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? JULY
I know not the date, nor how I have landed myself in this hell. The walls that trap me, I recognise them. This bunker, it reeks with the overwhelming sense of déjà vu. Yet I know of nothing that has happened within it. It is dark, and the only thing I can hear is it crawling through the walls. Whatever the fuck it even is.
When I awoke I found a medical report for a soldier called Clément. That is me, it must be. Dr. Jonsinki wrote of my condition. Amnesia. Explains only a fraction of my situation. Then there were these sounds. I thought myself going crazy, alone in this dark place.
I found a fellow soldier in the kitchen. He was wounded, but he seemed to recognise me. Henri. Yes, that is my name. He made it certain to me. Henri. It should feel familiar and yet I cannot feel it. The soldier died. I have no name to grieve for. How does one grieve for he who he cannot even remember? He asked me to kill him. Put a round through his head before something worse took him. My finger could only brush the trigger before he was gone. Some… monster emerged from the wall. There was screaming, and then nothing.
I learned two things from that nameless man. That my name is Henri, and that I am trapped down here. The officers blew the exit shut. And to leave I must blow it back open. Somehow. Without it finding me. I pray for any men trapped in this hell, and I pray that I live to remember.
H. Clément
? JULY
It’s a maze. It’s a maze of halls that I have not a clue how to navigate. There is a map in the safe room but it only shows the main areas. My means to escape are not here, they are deeper in. The generator. They say it does not like light. They have left behind fuel for me to use but even with the lights on, I feel as though I am being stalked.
The scratches in the walls. The growls echoing through these hallways. Is this room truly safe? I can only pray. I know I must wander deeper to escape. I know what I must do. This fear I feel, I cannot justify it. Any man would fear death, but I am no man. I am the ghost of a man who once was. One I cannot remember. I have not even a face to my name, there are no mirrors. I have nothing to lose. Nothing that I know of. I must stop being so cowardly.
I will leave now. Pray for me.
H. Clément
? JULY
What have I done? What sin have I that I do not know? Is it still my sin if I hold no memory of the man who committed it? I do not know what God’s judgement will be. Perhaps this is it. The bunker is hell, and it is my punishment. Punishment for what I have done. What I cannot remember.
I found a letter in the locker room of the soldiers. I found my own, H. Clément. On the floor was a letter with my initials, dated 9 July. How long has it been since? It speaks of a thing I have done. This horrible thing, worthy of the judgement of the divine. I know not of what it was, only that it happened.
My agony. Is it just punishment? One for only a man who stained his hands so red, you can no longer see skin. So much, yet almost nothing at all. Blurs of my mind and scattered letters of dead men, they are all I have to figure out what happened. They are my only guide.
Whether this bunker was punishment enough will be for God to decide. If I escape, if I die. It’s not my choice what he has decided for Henri Clément.
H. Clément
? JULY
Remember. I cannot remember god fucking dammit. These letters these endless clues this place this hell. I can make nothing of it. I have nothing. Nothing but this crappy useless piece of shit flashlight and the words of dead men.
Why can I not remember, His face. I saw his face. I know him but I don’t. I know all of these men, these corpses and yet I am still a ghost even amongst the dead. The picture. Two men standing side by side. They were leaving for the war I am certain. The one on the left the bag says Henri. It says Henri could he be me? Is this my face? And on the right Lambert- Augustine. I know him I know him. I know him but I draw blank.
When I see his face I feel this warmth. This feeling of comfort and safety, of happiness. I cannot recall feeling as such before. But these feelings are drowned out by this grief. This guilt. This sense of wrong-doing. I cannot look him in the eye. As if I have done something terrible to him.
It is meaningless now, but I am deeply sorry, Augustin.
H. Clément
? JULY
I have seen it. The monster that stalks me. It took one look at me and found itself angered. Deeply angered. I thank God for the single bullet loaded in my gun. If not for it I would be dead.
It is this pale colour, but dirtied by the mud, dust, and the blood. Teeth like razors. Long and sharp. You would be dead before it could even clench its jaw. Claws not unlike the teeth. I should know for it had caught me for just a moment. My leg was clawed open, the wound deep enough to cause infection, I'm sure. I have done what I could to clean it, but this place is filthy. I pray the infection holds off long enough for me to get out of this place.
Something has been on my mind, as of recent. These letters I find, they speak of man after man dying at the hands of this beast. No one was safe. Not here. And yet, I, an unconscious man, lived. It smells blood, yet it did not go for mine. Even in a state of such unconsciousness, I am certain it would have found me. Perhaps God found that dying unaware was too easy an out. But it is strange. When I left the infirmary it had suddenly taken such interest in killing me. Maybe I am overthinking this. I have more pressing matters to attend to.
I have retrieved the dynamite from the arsenal. All I need now is the detonator to set it off. I pray I leave soon.
H. Clément
? JULY
These damn rats. They are giving me more grief than the monster. They are in almost every room beyond the central bunker. They block the hallways, and they waste no time biting at my legs if I stand too close. It wouldn’t be so much an issue if the monster could not smell blood.
I discovered through letters that the rats had long been a problem. A problem that seemed to have worsened. They went for the flesh of my fellow soldiers. They had to start burning the bodies. I am surprised they had not come to the infirmary and feasted on myself. The only way through them is to repel them by fire. The only quiet method at least. Anything too loud and the monster finds me. There have been far too many close calls. With nothing but a single bit of wood drawing the line between life and death.
Is my continued survival a blessing? Has God seen me suffer enough for my sin? If I escape this bunker, what comes after? I can still hear the sounds of the war above ground. A war I cannot even remember fighting in. I know nothing of the surroundings, or even what place I am in. But that is an issue I will have to resolve later. There is no point pondering challenges I might not even face. Not until I have overcome this one.
