Hordes of German bombers swarmed above London blocking out the moon: a winged steel serpent raining annihilation. Every blast shook the earth beneath her. Dust poured from above like sifted flour. The explosions came closer and closer together, drawing nearer. Soon the serpent would close upon itself, swallow its tail and rest, rearm, and return to begin again. A sheared water pipe disgorged black liquid into a pool beside Clara. Bits of children’s toys, building blocks, and the lifeless limbs of those less fortunate circled lazily in the water. 

The air raid siren enveloped everything, calling her back to life. She felt naked, unprotected. The thick dust in the air burned into her lungs. She rolled onto her back, hands flying to her face, then over her ears. Her shallow metal helmet was gone and the thick woolen overcoat was soaked through, impossibly heavy. Flames from the bombs licked at her out of the darkness. She drew away instinctively. 

The firelight danced across her uniform. The letters CD embroidered in gold thread shone briefly. A small, metallic pin in the shape of a crown had once accented the letters, pinned upon her chest the day she graduated into the Civil Defence Service. From as far back as Clara could remember, she had always felt as though she were made for that one purpose. Like her helmet, the pin had been torn away. She stood, kicking what remained of her helmet into the black pool. It crashed into other ruined objects, another broken toy. The siren’s scream continued, a disembodied warning issued from inhuman vocal chords.   

Clara cast off the leaden overcoat. It floated briefly on the surface of the pool before sinking. She whispered the motto from the CD poster. You can’t be certain, but you can be ready. Shivering hands flew between pockets taking inventory. Left pants pocket. Matches. Gone. Right pants pocket. Flashlight. Gone. Breast pocket. Whistle. Gone. All gone. A scorched and ruined bus burned across from her. Unmoving bodies had been cast about inside, disturbed and shuffled from their assigned seating.  

Flames encroached upon her shoes. Clara jumped back as fire surfed along the spreading petrol. For a moment, she met the gaze of a metallic green eye set deep in a ruined, ruddy face, thrown against a broken window on the bus now unblinkingly awaiting immolation. Filthy blonde locks draped across the face, highlighted by a stained bow that was once pink. Clara knew the girl was running from someone, but who? Why would she leave the house during a bombing? I have to find her. Have to protect her. She trusted me. 

II

The doll sat on the bottom shelf of the wardrobe gazing silently out from behind panes of streaked glass. She was all that Emily had to remember her late mother by. Everything else had been tossed in the bin. A crack whispered down the middle of the doll’s face. She had been shoved into the wardrobe along with the rest of the orphans’ things deemed valuable enough to keep for later sale, gold and silver mementos of dead mothers and dead fathers. Her girl’s mother died of fever shortly after receiving word that her husband had been killed in action in North Africa. “Aunt” Eunice, as she insisted they call her, took Emily in along with the other children. The inanimate contents of the wardrobe were relics of a happier time, abandoned to gather dust.  

When the lamps went out each night, the children huddled together against the cold, against the dark, for company, community, but most of all out of fear. Mountainous shapes surrounded the giant bed where they slept, lurking beneath dust covers. The children were too afraid to look beneath the shrouds, but if they had, they might have recognized familiar items from their former halls and parlors purloined by Aunt Eunice. 

Even if they would have dared, the children were not allowed to look beneath the tented covers, and certainly were never allowed to touch. Any time the children’s conversation or bodies drew too near, Eunice’s harsh voice and harsher hands were ready to dole out punishment. Yet the children’s conversation rarely strayed far from the topic of the endless possibilities beneath. The doll imagined along with the children, and spent much time with her face pressed against the glass, eyes darting between the unknown shapes and the children. 

It was after a particularly fanciful discussion amongst the children when the doll first saw the thing moving toward the children in the darkness. The children’s conversation grew fainter and fainter as each voice faded into sleep. Soon her girl’s was the only voice alone in the void. As the smallest child, Emily was pushed to the outside of the bed, as the doll had been pushed to the front of the wardrobe, runts of the litter shoved toward the cold to die. The doll shivered, listening to the even breathing of the children. Suddenly the sound faded away, overpowered by the rasping voice in the darkness. She screamed but no sound came out and no one heard. 

III

Wedged between the destroyed bus and a sea of rubble shot through with gnarled rebar, Clara inched along toward a distant speck of light. The girl must have gone that way. And what of the shape that pursued the child out from the safety of the house? How horrible must something be to draw a child into the open during a bombardment? A distant explosion rattled everything. The bus groaned and leapt, smashing her against the mountain of rubble and driving broken iron teeth into her leg. Finding herself pinned, she whimpered in pain. 

