tendencies, lieutenant.”

“So I was taught at Sunday School.”

“Well?” Machen slowly shook his head. “How do you wish me to respond? With a ‘Yes, lieutenant. Clearly they were avenging angels. Weren’t we, the British, fortunate?’ “

“No, Mr Machen. At Sunday School we are only taught a much-diluted version of Biblical events. The world of gods and spirits is far more complex than that.”

“Ah, the spirit world…”

“Please don’t mock me, sir.”

“Why should I mock you? Whatever you and I believe to make this existence a more palatable one should not be open to mockery.” The tremor of falling bombs jingled Machen’s decanters in their tantalus. “We should be free to choose our gods.”

“And to choose our angels?”

“If that is what is important to you, yes.”

“Mr Machen. What is important to me is that I learn what happened to me on that day in August when I should have been killed. I was saved by something I cannot understand. Perhaps ‘angels’ is the wrong word, but how else can I describe them?”

“Lieutenant. If you believe angels were your saviours then continue to believe. Take strength from that.”

“But I have to know what they were.”

“No, you don’t. And to dig deeper would be folly.”

“No, I-”

“Be content; let it remain a mystery.”

“That would be contemptible.”

“Contemptible?” Colour rose in Machen’s cheeks. “Contemptible? How can it be contemptible?”

“Listen, man. For Heaven’s sake, listen!” Smith pointed toward the curtained window. “Out there hundreds of men, women and children are being slaughtered by the Germans. You hear the aircraft? You hear the bombs? There are hundreds of them, tearing the heart out of this city. Yet you calmly tell me to forget that when the British were last threatened with annihilation, some force of pure good — angels, whatever — looked down and saw the slaughter. And they chose to stop it.” Smith sprang from the chair and swept the curtain open. Bursts of fire blossomed across the face of the city. The dome of St Paul ’s showed as a silhouette against the blood-red light. Smoke boiled into the sky. Searchlights stalked the clouds, while anti-aircraft guns hurled glittering tracer shells at enemy bombers.

“Don’t forget,” Machen said in even tones. “We have a blackout for a reason. Close the curtains, lieutenant.”

“Help me uncover the truth about the angels.”

“No.”

“But think! Just for a moment! If we can summon the angels again, they may halt the bombing.”

“Close the curtains. The pilots can see a lit match from 20,000 feet.”

“Not until you agree to help me.”

“Lieutenant, that is the worst kind of blackmail. And you don’t mean it.”

With a snarl Smith dragged the heavy blackout curtains shut. Machen was right. This was not the way. Taking a deep breath he said, “I’m sorry to have disturbed you. I’ll bid you good night.”

Machen sighed. “I don’t blame you for trying to save London. Lord knows we need His help tonight. Sit down. Here… have a little more of this. You know…” He poured more whisky. “This is known as ‘the water of life’. Not without good reason, hmm?”

Smith sagged into the chair, deflated. He’d become a man of straw; nothing but a suit full of fibres. He had suddenly lost the strength to continue with his quest… his quest… his quest for what? Angels? To learn about what had happened to him one day in August more than two decades ago? More importantly, to invoke those angels again, save his country from an evil enemy that was reducing it to ruin. And now what? The only man who could help him refused. Maybe it was time to simply walk away into the night.

There was a long pause, the only sound the continued thump of falling bombs.

At last Machen spoke. His voice’s tone dropped into one that was as kind as it was mellifluous. “Lieutenant Smith. A while past you said you were going to ask me about a story I wrote a long time ago?”

“Yes.” Defeat held him down like a stone weight. “What of it?”

A slow, sad smile spread across Machen’s face. “Then why don’t you ask me about it now?”

Smith took a drink and nodded. “After all these years, I still don’t know what’s happening to me when I read it,” he said. “I grow cold, distanced, as if viewing myself from beyond my own body. My memory grows vague and much of what has happened between then and now vanishes, as if I’ve lived nothing. As if half of my life is empty. And at the same time I feel observed, as if someone a long way off is thinking of me, watching me, knowing my every move. It’s as though I am reading about myself, and in the story I know that’s the case. It’s not a story, not really: it’s a spell. A spell to invoke angels, Mr Machen, and you wrote it.”

“Ha!” Machen said, standing and spitting sparks from his pipe. “You admit at least that the story is mine! Well, there’s a good start, for sure. Many before now have denied me even that courtesy. The mad ones, mostly.”

“It worked, sir. It can work again!” Smith grabbed the arms of his chair when he felt the familiar tremors coming on, starting from his feet and vibrating up through his bones and flesh, as if he were feeling a slow-motion explosion through the ground. The whisky glass he had set on the chair’s arm shook and threatened to spill.

Machen watched him from beside the fireplace, calmly but not dispassionately. The old man’s eyes were filled with passion, and a knowledge that humbled Smith.

“You wrote ‘The Bowmen’, Mr Machen, and the bliss in which you spun those words made them into much more than the sum of their parts. That is what I believe, and have always believed since returning from the front and first reading it. Even now, you knew part of the story I was telling. You knew the numbers of German dead and-”

“Of course I did, because I wrote the story!”

“Yes! There! That’s it!”

“That isn’t it at all!” Machen said. He shook his head angrily and turned to the fire, seeming to find comfort in the cheery flames even as the light of a burning London flickered at the edges of the blackout curtains, fiery fingers seeking entrance. He mumbled something and shook his head again, relighting his pipe and puffing clouds of fragrant smoke into the room.

“What did you say?” Smith asked, nervous now. He had come here to talk to this man, not anger him.

“I thought that story had stopped haunting me years ago,” Machen said. He glanced back at Smith, and he had such a curious look in his eye-part fear, part fascination-that Smith’s heart skipped a beat. “Are you real?” the old writer asked.

“I am,” Smith said, unperturbed by the question. “Sometimes I wonder, but I know I am. I know what I did in the war, I know I’ve lived since then, and even though sometimes much of my life is a blank… of course I’m real. I’m as real as you.”

“As real as me,” Machen said. “Well, what more could I ask for?”

“The story,” Smith persisted. “ ‘The Bowmen’. Did you know what you were doing when you wrote it? Did you know what would happen?”

“That was an indifferent piece of work,” Machen said. “There was neither power in the words, nor ecstasy to the writing. It was a trifling tale, nothing more. Whatever you saw, Mr Smith, you have my leave to believe. But it had nothing whatsoever to do with the story I wrote all those years ago.”

“But-”

“When was the battle? When was the retreat, the slaughter of Mons? When was it you saw these Angels?”

“August, the hot August of 1914.”

“There. My story appeared on 29 September of that same year. Not before the event, sir. After! There are those who say I stole the tale in some manner, and although that is certainly not the case, if it pleases you to believe so then please do. If that will detract you from this lunacy, then please do.”

Another bomb fell outside, closer than any had fallen before, and the fire hissed in the grate as the heat-blast tried to suck it up and out of the chimney. Smith winced in his chair, but explosions held little fear for him. He could not see them. The blasts that tore his sleep to shreds were those he had seen, the ones full of mud and body parts, the explosions that lifted ten tons of mud and flung it down on top of a man, burying him alive, perhaps for ever. These detonations from outside were second-hand.

“You must have conceived of the tale before, though,” Smith persisted.

“No.”

“I know what I saw, Mr Machen-”

“No!”

“I know what I saw and I know what I read. And I know for sure that they were one and the same. I saw unearthly visions — angels, ghosts, apparitions, whatever — that we need to save us from destruction right now, and I read of them, and you wrote what I read.”

“Please just stop,” Machen said, looking suddenly tired, so old and tired.

“Whether they were Agincourt bowmen or true mercenaries from Heaven, you wrote those words. I really don’t see any way out of that.”

“Then you, sir, are a fool. Old soldier or not — and it shames me to say it — you are still a fool.”

“But-”

“Did you suffer from a blast-shock in the war? Were you shipped from the trenches on a stretcher, raving?”

“Well…” Smith thought back to that time at Mons, how silent the battlefield had become for a brief few minutes while he walked from corpse to corpse…

… Checking their pulses, suddenly certain that he would find them all alive. They were feigning, it was part of some diabolical Hun ploy, an hallucinogenic gas, and any minute now they would leap up and complete the slaughter that they had begun.

But no, they were all dead.

“Delamare!” The captain called from the trenches. “Get back here, you bloody fool! That’s not all of them, you know. There’ll be more on their way soon!”

“I think not,” Smith said to himself, looking down into the disbelieving eyes of a dead enemy soldier. He saw himself reflected there, and he realized that the two of them looked very similar. The dead man even had a shaving cut under his jaw, just as Smith had given himself only the day before. He reached up and scratched his own cut, pleased that it could bleed.

He walked further in, and it was like wading through frozen waves at the seaside. Grasping hands dropped back down as he brushed by, legs fell to the side, heads lolled on necks, and every one of them was dead. Smith turned one body over, lifted the arms on another, looking for the wounds that had killed them. Still, he could find none. His feet squelched in the mud that would be these men’s eternal resting place.

