Hauntings by Ellen Datlow Page A

his brightness was missing, that whatever quality had enabled him to do his broadcasts had been sucked dry.
    One morning as I was passing the PX, whose shiny surfaces reflected a dynamited white glare of sun, I noticed a crowd of men pressing through the front door, apparently trying to catch sight of something inside. I pushed through them and found one of the canteen clerks—a lean kid with black hair and a wolfish face—engaged in beating Randall to a pulp. I pulled him off, threw him into a table, and kneeled beside Randall, who had collapsed to the floor. His cheekbones were lumped and discolored; blood poured from his nose, trickled from his mouth. His eyes met mine, and I felt nothing from him: he seemed muffled, vibeless, as if heavily sedated.
    â€œThey out to get me, Curt,” he mumbled.
    All my sympathy for him was suddenly resurrected. “It’s okay, man,” I said. “Sooner or later, it’ll blow over.” I handed him my bandanna, and he dabbed ineffectually at the flow from his nose. Watching him, I recalled Moon’s categorization of my motives for befriending him, and I understood now that my true motives had less to do with our relative social status than with my belief that he could be saved, that—after months of standing by helplessly while the unsalvageable marched to their fates—I thought I might be able to effect some small good work. This may seem altruistic to the point of naïveté, and perhaps it was, perhaps the brimstone oppressiveness of the war had from the residue of old sermons heard and disregarded provoked some vain Christian reflex; but the need was strong in me, nonetheless, and I realized that I had fixed on it as a prerequisite to my own salvation.
    Randall handed back the bandanna. “Ain’t gonna blow over,” he said. “Not with these guys.”
    I grabbed his elbow and hauled him to his feet. “What guys?”
    He looked around as if afraid of eavesdroppers. “Delta Sly Honey!”
    â€œChrist, Randall! Come on.” I tried to guide him toward the door, but he wrenched free.
    â€œThey out to get me! They say I crossed over and they took care of Moon for me...and then I got away from ’em.” He dug his fingers into my arm. “But I can’t remember, Curt! I can’t remember nothin’!”
    My first impulse was to tell him to drop the amnesia act, but then I thought about the painted men who had scragged Moon: if they were after Randall, he was in big trouble. “Let’s get you patched up,” I said. “We’ll talk about this later.”
    He gazed at me, dull and uncomprehending. “You gonna help me?” he asked in a tone of disbelief.
    I doubted anyone could help him now, and maybe, I thought, that was also part of my motivation—the desire to know the good sin of honest failure. “Sure,” I told him. “We’ll figure out somethin’.”
    We started for the door, but on seeing the men gathered there, Randall balked. “What you want from me?” he shouted, giving a flailing, awkward wave with his left arm as if to make them vanish. “What the fuck you want?”
    They stared coldly at him, and those stares were like bad answers. He hung his head and kept it hung all the way to the infirmary.
    That night I set out to visit Randall, intending to advise him to confess, a tactic I perceived as his one hope of survival. I’d planned to see him early in the evening, but was called back on duty and didn’t get clear until well after midnight. The base was quiet and deserted-feeling. Only a few lights picked out the darkened slopes, and had it not been for the heat and stench, it would have been easy to believe that the hill with its illuminated caves was a place of mild enchantment, inhabited by elves and not frightened men. The moon was almost full, and beneath it the PX shone like an immense silver lozenge. Though it had