#came back wrong

“I’ve missed you,” you say softly. 

“Missed you too.”

It's not much better when you bring him home. There's a big welcome home party for him — his pa and his great Aunt Betty and all the neighbours who used to say he was such a good kid — and none of them seem to notice the change. He smiles at everyone and laughs politely at their jokes, but his arm is heavy around your waist the entire time.

When the party is over and evening starts creeping into night, you find yourself giving one excuse after the other so you won't be alone with him. 

“You really ought to drive Aunt Betty home. Her eyes aren't the best anymore.”

“I'll just run these leftovers over to the neighbours. You know how the kids love cake.”

“Just go on up to bed without me. I want to get this mess cleaned up.”

But all your excuses run dry eventually. He walks with you over to the neighbours and tells the kids he'd be happy to send over some cookies tomorrow. He helps you sweep up and wipe the tables, even though he's still in his dress blues and you know how much he hates to get them dirty. 

When the house is spotless and the moon is high, you finally have no way of avoiding him.

“I thought about you all the while I was gone,” he says at last. You can't read the expression on his face. “I did everything I could to get back to you.”

You expect him to kiss you, or touch you with that fire all returning soldiers are rumoured to have. He doesn't. He just gets ready for bed and sleeps on the very edge of the mattress. 

You tell yourself that you're being paranoid. Who knows what terrible things he saw during the war? Of course he's going to be a different man after all that violence and blood. 

The next morning, you make him his favourite breakfast. You rest your palm on his thigh while he pushes it around his plate. He doesn't eat a single bite. 

“What would you like to do today?” you ask. 

“Whatever you want. As long as we're together.”

That's another strange thing about him — he's oddly subdued. The man he was before would be all over you, calling you baby and darling and dollface. He'd be proposing half a dozen different places to visit. 

You tell yourself that your old fiancé will come back with time. Maybe he just needs to adjust to being back home. 

A month passes, and then another. He doesn't kiss you. He doesn't hold you at night. You don't see him eat a single thing.

You still love him. Of course you do. But oh, it's hard. You might as well be living with a stranger. 

“What have I done wrong?” you ask him eventually. “Why won't you touch me?”

He looks guilty. And maybe a little frightened. 

“I…can't. I'll hurt you. You don't understand how badly I want you, how much I wanted you while I was gone.”

“Please.” You touch his cheek. “Please, just be my fiancé again.”

When you stand on your toes to kiss him, he goes perfectly still. His lips are cool, and he tastes of pine. 

“Don't,” he says when you move closer. “I'm not safe. Not for you.”

You pull away, but can't hide the hurt and anger you feel. 

“What's the point then? If you won't have me, then maybe we shouldn't be together at all.”

He flinches when you pull off your engagement ring and slam it against his chest. But he doesn't follow you when you leave. 

Getting your own apartment and sleeping alone is less of a transition than you thought it would be. You were alone when he was gone, and you were alone when he came back, too. It hurts. It hurts deep inside you, and most mornings you have trouble forcing yourself out of bed. 

You tell yourself that it's for the best. He doesn’t want you, not really. If he did, he would have fought harder to keep you. You try to forget about him, mourn him as though he died overseas. 

It doesn't work. And when he finally comes to get you back, some part of you isn't all that surprised.

He comes for you on the night of your anniversary. 

You wake up to a cold breeze, and when you open your eyes, your bedroom curtains are fluttering in the open window. 

“Don't scream,” he tells you pleasantly. He's sitting in an armchair in the corner of your room and you're so shocked to see him that you make no sound at all. 

“I thought staying away from you would be the best thing for you,” he says. “But it wasn't any good, not a bit. I kept thinking about you like I was still at war.”

He's in his field uniform. Even though it's clean, the front of it is ripped to shreds. He fingers the holes in his shirt. 

“Machine gun. Hurt like a bitch. When I died, you were the last thing I thought about. More than the panic, more than the fear of death, it was you.”

You sit up slowly. You can't take your eyes off him. 

“What are you?”

He shrugs. “I don't know. I just know that I died, and they had to leave me behind. There are strange things over there, stories I used to laugh at when we were first deployed. When I woke up, those stories didn't seem all that funny anymore.”

It's his eyes, you realise slowly. It's his eyes that are the most different thing about him. The same colour, the same shape. But you get the sense that something old and terrible is staring out at you.

“What did this to you?”

He sighs and rubs his jaw. “I don't know that either. But I don't get hungry anymore. I tried eating a few times, out of curiosity, but it all tastes like mud. I don't sleep, I don't dream. Nothing.”

“When we were in bed together…”

“I was awake the entire time. When you fall asleep, I like to watch you. You can't understand how much you mean to me. You’re the one thing that kept me going.”

“You say that. You say you love me. So why hide this from me?”

“Would you have believed me?”

You aren't sure you believe him now either. The logical part of your brain is telling you that there's no way a dead soldier can just get up off the battlefield and come home. But those eyes…

He sighs again and leans forward with his elbows on his knees. His dog tags swing on their chain, catching the moonlight. 

“I don't know what I am. I don't know if there's heaven or hell or if I can even die again. All I know is that I love you. I want to be with you. Staying away is impossible, and…dangerous.”

