Ghouljaw and Other Stories (32 page)

I flinched when I heard, “Hey,” hissed from behind me. Meadows. I was still furious, but it was a familiar and complicated emotion when dealing with my friend.

“What the hell do you want?”

Meadows had removed his M-frames, and his dark eyes darted around. “When we get back, after this, I’m going to talk to somebody.” We walked on for a few seconds. As if I didn’t comprehend, Meadows added, “I’m going to get help when we get released.”

I thought about that for a moment. “If we get released in one piece,” I said, meaning for it to sound more lighthearted than it did. Meadows simply nodded and looked away. I felt like doing something, patting him on the shoulder, maybe; of course this would have been wildly inappropriate. “If you’re serious about that,” I said eventually, “then I’ll go with you.” In the rapidly receding light, Meadows squinted over at me. I shrugged. “There’s some stuff I need to get off my chest.” I glanced around at the other soldiers—Flood, Ricketts, Harper. “I think there’s stuff we all need to talk about.” We walked in companionable silence as Strauss led us north for another hour or so.

A man emerged from the rocks up ahead. He was dressed in dark, dusty villager garb, and he began gesticulating and babbling something in Pashto. As opposed to most of us, Strauss fully seemed to expect this. Our lieutenant never drew his handgun, but simply raised a wrinkled sheet of paper. The stranger inspected the ragged paper, said something else, and began walking in the direction from which he’d emerged.

The village, primitive even by Afghan standards, nearly blended in with the dark and jagged folds of mountain stone as we approached. The most prominent structures were composed of some sort of mold-mottled stucco or clay. Surrounding the village proper was a jumble of crudely assembled shacks and huts. It was very dark now. Orange light from various fires sent flickering shadows against the cul-de-sac of rock walls that rose up around the habitation.

Strauss ordered us to hold our position on the perimeter and motioned for Flood to accompany him. Our translator was inspecting a small handheld device (likely a navigation instrument), the illumination glinting off his glasses. Flood seemed to hesitate before jogging forward to catch up with our lieutenant.

There was a rush of movement and chatter from one of the outbuildings as a gray-bearded man confronted Strauss and Flood. The man was wearing a wide, dark turban and was dressed in a long white bisht—certainly the village elder or at least some sort of governor. But I was less focused on the man than on his entourage. To my surprise, he was not surrounded by Kalashnikov-toting bodyguards, but rather a procession of burkha-clad figures. These women—what I presumed were his wives—were startlingly tall, towering over the governor. Their unusual height, paired with a nearly imperceptible swaying—as if engaged in some silent chant—added to my unease.

A large fire illuminated the village elder and his escorts. Strauss raised his voice a few times while Flood seemed to play peacemaker. Eventually, Strauss sent Flood back to our group.

The scowling translator would have strode right past me, but I stopped him with an urgent whisper. “What’d he say?” Flood ignored this and continued walking, so I followed, jogging up behind him. “What the hell happened?”

Flood stopped. I had never seen our calm-and-collected translator so hostile. For an instant, his expression suggested that—whether verbally or physically—he was going to lash out at me. But Flood finally blinked and licked his lips. “I’m not sure . . . exactly.” I opened my mouth to ask why but he cut me short. “The guy’s talking in some sort of mishmash of Pashto, Uzbek, and . . . something else I don’t recognize.”

I glanced over my shoulder. The other guys in the squad were holding their positions, while Strauss continued speaking with the elder, his contingent of black burka-clad women swaying around him. Again I appraised the translator. “What are we doing here?”

Flood grew more agitated. “We weren’t supposed to leave Deh Ravod—we weren’t supposed to split the squad. Ceghak wasn’t part of the plan.”

Strauss raised his voice, and Flood looked past me to see what the problem was. He was about walk away, but I grabbed his arm. “What is that guy saying to Strauss?”

Now, physically halted, Flood looked genuinely pissed. But he didn’t pull his arm away, not yet. Through clenched teeth he said, “I’m telling you—I . . . don’t . . . know.” Flood flicked a glance over at Strauss. “The old man’s not one of our informants. In fact . . . Strauss doesn’t seem interested in the Taliban at all.”