From his own trenches Smith could hear the amazed muttering of his comrades in arms. One of them was crying, a few were praying, and many more seemed to be talking to themselves, trying to find some sort of truth in whatever words they could utter. Miracle, he heard, and Angels, and Saved us, saved us…

Out here he needed to find truth, a revelation that would prove him sane, and yet there was only more madness in the faces of these dead Huns.

And then he heard a sound. It was something he recognized and knew that he could not escape. However far he ran, however fast, he could just as easily have been running into its path. What set the sound of this shell aside was that it was on its own, cutting a single whistling line through the August sky, fired in anger, haste or sad defiance.

He turned and looked back at the trenches, and the only man he saw was Bill. Everyone else had ducked down to find whatever cover they could.

Their stares met, and Smith knew: My time is now.

The shell landed and exploded twenty feet to his left. He was aware of the eruption, the slap of the shock wave as it tore his skin and flipped him sideways onto the ground, the heat singeing his hair and setting his clothes smouldering. And then from above came a flock of shadows blotting out the sun: the dead enemy raining down in broken pieces to bury him.

The noise was nightmarish. The sounds of a house dying around him, wood splitting and plaster powdering, floors ruptured, water hosing across the walls as plumbing was ripped to shreds by the force of the explosion.

Smith found himself on the floor. Whisky had spilled from his tumbled glass and now he wished he had drunk some more, ineffectual though it had seemed. In his memories a cold hand slapped his face, as the rest of its dead owner showered down upon him.

Here, and now, he heard a shout from the old writer as a ball of flame and smoke rushed in through the shattered window, setting the curtains instantly ablaze and dripping fire across the carpet.

“Smith!” Machen shouted.

Smith tried to lift himself up, but something held him down. Another explosion rocked the floor beneath his body, and he heard a house grumbling its last as it collapsed further along the street.

The first explosion seemed to be continuing. Its initial blast had shattered beams and walls, and now the house was slowly crumbling in on itself with a terrible clamour, the noise just as loud and shocking as the initial blast. Smith was buried, as he had been buried before, but this time he was conscious. He looked up and saw stars, winking in and out of existence as if time itself had increased to an incredible speed… or perhaps they were angels, come to take him… and then he realized that he was watching tiny explosions high in the air, anti-aircraft fire seeking out dark shapes caught in converging searchlights.

“Smith!” Machen shouted again, and a shadow blotted out the violent light. A hand closed around Smith’s wrist, Machen grunted and cursed as he heaved, and seconds later the two men were sprawled in the road outside the house, witnessing its final collapse.

As if the destruction of this house had been the culmination of their aims, the German bombers drifted away for the night. The sudden reduction in noise was shocking — there were still explosions, fires roaring in the distance and setting the horizon aflame, shouting, the sounds of fire tenders racing through the streets — but the bombing had stopped, and to Smith it felt like morning. Another night of nightmare ended.

“Are you hurt?” Machen asked. “Are you all right?” Smith ran his hand over his body, feeling for broken bones but finding only old wounds. There was the knot in his hip where a dead German’s head had landed with such force that it had smashed the bone. Scar tissue across his neck from shrapnel wounds. And other places, traumas he could not touch because they were inside him, scorched on his mind.

“I think so,” Smith said, his answer ambiguous even to himself. Was he all right? Had he ever been all right?

Machen was looking around at the wreck of the house, shaking his head. “My friend will be upset,” he said. “I was merely lodging here. Pity — lovely house. Charming fireplace, and a wine cellar I shall mourn for the rest of my days.”

Smith stood on shaking legs, still searching for new injuries. It appeared that he had escaped relatively unharmed. He would have called it a miracle, had he not already been witness to one.

“You seem unconcerned at our near miss,” he said.

Machen looked at him and smiled. Somehow he had rescued his pipe, and now he put it to his mouth and puffed until fresh smoke began to issue forth. “I am an old man now. If the Lord chooses my time, then he does. Though I must admit, the thought that maybe this was my time was still worrying.”

“So now do you see why we need their help?”

“Oh, your angels.”

“Yes!”

Machen puffed at his pipe, frowning. He seemed to be deep in thought, and Smith sensed that now was not the time to interrupt. Finally, the old man spoke.

“I admit that you have me intrigued,” he said, “but for reasons all my own. There is certainly further investigation we can carry out into your claims. This is a matter I have long wished to put behind me — it makes me sick to the core, to tell the truth — but your insistence is pressing.” He regarded Smith with a look that only the aged can really muster. “You seem a polite young man, although perhaps not possessing all your senses. You appear certain of what you saw. And for that, I believe that you believe it is the truth.”

“I don’t believe, I know!”

“Truth and certainty are not good bedfellows, Lieutenant Smith. Come! We have somewhere to go!”

They walked in silence through the suburbs before Lieutenant Smith realized he hadn’t asked the logical question. “Mr Machen, you said we have somewhere to go?”

“Indeed I did, sir.”

“Where?”

“I believe we require a little hard evidence. Something tactile to grasp in our hands.”

“Oh?”

“You feel well enough? The explosion at the house…”

“I feel perfectly fine. Perhaps even better than I ought in the circumstances. That bomb scored a direct hit.”

“We were fortunate. Or maybe there are forces at work requiring us to seek a resolution to our mystery.”

Smith saw Machen’s grim smile by the light of burning buildings.

“So where are we going?”

“To the archive of the London Evening News in Bloomsbury.”

“I don’t see that-”

“Ah, lieutenant. Remember the ancient Oriental proverb: ‘The longest journey begins with a single step.’ A trip to the newspaper’s document depository will furnish us with that first step.” The man nodded in the direction of central London, a city ringing with fire-engine bells, glowing with a thousand incendiary fires. “That is if the building hasn’t been reduced to ashes. Ah, careful where you step, my dear fellow. I dare say the authorities will collect these with due respect.”

Human remains, especially blood spilled on a flat, hard surface, are astonishingly slippery. Smith recalled a young corporal slipping on human entrails on a cobbled yard, falling with such force that it detonated the rifle grenade in his backpack. Even as Smith walked through this present-day apocalypse, he sensed the tug of the past drawing him back to the trenches of the Great War. That was a haunted time; and, dear God, he refused to be haunted by it just at that moment.

To prevent himself from slipping back into malignant reverie he said, “Mr Machen… won’t you tell me something of yourself and what led to you write ‘The Bowmen’?”

“Why not? It’s a filthy night in so many respects. A little storytelling now might do us some good.”

The old writer began to speak in his deep, resonant voice about the beginning of his own life. Smith found himself drifting into a state that was nearer trance than wakefulness. Here he was, walking through London in the dead of night, body parts littering an otherwise empty street, the surviving occupants still taking refuge in their shelters. The sky above London burned a bloody red. And from all quarters of the ancient city sirens rose in a single note to signify the “all clear”, although it could equally have been the trumpets of angels calling newly released souls to heaven. Trying not to let the air of unreality settle too deeply into his bones, Smith concentrated on Machen’s words.

“‘… I shall always esteem it as the greatest piece of fortune that has fallen on me, that I was born in that noble, fallen Caerleon-on-Usk, in the heart of Gwent.’ If you will excuse an author’s conceit, those words I’ve just recited are from my autobiography. And I still stand by them. On 3 March 1863 I was born into what seemed a magical borderland between this reality and others too fabulous for mortals to describe with any accuracy. I’m still far from adept at capturing the quiddity of the land I grew up in. A land of hills, deep lanes and dark woods aplenty. Of rivers that foamed red after rain. And peopled by men and women who spoke an ancient language that no Englishman could fathom. My father was rector there, and I grew up an only child, often with only my imagination as a companion. I roamed what, for me, is a faery land of ineffable mystery. It was littered with the romantic ruins of the Roman occupation. It was saturated to the very roots with Celtic myth. No wonder, then, that I grew into a young man with one burning ambition: to write! As soon as I could I left my native Wales for London. And there, as many a young man has done before me, I wrote beautifully incomprehensible literature in an attic room. I sustained my body on green tea, dry bread and tobacco. And all the time my mind blazed with stories — such incredible stories! Tales of mystery, gods and spirit worlds that would astonish the world of letters. Of course, publishers rejected them as the awfully conceited trumpery of an eager but inexperienced scribbler, such as I was in those days. And like so many young men who’d followed their star to Grub Street, I starved. Well… I managed to avoid the work house and death by malnutrition… by a whisker, I should add. I earned a meagre wage as by turns a teacher, cataloguer, publisher’s assistant. And step by step, inch by inch I began to earn my daily bread as a writer. And so I saw my strange compositions begin to appear in print, only to puzzle the great British public, I dare say. The Great God Pan, The Inmost Light, The Three Impostors… and many short stories and essays. If you disregard the piffling sums I received for my work you could almost describe it as a successful literary life. I found a home. I married, only to lose my wife, Amy, within twelve years to cancer. No angel was at hand then at her deathbed, you’ll note. At least none that I saw. In order to try and cope with bereavement I changed careers. At the age of thirty-seven, in 1900, I became an actor with the Benson company. Marvellous times. Forget what they say about schooldays — those were the happiest of my life, treading the boards. Did you know I even starred in a silent picture? Good grief, me! Can you believe such a thing? Ah… then by the end of the decade I’d retired, gracefully I hope, from a life of acting, to earn my daily bread with the pen once more. I’d also rather fortuitously acquired a second wife along the way. She’s at home at Amersham at the moment. Safe, I hope, bearing in mind this little outbreak of hellfire tonight.” Machen indicated bombed buildings with his unlit pipe. Flames still licked at exposed timbers. At the end of the street men directed water hoses onto a burning post office. “Now where was I? Uhm… ah, yes, back to the quarry face of literature. From the heaven of greasepaint and make-believe to my own personal hell — becoming a reporter on the London Evening News. Lieutenant, I’d dreamt of weaving tales of magic and awe only to find myself sitting at my desk in the journalists’ cattle shed of an office, writing interminable copy concerning the rich and famous of London society. My given quests? To learn whether the Duke of Richmond favoured flannels over tweed that particular season, or whether it was fashionable for the daughters of admirals to devour their pate on toast or wafer, or to discover the name of Lady Such-and-such’s favorite poodle. It was deadly dull work; my family straddled the line between being merely hard-up and actually poverty-stricken. There you have it, the needs of providing for my family — poor though it was — made a prisoner of me in a newspaper office. A job, you will have surmised, that I hated with absolute passion.”

