Chapter 8-Shot in the Dark

~*Chapter Eight-Shot in the Dark*~



Rain in Atlanta was a curious thing.

Rain in general was a normal occurrence, but there was something different about this rain. While rain was usually warm and hardly bothered anybody, save for the inconvenience of getting wet, this rain was cold. It was the kind of rain that could chill a person to the bone and hardly realize it; it made people sick right, left, and centre, and it even killed some of them. This rain was brutal.

It was in the midst of one of these rains when Constance’s eyes slowly opened.

She felt nothing. Nothing, that is, besides an odd feeling of permanence. Complete and utter permanence.  A feeling of never changing or moving forward in life; merely existing as if carved out of stone, like a statue. She was nothing more than a statue that moved and breathed but was still not living.

Constance knew not how she knew it, but she realized almost immediately upon waking on the hard wooden floor of the piano room that there was the odd sense of permanence about her. She felt as if she was suddenly stuck in a bubble, and the world changed around her while she remained the same for years and years to come. It didn’t matter how hard she tried to pop the bubble and rejoin the rest of the living world; it would not give up its entirely airtight seal around her. The bubble seemed to be made of the rain pounding down on the glass ceiling, threatening to burst through and soak Constance, the writing desk, and the piano in its tidal wave of numb coldness.

The odd sense of permanence, like the rain, chilled Constance to the bone. She certainly wasn’t afraid, but the feeling of remaining at age sixteen for the rest of time – never experiencing the joys of having children, or the trance-like state of sleep in which dreams appear, or the sweet release of tears dripping from the eyes, or the invigorating coolness of a gust of wind on her face, or the tang of taste when she ate – made her sick.

At the very least, the inferno of pain was gone.

~*~

Silas Rosehaven had joined the Confederate army as soon as he had turned eighteen. He hadn’t seen his family since.

Every day, his life was nothing more than marching, marching, marching . . . . There was the occasional battle to be fought, but he slowly found himself becoming vaguely disappointed with his war experience. He had joined up because the stagnant life of Atlanta had gotten to be far too . . . well, stagnant. Silas longed for excitement; the thrilling experience of firing into an oncoming line of Yankees, the prospect of gleaning some sort of nearly-fatal injury and having a story to tell when he returned, the ever-present hope of meeting a pretty girl on his travels – be it a nurse in the hospital tent or a Southern Belle on a carriage ride past their camp.

Frankly, the war had so far failed to live up to his expectations.

He rarely thought of his family; he was too caught up in his new life to pay them any mind. They were miles away, and he hadn’t really been close with any of them anyway. His mother had always been fussy over him, his father relaxed. He had learned all he needed to know about life from his father. Charles had treated him more like an apprentice to whom he was charged with the duty of relaying each nuance of a man’s daily life than a son. But Silas was the oldest, and Charles had not had any knowledge of how to raise a child. He simply did the best he could. At least Charles wasn’t finicky like Abigail was. She was nothing more than a thorn in Silas’ side, and he was, honestly, quite glad to be rid of her. Jane was only a child, and she had behaved in a way that can be expected of a child. Silas didn’t dislike her, but he hadn’t fully understood her either. She was such a girl! She always would be. She’d grow up to be the lovely woman that every man in his right mind would pine for, going to any length to win her heart and hand. She would be a prize worth dying for. But, at the moment, she was nothing more than a child. Just a cute, girlish child.

Silas had, however, pondered time and time again over one more member of his family. He didn’t know how he felt about her, but he was sure that she hated him. He couldn’t say why, but he thought that Constance made it rather apparent that she hated everybody who lived on the earth. It was almost as though she was offended that they had the audacity to stand there, breathing her air and taking up space to which she had the rightful claims.

He could never forget that one day when she was eight. Constance had seen the whole family ogling over baby Jane, and she had very deliberately walked up to the cradle, and she had very intentionally snapped the girl’s left index finger, and she had very purposefully walked off without so much as batting an eye. She had known. She had known exactly what she was doing. He couldn’t say what made him think this, but she had somehow known that the girl would be left-handed, and that the finger that she had broken so resolutely would not set properly. She had somehow known that Jane’s broken finger would incapacitate her in later years. She had set out to ruin the girl, and he couldn’t say why other than the simple explanation that she hated everyone.

Jane hadn’t even been alive long enough to commit some terrible affront that could result in her deformation. So why had Constance done what she had? Silas had no idea. It had crossed his mind on one occasion or another that, had Constance had a personal vendetta against Jane, she would not have made the damage so subtle. Everything Constance had ever done was with intent and calculated. She never made even the slightest of mistakes, and she never showed any signs of even the slightest sense of remorse.

