LE DESERTEUR

Katherine Webb

       

            Jess goes to the farm alone to start repairing her heart. She and Simon had booked the holiday months before, when things had been going fine. And then he’d asked for space, for time to think, and within a fortnight he’d moved in with a blonde woman called Laura. Simon told Jess to cancel the booking, but in defiance she did not. The rent was a bargain for Normandy. It was an old worker’s cottage, gently falling into peaceful dilapidation. No television, no central heating, no swimming pool, no telephone. As she drives into the yard Jess wonders briefly about the heating – the plan had been to share bodily warmth. There would be none of that now.

 

The old man who greets her introduces himself only as le patron. An expression of deep melancholy sits heavy on his face. He looks past her at the empty car, and his face falls even further.

  “Vous-êtes toute seule, madame?” He asks. Jess bridles. You are alone?

  “Oui!” She replies, as brightly as she can. Can’t a woman travel alone? But le patron looks troubled as he escorts her to the cottage through a carpet of russet leaves. He unlocks the door and hands Jess the key, and she’s wondering if he’ll go without another word when he turns, and says:

  “Faites attention, madame…prenez garde du déserteur.” Beware of the deserter? Jess translates, with a shock. How can he know? Has Simon telephoned him? “J’habite là-bas, si vous avez besoin...” He adds, pointing at the main farmhouse. Jess frowns, and wonders sadly when it was that she’d stopped being a mademoiselle, and had become a madame.

            Jess explores the cottage and tries not to notice what Simon would have loved about it. Crooked stairs, stone floors, drifts of papery leaves blown into the hall from the dormant trees outside; the bare minimum of furniture and a massive fireplace blackened by years of soot and ashes. The air is musty with the dry, worn smells of ancient wood and stone, like the inside of a church.

 

It is also cold. Outside, the December sun sets in a white sky, briefly flaring the western horizon with wan yellow light. Jess makes herself a cup of tea in the sparse kitchen, rinsing dead flies from a mug while the kettle slowly heats. She finds the wood store outside as darkness falls, and carries several huge logs to the fireplace. But there’s no kindling; just an axe wedged into a block by the woodpile. Simon would have loved that. Jess takes a deep breath, and banishes him from her mind. She wonders whether to go and ask le patron, but it seems a long walk to the farmhouse in the dark, and she can’t see any lights on inside. He hadn’t seemed the most giving of hosts, and the neglected orchard outside is littered with fallen branches. Jess pulls her sleeves down over her hands and wishes she’d brought gloves.

 

The light from the cottage doesn’t reach very far into the darkness, and Jess’s own shadow gets in her way as she stumbles into the orchard. And a torch, she thinks, as her breath clouds into the evening air. Overhead, the skeletal branches of the apple trees trace an intricate pattern against the sky. Jess’s face and hands are soon scratched as she searches, cursing gently under her breath. And then she pauses.

 

There is a sound – she’s sure she heard it. She holds her breath and it comes again – the wheeze of a laboured breath, the whisper of a footstep in the leaves. Jess’s heart quickens and her throat tightens.

  “Who’s there?” She calls, alarm making her voice loud and abrupt in the stillness. Remembering where she is, she tries again. “Qui est là?” There’s no reply, and Jess struggles to hear over the noise of her own heartbeat. It comes again. A breath, more like a gasp, pained and ragged, and more rustling movement. It’s coming from a stone barn, sitting to one side of the orchard with its doorway gaping blackly. Heart pounding, Jess takes a few steps towards the barn, hugging her collection of kindling to her chest like a shield.

 

            But then her feet falter and she stops, hit at once by a feeling of dread so strong that her arms fall limply to her sides and the kindling tumbles to the ground. The damp evening air seems to freeze in her chest. There is something so wrong about the figure at the side of the barn, something so wrong that her every instinct screams at her to run even if she doesn’t know why. But her legs are like water and she stares at him, her own blood roaring as loud as an ocean in her ears. It should be too dark to see him, she thinks frantically; it is too dark to see him!

 

            But see him she can. A small, thin man. He leans one hand against the barn for support, and staggers with every step. He has a muddy stick to help him, but seems too weak to use it; and he wears the tattered remains of a uniform. The fabric gleams wetly over his stomach, around a ragged tear. He looks at her with a face full of pain and fear, his skin alight with a dull, feverish sheen. Suddenly, he opens his mouth to speak and Jess can smell him – a smell so strong and foul, so loaded with decay that bile rises in her throat. He shouts something at her, but for the pounding in her ears Jess can’t make out the words; and then he is gone, stepping through the doorway of the barn into a darkness that swallows him in an instant. Released, Jess flies back to the cottage.