“You still wrote fiction?”

“Yes, there were still short stories and literary sketches for magazines.”

“Then the war. The Great War.”

“Yes, lieutenant. The Great War. My age required me to view the battles in Europe from afar. And I was still a slave of the press galley. However, I saw that for the first time my talent, what there was of it, might have a greater purpose than I first supposed. Those first months of the war were bad ones for Britain. Food ran short, tens of thousands of our soldiers were killed, towns and villages alike grieved for the loss of their young men, we were in constant retreat as the Germans scored victory after victory. People from the lowest classes to the aristocracy were considering the awful possibility that we might lose the war, and that the Kaiser would claim the British Empire for himself. It seemed to me that although I could never fire a rifle in anger, I might help alleviate this pervading air of despondency. With my editor’s blessing I began to write short articles in praise of the British way of life, in studies of how ordinary men and women went about their work. I strove to illuminate the working folks’ innate sense of honesty and goodness. As well as the factual articles I contributed short squibs of fiction to the newspaper, intended to warm the patriot’s heart and perhaps raise the spirits of the reader, at least for a few moments.”

“Then came ‘The Bowmen’?”

“Yes, sir, then along came ‘The Bowmen’.” Despite his age, the old man moved effortlessly through the darkened streets. Stepping over rubble, or sidestepping a bloodied human limb, did not interrupt his faultless discourse. “My story ‘The Bowmen’ wasn’t a great work of literature that had been maturing inside me. Far from it! The tale suggested itself to me on the last Sunday of August, 1914. Before going to church I — like my countrymen — had been reading press reports of terrible calamity on the battle fields of Europe. Our army was in retreat. The Germans were close to breaking through our lines before racing to capture the Channel ports. In short, it looked as if the British nation was doomed. During the singing of the Gospel by the deacon in church I, unbidden, found myself imagining the British Army embroiled in a furnace of torment, agony and death. In the midst of this our brave fighting men were consumed by the flame, yet aureoled in it; they were scattered like ashes and yet triumphant; they were martyred yet forever glorious. I saw our men with a shining about them. And this vision, I suppose you could call it, formed the basis of the story ‘The Soldier’s Rest’, which is a far better work than ‘The Bowmen’. Incidentally, I did write ‘The Bowmen’, despite rumours you might have heard to the contrary that I had secret knowledge of an actual event, or that the manuscript of the completed story was delivered to me by ‘a lady-in-waiting’ and that I simply added my name beneath the title in an act of literary piracy! No, I penned a tale that, although mediocre in execution, I hoped would at least moderate the misery of a small percentage of our people who were living in such unhappiness and fear. And so the story appeared in the Evening News of 29 September 1914. I apologize for making its genesis appear such a profound event. It wasn’t; it was merely a short tale about British soldiers being saved by the ghostly archers of Agincourt. As it appeared in an evening newspaper, I believed it would be forgotten by the time the following morning’s paper arrived on the public’s doormat. However, a month or two later, I received requests from the editors of a number of parish magazines to reprint the tale. As I did not own the copyright of ‘The Bowmen’, my editor agreed. I wasn’t unhappy. If readers’ hearts were lifted by my work then all well and good. However, when letters began to arrive at the office with requests to reprint the story as a pamphlet — together with a plea that I write an introduction, citing the source of my material, giving dates and names of witnesses of the miraculous event — I found myself in very peculiar territory indeed. In short, within the space of a few months, rational men and women the length of Britain — perhaps even the Empire — believed that ‘The Bowmen’ was not a work of fiction at all, but a newspaper report containing nothing but hard fact. In retrospect, I understand that my story delivered a powerful morale boost to the nation. But at the time it turned my life into a nightmare. When I replied to countless hopeful letters that my story was ‘made up’, I was greeted with disbelief. People had read the story in a newspaper so it must be true; that’s how the logic ran. And when I insisted ‘The Bowmen’ was fiction, that it contained not a shred of fact, that was when men and women turned on me as viciously as starving dogs. I was spat upon in the street, threatened with a beating in bars. My wife was pushed to the ground in our own garden when a priest, who’d called to remonstrate with me, didn’t believe that I was not at home. And then another miracle occurred: the miracle of mass self-delusion. When it seemed that I had the upper hand — when at last I began to build an argument that ‘The Bowmen’ was a piece of fiction — some very senior churchmen launched a counter-argument. They conceded that while ‘The Bowmen’ was intended as fiction, I had, in fact, experienced a God-given vision of a genuine miracle: the rescue of our troops on the battlefield by some immortal agency. Moreover, the churchmen claimed I was so conceited, so consumed by greed that I’d passed this wonderful vision off as my own work, whereby I could benefit from the fame it would bring me and become monstrously rich! The public accepted the churchmen’s argument. I was seen as something lower than a swindler and blackmailer.”

Smith glanced at the shadowed face of the writer. “But the money you earned must have helped compensate you for the social discomfort.”

“Money? What money? I didn’t earn a penny from the story. I wrote it as part of my salaried duties for the newspaper. The newspaper owner collected all the royalties and reprint fees, and kept them for himself without so much as a thank-you flung in my direction. There was no money, lieutenant. Not for me. Merely national contempt.”

“So you discount that the churchmen might have been right? That there’s no supernatural element entering into the equation?”

“As I wrote a little while later: ‘Here indeed we have the maggot writhing in the midst of corrupted offal denying the existence of the sun.’ I’m not saying that there was never a supernormal intervention during that war, or this one. Only that I have no evidence one way or the other. And ‘The Bowmen’ is certainly not evidence of such divine intervention. It is a story, a story, a story. Fiction and nothing more.”

The old man awarded the younger one that searching glance again. “But you, Lieutenant Smith, would take the contrary point of view. After all, you say you believe you saw the events of my story take place in reality.”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Then let us prove to ourselves that ‘The Bowmen’ story exists in the real world. Ah! At least the archive hasn’t been blasted to smithereens. If you step through that gateway to your right…”

Smith passed through a gate set in a brick wall. Just along the road he could make out the imposing bulk of the British Museum. Searchlights still probed the clouds’ underbelly. A smell of burning persisted in the air, but here at least the city had fallen silent.

Machen said, “Take care. It’s very dark in this yard. Do you think it would be safe for me to smoke my pipe now… ahm, best not. The rules against naked lights at night are very strict. Now… where is it?”

“Can I help?”

“I’m trying to find the bell push. Good Lord, it’s so dark I can’t see my hand in front of my face… ah, this is it. No, no…” He chuckled. “I’m trying to push my finger into a satyr’s eye. I should add, a carved one. If you could see this old door frame you’d see how intricately carved it is. Ah, this is it.”

Smith heard a bell sound faintly inside the building, and after a long pause a muffled, disgruntled voice came through the carved door hidden in the darkness.

“The archive is closed. Opening hours are nine till five. Goodnight.”

“Benjamin, it’s me. Machen.”

“Arthur? Why didn’t you say?”

“I just did, Benjamin.” Machen’s tone was good-natured. “Aren’t you going to let us enter your fortress?”

“Of course, of course.” There came the sound of bolts being drawn, a key turned, and the darkness changed shade. “Careful how you go, Arthur. I can’t switch on the light until I’ve closed the door behind you. Blackout regulations, you know.”

“Of course, Benjamin. Ah, I have a friend along, too. We’re on something of a quest.”

“Splendid! In you come, then. Ah, terrible tonight. I heard there were two hundred bombers in the formation.”

“Terrible indeed, Benjamin. They won’t rest until they have us living in the sewers.”

