The Many Deaths of Barnaby Rutledge
(as transcribed by Mitchell Berenson)
Prologue:
Three men sat huddled before a fire somewhere in France. One was a coward, who was too afraid to live, one was a man who was far too wicked to die, and one man was Barnaby Rutledge.
The Coward had spent the day with a French battalion, organizing the handover of a local trench and thus had nothing to speak about but the smell of burnt sausages and the salacious reading material matted to the walls of the trench and smeared with too-many filthy thumbprints. Every time a shell ruptured the sky, he ducked his head and tried to hide the tremors in his hands and his mouth. But it wasn’t this that made him a Coward. But if I were to tell you all my secrets, there would be no way to keep you near me.
The Wicked Man was, like the fallen angel himself, born in fire and had heard the music of angels, and now inhabited the circles of the damned. There were very few who knew anything of this man’s story, and it was Barnaby Rutledge alone who knew it all. All men will try and gain immortality by telling their story, and there are none so insistent as those into whose eyes Death had stared. Their voices filled the night, lonely souls, seeking the comfort of ghosts. But for these two, it was different. For Barnaby Rutledge had already lived too many lives for one man, and it was in his power alone to save the Angel from the fires into which he was born to perish.
The Coward slept eventually, his naturally dull mind further tamed by the liberal application of French whiskey. He was far too well-bred to snore, but, like all men who had seen war, his sleep was broken by frantic words that even the wind had learned to ignore. And as he slept, the blessed unconsciousness that is the only haven, the Fallen Angel watched the flames, and spoke to Barnaby Rutledge. He explained to him about the songs that the winter whispers in the fall of the snow and showed him the path that is trod by dreams and the limping lope of nightmares, and of the salvation that can live in a pair of human eyes. He told him the truth. For Barnaby Rutledge was to die that night, once again.
Once again and once again.
It happened at dawn, as somehow all deaths must. Barnaby Rutledge and his wicked companion had risen, and were walking through the mud and the stench that was a mockery of farmer’s fields and children’s gardens. The Coward had been left behind in the fire and neither man remaining could even remember his name. They were lost and they were cold and neither had slept in nearly three days. And still, their battalion was no where in site. The earth was filled with men and with parts of men and yet, for all the faces they saw and all the faces they tried not to see, the men for whom they searched remained utterly elusive.
How many do you think there are, whispered Barnaby Rutledge to The Wicked One.
As many as there are grains of sand on the shore, and all of them worth no more than that combined. Came the hushed reply from a dry and rasping throat.
But Barnaby Rutledge knew this could not be. For Barnaby Rutledge could see the men behind the mud and the fear and the blood and the mask of stupid indifference that a life in the earth casts on each face. And it was because Barnaby Rutledge saw a man, or the helmet of one, at least, pass along the top of a nearby ridge that he climbed to the top and peered over. And then the sky was lit with a fire brighter than the dawn; a fire known far too well to the wicked man. Whether the fire came from the sky like an arm of the vengeful sun or from the ground where the demons dwelled who had once been men, no one had time to tell. For before the eye could see the spark or the ear hear the scream of triumph, Barnaby Rutledge was consumed by the fire. And Barnaby Rutledge died, once again.
It was not a sensation he feared, for Death had grown fond of Barnaby Rutledge. There was, indeed, a sort of relief in knowing that the worst that humankind could conceive was not merely tolerable. It was a blessing. For there were so many ways to die in the cloying mud of France. The fire sang and shrieked with joy when it burned, and the sound of its song drowned out the voice of the men. Its heat warmed him in places he didn’t know existed. It made him feel as if he had a soul.
And so Barnaby Rutledge closed his eyes and thought of how his next death should be and from where the fire would next descend. And he studied the eyes of the wicked man below him. He could have saved him, he thought, as the flames traced the blue of his eyes. The Wicked Man watched the fire with guilty envy. And he watched Death take Barnaby Rutledge and lead him away from the trenches and the things that lived in them. And in Death, he saw a familiar face; one that he had known from his first days, but a face that had never looked at him with anything but contempt. And he wondered why it was that he was never permitted to follow. And when the last chorus of the flames had floated away, the wicked man looked at the earth that now held the best of a good man, and he spit and he walked away, alone.
He would find Barnaby Rutledge again, one day, he knew. And he would whisper to him of the song of rain on a windowpane, or the hushed frenzies of dried autumn leaves. And he would watch him die. Once again.
Once again and once again.