She never frightened him, though. Maybe it was because he had grown up with her, or because he was a man, or even because he was older. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t fear her like the rest of their family seemed to. They all complied and did her bidding regardless. The only exception to this general rule was Charles, who sometimes had the courage to put his foot down and stop Constance from running his house like some twisted dictator. And she respected him. Usually. She knew she didn’t have to, but she chose to respect him on occasion.

That was the funny thing about respect that Silas hadn’t truly understood until after he had joined the army:  respect was mutual. In order for one person to become respected, another person must have conceded to give that person respect in the first place. That wasn’t clear to him until he saw the way the Confederate boys acted toward their commanders. It didn’t matter whether it was a long-time general or a recently promoted friend; they would treat both the same. Respect could not be taken. It could only be earned and given.

Constance was different.

You had to respect her. If you didn’t choose to respect her, then she would content herself with forcing you to fear her. That was the trap into which the rest of his family (excepting Charles every now and again) had fallen. They feared her because they hadn’t respected her.

But Silas didn’t pretend to understand his sister. He couldn’t even say whether he liked her or hated her. But the fact remained that she was the sole member of his family who was consistently on his mind, whether he was consciously thinking of her or otherwise.

He walked along the campground, searching for his tent. It would be marked with his name on a piece of parchment nailed to the rod holding it up. After scanning the lists of names, he finally found the one with his, and he climbed under the canvas shelter.

There were two other men there, both of whom he had seen before, but he didn’t personally know. One of them was shorter, slightly sun-burnt, with golden hair. His eyes were bright, and he was young both in the flesh and in spirit. The other was taller with a tanner complexion. He had naturally dark hair that was peppered with sun-bleached highlights. His eyes were a lighter shade of brown than Silas had expected, and they seemed to be the centre of his personality. At first glance, the man appeared to be rather shrewd and calm, with a very Southern air about him. Silas was instantly drawn to both men, each for reasons specific to him.

The young blonde smiled as he entred, though Silas was stooped so as to avoid hitting his head against the top of the tent. As Silas knelt and shook hands with the boy, the Southern-looking man nodded a greeting.

“Hey there,” the boy said. “My name’s Peter. Peter Garner. What’s yours?”

Silas smiled and answered with his name.

“Mighty nice to meet you, Mister Rosehaven. A real pleasure.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the other man, saying, “That there’s Mister Falon. There’s supposed to be one other man in here with us, but I dunno where he’s gotten to.”

“He’s probably still checking the lists,” Silas said, thinking the one thing that he knew was on all three of their minds, though they were too hesitant to say it out loud:  Or he was dead. With that heavy image in his mind, Silas started to unroll his sheets and pillow, getting ready for a long-overdue full night’s sleep. He yawned quietly as he worked.

“You tired, Mister Rosehaven?”

“Yes,” Silas answered. “I haven’t had a proper sleep for a week. I’ve only been able to catch a few spare naps for the last few days.”

As Silas spoke, Peter’s brow furrowed. Finally, he said, “That’s mighty upsettin’. Say, Mister Rosehaven, where you from?”

“Atlanta.”

“You sure don’t talk like you’re from Atlanta.”

After a second, Silas realized that Peter was referring to his British accent, which he had picked up from his British parents. He had been born in Atlanta, but his speech was definitely from England.

“Oh, that!” he said, smiling at Peter. “My parents are English. I suppose they passed their manner of speaking on to me when I was younger.”

“Wow,” Peter said, stifling a yawn. Mister Falon was yawning discretely as well. “That sure is somethin’ Mister Rosehaven,” Peter said.

“It’s not much,” Silas said, pulling off his shoes and lying down on his blankets.

“At least you know where you’re from.”

Upon hearing the voice, Silas looked over to see Mister Falon half-smiling at him. “I never knew my parents. They were dead before I could hold my head up on my own,” he continued.

After a rather long pause, Silas said, “I’m very sorry, sir.” As soon as he’d said it, he wished he could take the words back again. They sounded so incredibly weak.

“This is war, Mister Rosehaven,” Mister Falon replied. “You cannot afford to be sorry. You can’t afford to trust anybody. Nor can you count on living to see tomorrow.”

Silas’ brow furrowed. Mister Falon’s remark had taken him slightly by surprise. “Beg pardon?” he asked.

‘You’re wondering why I told you about my parents.” It was a statement; not a question.

After a pause, Silas answered, “Yes.”