Smith walked into an echoing hallway and the door clunked shut behind him. There was another click and a dazzling light lit up the surroundings. Standing close by was an elderly man, stooped and disturbingly frail. Smith noted that he wore an exotic cricket blazer, trimmed with pale blue at the cuffs and collar, a team badge adorning the breast pocket.

“Now, what can I do you for, Arthur?” Despite his frailty the old man sounded cheerful. Evidently he was delighted to see Machen. “You’ve not been this way in a long while.”

“No, I’m stranded out at the end of the line in Amersham. I haven’t been up to town for months. However, I’ve come now to raid your archive, if I may?”

“Of course, of course. How’s the family?”

“Purefoy relentlessly knits socks for sailors, while Janet is training to become a nurse… she’s my daughter, you know?”

“Yes, I remember. And your son?”

“Hilary. He was captured by the Italians. They’ve had him picking grapes in Tuscany.”

“Too bad. I’m sorry, Arthur.”

“At least he’s out of harm’s way, but I dare say he wishes he was back in the thick of it again. We’ve had letters so we know he’s in good health.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Well, you know the way. I’ll scuttle back to the office. I’m ordered to remain by the phone in case anyone in editorial needs back issues from way back when. They never do, of course. So I sit, drink tea, wait.”

After the old man had wandered off into the labyrinth, Machen led Smith to a long room filled with filing cabinets.

“This is the manuscript room,” Machen told him. “We should find what we’re looking for here.” He consulted a leather-bound ledger filled with page after page of entries. “I’ve known Benjamin since 1910… or was it 1909?”

“A rather colourful garb for a caretaker.”

“Ah, the cricket blazer. Benjamin was once a first-class county player for Kent. After he retired from the game he became the staff sports writer, rising to sports editor by the time of the Great War. But Lord Alfred Douglas — he’s the owner of the newspaper group — despises cricket. With the outbreak of hostilities Douglas demoted Benjamin to sweep the floors here and run errands for editorial staff. Something, you’ll agree, of a bitter insult to the man?”

Smith didn’t have a chance to reply as Machen declaimed, “Hah! Here we are. Number 23 dash 406. 23 refers to the filing-cabinet number… let’s see that will be… uhm, there to your left, lieutenant. Continue to the end of the row.”

Smith followed Machen along the line of green metal cabinets. His whole night was becoming increasingly surreal.

Is Machen leading me on a wild goose chase? I went to his house to find the truth about what happened to me on that day in 1914. Now we’re haring round London looking for scraps of paper. Is he humouring me? Perhaps hoping I tire of this and simply go?

Machen heaved open a drawer that had not been opened in years. The wheels screeched on their steel runners. “Now 406… 406… ah, 403, 405. 406! Well, I must say I’d forgotten what a slender envelope it was. All that fuss, thunder and lightning over this little thing. Move across to the light where we can see it better. Here we are: ‘The Bowmen’. You know, I’m almost afraid to open the envelope just in case the manuscript isn’t there. Or perhaps the pages are blank? Or maybe I’ll find the story written in a hand other than my own.” He smiled grimly. “Imagine what a shock that would be.”

Smith saw the old man’s hand tremble as he opened the brown quarto envelope and withdrew half a dozen sheets of paper, neatly folded in half and covered with handwriting.

Machen unfolded the manuscript and laid it flat on the table beneath the light.

Smith heard the note of relief in the man’s voice. “Yes, of course this is mine. Written in pencil under my own name. Look, there are the editor’s initials approving its publication. And here’s the sub-editor’s signature along with his rather heavy-handed editorial marks. But then he was notorious for his dislike of adjectives and a poetic turn of phrase. A few years later he drowned in Stratford-upon-Avon. Rather poetic justice, I always thought. Nevertheless, lieutenant, here is the manuscript. Hold it if you wish.”

“And these blue pencil marks?”

“In those days — just as in this war — a Ministry censor was assigned to the editorial office to read everything we wrote before publication. He amended or deleted anything he judged to be injurious to the war effort. There’s his official stamp and initials. And he’s made a few deletions, too. There is-”

“No! Don’t show me them!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t show me.”

“What on earth-”

Smith took a deep breath. His heart thudded in his chest. “Listen, Mr Machen. It’s just possible there’s something in the manuscript that will help prove to you that I’m not mistaken. That I really did witness a miraculous intervention on the battlefield.”

“And what might that something be?”

Smith frowned, closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind. “Let me get this straight, sir. You wrote the manuscript in your own hand?”

“Indeed, I did.”

“So the only people to see the finished story before it was typeset would be the editor, sub-editor…”

“And the censor, yes. So?”

“Did the censor delete any references to place names?”

“As a matter of fact, he did blue pencil the name of a Belgian village, even though I was most strenuous to point out that it was fictitious. A romantic concoction of my own and nothing more. It was-”

“No, don’t tell me.” Lieutenant Smith moved back from the manuscript on the table, holding his hands toward it to make clear to Machen that he couldn’t see any of the text. “Near where I saw the angels there lay the remains of a village that formed a section of our lines.” He watched Machen’s face for any reaction when he spoke the name. “The village was called Sierville-en-Caux.” Machen raised his eyebrows, and Smith continued. “The village church had been reduced to its foundations by shellfire, but rising from the rubble in its centre was-”

“A statue of St Jude, the patron saint of lost causes,” Machen whispered. “Good Lord… oh my good Lord…”

“And the statue was unmarked, despite the destruction surrounding it.”

Machen turned over two pages of the manuscript. “There’s… it’s difficult to see. The censor worked hard with that blue pencil of his. But you can just make out my handwriting: Sierville-en-Caux. And the description of a church with not a stone intact, yet with the unmarked statue of St Jude remaining upright and glorious.” Machen looked suddenly tired. Some of the fire had gone from his eyes. “You do realize, lieutenant, that I am now a man standing upon the thinnest of ice above the most lethal of rapids. The border between fact and fiction has become fluid. I don’t know what to believe… I don’t…” He shrugged and sighed.

“I don’t know what to feel.” Smith took a deep breath, shaking, cold and yet sweating. “For the first time since it happened I’ve found real evidence. Perhaps now people will stop regarding me as a lunatic when I tell them that I witnessed a miracle.”

“You’re still some way from proving any celestial intervention, lieutenant. Many will dismiss the place name in my manuscript as coincidence, or even accuse you of breaking in here and reading the excised text.” Machen slipped the manuscript back into its envelope. “In truth, I believed what I termed as the first step in our investigation would be the only step. That sight of ‘The Bowmen’ script would dissuade you from looking further.”

Smith touched Machen’s shoulder. “And now?”

“Everything has changed… everything.” The old writer weighed the envelope in his hand, and then seemed to reach a decision. “My instincts now are for us to hold a council of war and decide where we go next. But first, I need to reread my tale. It’s been many years, and my memory is rusty to say the least.”

“Do you think there may be more in there? More proof, more evidence?”

“I truly don’t know, lieutenant. Truly. Now, why don’t you go and find Benjamin, have a chat to him while I peruse this again? I’d welcome the solitude. It helps me think. Right now my brain is in danger of overload, I feel, and yet I wonder if something eludes us still.”

Smith nodded, went to clasp the old writer’s hand — contact with this man would have felt good, comforting — but Machen had already turned away. Given his leave, Smith left the room.

The corridors beyond were dark and musty, lit faintly here and there by candles which Benjamin must have left burning for their navigation back to the outside door. There were many doors, huddled in shadow as if trying hard to hide, and Smith stopped outside one or two. He put his ear to the wood and listened, but there was only a thick, oppressive silence. Spider webs hung heavy with dust from the corridor ceiling. Yet he saw no spiders. It was as if this whole place was waiting for something to happen.

Smith found himself back in the vestibule where they had entered. He had no real wish to chat with the old caretaker, so he leaned against a wall, hearing nothing but the rushing of his own blood and the thump of his heart. He coughed lightly to kill the silence.

They would be walking home soon. He did not have his watch with him so he decided to look outside and see whether dawn had arrived. The glaring light was still on so he flicked the switch off, shifted the blackout curtain, and glanced through the dust-smeared window.

It was raining. It was dark. And yet for a few seconds as he glanced out, the rain was illuminated into silvery spears cast earthward, darting streaks caught in the glow from something nearby or far away. The light soon faded, however, plunging the alley back into a darkness rattled by the impacts of raindrops.

Smith pulled back from the door and let the curtain drop into place. An explosion high in the air, he guessed, or a searchlight reflected from the low cloud ceiling.

“Tea?”

Smith jumped and spun around. The old caretaker stood behind him, holding a lighted candle in one hand. “You startled me!” Smith said.

Benjamin smiled and raised his eyebrows. “Sorry. I’ve even startled myself in here a few times! Weird sound qualities, all these corridors have. I’ve coughed and heard myself coughing back on many occasions. And once…”

“Yes?”

Benjamin frowned and looked away. “No matter. Tea? I make very good tea. And perhaps you’d like to hear a little about Mr Machen?”