Trapped like a doll in a wardrobe, locked away and forgotten, she was unable to move to the left or right. She could only gaze outward at the horrors unfolding before her. Her button-like eyes could not be closed against the children’s terror. A line of dark figures stood rigid in the shadows to her right. She suddenly remembered something one of the other orphans had told her, as if he were beside her now, in the darkness, whispering. 

T.S. was small, almost smaller than she was. He was the only one who ever made room for her. He was pale, with translucent hair and steely grey eyes. “My father survived an avalanche in France. He and his men were on patrol when it happened. Twelve men–all buried. The trick is to stay calm. Sometimes you have to save yourself before you can help others. At first, father screamed and screamed into the fragmented faces of fallen trees and rocks entombing him. Finally, he calmed himself and started to dig.”

IV

You have to save yourself before you can help others. Clara closed her eyes and held her breath, managing to inch out from beneath the suffocating trolley. Nearby, a guttering voice spewed sibilant filth, slavering after the child. After her child. Save yourself. Picturing T.S. standing nearby, steadfast and ready for battle, gave her strength. Her fear retreated. Broken materials and objects surrounded her like the playroom of a giant destroyed in a tantrum. She had to escape, to find her girl, protect her from this thing. The drone of engines drifted down to her. The serpent had returned to the skies above. 

Shockwaves from bursting bombs rattled her teeth. Rocks shifted and the speck of light grew larger. A boulder fell aside and there was a path forward. For a moment, light fell through the shifting rocks upon an unspeakable shape before her. She closed her eyes and darted past the shape. Something grasped at her as she ran, stabbing into her shoulder. Clara gritted her teeth against the pain, and kicked out in instinctual revulsion, driving forward into the hole, past the monster. She did not look back. 

V

The doll slumped sideways, crashing into the tin soldiers. Frantic wings beat somewhere in the darkness; on another shelf of the wardrobe, a once beloved garment was being devoured by moths one thread at a time. Rough handling was wearing on the doll’s body. Aunt Eunice’s third husband only spoke when he yelled, only let go when things cracked. 

VI

Help the others. The noise of destruction sounded different here, but something was missing. The sound of the thing behind her was gone, washed away by the tide of rubble from above that now sealed the passage. She stood in a partially-collapsed subway tunnel lit by flames drunkenly dancing within a barrel. Her back pressed against the now sealed opening through which she had passed. Like an undertaker soliciting business, this tunnel welcomed all who flocked there for shelter, entombing not happily, but with a sense of purpose. One leg flagged beneath her, pierced through by a red iron fang protruding from the rubble. The belligerent flames wasted no time illuminating the white bone at the center of the wound. 

I volunteered for the Civil Defence to help others. But sometimes you have to help yourself before you can help others. A plan formed:  her porcelain white hands darted to her waist. The mass-produced belt and buckle had been issued along with the rest of the uniform on graduation day. It was one of the few reminders of that happy time and now it would serve to bind her flesh. 

The metronome of her life beat out onto the gnarled rail in 4/4 time as Clara gingerly excised the belt’s tooth. The belt was off now. She maneuvered it under the leg. The ankle twisted sickly away as she tightened the belt. Diesel fumes and smoke waltzed into her lungs as she screamed.

VII

“My father saved a man atop a trench in France. No one else believed him. But I did. At night the rats would come and take the dead, and those that held to life by one string and were pulled toward death by another. Father said you could hear them coming, a million-mouthed monstrosity. They were an abomination the men feared just as much as the guns, gas, and Germans.”

“The larger men were swarmed first: more mass meant more meat. Father said they could smell blood, and liked it best when it was not long out from the body. Another soldier lay just above the lip of father’s trench. A German bayonet had broken off inside him and he was bleeding out through the jagged tear. Father said the man was worried about his wedding ring and kept calling out for someone to take it from him.”

“Beyond the wall of the trench was death – Father knew it. He crouched, biting into his fist to stop the tears. Then they heard the lumbering bulk of a million blood-stained paws. It was the only sound worse than the whistle that drove the soldiers out of the trench. The wounded man screamed. Father knew death dwelled beyond the trench, but the man’s screams roused him. He rushed to the edge and peered out into a sea of blood red eyes. Gathering his wits, father climbed out.”

