From: L.Cpl. T. Hurley
To: Linda Hurley
Subject: new billet

Dear L,
Just thought I’d update you on the new billet. Bit of a dump! Still no worse than anywhere else I’ve been stationed… Sarge says the locals call it the ghost house – not because it’s haunted or anything. Some sort of word for HQ or intelligence centre. Won’t bore you with the details. Basically it was a secret prison. Love you, babe. Give the kiddies a kiss from dad.
X
Trev

From: L. Cpl. T. Hurley
To: Linda Hurley
Subject: re: new billet

You remember I said the new billet was no worse than anywhere else I’d been stationed? Forget I said it. Actually, it is worse. Much worse.

From: L. Cpl. T. Hurley
To: Linda Hurley
Subject: ghost house

Ignore that last email. I was in a bit of a bad place. I don’t just mean the ghost house, in my head as well. Mind you, being on watch here on my own for the night didn’t do me any favours. Nothing to do but stare at the grey wall. The stains that someone’s half-heartedly tried to clean off. Luckily things have got well busy round here since then. That’s why I haven’t been in touch for a few days. Sorry, babe. Duty calls, and all that! We’ve had a few prisoners come through. Just as well, this place is already fitted with cells. We’re not going to use any of the other equipment we’ve found in here. It’s all shut away in big metal lockers. We’ll show them we’re not like the crowd who used to run things around here. ‘Robustly’ - that’s the word our colonel uses, when he tells us how to handle prisoners. Tell you what though, babe, this place does do your head in. By the end of my first night watch, I was starting to see things. Like those stains were starting to ooze down the grey wall. Then there was the Thing I thought I could see in the corner of my eye! Lack of sleep, that’s all it was. Still, you should have seen what I saw when I turned round to look at the Thing. But that’s not the worst of it. The worst thing was when I nodded off, It was waiting for me. Still the thought of that helped me stay awake and keep watch after that.
Love you. Kiss the kids.
T

From: L. Cpl. T. Hurley
To: Linda Hurley
Subject: the colonel

You might have heard about it on the news, but the colonel’s been injured, hurt bad. I’m in trouble too. Tell you more in a bit. There’s been weird stuff going on. Don’t know what to tell you. People watching me all the time, even when I’m emailing you.
T

From: L. Cpl. Hurley
To: Linda Hurley
Subject: re: the colonel

Dear Linda
Read this email, then delete it. Or maybe it’d be better if you just delete it, I don’t know. You might not even get it. I’m grabbing a few moments while no one’s around to email this to you. If anyone looks over my shoulder, I’ll be in even more trouble than I am already. I mean, after what happened, court martial’s the least of my problems. Even if they don’t delete this email before I’ve sent it, it’ll probably get intercepted. What amazes me is that they haven’t clapped me in irons already. They’re still letting me walk around the place free. Maybe they’re a bit scared of me after what happened. Maybe they know it wasn’t really me doing it. Maybe the chain of command’s gone a bit off kilter – the colonel would never have let me wander around the ghost house without an escort after what I’d done. But that’s kind of neither here nor there now, seeing that he’s dead.

One thing’s for sure. They don’t want this to get out. So I’d better get on with telling you what really happened, before someone stops me. Which brings me back to the colonel. It was he who briefed me about the prisoner. The colonel told me he’d be a tough nut to crack, though I didn’t see how when he said the kid was only fifteen. No point in using a sledgehammer, I thought. So far we’d been able to get the info we needed without getting too physical. Just a hood over the head, a few slaps around the face, the odd dunk under water. Look, I know you and the kids like to think of me as some sort of action hero rescuing babies from burning buildings, but sometimes it’s just a dirty, shitty job.

‘Got a job for you, Hurley,’ colonel says to me one day. ‘Prisoner’s still refusing to talk.’

‘What’s new?’ says I. ‘Well, don’t worry, I’ll soon get him to open up.’

I have to admit, I was itching to get started. I’d seen what had happened to some of the lads when that oil pipeline went up. They weren’t just burned red, they were burned yellow and black. We go in. He’s in there, hooded up, his interpreter next to him.