That decided Smith. He followed Benjamin through a couple of corridors, left turn, right turn, thinking how the old man seemed to be winding down with time. How old was he when I was fighting in the trenches? Smith wondered. Would he believe me? Or would he, a friend of the writer, display Machen’s own angry doubt}

Doubt, yes. But Machen had been shaken over the matter of the village name. That was surely no coincidence, and no man of his intelligence would claim it as such.

“I have cheap tea, I’m afraid, but I make up for it by a lengthy brew while still boiling. Makes for an interesting taste, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

They reached Benjamin’s room: small, comfortable, obviously a place where the old man spent a lot of time. “That sounds fine,” Smith said.

“Did Arthur say how long he’d be?”

Smith shook his head.

“Ah! Well, I’ll make him a cup, anyway.” Benjamin went about brewing his tea, everything he did measured and smooth from long practice. He was certainly a man of habit.

“How long have you known Mr Machen?” Smith asked.

Benjamin laughed. “Longer than I care to remember! Longer than you could.”

“I’ve read all his work,” Smith said. “Everything. The books, the stories. Everything.”

“Oh, I doubt that, sir.” Benjamin poured boiling water and stirred the tea, returning it to the boil to get the most out of the insipid tea leaves.

“Then is there more? Hidden work that perhaps I could peruse?”

The old man looked at Smith, fleetingly suspicious. “You don’t know the man, do you? I could tell that by the way he introduced you. But even though you don’t know him, you’ve got him flustered and disturbed. I could sense that, too. And I’m not sure it’s something I feel wholly comfortable with, to be honest, sir.”

Smith shook his head, but he could think of nothing to say, no defence for what he had brought into Machen this night.

Benjamin continued. “However… I’m not one to jump to conclusions. And I know Arthur would have never brought you here if he didn’t have good reason.”

“He’s a great man,” Smith said, wondering where that had come from. He had often thought of the writer as a genius, a true wordsmith and perhaps, at times, capable of magic. But ‘great’ was a heavy word, one with consequences.

“He is that,” Benjamin said, handing Smith a steaming cup. “He’s a good man, a great man. Some would say a prophet.”

Prophet! thought Smith. Yes, a prophet!

“Who would say that?”

Benjamin shrugged and took a sip of his hot tea, gasping and blowing softly to salve his burned lips. “Some,” he said. “Indeed, I heard of one American scholar who described Mr Machen as The Apostle of Wonder.”

Machen came into the room at that moment, seemingly having taken the few minutes to compose himself. “There you are, lieutenant! Oh dear, you’re not drinking Benjamin’s tea, are you? That dreadful brew is our first line of defence should Hitler invade.”

“We were just talking about you,” Benjamin said.

Machen shook his head. “Oh dear, oh dear, and I thought my night could not get any worse. Come, lieutenant! One more place to visit tonight, and then perhaps it’s time to let our brains rest for a while.” He turned back to Benjamin and shook the old man’s hand warmly. “Splendid to see you again, Benjamin. I only hope it’s not too long before the next time.”

“Me too, Arthur.”

The men smiled, and Smith saw an old friendship in their eyes.

Outside, dawn was creeping into the eastern sky. The rain dampened down the smoke rising over the city, but the air still stank of burning, and of war. Sirens sang across the capital, ferrying firemen to fires or the injured away from them, and although the danger was barely passed, there were people in the streets. Milkmen, making their deliveries; men and women going to work; policemen, bearing sad news. Smith strode after Machen, wanting to question him again but honouring the older man’s silence.

Finally, rounding corner after corner, they reached a small park. It was in a square between large houses, an overgrown refuge of plant and tree and squirrel, and upon entering Smith already felt further away from the war. The flowers were bright, the ground dark and clean from the recent downpour, and even the smells of burning seemed lessened.

“Here,” Machen said. “This will do.”

“What are we here for?” Smith said, looking around. He was tired — he had not realized how tired until now, trudging once again through the London streets — and Machen himself seemed exhausted. The old writer eased himself onto a bench with a sigh, servicing his pipe and lighting it before answering.

“We’re here to talk,” Machen said. “Only briefly, for I am truly exhausted, and Purefoy will doubtless be getting worried already. I told her I would be home at sunup, at the latest.” He puffed contentedly on his pipe and looked around at the trees. “Do you like nature, lieutenant?”

Smith looked around, nodding. “Yes. It’s very… peaceful.”

Machen scoffed. “Pah! Peaceful is one thing it is not! Basic, elemental, relaxing, wondrous, revealing and secretive. But nature is alive, Smith, an evolving thing, always on the move. Never peaceful. And it allows us. This park, here, is our own pretence at nature.”

“How do you mean?”

Machen pointed with the stem of his pipe. “See how the trees are spaced? See how regular the shrub borders are? All very ordered and fake, a sham of reality, and we made it for our own pleasure. Real nature has an order all its own.”

Smith looked around, frowning, wishing that the old man would make his point but not wanting to push him.

“Yet most people come here and are fooled,” Machen said. “They view this place and see what the designers and gardeners intended, yet at the same time the truth is far different. Just as I do with my writing, they dream in fire and work in clay. Their ultimate aims are effectively unachievable, because the perfection of nature cannot be manufactured. They are deceived. They are…” He trailed off, seemingly confused for a few seconds, puffing his pipe to gather his thoughts. “They think they see something that is not really there. They believe that they view one thing, while in reality it’s something quite different. Do you understand my meaning?”

“You mean,” Smith said, “that my story and yours are not alike. That even through all the similarities, I am deluding myself. That’s what you mean.”

“In a way, yes.”

“But that is not what I believe.”

Machen stood and extended his hand. “I have to go home, Lieutenant Smith. It has been a night I shall not forget in a hurry! You have opened my eyes a little, and for that I am thankful.”

“But that’s not all!” Smith said, becoming agitated. This had not gone the way he had intended, nowhere near, and now that there was an end in sight his frustration came to the fore.

“No, it is not. Please be my guest this evening, lieutenant, at a little church on Banwick Road. A church I often frequent.”

“The church where…?”

“Indeed,” Machen said. “The church where my muse first presented me with this tale. Perhaps there, in that divine place, the truth may be more readily visible. Now, sir, I must bid you farewell.”

Machen walked from the park, and within seconds he had disappeared behind a row of trees.

Smith sat on the bench and looked around, trying to analyse what Machen had said about this little park. Did he mean that it was not as it should be, and therefore that Smith’s story was unbelievable? Or was he trying to get across that many people came here and thought they were in the depths of nature… whereas, in fact, they were deceived?

Was Smith deceiving himself? Were his memories as trustworthy as he believed?

He closed his eyes and smelled the mud, the stench of rotting dead friends, saw earth blossoming skywards in slow-motion explosions, felt the slick coolness of trench foot, heard the report of a rifle and the scream of a fallen man, on one side or the other, dying in pain whichever country he fought for.

No, he was not deceived. Now more than ever he believed that what he had seen in those trenches, what he and hundreds of others had witnessed, had been provoked by this one old writer. A man whose words had far more power than he was ready to admit.

A man who could conjure angels.

Smith was staying in a hotel not far from where he and Machen parted company. He walked slowly through the streets, musing upon what the night had brought, and wondering whether anything had really been resolved.

The sun was edging above the horizon but it was a cloudy morning, and although it had stopped raining the light was still weak. He took a back street as a short cut, keen to reach his bed and sleep for a few precious hours, and that was when he realised he was being followed.

There was no sound to give away his pursuer, no fleeting figure glimpsed from the corner of his eye; he simply knew that he was not alone in that street. He stopped and turned around, scanned the way he had come. No one hid in doorways, no one hunkered down behind a parked car, no one turned and fled. Yet that sense was there, an undeniable crawling down his spine, a certainty that he was being watched.

“Hello!” Smith called, brave now that night was sinking back into shadows. Perhaps Mr Machen had followed to ask him something else, or simply to prove to himself that Smith was no madman? But nobody answered his call. Pigeons fluttered on window ledges, a dog trotted across the street and a cat watched him from inside a house, tail twitching as it regarded him coolly.

He hurried to the end of the street and turned left… and then stopped, pressing himself against a wall, listening out for footsteps or the panting of a running man. He heard neither. A car passed him from left to right, its driver giving him a wary glance, and Smith tried to smile. But the expression no longer fitted his face. He was tried and confused. He needed a sleep without dreams, a long rest, and then tonight perhaps he and Machen would experience some epiphany, the truth made plain to their refreshed minds. His own conviction had been diluted by Machen’s scepticism.

He took one last quick glance around the corner, and saw light fade away.

It might have been a blur on his eye, a piece of dust floating on the air. Or perhaps it was a trick of the sun, someone opening a window and casting a fleeting reflection. But the sun was hidden by thick clouds. And though he wiped his eyes, still he saw the silvery light crawling across an expanse of red brick. No shadow was cast there. The brick sucked in the light and stood as silent testament to its existence.

Smith closed his eyes, opened them again, thought of the illuminated downpour of rain outside the Bloomsbury archive building. Searchlight, he had thought at the time, but now that seemed unlikely. Now, he had to wonder just who or what was following him.

