1863
Clara looked up from her letter. Everything had gone quiet. Unnaturally so. A field hospital was a loud and chaotic place by nature. The conversations of doctors and nurses punctuated by the groans of the wounded and dying. Holding out her lantern, she walked through the row of camp beds. Empty. Each bed had held a man just ten minutes ago, when she had last made her rounds. It didn’t make any sense. She would have heard them, seated nearby as she was. Many of them could not sit up on their own, let alone walk.
“Doctor Wils—”
The words died suddenly in her throat. There was a figure standing at the end of the row of beds, just at the edge of the lantern’s light. Dingy rags hung from its body like a madman’s shroud, obscuring everything but its glassy eyes. She knew she ought to scream, that it was her best and only hope for survival. There were hundreds of soldiers camped within earshot of the hospital tent. They would hear her. They would come. And yet she could say nothing at all.
It moved closer, slow and inexorable. Clara tried again to cry out, tried to move, but it was as if her body was no longer her own.
“The suff…”
Its words were soft and drawn out like the hissing of a snake.
What do you want?
Whether she spoke these words aloud or only thought them, she didn’t know.
“The suffering must end…”
Then allow me to ease their suffering. That’s why I’m here.
The creature stopped just in front of her. Eyes unblinking, as if they could see her innermost being. Then it broke into a wide, terrible smile.
“We are the same, you and I,” it whispered. “You will learn this with time.”
This is awesome! The snakey hiss of "ease their suffering" somehow reminds me of Poe's "surcease of sorrow" and similar turns of a phrase.
I've found myself increasingly wandering out of crowded Culture City and off the beaten Path of Politics and into the foreboding-yet-fascinating Fiction Forest that borders the misty map of Substack, and I must say I am delighted with strange and wondrous things I'm finding there!
(Yes, I know the case could be made that most cultural and political discussions nowadays are complete fiction too, but you know what I mean haha)
Cool take on the legend! I especially like the imagery of the two glassy eyes staring out of the rags, reflecting the lantern; it reminded me of seeing the shining eyes of a wild animal just at the edge of a street lamp, while walking at night. Great creepy immersion.