“Why dangerous?”

“Because I want you all the more when I can't see you. It's like I need to mark you up just so I know you're mine. I thought I loved you already, but now I burn up at the thought of being without you.”

Your dead fiancé stands up slowly. You're not afraid of him, because deep down you get the sense that he's still the man who loves you. No, you're far more afraid of the thing you can feel right below the surface. The magic or curse or hoodoo that's keeping him alive. 

“Will you let me kiss you, knowing what you know now? Knowing what I am?” 

There's only one answer you can give him. Despite your fear, despite the deep-seated sense of wrongness, he's always loved you. And you've always loved him. 

The lonesomeness of the high mountains could be crippling, but it was being around your menace of a husband that truly made life there hard. He was the only man in your clan who would take you, and your family would rather lie in their graves to rot than send off one of their own to a traitorous neighboring village.

None of that mattered now, when you were so far from any form of companionship or civilization, your desperation leading to the point of grasping at the few straws your distant, cold husband would offer.

But that man wasn't here, not in this house. What remained of his hollow vessel was unholy, a beast of small resemblance.

The details were all there: dirty off-white field shirt, cracked leather suspenders, even the strong gash of scar across his knuckles, the one that gripped the reins so tightly they twisted in his fingers.

"You're home." Was all you could mutter.

Not, 'where have you been' or 'I was worried sick;' when speaking to your husband, most words would float right past him.

The mud on his boots slid against the oak floors, leaving a wet, thumping sound as he trudged through the living room. Small remains in the fireplace was left in glowing embers, dying flames casting shadows upon your husband's face.

You had never stared long at anything above his shoulders, either out of worry of him striking you for doing so, or maybe fear of finding him repulsive to look at, knowing he was all you had until your life's end.

But seeing him now, his face didn't look much different. A sharp frown turned down his lips, his strong nose inhaling, exhaling so quietly you might not hear him breathe in a silent room; but his chest heaved in wild ups and downs.

Another step forward. The front door was left open, and you could see the summer fireflies landing on the porch outside. A shallow dirt line followed his trail up the steps, as if his boots had been sliding in the dirt all the way home.

You held the oil lamp further away from your face, illuminating the dirt smeared across his. His hair was slick, covering his eyes like dripping ink.

"Want a bath?"

You spoke louder, voice still hoarse from sleep. He didn't look right, and it wasn’t just the dirtiness. Was there some sort of attacker that shook him? maybe a steep fall from one of the narrow roads down the hill?

Not quite...  there was something deeper under his skin that was inherently different. His smell, like that of petrichor and iron. As he moved, one arm swung lower than another, his back hunched in a way that made him look broader.

As he walked, his leg cracked in such a loud pop it almost made you jump. Splatters of dark speckled his cotton shirt, becoming brighter as he neared.

It was like watching an injured animal try to scoot itself deeper into the forest, letting itself suffer rather than stop to spare the pain. But instead of a creature trying to escape, he was languidly dragging himself at you.

"You sound... tired. You should get to bed."

Despite the gnawing sense of dread beginning to curl in your stomach, you stood your ground, half of your body leaning from out of your shared bedroom. You'd do your spousal duties, take care of him, so long as he stopped scaring you. 

As you listened to him, you realized Bettie couldn't be heard in her stall, and there were no hoove prints following the fresh trail of mud near the front door. Where had she gone? Had he lost her in the high mountains, leaving my her to roam aimlessly in the wide plains?

Or maybe, something had gotten her, your husband barely making it out himself; it would certainly explain the state he was in.

His body cracked with each aching move, back twisting in a way where his ribs jutted beneath his skin, twisting again for his left leg to snap back in place. Before you knew it, his face was hovering, drifting only inches away. Along the dry wall his hand grazed to create a black streak, sliding over the only picture you kept of your wedding day. He was so tall he barely fit in the yellowed picture; though his height was noteable, it never scared you until tonight.

Along with it, his hands... they hung low to the ground, the one resting upon the wall now coming towards you. It grasped foreward for you, opposite to the oil lamp in your grip. Dirt and something thick, like molasses, was stuck beneath his fingernails.

"Mmhn..."

Something guttural came from his lips, his mouth parting with a black thickness foaming at the corner. It glued between his teeth, swallowing his tongue as it drooled down his chin.

This wasn't him. It was his body-- or atleast what you could remember of it. They were pieces of him but they didn't fit right. He looked like a corpse left forgotten and dunked in oil, but he smelled only of rainwater and highland grass, nothing dead following him. Yet, the smell on his hands, the one that came to rest upon your cheek, cupping at your jaw, it was like rotting flesh.

His fingers rigidly stroked your cheek, using his thumb to smear a mixture of black beneath your eye. So cold, the touch sent a shock down to your feet, leaving you frozen still.

You might've not known your husband, not his voice or a solid memory of his face. But this was... something from outside. Someone. But it wasn't the man who promised to hold you in sickness and health.

A wet smear from his finger drew down your lip, the caress so gentle and inexplicably foreign.

Through the croak of his chest, he strained to speak through the black trenches of his mouth.