He hurried away, comforted by the appearance of several people in the street. He glanced back often, pleased that daylight had now taken a firm hold, and yet somewhat disappointed as well.

He had not felt threatened, fearful or in danger.

In fact, he wished the light would appear again. It reminded him…

Smith reached his room, drank a glass of water to wash away the dust of the previous night, stripped off his clothes — torn and made tatty by his virtual burial in the collapsed house — and within a minute of lying down, he slept.

Perhaps he dreamed.

When he woke he shouted out loud, rolling from the bed and huddling beneath the sheets, hiding himself, making it safe. The room was brightly lit, a shimmering illumination that seemed to be peering in from outside, assaulting his senses in concert with the squeal of brakes (the scream of a falling shell), the shout of a newspaper seller (the cry of a dying man calling for his mother), the sound of rain hitting the window (water in the trenches, squelching underfoot, trying to suck him down into the mud where so many of his friends lay rotting… for ever). Smith shivered and groaned, perceiving the shifting light even through the thickness of the blanket. He tried to link his fears with what had happened all those years ago, but that time felt vague as a dream, fading like dreams do into a feeling, a sensation, a memory with no definable detail.

Smith remembered where he was and why. He held in a breath, threw aside the blanket, and the room was lit by sunlight. It slanted in through dusty window-panes, catching a million specks of dust dancing before his eyes. It was still raining — a summer shower, fresh and invigorating — and perhaps that accounted for the strange quality of light. Constantly shifting. Refracted through raindrops, diluted and silvered by the water.

Or perhaps he dreamed.

The church was small, innocuous, subsumed by other large, contemporary buildings. Whereas its history and standing should have made the surrounding structures look out of place, the opposite was true. The church, here for hundreds of years, had lost its identity to its new companions. Its facade was blackened from the effects of exhaust fumes, its once-proud oaken door a darker entrance now than had ever been intended. Even the openings of its bell tower had been bricked in.

Smith stood on the opposite side of the road for a while, staring at the church. He was trying to make a connection, feel something pertinent to his reason for being here. It was in this place that Machen had conceived the story, after all. Perhaps that very thought had held more power than any normal prayer. But Smith could feel nothing, no sense of revelation, and by the time he saw Machen approaching slowly along the street he was depressed and gloomy.

Dusk was falling. The bombers would be here again soon. People were rushing home, to the safety of their shelters or the Tube stations. Cars, buses and other vehicles hurried through the streets, a few of them turning on their covered headlights but most defying the coming dark.

“Lieutenant Smith!” Machen called from across the street, waving his walking cane.

Smith waved back. Perhaps tonight, he thought. Perhaps to night the truth will out.

He crossed the road and shook Machen’s hand.

“Did you sleep well?” Machen asked.

“I had a nightmare.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Machen avoided Smith’s gaze, looking down at the pavement, up at the church. “I had an odd dream, too. But then I am an old man, and my mind often wanders of its own accord. Shall we?” He indicated the church doorway, inviting Smith to enter first.

“After you,” Smith said. And as they walked through into the lobby and then the cool church interior, he knew that they would see a light in there, a luminescence shimmering above the pews, hanging beneath the ceiling like a great bat examining them soundlessly.

But there was nothing. The stained-glass windows on the left shone with the pink of the setting sun, yielding a little light to see by. The church was empty but for the two of them.

“I thought a church would be busy in these times,” Smith said.

“It is, during the day,” Machen smiled. “But when it comes to night-time and bombings, people would rather worship from the safety of an air-raid shelter. Did you hear about St Paul ’s? Lost one of its clock towers, I hear. Terrible shame. Lovely building. I was in the Whispering Gallery once, alone, and someone whispered to me.”

They sat together in a pew halfway down the nave, silent and companionable. Agitated though he was, Smith felt an immediate sense of tranquillity. His beliefs and faith were a mixed stew, but how could one not come to such a serene place, a place where so many found comfort and peace, and not find peace oneself?

“This is approximately where I was sitting,” Machen said. “The church was full then, brimming with people desperate to understand. To come to terms with what was happening over the Channel. Fear permeated the atmosphere. Tales of the barbaric Hun were rife in the press — the crucified soldier, the spearing of babies, how German soldiers cut off the hands and feet of nurses — and there was true terror in the idea that the Kaiser’s armies would cross to our fair isle. So we prayed. We prayed for the victory of Good over Evil, because in those days the definitions were clear-cut.”

“I saw thousands of dead Germans,” Smith said. “They all looked like me. They had parents and siblings and lovers who mourned them. We were all equally as scared out there.”

“And yet the demonization of Germany exists today as much as it did twenty-five years ago,” Machen continued. “It is neither right, nor wrong. It is simply how the public has to deal with these things. We — you and I — are useless in this current fight. We have to lend moral support, and for that we have to believe ourselves morally right.”

They sat in silence again for a while, but Smith sensed that Machen was uncomfortable. The old writer kept glancing at him, as if to confirm to himself that this lieutenant was the same man with whom he’d had such an adventure last night.

“Tell me,” Machen said at last. “Tell me of the time in the trenches, when your angels came and saved you and your men. What did they look like? Describe them to me.”

“But you know what they looked like, you wrote of them.”

“I wrote some of what I imagined. But the translation between imagination and paper is imprecise at best. Please, humour me.”

“Are you starting to believe?” Smith asked, suddenly excited. “Do you see some truth in what I say?”

“I see inconsistencies which I must explore. And I feel… obliged to pursue our inquiry. Please, Delamare… tell me.”

Smith closed his eyes for a few moments, gathering his thoughts, sending himself back to that time in the trenches. The guns roared, explosions flared along the front, and a tide of grey-clad men headed their way across the plains of Hell.

And then…

And then the muttering began, and the laughing, and the muttering again in a language that Smith did not recognize. One of his mates in the trench had gone mad, and in amongst the snippets of music-hall song and encouraging shouts, his voice was quiet and yet loud, loudest of all.

And then something passed over their heads, singing through the air, going the wrong way because all their own artillery had been pulled back.

The first line of Germans fell, struck down by spears of light.

Smith turned around, his gun hot in his hands, slipping down the wall of the trench as he saw what approached.

At first he thought it was a cloud of gas, but it was drifting sideways against the breeze, its trajectory exact and defined. And as it came closer and let loose another cloud of whistling shapes — they passed straight over the trenches, slashing through the air as fast as bullets — he saw figures beginning to manifest from the cloud. The outlines of men, archers, their longbows constantly drawn and letting fly, drawn again. The arrows ripped across the ruined land and buried themselves in the lines of advancing Germans. A new hail was fired every second, even as the shining, glowing shapes approached nearer, nearer… and then passed over the British trenches, advancing onward.

The rattle of German gunfire cut smoky holes in the nebulous shapes, but their forms flowed to fill the spaces slashed through reality, and their bows let loose once more.

At their head, astride a shining horse, a man in armour. He waved his sword and encouraged a charge, charging himself, sword hacking at the air and cutting down ten grey men. The arrows passed through him and rather than damaging his glowing inconsistency it seemed to empower their shafts even more. A dozen men fell from each arrow, its path hacked back through the hordes.

Smith watched the horse rear, its rider shouting silent exhortations heard only in the minds of those British warriors watching and not believing… and he blinked back a sudden blast of recognition.

That way, true madness lay.

“It must have been from books,” Smith said. “I’d seen his image before, and it was stored in my mind. He was known to me.”

Machen sat silent, ashen-faced in the pew beside Smith. His eyes were closed. Smith hoped that he was praying.

“And now?” Smith asked quietly. “And now, what do you think?”

“I will assume nothing,” Machen said, “and neither should you. But your account is as I imagined it, similar in every detail. When I reread my tale last night, hidden in the depths of the archive, I realized how ambiguous my descriptions were. Given the restrictions of length that I had to obey — it was for a newspaper article, after all — I intimated rather than described. But your account… it is as if you were me, sitting here all those years ago and conceiving the tale. Your words are my thoughts. I… I do not understand.”

Smith smiled and sank back into the pew, certain that truth was finding its own way. What that truth was, and how its complexities worked, did not concern him for the moment.

“And now,” Machen said, “perhaps you would be so good as to view the third west-facing window. It was there that my gaze rested twenty-five years ago when the bones of the tale came to me. And it is there that now lies an enigma stranger than I can bear. I was not sure, I doubted my recollection, but now…”

Smith stood and walked to the window, squinting at the sunset beaming in, enlivening the rich colours. “What?” he said. “What do you believe? Do you…”

He trailed off, feeling language leave him, understanding fleeing with every step he took. Reality twisted around him, and he was at once alone and accompanied by multitudes in this church. The spirits of a thousand worshippers looked over his shoulder as he stared at the window, and they were as amazed as he.

Set in an intricate web of lead and stained glass, St George stood tall and proud in a suit of golden armour; protector and saint, warrior and king.

And as the sunset turned red as blood, Smith saw that St George’s face was his own.