“The rats reached the man at the same time as my father. They drank at the pool of blood, inching toward its pulsing source. Father emptied his pistol into the swarm as it tore the flesh from the man’s legs. He threw the pistol into the rats and grasped a discarded spade. One rat, larger than all the others, stared not at the thrashing man on the ground, but into the eyes of my father. He said something danced in those eyes that should not exist. Father smashed its head in with the spade. The swarm paused, momentarily leaderless. Father drove forward scattering thousands of rats as a German gunner noticed him and opened fire.”

“Father pulled the man back, reclaiming him for humanity from the rats and bullets. They fell, huddled together in the mud at the bottom of the trench. Father wrapped what remained of the man’s legs as tight as he could and promised to return the wedding ring to his wife. The man died quietly as the sun rose. Father saved him. He saved that man.”

VIII

Clara’s jaw ached. She cinched the belt tight as she could stand, feeding the metal tooth back into the worn brown leather. The light had faded around her. A broken piece of pipe caught her eye. Standing, she limped over to it and braced her foot on one end. Leaning all her weight forward while pulling the length of the shaft backward, the pipe groaned and yielded into a small crook. Now all I have to do is walk forward. The white of her bone seemed dull in the fading light against the bloody metal tooth that held the tourniquet together. 

IX

T.S. didn’t have any of the things the others had. No pictures of his father or mother remained, no change of clothing, no mementos of a life before. What T.S. did have was purpose. What T.S. had was courage. What T.S. had was white-hot rage burning against his fears.

After the first night the voice intruded upon the children’s peaceful slumber, Clara and T.S. became closer than ever. She told him about the shape in the darkness, how it had come and gone, unseen and unheard by the others. Had it been a dream? She asked this of him and he answered. “I don’t think so. You see, it takes many shapes, many forms, but is always the same. What you saw, what you heard was real. And it doesn’t matter if no one else saw it. If no one else believes you. I believe you. And we’re going to fight it. Together.”

The children made fun of his pale skin and stiff joints. They would burn him with matches and cast him into muddy puddles, pretending he had narrowly avoided an artillery strike. When she looked at his scuffed and filthy body, it told her a story of defeat. But behind quivering shoulders, she caught glimpses of something else. Something majestic, exquisite and radiant on even the most dreary of days.

The voice penetrated the safety of the room again and again. No one except T.S. believed her. How dare she invent horrors to frighten the others. How dare she sound a false alarm in a time of such fear. Aunt Eunice told Emily she was worse than the Jerries and would be punished for it. The kind, old dog had disappeared, which meant a vacancy. And so, as a result of sleepless nights in the doghouse, she stopped telling. 

The shadow’s voice tonguing its way toward her from the window of the children’s room nearby wasn’t what made the nights horrifying. What made the nights horrifying were the sounds the children made as the shadow broke them one by one. Children were snatched from peaceful sleep and she alone bore witness to their passage. But the children never spoke. 

“You know–the last thing my father said to me, the very last thing? He told me another story about his time in France. Father was wounded in the fighting to take a ridge overlooking a small stream. The guns reduced men to nothing, excising everything that made them men. But they did not stop the men charging forward. For days and days, the dying wounded crawled back as best they could. Every inch earned before expiration meant dying closer to home.” 

“Father was lucky. He made it to a field hospital and said the boys with him had it much worse. Young men suffocated silently in the darkness of the tent, skin scorched and scoured away by mustard gas. He saw tears fall from burnt and bandaged eyes.”

“This was near the end of the Great War. Father said it had to end. Only embers and shattered bones remained for the war to consume. That day a priest walked among the beds, giving Last Rites to as many as he could, knowing he could not reach them all. Father said the priest’s eyes didn’t look at him but through him, at something beyond him, and only smiled sadly. That night, a barrage began and before the wounded could be evacuated, a shell fell into the tent, smashing the one vacant bed.”

“Everything stopped. Like a pocket watch, the world ceased to tick. Dozens of wide eyes flicked back and forth beneath sodden bandages in the darkness, working by will alone to push the bomb in the middle of the floor away. And then a young doctor, a nice man who showed pictures of his children to anyone who would look, who wrote and read poems about his wife to the recovering, a man who had everything to live for, calmly removed his stethoscope, picked up the shell, and carried it out and away from the tent.”