 

            Shivering in the bright room, Jess manages to light the fire with an old magazine. She huddles close to it and wishes that there were curtains. The black windowpane makes her skin crawl, and at any moment she expects to see that pale, damaged face appear at the glass. There is no signal on her mobile phone, and in waiting for one to appear, Jess finally falls asleep.

 

            By morning the pale blue sky and lemony winter sunshine convince Jess that she was frightened by the darkness, nothing more. The man was probably a local drunk, a homeless man - harmless and pitiful. After a strong coffee she decides to go and see if he’s still there. If he is, she will take him some coffee, and tell le patron. The barn is empty. Light streams through a window high in the wall, and there is nothing inside but a mouldering layer of hay on the earth floor.

           

Jess passes a solitary day visiting churches and villages and cafés by herself. She shops for food and wine, unable to face having dinner out, and wonders whether it was such a good idea to come to France alone. At dinner she drinks a whole bottle of red wine, just to feel it singing hotly through her veins. But it only makes her sad, and angry with herself. She is too alone with her thoughts here, where there’s nothing to distract her. She goes to the window and stares at her own pale reflection. It’s a clear night and the distant moon shines down, outlining the trees in silver. Jess glimpses a faint movement by the barn, and though her heart beats faster, the wine makes her bold.

 

            Not sure if she intends to help or confront the hobo, Jess strides over to the barn with her chin defiantly high. But when she gets close to the doorway she falters. It’s too dark inside. The blackness is like a solid wall. She thinks about calling out but the words die in her throat. Then, like a thunderclap, a wind blows from nowhere, streaming through her hair, icy and fast, making tears pour down her face. Jess takes a step back and stumbles, abruptly sitting down on the frosty ground. The wind whips at her, colder than the grave, stripping the wine’s warmth from her blood. Sick with fear, she sees that the trees are motionless. The wind does not touch them even though it screams in her ears like a thousand voices raised in warning.

 

            Then he is there, appearing at the side of the barn in the blink of an eye. Jess wipes her eyes but they blur again, and the wind throws her hair into her face so that she has to scrabble at it, desperate to keep her eyes on him because, she is suddenly sure, if he turns towards her, her heart will fail. His broken form radiates a terror and madness so palpable it hits her like the stink of him, stronger than before: a pall of anguish and decaying flesh, of suppurating wounds and rampant infestation. She is closer than before and can see more of his uniform, more of the dreadful wound in his midriff. His feet are bare and darkly swollen with rot. He mutters as he passes, in a voice that seems to come from far away; and Jess catches one phrase as he steps into the darkness and vanishes: “Je ne reviens pas!”

 

            Jess runs to the farmhouse and knocks loudly, gasping for breath. Her mind shies from what she has seen, from what she suspects, what she knows about the man by the barn. The man is not alive. His uniform is archaic, perhaps from World War I; the wound in his stomach is too grave, the smell of him too foul. No such being could be alive. She remembers what le patron said when she arrived: Prenez garde du déserteur. Is this, then, the deserter he was warning of? The farmhouse is as ramshackle as the cottage, and dark. Jess picks her way to the back door and knocks again, peering through the glass, but there is no sound within, no movement. Some geese fossicking in the muddy grass pause to hiss at her. Grateful for this company at least, Jess sinks down onto the step.

 

The bitter cold soon rouses her. She has to get back to the cottage – she has to go back past the barn. As she approaches it her mind fills up with dread: a terrible, debilitating fear that increases with every step; but she is dragged closer by grim fascination, by the unbidden need to talk to the man, to find out why he remains. As Jess crosses the barn’s threshold an icy shiver slides down her spine, and she shudders. The silence is deafening, and the darkness complete. Her heart is high in her throat, choking her - she never knew it could beat so fast, so painfully. Gradually, she discerns a shaft of pale moonlight coming through the window, and where it falls she sees him, curled up on his side. It takes every ounce of will she can find to speak, and not run from the terrible presence.

 

 “Qu’est ce que vous voulez?” Jess whispers. What do you want? As soon as she speaks he tries to rise, using his muddied stick to lever himself up. Jess’s stomach quivers to see him move.

  “Je ne reviens pas! Jamais!” He croaks, his voice thin and distant. “Je suis blessé! Je ne reviens jamais!” I’m wounded; she understands; I’m never going back! She has no words to reassure him, no words to comfort him; no words to save herself because when the man looks at her his eyes are feverish mad and desperate, and the stick he has been leaning on is his rifle. He raises it slowly, the barrel weaving to and fro, and Jess watches, mesmerised, her mind so crippled with terror that she can no longer think. It’s not real, she tells herself frantically; but as the soldier squints against the coming retort, Jess shuts her eyes, and is deafened, and knows only blackness thereafter.