Smith turned to Machen and breathed the words, “Mr Machen, when you look at the stained glass window, what do you see?”

Machen looked from the face of St. George in painted glass, with the light of the dying sun shining through, to Smith. “I…”

Smith turned suddenly, tilting his head to one side, listening.

Machen began again, clearly puzzled by the man’s reaction. “I see the face I imagined all those years-”

Smith held his finger to his lips. “Just a moment,” he whispered. “I don’t think we’re alone.” He moved to the centre of the aisle and looked back toward the entrance doors. Beneath the archway that supported the tower above it was a void of deep shadow. I did hear something, he told himself. Or was it a sound? Perhaps it was more a sixth sense, warning him that someone had slipped into the church. He recalled the same feeling earlier when he’d sensed that he was not alone in the street; almost a primitive residual instinct, signalling that — what? He was being watched? Followed?

“Wait here a moment,” he told Machen, then moved quietly between the bench pews. He saw no one, but he thought he heard footsteps as light as feathers brushing the flagstone floor to his right. By now the daylight was almost gone. With blackout regulations in force there was no artificial lighting. The only illumination was the afterglow of the sun throwing ghostly projections from stained-glass windows onto pews, stone columns and white-painted walls. Smith turned and retraced his steps toward the altar, and multicoloured images of saints, unicorns, lambs and cherubs flowed across him, dappling him in greens, golds, reds and heavenly blues.

Maybe it’s this place, he thought. It’s working on my imagination, especially as this was the birthplace of Machen’s story. Then there’s the stained-glass depiction of St George, and his face… It’s like a firestorm in my mind. Truth and make-believe are stirring themselves together.

He glanced toward Machen, standing there with the light shining around him, looking every inch a saint conjured from the distant past, his silver hair changing colour as the remaining daylight seeped through the church windows. Machen watched him approach.

“Anyone, lieutenant?”

“No. My imagination’s getting a little jumpy of late.”

“No small wonder.” Machen turned to the stained glass of St George. “Now, this image. It dates back to the sixteen-hundreds. I should very much like it if you were to stand beside it so that I can…”

Machen continued speaking as Smith’s attention was drawn to a statue carved in dark wood. It stood so close to the lectern that Smith thought it formed the central column. The statue was in deep shadow and he could make out barely any detail, but for some reason he could not tear his gaze away from it, from the hard, rounded head to the over-large eyes that glinted eerily in the depths of that shadow. Machen was still talking about comparing the image of St George with Smith. Of collecting a camera. Of bringing respected individuals who could verify the uncanny similarity. Only Smith was no longer listening. The statue… there was something wrong… the silhouette was man-sized. And it did not obey any sculptor’s convention. Not the prime attribute of the statue which was: a statue shall not of its own volition move…

A rush of ice plunged down Smith’s backbone. The statue glided smoothly forward. Machen had still not noticed, and he continued talking, enthralled by the similarity between the painted representation and the flesh-and-blood figure of the lieutenant standing beside to him. “Remarkable, quite remark able. Of course, there are some that will dismiss it as coincidence… pure coincidence. But if I’m not-.”

“Mr Machen, stand back.”

“Pardon?”

“Back… get out of my way.” Smith unbuckled the holster flap and drew out his revolver.

“Lieutenant… Delamare, what on earth’s wrong?”

“Keep back.” Smith moved forward, pushing the old man to one side as the dark figure glided out of the shadows. It passed through the blood-red projection of Christ on the Cross. Dolorous. Martyred. The magnified eyes were momentarily superimposed on the large eyes of the man now approaching. A crown of thorns slid over the glossily dark head.

Then Smith realized why the eyes were so large and unblinking. As the man emerged from the dappling of refracted light Smith saw his goggles, the leather flying helmet sheathing his head, the pilot’s tunic and leather-gauntleted hands.

“Dear Lord,” Machen breathed. “That uniform is Luftwaffe!”

Smith cocked the revolver with his thumb and aimed. “Stay where you are. You are now a prisoner of war. Do you understand? Stay back.”

The man merely grinned. The goggles flashed red, green, yellow as he moved forward.

“Nein,” Smith barked. “Neinl Halt!”

But the German pilot did not stop, and neither did his smile falter. He moved forward faster, breaking into a run, heading straight for Smith.

Smith fired two shots point-blank into the man’s chest. The German charged into him, pushing him back. Smith tried to resist but his feet slid on the floor — his attacker’s muscular strength was formidable. Effortlessly the pilot shoved him back and back, until he slammed into a stone pillar with enough force to wind him.

And then the pilot’s hands found Smith’s throat to crush with agonizing ferocity. Instantly the air locked in Smith’s lungs; he could not breathe, could barely move. He could only look into the smiling face of the pilot, the eyes masked by the tinted goggles. As Smith’s vision blurred he saw Machen stride up behind the pilot, grab him by the tunic and try to haul him back. Despite his age, Machen possessed the powerful build of his countrymen, with long muscular arms that succeeded in breaking the pilot’s grip from Smith’s throat. However, the pilot repositioned his hands to force Smith backward again, as if trying to crush him into the stone walls of the church.

Smith grunted a breath into his lungs. Then, realizing that he still held the revolver, he jabbed the muzzle into the man’s side just above his right hip and fired a.38 calibre round through his body. It must have torn through kidney and intestine alike.

Even though the German twitched as the bullet passed through him, it did not shift his expression. The smile remained fixed — immobile, as if carved on that grey face. With his free hand the pilot struck back at Machen, knocking the old man to the church floor where he lay stunned by the uncanny force of the blow.

Then, with the speed of a striking cobra, those black gauntlets sliced through the air to seize Smith by the throat, once more squeezing his windpipe shut. Blood thundered in his ears. His vision blurred. Behind his attacker he saw Machen try to stand, but fail. Instead the writer sat supported by one hand, unable to act to save Smith, but still able to watch his imminent demise. Even though the lieutenant struggled with every shred of his strength, he could not break the steely grip on his throat. In front of him the German’s face distorted and rippled as Smith’s senses began to fade away.

And then the pilot moved that ballooning, shapeshifting head closer to Smith’s. The dark lips parted and a voice hissed: “Alea jacta est.”

For a second the man reverted to statue-like stillness. Then the pressure vanished from Smith’s throat, and the pilot crumpled to the floor with the limpness of an empty sack. Smith gasped a few frantic breaths. Air had never tasted so sweet or cool. He tried to cock the revolver in case the man renewed his attack, but his hands were still weak. Instead, he steadied himself against the pillar with his free hand while breathing deeply. The pilot lay flat on his back without moving. Maybe those pistol shots had hit their mark after all.

“It’s all right, Arthur,” he said at length. “He’s out for the count.” Smith walked unsteadily to the old man and helped him stand. “How do you feel?”

“I might be old, lieutenant, but I’m tougher than I look.” In the deep twilight Machen glanced down at the fallen pilot, then back at Smith. “Moreover, I don’t believe the man poses much of a threat now, considering the holes you’ve stitched in his chest.”

Smith nodded. “He must have bailed out from one of the bombers last night and has been hiding in the church. What he hoped to achieve with his bare hands, heaven alone knows; the fool should have given himself up.”

Machen regarded the pilot. “Just before he collapsed, lieutenant, he spoke to you?”

“That he did, but apart from a few words I don’t speak German.”

“Our friend didn’t use any German words. It was Latin.”

“Latin?”

“He spoke the phrase: Alea jacta est.”

Smith gave a grim smile. “My Latin is as good as my German, I’m afraid.”

“Alea jacta est, Lieutenant. It means ‘the dice are cast.’”

“The man must have lost his mind.”

“Or he was delivering a message to you.” Machen rubbed his jaw. “ ‘The dice are cast’. Meaning, I venture, a sequence of events has been triggered which will have a decisive result. Though one which no one can predict.”

“But who sent him? How did he know we’d be here in this church tonight? His commanding officer couldn’t have ordered him here when even we didn’t know we’d be in the place until a few hours ago.”

“Lieutenant Smith, you’ve missed the point.”

“What point?”

“The man’s commanding officer ordered him to bomb London, not deliver a warning in Latin to you.”

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know. But I dare say there was no mortal hand in this.”

“I disagree. There was.”

Machen looked at him levelly. “Whose mortal hand?”

“His. The pilot’s.”

Smith watched Machen kneel down with some difficulty beside the man.

“Don’t get too close, Arthur.”

“He won’t move again. Not of his own volition, anyway.”

“Then I’m a better shot than I thought.”

The writer pulled back the tunic collar and touched the pilot’s bare neck. “He is dead. And he’s been dead for hours.”

“Impossible.”

Machen tugged up the flying goggles to reveal two raw sockets devoid of eyes. The writer drew a breath of distaste. “This man died in his aircraft. The shock wave from an anti-aircraft shell destroyed his eyes, no doubt at the same moment that it disintegrated his plane. See how the arms and legs bend? Every bone in his body was shattered when he struck the ground. The neck is dislocated, allowing extreme-”

“Stop it… please don’t tell me any more.”