Mister Falon took a deep breath and let it hiss out his nose. Then, he said, “Sometimes, you’ve got to ask yourself which is worse:  telling all of your secrets to people whom you have no reason to trust, or having all of your secrets die with you and never be remembered. I could die at any moment out here. Why not let others hear my secrets so that they can remember me in the right way after I’m dead? Just because I tell someone something personal doesn’t mean I trust them; it simply means that I want that bit of myself to live on through them should I die before I get the chance to trust them.”

Silas looked over to his right and saw Peter curled up, asleep on his blankets. The summer night was hot, but Peter had fallen asleep right where he was; he hadn’t even removed his shoes. Silas pulled off the boy’s shoes and socks, and then removed his own socks and started to unbutton his shirt.

Mister Falon had a point. Silas had never thought of personal information as a way to be remembered before. To him, it had all been secret, to be guarded until he trusted someone enough for them to know. But giving the information to someone he barely knew as a means of remembering him . . . well, it wasn’t a half bad idea.

“I have a sister who is . . . odd,” Silas blurted, without thinking. This time though, he didn’t want the words to come back to him. He was okay with Mister Falon knowing about Constance. He couldn’t say why; maybe it was the other man’s well-educated speech combined with the easy-going sound of the Southern twang hanging from his every word. Maybe it was his abnormally light eyes that seemed to, on their own, reassure him. Who knows what it was. Silas didn’t care. He just knew that he felt a sudden urge to release every secret into the world, ignorant of the individual destinations of each one. Someone had to know. Why not Mister Falon?

“In what way?” Mister Falon asked.

With a laugh that sounded slightly like a dog’s bark, Silas replied, “In every way.”

“Go on.”

It was as if those two simple words opened the floodgates of information that he had been withholding from society as a whole. Not knowing where to begin, he wanted to start rattling off a list; instead, he heard himself say, “She hates everyone, and everyone is afraid of her.”

“How so?”

“We can’t tell her to do anything, because she always does whatever she wants. There’s nothing we can do to stop her, and she knows it. She’s more powerful than all of us combined. She knows that too.” Silas paused and glanced at Mister Falon. The man’s bright eyes just stared back, not showing any reaction to what was said. Silas may as well have been talking about the weather. After a second, he added, “I’ve never spoken of her to anyone before.”

“It feels good to talk to someone, doesn’t it?” Mister Falon asked.

Silas just nodded. After having said so much confidential information in one single stretch, he could hardly string two words together any longer. He took a deep breath and felt the ability to speak clearly return to him slowly.

“What does she look like, should I ever meet her?” Mister Falon asked.

“She’s tall. She’s got long, dark brown hair and grey eyes like a storm. Her face is as pale as porcelain, and she hardly ever smiles.” It felt weird to him, saying how his sister rarely smiled. It made her seem like a bitter woman; but in a way, she was.

“Anything else?” Mister Falon said as he pulled his shoes from his feet – his abnormally narrow and oddly shaped feet. His boots were worn in odd places, and they were faded and wrinkled with age. Mister Falon didn’t appear to be very much older than Silas himself (ten years at the most), but those boots seemed to be twice his own age.

“No sir,” Silas said. After a pause, he added, “Where did you get your boots?”

Mister Falon sighed as he removed his socks and threw them on the ground beside his boots. “It’s a sad thing, war,” he said. “I got these boots off of the feet of a corpse after a battle. They seemed in good condition, and he wouldn’t be needing them any longer, so, since my old ones were wearing out, I took them for myself.” He looked a Silas and gave his funny half-grin. “Morbid, ain’t it?”

As Mister Falon half-smiled at Silas and started unbuttoning his shirt, Silas could hardly believe his own ears.

“You just . . . took them off the feet of a dead man?”

Mister Falon nodded, eyes as bright and observant as ever.  Silas laid down on his blankets and stared up at the tent’s ceiling. He couldn’t imagine looking into the face of a dead man and just pulling the boots right off of his feet. It hardly seemed humane or respectful for the fallen.

“Which army? Union?”

“Confederate.” Mister Falon gave a sad half-smile again, saying, “He was my friend.”

“I’m sorry,” Silas said again.

“Your being sorry won’t bring him back.”

There was a long pause, filled with only the quiet snores of Peter, who lay sprawled out on his makeshift bed a few feet across the tent.

Silas’ whisper broke the silence. “Was it hard? Looking at him, dead on the ground, and taking his boots?” Silas could hardly imagine it without grimacing.

“Not particularly. He didn’t have a head. It had gotten blown off in the battle.”