I didn’t have much time. “So what—”

“Goddamn it, Craft,” said Flood, yanking his arm from my grip. “The guy keeps saying something about . . . an exchange.”

Not unusual. Most of our intelligence resulted from one sort of symbiotic trade or another. “So what?”

Flood discreetly unholstered his Beretta, checked the clip, and reholstered the handgun. “He keeps using a word I can’t figure out.” Flood began to walk away, but stopped. “The closest thing I can figure is that he means”—he shook his head—
“fish.”

Strauss called our unit over, ordering us to follow him deeper into the village. Sunlight, along with the purplish streaks of twilight residue, had completely disappeared. The village was a jumble of fire-pit painted stone and sharp-edged shadows.

The village elder did not budge as we marched past him and his entourage. Closer now, I found myself having difficulty even making eye contact with the black-clad figures. I’m about six feet tall, but these figures were at least two inches taller than me. I could hear the elder mumbling something. He seemed to be solemnly appraising us, examining each one of us. Maybe he was just doing a head count.

I peered directly at one of the faces of the burkha-covered sentinels, scrutinizing the thin-slitted opening in the mask. The eyes and skin were all wrong. Not only did they never blink (nor really look at anything, for that matter), but there was a waxy quality about the eyelids and surrounding flesh. I had the notion that, if touched, the whitish tissue would have the same fat-flimsy texture as uncooked bacon. And the eyes were cloudy and too bulgy, as if milky marbles had been hastily inserted in the sockets of a wax dummy. I looked away.

As we passed I noticed the smell—something nice, like lavender, mingled with something fetid, like sun-spoiled shellfish.

We were snaking our way between the shacks when something occurred to me: I hadn’t seen any kids. Children, in almost all our encounters, were always part of the backdrop. But here. But here, the absence of children was distracting.

Strauss stopped at a canvas-covered hut and again split-up our already meager team, ordering Flood and several others to stay behind. The rest of us followed the lieutenant into the hut. I gave Flood a lingering look as I passed, which he returned with a hard-to-read expression—something like reluctance, disgust, and (I like to think) a signal of vigilance.
Watch your ass, Craft
.

The interior of the fire-lit tent appeared as you’d imagine. Shadows. Clutter. Dust-grimed faces, but still none of them children. Because it was adjacent to the mountain, one of the walls was all stone. A large, intricate carpet was attached to the wall. Strauss silently regarded the few people in the hut before walking over to the rug and yanking it aside, revealing the large, open mouth of a cave.

Strauss ordered on our night-vision goggles. “Ricketts,” Strauss called out, waving the soldier forward to take point. Both men clicked on low-watt flashlights to provide faint ambient illumination. Single-file, we followed each other into the tunnel.

We shuffled through a warren of twists and turns for over thirty minutes. The cave floor throughout was dusted with sand, making the downward-sloping path easy to distinguish. Meadows was a few paces in front of me. Gradually, the cave grew colder and the walls began to glisten with moisture. I caught the mineral whiff of water.

Up ahead came a sudden rustling of equipment and a rush of whispers. Instinctively, I crouched and braced my weapon. Strauss, his coarse voice echoing through the cave, said, “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Nothing happened for a few long moments. Then, through the green-glowing screen of my goggles, I saw them.

Three of the towering, burkha-covered figures were moving toward us. Moving isn’t the right word—gliding, almost floating. Strauss barked out another order to hold fire as the black-caped shapes silently swept past. In the green glow, I watched them—their masks, that narrow strip exposing that flimsy skin and unblinking, milk-murky eyes. As the final cloaked figure drifted by, I noticed something on the cave floor, some sort of dark liquid streaking a trail behind the retreating figures. When they disappeared I again paused on the lines of the inky, foul-smelling excretion. I nearly let go of my weapon in favor of clutching my nose and mouth.

In a few seconds we were moving again. The ceiling and body of the cave opened up into a wide passage. Strauss called for us to stop and ordered Harper to the front. Again: traded whispers. Harper nodded, hefted his weapon, and hunched low, moving quickly around a ragged crook of cave wall.

