Clang.
The hammer again. Audrey staggered from their bedroom into the forge. The wasted figure stood, sunken eyes blazing with fear, before the red-hot anvil. His arms, so strong and sure before he left to fight on foreign shores, now shook under the hammer’s weight. She scrambled over to him. He hadn’t begun to scream, not yet.
Sparks were worming over his skin. The leather apron had slipped. Underneath he was naked. He shuddered as his mouth worked without sound, a thin dribble of blood where he’d bit his lip. He was hearing them again.
“Robin.” Half choked on coal smoke, burnt hair, sweat, scorching skin, Audrey spoke gently. “Robin, you’re safe. I’m here.”
His head whipped round, his voice an urgent hiss.
“Audrey! Get behind me! You’re in the thick.”
The flies. They came when the tinnitus was bad and then came hell, Gallipoli – the trenches, screaming horses, abandoned corpses, the mounds of dead, the mud, and the flies, the endless fucking flies. On the hottest days, flies blotted out the sun. And though she might not see or hear them, they had followed him home.
“Robin, my love.”
His hands trembled as he swung the hammer. If she startled him on an upswing, he might let go and crack his skull.
“Lay the hammer down and come to me.”
“The flies. I must drive away the flies. They bring the dead.” The hammer fell from his hands, raising dust. He slumped to the side. His wasted frame shook with fever.
She carried him bodily to their time-weathered riders’ bench. While he’d been away, she had kept the forge, growing strong. In turn the war had consumed him, till he was but a husk. She sat there all the night, cradling him like the babe they’d never had. His body twisted against her, quietly whimpering, mumbling fragments of the war that clung to him, that clawed at his mind and stalked his dreams. The coals burned to ash as the smoldering rage in her gut flamed anew. Tomorrow, tomorrow she would try again.
***
The bench provided by The Ministry of Pensions in the North was angular and narrow. Anything to discourage the poor bastards who’d survived Europe’s bloody game of empires. Audrey tried to soften her face and steel herself inside as she waited between a hard-eyed widow and a soldier who sang low as he scratched at the stump of his left arm.
“Robin Winters.”
A slack-faced, portly man, missing the laugh lines common to his age, called from behind a barren desk. He barely glanced up at her approach.
“Clearly, you are not Robin Winters.”
She swallowed, tried to smile politely.
“Robin is dreadful ill. I’m the wife. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
“What brings you then?”
“I need to plead his case again, sir. With the malaria and the tinnitus and the shellshock, my husband’s an awful wreck.” She faltered under his dispassionate stare. One last gamble. Robin would hate her, but what else could she do? “He can’t work. If he keeps on, he’ll hurt himself. A military pension-”
“File says he’s a blacksmith. Good trade. Fox hunting begins next week.”
“Sir, it’s dangerous. He sees things. He sees the dead come back for him.”
“How fitting. His file indicates he was a coward.” November frost in tweed. Not a twitch of compassion. “Lucky to be alive. Spinelessness is best dealt with on the field. Summary justice.”
Her stomach burned. He cut her off before she could protest.
“Find a priest. Absolution might ease his soul. Don’t come back.” A vicious smirk danced around the corners of his mouth. “I’ve half a mind to tell the Peelers about him. They hate cowards, especially lazy Irish riffraff trying to weasel out of an honest day’s work.”
She tamped down her fury. Imagined snapping the bastard over her knee like a badly wrought paling. Left. She’d do Robin no good from gaol.
***
On the path to the forge, she smelled her husband’s fear. Gunpowder. Blood. A low buzzing. Flies hovered at the door. Her nape prickled, her eyes frozen wide. Every sound seemed too loud.
“Robin?”
Maybe he truly was hounded by the dead. She could smell the corpses, crawling back for him. Swallowed. Felt her throat stick. Stepped into the forge.
There. On the bench. Sprawled like he was waiting for his horse to be shod. Service pistol still hanging from his hand. Head tipped back like he was napping. Sandy hair, clotted red, white bone. Wall behind him slick and black, glinting orange with flickering flame.
She fell back on her haunches. Called out his name. Tears spattered a half-worked horseshoe in the dirt. The dead had claimed him after all.
She sat on the rider’s bench all through the night in the light of the dying coals, holding him close as her anger roared.
***
At dawn, Audrey rose. Washed the body, laid him out on the kitchen table, read the poems. Keened. She poured the salt and earth onto his chest, placed tobacco for the journey in his hand. She kept his soul as best she could. But her sadness was poisoned by fury, leaving no heart to celebrate the life that had been stolen.
A knock. The slack-faced man from the ministry stood in the doorway, a grey horse spattered with mud limping round the yard behind him.
“Terribly sorry, I was passing your forge and my horse cracked a shoe. Luckiest place for it, I suppose. How much for a new one?” His eyes narrowed; lips pursed as he studied her further. Stared at her, draped in forge leathers and Robin’s cast-off clothes. A far cry from the glad rags she’d dragged from deep in her closet just yesterday. “Say, you’re that Irishman’s wife, correct?”
Audrey paused, gritting her teeth before she managed to speak.
“He’s away.”
“Drowning his sorrows, is he? Bring him here, I’ll wait. If he can’t do his job, he’ll face the penalties of those who feign illness. You’ll thank me for it in the end, mark my words.”
She stared into his face, gorge rising.
“I can help. Just follow me, bring your horse.”
She hitched the mare at the shoeing post, trimmed the hoof and pried off the broken shoe. More cast iron than wrought. Melted down scraps likely. Shoddy work. The man settled on the rider’s bench. Right where she’d found Robin.
“Hard work and God, that’s what he needs. Not charity.”
Audrey found a horseshoe in the forge. The last one Robin made. She laid it on the anvil. Took up his hammer. Swung high. Smiled. In earnest this time. She’d grown so very strong in the years since she had seen her husband off to war.
“For Robin.”
Crack of bone. Spray of blood.
“For me.”
She swung again. Radiant in her anger and her joy.
When she was done, she tied his foot to one stirrup and sent his horse scrambling down the empty road. She scrubbed down the forge and the bench once more. Swatted away the flies as she worked. Damn, but they could breed fast.
It was a damp day, hot for September. There was a low droning all around her. She returned to Robin’s shrouded body, to start his lonely wake. To celebrate a life. To mourn its loss. To cherish every memory of his love and his pain.
About The Author
Zira MacFarlane placed 1st in the Ghost & Horror Short Story Contest, October 2021, with their award winning story Fly Bait. Zira won the $100 cash prize and publication in Indie It Press’s forthcoming Anthology, 2022: COURAGEOUS CREATIVE.
Zira MacFarlane is a nonbinary queer biologist who lives in Toronto with a small menagerie of cats, geckos, and humans. They are an amateur writer, and love using horror and fantasy to explore ecological themes and stories of queer love and pain. In the wild, they can be found storytelling, birdwatching, and trying to discover the latest mischief their cats have caused.