“And the pocket watch world sprang to life again. The shell exploded, knocking the tent down, but sparing all inside. No part of the doctor was ever recovered. It was as if he had never existed. The survivors from the tent ringed the crater that had devoured the doctor and filled it with their tears. That doctor and those like him, they are why the thing in the darkness can never win, why we’re going to save them all.” He hugged her. Comforted her. He was the only friend Clara had.

X

We’re going to save them all. She growled out each syllable as she hobbled along the abandoned rails, wincing as the crutch struck each crosstie. She took two more steps and stopped. A miasma enveloped her, stinging her eyes. It was a smell she knew intimately; it had accompanied each exploitation, abuse, and attack the children received at the hands of the monstrous shadow. The first fingers of the scent were a cloak of flowers teasing their way into her nostrils. Then the masquerade was shattered by the clandestine burst of carrion stench wafting from underneath. She gagged against the oppressive waves, moving forward. 

Each step drove the bent pipe painfully into her armpit. She thought of the sleepless nights, spent powerlessly observing and then drowning in a torrent of shame and guilt as the sun shone through the glass panes each morning. Seeing the faces of the children, their bodies, the candles in their hearts and fire behind their eyes snuffed out was almost too much to bear. 

Rusty rails twisted to the right at her feet, rounding a blackened corner. Resting for a moment against a scorched brick wall, she heard the voice. There, at the end of the side passage. Somehow it had overtaken her, surpassed her. And she recognized the words the voice was saying. They were words of comfort and assurance poorly disguising thinly veiled threats. T.S. would have told her to be brave. He wouldn‘t be afraid. He didn’t know how to be afraid. 

She felt drunk on the fumes of the miasma. She had never been this close to the source before. Moonlight from high above danced among spastic movements made by the creeping shadow. It hadn’t touched Emily. Yet. Her girl cowered. Tiny, doll-like hands shielded her eyes from the horror. The thing wouldn’t touch until its eyes had had their fill.

It wasn’t too late. We’re going to save them all. She moved within inches of the monster, and saw the form, always obscured by the layers of miasma, clearly for the first time. Tentacles writhed outward from a body that was all greedy mouth and glinting eye. The tentacles stood on the brink of ecstasy in rapt attention, listening for their cue. The girl’s sobbing stopped and the monster turned. 

XI

T.S. stood next to her in the moonlight. “That’s right! It doesn’t matter whether we win or lose. Whether we die fighting. Whether we never see each other again. As long as there are those who will listen, it can never truly win. Don’t you see? You can’t think about it in terms of our lives. Of our end. All that matters is the act of defiance. If you stand with me, we drive a firebrand into its eye. It doesn’t know how to fight. All it can do is exploit. We’ve already won. Why are you crying?”

XII

Clara blinked against the fumes as the great maw unfurled, revealing row upon row of dull and cracked teeth. His tentacles moved closer. Soon he would feast upon Emily. Inside the sea of teeth, she saw something wriggling. An eye lurked deep inside the bowels of the mouth. The eye bulged open, breaking through a seam of phlegm. And then the eye was open. “It ends here!” Clara screamed, raising the crutch and driving it into the iris of the mouth’s eye as it closed. A million razor points of darkness welcomed her. 

XIII

LONDON – Two hundred missing, feared dead in last night’s Nazi bombing raid. Rescue crews are still working to uncover survivors and remains. Burst gas and water lines continue to frustrate efforts. An orphanage was struck, but miraculously, all the children were spared. A man was found dead by policemen at the edge of the rubble. “He reeked of booze,” said Lieutenant Murray of the London Metropolitan Police. “It was as if he’d drowned in the stuff. But that isn’t what killed him. Seems he’d run outside at the first sirens, chasing after a girl. We found her safe and sound in a nearby shelter. Not unusual for children to get separated from their guardians these days, what with the war on.” The man was found facedown in the street. Nearby, the broken body of a rusted blue tin soldier was found. It is believed the man stepped on it and fell forward onto the Civil Defence doll that had belonged to the girl who fled. The doll’s shattered leg drove straight into the man’s eye, killing him instantly. “The girl told us what went on in that house, what he did to the children, what his wife saw but chose to ignore. Unspeakable things,” Murray continued.  Reports indicate the mistress of the orphanage died in the blast and the children will be moved to St. Anthony’s. Murray’s final words were, “Thank God those dolls fell where they did. That’s all I can say. Thank God.”

---