That was enough. Silas couldn’t think of it. He hardly knew any of the men in the regiment, but if he encountered any of them lying prone on the battlefield, without a head, he would be terrified. The last thing on his mind would be the boots on the man’s feet.

But, he supposed, that was what war and fighting could do to a man. It could make him forget about humanity, simply living as a shell of a man who, for a few small seconds, claims that he’s not afraid to die. War made every man fend for himself at one point or another. Mister Falon needed new boots, so he took a pair; it didn’t matter where they’d come from. In the same way, men will always look after themselves first. Always. Especially during a war.

Both men yawned, and Mister Falon said, “Well, good night Mister Rosehaven. Sleep well, and we can talk more tomorrow.”

In the silence that followed, Silas laid there, thinking about all that Mister Falon had said. If it hadn’t been for his physical exhaustion, he would have laid there all night, just contemplating, pondering, musing, and wondering. Would he himself become as desensitized as Mister Falon had become? Would suffering always seem a fairytale without any reasoning or logic behind it? Would he ever have to become a part of a bloodbath that could leave him scarred in both flesh and spirit?

Mister Falon himself wasn’t too strange of a man; his views of the world were distorted by war, it could not be argued otherwise, but he seemed a nice fellow. Silas liked him. Peter, on the other hand, was hardly tainted by the war at all. He was involved in the war simply to bring about peace again. He wasn’t out to fight. He liked everyone, and he trusted easily. He had a rather childlike air of innocence about him. Silas liked him, too.



In the dead of the night, somewhere in that deep, dark state of sleep where one can hear sounds without realizing that their origin lies outside of the dream in which one is immersed, the bugles sounded.

In a sleepy stupor, Silas struggled to his feet, trying his best to re-dress himself in the darkness. Suddenly, there was a soft glow from the opposite side of the tent; Mister Falon had had sense enough to light the stub of a candle. The flame lit his face in an eerie way, making him seem even more ethereal than he already was.

Mister Falon gave a grin and said, “Time to go to work.”

Silas sat on the ground lacing up one of his boots. He looked up at Mister Falon, wondering what he meant by work. Once the other man picked up his gun, however, his meaning became clear. “Battle,” Silas said.

With a nod, Mister Falon knelt to the ground and started to gently shake Peter, who was still lying on the ground, trying to ignore the bugles and return to his dream. “Peter,” Mister Falon said, “Wake up. We’ve got to go. Come on!”

After a few moments like this, Peter groggily sat up and pulled his socks and boots on, lacing them rather slowly. As soon as Mister Falon and his candle began to leave the tent, however, he jumped up and followed, laces trailing behind him.

“Mister Falon,” Silas asked, “What’s going on?”

“It looks like we’re being ambushed, Mister Rosehaven. But I’m not the person to ask. I merely do as I’m told.”

All around them, men were grabbing their guns and running about in no particular direction. There was hardly a sense of organization or leadership in the camp that night.

Out of seemingly nowhere, gunshots rang through the air. Whose they were, nobody could tell. Friend or foe, nobody could tell. Fatal or otherwise, nobody could tell. But the sound of the shots struck panic into the hearts of the men; panic that could only be remedied by a sense of productiveness. To create this sense, men picked up guns and fired them at random into the darkness around them. The darkness laid upon their eyes like a blindfold. The only light to pierce it was the flash of gunpowder as it exploded within a gun, causing a bullet to pelt through the air toward nothing at all except more darkness. Who knew what was cloaked in the black of night?

The chaos was evident; Silas tried his best to maintain a cool head, but it proved to be a difficult feat to manage when shots were firing on all sides of him, and he hardly knew whether to duck or dodge or fire back. He had gotten separated from Mister Falon and Peter as a swarm of who knows who came and pulled him into its midst. He had no clue as to his location, nor did he have an inkling as to the identities of his current company.

The entire world was black as death. He heard a shot fire at close range. He felt intense, searing pain in his chest. The entire world was black as death.

Silas Rosehaven never lived to see the blackness dissolve with the sunrise.

~*~

Mister Falon walked the deserted campsite. Any soul who had inhabited it was either preparing to move on to a new campsite or had already moved on into the arms of death. The living were few, and the dead were many. In the confusion, it had been impossible to tell which army was shooting at which, but Mister Falon had gathered one thing from the unprovoked attack:  the Union boys were headed for Atlanta.

Mister Falon knew not where this notion had come from, but he knew, with every fibre of his being, that it was right. Scores of innocent men had died. Scores more would die. The Union was bringing the war into the home lives of the people of Atlanta. If anything could be thought of as blatantly unfair, this was certainly one of those things. People would be murdered in their beds. The Union boys would desecrate Atlanta; that much was certain. It pained Mister Falon to think it.