The colonel warms up for me:

‘So do you still refuse to tell me the names of your accomplices?’

The interpreter mumbles something to the prisoner, who mumbles something back. Even the interpreter can barely understand it, it’s so muffled by the sack over his head. Then the interpreter turns to the colonel, not looking him in the eye, embarrassed:.

‘He said, “fuck you.”’

The colonel looks at me nods, the signal for me to start working him over (the prisoner that is, not the colonel …). So I start with a couple of slaps, first one way, then the other, a sort of warning shot across the bows. The colonel asks him if he’s got anything to add. This relaying between the colonel, the interpreter, the prisoner and the back of my hand carries on for ages. Until the prisoner breaks the pattern. He whispers something to the interpreter. This time the interpreter doesn’t look embarrassed. He looks terrified.

‘He says, “if you harm him, you will be sorry.”’

Up to now, I’ve kept my mouth shut, letting the colonel do the talking, but now I break rank.

‘Oh, yeah?’ I say. ‘And how are you going to do that, without all your friends to back you up?’

‘Quiet, Hurley,’ the colonel snaps. And then to the interpreter, ‘Ask him what he means.’

The interpreter does.

‘He says, “he will use his mind, for that is how he sabotaged the pipeline.”’

After that, it’s all a bit of blur. One minute I’m thinking about the yellow and black burnt bodies of the boys who’d been guarding the pipeline, and how he’s just admitted to being the brains behind the operation. The next he’s on the floor with me stamping on his head. The interpreter’s cowering in the corner. The colonel’s keeping his distance too, standing back, not lifting a finger to stop me. Maybe he wants this to happen. After all, whatever happens, I’m going to carry the can, not him. And through it all, the kid’s just lying there with me pounding and pounding his head to jelly. I carry on until I’m exhausted, then there’s just silence, except for something icky seeping through the sacking and dripping on the metal floor. And just as I’m thinking he shouldn’t be able to use his mind for anything by now, things start to get really weird.

Because now the Thing appears, the one I told you about, the one I kept seeing in the corner of my eye. Except it’s not in the corner of my eye anymore, it’s right in front of me. I never told you what it looked like. It’s got a baby’s face, but not like a baby you’ve ever seen, or would ever want to see. You know how babies’ heads are too big for their bodies? Well, this one’s bloated, over-sized head would loll and snap from the spindly, sickly body if it not for the braces and restraints supporting it. And then there are the eyes - dark, dark eyes, no irises, just big black pools. And those eyes are telling me to do things, telling me to walk over to the metal locker.

But I can’t open it, so I look back to where the kid was lying all twisted and broken. Except he’s not lying down anymore, he’s sitting up, though he shouldn’t be able to, he should be brain dead at least after the beating he took. And he’s taking the sack off his head, peeling it away from the sticky fluids leaking from his skull, and I can see his head swollen like a pumpkin, and the yellow liquid trickling from his ear. And the eyes in that bloated, over-sized head are all wrong. One of the pupils is the size of a pin prick, the other pupil has grown to engulf the iris. And the one that’s the size of a pin prick grows too, until what’s left is two black, black pools, with no whites, and when they look at the locker, there’s this bright white light and it swings open. And I look at the blow torch inside. Then I look at the colonel.

Like I said, it might have been easier for the colonel if I’d just battered the kid, then taken all the blame for the whole thing. Then again maybe the fact I could tell he was setting me up helped the Thing get inside my head. Even if it was all me, not the Thing telling me to roast the skin off the colonel, there’s no way I could have got into that locker, without Its help. But I can’t say I was just following orders when I fried the colonel, any more than when I stamped that kid’s skull in.

I’m glad I’ve managed to get all this down, love, because they’ll be coming for me soon. I don’t know quite who now the colonel’s dead, and I don’t know quite what they’ll do with me. Better not let them catch me writing this. It’s not so much they don’t want the public at home to know how we treat prisoners. It’s more they don’t want it to get out that the dirty bombs they dropped on the population have given some of them very strange powers.