I imagined Meadows up there—our squad’s hero, grip tight on his carbine, molars clenched like vices, eyes narrowed on the point of attack. I, on the other hand, continuously had to coax myself into action to avoid being court-martialed for disobeying a direct order.

The screaming started without any sort of preceding commotion. There was a sporadic cadence of gunfire, but it was brief. My heart surged and my stomach lurched when I heard Harper begin to articulate the word
help
.

But Strauss remained silent and unmoving. At one point I saw Ricketts try to stand from his crouched position, and Strauss turned around and growled something at him. Ricketts lowered himself again.

Harper’s cried for help deteriorated into tormented, inarticulate shrieks. I had the nauseous notion that he was caught in some sort of spiderweb.

We all tensed as faint light blossomed up ahead, a pulsing glow that seemed to grow in intensity along with Harper’s insane screams. As the light grew brighter, I pulled off my goggles. The greenish-blue light soon swelled strong enough for me to see the detail of my teammates’ faces. So it was the screaming. I know that now. Some sort of connection between the ferocity of the screams and the brilliance of the light.

Meadows was looking back at me, staring at me over his shoulder. There was something in the angle of his neck, a small shift of his chin, an unspoken question:
If I make a move, will you back me up?

Meadows was also asking to get court-martialed or possibly shot. I meant to give my friend some sort of response, but I stayed still. Eventually Meadows took his eyes away from me.

I was expecting a delay, but Meadows simply sprang forward, gun trained in front of him, defiantly sprinting ahead down the tunnel, the blue-green light casting his swift-moving shadow against the walls. “Goddamn it, Meadows,” growled Strauss as the insubordinate soldier ran past, disappearing around the rocky elbow of cave wall. Strauss, gesticulating with his handgun, spun on the rest of us. “No one move—no matter what you hear, no one move. Stick with the plan and hold your positions.”

Mercifully, Harper’s screams were drowned out by the resumption of gunfire. Meadows. Even at this distance I could hear the jingle of fired casings bouncing off the rock. The sound of machine-gun fire blended with my racing heart. Meadows had asked for my help. He’d asked me to be something other than a coward.

I shoved myself from the cave wall and lurched forward, racing past my comrades and the screaming and cursing Strauss. I can’t be certain, but I believe I heard our lieutenant shout, “You’re not part of the plan!”

Not slowing, I rounded the corner and hunkered into my weapon. The machine-gun fire suddenly ceased along with the pain-laced soundtrack of Harper’s screaming. But I could hear the lapping and sloshing of water now. The flickering, algae-tinted light throbbed within the narrow corridor.

Another sharp turn, and I drew up on an open space and tried to make sense of what I was seeing. Positioned in a shadowed alcove was part of an Army MLRS—a multiple rocket launcher system. It was just the loader module, twelve square compartments that usually contained M270 rockets. There must have been another entrance somewhere big enough to haul this thing in here. I didn’t care about logistics at the time, I don’t care now. I crept closer, trying to get a better look at the rockets inside.

I could see the tops of their heads. The corpses of children—the youngest probably around seven years old—were fit snugly within the dozen rocket compartments. Their pale faces were quite distinct in the diffuse glow. Some of their eyes were open. Some had died with agonized expressions.

I staggered backward, trying to stay on my feet. I was seized with the need to cry, to weep openly, to sink down onto the sandy floor and cover my face. Strauss’s shouts echoed down the corridor. I tore off my helmet and flung it at the rocket module, steeling myself with a scream before running toward the light.

The tunnel dead-ended in some sort of grotto. The concave wall was textured with large, polished rocks, like cobblestones, and their slickness glistened with reflected light pulsing from within a wide pool. Harper was on the narrow shore. Still alive, he clawed at the sand as he tried to pull himself away from the water. His lower legs were missing and his hips and pelvis were connected to something. I followed the ropy line of gore to the shallow pool.

My first thought was that I was looking at a large, bobbing black raft. But then my mind reconciled the true contour of the presence in that shallow pool.

I have privately described it as an enormous octopus, but that’s not quite right. I’ve spent countless nights searching images on the Internet, trying to capture the anatomy of this thing. The giant creature in the grotto was nearly identical to a cephalopod called the vampire squid.