I am now trying to find a way into the Roman tunnels. From what I have gathered, the detonator lies there. I pray that God have mercy.
H. Clément
? JULY
My sin. My sin, it is beyond what can be forgiven. The truth of this hell lay before my eyes and yet I cannot understand. It was me. It was my own doing. These men that surround me. Their blood stains my hands and it stains my soul. Bodies. Bodies piling. Their demise the consequence of what I have done.
The monster is no monster. The monster has no fault for who am I to blame an unknowing man? For it would put me to shame. These letters. Proof of Augustine’s fate. A fate which I had sealed. The patrol, my prank, Augustine, the water. It was never my intention for this curse to fall upon him, and yet that is no excuse. Had I just played a fair game Augustine would have never fallen in that pit. Never drank that water. Would have never become what he is now.
Should I be allowed to walk out of this place a free man, when it is a hell of my own creation? Who am I to return back to wherever it is Henri Clément once came from? Would Augustine’s wife and son be there? How would I face these people knowing what I have done to him? To walk among the holy when my soul has been touched by hell itself?
Would there be a point in leaving this place? I know nothing but my name, my face and my sin. Even now, all three feel foreign. Will my memory ever return to me?
With hopes of a life beyond this, I will push forward.
H. Clément
? JULY
I at last had entered the Roman tunnels. It seemed Augustine did not follow me there. But before the entrance to the tunnels I had found something terrible. There was a letter left from a man called Toussaint Beaufoy. The name sounds familiar.
It seems Toussaint had lost his mind in all the chaos. These tunnels they have warped the minds of these men. On the table, beside the letter, was a cloth stained in blood. Two eyes laid atop of it. Toussaint’s eyes. He had gouged them out. Had he craved for that darkness so much, that he would make it so he never saw anything else again? It’s nothing to ponder on. I plan on leaving this place before I succumb to the same fate as him.
I encountered Toussaint in the tunnels. As I entered I saw stones floating, somehow still bizarre despite everything this bunker has witnessed. He was singing. The same words he wrote in his twisted letter.
Whirl the world, the world we whirl. It all gets lost in a terrible twirl.
I thought I had been hallucinating when I first heard his voice. But his continued singing, and how it grew it ever louder the further I walked, I knew it was him. Toussaint was alive, and he was in the tunnels. Singing. SInging in the fog.
Can’t see the sun for all the black smoke. Can’t see the ground for all the dead folk.
Can’t see the ocean, can’t see the trees. So I stay down here on my knees.
My memory of Tousaint is blurred at the very best, but it saddened me to see him like this. The song he sang. It was the song of the hell that had befallen Augustine. These men. This Bunker. Toussaint himself. I have no time to ponder on its meaning. He heard me, and a gunshot fired. He’d taken the shotgun with him. It pained me to do so, but it seemed I had no choice but to take his life. But perhaps that was the merciful option. Least he stayed there, singing and singing in an endless loop, until his days ran dry. Or perhaps the immortal world was real, and he’d be stuck there for eternity. Singing the song of our demise. It pained me to kill a brother soldier. I pray Toussaint find peace in Heaven.
As I left the tunnels I discovered a place I thought I’d never see again. The very same pit I’d found Augustine that night on patrol. The water there. It is what cursed him. But most shockingly, there lying abandoned and unloved, just as Augustine said, was the stuffed rabbit he had bought for his son. I took it with me. Perhaps he would want it back. It sounds such a stupid idea, but I feel inclined to give it to him before I leave this place.
With the detonator, and with the dynamite in place, it is finally time to break free from this hell.
H. Clément
___
The gun. The bridge. The rabbit. Augustine. He fell. He fell down. He's gone. Henri killed him. The last thing he would ever hear his best friend say, was an anguished growl. It sounded far too similar to his name. Like he was screaming at Henri to help him.
He ran; in a blur of events, he found himself outside. For the first time he could ever recall, he was free.
Clouds. Coating the sky dark.
Can’t see the sun for all the black smoke.
It was one of the first things Henri had noticed upon opening his eyes, The second was the bodies.
Some German, but most of his fellow soldiers. All lying dead in a heap, abandoned and unloved in the chaos of the war. Had this been how that rabbit felt?
Can’t see the ground for all the dead folk.
He was alive. Somehow. It was unfortunate luck. Stupid. Unfortunate luck. The one who had caused this all to occur, the one who lay unconscious, touched, as these men suffered for his sin; that was the one who saw the day outside that hell.
He survived, but Henri Clément remained rotting in that bunker.
Freedom was within arms reach, just beyond the corpses that whispered his sins. But there was no soul to relish in it. Nothing but a ghost was left to witness it.
Had that been his fall from grace? .
“Schnell! Schnell!”
Henri looked up, the glow of flashlights at the top of the pit he lay in.
And how fucked up was that? Having clawed his way out of hell itself, only for his fate to fall into the hands of enemy soldiers.
____
Augustine. You said we would survive this hell together. I suppose you weren’t wrong. After all, we didn’t die inside the bunker. You fucking bastard.
I can hear the voices of these men. They are familiar, in a way. I believe they are calling me to my death.
In the chorus of voices I can hear people I think I once knew. Toussaint, Stafford, Josinski, Jourbert, Chanard, Farber. Are they beckoning me to fall to hell or do they ask me to join them in Heaven? Or perhaps they guide me to a fate worse. I am not sure.
I cannot hear you amongst them, Augustin. Is the curse of immortality real? Are you still wandering the world, stuck with your agony? Will you be in agony forever because of my sin?
I pray for you, my dear friend. I pray for your peace, however it may come to you. I know it is selfish of me to ask, but could you pray for mine too?
H. Clément