Page 25 of Geist Fleisch
To hell with it. Max was here, with him, and he was no longer afraid. Maybe it was wrong to feel this attracted to a ghost, but what was right or normal about any of this?
“You’ve come back?”
Callum broke off their kiss and looked up at Ferdi, shame seeping into his heart again. “I hope that’s all right.”
Ferdi gave him the cautious smile of a natural-born diplomat. “Just be careful.”
From the corner of his eye, Callum saw Max’s head tilt forward in a ‘get lost’ gesture. Ferdi’s expression gathered a touch of slyness before he let them be. All the same, Max cupped his hands over Callum’s face, covering their next kiss from view like a confessional curtain. Callum had never felt a kiss like it. Far from a simple, crude slapping of lips and tongues, it felt as if Max had filled every spare crevice of his mouth with whatever earthly essence remained in him. The man should, to some logical corner of Callum’s mind, have tasted like death, but nothing could be further from this sweet reality, which wrapped him in a warmth and safety that crept down his throat until it hugged his entire body. He’d always scoffed at talk about kisses that left people breathless, but Max’s robbed him of the very function, until he at last inhaled the ghost’s enticing scent. He stroked the back of his fingers over the German’s shirt, allowing their tips to stray inside, brushing Max’s smooth chest.
The man broke into sudden laughter.
“You all right?” Callum asked, hoping he hadn’t ruined whatever magick Max had been working on him.
“Ja, ja, alles gut.” Max grinned.
What was the German for ‘ticklish?’
Max gave Callum a light peck on the lips, then tilted Callum’s head forward, gently kissing each of his eyelids. He rattled off something Callum took to be an explanation, but couldn’t catch over the suddenly upbeat music that had drawn more men to the dance floor.
Ignoring his tightening pants, he just nodded his approval and smiled. “Ist gut.”
Max squeezed his hand and stood, pulling him toward the floor. “Komm.”
Damn it. He’d always been ashamed to dance back home. Even in Berlin, he’d kept looking over his shoulder, hoping the place wouldn’t be raided. But what was he afraid of now? Ghost coppers? Max led him to the centre of the dance floor, ducking and weaving while ghosts danced and flitted around them in time with big band rhythms that would have been sneered right off the player back in Notts. Callum tensed, a tingling of mild electricity searing his nerves as he brushed one of the other ghosts. But it didn’t seem to bother the man. Maybe he hadn’t felt it at all. Maybe the only reason Callum could feel Max, as the German put his hands on Callum’s shoulders and started up the same jerky movement as his contemporaries, was because Max wanted him to. At least his pants had relaxed into the festivities. Time and place, Callum. Time and place.
Three songs in, there was no escaping it. He was a terrible dancer. He’d earned several laughs from the ghosts around him, but none were ill-meant. He wondered if they knew he was alive, but even while he danced, even as the playful big band gave way to a slow tune that brought Max’s body close to hisand warmed his heart again, Ferdi’s warning never quite left his mind. Careful, Englishman. Careful.
The music lowered some more, and Max drew even closer, again cupping Callum’s face in his hands and kissing him with deep, unrestrained longing. Forget what it was like for him to kiss a ghost. What was it like for the ghost to kiss him, a living man, after all these years? The sweet scent overtook him again as their kiss broke and he buried his face in the slightly taller Max’s neck, resting his head against the man’s shoulder. They slow danced. Max whispered something to him in German, and Callum needed no translation as they kept moving around the floor like there was no-one else there. It took several moments for Callum to hear the shouts, moans and screams that broke through the gentle safety of the place. He looked up, beginning now to see flashes of light, breaking into the room like sudden cracks in the ceiling or walls that were gone as soon as they attacked. But each flash was an assault on his senses. The convivial smell of liquor, cigarettes, happy men, and most of all, Max, struggled against acrid smells of mud, gunpowder, and rancid, cooking meat. Some awful chemical smell too, like gas. He jumped, clutching Max tight as another flash of light came with a loud bang. Not a gun, but an explosion that set the room ablaze with light once more. He saw men scurry from the floor to shelter under tables, saw them flee, searching for doors and windows that were not there. The same men who’d been dancing alongside him and Max moments earlier were now changed and mutilated, their war wounds raw, unmasked and bloody.
Callum could smell death. A battlefield writ large within this hallowed space that had offered them safety. He jumped, almost colliding with Max as a hand, its flesh burned away almost to the bone, gripped his ankle, its owner screaming over the rat-tat-tatting of gunfire and the whistling and boom of artillery shells.This was just one of maybe a dozen men who lay screaming on the floor, foetal, prone, or ignoring their own melting flesh as they clutched a fallen comrade in even worse shape.
Max! Callum shrank back in horror as the smell of burnt flesh replaced Max’s sweet scent. The man’s once beautiful face was now a mess of bloodied ash and mud. It fell away as Max’s legs failed him. Callum caught him under the arms just in time, panicked as Max mewled at him with a mouth full of blood. The same blood caked Callum’s hands as he lifted them from Max’s bullet-torn body.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, then another, the scent of death stronger still, as several of the dead soldiers surrounded him and dragged him away. He recognised the one in front of him, the sneering face unblemished, but with a shirt burned right through.
“Fleisch,” Ernst hissed at him, the accusation plain. “Englisch Fleisch!”
Callum screamed as he felt hard, cold fingers dig into his side. They pushed through his gut and reached for his heart, where they squeezed with all their deathly might. He tried to scream again, only to choke on nothing as his nerves seized. Whatever the ghost was doing to him, whoever it was, it would surely kill him if he didn’t…
He clutched the buttons on his jacket, ripped them free and threw them to the floor like dice. His head landed on the cold, hard floor of Suzi’s with a sharp thud.
“Callum!” Frank rushed to his side, nursing his head. “Are you hurt? No? What did you see?”
Callum’s skin felt like chunks of his flesh had torn away, charred and ruined. No sooner did one pain subside thananother took its place with that same awful burn. The scent of smoke, mud and death filled his nostrils. He pushed Frank away with a force that surprised them both. From the corner of his eye, he saw Brigitte tense, watching them from the bar.
“It’s all right!” Frank raised a hand to caution her. “It’s all right, Callum. You’re back. It’s just us. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise the trip back would be so—”
“What the bloody hell are you playing at?” he screamed, getting to his feet. “What did you do to them?”
Frank and Brigitte stared at him, eyes wide, stunned by the outburst and accusation, until Frank, also getting to his feet, turned to his colleague. “Water, quickly. And something stronger.”
“I don’t need a bloody drink!” Callum roared, his voice now hoarse and dry as if he’d been breathing the smoke himself. “What did you do? What happened in there?”
“You tell us,” Brigitte said, calmly passing him two glasses, one with water, the other with whiskey. “Our equipment is fried.”
“Damn your equipment!”
“Callum, please,” Frank implored. “What’s happened?”
