Captain Wright returns to the dugout with dark eyes and a white pinch of tension around his mouth.
“Whisky,” he says.
“Quiet out?” Jack asks as he pours two glassfuls.
“Yes,” says Wright. His hand twitches. “I came across Bennett. Lent him a smoke. ”
“And?”
Wright barks a laugh.
“Bennett bought it last week.”
Jack doesn’t know what to say. That to die and come back here would be unthinkable; that Wright is mad; that they are all mad.
“Are you all right?”
“No.” Wright dashes back a generous measure of whisky. “The little swine still has my lighter.”
Author’s Note: I can’t imagine soldiers on the Western Front being particularly fazed by ghosts. Case in point, the moving yet matter-of-fact Charles Sorley poem “When You See Millions Of The Mouthless Dead” which inspired the title of this piece.
This gave me chills reading it. The bit about the lighter will stay with me.
Wonderful piece, and very memorable.
Such creepiness in so few words is difficult, but this story gets it bang on.