As he walked, he noticed a blonde-headed boy lying dead, face down on the ground. Mister Falon believed that all men should have the honor of looking toward heaven in their death, so he knelt and turned the corpse over.

Staring up at him, eyes clenched tight against the stagnant darkness, a gaping bullet wound in his chest, was Silas Rosehaven.

Peter walked up to Mister Falon and stood beside him. Together, the men removed their caps and inclined their heads toward their dead friend. Mister Falon muttered the Lord’s Prayer under his breath, eyes closed, head bowed; Peter silently followed his example. Once Mister Falon had finished, the two men crossed themselves, touching their right hand first to their forehead, then to their right shoulder, then to their left shoulder, and finally back to their right shoulder. Then, both men said, “Amen.” In the silence of the deserted campground, their voices rode the breeze as it meandered past, slowly consecrating the dead with the breath of God and anointing the living with His touch.

“He went and died before he ever got the chance to live,” Peter whispered.

“At the very least, he will be remembered,” Mister Falon replied. “I will always know him as Mister Rosehaven, the kind man with the unfortunate curse of having a deranged sister.”

After a pause, Peter looked up at Mister Falon and said, “I think, however deranged she may be, his sister sure would like to know that he’s dead.”

Mister Falon nodded, saying, “I think you’re right, Peter. If we ever find ourselves in Atlanta, we’ll be sure to tell her.”

The men both knelt down before the corpse and gave one last nod in respect for the fallen. They then commenced to strip him of his gun and shells, his satchel, and his leather boots. They did this with respect as well; for Silas would no longer need any of his belongings, and he surely would have wanted them to go to good use. After all, Peter’s boots were wearing thin, and he could probably fit decently into Silas’ rather new ones.

~*~

The siege had begun.

Out of nowhere, Union boys came marching through the streets. Some carried torches, others carried guns. The instant that their feet crossed the border into the city, a terrible fear spiked. All of Atlanta cried that night.

Constance Rosehaven had snuck off the plantation, as she frequently did, and she was walking toward the seamstresses’ shop. She was contemplating whether blue or purple would look best with her complexion. But, as was usually the case with Constance, she had much more on her mind than the self-absorbed thoughts of a new dress.

The air was dry. The gravel beneath her feet crunched loudly. There was fresh bread baking at the shop down the way. Her dress was heavy hanging from her shoulders. Her mother didn’t lace her corset tight enough. The sun was hot, but the breeze was cool. The family in the candle shop was having an argument over whether tall candles or short candles would be more cost-effective. Birds were singing in the woods almost a mile away. A carriage was rolling over the gravel on the next street over. In the carriage, there were three women giggling about something a man had said to them earlier. The leaves on the trees whistled in the breeze. Constance’s dark curls were tickling her neck. A horse whinnied and pawed the ground in boredom. He then put his head down to sniff the grass growing along the edges of the road.

There was the sound of marching. A hundred – a thousand – even more – pairs of boots stepped together in unison. They were headed toward Atlanta.

Constance, along with most girls in the city, had had fantasies about what the Yankee boys would be like. They would be tall, handsome, strong, gallant, and chivalrous. They would be knights in blue uniforms. Every girl imagined falling madly in love with a Yank. Not because the confederates weren’t good enough, but simply because Yanks were new to them. It was more a longing for novelty than for anything else. And in every girl’s mind, Union boys were perfect:  gallant, brave, kind, caring, gentle, and anything else that connoted valiance.

Constance watched as they marched into Atlanta in regiments. Something was wrong. They didn’t look the way she’d anticipated. They were carrying weapons, and they didn’t smile. As they passed her, they didn’t even give a nod in her direction. It was as though she wasn’t even there.

She wanted to see their faces again, so she ducked into the woods and ran at her top speed to get ahead of them. They marched toward her. Suddenly, as they passed a field on their right, one of the boys with torches – without ever breaking rank or faltering in step – held out his flame and lit the field like a giant wick.

Constance watched them just march past the burning field as if nothing had happened; the field was being eaten alive by fire, and they could not have cared less. She didn’t dare follow them again. She simply stood and watched the flames with rapt attention. They weren’t here to be knights; they were here to destroy. They were here to burn fields, and violate women, and murder men, and hurt children, and invade houses, and split homes, and cause chaos, and shoot anyone who dared to get in their way. At all of this, Constance knew, they would succeed with flying colors.

Constance didn’t know if she liked what they were doing or not.