The Spectre

I always wondered what it would be like to die. I pictured it a thousand ways. I imagined what would come after. Would I go to heaven? I don’t think I was a good enough person for that. What about hell? No, I wasn’t really a bad person. Would everything become void? Like I never existed in the first place?

What I got was something I never could have fathomed.

I remember when the first bullet struck my chest. Their superior ammunition was no match for my homemade plate. The pain was searing, like nothing I had ever felt before. But the second… the second strike was cold. The last thing I felt as I fell was the intense cold that told me I would not be getting up. Ever.

But I did wake up. I don’t know how. Or why. But I did. I found myself slumped against the wall, and I was cold. So unbearably cold. And I noticed something else: I didn’t feel any pain. Confused, I reached for my chest and I felt the plate shattered in its carrier. But out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something odd. My arm, it didn’t move. I sat bolt upright, and to my surprise my body didn’t come with me. And it got so much colder. I quickly slumped back down and tried to match the position of my lifeless limbs. A slight warmth spread from my neck to the rest of my body. I was comfortable. So I closed my eyes to rest.

I opened my eyes again. But something was different. The tunnel where I fell was different. Water trickled down the side of the wall in front of me, and light filtered in through a hole in the ceiling that wasn’t there before and lichen covered the ground where the light shone. How long had I been asleep? I glanced down, experiencing a wave of cold as I did. My clothes were tattered but still there. My skin, however, was shrunken and stretched over my bones. I must be dead. And I’d been dead a long time. Why had no one come to retrieve me? Was the war over? Did they forget me? I took better stock of my surroundings. To my right, my rifle lay rusting a few inches away from my outstretched hand. Was I that close to getting into Valhalla? I guess I’ll never know. I figured I had to come to terms with my own post-mortality, brave the cold and figure out what happened. I stood up.

The wave of frigid air that hit me was almost unbearable. Almost. I looked down at my body. In my last moments, I must have been standing near the wall of the tunnel. The spatter of my blood stained the concrete above my head, and more blood stained the ground under my crumpled and decayed corpse. There was a glimmer around my neck. The locket. The one that she gave me before I left to go to the front. She told me it would keep me safe; I guess she lied. No, she just didn’t know. I followed my decayed neck up to my face...it was painful to look at. I no longer looked like me. The skin was barely there, and what was left was stretched thin. My eyes were empty holes. I couldn’t bear to look any longer. I turned away.

Not wanting to stare at myself any longer I took stock of the room. There were two more corpses near where I fell. Both wore the green armband over their tattered clothes that signified they were my comrades. Their rifles lay underneath them; I wondered if they still clutched theirs. I took a step towards them, and the cold became even more intense. I shivered. I took another step and the cold became impossible to bear. I retreated towards my corpse and as I went it became a little less cold. I sat back down matched the position of my decayed limbs and once again the warmth spread from my neck. I noticed this time that it came from around my neck. From the locket. But the warmth soothed me until I closed my eyes and slept.

I woke once again. The hole in the ceiling had grown bigger. So big in fact I could see the skyline of the once grand city I had died defending. Now even the tallest buildings had fallen. Spires of green covered the protruding steel and concrete. It was gone. Just like I was. Just a remnant of its once self. A spectre of the past. But I wasn’t upset. And I don’t think the city was either. I, and it, was at peace.

I stood. The cold was intense again, but I tried to manage it. I looked back down at myself. My rifle had rusted to almost nothing. I was nothing but bones and rags. But the locket remained intact, like it was never touched by time. Maybe that’s what kept me here. I took a step away. The cold set in, but more manageable this time. I walked over to my fallen comrades. Through the rags and bones I saw their hands still clutched their rusted rifles. Lucky bastards.

I decided to move on. With each step away from my body the cold grew stronger. I strode down the tunnel and through a puddle of water that didn’t react as I passed through it. The air around me was frigid and getting colder by the second. I found a staircase out of the tunnel and ascended towards the light. I stepped into the open air, butthe wave of cold knocked me back onto the staircase. I stood on the top step and gazed out into the wilderness that certainly wasn’t there when I died. A squirrel sprinted away from the opening where I stood. Several birds took off and flew quickly away from me. It was a beautiful scene, but clearly it wanted no part of me. So I returned to the depths, shivering. I retraced my steps back to my pile of bones. I sat back down and repositioned my limbs, and the familiar warmth spread from the locket to the rest of my body. And I slept.

I awoke again, but this time it was different. I still felt tired, like I didn’t want to get up. But I heard voices. For the first time in a time longer than I could remember I heard voices. I opened my eyes. There were three people in the room, two men and a woman. They were picking over the corpses of my two comrades, talking in hushed yet excited tones. One of them pulled a helmet off the nearest one's head, and placed it in a plastic bag. Then one man approached me. He admired me for a second, his eyes showing interest and awe. He produced what I can only describe as a camera and took several pictures of me. I stood.

“It’s…. Cold” he muttered. He then straightened up and returned to his accomplices. They spoke some more and laid out some orange flags around my comrades bodies and mine. The woman announced it was time to go and the men began gathering their belongings. The same man approached my body again and I watched as he pulled the locket from around my neck. I felt a twinge of anger, and the cold got worse. He stuffed the locket into his pocket and looked around guiltily. Neither of the other people in the room noticed, and satisfied, he rejoined them. As he walked away, the cold intensified. I drifted after him, trying to stay warm. I followed them through the tunnels and out. As we exited the tunnel the birds around took flight. Critters scurried out of my path. The three people ahead of me complained of the chill. They approached a vehicle where a fourth man was waiting. They climbed in the back of it. I followed and sat next to the man with my locket.

He kept the locket with him for some time. And I had to follow him wherever he took it. I watched him age and decay, but not like I did. When he was close to death he passed the locket to his daughter, who in her old age passed it to her son. For generations I followed the locket from hand to hand, never able to rest. Eventually the locket was left in an attic. So I got as close to the locket as I could, but I could never get the comfortable warmth back on my body.

I was cold. I was lonely. I was dead.