“So, you’ll realize why two bullets in the man’s chest didn’t stop him. You can’t kill a dead man.”

Smith shook his head, feeling reality flee with the daylight. “Tell me, Arthur. What forces are at work here?”

“I don’t know. But I believe some course of action is expected of you.” He looked up at Smith. “I’m beginning to wonder if you were the individual responsible in the Great War for summoning divine intervention on the battlefield.”

“No. I merely witnessed it. I wasn’t the instigator.”

“No?”

“No. How can I have been? I did nothing.”

“Maybe you didn’t have to perform a conscious act or ritual. Or even utter an incantation. Perhaps you acted as a passive catalyst-”

“No.”

“Or a conduit for a greater power.”

This was not what Smith had anticipated. He’d come seeking this man — looking for answers, not more complex questions. “Please, Arthur. I’d rather leave here now.” He could not look away from the face that had no eyes.

“Very well. It’s probably for the best.”

“We should inform the police about-”

“Don’t worry, he’ll be found soon enough. Come.”

Smith followed the writer as he hurried along the aisle. When they reached the door Smith glanced back.

The dead man sat bolt upright. The empty eye sockets fixed on him as if the corpse looked deep into his soul. “Alea jacta est,” the voice cracked the silence. “Alea jacta est.”

The dice are cast.

Saying nothing, believing nothing, Smith followed Machen out into the night.

For the first mile of their walk through the night-time streets Smith repeatedly glanced back, expecting to see the dead pilot loping after them. What he could do then to protect Machen and himself, he had no idea. The corpse had been immune to bullets, it was no respecter of sacred ground, and Smith was no match for its phenomenal strength.

However, by the second mile he was confident that the corpse was not following. For the time being, they were safe.

Smith glanced at Machen as they walked side by side. “You believe that somehow I invoked the miracle that I witnessed — the same one you wrote about in ‘The Bowmen’?”

“I’m reaching that conclusion. As I’m reaching the conclusion that we find ourselves on this quest to learn more about the matter, because somehow it will become relevant shortly. The dice are cast. I feel that we are somehow suspended between disaster and salvation.”

“And am I the key to this?”

“Yes, lieutenant, I believe you are. Your time is come again. You must act to save your nation.”

Smith scoffed, shook his head, desperate to deny this madness. “How? And save the country against what?”

“We are at war.”

“That I do know. But I can’t win a war single-handed. Am I to arrive in Berlin with a pistol in my hand and assassinate Hitler?”

“If only you could…” Machen tilted his head, his hair glinting silver in the near-dark. “All I do know is that you will be required to act… and act soon.”

“But I don’t know…”

“I don’t think I should be with you right now,” Machen said.

“What? What do you mean?”

“I’m an old man, and I’ve had more than my share of frights these past days. Much as I’ve sought wonders all my life, I simply feel right now that I should go home to my wife. She’ll be waiting for me. I’m very old, lieutenant. Very old. Soon the time will come when I know the truth of things for sure, but right now… right now, I believe it’s time for you to be alone. It’s time for me to leave things to happen.” He turned to walk away, and then glanced back at Smith, a smile askew on his face. “Who knows… maybe one day I’ll write a story about this.”

Machen left Smith on the darkened street. Within seconds the old man had disappeared into the shadows, lost to the night. Smith stared after him open-mouthed, feeling lost and loss.

A siren sang out in the distance, warning of yet another night of bombing and destruction, chaos and death. Smith’s confusion was supplanted by an increasing desperation, the idea that he had failed totally to carry out the task he had set himself. Though he had learned much since meeting Machen and escaping the bombed house, he had not discovered enough, nowhere near enough to effect any change. The bombers were still drifting in from the east, the slaughter would continue, and all the mysteries piled up behind him — the window, the living-dead German airman, his knowledge of what only Machen should truly know — they were nothing compared to the horror about to come once again to London.

Smith spun around, wondering what to do and where to go, when he saw the glow growing from the mouth of an alley along the street. To begin with he thought someone had forgotten to close their blackout curtains, but the glow was growing. Perhaps they were opening a door, ignorant of the light they were spilling, the target they were creating for enemy bombers? Smith tried to shout but his voice stuck in his throat. He ran instead, but soon slowed as the luminescence expanded, grew stronger… and it was a silvery light, a shine growing from the impenetrable dark, not spreading from one single source.

Smith came to a standstill, about to turn and run the other way, to follow Machen, find his home, track him down and extract the final truth.

The light expanded some more, its edges straining as if contained within a filled balloon. He even heard the creaking, wrenching sound of something beginning to split… the air-raid siren fading… the darkness becoming strangely deeper, the further the light pushed out…

And then it broke.

The silvery light erupted from the alley like a slow-motion explosion. Before Smith could react it was upon him, warm and slick across his skin, penetrating his ears and eyes and mind, showing him… showing him the truth that even Machen been unable to truly comprehend…

As realization struck Smith down and picked him up in its impossible arms, the first bombs of the night fell on his beloved city.

“How is your wife?” Smith asked.

“She’s well,” Machen said. “Scared. Worried that I’ve been out so much of late. But well. And I’ve told her… I’ve told her that this is my last meeting with you.”

Smith nodded. “I knew you’d want to see me again. And I guessed this was the best place to find you.”

They stood at the entrance to Highgate Cemetery, a ten-minute walk from the house in which they had first met. A group of men worked deep in the cemetery, gathering body parts from a huge crater carved out by a land mine the previous night.

“At least the dead cannot be killed,” Machen said.

Smith laughed. It was the first time he had laughed in a long time.

The two men stood silently for a few minutes: Machen, an old man, forever questing for the truth of things, the reality behind the facade; and Delamare Smith, a veteran of the Great War trenches, a man confused by what he had seen, now confused no more.

Now he knew the truth. He had glimpsed beyond the veil. And he knew that the old writer was waiting as patiently as he could to be told.

“There was a bomber carrying pneumonic plague,” he said at last. Machen stared at him aghast, but Smith went on. “It was hidden away deep within the largest formation of the night. Those flying around it were not told of the cargo — this was a plot of the Nazis, not the common German soldiery — but they were instructed to keep it safe, sacrifice themselves should the need arise. Many did.

“They were going to drop to three thousand feet and release it into the atmosphere, minute droplets that would carry on the breeze, disperse all across London, settling down on our capital just as the all-clear sounded and our women and children came up from the shelters, the Tube stations, the other holes in the ground we’ve been forced to hide in.”

“Like rats,” Machen said.

“Like rats. And like rats, they were going to slaughter us.”

“It will be… catastrophic!” Machen stared into the graveyard, as if looking for room for a million more graves.

“It would have been, had I not destroyed that bomber.”

Machen could only stare.

Smith smiled at the old man. “You’ll hear stories,” he said. “They’ll be told in newspapers and perhaps books over the coming days and weeks. Stories of an explosion in the night sky, bright as the sun, but a cool silver, not the angry yellow of fire. Stories of a German squadron blasted out of the sky, though there were no fighters nearby at the time.” Smith leaned on the wall, staring up at the sun as if enjoying the heat on his face for the very first time. “And I’m sure — I’m positive — that in the fullness of time, fighter pilots will begin claiming that they saw it all happen as well. The countless German aircraft, far too many for them to shoot down, strafed by spears of silver light. Brought down by angels.”

“I don’t…” Machen was speechless.

“Divine intervention, Mr Machen,” Smith said. He held out his hand. “It was an honour to meet you, sir. I don’t think I ever did tell you just how much I enjoy your work. How inspirational you’ve been to me. Your tales of wonders beneath and beyond what we accept… they have helped me. Without your writing…” He shook his head. “Well, it’s time for me to leave.”

Machen’s dazed wonder had been replaced by a calm acceptance. His eyes, still confused, were smiling once again. “It has been an honour for me, too, lieutenant. And now, I suspect…?” He nodded along the street, towards where his friend’s house lay in ruins.

Smith smiled and nodded. “You suspect right, sir. In the ruins, you will find something that may help you to understand.”

Without another word, Smith stepped past the old writer and walked down the street. He stepped across rubble blown into the road, shattered crockery crunching underfoot, but the further he went the fainter grew the sound of his footsteps, the smell of burning faded slowly away, and London opened her arms to receive him for ever.

Arthur Machen stood looking at the ruins of the house. How he and Smith had ever crawled out of there alive…

Eventually, gathering his courage about him, tapping the ground before him with his cane, he advanced on the wreckage. He had to climb a little mound of rubble and splintered floor-boarding before he could pass under the overhanging roof. It was stupidly dangerous, he was aware of that, but he had to know.

He had to.

It seemed that he had spent his whole life working towards this moment of epiphany.

He saw something protruding from beneath one of the blown-out doors. It was a boot-clad foot, the boot being First World War army issue. Next to the boot, shattered on the floor, the remains of a whisky glass caught the rays of the early-morning sun.

Breathing hard, grabbing the door’s brass handle, Machen stood and pulled. And he opened the portal to the ecstasy of truth.

THE END